Coraggio Consulting Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, May 5, 2026 Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia Length: 5h 28m (video) Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M4g_CGPmrM 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 2026-10-27. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:06:14] - The question is to order at 11:55 a.m. I call on Dr. Reed for a discussion on the Skyview High School and Western Pyramid boundaries. - Thank you, Ms. Dixit. We're running just a scooch late, so I'm not gonna go into much of an introduction other than to say Mr. Gordon and Mr. Smith will be sharing the work. [00:06:36] Mr. Smith has been, if you will, guiding this work on the opening of the new high school and our pyramid work. We also have other staff on board who have been part of those conversations. So Mr. Gordon, I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to you and then I'll probably make a couple comments following the presentation. [00:06:57] So thank you, Ms. Dixon. - Hey, good morning all. Today's session provides a comprehensive update on the Skyview High School Boundary process. We will walk through key milestones, provide some background, give an update on the 2232 process, and we'll talk about A&E, architectural engineering procurement services, some community feedback that we received, and we'll run through three draft scenarios. [00:07:22] Goal is to inform the board and frame a discussion ahead of future community engagement and decision points. The school boundary was initially paused from a division-wide boundary review to allow for thoughtful planning after property acquisition. [00:07:37] This approach assures decisions on school type, timing, and boundaries are aligned and informed by community input. Earlier concepts were preliminary. This is the first structured opportunity to develop boundary collaborative with the community. A formal kickoff boundary development was held at Skyview High School in the Western Pyramids was held on the 25th of March, 2026. [00:08:01] This process is governed by school board policy 8130 and follows an expedited adjustment framework. This is appropriate given the capacity pressures and the opening of a new high school. We are applying the same priorities and criteria used in the comprehensive reviews, including proximity, capacity, and program continuity. [00:08:20] Community engagement remains central and is structured per regulation 8130. In parallel, the 2232 land use process is underway and it will enable the site use as a public facility. [00:08:36] This process is structured in four phases, data collection, scenario development, refinement, and final recommendation. We have transitioned into initial community input and draft scenarios into refinement. The community engagement is occurring in two waves and to ensure iterative feedback. [00:08:55] The goal is to bring forward a well-vetted recommendation for school board action in potentially June or the July timeframe that we'll talk about later. This slide depicts capacity pressure across the Western school pyramids, particularly at Centerville and Chantilly. [00:09:11] Several schools are operating above program capacity, even higher when excluding modular units. Skyview High School is a critical strategy to relieve overcrowding and rebalance utilization across the region. Boundary decisions will focus on aligning enrollment with available capacity while minimizing disruption where possible. [00:09:32] Again, I'd like to reinforce the need for the Western high school because of the high school capacity utilization across the Western pyramids. Now looking at the 2232 land use process update, this process is progressing through required county reviews and public engagement. [00:09:50] Multiple meetings have been conducted with a land use and transportation committee and includes a neighboring HOA called Creekside. A planning commission hearing is scheduled for May 13th. This process is essential to secure the approval for the site's public use. [00:10:06] This process is on track. We executed a, I'm not talking about the engineering and architectural solicitations. We executed a competitive procurement with A&E services for A&E services in accordance with policy 8220.5 and the Virginia Public Procurement Act. [00:10:26] The RFP was issued on March 5th. Eight proposals were received and evaluated a structured, criteria-based process. A top-rate firm has been identified, and fee negotiations are currently underway. The goal is to bring forward a contract award recommendation to the board in June. This keeps design activities aligned with the project schedule and opening timeline. [00:10:47] Now getting into some other details for the request for proposal, or the RFP, is basically broken into three components. There's a main building renovation piece, there's a shell building tenant fit-out piece, and then there's a site improvement supporting a full high school experience so looking at the main building this project will repurpose and modernize existing interior spaces to meet high school instructional needs underutilized and open areas will be converted into functional classroom space to maximize capacity with where feasible staff work rooms and elementary pre-skate pre-k spaces will be reconfigured to support high school [00:11:27] programming standards design will ensure full alignment with high school and structural requirements including appropriate classroom sizes layouts and support spaces necessary upgrades to the building systems stability and life safety we incorporated into to support the increased capacity and revised use the existing swimming pool will remain unchanged allowing us to focus resources on instructional and core support spaces looking at the shell buildings the two shell buildings will undergo a corporate apartment sorry will undergo a complete interior build out to support high school operations. This includes delivery of both general education and specialized [00:12:05] instructional spaces. Each building will be equipped with appropriate support areas including collaboration and operational spaces. Full building systems and code compliant infrastructure including plumbing restrooms will be installed to meet occupancy requirements. These buildings will provide critical additional capacity and program flexibility as a school grows. [00:12:24] Looking at site improvements supporting the full high school experience, site upgrades will ensure the campus supports a comprehensive high school program. Athletic facilities will be enhanced including stadium improvements, track and field, and tennis courts. Supporting elements such as concessions, press boxes, ticketing, and storage will be incorporated into will be incorporated to enable full event operations. Asphalt play areas and outdoor activity spaces will be improved to support student use throughout the day. Lighting systems for fields and site areas will be upgraded to improve safety, usability, and community spaces or community access. These site investments will will ensure the campus function as a complete modern high school environment [00:13:03] for students in the community. Looking at key dates, community engagement on initial scenarios occurred last week, April 28th and 30th. Today's work session provides direction ahead of next engagement round plan for May 28th and 30th. [00:13:19] The superintendent's recommendation to the board, it was originally planned for June. Again, we'll talk about later about how that pushes to July possibly. These milestones are tightly aligned to maintain schedule for a school opening. When looking at community feedback overview, As of last Tuesday, we had received over 1,400 responses reflecting strong community engagement. [00:13:39] Feedback has been submitted across multiple languages, reinforcing broad participation. This input is actively informing scenario refinement and decision-making. Continued engagement remains a priority as we move into the next phase. Looking at community feedback from the two engagements we had last week on April 28th and 30th, currently we've received over 5,000 MAP comments and we're still counting. [00:14:03] We've had over 20,000 address searches and featured clicks where, you know, someone's clicking on a school is almost 90,000 clicks. We've had over 12,000 unique visitor IDs. [00:14:19] And then when you incorporate the questions that were received in person and online last week, with the amount, we've had over 400 questions that were submitted in person and online. And then I've personally seen at least 150 emails or so have come in to the leadership within the district. [00:14:38] When looking at a respondent's profile, the majority of respondents are parents of current students with strong representation from elementary families. This indicates a high level of interest for families who will be directly impacted by future boundary changes. When looking at geographic distribution, participation is geographically diverse with the highest concentration from Herndon. [00:15:02] This aligns with areas expected to experience and most significant boundary considerations. When looking at school representation, strong participation from Carson Middle School and Crossfield Elementary School communities, this reflects engagement from key feeder patterns likely to be impacted by boundary adjustments. [00:15:18] When looking at community priorities, families are prioritizing factors such as proximity, stability, and program alignment. These priorities will be balanced alongside capacity and operational considerations in the scenario refinement. When looking at slides 16 and 17, We'll cover community concerns, feedback highlights, concerns focused on specific high schools, particularly Westfield, Oakton, South Lakes, and Chantilly. [00:15:45] Themes included overcrowding, feeder pattern, continuity, and distance, and potential disruption. These concerns are being incorporated into additional scenario adjustments. So now we'll go through slides 18 through 21, where we'll talk about scenario options. [00:16:02] These scenarios represent initial options developed using capacity data, feeder patterns, and community input. Each scenario balances trade-offs between utilization, proximity, and stability. These are not the final recommendations, rather they are tools to gather feedback and refine options. [00:16:18] The next phase will focus on narrowing and improving these scenarios based on stakeholder input. WXY, who is our consultant, looked at current state. The existing bounding structure reflects modern balance but growing strain. While 22 schools are currently at target utilization, only 15 can accommodate future growth with seven supporting capacity deficits. [00:16:39] The average student travel distance currently sits at 2.42 miles, and the system includes 11 split feeders contributing to continuity and community concerns. So what you see in front of you is the first scenario, scenario one, which is titled Balanced Improvement Approach. [00:16:55] Improves utilization while maintaining a moderate level of stability. It reduces schools nearing capacity deficit to one and improves travel distances to 2.27 miles. However, it requires rezoning approximately 12.8% students. Split feeders are reduced to eight representing a net improvement and alignment while maintaining a balanced trade-off between change and operational benefit. Looking at scenario two which is titled stability focus approach minimizes disruption with the least amount of student reassignment at 9.9 percent while achieving the strongest utilization out for 25 schools at [00:17:29] target at the highest capacity to absorb growth. Travel distance improves to 2.29 miles however this option increases split feeder patterns to 13 negatively impacting feeder alignment along long-term continuity when looking at scenario three alignment and efficiency approach maximizes feeder pattern alignment and operational efficiency it produces the fewest split feeders that's six and the shortest average travel time at 2.26 miles while maintaining strong utilization improvements this scenario requires the greatest level with 13.8 students being rezoned representing [00:18:07] the most significant community impact among the options. Overall, each scenario represents a distinct trade-off. Scenario one balances and disruption, scenario two prioritizes stability and capacity but at the expense of feeder alignment, and scenario three delivers the strongest long-term structural alignment and efficiency that requires the most change. [00:18:28] These scenarios provide a structured framework for decision making allowing leadership to weigh in, to weigh capacity needs community impact transportation considerations and feeder pattern and integrity in determining a preferred path forward so in closing i thank the board and community for a continued engagement feedback and direction from this session will directly inform the next iteration of scenarios and we remain on track for a june-tuly recommendation to the board decision so thank you stand by for your questions uh dr reed wants to make some comments yeah as [00:19:02] i mentioned intro i have a couple comments to make one thank you this is a large body of work recall board and community watching while the western boundary process is working our abilities team is also meeting in four other hotspot areas across the county doing boundary work right now that will be brought forward to the board by January of 27 for the fall of 27 so as we are looking at this timeline right now and looking at the feedback as we want to be responsive to [00:19:37] community feedback we really believe at this point that we should have a third cycle as part of this review initially the consultants were planning to come back with two scenarios in May and then that would go from there to a recommendation I in reviewing that with staff we feel like we really need to come back with three scenarios in May not to because we're not ready to narrow it yet giving given the breadth of feedback so I think we would like the consultant to come back with three scenarios in May and we have those [00:20:14] meetings set and then we'd like to add a cycle of review after that that's public again we want to make sure we get this right and we want to make sure we're thoughtful about hearing our community's feedback so I would propose that while we had discussed June as being a board vote that minimally we move the board vote to the second meeting in July which would give us an opportunity to take a third cycle publicly to the community before it comes back for a final review and recommendation to the board so I did want to make that comment and in large [00:20:54] part when we posted this Tuesday we've had other interactions and we've reviewed more feedback and just feel like we need to take a very measured approach at this time. So I would certainly be advocating to extend this a bit and have one more cycle. [00:21:13] Another way that we've discussed to take this one more look is to really be more focused about this being a feeder pattern and high school boundary look at this point. I know that there were several elementaries that were in play originally in the original division-wide work. [00:21:33] And I think Mr. Gordon, as we reviewed that, that was Virginia Run, I believe in Bull Run, that were part of the elementaries which we paused when we said we were gonna pause the Western Boundary work. And I know there have been several other elementaries that have come into play with several of the early consultant maps. [00:21:52] One of those Fox Mill and then another, I don't know if Crossfield's actual boundaries, what was it, Lee's Corner? So really, as we look at that, I think if we wanna get the high school boundaries thoughtfully reviewed, I think it would also be my recommendation that we don't address elementary boundaries of the individual elementaries with a particular recommendation, rather that can be part of our next five-year look. [00:22:20] However, we do need to address the elementary feeder placement because it's critical that we understand where our elementaries, as they currently are boundaried, what feeder pattern they'll go to. So I think if we can more laser-like focus on the task in front of us and do another round, which would be a measured approach to review, I think that those are adjustments that I would like to recommend at this point based on our staff review. [00:22:53] - Okay, with that, we will go ahead and start our discussion, Dr. Anderson. - Thank you. Just in response to what you offered, I'm kind of looking at the sky view work a little bit removed because I don't understand all the nuances of the neighborhoods. [00:23:09] So I do defer quite a bit to those who do, but it seems, but I've seen the emails. That much is true. I've heard, or I'd rather read the concerns and I think slowing down, sometimes you have to go slow to go fast, I think is a good thing. [00:23:26] could use that in more than one place so i appreciate that you're exercising that discretion here so i have no concerns unless people who are closer to the action do regarding the july date and just to make sure that i fully understand because i really need to build my knowledge based on this in this conversation the high school boundaries will continue and that's what we'll be voting on in july and the elementary work will be at a future date is that what i should take away [00:24:00] from your comments i think that we have to decide yes i would take that away okay my comments yes i i know a word yes yes okay thank you for keeping it simple um my other question is for mr gordon as you went through some of these scenarios of which there are three so you're asking the um consultant to bring more than these three scenarios so dr anderson and again for those also listening the process we've previously gone through is the consultant provides scenarios then those based on [00:24:35] feedback those scenarios are revised or adjusted we're not going to create sort of brand new scenarios but they're going to revise the three that are there what my request is and i've talked with the team is that the consultant was going to pair those down to two with the next round i don't think we're ready for that yet i think we need to revise and bring three and then the third round we would go back go down to two to really hear feedback from the community so each time these revisions should get tighter and tighter because they really i mean we value our community [00:25:10] input and we did in the division-wide work and we want to make sure we integrate that feedback into subsequent drafts that the consultant will bring forward okay thank you that is helpful in helping me understand what you have in here in front of us mr. Gordon as you were presenting you kind of shared some data regarding the number of students that would be impacted and also bus timelines and some other pieces that I don't see here what can I find that information because they're they seem to only be in your notes I didn't see them in the [00:25:43] powerpoint there was a handout that the consultant provide that at the at the two engagements here we have it electronically I think we could probably cannot be posted with today I have this online I have whatever this is but I don't think I have that be added to today's converse on today's conversation since he did make reference to that handout I'm asking miss that low thank you I'm I would need a copy of the handout yes we can add it super so then [00:26:18] I'll ask my questions about that once I've reviewed it couple of things slide six I thought and again please correct me if I'm wrong our aim for skyview was 2,500 is to that has that changed 2,000 or maybe it's me who's okay I see the body I read the language I got it that was fairly unanimous so I'm going to skip to the next piece the what's that III read the room yes regarding the 2232 I [00:26:56] hate to bring this into the room but I I have found them to be a little bit unpredictable because that's what history has shown me at least in my area do we have a plan b in case that the may 13th day does in case that there's a delay to their vote on may 13th because we've been here before so at this point in time as we're working through the process we're working hand in hand with our counterparts at the county and we're not tracking [00:27:29] an issue for for there to be a plan b we will go for uh presentation on the 13th all the preliminary meetings that we've been required to do are in line and we're not anticipating any issues at this time okay i'm gonna leave that there um then moving on to slide eight um the fee proposal can you help me understand that a little bit better this is a little bit outside of my bailiwick but what particularly on slide eight this what's the purpose of the rfp or what's the fee proposal [00:28:06] so i don't know if so we're through the rfp process we're looking to hire an architect and engineering firm to start the design process to do the the three the three components of the of the build out, which would be the main building. [00:28:21] - Is that a different charge outside of their just regular plan, scope of work, and cost? - So you hire an A&E service. So the fee is to do the design work. And so we're in negotiation piece and we're not really, we can't discuss amounts or the vendor that we're working with for a discussion. [00:28:43] - Sure, sure. - You'll see that when we come forward for approval, you'll see that then. - Okay, I think I'll ask you my question separately, but the question that I do wanna ask here is, where's the funding coming from for this work? 'Cause I know we had moved some things around for the purchase of the building. [00:28:59] I don't know if I'm clear on where the funds are coming from for the rest of the work. - It's through the capital funds, capital bonding fund. - I'll take a go back, please. [00:29:15] - Hey, and I just wanted to share some guiding questions to help us further, you know, preliminary thoughts about the boundaries, feedback we've received from constituents, how will the renovations, construction, impact students and educators next year and the concerns especially of board members whose constituents are affected. [00:29:33] So just want to put those out there. So Mr. McDaniel, then Mr. Leidy, and then Mr. McElveen. Thank you. [00:29:50] I have been eyeballed deep in this in the last week and a real quick housekeeping item on slide six where we talk about the capacity and I've said this before and I'll say it again and again until I'm blue in the face, that does not include future development that is not yet under active construction. [00:30:07] So those numbers, even though under our calculations they say what they say, it does not include things that the Board of Supervisors has approved that has yet turned on those projects. That's a very important thing to keep saying because those numbers are going to change. [00:30:27] On that, based on the community feedback that I, and I've gotten a lot more than 150 emails, probably not as much as the magisterials have, but I've gotten a lot of emails. I appreciate the desire to narrow this into a middle school, high school adjustment and leave the elementaries off the table for the time being. [00:30:45] And there was a couple of different elementary changes that I think were already in the works and were vetted and requested, so to speak, by the community to make some changes during the countywide review. So those are fine. But the ones that have been proposed as part of this that have led to consternation, I do agree those need to be pulled back. [00:31:04] And as far as the push, I don't have an issue adding a third round of review to it. That July 16th date makes sense to me. I would not want this to go beyond recess because we need to give the community an answer. I mean, I was an advocate for this to be done during the division-wide review. [00:31:22] It is what it is at this point, but we don't need to continue to kick this can any more than we absolutely have to. So adding that third review, having the final vote on July 16th, I don't have an issue with that. Regarding the 2232, I was actually at the PC, I was at the meeting a week or so ago at Carson Middle School where we did the meeting for the planning commissioner, Evelyn, and it was a meeting of one. [00:31:47] One member of the public showed up for that meeting, which in land use, that's not a bad sign necessarily. It means that the project and the proposal isn't controversial. And I'm also going, as the PC liaison, I'm also going to be testifying before the planning commission with some comments their public hearing on the 13th at 7:30 p.m. if any of my colleagues would like to join. [00:32:11] I will circulate my comments to the full board prior to to hopefully have it be an official board statement. But based on my knowledge of how this land use process has been tracking, I don't have particular heartburn about a 22-32. [00:32:27] My final question before my time runs out, can someone speak to when we're going to actually come back with a phasing in transportation plan? We have to have the boundaries in place, obviously, to run those calculations. But I do believe the board needs to codify that and solidify it because this is outside the normal boundary review process. [00:32:48] So Mr. McDaniel, as you mentioned, we do need the boundaries to come back with that. So if we do the vote on the boundaries in July, I think we could either talk about transportation and phasing at that meeting or the first meeting in August when we return. I think staff would probably prefer a little more time but if we wanted to you know make those simultaneous we can certainly you know run those scenarios and numbers and have that for you at that meeting as well thank you miss lady and then mr. McElbeen thank you and I want to thank staff I was at the Thursday [00:33:25] in person at the Thursday Skyview boundary meeting and as I told the constituents at the end we do listen these meetings do matter and I think that it's been heard loud and clear the concerns I also want to up back that I did have several people ask state make a statement to me which is the loudest people get heard and I also said that actually we listen to all people so encourage people to use their resources their BRAC committee members if they think they're in a vocal minority that we still value that input as we move [00:34:02] forward and and grateful that in an agreement in regards to I believe it's mostly Lease Corner and Fox Mill or any that were added in this particular round that we're not in previously rounds I also am grateful to listening to the community wanting this a little more time and offering a third review I think that's fantastic I do have a question based on my colleague's question when you're talking about transportation phasing in perhaps early august or we're talking about for fiscal year 27 28 yes ma'am because we already have the decision in place [00:34:42] for the fall of 26 so we're a full year out and honestly even if we did it in august it's going to be earlier you know well ahead of schedule so thank you i just wanted to verify for folks listening that but that's we're talking about a year away because the board only voted on next year so no most importantly I just want to thank staff and thank the community members who've come out and shared their concerns I'm very excited about Skyview opening and I'm very excited about what I believe [00:35:15] enrollment numbers to be so it's an exciting time thanks thank you so much so I have some questions about the physical plant since you touched on that in your initial slides so the first question is can you walk us through a little bit more about what you're envisioning for the two external buildings that that design so yeah so yes sir so it's there are two shell buildings and this is as I described if we're looking to build those out to support a traditional pathway traditional high school settings so [00:35:50] there you've been in the shells they have some bathrooms already but we need based on student load. And if I remember correctly, it's about 10 classrooms per building that we'll be building out. So potentially 20 additional classrooms. [00:36:06] - Okay. - Designed to our current ed specs. - So this is an opportunity for us to look at single stall bathrooms instead of group bathrooms. Is that something that's being considered? What are the current bathrooms in the building? [00:36:23] - I don't remember the current configuration. It's been a while since I've been there, but I'll take that note back to see how that might affect future design. So single stall bathrooms. - Right, yeah. given the policy issues we're dealing with, and I think preferences in general. [00:36:39] That would be my preference. And so can we also talk a little bit more about the sports fields? You talk just very broadly in the slides about kind of reconfigurations to the lighting and building out the track. [00:36:54] Are we going to be adding additional fields at this point? - So there are some spaces for additional fields. So if you've been to the site, there's the main field, and on the other side of the building. Down below that, there's an area for a field, and on the other side of the building, there's an area for kind of a temp field as there is right now. [00:37:10] So fitting in a tennis court will be, you know, as large as some other schools, probably not, but we'll have to deal with the site footprint that we have. - Are we going to be encroaching onto that, what I would call like liminal space between Carson and this facility? [00:37:29] Is there any plan to use that? - Haven't seen, you know, haven't, don't know where the path goes, but right now I don't have a plan to do that, but we'll have to see what is needed truly to fit out the school. - Got it. Separately, can you tell us a little bit about Centerville High School renovation? [00:37:48] Is there any update on that then? - So nothing has changed from where we previously were. We're still in a far discussion with the county. - Great, that's it for now. - Full area racial discussion. - Thank you. [00:38:06] - Mr. Moon. - I'm not gonna ask you a more question about Centerville, but I'm gonna ask you questions about next iteration of options for the board to consider for the boundary-wise. Would you, at that time, you bring back the next iteration, would you bring some more specific numbers, number of students that will be affected at each of the schools that's gonna be impacted by the scenarios? [00:38:34] I appreciate the fact that you gave us a percentage, 10%, 14%, et cetera. Those are good, but I also wanna see numbers. - Yes sir, I can provide numbers now if you would like. - For the next one. yes sir okay we have mystics and then I will go so thank you mr. Gordon for the presentation actually being this in my district I did receive more than thousand emails and messages from the community and it is really something everybody is [00:39:11] thinking about right now in the district so having said that it's lovely to get the community engaged I really enjoyed the community meetings mr. Smith you did a great job at the listening to all the parents and there was we had 300 more than 300 online and more than 100 in-person community members and the word is going around yesterday I had a meeting with I was expecting one person there were 50 people in the zoom meeting so you know because the PTAs and PTOs are getting together and coming so my I guess one of the question has with the [00:39:50] maps some of the under enrolls rocky run and they showing students are moving from rocky run to Liberty and we really don't want to lose any more students at rocky run because it's already under enrolled school and that is one of the things my community is really emailing me about other than the elementary school distance is a big issue like they want students to all the parents want students to go to their close by near a school and and I see that on the chart 17 that [00:40:25] that's one of the concern that schools too far from where they'd be you know boundaries suggesting them to go so I'll just you know maybe and quite this question for dr. Reed is you know we talked about elementary school so are we considering bull run Virginia run still as a part of that boundary discussion or all elementary school we are kind of pausing right now so I believe we're pausing the elementary discussion at this time so I don't believe the other [00:41:02] schools were part of the we ended up not taking action on them in the full division review so I would also say that with regard to the the distance and the time on the phone last evening with the parent and there's a difference right the consultant did a geographic boundary adjustment without necessarily understanding the roads and the traffic at certain hours of the day and time in our county so that's where the on the ground feedback is so important from our [00:41:37] families because when the consultants put their sort of best geographic or GIS and sort of technical recommendations then I think real people in real lives in real time have to say well that may make sense it doesn't for us based on traffic and time and congestion and people's work hours in different parts of the county so that feedback is going to come back and obviously is part of our calculus I also want to clarify that the BRAC similar to the division work the consultants put out the first their first drawings and then the BRAC [00:42:13] reviewed the feedback about those drawings and not review these initial drawings but they will be reviewing the feedback from the drawings before the next iteration so just wanted to clarify that as well that's good information to know so other than that I think Skyview overall has been such a welcoming you know schools in our community and people are excited to go and definitely all the tracks we have in the school I I want to just maybe check on the enrollments [00:42:49] data status if you want to share that sure and good afternoon everyone and I do want to thank the school board members who showed up at the community engagements events it was very comforting to be able to talk to the community and have school board members there to also hear those concerns as it relates to enrollment at skyview right now we're bumping up against 800 students who are enrolled at skyview for the fall we're also very excited about a water safety academy that we've been working very closely with ISD and transportation [00:43:25] to ensure that we can provide certifications in CPR lifeguarding water safety for students in 11th and 12th grade so an academy program bringing students into the school and that would be for up to a hundred students that's great news actually once we saw the swimming pool we were like this is you know dr. Reed mentioned this is gonna be a great addition to have our students certified and you know get employment after they're certified as a lifeguards [00:44:00] When we talk about the pre-K and maybe some other things, are we also including the enrollment or the program is not done yet, the pre-K program? - So we are not including pre-K in terms of enrollment at this time. [00:44:17] We know that the pre-K program, we haven't done anything with that space. We have the furniture. There are some programming discussions that are happening with pre-K and there were some issues where we wanted to hold the school for the 22-32 process to ensure that it's a high school and then work on some of the pre-K programming once that process continues, or it comes to an end. [00:44:38] - I think that's great. Thank you so much, those are my questions. - I will go ahead and take a turn and then we have it back to Dr. Anderson. So I want to summarize my understanding of this Skyview boundary work to date. [00:44:54] So the board approved to hire the consultants, WXY, to conduct the work. The consultants conducted outreach, survey went to the community, we have that survey data presented in the slides today. The superintendent sent scenarios to the board in the Friday letter on April 24th, I think it was, or 23rd, and then April 26th, the boundaries were published and that night we had a community meeting. [00:45:19] The BRAC committee did not review the scenarios. The school board did not have ample opportunity to provide input on the scenarios. I am finding the updates today far too cavalier for my liking and imprecise. [00:45:36] I think it's dismissive of the amount of real emotional heartache that thousands of students and families have experienced. And I think that it's evidence of the failure of this to be rolled out in a positive way. [00:45:55] When we did the comprehensive boundary review, one of the failed motions was that the superintendent conduct an evaluation and lessons learned. That was voted down by the board. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like lessons were learned because if last week we could have avoided putting out elementary school boundaries that today the superintendent said, it seems we're not and I will seek confirmation, all of this strife could have been avoided and now all of the extra money we're apparently gonna spend on a third review, which has yet to be identified in dollars. [00:46:31] We don't know that number and Mr. McElveen asked a budget question on how much the comprehensive boundary review was and we did not get a fulsome response. We got the number of the contract and then we were told something like 400 overtime hours were worked with no dollar price on that. [00:46:46] So this is evidence of repeated, imprecise, and cavalier approaches to one of the most sacrosanct things that people decide on in this county. Where to buy their homes, where to send their kids to school, where to invest in school. [00:47:02] I want my colleagues to please understand, so last Tuesday that came out and drew a line through Fox Mill Estates. And not only was that a whammy, the double whammy was the community had no idea that elementary schools would be discussed. They had in good faith participated for months in these discussions. [00:47:19] That Friday night, they had their amazing annual Matsuri event, their huge Japanese cultural program. And for me, it had a damper on it because we're so fraught. If we do not hold the superintendent accountable for how these processes roll out, We are not doing our jobs. [00:47:38] It is our right to know how much money is being spent. It is our right to know what she is proposing to the public more than 30 seconds in advance. Tremendous pain has been done in this community. I have further questions, but I will wait for now, because I'm still recovering from the emotion of it all. [00:48:00] Dr. Anderson, and then Mr. McElveen. - Thank you, I have a number of things, but I wanna be way late a little bit regarding the bathrooms that Mr. McElveen has mentioned. We've had multiple conversations, and they've all been kind of conversations about moving to single-stall bathrooms, and this has been happening since our first term on the board. [00:48:21] So my question to Dr. Reed is, what do we need to do as a board in order to move that from a conversation to an actual education? Do you want me to bring a forum topic, a motion, so that when we are looking at renovations, we are looking at any physical work, that single-stall bathrooms be the default rather than the gang bathrooms that we currently have. [00:48:46] - So that's a great question. I think in the design and construction phase, there's also a community permitting piece. I guess I would defer to you in terms of what would be required to ensure that maybe that's part of the RFP and the design piece. [00:49:02] I'm just wanting to make sure that it matches up with whatever permitting moves forward. - Ma'am, I just would say, in my 10 months here, it's a new topic for me. And I think I need a little time to talk with staff to make sure I fully understand what the second and third order effects are and would be willing to provide that information but i need to talk with staff and not create something that i'm you know not fully understanding sure happy to do that i just want to make sure that we are communicating to you that this is something that needs to happen and so how you get that working i'll circle back with you because i want to move beyond conversation on this because it's been ongoing since literally 2020. um second thing [00:49:41] is the enrollment um i know we've said this at well i haven't said this but i know it has been said over and over and over again that we were going to be beating people off and that we were going to have at least a thousand this year we are at 800 i think i'm surprised by that and i remember the conversations that we would be uh opening with up to a thousand students for the for the fall and i know that the school has been working very uh closely with community members uh the school [00:50:14] staff at at Skyview they have gone to our middle schools to do presentations they're providing we've had events every week since the beginning of the year for families to attend there's actually for those who are watching the work session at four o'clock today on Tuesdays they are available for tours at the building for those families who are interested in attending so we're still trying to recruit I say that we're still engaging with families and they're still helping families understand that Skyview could be an option for them oh okay the water [00:50:54] safety is that a lifeguard course or is it what you had discussed earlier which is to teach water safety to third grade students from the schools around the division so we're those are two different projects I'm still committed and we are still committed to working on a partnership with our Park Authority to provide OSU to provide water safety courses for our third graders here in Fairfax County but that's not what this is this is an Academy course that is [00:51:28] being developed to support really a WSI certification or equivalent we recognize that Fairfax County has a number of pools and it's an opportunity for our young people to earn a certification that would enable them to be employed as a lifeguard during the summers or during the times that even an indoor pools right that could be a year-round extra work so that's my understanding that what we're talking about here mr. Smith and you've been directly involved with this yes we're looking at a variety of certifications [00:52:02] advanced lifeguarding american heart association cpr american red cross water safety instruction american red cross first aid those would be the some of the certifications that students could receive and then quite possibly a pool operator's license for those students who may already have some of these certifications where they could learn more about the management of of a pool itself thank you and that would be just for the surrounding schools or available to more than just the schools that are listed here i don't know how far you've gone in that planning [00:52:38] so right now we're looking at working with trans to see how far to go based on student schedules as we think about academies across the the county wanting to ensure that we could provide transportation to those 11th and 12th grade students so that they could get back to their Bay School to take advantage of other coursework. So we're still looking at the catchment area on that for the academy, but we are offering it for 11th and 12th graders because we don't have 11th and 12th graders at Skyview yet. Sure, so I should deduce that the academy is going to be what our [00:53:13] current academies are. If you're geographically located in too remote of an area, you cannot have access, which is the very thing we've been trying to combat. At this point, again, without having information about the transportation piece, it would look like more of a traditional academy, geographically located. [00:53:34] Which is unfortunate. Well, I do think that, I mean, we have to seed, if you will, incubate pilot programs somewhere, and having a pool enables us to do that here. That doesn't mean that once we can get this academy program up and running, that we couldn't look at other pools in the county once the program is situated to expand programming to it just would have a different budget consideration if we need to rent full time sure I hear you but it just doesn't happen you know sixth grade in the middle school only in Mason district that is a very very clear example of that I do want to say one last thing because I see that my time is [00:54:13] going that can I finish this one statement miss Marin I I think there's been a huge opportunity that has been missed with all of this work I'm glad to hear you say Dr. Reed that the technical piece from the consultants whether it be WIZ through consulting it happens and it's fine and it's good on its face but it misses the opportunity to really understand what's happening in the neighborhoods what is the lived experiences in the neighborhoods and what [00:54:48] the community will or will not tolerate we did not do this in this process I don't think this board was properly leveraged to help support that we were on the side we watched the bus go past us we were not on the bus to help this be less difficult for the public that's a huge miss and I would be remiss if I didn't share this because we have to do better on that point Thank you Dr. Anderson. Mr. McLean. Thank you and thank you Dr. Anderson for that. The one thing I would correct you on I don't think they're called gang bathrooms I think they're group bathrooms. [00:55:29] I'm sorry I was a principal when I opened up a new school and they said we have gang bathrooms I'm like what? Construction told me there were gang bathrooms. So one question kind of following on Dr. Anderson's points I know there's been some county-wide communication that's gone out about potentially recruiting students from other parts of the county? [00:55:50] Do you want to speak to that at all? I think, you know, originally we talked about having the priority being to the five pyramids on the western part of the county, but if there were spaces available, that they would be available outside those five pyramids. [00:56:06] So there has been communication out about that and opportunities to see the facility for other students in the county. Got it. Okay. So I think to Mr. Smith's point, we are still, if the word isn't recruiting, we're still welcoming people to come. [00:56:24] - We're still welcoming people to look at the site and see if that's a choice for their child. - So when we think about this, the academy program here, you know, it's billed as an aviation academy. It sounds like it's moving to more of a air and water academy. Would you agree with that statement? [00:56:39] - Well, I don't know if it, I remember we did say it was gonna be a comprehensive high school with some strategic pathways. I do think that the pool presents a unique opportunity for us. And as we think about, maybe we could talk about air and water. [00:56:57] I don't know, but Mr. Smith, I'll defer. I don't want to put words in Mr. Jagle's mouth. - No, no, I do think that air and water, Air Force, Navy, I don't know, I don't want to go down that road. But it is an opportunity where, because we do have a pool, think that to take full advantage of the opportunities with the pool we also know that the pool is already set to support individuals with disabilities and we've had those discussions with our Department of Special Services of what future programming might look like for students as it relates to the pool as it [00:57:35] relates to therapy so I think that there are many opportunities for an aviation school that has a pool where there are opportunities where we utilize the pool to its fullest potential well I appreciated hearing about all those opportunities today so thanks for presenting that the pool facility management pool management certification is interesting to me I was actually a snack bar manager at a pool I would love to see I would love to see a snack bar certification we can create a snack bar Academy and we will ask you to be an instructor at the snack bar Academy I'm sure it comes to note it's no surprise [00:58:12] to my colleagues okay thanks everyone okay miss lady thank you and I believe that I heard we're close to 800 yes I think that's fantastic I do remember the conversation at the dais quite vividly and I think there were some folks who didn't think that from an opt-in perspective that we would get those numbers I also say that being there on the open house this past Saturday I was [00:58:47] ecstatic to talk to people from around the county who work in that area which is why it's a possibility for their children but also saw you know I don't know if it's been shared but mr. Jagels has talked about the Pete working with the PTSA to create a ride app where depending on where parents are coming from like we can't share addresses or emails but they can choose to share them that they can create their own hubs or their own carpools and I think that that's important to note because it does make it more [00:59:24] accessible than just the default of thinking that there is no transportation the other thing I'll say is as someone who's spent you know the you know i i mean i worked at tj for four years but working at marshall academy i mean marshall high school which has an academy at chantilly high school which has an academy i i did that by choice because i love the opportunities that are there but you know by design we didn't choose i mean someone at some point chose to put hvac at edison um and that's a long way for our folks to travel our kids can't access it right i mean i i don't [01:00:01] want to sit here at the dais and complain about my side of the county and how far it is there are areas where some opportunities are more amenable or more um you know sort of um they can get there um easier and i don't want um you know i i i'm excited about skyview and anything we do in this system any decisions we make um you know there's there's they're tough at times but i i just you know i think that what we're going to be doing with the academy making part of it an academy for [01:00:36] certain pathways is fantastic and i do think the water safety we'll figure it out for the whole county when it comes to the third graders um and i think it's a great resource so i just you know i understand the consternation some folks went through with the drafts that came out um and and hopefully now that's that they're you know celebrating what they are hearing today um because i just i want to uplift staff for listening and and pivoting pretty quickly um to incorporate that feedback um so i remain optimistic about what's going to happen at [01:01:13] skyview and just thank everyone for all the hard work thank you mr mcdaniel then mr moon thank you and i appreciate the update on the enrollment um situation i mean i i don't think there's anything particularly magic about the 1000 number um you know but it seems to certainly be trending in in that direction, and I have no, I have absolutely no doubt that we'll open and everything will be fine with a cohort of students that are going to enjoy this building and the amenities and the opportunities it has to offer. [01:01:42] You know, when consultants come to the table, they typically do a very rigid data analytics process, and that's clearly been done here. I would like to say that this presentation that the, and I was at both of the meetings at Skyview, one virtual, one in person, and the document that the consultants generated that was shared with the community is very professional it has a lot of data and it is a very good work product I was very impressed with the work that they've done in generating these scenarios that being said what our job is to do is to take that hard data and to marry it up with that community input [01:02:21] and that's us at this table that's having town halls that's engaging with constituencies I've done it which I have done extensively over the last week and that's a process that takes time so we'll get to the right decision and we will open the high school this fall and it will continue and this is going to be a great asset and a great opportunity for our students thank you thank you I just want to address the time I had asked the chair and vice chair about adjusting the time allowed on this agenda and I didn't get confirmation that we would be but clearly we need more time that's so I gave you an email [01:03:00] back that said that we would add the time on to the end of the day I must have missed that yes you must have but yes you received a response that said that we would add time on to the end of the day which is what I'm hoping we can do okay yeah that I guess that was unclear to me that we would if if you want to do it again this agenda and there's people here in the public you know we've got to be clear about what our agenda are and things change there was a very big change that happened last week with this topic that impacts tens of thousands of people so adjusting our agenda makes sense so given that it's now 10 to 12 and our clerks just informed me that [01:03:37] you know we need to keep going on the um on our agenda we will go ahead and pause here for skyview we do have two and a half hours for the calendar discussion which as i also said i do not think that is necessary given the hard work governance has done so i'm hard pressed to say to the public WHEN THEY CAN EXPECT FOR THIS BOARD TO RECONVENE ABOUT SKYVIEW IN THAT 3-5:30 TIME FRAME. [01:04:01] WELL, I ONLY SAW TWO MORE PLACARDS. COULD WE NOT GET THROUGH THOSE QUESTIONS AND THEN MOVE? WE HAVE A PANEL OF PEOPLE COMING AT 1:00, AND SO I WANT TO GIVE THE BOARD ENOUGH TIME TO GO AHEAD AND BREAK FOR LUNCH. BUT WE'RE GOING TO DO A FASTER LUNCH, AND THEN WE'RE GOING TO RECONVENE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. [01:04:18] SO WE CAN ABSOLUTELY MAKE SURE THAT WE PICK UP THE REST OF THE DISCUSSION AT THE END OF THE DAY. So I guess to members of the public, I would guess no earlier than 4 p.m. the board will reconvene a discussion about Skyview, but that seems to be it. So Mr. Moon, I know you were next. I also had further comments. [01:04:35] So with this, the board will go into a recess and shall we say reconvene at 1.15 to give us a reasonable amount of time to just, yes. Okay, so we will reconvene at 1.15. [01:15:28] If you can please take your seats. [01:31:52] Okay, so at 1.21, I'll call this work session on an artificial intelligence panel discussion to order. I'll turn it over to Dr. Reed. Thank you, Ms. Lady. So good afternoon. [01:32:08] And as we begin today's panel, and it's so good to see all of you here, I want to suggest that we frame the discussion around a really core idea that we've been contemplating, and that is how do we create a roadmap as a school division for implementing AI which improves human skills and not reduces or replaces them and i really want to thank uh richard colada for sort of framing that because we had a conversation in preparation for today's conversation and i think that's really an important way to think about framing it [01:32:41] how do we create a road map for implementing ai that improves our human skills our human capacity to problem solve to collaborate and to generate solutions for many of the challenges facing us and not about reducing or replacing them. [01:32:58] To have AI to be an assistant, which maybe helps free up time administratively, so we can spend more time with one another, I think is really exciting. So here in Fairfax, I know that that's where the premise we wanna start with is how to enable AI as a tool to strengthen our human capabilities, not reduce them. [01:33:18] And so I wanna make sure that as we listen to the panel this afternoon, I'm gonna cut my remarks short because we're running a little short on time. And I really want the board and our community to hear from our four experts in the field. [01:33:36] First of all, Dr. Richard Kablata, the CEO of ISTE and ASCD. And for those of you watching online, the bio slides have been posted. I also want to introduce Dr. Amarda Shehu. I may have not pronounced that correctly, Shehu, who is the chief AI officer for George Mason University, our higher education partner, and Yusuf Ahmed, the co-founder of PlayLab and our partner in our Meeting the Moment competition that we had earlier this year. [01:34:10] Also online, we have Dr. Allison Mishkin, the youth policy lead for OpenAI, who has joined us remotely this afternoon. We believe that the really diverse perspectives will provide some valuable insights, and we're looking forward to the conversation. [01:34:27] So at this time, I would like to turn it over to Mr. Sethi and Dr. Presidio as they are collaboratively leading this work here in the school division. So Mr. Sethi. - Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Reed and thank you to the panelists. We're gonna start with a quick slide deck, which Mr. Coletta is gonna lead us through to round the conversation and then go on and ask some questions to the panel from there on out. [01:34:53] - Well, thank you and thank you for the opportunity to spend some time here. I am thrilled to be here. I spend most of my life traveling around having meetings like this in districts all around the country. I am a parent of four FCPS students, two recently graduated, two that are in the Herndon Pyramid right now. [01:35:09] So I'm honored to be able to have a minute to be here with you all. I think the first, if we go back to the slide before real quick, I just wanted to set up, and these are just three slides, this will not be long, but I wanted to tee up the conversation in a way that I think could be helpful. And I found having had lots of these conversations before, some areas where we can kind of get caught up and I wanted to do that. [01:35:31] So my first point, my first ask is, before we dive too far into anything related to AI, it's useful to ask this question, what is your why for AI? What's your why for it, right? I think Dr. Reed just said something really, really powerful, this idea of thinking about AI, using AI to help students become better at doing uniquely human skills, right? [01:35:56] That's a great why. And I think you could have versions of that that align with what you want to do as a division. For example, our why in Fairfax County is that we believe AI should be used to help students be more curious, more creative, and more collaborative. [01:36:16] That's a good why. A good why is focusing on using AI to help students do their uniquely human skills better, as we talked about. Those are good whys. Just learning about AI 'cause it's here is not a good why. And I see school districts around the country falling into that. [01:36:34] We better do this, it's here, we better do this. And so trying to shift to that really thoughtful why. And again, for me, it would be about helping support human skills. So if we can, and I'm just gonna go to the next slide here. What I wanna share is there are four distinct use cases for AI in education. [01:36:49] And this is where we get wrapped up a little bit. I've been in lots of conversations where people are, you know, passionately arguing for one view and passionately for another. And then when you stop and say, well, what are you talking about when you say doing AI? You find out, you know, if you could see their thought bubbles pop up, they're actually thinking about very different things. [01:37:07] And so I just wanna lay this out here. There are four use cases. And I think my friend, Babak Mushaghani was here recently, and he and I were very aligned on this. He's also trying to help. So this will line up with what you heard from him. The first is using AI for school efficiency, right? [01:37:24] Doing things like helping to analyze data, data sets, doing things like helping to optimize hiring processes or identify more efficient bus routes or those important things, but it's for the efficiency of the school, that's one. Number two is for teacher efficiency. [01:37:42] Teachers, this is creating lesson materials, creating a rubric, drafting an email to a parent, maybe making some materials, differentiated instruction. That's the use case number two. Number three is learning about AI, right? Sometimes we call that AI literacy, right? [01:37:57] Learning about AI. What is AI? How does it work? What's an LLM? How does the data get processed? That's all that falls into bucket three. And then bucket four is learning with AI. It's using AI to help identify where there might be gaps in learning and suggesting opportunities to move forward. [01:38:17] It's getting feedback. It's practicing a conversation with AI before a student maybe has to present that in front of a class. It's getting personalized tutoring and support. It's also using AI as a brainstorming partner to help think more broadly about a topic than one might do on their own. [01:38:35] I set this up because I would invite you as you're having this conversation long after we all leave, as you're having this conversation, to be very thoughtful about which one of these you're talking about in the moment. Because the policies, the goals, the examples that you use all shift based on which one of these you mean. [01:38:51] And the last thing I'll say on this is, I would strongly encourage you to not lose focus on that fourth bucket. I feel like we get a lot of attention on number two, a lot of attention around number three, and often that fourth bucket of how do we learn with AI, how do we use AI to support learning, kind of gets left off. [01:39:12] And actually I believe that's probably the most important, they're all important, but I think that one's the most important as the role of the school. And so the last slide that I'll share and then I'll wrap up is we have a number of schools around the country and states that have reached out to us and said, great, we're in, we want to do that. How do we do it? [01:39:28] What are the skills? What does that look like? And so if you go to the next slide, we've created something called the profile of an AI-ready graduate. And these are six human skills. These are human skills being a learner, a researcher, a synthesizer, a problem solver, a connector and a storyteller, six human skills that we believe all students, by the time they graduate, will need to know how to use AI to do better. [01:39:54] And that's what the profile of an AI graduate is. And we have a more fleshed out version that has sub skills under all of these and can really get into details of what you should do. But these are the things that we want to see. When students graduate and go to their place of work or future learning, they're gonna be expected to know how to use AI to help get unstuck, right? [01:40:14] They're gonna be expected to know how to use AI to tell stories. And I don't just mean that in an entertaining way. I mean to capture hearts and minds about something they care about. They're gonna be expected to use AI to generate far more possibilities for problem solutions that they will then choose which is the right way to move forward. [01:40:32] And so these are the idea that we wanna be thinking about is how do we help model using AI to help them be stronger in skills like being a good researcher, a good learner, a good problem solver, a good connector with other people. AI is a very powerful tool to help understand viewpoints and connect with other people if used in this way, right, in this bucket four way. [01:40:55] So let me wrap there. Thank you for letting me sort of get that, state that out, but I think this will, keeping this idea of these four use cases can be helpful as we have this conversation and certainly look forward to however we can help do that. Thanks. [01:41:10] - All right, well, thank you, Richard, for kicking us off. That's the best PowerPoint presentation I've seen in terms of length in a long time. That's it. So I'm going to need to take a page out of your book and start to cut my PowerPoints down. But we're going to try to be as informal as possible with the discussion. And I think those four use cases that you just laid out is a really good framework for us in our community and the FCPS community to think about AI. [01:41:33] And I do think you're right. It's kind of that fourth use case of learning with AI that we're probably struggling with the most. more about all four use cases but it's probably that last one that we're struggling with the most and I think for the first question we would just ask any of our panelists you know what are some of the promising practices that we might be seeing around the country or around the world and a little bit more detail where we see actually some promising practices with learning with AI in the classroom and anybody can just jump in whenever whenever you feel moved plenty but I already talked a lot somebody else want to jump in and right I can give [01:42:11] a few examples but they are not primarily from 312 they're from higher ed just because of the position they occupy but some of them may be general and transferable very low-hanging fruit that i have seen instructors at george mason university has been gamification so using very simple tools and some of these technologies out there i'm not going to name specific providers in this meeting to create quick games in order to reinforce certain concepts so for instance like the card matching game that usually tests memory i think we've all played it like you open [01:42:51] strawberry and then it disappears and you know then you try to match strawberry strawberry so some instructors are using this in order to allow students to connect concepts and to be able to practice this at home. So outside office hours, outside the usual you know nine to five when the instructor is available either in class or in their office. I've also seen instructors using allowing students to use these tools but more as critics so in a Socratic fashion to challenge their ideas or to challenge [01:43:26] their project in order to iterate and to consider the multiple other solutions or approaches as we just heard again not to replace the work of the student but to be there as a critic and to push the student to think a little bit deeper and to advance more in their both their understanding and in the maturity and sophistication of the types of projects that they're pulling together and I and this falls under teaching with AI right so utilizing these tools these AI platforms out there that have very specific capabilities in order to [01:44:04] enhance the teaching, to enhance pedagogy, to make themselves in some fashion available to students. But there are also many other cases that our instructors are including in the classroom that fall more under the category of teaching about AI, no matter the discipline where students are, providing them some basic AI literacy, understanding of what these tools can and more importantly what they cannot do and the most powerful example is not the one where instructors are telling students but are having them experiment [01:44:39] themselves in very structured sort of studio like fashions exit ticket like fashion where the students themselves are carrying out very specific experiments and figuring out in real time the quality of the answers what it that they can and cannot rely on. [01:44:59] And then the third category is the funny one, teaching with AI about AI. So, I've done this myself, for instance, I had students experiment with consumer chatbots, and here I can mention a couple, OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, and even Grok. [01:45:19] They would pull problems, prompts, that were reasoning tasks. So for instance, I'm giving you a series, two, four, six, what's the next one? That's called the reasoning task, right? Many students in K-12 are supposed to be able to figure out these patterns. [01:45:39] And so the students would design somewhat more advanced reasoning tasks and provide them to these consumer chatbots, the free version, and they would record not just the accuracy of the answer, but they would also record the reasoning, whether the reasoning was correct, because they found out in real time that the answer could be correct, but the reasoning would have no connection to the answer or the other way around. [01:46:03] They also learned, for instance, how brittle these AI technologies can be because they went through a structured process where they would push the chatbot and say, "Hmm, I'm not sure you got this right," and see the response, and then would have a more than polite push, an aggressive challenge. [01:46:22] you really failed at this and see the response of these tools. And so in real action, they learned about reliability of these tools. How often did they change their mind? Are they really reasoning? Is the answer connected to the reasoning at all? The instructor did not, in this case myself, I did not have to teach them or preach to them. [01:46:40] They could see it in action. They could gather and analyze. They did all their data analytics with AI. No spreadsheets involved, no Python coding involved. So it was a bit of an interesting exercise, but they learned in action basically probably four weeks of material that I could have spent to teach them about AI literacy. [01:47:00] So there are lots of examples. - Let me add one real quick, I'll just be very brief. This is a teacher that I was talking to in Maryland, just up the road. And she was sharing with me a student that she had who was just struggling to write. It was one of those students that had, I don't know if you've experienced this yourself, maybe that blank page fear, right? [01:47:17] There was that blank page sitting in front of them and they just got stuck and felt like they couldn't move. And this was something that they were working on for a while. And so finally she said, let's try something. We're gonna use AI and we're gonna say, AI is gonna give you a first sentence. And she prompted it to say, here's the topic, write your first sentence. [01:47:34] Your job is just to come up with the next sentence and then AI will give you the next sentence and then you'll do the next one. And so they started doing this sort of paired writing. And what was amazing is over time, this kid just got over this fear of just getting started. And so then they were able to pair it back and said, hey, this time we're gonna do it again. [01:47:51] This time A is just gonna give you the first sentence and you need to write the paragraph and then they're gonna help tee up the next paragraph that you can write. And to the point where this kid then became confident on his own in being able to write. That's a really interesting example of this, that fourth bucket that I shared of using AI to help strengthen a human skill. [01:48:07] This kid needed to become a good writer. He wanted to, the teacher wanted to. He was stuck because this here's a blank piece of paper was holding him up, but AI was able to help move him over and through that, through structured practice. [01:48:23] - Can y'all hear me? Okay, I'll keep it simple. There are many, many examples. Like we have a database with over 100,000 teacher projects, so like wide ranges of use cases. If we just focus on writing feedback, one thing that we've learned about teacher use and like good use that's actually impactful, a lot of it has more to do with culture, context, and how the tool is introduced and used than technology itself. [01:48:47] And so even if we take something like writing feedback, having like, you know, so one example, We work with a community of science teachers in Massachusetts, all teaching the same curriculum, OpenSciEd. It's a research-backed, rigorous curriculum. And they have the same AI tool that gives students writing feedback where they can get formative practice at-bats to improve their claims, evidence, and reasoning. [01:49:08] This AI tool, there's a researcher that independently studied its impact in one classroom where they saw significant gains in their reasoning skills through using this formative feedback tool. But, and here's a rub, the results vary dramatically by how a teacher introduced it. [01:49:23] There are certain teachers that had conversations about what is this? Where does this fit? What are our norms and values as a class, as we use the technology? And when that was done well, it was used as something that really, like a bicycle for the mind. It augmented kids who were struggling, who weren't able to ask for help, or really seeing gains. [01:49:41] Kids who were already doing well were being accelerated. So it was both raising the floor and raising the ceiling. But in classes where the conditions, when it was not introduced effectively, a lot of kids thinking that wait my teacher is not giving me feedback this bot is what does that mean what does that mean about me right and so i think that the emphasis or the lesson that i take from that is like there's a whole conversation about technology but i think as important if not more important is a conversation around how do we set teachers and our systems up to introduce these things well in ways that actually create the kind of learning cultures that we want to see all right thank you very much i think um well dr michigan had her hand up a minute ago did you [01:50:18] want to jump in on this one or i'm happy to jump in but also cognizant of the time if we want to move to the next question okay well maybe maybe actually we will move to the next question then because i think a lot of those comments were great in terms of getting a little bit more specific about what some of those instructional use cases look like and i think one of the things that i probably should clarify just for folks in the community that might be watching right now in fairfax we are not using ai chat generative ai chat features with our students right now our teachers have access to those but we have been very intentional and deliberate to really try to think about you know before we roll tools out what are some of the foundational AI literacy [01:50:56] practices ethical practices academic integrity practices and things that we would need to have in place and some of the examples that you just gave I think we're getting some questions from our community about if students are interacting with these generative AI tools and they're getting coaching feedback support brainstorming help some of the examples that you gave what does that mean for academic integrity, and how do we ensure that we're not offloading student thinking, that we're actually providing supports to deepen student curiosity, to deepen inquiry, to deepen student thinking. [01:51:30] And I'm just wondering, what are some of the best practices that you might be seeing in schools, whether they're K-12 or higher education, to really kind of balance some of these concerns around academic integrity? I can start on that. [01:51:46] This is something we spend a lot of time on. And I think part of the key with this is understanding the difference between productive and nonproductive struggle. And so one of the things that we think about is should learning, should there be struggle? Should there be, should it be, you know, should it be hard? [01:52:03] Yes, the answer is we do want, we want kids to struggle with concepts and we want them to learn. We know that we learn through that. The challenge is that there's also a lot of nonproductive struggle in school, and that doesn't help with learning. In fact, it does the opposite. removes the opportunity to learn. [01:52:20] And so I think what we need to be really thoughtful about is what is productive struggle and what is not productive. So let me give you an example. Taking a concept from science and understanding how that might apply in the real world, trying to understand how that might apply in a particular scenario or situation that's set up, knowing how those chemical compounds, you can tell I don't, I'm a Spanish teacher, right? [01:52:42] I probably should have used a Spanish example. Understanding where and how to use past subjunctive correctively in Spanish. that I'm better, I'm now in my territory, right? That is productive struggle, that is good. Here's what is not productive struggle. Not understanding the instructions and waiting because there's nobody at 10 o'clock at night that can help figure that out. [01:52:59] Not understanding a cultural reference that doesn't make sense in an assignment, and there's lots of those, and not having any way to get around that. Having to take information that is not at the right level for a student who can't get at it because it's written at a level that's either too high or too low for them. [01:53:15] That's non-productive struggle. None of that leads to helping learning. And so those are cases where it's actually really helpful to be able to use AI. What you don't wanna do is replace that productive struggle. And so I saw an example of this. Let me just give a non-example here. I was at a school district, and there was a teacher who said, look, I don't have time to make this assessment. [01:53:34] I'm gonna go into AI, just here's the standard, make the assessment, and then she took it and then posted it in her online, you know, Schoology or whatever it was. And the students then logged in and said, I don't have time to write this, do this assessment. this is homework, I don't have time to do that. They took the assessment questions, put it into the AI and generated an answer, right? [01:53:51] They then posted that back in their online tool. And the teacher said, I don't know how to grade this. So she took the answers, put it in AI and gave feedback and then posted it to the students, right? So we've just had this back and forth and back and forth. Who got smarter in that? [01:54:06] Well, AI did, AI got smarter. The people didn't get smarter, right? So that's an example of that productive struggle, that actual project circle just got handed off to a machine. That is what we don't wanna do. And I think that's the key here. And I think the goal at the end of the day is to say, and we need to have this conversation, when would it be inappropriate to hand a task off to AI? [01:54:31] And, and you have to find this one, when would it be inappropriate not to, right? I had a kid who just spent, this was a number of years ago, to be clear, going through school three days, formatting references in MLA format, right? [01:54:47] That is not a good use of student time. Three days formatting MLA. Nobody in his life, when he graduates, he will never format anything in MLA manually ever, right? So that's an example of non-productive struggle that would have been, should have been handed off to a tool to do that. [01:55:02] The writing process, the creating process, finding his voice, that's a skill that would be totally inappropriate to hand off to AI. - Well, that's a great example, and it's given me flashbacks to my dissertation and all of the citations, and it took me more than two or three days to do those, I can assure you. [01:55:21] So I think we're gonna bring Dr. Yes, yes, I was gonna bring Dr. Mishkin in, and I'm getting a lot of facilitation help from my colleagues, which is great. I need all the help I can get, so Dr. Mishkin. - Thanks everyone, and apologies. I'm unable to be there in person today, but I really wanna underscore everything that was just said and emphasize both the importance of AI literacy and that's real concrete structures ensure that young people are taught to be critical consumers of when are these tools going to encourage their learning when is it really going to be more about cognitive offloading and that's where i really think the fcps approach of focusing on let's make sure that the teachers and the [01:55:59] adults and the community around a child is really well prepared and understands those nuances themselves before we put it into the hands of young people um and so i think that's a really critical approach um secondly i think it's also important to recognize that the tools themselves be best suited for learning we actually don't have a consumer facing education product at the moment because we're doing research to ensure with academic partners including stanford university around a special model tuned to promote concepts like metacognition with the concept being before we put these powerful hands into an educational environment it's really important to ensure that [01:56:35] we do so thoughtfully as still we do have consumer tools that users may choose to engage with on teenagers only including a study mode that all consumers can opt into to make sure that they're getting the scaffolding necessary to encourage deeper thinking and academic involvement and so i really think that the solution to solving a lot of these problems is not around a one-size-fits-all approach but it's about making sure that everyone in a student's ecosystem knows how to have and can grapple with these questions um making sure that students themselves are trained on okay what What are some great places where we can maybe increase in efficiency so we can focus classroom time on the actual act of learning? [01:57:15] And then also, what are the best tools out there to support those learning goals? And that only by really thinking collaboratively, we'd be able to ensure that young people are best prepared to be critical users of these tools when they grow up. Thank you. That's super helpful. [01:57:31] And I think just to kind of paraphrase, one of the things that I heard in there is not just turning students loose in unstructured ways, in unsupervised ways with AI tools, but being very deliberate and intentional and even fine tuning what the tools are capable of doing to make sure that we're providing students with the appropriate supervision and scaffolds to use those tools correctly. [01:57:53] So that's very helpful, thank you. Gautam? - I'll jump in and maybe follow up with the question which lines up, right? As you look at the adult and teacher training models that are emerging, and these are being developed on the fly because this is so new, there's no teacher training school working at this as yet. [01:58:10] what may be some of the approaches that the division should take in preparing our adults, the teachers, and maybe even our community in engaging on this? - Sort of an important perspective on this one. [01:58:26] Teacher preparation, to me, is a main objective if you want equity. So when people say equity and access, they typically think about AI infrastructure, right, or AI tools. So they're thinking, hey, we wanna make sure that it's not just a kid who can afford, whose parents can afford the latest premier model in the after hours, but we wanna make sure that all our students have access to some highly capable models. [01:58:53] So we typically tend to think infrastructure or technology, but having teachers who know when and how to integrate these tools in the classroom, that is a competitive advantage, right? So, and I would even advocate that is more of a competitive advantage than having access to the latest JetGPT model. [01:59:14] Because as you mentioned earlier, it's really about how you're thoughtful, how you're integrating them in the right context for the right student population, at the right level of development, right, for the right reasons. But training has been a real challenge because the tools change, they evolve so quickly. [01:59:34] And it's very often the case that, at least in education, We don't, by design, we're not built to move fast, right? We're built to be thoughtful and careful. So there's always a little bit of a mismatch. [01:59:51] We train for the tools of yesterday when the tool already changed in front of us. A model that is emerging in higher ed has been the peer-to-peer training model. And primarily that's driven by lack of resources and lack of money to hire people that can call the community and and train all right so it's just it's a it's a recognition that we will never have maybe what industry will have but we do have inside we have champions we have folks that are innovators and we want those folks to come out of the woodworks and tell us what it is that they're doing right what are the cool things that they're possibly thinking about and [02:00:30] implementing but hiding we want them to come out share pilot and then create a community of practice So at Mason, for instance, we have communities of practice among instructors, we have communities of practice among staff, and they exchange problems, questions, and solutions over teams. [02:00:47] They say, "Hey, I was trying to do this and I couldn't. Can somebody help me?" And somebody comes and has an answer, or somebody comes and says, "Well, that's kind of interesting. Let's think about that together." And that community grows really fast in their understanding. And I have become a firm believer that that's the only way to attempt to catch up. [02:01:07] being highly structured requires a lot of prep time ahead, requires a lot of resources, but when you distribute it to a peer community, that's probably the distributed model is probably merging at least across higher ed as something that's practical and reasonable enough. [02:01:23] Richard has a lot more expertise here. I see you're writing notes. I'm going to let you go. What I'd add is I think there are three, if I were to think about it, there are three core things that we all need to develop right now. I think to your point, the tech is changing. [02:01:40] We're trying to learn about a moving target. That's really hard. It's a moving target that has real world implications. You're seeing the data centers go up. You're seeing like conversations about energy prices. There's real conversations about safety. Like a lot of the chat about companionship, chatbots, right? [02:01:55] And chatbots are the tip of the iceberg. They're like cassette tapes from my point of view. The like AI agents and agentic systems that are coming will likely be more powerful. But with risks also come real possibilities for connection, for raising the floor for more young people and for adults. [02:02:11] And so I think for adult literacy and teacher literacy, we think three things are important. It's like actually getting hands-on, playing with the technology regularly in places where it's safe to play, where you as a teacher can be around peers, ask questions, be vulnerable. [02:02:26] You don't need to be the expert all the time. But then two, as you play, really start to think about from my context, what can I do today to help my students? What can I do to actually help myself in my work? We all know that teachers, it's a really tough profession. And then three, because this tech is so new, as an organization like Fairfax, how do you create the space for thinking not just about direct implications, but unintended implications? [02:02:52] The example I'll share is, we work with every community college in California, and what I've been hearing from faculty there is anecdotally, they're noticing that some of these really effective AI tools that they have for their students are helping immediately. They're helping first-generation students navigate courses that they otherwise would have difficulty navigating but they're seeing less peer-to-peer collaboration outside of class kids are turning to chatbots instead of to peer groups and so the question then becomes how might we design the technology is really beneficial how do we design it in a way that's pro-social and we're seeing some colleges there that have been piloting the use of the tech in ways that is actually still augmenting and actually helping more young people find peer collaborators and groups and so it's [02:03:30] I don't think it's either/or but again it's a question of how do we roll it out in a way that both helps us use it in ways that create the kind of learning communities that we actually want to be a part of. Just to add, I agree with that, and I won't add much more to that, but just to say, if you focus training on tools, you will always be behind. [02:03:47] If you focus training on principles, you will be ready regardless of what tools come along. And good learning is good learning. And so if we talk about what are the principles of good learning, then as new features, it becomes very clear, we're not always playing catch up. [02:04:03] we know this makes sense because it supports effective learning this doesn't regardless of what's in the tool and and actually I want to if I can just give a quick shout out to Fairfax County and Sloan Seam in particular has made a shift where all of the school-based technology specialists the ESPITs are in process of getting certified an industry recognized certification on effective learning right so to be clear these are technology specialists their certification is on what is effective in engaging learning because the best way to be a school-based technology specialist is to understand what good learning looks like and what it doesn't and I think we're where we got wrapped [02:04:42] around the axe a little bit and there's certainly a broader conversation not the topic I guess for today but a broader conversation around tech in schools in general is from a whole lot of not effective technology use that largely came in after COVID and and so so just kudos to to the team here for being ahead of that and saying we're gonna make sure our instructional coaches really understand what does good learning look like and how do you use technology to support good learning regardless of what tool happens to show up? Just a strong, I really want to emphasize that, couldn't have been said better myself. The principles behind how we should thoughtfully [02:05:22] engage with and be critical consumers of technology doesn't change that much depending on the tool, right? Like concepts like digital literacy, which emphasize checking validity of information, be critical consumers, ask yourself when is it appropriate to use technology and when is it not, apply regardless of the medium, regardless of if it's generative AI or sending a message. And so I think anchoring an approach in what is the science of learning, what do I need to get across, and also recognizing that the principles and the concepts and the values that you are trying to communicate shouldn't be shifting based on the latest technological release, [02:05:59] can help ensure that teachers, educators, parents, community members are best prepared to help students navigate the technological shift ahead. Can I disagree a little bit? I agree with like the emphasis on digital literacy. Technology and tools do matter. Has anyone here heard of right to repair? A few folks, do you mind explaining like real quick? Companies that produce certain things don't allow other people to fix them if they're broken, so it creates a lot of cost on the like John Deere is a great example like farmers across country can't fix their tractors and it's not because attack it's like a lot of business decisions are [02:06:35] made to make it that way and I think the push I'd make is as a district their choices around like technology that you can't fix you can't understand a world where like we just were living with black boxes or there's a push you can make towards procuring technology that you can understand that's interrogable where young people and educators can get behind the scenes to see how the thing is working um and so i think that's the agree on the digital literacy and i think there's a push on like you know the the transparency does matter yeah fully agree but i think that the question like the the goal is not just how do you use it once you pick a a tool not just how do i use this [02:07:14] particular tool but how do i use all tools and this may be like there might be specific features of a given tool that you need to use but the questions that you need to be asking and interrogating or not just purely like how do i turn this particular one on and off maybe a follow-up to that as we think about universal literacy we want parents and our community be on the journey with us in that because we know while access at school is certainly blocked students or young adults may still have access outside how do we help build or shape the thinking and support [02:07:48] structures for families any best practices emerging in this realm of anything any advice for us as a division we spend a lot of work working with families on this and I think what the what we found in schools that have done this well I think of districts like Miami-Dade has done a very good job of this it is helping parents have more meaningful conversations with their kids and a lot of times that is doesn't happen the school you know rolls out a new technology or another program and you know maybe informs parents but doesn't [02:08:27] necessarily help help them have meaningful conversations and so some of the things that we recommend and you know not to sound like a self-promotion here but I did I did write a book specifically on this how to help parents and families have more meaningful conversations about technology use and so some of the questions that we recommend are you know when in our family right when is it appropriate to use technology and when isn't how can we use technology to help us be better members of the community one of the examples that I often give is you know I was walking down the street the other day and picked up a there's just a little piece of trash on the ground we were at a park and I just threw it away I didn't really think anything of it the [02:09:05] next time I went out my son saw a water bottle sitting in there and just picked it up and threw it away that modeling is really powerful right but in a digital world it's very hard to model if you're not explicit about it right if it's if it's me just sitting in front of my computer I could be playing a game or I or I could be helping support the blood drive that's happening at our local community, but to my kid, it's just dad sitting at his computer again. [02:09:31] And so being explicit about saying, how do we use technology? What is the equivalent of throwing away a piece of trash in the virtual world? What is the equivalent of using technology to help us connect and engage more as a family, right? And so asking those questions I think are really important. [02:09:46] We recommend that all schools have a acceptable use guide or a set of norms for how technology is used. And we see these a lot in districts around the country, but they usually start with don't, right? Don't use technology to do this and don't use it for this and don't share your password and don't be a jerk online and don't do, it's just all the don'ts, right? [02:10:06] The problem is you can't practice not doing something. Thou shalt not, you can't practice not doing something. And so we actually need to articulate what are the do's? What are the do's that we wanna see? I want to see, I expect you in my classroom when I was teaching, I would say, I expect you to use technology to fact check. [02:10:22] I expect you to use it to bring new viewpoints to class that we didn't have before. I expect you to use it to be able to present ideas in more creative ways. I expect you to use it to keep track of when your assignments are due, whatever it is. But being able to articulate the vision of what we want to see, right? That's where we need to go. [02:10:38] And so if we can help parents tee up some of those questions at home as well, it can make it a much more engaging conversation. And that is a decision of families, right? Families decide where and how they want technology to engage. but if they understand what are some of the questions that they should be asking and how those align with some of the expectations for how technology is used in learning, it creates a much, much better environment. [02:11:01] And I can tell you from districts that have done this, the sort of anger and animosity that some parents have just sort of go away because they're part of that conversation and it's an important one to have. - How come your skin? [02:11:17] Oh, you're good. - Apologies, I think that was an earlier hand. - No problem at all. And Richard, some of your last comments just made me think a little bit as you're talking about acceptable use policies and being able to articulate the vision for how we would want students to use the tools. [02:11:34] Our community and our board is in the process of developing a policy right now around instructional technology and artificial intelligence is a big component of that. So do you have any advice for us in terms of like what we should put into a policy, what we should perhaps stray away from a little bit more? [02:11:52] Just any thoughts or ideas really for the entire panel as we think about the type of policy that would promote the types of use that we would wanna see with technology tools and protect against the risks that we're all concerned about, any advice that the panel might have for us? - I'll start quickly, but I'm sure other people have thoughts and I'll be brief 'cause I don't need to take too much time here. [02:12:10] But I do think it's really critical, again, back to what I said, focus on the learning. When I see technology policies that start with lots of tools and don't and when and count the minutes for how you can use technology, that is not an effective technology vision, right? [02:12:25] If I have technology that is not effective for learning, two minutes is too long, right? If I have technology that's helping create creative, engaging, curious learners, then longer makes sense. And so I think it's really important that we talk about those principles and make sure that in the policies that the learning is really clear. [02:12:43] I just was on a meeting with another large school district from the other side of the country that is struggling with us right now. And they were saying, you know, we're having, you know, trouble and we're trying to figure out how do we create this and lots of disagreement. I said, "Can I see the policy?" [02:12:59] Every year at the beginning of the year, they send around the policy that you'd sign and opt-in or opt-out, however you think about it. I said, "Can I just see it? Can I see what it is?" And I looked at this thing, and it was written by a lawyer, clearly, and it just had all of this, your data will be used in all these different ways and all these systems. And I said, "I wouldn't sign that. [02:13:16] Are you kidding me? I would opt out right there when I saw it." They said, "Wait, but that's a tool that they're using for these creative virtual science projects." I was like, "That doesn't say that on here." And so it's really important if you have a policy anywhere that is going out the door and it's a technology policy, but it's not focused on learning, time to redo the policy. [02:13:34] Every policy, every technology policy has to focus on learning if it's gonna be effective, even if the end of the day is to talk about how you're gonna use technology. Sorry. - I wanted to give a perspective because we gave through this exercise about 18 months ago trying to craft a policy. [02:13:49] We did not call it policy because the moment we would do that, all the lawyers would get up and we wouldn't move anywhere. So we called it guidelines for safe and responsible use of AI. And I'm just gonna make two points. One is, what are you trying to protect? [02:14:05] The tools will evolve, their capabilities will evolve. What is permissible now, maybe we'll figure out that that was not such a good idea three years from now. Or what we think now is not possible, two years from now we'll think that's okay. We have moved beyond that. But what are you willing to protect? [02:14:22] What do you wanna protect? And so it's very important to outline those principles, even though people might scoff at them, but the principles tell the community what is precious and what your identity is. So if you wanna protect critical thinking, you should put it in there because the teachers will see that and whenever they want to integrate something, they're gonna ask, "Am I protecting critical thinking?" [02:14:42] So at least those principles become questions of what it is that you wanna protect. The answer may look different from classroom to classroom, from district to district, but you gotta have those really clear, front and center, transparent. The second one is guidelines, policies, they tend to be dry, right? [02:14:58] They tend to be, we want to protect this, this is important, right? They're kind of virtue signaling at some point. So you wanna take those and you wanna translate them for, what does this mean for you as a teacher? What does this mean for you as a student? What does this mean for you as staff? [02:15:14] So you also want to take those guidelines and you wanna translate them into something more practical that is very specific and use-oriented or user-based. And then the third thing, I guess I said too, I lied the third thing is we should put somewhere that we reserve the right to change our mind because things are moving so fast right and that will make it okay for people to understand that they can move around the margins right they can come to you with a question they can be comfortable to surface something that the policy said but that they're actually not finding possible to [02:15:53] implement in the classroom right they should feel safe so that's why we call them guidelines because they're squishy and fuzzy and you can go and you can modify them. Dr. Mishkin. Lower my hand. I love this analogy also needing to emphasize the shoulds, right? Like we don't teach piano by saying this is all the notes you don't play. We say here's how to play it. And I think what's really interesting about all the examples that I'm hearing with regards to acceptable use policies is emphasizing what are the shoulds, what are the visions, but also I think separately it's really important that it's done in a transparent way so that young people [02:16:29] and educators and everyone in the community knows what those values are part of my community my concern with like the this is what the data says and these are what etc is what does that mean what the so what and i think it's really critical that any policy not just has the substance of what our goals are and what our articulations are but that it's articulated in a way so that young people educators can meet community members really understand what it is they are agreeing to and can really buy in and feel a part of and excited about that vision. [02:17:01] Well, all of those comments were fabulous and give us a lot of, I think, food for thought in terms of how we're crafting our policies and our acceptable use policies as well. I really like to focus on our values, the practices that we want to see in clear language to articulate that, not just to our community and teachers, but also to our students in terms of how we would want them to use the tools and devices. [02:17:23] It does raise a little bit of a question in terms of once we've got that dialed in really well and we think that we're ready perhaps to enter more into the AI for learning space, one of the things that we know that we have to be aware of from the very beginning is how would we measure the effectiveness of learning with AI tools? [02:17:43] So we're kind of curious what suggestions, recommendations you might have, things that you're seeing in the field, either evidence of how AI is being used in the classroom to impact learning, or things that we should be thinking about in terms of how we would want to go about measuring that here in FCPS. [02:18:05] I think, Allison, you should totally share some of the research that OpenAI has produced. I think it's really good. ISTE obviously has produced a lot of really good work on this. The quick thing I'll say while they tee up, because they have tons of research that they could they could pull from is it's connected to what you just asked about earlier the districts we've seen have the most impact on outcomes are the ones that are coming at this with learning questions and it's often the ones where the boards are holding their teams accountable to what are we learning about AI implementation in our district where is it improving teacher outcomes like teacher satisfaction efficiency etc capability I actually think is a big one where is it improving student outcomes and where are things that we [02:18:44] tried not working and how can we course so i think just that learning orientation is really important at the systems level a lot of examples i could share i think the favorite one that i have especially thinking about how entry level just the discourse around entry level jobs it went from cousins and like you know friends that are like recent graduates from college um uh there's some powerful use cases around making learning more relevant and more real so i think who here think just a tangent really quickly who here thinks of themselves as a math person come on dr reid i I mean, not many people, but what's beautiful about AI [02:19:22] from my point of view, we work with illustrative mathematics. It's a really strong evidence-based math curriculum. They're open source. And what we've seen with AI is districts as large as New York City to small rural districts are using AI tools to one, build the capabilities of teachers to teach with this really rich but hard curriculum, but then two, creating really strong AI tools with guardrails that their students can then use to make learning more meaningful. [02:19:48] For example, in New York City, these international schools that serve mainly newcomers to the country are using AI tools to help teachers personalize projects to the context of these kids. They can think about the Mets. I know we're in DC, but in Queens, they care about the Mets or the Knicks, if it's right now. [02:20:06] But they can connect it to things that kids actually care about. And then they can offer kids support so that they can actually, and that's changing and it's leading to more kids seeing themselves as math kids. And I think that matters and that's important, but it started with the district team that's leading this, Superintendent Alan Chang, asking the question of what can we try right now and what are the cycles of data that we can collect so that we can learn what's working and what's not. [02:20:28] And when it's not working, instead of coming down with a stick, it's like, hey, we tried it. We obviously tried it within a container, right? What do we shift? What do we pause? What do we do differently? So I think creating those conditions feels really important. [02:20:46] - Alison, you got a shout out to go in there. I'll share something that you should, do you wanna jump in or? happy to jump in. As they mentioned, at OpenAI, we've externalized our learning outcomes measurement suite, which is just this concept of both how do we use model behavior and change how the model responds to ensure that it's really also just being fine-tuned for all of those learning science principles that I think have come up repeatedly as key needs throughout this panel. The second is then okay we need to actually like measure like both like how the individual use of the product [02:21:22] changes um and also um how broader skills like metacognition etc evolve and so through this toolkit which i'm happy to share um we've externalized a system and way of thinking through both what are the shifts and what are the ways in which ai might be able to help learning um as well as here's the tangible like technologies you can deploy to measure how learning happens through ChachiBT. I think this also gets to a broader point about when selecting technology providers, which is ensuring that there is evidence even from day one, not just before it [02:21:59] enters your classroom of this is the theory of change as to how we believe we can better design and implement learning sciences through this tool. And here's the evidence that it can already achieve that goals and then measure it within your classroom setting. But just really making sure that research-aligned learning pedagogical approaches are what are prioritized. [02:22:17] Just to be clear, there's no special measure of AI learning, right? We know what good learning is. We know what good learning looks like. If we are using AI effectively, we are using it to get at effective learning principles that we've known for a very long time. We've known, you know, since I was teaching back in, you know, many, many, many years ago, right? We know that if learning has meaning for students, they're going to learn better, right? That's really hard to do. When I had five classes, I was in a state that had a lot higher student ratio. I had five classes of 30 students each every day. Making individual [02:22:54] meaning for every student is very hard to do, right? We know that having meaning leads to better learning. If AI can help do that, we're doing it right. We know that we need way more feedback, right? There's lots and lots of research that shows if we want to improve learning, it's not the amount of content that we need to increase, it's the of feedback that we need to increase students need far more feedback than they get if ai can help give more feedback great we know that authentic practice is incredibly important authentic practice that's hard to do again as a previous high school teacher that's hard to do when you have over over 100 students if ai can help with more authentic practice and it's leading to [02:23:31] improved learning great if it's not supporting those things time to stop and think about how how we're using it and maybe reevaluate the decisions. - Well, I wanna thank all of you for that response. And again, it's very consistent with the themes you've touched on from the very beginning that we should only be using AI in ways that are already aligned to evidence-based instructional practices. [02:23:52] And if we do that, we can continue to use the research base to measure the impact of how we're using those tools. So that's excellent. Gautam? - Yeah, just from a workforce perspective, and Yusuf, you just touched on it. As we prepare the next generation and they're going through the pipeline, What may you be seeing right now in the workforce as a founder and a CEO at tech companies? [02:24:13] And what are the expectations of the employees that are coming in to the workforce? - Happy to jump in, but I know all of you probably have ideas. I have a lot of friends that like AI labs in San Francisco. And so we hear a lot, but I think from our end, like work is starting to change. [02:24:33] Like, I don't know if you guys have tracked, but did anyone hear about like the improvements in a lot of the models back in December? So I mean, particularly around coding, right? And so like our team, you know, we use, some folks use Codex, which is from OpenAI. [02:24:49] Most of us use Cloud Code. We work very closely with both the Anthropoc and the DeepMind teams. And I think the kind of, what's shifted here, whether you're using Codex or Cloud Code or one of Google's tools, or the many other coding assistants, is software engineering has fundamentally changed. Not like, it's not magic, right? [02:25:06] There's a lot of real engineering work that's happening, But it's clear if you peek around the corner what it means to be an engineer, what it means to be an AI researcher, if we look at some of the things that are happening on some of the different model training teams, it's changing. And I think that for us, it actually relates to what I was hearing earlier. [02:25:25] We think a lot about how are we learning as an organization? Like how are we creating the space among all the other things we're trying to do to try new ways of learning and collaborating? And so I think that's been something that we've been thinking a lot about. I think the second maybe thing I'd share back is like, as humans, like especially when you think about education and young people, many of us are parents. [02:25:49] I have a three-year-old and a one-year-old. So the stakes maybe are a little bit different than your high school and middle school are. But it's clear the current education system from my point of view, what I went through, is not gonna be the education system that my children need, right? [02:26:06] Taking, you know, learning fixed subjects, standardized exams, doing math worksheets, doesn't feel like the thing that's actually gonna equip my kids for the world that we're entering into. And the reality is that discovering what education should look like for this new world isn't something, it's not a known, we don't know what the solution is. [02:26:24] We have ideas, there are tons of wonderful examples. Richard can probably expound on many of the wonderful school systems that they've worked with around the world. But we need to create space for learning and trying new things. How do we teach math, how do we teach science, how do we build critical thinking for this world that we're entering into? And if I leave you with one, I think one powerful idea, it's this powerful idea that we need to create containers for safe and responsible experimentation. [02:26:48] Experimentation is a really loaded word. It's something we don't want to talk about when we talk about our kids, we talk about our families. But if you really break down what experiment means, it means you have a real hypothesis that's grounded in something, usually science, learning science, pedagogy, ideas about what competence should be, and then you scope out a way to validate whether what you're trying is working or is not working. [02:27:08] And I think we're at a moment where we need really thoughtful, responsible experimentation with safeguards for, to help discover what teaching and learning should look like for the school world that we're entering into. 'Cause if we don't, we're just gonna keep doing the same old, same old. And we know that's not gonna be what sets up my kids for success. [02:27:23] It's not gonna be what sets up kids here in Fairfax County. And so I think that's the kind of, as I think about our experience of the changing, of like how work is changing, I think that's the idea I'd leave you with. - Other thoughts? [02:27:39] - Yeah, I get asked a lot by parents What discipline, what major should I send in my kid? What is safe from AI? I don't charge them for my answers. But I do want to echo Yusuf that. [02:27:55] Whatever answer you get, it's probably not the right one. At most, I think we're guessing, because things are evolving so fast. So even folks that say things such as, well, a mechanical engineer will be safe, because it's very tactile, right? It's like you're dealing with things. [02:28:11] I don't think that's the right way to think about it. The right way to think about it is for these kids, and I have kids. I have a high schooler and a middle schooler here in the county. For these kids that will go in a very, in a radically different workplace, right, well, they will be expected to seamlessly integrate these in their daily job. [02:28:38] What are we doing in order to prepare them cognitively for what they will need? We might not be able to teach them the latest and the greatest about the technologies, but we should be able to position them so that whenever the technology changes, they still have the formation. [02:28:56] So in a way, the answer is a very old one. What are you in the business of? Whether it's higher ed or K-12, you're in the business of formation. students encounter through their middle school through their high school through you know community college through the four-year if they go to to a typical four-year college what they encounter every day are our problems so what they really need to develop are those the ways to come up with answers the ways to come up with solutions right the ways to think about things so in a way things will change a lot and they will not change because those core skills I argue [02:29:35] and I tell parents those are even more important now right the ones that are is so easy to forget about if you focus on the moving target those become even more important those are the ones that you need to protect because those are I don't like the word durable but those are the things that will stand I do have trepidations myself about my own kids so I am very cognizant about what they use at home so I agree here that I put very very sharp boundaries at home and one thing that I did want to get a little bit earlier which is in line is not all [02:30:13] AI use is good right good AI use is good but your your challenge is to define those boundaries and to be able to feel comfortable to say nope not at this age okay but restricted right and and we're looking at you we're looking at you because you understand cognitive development right just keep AI to the same standard as just any other technology even though it is so easy to [02:30:44] be wowed by it keep it to that same okay no kid as I say thank you Apologies. I think that must happen at least once a meeting. I just want to emphasize everything that's been said before. And going deep on that, it's really easy to be wowed by like, oh, wow, look at what it's done. I think in some ways, that's a lot of the power of AI and where I see [02:31:18] the opportunities for young people. So with tools like Codex or Cloud Code or really any of these, it becomes a lot easier to be a creator. And we know how impactful and important it is for kids to be creators rather than just consumers of content. [02:31:34] And what that means that the tools to solve the problems that they care about are ever closer to young people, regardless of what age they are or when they're graduating. I think there's incredible opportunity because no matter what happens, problems aren't going to go away in society, but kids are innate problem solvers. [02:31:56] And what AI does is give folks the tools to solve that which they care about, which I think is incredibly important and powerful and so i think education and preparing young people to tackle problems to understand how to solve or design an experiment or um really those uniquely human skills um are going to be really impactful and help them succeed we certainly saw that in the competition we held for our high school students who opted into it they all came with their passions use the technology and the tool to kind of build the outcomes that they were really [02:32:32] passionate about everything from finding food for families to rentals and supporting all sorts of things in that and that is a powerful example when when you start using these tools you start synthesizing and actually orchestration is one of those words which comes in as an it person now working with these tools and even building apps you're orchestrating the experiences and and you're very quick for experimentation to see, I build something, I can have somebody use it, I can get a feedback, I can correct that loop and be able to deploy something which is useful. [02:33:05] And that's the end. And if it's not useful, it's likely not gonna get used and that feedback loop is so tight. You don't have to wait years or months anymore. It's like overnight you can get that feedback to say if this is working or it's not working. Maybe one final question. I know some of you have to leave at 2:30. [02:33:21] As we look at AI and education, where may you see AI and education's impact in five years? How do you think of that framing? And we're all predicting here, nobody has the answer, but what would you see? [02:33:42] - Alison, tell us what you're seeing inside. - Oh gosh, I don't wanna predict the future because I'm currently at a conference and candidly, if you'd asked me even three years ago, what the technology would look like, I would not have believed you. [02:34:01] Instead, I have a wish list, which is that I hope that this technology and really all technologies become tools to help young people realize why learning is so fun and why the craft of knowledge is this uniquely amazing adventure and recognize that they have the power in their communities and in their schools to really be impactful, well-rounded individuals passionate and excited about something and so my hope is that these tools better enable to that four-part framework that we led with at all levels [02:34:38] of the ecosystem it's all about ensuring that classroom time and young people's time is devoted to the act of learning and the goals that we have for them as humans and so I think as long as we keep that North Star I'm really optimistic I can give you my hope. My hope is that we will have better clarity after five years on what is good, what is beneficial, what should we keep, what should we experiment, what should we try out. [02:35:11] And what I expect in five years is that we will have hopefully delineated sharper boundaries as more specific evidence accumulates. And by specific evidence, I mean very specific experiments running, you know, very specific group ages around very specific uses. [02:35:29] So that there's no sense of having to try to figure it out in real time, but we have good evidence to point to and we can then make the right decisions for our kids. for our kids? I think there are two very distinct different futures five years out. [02:35:49] One is where we have offloaded important human skills to AI. We've stopped being able to be good writers, good thinkers, good problem solvers because it's gotten so easy to just hand it off to AI. And one where we're no longer using it in a way that can really reinforce human skills. [02:36:09] And that world scares me. There's another future world that looks very different. And it's one where we have decided to use AI to help us do human better, to help us be better collaborators, more curious, better problem solvers, more able to connect and engage with important problems with different viewpoints. [02:36:30] And I don't think there's going to be much of a middle. I think it's going to be pretty much one or the other. And to be completely frank, that will largely come down to how we prepare students for the world that they're going to be living in. And if we are able to model these important key skills, model the use of this tool as one that can help us be curious, be creative, be better learners, get feedback better, get more viewpoints better, engage with each other, know how to learn and synthesize from materials better. [02:37:00] If we can model those skills, we're setting ourselves up for a very, very effective, very positive second option. But if we don't, if we just sort of stand back and let it happen, AI will happen. There is no question about that. AI will happen, there's no putting it away, There's no putting it back in the, it's here. [02:37:18] Our choice is what one of those future worlds do we want? And I hope, my hope, and I will do everything that I can as a Fairfax County parent and a leader of an international education organization that's based right down the road here. I will do everything that I can to help make sure that we are modeling and preparing kids for that second future where they are really using this tool to become much better at the human skills than we've been able to get to in the past. [02:37:47] - Anything, leave it at that. I think that the two questions I'd ask, like that yes to everything Richard just said, and the two questions I'd ask is, what are we learning about all this, like in regularly asking it? And the second question I think to your point is, to what extent do people in the district, students, adults, feel a greater sense of agency? [02:38:07] Those to me feel like the canaries in the coal mine that give us a sense of which direction are we going in? Are we moving towards a brave new world? Aldous Huxley's kind of like cognitive offloaded world? Or are we moving to a world of like real like robust agency? Allison's point about more creators, not just consumers. So I think those are the two questions I'd ask. [02:38:26] Well, thank you all so much for sharing your ideas and thoughts with us today. I think that was a great feedback that I'm still considering some of the responses. I think that's our agenda for today. [02:38:47] Okay, so I think we had you scheduled till 2:30, so at this point, we appreciate you. Thank you so much for taking the time to being with us, and I think we're gonna take a quick break to do a technology turnaround so we can then engage in our AI conversation based on a lot of what we learned today. [02:39:05] So I feel your excitement. It's palpable. And I think, as many of you said, we're sort of at a crossroads here. And we've got to put the guardrails in place to leverage in the appropriate way. [02:39:22] And I think that's what we're trying to do. So once again, appreciate all your time and thanks for being here. [02:39:28] So we'll take a deep break at 2:29, five-minute break on AI, and I'll turn it over to Dr. [02:55:41] Reed. Thank you, Miss Lady. I really want to thank Mr. Sethi and Dr. Presidio for facilitating our panel of industry leads and thought leads on this topic of AI, and appreciate the time in preparing. [02:56:03] And I want to also thank our four panelists for providing time to be here and to support a conversation I think that we need to continue to have and appreciate the board's willingness to engage in this topic with our panel as well as the community watching. [02:56:25] So I think really this is an opportunity, Ms. Lady, for the board to interact with one another about what they've heard because you know as Ms. Marin has indicated our AI policy is very shortly going to be finalized and we want to make sure that we have a chance to dialogue about that. [02:56:44] I think that was one of the things we heard that was important from the panelists is to continue to have a conversation because context matters. So I look forward to the conversation and the feedback this afternoon. Thank you. recognize placards that went up as our guests were speaking so I'm gonna go in the order that I saw them rise at that time to that and we'll start with dr. [02:57:06] Anderson thank you firstly I wanted to thank our guests that was very informative I have multiple pages of notes here so I appreciated hearing their thinking similarly mr. Dr. Presidio and Mrs. Sethi a lot of the questions that you raise in the conversation were things that I jotted it down because I wanted to hear what their thinking was about that so thank you for that facilitation just jumping into my comments I want to be sure that I kind of ground this because we had an educator from GMU Dr. Shehu but for the [02:57:42] most part the bulk of the panel were vendors that is that brings in a bias to it so I want to be sure that we put that in the room we're seeing one perspective very helpful again lots of good nuggets but it is a very different perspective to be presenting from the position of a vendor and I want to start by what mr. Coletta shared which is what is your why I thought that was a very good place to start because I don't necessarily think we've had that conversation fulsome with this full board one of the things he said is we it [02:58:20] shouldn't be that we better do this and it's here and I guarantee if we're at a replay any board conversation we've had that's been what's been said it's here so we've got to do it that shouldn't be our sense of urgency and it was glad to I was glad to hear that be shared here with them couple of things there are some and I appreciated hearing all the four components and there seems to be some lower-hanging fruit in terms of what is palatable acceptable even expected in some ways and some of the other things that are a little bit more [02:58:59] touchy palatable acceptable I think for me falls into the area of operations I think everybody wants more efficiency when he talked about efficiency of schools and efficiency of instruction efficiency of operations is what came to my mind because he talked about bus routes I'm like yes we want that we want more efficient bus rides that we don't have to hand create, we want, I want, I've said this before and I'll continue to say it now, I want for teachers to have more efficient operations as well in terms of creating resources but the outstanding question which I was really hoping to hear is how do we ensure that those are [02:59:37] good resources so that we're not passing on bad information because this does happen we've had what two lawyers in New York that use AI and were wrong and you think it would stop but after the first one which is a big public splash second one still went and that's that just happened very recently so that's the ongoing question as well as what did she write here she said what are we trying to protect that is definitely something that I'm going to be sitting and reflecting on as we are continuing the work on the AI policy. [03:00:16] Because if we are not clear about that in the policy, it doesn't seem to protect it. And that's what Dr. Shehu said. I'll stop here and wait for it and go back at this time. Thank you. Ms. Mehran, followed by Mr. Dannon. Yeah, this didn't present new knowledge to me or considerations. [03:00:34] I found it underwhelming. I was really excited, especially to hear from Mr. Kulata, but I just found like it was all over the place and it was a straight-up hour of talking at us. I'm concerned that this board and the school division have a pattern of having employees of large tech companies come in and sit at our table and yet not stay long enough to hear what our challenges are and what they could learn from a school division like us. I would have loved to have asked them what they plan to suggest we train our educators on. There was a quote about that. I wanted to hear more about other school divisions. There was a comment about how New York City is using AI to help teachers personalize projects like in Queens, well what were [03:01:13] the outcomes for those kids? Was it a pilot or was it to scale? What data are they collecting to show that it's been positive? Anecdote is not evidence and I heard our panelists talk about schools in Maryland, a group of teachers they talked to, some people in Massachusetts. That is not good enough for the children of this county. I would have loved to spend time talking about the decision this board needs to make about curriculum liability and safety purchases device use monitoring and measuring outcomes I really would have liked to have said to them that creating systems in a school division of this size cannot [03:01:50] be done with grassroots efforts by employees who are doing pilot projects that it requires intentional investment of time and money and it's public money and we can't just have quote fuzzy guidelines as the GMU professor said it's like they're divorced from understanding our reality we do have standardized testing I love that I look for the day when we don't have to have that but we are dependent on public money and we can't just make fuzzy decisions this was not helpful for me what I want to know is what is FCPS doing to roll out AI literacy instruction like we already do for family life [03:02:28] education what is happening is it the same thing as a part of digital literacy, global curriculum with a digital literacy curriculum. We heard earlier the website on AI isn't even up-to-date. Our CTO said it's still in progress. That is not good enough. How much are we spending? I will say I have numbers from members of the public, a whole spreadsheet of numbers that they've put together on what we're spending. I don't have those numbers. I don't need [03:03:03] more cheerleading about AI. I need us to focus on the decisions we need to grapple with and be realistic about it. And once we can put that stuff in place, then I'm all for getting creative. But again, when Arlington Public Schools has their principals with the authority to give opt-out on devices, we can talk about AI all day, but our parents want to know where we are with devices and what they're doing and what the applications are. Thank you. Mr. Dannon and Mr. Moon. [03:03:38] - Thank you very much. So I have to say, I really appreciate the discussion and I know it jumped around a bit, but like I shared earlier, this is unfortunately not to bring up bad memories, a lot like COVID where there isn't really a roadmap or kind of thing our way around that narrow path, as I've heard described. [03:03:56] And I appreciate ending with the two different scenarios. And I think we're already seeing elements of at least the first, and yeah, my only regret is, yeah, I do wish we had more time. Will there be more opportunities? or I guess, Dr. Reed or Dr. Presidio, Mr. Sethi, what are the opportunities will we have to engage with some of these experts as we think through and formulate policy? [03:04:19] - So I think that really we can, our staff is very well connected to a number of leading thought partners in this field. So I think as topics perhaps are brought forward that we want more engagement, we'll certainly provide or do an outreach and provide thought partners to be at the table to visit with you. [03:04:42] - That's great, I appreciate it. And especially now we're putting pen to paper, I appreciate you sharing resources from other school divisions, sample policies and so forth. I think the New York City policy was helpful in that it specifically instructed the division of what not to do, so that was helpful. [03:04:58] I'll be honest too, I think, I was at the Meeting the Moment event back in December, maybe January, so forth. It was not as student-centered as I imagined. I've been to events that we've put on and they were very, I loved how we literally centered the students and asked them a lot of questions. [03:05:16] And that to me, honestly, it felt a little more like a pep rally for these tools, which I get. And I work in tech, so I understand people get excited about the tools. So I really appreciate that this was a little bit more robust and it talked about our why statement and so forth and putting the data and research first and outlining. [03:05:33] I put in my notes, what do we envision for our students? And so, is the clock going by the way? I don't want, I've never gone over my time, so I just wanna make sure. It threw me off. Yes, all right. So, you know, so that answers that question. [03:05:51] But, you know, I guess my, I appreciate the comments too about productive struggle, centering that. You know, my concern, and I've shared this before, is that as technology becomes more ubiquitous, it's having the effect of separating our kids and isolating our kids. And so even the example that was shared about using AI to as like a, to help with writing prompts. [03:06:11] You know, that could be good. I mean, as an adult, I would use AI for that kind of thing. My concern is that as a student, that took away the student's possibility, and this is not to knock the presenter. This is, again, I think to hopefully display how complex this is, but using AI for a prompt took away the opportunity for that child to push themselves a little bit further and make a mistake and screw up and figure it out and struggle. [03:06:32] It also took away an opportunity for them to maybe collaborate with another human on that kind of stuff, right? So it's, you know, as we kind of think through our philosophy on this, those are the kind of things that come out to me. And my personal view is that, or my hope at least, is that AI can take over those boring repetitive tasks, as they mentioned. [03:06:50] There are certain things that, the MLA formatting example, I remember that from Policy Studies 101, having to do that, and I've never had to do it since. And my rudimentary vision is that we have a school system that pushes kids to do that deep thinking that really difficult cognitive load and challenging themselves and you know I think I maybe what's just saying you know as a a lot of us are at least 40 and above you know we we had the benefit of having this rigorous mostly tech free education and we learned a lot we grew a lot and you know we struggled and I think you know as a parent and I was a board member we had that same concern [03:07:27] that we don't want to take that from our kids and I think there's a lot of shared agreement on that like I said I think we're trying to walk that narrow path of how do we you know be realistic about what the future is to come and how do we emphasize those unique human skills and the last thing I'll say is I think we already have a great resource with portrait of a graduate and I guess my question for you all is you know do we need to double down on that or there may be changes to portrait of a graduate to make sure that we're you know taking consideration with the the spray new world looks like so I'll stop there thank you mr. moon oh thank you I have a slightly different take from my school board representative from Hunter Mill District or Mason District on [03:08:06] today's discussion all year with experts. I appreciate their being here and they're making their own presentations and also answering our question as a benefit. There may be some some bias being vendors but hey we get biases from all our presenters. So with that said, with that said, as far as a AI being here, I approach that from from this anger. AI is here. Can we, can we [03:08:40] prevent all the families, all students from using AI? I don't think that would be possible ever because there are certain things beyond our control. Students will use that at home with or without parental permissions, or with encouragement to parents sometimes, a lot of times, that can happen. So what do we do right now do nothing because of uncertainty out there do we just wait for five years doing nothing is that is that the choice we have yes that is choice we have is that the decision we want to make [03:09:18] is that the way do we want to go for me no absolutely not absolutely not the question about question about a what's your why for ai that's for the board to decide individual body members perhaps have a different why but we'll have to have a collective wisdom collective wisdom display and deciding why for our school division that's a policy decision we're going to have to make use of digital digital devices opting out it's the same thing those are decisions up for us you ask people about what do you think [03:09:55] what do you think we're probably hear hundreds thousands of different opinions on this at the bottom of the day it's going to come to 12 of us working with superintendents in other senior staff to make decisions rather than kicking things down the road. That's where I am and I was going to ask if I still have 54 seconds so if Dr. Reed or Dr. Presidio if you don't mind going to their presentation slide where they had the four AI use cases in education with four columns one two three four whether do you generally [03:10:35] agree with that Mr. Smith you can participate as well Mr. Gautam do you generally agree with those four big categories with sub you know sub items you see underneath and if so can you share with us generally where our secure system may be on each one of those I mean I'm not sure who wants to go ahead I can talk about at least one and two I think with the availability of the tools that we have enabled right now we are seeing the [03:11:14] acceptance and enthusiasm by staff being able to learn from it because these tools you still have to learn how to use them and use them meaningfully they'll produce an output which may be worth something or maybe worth nothing but we have to judge the output as adults who are using the tools so when it comes to sort of school efficiency and teacher efficiencies at least in technology because we can use these tools to write programs by the tools we make systems internally we make parent digital consent as a system that engineers in our team currently wrote to support parent consent to different choices in the school division those kind of tools we can evaluate push faster we're using [03:11:52] them to evaluate the security challenges cyber security challenges those things so on the efficiency side from an operational perspective we are seeing initial value and it is only accelerating where we feel as we get towards next school year you will see real examples of value that is generated from it but it still requires an adoption curve right people are still a little hesitant waiting to see where we land with that I think we are seeing our teachers being able to use some of these technologies especially when they're curating their coursework and working through those but they are in early stages we did a PD recently we had to join an online training session with an [03:12:29] AI tool to just learn what it is all about so those are the early stages are at least on those two fronts yeah I definitely agree with Gotham and I would say I mean across the continuum first of all I would say we're just at the early stages in any for any of these four different use cases to maybe speak about three and four that Gotham's covered one and two the AI literacy work is the work that we've been developing those lessons and piloting those lessons with students now and teachers now to get feedback to optimize those so that we can scale them up because we think it's [03:13:04] incredibly important that students one understand the risks of using AI independently outside of the school system and we've discussed those here publicly before but also understand how AI works so that they don't you know get manipulated by the technology which is another key risk and the learning with AI is where we've got the most work to do though I mean we are just trying to understand some of the use cases where AI would add value in the last work session that we did last week we tried to present a couple different use cases to show some of our thinking I think the feedback from the board at that point was good and it's pushing our thinking so we're [03:13:43] just if this was a continuum we are just barely getting started in AI with instruction and the other three I think we're much farther along. Okay, with nine seconds left, Dr. Reed, I as a one board member would love to hear from you or get from you list of questions that I should be answering in making decisions on AI policy or giving you as a CEO of a school system of a feedback about what I think as one board member or us, 12 of us as collective body. Mr. Moon, I'm sorry, you would like a list of [03:14:22] questions list of questions that i should be thinking about answering thank you thank you uh mystics following miss anderson i just wanted to to share a little bit i i understand that it can seem like we are bringing in experts to talk to us um as some sort of cheerleading event related to ai but i don't think that's what's happening um we don't have to cheer they don't have to [03:14:59] a cheerlead for us AI is happening outside of our walls regardless of whether or not we engage with it or not what I do see happening is that no one wants us to be left behind and we have high-level folks from all over the country that are coming in to talk to us about what our opportunities are because they see us as a leader within the country related to education so I heard some very important things don't start with the don'ts you can't just give restrictions related to any of these things and anybody who's parenting a teenager right now can tell you that starting with the don'ts doesn't work I love the idea of focusing on the learning if we make our policies and make our [03:15:38] decisions focused on what the learning outcomes are because there's a lot out there about ed tech but they are very clear that all screen time is not equal and they are talking clearly about the fact that good ed tech is far more beneficial than than no ed tech at all so what are we trying to protect I think is an extremely important question for me I love the focus on critical thinking because I think that's the core of this I also a hundred percent want student safety protected because we need to make sure that these are tools that our kids are already using and we've watched that happen with social media and [03:16:17] we ignored it as a division we ignored it and so I want to make sure that we don't do that again and so I would love to talk about how we can protect student safety and what and that is something and I love the concept of reserving our the right to change our minds because we that's the that's my whole point as to why I want us to stop conflating the conversation between ed tech and screen time and AI AI is innovative technology that is a different approach for the division then talking about how much screen time our kids are getting that is those are two separate conversations and they feed each other but it is two [03:16:55] separate conversations and I would like to keep them as two separate conversations so that we have we don't lose the innovative part of our education because I think that that is a real risk in our division if we we can all be nostalgic for something that happened when we were kids but we didn't have technology like like they did when we were kids like we were on dial-up at the best like I was a freshman in college before I was able to really really get online and that was with my father like doing something in FCPS when I was in fourth grade talking to schools in Alaska like we were not we were he was very much an early adopter so I'm just gonna say that I want us to [03:17:34] continue to see the curiosity in our own work so that we can move forward and make sure that we're attacking this from those positions of curiosity because I think that's where we will be successful thank you perfect timing miss Dixit so I would say I was really appreciative of all the speakers who had come today and taken time of their busy schedule and I know how busy they are as leaders in their own organization. I spoke with Yusuf after the conversation and and just to learn his passion and I think everybody's passion was coming through [03:18:13] while they were speaking about it. I'll say as a global you know learner I should say that I'm seeing other countries taking adopting AI much more than us in US even though AI came out of US so in fact other education system are embracing it and they're they want their kids to be future ready now it's up to the parents choice that they want a kid to go into the AI field or maybe kids can decide for themselves but exposure is important because 80% of the [03:18:52] jobs in the future will have some AI element to it except I think the hard blue-collar jobs where you actually have to do plumbing and and other kind of works but anything with the office desk environment medical field and correct me if I'm wrong but everything will have some sort of AI piece we teach these kids from our perspective like in a protective environment otherwise they're going to do that themselves on their own free time they're going to go to any like computer they can get their hands on and and learn for themselves so for me and I think we didn't go to this slide there was another slide was [03:19:30] portrait of the graduates after this one in online and FCPS portrait of graduate it's talks about communicator ethical global citizen collaborator right so creative thinker critical thinker i think if we can use our ai tools to enhance these skills for our students that is the goal i the way i want to go they don't have to be ai experts but just know enough so that they can when they grow up they can take their path and it will help them in some ways i used ai for productivity and i feel like any teachers who are taking too much [03:20:06] time to develop course material and it helps them to get it get it done it helps their productivity it's it's there for their use so I do not I think this is going away this is happening and we have to be done the right side of it or other two rather than fighting it because it's not going to work if we don't adopt AI policy it's going to be unregulated AI it's going to be difficult to manage and that's five-year example which he was sharing on what I I know this is happening in this real world there gonna be a lot of jobs in five years which are going in a very different direction so I I hope we can [03:20:45] collaborate and work on this together thank you thank you mr. McDaniel followed by mr. McElveen to go back to the question that mr. Moon asked you know why I mean I have two whys one what Miss Sima was alluding to you know skills and opportunities there's no question that the use of AI is a skill that will go with a graduate for the rest of their lives and exposing the opportunities in that field whether it's strictly within that field or if it's if it's exposing them to other fields that will require that skill that's what we're in the [03:21:24] business of across a whole host of other topics that we that we teach and we have courses on so I don't know you know we need to explore that here but what Miss Anderson said this is the conversation that I have with with parents when I talk to them about this, you know, when social media came up, it was largely ignored by K-12 education, public and private, and colleges, and it led to epidemics of problems that, you know, to a certain extent we're still grappling with today because it was just ignored, and people were out there, students were out there on their own, doing their own thing with social media, and it led to safety problems, and we're already seeing that with [03:22:02] AI. You know, kids are going out and having inappropriate interactions with AI, and it's leading to very tragic situations that are in the newspaper. So I, you know, I would hate to see something like that happen here anywhere, much less here in Fairfax County. So those are kind of my two whys. One of the things I'm very interested in is the operational efficiencies that AI can provide. And I go back to the data that was presented at the meeting of the moment symposium about how much teacher time is used on things that are not actually like straight one-on-one teaching with kids and the opportunities that AI can [03:22:35] provide to cut down on some of those tasks and their efficiency. We've got to really look in that because as budgets get, tying it all back to budget, as budgets get tighter and tighter and tighter and we're asked to do more with less and we ask our teachers to do more with less, you know technology has a place to provide capacity to do that more with less without necessarily sacrificing the time that they need to be one-on-one with the student or with the group of students on that note I toured elementary school yesterday and I was at the fifth grade language arts class and outside of the class on the wall there was a row of instead of art it was handwritten essays this teacher asked the [03:23:15] student to write make come up with their own legend and write their own legend and they were all written with pencil and notepaper regular old you know old school if you will notepaper and he made an interesting comment to me that I've heard before he said when they do that they all gave him feedback that they They have to think more about how they write, how they structure, how they flow. [03:23:37] More of that analytical, creative part of their brain is more engaged because when you type it on a computer, it's so easy to just backspace or cut and paste and restructure. So writing that out by hand developed these skills I think we all want to protect and nurture and foster. So all that being said, there is a balance here, and I'm looking forward to us being on the forefront of striking that balance. [03:23:57] okay seeing as though mr mckelveen is away from the table um i'll take a turn um i was grateful uh for the comments today from our from our panel um and again you know i think the four ai use cases education i think those buckets are need to be at the forefront of what we're thinking about because it really does break it down um and i think that we have to focus on learning and i feel like what i heard was when it comes to policy that we really can't put [03:24:31] everything in the kitchen sink in one but we probably need to leverage the committee we talked about in the earlier forum for more or less tech ed review because that's the curriculum if you will it'd be accessing tech ed to help curriculum um and perhaps what i'm at least what i feel like i'm digesting about what I heard is maybe separating that from the policy about utilizing technology to learn but not getting specific about certain tools because they made it very clear that we need to focus on the learning and not [03:25:10] the tools I think that what we need to talk about too is is training I think that the AI literacy obviously is of paramount importance but also the AI literacy of our teachers and this is where the peer-to-peer which was talked about is happening organically in our schools I came to the inclusion pilot showcase last Friday at Willow Oaks and you know visited the different locations and and sort of the intersectionality of inclusion and lighthouse schools or [03:25:48] innovative technology use and learning was evident and you know that excites me because you know everyone who is standing next to a board and talking was just beaming with pride about what they've done in their school because they had a targeted team focused on inclusion and how they were sharing stories about you know leveraging technology to help kids with disabilities, kids that are multi-language learners, access learning in ways that they [03:26:23] hadn't previously. And they talked also about the fact that some of them, their team started with four people who agreed to participate and is now like at 25 strong because one team member may have gotten back to their CLT, shared the work, and it sort of churned. And then they all leaned in and they are teaching each other because I'm not an early adopter of technology. I never have been um maybe pickleball or a new sport but not technology and um and i think it's great because i i lean on those people i did throughout my entire career i mean when i was building master [03:26:59] schedules i i had to lean on the people who were really good at pulling the data running the reports that were allowed for us to to learn and and focus as we built so i'll stop there i see that mr Mr. McElveen has returned. Mr. McElveen. [03:27:16] - Thank you. So first of all, I really appreciated Richard Collada's presentation. The two slides were very helpful. I wish we could have had that a year ago instead of the run, hide, fight presentation. But that being said, I will say that today's presentation probably could have been the homework. [03:27:40] The benefit of bringing people to us is having us have the opportunity to engage with them and ask them questions. So I was disappointed with that. And to some other comments that have been made, it is very hard to move the battleship. And I think we have to be very deliberate when we make decisions on how to proceed with technology. [03:28:01] I'm gonna refer back to my comments last month. It took us six to eight years to begin any one-to-one work on computers, right? And over in the blink of an eye, that changed because of the pandemic. but we don't have a pandemic situation here. We have the benefit of being able to think deliberatively about these things and work iteratively to get them right. [03:28:25] So grateful for the staff support. Do hope if we have the opportunity to see these people again that it can be a conversation instead of a lecture. Thanks. - Ms. St. John Cunning. - I too am very grateful for all the work that the staff has done and for this panel because they raised a lot of really interesting questions and they gave us a lot of insight. [03:28:49] I think the most important thing that we talked about is that we have to define our why. And what was grounded in that why was education and that we're in the business of formation of students. And I think if we keep those as our guiding lights, then we can do the why. [03:29:07] And what really resonated with us, with me, was focusing on effective learning and maintaining the core competencies that we want, which I think are very well outlined in "Portrait of a Graduate," and using this AI, and again, I wanna separate AI, 'cause that's what this discussion was, as opposed to technology, which is a whole different aspect that we're discussing. [03:29:31] But what I heard was, this is a way that can enhance our humanity and our human experience. And I think if that becomes our why and we have those, this will address focusing not on the moving target, as was said, but as it changes, knowing that we have a philosophy that will be applied to any new tool that comes up. [03:29:53] And I think that that's really critical, and that also prevents us from getting down into the no, no, no, this shouldn't be done. If we have some really strict boundaries of this is our why, these are our core competencies, then this is everything that comes through us, whatever new tool, whatever new technology, and how AI looks, if we stick to that framework and that philosophy, then I think we can come up with something that will be successful, that it will allow us to have that nimbleness and this flexibility, because yes, it's not COVID, but this is moving so fast that it's moved, we have to be, I've been using this word a lot today 'cause it just seems to have applied to everything, [03:30:32] we have to be nimble, we have to be nimble because this is all occurring very quickly. Again, if we have our core why, then anything that comes to us has got to fit under those parameters. [03:30:50] - Thank you, Dr. Anderson from Goback. - Thank you. You know, I understand the opportunity that we need to have staff explore and to get to know the tool. [03:31:06] You know, that's how we're going to learn. Conversely, there's just the concern from I think the parents that this staff is learning on my kid's dime, so to speak. They only have a fourth grade year, a fifth grade year, a sixth grade year, can't get it undone. [03:31:23] So how to ensure that whatever it is that the staff is learning, whatever it is that they're doing, as they are potentially going to impact students through an indirect use of AI, that that's a good product. I think that's the crux. So Dr. Reed, one of the questions that I want to ask is how are we evaluating that effectiveness as teachers are learning and trying to find resources, because nothing scares me more than a teacher who wants to do the right thing, who is using AI to develop resources for her students and then not having the right tools [03:32:01] to evaluate the veracity of that resource and then passing along that bad information to kids. That's the tension where it's so scary because we know there's no do-over. - I'll have Dr. Presidio answer that because we do have a division curriculum that is expected to be taught. [03:32:23] And I, to your point, I think that, you know, the partnership with OpenAI to learn about AI tools is a way in which I think the division, and Mr. Sethi and Dr. Presidio can speak to this. [03:32:44] I think Mr. Sethi talked about 2,000 staff on a particular professional development where there's an effort to provide thoughtful, professional development on what tools to, how to work with the tools, how to optimize the tools. [03:33:01] So I think there's, you know, an opportunity to have more of a group conversation around that topic with staff. But I'll, to the point I think you're making about rogue materials, is that sort of, I would want-- - I wouldn't, that was not my term. - Well, I mean, you said finding their own materials, so I think-- - Because that's one of the things we talked about to increase teacher efficiency to differentiate better you're going to create materials that are going to be very specific to the children in front of you they're not going to be developed by central office per se well I think that's what I want to ask dr. Presidio to speak to because they there is an expectation that the information that is [03:33:39] presented in the classroom does have is vetted by the school division so in terms of the pacing guides I think dr. Presidio you've spoken to so I'll let you I think there's maybe a couple questions here but let me try to address the curriculum materials issue first so we have a core curriculum if we don't have a basal curriculum meaning we purchase something from a vendor like our language arts benchmark curriculum we have a centrally created and curated curriculum through our planning and pacing guides that all teachers are expected to use that doesn't mean the teachers don't add or differentiate that curriculum at certain times, right? [03:34:18] But that's why our collaborative learning team process is so important, because we don't want people working in isolation to make those individual decisions. As much as possible, we want people really leaning in and taking advantage of the collective knowledge of their instructional teams, their collaborative learning teams. [03:34:35] So what ends up happening, though, oftentimes, is when the materials that we provide need some additional differentiation or scaffolding, then individual teachers and teams are left to try to do some of that work based on the needs of the students that they have in their particular class. [03:34:52] It's not possible for a vendor or for central office to create every single lesson and every single instructional material that a teacher might need in the classroom. So where we believe when we get back to this use case of AI for teacher efficiency is that we do believe, and that was, well, first of all, we do believe that AI can provide some of the scaffolding and differentiation for multilingual learners, for example, that often teachers might need to customize some of the off-the-shelf ready materials that we provide. [03:35:25] Those were some of the examples that we were trying to provide in last week's work session of what that might look like and what that process might look like for a teacher to go through that process. Your question about evaluation of the work that we're doing in pilots, I just want to clarify we're not piloting work with generative chat AI tools with students right now. [03:35:45] We're waiting to figure out where do we end up as a school division and community with our policy, and what are the use cases that we really want to promote in that fourth bucket. So when we talk about things like inquiry and curiosity and deep thinking and the portrait of graduate skills, we are working right now to try to think about what some of those use cases would look like. [03:36:07] And those are the things that we would pilot with a very intentional evaluation process to determine if they're actually having the intended effect in enhancing learning outcomes. And our research office is here with us today in the audience, and we appreciate the partnership with them. So that's the type of research that we would do on pilots when we would initiate them. [03:36:27] But we haven't done that at this point right now. We've really leaned into those first three buckets in the AI literacy curriculum, which was one of the other questions that I think was part of this. That is yet to be brought to scale. Those are just pilots. And again, that is teaching students about what AI is, how it works, how to avoid bias, look for bias, manipulation, some of the safety concerns that many of you have expressed in your comments here today. [03:36:53] I appreciate that. I'm not sure if that answers my question, but I also realize how loaded that question is because teachers will always create materials i did it as a teacher whether i came up with it on my own it's just that now we have this tool that everyone has agreed that is very powerful and is moving at a speed at which people can't keep up that could potentially create harmful things just how do how are we teaching our teachers from getting into that um into the cycle that i think Mr. Collada explained where the teacher created the tool didn't have a chance to write it just [03:37:30] send it to kids the kids use ai to do it the teachers use ai to grade it and then that really removes the learning for the children just just one last point on this i mean that's about the ai literacy for our educators right so that is making sure and we've issued guidelines about the things that we wouldn't want teachers to use ai to do right we don't want teachers to use ai to grade right the human judgment and the evaluation is really important in the grading process we don't want to outsource that to ai so so those are the things that we're working on when we talk about ai literacy for students and ai literacy for staff teachers cannot use ai to to grade and to give [03:38:09] feedback under our guidelines the final grade that a teacher assigns a student needs to be based on their professional judgment thank you i'm not seeing other placards so we have another healthy robust conversation ahead of us so 3:28 we'll close the conversation [03:38:34] around AI and transition to calendar in about three minutes thanks we're gonna [03:52:50] kick off our conversation on school calendar and I'll start we are going to do a couple things recap the progress we instituted from the regular vote on April 9 and the status the work and look ahead we're gonna recap the April 21 governance meeting and walk through the draft policy which is from April 21 meeting with also some suggested edits based on the vote so if you all had a chance to look at the draft policy you will see that we have [03:53:25] offered some redlining to the language related to early release days well I guess we'll get to that point when we go through the policy so let's just go through the policy and recap the governance meeting from April 21 and also I know we had some questions about emergency weather and Petrus is here to help us with that because it's a very complicated thing it changes every year in terms of the math behind it but when we get to that we're grateful that she's [03:54:05] here to help explain that to us so I'm gonna turn over to my colleague Miss Meredith to talk about the governance and policy the recap of the policy great Thanks, Ms. Leidy. It's good for us to get together and try to take stock of where we're at because we know we want to move forward on this. [03:54:20] So, again, just to get my mind in its two, so since our vote on April 9th, we have made it clear that the early release days will be published on the calendar in advance. The Veterans Day is instructional day, that we're going to have updated calendars by July 9th, 2026, for three years, so that's this upcoming school year, which is already done, plus the two that we'll vote on that night. [03:54:44] and that was Mr. McDaniel's motion and that there was alignment among members that five days and a consistent calendar is among the top priorities for the calendar so those were things that came in April 9th so again the hope is that we could even put this on new business for this Thursday for action May 9th excuse me for May 7th for action at the regular May 21st meeting which gives our superintendent maximum amount of time to get those calendars out published we get in put and we vote on July 9th so to recap the April 21st governance committee meeting so at that meeting there were the five committee members plus our board [03:55:24] chair so six members and among we six there was alignment that five days be among the top priority it wasn't listed as the top priority and there was no appetite for putting a number or percentage of weeks of full five-day weeks in the policy so I just want to say that again the six board members there were not interested in putting in the policy a number or percentage of weeks per quarter or the year in the policy so just want to share that so if [03:55:59] we could just walk through the draft which is posted so again this is taking the best of what was published back in November 23 what we've heard is inputs and let me just grab my copy one second so it combines the six existing policies which is a good thing it includes clarity on such things as community engagement emergency closures including snow days so that we'll hear more for more on that and especially it identifies and publishes religious and [03:56:35] cultural observances and federal and state recognized student holidays and it was Robin and I thought it was important to underscore the state recognize holidays because we have Juneteenth we also have those state elections which impact us in ways that federal holidays don't and the Friday before Labor Day which is required thank you so also note that from the 2023 guidance things that carried into this policy that previously were not codified is that spring break is not tied to the Easter holiday which is also I believe in alignment with area jurisdictions again those federal and state holidays [03:57:11] and Veterans Day becoming an observance day so an instructional day but an O or observance day so those three things had been practices but not codified so that's even more that we're getting clarity to that our public wanted us to be clear about okay the spring break not going to Easter the federal and state designated holidays and Veterans Day becoming an observance day then there were three questions we had asked of the superintendent one was about any implications with collective bargaining one was about weather related closures and the third one which I will think of while perhaps you want to speak to those [03:57:47] two thank you thank you miss Marin I think I'll the collective bargaining I'm gonna ask mr. Smith to comment on I did provide you a memo this morning related to that but mr. Smith if you could comment on the collective bargaining CBA piece I believe you have that in front of you I do and good afternoon everyone so as it relates to collective bargaining currently we have three CBAs two with [03:58:22] the FEU and one with FCF PSA and all three the governance for work days is is governed by Regulation 4421. So as it relates to workdays, what happens is that the school board shall establish the student calendar, and then the superintendent shall establish the employee calendar, and we use Regulation 4421 to develop that calendar. [03:58:54] The only other carve out that we have in the CBA for our operational employees is that when developing the work calendar, we shall ensure that we have 12 holidays for our transportation and food nutrition service employees. [03:59:12] And so that's the carve out that is stated and stipulated in the CBA. - So we're good that this policy complies with our collective bargaining. - I believe that's correct. - That is correct. - Great, thank you. [03:59:29] Yes, and then we want to talk about, we were trying to get some clarity to that always asked question, how many surgeries do we have? Are we gonna make up this in the days? That, and then also Dr. Reed, the community engagement piece that you were eager to follow up with us on. Those were the other two remaining pieces. - Thank you, Ms. Marin. So, Ms. Huffman, if you would please share sort of the history and how we established the number of weather days in the contract. [03:59:55] And as Betris gathers herself, I do wanna say that the last two years, especially, we've used almost all the days we did put in the calendar. so I think we're probably at a nice sweet spot at the moment so Betris do you want to describe that please certainly it it is an annual process that we go through using a layered approach that applies each of the set of regulations from the state code so there's a requirement for the overall instructional time and a requirement specific to the instructional hours the [04:00:32] core academic hours at elementary middle school and seat hours at high school for credit so each of those are taken into account based on the instructional guidance and the bell schedules that we have recess goes into play so essentially we ensure that looking at the calendar days that we have our bell schedules that have been set the instructional guidance in place that we are complying with all of those state regulations at each layer and then calculating our total we see what wiggle room we have and essentially find the [04:01:11] level that has the least that's what we then use to determine where we would have our our buffer for weather so which if it's elementary school middle school or high school that is closest to the state requirement, in other words, has the least give, that's what we go by when we say for the division that we have, for example, 10 built-in snow days. [04:01:40] So it will vary a little bit year by year based on all those parameters, but for the last couple of years, it's been around 10. And as Dr. Reed said, we've come close to using that for the last couple of years. And if I could add to that, so the 10 days that we're talking about, that's the equivalent. [04:01:57] Those are the equivalent minutes above the 990. So it's important to note that our six-hour days is 30 minutes longer than the state requires. So that provides more instructional time as part of the day. So we do not have additional days that we have built into the calendar, but we have the equivalent of those days, which provides that buffer. [04:02:21] And so, in doing the calculations, you may have a variety of calculations that provide the equivalent of 15 additional days, 11 additional days, or 10, and whatever is lowest. We then truncate that at the decimal point to provide that number of buffer days. [04:02:43] - Thank you for that. And just for folks, it does make sense, having worked in the system, that bell schedules are different, and we talk about instructional hours. I believe our elementary students have the most instructional hours, but then with some of the way we've done flex schedules and teaching cell lessons and things like that, all of those things don't always qualify as instructional minutes. [04:03:04] And so I do understand that however that falls, with the 990 hours, whatever level, what's either middle or high, is typically where we're gonna see the excess that might equate to up to 10 additional days. So I don't think we, given that it moves, a moving target a bit i think that if we wanted to put something in policy my suggestion would be a no less no fewer than five days six days built in with via the extra hours versus we build in this exact number because i think it fluctuates would that work for you dr reed i do think it [04:03:40] would be best to say a minimum because it does fluctuate year to year and we want to make sure that we provide a thoughtful year-to-year number which is what the team's been calculating so i So I think a minimum number, and then allowing us to work with that makes the most sense. [04:03:56] And I think that meets with a lot of the conversations at governance because there was, with nothing codified in here, many of our communities and our families have no idea we have buffer built in. And so that's the reason we want to put something in policy so they understand there is a buffer. [04:04:12] It would be no less than perhaps five days. We can work on that to at least codify it. Great. add and thank you for reminding us that was the impetus and that's why that line which is on the screen now SPS has blank number of snow days available for use each school year right so we've just heard that that's not how it's calculated but if we can say no less than the equivalent of five so no fewer than than the equivalent of five emergency weather not snow because we've [04:04:49] had there's other reasons we've had mother we had tornadoes so I would say emergency closures right so just with the sentence starting as you know there will be no less than the equivalent of five would that suffice I don't know if we need to qualify it with weather yeah I only bring that up because within that nine was the election that the days for the election this year - correct yeah so we we used nine I guess but they weren't all for Snowcrete they were also because of elections that had to take place over and over and over and over again in the [04:05:27] Braddock district no wasn't as bad so maybe no less than seven is being recommended by dr. Reed less than seven gives us election flexibility okay so there will be no less than seven and then the equivalent of seven emergency closure days now do note that and we can walk through the so we wanted to take this portion allow dr. Reed to respond to the three things the governance committee asked her to come back with but we will go through the whole policy now and you'll see that in another place the policy we do now talk about special [04:06:02] elections so again just trying to make it clear and concise so shall we put a pause on that and maybe before we get to community engagement actually let's walk through the policy what do you think yeah and I just I want to thank both Miss Marin and chair Anderson who worked hard on versions of this and the one that we're viewing chair Anderson organized for us so I just want to put that out and just I appreciate the work of different board members and their input that's gotten us this far so if members if you want to look online or [04:06:42] pull out your policy so again just to walk through it the purpose having that unified policy doing away with having six and having them all together so it would be this one policy 1344 and then sunsets the other ones that have been brought in the summary of changes is that it's been updated in its entirety we have definitions there and then we have a philosophy that again encapsulates that we want it to be reliable we want it to be clear that it prioritizes as rigorous learning respects the diversity of our community okay and the [04:07:18] use of our facilities as public assets and also to align with practices of neighboring school divisions okay so that's the top of page two so section five is policy and what's good is that the I was reminded this Thursday we have on action or consent rather the Governance Committee put forth the structure to help get all of our policies in alignment because there's different formats from different years so we are going to vote on consent the governance committee thought it was great and passed it through to consent to the board and so what I'm so pleased about is that this fits that structure [04:07:56] this section policy or responsibilities so that's great we could leave that title and then we have calendar and instructional time that includes the standard calendar structure calendar adoption how we're going to adopt it a community engagement portion which again we will have time for dr. Reed to come back and talk about the survey that's been in draft emergency closures which we just talked about and a modified school year calendar which isn't as prevalent in our use as other pieces so then the calendar development guidelines these are all things that pull in from all those other policies the start of [04:08:34] school making sure people know that if we're starting before Labor Day we've got to have that four-day weekend and then the last day of school the length of the school day you know school start and end times and then any adjustments again we have a few edits coming forth to this then in section in the fourth place we have student holidays and observances which that list comes from the 2023 guidance document that the superintendent has used to develop calendars so this would be the first time codifying that list altogether here [04:09:07] this policy then we have recognition of cultural observance days commemoration so an extension of you know observances then the summer holiday and county-wide elections so that's all the stuff in one place and then ms lady and i went through and from governance also suggested just a few things and that's on the printed red line you have and also it's on board docs it was sent by email as well yeah that was to incorporate what we voted on the board meeting so if we [04:09:44] want to officially do that in this document we can yeah under the earlier release days which is on page three I think under length of the yeah under adjustments I believe it says so as mandated by the code of Virginia the first day of student attendance shall be no earlier I think that paragraph is [04:10:21] fine okay all right so let's go to the early days sorry yeah the edits I suggested were there should be no more than four division-wide early release days point of clarification yeah um we did not vote on four division or eight division-wide I know that's what we're correcting well but that's what's being corrected we did not vote on that we voted on eight early early release days [04:10:56] for elementary only that's right so oh I see we're saying so your headline is incorrect we we are only ever have given for division-wide early release days right so we're trying to codify that for early release days for end of course and it's end of quarter right and for additional for elementary only Anderson I gave you a copy earlier in the day and I've since then updated that to cross out that eight it's for if the clerks could put up the version that I shared by [04:11:26] email please um that's not what i shared by email but it just point of clarification it is for end of quarter early release division-wide all levels and then four additional for elementary early release is what we voted on i understand that that's what we voted on for the 26 27 calendar i would like i'll i'll speak more i got you okay that is correct that is what we voted on just for the 26 27 calendar and not necessarily in perpetuity so that's open for conversation [04:12:02] thank you just getting the right version please okay yes please I think [04:12:44] additional and again just to reiterate that this is up for debate you're correct this is something we vote on for next school year and I guess my apologies if I made the assumption that that was perhaps going to be in perpetuity but it certainly was not voted on a perpetuity yet right so thank you clerk team for getting that up there and again we're just presenting this to you for then discussion because it's a lot of pieces we're trying to we've together in the interest of time. [04:13:18] So that, from what Ms. Lady understand, would reflect the vote that happened at our last board meeting. And then the other additional changes were, Ms. Lady had a good description up under the start of school and that's on your, the shared document that just explains why, we always get asked, why do we start before later day? [04:13:39] Why can't we end later? So Ms. Lady wrote that up and said, well, we start school before Labor Day so that students have two additional weeks of instruction and have time at the end for testing so that's for your consideration and then the last thing under student holidays and observances which just to put for the spring holiday that there not be an FCPS scheduled student holiday on the Monday after spring break so that was a suggestion for board consideration okay so all right I did not see the order of placards I do believe I saw miss [04:14:17] Anderson's first some start there I have I have just a few things that I'm probably gonna need to go back I just wanted to I don't have any concern with the extra information added at the start of school I am I am extremely concerned about the language related to early releases for the same reason I was concerned when we voted in voted on it is that it doesn't acknowledge the fact that we have lots of early release days at the high school level that are are beneficial to our students related to and I hear nothing from parents related concern about those days so I would like to be extremely careful about how we're [04:14:54] wording things the other thing is we unless each school is is publishing an individual student calendar this is going to be impossible to make sure that every early release day is codified for every school on the same calendar we have 199 schools there's just no world that we're going to be able to do that effectively and I don't think that our intention is to allow the early release days into perpetuity we had talked to Dr. Reed about the ways to phase them out eventually and that was that was the negotiation to get to eight for [04:15:30] elementary in addition I would like to make sure that we're consistent with our language if we're not calling it spring break as the whole as the overarching then we should make sure that if we're gonna say that there's no FCPS scheduled student holiday it should say after the spring holiday not spring break in In addition to the fact that I want to make sure what happens if we end a quarter with the last day before spring break, which often happens, does that mean that we are not going to give teachers a teacher work day after the spring break or after the spring holiday? [04:16:09] I think based on the discussion that we wouldn't do that. We would end it on Thursday to ensure that that happened up front, that the teacher work day would be then the next day to prevent it from being the following Monday because it's already an early release, therefore it's only disrupting one five-day week and not two five-day weeks was the discussion. [04:16:35] Okay. The other thing is I spent a fair amount of time merging the two documents together that we had been working from, and so I have a lot of familiarity with the reason. So I'm not wholeheartedly against the reorganization of it. [04:16:51] I don't understand fully why this was only given to us right before the meeting because again that is and it would have been extremely helpful for this to be actually redlined to indicate where things were within the document rather than proposed in the way that it is because it's it's a pretty significant departure from the way that it was presented and so I'm I'm okay with talking about that but I would need to be able to actually see the document put together with with the whole thing so I'll leave it there but I may have a few [04:17:26] more comments thank you mr. McDaniel I was a little confused as well so thinking on my feet here this on this document I have parent I mean I have constituents wanting us to go back to starting after Labor Day so I don't know that we need a red line paragraph talking up starting before Labor Day I I mean, the policy is a policy. [04:17:56] It just seems editorial in nature. I think we should just stick to what the code says and be done with it. So comment there. I still continue to have the elementary plan time. I think the motion that was brought last time that I abstained on was obviously from the comments and the conversation that ran three hours on the dais was a mess, quite frankly. [04:18:18] And I still have heartburn about that, but the board voted and it is what it is. But I guess, so there shall not be an FCPS scheduled student holiday on the Monday after spring break. That kind of implies that there could be after winter break or Thanksgiving break. [04:18:36] So that was a question there. There was also a comment made about Easter, and I guess trying to decouple, there was a comment about Easter, but the word Easter isn't anywhere in the draft or the red line draft, so I didn't really know where that came from. And regarding Veterans Day as an O day, No other O days are in policy or regulation. [04:18:58] I don't know why we were necessarily calling out Veterans Day as an O day. The policy does refer back to policy 1460 religion under the recognition of cultural observance days, which I pulled up a copy of here. Again, there's no actual observance days listed out. [04:19:15] And then regulation 1460, which obviously aligns with policy 1460, also doesn't write out anything in regards to specific O days. So I don't think it's necessary to specifically call out Veterans Day as an O, I'm fine with it being an O day, but yeah, again, just thinking quick on my feet here, those are some of the comments that I have. [04:19:37] I'd love to be able to just answer some questions, not speak to your opinion and thoughts, but so this combines the policy that said Veterans Day will be a student holiday, I mean a student day of instruction. So that's why Veterans Day is an O day, because it codifies what was in the policy and then codifies what we voted on last time, which said that Veterans Day will be an O day. [04:20:01] So that's where that comes from. Regarding Easter, you're right, it doesn't mention it. We do hear, though, the reason it was put in is because we do hear, is it going to be coupled to Easter or not? So that's up for debate. The policy does say that the winter break will be a certain number of days and will end on a Monday or Friday. [04:20:21] it doesn't say it the way the spring holiday and we I'm happy to make that change the holiday from break so those are some of the answers to your questions and certainly it's debatable still how we put in early release days right so that's another person who we want to make sure it's saying we want to make sure we get that right okay and then I also just want to confirm I'm hearing that there might be different opinions on saying no break no Monday after a spring holiday student holiday do you have I captured your have I answered your question yeah I think I mean the only comments okay perhaps it's [04:20:58] worth actually listing out the O days if we're gonna list out one I think it would probably be beneficial to list out all of them just so it's very clear on the O days but I'm not gonna die on that hill anyway that's all dr. Anderson thank you I'm just going to start with what's first and that was the comment regarding the start of school, the before Labor Day, after Labor Day. [04:21:29] Is this still accurate given the Den Helmer bill regarding when SOLs are to be administered? Because that was pushed back. So I think there's some space there for some discrepancy. Maybe that's worth looking into if we choose to stay married to this language. Because I know that was moved back by a year or two. [04:21:47] - Yeah, I think it's not this year, not next year, but the next year. - Right, so then we couldn't say we are afforded that because of the time, because they'll have to do it so close to the end of the school year, it becomes a moot point. - That's correct for SOLs, it's not correct for APs, IBs, and DEs, okay? [04:22:02] Those are hard intercourse. Before, when we didn't start before Labor Day, we put our kids at a huge disadvantage, this is Robin Lady's opinion, because in the south, they start the first week of August, so it's not only preparation for standardized testing at the AP, IB level, it's also the college process. [04:22:19] The deadlines continue to back up. The earliest hard deadline is October 15, but rolling admissions for some schools starts August 1. We don't have transcript secretaries, transcript AAs in the office over the summer. And for kids to-- - Right, and I appreciate all of that, but I could also counter that in the South, they start early, but they also end early. [04:22:40] We just have a very long period. - No, I understand, but again, my point of saying in my edit was for spring testing, I don't wanna outline SOL versus AP or DE. - Well, SOL is identified here. That just may no longer be applicable. That's why I raised it. - I would say for spring testing. - I'm just going to move on to my next thing. [04:22:57] My next thing is regarding early release days. I do agree with Ms. Anderson. We can't necessarily identify on the date that these seven schools are going to be off on the seventh and then these nine schools are gonna be off on the 15th. [04:23:15] However, I see a space for us at the bottom of the calendar, student calendar for there to be some sort of asterisk that says elementary will have four early release days to be determined similarly high school will have X number of early release days to be determined because we don't talk about that at all and I think we need to make sure that there's clarity that elementary will have the four division wide which is on the calendar which we can definitely live by but elementary will have four extras four more high schools will have whatever that number is because frankly i don't even think i know i just know [04:23:53] that kid is always in my house so if we could just let people know how many days they should expect to see their kids in their homes even if it's at the bottom of the document i think that gives us the communication rather than no information at all so that's one piece um i wanted to better understand uh and i'd love feedback to that point when i pause here i better i wanted to better understand the emergency days I understand we use nine and then the initial conversation was five and then we landed at seven I'm trying to figure out why this feels arbitrary to me help me better grasp my head around this I [04:24:32] think the last several years even pre my getting to the division we've used the approximate the equivalent of ten and I don't see a reason to adjust that given we've been very close to that the last couple years so that's where I would likely continue to build it. So I think having no less than seven, the reason it's arbitrary is likely we're going to go with 10, the equivalent of. So whether it's no less than five or no less than seven, 10 still fits there. I think this year with the elections, the special elections [04:25:09] and the weather, it has been more challenging perhaps than other years. But as we looked back the data i think we had nine that we used a year ago and um nine that we've used this year so you know it's very close does the policy clearly state 10 the the old policy so it had no number i believe there was any number i think that was a calculation that staff because of historical purposes marty you've been here obviously longer than i have there was a historical pattern that has been utilized yes when we developed the calendar we were looking at those [04:25:46] those instructional hours above the 990 and then landed on that lowest number so 10 is where it's been but it has been as low as 8 depending on the time that we've had built for instruction and it's been as high as 11 and maybe a little bit higher so that number does fluctuate and the board members of the board may remember in years past when we didn't to use all of the buffer days that we had and I think that I've answered many questions both with the community and with our own teachers and staff wanting [04:26:23] those days back and they're not additional days that are built in it's hours that lead in today I was trying to have that conversation back there with Emily so how helpful is it to say it's no fewer than 579 if we're going to use what we use because how helpful is that that's the piece I don't think I understand I think that the and again it I think that the architects of the draft you're looking at wanted a greater sense of transparency for the community that there are actual extra days built in I don't know that we would always pick ten [04:26:59] I think that's what we've traditionally picked over the last recent past but a policy you know doesn't get reviewed as regularly so I think having a minimum and then leaving that latitude signals that there are extra days without limiting what staff believe the extra days need to be based on the calculation for that given year and video ease possible adjustments to calculation so I think the minimum signals there is something beyond without limiting what staff needs to do to address VDOE requirements and possible emergencies [04:27:38] based on our context because right now we still have a hundred and eighty days of instruction on our calendar we build the calendar based on 180 days 180 days with additional hours sprinkled in to come up to what comes across at least to me as a fairly arbitrary number because we're gonna use what we use and again the state's guidance is built on 185.5 hour days we build our calendar on 186 hour days for students that's the piece where I'm not sure I see the utility of [04:28:14] this piece where we're adding the numbers I do want to say with this cardboard piece that we have here the letter B the suggested student holidays and observances language about no holiday of the Monday after spring break I think that's spot-on because that just was insult to injury in a lot of ways I'll take a go back to finish the rest of my thoughts all right thank you miss Dixit so I was not on the governance of meetings I guess when you guys discuss this so I think some of the information is a bit new to me I don't [04:28:54] know the memo and some of the info I'm still kind of going through that but I've had a question about the the top of the policy it says the Sunset's policy one three five zero three four one five three three eight zero three eight four [04:29:11] zero can somebody pull up the policy three eight four zero this is the only thing I found under three eight four zero it's about community participation [04:29:47] or student performances community events so I think this needs to be removed from that this calendar policy and the rest are fine can I continue okay I also wanted to ask one definition section I know we have very very nicely put out [04:30:23] all the definitions which we didn't have in the prior policies I didn't see about anything about virtual instruction days or anything to say the school is in session but the classes are done virtually in case there is a you know emergency or I know we move yeah like it's been extended should we address that here as well is that a question for me yes dr. it's my understanding that we weren't gonna link both of those in this policy I know video he has rules about [04:31:02] how many days you could go virtual and that would so we could certainly follow statute but I don't it hasn't been traditionally a part of our calendar policy yeah the reason I asked is when we keep saying five consecutive days of student instruction so far for example there had something and happen and we had to go virtual maybe twice or thrice in the year it would still count as a five-day instruction maybe even the one or two days are virtual how do we [04:31:39] quantify that I don't know that it would if it doesn't if we're not able to effectively instruct all children so I think that then we end up potentially making up time if we're not able to do that but I I certainly could go back to staff and talk about that but I that has not been a part of our calendar policy I think at one point there was guidance that if we missed a certain number of days we would consider that but we took that off the books a couple years ago because again it's very difficult I think COVID also taught us it's very [04:32:18] difficult to effectively educate and engage with every child in a virtual format okay because our calendar policy kind of starting with the man you know five days school days that's like the kind of the philosophy and the philosophy section so my mind went into what when kids are virtual I also wanted to share about Labor Day and starting closing the school starting the school early or closing the school early I think we are going into way late in summer and and [04:32:58] starting the school way late again it's this is my opinion one board member but I just feel like maybe there's a way we could school and a school a little bit earlier or start either way start the school earlier or end the school earlier like yeah i know i know so this this is the issue with some of our rules is like i think i'm i don't know okay [04:33:34] so the reason i said it in many parts of the world and then i'll i'll say the schools end early and they start next year's instruction before they split end the school for summer break that's very interesting to me doesn't happen here in the United States and I don't know the logic behind it maybe it's you get to the next grade so you finish your fourth grade your class and then you have like a one or two-day break after exam and then you are right back to fifth grade starting the school and then go for your summer break I have no yeah exactly so it doesn't have billions of students are [04:34:13] doing that across the world but I think us is not but I don't the benefit of that or the you know it's good or bad educational wise but this is a practice and when I heard about you know closing school early I was like maybe you know we could give them extra additional courses for next year to study over the summer I believe in homework can I share a comment so so you know again these are the things that have over months of review bubbled up as areas that we can take action on now I think you know virtual days when school starts and ends [04:34:53] I think a lot of us want to talk about it and so I'm writing this down I just doesn't seem like we're gonna get to that in time for the superintendent to make the decisions but this could be the next steps you know after we just get this policy cleaned up and again the thing about Labor Day that language Robin and I thought it would be helpful to put that in there and present it to you all for consideration because we were all received questions about it it does not have to be in there it was meant to be helpful if it's not let's just take that out so thank you and similarly the addition of no less than this number of emergency days both of those are editorial but we were we keep [04:35:31] hearing from people that they're not aware of the reasoning which is the only reason that we've made it editorial and put it in there okay all right so miss st. John Cunningham next so first of all again got this right now I'm having a difficult time crosswalking it because it's not following the same pattern so I want to ask what was the reasoning for the reorg and I know that I'm gonna need more time to dive into this and look at this because the way it's it's not redlined the way I'm used to normally seeing red lines so I'm having to skip all over yeah sure you know I you know answer to a question why wasn't [04:36:09] this sooner I was just really busy last up I was meeting manager to the events today to the sections today so when I really went back and reread for I don't know maybe my third time last night to prepare for today the draft policy that was posted I said huh you know I think some of these things could be better categorized so like things talking about the standard calendar makeup we're gonna have standard the instructional times gonna be 180 days or 990 hours the structure and that's direct content from what's in there let's put the start of school the length of the school day the last day of school the summer those are all standard things and then I said okay well then there's development guidelines so let's put in there about the holidays and observances how to do [04:36:49] community engagement how it's going to be adopted and then finally putting the two closure pieces together so emergency closures and countywide elections were about community about closures and then that last piece about a modified year calendar which is really just on a school-by-school basis these are my personal suggestions if it's too much to do at this time that's fine I thought that this would be a more organized way to present it than what the policy currently has it as but it's if it will if it impedes getting this to the new business on Thursday I am happy to have you all reject it just the way my brain [04:37:24] works it's it's really hard for me to crosswalk so that was my only thing I do appreciate the language you want to add in terms of clarification about why this is being done although I don't know that it needs to be in policy I think that's something that we as school board members put out I appreciate the reason that it's there because I think that again going back to our communication and how we get the information out because this to me is more explanatory and do we do that in all of our policies so I mean I can go either way I [04:38:00] appreciate it I understand the reasoning I'm just trying to you know since I'm being in government since I've started being a governance looking at how we have consistency in all our policies so again that that's just my two cents for for what that's worth um the other thing about the monday after um spring break i i don't know why that was originally done i do know that there is a large celebration at the zoo for our african-american community historically in this area because before uh the african-american community could not go to the white house easter egg rule so what traditionally has happened is that a lot of our [04:38:38] african-american community goes to the national zoo i don't know that was the initial reasoning for that being that monday off i'm just putting it out there as a fact that i happen to know okay thank you uh mr dannon good afternoon um first i i appreciate uh one effort um to consolidate a lot of policies into one i thought that was really great when i saw that at the top so um and i appreciate um mystics miss dixit's outside the box thinking because i'm gonna ask a couple questions one is people have brought to me and about how much they throughout this [04:39:17] whole discussion but boy those early release mondays weren't so bad so for the record given what um you shared mr smith that um that is that ship is so that is not a possibility of carving out language in this policy to make that an option again correct or doctor the earlier mondays the people like the consistency of it they eventually could plan around it they knew that it was you know every monday they would get out a couple hours early that is not a possible we're not going back to that is that correct if we that's my question is that you know the sense of that i think that's really a board decision and i think most recently [04:39:54] it was okay okay all right thank you so i need to discuss inside the house that'll be maybe next meeting that was a joke um well and i also i also wanted to apologize to mystics it about the virtual learning too that also requires devices right so I think all of those are conversations we're still having at the moment and I just think that you know at this point that's probably another reason not to conflate that the two so under definitions I didn't see a definition for student holiday but it was referenced is it [04:40:34] worth clarifying or did I miss it somewhere I'm fine with that I think it's a good point because people understand a student holiday is when students are home but faculty is working yeah okay fine and then section 5 a 1 this the second the third paragraph I think is just duplicative of the other so a page two under calendar instruction time standard calendar structure it says the board prioritizes full school weeks during each quarter that was it's just [04:41:13] duplicative we've crossed it out on the version up here the language under section two calendar adoption and the third paragraph seemed a little fuzzy where it talks about with the third year adopted at the first regular board meeting I think it makes sense like it's every year we're approving the calendar three years out correct it's maybe it's not fuzzy to anybody else but so it is a little fuzzy I don't know if we need to apologize I've not come up with a suggested language for it but you know maybe we add an annual basis or [04:41:50] something like that to clarify again just a suggestion section three right below that community engagement and apologies again if this was already discussed but where it says feedback may be gathered I don't know if you want to strengthen this language just to you know document clearly that we will be gathering public input that it's instrumental to this maybe that requires like a new sentence about forming group or something like that but and I know I get I know I trust you will get community input but it always better to have it in policy this is a little pet peeve of mine going down to calendar [04:42:27] development guidelines part B start of school is there a reason why that we clarify that's really listed that school should start on a Monday I feel like I remember a couple years ago school starting on like a Wednesday and it made things a little bit easier maybe for school staff that could be miss remember me that I'm getting looks from folks who work inside the school knows Monday is that the preferred start date over okay in a different district is it need to be I'm trying what's the benefit of that I guess is my question of having it or is there a benefit to starting midweek well it gives us one five-day week yeah exactly no I make sense I was thinking in terms of like [04:43:04] support staff I know I mean I do agree with you that that it's a marathon for staff that first week to be five days and when we were after Labor Day it was always a four-day week but then you'd have three four-day weeks in a row got it okay because you'd have the first week before days you have to have off the Friday before Labor Day and the Monday of Labor Day so you'd have three four-day weeks so that's probably why it was codified starting on a Monday okay I didn't yeah I didn't I won't the term you used earlier is but I won't no no I just more of a question the last thing is you know I go back for I know [04:43:41] I've shared this before but going back up to philosophy my recommendation would be to strike the language where it says full school weeks five years instruction to uphold and just state committed to an academic calendar that prioritizes instructional continuity and stability so it's basically the same thing but I think that language just gets at the heart of the issue is that people want that consistency and stability you know we have five day weeks and presuming those are Monday through Friday weeks but I mean basically striking up on page two under philosophy and I'm sorry my not making a motion or [04:44:20] anything but my suggestion would be striking the language where it says full school weeks five day all the way through to uphold so that it states committed to an academic calendar that prioritizes instructional continuity instability because I'm not aware of any research that states that a five-day week per se is better for instructional outcomes or educational outcomes but I do know that having instructional continuity and stability does and so that's just the thinking behind that is it being very specific about what we mean there so I saw miss Dixit I like that idea if anybody else any other [04:44:54] thoughts on that but what's the thought behind it can I ask it yeah yeah I guess just kind of look back we're talking about the process so as governance people you know we provided our own standalone suggestions for discussion so I think awesome that you're providing your suggestion I think it's pretty clear that we can't put this on new business for this Thursday so it can come back to governance we could have that discussion get it the final back out to the full board and get it finished you know whether that's getting feedback you know there's always that kind of weird space when it's like well [04:45:33] we put something out to the board and then if we change it do we need to republish it or but we'll figure it out but I'm writing a list of things that I'm hearing agreement on or questions on I'm sure the clerks are and so we could bring that to governance for discussion so I'm glad I'm glad it's captured but I don't agree with it yet personally that's it okay thank you all mr. moon I thank you on the philosophy since you know several board members mentioned about the particular paragraph I was going to suggest the flipping I mean [04:46:10] there is basically there are two sentences three sentences one first and second could go after the third so starting with the philosophy section could start with the board seeks to provide a clear and reliable framework start with that and first two sentences could come later as a commitment because the next paragraph or so far is about commitment that's me and I have a question regarding secondary scores especially for high schools on the final [04:46:48] exam period how many days do they normally get four days for days just at the year or at the end of each semester or that was confirmed by mr. Dr. Presidio so yeah it's four it's four it's two it's four the very last day of school is an early release and the three prior to that are exam days where there's two exams per day but we have seven blocks your first exam is the last period of whatever that A or B day is and then the others are built in so you don't have more than is that is that at the end of the school year yes only okay high school [04:47:27] only and then there's the SAT PSAT early release and therefore the elementary so it's five at high school end of a quarter early real estate division wide how many hours they get up earlier two hours is that three hours two hours i just want to make sure that i am understanding this correctly i'm not sure if it's two or three last day is three are all the grading days three they're three of the four division wide are two and the fourth of four is three okay what about [04:48:03] all the early release days for the elementary those are three what about exam period how many early release hours i'm trying to count back from 1080 hours we have yeah out of 180 instructional days if we set aside 10 days as an emergency day that's a 60 hours out of that right we need 990 minimum, you set aside the 60 hours, 1,050 right there. If you have 1,080 hours, that leaves us with [04:48:39] only 30 hours for all the early releases, whatever, SAT, PSAT, high school exam, or end of quarter, or those four additional. So just keep that in mind that we have 1,080 hours built-in, and then we have to have a 990 minimum. Others, including all those snow days, each snow day is six hours off. And then we also have a mini late start, two hour delays, all those things come up [04:49:16] to count that down. Because I remember, you know, many years ago, we had to make that up at the end of the school year for, for, for, for, and also for the certain period of time, we have to make up we have to make up certain number of minutes every day so uh okay so with that said i also have a question regarding generally all these number of holidays the length of a spring break length of winter break all that if you could i finish that go ahead yes [04:49:51] okay if you i did my arithmetic it's not calculus you add all those and the summer will never exceed more than eight weeks and for the teachers who have to come about a week earlier for teachers summer will never go more than seven weeks so that and also I have a problem with the definition of a winter break being ten business days because business days do not include holidays so our intention was to keep this as high level as possible and we've gone like way down deep in the [04:50:31] weeds and haven't even talked about the biggest thing we thought would be the discussion which would be a cultural observance days and all that so you know again we're gonna take all this feedback back to governance we'll bring a red line back you are welcome to give input at any time I have given copious updates over the last few months so we have until 5:30 but we were going to try and do sky view again since that is such a big deal but we also I think what we need to do is pivot to exactly where Mr. Moon was going if we can focus on section 4A student holidays just so we can get a sense before we go back to [04:51:08] governments where people live with this this is certainly what's in draft form and and and then also if we can get to any consensus on which of the three surveys that Dr. Reed put out but let's start first with any comments on the designated student holidays which are in alphabetical order and again those are from the November 2023 guidance document that was not voted by the board but that is used now so are we gonna look for as much agreement as possible that people want to do a show of hands who is in line with it who is not are we all over the map okay well I just want to pivot to that page because I don't want [04:51:47] to us not to go to have that part of the conversation and any other you know edits to the policy we welcome so I'm just gonna go in the order of what I saw as go backs and if someone doesn't you know want to speak to this that's fine or if you feel radically like you need to talk about something else and you still want your go back that's fine too dr. Anderson that was actually the first thing that I had on my list of things to talk about as I mentioned in governance I do not want for this list to be part of the policy one of the things that I know was clear from mr. Foster when we talked about holidays [04:52:26] before and again I pulled up the information is that there has to be some operational impact this leaves it open to I think interpretation that we could add without having that secular reason which he had outlined previously doing a public meeting I'm just referring to the public meeting conversations that you had did you read his update that was shared with us yesterday I not sure that he addressed this very thoroughly okay so I will take a look at that in a little bit I will take a look at that in a little bit I have other things that I [04:53:01] want to speak about the community engagement piece on page 3 where it says feedback may it should say shall because the feedback has to happen how is how it happens is the flexibility because the may onto the feedback means it could not happen so that would be my very strong ask again I talked about adding all the early release days as an asterisk on it. Starting midweek, I have to say from somebody who worked in schools for many, many, many years over two decades, it was really nice to start on a Wednesday [04:53:38] because there was only so much bandwidth for students and students. So that would be one of the spaces if there was some flexibility, I would appreciate that just because it makes it a little easier in life five-day weeks I am also vehemently opposed to removing that from the language because it's part of the advocacy that we've been hearing a lot about and not being responsive to that I think misses the mark again maybe in [04:54:15] one place and not the other but I just wanted to raise that I do think this needs to go back to governance with a reiteration of all of what's been provided today in a nice red line version so we can just have one document instead of multiple documents to review and I will go take a look at mr. [04:54:34] Foster's email right now thank you okay I'm just gonna stay in the order well actually I'll go with placards and then the time we'll come back so mr. moon yeah one thing that I was not able to finish is with a winter break as written as written right now here as a draft is a 10 10 business days me as business days do not include holidays so Christmas Day and New Year's Day those are holidays so if they are not included 10 business days they will take the extent to two [04:55:12] and a half weeks you need to add over two days so make it 12 sort of so that's that's way too long that's way too long you could say just ten calendar day no ten ten weekdays are you is that are you done yeah I have some additional comment on the winter break being somewhat much longer than it used to be [04:55:50] but I will reserve that for some other time mistakes it so I'm doing to just say that I'm good with the number of holidays mentioned here the I did not support a Veterans Day to be a school day during the last voting and it's shady it shows here as all day I may be okay with that but I really wanted that to be holiday too that's my opinion on that and like Mr. Tannen said right ideas consistency that's what the community is saying I don't want to put space [04:56:28] specific language in the policy document and get you know you know just make it more and like a generic in nature I think I like that approach is to put it as a as the this calendar policies to make our school system give you know consistent instruction so I would like to hold on to that thought and I would appreciate if our government's team can you know consider our non non [04:57:05] governance people also our thoughts into action when you redo the word the work that's why we're here right so I just want to make sure some time people are there they don't get hurt well and I I feel like also like some people hold on to their parts and believe in that what is right but if that just because they believe in it it doesn't make it right so the board has to decide that right so I not particularly saying miss lady that you're you're you're specifically doing [04:57:42] that but overall I have I've seen that when you're not in the room things can happen but you don't want to happen well this will come to a board vote and I think that since these are outlined in the policy that governance brought to you that that was the feeling in the room of governance and it sounds like you're in agreement with what's in front of you so I think you you were represented in the room when it comes to these days yeah yeah I'm just saying the five days the language oh yeah I changed my mind on that okay thanks okay thank you miss st. John cunning no I'm sorry yes miss st. John mr. mr. Dannon [04:58:22] promises day on section four here so just to clarify when we say student holidays here would these also be teacher work days or that's just TBD because I see like you know Labor Day and fourth of July and I'm presuming people we wouldn't be asking teachers to work those days or would we okay I was unsure just from the way that was it was listed here and I guess when we have the definition of student holidays that'll help has there been any more I understand some folks have we've tried to reach out to the minority faith coalition and I will say I met with them a while back and it was shared with me that that was one of those great examples where people of different views came together and [04:59:01] collaborated and worked things out and gave inputs you know again maybe not perfect we're not gonna there is not a perfect calendar and so it's probably worth saying that out loud but have we heard more from them or had more engagement with those kind of groups to get a sense of where they're at with this and so forth I'll put that out to the board or to Dr. Reed if you've heard from that group okay and again this is Tom Dan in middle child's trying trying to strike a balance here. [04:59:28] But has there been any thought given to some of these, I recognize election day is always on a Tuesday, for example, but to treating some of these as a holiday day off if it falls on a Monday or a Friday, and then an observed day if it's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And again, I recognize this is an imperfect solution. [04:59:45] This is a difficult problem. We're trying to balance competing interests here. But I do wanna put that out there, again, if it's, I don't know if other school divisions do this, where, you know, if, like I said, a holiday one of these religious holidays falls on a Monday or Friday gets recognized and if not it becomes a no day so that's my comment I think thank you I think we're capturing that note the st. John Cunning and then mr. McDaniel so I appreciate all the work that has gone into this and the thing about this is that we're trying to balance competing priorities not saying that one [05:00:23] is more important than the other and and that's what's difficult and that's those are the decisions we have to make so I do appreciate the work that has gone into this and yes there's been advocacy for the five days I've gotten letters saying we should just go to a four-day week so again it's always some of the loudest voices that we hear and I've gotten like absolutely no holidays let's not do any holidays so there are competing priorities and we're trying to balance what is impossible and there are some people that are not going to be happy and we need to recognize this we're trying to do the best for our students for our staff for our community I appreciate this work session I [05:01:02] appreciate the engagement and I would just offer to the rest of the people that are here that are normally not in governance whatever your suggestions are please email them in because that doesn't mean that just because you're not at the committee doesn't mean that you don't have a seat at the table I heard some great suggestions here today but this is the first time we've had to discuss it and that's what a work session is for so I appreciate the feedback and the engagement that we received and I just want to put on the record that these are all competing priorities any faith day is holy to that person and we have to respect that and I'm glad that our community does that so [05:01:41] just my two cents if you really feel strongly about that email the chair email the people in governance and we will take everything into consideration thank you mr. McDaniel so to the topic at hand that was requested to be discussed the holiday I'm fine with the section as is I think with the technical edits around business day versus workday that's fine and mr. moon you know the math exercise it convinced me that calendar math is harder than boundary math yeah so anyway but I agree with dr. Anderson's comments about may versus [05:02:17] shall and community engagement I think that takes care of that you know I agree there's no research necessarily showing that five-day weeks produce different outcomes, but I would suppose that that means that conversely there's no research saying it doesn't, and if it's a neutral factor, and if the community is generally wanting five day weeks, if it's a neutral factor and if the community is generally wanting five day weeks, I don't have a problem saying in the policy that that's a goal. [05:02:45] I worked with Mr. Dunn on language on a motion that I agreed to second, which put specific numbers in there, and I was very clear with him, I don't know if I'm going to support the motion or not, because I don't know where I am on specific numbers, but I'm happy with language as is that says we are striving to attain five day complete weeks um i did have a technical question though that i forgot to ask and miss mirin reminded it when she said elections we have in there that it will be canceled for a substantial number of the word substantial is in there what what is substantial i actually added that and it was because it was actually the special election for the braddock district was the perfect example is that we probably can manage it if it's [05:03:22] one district that is has a special election or one smaller congressional you know like not congressional but one smaller legislative district but we can't necessarily do it when it the reason that we did it for the congressional seat was because it was over a percentage of our schools and so it was that was up to the superintendent but it was over 50 percent of our schools that's my should we just say over 50 percent I guess that's my what is is the definition of, I agree with your comments, but I guess my question was what was the definition of substantial. [05:03:58] Anyway, governance can figure that out. But whatever you wanna do, there needs to be a number in there, I guess my point, a numerical number. And lastly, this is a, I have never seen a school division outside, and I was in public schools in Mississippi, so take that for what it's worth. [05:04:19] But the Friday before Labor Day, having a holiday, And I know it was the compromise of the King's Dominion law, and I get all of that. So maybe I'll bring a motion to put in our legislative package to roll it back, because that's just goofy to me. [05:04:35] And Mr. Moon and I will have a conversation offline about one week of winter break versus two, because that was a historical change that I think has contributed to the mess that things have become. I'm done. Okay. So I just, I do have one question. [05:04:54] 100% support and and believe in community strong community engagement I guess my question is if we change that from a May to a shall but the policy also dictates the dates then I guess the community input is simply around more or less the length of things like winter break spring break or Thanksgiving if we're going to name the days in the policy then we're not but oh days are not named [05:05:27] and I and I well I agree with Veterans Day being an O day but sunsetting the policy that exists around Veterans Day which by the way I did vote to make Veterans Day a school day because that's what the policy stated and I followed policy I agree with my one of my colleagues that I would prefer that that be a holiday I understand the appetite for it not to be and I voted that direction for next year but just because it had its own standalone policy doesn't it has to be named as an o-day in this policy because i don't really want to name all the o-days [05:06:03] but i'm fine with it being named um but i kind of just like those being operated like on the calendar um so we also need to talk about the survey speaking of community input so i'll just put it out there that i personally um and i'm going to get back to other people but i think we need to focus a little energy on here because if we're going to get the input that needs to to happen sooner than later and I would just say that I don't really have an appetite for a but I'm but I have an appetite for B B or C and maybe you know [05:06:39] I'm anxious to hear other people people's thoughts I do believe that so I think with that sort of in mind I'm gonna go back to dr. Anderson I'm so sorry can you just come back to me okay miss st. John Cunning mr. Dannon I just around on the feedback and so forth. [05:07:09] My sense from the conversation a couple weeks ago was around one, making good use of that feedback, so not asking for feedback every year. And again, this doesn't have to be decided today, but just for the input, maybe working in some language around conducting a comprehensive review every three years where the community looks at the data. [05:07:29] But I agree with the sentiment shared a couple weeks ago that putting out a survey every year, having volunteers and so forth look at that could be, that'll lend itself to overcorrecting versus meaningful feedback, so pause there. [05:07:45] - Ms. Anderson. - I am the one that's strongly advocating for it to be an O-Day because, or for Veterans Day to be an O-Day for two reasons. First, it's the only federal holiday that we don't give off in just the list of holidays. [05:08:01] The other one, the reason is, is that our community is widely unagreed, like they're not in agreement as to how this should be laid out, and I believe that the O Day, in my opinion, is the happy medium between, so that if you have someone that really wants to take their child to their unit and go celebrate Veterans Day with their units, they can do that, but otherwise, then we would still have something at the school related to honoring that tradition. [05:08:32] So I also believe that it's the only cultural observance day that's a little bit different than the rest of them. Many of the other cultural observance days are really focused on religious holidays and not necessarily, this is really, it's a different, it's a different reason. [05:08:51] And so that is the reason that I'm advocating for it to clearly be outlined. And also, if we don't do that, then we need to identify clearly that Veterans Day will be a day at school, so. - Thank you. Dr. Anderson. [05:09:07] - Thank you. I do wanna share two quick things regarding the survey, that was something that I advocated for, and I do not want it to be a yearly survey. I think you need a little bit of time. That's what I shared in my comments to Dr. Reed when I spoke to that motion. [05:09:23] I think every other year is fine. Every year is not that helpful. And it is going to be, it should be informative in order to give some way for us to perhaps review policy. Speaking of, the survey that is in front of us, I do want to lean into the one that ranks the different options because this is a zero-sum game. [05:09:48] We can't do it all. It will be very helpful and instructive to understand where does the community fall in terms of what is the most important. If it's a five-day winter break, so be it. I would like to have the one that ranks the different options there. [05:10:09] Were you looking for something more specific, Dr. Reed, whether it's B or C? Because I think both of those accomplished that. If we go back to page three of the draft policy that's posted, the top where it says community engagement, it says feedback may address start and end dates, timing of breaks, and alignment with regional school divisions. [05:10:31] So, in a sense, it's outlining what the survey really should encompass, and so that was why a was originally developed which did not include feedback on religious or cultural holidays so B and C do include a ranked choice that includes religious holidays and cultural observance days so I just would want to make sure I mean draft a meets the expectation of that paragraph number three and if the board [05:11:09] is going to list the holidays in the policy then I don't know if you want to survey about the list again it's a question no it's a fair question and the way that I see it is the feedback shall happen but the questions that are asked what's listed here may be asked it doesn't have to be all of those things but I think realistically speaking they're going to be some areas that are a little bit more defined than others but I also think it could be pretty informative to the school board to inform our decisions when it comes to these policies because next school board that gets seated in 2028 may decide [05:11:48] this is all moon and they want to do something differently at least having this kind of feedback from the community gives some anchor to decision-making even at the policy level so I don't know if I miss that's my long way of saying I don't know if I'm as worried in terms of what it says here because it's a may you could add to it you could subtract from it it doesn't have to just be those well I'm I appreciate that and I'm looking for some consensus on whether [05:12:16] the board feels that a B or C you're gonna better meet their needs I I think that I would advocate for B because I feel like it still gets to the rank order and it gives us a little bit more detail than the than the a option did but it doesn't go too far into other concerns so I think that for me the B would be a happy medium and I do have a question for staff when we get to a [05:12:53] consensus on this how long is much time should be allotted to get this out and then be able to evaluate data to inform the board vote on future calendars so thank you Miss lady I believe that we wanted to provide this for a board vote at the July meeting and because it'll connect to the calendar and we'll have have to have new business which will back it up a bit so I'll ask miss Neal to have either you or someone from your department be responsive to from the time of putting the survey out to when we can have data in such a way to inform [05:13:33] that what we realistically think that is no dr. Reed I think we if we can kind of backward mapping from the date that you need and I think what I want to kind of flag that it's not so much about how long it takes for us because we can expedite there are certain pieces we really can't such as a translation but I think it's the timing of when you are sending this survey would be really important because toward the end of school year but I also want to share that historically we have very low response rate whenever we do family surveys so it's it's a long it may not be the question I mean answer you are looking for but I'm saying we can actually try to back map it from the [05:14:12] date but I also want to be very mindful when we send it given all the end of school and other priorities the families may have so I think we could provide a suggested timeline in the Friday letter okay dr. Raiders of miss Dixon just a little bit surprised with one question about the survey why would we want to ask our community whether they want schools on federal holidays like that question or reduce the number of federal holidays because that's some of [05:14:49] their parents are our home they they want to you know keep their kids with them and it's a no-brainer hopefully they are they want to keep their kids but that question is there or thing on all options I just wanted to have a look on that a fair question I think we're just looking at ways all the possible variables if five-day weeks are a priority then what are the things that [05:15:26] are involved in five-day weeks and there's not for whatever reason there not been a requirement that federal holidays be federal holidays so i think that that was a question i think that the team felt was related to the goal statement the board had around five day weeks i mean there could be anything else than this question like i i will be like do you want to work go to school on sunday like something like that right and then just federal holidays i mean it's uh it's like uh that question i'll really take off from the list if i was the [05:16:03] surveyor but uh anyways if you're trying to get everybody's input my only question is dr reed left is what if there's only few people who are pushing this one agenda or that agenda are answering the surveys there's going to be a unique id for each uh person that they can't like thousand response from same person we've sure had that question so somewhere in the past that must have happened so um miss kim do you want to um respond to that please yes we actually use Qualtrics platform and we actually have the directory of the parents that we have so we [05:16:41] actively filter those who are a little bit more eager than others to express their opinions Dr. Andrews, did you have additional questions? No, I just wanted to say that I think given that, especially the statement that Dr. Reed just made about, you know, we want to know where to go since five day weeks are important in response to the federal holiday, I think I want to lean into survey C. Thank you. [05:17:17] All right. So I think ideally we could wrap this up if we could get consensus on one of these options. Oh, we can't because they're not posted. [05:17:35] Okay, so we'll pause on that. So not seeing any more placards. We do have a little bit of time to revisit the Skyview boundary conversation. I know there were a couple of folks that still had questions. So I'm going to turn it back over to Ms. Marin and Ms. Dixit to continue that conversation. [05:17:57] Thank you. Mr. Moon, your Skyview or boundary? Mr. Skyview. Ms. Dixit, would you like to begin? Yes, thank you so much. - I just wanted to just continue this conversation which was kind of left off earlier. [05:18:14] I don't have any questions at this moment, but I'll make some comments after my colleagues have got a chance to speak. - So Mr. Moon, would you like to go ahead? And then Dr. Anderson. [05:18:30] - Yes, thank you. I think I heard something. I'm sorry, I said Mr. Moon and then Dr. Anderson. - Oh, I'm okay if you wanna go first. I'm an old man, so go ahead. I got a little bit confused with some of the conversations and versus what's on the slide. [05:18:51] Slide nine, this is bullet three. It talks about the conversion of the existing elementary and pre-K classrooms. Are we keeping those or converting them? Because that's a little different from the comments that you made, Mr. Gordon. [05:19:08] - So it's a part of the total process of bringing the school within our standards. So we'll convert as needed to make sure we have enough space to eventually house 2,000 students. - Right, so I've only been at the school twice, and so the space that I think I visited, that was the pre-K space, are you thinking we would take part of that if we needed to, up to all of it if we needed to? [05:19:35] That's what I'm hearing. - It's primarily elementary space, go ahead. - So there is a pre-K space in the building that is separate from the elementary wing, And so the wings in question that are the elementary wing, those would be converted to support high school students. [05:19:53] - But you see the statement that I'm referring to. You see the third bullet. It doesn't really say what you just talked about. It doesn't reflect what you just said. - We can clear that up with the pre-K spaces. The pre-K spaces will remain in the building. [05:20:12] They are not being converted. - Thank you. And my last thing is just, I asked this earlier in terms of where the funds are coming from, because please help me better understand. We had the 150 for the purchase, which were taken from other projects. [05:20:29] Where are the dollars for the construction coming out of? More specifically, what is not going to be done so we can achieve this because we don't have any new dollars? Existing capital funds that we get every year. [05:20:44] We'll have to get back to you with more specifics. I think we've had several times we've provided a spreadsheet, but we can get back to you on I didn't bring that for this afternoon's conversation. - Thank you, that will be very helpful. [05:21:03] - Mr. Moon? - Okay, one quick question regarding transportation. That I do understand that the invitations have been extended beyond those five schools, and I have also heard over the weekend that some of those parents have been apparently informed that for the transportation, they could go to depot drop-up, is that? [05:21:30] - Yes, just as all the other high schools that we're phasing at this point. There are depots or hubs that are running that are able to be used and those have been shared. - Okay, there will be no limitations, right? They're not gonna cut up at a certain point. - No, sir. - Okay, thank you. [05:21:51] - Mr. McKenna. - Thank you. The only real question I have is there was some commentary in the previous round on this, and I kind of agree with it to a certain extent, but for those impacted magisterial district board, and I think there's, I know Ms. Dixon, Ms. Marin, Do you have impact with Skyview? [05:22:13] I can't remember. Technically, yes, on paper. Okay. Well, for the magisterials and the three at-larges whose constituents are going to be impacted by this, for the second and the third round, is there a particular, I mean, can we be given a preview of these maps prior to just to maybe potentially get ahead of any? [05:22:33] We did get you the, we did give a preview in the Friday letter of the prior maps on a Friday prior to a Tuesday release. having said that I think it would be helpful I mean for sure depending on how quickly there there's gonna be some pretty quick turnaround adding a third cycle and only two weeks so but as soon as the I mean essentially I got them to you as soon as we got them from the consultant so happy to do that I think [05:23:02] that was all miss Merrin do you want to go I I do think I would like to see the expanded budget for doing the third round I think well when we get the design I'm I'm pretty tired at this point of the day this was not the end of the daytime I was hoping for I will share a few things I have to follow up to get [05:23:42] actual commitment from the superintendent but some constituent asked at the April 28th meeting what was the criteria for considering the feedback that people are giving and this was the same question that I heard at very first boundary meeting I attended in the fall you know is it the people in the room who are the loudest who are going to be heard and the answer given was very vague and just said the boundary review committee will review the feedback it's people are seeing that there's not the detail coming forth that they're seeking also I would like the slides from today to reflect some things you know these slides are our public records and not including the [05:24:21] update on the comments received the thousands and thousands of comments received in one week is not being authentic to this work for now and for the future so I did send an email around asking that either the slide here be updated to say that those 1,400 comments were before the maps were published and/or showing that what has ended up as a result my colleague said earlier the slide about future capacity due to construction this becomes a historical reference document the consultants documents show the potential [05:24:58] growth from households residential construction but our slides do not that is insurance for us when we want to go and advocate and look at what's been done also say finally when we voted on the comprehensive boundary and the last minute changes earlier this year I made a point to say please don't wait until January dr. Reed to finalize the other boundary adjustments that forthcoming because we know this year that people were waiting you know with bated breath for their schools were going to change and if you present to us in January the boundary changes for those four other areas we're putting people we just discussed this so again I just don't understand why we wouldn't try and make [05:25:36] it easier for families and give it to the board in November December so thank - Thank you, Miss Marin. I'll just go at the last unless someone else wants to speak. No one, okay. [05:25:53] So this was a sudden change for our community. I understand, especially the elementary school parents were very surprised. And there were many of them, like I said earlier, thousands plus emails and messages to me. [05:26:08] I just found the response from superintendent and Ms. Smith that we're taking the elementary off the table pretty quick just to, and we already am sharing that information to the community because I wanna make sure that they also understand not everybody's watching the work session. [05:26:30] So I'm gonna use my tools to send messaging out. But the support and the engagement we got from the community was overwhelming. This is how FCPS works. It's like our parents are equal partners, their voice matters. [05:26:46] And when they came in the room and they spoke and we heard them, that is the part of this board is to hear from our community and then take action accordingly. So in fact, I had really supportive conversation, understanding conversation. [05:27:01] All the meetings were very respectful. We didn't have anybody coming in and throwing stones at us, thank God. But I was pleasantly surprised with the support system we have. So I will say thank you to all the parents who engaged with us. [05:27:20] And now they are basically together in this. And this group of parents who met me last week, yesterday, told me, is there anything they can do for our school system? And when I said, yes, we need money, there are advocates now to get our money from state, local, wherever they can. [05:27:40] So I just meant to say, I mean, I tend to be very thankful for the support we got from both school system and from our parents for this. So Skyview is gonna be great. Thank you. [05:27:57] - You wanna close? - Okay. So I think with nobody else want to speak anymore, this work session is adjourned as of 5:17 p.m. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com