Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Date: Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 5h 3m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8_6UhyRlFo
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.

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[00:00:10] Okay, board members, attention please. We're gonna get started. So this June 23rd, 2026 work session is called to order at 11:18 AM. We are gonna hold on voting in Mr. Dunn because he is not with us.

[00:00:31] So we have exciting topic in front of us today, 2.02 FY25 OAG annual report and FY27 risk assessment and audit topics. We're very excited to have with us Auditor General Esther Koh and Deputy General Ms. Moore.

[00:00:49] So they will be taking the presentation from here. So I call on them to present these topics. For board members, we will be having discussion after we go through all of the presentations. - Thank you, Mr. McLevine. So good morning, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to present today.

[00:01:07] So Danelle Moore is our Deputy Auditor General. So both the two of us will be presenting this fun exciting materials with you all. So please excuse my deep voice today, I'm recovering from a cold. So my goal is that we can do tag team and then do the presentation first, about 30 minutes, and like Mr. McLevine mentioned, we will open for questions afterwards. So we have three items to cover today. First we are going to look back to the work that completed by the Office of Auditor

[00:01:40] general, OAG, in the last fiscal year '25. And then we will look forward into the future. Actually, it's just a few days after that is already fiscal year '27, only one week after. So we are going to share the audit topics that we want to propose to do for fiscal year '27.

[00:02:01] And to breach the two, we will also provide a mid-year briefing about what we have done in fiscal year 26 so far, so that you can hear the full cycle of OAG work. And before we start and pulling up the presentation, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the audit committee chair, Mr. McLevine, and also all the audit committee members from the school board joining us. And then I also want to thank our community members. Within the audit committee we have two community members.

[00:02:35] They are Ms. Apana Krishna and also Ms. Nanette Henderson, who work tirelessly with my office going through many audits and follow-up reports. And of course, I want to thank my team as well. And I would also like to thank Dr. Reed and the management team, always collaborating with my office.

[00:02:55] So it allows an objective evaluation of FCPS processes, but also allow for working together, collaboration, discussion of how to improve our processes. And of course, audit is a fun topic as we started, but I know that sometimes it may not be.

[00:03:14] So I really appreciate everyone's support, just sometimes. Okay, so with that, we will start with the fiscal year 25 OAG annual report, which is item number one.

[00:03:28] I would like to first provide some background about OAG particularly for those community members who is watching this work session today that the office reports directly to the school board and per our audit charter policy one one zero five the office has unrestricted access to all school division information which is relevant to the areas under review with this independent structure and access it allows my office to carry out the mission effectively. And OAG follows something called the government auditing standards. These

[00:04:06] standards are issued by the government accountability office. And in the auditor world, we called it as a yellow book. And many times I like visual, so I brought a yellow book with us. So you can see it. This is the standard that we follow. And what is our mission? Our mission is to determine whether ongoing processes at the divisions are designed, if adequately designed, functioning effectively, efficiently, and be fully accountable to our community members.

[00:04:37] And we achieve this goal through our four pillars of work. And I know that each time I talk about these four pillars, so I'm sure you all can memorize that. The first one is about risk assessment, meaning how we come up with the audit topics.

[00:04:53] The second one is internal audit, meaning our bread and butter. And the third one is the management of the fraud, waste, and abuse inquiries. And the last one is outreach and education. So for the clock, we can actually go a little bit down to, I'm going to skip some of the pages.

[00:05:11] Yep, page four is a good place to stop. So within OAG, we have a total of eight full-time equivalent employees, seven auditors and one admin. But within this small group, we actually have a lot of expertise in it. So as you can see, we have certified public accountants, we have certified internal auditors, certified fraud examiners, and certified information system auditors. And this sounds a lot of alphabets, but I just want to highlight that because it provides the public to know that

[00:05:47] we have the credentials to do the work that we have been asked to do. And then we can move on to the bottom of this page which is the OAG value. And we can stop here, the table. So this table we would like to quantify for you all how we know that the work of OAG is being done effectively. So we are using a couple of data points. First one is from an organization called the Council of Gray City School. So as you can see, the indicators listed here based upon the latest 24-25 results. OAG is operating more effectively and efficiently

[00:06:24] than other school districts, internal audit offices that are within the indicators. OAG is independent and we also collaborated with management and you can see that our recommendations are fully accepted by management team. And at the same time, we also conduct post-audit surveys, which is listed on the following page, and you can see that we asked eight different themes of questions, and our goal is to get a 90% of yes about these eight questions.

[00:06:55] And we met this goal during Fiscal Year 25. And at the bottom of this page, we listed many other OAG achievements, accomplishments, and I just want to highlight two here. One is that we completed all the approved audits by the board.

[00:07:10] And the second is about peer review. Peer review here means who is auditing OAG, right? We also want to ensure that our quality is up for standard. So every three years, we receive external reviewers to come in, and this year is particularly challenging.

[00:07:28] It's not because of the work itself, it's because the coming of the external reviewers happened to be the week that we have a heavy snowstorm. If you all remember, it was like the 10-inch snow and something like that. So Danelle and I have to really come into the office to really work with the evaluators at the time.

[00:07:48] And we were very fortunate to get the highest rating possible, which is the past rating with no management letter comments. And with that, I would like to move forward to page six. Page six outlined the risk assessment process. And I'm going to skip it because when I talk about the fiscal year 27 plan, we will go through that in depth again.

[00:08:12] And then on page seven, it shows the process of internal audit. And I got these questions quite a lot, it's like, hey, Esther, is it after the issue of the audit reports, then we won't see you again? The answer is no, because fortunately, I say, right, it's good to see the friendly auditors.

[00:08:32] The truth is that that we will follow up on all the audit recommendations, suggestions with management, and then we will report the status with the audit committee. And then also share the report with the school board in my monthly communications.

[00:08:48] And then on page 8, it shows our fraud, waste, and abuse effort. See something, say something is always the theme within reporting things ahead of time. So you can see the different categories of situations that we received here.

[00:09:05] On the right side, there are like the colorful grid with like the titles such as Fender, virtual executions, use of SS residency, so on and so forth. I just want to make a statement here to ensure community members know and also our employees are fully aware that my office takes all the concerns very seriously and then we look into each one of them with full due diligence.

[00:09:32] And I also want to say this too, while myself as an auditor, this is my only job I know how to do, But I need to say this is that conducting audits is not the most effective way to find fraud ways and abuse. Because you're like finding a needle in the haystack, audits by default is sampling.

[00:09:52] So what is the most effective way to identify fraud ways and abuse concerns are really people bringing it to our attention through tip line. line. So fraud, waste and abuse is a very good tool providing that our employees feel comfortable, you know, to share through the tip line and so that we can take early actions before it becomes a problem. So with that, page 9 and 10 shows the last pillar of work, right? Like going back to my earlier point, how could we making sure our employees or community members feel comfortable to use

[00:10:31] the hotline. We really need to come out, like, not serving as really internal, internal audit, we really need to making sure what we do, people is aware of them. So, so here on this slide, it shows about the Audit Bus, and I, again, I really need to give a big shout out to Danelle because she's always like our author for Audit Bus, and then making sure that it is being issued on a monthly basis. The only time, break time that we took is during summer.

[00:11:02] other than that we will issue the audit bus on a monthly basis and also thank you for you all too to help us to spread the word so that people subscribing to it and as an auditor we don't really see the subscriptions it's a number we actually now use a more accurate number is how many people actually opened the audit bus emails so as you can see the trend is moving upward And after July 2024, you can see the statistics, it's above 800.

[00:11:34] People really open the Audibus emails. Other than issuing the Audibus, we also keep our OHE website update, and we have been also providing a lot of training and education in—so two different methods.

[00:11:53] One is through the National Association of State Boards Accountancy, where we really literally issue a certificate where people can claim continuous professional education credits. We're also very fortunate to have time to present a leadership kickoff and also the finance tech annual training, so particularly thanks to management to allow this to happen. And we are also hosting a DMV auditor group. DMV stands for our neighboring districts and that we have a group of about 20 auditors across DC, Maryland, and Virginia that we meet on a quarterly basis

[00:12:29] to talk about hot topics in the internal audit area. And we also celebrate the Internal Audit Awareness Month. I know you all know it's the month of May that just passed. And thank you for showing up physically and thinking about it as well. Okay, so with that, I would like to transition into that now to talk about page 11 about our audit results thank you Esther as to mention on page 11 I'm going to be begin discussing the audit results for FY25 audits and we completed all audits which included six performance audits and

[00:13:08] 14 business process audits and as you can see on page 11 we categorize the findings and observations under high risk moderate risk low risk and observation and when we talk about high risk those those items are where controls are not in place or are inadequate or there's areas of non-compliance for medium risk that means controls are in place but are not sufficiently complied with or non-compliance with FCPS regulations low risk would be controls are in place but the level of compliance varies but it's

[00:13:43] not systematic and then observation does not fit the definition of being high medium, or low. These are more of items that are opportunities for improvement. So beginning on page 12, we give a little bit more detail about the audits that we conducted.

[00:14:02] So our first performance audit is the procurement process audit. During this audit, we identified three moderate risk findings, one low risk finding, and one observation. Some of those key findings include an alignment of policies and regulations and guidance regarding the vendor approval process between the Office of Procurement Services, the Office of Cyber Security and the Department of Information Technology.

[00:14:26] Another key finding was operational efficiencies in vendor communication and the review processes that exist impacting the vendor solicitation. Our second audit is the Student Disciplinary Process Audit, and the results of this audit was exempt from disclosure based on the Virginia Code, but we did share those audit results in a closed meeting with the Audit Committee.

[00:14:51] Our third audit is the critical process review hiring audit. This audit we identified three moderate risk findings and one low risk findings. Some of the key findings included challenges with the design of the hiring and onboarding process that may lead to inconsistent application of hiring practices, as well as a limited number of measurable goals and objectives tied to milestones throughout the hiring process may prevent management from measuring operational effectiveness.

[00:15:20] As you go over to page 13, we have the construction and renovation contracting process audit. During this audit we identified one high risk finding, three moderate risk findings, and one observation.

[00:15:35] Some of the key findings include non-compliance with project and contract terms and the design and construction manual, and several areas where improvement could be made in the FCPS construction monitoring practices.

[00:15:51] Our next audit is our Local School Activity Funds audit, and this is an audit that we conduct every year based on the Virginia Code. This audit we had, I believe there were a couple recommendations. The main observation was that out of the total of 202 sites that we audited, we noted exceptions of noncompliance with FCP regulations at 73 sites.

[00:16:18] There were no exceptions noted at the remaining 129 sites. We also wanted to mention that the exceptions occurred at the site level and did not impact the site's cash year-end balance, or there was no material effect on the financial reporting as FCB as a division as a whole.

[00:16:42] Our next audit, which is on page 14, is our continuous monitoring, where we look at appropriated and non-appropriated transactions on a quarterly basis. We also do conduct site visits on a quarterly basis at a number of sites. So during FY25, out of the 202 sites, there were 103 sites with no exceptions noted.

[00:17:04] 55 sites had exceptions noted in three or fewer areas, and 45 did not have any transactions appear in the sample. And we did a total of 68 site visits in person. And I just wanted to mention, our continuous monitoring the non-appropriated transactions do kind of roll over into our local school activities funds audit so we use that as our sample for local school activity funds audit okay also on page 14 was the business process audits as i mentioned we we conducted 14 business process audits in fy25 including one school and excuse me

[00:17:39] including one office in 13 schools during the business process audits if you look at on page 15 you will see a chart that provides the themes of the process business process audits by high medium or low we identified 37 low risk findings eight moderate risk findings and two high risk findings the key findings were related to the purchasing process timeliness of payments bank and non-bank reconciliation and sufficiency of documentation further down page 15 i will go

[00:18:17] into the audit recommendation follow-up. As Esther mentioned, once we complete the audit, you're not completely done with us. We come back on a quarterly basis to make sure that the corrective actions are being effectively implemented. So at the beginning of FY25, we had 14 open recommendations from prior years that remained outstanding.

[00:18:38] During the year, we made a total of 45 new recommendations and reported 30 recommendations closed. As of July 31st, 29 recommendations from the current and prior year remain outstanding. And those were related to the Food and Nutrition Services Audit, the Procurement Process Audit, the Critical Process Review Hiring Audit, and the Construction and Renovation Contracting Process Audit.

[00:19:05] So now I would like to transition over into the mid-year briefing. And we wanted to provide the mid-year briefing just because the annual report we completed back in January. So we wanted to fill in the gap of what we've done since that time. So if you look on slide number three for the mid-year briefing, I'm kind of going to skip around a little bit.

[00:19:29] We currently have completed the number two, which is the health care claims management, as well as number five, the school and office safety audits. Those audits were exempt from disclosure based on the Virginia Code in accordance with the Virginia Code.

[00:19:45] but we did discuss those in a closed session with the audit committee. Currently, we have the hourly employee structure and stipends audit. We actually just completed that and reported out in our June audit committee meeting. We have our local school activity funds audit, which is scheduled to be presented during next fiscal year.

[00:20:07] Our specific contracts and vendor management audit, we're scheduled to have that completed and presented to the audit committee in September, as well as continuous monitoring, which is ongoing. And I think Esther mentioned about the OAG system of quality management and external peer review.

[00:20:23] We did have a peer review conducted this year, and we passed with the highest rating. But we have continued to update our processes, our internal process, to make sure that we're conducting quality audits. And as well, the Yellow Book or GAGIS, the Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards, have been updated.

[00:20:39] So we had to update our processes based on their updates that were made. And then I wanted to go over to talk a little bit more about the business process audits. On slide number five, you can see we have provided a table of the business process audits.

[00:20:56] We completed seven business process audits since, I'm sorry, beginning of 2026 for one high risk, that includes one high risk audit, excuse me, one high risk finding, four moderate risk findings, and 11 low risk findings.

[00:21:13] And then we've conducted an additional five business process audits that were presented in our June 2026 audit committee meeting. And then I wanted to skip over to slide, excuse me, I want to talk a little bit more about the audit follow-up, which is on slide 13.

[00:21:38] So at the beginning of January 31st, 2026, we currently had 16 recommendations from the current and prior years remaining outstanding. and these were related to, again, the Food and Nutrition Service Audit, which has two outstanding recommendations. Procurement Process Audit has four recommendations outstanding.

[00:21:55] The Critical Process Review for Hiring has four recommendations outstanding, and the Construction and Renovation Contracting Process Audit currently has six recommendations outstanding. And we did have a more updated briefing that was provided in our June Audit Committee meeting, so if you are curious or want more information, you can access that information on BoardDocs.

[00:22:17] And I would like to turn it over to Esther, talk a little bit more about the updates for fraud, waste, and abuse. - Thank you. So on slide 14, that it shows again our fraud, waste, and abuse effort. And again, this is a breach between the fiscal year 25 annual report and then also the future, right?

[00:22:36] So I'm sorry, it may be a little bit small and maybe the clock can make it bigger, but if not, you can also see it on the BoardDocs or on your laptop as well. We got a question sometimes is that how are we doing? Is this number represent a good indicator or not so good indicator?

[00:22:57] So the response that I would like to provide, it is a great question, right? And how do we know about the health? Is it a healthy situation or is not? I wanna say this, that I suggest for fraud, waste and abuse, we should compare it internally with FCPS statistics.

[00:23:14] is it's because like each organization operates a little bit differently and they may have different types of hotlines, different contents of hotline reporting. Here what we try to do also, you may notice that there is one more data points provided here, which is the reportable columns. So not only presenting the entire total amount that we received in that fiscal year, we also highlight the number of cases that have been reported to to the audit committee, and those are situations that may have credibility of roadways and abuse,

[00:23:47] or situations that are more high-profile, or maybe more systemic, control deficiencies, so on and so forth. And you can see that the reportable percentage out of the total caseload is increasing. So to me, it means that the authenticity of the cases reported in is actually more meaningful when we looked at it, because a lot of them yield, you know, an authentic outcome.

[00:24:12] So with that, I would like to do another promotion here. Please use this hotline and please use this means and allow your constituents to know because together we can make it a bigger fraud prevention team. And with that, I would also then like to move on to slide nine-- slide 16, I'm sorry, of this presentation.

[00:24:36] And I'm very proud to say that in the fiscal year 26 up until April, We have trained almost 2,000 employees and external stakeholders. Considering a team of our size, I really think that is a big accomplishment, and we are trying to make sure every employee knows about Office of Auditor General and who we are and what we do.

[00:24:59] And again, thank you for your partnership with us to share this with your constituents as well. And then with that, I would like to transition to our last presentation so that we can end this presentation part of today's meeting is the fiscal year 27 risk assessment and audit topics.

[00:25:20] So now we are looking into the future in about a week about what we are proposing to do for the audit. So this presentation is the roadmap guiding our audit efforts for the upcoming fiscal year. And I will mainly go through this PowerPoint only and there's another document that goes hand-in-hand with the PowerPoint which is notated as item number four, the same title name in BotDocs if you are interested to read more details.

[00:25:49] So I would like to start off in talking about slide three. Slide three here sets the stage of our discussion, and this slide outlines our mission and our authority, and I have mentioned about that earlier on when we talked about the fiscal year 25 annual report.

[00:26:09] And each year, we will set aside some audit topics, and then we will be presenting that to the audit committee. And this year, we were able to do it in March, and now we are moving forward to propose it to the school board because the audit committee concurred with our plan, and we will be talking about it, the details today.

[00:26:30] And slide four provides more details about how we developed the audit plan, and we have received inputs from many different resources. And I want to talk about that under 2A, we did a very robust benchmarking exercise to see what are the other topics that the internal audit departments around the nations do.

[00:26:53] So we looked at 24 different internal audit departments, many of them were actually leading in big departments with a large enrollment of students in the nation. And then we also solicited feedback from school board and also audit committee members, including the community members.

[00:27:12] So we got a majority of responses from 10 school board members and the two community members' response. So thank you for your help so that we can see whether your feedback on our proposal. And then we also solicited feedback from employees.

[00:27:28] We have conducted 31 interviews, mainly with leadership team members, and then we also collected 85 surveys, the total number of surveys that we sent out is about 240. So, it's a pretty good response rate of about 30%.

[00:27:43] And then we also consider all the different types of risk, right? It has financial, reputational, operational risk, and then before we propose our plan. So, with that, we can move on to slide 5. So, this is the heavy-loaded page, I think, is our outcomes for the audits to be done So, there are four main audits, new audits, that we are proposing One is the athletic programs focusing on the funds component and how our working relationship with the booster organizations Item two is continuous background and professional verification

[00:28:23] and we know that the importance to put a trusted adult in front of our children So, OAG would like to validate that process across the district. And number three is the fundraising activity. So, fundraising activity is a little bit broader than just the athletic program.

[00:28:39] We actually propose to first starting looking at fundraising activity first in the first half of the fiscal year of '27. So, once we know kind of the baseline and then we will go into the athletic programs in the second half of the fiscal year.

[00:28:54] And then item number four is specific contracts. and we know that that contracts monitoring is really important. So in fiscal year 26, meaning currently, we are looking at Department of Special Services and then also Instructional Services Department on how they monitor their contracts.

[00:29:14] And in fiscal year 27, we propose to look at DIT, Department of Information Technology, to understand how they manage their contracts. And the other ones are some continuous and also annual audit that we do every year, so I'm going to skip those.

[00:29:32] And slide 6. Slide 6 here are some other considerations I want to highlight. Here are three topics that are also rise to the top horizon, but we did not include this topic, so to speak, formally into our fiscal year 27 plan.

[00:29:52] The first one is about student transfer process and CIP. We of course know that this is a very important topic, we at the same time know that the boundary work has just been completed, so we want to leave some time for that new boundary to work out and before we consider auditing this topic in fiscal year 28 or after. And then the second one is the Artificial Intelligence Governance Framework. This year, for fiscal year 27, we proposed to look at the DIT contracts, and as we know that the IT/AI governance policy is still in the development

[00:30:28] phase and we are starting using it, we just want to give it a little bit more time before we audit it so that we can see the impact. And the last one is career and technical education programs. We will continue to integrate this type of programs in our regular school audits so we can see that how on the ground the schools are really operating for the CTE programs and then to ensure the regular checks and balances are in place.

[00:30:54] So even though for CTE program, we do not include this as a central program to be audited, but we include the aspect of it in the school audits. And then moving on, slide 7 is some of the key metrics that we use, and you may ask, "Hey, Esther, why these four topics?"

[00:31:15] And here are some of the high-level reasons about why. All these four new topics are identified through benchmarking, meaning that they are overwhelmingly— the other school district internal audit shops also looked at it. And then we also get the majority of the school board and audit committee members who responded to us, they supported it as well.

[00:31:35] And moving on to the next slide is our operational plan, based upon the resources that we have and how we're going to kind of have these audits to be completed.

[00:31:51] And then, for the following pages, because of the interest of time, I think I'm going to kind of just skip over them, because these are the slides that talk about the details of each one of the audits. Maybe just highlight one thing here, this is the Local School Activity Funds audit.

[00:32:10] Many of you have heard our presentation about it. I would like to clarify that it mentioned about cash balances are fairly stated. The catch defined here include catch and catch equivalent. So it has also checks, catch, and anything in that form.

[00:32:27] We will be checking that as part of the Local School Activity Fund audit. So with that, I would like to jump over to slide 20 to expedite our presentation so that we can open up for questions. Here are some of the useful links that we can use if you are interested to find out more about the Office of Auditor General.

[00:32:49] So with that, I would like to end this presentation. I know that last year when I came, I say similar thing, that when I think about OAG, it can actually stand for different words, right? One, of course, is Office of Auditor General, and it can also stand for one amazing group.

[00:33:06] So thank you for being in this group with us, because without your support, it doesn't… would not work for internal audit like OAG, so that we can all working together to be fully accountable to our community members. So with that, we'd like to hand the time back to the meeting manager.

[00:33:23] Well, thank you both so much for that very in-depth and quick presentation. We have two folks with placards up, so we'll start with Dr. Anderson, followed by Mr. Moon. We'll begin with Mr. Moon, followed by Dr. Anderson.

[00:33:40] But that didn't really matter, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the presentation. As a member of an audit committee, I fully support your recommendations for next year. And also, as to your comment earlier about people in your office working tirelessly.

[00:34:01] Yes, absolutely. But that's making an audit committee member, just one member, becoming very tired because you do so much work and there's so much reports that I have to read and become familiar with. With that said, I want to take you back to, I don't know which PowerPoint presentation this one is, about 2025, it's going back, I'm going back, 2025 Construction and Renovation Contracting Process Audit,

[00:34:35] that since that construction money that we are using is a large amount, $230 million per year, basically, that's our cash flow from the county, and that there was a high risk finding for out of that audit, and there are still six recommendations outstanding.

[00:35:04] I know this was presented to the committee for the rest of my colleagues in the public once again. If you could comment on those remaining recommendations outstanding and how you think the management is gonna address those outstanding recommendations.

[00:35:21] I appreciate that. - Thank you, Mr. Moon, for the question and helping us to frame, you know, like we have done this audit, so what right now? I would like to defer to Ms. Moore to kind of go over the details, but based upon my understanding, we see continuous improvements like from the management.

[00:35:42] So the process is in place, but yes, we still have some recommendations that are open. so if Darnell, if you can go through them at a high level.

[00:35:59] - The remaining recommendations that we have are finalizing the design and construction manual, which they have been working on, but they're still in the process of completing some edits and going through leadership review. So that was one of the items that are still open.

[00:36:18] Another item is establishing the key performance indicators and benchmarking, so they have to establish those indicators and then give some time to collect the data to kind of benchmark against year after year. So that is still in process, as well as exploring the solution for creating dashboards.

[00:36:34] So I believe design and construction has attempted to build a dashboard with, I think the system is called Kula. I'm not sure if I'm saying that correctly, but found that there was some external access that was restricted. So I think they're kind of going back to see what other platforms they can use.

[00:36:50] I believe Click is one of them that they have mentioned that they are evaluating to see going forward and they'll be able to use that as a dashboard. - Any of those outstanding recommendations related to that high risk finding or are you able to talk about and address that?

[00:37:16] - So we may need a little bit of time to kind of to link everything together, Mr. Moon. - I'm sorry that I didn't give you heads up. - Don't mind just a quick second.

[00:37:32] Baby, do you have any other questions while Danelle-- - That's basically what I have. - Maybe I can first go back to the-- - So yeah, so, okay, the five risk findings was that we identified instances of non-compliance with the project terms and the design and construction manual.

[00:38:03] So I think one is the manual is still in process of being updated. And also increasing, implementing a monitoring process to increase accountability and ensure compliance with those contracting guidelines, including completing daily reports at the construction sites, doing the punch list, which is a tracking of everything that needs to be done to complete the project and submittal timelines.

[00:38:31] So I believe most of, I believe, I know last time, the punch list, we did close that recommendation. Sorry, let me go back one second. I'm gonna make sure I'm telling you correctly.

[00:38:46] Yeah, so we did close three of those items, which is implementing a formal process for documenting and improving the project timelines, implementing a process for the punch list as well as re-evaluating the period of time from the substantial time to the final completion dates, which I think they were going to remove the 30-day requirement period because there had been some delays in trying to meet that final completion date.

[00:39:13] So a recommendation is still outstanding. What is your understanding of how the management, when those are going to be actually addressed or complied with?

[00:39:29] So we are going to follow up on a quarterly basis for all the open recommendations. I don't know if management gave us a revised due date to complete those items. So as of right now, I don't think we have a revised due date.

[00:39:48] I know the last three that are still open were due as of April 30th. but we have seen movement on those items. So we will, during our next quarterly follow-up, we will get those updated due dates from it. Yes, the first one, the superintendent in Rodrigo is not here, so to work with the OAG to see whether those recommendations can be complied with.

[00:40:18] Thank you, Mr. Moon. Dr. Anderson? Thank you. First, I would like to offer my congratulations for a successful audit of your office. Can you speak a little bit in terms of the auditing that takes place of your office?

[00:40:38] Is that an industry recommendation? Is it mandated or is it something that you have optionally opted into? - Thank you, Dr. Anderson, great question. So per the government auditing standard, it's actually a requirement that each of the shop, if we claim compliance with it, then we have to have this external peer review to be done every three years thank you for that one of the documents that well rather a tool that you pointed to now I can't find the page because I didn't

[00:41:15] write it the data data snipper is that a tool that you're using to evaluate local funds or is that a tool that sites are using or both can you kind of tease that out a little bit more please sure that is a tool that we're using to analyze transactions so we'll dump all the schools transaction into the system and then we will select a sample based on different parameters we're looking for transactions over $10,000 are we looking for transactions under $10,000 so that helps us to streamline our review and you know compile our work papers so to make sure that we have sufficient audit evidence based on the conclusions that

[00:41:54] we come to. So it just helps kind of organize your work a little bit what did you use before the installation of this system was it all manual no we've we've actually had two tools we've used idea which is a similar tool that just helps you know do a data analysis and compile the information and we also use yeah of course that Excel is always a great tool right but for data sniper if I may also compliment what Danelle mentioned Dr. Anderson the power for this is that it

[00:42:30] transfer it can convert a lot of PDF into Excel in a large volumes so I think it specifically helped us at FCPS as you know that we have a lot of scanned copies menu or electronic so it's actually helped us to eliminate a lot of the manual error right if you need to ask someone type in that you know like the dinosaur's age, so we are very fortunate to be able to use this tool.

[00:42:57] And also the other thing which is powerful and I think OAG is working very hard on is really to tailor the scripts that we use to run report, right? So now you have all the data set and then so what? You really need to think kind of like maybe based upon the fraud race and abuse cases that we are looking into so we have more insights into how the data, what will look like a red flags, so we can then immediately update our scripts, like the prompts I put in, and then we run the right formula, and then we can get the results, then we can focus on those higher risk areas, if it makes sense.

[00:43:34] No, absolutely, thank you for explaining that. I also appreciate the comments that you made regarding fraud, waste, and abuse, the guidance that you've given about how audit is just a needle in a haystack, that it is most productive when there's an actual report so i want to ensure that we are elevating that guidance to the people at large to those who work a little bit more closely in these areas than we do to help bring attention to areas that might require it um and so and pivoting to the audit buzz because i think

[00:44:09] that's where you get your information a little bit more um your outreach is greater through that and i know that we've all added that to our newsletters is there a social media presence for your office if i make that's great idea we try to do it before but because of the resources that we have um we just could not really like follow through all the social media and be able to responsive to any comments that we may collect so we do continuously update our website but not

[00:44:49] like creating something like Twitter or some Instagram we don't have those yeah the website is for people who are looking for something specifically if you're just trying to raise awareness you know the casual user is going to see it on their social media feed and like oh this office exists I'm not going to the website unless I'm really looking for something specific so I wonder how you can make that work for you in a way that is evergreen and does not allow for like the heavy responses back and forth that you'll need somebody to manage I think there's some ways around that looking just to raise awareness so

[00:45:28] it's out here but you know in your in your in your header it's like come and visit us here if you have questions if you want to report rather than having to track the social media aspect so that's just something I want to raise to you my next set of questions were really around much of what mr. moon has begun to talk about which was the construction renovation the findings that you listed were there were high risk one high risk three moderate and one observation can you speak a little bit first in terms of how is the observation different from a

[00:46:05] recommendation I can start with that and when Danelle can get ready for the details so and so I'm going to be a little bit more like an auditor when we talks about the definitions, if I may. So a finding, we have to have a very clear criteria.

[00:46:24] So like let's say, like FCPS policy and regulations say this, that if there is any kind of deterrence from that or any deterrence from the yellow book, then we will call it as a finding, a very clear delineation with the criteria.

[00:46:40] And then we'll call it as a finding as well if there is a direct contribution to the audit study that we are doing. like direct related to the audit objective. However, during the audit, we sometimes also find some anecdotal or something else that we also want to raise it to the attention of the readers and then we call them as the observation.

[00:47:05] - Can an observation also be high risk? - No. - Okay, so the observation, so there's no space for something that you are accidentally uncovering to become in a high risk factor or in the risk factor column.

[00:47:20] I do not believe so. If that is the case, right, if it is really happening, we would need to call for another audit to cover that, right? Because, yeah. I do have some go-bats. Okay, let's go to Ms. Marin first. Yes, good morning. Thank you, as always, to the auditor team.

[00:47:40] I am wondering, you know, this year the school division received the Baldrige Award, and I'm wondering, perhaps this is a question more for the superintendent, but how were the audits used to achieve that award since it's so tied to processes? So I'd love to hear that either from our Auditor General or our Superintendent.

[00:48:01] - Thank you, Madeline, for the question. So, of course, that the goal for the mission for our office is to ensure the processes that we have are effective, efficient, and be fully accountable to our community members. And I think that's closely related to the Braulich report the superintendents has embarked this year but as to how we are working together I don't think there is a kind of like very direct relationship at this point because I know that projects has just started and I would look for like to look for more you know coordination so that one plus one is equal to three

[00:48:40] and more right and I would love to hear like Dr. Reed you know thinking about that idea thank you mr. Smith has generally coordinated the work for that so I'll check in with him on what those connections might look like yeah well as always I find the auditor's office a wealth of information that I wish we could use more so I certainly hope that the superintendent can see what's applicable to the Baldrige work and you know I wondered my question was also what had been used to apply for the Baldrige framework but so it strikes me

[00:49:19] that in my seven years on the school board I have not yet been on the audit committee so I'd like to think next year is my year and I will put in a request for that if mr. McElveen will allow or share during his good leadership but that's not up to me but I really would like to dig in because I've seen the arc of the work and I would like to help us use it more so we'll see if that can happen I hope so thank you back to dr. Anderson thank you just going back to the findings that you had during that mid-year report I hear what you just

[00:49:59] shared regarding most of the recommendations have been closed there's three outstanding so I guess my question is for dr. Reed on that point do you anticipate closing out those last recommendations or I don't know if this is a mr. we do closing out the recommendations and in some cases I think it's a timing issue where I think we are about done but not prior to the completion of the Auditor General's report but yes we would definitely plan to close those out I know when I arrived in the school division there were a

[00:50:39] number of audit issues that were open that had not been closed out for some time so we've steadily chipped away and I think we're really almost done closing those out and I think we have drafts to close the rest of the remaining ones out mr. Smith do you want to comment I know you directly oversee good afternoon everyone yes we've been working very closely with the Auditor General's office and have a process in place where we follow up with our departments on those that are outstanding again there are items that haven't gotten to the particular due date yet and for those that are still outstanding I work very

[00:51:16] closely with the departments to ensure that they're closed out in a timely manner can someone speak a little bit more to the kpis of construction benchmark marking in terms of well clearly there have been some um deleterious impact i i guess my wondering is how come we didn't have those in place because that is the monitoring of the the construction work maybe thank you for the question maybe I was really sending that to staff and I'm sorry I'm at a bit of a

[00:51:53] disadvantage just coming into the room if you just want to look at page 13 of their report that might give you a little bit of a sense but I'll go on to my next question you look up I can also comment I mean I think these coming into the division we did not have KPIs really for departments or academic departments or operational departments so we've been instituting those over the last several years and i think the kpis around construction are an example of those pieces that are being put into place and i think we've discussed on multiple occasions sort of some of

[00:52:29] the project the escalation that occurs when time when things get delayed i do think to be fair covid and some of the impacts around construction at that time may have played a role but i certainly We are definitely working on establishment of KPIs across all operational departments.

[00:52:52] No, thank you. That's very helpful. And the next two areas in which you highlighted high risk or moderate risk were Holland Meadow Elementary and Sandburg Middle. At least that's what I saw on the chart.

[00:53:12] Is it, Dr. Ann, should we go over kind of the details, what they are? Just a little bit. I'd love to better understand what your findings were. I do remember Holland Meadows, but I don't remember the other one. Daniel, do you have both of them with you? Yes, just a small summary.

[00:53:29] So Holland Meadows, I believe this was the issue where there was a donation to support the outdoor education program, and they purchased the greenhouse, but they never installed the greenhouse at Holland Meadows. So I believe that was that high-risk finding. And then at Sandburg, the financial management report that is done monthly, the reconciliation, There were nine out of nine months that we looked at where they were not approved or reconciled in a timely manner.

[00:53:54] And then there were three appropriated cards and one non-appropriated card that were not reconciled timely. So with all of that together, we consider that a high finding. Thank you. And what was the moderate finding for Holland Meadows? Holland Meadows, one second.

[00:54:11] We had one of each. And then four low-risk findings. glad here with uh daniel and then she can put up all the details here so the moderate finding for holland meadows was a personnel payment someone was paid without going through the um my time so they were paid with the i believe it was a cash dispersant which is a check and the um low risk findings there were four for holland meadows i have yeah because you had a total of

[00:54:48] six findings there one second so one of those was the non-bank reconciliation we had a month of july 2024 fmr was not approved in the online application so that was a low finding we had timely payment payment to a vendor was not made by the due date and purchasing process which is one of the cash disbursements which is a check was um there was funds were obligated prior to

[00:55:22] having an approved purchase order i see thank you so much um just looking ahead in terms of what you'll be accomplishing next year i am pretty interested in the athletic programs and booster work primarily it's been such a churn in my community since i've been on the board just not having clarity of processes or clarity as to who's responsible for what and even a preliminary report from your office a few years ago really highlighted this is an area that needs

[00:55:57] a little bit more focus um this will be across all of the 26 high schools now okay thank you and the fundraising component just talk a little bit in terms of how that what the scope of that is going to be because we have, everybody raises funds for all kinds of reasons, PTAs, boosters, individual athletic groups.

[00:56:26] What are you going to be looking at here so that it's manageable and expectations can be set? - Great question and thank you. So if I can have the clerk to put up item number three so we can all look at the scope of work.

[00:56:41] If we can go to page 14 of item three, which is fiscal year 27, yep, this one, yep, slide 14. So this is the high-level scope of work, Dr. Anderson, that you can see the objective.

[00:57:00] One is to look at what are the checks and balances, and also the policy and regulations. We need to understand that first, right? What are the guardrails surrounding the use of fundraising activities? And then two, we will look to see if there's any unauthorized use for those platforms, right?

[00:57:23] We know that many times people are very creative at using GoFundMe or something that is not allowed by the system. And then we will also look at benchmarking to look at how the other school districts are doing the fundraising activities.

[00:57:39] So, this audit will go first, actually, maybe, like, in the month of August we would like to start with that, and we want to spend about six months looking in it to kind of find out the high level, kind of like, what is the policy, what is the controls, and then also looking at if there's any way people can do it not in the right way, and then also look at how the other school districts are doing it, so to set up the tone.

[00:58:09] And that will go first, and then after that, then we will look into the athletic programs. So to set up a foundation first. - No, that's very helpful, thank you. And I think those were my questions, thank you.

[00:58:25] - Thanks, Dr. Anderson, okay, we have two more. Ms. Dixit followed by Ms. St. John. - So thank you, Esther, thank you so much for presenting this. I just have a couple of questions. In one of your feedbacks, I guess, there is a point here that FCPS does not have any supply diversity program.

[00:58:49] Is that true? Like, is that? Oh, I think this may be, I will wait for Ms. Moore to put up the documents. And I think this may be in the procurement audit where we maybe rated it as an observation, I want to say.

[00:59:12] do you mind and now to speak a little bit more about that based on my understanding it was that um the office of procurement services hadn't established a program to mirror the fairfax county's efforts um and so i believe there were some differences um to align with the one fairfax policy and the fairfax county purchasing resolution um so we just asked that the office of procurement services consider um in consult in consultation with division council and fairfax government to Evaluate if that program could be established okay. Is there any response on that? What is so being that this was observations?

[00:59:50] We typically do not get a management response or follow-up on any on observations just on the high moderate and low findings Dr. Reed I would like to get some update from the procurement office about that because I was under that observation I think we had this discussion that we will build some supply diversity programs in our procurement office, and I guess it aligns with the county, and there are small, woman-owned, minority-owned, service-disabled, veteran-owned businesses which are given sometime priorities

[01:00:29] and set-asides in the government world. So knowing we are local government, too, we could look into that. The other thing I know you're doing to this audit, so I know there's another audit which will be happening next year, which you're probably going to start soon, or maybe you have started.

[01:00:54] There's $515 million of awards for DIT. That's a very significant amount. And then I also read some observations about the non-alignment and vendor selection, things like that. Could you elaborate a bit on that, because I want to hear, rather than just reading on document what was the feedback so thank you Seema so is it a question I just want to clarify to ensure we have a upcoming audit that is happening for DIT contracts are you talking about that or you were talking about an audit that has

[01:01:30] been completed so based on what is completed I want to know how the other one will be done so if you could talk about how it was done the one you completed and the key observation that just let's fall yeah which audit that do you mind to clarify sure um i'll just read from here and there was some key observations audit objective departments were tasked with identifying needs providing inputs during the solicitation negotiation process

[01:02:01] it's on slide 10 and it talks about um yeah which presentation it is as i'm pulling it up And I'm sorry we have so many and it's not making each one of us. I know, I know, it's not easy. Yeah, so thank you.

[01:02:17] It's on FY25 annual report procurement process. Thank you, thank you for the clarification. So back in fiscal year 25, so we looked at it like a life cycle, right?

[01:02:34] And I appreciate, you know, the questions and I know, Seymour, you have a lot of backgrounds in managing contracts and procurements. So is this the right slide, first of all? - I don't see the scope.

[01:02:50] I think PDF page 15. - I want to say maybe it's from the fiscal year 25. - Yes. - Any report. - Yes.

[01:03:08] - Fiscal year 25, any report. Page 15. - On PDF. You know, without, I can separately send you an email about this, just don't wanna take too much time.

[01:03:26] but it basically said the auditor, result of audit, OAG identified three moderate risk finding in regarding vendor approval process between OPS, OCS, and Department of DIT. Operational inefficiencies in vendor communication and review processes exist that are impacting vendor solicitation, resulting from resource constraint and comprehensive questionnaires.

[01:03:53] - Yep, I got it, okay. So, and thank you for helping me to connect the dots. So for that particular audit, when we think about the life cycle, we want to look at the procurement processes first, right? That's the start. So which is on page 12 of the fiscal year 25 annual report. So when we looked at the start of the process, because right now, as we know that the cybersecurity risk is high, so that's why during the procurement process, the consideration of IT is important as well. When we did the audit for the procurement

[01:04:32] process, again, it's the start of the process, that it seems that the coordination between DIT and procurement can be further improved. At the time, I believe that there was kind of one-size-fits-all that all procurement, no matter of—I'm just maybe using overstatement that no matter what items we bring, have to go through a very, very robust IT review.

[01:04:58] So that's what was one of the findings. And then as a result of that, management has been improving it to make it not one size feed all, it's actually based upon the types of procurements that are happening. And then they are using different risk model to assess whether they accept the vendors or not.

[01:05:19] So that's one of the findings. And then the other one is about asking Office of Procurement Services to develop the key performance indicator, like Dr. Reid mentioned, that that is a new strategy that, like, they are asking all the departments to do.

[01:05:39] So that's the start, right? After we looked at the procurement process, Seymour, then we think about to look at the next of the procurement, right, which is the contracting, contract monitoring. So how do we, making sure that after the procurement has been made, the contracts have been managed along, right?

[01:05:57] Not just we buy something and then just let it go, right? But so, this fiscal year '26, we are looking at the contracts from DSS, Department of Special Services, and then also ISD, Instructional Services Department.

[01:06:13] And then in fiscal year 27, we proposed to look at the DIT contracts. So as you mentioned correctly, that they have incurred a lot of, you know, expensive, you know, contracts. And we want to make sure that we are overseeing those contracts regularly.

[01:06:35] And this question could be for the, I guess, procurement team. But are you aware of like any sourcing agreements we have in place with some companies for like IT? Like we have $500 million in IT contracts.

[01:06:51] So we are doing this one-off contracts or we are doing strategic sourcing or blanket purchase agreements? Thank you for the question. We actually haven't started planning yet. So unfortunately, I don't think we have the details.

[01:07:06] I don't know if management could comment on that. for the DIT types of contracts and how do we do those, the contract mechanism. - I think we'd have to get back to you, Ms. Dixit, but we could do that. - Okay, thank you so much.

[01:07:22] And I know I was a part of the joint IT committee along with Ms. Seismohiser and then Ms. Anderson joined me. The idea was to combine the purchasing capabilities of Fairfax County and FCPS so we can have better pricing for some of those IT contracts we can you know bargain better in a way we are like a bigger system but yeah I know the technology doesn't speak sometime we use different portals but that was a task and I think there were there was a good success you know we can save money on that so anyway thank you for that maybe can I just add a quick

[01:07:58] comment so mistakes it we can certainly looked into that as well during our audit to see like how that's being you know can we further capitalize that the one fairfax idea I wanted to go back to your question about the supplier diversity observation I misspoke they did provide us with a management response and what their actions are we just don't follow up on those observations so if you go to page 26 in the report and if you a quick way to get there is on page 11 in the annual report if you I believe there's a link that might take you

[01:08:34] directly to that report and on page 26 they did provide a management response in their actions thank you I am really not going to ask questions I just really want to say thank you for all the work that the audit committee has done those that are present as well as those that aren't present as well as our two citizen members on the board I'm lucky to be on the audit committee and I know that you go in depth on some of the things that we're discussing at high

[01:09:11] level here and I appreciate the thoroughness the work the attitude that you do everything with I also appreciate your patience when you know you're talking about a system level and I'm talking about my experience being in the schools but you're always willing to listen and you're always willing to you know see how maybe a systems level decision or process looks like you know down on the ground level and I appreciate that openness and willingness to discuss that so I just want to thank you for all your work obviously this is

[01:09:47] a big report but just for my colleagues here like when we have our our meetings I mean we go way more in depth and always if you have questions they're always there willing and cheerful and willing to help so I just really want to commend you for all the work because I know it's hard work it's detailed work but you guys make it look easy so thank you okay great and I think dr.

[01:10:16] Anderson has one final question sorry I missed this in my initial ask on page 11 of the report audit results this is the one that is titled fiscal year 2025 annual report the student disciplinary process it's all starred can you talk a a little bit in terms of any findings of that audit so we can talk about the audit objective meaning what we have looked at but my understanding is we could not talk about what the results are because this is exempt from four-year

[01:10:55] disclosure and I think I may need division counsel to explain that but I can talk about the objective here yes you could talk about the objectives and and indicate whether or not there were any findings, like yes or no.

[01:11:11] May I answer? I can talk about the objective first and then maybe, Ryan, you can give me some guidance if I can say yes or no. So the objective, first of all, we evaluate the process. So we looked at the full process, including the appeals process to ensure compliance with federal, state, policy, regulation, and procedures.

[01:11:32] So the first objective are more compliance-driven. Second one, we assess whether they are effective, like whether the checks and balances and all the compliance requirements, are they effective? Are they being able to attain the goal or the intention of those process?

[01:11:52] The third one is we also benchmark the hearings and appeals operations with the other jurisdictions. So these are the three topics that we looked at. I don't know if Mr. McLevin, you want to comment on that? No, I would just say if folks want to review the findings individually, we can arrange for that.

[01:12:13] I would definitely be interested in doing that because I'm hearing there were findings and so do I arrange this with you directly? Yeah. Yeah, we can connect. Okay. Thank you. Okay, great. Well, just want to thank both of you and the whole audit team again for a very productive year.

[01:12:32] I think it goes without saying that you've uncovered some things in the system that have BEEN VERY IMPORTANT AND WE APPRECIATE YOUR ATTENTION TO ALL OF THAT. WITH THAT, I AM GIVING THE BOARD BACK 50 MINUTES. WE STARTED 20 MINUTES LATE. WE ARE ENDING 30 MINUTES EARLY.

[01:12:48] WE CAN ADJOURN FOR LUNCH. NOT ADJOURN, RECESS. RECESS FOR LUNCH AT 12:30 P.M.

[01:12:54] THANK YOU.

[01:13:53] OKAY. THANK YOU. READY? YEAH. WE WILL NOW -- OH, I'M SORRY. I HAVE TO GO, TOO. WE WILL NOW MOVE ON TO THE PRE-K AND EARLY HEAD START PARENT POLICY COMMITTEE ANNUAL REPORT. portion of the work session at 1:36 p.m. I call on staff to begin their presentation. Would you like for me to introduce our members okay so we have

[01:14:23] Teresa she's our board chair and doctor I'm gonna say it right no one bus got it there we go no one bus yes that is that that is accurate all right so we'll go

[01:14:56] ahead and get started um so we're here today representing the pre-k and early headstart parent policy committee to present the annual program report on behalf of the fcps pre-k and early start parent policy committee we thank you for the opportunity to present our 20 to 25 20 to 26 annual report the parent policy as you know serves as the governing voice of families enrolled in these programs and we're proud to share the progress data and recommendations that reflect our work this year they will walk you through program highlights enrollment trends the expansion of our inclusive learning models comprehensive

[01:15:34] services and the recommendations our committee is bringing forward for your consideration pre-k and early head start program serves students through the federal head start grant and the Virginia preschool initiative Fairfax County public schools pre-k and early head start provide high quality preschool education and wraparound services to children who face economic and educational risk factors the program provides a high quality preschool experience including comprehensive services for students with economic and educational risk factors with the purpose of providing a strong start for kindergarten readiness skills including both academic and social and emotional skills the goal is pretty straightforward give every child a

[01:16:12] strong start in the kindergarten readiness skills they need to thrive both academically and socially and emotionally this year the pre-k program serves 2,378 students the pre-k program serves students who are three years old and four years by September 30th but due to a limited number of slots to meet demand priority is given to four-year-olds so they have an opportunity for preschool experience before kindergarten the early head start program provides 48 slots for pregnant mothers and children from birth through 30 months old numbers reflect the scale of our community's investment in early childhood education and the ongoing demand from families who rely on this

[01:16:50] program the early head start program is in three schools uh crestwood clearview and dogwood and will serve mothers before the baby is born and as i mentioned earlier to 30 months eligibility is is based on a combination of risk factors, recognizing that children's needs do not come from a single circumstance.

[01:17:10] Qualifying factors include family income based on federal poverty level, homelessness, or foster care status, receipt of public assistance, and parents who do not complete high school. Additional risk factors considered include parental incarceration, child protective services referrals, and eligibility for special education services.

[01:17:29] This broad eligibility framework ensures the program reaches the children who stand to benefit the most, including children who might otherwise fall through the gaps. Eligibility requirements do vary slightly between Head Start and the Virginia Preschool Initiative, but the summary is in some of the ways a child might qualify for those programs.

[01:17:46] So income eligibility is a primary category. For Head Start classrooms, income eligibility is below 130% of the federal poverty guidelines or just under $42,000 for a family of four. For the Virginia Preschool Initiative, the state eligibility is 200% of the federal poverty guidelines for just over 62,000 for a family of four.

[01:18:07] Due to a high cost of living in Fairfax County locally, we're able to serve families with incomes up to 350% of the federal poverty guidelines for the Virginia Preschool Initiative where there's space available. Children may also qualify if they're experiencing homelessness or foster care, receive public assistance, if their parents did not graduate from high school, or if they have other risk factors, such as having a parent, again, who is incarcerated, or if the family is referred by Child Protective Services.

[01:18:31] Starting in the 2022 to 2023 school year, the Virginia Preschool Initiative changed their guidelines, allowing all students who qualify for special education services to be found eligible for the Virginia Preschool Initiative, regardless of income. The Pre-K and Early Head Start program have had the federal and state goals of at least 10% of students enrolled to be students with the Individualized Education Program or IEP.

[01:18:56] These students are dually enrolled in both the Pre-K and Early Head Start and also receive special education services from a special education teacher, either in the classroom or in a small group setting. Since 2022, 23, when the eligibility criteria changed, the pre-care program has been working along with the early childhood identification and services team to create and expand more full-time inclusion opportunities for students through the inclusion classroom models, such as the single teacher and itinerant models, and the new for next year, the co-teaching model.

[01:19:26] In addition to the full-day classrooms, pre-K classrooms and early childhood class-based preschool autism classrooms are pairing together for up to half a day so that students in both classrooms have an opportunity to learn and play together in an inclusive environment. One of the most significant stories of this school year is the dramatic expansion of the inclusive pre-K programs.

[01:19:45] Again, that places children with and without disabilities together in the same learning environment. Three years ago, in school year 23 to 24, we only had seven pre-K inclusion classrooms. This year, that number has grown to 133, a nearly 20-fold increase in just two years.

[01:20:03] During that same period, traditional pre-K classrooms went from 110 down to 43, reflecting a deliberate shift in how we structure early learning environments. Total full K/PK slots have grown from 2,064 to 2,378, and the number of schools with pre-K and pre-K inclusion classrooms has expanded from 66 to 78.

[01:20:24] Full inclusion is offered through three models. We talked about the single teacher model, the itinerant model, and a new co-teaching model launching in this upcoming school year. Half day inclusion options are also available by pairing pre-K with early childhood class-based classrooms with the preschool autism classrooms.

[01:20:41] And just talking a little bit about my own inclusion story, so my daughter was identified early in the ITC program at the age of two, and then was enrolled in the child fund program shortly before we learned of her rare genetic condition, of which there are only 600 other identified individuals.

[01:20:57] We started in this bed classroom, I don't know why I'm doing this, where she spent two years. This past year, with eligibility from her IEP, I was notified there was room for her to have an inclusive experience through an itinerant model.

[01:21:13] She was placed into an itinerant classroom, where she has thrived and built on her social-emotional skills, as we better her for the general classroom kindergarten experience with some of the supports through her IEP. Next slide, please. As we have expanded inclusion in the pre-K classrooms, this chart shows preliminary data from the 25 to 26 school years surpassing the state goal with 36.9% of three to five-year-olds receiving the majority of their special education services in the general education setting.

[01:21:44] This slide highlights Indicator 6A from the Virginia Department of Education, which measures the percentage of children ages three through five with individual education programs who attend a regularly early childhood program and receive the majority of their special education services in the inclusive setting. Fairfax County Public Schools is making strong progress on this indicator and the expansion of inclusion classrooms you just saw is directly tied to our commitment to meeting and exceeding the state's expectations. Research consistently shows that inclusive settings benefit all children, not just those with IUPs. This investment serves every family in the program. Now passing it along to Garrett.

[01:22:19] Because the program serves students with economic and academic risk factors, each year we report demographic data about the children that the program serves. The top graph here shows the breakdown of students by family income.

[01:22:37] The portion in blue is the students who would qualify under the federal Head Start guidelines of 130% the federal poverty limit. The portion in orange represents students who qualify under the Virginia income guidelines of 200% of the poverty limit. The green and lighter blue represent the higher local guidelines due to the higher cost of living in the area.

[01:23:00] And the portion of students who do not qualify based on income but some other factors such as having an IEP. A majority of the students in the program are multilingual learners with families that speak another language besides English in their home. 20% of the total number of students who were served this year were identified as having a disability and qualified for an IEP.

[01:23:22] For my family, my now son, we just finished, finalized our adoption two weeks ago. That was a contributing factor for his acceptance into the pre-K program, as well as at the start of last year, they had been in the foster care program.

[01:23:47] They were within foster care before finalizing our adoption. But at about this time last year, they were placed with us. Actually, Monday, this coming Monday is one year from that day that they moved into our house.

[01:24:08] And as we're trying to get our house ready for then three- and four-year-old, we're wondering what are we going to do with these kids during the day. And we were fortunate enough that Dimitri, with meeting with his IEP and the foster system, as well as his little sister, they were able to get into the pre-K programs, though, at different schools.

[01:24:43] the because there's been such dedication to expanding access to the pre-k program within fairfax county is evidenced by our increased enrollment numbers year over year we're seeing that that they were actually both of them were actually able to get into the school system instead of just dimitri at four um and this two weeks ago last week when it was amber's last day of school She came home and was saying, I'm ready to see Ms. Maury tomorrow.

[01:25:21] I'm like, I know, honey, but it's the last day of school. We might see her around. But we'll go to school next year. And then we found out that there's actually a closer pre-K program at the school we're zoned for that she'll be attending next school year at Island Creek instead of Lane Elementary.

[01:25:42] So that's the school all of our neighborhood kids go to. So that continued expansion just continues to show great results for members of the community like myself. That being said, not all families who are eligible can be served by the program each year.

[01:26:05] For this year, over 5,200 students applied for the 2,246 slots available. Some of those applications were abandoned, for example, if they were found ineligible or if they moved. The majority of three-year-old applicants, nearly 1,300, weren't completed because the space at their school was filled with four-year-olds.

[01:26:24] Their applications will be followed up on for the subsequent school year. 404 students remained on the wait list at the end of the school year this year. For families that do get enrolled in the program, the Federal Head Start and Virginia Preschool Initiative grants require that the program provide certain comprehensive services to children and their families.

[01:26:47] Some of these include eligibility, enrollment, and attendance support, family services, and connecting to resources in the community, health and nutrition support, including mental health services, education support, and support for students with disabilities. Program staff and teachers build relationships with each and every family, starting as they help families through the application process itself and enrollment and connecting with families as they encounter challenges through the whole school year.

[01:27:17] And here's where I'll speak in my professional capacity as a pediatrician. We know that having kids in school is more protective because there's more eyes on kids.

[01:27:33] They're not sequestered at home. Teachers are able to see indicators such as repeatedly dirty clothing or a child that previously came in really well fed, They're asking for more and more food, and it's not because they're growing.

[01:27:54] We're able to create points of intervention within the community beyond education itself that can allow for intervention much sooner if a family needs help or if a child is in an unsafe environment.

[01:28:16] Here are some of the highlights from the different service areas in the program this year. The Parent Policy Committee is not simply a parent group.

[01:28:39] It's the governing body that gives families a formal structured voice in how Fairfax County Public Schools pre-K and early Head Start programs are run. Parent participation in program governance and policy decisions is a core requirement and a key component of the program. And the PPC is how Fairfax County Public Schools fulfills that commitment.

[01:28:57] Based on the feedback from last year's policy council, this year we came together both in person and virtually for our meetings. The families represented on this committee come from across Fairfax County and their lived experiences in the program directly shape the recommendations we bring forward.

[01:29:13] When meeting in person, the children also had an opportunity to come together and participate in fun activities and take home a new book, providing additional educational experiences and for them to interact with other peers. These are the members of the Executive Board this year.

[01:29:30] Each of these members is a current pre-K or early Head Start parent who has dedicated significant time and energy to this work on behalf of their fellow families we're grateful for their leadership we want to thank every parent who attended the parent policy committee meetings this year and contributed to our effort and their advocacy for the program and we can attest to that I think from our own experiences and our professional capacities as well as members of the executive board we worked with program staff to plan and facilitate the quarterly meetings the parent policy committee operates through a structured governance model that ensures broad family representation and consistent engagement throughout

[01:30:04] the year. The committee includes five executive board members, 64 representatives drawn from school locations across the county, four community representatives, and five policy council representatives. This year we held five full PPC meetings, a virtual kickoff in the fall, hybrid meetings in November and March, a virtual meeting in January, and an in-person meeting to close out in May. Six representatives attended at least one quarterly meeting this year and we had four community representatives. In addition to attending the Fairfax County Pre-K and Early Head Start Parent Policy Committee, five members were also selected to participate in the Fairfax

[01:30:42] Head Start County Policy Council and share their information from that group. All parents of Pre-K and Early Head Start families are invited to attend the quarterly meetings as well as participate in their family center meetings that happen at each school. We learned more about the Pre-K and Early Head Start program from staff and had a portion of the meeting that were structured as parent conversations parents shared their experiences including their positive experiences and feedback and specific topics for the program to continue to be more successful in the coming years they shared many stories of how the program impacted their students and their families many of

[01:31:17] the families also highlighted that the preschoolers now were baby now that were babies during covid and didn't have strong communication or social skills we heard about how these children have blossomed now since they have been in the program other families shared how the program has helped their family when their family was struggling with job loss and the high cost of food giving them security that their child is taken care of so they can get out and go to school or find a new job themselves students in the program also make gains towards academic kindergarten readiness three and four-year-old students take the virginia kindergarten readiness program vkrp early

[01:31:53] mathematics assessment emas and the virginia language and literacy screener system or vows this is data for the four-year-olds in the data you can see that the orange category students in the beginning developmental band goes down from fall to spring in all areas of assessment note that the spring assessment has more challenging tasks or requires more correct answers so it's a little bit of a shifting goal post to get the same developmental band than in the fall this is especially true for the emas where the spring assessment includes some kindergarten

[01:32:32] standards in all areas of the valves the percentage of students in the strong band was near or more than half of all students completing the pre-k year now even with program expansion in the past few years all students in fairfax county still do not have access to a quality preschool experience this map here shows the number and percentage of students who enter kindergarten without a pre-k experience in each high school pyramid. The darkest green areas show where over 30% of

[01:33:10] students have not had the opportunity to go to preschool before kindergarten. The medium greener colors are between 20 and 29%, and as it gets lighter, it does decrease in percentage, as you can see. Each year, the PPC makes recommendations to the school board to continue to improve the pre-k and early head start programs for families.

[01:33:39] Here are the recommendations from this year. The first being including pre-k students in school-based staffing formulas for time to teach, ensuring consistent access to specials classes for all students. Pre-k students are not included in staffing formulas for the elementary schools where they attend.

[01:33:59] This does mean that as many schools, students do not have access to specials classes such as music, PE, or art for enrichment in line with strategic plan goal 1E. It has been an ongoing recommendation from the Parent Policy Committee to guarantee all early childhood students access to these classes.

[01:34:18] Many families who are eligible for pre-K throughout the economic and educational risk factors do not have access to these type of enrichment activities in a community setting due to cost or inability to find programs that are able to serve students with disabilities.

[01:34:37] Lack of access to consistent specials also impacts pre-K teachers because it cuts into their time to plan on a daily basis. Planning subs often come for a five hour block of time, one day a week.

[01:34:54] Pre-K teachers at the same school often cannot coordinate common planning time if their planning time sub coverage is on different days. It is especially important for teachers co-teachering in the inclusion models to have common planning time together.

[01:35:12] - Recommendation two is to provide access to pre-K students for after-school childcare enrichment programs at schools, including on teacher workdays. Pre-K students are not currently able to attend the school-age childcare or SAC program that serves students K through six in elementary schools. The SAC program allows students to engage in enrichment activities and social interactions with students in a setting with fewer academic demands and can foster development of more social skills with students from their communities.

[01:35:37] Not having access to before or after care or near the school site can be a barrier to many families who would qualify for the program due to economic eligibility, but who need access to full daycare due to their work schedule. Childcare centers and home-based childcare typically have full daycare to cover a patient workday and have fewer teacher workdays when school is not available, but may not offer the same kindergarten readiness benefits.

[01:36:01] - The third recommendation is to continue funding program expansion to increase the number of families the program can serve, including expanding who can qualify such as those at higher incomes or other situations such as job loss or medical conditions. The pre-K and early Head Start program continues to have the ongoing need of a waitlist in many areas of the county.

[01:36:24] Students who qualify for the program but have a higher family income may end up on the waitlist but may also not be able to afford private preschool due to the high cost of living in Fairfax County. Additionally, families who experience job loss or family emergencies such as medical conditions may not apply until program slots are already filled.

[01:36:44] Continuing to expand the pre-K slots at schools where there is a wait list helps to ensure that more families will be able to access high-quality early childhood education to be ready for kindergarten. Thank you.

[01:37:02] Thank you. I now invite my colleagues who have questions, beginning with Dr. Anderson. Thank you for sharing this report, and thank you to both of you for sharing your personal stories.

[01:37:24] it's always a great testament to see like the kids behind the numbers and so thank you both for being able to share that and congratulations on your adoption I know that has to be a wonderful day in your family one of the things that I also wanted to talk about that you just raised that you raised as well Dr. Snow and Buss you think I will remember that Dr. Snow and Buss when you

[01:37:57] mentioned when kids are in schools where they're able to have or in places where they're able to have increased monitoring there is that opportunity for early intervention I know we noticed that here ourselves during COVID when students were not with us and so there were decreased reports for even CPS calls and of course the decreased opportunity to intervene when things that are not typical are happening in those families so thank you for raising that one of the

[01:38:32] things that I noticed in the report I'm trying to find the page I think this is page three of the full report the early head start I see the gains with the pre K in terms of the students slots increasing but the early head start sites are not necessarily increasing or the classroom sizes are not increasing at the same pace who can speak to that a little bit I can speak so it's not so much a challenge it's just the reality head start early head start those are

[01:39:11] federally funded slots that we have and for FCPS as the delegate of the early head start grant we we get 48 slots that's how many that we receive so So there's more early Head Start programs in the community, Gum Springs, things of that nature, where more of our students that are between the ages of birth and three years old are served.

[01:39:41] So it's just spread out across multiple organizations. It's not just FCPS. With the pre-K, we can control that a little bit better because we are not necessarily sharing it in the same way that the grants are being dispersed throughout other organizations in Fairfax County yes and we do share some VPI slots as well however we get the lion's share of the VPI slots now this is probably a question for dr. Presidio because I have not been on skip this year and I know

[01:40:15] that was a continuing conversation miss Dixit thank you I know when I exited skipped the conversation had been really trying to find a common definition regarding preschools that FCPS offers and how they may be different from what the county supports can you speak to any progress to that end yeah thanks for the question and we did have a number of discussions about that a year ago and skip we actually resolved that at the end of the 24/25 school year when we

[01:40:54] approved the equitable school readiness plan with the county so again as miss Pilsen was describing we're really focused more on and again there's some overlap as she described as well but we're really focused more on the preschool components of our joint work with the county and the county is really focused more on some of the alternative programs that families have the choice to access early head starts one of them as well as community based programming but um yeah we were able to resolve any concerns about that at the end of 24 25. okay thank you can you share a little bit in terms of how many three-year-olds we're serving i know the bulk are

[01:41:32] four the bulk are four and i do not think i have specific numbers at this time um but i can get that to you in terms of i want to say we have about 300 three-year-olds in our program that we're serving and that's giving a ballpark these three-year-olds that are requiring supports because of special needs or so this is i'm talking about just vpi okay head start okay thank you um and in terms of the recommendations um you know three recommendations and i know one i've seen many many

[01:42:10] times before which brings me to the conversation with dr reed um the specials piece if you could speak a little bit and I'd love to go back please about what the impact would be what would we need to do to prepare our system so that these classes have specials because there's a staffing impact teachers can only do so much is in if that has been the major obstacle to prevent us from moving forward a little bit on that recommendation I'm not entirely sure what's prevented us from moving forward other than likely budget if there are staffing implications

[01:42:50] for adding those programs I also know head start has some specific program guidelines and they do things that within head start and I assume miss Pilsen within early childhood as well that because there are certain feeding and certain instructional pieces that the program really has certain goals and objectives too so i don't know and it doesn't meet i don't think every day all day all week i'm not the the early childhood side of it as well okay because some of the programs i think

[01:43:27] ecb does not so it's some of the preschool programs they're not as they're they're a different time module so um i think that at this point probably it's more a scheduling and staffing challenge as well as perhaps a program piece but again I would probably defer to Ms. Pilsen and Dr. Presidio on the program design at this point I know they have a number of look fors and targets within the current structure that

[01:43:59] they're working on I'll follow up on my go back thank you I'm mr. Malikovine thanks and thank you all for the presentation which was I actually found to be far more useful than past presentations I appreciated all the statistics and everything that you shared it's great to have all that in one place so really appreciate it and I do want to just acknowledge that the conversation we were having a decade plus ago is very different than the conversation we're having now where we were just inching up in the hundreds and now we're in the thousands that we're able to reach through this so it's certainly

[01:44:35] not enough but we just have to keep pushing over time and we'll eventually get there so I think my My question is actually the same as Dr. Anderson's, and maybe Dr. Presidio can take a crack at it, about the recommendation to increase the access to TTT time.

[01:44:54] So I know just having sat down with principals, looked at the difficulty of the master calendar, at this point we aren't able to accommodate our own students with the programming in TTT that we want. certainly many of us want to expand TTT with language offerings and other things.

[01:45:13] I just don't know how we ever get to this recommendation if we can't provide it to our K-12 students. - I also, Mr. McElwain, there's also another little piece because we're having to do a lot of the funding for our preschool from our own operating fund.

[01:45:30] I think the discussion was do we continue to expand preschool offerings with any operating fund dollars or the triple T time, right? Like, 'cause we're not gonna be able to do both. And I think over the last couple of years, we've really felt like the more young children that we can serve, that's probably overrides the ability to spend the money on the triple T.

[01:45:55] Does that make sense? Like in terms of priority, trying to get more children into a preschool at all out of that same bucket of money. But Dr. Presidio, I know you have something to add as well. Well, I mean, you really just covered it. At the end of the day, it's just a factor of money and, you know, with limited fiscal resources, how we prioritize any additional investments that we would make in early childhood education, as Dr. Reid mentioned.

[01:46:19] So that's really the issue here. Well, for future discussion, thank you. Mr. Moon. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation, Mrs. Snow and Dr. Snow-Yan-Bus.

[01:46:40] I concur with Mr. McAlvin that we have been making progress slowly, but hopefully eventually we'll get to the point where we all desire to get here. With it in mind, looking at the numbers on page slide number, this one is page, doesn't have a page number, but seven.

[01:47:05] I see number of applications being 5,269 and number of slots 2426 with a full full on the wait list. So about 2,600 of the applicants are basically either not in the slot or on the wait list.

[01:47:28] So could you describe about those 2,600, whether they were simply not qualified under criteria or who are they? so those students would be students that they may not qualify because of income eligibility thresholds they may be students who they've abandoned their application they may not meet the age criteria because we do prioritize our four-year-old students so there are many variables you have those data those

[01:48:04] information or their lover specific data we can get that yes okay it's actually it's on we have it on a slide it's page nine in the page nine of the report okay I'll go back and read that again look at page is it in the report or the slide deck it may be in

[01:48:31] senior slide your report that has the it breaks down the number of families that apply and the data that we're able to collect on what happens to those families who they are I'm more interested who they are. And so with that, another question that I have is, this is a million dollar question,

[01:49:05] or a billion dollar question is, when we talk about universal pre-K, are we talking about both four-year-olds and three-year-olds, put them together, or? Will you repeat that question for me? When we talk about universal pre-K, which elected officials get to talk, policymakers get stuff from time to time as perhaps where we should go eventually is that are we talking about both three years and four years old is that ideally ideally of

[01:49:41] course it would be three and four year olds however realistically I think that we would have to as we've our priority has been our four-year-old students because they're matriculating to kindergarten the following year and we want to make sure that they have had that full year to prepare them to build the readiness skills and things of that nature so that they can go to kindergarten in the upcoming fall so so we're just keeping four year four year hours in mind if the community leaders community wants to talk about reaching a

[01:50:16] consensus was setting a goal for universal pre-k what is the number we are seeking we are looking at number of us children so we enroll roughly between 10 and 12,000 students annually in kindergarten okay so in thinking about that number of students if we were able to offer universal pre-k to all four year olds that we would need to be able to serve at least 90% of that it between 80 and 90 because we have to also consider there's some families that

[01:50:55] They're not going to choose. Who may not, right. Yes, and there's some families that just may not be here yet. Or who may choose other options. Correct. They may choose other options, or they may not live in the area yet. There's the X factor. So I would say if we could serve 80% of the average, the trending number of kindergartners that we serve each year.

[01:51:16] So that could be 8,000 to 9,000. 8,000 to 9,000. 8,000 to 9,000 students. You know, setting aside the facility needs to accommodate those students, is it, I'm I believe that you will be able to do so.

[01:51:32] Just let us know what the investment, additional investment we need to make that happen. We will definitely get back to you. Because that's the conversation. The Board of Supervisors and then folks down in General Assembly we need to have, we need to know and then got to have a conversation.

[01:51:54] Thank you. Mr. Krish followed by Ms. Levy. Thank you. Picking up where Mr. Moon left off, It seems to me that in addition to perhaps a slightly smaller subset based on the kindergarten numbers, that if we were among the only folks in the region providing pre-K, that might end up being a draw for people that live close by that want to move for that purpose.

[01:52:29] Secondarily, if the state were to move forward, Spanberger, the governor, has indicated a support for a private public blended option um and so i'd be interested to know you know if you are going to calculate what a dollar figure might look like um it'd be interesting to know how choice breaks down in that environment people choosing uh private providers versus uh public schools um uh you know i'll always bring attention whenever we do this report to the heat map

[01:53:06] that continues to show the exact same communities with the largest number of students who are not being served this essential building block for public education and success in our system. One of the goals is the continued expansion and VPI was brought up.

[01:53:27] I know in the last administration, the Department of Education marveled at our ability to fill all of our slots and even offered additional slots before telling us that not only would we not get those additional slots that they offered, but that we were going to get fewer slots than we had the previous year, even though we were filling all of our slots.

[01:53:46] Has that been rectified in the new administration? With the new administration, they have level set the slots. I want to say there's a proposed increase in terms of the dollar amount that we receive for per pupil, yes, and they are holding steady at the number of slots for this upcoming school year.

[01:54:14] So we're not getting less, and if we need more, we'll see what's available after the October 1st. - That's heartening, and maybe that can be some of our specific state-level advocacy with the legislative program next year, is the community growth there.

[01:54:32] I appreciate all the work that went into this and the parents' service on the committee, especially our Timber Lane parent, but that's all I've got, thank you. - This lady. - Yeah, to follow up my colleague's question, with the recent announcements regarding potentially more money for students with disabilities, could that impact pre-K for students that are in child find?

[01:55:03] - Can you ask that question again? I wanna make sure I'm understanding what you're asking. - Well, I guess just in what I've seen from the Secretary of Education, McMahon, lot of information coming out in relation to students with disabilities and so depending on how you hear or what you read there's potential that there might be more money to appropriately better fund because it's grossly underfunded those services with our students who are in child fine who are pre-k could that potentially help us add seats add seats for pre-k yeah no that that would add

[01:55:39] seats for the number that would increase the number of students that would be found eligible through for special education so that may create more we have to serve all of our students with IEPs whether no matter what we don't have an option so that would grow our early childhood special education programming but squeeze others out potentially not necessarily unless we're looking at inclusion so if they're only if they're served in a self-contained program then

[01:56:12] And no, that would just continue to grow self-contained services for students with IEPs that are in served in early childhood programming. However, as far as serving in an inclusion classroom, yes, that would decrease the number of students that were able to serve who are found eligible based on the income eligibility factors.

[01:56:32] OK, the main reason I put my placard up is the heat maps as the magisterial who lives in the area. with the greatest need for this. It's painful to look at the same map year after year.

[01:56:49] And I'm talking about Paige Harnden. Yes. See, you didn't even have to look at a map, did you? My ask-- and I'm sorry Dr. Reed had to leave the room for the moment-- is that Skyview has a pre-K part in their building.

[01:57:08] I personally don't understand why we aren't opening that next year. We've had plenty of time to work on this. But my ask is that we look at that and prioritize the fact that the greenest spot on this map with the greatest need is Herndon, and it's right next to Skyview.

[01:57:26] Skyview has a Herndon address, I actually believe. That would just be fantastic. I'm begging. I don't know who's listening, but, you know, when you look at this, this has to happen, even if we are not opening it as, I mean, the vision is it's early childhood education.

[01:57:47] for our students to you like like an academy model where they would come home and come over to Skyview and learn but also be the supports with those students so that's that's I don't think it's a big ask but I'm gonna call it my my big beautiful ask I could just address that just briefly and I appreciate miss lady's advocacy on that and we did begin some preliminary planning this year I'm sorry

[01:58:24] I'm trying to speak. Yeah, it's on. I'll get a little bit closer. I was just saying that we did begin preliminary planning on that this year, but weren't able to actually open the classrooms for a variety of operational and fiscal reasons. But that is a priority for 27-28, so we're definitely working on that. And if we can do something sooner, that would be great. That would be my next ask, is maybe my second semester. Sanderson. Okay, so I'm along the same boat as pretty much everybody else is the fact that when we look at those numbers of the kids that are

[01:59:00] applications but not slots and when I look back at the report and see that it was 1280 kids that are not they're basically a three-year-olds so they don't meet the age requirement mm-hmm so I have a number of questions first is when we are doing these applications is the 5269 are those really leads and not full applications or are these people that have gone through the process of doing so are we not telling folks straight up that we're only taking four-year-olds because we don't only take four-year-olds we prioritize four year olds so we are only taking four-year-olds so we're not a hundred

[01:59:39] percent all four-year-olds we do serve threes we do serve threes I logically understand what you're saying but we're basically giving hope to 1200 families that are looking for a slot that we know or we're not going to take and so that I have I understand why we would want to make sure that we could I would just love to keep them on a list of backfill rather than having them go through the entire application process in order because that is an onerous task for lots of these absolutely and so I would just like us and I would appreciate in the future if we can get some of that information nuanced out on this slide

[02:00:16] slide that talks about how many kids are three-year-olds, how many three-year-olds that we're serving. Because I think that that's a really important part of this process. I don't, I understand why we're prioritizing four-year-olds, but I also want to make sure that we're being, we're not being disingenuous with the public about what, who is actually going to make it in.

[02:00:35] Because again, the act of going through for lots of our families that are, that are in this boat, that's not an insignificant process. And so I would want to make sure that we could do that with a little bit more clarity oh and then the other thing that I do want to also say is I recognize that we have a very solid want for universal pre-k I would really want to figure out whether or not our facilities could manage that because when you when you even when you start talking about 80% and then we go down to three in order to do again do it with fidelity like that you're talking

[02:01:10] what 20,000 more kids easy that's that's the low end and so I want to know where those 20,000 kids are going to go within our schools. I would just like to, as the parent of somebody who was three that attended pre-K, during the application process, it was made very clear to us that four-year-olds are prioritized.

[02:01:36] We can put together this application knowing full well that there's a solid chance that it's going to be without any, that she wouldn't be, my daughter wouldn't have a space. But it's, so at least from the direct communication to this parent, it was made clear and it didn't, it wasn't promising anything. So. No, and I hear you. I think that for me, that just makes it

[02:02:11] more, more like heartbreaking in the fact that you had this number of families that were looking for this as an option and needed it in some way or another and so I understand what exactly what you're saying and I I mean this this is something that I always try to match up with the information that we get when we were talking about the goal report related to this and so looking at these numbers and how they interact with the number of kids that we're actually serving in different areas and how many of our kiddos are not receiving services anywhere else so that is where it just it breaks my heart to think of 1200 or so

[02:02:49] three-year-olds that we're trying to get in and couldn't make it so yes well I actually have a three-year-old because she saw her sister go and wanted to go every day so we had left her crying and she asked me to go to school so we had to enroll her in private school so every morning we split off in two different directions to take the kids which is hard when we have to go to work so there there is that personal piece too so we had to kind of figure out scheduling thank you so before we go back so I'm going to take a turn first of all thank you for this report I appreciate it and I particularly appreciate appreciate the vulnerability of you sharing your personal stories and I think that it's

[02:03:26] important not only for the board but for the public to see the kind of impact the programming has on the lives of our families and our students and I think you both gave very poignant examples of a lot of the good work that's going on I'm just going to my colleagues' concern about how this is presented to families as a family liaison.

[02:03:48] I always encourage people to apply, even if they had a three-year-old, with the understanding priorities given to four-year-olds. And what we've seen sometimes is the four-year-old slots are not filled, and then if you don't have applications, you can't fill them. So it's kind of a backup. The other thing that's an advantage to families, like I've had mothers that just had a baby, and I said, apply, because then they'll be on the wait list.

[02:04:09] like you'll get them queued up. So that three-year-old is queued up or that two-year-old is queued up. So I'm like, head your bets. And so that when your kid gets to that age, they're already going to be the first one in line. I just want to clarify that from my personal down on the trenches work.

[02:04:26] In terms of the heat map that we're looking at, one of my schools, a couple of my schools actually, also are the darker green. but this heat map is the kids that are entering into our preschool program without the experience of having, you know, entering kindergarten without a preschool experience.

[02:04:50] And so do we have, this is that they're not receiving our preschool experience? - They're not receiving preschool experience period. So this is based on the pre-K experience form that parents fill out during kindergarten registration.

[02:05:07] That's where that data piece comes from. And my question is, is the reason that there is not enough programming, so in these areas that are high, are we seeing gaps in terms of, yeah, but when we see, are there actual applications, people that have applied and have not been accepted, or they just haven't applied?

[02:05:29] We would have to get that specificity as far as that Herndon area is concerned if we're looking at that, or any of our areas where we have a higher number of students without a pre-K experience. What we do know is there's a number of students that it is a matter of programming.

[02:05:49] There's a number of families who, yes, they'll apply to our program, and if we don't have programming available through the school system, we will recommend them to the county for programming in the community, and because they want a school program, they will not choose county programming, or we have families that we recommend county programming, and they apply and find placement in that particular direction.

[02:06:18] There's also families that they are new to the area, so they did not know, we didn't have them here. So their first experience in school was the application for K. So there's those factors as well.

[02:06:35] But in terms of our wait list specifically for Herndon, we do have, let me see, I have a page in our report, give me a second. Some numbers in terms of the number of families that have the average wait list.

[02:06:55] And whenever we're looking at our Herndon schools, so that would be region one. So surprisingly, we have at the time of the report, 10 students between, well, 11 between Hutchison, Hunterswood and Herndon Elementary School on a wait list.

[02:07:22] So that's relatively low. So there may be families that why the number, the percentage of students entering kindergarten is so high, there may be other variables. It may not just be that a family is not applying.

[02:07:41] There's outreach in the community. It could be the family is new to the area. Right, yeah, and I know I was looking for Lewis and Forestdale Elementary had seven students on the wait list, and those are the only ones that fit onto there. So I was looking at those numbers. I think we just need to dig more into the data and see the whys.

[02:07:59] and also i know a lot of times some families don't know about it i mean i know that i've done flyers out in apartment buildings like apply for this you know i mean we the outreach has to be there it's really good for when kids are in school our outreach is really good but if you are a family that has a young kiddo that has not come to school sometimes the outreach is what the issue is it's like you can apply for this um and i would like to add if you don't mind um for this current school year getting you can tell we have fewer numbers on the wait list fewer children on the wait list we We had fewer applications, and that's also fear that families have been experiencing as well.

[02:08:38] We have had our comprehensive services team have had to work differently in order to reach families, to get applications to them in ways that we didn't have to navigate previously.

[02:08:56] So, and our team's very, they're very accommodating where they will meet families at the neighborhood school to complete the applications, things of that nature, so it's not a matter of trying to get to Falls Church or something, you know, in those type of cases.

[02:09:13] But our current, the current state is having an impact on the families that are accessing our programming. Thank you for that clarification. I do want to ask you if you could give us a little bit of information for the GLAAD program that you have since 71 percent of the kids are identified as multilingual learners so it it's not so much the glad it's our students with who are multilingual learners we are using glad strategies and our yes because I'm

[02:09:47] like wait glad program catching me up Marcia they are receiving where our teachers are being provided strategies to use with their students and as we know just like with our students with who are special education students or students that are advanced academic learners or multilingual learners some of the strategies it's just good teaching right so our teachers have went some of our resource teachers have attended training more of our resource teachers will attend this year and they're using the strategies with our our with all of our

[02:10:23] students in our pre-k classrooms and they are seeing a significant difference in building up that oral language development and building their their listening and and speaking skills in English and for some of our students it's they're being more verbal in their home language as well because as we know some of us they're three and four sometimes they're still developing language skills in general so they're definitely growing so it's been it's going great our resource teachers have worked collaboratively with our

[02:11:01] colleagues in our multilingual learner office to create instructional resources and to provide professional development for strategies to our pre-k teachers this school year. Thank you. Thank you. I'd love to see the data on that, on how that plays out.

[02:11:24] And just a final note, I've worked with a lot of Head Start teachers and they are amazing beyond belief and also are pre-K special education teachers. The work that goes on is amazing. So I really want to thank all those teachers for what they do. Thank you. Dr. Anderson for a go back. Yes, thank you. I do want to start off where Ms. Anderson left off regarding space.

[02:11:49] because I think that's a part of the calculus that has not been widely discussed. And so Dr. Reed, one of the things that I have raised in the past few years is what is taking place at Wayanoke Elementary in terms of to make space to accommodate the students who do need to be in the preschool program.

[02:12:09] The entire fifth grade has had to be moved outside. And just reviewing the last CIP, particularly after some of the boundary changes, there are some schools that have space, that are under-enrolled.

[02:12:25] Walk me through a little bit how those schools are being evaluated, if they are or if they're not, for potential space for preschool opportunities. - I know that our facilities team and our ISD team doesn't walk through schools.

[02:12:44] Ms. Pilsen is nodding. So I believe that's an annual event or effort to determine if there are better sites where we wouldn't need to move children outside. But Ms. Pilsen, you're nodding. Do you want to kind of share? I'm disagreeing. That's exactly. So do we have new spaces that have come onto the list?

[02:13:03] Because, again, I just remember some of the schools based on the last boundary now have fallen to low 70s. And so that means that there's some opportunities there. Do we have some new identified sites? So we work collaboratively with the facilities team to identify schools that have either capacity shifts and it's it's building space and also demographics and in terms of what schools have the space and do they have a demographic in order to serve students in that community so we

[02:13:39] don't have children sitting on a school bus for an hour to and from from school so yes that is an ongoing practice we annually annually go through and exercise looking at program sites and recommendations where there are places where we would like to add programming based on the facilities yes we are working through that yes there are yes and I appreciate the attention to not having students be on the bus for extended periods of time however I'd

[02:14:16] like for that to be weighed against not having any opportunities at all absolutely I think I would lean to the former rather than the latter I want to dig a little bit in terms of the recommendations Dr. Reed there are three that were provided just to kind of I guess in my mind's eye to level set in terms of what's possible what's not possible I do realize that there will be a staff response to this at some point so not wanting to necessarily get ahead of that but much of this involves staffing like how feasible is this in

[02:14:53] kind of our current climate because the TTT in order to have students and programming access specials art music etc that means you need to increase that ratio which means staffing is increased there the after-school childcare I'd love to hear in terms of and I hear that this is not SAC because SAC is not run by us but do we have a space where we could create this with the staff that already works with those students like I just want to know how feasible is this

[02:15:29] I would have to defer to staff on this one to actually study it and provide a staff response I think off the top of my head without the analysis that needs to happen I don't know what type of after-school child care staff would be providing in addition to instruction all day if it's not some SAC type program so I don't know maybe that's a question but it's certainly something the team can take a look at oh maybe that's a question for the committee just to kind

[02:16:08] of dig down in terms of what is feasible here if it's not going to be the teachers that work throughout the day with kids and it's not SAC who would potentially be tapped to provide these services from your committee's discussions I don't believe that that was something that we necessarily were were looking at directly I don't remember having those conversations specifically I think I can chime in because we had almost like focus groups

[02:16:47] with some of the families and I think you know with I know the school calendar is you know being reviewed and part of that was like with the holidays of parents not being able to take off of work when they have the kids in the programs and having other enrichment opportunities for the the students to attend to so maybe it's a it's like a public-private partnership almost like you know are there other community community members that we could like tie in to maybe provide some of these services to the kids so their parents can work just just because I think it was hard for them in terms of like what they were responding to and that's also the case for our k-12 parents you know

[02:17:23] kindergarten parents are in the same position and so the wondering is if we were able to provide something you may have a three or four year old but you may also have a five or six year old that could potentially benefit I just wondered in terms of what am I advocating on the table they didn't have access to like say a sack program because they don't have that piece right think you know the K through five do have that piece will potentially if they're not on the waitlist but they do have the opportunity so just looking for some opportunities where they would have something similar I appreciate it thank you so much yeah thank you we are way over time I am going to go to miss

[02:17:59] Dixit for her first turn and then we'll move on and can you make this two minutes please folks yes I I just wanted to just give some remarks at the end that it's a very important stuff which is education of our pre K students I I believe in more than just keeping them engaged, but also educating them, that the four-year-old, three-year-old, they can absolutely pick up stuff.

[02:18:25] And they can, and I think this is the one thing we can do to bridge the equity gap, is especially if the students from Herndon area or any of our other area which we have, these kids don't have otherwise access to pre-K.

[02:18:41] So I'm all for giving more and more positions, like slots for students who are eligible, and especially to our low-income students, have families who otherwise cannot afford to send their kids.

[02:18:57] So I appreciate the work that's done in this, and thank you for sharing your own stories. My own kid had to go to Child Find at one point, younger son, he was not speaking at that time, and the service was amazing, and now you can talk to him about anything and everything in the world.

[02:19:19] So kids do get this great service. I'm very thankful of all the resources we have in the county and I appreciate your time, thanks. - Thank you so much for the presentation and for all the information. At this time, you are dismissed.

[02:19:36] At this time, I'm going to invite the Foundation for Applied Technical Education, FATE, to present their annual report.

[02:19:58] - Excellent. - Thank you for having us. Do you wanna do introductions quickly? - Sure, my name's Craig Lewis. I'm the senior manager for technology education, engineering and the building trades. I also oversee FATE as part of my role.

[02:20:13] So I've been supporting FATE for the past three years. I'll turn it over to Ed. - I'm Ed Johnson, I'm the president of FATE. I've been the president for the last couple of years, but I've been on the board for 20 years now this year. I was actually in, I heard some commentary earlier about kind of the personal connections to some of these programs that people work on.

[02:20:31] and I know a lot of you have heard from me over the years, so this is not new for anybody, but I'm a product of Fairfax County Public Schools, went to Oakton High School, was in the construction program when I was in high school. My mom was a special ed teacher in Fairfax County for over 20 years, so we have a long affinity to Fairfax County Public Schools, and I've spent a tremendous amount of time in my career, largely in the construction and real estate business, and then also I've spent a lot of time with FATE and other programs teaching some of these same skill sets I use every single day, largely because of some of the interest I grew out of this program in high school. So I am happy to be here today and always happy

[02:21:08] to talk to you about what we do and where we're headed, but I will turn it over to Jen to talk quickly. Whitney, sorry. I forgot who came up with me. Whitney and Jen are frequently. Whitney Ketledge, Senior Manager for Career and Technical Education, and Ed's certainly our expert here, so we'll let him take it.

[02:21:28] Where are we going? Oh, we got, is it gonna be in front of us too?

[02:21:49] - Excellent. - All right. So this is always a fun one to start with because I think one of the things that I enjoy the most outside of being able to provide some of the expertise that all of the board members have candidly, not just myself in the various areas that we work in is how much money we're able to generate through some of the student enterprises that we manage.

[02:22:08] And ultimately most of that money finds its way back to the schools, which is great. Obviously there's costs of running the programs that we typically manage, but what you're seeing on the left here is direct dollars that went back into the school this year. So $220,000 went back through really three avenues, one of which is grants.

[02:22:26] It's a program we started probably 15 years ago when we realized that we were generating dollars, but the scope of what we are really responsible for in Fairfax County is relatively limited. It's student run enterprises and it's largely focused on construction and automotive.

[02:22:43] And we've been constantly trying to find ways to expand that. one of those things and this bucket has grown throughout the years which is great but effectively we open up the grant program every single year to all the CTE programs across now secondary and high school correct we've had a couple of middle schools middle middle high school sorry and it has been a really proud moment for us I mean we've been doing scholarships for a long time but being able to get involved in CTE programs that typically we do not have any exposure to don't have access to and wouldn't otherwise really be able to to build businesses around and help them advance things that candidly are all student and teacher supported.

[02:23:20] These are not typically higher objectives that are coming from you all or elsewhere. They're ideas that the teachers have and seeing the day-to-day impact they can have on the kids and trying to find opportunities to advance the education that they do inside of their classroom that they typically would not otherwise be able to do without this funding is an important part of now what we've done and something we're very proud of and continue to do, which is great.

[02:23:42] Scholarships been around for a long time. I know we say over the past 18 years, I assure you we've been doing the scholarships well longer than I've been on the board as well. So I know it's been probably a much larger number than that and much longer ago when we started it. But this year we were able to provide nine scholarships and a total of $18,000.

[02:23:59] Typically that ranges, I would say, between eight and 15 scholarships a year and 15 to $25,000 a year. And so again, much like grants gives us the ability to help the students that have come through our programs or excited about what we're doing, excited to advance their selves, either that be through careers and education directly outside of school, or going into the trades directly outside of school, which is obviously, as everybody around the table here knows, is a large part of what we've been supporting for many years.

[02:24:27] And then student auto sales, probably by the number of students and dollar-wise is the biggest impact we make every year. You can see the statistics here on the screen, but of $220,000 worth of cars sold $165,000 going back to the schools, which is great.

[02:24:44] And again, allows those programs to do things that they otherwise would not be able to do on a standalone basis. So I probably covered half of what's in the rest of the slides and Craig will admonish me for it later. But nonetheless, we are really happy to be here today and talk about all of it.

[02:25:00] So from a construction standpoint, this past year, I think we were probably under contract or soon to be under contract when we saw you all last year on our latest house, but it closed, as you can see on here, for $1.35 million last summer. Lot 14 is under construction.

[02:25:15] We'll talk about it a little bit later, but we have 15, 16, 17, and 18 left four more homes. So everybody hears every year about how we need to find more land. We are diligently working on that. We have met with Dr. Reed once for a couple of different sites that may or may not be possible, but we are really working hard to find out where we can go next.

[02:25:35] And we'll talk about this a little bit later as well, but we're starting to look at other avenues as well. As we know, land in Fairfax County is very valuable and hard to find these days, unlike maybe some time in the past where we've done this before. So I don't know if you want to add anything from an educational standpoint here.

[02:25:52] - Yeah, we're doing wonderful things over the residential construction. I know some of you were at the open house for last year, that Lot 13, which was a great event we had. But one of the things I want to highlight on here is, not only in this slide, but as you look through the other slides, Some of the things that you see are industry credentials.

[02:26:09] We are getting students in industry credentials. OSHA 10 is something they take with them, which is highly important when they go out into the field, which is really cool. And could be lucrative for them in the future. And you'll see essence of like high quality work-based learning opportunities as well, which is directly tied to some of our strategic plans.

[02:26:28] So as you look through it, obviously the residential construction site, they're onsite building a home, learning all of the facets of the construction industry and getting industry certifications through that. So that's a pretty proud metric for us as well with this residential construction plan.

[02:26:44] - Student auto sales, we hit on it earlier. I would be remiss to not let Craig talk about most of this from an educational standpoint. Obviously our involvement is mostly student auto sales. So we do not really interact as much from an educational standpoint with the skill sets that are being taught in the classroom, but obviously provide that conduit for money that's being generated through student auto sales to come back into the classroom and have the teachers and Craig's team determine where that's best suited and how that's best used to advance those programs.

[02:27:09] But again, this is a longstanding program for FADE, obviously one we're very proud of. I'm always impressed as we walk the schools and see the academies, how many students are interested in these programs now, how long they're in this program. Obviously there's some highlights here on the screen, but it is fascinating to me that in a jurisdiction like ours, particularly where I grew up, I don't think I had any peers growing up that were truly interested in something like this.

[02:27:33] and we're having a really big shift in that and seeing a lot of students in a lot of these programs be oversubscribed, which is, again, is a very proud moment for all of us because we know this is desperately needed out in the field today. - And I would add that with Faith's support, being able to run our auto dealership out of Marshall High School, Lyman Rose, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about him.

[02:27:54] He is our dealer and operator at Marshall High School. It is housed there. The dealership is not part of Marshall High School, but it's just housed at Marshall High School. But through the collaboration with FATE, we're able to take in donations from the community.

[02:28:10] As you saw, 246 donations received. Those are spread out throughout the 13 automotive programs that we have in the county, plus the two auto collision programs we have, one at Edison and one at Chantilly. But the students get a full life cycle because of this opportunity, where they get to look at a donated vehicle, determine if the repairs are suitable to actually fix up and actually sell, or are they just gonna be junk, right?

[02:28:36] So they get to see that life cycle, but they then get to do diagnose, they get to inspect, diagnose, and then understand some of the nuances with inventory, how do you create repair orders. So it's a really great work-based learning opportunity for them for the full life cycle.

[02:28:52] And we're also proud that through these courses, because we get the trainer cars and they get the real world experience, they're earning ASC certifications, which are industry-recognized credentials, that they take with them. And when they, they have up to eight that they can earn, and they can go out and land a job immediately.

[02:29:10] We have, I don't have the statistics, 'cause I'm sure you're gonna ask how many students go into the automotive field. Sometimes it's hard to track, but with the preparation from our courses, they're absolutely ready and able to join any repair shop or dealership.

[02:29:27] We have a couple kids who are working at Porsche. We have Pohanka, Orsman, and the teachers do a great job of bringing those industries into the classroom as well, which is pretty great. And then money that's reinvested back into the programs, that's across the 13 programs, but that does support them and keep things valuable for them.

[02:29:46] So it's a really great opportunity for them. It is not our main focus, but it is obviously the educational and the competencies and the AAC certification is our main focus, but without Fade's ability to support this, we would have limited opportunities for our students.

[02:30:09] - Next, break it. - Thank you. So entrepreneurship, this is another side of the business that you guys have heard about for years now, but frankly, we probably started 15 years ago or so, and it was through the Chantilly spirit box that the entrepreneurship program at that school came to us and basically asked for a loan to be able to start a student-run business within their school, and over the years, it has taken on a variety of different forms and functions.

[02:30:42] Market Days is shown here. That's probably the largest one we do every single year. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with it, but we have been supporting that for a long time. That is usually a yearly cycle with them, but we have been approached over the years and have done a number of some of these investment opportunities effectively, where we set up a loan with students in schools, not particularly with the students themselves, but the students come and pitch to us their business plan, ultimately refine that and then have a repayment structure associated with it back to fate to be able to start some of these entrepreneurship opportunities within their own schools, which is always very fun to see.

[02:31:14] We continue to encourage all the teachers to get involved and do more of it. We certainly have the opportunity to do so more than we are today, but when they do do it, it's really exciting to hear from them. It's a lot of fun and they come up with many of these businesses on their own, which has been great.

[02:31:30] - And you can see highlighted there are just three of the 10 schools that we're able to support. And then it's really cool because the students are designing the products. They're going through a minimum viable product pitch, developing a budget plan, branding how they're gonna get it out to their students, and then delivering customer service on the day of the market days.

[02:31:52] These range from fashion attire to 3D printed designs, and it could even be food if that's the case. But it is a real school-based enterprise that they are developing through this entrepreneurship program, which again ties right back to our, you know, high-quality work-based learning opportunities that we're trying to promote in the career and technical education world.

[02:32:15] So they're getting the full scope, whether it's through instruction and more of a book work, or actual deployment when they're out there in the cafeterias and hallways and actually selling the products and taking the money from their clients.

[02:32:34] - Program enhancement grants, I'd probably hit on this more than I should have on the cover slide, but nonetheless, you maybe got most of it. You probably also tell this is something I'm really proud of. pushed to start this a long time ago. And it's been a lot of fun to see the ideas that come from these other teachers.

[02:32:49] And like I said before, it's not necessarily things that are just simply part of the curriculum and unfunded. These are ideas that the teachers have that they think they can better the student's opportunity in the classroom by doing this, but simply do not have the financial means to do so. And so we have gone from probably getting a couple of applications a year to this past year, we probably had north of 25 is my guess.

[02:33:12] And so the downside of that is now we're in a position where we can't simply fund everyone that comes through. This year, I think the applications exceeded $100,000 in asks from us. And so it is getting to the point where teachers know about it, administration knows about it.

[02:33:27] We are getting adoption and we're finding opportunities to get kind of as much out as we can in a manner that we think can impact the students the most and frankly aligns with our objectives from a CTE perspective of advancing those trades in those education modules. So it has been a ton of fun for me personally. to do this every year, and so I'm glad we get to do it, and I'm glad a lot of these programs that otherwise didn't have the resources to do what they're doing in the classroom can do it now, so it's been great.

[02:33:52] And these opportunities range from actual equipment that potentially our budget may not be able to finance this year or swag if they're promoting a fashion show, some swag that they might not be able to fund, but also field trips to go out into the industry.

[02:34:09] Our pharmacy students went to Inova. We've had welding go to different union facilities. But I think we've maybe had about three different field trips that got them into the industry and actually connected with different professionals, which is really a great experience for them to talk to those professionals.

[02:34:31] As we know, when they're talking, if I was to tell my son something, he's not going to listen. Sometimes when I was a teacher, they didn't always listen. But when you have industry professionals telling you, this is an opportunity, you need to grasp onto it, it really kind of hits home for a lot of kids. So, like we said, we have an overabundance of applications that come in.

[02:34:53] And through our scholarship committee on the State Board, we unfortunately had to turn it away some, but we are getting more and more coming in, which is great because they're seeing more opportunities from that. And as we look at them, it's just a really cool experience to actually read through the applications.

[02:35:09] And it's coming from a lot of the teachers, so we get to see what they're thinking and how they want to apply it to their programs. And probably a similar reaction on this one. Obviously, we've been doing this for a very long time. I was also the recipient of a scholarship from FATE when I was in high school 26 years ago.

[02:35:30] But nonetheless, it has been around for, like I said, a lot longer than the $371,000 in 18 years, which has been great. I'm hopeful that number has probably surpassed the half a million dollars at this time. But again, a source of pride for us that we get to do this through the profits that are generated through some of the student-run businesses associated with FATE.

[02:35:50] And for those of you who aren't familiar, but we have scholarships that are apprenticeship scholarships, we have specific tool scholarships, and we have academic scholarships. So the tool scholarships, these students have been identified that they are going into the industry right out of high school, or they're going to an apprenticeship program that they've already been accepted to, so they need a starting pack of tools.

[02:36:13] So we're able to provide them with what they need. A couple of that students, I believe Devin is in the top picture there, I believe he's going to work with EMWA who, yeah, I believe he's going with EMWA. We have kind of a collaboration with them where some of our students who finish a sequence of our CTE programs in the trades can get into their apprenticeship program automatically, and we are able to support him with some of his tools because of that, which is phenomenal.

[02:36:40] I think the student down the bottom on the left, he's going to, I don't know what it's called, but it's Lineman's Apprenticeship. He's going to be a lineman, linesman. So we were able to fund him with his tools as well. And we had about, I think it was four academic scholarships for those going off to university as well.

[02:36:57] So that was so rewarding. I think we had about 20 students, 25 students kind of apply for these, which is great. We're always trying to up the number of that, because that's one of our main focuses, get them the opportunities that they need and the tools or the funding that they need to do the next level.

[02:37:21] So on all of this, I was kind of alluding to it, but our strategic plan, our FCPS goals, our strategic plan, and goal number five, leading for tomorrow's innovation. You know, we try to, we're preparing students through all of these avenues for focus on work-based learning and industry partnerships.

[02:37:40] Trying to align our program with high demand careers, with automotive construction careers are highly, those professionals are highly needed right now. So we're trying to make sure that we are promoting this and applying these, but also through the funding that's provided to our entrepreneurship classes and the other programs, we're providing opportunities for high quality work-based learning in the schools directly, which is a goal of ours in CTE, but also across the county to support that.

[02:38:10] So while FATE is building houses, and that's pretty cool, what people don't see is all the other opportunities that we're providing students. And we reached about 3,000 students tangentially through this, maybe a little bit more.

[02:38:27] Our automotive programs, as we said, are over-subscribed. They have about 1,300 to 1,500 students in them, and we're turning kids away every year because sometimes space is limited based on state requirements for how many kids we can have in there. But through this power point, you can see like we're providing, FATE's providing funding and quality-based opportunities for those students in this program.

[02:38:54] - And last is the usual plug with a different tent this year. Obviously, we are continuing to look for land for our next opportunity. But at the same time, we've had a lot of conversations with you guys over the years about what I'll call is the largest program we have dollar-wise, which is construction, and the number of students we can have on that job site.

[02:39:12] That is always kind of the push-pull we have and has been around for the entire time fate has been in existence. How many students we have on the job site is a fact that we unfortunately cannot change. And so what we have been starting to work on this year is in parallel with identifying the next site, knowing that whether or not the next site exists, at some point the next site will not exist in Fairfax County and we will ultimately need to find solutions to teach these same skill sets to students and ultimately find opportunities where we can expand what we are able to do.

[02:39:43] and whether that be kind of hybrid programs between the classroom and the field or trying to bring field-based experiences into the classroom, we have started an effort this year to be able to identify new programs or new ways that we can partner with the county to do that.

[02:39:58] Obviously, the good news is the timing is on our side to do it, you know, just listening to the conversation that was going on prior to us coming up today, none of this is going to happen quickly. It will require collaboration between staff, ourselves, administration and otherwise to identify those programs, fund those programs in the right manner and get them up and running.

[02:40:18] We still have five years left on the job site. So we have time to think through some of this. We did not want to be in a position where the next site does not exist. And then we are trying to figure out how to continue to teach these trades and also how to do so in a sustainable manner. I think I've answered a lot of questions over the years here about things we can and can't do.

[02:40:36] And one thing that we always rely on as being sustainable is we need to come up with programs that generated enough money, not just to pay for the money we put in, but to create a profit such that we can continue to do all the things you've seen today, in addition to fund the next stage of each of these programs as they occur.

[02:40:53] And so I just wanna make sure that everybody knows that this isn't a kind of a stagnant conversation for us. It's very real at fate. We understand that time is going to ultimately change this matrix, whether it's this next evolution of kind of what we'll call phase three or not.

[02:41:08] But in any event is something we're very focused on and we'll continue to work on over the next couple of years. So hopefully we'll have some advancements at least in that next year. I'm sure some people in this room will be very much part of those conversations. But we are heading in a direction where hopefully we'll be able to start evolving what we do and what has been done in the past to meet the needs of the current status in Fairfax County.

[02:41:29] So I think that is it. Thank you. At this point, I am going to invite my colleagues to ask questions, but I am going to ask the clerks to do a two-minute clock because we are way over time. I will talk quickly.

[02:41:49] And I'm going to start with Ms. Anderson. Okay, so I am going to ask my questions quickly, but I know that there are a few things that I always think about with this. First is that we've had long conversations previously about the fact that part of our limitation is related to the types of job sites that we can have kids on.

[02:42:06] Right. And so I am going to put a specific ask on the table this year is that I would like you to work with us with what we need to do for state advocacy to change those rules, Because we have a magical moment going on right now that I would like us to take advantage of and we can find a champion that's going to help us work with the CTE programs to ensure that we have access.

[02:42:29] Because right now, the county is working a ton on affordable housing, and it makes a whole lot of sense to have our kids connected in with those programs, if at all possible, to get a variety of types of experiences, even within the same. Because I know that some of what we've talked about is that some of the programming from year to year is harder to create that progression.

[02:42:51] So it would be really cool to see ways that we could create progression through different types of construction. and then the other aspect is that I'm wondering do we connect in our electrical students and our HVAC students in with the construction awesome because that's the other thing that I would like is we have affordable housing going up in lots of different locations and I know the wait list that we have for electrical and HVAC and those are people that AI is not going to take their jobs and they're going to walk out the door and be able to immediately put those skills to use so I would love to see us expand those programs particularly in areas that maybe have a little bit more space now that didn't have space before

[02:43:29] so right now I believe I'm right that Edison is the only electrical program in the entire county correct there is a new electrical program coming to Fairfax it's in development right now it is in need of a teacher so we are actively searching and recruiting for an electrical instructor so I would be remiss not to say that in this forum can you send us a note about that so we can include it in our newsletters because we could find maybe a retired electrician that still wants to give back to the community. And so I want to make sure that we can get that out to the community. So anytime

[02:44:05] that you're looking for a very specialized type of person that may not be just looking at our job listings, please let us know. Perfect. Thank you. And I'll address the first one real quick. On affordable housing, obviously we're all proponents of it. We'd love to do more of it. Fairfax is an incredibly expensive place to live we all kind of recognize that to my earlier point I think I've mentioned this over the years from a regulatory standpoint I don't think getting more students on the job sites really possible it's primarily OSHA that's driving that and so I think that's going to be a challenge that we'll always have but that being said if there are funding opportunities at the state to be able to help supplement what we can put into something to make affordable housing

[02:44:45] work mathematically for us that is absolutely something we're happy to explore with you guys So I don't know if those situations exist in the conversations you're having, but if there is funding opportunities for that, there's certainly a conversation to be had. Mr. McElbeen.

[02:45:02] Thanks. Just to pick up where Ms. Anderson left off, you know, as she said, there are a lot of conversations about affordable housing, including putting affordable housing on the government center property. Have you had an opportunity ever to present to the Board of Supervisors?

[02:45:19] Have I, from a faith perspective? It has faith. No, professionally I have many times. but I have not from a faith perspective I have met with several supervisors though over the years they have attended our open houses and I've had one-on-one meetings with a number of them some of which have been on school board before and I know you guys are familiar with yeah so there is a conversation out there about the support I would say probably Supervisor Lusk Supervisor Palchek in particular have been very supportive so there are there are inroads to do that but what form and function that takes based on the objectives around this day, we have not pushed very hard on that over the years.

[02:45:57] - I do think a formal presentation of some kind would be useful. I think even just making that offer to them would be-- - I am always more than happy. - Yeah, that's great. Relatedly, and this is a Whitney question, what is the status of Trades for Tomorrow program?

[02:46:15] Or anyone who-- - Trades for Tomorrow. - So they recently interviewed a large amount of students and I would have to pull the exact number. There's always a conflict with how many positions are available and or funded, and how many students apply, which is, well, not always, a recent problem.

[02:46:40] That is, it's great that we have more students interested, and then it's also a challenge that we can't meet that need. So we have increased the amount of spots, and we're working closely with them, and that's one of the creative options we've been talking to FATE about. And then we also are able to work with those kids who apply to prepare for interviews with other apprenticeship possibilities with other partners.

[02:47:01] So those, Trades for Tomorrow has helped expand our apprenticeship opportunities with other partners as well, because we've been able to say, look, we have this great program. It's already set up for you. Here's how you can take this and run with it too. So it's growing year after year.

[02:47:18] We have more and more students moving into those roles. And then, and we can share a list of success stories because we have quite a few of those students now who are working for us full-time for Fairfax County. - Do you have a sense of statistics on that? And if you don't, not, but just how many are-- - Not off the top of my head, I would need to, I would pull it though, yeah.

[02:47:37] - Okay, that's great, thanks. So I wanna talk a little bit about auto sales. So can you give me a sense, and this is something, I'm asking because this came up in our last audit committee meeting, what does the org chart of the auto sales program look like?

[02:47:57] and how does that interact with FCPS? - Sure, so I've mentioned Lyman Rose. He's our dealer operator. He's licensed in Virginia to be our dealer operator, as well as Alessia, who's an admin assistant, but she also is a dealer operator, just in case he's not there.

[02:48:16] He can handle some of the things. For oversight, I oversight the programmatic procedures of that, and obviously Whitney is part of that in terms of some approvals that need to go through. As far as the dealership and when things are needed at the dealership, administrative tools or anything like that, FATE is providing funding for that.

[02:48:38] In terms of FCPS, the collaboration is FCPS takes in the donations of the cars, and then once they are deemed saleable, they get transferred to FATE as a FATE car, if that makes sense. In terms of the procedures, we've done a big overhaul of any procedures this year per audits that have been done.

[02:49:00] I think I told Esther here. - She was here. - I worked there closely about the procedures and reviewed all of those. And we've actually updated those procedures with all of the recommendations that they've listed in there and presented that to all the automotive teachers. And we're gonna present that to high school administrators in the summer, this upcoming summer.

[02:49:20] So everyone is aware of those procedures that are in place in terms of documentation for repair orders, inspections, kind of a go no go in terms of sales for a car so that everyone understands what needs to happen before a sale of a car is done because we do need to make sure that we're taking care of all any inventory and purchases that are made to for the repairs of those cars that are using some of the SAA's funding that we're provided that ultimately goes back to the schools. I guess my question is auto sales is completely separate from FCPS with the exception of the donations right

[02:49:58] So they operate the program separate from SCJ. It's more of a collaboration. So we collaborate with Marshall. Marshall provides the supervision of the employee because they're directly there. They does the oversight of student auto sales program from a financial standpoint.

[02:50:16] We work on the programmatic aspects. We partner with all 13 auto programs and their administrators for the daily operations. So it's really a collaboration. Yeah, it's a bit of a tangled web. yeah um so uh anyway i appreciate all that um i do think you know as you've done this overhaul it would be helpful to pull on the kind of the financial training resources that we offer through the comptroller and others just as we're training folks and how to go about the processes so um anyway we'll leave it there for now um and uh one last kind of housekeeping question is the banquet

[02:50:54] no longer happening is that a was that a pandemic death or i was like who wants to take that that was before my time taking over fate so i have never attended a banquet um i i treated the open house as kind of an open forum for a banquet but i believe i do know that they did happen yeah but that seemed to have died with covet yeah it was yeah it was it was during covet it became it it became very large and a little unruly to say um costs certainly were a factor i mean it is because It became a very large and very expensive event to do.

[02:51:28] I really enjoyed it, but we kind of went through a cost-benefit analysis and a programming analysis and a coordinating. It took, I would say it was taking a quarter of Faith's capacity from a management standpoint and tens of thousands of dollars to do each year, and we were like, are we really getting much out of this at the end of the day?

[02:51:48] I've made the point over the years, which I really enjoy going to get to see all these programs and get to see the students and the balance of it, but I'm not the one that knows them. Presenting the awards directly to the students, I've so much more enjoyed during the scholarship moments or whatever it is to have the teacher there to talk about the student, and that's the relationship that matters, and we kind of lost all of that in it as well.

[02:52:11] And so there was a, I would say it's a confluence of issues that led to it, to be very honest with you, but it is no longer in existence for many reasons, unfortunately. I know Mr. Moon and I missed those dinners. Yeah, we very much enjoyed it. We enjoyed you all coming as well. Thank you. Ms. Dixit followed by Mr. Moon.

[02:52:34] Thank you for the presentation. Actually, the forum housing, my colleagues also talked about it. Virginia recently passed a major zoning bill, which allows to build accessory dwelling units on the single-family lots. And I think it's an answer to some of these issues is not finding more lots to build homes because, you know, if somebody has a two-acre lot and they want to build another house there, it's now allowed.

[02:53:00] And local government, obviously, this is going to be going in effect next year, July 1st, 2027, this law. So I think that's going to open up some doors. And I think our local government is going to obviously encourage that because we do face that shortage, housing shortage in Fairfax County.

[02:53:19] So that is what I am thinking is, like, you know, already coming up with creative solution. This is one of them other than the building on industry parks or places where there's not business happening, but those lots can be repurposed.

[02:53:37] Other thing I saw that you were looking for other ideas is one of the suggestions in your alternatives to explore. And obviously, we're talking about the jobs which are AI-proof jobs in the future, and there's going to be always a need for them.

[02:53:53] But they're all of jobs which are not in the market yet. We don't know those are going to be, what is going to be out, the job market will look like in 10 years from now. And our students have to be ready for some of those changing some landscapes outside.

[02:54:10] And I would say that industry partnership right now with the different partners, it's more important now than ever because, and that is what I wanted to ask you guys, is how strong is the industry partnership for FACTS?

[02:54:29] - I think industry partnership is always being discussed and sought after, and we are constantly trying to figure out how that works within our realm.

[02:54:46] Within FATE, the industry is on our board. We have the interior designers, we have the architects, land developers, the Fairfax County land development is on there, and they have the opportunity to work with our students. Outside of that, we are looking for other opportunities.

[02:55:03] Just the other day, we met with a company that does plumbing training. We've met with electrical companies. We've met with other industries, too. And they all want to support, but finding that way of doing that is always the hard part, right?

[02:55:25] The coming in and speaking to the students is wonderful and giving opportunities, going out and seeing them, as I just said, is wonderful. How do we build on that, right? and how do we make that more feasible and more deeper if we want to? I think we're starting that process very well right now, and I think it's going to grow.

[02:55:44] As I know we're at a turning point kind of in our country here where more of these trades want to get hands on our students really, and they want to be part of it and provide. So I think we're really kind of at that beginning stages where they're gonna start diving in and doing stuff in the trades more and more and more.

[02:56:00] So we're working on that. Beyond the trades, we have a very strong, high quality work-based learning program. So we had over 6,000 internships, clinicals, apprenticeships in the last year. There are hundreds of partners that work with us on a regular basis.

[02:56:19] The challenge is always that we have so many students. And so it's never enough. So we're constantly looking to expand that. And FATE is a great example of the people who sit on that board working companies run companies and have lots of connections that help to provide opportunities for those students and that then creates a spiral effect for more and more students and more opportunities. So we're trying to take advantage of the really great success stories like Trades for Tomorrow and things like that and how can we expand that and use those as an example when we're talking to

[02:56:54] partners of here's how you can do it too. So we have a great foundation and we have a lot already happening and then how can we expand that to more kids well and from a faith perspective i'll add this year um nvbia is an organization that we have just started working with that is effectively the housing representation for the area here housing industry representation and so one of the members on their board has been working with us very closely to kind of figure out that relationship among others financial support and some contractor support for the job site and otherwise that help us either reduce costs add advocacy to what we're doing or ultimately find training

[02:57:33] opportunities for students and so many of those things are happening it's just as Craig said it's always a zigzag road many of them what they want is the perfectly trained student that is a senior and graduating that can go right on their job site the path to get them from 15 or 16 years old to that point the industry has not figured out yet and we all keep kind of backing going back and forth and back and forth on how to get those students engaged at the right time with the right skill set so when they get there much like the automotive program they are truly ready to go and two examples I'll give you that this year we are this fall we didn't have a residential construction

[02:58:11] teacher at the site I actually became the teacher there for two months and we brought van meter homes in to talk to the students and from there they were able to offer two jobs to students this year one student was working on a flexible type schedule where he got to go out and work with them during the year and then today I actually met with hit construction who myself and the current residential construction teacher who we hired in November he's doing phenomenal we met with hit construction about how we can talk to the students next year incoming students about setting up some sort of pipeline them coming in and speaking with the students but then how does that look in

[02:58:50] terms of like an internship or an apprenticeship after or during the school year so we're working on I'm specifically focusing on the trades because that's my bread and butter right now. But we're actively working on those types of things. Thank you so much. Mr. Moon.

[02:59:09] Since Mr. McClubbie mentioned about banquets, I didn't realize that there was pretty much taking off quarter, 25% of your capacity.

[02:59:24] I didn't think they would have cost tens of thousands of dollars, but I'm not the one. I wasn't the one who organized that and paid the bills.

[02:59:33] But I thought there was a nice opportunity to, you know, first publicly, publicly in the presence of senior leadership of the school system, including school board members, and we could also invite members in the board of supervisors to recognize, acknowledge and recognize services being provided members on the board of directors of a faith and also educators, you know, within and without.

[03:00:05] school system to help our students learn those very, very valuable skills and also promote and market our program and also provide a connection with potential teachers outside out there and construction or electrical work you mentioned about, et cetera.

[03:00:27] So I know it's a lot of work for someone who has to actually to have to make an arrangement And, of course, but you can also solicit some contributions from business community as well. So, and I'm hoping that you will consider bringing it back.

[03:00:46] And also, since Mr. McElvin mentioned this, Mr. McElvin is, at least at this point, a liaison to Educate Fairfax. You know, he might be able to bring that up as a topic of a discussion at Educate Fairfax to work with the faith.

[03:01:05] because educate Fairfax also reaches out to business communities as well. So if we are seeking my support in bringing back, you have that, thank you. - Mr. Moon, go ahead. - Mr. Moon, are you suggesting that you wanna be on the collaboration committee to help develop, and Mr. McElveen will also be on there to help collaborate, I think we may have heard that.

[03:01:29] - I think Mr. McElveen is a perfect person. - Okay, we'll note it. - I'm happy to bring it back to the board, we'll chat with them about that. Yeah, of course. Seeing no more placards, I'm just going to take a quick turn to thank you for all the work you do. I am the proud beneficiary of the fact that the homes built are in my district and they are phenomenal. I wish I could afford them. And also, you know, getting the word out, we, a lot of people don't know what to do with their cars. And this, this past year we donated a car and I would love to see what the fate of that car is and where it is. But at the end of the day, I know that it was a great donation because it's helping our kids.

[03:02:07] So thank you for all the work that you do. I'm sure that board members might have some other questions, but due to our time limitations, we can't, you know, continue. And I would just encourage everyone to go look at our CTE programs because you talking about them is one thing, but when you're there and you're seeing the teachers, you're seeing the students, you're seeing the excitement, it's just something that you have to, you know, seeing is believing.

[03:02:31] And these kids are just amazing, and they're amazing because of the work that everybody does and everybody invests in them. So thank you for all that work. Thank you. Well, we appreciate your guys' continued support. It's always fun for me to come here and talk to you guys every year. So thank you. We will have a truly five-minute recess just for transition.

[03:02:48] And we have to be back because we are way behind. So we will go ahead and begin our conversation about the policy work around innovative technology.

[03:03:19] So myself and Ms. Lady will be the meeting managers. And this is work that has previously been looked at governance. So let me give us a summary of where we've been and where we could head today. So the policy discussions around innovative tech and artificial intelligence have been going on since January.

[03:03:40] And we've been really engaged in it and had a lot of discussions, and it's evolved. So the governance committee last met last week on June 16th and really decided that separating into two policies was the way to go given all of the discussion and input that we'd had over those months.

[03:04:00] So on board docs, we do have two public documents. They don't have numbers yet, of course, but one is information technology and the innovation in instructional tech. And one focuses on the use of educational technology that resides with the Office of Instructional Services.

[03:04:19] So an ISD, Instructional Services, and an IT policy. I did send around some questions that emerged from governance to help frame our discussion today, including just overall, do people agree about what's in each policy, the two distinct categories?

[03:04:38] Would you want to see anything added to either policy document? And in addition, there's also been some red lines or suggested edits have come forth throughout the course of the governance committee those have all been publicly posted for the convenience of the board members those are all posted in the executive content of the board docs item for today so you'll see we've got suggestions from robin lady from myself from sandy anderson and from ricardi anderson so as much as we can keep it high level though and not

[03:05:15] get into the you know wordsmithing as we like to call it that's probably the best place for our time today I also just want to pose a few questions you know timeline when are we expecting to bring this to implementation you know that's one question again general feedback on bifurcating and again next steps so if we want to kick it off with do you agree what's in each policy

[03:05:49] do you agree with the bifurcation in the buckets and is there something missing that you'd want to see put in here why don't we start with that with um with three minute comments and we have till 5 30. so uh okay well i see dr anderson's placard up so please go ahead now i'm going to be quick because i don't want to take a lot of time on this first round because um i'm on governance but i do want to say i do agree wholeheartedly with the bifurcation of the policy it's something

[03:06:27] that i had requested very early on and i'm glad to see that we have come around to it i will have some things that i want to make sure that we add but minimally at least want to hear what people's thinking is because if the group is not in agreement with the bifurcation then what I'm going to say is needs to be adjusted.

[03:06:52] - Thank you. Mr. Dannen. - I appreciate it. Someone, sorry, I'm not nearly as smart as I look, so can someone help explain how they view the difference between the two?

[03:07:07] 'Cause I struggle to understand. I like the idea of bifurcating. My personal view is that I think we should have a staff policy and then perhaps a student-focused policy, but can someone kind of explain just what the two, the differences between the two? - Yeah, I just want to ask, Does anyone on governance want to explain that?

[03:07:25] Dr. Anderson, do you want to explain it since you just endorsed it and put some popcorn in your mouth? Sure. Just to kind of make it quick, one of the policies speaks exactly to kind of the teaching and learning.

[03:07:41] Like this is what we should expect, and this is how technology is going to be infused in that. And the other one speaks about all of the other things to come. What is our general outlook regarding technology and how it will impact not just the teaching and learning component, but all of the other business of FCPS.

[03:08:00] It would have been, and I believe it had been a little bit challenging to fit all of this into one policy, which is why I've always been advocating for it to be separated. There will be a lot of overlap because we're essentially kind of talking about the same thing, but in different lanes.

[03:08:18] So there should be some overlap, but there will be some distinct things as well. I think while in the educational use piece, just to use an example to illustrate, it might make sense in the educational use part, the educational policy, to talk about screen time, balancing that out.

[03:08:38] That may not make sense in terms of the technology innovation piece. It might make sense in that one to speak more about how do we even evaluate the technology that we put in front of our students and/or staff, the procurement pieces, et cetera.

[03:08:58] So I think that one is a little bit more technical while the other one really hits the classroom a little bit closer. And I'm just offering you my definition. Would someone else from governance or otherwise want to -- Ms. Anderson, do you want to chime in too? Yeah, because I am a big proponent of having them as two.

[03:09:15] I see one as here is how technology is being utilized in our classrooms that is already here, and here is a policy that talks about how we're going to introduce new technologies. And so I do think that they're separate, and while I understand how they could be put together, for me the innovative tech policy has to abide by everything that is in the EdTech.

[03:09:35] So it doesn't matter how things are implemented within the division, they have to abide by the rules that are in the EdTech. So whatever we put in EdTech is going to be the overarching policy that's really going to guide everything else that we're doing. So I see them definitely connected, but the other reason that I want us to be careful on how we do this is I want us to be able to change things in EdTech or change things in Innovative that is pointing to the other policy but does not require overlap because that is how our policies can get out of date very quickly if we're not careful on working out the intersectionality as we're developing them.

[03:10:11] Thank you. Mr. Gannon, back to your turn. That's a great segue because where I struggle with this is that I think the first thing is that essentially this is not a technology discussion. This is an education discussion. And I really have to call out, I selected a gentleman for the ETRC who has a PhD in computer science.

[03:10:31] And one of the things I appreciate most from our conversations is that he's like, I'm not an educator. I'm relying on educators to tell me, you know, those important aspects of it. And then I can provide, you know, this small piece of it. But, you know, what I struggle with is I think we need to first kind of define or we need to recommit to shared principles, right?

[03:10:51] And what we think the future of classrooms is going to look like in 10 to 20 years, right? Like it's, there are people talking about bringing robots to classrooms and it won't be long before they're talking about, you know, brain chips and things like that. And I think we need to establish how we view the future of education.

[03:11:08] And to me, you know, those first principles are human-centered education, so nothing's going to replace teachers, rigor, high standards, especially in the age of AI where so much, you know, there's so much junk out there that, you know, we need to be pushing our kids more and more, which to me kind of carries over that we're not talking about two policies, but we're talking about looking at the grading policy.

[03:11:28] We're talking about looking at, you know, the academic dishonesty, stuff like that. Like, it touches on so many different things. So I'm looking forward to the rest of the discussion today. I do agree with the sentiment of having the bifurcation. I think in terms of a timeline to answer the question, my view would be starting with those shared philosophies and the scope and getting agreement on those and working our way down from there.

[03:11:50] So I will pause there, thanks. - Thank you. Anyone else? Did you wanna say something further? Please do. - I pretty much hit on everything. I just, I will have more to say when we're talking about which components need to be in each, but to start, wholeheartedly agree with with everything that both of our colleagues just said but I do think that this is the path forward that's going to allow us to have wholesome or like fulsome conversations related to how how tech needs to be used in the in the process of education okay so to try and summarize

[03:12:29] and see if we have some agreement at least an understanding so the instructional technology and this is a point I made in governance is the more we can name these differently it would probably be helpful to us but we can call one the IT policy perhaps and one the instructional policy is that seems to be the easiest way to differentiate because they both have the words instruction just to identify them by their department for the purposes of our discussion so one's an IT based policy and one's an instructional services based

[03:13:03] policy so to summarize the ISD PACE policy is here's how it's being used in our classrooms and then the instructional excuse me the IT policy is here's how we're going to introduce new technologies I would say adopt and introduce okay is there general agreement that that's what those two policies represent I see some yeses I see mostly okay more or less all right

[03:13:32] great so we're there I see miss Dixit has her placard up hello so I'm just the purpose almost to the same on both of these policies so are we because it does look very like confusing the name similar the purpose is quite similar so I don't know if you want to distinct and I want to take some input from mr. Seti who's if you're gonna put it as a IT policy I would like to get his input so basically if this is kind of where it should be landing because we are saying

[03:14:09] it's that this is a we're talking about education technically we are not talking about IT here this is not actually IT department this is education of using IT tools so that's I'm I just want to maybe get some sense from mr. Sethi too happy to jump in was actually hoping that as the conversations evolve we would get a better sense of where we're heading so we can kind of give you our thoughts on the policy in the structure we do have a lot of policies on technology already and a couple of regulations on managing technology

[03:14:49] privacy security acceptable use policy and so on and so forth so if this fits above and beyond that then certainly a conversation to be had but if it is already in those boxes then we can nuance the discussion further as it goes along yeah so technically that is what I was saying that this is an education policy and I I would prefer it to be in this space instead of the IT policy which is more of technical use and how infrastructure IT infrastructure things like like safety and all that also can we create like a little bit different

[03:15:26] purpose if you're making two policy otherwise you can combine them if the purpose is the same thank you okay so I did just I thought gather some agreement but we've heard some additional thoughts and I saw some people shaking their heads so I think it's important before we continue to be really clear if we're going to keep the policy separate and be really clear on their intentions because we've gone back and forth in governance and we need to decide so I

[03:15:56] think I think perhaps we're trying to consensus gather too soon because I haven't heard from everybody that's fine I did invite everyone to comment on it but let's keep going.

[03:16:18] I see Mr. Frisch has his placard up. - Yeah, as I said in governance, I support the, excuse me, the premise of the two policies 'cause I think they're distinct responsibilities for the work.

[03:16:33] I don't think that we're necessarily gonna have 100% agreement at the board table regardless of how much time we discuss it. So, you know, if seven members of the board are comfortable moving forward with two policies, which I am because I think that they are distinct needs, I think that's the direction we have to go.

[03:16:52] I'm hopeful that we can get more than seven people on the board that are interested in that direction and perhaps further discussion around the need would bring people along. From my perspective, you've got two distinct things.

[03:17:07] One is like, how are we using technology that we already have, that we have a grasp of and that we're going to have in the classroom? And the other is, how are we going to bring new technologies into the system? That includes AI. includes other things down the road and so i think those things are distinct enough that um that they warrant two separate policies um if the board decides that we only need one it'll just be a longer policy that does the same thing uh but i think that they they work well separately yeah so i'm going to take a turn before we start go backs um one of the points that i made in governance

[03:17:45] and i just want to make sure we continue to highlight and my colleague did reference this that we're talking about instruction um and i do understand from a you know tongue-tied place not necessarily wanting the word instruction in both of these but i did want instruction in both of these um i'm also a little uncomfortable committing to where they will live um because they are both supporting instruction and i don't think that matters at this time like i don't know if that's getting in the weeds but those are just some things that came to me top of top of mind

[03:18:18] um so in terms of of that i'm amenable to them being bifurcated and having two i will say this that at this stage of the game and i'm i'm interested in hearing my colleagues perspectives um that there's a lot of drafts that have been presented before us um the only drafts that i'm aware of prior to governance skeleton creating a skeleton of two drafts um was that miss anderson had put together a lengthy version of them bifurcated, and so I guess what I'm maybe asking

[03:18:52] is how my colleagues would feel about perhaps punting this back to staff, because they were never asked to bring us two separate policies that sort of meet the things that we are talking about, so instead of us listening and taking notes back to a governance meeting, perhaps us listening, sharing, commenting, and staff taking those copious notes to perhaps draft something to bring to us because I believe that we have a policy in the 1000s that basically somewhat says that that that's the genesis of where policies start they start with staff and then we sort of edit them so that's just where my

[03:19:28] thinking is at the moment so before we do a second round with Dr. Anderson I saw three colleagues I didn't quite get the order I think was mr. McElveen then missing John Cunning then mr. moon thanks so Melanie you're gonna hate me but I would yeah I mean one of the things you always say at board meetings and you and I share this agreement is that it's nice to have some sort of presentation I know you've sent sent us things via email and that's much appreciated and I can certainly agree to something in terms of like bifurcating a

[03:20:07] policy but is there anything that the committee wanted to present to us at any point because otherwise it's two and a half hours of conversation well I would say the email I sent does culminate in everything and you know the June 16th meeting with an add-on a week after graduation and now we're doing this I was confirmed meeting manager I think on Thursday so doing my best so maybe some speed reading I don't know we're listening I mean the history is it

[03:20:42] started as one it went to two we gotta move forward so um I think everyone's kind of sussing out what that means sure yeah I mean I'm fine with that so is the plan for today you're going to give us a discrete set of questions and then we converse and answer the plan is is that it it's clear people want to talk more about it right so the plan is is there consensus or is there a majority agreement on sticking with the two policy format Robin just raised a really question I was remembering even prior this year on governance we used to ask the superintendent to come back with versions for us we did that in the

[03:21:20] grading policy so we could say hey okay let's hand this over to the superintendent there was a question about timeline I can't fathom that we would bring this up before our final school board meeting of the school year on July 16th but that is a question how do people feel about when something would be implemented and then after reading these and if you'd had a chance to read the prior versions what would you want to see in either of these that isn't there I heard Robin raise a good point I think it was youth that said a thousand policy or maybe with someone else it was you like that's something like a good thing we can go

[03:21:57] back and they asked the superintendent so this is collaborative if you have other suggestions please let us know my one suggestion is could we get the language up on the screen so we're all on the same thing thank you one one two all of the above it really doesn't matter I just I just want it really is more of a discussion than the presentation but um certainly okay so are you done mr. McElveen okay so missing John Cunning and then mr. Moon

[03:22:34] mr. McElveen this is why I have printed not digital copies in front of me because there are so many and it's easier for me to see them this way. I do believe that they should be bifurcated. I didn't start with that, but the more we got into this, I saw the need for this.

[03:22:55] And although it wasn't presented as a policy, it was presented as suggestions, I think that the way that the purpose was divided by Ms. Anderson kind of shows the differences in terms of that one of them, in terms of the education technology is how that technology is there to support teaching and learning and the expectations and how all of that happens.

[03:23:21] Whereas the one for when we're talking about innovation in instruction, the new things that are coming, it talks about establishing a framework for new emerging experimental automated AI is one, but data intensive, like all the other things that might come up and how we're gonna be looking at not just AI, are the things that come, and what are the guidelines we're going to put there, and establishing that framework as these new innovative technologies come on board, and what is FCPS's, how is FCPS going to look at that?

[03:23:55] So I think that for Ms. Dixit, I think if you can kind of look at those things, and I know that they're all over the place, and I'm more than willing to share what I have here, it really clearly has a distinction to which each one has a different focus, and it divides that.

[03:24:12] And to be honest with you guys, look at governance. We were trying to put this together, and we were kind of cutting and pasting and doing the best that we could at that time, which even for me is confusing, but just to let you know that this is how we landed on this. Okay, thank you, Mr. Moon, and then Dr. Anderson.

[03:24:35] Thank you, Ms. Mehran. I concur with Mr. McElvin about the expectation to have some sort of presentation by the governance committee, because this is coming out of committee as recommendations, whether it was unanimous support or split votes or consensus.

[03:24:58] I thought that that's probably my preferred approach to put and then have a discussion. But at this point, whether it's two policies, one policy is less important for me than actually discussing what are the issues that board members want you to have the discussion on.

[03:25:21] And so have those on, whether they're 5, 10, 20, 2, have them, and then go one by one about what the board members have on their minds on that. Whether it is opt-out, opt-in, they are limiting the use of digital devices for certain grades or not letting the AI be used at all for certain grades and how to use by whom and what.

[03:25:50] You know, put some buckets and then have a discussion and then eventually, you know, we have it until 5.30. I don't know whether we'll be able to finish all the discussion by 4.30. And, you know, if we don't, we have a further discussion. If we do, at that point, I'm sure we have a STEM member who are taking a copious notes and then we can send whole thing to a superintendent dependent, based upon the conversation, come up with their recommendation as to what the policy should look like and have a further discussion because this is an important topic, important topic that, so when you said that you've been working, governance committee's

[03:26:26] been working on since January, January, full board is just starting on, just starting on, it will take some time, it's okay to take more time, but that was what I was hoping for, but that's only me. So I'm going to start with that. Doesn't matter whether one policy or two policies. What are the things that we want to have discussed and have answers on or have, you know,

[03:26:55] have a consensus formed on? And at the end, we may not agree on anything. Then we will come to the perhaps chair of the governance committee to come up with a motion at the board table and then have a debate at the board table.

[03:27:17] But that's not today because we are just beginning this discussion. So one of the things we want with having heard from members, many members in the community, and also having had discussion amongst the board members, one of the things that we want to have discussed, put that up first and then see where we go from there.

[03:27:39] So I'll just take a turn and make a comment based on Mr. Moon. I think that it was towards the end of the last government's meeting where we bifurcated these.

[03:27:56] And so in 15 minutes, we tried to separate the policies and create things we thought lived within them as a talking point for today. And then you have the outline that was shared by Ms. Marin in the email.

[03:28:12] What I don't want to lose in this conversation is the extensive work we did in governance and all of the other versions of drafts that have teased out in great degree sections like philosophy, sections like, you know, intentional tech, different responsibilities, different definitions.

[03:28:35] So I don't know whether, and I understand, you know, everyone's schedules are tight, but I guess what I don't know is do we need to take a recess and let people read some of the things that maybe they haven't had a chance to or just keep going and let you perhaps do that independently while we continue the conversation?

[03:28:57] I'm asking a question. - Yes. - I have read everything that's been sent to me by Ms. Marin. I've read everything on the bold doc, which really has a couple of documents, but there are more documents, I know that.

[03:29:16] So I've read them all, read them all. I am seeking, because Governance Committee has put in a lot of efforts, not just the committee members, but also non-committee members also joining the efforts. So what's the recommendations, put them up.

[03:29:35] If not, if you don't wanna put them up and add the Governance Committee's recommendations, then ask around, but that's gonna be the redoing what the Governance Committee has done, right? Because we may want to have, I am more passionate about these issues versus some other issues that can also come up as we discuss governance committee's recommendation.

[03:30:00] I want to see what is a governance committee, whether it's unanimous again or by a split majority vote. Mr. Moon, I can answer that question. The governance committee agreed unanimously to separate the policies or to forward them to the board.

[03:30:15] The governance committee agreed with what is in these versions. as starter language okay okay the governance committee agreed to ask you all what else you want in it because there's just never enough time to go through all the things i would say when you're asking about proposing motions i mean i personally did that i would like to bring that to discussion today if you want to talk about specific topics please say them but the start of this conversation was what do people think you know are we in some agreement about two policies are these hitting the mark what is not in here that you'd like to see in here

[03:30:55] that's where we are at so i'd like to not belabor what governance did or didn't do this is where we're at and so um i'd like to continue with people who are waiting to speak could i could i reply to that once quickly i would be happy to see those two policies put up one at a time and have a discussion okay well that's not how we're going to do it this minute at this minute we're gonna keep talking because we need to just discuss we're not gonna wordsmith and we could certainly put them up later is that okay with you are you I I see a

[03:31:31] couple placards I do think that that mr. moon is an appropriate suggestion once people feel like they've shared from a from a 50,000 level point before we get micro let's stay a little macro until we hear from more people but yeah I think we can get there within the time we have dr. Anderson and then mr. Frisch - I think a lot of the things that are being said are all valid.

[03:32:03] It's just a matter of organizing it. I think we are all heading in the same direction. And I'm gonna take some leaps here. One leap is we can have two policies. People are either ambivalent or in support of it. So I wanna frame my comments based on the fact that we're moving forward with two policies and which I won't talk about at all anymore because I already did.

[03:32:28] I agree with what Ms. Dixit had shared regarding the purposes, because we were just, in governance, really trying to run really quickly, but that's not what should stand. I would never be in agreement for the purpose to be the same in both of these.

[03:32:43] There's multiple versions of the purposes all over the place, so it's just time and energy didn't put us in a place to coalesce it for this meeting. So that is true, and I will offer my comments regarding all of the pieces.

[03:33:01] Thirdly, I do agree that this is a good space for us to give feedback. Again, at a high level, shared vision, these are the things that we want these two different policies to contain, and then let staff take the notes and to run it down.

[03:33:17] This is what they've done with all other policies that we've worked on. We've had work sessions where board members are giving it at the high level, and then they run it down and it goes back to committee. we also have the gift of time one of the things that i shared that i asked at the last governance meeting is what happens if this policy is not done by tomorrow by july by whatever because i hate to approve big ticket items during the summer months because the community is largely absent superintendent shared that you know we will be in the holding pattern that we're in right now

[03:33:56] i don't think we will you know it will be that detrimental to what's happening do we want to have things move yes but do we are we pressed for time i don't believe that to be the case but i do have an outstanding question with that in terms of the tech committee because they're starting their work we have a chicken and an egg conversation going on here which is first what the board believes and that's going to lay out the work for the tech committee because if we don't have this done then the tech committee really should not be starting and i know i'm throwing

[03:34:32] a lot of confusion but i'm gonna leave it there i'm gonna start with what are the things that i want to see the purposes have to be divided again i'm not going to wordsmith but for me for the purpose for the technology for the the instructional piece we must identify in the purpose the things that we know have been important to our community which is they want safe use ethical use of um technology in their classrooms connected to the mission oh that was my time so i'll take a go back

[03:35:11] okay so what i heard you saying is purpose there's some things you want in the purpose and then okay so mr frisch and then mr dannon thank you the other just to put a point on the conversation about how this came from governance after governance meeting our governance chair moved very quickly to take everything that we had done as a committee work with the clerk to to get that all wrapped up into a clear communication for the board, ran that past the full committee to ensure that we were all in alignment.

[03:35:48] You know, is this, am I accurately reflecting what we've decided here? We were, that got put up on board docs in the same timeframe that typical items, roughly the same timeframe, the typical materials are prepared for board consideration.

[03:36:05] So when I think about the separation of the policies as the first question asked of us, yes. The categories for the items within those policies, largely in agreement. We did not wordsmith at that meeting.

[03:36:21] We did not agree to language of those sections at that meeting, but we agreed broadly that these are the sections that need to be included, at least in terms of what our committee is capable of coming to agreement. You'll notice in your meeting materials that you read before the meeting that there's another group of items where the committee wanted to encourage the board to have further conversations that we were not, we didn't come to any kind of an agreement on, but that they were worth further conversation, whether it's how technology is selected or other items as well.

[03:36:56] So I'm comfortable with what topics we've identified for the policies. And I think the overarching questions that are being asked right now is an attempt to guide towards the creation of policy drafts that we will eventually discuss, vote on as a board.

[03:37:16] I'd be in favor of the superintendent bringing whatever we end up with as part of our next steps, bringing to the governance committee meeting, probably when we start up again in the new school year, what those things are and then what the two drafts are.

[03:37:34] And then in terms of what the ETRC is working on and how that works with what the board is doing, they're not a legislative body. They're not going to enact legislation that rules the school system. They're gonna make recommendations to the board. And I would hope that we would take those recommendations into consideration as the policy gets nailed down.

[03:37:55] And it's one of the reasons why it's encouraging that I believe the last communication is that ETRC is gonna be meeting twice a month until, or every couple weeks until the new school year. So I'm hopeful that all of those pieces can come together. And I think if folks will refer to the sections of each of the two policies and then the sections that we couldn't come to agreement on as a committee, I think that's a great place to start the conversation about what we envision being in the policy.

[03:38:26] - Thank you. Mr. Dannon and then I will take a turn before we go to a third round. - I would echo that too. I'd like to spend some time today to go through, maybe start with the instructional tech policy and just get a sense of the general buckets and the pulse of the board just to take advantage of the fact that we're all here together.

[03:38:44] I do, I want to ask to the, we're going to the ed tech committee. Doctor, can you talk a little bit about, so I know the meeting, their first meeting is in a week. Can you talk a little bit about what's on the agenda? I know we gave some direction a couple weeks ago, but what else can we expect from the committee in the coming months?

[03:39:01] And I'm thinking in terms of when we come back after recess. - So thank you, Mr. Dan. And actually I'm listening closely 'cause I have a draft charge was explained the superintendent advisory committee which was going to be made publicly attendable so it's sort of this hybrid committee so one of the things I want to make sure is that the charge I provide mr. Sethi and dr. Presidio who are going to co-chair the committee that the charge from the superintendent is very clear because they're gonna be tasked with coming back to me with recommendations that will then review as senior leaders and then I'll be

[03:39:39] providing to you as a board late next spring to be honest because we're gonna have to think about we talked we met this morning actually and I'm I just want to pause also and thank both dr. Presidio and mr. Sethi for taking this on it's it's a major body of work it's an important body of work and I really appreciate both of them stepping up and taking leadership in this so thank you publicly to both of you I will say that the charge I've really wrestled with how best to frame it there are a number of national frameworks around what I would

[03:40:17] call current conversation whether it's tech usage safety innovation there are a number of topics and part of my role this afternoon is really listening closely because I want to make sure that the charge and framework I provide is gonna to have clarity because I think it's gonna be really important as we look at research because this has to be a research-based committee right so there my expectation is going to be there's a synthesis of current research on the topics that we establish and that there's a thoughtful process to plan

[03:40:54] forward I'll also be checking in with the committee at regular intervals and And I'm just looking forward to the group that's been assembled. I appreciate each of you providing your representative. And I know they're in the process of finishing staff representatives and so forth.

[03:41:13] So I really wanna make sure that I also share the charge with you before I deliver it to the committee. So I was hopeful I could do that by Friday for in the Friday letter, but as a draft. And if there are concerns, obviously come back to that.

[03:41:28] but that's essentially what I would see at the moment. It combines some of what your motion was from the earlier meeting we had. We've got motion language from the June 11th meeting. And regardless of the committee, one of the things that is clear is that we need an opt-out option made available for preschool and elementary school students, for parents or guardians, for any electronic device to go home with students by August.

[03:41:57] So we wanna make sure that's in place regardless of where we end up with the policies at this point. And that's a commitment we've made so that we can communicate to principals, so they can communicate to parents, 'cause we wanna make sure that piece gets done. I hope that's helpful.

[03:42:13] - That is, and I'm really excited for the work of the committee because I, somebody much smarter than me told me that we are not going to problem solve our way to a vision. And I think we, I don't know who that was, but I really, I have to hammer, again, the point that we have to establish, I think, our shared agreement on some of these principles, right?

[03:42:33] That we will prioritize productive struggle. We're gonna prioritize human-to-human interaction because that is going to then inform all the other decisions we make about, do we allow AI use at this level or this level, right? Because we've already established, well, no, we think education is inherently a human interaction to relate to an example of shared.

[03:42:55] We don't want sixth graders to be relying on generative AI problems. We want them to be tapping the shoulder their classmate working on that kind of stuff, right? But there are also opportunities for technology to be used productively, right? And I think another thing that we have to be mindful of is how we speak about it. And actually, I read something from Jonathan Haidt, actually, I think this morning, talking about how when we talk about negatively about technology, kids hear that and they tune out, right? Like, we have to talk about this and stay in the light as we talk about this in a positive way in terms of opportunities for this. But while being really real about what the future is. So I appreciate all the work that that committee is going to do. Not too much pressure on them, but, you know, it could very well be a model for the country about how we

[03:43:35] address things coming forward. And I think that no pressure, but I'm glad we have all the right people in the room to help discuss and work that kind of stuff out. The other thing I'll say is that my sense, too, is that when we talk about policy, again, we've got to outline those core principles the the priorities and so forth because the technology is going to evolve so quickly that policies will just not be able to catch up with it and so we're going to rely heavily on regulation that's going to be informed by what we decide in terms of how we view the future of education so again no no no no pressure for the committee but again I do like the idea of going through

[03:44:12] just documenting kind of journal items that we want to discuss starting perhaps with the instructional tech policy and then maybe at the end somebody can make motion that we direct the staff to take those recommendations back and say well we think this might fit better in this policy this might fit better in this policy and go from there so I will stop there okay I will go ahead and take a turn so what I would like to see in the instructional policy in particular ISD policy is what I proposed in the motions those topics being addressed an age limit if any about well I think there should be so let's say an age

[03:44:50] limit for when devices are not to be used one-to-one that would be something that I want in the policy clearly. The decision we made about laptops and devices going home that would be a decision. Prohibiting AI use in grades eight and lower or more broadly are we prohibiting AI? Is it free reign? Is there an age limit or a grade limit? That I think should be that's missing from the policy so far and then reiteration that devices used are intentionally used and

[03:45:28] stored away at other times also I would like to put in there more about the educational technology review committee because I don't know I and again I haven't seen the the charge that the superintendent is drafting but what I did here just now is combing through research to present to the committee and that to me is not my understanding of what the committee is forming for and I just pulled up the forum again from May 5th and the purpose is to establish a formal process to review and guide the use of educational technology and AI and

[03:46:05] I'm sure there's some research informing that but I think parents also have opinions based on just their kids or their profession or what they know but the committee is supposed to inform the decisions about what technologies are used, how they're deployed, how their impact is measured. I would be really disappointed if the committee starts off with, I don't know, kind of the way it's been going with some of the parent groups that I've seen where it's like, this is how great AI is. Like this is a very different committee that's supposed to be looking at some of the things that we have data to, but we haven't

[03:46:43] had a chance to do it yet. Like all the apps we have, how much we spend, how much screen time our kids are on like it's more granular than talking about the role of technology in education so I'd like to see something more specific in the policy that really says what the role of this committee is and ultimately it's it's advising the superintendent who's advising the board the parking lot items public reporting I absolutely think that should be part of the policy because of the way the nature of these contracts are done and the board doesn't have financial ties you know so I'd like public reporting I'd like contracting again I think it's got

[03:47:21] to be clear what the role is of outside entities and who has oversight and I think it's got to be the board again intentional device usage and ultimately I just want to be guided by research like all the stuff that I just said is from the reading I've done I don't really want to be making up new things I think just codifying what I at least you know see is true is what I want in the policies so okay mistakes it for a second turn and then we'd go for a third round

[03:47:57] so thank you miss Marin and this thing actually is I don't know if you spoke on behalf of yourself or the governance committee but what you just said and there was a lot right what you want in the policy but what we got is a very different document so my question is that we have thought of different versions going on and your version probably has this and then there's miss Anderson version there is I guess more people have version yours so I wanted to know can we just put that them together and then look at them maybe what you're

[03:48:35] saying also is included in some other people's policy and we should have this as a board voice not a singular voice and I think that's what I want to see more collaborative work on that yeah I'll wait dr. Anderson and then miss Anderson I was conflicted should I just keep going on my list so be responsive

[03:49:12] to what has just been shared I'm gonna try to spit the baby in half here and be quick I agree with you I think there's the reason why there's so many different versions it's because we weren't able to come to a definitive conclusion about each of these versions. So since right now we are handing it back over to staff to review, this could be that opportunity for staff, you know, because they're way more resource, better resource than, you know, Janet and the Governance Committee are, to perhaps take a look at all these different versions and pull out the

[03:49:47] best of the ones that make sense, that are feasible, that are, that speak to the mission, etc. Some of the versions were just wordsmithing because we just like to say you know we like to use the word like instead of desire so there's also that if we could let go of the wordsmithing part I think we could be productive ultimately I do think that putting on the table the things that we want to make sure that we see the things that are important to us could be very informative to staff because I know they're taking copious notes this is being recorded as they're looking at those versions they're gonna say yep I

[03:50:26] heard Seema talk about this that and the other you know I heard nine people talk about this one I didn't hear anybody talk about this one so they'll be able to suss out what is going to result in something that is more like what the board wants so I'm gonna jump into that part in terms of what I want and I'm gonna try not to make it that exhaustive of a list we have to talk about some of the prohibitions like what will not happen because I want to be responsive to what I've been hearing from my community and there's just great concern that all of our kids are going to be sitting in front of AI and that should

[03:51:01] not be the case there should also be definitions and this is not new Dr. Presidio there should be some term that we are using to define the AI that already lives in our systems because we talked about this in governance where we have some generative AI and systems like Lexia ST Math albeit closed we have to find a way to identify that as separate from the AI the generative AI work that is causing lots of consternation from our public so both of these need to be

[03:51:38] in the definitions we have to talk about the balance of screen time there's lots of research lots of doctors talk about all of these things because I have a notebook worth of stuff too not as much as what Miss Marin has but are we going to be okay with our kids using computers under our watch because we're not responsible for what they do at home and I don't want to be responsible for that but are we going to put computers in front of our kids for two hours a day at all levels or 30 minutes there has to be a place in there where we are differentiating on the continuum of screen time and making sure that we're

[03:52:16] putting a stake in the ground about that balance and I have more Ms. Anderson I'm gonna start off by picking up with something that Dr. Anderson just said I fully and completely agree believe that our policies need to reference the fact that we need regulations related to screen time but I do not think that specific screen time should be in our policies because that that very likely is going to shift as we move forward and that is something firmly within the superintendent's requirement and that That will be monitored through the EL process which we firmly have in place that we can

[03:52:55] utilize to make sure that we understand exactly what's going on. We also have the flexibility to deny any regulation that the superintendent puts forward that we disagree with. That is in our policy already. And so I do not have any concern.

[03:53:12] I have full trust in our staff that they want the same things that we do. I have said this multiple times to multiple committee members all over, is all of us are in this because we care about kids. We want to do the right things for kids. We just have, and I actually don't think we're all that far apart.

[03:53:29] I just think that we need to work on finding our points of consensus and then moving forward with the things that we don't agree on. I do wanna give a little background about the two versions of the policies that I drafted that are lengthy and they have mistakes.

[03:53:45] They were a first shot at it. But they were a combination of the documents that governance had been working on in addition to the policy drafts that the superintendent had already brought forward to us. So this did not come out of nothing. I was trying to be accommodating to the things that I already knew that the committee was working on when I created these.

[03:54:06] And like I said, there are problems. I actually think probably the ed tech policy is closer to where I would want us to go. However, I will say that, to Mr. Seti's point, there are references in here that are probably in other policies that we need to pull out and, again, do the same thing that I'm talking about doing here, is privilege those policies to make those decisions, particularly considering data security and things like that.

[03:54:32] I do think that this policy needs to nod to the fact that we recognize that those exist, but these are going to be interconnected, and I think that we should allow them to be that way. But there are some pretty major buckets in the policy drafts that I came up with that I think are missing in the current committee's work, partially just because we never had the opportunity to actually talk through everything.

[03:54:58] And so I will say that I think that we're on the right track, and I agree with my colleagues that have said, I want to look for points of agreement first, because I think that that is going to be a stronger way for us to come together on this. And this is something that we need to come together on.

[03:55:14] We need to figure out how we can do that. And it cannot be something that, because, again, I think that we are so much closer together than we are further apart. All right, I remembered what I was going to say, which is a couple things.

[03:55:30] And one is that I've sort of been reading this TechnoSapiens. It's put out by Dr. Jacqueline Nessie from Brown, who is, you know, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Human Behavior. But she posed a question in one of her recent distributions that said, let's play a quick game.

[03:55:47] I'm going to describe a technology and you tell me what it is. Let's play a game. Kids are spending hours on this technology every day. A study of hundreds of 6 to 16-year-olds in the journal Pediatrics finds that many are addicted to it. There are also concerns about how this technology may interfere with social connection and the development of empathy and may increase exposure to violence and sexual content.

[03:56:07] Some evidence links it to anxiety and other mental health problems, yet parents feel powerless to stop it. Everybody got your answer? The household radio. My point is, in the 1920s and 1930s, ownership of personal radio saw exponential growth. I could go on and on because it outlines generationally the introductions of technologies, right? I do believe we are more in the same place than we are not. We want safeguards. The one thing I really want to talk about is, because

[03:56:42] there is disagreement in some spaces, but we talk a lot about AI and our students don't have access to it. They don't have access to gender AI, okay? So I want to talk a little bit about staff. We have to differentiate in policy staff use of AI and student use of AI. And as I indicated in my sample policy, you know, again, I think that this belongs in regulation, but for those taking notes, I'm comfortable with banning any gender of AI for students through sixth grade. And hear me out.

[03:57:17] This is an equity issue to me. When you get into middle school, you're taking more high school credits. We also have algebra in sixth grade, which could be an issue. But a lot of our kids who have their own technologies are accessing generative AI to study. They are saying, I don't understand this problem. Don't give me the answers, but break it down for me.

[03:57:41] They are saying, you know, here's the concepts I'm being tested on, putting in perhaps a sample of their homework from a teacher and saying, create a test for me, and then I will take said test. When I was a kid in math, I had homework every night because math was every day, and I would take three problems from my math sets and put them on a separate piece of paper.

[03:58:06] I created my own test for the night before the test, and they were homework problems from earlier, but that would save me this. So for me, it's an equity issue, and that's what we have to talk about, is some people have their own devices. But if you only have a school-issued device, and all of these things are banned because they're blacklisted, then you're at a disadvantage to your peers in learning.

[03:58:28] So that's the one thing I want to talk about in terms of student use. Staff use, well, I guess I'll take it back. Can I raise here in the effort of trying to get to highlight those places of agreement that was mentioned? So thoughts on AI, banning, limiting.

[03:58:45] Okay, so I suggested through eighth. Robin suggested through sixth. Can other people comment? Can we get to a place where we're all clear? Otherwise, we're never going to actually write down what we want to do. So Mr. Moon and then Ms. Anderson.

[03:59:07] You know, to that particular question, I could give my response. But my suggestion from the beginning was, I think, you know, Ms. Marron, when you began listing the, perhaps the issues slash questions we should be answering, put that out so that we can go one by one and answer.

[03:59:31] You know, everybody could, you know, we all could have some opinions on each one of those, or just some, a few of us may have on few of those. Do you have an opinion on this one now? So I will respond to that. okay i will do as i said as i said i think i think there have been you know varying varying suggestions on limiting the use of ai use of ai i can really go for up to sixth grade sixth grade not letting the use of ai ai in classroom in schools but we have no control what they're

[04:00:08] going to be doing at home that's going to be up to the parents that i mean we have no control are - Are you agreeing with-- - What I'm saying is we have no control. - Are you agreeing with Ms. Lady then, so no AI through sixth grade? - Sixth grade, that's the minimum I can agree. - Okay. - Minimum I can agree, whether-- - Seventh grade would be the first year.

[04:00:26] - Yeah, whether that should be expanded to eighth and then all your law from the ninth grade, I need to give a further thought. But sixth grade, I can agree. - Through sixth grade, so it would start in seventh. That's what Ms. Lady said. Mr. Moon's agreeing. Who's next? - Ms. Anderson.

[04:00:45] - Okay, my recommendation would be - Limited until sixth grade, nothing in the instruction. In middle school, it would only be available if the course description said that it was included and that way parents had a decision that they could make a decision whether or not they had a student that entered a course that was, so if you have kids taking engineering, kids taking computer science, like whatever, they would know that it was gonna be a part of it.

[04:01:11] And then in high school is when it would be appropriate. But I do not think because of the three middle schools that we have that start at sixth grade, I do not want to put a grade in there because I think that it is going to cause trouble for us. And we also are gonna have to consider what's going on in our secondary schools on how we would differentiate that when you have.

[04:01:30] But if you have a student that's a seventh grader that is taking a high school course, you would have to acknowledge the fact that you would understand that it could include. But I still would say that I only want AI included if it's part of instruction. It's not just blanketly in there for the sake of it being in there.

[04:01:49] The other thing that I would say is I absolutely want to teach our elementary kids what AI is and what they need to be careful about because we cannot pretend that it doesn't exist. So there has to be AI literacy that is happening at the younger grades so that because kids are going to be using these things at home and I refuse to let us go down the same path that we already went down with social media where we ignored it.

[04:02:14] And so we, I just, I am not suggesting that we give kindergartners AI. What I am suggesting is that we can start having the conversations about how to keep kids safe online in elementary school, so that when they are taking classes in middle school, that maybe incorporate different technologies.

[04:02:32] And look guys, we're talking about AI today, but in a year, it's gonna be something else. And so I want us to be careful that, that's why I wanna talk about innovative tech, because we have new things that are gonna be here before we're gonna be done with this conversation.

[04:02:48] So we have to come up with a plan on how to move forward with it. - Can I capture what you said? So available in secondary grades if the course description explicitly says. Okay, I just thought though you said about, 'cause we have some, whatever.

[04:03:04] Okay, middle school if the course description said it was needed and then available in high school. Right, okay, thank you. - Okay, Dr. Anderson.

[04:03:21] - I'm just glad I wasn't the only one who needed to raise the sixth grade issue. because I'm like, you people, you're killing me. I've said this a hundred times. Sixth grade doesn't work in the Mason District. That's a cutoff because the middle school can't do that. One of the things, so thank you.

[04:03:38] I appreciate that. I have to put that in there. One of the things that I didn't get a chance to get to, which I think will be very helpful in all of this is where does parent choice live? Because we have some parents who are going to be fine with having their littles use it, but we know the research tells us that's not right.

[04:03:59] So what I think I'm hearing, also let me backtrack a little bit, is that there's consensus for AI usage, not literacy, because we teach about a lot of things we don't make kids go out and do. AI usage in elementary school is not going to be on the table, and I'm just doing this so I can move on.

[04:04:19] So at the middle school level, it is going to be tied to specific courses that are outlined so parents know and have clarity and are signing off that I am good, that my kid is going to use AI. Is that what I'm hearing?

[04:04:37] - Seems like it. - Because that's what I would also like. It's not just the passive, listed AI use is involved in this advanced class. It's I am signing off and saying this is okay to do. So I am fine with that for the middle school level.

[04:04:53] High school level, where it seems to be not yet addressed, but will definitely be more likely than not. I'd like for the parent choice to still live there because not every parent wants that for their children for various reasons. We have kids with mental health issues that they just don't want that to be an access point.

[04:05:12] And the parents should have the right to say, no, this is not healthy for my child. As I've shared before, I think I shared this at the last meeting, I already have a couple of parents who are saying, I have a note from my doctor. My kid is not gonna be using AI or bringing home a computer.

[04:05:29] We can't be caught flat-footed for that reality. We have to plan for it. So the parent choice for me needs to exist in the places where access is being allowed. - Mr. Prish.

[04:05:47] - I think the, excuse me, the conversation around course catalog descriptions is interesting to me. And I'd be interested in exploring it for high school as well, beyond middle school. think more information is always better and if the policy somehow has to tackle academic integrity in such a way that it acknowledges the fact that whether we have a whether the system places a role for AI in the hand of a student or not

[04:06:26] students are going to use it and how are we mitigating their ability to use it for an unfair advantage. Now you talk to parents and they will talk about how, some will talk about how their child was accused of using generative AI for a paper and they definitely didn't do it and the teacher put it into a system to see if they could test it and that's never necessarily accurate and one test says something that another test doesn't. So, you know, and maybe this is something Ms. Anderson can speak to given her background teaching in college, but I know a lot

[04:07:02] of universities are stepping away from certain types of exams to try and ameliorate that issue it's something that I think at least in some way the policy should address a requirement that the superintendent have instructional services or others develop suggestions particularly in the classes where AI is permitted that still allow for the testing of true knowledge and writing ability and everything else that goes along with what the soft skills that that we're teaching in every class that go along with the hard skills.

[04:07:38] So I'd be interested, I really like the idea of including it in course catalogs so that parents know, again, it's not just a, this is gonna get used, it's a, what is the thoughtful use of this?

[04:07:55] And for the youngest learners, well, for all learners, period, regardless of where they enter our system, there needs to be a level setting of what students need to know about AI, whether we're allowing it in that class or not.

[04:08:16] - Mr. Dannon. - Thank you. So, yeah, obviously I'm very comfortable with the, let's say, blanket ban for elementary levels, but I also don't want to imply that that means uses anywhere else, and so I really like, which I don't think we are, but I really, I like the suggestion from Dr. Anderson that it be some form of like an opt-out or opt-in above the elementary level.

[04:08:42] And so I appreciate Mr. Frisch's, I almost said Dr. Frisch there, maybe someday. Mr. Frisch's recommendations that there's, just the issue is so nuanced, right? When we talk about activity, integrity, things like that. So I'd endorse your point too about, you know, looking at standards and so forth.

[04:09:01] I'm also curious, Dr. Reed, can you just to help us level set, how is AI being used by students in classrooms today in the division. I've seen a few things kind of pop up. My understanding is that it's generally project specific, where kids are opting in largely.

[04:09:19] There's also certain schools who've applied to the PlayLab. - So we have Lighthouse Schools, which is a collaborative project with the ISTE, ASCD National Consortium.

[04:09:34] So, and that's, I think, gonna be starting its fourth year. So we've been collaborative even pre the dawn of AI around innovation and technology with ISTE. And for elective projects, I know there've been some elective competitions that our students have participated in.

[04:09:53] In fact, I believe it's our Woodson, Robinson. Okay, whoosh, I don't wanna make that mistake. We have Fairfax County Public School students who have won the international contest, right? Involving that as an elective program.

[04:10:10] So with regard to any kind of general ed track, I'm not aware of that, but I'll ask Dr. Presidio to comment, as he obviously oversees our academic programs, but I'm not aware of that being used in any required or general education course.

[04:10:27] No, and again, I will qualify, though, and this is why the definition is going to be so important in the policy section, as a number of board members have pointed out again today. Generative chat feature AI is not used in FCPS, and students do not have access to generative chat feature-based AI.

[04:10:49] As we've talked before, artificial intelligence has been around for many years and built into a number of different software components. But in terms of the functionality to interact with the chat feature, that is not enabled or used in any of our schools at any grade levels today.

[04:11:11] So if I may, and this is why it gets, I think, so nuanced, because I've heard from teachers and parents where kids have been able to access alternative AI through various workarounds and so forth, and so I think we should wholeheartedly support review of standards, whether it's academic integrity, security, SRR, to make sure that we are effectively monitoring and policing that, right, so that kids aren't, like you said, getting an advantage over it.

[04:11:39] Because it is, like I said, I've heard from multiple people have gotten more grounds to that. Can you talk a little bit about how well does our current digital, for your average, let's say seventh grader, how well is our current digital literacy at educating them about AI, specifically safe AI usage? How would you rate that? Or is that something that... So on this issue, one of the things that, again, the board passed a motion on June 11th, which we appreciated, was to create a requirement for digital literacy lessons. Right Right now, we have digital literacy lessons that we have created and made available, but

[04:12:18] we've not required them to be instructed consistently from school to school. So one of the things that we'll be working with the Technology Review Committee on this summer is a proposal to have a required digital literacy curriculum, K through 12, in all of our schools starting next fall.

[04:12:35] So again, that's one of the priority items or deliverables, if you will, for the Technology Committee to give us feedback on that during the summer. Okay. So, and just to clarify, we're talking about, you know, moving forward with the courses that include AI being offered in the course catalog.

[04:12:53] That wouldn't be until at least 2027, 2028. Is that correct? Or would there be, you know, if there's board agreement to this today, would teachers be able to start offering that come this fall or later in the year? Well, I think it would depend on when the board adopted the policy and where you set that policy expectation.

[04:13:11] Again, we're not looking as a technology committee this summer to do anything other than develop recommended guidelines for what grade levels. Again, I'm just going to speak to the AI grade level usage issue because we have a number of deliverables for the committee this summer, largely starting with all of the things that the board adopted in the motion on June 11.

[04:13:35] But with respect to grade levels, we would be looking to provide the superintendent with recommendations about what grade levels in the future AI might be able to be utilized at but we're not looking to roll anything out sooner than there would be an opportunity for board discussion and the board to finish their policy and staff to finish the regulation okay and just because because and this is the discussion again my my fear is that there would be unintentionally like a green light to start including AI in classrooms without having the commensurate digital literacy curriculum at the same time right so I just want to try and through the timing for that, because I don't want, you know, your average ninth grader to get access

[04:14:13] to it in a class and have not received that kind of instruction and not have those guardrails in place. So I'm presuming from this discussion that we're taking it slowly and making sure that those sorts of things are in place. So, okay. I will stop there. Thank you. Sure. I'll go. Just as with my chair head on, I think it's great. We've made some headway on thoughts on AI access. Perhaps that's a good term to use, access and limitation, not ban.

[04:14:41] But I've kind of categorized what I think I heard, and we'll turn it back over to you all later to check, AI and academic integrity and AI literacy. I'll take this opportunity as myself, as one board member, to talk about AI literacy. And again, now my even more growing concern about the role of this new committee.

[04:14:58] Dr. Presidio just said a main goal of this committee is to give recommendations on digital literacy. That is not the intent of the committee. The intent of the committee is to inform decisions on instructional technology. We can hand pick off the internet or anywhere digital literacy plan or an AI literacy plan as an extension of the current digital literacy.

[04:15:21] And in true FCPS form, we've just heard that it's not consistently applied. I mean, that's like FCPS 101, right? It's in some schools and not others. The superintendent with our whole office of instructional specialists and curriculum designers can design a digital literacy and AI literacy plan.

[04:15:39] What they cannot do is know what our community wants in terms of what technology is in front of kids. Just like any other advisory committee, they're looking at what's the data. Show me how Lexia helps. Does it really help a first grader? Does it help a sixth grader? Show us.

[04:15:55] Do we need the device? How much time are kids? I feel that for the integrity of this committee to do what it is doing, that we really need to be more involved at the outset and hearing, I know we're going to hear the charge, which is great, but I'm concerned that this committee is going to be sent off on some task that isn't going to help us.

[04:16:18] I mean, I've been on advisory committees since before I was even elected, like way back in the 2000s, and I know what it's like to be doing work that doesn't get used or that's not the thing that was asked of by the board. The committee is supposed to do work on what technology our kids are using.

[04:16:38] I'd love to see us pivot to another topic of discussion, but I'll leave it to whoever wants to follow me, but one-on-one devices. What do we mean? Do we want to say no devices pre-K to two, to any grade?

[04:16:56] Do we want to say classroom sets? Do we want computer labs? These are all things that have been put out in the ether. What do people think about the policy, including something about the role of one-to-one devices, at least in elementary school, to start the discussion?

[04:17:12] That's something, as chair, I'd love to see us move toward. Okay, before I take my turn, Dr. Presidio would like to share. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify for folks that are listening. So my comments about the technology committee, and I think we're going to do all the things that you mentioned, but just to read from the board motion that was adopted on the 11th, Board voted in the affirmative to have the superintendent develop recommendations in consultation with the Technology Review Committee including enhancements to digital literacy instruction.

[04:17:46] So that's what I was referring to. We're not asking the committee to write a curriculum. We're asking the committee to review the lessons and the objectives that we have just like we do in FLE and give us feedback on if they're really addressing the major concerns that the community has. So that's what I was referring to.

[04:18:01] Sure, I appreciate that. I was referring to the May fifth vote of the school board on the forum language which very specifically talks about the committee reviewing instructional tech and we did have a discussion about whether this was a curriculum review committee which has very specific steps like for our basal materials and to my understanding it's not so yeah that's great if it wants to inform but the way I just heard it said was this is their number one thing and I argue it's not their number one thing the number one thing is what are our kids doing in the classrooms and what does the community think thank you I also was just looking back at my draft policy because I was trying to capture the things from there

[04:18:40] and it is one of several but it's in the charge and I do appreciate the conversation I guess I'll speak quickly to devices I'm okay with no devices pre-k through k but if we're gonna be assessing in first grade on a device they have to learn how to use the device to do that and I believe that in regulation it should be very limited because it has to be very intentional and purposeful and instructional. I do have a question though that you know my colleagues have talked about and opt out at the middle school and perhaps high school levels related to AI that might be incorporated

[04:19:20] into a course. How difficult like what's involved from a deployment of computers with our T-specs or somewhere back in wherever that if my mom opts me out but but dr reed's mom doesn't opt her out like what does that involve on staff workload it's just my question is that is that a viable option well i think again that was one of the things that the board passed in the june 11th

[04:19:57] motion for the committee to provide some recommendations on so we're going to be looking at all the different ways that we could actually develop some recommendations about an opt-out policy that we could operationalize well. Yeah, I'm kind of asking, and actually, I do appreciate, Dr. Presidio, Mr. Sethi, can you speak to this?

[04:20:14] Because from the IT side is what I'm concerned about. The T-specs are going to have to block me from having any form of generate AI within my Chromebook, but yet they're going to let Dr. Reed access it because her parents are allowing it. So I'm just trying to get more clarity on what that workload looks like or if it's even viable to do it that way.

[04:20:34] I mean, anything is possible with enough time and money and resources put towards it. That's how IT generally starts, is, like, if we can, what we can allocate towards. So given limited time and given how limited your resources are on, how small your department is, let's operate, like, I appreciate that.

[04:20:50] We can do anything, but we are poor, and we don't have money. We can't expand when we need to, which is troublesome because, but anyways, continue. I think the combination of how the teacher would differentiate in terms of lesson planning and delivery would be an interesting challenge.

[04:21:06] And then from a technology perspective, some tools may be easier than others where we have universal control. Other tools do not provide certain levels of control. And then the choice may be, should we stop using this tool altogether because it doesn't provide that control, which causes ripple effects throughout the division because those tools might be embedded in teacher practices, assessments, and everything else.

[04:21:28] So it would have to be sort of evaluated once we have, it will be a series of complex actions to take 'cause right now we do everything universally. We work at grade levels so we can do grade level policies. If you tell us everything sixth grade and below, I think that is feasible.

[04:21:46] But within a specific school, a specific grade, it does get complicated obviously. - Thank you. Because I just know that when I was in the system that you make a point of the differentiation of instruction.

[04:22:10] I mean, we're utilizing UDL, but I do know that if you're teaching a class, and like for years we didn't have math books, if someone opted their child out of the device, it was an unbelievable amount of additional work on a teacher, and I actually saw some teachers resign at the end of a school year because of how burdensome was to do that for one student in a classroom and I'm not I'm just putting that out there and in the air because it's a it's a fact and we were trying to

[04:22:48] create ways for our teachers to work smarter and again I'm struggling to conceptualize what that would look like perhaps that could be a good next step is to ask how viable it is for parents to opt out like what could that look like and then if we want to get back we could further continue on the device use the one-to-one so Robin I heard you say pre-k to k I know I earlier said pre-k to two and then who is next miss lady if we I believe that we're back to mr.

[04:23:21] moon I have been also waiting for a long time I think between the chair and the vice chair I did not you did I didn't see your placard but you are you got to go back before we go back to a go go go go go back all right thank you I did not answer the AI question and I wanted to make sure I answer that because then you want everybody's opinion I guess I am good with AI in high school to students who want to learn it as as their college and not you know just general learning

[04:23:57] product I should say just the course the projects any research they want to do on and maybe for their college preparation and you know once they go to college this you know the world is open to them completely there's no restriction so um but in middle school um like miss anderson said if it's required specifically for the course like you know my kid who's you know wants to be a cyber engineer or whatever uh and indeed they want to do some course which has some ai tool then i can give permission for that particular course so it should

[04:24:31] be parents for those middle school and from fourth to sixth grade I should say it should be the AI literacy and I agree Ms. Anderson that kids should know what's coming up we cannot expect them to because they have access to computers at home and they're using it without any knowledge and using these smartphones which I absolutely hate for kids but that's what it is and all we we have to teach them even if their parents are giving them these devices at home and then phones at home, they should know how to use it ethically, how to use it with the, you know,

[04:25:10] watch out for bad guys on internet and other things too. So that is very important for those third to six graders. So I really like that we are actually gonna do that, Dr. Presidio and then that is my thing is, and also I feel it should be a parent voice as well, it matters.

[04:25:31] I, as a parent, was very intentional with technology with my own child. But then there are a lot of parents or a lot of kids who don't have access to technology at home. They don't have four computers lying around. So that device which goes home is the only device they can learn on.

[04:25:49] So I'm really looking, thinking about that as well. So I did meet with some parents from the intentional technology group. And I mentioned this. I said, you know, we have to think about everyone. But overall, I would support high school and mid school restrictive use when the course allows.

[04:26:11] That's my point. We can move on to the next topic, then I can-- - Okay, Mr. McElveen for go back and then Mr. Moon. I didn't see his placard. - Okay, thank you. So I will pick up where Ms. Dixit left off. So I'm fine with Ms. Anderson's formulation of allowing AI in middle school with parental approval through a specific course selection, and also Ms. Dixit's point about AI literacy, so I can combine those two.

[04:26:40] And I just wanna provide the umbrella statement that all this accords with our wait until eighth initiative, which is actually wait until the end of eighth grade, right, until ninth. So we are supportive of that. Now to...

[04:26:58] - Ms. Mirren's initial question for this section, I agree with her that we should ban the use of one-to-one devices for K to two. And I think we should have language that, particularly in elementary school, it should be used thereafter as developmentally appropriate.

[04:27:21] You know, I've raised this with individual principals. They're supportive of it. Obviously, you know, I fully understand Miss Lady's concerns about assessments and things like that, and we need to make sure that we're able to adjust for that as needed. But frankly, elementary school parents are upset with the amount of assessments we're doing in general, not to mention our assessments on computers.

[04:27:47] So that's where I stand on that piece. Thank you. - Thank you, Mr. Moon. - Before I go back to the old issue of AI, or generative AI, let me first answer to a question about one-to-one device.

[04:28:07] But before I do that, I'm gonna ask just one more time to Dr. Reed, how are devices currently being used in classroom for K-2-2, and what's our expectation for students at K-2-2 to use digital devices at home?

[04:28:33] - So I think it's an interesting question, and I think it's nuances. I was listening to Mr. McAleen, I was thinking, I think what I heard was no one-to-one devices K-through-2, which is a bit different, as I know staff are taking notes, from no devices in K-1-2.

[04:28:51] So, do you know what I'm saying? Like the screen time versus one-to-one, so I think we need to kind of suss that out a little bit. Having said that, I know that there are certain reliances on, I wanna say Lexia or ST Math, there's some instructional programs, but Dr. Presidio, you may better understand that.

[04:29:13] And then there are the VALS, assessments, the MAP. So there's some assessments and some instructional programs that, but I don't know if any of those go home. So I'll have to defer to Dr. Presidio on that. - Yeah, so if the primary grade levels, let's say K to two, there's the curricular components that we have which are very limited.

[04:29:37] We have Lexia which is a reading platform that's individualized to students' reading levels. So it's designed to tailor personalized instruction to students to give them extra practice. That's between 30 to 75 minutes a week depending on if students are on grade level or below grade level.

[04:29:54] So that's the division usage of Lexia for language arts. Then we have ST Math which is a math curriculum similar to the language arts curriculum in Lexia, and that's between 30 to 60 minutes per week for students based, again, on where their level of additional practice, individualized practice lies.

[04:30:12] Then we have required assessments, and we do have the state-required assessments, so the VAL, the WIDA, for example. Those are administered electronically, and we really don't have alternative versions of those to be able to administer, and again, we'll talk about this with the committee this summer, but some things that we need to continue to consider is even if we do have alternative paper and pencil administration, how much instructional time is lost if we have to go to an alternative format that has to be scored by the teacher and then the data has to be entered by the teacher.

[04:30:44] There's a lot of additional time and workload constraints that have to be balanced by using an electronic assessment. So assessments required by the state, very limited curriculum access. Now, I do know, obviously, from having conversations with parents in the community that devices are being used more widely now but from a division standpoint those are the only uses for the devices that are part of our instructional program so we obviously can develop screen time guidelines or use guidelines that would be more restrictive than what what's happening on a day-to-day basis today i do also know that there was a lot of discussion about the importance of that face-to-face time in

[04:31:23] the classroom so there was some discussion about the devices being able to go home to access perhaps dyslexia at home or there was a program for multilingual learners that could be accessed at home because we wanted to really maximize that time in the classroom with face-to-face interactions like we learned that in COVID right how important when we gather in schools and learning spaces we want adult to it you know or human to human interaction and that's where again I think we need to tighten things up but that's where we've tried to respect parent choice and some of the equity issues that some board members have spoke to today in terms of some families want those devices to go home

[04:32:03] because they want the extra practice and they don't have other device access available if those devices didn't go home. And then we know other families don't want them to go home for very legitimate reasons as well. So we've got to find the right balance in setting these guidelines.

[04:32:19] - Having heard what I just heard from two doctors in education that I will not be able to answer to that question with a simple yes or no at this point. What will be academic impacts of a completely, completely prohibiting, prohibiting use of devices K through 2?

[04:32:44] What will be the financial impacts on the school system if we have to do it in alternative way? And also, I don't think any of us is asking, maybe I'm wrong about this, to start prohibiting this from upcoming school year, you know, from August 24th, whether school state is ready to be able to implement the policy like

[04:33:18] that. Unless I have a more detailed responses or satisfactory level of responses from superintendents, I will not be able to give you straight yes or no to that question. Now going back to artificial intelligence and generative AI that we're talking about as we're talking about opt-out you know you know putting in the board information and course catalog and and depending upon you know student's choice will either students be able to opt out from certain courses

[04:33:51] etc it sounded as if that Dr. Presidio was making this distinction because as he as he should because I was looking at the policy as drafted from the governance committee. There's a distinction between AI and generative AI.

[04:34:08] When you said that very little, if anything at all, of generative AI is currently used in instruction in classrooms, you meant to say generative AI, not AI, correct?

[04:34:26] That's correct. So are you then saying that AI is currently being used in the classrooms? I'm saying it's built into and has been for many, many years in the industry into different software programs.

[04:34:42] So we've discussed before AI. So if a course catalog needs to make a notation as to use of AI and give a student an option to opt out from all those AI embedded courses, courses, will we be able to provide enough alternatives for students to be able to opt out from all those courses and still satisfy their graduation requirements and whatever they want to pursue?

[04:35:14] So that is a very important question that our team needs to deliberate more on in terms of how we would operationalize it. I think we need to understand a little bit more from some of the perspectives of some of the different folks that will be on the technology committee. But the distinction I'm making is the types of AI that we have a lot of concerns with that share student data, perhaps, that allow students to interact with the technology in ways that humanize the technology.

[04:35:41] Those things are very easy to restrict, right? But if AI is built into an operational software like Adobe that students might use to open a PDF that their teacher has provided as an instructional resource, and we said we're banning all AI, that would be a real problem, right?

[04:35:57] So there's a lot of nuance in this that we've got to unpack. And I think we need to start with what are the definitions that are going to help us have this discussion? And from there, I think we can develop a policy framework that we can operationalize about what we need to restrict, what we can have access to, and put something together for you.

[04:36:18] But that is going to take a lot more thought and deliberation. So for my colleagues' benefits, I'm just raising there is an issue for us to really seriously think about. Thank you. Okay, I think we're to another round.

[04:36:34] Oh, no, Ms. St. John Cunning did not have a go back in that round. First of all, I think that what is really difficult in this conversation, and it has been for me, and even when I've spoken with parents, a lot of times when I'm talking about technology, I'm not talking about AI.

[04:36:50] And I think sometimes we interchange that, and I think that creates a lot of confusion, and it gets conflated. And I think that with the policies, we have to be very clear with that. Look, I worked in schools for 26 years. The reason I'm not tech savvy is because most of my job was interfacing with people one-on-one and providing wraparound services, and so I didn't have to rely on this very much.

[04:37:17] Having said that, there are a lot of aspects, exactly what Dr. Presidio just talked about, that if we don't do it this way, it's going to put a huge burden on our teachers in terms of the work. An example I'd like to give you is when our parents applied for free and reduced lunch, they used to have to get a paper application.

[04:37:38] I would help a lot of our parents fill it up, fill it out. A lot of our parents, some of them can't, you know, they're illiterate. They need help writing it. It would take a long time to get that done. Then we transitioned into having these applications online for parents.

[04:37:55] I would still help the parents, but instead of spending 45 minutes filling out the form, it would be reduced to 15 minutes. The parent would get an immediate response. They wouldn't have to stress about, oh, did I qualify? Did I not qualify? They would know immediately, which relieved a lot of stress for parents.

[04:38:14] And even though I might end up spending that same 45 minutes with that parent, it was not just on the form. It was like, oh, I see that you qualify for free and reduced lunch. Are there other needs that you have? How can I help you with this? It gave me more time to have more one-on-one, to start building the trust, to start evaluating what other needs the family might have.

[04:38:39] So again, this was not AI. This was just technology that reduced the time that we had to spend on paper and pencil and increased the level of services. So again, I'm talking about technology, not about AI, And I'm talking about doing things in a very intentional way that supports our students and supports our teachers to allow them to have that more one-on-one face time.

[04:39:04] The other thing is attendance. I mean, attendance used to be done, paper and pencil. And, you know, my colleague will know. Now that it's done, it's done on CIS. It goes straight to the office. There's no calls from the office. Where's your attendance? What's going on? Oh, we know this kid is me. You can respond a lot quicker.

[04:39:21] So those are all these little things that, and these are not even necessarily, this is not in the school. So these are the kinds of things that help our teachers and help our staff move forward. Again, I just want to make sure that we separate the use of some technological tools and not conflated with AI.

[04:39:46] And that's just what I wanted to say. And based on what Dr. Presidio said again, the other thing is equity. I have kids and we have families that have never seen a computer or know how to operate it.

[04:40:03] And if our kids are going to be tested on it, and I know some people, you know, somebody said, oh, this is easy. It's like learning how to do it for dummies. And I was like, well, I'm one of those dummies because it takes me a long time. It takes me a long time to get this down.

[04:40:18] And so if we're working on the same project and we have the same knowledge base, our scores are going to be different because I'm not familiar with this because I'm like, what key do I push? What key do I not push? Again, not AA, technology. And there are equity issues. There are exposure issues.

[04:40:37] And sometimes in my job and what I did as a family liaison, I saw that a lot. And some people don't get to see that and there's assumptions that everybody has a device and everybody knows how to use it. And that's not the case. Thank you. Ms. Anderson. I actually have a question for Mr. Sethi.

[04:40:59] So we use the term one-to-one a lot, but we're also using classroom sets as an alternative. What do you see as the difference between a one-to-one device and a classroom set? Because as far as I see, a classroom set is just a one-to-one device that we leave in the classroom.

[04:41:16] And so that can be handled by the opt-out that we've already decided on as a board at the last board meeting. So I don't see us going away from having a one-to-one device in terms of just ease of use that each kid has their own computer that's logged in to them already.

[04:41:33] But am I looking at this incorrectly? Prior to going one-to-one, classroom sets used to be some amount of laptops in the class which don't have a login, and any student can go in and start using it for the tool.

[04:41:53] So you would have like 10 devices for maybe 20 kids in the room, and that used to be because of the cost basis of going one-to-one. After going one-to-one, you can get individualized sort of control of the device. So the students logged in, they have their own account, and we also have sort of traceability controls that we can put in with their login.

[04:42:12] Authentication brings in, and then when they use an instructional tool, it can actually log what they did, just like we were talking about when attendance is taken, you don't have to go punch in four different buttons anymore. automatically know which then feeds into the data analysis which the teacher can get when the student use that tool to take an assessment so oftentimes and particularly when we're talking about state testing and things like that whether or not I mean not liking state testing is a different conversation it's not right now the state testing is on most of it is online yes and so we are going to have to have enough computers in a grade level in order to complete

[04:42:49] state testing which I know used to be an issue related like just how it was conducted before there were one-to-one devices so I just am and I think that many of the controls and including light speed and things like that that parents have become accustomed to are only available if we have a one-to-one device it doesn't work on a classroom set with ten ten computers in class you will not get your parent report because that's going to be to your student unless we can find a way for them to individually log in which means that the students are logging in and out of their devices if they leave it locked down the next kid picks it up they are using the computer it gets complicated so so that

[04:43:25] is where I am I am perfectly okay with us having one-to-one devices I am perfectly okay with parents deciding particularly in elementary school if they want to leave them at school I've talked before about secondary and the problems that that would create trying to leave devices at home I will say that I would love us to work with light speed and figure out a way that we could actually set screen time so that as a parent if I bring my if I have my student bring their laptop home that they can't get on something like it basically just blocks the computer from accessing anything at a certain time I know I can do that through my own personal router but again parents would need to

[04:44:02] understand how to do that in order to make that happen I will also say that right now today I am okay with pre-k through k not having a one-to-one one device so I don't have any problem with setting that limit now because I think that that is a place what I will say is I do think as as a person my oldest son was in kindergarten when we were advocating having more access to technology because they had one laptop for the entire class and they occasionally would have stations that wandered through certain things and so I I just will say that I think that that's probably a point of consensus that we

[04:44:39] get to pretty immediately when we start getting into first and second grade I get worried about some of the things that we've already adopted like benchmark and the state testing which I think gives parents a huge amount of information about what's going on with their kiddos and so I and I also think that we need to advocate with the state if we're trying to take those things away before we set that up as a point of failure for the division thank you Dr.

[04:45:07] dr. Anderson thank you all of this one-on-one devices I fully can we go to two minutes sorry in this final round thank you yeah yeah one-on-one devices I don't believe are necessary before grade two that doesn't mean that they cannot use them you know I've worked in schools my entire career and state testing occurred and the kids didn't have one-on-one devices it was a set of devices that was used across the grade level and of course you you know if you

[04:45:43] have two classes per grade level one makes sense if you have five classes per grade level maybe it's two sets and if we have our best laid plans which is intentional use which is it's not a passive use just to keep kids occupied then I think we will also relieve the option the need for that high set of control with relay light speed because again the kids are going to be given the devices to use when it's important to use so it's not going to be the

[04:46:17] unfettered access that they have currently so I am still on the camp of doing something up to grade two it doesn't mean they're not using it at all it means they're going to use it when they absolutely need to use it the policies I don't think should be silent on some of these things that we've talked about it doesn't need to be prescriptive in terms of the exact numbers of screen time the exact numbers of many of these things that we've been talking about but just like the grading policy we set the expectation that these things will be outlined further elsewhere but it should not be completely silent because then that means we don't have we're not putting a

[04:46:54] stake in the ground I'd like to understand mr. Sethi each year you know as a parent I have a long laundry list of things that I need to check for my kids to use and I got quite a bit of pushback because I didn't check YouTube from some people. Would this not fall under that kind of long laundry list of things that we have to approve of every year? I believe you're talking about the parent digital consent system where you, yeah, so the parent digital consent system currently gives you a series of things that are optional to check on or off. Not everything may fall in that optional box. There may be some things

[04:47:32] as core which will be delivered. So I think things like Google Docs, right? Google Docs would be delivered to your student because that's part of the core capabilities so there may be tools that are delivered as core that won't be checked off the box of tools YouTube would be optional which you'll have to opt-in or opt-out of so there's gonna be a different sets of tools which would fit into different boxes which get into opt-in opt-out okay thank you and just my last quick sentence it is not clear to parents that the devices are not to be brought home I had a parent who sent me not only the language on our website but collected

[04:48:11] language from a number of different families what they receive from their students across a number of grade levels it's always the computer must be charged every night how does that happen if it's not being brought home every night so there's some work there to be done in terms of setting the staff expectation if bringing the devices home are optional as was discussed at the last board meeting and you just spoke to protect potentially an energy increase and that we would have to pay if we're charging them all in a building so well

[04:48:44] we all agree with limiting them mr. Frisch thank you two things I want to bring up one we're having I think two conversations around consent and disclosure one is around devices and one is around disclosure or opt-out of classes that have AI and upper grades fine with the conversation around consent or opting out of devices etc coming home I don't think you need both for the

[04:49:21] purposes of instruction if the board how if if the board and regulations are such that course descriptions will include that information that provides the information that families need to make that decision. Perhaps there's a way to roll into that system when a family has a ban that certain classes aren't displayed, but I worry about families not being able to at least see what the other offerings are that are available to them that may include AI as part of the instruction. And again, a defined purpose behind that use.

[04:50:00] I do want to ask a couple questions about device use K2, particularly since much of the conversation revolves around making sure that students are prepared for testing. What do we do currently to ensure that students who have devices in those years are prepared for testing?

[04:50:18] I mean, obviously, when we give a student a device, we're showing them how to operate the device appropriately, right? We don't do necessarily test preparation for how to use the device to take a test.

[04:50:37] We help them with the test interface that they're going to interface with, and there is troubleshooting as teachers circulate the room and help students that might be having difficulty. But I don't think, I'll just say it this way, I don't think there's a real need to teach students how to prepare for electronic tests per se.

[04:50:57] I think we can do that within the policy discussions with device limits that have already been discussed. I do think just having been near the end of the year listening middle school classes, in particular math, there are some tools, online calculators, online graphing tools that I actually, the kids were explaining to me how to use because it wasn't necessarily intuitive.

[04:51:23] So I think maybe it might depend on the content, but there seem to be some tools. You and I are saying the same thing. I was just maybe being too concise. So that's what I'm saying. As a student would take a test, we would show them how the test interface would need to work, and we would help them figure out how to access those tools and everything.

[04:51:41] I'm just saying as a general matter, I don't think there's a lot of instruction that has to happen. Right, because as a general matter, many people know their way around a computer. But that's where the equity consideration comes in, is what is a student where that's not central in their family, they don't see their parents using them, et cetera.

[04:51:58] So as ETRC has this conversation, perhaps as the board's policy evolves, I'd be interested to know, okay, under what setting or what are the circumstances that provide the adequate amount of preparation so that a student is not disadvantaged in the use of the device for the purposes of testing?

[04:52:21] Because the last thing I think any of us want is to have these policy changes or these changes in practice go forward and then to have one of the byproducts be lower test scores because we didn't do our due diligence, right? I'm 100% confident that for most kids, there's no explanation needed.

[04:52:42] But for the kids who we already work really hard to ensure they have all the tools they need to succeed, we need to make sure that how we proceed here is equally generous. Thank you. Mr. Dannon. Thanks.

[04:52:58] - Just real quick, for the prior item on AI in classrooms, I just wanna clarify, are we talking about for being okay with elective use only? So, or would there be a path where a kid would need to use AI in order to graduate? Does that make sense?

[04:53:15] I should say, does anybody disagree with the limitation being to elective courses and not items that are required for graduation? - Can you say it again? Like how would you see it in policy, perhaps? - So we talked about in the previous discussion about us being okay with AI being used, or generative AI, whatever the definition we're gonna give it, being used at the potentially middle school and high school level for certain courses flagged in the course catalog.

[04:53:46] Would those only be elective or optional courses? I'm just concerned. I don't want there to be a limit. If a parent does not want their child to be using generative AI at all throughout their career at FCPS, would they be forced to take a course at some point in order to graduate, because that was part of a required course, or we're talking about just elective courses?

[04:54:08] - So the question is, would a required course require AI use? - I'm saying, yeah, for future, yeah, just getting a board sense of that, okay. And again, I'm trying to look at the underlying interest here, back to the one-to-one device question. I'm trying to look at the underlying interest here, and not just the fixed positions.

[04:54:24] If I may, it sounds like the board's general sentiment is towards a reduction in screen time, correct? Is that fair? the regulation of screen time. Okay, good, 'cause we have a resolution on Thursday, we're voting on it. The states, and I've heard from majority folks here that support that, you know, so that said, I support whatever gets us to that, right?

[04:54:43] Whether it's a one-to-one restriction or something like that, and I agree with the early point that we need to put a stake in the ground to provide direction, but letting, you know, regulation adapt as technology adapts, right? So setting guardrails and so forth. You know, and my other concern is just if we take away certain tech, we need to really make sure that we are replacing it with something, right?

[04:55:02] So with the laptop or the cell phone policy, for example, are we making playgrounds, are we expanding access to playgrounds and things like that. So if kids aren't on their phones, they have something else that they can do. So again, I support this, and the last thing I'll say is I really think just our policy needs to reflect the term of, and I've heard it amongst the table a number of times, as being intentional, right?

[04:55:20] 'Cause I've heard a lot of teachers that were very passionate about using it in intentional ways and being very restrictive, and I think there's shared agreement that we want it to be intentional in the classrooms, just trying to get to that. And so again, I'm looking forward to the work of this group and the committee. - Thank you, Ms. Dixon.

[04:55:38] - I'm not gonna repeat everything my colleague just said, but I agree with K2-2. They don't need to take devices home. They can use it to learn. And again, a lot of kids just learning the right way to use the computer and how to use it, that's also digital literacy.

[04:55:56] And we could use that time when they're learning to test or also like how to open different tabs, how to kind of use the computer properly. And so they're not overwhelmed when they're in third grade or fourth grade when they're using it more. So the K to two can use device at school when needed, not at home.

[04:56:16] And I think, again, everything comes out to be intention behind it, right? So if you're using it for instruction, instruction only, and then taking the device away as soon as the instruction is over, that's what it should be, right? Like, when my kids were in a school, I mean, many, many years ago, in kindergarten or first grade, they didn't have devices at that time.

[04:56:38] They used pen and papers, and they were working, I think sixth grade was the first time when my son got a laptop to take home. And then I don't think those kids did a very good, got a good laptop also, or they got a Chromebook.

[04:56:54] And I'm going to say Mr. Sethi was so bad that they were not, he was like, I'm not going to use this computer. So we had a desktop at home, and that's what my son used in front of me while I'm watching what he's doing, and did his work, did his play his game for a limited time only.

[04:57:12] So I think it is, again, I believe in a partnership between parents and school system. We can definitely do something, some changes here, but I feel like a lot of these things can continue at home, and problem is this, we have to balance this somehow.

[04:57:29] So I want to bring the parents in the conversation more than, you know, more and more. So thank you. All right, I'm going to take a final go back. Just a couple thoughts. First of all, obviously, instructional purposes, intentional, quality, and for assessments.

[04:57:49] A good point was made. The immediate feedback on one's learning through a cahoot, it's a tool, but I get immediate feedback on whether you're following me or I need, without calling out kids, I can say, whoa, I really thought they grasped X constantly. I'm going to have to reteach that because in the cahoot, two-thirds of them didn't get it right.

[04:58:08] So there are so many ways in which tools give immediate feedback to teachers to pivot, to reteach, to better scaffold, to better teach. That's what we want, the best teachers in the land, in Fairfax County, utilizing whatever they have access to to make sure our kids are learning.

[04:58:23] When we talk about the course approval thing, I've got to speak as a DSS. First of all, few parents read a course description. They don't read them. We now have required insist that they go put a check mark in the courses your student has signed up for for next year. But there's no mechanism to click on that course and have the description drop down.

[04:58:44] So we're talking about a lot of things that sound great, but in practicality, I don't see them happening. We are probably going to, in several years, have an AI required course for graduation maybe in the state of Virginia. So obviously we'd have to deal with that.

[04:59:00] DE classes, college credit classes, there's AI being used there. So I would be much more comfortable with, you know, if a course, elective course, to Mr. Dan's point, uses AI, then don't pick it for your kid. Then us basically trying to differentiate in the classroom who can and who can't use it.

[04:59:21] It would be more along those lines. And again, I don't know what it looks like in core, right? If you're taking multivariable calculus, if you're taking, I don't know linear algebra. I don't, DNA one, DNA two, you know, these are classes that I guarantee are using some form of AI. So we don't want to limit learning.

[04:59:37] And so for that point, I just think we need to be careful. So this is a fantastic conversation. And I think that we, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Mayer to sort of summarize where we're headed. But again, I love the fact that we are all in agreement of guardrails and intentional use of technology for instructional purposes.

[04:59:56] Thank you. Well said. So just as myself, I'm going to be putting forth the next step, asking about really what is the specific data around what our pre-K-2 students are using. I've appreciated the information about ST Math and Lexia, but like, let's really understand how many times are they on a device for the VALs, the MAP, the WIDA, the NGAT, the NAGAT rather.

[05:00:20] So I think the more we can understand what's actual and not what we think is happening will help inform us. I just want to share. I had an interaction a few weeks back where I was at a party with families and, you know, much like me, and I saw a parent hand a baby in arms a phone and I visit, like I just took a breath, but I didn't say anything because it's not my place.

[05:00:44] but that is the future that's what we're in so I think it's really important to focus on where we're going and whatever happened like it's done and the best of us are trying to battle screens and it's hard so as chair hat I'll share the Miss lady and I discussed and we're proposing this is the next step we'd like to send it send both these policies to the superintendent into her care and take what we've offered here and start to fill it up with with that content and then have one of the first work sessions of the school year be

[05:01:23] including a presentation by the superintendent and her staff on these two policies which we will get in advance that we can come with questions so that's representing that right Miss lady is that accurate I think out of fairness to staff is that is that viable that perhaps by a work session in September you could take a lot of what was discussed here and have a perhaps a draft of each of these policies I think that I would have to I'm gonna have to rely on the notes that the clerks have been taking because I'm not sure that there was because there was no consensus conversation about like some of the

[05:02:03] specifics like the grade level or the type of restriction I think we can do drafts with maybe leaving that level of detail out at this point because I I'm not I don't want to mischaracterize what I think the majority of the board thought on some of those topics I've got copious notes happy to share also the clerk has sent us the next steps document for next time yeah and that is a good place that we can all this is one place where I definitely suggest that we should use this document and put our notes in and that way we will have a consensus so that the superintendent will know what the board's direction

[05:02:40] generally is without this isn't a vote but it does give consensus so that there there is an understanding of the direction you know madam chair I think there's an AI tool to get a transcript of this discussion so great work everyone this is really productive and we'll pick it up you know in the fall we can certainly talk together one-on-one and what so what not but with that this meeting is adjourned at 5:34 p.m.

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