Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, July 9, 2026

Date: Thursday, July 9, 2026
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 5h 1m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmtsQCBfnsM
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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[00:05:56] this july 9th 2026 regular meeting of the fairfax county school board will now come to order

[00:13:49] please stand for the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the national anthem by antonia simon a soloist from daniels run elementary school under the direction

[00:13:59] of michelle mccarton i pledge allegiance i would like to apologize that we had the wrong names so

[00:16:17] it's Claire Baker and Riley Rixos and it was under this still under the direction of Michelle McCartney so thank you so much and please can we give one more round of applause okay agenda item at 3.02 announcements I want to welcome our new student representative Newt Shostek Mr. Shostek is a rising

[00:16:55] senior at Hayfield Secondary School and is serving on the board as the student representative from July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2027. To learn more about him, please visit the school board member page on the FCPS website. If you would like to receive a copy of the meeting agenda, please see the back of the auditorium.

[00:17:13] To obtain copies of any items or supporting materials being presented tonight, please reference the QR code on the agenda or visit www.fcps.edu/boarddocs. meeting is being broadcast on hawks channel 99 verizon fios channel 11 and live streamed on youtube and at our website at www.fcps.edu slash live stream agenda item 3.03 proclamation honoring the 2026 fcps outstanding employees i call on mr dunn for a proclamation whereas the outstanding elementary new teacher award recognizing an elementary teacher who is within their first

[00:17:52] three years of teaching and demonstrates outstanding performance and superior instructional skills was awarded to Clark Levine sixth grade teacher Haycock Elementary School and whereas the outstanding secondary new teacher award recognizing a secondary teacher who is within their first three years of teaching and demonstrates outstanding performance and superior instructional skills was awarded to Charlotte Smith history and social studies teacher Whitman Middle School and whereas the outstanding new principal award recognizing a distinguished educator an extraordinary leader who is within their

[00:18:31] first three years as principal was awarded to Lindsey Kearns Lake Braddock Secondary School and whereas the outstanding school-based operational employee award recognizing a school-based operational employee who has made unique and exceptional contributions to FCPS was awarded to Kimberly Roman, instructional assistant, Spring Hill Elementary School. And whereas the outstanding non-school-based operational employee award, recognizing a non-school-based operational employee who has made unique and exceptional contributions to FCPS, was awarded to Kevin

[00:19:07] Brown, warehouse distribution supervisor, Woodson Food Services Warehouse, chief operating office. And whereas the outstanding school-based professional employee award recognizing an operational and or non-instructional school-based employee who serves in a curriculum support or student support capacity and has made unique and exceptional contributions to FCPS was awarded to Corey Lonnet, school counselor, Bonnie Bray Elementary School. And whereas the outstanding non-school-based professional employee award, recognizing a non-school-based operational

[00:19:45] employee who demonstrates commitment, fosters cooperative relationships, and has made unique and exceptional contributions to FCPS, was awarded to Purvis Dawson, Emergency Management Planning Specialist, Chief Safety and Security Office. And whereas, the outstanding school-based leader award, recognizing a school-based leader who demonstrates outstanding leadership and strengthens the learning environment through their work, was awarded to Tricia Wayland, Assistant Principal, Bailey's Upper Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences.

[00:20:18] And whereas the Outstanding Non-School-Based Leader Award, recognizing a non-school-based leader who demonstrates outstanding leadership and strengthens the learning environment through their work, was awarded to Melissa D'Angelo, Director III, Food and Nutrition Services, Chief Operating Office.

[00:20:36] And whereas, the Outstanding Elementary Teacher Award, recognizing an elementary teacher who demonstrates dedication, commitment, and the ability to propel students to high levels of success, was awarded to Amanda Blevins, mathematics teacher, Mosaic Elementary School.

[00:20:52] And whereas, the Outstanding Secondary Teacher Award, recognizing a secondary teacher who demonstrates dedication, commitment, and the ability to propel students to high levels of success was awarded to Scott McCormick, Orchestra Director, Langley High School. And whereas the Outstanding Principal Award, recognizing an innovative and highly effective administrator whose vision inspires and guides staff, students, and the community to help lead their school to excellence, was awarded to Rashida Green, Bucknell Elementary School.

[00:21:24] Now therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board congratulates and extends its highest commendation to winners of the 2026 Outstanding Employee Awards as exceptional employees who create and demonstrate the best instructional and support practices. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Moon. I will call for a vote. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Mr.

[00:21:46] McDaniel, Ms. Marin, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dannon, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself, that is unanimous for all board members. Agenda Item 3.04, a proclamation honoring the school year 25-26 Fairfax County School Board Community Advisory Committees. I call on Mr. Frisch for a proclamation. Thank you. Whereas the Fairfax County School Board Community Advisory Committee members voluntarily serve the board and contribute to decision-making by providing thoughtful recommendations, informed guidance, and timely

[00:22:24] analysis on topics of critical importance to upholding student and staff success and well-being, And whereas the Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities recommends strengthening engagement, reducing barriers, and promoting continuous improvement by ensuring that FCPS uses relevant data to meaningfully inform program decisions, highlight patterns affecting students with disabilities, and support families in understanding their rights and options as they access information and participate in key educational decisions.

[00:22:53] And whereas the Minority Student Achievement Oversight Committee recommends implementing a standardized division-wide multilingual communication framework that ensures consistent accessible and equitable dissemination of information to all students and families on issues spanning advanced academic opportunities and pathways to career and technical education.

[00:23:14] The School Health Advisory Committee recommends a number of scheduling, tracking, and communications measures for FCPS to more effectively support healthy student sleep hygiene and to promote and support student mental health and well-being as well as the establishment of a technology advisory committee and whereas the career and technical education advisory committee recommends increasing student and family awareness of business and community partnerships expanding apprenticeship opportunities and increasing efforts to promote CTE pathways through consistent high impact messaging the adult and community education advisory committee

[00:23:51] demonstrates the uh demonstrated the specific monetary value that fcps adult education and workforce programs generate for the local economy and how those programs improve employment excuse me employability earnings potential and workforce attachment reducing inequality and strengthening families and neighborhoods particularly among disadvantaged populations and whereas the advanced academic programs advisory committee recommends strengthening collaboration among full-time aap teachers and schools conducting a robust evaluation of full-time aap investing in building

[00:24:26] teacher capacity for working and advanced learners improving communication and collecting more reliable data on the fidelity of implementation of student outcomes the title one parent advisory committee recommends that fcps should prioritize safe and inclusive learning environments that celebrate diversity and invest in essential supports for student readiness, meaningfully engage families and communities in supporting student achievement at Title I schools, and increase transparency, communication, and accountability for Title I funding, allocation to ensure families understand how Title I funding supports student achievement.

[00:25:03] Now therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board extends its deepest appreciation to the Fairfax County School Board Community Advisory Committees for their outstanding service and dedication to fairfax county school board and our students staff families and community members is there a second a second thank you miss marin i will call for a vote all those in favor mr frisch mr mcdaniel miss marin miss st john cunning miss lady miss dixit mr dannon mr dunn mr moon dr anderson and myself that is unanimous for all board members i would like to welcome all those

[00:25:40] that are here in support of the proclamation honoring the school year 25 26 the fairfax County School Board Community Advisory Committees to please join the board for a photo in front of

[00:25:51] the dais. I would like to welcome all those here in support of the proclamation honoring the 2026

[00:27:18] FCPS outstanding employees to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:28:52] Okay, agenda item 3.05, annual school board organizational arrangements including election

[00:30:28] of school board chair and vice chair. As the outgoing chair, I'm going to take just a quick moment to provide a few brief remarks. Good evening, colleagues, families, and community members. As I reflect on our shared journey over the last year, I'm deeply grateful for my time as the chair of our board. I find myself in a very reflective moment as my chair term comes to an end, and I have some important people that I would like to thank for their support this year. I want to start by extending my most sincere thanks and appreciation to Superintendent Reed and our entire division leadership team. Their unwavering dedication, hard work, and partnership are the true engine

[00:31:05] behind our progress, especially as we navigated a deeply challenging fiscal environment this past year. We are incredibly fortunate to have their steady hands guiding our schools. I want to thank Robin Lady, my vice chair throughout this year, and Carl Frisch, who was the chair while I was the vice chair last year. Leadership of a flat board is quite an endeavor, and I appreciated every second of talking things through to get to the best decision that we possibly could at the moment that we were in. I also want to thank our clerks and the school board office staff for their invaluable assistance in keeping us moving smoothly every single day in the big visible

[00:31:42] ways that everyone sees and the thousands of tiny ways that you work so hard to make us all feel seen and valued. And I also need to thank my own staff. Stephanie and Andrea both worked tirelessly to support me and really the whole board overall and I am so appreciative of them both. I would also like to take the time to thank my colleagues for their dedication this year and for finding it amusing instead of annoying that I constantly mix up your names so often. This past year we have been able to deliver incredible results for our students, staff, and families and I thought it was worth

[00:32:17] taking the time to recount just a few of our milestones. We followed through with what we started and adopted the very first comprehensive boundary review the division has completed since the school board became an elected board in this county. While we did not solve all of our boundary or capacity issues, it was a crucial first step. We set the path forward for our new high school, Skyview, including its name. We ratified the first collective bargaining agreement for the Fairfax County Federation of Principals, Supervisors, and Administrators. We passed a budget that squeezed every penny available to ensure that we could

[00:32:54] both honor our agreements and still maintain and expand opportunities for our students. We moved important governance work forward to update some of the board's policies and to provide an essential start towards those new policies that we so desperately need. We started the process towards expanding advanced academic programming to our expanding advanced academic programming to all middle schools and started with the Inundale pyramid.

[00:33:20] We welcomed a new colleague and we said best wishes to another. And we remain steadfast in our dedication to maintain supports for all of our students, regardless of their strengths, where they're from, or who they love.

[00:33:45] We have achieved all of this while staying true to our commitment of excellence, equity, and opportunity. And we should be proud of our work together, no matter how many times you practice it.

[00:34:05] Now it's no secret that when you get this many passionate people working together that there are bound to be some disagreements to the nuances of how we do the work. But I am grateful to have been able to work with all of you to head in the same direction on the things that mattered the most.

[00:34:22] And I remain committed to working through the rest of it as collaboratively as possible. So thank you in advance for your continued partnership as we meet the challenges ahead, and I stand ready to support our new chair and vice chair in any way that I can.

[00:34:43] The next order of business is agenda item 3.05, the annual organizational motion. Section 22.1-76 of the Code of Virginia specifies that at the annual organizational meeting, a school board shall elect one of its members to serve as chair and may elect one of its members to serve as vice chair, both for a one-year term, and shall approve other appointments and designations of responsibility for board operations during the year.

[00:35:15] I will now ask Dr. Reed to conduct the selection process for school board chair for the next year. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. At this time, I will open the floor to nominations for chair of the Fairfax County School Board. I nominate Robin Lady for chair of the board.

[00:35:32] Is there a second? I second. Robin Lady has been nominated as chair. Are there any other nominations? I nominate Dr. Ricardo Anderson as chair of the school board. Is there a second? I nominate Dr. Anderson.

[00:35:50] Robin Ladey and Dr. Riccardi Anderson have been nominated for chair. Are there any other nominations? Hearing no other nominations, the motion before the board is to elect Robin Ladey or Dr. Riccardi Anderson as chair of the Fairfax County School Board.

[00:36:09] I'll call first on those members who nominated Ms. Ladey and then those who nominated Dr. Anderson for comments. Mr. Frisch, would you like to speak to your nomination of Ms. Ladey? Yes, thank you, Superintendent Reed. It is my honor to nominate my friend and colleague, Robin Lady, to serve as chair of the Fairfax County School Board. I first met Robin a dozen years ago when she was director of student services, you may not know this, when she was director of student services at Chantilly High School.

[00:36:38] If you told either of us then that we'd one day serve together on this school board, let alone that I'd have the privilege of nominating her to be its chair, I don't think either of us would have believed you. What struck me about Robin then is exactly what continues to define her today she approaches every challenge with optimism she listens with an open mind she treats people with fairness and respect even when they disagree and she never loses sight of why we're here to serve students families and staff those qualities made her an exceptional educator they made me incredibly excited when she decided to run for school board

[00:37:14] and they're exactly why i'm excited that we have an opportunity to elect her as chair this evening they are complimented by her more than 30 years of experience serving fairfax county students families and educators few people bring the depth of institutional knowledge that robin does to this work and that perspective has made the board stronger and our conversations better informed and they are precisely why i'm even more excited uh that we are here this evening having recently completed one and a half terms as the board's chair in july i can tell you that leading this body requires more than knowledge of educational policy it requires patience integrity humility

[00:37:50] and the ability to bring people together around a shared responsibility to our students. Robin has consistently demonstrated those qualities through her leadership, her professionalism, and her unwavering commitment to doing what is best for our schools. I know she will lead this board with thoughtfulness, fairness, and compassion, and I look forward to supporting her during the year ahead.

[00:38:09] It is my privilege to place Robin Levy's name into nomination for chair of the Fairfax County School Board. Ms. St. John Cunning, would you like to speak to your second? Yes. When Robin and I first came onto this board, we quickly learned that both of us shared similar experiences as longtime FCPS employees, which is a bingo thing for everybody, but it says that we will always say that.

[00:38:33] We complemented each other with her experience primarily in high schools and mine in elementary schools. Our respective previous positions, hers as a counselor and mine as a family liaison, have given both of us a unique perspective that goes beyond the classroom. We know what happens in our division from the ground up.

[00:38:50] It is because of this understanding and experience that it is an honor for me to nominate Robin for vice chair, that it was an honor for me to nominate Robin last year for vice chair, and tonight it is both a pleasure and a privilege to second Robin Lady to serve as chair of our school board.

[00:39:07] Leadership is about more than presiding over meetings or guiding discussions. It is about bringing people together around a shared purpose, listening with respect, leading with integrity, and never losing sight of why we were here, to serve our students, staff, and our community.

[00:39:26] Robin embodies those qualities. Throughout her service, Robin has demonstrated a thoughtful, steady approach to leadership. She asks important questions, welcomes different perspectives, and works tirelessly to build consensus while keeping the needs of students at the center of every decision.

[00:39:44] She understands that our greatest responsibility is to create opportunities for every child to learn, grow, and thrive. Robin leads with humility, compassion, and a genuine commitment to public education. She has earned the confidence of her colleagues through her preparation, professionalism, and willingness to work collaboratively, even when the issues before us are challenging.

[00:40:08] She reminds us that our strongest decisions come from listening to one another, respecting one another, and remaining focused on the greater good. As we look ahead, I can think of no one better prepared to guide this board with wisdom, fairness, and a spirit of collaboration. I am confident that Robin will continue to foster trust, strengthen partnerships with our families and educators and help ensure that every decision reflects our shared commitment to excellence and opportunity for all students. It is with great respect and wholehearted confidence that I second Rob and Lady to serve as chair of the school board. I ask my fellow board members

[00:40:43] to join me in supporting her nomination. Mr. Moon, would you like to speak to your nomination of Dr. Anderson? Thank you, Dr. Reed. Probably to no surprises to my colleagues, participating in leadership election is something i have done more than 20 times it's probably one of those most joyous you know event that school board members can engage in especially on the night like this we are thanking a departing air leadership formal chair soon to be a formal chair

[00:41:17] amos anderson and soon to be a former white chair robin lady for their service for the past year and also welcoming your leadership and especially when you have more than one person wanting to step up to the hard work it's a time to celebrate and and because we all know that serving as a chair or vice chair requires not only just a lot of commitments but a lot of times of thick skin because you'll be taking a lot of criticisms and many times a lot of times very

[00:41:50] unfair criticisms and and and i want to thank you know both you know miss lady and dr enders for wanting to step up and to do the work, do the hard work. With that said, it is my honor to nominate Dr. Riccardi Anderson to serve as a chair of the Fairfax County School Board.

[00:42:09] Dr. Anderson brings decades of experience as a teacher, school principal, central office administrator, and community leader. That breadth of experience provides her with a deep understanding of how the decisions we make as a board affect students, staff, and families throughout our school division. Her experience in the classroom and as a school leader gives her valuable insight into both the opportunities and challenges facing Fairfax County public schools.

[00:42:43] Dr. Anderson previously served as a chair during the 2020-2021 term, demonstrating steady, thoughtful leadership during a particularly challenging period of our school system.

[00:42:58] Throughout her service, she has been diligent, prepared, and committed to ensuring that every student has the opportunity to succeed. She believes our school system must work for all students and that commitment has consistently guided her leadership.

[00:43:18] As a board member, Dr. Anderson takes her role as the community's representative very seriously. She understands that one of the board's most important responsibilities is to provide effective oversight of the superintendent's work while ensuring transparency and accountability in the work of this board.

[00:43:41] She does not hesitate in asking tough questions and demanding accountability. She is one of those board members who believes that demand for accountability should be shown not just in private, but in public. She believes in true transparency.

[00:44:00] Those principles are essential to maintaining the public's trust. She believes in distributed leadership. She understands that the strongest decisions come through collaboration, not isolation, not just working with the board's majority, but also hearing the inputs from those not in the majority on any issue.

[00:44:23] When bringing forward initiatives, she reaches out to fellow school board members, and seeks diverse perspectives, works to build consensus. She has demonstrated the ability to work with all people, communicate respectfully across different viewpoints, and bring colleagues together for the collective good of our students and our community.

[00:44:48] At a time when our school division continues to face significant challenges and important decisions, I believe we need a chair who combines experience with collaboration, thoughtful governance, and a commitment to transparency and accountability.

[00:45:06] Dr. Anderson has demonstrated those qualities throughout her career and her service on this board. For these reasons, I am proud to nominate Dr. Ricaldi Anderson to serve as chair of the Fairfax County School Board. Ms. Marin, would you like to speak to your second?

[00:45:26] Yes, so the role of chair and vice chair is about facilitating the work of the board across 12 individuals and then with the superintendent. It's wrangling a lot of people's attention, communicating information, collecting feedback, and being fair and weighing input from all board members so we can be a flat board.

[00:45:43] It's helping ultimately to unite individuals in the work of sustaining public education with leadership that shines as an example to hundreds of thousands of children and adults in Fairfax County, Virginia, and America. This is a huge responsibility, and I seek leadership that has shown me they are able to do this if elected as our leaders for the next year.

[00:46:03] I've been observing what they are reliable for. Dr. Anderson is reliable for leading with her values. I know what to expect from her. Dr. Anderson is reliable for offering solutions and seeking compromise and collaboration. Dr. Anderson is reliable for being an experienced manager.

[00:46:20] As a former school principal, I see how her professionalism and knowledge infused the human resources work needed to oversee the employees working in our school board office. Dr. Anderson is relying for being the example of accountability. She does what she says what she's going to do, and that reliability takes a burden off of me.

[00:46:38] I can rely on her to follow through, and I trust her word. Dr. Anderson is reliable for reaching out to communicate. She approaches others with respect, no matter what their personal relationship is. She is open to working with anyone in the effort to do what's best for students and this school division, a true diplomat.

[00:46:55] Dr. Anderson is reliable for knowing the role of a board leader and the work to be done, and also how it could improve, offering these options for collaboration. When previously chair on the last board we served on together, she consistently sought to garner input from all members and then shared the summary of that input with us all, very transparent and fair.

[00:47:14] I'm aware that Dr. Anderson would like to help us prioritize our work and dig into work that we must do, including policy work and work about educational technology. She is a planner and her board member input and interests focus on methodical action to achieve progress in board work.

[00:47:31] I choose Dr. Anderson. Ms. Anderson, can you please let me know which school board members have indicated that they would like to speak? Mr. Dannon. Mr. Dannon. Thank you very much.

[00:47:52] First, I want to thank Chair Anderson for her service. And I also want to share Mr. Moon's sentiment that it says a lot about the fact that we have multiple colleagues willing to step up. A friend of mine often reminds me that credit belongs to the person willing to step up and serve in the arena.

[00:48:08] And so I commend my colleagues for doing so. And now, after a few months, I've seen up close how difficult it can be to serve as chair, which is why I'm even more shocked that Mr. Frisch was able to do it for two years. I had the benefit, perhaps, before being elected, of watching everybody up here.

[00:48:29] And during that time, this lady really stood out to me. For one, for her passion for this work and for doing it right. And there's really something to be said for that. And in that, she brings her vast experience to bear for us, right?

[00:48:47] And I've seen, now that I've served alongside her for several months, I can say that the same values and the same person you see up here is the exact same person you see working behind the scenes. She's exceptionally collaborative. She's constantly trying to get inputs from a range of perspectives.

[00:49:04] Even the other day, we had questions about something that she had written, and as I called her, she's like, I'm already working on it to gather more input and feedback and make things better. She's also very direct, but honest at the same time, and very kind.

[00:49:20] And it's sometimes tough to hold those two together, but she does that very well. And so she's done an excellent job showcasing these attributes as vice chair, and I'm confident that these qualities will serve her well as chair, and I'm excited to support her. Mr. Dunn.

[00:49:37] Thank you. I'm proud to speak enthusiastically in support of my colleague, Dr. Riccardi Anderson, to serve as chair of the Fairfax County School Board. Leadership in a division as large and complex as ours requires more than just good intentions.

[00:49:53] It demands proven experience, unwavering integrity, and a steady hand. Dr. Anderson brings all three in abundance. Having previously served as both chair and vice chair of this board, she understands the immense responsibility of this role. She understands how to navigate complex challenges, facilitate rigorous discussion, and build consensus among 12 distinct voices representing diverse communities across our county.

[00:50:18] As the Mount Vernon District Representative, I place a high value on leadership that listens to families, supports our educators, and remains steadfastly focused on student achievement and well-being. Throughout her tenure representing the Mason District, Dr. Anderson has demonstrated a deep commitment to educational equity, transparency, and fiscal responsibility.

[00:50:38] She brings a disciplined, professional approach to governance and consistently centers the needs of our students in every policy debate. At a time when our division faces critical decisions around our infrastructure, student engagement, and educational outcomes, Dr. Anderson's experience and collaborative vision are exactly what this board needs to lead FCPS forward effectively.

[00:50:59] I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting Dr. Riccardi Anderson as our next chair. Ms. Dixon. First, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to my colleague, Ms. Anderson, for her exceptional leadership and dedicated service over the past year.

[00:51:17] Serving as chair that requires countless hours of hard work, thoughtful decision-making, and a steadfast commitment to our community. Ms. Anderson has carried out those responsibilities with integrity and grace and compassion.

[00:51:33] And I was very happy to be your neighbor. And also, I'm pleased to support Ms. Lady for the chair of the school board, even though I know how difficult it is to work with 12 elected members, but you are stepping up to this occasion.

[00:51:50] After being a vice chair for one year, I wanted to say Robin brings a lifetime of dedication to public education. With 27 years of distinguished service in Fairfax County Public School, I will never forget these words in my life, as both as a school counselor and director of student services.

[00:52:09] Her extensive experience working directly with the student families and staff, combined with her recognition as a respected leader in school counseling and college admission has given her a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing our schools. Since joining the school board, she has demonstrated a thoughtful, collaborative, and student-centered approach, always taking the time to listen, build consensus, and making informed decisions. I'm confident with her experience, integrity, and commitment to serving our students, staff and community makes her an outstanding choice to lead our board as a chair.

[00:52:46] Thank you. Dr. E, there are no other speakers. Excuse me. Dr. Anderson, Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I do want to take a moment to say a few words.

[00:53:04] Firstly, I want to say thank you to Mr. Moon and to Miss Marin for the nomination for my candidacy for chair of the school board. And I want to also thank you for your remarks. I've served with Ms. Marin for a very long time, so she's had a lot to draw from.

[00:53:22] And so I appreciate you pulling back some of those activities that occurred so long ago. I'm very grateful. I'm grateful for your thoughts. I'm grateful for your comments. It is an honor to have even a small bit of evidence that the spirit of my beliefs and the intent of my actions are received in the manner with which I intended, which is very often hard, but we all strive for that. Each person on this board sought this office because

[00:53:56] we saw a need to make things better in some way. Whether it had been to highlight the needs of a marginalized group or to advance mental health access or increase healthy habits such as better nutrition, outdoor classrooms. We each saw an opportunity to make a positive impact and improve the positions of the students, of the staff, and parents of the Fairfax County community.

[00:54:29] It is in that spirit that I accept the nomination. I want to find a way to make a positive impact on the governance of this school board. At goes the board, so goes the division. I am seeking to support board governance in a manner that uplifts all voices, to allow all to feel heard and valued.

[00:54:57] I envision a board in which members coalesce around issues and use dissenting perspectives to create a better solution. As they say, iron sharpens iron. I hope to contribute to the board in which leadership is distributed among all members.

[00:55:23] Each of us, every single one of us, has areas of expertise that should be maximized, perspectives that will benefit the system. Lastly, I want to support a board which holds dear its responsibilities to not only lift the concerns of the constituents who elected us to be their representatives, but to seek accountability from the school system and fulfill our duty to provide oversight.

[00:55:54] Let's be clear, no organization is perfect. No board is perfect. However, I do believe we are in a target-rich environment, and I would appreciate the opportunity to be part of the team to help make the change I seek. Again, thank you, Mr. Moon, and thank you, Ms. Marin.

[00:56:15] Dr. Reed, I believe we're now done. If there are no other comments, then we'll proceed with the vote. There are two nominations for chair of the school board, Ms. Robin Lady and Dr. Riccardi Anderson. The candidate who receives a majority of votes from those board members present and voting will be declared chair, and I will call for the votes in order of their nomination.

[00:56:41] Please note, in accordance with Robert's Rules of Order, Rule 46.38, as soon as one of the nominees receives a majority vote that person will be declared elected and no votes will be taken on the remaining nominees for that office. All those in favor of the motion to elect Robin Lady as chair of the Fairfax County School Board signify by raising your hand and saying aye. That would be Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Anderson,

[00:57:20] Ms. Dixit, and Mr. Dannon. Those opposed, that would be Ms. Marin, Mr. Dunn, and Dr. Anderson.

[00:57:36] Those abstaining, that would be Mr. Moon. Will the clerk please announce the vote? 7-3-1. Ms. Leidy has a majority. At this time, I am pleased to introduce the chair of the Fairfax County School Board, Ms. Robin Leidy.

[00:57:59] Thank you. Thank you, colleagues, for this honor and for the opportunity to serve as chair of the Fairfax County School Board. I take this responsibility very seriously, and I'm deeply humbled by the trust you've placed in me. First, I want to extend my deepest gratitude to Ms. Anderson. Thank you for your leadership as chair over the past year, and thank you for your mentorship.

[00:58:18] I've learned so much from your structured and organizational approach to this role. Most of all, while we have not always agreed, I'm grateful for our passionate conversations about the vital work of this board, conversations that have consistently pushed us both to be better leaders. As I step into this role, my core philosophy remains unchanged. My roles in FCPS, alongside my prior leadership on various boards and associations, taught me that leadership is not about title.

[00:58:45] It's about stewardship, strategy, and deep listening. In every decision we face, I will continue to ground myself in three fundamental questions. How will this impact our students? How will this impact our faculty and staff? And how will this impact our families? These questions are my compass, but I cannot navigate the challenges ahead alone. I genuinely celebrate the collective gifts and unique perspectives that every single member of this board brings to this table. To the entire board and to our community, I want you to know that I see this role as a bridge builder. I am fully committed to working with each of you, listening

[00:59:21] to your priorities, and finding common ground to move us forward together. We are serving at a time in our history when public education is being scrutinized like never before. Our shared mandate is to ensure that Fairfax County Public Schools are so robust, so inclusive, and so successful that families choose us. Strong schools build strong communities, and our local businesses explicitly cite FCPS as a primary economic draw. We have proven we can do hard things, updating our boundary, grading, and calendar policies, and implementing boundary changes for the upcoming year. This fall, I look forward to our governance committees

[01:00:00] continuing this vital work by finishing our innovation in instructional technology and educational technology policies. The work ahead of us demands excellent communication, a commitment to unity, and a great deal of humility. I promise to serve this board and Fairfax County Public Schools with absolute dedication and integrity.

[01:00:19] But as I said last year, I'm human. I ask for your grace when I inevitably make a mistake, and I promise to extend that exact same grace to each of you. Whether we agree or disagree tonight, your voice matters, and I am fully committed to working with you.

[01:00:36] Thank you, colleagues. Let's look forward to an exceptional year of serving our students together. Thank you.

[01:00:53] Let's get to work. At this time, I will open the floor to nominations for vice chair of the Fairfax County School Board. I'm pleased to nominate Mr. McDaniel for vice chair for the school board.

[01:01:15] Mr. McDaniel? Is there a second? Second. Kyle McDaniel has been nominated for vice chair. Are there any other nominations? I nominate Mateo Dunn as vice chair of the school board.

[01:01:33] Is there a second? I second the nomination. Mateo Dunn has been nominated for vice chair. Are there other nominations? Kyle McDaniel, Matteo Dunn have been nominated for vice chair. Are there any other nominations?

[01:01:49] Hearing no other nominations, the motion before the board is to elect Kyle McDaniel or Matteo Dunn as vice chair of the Ferris County School Board. I'll call first on those members who nominated Mr. McDaniel and then those who nominated Mr. Dunn for comments. Ms. Dixit, would you like to speak to your nomination of Mr. McDaniel?

[01:02:06] Yes, I will. And sorry to start speaking before. I'm pleased to support Mr. McDaniel for vice chair of the school board. Mr. McDaniel brings a strong background in public service, leadership and innovation along with a deep commitment to Fairfax County and its students.

[01:02:23] His experience in local government, business leadership and workforce development provides a valuable perspective as we continue addressing the opportunities and challenges facing our school system. Since joining the board, he has demonstrated a collective approach, collaborative approach, a willingness to listen to diverse viewpoints, and a steadfast focus on improving outcome for students, supporting our educators, and strengthening our school.

[01:02:51] I'm confident his leadership, dedication, and commitment to work collaboratively and with his colleagues will serve the board and our community well in the role of vice chair. And last but not least, he would be a vice chair who are not going to talk a lot on the bodayas.

[01:03:08] And I'll appreciate that. Thank you. Mr. Dannon, would you like to speak to your second? Yes, and again, I want to recognize the individuals who are willing to step up and serve in this role. I extend my respect to those and share gratitude that you're willing to step up because I know that it's not easy putting yourself out there.

[01:03:27] And I say that as somebody who, for the first time, ran for office a few months ago, and it is difficult putting your name out there, but I know you do it because you want to serve our community and make things better, and I appreciate that from my colleagues. You know, I've served on my first board when I was 18 years old, and I recognized right away that it takes a leadership team that can work collaboratively and bring folks together and also complement each other.

[01:03:51] And over the last few months, I've had the chance to work with Mr. McDaniel, and I found him to be somebody, a fellow policy wonk, who is incredibly knowledgeable about a range of topics that I frankly didn't even know we would be discussing. And I think he shares Miss Lady's passion for getting things right and doing this work with fidelity.

[01:04:09] I especially appreciate that Mr. McDonough has been able to help us reframe things and offer pragmatic compromises on a lot of issues. And, again, things that hadn't even occurred to me. You know, a discussion last week, I think, on the Centerville High School was a great example of that, right? He picked up on an issue that a lot of folks maybe hadn't even been paying attention to, worked through the nuances of it, and then worked for months to get it solved and get it done right and make progress towards that.

[01:04:35] So on top of that, you know, he brings to bear years of experience working with the Fairfax County government that I think we can really benefit from. I think one of the reasons I wanted to serve in this role was to help collaborate with the County Board of Supervisors, and I think he's really well positioned to help us do that. And at the same time, he's humble and he recognizes his limits, especially when it comes to education.

[01:04:55] And I think, again, it's where, you know, he can do a great job complimenting our newly elected chair. But almost on every issue I've talked to him about, you know, he's asked, you know, where he's brought the perspective of educators and folks who have to implement this work and making sure that it's done with fidelity. And so I recognize that, and again, I really appreciate it.

[01:05:12] And not for nothing, I've had the chance to see him as a father and as a husband. And our girls have even had a few playdates. And I've seen him as an exceptionally kind parent and a partner, and I think he'll bring all these qualities as vice chair, and I'm happy to support him.

[01:05:28] Ms. Mayer, would you like to speak to your nomination of Mr. Dunn? As I said earlier, the role of vice chair is to help facilitate the work of the board. It is an active role, a shared partnership of the chair and vice chair, so they can lead together and divvy up the work and the effort of engaging 10 other members, who each deserve access to information provided by the superintendent in meetings with the chair and vice chair.

[01:05:55] Mateo Dunn brings energy and creativity to his work as a school board member, and these attributes are benefits for a board leader. He challenges processes that often should rightly be challenged and improved. He values his and others' time and wants our meetings to be productive, held at times when members themselves and the public can participate.

[01:06:15] Being a part-time board with many members working full-time jobs, having his voice advocating for flexible meeting times that still honor public transparency is an important voice to have at the helm. Mr. Dunn is reliable for seeking support. I've seen his strategies for this only grow since his time on the board.

[01:06:33] he is eager to collaborate and also to find compromise he picks up the phone asks to schedule times to meet so discussions can happen this is a valuable strength to bring as vice chair mr dunn pays attention to details and this helps when planning out the work an essential skill for the board's work as we set our agenda and move through the year making adjustments when needed i choose mr dunn dr anderson would you like to speak to your second yes i would thank you i am quite pleased to be able to second Mr. Dunn for the position of Vice Chair. In a very short time,

[01:07:08] it was made very apparent that Mr. Dunn is a doer. He works with others for the true benefit of the system and not for personal gain. His leadership has been apparent in many initiatives, even such as laying the groundwork for the purchase of the King Abdullah Academy. I still recall the Saturday that he called me asking to be connected with anyone who knew about that site because he read it in the paper. And that really led to some wonderful opportunities for FCPS. Again, had

[01:07:44] nothing to do with the Mount Vernon district, but it was for the benefit of the system. And that is a moment that I will never forget because of how fast that entire initiative came to be. We'll also hear a bit more later on about his vision because he does share that in many ways. Having calendar meetings, having over 30 boundary meetings with his community. He wants to listen. He wants to be a representative for the community of Fairfax. Mr. Dunn is professional. Mr. Dunn is trustworthy.

[01:08:24] Mr. Dunn is committed to the students, parents, and staff of the FCPS community. He values being productive for the community above all. Mr. Dunn is able to work with every single person on this board and he seeks viewpoints to create consensus and to better his solution. He has said to me no fewer than about three times that his greatest value is being productive on this board and I do believe that belief will bring him to a space where he's able to support serving and creating

[01:09:03] consensus and ensuring that all voices are heard on this board. Thank you for stepping out and putting your name into the ring. Thank you. Mr. Moon. Thank you, Madam Chair. Without repeating what has been already said in support of Mr. Dunn, Mr. Dunn is one of those board members who does do his own work. He works hard. He researches issues. He wouldn't bring up anything to the board

[01:09:40] without having done his due diligence. He's analytical. He is bold. He doesn't afraid of asking questions, deep questions, thoughtful questions.

[01:09:57] But as a someone who had, in the past, served as a chair for three times, as a vice chair for three times, I know, I know what kind of a person would be the best help to a chair in the chairman's meeting and working as a team, as a chair and vice chair.

[01:10:22] Someone who is and who can provide countervailing viewpoints. That's what we have in Mr. Dunn. Between two excellent candidates, nominees today, Mr. Dunn is a better match to Madam Chair for the school system and for this board.

[01:10:51] Thank you. Mr. Frisch. Thank you. I'll be supporting Mr. McDaniel. I think he brings a remarkable combination of thoughtfulness, professionalism, and a genuine commitment to collaboration. And I've enjoyed serving with him over the past year on the Fairfax County Planning Commission.

[01:11:11] So I can say he approaches every issue with curiosity and asks tough questions without losing sight of the people affected by our decisions. And he's consistently demonstrated a willingness to listen, to build consensus, and to do hard work, and to continually improve.

[01:11:31] I also want to say a few words about our outgoing chair, Ms. Anderson, who was vice chair when I was chair. And I'm going to divulge a private conversation we had. We talked a little bit about how strange it is when you're wrapping up your time as chair, And it becomes kind of like an out of body experience to see the work of the board moving forward, knowing that you've done everything you can as chair, whatever you didn't get finished, you're going to cross your fingers and hope the next person picks up and prioritizes.

[01:12:02] But I want to say from the heart that I enjoyed working with you, not only as my vice chair, but having you as chair. And I look forward to you rejoining the lower 10, as it were.

[01:12:18] But I will not be giving up this seat next to Dr. Reed, so thank you. Dr. Anderson, I know that you bring passion and determination to everything you touch on this board. We have not always agreed, but that has not stopped us from routinely working together on difficult things, particularly when it comes to our shared schools like Falls Church High School and here at Luther Jackson, or on the trust policy to protect our immigrant students.

[01:12:49] I know that our collaboration will continue and that you will always tell me how you feel about an issue, and it will be unvarnished, and I appreciate that about you. And Mr. Dunn, in the spirit of divulging private conversations this evening, I'm going to divulge one I had with you when I was chair and you were brand new on the board.

[01:13:07] And I said, I think I said to you once, maybe you could be a little less like a bull in a china shop. And it elicited that laugh, and I had to get my iPhone replaced. But, you know, my point here is that we have not always agreed on topics or process or whatever, but we've kept it civil, we've remained in open communication, and at times we've been able to partner with each other on things that we were both passionate about.

[01:13:34] And I have no doubt that that will continue. And I look forward to working with our new chair and our new vice chair to advance the board's priorities through the strategic plan and our superintendent, because this work is incredibly important.

[01:13:50] Thank you. Mr. Dunn. Thank you. I'm stepping forward today to seek your support to serve as vice-chair of the Fairfax County School Board. And when I was elected to represent the Bound Vernon District, I pledged to bring rigorous oversight, candid communication, and unyielding constituent advocacy to this board. Over the past year, through every issue, from our comprehensive boundary reviews to our school calendar, instructional technology policy, and budget

[01:14:24] constraints, I have striven to uphold that sacred commitment. But as we face systemic challenges that cross every district boundary, I recognize that the role of vice chair requires a broader mandate, a steadfast commitment to serving all 180,000 students and families across the entirety of the county. I'm seeking the position of vice chair because our division stands at a pivotal moment. To navigate our fiscal challenges are to restore public trust and deliver the educational excellence every child in Fairfax County deserves, our board must be anchored in three foundational

[01:14:59] principles. Accountability, integrity, and transparency. Accountability requires measurable standards, explicit reporting mechanisms, and a willingness to confront structural challenges head-on. True accountability means moving beyond localized fixes and delivering systemic, division-wide solutions that uplift every community. We demonstrated this when we took decisive action to address severe capacity and facility needs across our system, leading to a landmark countywide initiative to acquire Skyview High School. This project stands as a testament to what we can accomplish when we look beyond individual districts and couple a unified

[01:15:36] division-wide vision with rigorous operational accountability. As Vice Chair, I will work tirelessly to ensure that every policy passed by this board includes clear oversight mechanisms, measurable benchmarks, and real follow-through system-wide. Integrity means doing what is right for our students and staff, even when it is hard. It means holding our division to the highest ethical standards, from ensuring fair play in student athletics to supporting evidence-based instructional policies that prioritize student health and learning. We see the need for this integrity in how we safeguard the developmental well-being of our youngest learners. It's why I've

[01:16:11] championed division-wide efforts to establish responsible, common-sense limits on school-issued electronic devices. A school board models leadership for over 180,000 students and families. We must, we must demonstrate integrity not only in our words but in our actions and our governance. Trust is earned through transparency. Throughout my tenure I have made it a priority to provide unvarnished facts, detailed data, and open forums, whether through town halls, community meetings, or comprehensive updates to my constituents. Decisions made by the school board directly impact families across the county. Families deserve transparency

[01:16:48] and to how decisions are made, how resources are allocated, and how policies are evaluated. As vice chair, I will advocate for open, accessible, and inclusive processes across every committee and board actions, ensuring that no community feels left out of the conversation. John McCain once said that the vice president's only responsibility consisted of a daily inquiry as to the health of the president. Fortunately and surprisingly, serving as vice chair of of this board carries far greater responsibilities.

[01:17:16] The vice chair must be a champion for the entire division. And as vice chair, my focus will be on supporting the chair, promoting efficient and effective governance of the school board and the school division, working tirelessly to promote collaboration and unity at a time when our school division confronts generational challenges.

[01:17:35] I am committed to maintaining board discipline, elevating constituent voices from every corner of our county at a time when our families need our support and keeping our division laser focused on academic achievement and operational excellence so i'm proud to accept your nomination and i ask for your vote to serve as vice chair so together truly together we can lead with accountability govern with integrity and operate with consistent transparency thank you thank you miss st john cunning thank you um first of all i want to thank everybody for stepping up for this because i know um that both positions are really difficult

[01:18:12] And I really want to thank our chair for all the work she has done with such amazing grace. It's not easy, and unless you sit at this dais and in back rooms, nobody understands how hard it is. And so I really want to appreciate both our chair and our vice chair for what they've done this year.

[01:18:31] I remember the first time I met Mr. McDaniel, and I appreciated his ability to say what he meant with an incredible efficiency of words and with clarity. I have actually stolen his simple three-word phrase of why we do this work, and he said three words, protect public education. He doesn't have to say anything else, and that's the way he operates.

[01:18:59] He knows what's going on, but he doesn't take up error time. He just does the work. He is level-headed and thoughtful when he considers decisions. If he doesn't understand something, he will reach out to colleagues, leaderships, or experts in the field at hand. He is always professional and has an amazing ability to keep his cool even when things get challenging as an at-large member he has traveled throughout our district and brings a district right perspective um we all know that he flies and he flies all over the place but i can also say he drives all over the place i think

[01:19:33] he's put on more miles on his car since he's been on the board um i have seen him grow in this role since he's come on board and he has stayed true to that commitment and he has stayed true to learning And as another colleague has said, I've also been able to see him with his daughters, who sometimes when it's necessary, he'll bring into work because that's how important the work is.

[01:19:59] So I am proud to say that I will support Mr. McDaniel. And as the nominator for him said, I will continue to appreciate his efficiency and clarity with words. Thank you.

[01:20:15] If there are no other comments, then we'll proceed with the vote. There are two nominations for vice chair of the school board, Kyle McDaniel and Matteo Dunn. The candidate who receives a majority of the votes from those board members present and voting will be declared vice chair.

[01:20:31] And I will call for the votes in order of their nomination. Please note, in accordance with Robert's rule of order, Rule 46.38, as soon as one of the nominees receives a majority vote, that person will be declared elected and no votes will be taken on the remaining nominees for that office. All those in favor of the motion to elect Kyle McDaniel as vice chair of the Fergus County School Board, signify by raising your hand and saying aye.

[01:20:55] Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dannett, and myself. All those opposed, Ms. Marin, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson. Will the clerk please read the vote?

[01:21:14] 7-4, there's a majority for Mr. McDaniel. At this time, I'm pleased to introduce the vice chair of the Fergus County School Board, Kyle McDaniel.

[01:21:29] I invite Mr. McTandrew to make some remarks. I don't feel like I can speak after it was said that I don't speak a lot, but I will very, very briefly.

[01:21:48] Thank you for the support, and I'm honored by the confidence in electing me as vice chairman, and I don't take it lightly. I want to start by thanking Chair Lady for her leadership and former Chair Anderson for the work she's put in the last two years in leadership. I'm looking forward to being a strong partner to Chair Lady in this role and to supporting the work that she's leading on behalf of the board of this division.

[01:22:08] You know, serving on this board, it's reminded me again and again that the decisions we make aren't abstract policy exercises. They land in classrooms. They land in bus lines, and they land in the lives of nearly 180,000 kids and their families and the staff who show up for them every day, and that's the responsibility that I carry into this new role.

[01:22:31] As vice chair, my job is to help this board function well, to keep our meetings productive, to make sure every member's voice is heard, and to step in when needed so our work continues without interruption. But more than that, I want to help us stay focused on what matters, which is sound governance, fiscal responsibility, and decisions grounded in what's best for kids.

[01:22:48] And I know we don't always agree on every issue that comes before us, and that's healthy, and that's okay. But I believe this board works best when we extend each other good faith, even in disagreement. So thank you again for your trust, and I look forward to working with everyone in the coming year. Thank you, Vice Chair McDaniel. We will now take a brief five-minute break.

[01:29:52] board members please take your seats board will now reconvene at 8 37 p.m i now call on mr mcdaniel

[01:36:11] for two motions i move that the school board designate the 2026-2027 calendar of regular business meetings which are typically held on thursdays as well as closed sessions and work sessions the board's calendar of meeting dates will be based on school year and will be published in july as detailed an attachment a of the agenda item special meetings board committee work sessions and other special functions will also be scheduled.

[01:36:38] Liaisons and committees will be organized to support the board's work. If needed, committees of three board members consider student disciplinary cases in closed meetings. Is there a second? I second. Mr. McDaniel, would you like to speak to your motion? Ms. Anderson, would you like to speak to your second?

[01:36:54] No. I will call for the vote. The motion before us is on the screen. All those in favor? Mr. Frisch, Ms. Anderson, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dannon, Mr. Moon, and myself.

[01:37:11] With everyone else away from the table. the clerk please read the votes the vote is 8-0 the motion carries thank you school board made motion number two i move the school board authorize or excuse me mr mcdaniel this is a long one i move the school board authorize organizational arrangements and appointments as follows number

[01:37:47] one set the salary of board members of 48 000 per year and that of the board chair 50 000 and reimburse all board members for travel expenses in the conduct of official business including attendance at meetings at the same rate as employees of the board number two compensate the student representative for attendance at participations at public meetings commensurate with the current minimum wage the student representative shall also be reimbursed with the approval of the school board chair for expenses incurred while on school board business number three appoint marty smith to serve as the superintendent's designee to attend any meeting of the school boards the superintendent cannot attend through july 31st of 2026.

[01:38:23] appoint dr francis ivy to serve as a superintendent's designee to attend any meeting of the school board that the superintendent cannot attend effective beginning august 1st 2026 number four appoint christina setlow as clerk of the school board and janet brown as deputy clerk of the school board each with a corporate surety bond as required by the code of virginia number five appoint deputy clerks of the school board for the limited purpose of signing titles to school division vehicles and countersigning payment warrants as detailed in attachment b of the agenda item Number six, appoint agents and deputy agents of the school board to examine, approve, and order payment of financial obligations of the school board and to approve disbursements made from all petty cash funds as detailed in attachment B of the agenda item.

[01:39:03] Number seven, appoint agents and deputy agents of the school board to examine, approve, and order payment only in connection with the Educational Employees Supplementary Retirement System of Fairfax County, the ERFC, as detailed in attachment B of the agenda item. Number eight, authorize the chair and clerk to sign all legal documents for the board other than those requiring the signature of some other officers and authorize the vice chair to sign in the absence or unavailability of the chair and the deputy clerks in the absence or unavailability of the clerk.

[01:39:30] Number nine, authorize Marty Smith, chief of staff, to execute official documents, including those relating to state, federal, and impact aid, requiring the superintendent's signature and those relating to the Virginia Department of Education reports, documents, requisitions, and other official correspondence in the absence or unavailability of the division superintendent effective through July 31st, 2026. Authorize Dr. Francis Ivey, interim chief of staff, to execute official documents, including those relating to state, federal, and impact aid requiring the superintendent's signature, and those relating to the Virginia Department of Education reports, documents, requisitions, and other official correspondence in the absence or unavailability of the division superintendent effective beginning August 1st,

[01:40:10] 2026. Number 10, retain the following outside law firms as assigned and managed by the Office of Division Council, the firm of Hunt and Andrews Kurth to provide general legal advice and litigation services, the firm of Blankenship and Keith to provide general legal and special education advice and litigation services, the firm of Franklin and Prokopik to provide workers' compensation services, the firm of Michael E. Kenny PLC to provide general legal advice and litigation services, the firm of Sands Anderson to provide general legal advice and litigation services, and such other firms as are determined to be necessary from time to time number 11 appoint an impartial hearing officer mary mcgowan pursuant to virginia code

[01:40:49] 22.1-311 b upon a timely request for hearing pursuant to virginia code 22.1-309 and as required by the virginia code the school board will refer such hearing to either an impartial hearing officer or a three-member fact-finding panel based upon the preference of the employee requesting the hearing is there a second i second mr mcdaniel would like to speak to your motion no miss anderson would you like to speak to your second no i will call on the vote the motion before us is on the screen all those in favor mr frisch miss anderson miss marron

[01:41:23] miss st john cunning mr mcdaniel miss dixton mr dannin mr dunn mr moon dr anderson and myself will the clerk please announce the vote the votes 11-0 the motion carries 4.01 community participation the next order of business is community participation we welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening additional information about signing up to provide comments at School Board regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the School Board's website at www.fcps.edu/school board. During the signup process, community members acknowledge they were informed of the School Board's expectations for proper decorum when

[01:42:02] providing comments. These expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room. We ask audience members to be respectful of one another. Shouting an outburst will not be tolerated. Please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks. Audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain at their seats, including when recording video or taking photos. We are grateful to those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation. School Board members will be listening but not

[01:42:29] responding. Madam Clerk, please call the first speaker. Robert Shaw. Good evening, chair and members of the board. I'm Robert Shaw, representing the Springfield District on the Minority Student Achievement Oversight Committee and one of its incoming co-chairs. Tonight, I'll speak on two

[01:43:02] priorities from our 2026 annual report first the young scholars grant the young scholars model closes access and opportunity graph gaps for underrepresented students in an advanced academic program but once they reach high school support becomes a matter of chance the grant that funded school design programming has been eliminated we are asking the board to reinstate it. Secondly, equity and cultural responsiveness staffing. This school year,

[01:43:39] the ECR team was reduced from 11 staff to 5 due to grant funding insecurity. That loss means less direct support of school closing achievement gap and fewer student equity ambassador leader opportunities for our students. Our school-based equity leads, teachers, counselors, coaches, take on this role for $700 stipend and for after-hours training. When ECR had a specialist

[01:44:13] in every region, that specialist coached them individually. Without that coaching, equity leads mean well, but lack real preparation, what our committee calls check equity. If we want equity leads to be effective, not symbolic, they need regional specialists guiding their work. MSCOC recommends restoring these ECR position, and we urge the board to direct Dr. Reed to do so.

[01:44:44] Thank you for your time and continued partnership with our committee. Thank you. Panos Hatsianis. Good evening.

[01:45:10] My name is Panos Hatsianis. I am a CPS parent and I want to speak about AI in the upper grades. First, I am not anti-tech. I have a PhD in computer science and I'm working with many emerging technologies like cryptography and quantum computing. I am as pro-tech as it gets. But that also makes me very aware that powerful technologies need careful guardrails, especially with children.

[01:45:32] I understand you are looking for quick fixes and several promotions today are in the right direction. The current motion on AI in particular prohibits student use across all grades until there is a formal policy. This is good because it basically preserves the status quo. After parent advocacy, IT has blocked almost all of GNAI tools.

[01:45:50] We should not weaken these restrictions. However, anything that says no AI until grade X will be very problematic. That immediately implies AI is acceptable in grade X plus one. That is a major policy decision which should not be made before you have evidence of educational benefit, risk analysis and real teacher and parent input.

[01:46:13] Some of you mentioned AI projects already underway in some high schools, claiming that things are working well. But teachers I have spoken with at those schools describe this as a top-down approach, not a classroom-driven demand. If the concern is students should not be left behind, then teach them about AI, how it works, what it can do, what are the risks.

[01:46:32] but not normalized student use before understanding the consequences. Teachers already can tell whether student work is authentic. Some have moved back to paper because this is the only practical way to make it AI resistant. There are also concerns about cognitive of loading, privacy, attention, independent reasoning.

[01:46:50] The fact that some high school students use AI at home does not mean it should be normalized at the school. Please preserve current AI restrictions, reject grade cutoffs, and let the policy process happen before expanding student AI access. Thank you.

[01:47:10] Michelle Durst. Hello. In July 2025, Fairfax County Public Schools joined a lawsuit against Google claiming that Google had developed products intended to harm and cause addiction in kids.

[01:47:33] This is fueling a mental health crisis that Fairfax County now has to divert resources to address. How many of you knew about this? It's good that you're doing this, but how many of you knew about this lawsuit? In Illinois, a lawsuit has been settled with Google for inappropriately collecting students' data.

[01:47:57] Two lawsuits have found Google liable of creating harm and addiction in kids. So I have to ask, why are we mandating that we put kids on Google Chromebooks when we know for a fact Google is creating products that are intended to be harmful and addicting to our students, to our children?

[01:48:23] And we don't have the IT capacity we have learned to put the safeguards in place for these children. And then we put kids on digital curriculum. This is my second grade son, social studies curriculum.

[01:48:39] Google Slides. After Google Slides. I'm happy to pass them out afterwards. And this is his language arts curriculum. It is empty. And I'm happy to pass those out. And I've asked for two years for my child to write with a pencil due to health issues. And they're still empty.

[01:48:57] And what is the incentive for teachers to do the pencil and paper writing when you have 401 education technology tools for elementary school alone? When I last spoke to you in April, you had 388.

[01:49:15] So there's not cost transparency. There's not evidence that you have shared with us, strong evidence for this use. Sarah Howard.

[01:49:32] Good evening, Dr. Reed and members of the board. I am here to request an expedited common-sense boundary correction for 14 elementary school students living at the dead-end section of Hoos Road in Spa 8921.

[01:49:51] The recent boundary update reassigns our children to Saratoga Elementary School and a 3.2-mile commute across heavily congested roads. Yet Hunt Valley Elementary is just 1.4 miles away, directly up the street from our neighborhood.

[01:50:06] Our neighborhood was artificially cut off from the rest of Spa 8921 when the Fairfax County Parkway was built. Boundary View staff has acknowledged that initial recommendations relied on high-level geographic data without street-level routing context.

[01:50:23] Well, today we are bringing you that context. Buses for West Springfield Pyramid already pass our street every single day. Serving our neighborhood adds just 800 feet to existing bus routes, Whereas a bus from Saratoga will have to transit the heavily trafficked 286-289 Junction just to get to our small little dead-end section of Hood's Road and our neighborhood alone.

[01:50:47] Moving our neighborhood to Hunt Valley adds just a 2% impact to a school projected to operate well under capacity. The impact on Irving Middle School and West Springfield High is even smaller, less than a quarter of a percent. Our children belong to the Hunt Valley community, and realigning our neighborhood restores the natural community ties prioritized in policy 8130 over 79% of affected residents have signed petitions requesting this change you and your staffs received an email today containing relevant data points this petition along with route videos I plead with you to please review those things this isn't a disruptive broad boundary

[01:51:26] overhaul it is a quick surgical correction of a historical anomaly realigning our neighborhood to spa 8916 before the upcoming school year avoids putting our kids through two unnecessary transitions and aligns perfectly with FCPS policy. Keith Gentry. Good evening. I'm here tonight to speak not as an

[01:52:03] individual but on behalf of FCPS Parents for Intentional Technology. We would first like to thank the school board for the steps taken recent weeks to begin addressing overuse and over-reliance of screens and FCPS. We are grateful for your partnership and are looking forward to the next steps that will bring change to our children's classrooms. In recent months, we've heard a lot about testing. No matter how compelling the research on the detrimental effects of device-based learning on children's cognition, attention, vision, and mental health, these concerns seem to pale in comparison to the possibility they might not perform well on tests. We wanted to find out what tests our children

[01:52:40] take at each grade level that they can only be prepared for by year-round use of a laptop or iPad. So we asked elementary teachers and principals what testing looks like for each grade. I'm happy to share with you tonight a significant finding from these conversations. There are no device-based tests for FCPS students in pre-K or kindergarten, none.

[01:53:02] The few tests that kindergartners take are administered one-on-one with a teacher. In other words, iPad uses in kindergarten is not preparing students to take an iPad-based test. It is straining their eyes, yes, extracting them from hands-on learning, yes.

[01:53:19] It is giving them access to inappropriate content on the Internet, yes, but is not preparing them for state-mandated testing. School staff even told us they see iPad fluency as detrimental to first graders' ability to learn to use a laptop.

[01:53:35] We can add that to the list of what kindergarten iPad uses does, and state testing is delivered on laptops. Who should use iPads in pre-K and kindergarten? Students with IPs, 504 plans, or language learning needs whose families and school teams have determined that such uses is in their best interest.

[01:53:53] But let this be the end of a wholesale iPad deployment in our Fairfax County schools. There are no counter-arguments left. Thank you. Andrew Strutt.

[01:54:12] Members of the Board, Superintendent, my name is Andrew Strutt, and I'm here tonight to place on public record a profound and systemic failure of leadership at Oakton Elementary School. I submitted evidence of this failure to the Board's written record last month.

[01:54:31] The response was silence, so I'm here to ensure that it's heard. For months, the local administration has demonstrated a persistent disregard for my daughter's indigenous identity, mispronouncing her name, flying the wrong tribal flag, and ignoring cultural offensive murals. This baseline of deliberate indifference has now escalated to a severe breach of law and duty.

[01:54:51] My daughter recently reported an assault at the school. The administration did not notify me or the proper authorities. I hold in my hand a formal letter from the school's principal admitting in writing that the school did not fulfill its responsibility to notify a parent.

[01:55:06] However, rather than addressing the gravity of the situation, the principal frames the severe negligence as a mere communication breakdown and attempts to scapegoat a subordinate administrator. This was not a simple missed phone call by one subordinate. It was a failure of six separate staff members, all mandatory reporters, to comply with state law, federal law, and FCPS district regulations regarding an alleged assault. The principal's letter is transparent attempt to contain liability by isolating the blame, completely ignoring the mandatory reporting failures of the entire staff. Because the school's administration proved

[01:55:42] legally compromised, I secured a safety plan by myself and bypassed the school to involve local law enforcement and the district Title IX coordinator. A principal attempting to protect this institution by throwing a subordinate under the bus does not absolve this district of its legal obligations. I demand that the board formally investigate the administration of Oakton Elementary School for their collective failure to adhere to mandatory reporting laws for allowing a culture a deliberate indifference to endanger a student. Thank you for your time.

[01:56:25] I will address two motions you have for new business tonight. Motion three requests an inventory of generative AI tools and a moratorium of their use until the board adopts a formal policy.

[01:56:42] Your staff continue to claim that students do not have access to, and I quote, "Generative chat feature-based AI in any of our schools at any grade levels today." That's true today, but they have been available in the past. Access to chatbots is not the only concern parents have about AI.

[01:57:00] We're concerned about cognitive stunting that harms students when they have Gen AI do their work. That option's available today to all students in all schools at all grade levels. Type in Google search on a school laptop. Write me a five-paragraph essay about meiosis and make it sound like a ninth grader wrote it.

[01:57:18] Boom, instant essay, homework, done. That is because Google has, as the default search result, an AI summary. Use your leverage as a large district and work with Google to block this. Motion 4 requests a report by December about the feasibility of a whitelist.

[01:57:36] This might result in activity in a whitelist by 2027. Meanwhile, your reactive whack-a-mole approach continues to cause physical and mental harm, especially to some of our most vulnerable populations, students with executive functioning disorders. functions are a greater predictor of life success than intelligence, yet the constant distractions from non-instructional content continues to stunt students' ability to develop these functions. We can have the debate about whether ST Math and Lexia and other educational apps improve learning. Spoiler alert, they don't. But all of us here should agree that there is no reason why students should have access to any non-instructional content on school laptops

[01:58:15] ever. It is not fair to students and it's not fair to teachers who do not want to be the laptop police, especially when admin don't enforce the violations. Use a whitelist model by the beginning of the next school year. This is the defining issue for your tenure. This is what voters care

[01:58:31] about. Fix it. Maria Petricus. Maria Petricus. Apologies. One second. Apologies. We're having

[01:59:34] issues moving one of the virtual participants over to Hannah Dubrow Gray. Ms. Gray, go ahead

[02:00:01] and speak, please. Ms. Gray, we cannot hear you. Madam Clerk, it looks from our angle at the

[02:00:53] television that maybe we have muted that's for our interior system this runs through the truck so she would still be able to hear okay thank you miss great can you check your audio settings using the carrot at next to where it says

[02:01:27] audio to see because we have a feeling that might be the issue miss great we can hear you we're having a technical issue what if you were to put the

[02:02:00] microphone to the phone miss gray try speaking now yes miss Okay, go ahead and proceed.

[02:02:24] Okay, perfect. Thank you. I also, I don't see the option to turn on my video, but I'll just go ahead and start. My name is Hannah Dubrow-Gray. I'm a Franconia district resident and 2010 FCPS grad. I consider myself someone who has always been an early adopter of new technology and eager to discover how technology can enrich, automate, or upscale my life at work and at home.

[02:02:46] However, I want to add my voice to the growing movement of parents' concern that technology use in school is becoming a hindrance and distraction to real learning and personal growth. At home, we work really hard to eliminate any screen exposure for our small children and are frustrated that when they enter kindergarten, they will be given iPads and assigned to use computer programs and games like ST Math and Lexia. The AAP guidance says that any screen time at this age should be social and co-viewed. Parents should be the ones deciding if and how our young children are ready to use devices outside of sorry I support the currently ongoing

[02:03:26] effort to remove all devices from K through two and for the ETRC to audit all technology being implemented in schools to weigh the potential benefits if any with the known harms students need opportunities to hone fundamental human skills before augmenting with technology so that the student or parent can assess for themselves whether the technology is helping or hindering their learning. There should be an option for every student to learn without relying completely

[02:03:53] on technology. Thank you. Moving on to video testimony, please play the video testimony of Priya Binkley. I'm a parent of a rising ninth grader and when they started middle school, I saw firsthand how the Chromebook has shifted from a learning tool into a barrier to learning.

[02:04:25] In my home, internet access is limited and monitored. While my child is at school, they have unfiltered access to games and other online distractions throughout the day. Yes, unfiltered, because like most students, they learned how to bypass FCPS's technology filters.

[02:04:41] I set consequences at home and communicated the issues with his teachers, school counselors, administrators, and the FCPS technology team. Behavior did not change because the learning environment stayed the same. Children's brains are still developing. Expecting them to ignore constant digital temptation is like asking a child to sit with a bowl of their favorite candy in their lap for six hours every day and never eat it.

[02:05:02] For many students, especially those who struggle with attention or impulse control, that is an unreasonable and unfair expectation. Technology is also replacing essential parts of learning. Autocorrect means students aren't learning to spell. Digital math programs often hide the thinking process, making it harder for students, parents, and teachers to identify where mistakes happened.

[02:05:24] AI can produce polished writing, but it cannot replace the learning that comes from research, organizing ideas, and expressing them in your own words. I believe technology use education starts at home, with parents having conversations with their kids about appropriate behavior and expectations.

[02:05:39] However, when I send my child to school, I feel powerless because the way technology is currently used in school makes it nearly impossible to reinforce those expectations. I am asking the school board to establish evidence-based, age-appropriate standards for edtech use across the county, strengthen technology safeguards, support teachers in using less technology without creating more work for them, provide printed textbooks as an option, and pause implementation of the use of AI until clear, research-based standards are established. Thank you.

[02:06:10] Please play the video testimony of Julia Adams. Good evening chair, board members, and superintendent.

[02:06:26] a student, confided in me his frustration about the lack of real-world challenge learning. I listened and I must admit he made a great argument. I've requested that each member receive a copy of his gratitude letter to me. My name is Juliette Adams, an educator and community engagement advocate who understand students yearning to be greater participants in their

[02:07:00] learning experience. I respectfully recommend that each board member make regular field visits to their schools with the purpose of direct engagement with students, facilitating conversation about their day-to-day school experiences, their learning environment, and subject area. This is an ideal opportunity to learn from students their perspective about technology as a learning tool

[02:07:32] and provide first-hand perspective not captured in reports or data. Regular school visits allow students, parents, and educators to experience board members active engagement by meeting students where they learn the experience provides a deeper understanding of each school's unique environment while strengthening the connection between governance and the classroom in supporting

[02:08:05] every student's success through direct interaction thank you in advance for your action chair lady that was our last public speaker 5.01 student representative matters i call on mr shostick for student representative matters thank you greetings to the members of the board fcps staff the community and most importantly to the 180 000 great students of fairfax county it is an honor

[02:08:40] and a privilege to sit here today as your 56th student representative to the school board first and foremost i want to extend my immeasurable gratitude towards the student advisory council for putting their faith in my leadership this upcoming school year it is a nearly impossible task to choose just one person to represent a body as vast and diverse as fairfax county and yet the sac rose the occasion it is in that spirit that i plan to lead and is in that spirit that i also plan to advocate for its reform as one of my priorities this year outside of this i have a long list of other issues that i plan on bringing to the board's attention in my term ranging from

[02:09:16] security policies to mental health services and everything in between i plan on using my limited time here to bring as many issues faced by students to the board as I possibly can. This is something I made an effort to emphasize during the election, and I continue to emphasize it now. As many of the council delegates know, as well as some of the board members here today, I ran a bit of a campaign during the months leading up to the primary and general elections for this role. And during my time on the campaign trail, I took on a number of additional issues that I plan to work on as student rep. I believe that this more broadly symbolizes the job that I want to do, as I hope to bridge the gap between us as the students and the administrative decisions

[02:09:52] made by the board. I know this is a goal that many previous student representatives have had, which is why I would also like to thank Ms. McConaugh and the other student reps who came before her for all the groundwork they laid for me to be here and say this now. Like many things in life, I know change in this county takes time, but I also know the process of change outlasts any one person or any one term, and I hope that, if nothing else, I will be able to leave this role knowing that I served as a catalyst for change. I had the pleasure of speaking with Ms. St. John Cunning recently, and she told me she takes her job as a school board member more seriously than the title itself. This is something I hope to embody during my time as student rep, as I'll work for all of you, the students at Fairfax

[02:10:31] County Public Schools, rather than for my own goals or ambitions. More importantly, I care more about taking part in change, something that is larger than myself, than I do about any personal gain or success. I hope that today signifies the dawn of a new era of student representation in this county, and I can definitely say that this will be the greatest responsibility that I'll hold in my academic career. To the superintendent and board members present, I would like to say that I'm enthusiastically looking forward to working with each and every one of you on improving our schools this year. Similar to my plans to reach out to students across the county, I hope to have the opportunity to work closely with you all as well. Not just through board meetings, but also

[02:11:11] during work sessions and community events. Thank you. And to any parents, teachers, and the broader FCPS community, I promise you all that I'll work diligently to ensure that your students and children are getting the representation they deserve. Finally, to any current SCPS students watching, I want you all to know that I will fight tooth and nail for you. I will put the needs and interests of you all before those of my own and I will ensure that the work you do to contribute to our school system will not go unnoticed or without representation. I am extraordinarily proud to call this county my home and I cannot think of a better way to give back to my home than

[02:11:47] to serve you all as your next student representative. Thank you. Thank you. 6.0, action items. I call on Mr. Dunn for a motion.

[02:12:25] Customary practice is to introduce new business at least one meeting before taking it up as an action item. However, due to its nature, it would make sense to consider new business item 10.11 tonight as an action item. We have done this in the past under a suspension of the rules.

[02:12:41] Thus, I ask for unanimous consent to suspend the rules and take up new business item 10.11 after all scheduled action items. Is there a second? Second. There's a motion on the floor to suspend the rules and take up new business agenda item 10.11 after all scheduled action items.

[02:13:00] This motion is not debatable, and a two-thirds vote in favor is needed to adopt the motion to suspend the rules. If the vote does not meet the threshold, then the motion will stay on the new business calendar. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Marin, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dannen, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself.

[02:13:21] It's unanimous for the board present. The motion is adopted, and the clerk is instructed to reclassify agenda item 10.11 as action item 6.04. 6.01, action item certification of a closed meeting's compliance.

[02:13:43] In order to comply with section 2.2-3712D of the Code of Virginia, it is necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairbanks County School Board convened a closed meeting on July 9, 2026, to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements, And only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the board during the closed meeting.

[02:14:07] Do I have a motion? Ms. Anderson, do I have a second? Mr. Frisch. All those in favor? Mr. Frisch, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Marin, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dannen, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself.

[02:14:24] That's unanimous for board members present. Action item 6.02, confirmation of action taken in closed meeting. Closed motion number one, I call on Mr. Frisch for a motion. I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who engaged in unwanted and improper physical contact with another student at school and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent. Is there a second? I second. All those in favor? Mr. Frisch, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Marin, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dana, Mr. Dunn,

[02:15:02] Mr. Moon, and myself. All those opposed? Dr. Anderson. Will the clerk please read the vote? 10-1, the motion carries. Thank you. Closed motion number two, I call on Mr. McDaniel for a motion. I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who possessed drugs at school in a quantity consistent with distribution at school and to remander the division superintendent any further action as necessary and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent.

[02:15:29] Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Mr. Frisch, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Marin, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dannon, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. That's unanimous for board members present. Closed motion number three, I call on Ms. Anderson for a motion.

[02:15:52] I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who participated in a crime in the community and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the Division of Superintendent. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Marin, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dannen, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself.

[02:16:12] That's unanimous for board members present. Closed motion number four, I call on Mr. Dannen for a motion. I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who is found responsible for a Title IX sexual harassment violation and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent.

[02:16:27] Is there a second? I second. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Marin, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Dixon, Mr. Dixon, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. It's unanimous for board members present. Action Iams 6.03, 2027-2028, and 2028-29 standard school year calendars.

[02:16:51] I call on Mr. McDaniel for a motion. I move that the Fairfax County School Board adopt the 2027-2028 and 2028-2029 school year calendars as detailed in the attachments on board docs. Is there a second? I second. Mr. McDaniel, would you like to speak to your motion?

[02:17:09] Briefly, because a lot of words have been shed on this issue, so I will be very brief. basically we're adopting the next to the 27 28 28 29 calendars those calendars are the embodiment of policy that was previously adopted and and thanks to mr dunn we have some hard data that shows that the situation has improved from the previous school year in terms of more consistent five-day weeks so i'm happy to move this forward so the community can have calendars for the next effectively the next three years approved and out there to plan around thank Ms. Dixit, would you like to speak to your second?

[02:17:46] Yes, I'd like to support this as well. I like the collaboration between the board members to get this done. And it is a very, it's never easy task because no one calendar will satisfy everyone. Families and staff all have different priorities.

[02:18:05] Some have expressed interest in a year-round calendar. Some, many elementary families are one more uninterrupted five days instructional weeks. Our staff needs professional development days to continue to support student learning. And we also have to respect religious and cultural observations while meeting state requirements, school board policy.

[02:18:26] So overall, I believe this can strike a thoughtful balance. They preserve the break that family values, maintain the required 180 days, instructional days, and 15 professional work days, maximize five days instructional weeks where possible, balancing instructional quarters, and comply with both state requirements and board policy.

[02:18:47] For those reasons, I'll be supporting these calendars. Thanks. - Thank you, Mr. Moon. - Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm gonna support the motion, however, with a great, great reservation. My colleagues will probably remember that I did not support calendar policy when you voted on it on June 11th because at the time we're in the middle of conducting survey and even without waiting for the survey to be returned by our community members, parents and staff members,

[02:19:22] board decide to pass a policy. And what's the use of a survey? So I voted against that. However, majority board members supported it and that's the policy we have.

[02:19:39] And under the policy, there were only so much we could do in terms of coming up with calendars for two years. Because we have heard a lot from the community about not having enough five-day instructional weeks.

[02:19:57] Look at what have come up. Only, what, one more week? Was there what the community was seeking? Unfortunately, under our policy passed on June 11th, which I didn't support, We are pretty much constrained in what we can do.

[02:20:18] So that's what we got. So at this point, that's the only thing that we can, you know, that's the best that we can come up with. That is why I'm, that is why, that's the only reason I'm supporting it. Because that's the best we can do under the policy.

[02:20:34] We should not have a pass on June 11th. Thank you. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. - Firstly, I'd like to ask, there is a presentation that is posted, but we have not had the benefit of that presentation.

[02:20:51] Will that be shared? - I certainly could make the presentation. - That would be great. - That would be fantastic. - Yes, ma'am. - Thank you.

[02:21:10] - It's a presentation.

[02:21:36] - All right, good evening, Madam Chair and the school board members of the community. Tonight, we're bringing forward the proposed calendars And they do reflect the board's prior direction, the newly revised standard school year calendar policy, community engagement, survey feedback, and our effort to balance instructional continuity, predictability, and reliability for parents, families, and staff.

[02:22:05] Before we get started, I want to extend a huge thank you to all our parents, caregivers, staff members, and labor partners who provided input as part of this process, as well as the staff that worked very hard on it. Mr. Smith, Ms. Neal, Dr. King, Mr. Solomon, and many others.

[02:22:22] Tonight, the overview and timeline provides really a framework for how we got here this evening, and I think that tonight's recommendation reestablishes the advanced creation and distribution of the three standard school year calendars, which provides predictability for families, staff school and division operations and next the highlights I think several of you have already commented on these but these are essentially in alignment with the revised policy that's already been approved by the board which provided a

[02:22:59] framework excuse me for developing the standard school year calendar one of the things that's important to note is that there are a number of aspects of this calendar that are fixed aspects right like that we're it's a essentially a math problem there are only so many days and so many requirements so you can see all the check marks are those things which we needed to maintain and those are in fact maintained in both calendar drafts we're providing this evening the

[02:23:33] engagement process which is the next slide I want to make sure folks understand we did administer a voluntary survey it was offered in 44 languages and responses were submitted in 30 languages in addition as was the expectation i used previously scheduled community meetings also to gather input from division constituents so as we look at the next slide we did receive quite a bit of feedback quite honestly and these survey results and community

[02:24:08] input were used as one important data point the staff that put this together also considered this feedback alongside board policy state requirements and again needing to balance instructional priorities as well as the continuity of education so several priorities for the calendar design emerged from this process and you can see what those are they're outlined for you on the slide finally Really, at the end of the day, the calendars were designed to support long-range predictability

[02:24:42] for families and staff while continuing to identify the observance days and maximizing instruction where permitted by policy. So we had approximately 30, well, not approximately, we had 33,389 parents and caregivers that completed the survey and 14,402 staff.

[02:25:07] So the staff respondents reported a higher satisfaction with the current calendar structure than parents did. Being essentially about 56% of staff reported being extremely or somewhat satisfied compared to 39% of parents and caregivers.

[02:25:25] So again, you can see essentially the highlights, if you will, from the calendar are broken out here in the bulleted list. As we look at the proposed 27-28 calendar, it's a strong example of the new policy in action, although it's also a strong example of the fact that sometimes holidays don't fall during the week.

[02:25:48] And so as we noted this past year, every possible challenge was met this past year because every holiday fell during the week. We had an excessive number of election days this past year, and we had weather that was for the ages.

[02:26:06] So I think if we were to pick a year of disruption, this was it. Next year is better also because the holidays hit more on the weekends, but we did try to make sure that we balanced the quarters and also tried to put the end of quarter staff grading days in strategic locations.

[02:26:32] so the quarters look better balanced this year and we are able to have 27 full five-day instructional weeks so for the 28 29 calendar it still remains compliant with the policy you can see the first day of school and so forth the quarters again seem reasonable and it includes 26 full five-day weeks so on maximizing instructional time this is a summary chart staff again worked hard to balance

[02:27:09] quarters as best as possible hoping that weather won't disrupt that and that is the maximization of instructional time so you can take a look at the changes based on policy and feedback one of the things we will be doing in alignment with expectation in the policy is we will initiate a calendar review committee sometime mid-year and that group will gather and make a recommendation for the third year out calendar that will come back to you on the organizational

[02:27:43] meeting in july again next year so we've kind of took a look at a variety of different topics but we did make the adjustments based on policy overall we tried to prioritize five-day instructional weeks balancing our quarters maintaining instructional days and professional work time for our staff at the end of quarters I know that we've had some staff ask why we have professional work days after the school year ended and in part because if we put them in the middle we have fewer five day weeks again so we did put some days at the very end of the year and added a

[02:28:19] day at the very beginning of the year to get them out of the weeks during the year so that we could have more five-day weeks in closing we recommend approval of the proposed 27 28 and 28 29 standard school year calendars they do align with the board's direction and comply with the revised policy they reflect community input and preserve the breaks most consistently prioritized by respondents so at this point thank you very much and I'm happy to answer any questions and those staff that are present that were part of the process

[02:28:56] can as well. Thank you Dr. Reed I will return back to Dr. Anderson. Thank you and thank you for the presentation. Just a few questions can you speak to a little bit about the survey results I think we received what 47,000 responses between the parents and the staff and we have here quite interesting data I'm I'm looking at the survey results that was also posted that showed that 61% of parents were dissatisfied with the calendar as compared to 45% of staff.

[02:29:32] Can you just point out to the areas in which you were able to reflect the survey findings in the new calendars that are being proposed? So I'm going to note that the effort was to try to have more five-day weeks, and um to address some of the parent concerns i think the parents valued the two weeks at winter the week at spring so we maintained um those weeks um mr solomon do you have any other i know you worked hard with the team to put the calendars together do you have any other sort of crosswalk

[02:30:12] thoughts absolutely and thank you for the question our research team did an incredible job uh getting the survey put together and making sure that it was widely available to all of our family staff and other and other stakeholders one of the interesting parts of the survey is that when you take a step back and look at the results in totality no single option received a majority vote and part of what that signals from a survey administration perspective is that there are trade-offs to be made between the different options it was interesting though to see that families um and staff most often chose maintaining the two-week break during winter break the one

[02:30:51] week break during spring break all of those different things which is codified in the policy so it was helpful information um for us as administration as we were developing the survey i'm sorry as we were developing the two calendars in concert with the policy i don't think that was your time i think snoopy arrived to play the piano for a second please continue uh nothing further now everybody's forgotten i'm so sorry did you say you were finished uh yes i'm sorry i said i have

[02:31:29] nothing further i kind of got confused there uh one of the things that i noticed in the survey results which was fairly surprising to me was i'm trying to find the page but it was the alignment to neighboring school divisions that was ranked very low can you share a little bit in terms of staff reflection to that data point the data point is it relates to uh folks who took the survey not prioritizing that as much correct i i couldn't make out what you said can you say it again please it was ranked lower in the survey meaning that it doesn't mean that it's not

[02:32:06] important to our families and to our staff members who completed the survey what it means is that it's less important than something like maintaining two weeks during winter break and one week during spring break or maximizing full five-day instructional weeks okay well when we have a close choice in that way we have to make decisions I know one of the criticisms which I've shared with you that I received from my constituents was not having the ability to have an open-ended section where they could perhaps explain their thinking a little bit more can you speak to future surveys which we hope will be happening granted we've already decided that this well my

[02:32:46] advocacy was not for it to be every year but in the out years will these surveys continue to be in this close format with no opportunity for an open-ended input so mr. Solomon's team actually did not design the survey it was designed by our research department so our the research department designed it for a variety of reasons so it could be studied and it could be analyzed in their research way and they're not here this evening to explain that but I can ask

[02:33:20] that further I would think that in out years in terms of surveys that's something perhaps that the calendar committee might discuss and perhaps make a recommendation I know that when you leave things open-ended it there's a lot more analysis and perhaps not as many according to our research team not as many clear sort of conclusions that can be drawn so but I'll leave that up to them to address, but our research team designed it. Sure. I also think because of the timetable

[02:33:55] that was in front of you to complete this, just going through all of these additional statements would have been a lot more time consuming. But given that we have so much time until the next one, I think there's some space for your research team to take a look at that. Similarly to Mr. Moon, I'm dismayed by the fact that we essentially shut down 47,000 comments there were some points that just landed where they landed which is great and that was fortuitous but it wasn't intentional to really use the feedback from the community because the board went ahead and created

[02:34:33] a policy that usurped some of the comments that we received I do want to ask there this is a point where I I'm I shared this before and I'm hoping there's an opportunity I realize that it is not possible to place the early early release days on the calendar because they're done by pyramid but I'm wondering if there's some sort of place where we could locate um just maybe underneath the lengths of the length of the quarters that there will be four more days for elementary schools because I think just having that information be part of the calendar makes sense

[02:35:14] So, yes, ma'am. I know that for this coming year, they're going to publish them prior to the start of the year. For the two-year out, I think they will likely, the hope would be as we look at new elementary math materials that we're going to also need to coordinate with whoever we end up purchasing those materials from because that may have some impact on when we choose those days.

[02:35:46] They may say maybe since we only have four all year, maybe two should come earlier. And then the other, you know, I just, I'm not sure yet what that's going to look like. But for next year, they will be published before the start of the year, start of the year. Sure. And I appreciate that.

[02:36:02] I think that was my time. I'd like to go back, please. Okay. Ms. Marin. Okay. I was ready. Things happening here.

[02:36:18] Okay. So commenting on the calendars, getting back to that. I appreciate the work of the superintendent and staff for adhering to the policy set forth by the board after our work earlier this year and our feedback in developing these calendars. I'm so pleased that the drafts include more full school weeks and have only a few partial weeks in 27-28 and 28-29, not including the spring breaks.

[02:36:42] You know, these improve on what we saw, you know, where it was planned for 17 partial school weeks. So now we're down to 12 to 14, because that's really challenging for our families who struggled to arrange for child care on days off of school as well as educators to provide that instructional continuity. We do have the survey data showing, though, that there still is a lot of concern about the calendar, both from families and staff.

[02:37:05] So, you know, I think it's going to continue to be a challenge, and I plan to keep advocating for more full five-day school weeks so that we can get the instructional continuity and have stability in our families and community. Thank you. Mr. Dunn. Thank you.

[02:37:24] I really appreciate the survey, and one of the things that is, you know, glaringly obvious from it is, you know, an overwhelming majority of parents and a substantial amount of staff, nearly half, are somewhat or extremely dissatisfied with the current calendar.

[02:37:45] And so I'm grateful that the Governance Committee put together a draft policy. So thank you to the Governance Committee under Ms. Maron's leadership. And I appreciate the revisions that Mr. Frisch proposed that I supported, which I think reinforced first, the direction of having a real emphasis on instructional continuity in five-day weeks because the survey clearly reflects that that's the highest priority and other trade-offs that are reflected in the survey are subordinated to that.

[02:38:23] I think these calendars are an improvement over this year's, but what I'll be watching going forward is continued improvement because the historical norm was 70% five-day weeks, meaning plus or minus 5%, sometimes getting into the 80s, 80% five-day weeks.

[02:38:46] And I'd like us to be able to continue to move in that direction. What I'm heartened by is that there will be a counter review committee. And so this survey data, even though it was somewhat misaligned, as my colleagues have said with the adoption of the policy, I think it will inform the deliberations of the calendar review committee. And beyond that, this school board has decided that every year we're going to be reviewing the calendar. And that's important because we haven't looked at a calendar for the past three years, and now we'll be doing it annually. So we'll have a continuing opportunity to update the policy, to update the calendar, to make sure we're making continued forward progress.

[02:39:26] And if we're not, then, you know, we'll have to have a conversation, right, as a board, as a community. This is a work in progress. It's not an overnight fix. And, Dr. Reid, I think I'd asked you the last time we talked about this, whether the policy would reverse the 20-year trend of the deterioration of the calendar.

[02:39:47] And I believe you affirmed that it would. Yes, sir. So I believe this moves in the right direction. I'd like to see continued progress going forward. I'd like us to, at a minimum, conduct the same survey annually, just like Gallup has conducted the same presidential election poll for 40 years, because then you can compare apples to apples every year progress.

[02:40:09] What I'd like to see next year is let's do the survey and see if people are more satisfied with it, both staff and the community. And if it's not, then we need to have further community conversations to inform revisions to the calendar. But I appreciate that the school board came together to work in a very collaborative way to improve the calendar.

[02:40:28] And I look forward to continued forward progress in the years to come. Thank you. Mr. Frisch. Thank you. I'm going to riff off of the just like Gallup comment that my colleague just mentioned. Sadly, Gallup no longer does that poll. Google it. It's a mess.

[02:40:47] but I appreciate the great work that our staff does to engage the community and solicit their feedback and even when it's a what might seem on paper to be a low percentage of people any statistician who works in survey collection would be thrilled to have the sample sizes that we have I just want to take it one step further so that the data can be instructive rather than informative when we don't receive data that is weighted to provide us with an analysis that says

[02:41:25] x percent of families feel this x percent of employees feel that we're just left with basically information of those who are willing to participate and there's great value in the people who turn up to participate but i want to take their participation and inject some steroids into it so that it can speak for the totality of the people we represent including the people who don't participate in the surveys there are ways to weight this information that we receive from our families and our staff so that we can have a clear understanding of exactly where they stand

[02:42:04] on these issues there are also ways to ensure that we are over sampling in communities where we might want to know our free and reduced meals families feeling differently about this than others are multilingual families feeling differently about this than others is it regionally different etc these are tremendous opportunities to present this board with information that is not just anecdotal because without rigor without waiting this is anecdotal evidence and so while

[02:42:39] I appreciate the I know how hard it is to get this kind of participation I think we can do even better, not just on this, but on all of the engagement surveys that we do. And in the next school year, I'll probably be bringing forward some kind of a forum topic to explore how we might really make this important work shine even more. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Shostek. Thank you.

[02:43:10] One of my initial questions is going to be was whether or not the sample is weighted or not. So thank you for touching on that Mr. Frisch. I would just like to note here in this sample that although for in terms of the the modifying the calendar that nothing received an outright majority it does seem like there is a somewhat commanding plurality of people that are respondents at least that one wanted to eliminate religious and cultural holidays. Is this being discussed at all or are these holidays I guess under threat because I believe that'd be kind of a slippery

[02:43:44] slope to go on and then my my other question is are there any plans to invite students to this survey in the future thank you so um the holidays are encoded in policy at the moment so we need to follow the policy and with regard to students that'll be something probably the calendar committee will likely discuss you bet mr dan thank you and um i'm just glad i'm not the new

[02:44:19] person anymore but i appreciate those questions um it uh the student perspective on this is just so important and i talk sometimes about like you wouldn't run a business without talking to your customers and you wouldn't run a school division without talking to students and i know you do a good job listening to our students and i'm glad to have you have you join um staying on topic again i appreciate all the work that went into putting these calendars together um everybody recognizes i think this current year was for most people very difficult um and it was not an easy task to kind of reconcile this is you know one of my colleagues said this earlier this is essentially a math problem without an easy clear solution um you know and especially things in terms of the the two-week

[02:44:59] winter break and the staff training and i want to talk a little bit about that um can you speak to the professional work days i think they're called in this um what the comparisons you've done with both neighboring divisions as well as other large divisions in terms of both the quantity of those and the timing of those so it's very common to have grading days at the end of quarters and that's what four of these days are there at the end of the quarter it's also very common to have some type of division directed days or school directed days or staff planning days sprinkled throughout the year

[02:45:38] because that's really what is commonly called job embedded professional development if you only hold professional development before school starts and after school ends you lose the opportunity to try particularly with the new materials or new approaches often you want to get through you know eight to ten weeks and then gather and talk about how is it going what adjustments do we want to make and I think that there's always some tension between do we just pull people out and put substitutes in which takes care of

[02:46:16] not needing to find childcare maybe right but it isn't necessarily what we would it's not the classroom teacher working with students and given that substitutes we're not always able to find enough substitutes to cover classrooms that's become less of a desirable solution but it's it's not uncommon to have those days I would ask mr. Solomon do you because I know you all put the work calendar together because one of the things there's a student calendar which is what you're voting on but then the work calendar sort of

[02:46:53] determines what what the uses are for those days so are we sort of in line with what other divisions are doing yes I believe we are in line with neighboring jurisdictions and dr. your point about the work calendars is spot-on while we have one standard school year calendar that all of our schools look at our families look at etc for our 40,000 employees there are give or take 20 to 25 work calendars corresponding so for example on a day that we're having a professional work day where students aren't in the building we may not have food service workers or bus drivers on one of those days so it's a balance as we look at those different employee groups so it really allows us to do

[02:47:32] both things it allows us to balance the employment calendars across all employee groups and to dr reed's point it allows um the division to make sure that there's job embedded professional development um i appreciate that so in cases like in other divisions i think new york city is one of them that comes to mind that have fewer i believe work days in the middle of the year is it a matter of them bringing in subs then or how do they do it differently and i want to caveat to say i think this is my view this is very important right i i don't disagree we should have professional development um and i think as a separate topic i'd love to talk more about ways to maximize this? Because I always hear from teachers that some of this training could have

[02:48:11] been an email, right? And how can we, you know, look at this holistically, make sure we're maximizing this, right? Because, and I talked to a reading specialist a couple months ago about this, and we need to have these periodic check-ins to review data to make sure that we are, teachers are able to update their planning. So I recognize this is very important, but I want to just get a sense of what else is being done elsewhere.

[02:48:31] Right. Well, I think the quarter days are not professional development, right? Those or when our teachers are actually doing grades. So that's completely separate from coming together, for example, to spend a day on new expectations around reading or math or science, writing, whatever their content is.

[02:48:54] So I think different states have different lengths of school years, actually, that are required, different instructional hours, different ways of calculating that. I would have to check in with my colleagues in New York I was just last evening with colleagues from Clark County and Nashville and Duval County and other places around the country, other superintendents.

[02:49:17] And I think our calendars, we were chuckling about all of us are starting school relatively soon, some earlier than others. Some are going back as early as August 3rd. So, you know, all across the country, it's just very, the calendars just look different.

[02:49:36] But we can get you some data about the number of days. I don't think we're an outlier on staff work days. Okay. I appreciate that very much. And I even had a constituent work up multiple calendars. I tried myself to see how can we shorten the school year by a week. And it's difficult.

[02:49:51] So I recognize and I appreciate all the work that you've done. The last thing I'll say is just I know we've made changes. Some folks may have already made plans around spring break and so forth for the 27-28 year. I would just, you know, if we do approve these tonight, just ask you all to please make sure we communicate that promptly to folks.

[02:50:09] Those who maybe have booked flights or whatever can make adjustments. As soon as we have an approved calendar, we're going to be posting them to the website. All right, well, I'll stop talking so you can move forward. Thank you. No, people are, now that we've done three years out, people are used to, they also need to ask for time off and out years, sometimes depending on your job.

[02:50:29] Thank you. Ms. St. John-Cunning. So first of all, I want to thank the staff for doing this work. I know that there was a quick turnaround on this, and it was a lot of work, so I appreciate that. And even though the survey went out after the policy was -- yeah, the survey went out after the policy was adopted, it seems to -- the survey seems to align with what we put out, which to me is encouraging.

[02:50:58] I agree with my other colleagues that are concerned about people that didn't take the survey and I know it went out in different languages and I would be interested to see what languages -- what surveys came in in those languages and what their results were because I think that might also be telling a story in terms of what's important.

[02:51:18] But I think we do have to cast a wider net to make sure that we get data from some of our populations that traditionally don't take -- don't respond to the surveys.

[02:51:34] I think that, you know, this is a math problem. It's a difficult situation. I agree with our student representative. I actually was at an elementary school where they did give me a petition. And the interesting thing about the elementary school and their calendar when we started talking about it, it was they wanted more summer.

[02:51:50] And I'm like, well, then you're going to have to give. It's a math problem. And they were willing to give up spring break to get more summer. And the fact that elementary kids were willing to do that is pretty amazing. They started negotiating amongst themselves, so I thought that that was really interesting that they could do that.

[02:52:09] So it's not, you know, this isn't going to be a perfect calendar, but it's about finding balance, and it also, I think that this really reflects our shared commitment to our students and supports our educators and serves our families across the country, and we're not going to have a perfect solution, but I think for now this is as good as it gets.

[02:52:29] So I really, really want to thank the staff because I know this was quick. It was like, do the survey, get it done. You've got like, what, three weeks. So thank you for all your work. Thank you. Dr. Anderson for go back. Yes, thank you.

[02:52:44] Just kind of going back to the early release days, I hope that I didn't initiate any kind of advocacy for them to happen in perpetuity because I think when they were introduced two years ago, parents were looking for them to be a temporary measure. And I have no wish to make them be in the calendar in perpetuity.

[02:53:04] The four extra early release for elementary. Those are the ones that I'm speaking to. And in the same vein of trying to find some way to indicate that there will be some additional days for elementary, I think we need to indicate somewhere that also high school has early release days as well.

[02:53:20] Again, it doesn't have to be the dates. It could be there has to be some way to indicate that because it gives you the full breadth of the information. because this is what parents put on their refrigerator doors, and so having all the information in one place would be helpful. Speaking of early release days, can you speak a little bit to some of the early release days are two hours early and some are three hours early.

[02:53:44] What is the rationale of that, and can we just standardize that? I am not sure what the rationale is, and I suppose we could, so let me take that back to the team.

[02:54:00] Okay, I think it's probably historic. Let's just pick a point and just stay at that point at all times. Again, we're looking for predictability and it's not predictable when parents don't know whether it's two hours or three hours. You talked a little bit earlier about having the quarters be more balanced.

[02:54:20] I actually have a counterpoint for consideration. I think quarter four should be shorter. I think quarter one should be longer. Well, especially at the elementary level, you spend weeks and weeks and weeks with diagnostic. And so there's not as much instructional time in that quarter if they were to be equally paced.

[02:54:39] And we also have the added conversation of what happens in quarter four, which I think was talked about in a very recent meeting, which is not a whole lot in some places, just a whole lot of movies. So maybe a little bit less time. Well, yes. And I think we tried to match them with other holidays to minimize the loss of five day weeks because we have to have the grading day at the end of the quarter. So it became part of the puzzle.

[02:55:09] And I realize this is a huge puzzle so thank you for that and I do have one last question on March 28. There are two professional development days there and I know there was none in March 29 but there's a presidential primary and 28 but two days can you speak to that please.

[02:55:31] So there's a presidential primary on Tuesday the 7th, so we put a professional development day on Monday the 6th because rather than put it at another location that would have eaten up another five-day week, we opted not to do that.

[02:55:53] If you look at 28-29, you can see we added a professional workday in February on the 16th. So there's been this floating professional workday, and I think that's often the division-directed one.

[02:56:10] So we put it in right before the primary so that it wouldn't eat up another five-day week. Thank you for that. And the last thing that I'll say to avoid any more go-go backs is, for me, this is like fruit from the poison tree. I had significant issues with the policy, so therefore I have to have significant issues with the product.

[02:56:31] Not your doing. I think you guys did the best that you could, but I can't support this because I don't feel like the policy landed in the most optimal place. Thank you. Mr. Dunford, go back. I wanted to make a request before you publish these as official.

[02:56:54] So my wife works at a preschool, and they follow the FCPS calendar. And one of her teachers didn't show up one day and unexpectedly didn't call in. And so she called the teacher at home and said, are you planning to come in today?

[02:57:11] She said, oh, I thought it was a day off because I looked at the calendar, and I thought that color meant day off. And looking at this, you know, you have almost every color of Rory G. Biv, the rainbow, reflected in this calendar. And I just wonder if we can simplify it, right?

[02:57:31] I mean, the O days, for example, like to an average parent, is it significant that it's an O day? That's a, that's kind of, the O days are relevant to FCPS to reflect that there aren't major tests and no problems in athletic events.

[02:57:46] I don't think it means a lot to the parent. You know, they need to know, is this a school day or not a school day? And that's binary, right? and then is there an early release day or not an early release day so if we can just have like two or three colors rather than all the roy gbiv colors um i think it would make it more consumer friendly and and that's just one anecdotal example i've heard many many others just people trying to decipher this and feeling like it's a little bit hieroglyphics like there are some things we need to know that's insider baseball but just what does the parent need to know to know if it's a

[02:58:25] school day or not a school day so just something to think about i will take that back to the team i do know that for some of our families and some of our staff the o day designation does have you know a deeper well it's a holiday but right but but right it's a holiday for them right but for 90 so their their holiday has meaning because it's a cultural and religious holiday right But the O symbolizes that FCPS has restricted certain activities on that day.

[02:58:57] It doesn't add to or diminish the holiday. It's just an extra letter and color on a calendar that doesn't really have meaning, right, to the average family. It has meaning to FCPS to tell you what planning can happen, what events, tests can happen.

[02:59:17] So there's just more content on here than the average family needs to know. Okay, I will take that back to the staff for a discussion. So seeing no others, I'll take a turn. I appreciate my colleagues' comments, but I kind of like the color-coded calendar.

[02:59:40] And I think it's clear. I think the legend's very clear. I do think, I mean, the legend's right there in the calendar to decipher what the letters mean. So I guess I'd want to see whatever's proposed that might be different.

[02:59:58] Because I do agree that for a lot of our families, seeing the O days listed is seeing them and acknowledging their holiday, even if it's not a student holiday. Seeing no more lights on, I will call for the vote on the motion, which will be put on the screen in a minute.

[03:00:20] All those in favor of the motion on the screen, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Marin, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dana, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, and myself.

[03:00:42] All those opposed, Dr. Anderson. The clerk, please read the vote. 10-1, the motion carries. Thank you. Action item 6.04, supporting the option to place a 1% local options sales tax referendum on the ballot for public schools' construction, renovation, and capital improvement projects.

[03:01:03] I call on Mr. Dunn for a motion. Whereas, the Fairfax County School Board recognizes its primary responsibility to provide modern, safe, high-quality, and equitable learning environments for all students across Fairfax County Public Schools, and whereas FCPS currently operates under an extended 42-year school renovation cycle, leaving many aging school facilities waiting decades for major modernizations and structural overhauls, and whereas FCPS faces an estimated $400 million deferred maintenance backlog across its infrastructure, including

[03:01:42] critical HVAC replacements, roof renewals, athletic field upgrades, and facility security enhancements that far exceeds currently available bond capacity and operating revenues. And whereas, as highlighted in the FCPS Capital Improvement Program, recent construction market inflation, supply chain pressures, and escalating project costs have severely strained the division's capital plan and elongated completion timelines. And whereas, the Commonwealth of Virginia has historically limited authority for local option sales tax referenda for school capital projects

[03:02:18] to select rural jurisdictions, leaving Northern Virginia localities relying primarily on general obligation bonds and local property tax revenues. And whereas recent actions by the Virginia General Assembly expanded this statutory authority, allowing Northern Virginia localities, including Fairfax County, to place a local option sales tax referendum of up to 1% on the ballot to support school capital investments in public infrastructure and whereas under Virginia law any revenue generated through an approved one percent local option sales tax for public schools must be strictly earmarked for school construction major renovations capital improvements debt service

[03:02:56] reduction or addressing deferred infrastructure backlogs and whereas Fairfax County serves as a major commercial retail and hospitality hub for the national capital region anchored by major regional shopping centers, corporate headquarters, and heavily traveled transit corridors, including I-95, I-495, I-66, and the Dulles Corridor, generating substantial retail activity from commuters, tourists, and non-residents who would contribute directly to funding FCPS facilities.

[03:03:26] And whereas establishing a dedicated sales tax revenue stream would significantly lower the division's infrastructure backlog, accelerate the 42-year renovation timeline, and relieve pressure on local real estate property taxpayers who currently bear the vast majority of local capital funding burdens and whereas implementation of the local option sales tax requires direct voter approval through a ballot referendum during a general election ensuring that Fairfax County residents have the ultimate authority to determine whether to adopt this dedicated capital funding source and whereas state law governs the authorization of such local option taxes

[03:04:05] ensuring fiscal oversight transparency and accountability to the public now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board formally supports the authority to place a one percent local option sales tax referendum on the ballot for school construction major facility renovations and capital projects and be it further resolved that the school board respectfully urges the fairfax county board of supervisors to evaluate the potential benefits of this dedicated funding mechanism to address FCPS's $400 million maintenance backlog and 42-year renovation cycle and to take the necessary formal actions to place the referendum before Fairfax County

[03:04:44] voters at an eligible general election and be it further resolved that the school board reaffirms its commitment that all revenues generated through such a dedicated sales tax, if approved by voters, will be strictly utilized to accelerate school renovations, eliminate deferred maintenance backlogs, build modern educational facilities, and directly support the priorities established in the FCPS Capital Improvement Plant, and be it finally resolved that a copy of this resolution shall be officially transmitted to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, the Fairfax County Executive, the Superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools,

[03:05:23] and the members of the Fairfax County Delegation to the Virginia General Assembly. Is there a second? Second. Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your motion? - Yes, I have dedicated significant time over the past three years to investigating the condition of our school facilities.

[03:05:44] And I believe it is our sacred obligation to ensure that not only that every child receives a world-class education, but they have a safe learning environment in modern up-to-date school buildings and have access to world-class athletic extracurricular facilities. What I've seen in touring our school buildings is that there's a great need to think outside the box and take extraordinary measures so that we can upgrade our school facilities many of which are

[03:06:21] already not in the best of condition but may not be receive a renovation for decades to come because of our 42-year renovation cycle. School board policy is to renovate schools every 25 years but that's talking about bricks and mortar.

[03:06:38] Realistically we need to update our electrical, our HVAC, our plumbing and other infrastructure far more frequently including playgrounds and asphalt parking lots because they don't last as long as 25 years without updates and so we need to make sure that we are doing everything within our power to solve this conundrum that has gotten worse over the past 20, 30, 40 years. And we need to, just as we did with the calendar, bend that curve and start moving in the right direction back from 42 years back to 25,

[03:07:15] and to address the deferred maintenance backlog, which is currently approximately $400 million and growing at up to 10% per year, which if you compound out over time, that can quickly reach a billion dollars. And we have neighboring counties in the DMV region that have deferred maintenance backlogs in the billions of dollars, and that's almost too large of a hole to dig yourself out of. So when the state legislature enacted this legislation, this was something I was keenly interested in for the past several sessions where it's been brought up, and I

[03:07:52] appreciate the opportunity to work collaboratively with the Board of Supervisors to put this on the referendum and to have a conversation with voters to say that our schools need additional funding, a dedicated capital funding source that will not be supplanted by reducing other funding, but will go dedicated to support our schools and perhaps in the, depending on the ultimate shape of the measure put in place by the Board of Supervisors to support Metro to support transportation as well. But just $200 million that could be generated through this tax, much of which

[03:08:30] would be paid by people who live outside the county, but come here for tourism, passing through to other places could mean a great acceleration and newly renovated elementary, middle and high schools, I think would be of great benefit to the entire community, especially given that it's not just students using these facilities, but our community use has skyrocketed in recent years, used for everything from churches to Boy Scout meetings.

[03:08:57] Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Frisch, we'd like to speak to your second. Yes. Thank you, Chair, Lady. I'm pleased to second this resolution because we cannot continue to meet the 21st century expectations with 20th century funding tools.

[03:09:13] Every year, this board confronts aging buildings, deferred maintenance, rising construction costs, the growing gap between what our students deserve and what our capital funding can support while ensuring Fairfax County maintains its AAA bond rating. We have a responsibility to be good stewards of tax dollars while thinking creatively about how we meet those challenges. That means exploring every reasonable, responsible option rather than relying on the same limited toolbox we've used for quite some time. This resolution doesn't raise taxes and it doesn't commit the county to pursuing one it recognizes that the general assembly has given fairfax county a tool that many communities

[03:09:49] have long valued and sought and asks that it be seriously evaluated ultimately any decision would rest with the voters i believe our residents deserve the opportunity to decide whether a dedicated funding source for school construction and modernization makes sense for our community after a few years of progress we actually shrunk that renovation cycle for a few years We've watched our renovation cycle stretch out while costs continue to rise since the pandemic.

[03:10:19] Delaying these fixes doesn't make them less expensive. It almost always makes them more expensive. If we're serious about giving students and staff the facilities they deserve and saving taxpayers money, we have to consider new approaches like this. I also want to thank our partners on the Board of Supervisors who have consistently demonstrated their commitment to Fairfax County Public Schools and have been indispensable partners in advocating for increased school funding and funding options from the state.

[03:10:43] To be clear, as we explore every available local option, we must also continue advocating for greater state investment. Implementing the Joint Legislative Audit Review Commission's recommendations would bring Virginia's investment in public education on par with the national average, and for Fairfax County alone, again, we say this all the time, that would mean an additional nearly $570 million in state funding for our schools every year. I'm grateful for the progress our General Assembly delegation has made toward that goal, and I look forward to continuing our work together to make more of those recommendations a reality. Good governance isn't always about

[03:11:21] saying yes to every idea. It's about evaluating every tool available to us while continuing to advocate for the funding our students deserve. That's what this resolution does, and I'm happy to support it. Thank you. Ms. Marin. This is a solution offered to Fairfax County by Virginia's General Assembly to obtain desperately needed public facility funding that does not rely on Fairfax County homeowners and taxpayers. This is the state's answer to years of requests that the school board and the board of supervisors have asked for. This is an opportunity to ask the public if they want to invest in our public school facilities. This is not a new idea to

[03:12:00] our public. Residents already vote regularly on financial facilities investments. This is the public schools bond, which sustains a high passing rate at 70% of voter approval. Our residents have already shown that they agree with investing in facilities that host children's education, adults' employment, community recreation, and civic engagement that are safe, modern, and accessible.

[03:12:23] This is what residents expect. This is relief from the relentless use of homeowner tax to fill the gap from the state, to fund our public school facilities that benefit all Fairfax residents, whether they have children in schools or not. The Board of Supervisors has been asking Richmond for solutions, money, to lessen the burden on Fairfax taxpayers. This is a solution. This is an opportunity for Fairfax County to get the money. Thank you. Mr. Dunn. Mr. Dannon. No. Dr. Anderson.

[03:13:00] Should I just pick anybody? I mean, I got it with the two Ds, but okay. At any rate, I appreciate this being brought forward when I said earlier that mr. Dunn is a visionary and that he is always willing to bring things forward to investigate them deeply This is an example of that. I know he worked really really quickly to get this resolution written and brought to the board's attention So thank you for that I think there are a lot of good things that I won't repeat what both miss Marin and

[03:13:38] and Mr. Frisch shared, but I do want to offer one little correction in Mr. Dunn's comments regarding the renovation queue in Fairfax County. While 25 years is what's on paper, 42 years is the actuality. We have not met that by any stretch of the imagination. And then systems have to be replaced out of sequence, and then when there's finally a renovation, they still have to be replaced because they won't fit with the new structures and so I think this is a great opportunity minimally for conversation for us to discuss with our funding partners what is

[03:14:16] possible for Fairfax County to accelerate some of the disparities that I know will become and probably has already been I heard this you know from others who visited the disparity between some of our buildings the new sky view it's a building unlike any of the others all of our students deserve something that is that fantastic and so I'm looking forward to supporting this resolution and to engaging with my partner on the Board of Supervisors in terms of their thinking on making this happen for our schools so

[03:14:51] thank you mr. Dunn for your work on this mr. Dunn for go back thank you I just want to note, currently nine Virginia localities currently have the authority to do this. Danville, Charlotte, Gloucester, Halifax, Henry, Mecklenburg, Northampton, Patrick, and Pennsylvania. Collectively, they've raised $119 million over the past five years. And when this has been put to voters, when this has been put to voters, even conservative counties like Gloucester County

[03:15:27] have approved it by a margin of 62 percent to 38 percent. And that's because the entire community and every county wants to see their children tend school in a modern, safe learning environment.

[03:15:44] And the reality is, if you look across the Commonwealth, many of our school buildings, if not most of them, are 50 years or more old. And they're not in the best condition, not just in Fairfax County, but across the state. So this is a statewide measure because it's a statewide problem. And I think we tend on average to have better, better quality facilities in Fairfax County, but we need to have world-class facilities. And I think Skyview really sets a new standard of what we can achieve, an award-winning architectural design. If you haven't visited,

[03:16:18] I encourage you to do so on one of the open houses that I know are held on occasion and and really get a sense of of what international school design can can do because i've traveled extensively over national internationally seeing and attending schools overseas and and it really is much different than the schools we're used to and we need to do better we can do better and we can make sure our students don't just receive a world-class education but do so in a world-class learning environment thank you miss st john cunning um so i appreciate that this was brought up and

[03:16:55] and that it was done quickly and that we were nimble and nimble and able to do this quickly. I want to bring this down to the human level in the sense that as a community school coordinator, I have always said the center of a community is the school.

[03:17:11] That's where people go to. That's where they migrate. And increasingly, our schools are used for more than just education. I know that as a community school coordinator, it was a food distribution site. During COVID, it was where kids were getting vaccines and the entire community was getting vaccines.

[03:17:29] It's where enrichment opportunities occur after school, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, sports, other activities. So our facilities are used consistently by our community. Civic organizations use them. Religious organizations use them.

[03:17:44] And all of this creates wear and tear on our schools. And if we want to continue having the heart of our school, the heart of our communities being that school providing safe buildings that are modern, that can be used, it's something that goes beyond just the academic use.

[03:18:07] it's something that really our entire community uses and so i just want to stress that and stress the importance of that uh because when it comes down to it we always of course we have to talk about the dollars and cents that that apply to it but being in the buildings and seeing how they're used and how they can enrich a community is so critical so maintaining these buildings and having them up to par is very important thank you seeing no other lights i will call for the vote on the motion which is on the screen it's very long we will not read it again uh all those in favor

[03:18:43] mr frisch miss anderson miss marron miss st john cunning mr mcdaniel miss dixit mr dann and mr dunn mr moon dr anderson myself that's unanimous for board members um 7.01 performance review emergency emergency succession el2 monitoring report each year the school board assesses the superintendent in part on the basis of the school division's reasonable progress toward achieving the 2023-30 strategic plans, goals, and adherences to a set of 13 executive limitations found on pages

[03:19:18] 14 to 31 of the board's strategic governance manual. The superintendent provides annual monitoring reports to the board for each executive limitation. The board then votes on whether the provided report is in compliance or in corrective or if corrective action is needed. I call on Dr.

[03:19:33] Reed for monitoring report on executive limitation two, emergency succession. Good evening, Madam chair members of the board and the public as chairlady indicated tonight it will be presenting executive limitation two which discusses the emergency superintendent succession it's one of the shortest ELs and it's clear that I shall not fail to designate at least one other executive staff member as an acting superintendent who would be familiar with the board's governance PROCESS AND ISSUES OF CURRENT CONCERN AND IS CAPABLE OF ASSUMING SUPERINTENDENT RESPONSIBILITIES

[03:20:11] IN MY ABSENCE OR IN THE EVENT OF A SUDDEN AND UNEXPECTED LOSS OF MY ABILITY TO SERVE, I GUESS FOR LACK OF A BETTER TERM. AND THIS REQUIRES SOMEBODY WITH A SUPERINTENDENT CREDENTIAL. SO I HAVE GATHERED INFORMATION THAT I BELIEVE SUPPORTS COMPLIANCE WITH THE board's executive limitation on this topic so with regard to this i've designated the chief of staff marty smith to assume these responsibilities up through his retirement date which will be at the

[03:20:45] end of july july 31st and as i've indicated i'll be um well dr francis ivey will be joining us as the interim our acting interim chief of staff and she will be designated as the successor beginning august 1 and she is at this time willing to serve through up until winter break although we may not fully require that as we will be posting the chief of staff position this fall and obviously at that

[03:21:20] point um we would i would come back to the board and make that adjustment we have contacted the virginia department of education and confirmed that that is their preference as well because we would need to make an adjustment there as well so upon mr smith's retirement dr ivy will serve as the interim chief of staff and my designee and for those of you who were on the prior board dr ivy has previously served as a successor and designee consistent with this designation the annual school board arrangements also have included the appointment to match

[03:21:55] or be parallel with EL2 so one of the things that you know should I be hit by a bus tomorrow or some vehicle or something or unexpectedly lose the capacity to serve I have directed our chief of staff to work collaboratively with the senior leadership team to address issues and/or emergencies that might occur and ensure that open and continuous lines of communication remain established between, in this case, Mr. Smith and subsequently Dr. Ivey and the senior leadership team and the board. The chief of staff has been provided with the board's policies, regulations, and governance

[03:22:35] manual, which includes executive limitations, and also is familiar and is a co-signer on all state and federal documents. And the chief of staff is also, the current chief of staff is very familiar with our strategic plan and priorities as is Dr. Ivey. So, Madam Chair, that concludes the presentation for EL2, the emergency superintendent succession. Thank you. I now call on Mr. Dana for a motion. I move that the school board finds that the superintendent is in compliance with executive limitation number two, emergency succession. I further move that the school board approve the monitoring report based on the superintendent's reasonable interpretation of executive limitation

[03:23:13] number two emergency succession as outlined in the strategic governance manual is there a second i second thank you uh mr frisch my apologies mr dana would you like to speak to your motion yes chair lady lady i would can't wait to use that the rest of this year um just very briefly uh one we are all praying you don't get hit by a bus um and uh yeah i recognize um i've gotten a chance to work with uh marty smith and um should something like that happen marty's fantastic and wonderful

[03:23:51] I also just want to take a moment to recognize Dr. Ivy. For folks who don't know her, she has a remarkable background and it's such a testament to how wonderful the school system we have that we can have somebody like her with her experience, which started in special education, and her passion in our system.

[03:24:09] And again, I hope this would never happen, but if it does, I know she would do a phenomenal job, so thank you. Yeah, it's important that we smooth this transition because, you know, as I've shared with all our chief officers, they're a heartbeat away right but literally the chief of staff is a heartbeat away so it's uh but both mr smith and dr ivy are phenomenal and they know the system inside now miss st john cunning would you like to speak to your second no i think the plan was perfectly presented thank you mr fresh um i do want to thank dr ivy who i'm certain has been watching every board meeting

[03:24:48] since she retired um for coming back to fcps and also for setting such a great example to mr smith as he retires that he doesn't have to go very far uh he can keep coming back to support our students and our staff um i also do want to note that while this is a short uh el because we're established you're establishing succession and um i expect staff to protect you from buses apparently um But a lot more work has gone into preparing for succession than identifying individuals who will pick up the reins if necessary.

[03:25:28] I would direct anybody watching at home to visit the FCPS website specifically and search for strategic governance. Any superintendent, any future superintendent, any acting superintendent, any member who joins division leadership can look back at now several years of detailed action and reports that the superintendent has done, that the board has weighed in on over several years now.

[03:25:58] And they will have a breadth of information that we did not used to have all in one place. Certainly staff would, you know, go through tremendous work to bring people up to speed. And now we have a tremendous amount of information.

[03:26:15] And I think that's one of the defining gifts you've brought to this school division. And it's one of the reasons why I'm happy to vote that this is in compliance IN ADDITION TO THE INDIVIDUALS WHO WOULD SUCCEED IF NECESSARY, THERE IS A MASSIVE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION THAT'S BEEN PREPARED FOR THEM ALREADY.

[03:26:33] THANK YOU, MR. DUNN. JUST AS A QUESTION, HAS THE CHIEF OF STAFF ALWAYS BEEN THE SUCCESSOR TO THE SUPERINTENDENT? IN MY VERY -- YOU KNOW, I'LL BE STARTING YEAR FIVE. PREVIOUSLY THERE WAS A DEPUTY SUPERINTENDENT, WHICH I BELIEVE WAS THE DESIGNEE.

[03:26:56] I also, you know, I haven't gone back through 20 years of history, but it's generally the person who is working most directly with documents because that's also part of the, your successor has to be familiar with state and local documents, all the types of things.

[03:27:17] There's a lot of, how do I say this, there are a lot of logistical details that aren't necessarily glamorous to talk about, but that are routinely managed, that that person needs to work pretty closely with the superintendent.

[03:27:34] So previously it's been a deputy, most recently it's been a chief of staff. What is the equivalent of the deputy right now? Is it chief of schools? We don't have one at this point. I think the, because no one is at that pay grade.

[03:27:51] so but the equivalent in terms of coordinating the work is the chief of staff mr smith coordinates chief meetings as the chief of staff so he would be as close to equivalent to a deputy but not with a salary thank you thank you miss anderson i don't want to speak long to this but i do want to say thank you for all the work that you did to ensure that we did everything we possibly could to make sure that even though mr smith is is leaving us um which we're all very sad about i appreciate the diligence that you and staff took to make sure that we had this set up exactly correctly so that

[03:28:28] we could have the interim in place and a plan moving forward so i just wanted to say thank you for the care that you took i mean this is a very short el and it's a it's kind of perfunctory but i really appreciate the the time that it took to make sure we got it right mr mcdaniel i will offer the same piece of advice that i offer every year we go through this a lot of c-suite executives have built into their travel policies that they cannot fly in the same airplane so it may be something to think about going forward right mr smith and i don't fly together and we don't

[03:29:06] vacation at the same time right like the successor generally is here dr ivy and i already have discussed august through the fall so that we're never both gone at the same time but thank you you know how i don't like to fly to begin with so thank you uh seeing no other lights on i will call for the vote on the motion which is on the screen. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Mairn, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dannen, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson and

[03:29:40] myself with Mr. Moon away from the table. Madam Clerk, you read the verb. 10-0-0-1, the motion carries. Annually, the board will review each executive limitation at the time that monitoring report is provided to determine if revisions are needed. Board members may offer amendments to executive limitations at any regular meeting provided they send final amendment language the board and clerk at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting in which it is to be considered at this time as no amendments have been

[03:30:19] submitted in advance of this meeting executive invitation to emergency succession was placed on the consent agenda for approval later in tonight's meeting to maintain the current language for the year ahead at this time the board will take a few minutes to document their individual feedback on the monitoring report school board members may complete the hard copy found to your diocese or the online form linked in the meeting script. If you have any issues accessing the online form, please contact the clerks. Without objection, can we just continue and not take a break? Excellent. 8.01, Skyview High School Western Pyramids, Superintendent's Preliminary

[03:30:57] Boundary Recommendation. I call on Dr. Reed for a presentation on Skyview High School Western Pyramids, Superintendent's Preliminary Boundary Recommendation. Thank you, Madam Chair. Tonight, I just want to be very clear this is the preliminary recommendation which is to say that we do still have the public hearing on the 13th and then based on that public hearing and what we hear I'll make the adjustments final adjustments and present the final recommendation at our board meeting on

[03:31:34] 16th so that tonight is not a vote night it's simply my preliminary recommendation so having said that let's go to the next slide this evening I will be providing my the summary of the review and again the preliminary recommendation so as a reminder per 8130 local school boundaries and program assignments priority prioritize these four areas and next slide a little bit of background

[03:32:10] for the community watching in august like we haven't even owned this property for a full year yet um and i think it feels like sometimes um a lot of uh anyhow it's there's been a lot of work on the part of staff and i want to thank um mr gordon and his staff miss young wedhall and her staff, Mr. Smith. This has been a big team effort. And like I said, we haven't even owned the building for a year. In November, the board voted to open the new school for the coming year. And in March,

[03:32:46] we awarded a contract to an architecture and urban design firm, WXY, to assist with this boundary study, which concluded in June. When we look at the community engagement at a glance, essentially the data is up there we've had six community meetings 15,000 map comments 49,000 address searches and 25,000 unique visitors to the interactive Explorer tool the boundary Advisory Committee has also been part of this work they've helped to ensure the the tracking of the process in terms of

[03:33:23] making sure the community meeting dates and materials were ready and I think of work to keep students at the center of the conversations the committee will be meeting again on the 14th after the public hearing so the committee will have a chance also to review what they heard at the public hearing and will also provide community input there have been four other ongoing boundary studies that have been going on that the facilities team is working on although I will not

[03:33:57] be going into those tonight this slide shows the dates that we've had the community meetings and the sessions with the superintendent advisory committees so it's been a pretty active spring and early summer so the school board engagement has held public discussion of the scenarios at two different work sessions one in October and one in May and tonight my preliminary recommendation has been informed by primarily the feedback received from the community in concert with the consultant and staff recommendations as well as the synthesis

[03:34:36] from the superintendent boundary review committee so the preliminary recommendation draws students really from Westfield Chantilly and South Lakes high schools and the overall changes will help balance enrollment across all of the high school regions no high school will be projected to be over utilized and it will help balance enrollment across all six of the schools in the western part of the county also the preliminary recommendation creates a straight feeder or eliminates the split feeder

[03:35:09] from carson to skyview and franklin middle school will remain the only middle school to high school split feeder in the western part of the county so i know the team the staff and the consultant in the community you know have at least minimized another split feeder situation based on the proposed boundaries this is the total of students that will be impacted in terms of being moved which is approximately in all total about 2 544 420 of which are middle school and just over 2 000

[03:35:46] are high school students so the slide here shows the adjusted student membership and program capacity utilization um overall these adjusted memberships allow for growth still again this is just like in the moment while keeping student population in place to support really vibrant school communities we're currently also reviewing the placement of programs and academies and we could shift some of those program and academy programs around between some of these schools

[03:36:23] to make sure that we're able to utilize parking and entrance and egress in areas of campuses perhaps that may have more space now that didn't have space before. And then the preliminary scenario for middle school capacities, and this shows the adjusted capacities for middle schools based on the preliminary recommendation.

[03:36:46] With the next 12 slides, we want to walk through the overview of the recommended boundary changes, will be affecting students at 10 of the schools and um you can see the existing boundaries on the slide as well as the proposed boundaries and i this isn't really the best venue to try to slog through the differences in the maps but these have been posted and they are part of the explorer tool And in the center, the bulleted list identifies what the actual proposed changes would do.

[03:37:25] So it eliminates, among other things, the elementary school to high school split feeder for Floris and Oak Hill elementary schools. And then Coates, McNair, McNair Upper, and Fox Mill will also be straight feeders rather than split.

[03:37:42] Or they will be straight feeders to Skyview. Eliminating middle school to high school split feeders for Carson is another aspect of this. So, Centerville High School, I don't know what happened.

[03:38:04] Madam Clerk, can we, thank you. Okay, this slide again shows the proposed boundary for Centerville in the darker pink and Westfield in the lighter pink. And just, I think one of the things that's come up several times in the advisory committee is anytime you introduce an entirely new school, whether you built the new school or bought the new school, you're going to have to populate it with students who are going to current schools.

[03:38:33] I mean, that's what you do. That's why you buy the school. So I think that clearly having Skyview in this Western mix is going to lower the enrollment demographics at other schools.

[03:38:48] So the impact for Centerville, then we have the impact for Chantilly High School at this time, and this has got, this has Chantilly in teal, Skyview in yellow, and Westfield in pink.

[03:39:05] again these are online and the explorer tools are online so then we go to oakton high school and currently there are no changes proposed for oakton high school which is shown in purple and purple then we go to south lakes high school the proposed boundary for sky view in this case is shown in yellow and south lakes in light pink and this actually affects about 384 high school

[03:39:37] students from south lakes to skyview and this is an area where we also looked at the housing impact potentially of new permits so but this would approximately again impact about 384 high school students we have westfield high school the proposed boundary for westfield is in pink chantilly is in teal and centerville is also in pink and sky view is in yellow so this creates an elementary to high

[03:40:16] school split feeder for brookfield which would now feed either westfield or chantilly so um but it does i think we're on the next slide we're on westfield please thank you reassigned 77 students to centerville and 268 um come from chantilly to westfield and then reassigns another 1062 from westfield to skyview the western uh geography is really challenging we had hoped to go from current school to the new school but in some cases we have to backfill just because of the

[03:40:56] geographic distances so then we look at Carson middle school you can see that the existing boundaries and proposed are also on the chart and the shifting student populations are listed as well and Franklin middle school this shows the proposed boundary for Franklin and Brown and Carson in green with Stone middle school in purple the proposed changes reduce the number of middle schools that Crossfield elementary schools would feed

[03:41:36] from three to two which now will be Franklin and Hughes middle schools and then it reduces the number of high schools Franklin middle school would feed into from three to two which would be Chantilly and Oakton so and it reduces the Franklin capacity about five percent Hughes middle school there are proposed changes given the current boundary situation and Liberty Middle

[03:42:04] School they're modest changes only about 35 middle school students and see Rocky Run Middle School the proposed changes here are very minor again and most of these were again around geographic moves and stone middle school again minor changes we're at about

[03:42:40] 111 from franklin to stone with a reassignment of 35 from liberty to stone so this reduces the number of middle schools cub run feeds into from three to two which are now stone and rocky run and the timeline and closing just want to remind the board and the community that tonight is a preliminary recommendation no vote or action to be taken on the 13th we'll have the public hearing on the 14th the advisory committee meets to review what we heard the public hearing and then on the 16th

[03:43:19] I'll bring the final recommendation and mr. Smith will also be here that night SINCE HE HEADED UP THIS WESTERN PROCESS AND MAYBE HE WILL ALSO BE ABLE TO ANSWER SOME OF THE MORE DETAILED QUESTIONS. BUT, MADAM CHAIR, THAT CONCLUDES THE PRESENTATION OF MY PRELIMINARY RECOMMENDATIONS THIS EVENING.

[03:43:39] AND HAPPY TO TAKE QUESTIONS OR FEEDBACK ON THE PRELIMINARY RECOMMENDATIONS. THANK YOU, DR. REED. AT THIS TIME I WILL CALL ON BOARD MEMBERS TO ASK CLARIFYING QUESTIONS OR PROVIDE COMMENTS. We'll start with Ms. Marin, followed by Mr. Dunn. Thank you.

[03:43:55] Well, it certainly is exciting setting a new boundary for a new school. The level of, I will say, anxiety over selecting the school without fully knowing the programming and transportation has subsided from what I've seen, and I hope we can capture the lessons learned about how to introduce that to the public in the future.

[03:44:12] Even though boundary setting is new for us as a practice, of course, as you said, it's how we bring students to the facilities. The community input I've heard is that changes are acceptable regarding neighborhoods being re-boundaried or staying the same. However, there is a growing concern, like hourly, over the last few days about the drop in student membership, why these levels are agreeable, and if the clerks could please pull up slide 10, I would, I think it's slide 10, yeah.

[03:44:45] You know, why these levels are agreeable. are seeing - this is the first time residents are seeing the information in this way and I have to say it reminds me of what happened in the first iteration way back in April when the Fox Miller Munchie School community was proposed to be split in half and separated and it creates a ton of anxiety. It's the first time that topic's been put out that way and I really see the same thing happening here because up until now it's been this idea that the new high school will include Centerville, Chantilly, Westfield, and then Oakton and South the South Lakes a little bit less.

[03:45:22] And that word balance, I'd like you to speak to what does balance mean? Because when you have a high school going to 72% and another one staying the same, that's not balanced to me. How is how is that balancing, Dr. Reed? So I think that, let me find a slide that has the numbers on it.

[03:45:44] They're all roughly, and Mr. Gordon, I'm going to be calling on you shortly. They're all roughly in the 2000 range, 2000 student range. Is that slide 13, perhaps? I'm sorry? It might be slide 13, perhaps. Could be.

[03:46:01] I'm just trying to go through it here. But the balance means that they were all roughly similar in size. And I do know that the, I think it is slide 13, I do think that we also tried to, as the consultants worked with the demographics, tried to look at where are most of the growth plans in the county as well.

[03:46:33] So making sure that we have space. So some of the school areas, for example, Westfield, that's at 2030, may now have space for some Academy programs that they didn't previously have space for and I believe some of the housing plan starts mr. Gordon were in that area so perhaps you could talk about it's both balancing for today and balancing in the out years I think is what you were trying to achieve is that correct mr. Gordon absolutely that is correct and if you look if you look at Westfield when we you know you're boundering out you know a net total about 600 students coming out

[03:47:13] those coming in that will also give us ability to eliminate almost 13 trailers that are at that location as well. So that's helpful. The challenge for me is that this is my only shot to have a conversation about this proposal and the public hasn't heard that trailers would be reduced and the public hasn't heard that academies might be switched. I had a parent today at Westfield say what if we switch the academies? All great ideas but Dr. Reed you and the previous chair and Vice Chair set us up with one week to have a discussion about this, with a public hearing in

[03:47:49] the middle. And that is creating, I have so many questions, if I can continue, and by my count, it's 717 from Westfield, not about a net of 600. According to the numbers here, it's 1062 from Westfield to Skyview, 268 in from Chantilly, and 77 in from Centerville. The boundary policy, and I've said this with the comprehensive as well, four pillars, access to programming is the number one. So how can we say that reducing a school population by 25% is going to keep good access

[03:48:25] to programming? That does not mean, and I'd like acknowledgement that this is true. If you're going to reduce that, we know what happens when membership drops, the funding drops, the teacher staff drops. The number of options, we have not talked about that. I'll just share the other thing about the boundary policy, enrollment capacity, proximity, and transportation. All I see here is enrollment capacity, and I would like another go back and possibly grace for a third one, since this is my only chance to ask questions ahead of the vote. Thank you. Mr. Dunn. Dr. Reed,

[03:49:05] what are the projected percentage of students at Skyview who will be on free and reduced price meals? I don't know the answer to that. It's hard to project out because remember there's a phasing process to this so I'm not sure. We'd have to predict who is going to be financially challenged two years from now. I'm not sure. That would take some time to think through I think.

[03:49:41] Well generally I mean my understanding is that in our database of 180,000 students we know which students receive free and reduced price meals and we also know who's opted into Skyview for ninth and tenth grades starting next year don't we well some schools are CEP schools so they're not filling out individual paperwork if that makes sense like they're qualifying as a school so I don't but we could go back and look and see if there's a way to calculate that but we haven't been tracking that at this point yeah I I would be very interested to see I mean if you just make the assumption if they're at one of the community schools that that they would

[03:50:20] be free and reduced price lunch I would like to know that both for sky view and then what the percentages for each of the five high school pyramids will be after these changes are made because I am concerned that we're not thinking through the potential impacts on equity I I wonder why are we moving why are we not moving more students out of Centerville to eliminate the need for modulars, because it seems that, you know, more students could be moved, so we could save potentially money

[03:50:55] on the upcoming renovation by not expanding the school, and after the move, the utilization at Centerville is currently predicted to still be at 101% or 109% without modulars. So Mr. Gordon?

[03:51:10] Yes. Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir. Centerville so we also have as you mentioned we have a future renovation project that's ongoing that will then help reduce some of that capacity as we see going forward additionally there is development as been mentioned before within within that area there's approximately additional six hundred or six thousand housing units which would potentially yield another 598 students so we do see growth in that area which which will support our future renovation

[03:51:48] for that school then it's currently there's roughly 21 22 hundred students at Centerville this takes it down you know 77 students as Dr. Reed mentioned before so I think looking at future renovation plus future growth yield and that all combined together for this analysis sorry I find that confusing if if we're gonna add 600 students at Centerville and it's currently a hundred and nine percent overcrowded why wouldn't we seek to move more students out of Centerville to bring it into a normal range.

[03:52:24] The optimal range, FCPS has said, is 85% to 94% so that you have at least some flex. You had mentioned with Westfield, you want to add academies. But if you're going to be adding 600 students to Centerville and you're currently at 109 after the changes, we could end up in a park lawn situation with a forest of modulars and trailers.

[03:52:50] it's cheap I don't you know foresee that situation occurring I think the time lag between new housing starts getting the facility that we have currently designed it's looking at 3,000 students so what we have plans for right now is for a 3,000 student facility there has been an ask in the previous board to go back to see what size facility do we actually need to build in that process does it need to be 3,000 does it need to be 2,500 so we're in a process of reviewing that I think we have to August 28 to come back with that data to see what is the recommendation to go forward so I acknowledge the fact that currently it

[03:53:29] is that it's still within the realm of what we consider to be a appropriate size capacity about 95 to 103 percent when you consider modulars or without modulars so I think that this is a further answer your question we are looking at all options again I think the future starts will come at a later date that will incorporate the building of a new school within the next two and a half years of completion thank you there's been some chatter online that Oakton High School which is the wealthiest and largest of the schools is

[03:54:06] is being left untouched while some supposedly poorer areas of Chantilly High School and Centerville High School are being sent to Westfield I don't know if any of that's true, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to address those, that online chatter. So I haven't looked at the online chatter, but I do know that you and I talked about that.

[03:54:27] One of the adjustments we made in the center or the Chantilly-Westfield boundary is we really looked, there's a ravine that cuts through, I don't know which neighborhood that is, but what we chose to do is say that that ravine was kind of a natural point of demarcation right because you can't walk through the ravine and so anything to the Chantilly side of the ravine we were gonna stay with Chantilly and on the Westfield side of the ravine go to Westfield but beyond that I you know the

[03:55:06] consultant in the community feedback looked at the geography the transportation the safe routes to schools where do we have paths that can go to schools I know all of those were part of the calculus but mr. Gordon do you have a response for that as well but you're correct we looked at geographic boundaries there was the consultant did not look at housing types when they did their analysis so that wasn't part of the consideration so whether negative or are positive for that so i don't see that as a as a reason as for uh housing communities to be

[03:55:42] concluded or not included we did take feedback throughout the whole process and we did adjust based on you know community feedback through the process okay i appreciate certainly it wasn't motivated by that but understanding potential impacts even if inadvertent or unintended uh would be valuable to know especially the frm percentages that you are projecting or anticipating Thank you.

[03:56:08] Thank you. Mr. Moon. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for the presentation. I think my colleagues have already asked some of the questions that I had on my mind. But using page 13, yes, adjusted membership and adjusted program capacity, utilization percent, that's sort of basic, except for Skyview, because it's going to take a while to get to that point.

[03:56:38] other schools, is that sort of year one numbers? I'm just trying to figure out, you know, when will these numbers are expected to occur? Is that year one, year five, or year two?

[03:56:54] Because I am also looking for out years numbers, five years from now, five years after the boundary adjustments, or 10 years based upon whatever the data we do have. Right.

[03:57:09] No, it's a great question. Mr. Gordon? Hey, sir. So we obviously we do a CIP that looks at five years every year five years out. Yes. Yes, sir. So we so as we roll through the CIP process every year, we'll continue to adjust that on an annual basis. Is it possible for you to see, you know, tenure tenure numbers, whatever the data we have, because there are a lot of developments that maybe go on in the western part of the county.

[03:57:33] That's going to take a number of years to get to that point. I think that's a really good idea. So I know it's not, I mean, it's just a projection, but when we do boundary adjustments like this, I used to, we used to be provided with audio data as a guidance.

[03:57:53] I'll take that back. I'll work with staff to see what information we can provide for a 10-year projection. And we do know, again, the housing starts that are coming that would affect that type of information, whether they're approved in construction or planned. That will also provide that type of information or will inform us on, you know, future requirements.

[03:58:12] I mean, that, that, those information will be, you know, very valuable, especially if the board, you know, ever entertains a thought of adjusting renovation scope or expansion scope of a Centerville.

[03:58:28] I'm not saying that I'm in favor of that. If the board is going to be entertaining, that idea, having that out-year data will be important. Thank you. Yes, sir. I think Centerville still could be adjusted down the road in looking at these numbers, but we wouldn't want to move them twice, right?

[03:58:52] So I think that it's likely, and again, when Mr. Smith gets back, it's likely that this is the first move at this, right? AND SO I THINK IT'S APPROPRIATE TO LOOK AT THE OUT YEARS I THINK THAT SHOULD GIVE US SOME GUIDANCE THANK YOU MS DIXET FOLLOWED BY DR. EIRSEN SO OBVIOUSLY THE SCHOOL IS REALLY IMPORTANT FOR ME BECAUSE THIS IS MY DISTRICT AND WATCHING THIS VERY CAREFULLY FROM THE BEGINNING ATTENDING ALL THE BOUNDARY MEETINGS AND ALSO MR. MCDANIEL WHO'S ALWAYS INVOLVED AS WELL SO I WANTED TO

[03:59:32] make some comments based on what I heard from the community so my other colleagues know about it and this from the Chantilly High School the students from the Oak Hill area they are very happy to attend Skyview they're moving to Skyview and the feedback I've received from that community has been very positive and they're excited to move to Skyview this helps reduce overcrowding in Chantilly High School for sure.

[04:00:00] And I do want to mention about Westfield. The topic came up Westfield is again my school. I'm very involved in I had a conversation with you about, you know, how we can engage and make it more attractive to the school with the academy or some other programs having some space used there too, as it's a big school.

[04:00:23] And I understand the reason maybe Mr. Dunn may not know that how why we can't move Centerville students to Westfield, it was introduced, the community just came so strong and basically said they don't want to move because they're very far away from Westfield.

[04:00:41] They were like 4.8 miles average away, while Centerville High School was like 2.2 miles away. So that is why disruption, the community feedback, everything was taken into consideration by the boundary committee and dr reed's team and this adjustment was made so i was very impressed with the overall um the the consultant and the boundary team taking the feedback from the community and working with them and and providing solutions where so yeah it does look like west field is going to be have a little limited less capacity but those most students were coming like

[04:01:19] 20-30 miles not miles driving time from Herndon they were coming to Westfield those are going to Skyview which is much closer to them they're like one mile away or two miles away from Skyview and that makes sense if somebody is you know sitting in the traffic for 20-30 minutes or 28 and they have an opportunity to go to a school which is five minutes away I think families will take that um so that is that's that's why a lot of s field parents are not complaining about moving to skyview i've only heard a couple of i guess uh issues with you know grandfathering and you know

[04:01:58] questions about that and we are going to discuss that we're going to talk about siblings and grandfathering and those are going to be my questions uh dr reed is how are we going to handle a sibling situation because some parents have reached out and saying they have students who who are you know one one child is going to you know to have three kids going to three different high schools how do we accommodate that that actually becomes part of the phasing and transportation conversation which also is up for vote on the 16th and I don't recall what we decided with siblings I know we had

[04:02:36] rules within which grade levels could stay and then which grade levels that were staying would have transportation but I don't recall where we landed on siblings to be honest so I think it's probably a stay space available but if you look at these schools more often than not maybe that is space available but again I don't know I would have to go back to the team Eric do you remember Mr. Gordon where we landed with siblings I do not I think we were silent on it all right we can do some sibling research and make sure we get the get that out

[04:03:12] you let's make sure we do that with a note tomorrow just want to make sure madam clerk is my time up yeah thank you dr. Anderson thank you so much and again I'm kind of on the outside looking in and so I am listening and absorbing all of what the folks who are a little bit more deeply involved in who are more deeply involved in are saying and the reason why I want to offer a clarification I want to receive clarification it's because whether I like it or not I still have to vote on this so I better understand what I'm

[04:03:46] voting on. So my first question is the data I was looking at the data in the newest SIP and as I was looking through chart 13 the numbers weren't matching up for me when I looked at the 26-27 school year capacity projections. It took me a minute to realize that the numbers that we are comparing against are the 25-26 school year which just closed. Can I better understand why we use those numbers in lieu of what we're expecting to have happen in 26-27, which is coming up in less

[04:04:22] than two months. I will ask Mr. Gordon. That's a good question, ma'am. Thank you. I think it comes down to simply as we started the process using the previous numbers. CIP was published halfway through the process, so it was make a decision. Are we going back to change numbers that would have maybe affected previous comprehensive boundary and keep the same kind of data set going forward?

[04:04:47] SURE IF I COULD JUST MAKE A THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE WORTHWHILE TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE NEW NUMBERS BECAUSE THOSE ARE THE NEW NUMBERS AND SOME OF THEM ARE NOT AS CLOSE TO EACH OTHER I JUST THINK LIKE USING THE OLD NUMBERS STILL PUTS US IN A SLIGHTLY OUTDATED PLACE ONE OF THE THINGS THAT YOU MENTIONED EARLIER WAS THE BALANCE AND I KNOW MS MARIN ASKED SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THAT THAT BRINGS TO ME A QUESTION THAT I'VE ASKED SINCE MY FIRST TIME ON THE BOARD MY FIRST YEAR ON THE BOARD WHEN WE'RE LOOKING AT GLEN FOREST ELEMENTARY

[04:05:18] and doing some adjustments there do we have a a recommended size of schools because we have oakton if i'm looking at your list here oakton has 2700 the next closest school is at 2300 and there's one at 2000 well there's two in the 2000s those are not balanced to me at all because there's almost 700 kids apart what what is the recommended recommended size of schools at all

[04:05:51] levels have we given that some additional thought we do have a standard or projection kind of threshold sizes for uh for our schools i believe uh middle school is typically about 1350 i think we get into the high schools we're looking at around uh 2800 or so there's kind of 20 200 or So that's a threshold to get to.

[04:06:15] So 2,800 is what we consider to be the upper end? Upper end, yes. So then what I think I'm hearing is we shouldn't be growing anymore in Oakton. Is there a low end? I think there is a low end.

[04:06:31] I just don't have the number off the top of my head. I can provide that data. And I'm just kind of contrasting with, you know, Lewis High School being the size that it is. And Centerville, I'm sorry, Oakton being the size that it is. those are very two different area two different playing fields so I just wonder how do we get a little bit more a little closer to whatever that optimal size is and again I have questions about why some of the schools are increasing in capacity and I think Centerville was one and Oakton is the

[04:07:06] other it's going up from 100% to 103 when it's already fairly large can you speak to that a little bit, and I think Ms. Dixit talked about the Centerville piece. It was that parents did not want to move, which is why you didn't have as much flexibility. Is that accurate? Can you explain why Oakton has increased? Let me talk about the Centerville, excuse me, the Centerville-Westfield piece. The traffic, it's not just the miles, because when you look at a map, you think, okay,

[04:07:39] it's even though it's twice the miles it's still only it's under 10 miles right but the traffic during the times that people like in the morning and then often in the evening the it's not unlike other parts of the county where on the map it looks doable but when you do it in traffic it's a nightmare right so I think that traffic and some of the traffic patterns played a role in the Centerville conversation because um as did you know the ability to ride your bike home after

[04:08:15] practice um or a play practice or whatever after school um so the Oakton piece I don't think we added any kids to Oakton so it may just be the cohort roll-up perhaps I don't know it shouldn't have changed I wouldn't think but I don't know Mr. Gordon I would agree there was there was no change for students boundaried in and boundaried out yeah there was no add of I don't know about the change I just know what's on the CIP and when I look at what is projected for the 26-27 school year

[04:08:51] it says 100 percent and what is on your document on this page it says 103 percent so that's a plus three. And again, I just pulled it from the CIP. Yeah, it may be a reconciliation of numbers, but nobody was added to Oakton. Okay. And I think that was my time. I'll take a go back, please. Mr. Dannen. Thanks. So, you know, when it comes to area geographical specific topics like this, I typically try to defer to my magistral colleagues and my at-large colleagues who I know have been spending a lot of time working on this. But as my colleague, Dr. Anderson, shared, you know, I recognize as well that we will all be asked to vote on this at some point. So I've

[04:09:29] been reading everything um listening to the comments um and following along so that i am informed um but i do want to share a couple things in advance of that vote and um first is i have not yet visited the school but i've spoken with some of my colleagues who have and um i actually spoke with a parent the other day whose children used to attend it uh when it's king abdullah academy and i've heard it's an amazing school and so there's a you know it's certainly a huge benefit to be gained from it and um i want to express my kudos to everybody who worked to make this happen because I recognize it was not an easy, lengthy process.

[04:10:04] So I also want to recognize that this is having, dealing with boundaries, changes, potential changes within my district. I recognize this is difficult. It's not, and the first question I asked was, you know, all right, you know, what's the, is there an easy solution for this?

[04:10:21] Is there a math solution for this? And your team was like, no, there's not. It's very difficult. It's hard to do. There's so many competing priorities. and you just a few moments ago talking about like on the map it looks this way but then you get there and it's different and i've had communities express the same thing that you know i get why i would look this way to somebody not at that site and but once you go there if you're from the community it matters so i just want to point out that um you know you probably maybe you would say but uh i recognize mr smith is is phenomenal he's well you would say that but he's one of your top people to be honest and um and you you i would assume purposely put him as the champion for this topic

[04:10:57] because it's a very difficult one we are you know the boundary changes in Braddock are nothing compared to how I think big and complex this is so um and if it's any kind of measurement and I recognize speaking to the folks who've been working in my district that it's a lot of work I mean I have spent countless hours pouring through maps and meeting with people and I know your team has spent even more time than that going through it and they're trying to get it right um there's not easy solution for this. You know, and to that same end, I also want to express to the community members, please keep sending along the information. It does get used. And I'll say this again as a

[04:11:33] new person, first questions I ask were about these things. Like, all right, now that I'm on board, you know, tell me what else I need to know. And they're very, you know, up front, like they're trying to get this right. And so, you know, please continue sharing. You know, we recognize that there is no perfect solution. Reading through this, I recognize there are some, you know, serious concerns of under enrollment and it's not the unfortunately not the only school in the county that's facing that um and so i'll keep listening i do want to ask briefly about the the split feeders because i heard from a parent the other day about who was literally in tears with her kids having to be sent off um and separated from the friend group uh do you have on hand for the remaining

[04:12:07] split feeders what the percentage breakdowns are between uh where they'll be headed well are you Are you talking about the rest of the county for the sky for the schools in particular? We do have that data off the top of your head.

[04:12:26] I know Carson was one of the most prolific split feeders in the county and no longer is. So that was a huge move. Off the top of my head is Carson primarily, I think. We're talking about the impact of split feeders. Broadly speaking, is it 50-50? Is it putting aside the fact that it's an AAP center?

[04:12:45] You know, are you talking about there's like a sliver of 10 percent of the kids that are heading off to a different school? is it 50 or in the entire five pyramid region for the for the remaining split feeders I think with that correct yes yeah no it's one of my concerns as well we've had like I said in brag that same thing so again I appreciate all the work and I'll continue to be reading and following along Miss Anderson I just wanted to speak to this it's I'm in a weird situation that I have several of the schools that are being impacted but not the students so these are schools

[04:13:23] that Ms. Dixit and I share that I have, the school is physically in my district, but she has the majority of the students that are moving. So it's a very unique circumstance. But the biggest issue is that both Centerville and Chantilly are in desperate need of a renovation.

[04:13:41] And so the fact that we would be pulling Chantilly down to tighten their boundary is a good move because of the fact that the anticipated renovation that I hope would be coming, if nothing else, to get more light in that building would be amazingly a good idea.

[04:13:58] And so I want to clarify one more time about our last meeting when I brought forward the motion that Mr. Gordon was talking about. This was not intended to negate the need to do the renovation of Centerville. It was just a moment to check our thinking because it had been a fair amount of time.

[04:14:17] And we have had a lot of new information about development that's going on. board of supervisors colleagues are working very hard to try to increase development opportunities and so i just i wanted it to have that moment to have that the check of thinking um the other thing that i will say is that when we identified the five pyramids that were going to be looked at related to skyview it was really about the initial decision um to purchase a western high school to begin with and that was not that was fully dependent on where the school was going to be located

[04:14:50] So in this case, it didn't necessarily work for Centerville to take on the biggest relief in order to make sure. But I do appreciate that we were able to find some relief in that circumstance. And just aligning some of the, this is a very interesting area of the county related to split feeders at the middle school level.

[04:15:12] And so I think that this is a step towards the right direction. It's probably not going to be perfect. But what I will tell you is those areas of the county where we have pyramids that are very concerned about their enrollment, it's far fewer students. And so I appreciate the fact that we're aiming to try to keep them all roughly around the same size.

[04:15:32] And so I know that when you look at the full capacity in terms of the program capacity, I do want to also acknowledge that we still have a lot of kids in trailers at those schools. And so it's an opportunity for us to kind of do what we've been talking about, which is reduce those, if at all possible.

[04:15:50] So I appreciate the work that staff has done here. Thank you. I'm going to take a quick turn before gobacks. Mostly to speak to my expertise on building a master schedule. When I first started in Fairfax County, there were 1,300 students at Marshall High School.

[04:16:07] And there were program capacity issues, right? Like, we had a lot more singletons, where a class was only taught one time, and kids were squeezed. You know, if I look at our counterparts in Loudoun County, their ideal number is 2,000 for high school.

[04:16:25] And I just want to share that when I look at this in terms of balance, that 2,000 is a robust set of course offerings. Having built a master for 2,800 kids at Chantilly, yeah, I might have eight BC Calc classes, and it might be that I have five, but I still have multiples of many of those.

[04:16:46] So I just want to make sure folks understand that I think when we're getting down under 1,500, then we're really going to see maybe some impacts on programming in terms of offerings. But I don't feel it at all when we're close to the 2,000 mark. And the last thing I'm going to say is when you look at that Chantilly number of 2344, that doesn't include the kids that go to the academy that are not Chantilly students.

[04:17:08] That is the Chantilly-based kids who go there. So there is capacity. I mean, when you talk about the capacity is, I mean, we have kids coming from other schools who are accessing curriculum, but they're not in those numbers.

[04:17:23] I just want to make sure as a point of clarification. So at this point, we'll go to gobacks, and I'll start with Ms. Marin. To finish about the goal of balance that's in the policy, having two schools at 100 percent, two at 90 percent, and one at each 83 and 72, that is not balanced.

[04:17:41] There's clearly a disproportionate amount of burden placed on South Lakes and Westfield, clearly. I want to turn to community feedback. Dr. Reed, you and your staff say repeatedly, including tonight, that your recommendation is informed by the community feedback, as it should be.

[04:17:58] That's part of the process. Yet I learned yesterday that participation in the Boundary Review Advisory Committee is very inequitable. The attendance data that your staff kept show that for Westfield and South Lakes, they had no representation until the end of May.

[04:18:16] Four of the nine meetings were attended, and that's it. So the whole idea of the committee was to have representation. That's the whole point of this thing. It's unacceptable that that was allowed to happen. look parents and staff they're concerned too and I don't see clear communications people like Mr.

[04:18:37] Moon asked there's nothing that says this is what I'm going to look like year by year this is what people see and by the way this is not a complete picture because it's not showing the current membership it's not showing the actual children the people who are going to be impacted we need the year-by-year projection because it's just too much for people to try and understand what this means. And staff have told me that they do think programming will suffer. So I'll just say that from my conversations. This is a big, the following thing is a big finding that I've come to after trying to pour over this data for weeks, the housing projections. We may know that things take

[04:19:14] a long time in Fairfax County to get done. I've heard from builders and businesses, zoning, planning, it takes a long time. We receive these updates that say, hey, something that got put in in 2017, We're still tinkering with what the zoning is going to be. In a recent letter you sent us, there was a potential for almost 30,000 housing units, but no timeline.

[04:19:37] If I could finish, please, I think this is really important. Is that okay? Without objection, can we give Ms. Marin an additional minute? At least, please. Thank you. This is a complex thing. Look, development like this is not happening all over the county.

[04:19:55] It's happening in Hunter Mill and Sully and a little bit of Providence. Well, not a little bit. It's happening in Providence. There needs to be greater collaboration about what this region is coming into. Now, I asked the supervisor a few weeks ago, can you get me better housing projections?

[04:20:10] I haven't gotten them yet. But it's not just about Hunter Mill. It's about Sully. There's no crosswalk. Are these projections right? Will there be, I got to say, I drove by a development in Reston that's supposed to come on market in December. It was a pile of rubble.

[04:20:26] Now maybe there's a section that's coming on and maybe that's part of it, but I am trying to reconcile all this information and the projections, and by the way, this doesn't even include the changes from the comprehensive boundary change, and we did actually today get from your office one of the zoning memos that says that it's going to be impacted by the January 22-26 boundary adjustments.

[04:20:50] I mean, there is so much here. I'm all for not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, but this is missing so much information and thought. I wonder if the board can think about coming back to this in September with much more information from the superintendent.

[04:21:08] I don't see how we get these questions answered to make decisions about thousands of people's lives and jobs tonight. Thank you. Dr. Anderson for, oh, sorry, Ms. Dixit for Go Back. I feel I'm living in a different alternate universe right now.

[04:21:27] I'm not seeing any emergency situation, any people crying out and losing their jobs and having any issues in my district. And I will specifically talk about my district right now, which is Sully District, where Westfield sits, and I'm going to make a comment about Westfield.

[04:21:47] Westfield is one of my top priorities. I'll be working closely with the principal, the regional superintendent, and FCPA staff to ensure the school continues to receive the staffing, academic opportunities, and resources it needs. I will also continue monitoring enrollment trends and new development so we can respond proactively as our community grows.

[04:22:09] It is also important to remember that these changes won't happen at all at once. The implementation is phased in within one opt-in year followed by an opt-out year. So the enrollment changes will occur gradually over the next couple of years rather than immediately. That gives us time to evaluate the impact and make sure we are supporting all of our schools throughout the transition.

[04:22:34] So I just know that restricting is never easy. I have people who have come to me, several communities, Lease Corner, Crossfield, Oak Hill, Bull Run. I can go on and on and on. And I'm so happy to say that, Dr. Reid, that you and your team have listened to each and every community so far.

[04:22:53] You have met people. You have come to Common Boundary Meeting. Mr. Gordon, Mr. Smith were with my town halls. You know, Mr. Smith came there. So I think I'm just saying that the job was well done. It's not perfect.

[04:23:08] Nothing can be perfect in life. But it is almost to the perfection what I'm looking at it. So thank you to all the team who's worked so much their time on this I really appreciate it.

[04:23:25] Thank you. Dr. Anderson for go back.

[04:23:49] The other comment that I had that I want to say this is regarding the middle schools. I think that one really landed well in terms of all the numbers being fairly similar. So I just wanted to offer that. What is the time frame that this will be effective because I don't think I have a good handle on this.

[04:24:10] for fall of 27 or recall that it won't be any sooner than the fall of 27 but we have our phasing vote next week as well on the 16th so then these final numbers will be achieved in which year potentially 28 28 29 let me think from it mr. Gordon you have it off the tip of your tongue here I think it's all complete in 29 so we're you know skyview goes set this uh this school year and then we have three

[04:24:48] years you know after that where we're rotating a new grade in so um the next three years we're moving through that and just to clarify one piece from earlier so standard design thresholds for our facilities i said middle schools were 13 or 1350 students high schools are 2500 i misspoke and said 28 so 2500 is generally the upper threshold for high schools and elementary school is the upper THRESHOLD IS GENERALLY 950 FOR STUDENT COUNT.

[04:25:15] THANK YOU. I THINK 28-29 IS THE YEAR THAT 26-27 IS 9-10, 27-28 IS 9-10-11, AND 28-29 IS 9-12. OKAY. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT YOU SAID, MR. GORDON, A LITTLE BIT EARLIER WAS ABOUT THE POTENTIAL LAG BETWEEN THE DEVELOPMENTS THAT COULD POTENTIALLY OFFER THE 6,000 UNITS I THINK YOU TALKED think you talked about to is that the Westfield pyramid or was at the South Lakes the 6,000 units that was that was for Centerville that was Centerville so

[04:25:53] a case in point like South Lakes where there's roughly 16,000 projected housing units 13,000 of those are either an approved or under construction with about 3,000 that are in a kind of a pending status so there's generally three categories that are pending approved or under construction so within the center of a one it was roughly I'm going back and look at my notes so I think was right right around 5,000 that would produce I'm sorry with 6105 proposed housing units with which would produce a student yield of roughly 598 students and what's the yield with the development that would potentially feed

[04:26:33] into South Lakes so the student yield and when I say student yield for the 598 that's at the high school level. So for the South Lakes, if we're looking at the 13,000 of approved and under construction, that would bring a student yield of roughly 702 students. 702 students. And do we have a sense as to, I know you talked about the different phases of construction and permitting, yeah, and permitting. When is all of that expected to be accomplished? So I can't really speak to things that are pending, but definitely things that are under construction

[04:27:07] or under construction right and then pending is this one step away from that so a little more uh realistic so i think uh for for for planning purposes you know we really look at the under construction piece obviously but pending is also important to us as well we're going to project into the future okay thank you and lastly if we could put that slide back up the westfield chantilly map i just want to get a better sense of the ravine that you had referred to i don't know

[04:27:40] there's some way for you to highlight where that is located i have looked at a much more detailed map when we looked at it so i'm not sure i can so put a line on this particular map so it so ma'am it generally uh includes um going north to south a wellburn court i'm not going to be able to direct it to you but um i can you know we can show you a later date and time but are on a different map so it's generally north to south uh looking at well uh wellborn court and also includes uh streets uh wallenay village court as well so again not going to see that detail on this map

[04:28:19] had to look at a larger map to understand i'll probably come over for maybe for you to indicate such because i did receive some emails as well i think everybody did about the potential bias and that and if we have a a natural man-made um separator then it makes sense to kind of lean INTO THAT AND I'D LIKE TO KNOW EXACTLY WHERE THAT IS SO I COULD BE RESPONSIVE TO THOSE WHO ARE REACHING OUT WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE MAP DO YOU SEE THE WEST FIELD IS THAT PINK AND CHANTILLY IS THAT LIGHT GREEN THE RAVENE I THINK MR. GORDON IS IN THAT CROSS HATCH AREA RIGHT SO THAT'S BEEN

[04:28:54] DIVIDED BY A RAVENE AND THAT'S I BELIEVE THAT'S WHERE THE RAVENES IT'S ON IT IT'S ON THE EASTERN THIRD OF THAT CROSS PATCH AREA THAT YOU REFERRED TO, MA'AM. VERY GOOD. THANK YOU. I'LL KEEP LISTENING AND LEARNING. OKAY. AGENDA MONEY 8.02 FY.

[04:29:13] I'M SORRY. CAN I HAVE ANOTHER TURN? MR. DUNN FOR GOBACK. THANK YOU. I JUST WANT TO ASK, WHEN YOU DELIVERED THE FINAL RECOMMENDATION, WILL YOU ALSO INCLUDE WITH THAT A TRANSPORTATION PLAN, A TRANSPORTATION PHASING PLAN, OR DO YOU FEEL LIKE THAT hasn't been worked out sufficiently or do you feel that has been resolved just trying to understand you know what will be included in the final recommendation and will there be any pieces

[04:29:46] that will be brought to the board at a later date so there are going to be two final recommendations next week on the 16th I did the bazing and transportation under new business at our last board meeting so that presentation was done and I'll bring the final one on the 16th and then and this is the preliminary, and this final will be on the 16th.

[04:30:12] So there will be two separate presentations, but it's our intent to get those both wrapped up on the 16th. Great. Thank you. Yes, sir. May I have a point of order if there is to ask for another turn? Is that a point of order? I don't know. Well, actually, it would be that we would need to suspend the rules.

[04:30:33] May I ask for the rules to be suspended so I can have another turn? So without objection, are people comfortable with suspending the rules? okay one more go back thank you colleagues dr reed can you your director of facilities just said the projection is 2500 is kind of the goal for a high school why then is oakton high school staying at 2700 students and 103 capacity so we do have other high schools that are over 2500 as

[04:31:06] well so my guess is that there wasn't an ability to make that move but mr. Gordon capacity is a double-edged sword right so it has its student enrollment plus capacity plus program capacity as well and every and we have different size schools throughout so different schools based on program the capacity can have the ability to accept you know a different size students and 103 is still within our range of 85 to 104.

[04:31:36] Excuse me, I understand and I don't wanna use our time. I'm not, again, hearing the level of urgency or craving for accuracy that I think is completely merited. You were talking about decreasing a high school by 25% of the population, and you have a high school that is over by 200 students and 3%, that doesn't even match what's in the CIP.

[04:32:01] and you expect me to decide where to send people. I also want to say that the housing numbers, and I've said this before, I met with your chief of facilities. I did try to meet with you, Dr. Reed. Our last two meetings have been canceled.

[04:32:18] The housing projection numbers are conflated. Talking about what's zoned, what's pending, those are conflated, which the supervisor confirmed to me, and I don't have those numbers. So what I am wondering is, can we get more precise before we change thousands of people's lives to not create balance and come back to this perhaps in September also with the full presentation including the boundary and the phasing. It's not acceptable that no one is sure what the sibling approaches. It's just not

[04:32:52] acceptable. This is far too cavalier and I would like us to consider, I don't know how we do that, but I'd like us to consider waiting a few more weeks because there's a lot of confusion. There's not a complete plan here. There's not a complete phasing plan.

[04:33:09] There's not a complete timeline. The housing projection numbers are conflated. It's not balanced, and the access to programming per the boundary policy has not been addressed. So if anybody else would like to speak, I hope you'd chime in. This is a big deal.

[04:33:24] Thank you. Agenda item 8.02, FY2026 year-end review. I call on Dr. Reed for an FY2026 year-end review. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to have our Chief Finance Officer, Ms. Lee Burden, present the year-end review.

[04:33:45] So, Ms. Burden? Point of order. State your point of order. Thank you. Could we have a real slow roll through this? I know typically we run through this fairly quickly, which is usually fine because we would have had some time with this.

[04:34:01] But given the glitches that happen with board docs, I literally have not had a moment to take a look at this. So if we could just kind of go through all of the components rather than the high level that we typically get, I would be appreciative of that. Thank you. Not a point of order.

[04:34:20] That's not a point of order, by the way. But I was being polite. Good evening. Good evening. Chairman Anderson.

[04:34:35] No, no, I'm sorry. Chairman Leidy, members of the school board and Dr. Reed. The year-end review offers an opportunity for final revisions to the fiscal 26 budget and provide carryover information and other revisions to the fiscal 27 approved budget.

[04:34:53] On page 1 of the attachment, the summary identifies the changes to fiscal 26 based on revenue adjustments and unspent expenditures and then adjustments to fiscal 26 for routine commitments, encumbrances, central projects, schools, department carryover, previously identified adjustments, as well as, well, actually that's where it ends.

[04:35:20] Section 1A shows the revenue variance from budget to actual, which is a net decrease of $2.9 million that is attributable to reduced state basic aid due to enrollment loss, offset by increased sales tax and one-time equivalent action bonus dollars.

[04:35:40] We also have unspent federal IDEA funds that are carried over into fiscal 26, so that's a negative $9.2 million, offset by increases in tuition from Thomas Jefferson and Fairfax City, so that the overall net decrease, again, is $2.9 million on the revenue side.

[04:36:01] As far as the expenditure balance, first we have the routine carryover funds, which are encumbrances or undelivered orders at $54.5 million. Schools project carryover, $166.1 million.

[04:36:19] Department carryover, $6.8 million. Reserve funds for the school board flexibility reserve and the fuel contingency, $11 million. And then a beginning balance adjustment of negative $13.3 million.

[04:36:33] Previously identified adjustments include the half-hour extended day for special education teachers at a cost of $28.5 million, the premium stabilization reserve for health care needs to be replenished at $25 million, and then usage of $1 million of the school board flexibility reserve to fund school board staff assistance, which was an action that was taken last year.

[04:37:06] After the routine carryover and items previously identified, the FY26 expenditure savings is zero. Also shown is the operating school grants at $9.4 million, and that's just IDEA money in fiscal 26 that's not yet been spent, and so it carries forward to fiscal 27.

[04:37:31] The remaining pages detail changes to other funds and provide other supplemental information. The other ones represent multi-year programs whose funds flow from year to year with fund balances and stabilization reserves as required.

[04:37:50] Generally, we are just recognizing carryover of unspent funds and authorized bond funding for school construction and increases to existing grants or new grants for food services, ACE, and the grant fund. On page 10 are the year-end financial statements, fund statements for each fund, which display revenue and expenditures, transfers in, transfers out, changes in fund balance for each of the nine school board funds.

[04:38:16] On page 19 is the supplemental appropriation resolution, whose purpose is to transmit to the county changes to the 27 budget from the 26 final budget review or year-end. Also on page 20 is the fiscal planning resolution, which represents the transfers from the operating fund to other funds.

[04:38:37] And then on the last page, the grant development summary provides information about fiscal 26 grants. This will come back to you for action at the next regular school board meeting on July 16th. Thank you. Mr. McDaniel.

[04:38:54] Thank you. As always, thank you, Lee, and your team for all the work into this. Just a quick question. You and I talked about this. But for the public and perhaps some colleagues, I want to make sure that we're clear, this year-end package does not incorporate the recently approved state budget from a couple of weeks ago.

[04:39:14] So the funding associated with that that's coming to us will be in a separate appropriate appropriation. Yes, that is correct. All right, thank you, that was all. Ms. Merritt. Yes, thank you. The school board had directed on February 26th this year that the superintendent provide transportation to non-boundary or current students for high schools consistent with the phasing policy and that year-end funds be utilized if the existing transportation budget cannot fund all associated costs. Can you please speak to that? Is that part of this? Did the transportation budget cover the cost expected?

[04:39:46] Yeah, the transportation budget is expected to have enough funds to be able to hire the drivers for high school only for that transportation initiative. And that $1.3 million also included an assumption for buses.

[04:40:03] But since then, we were able to access a federal grant for EV buses. And so the number's not as large. It's just the salary piece, and they'll be able to cover that within their existing funds. That's wonderful news. Thank you. Additionally, about the state budget, so can we receive an update about the state budget as a presentation on July 16th?

[04:40:26] Because I believe it's important that we know what's happening. Even tonight, we knew very last minute about the 1% option that we rallied for and quickly pivoted. That's tough for a board to do. Can we hear more about what the state budget is going to be bringing us?

[04:40:43] I mean, I can tell you right now, if you'd like. I would love that the you know this video we usually wait till video he puts out the calculation templates because those are the most accurate amounts of what we would get and we're going to get about 30 million more than we had expected and that will come back to you all at the next quarterly review or we could do it out of out of cycle if we needed to I just want to mention that the Board of Supervisors in its fiscal 28 and 29 guidance as part of its adoption or

[04:41:22] appropriation action back in May strongly suggested that the school board consider if we got additional funds from the state that we set those funds aside because fiscal 28 is expected to be an extremely challenging year. So when thank you so when would we discuss that is that part of the next budget planning in process yeah that's something that I expect the superintendent will make a recommendation as I said video we didn't get the calculation templates out until this week and you know of course we had to check

[04:41:58] them and you know make sure all the numbers were correct so we even though dr. Reed of course is certainly aware of the summary that I just told you we we haven't talked yet about process or what we're going to do because, you know, our fiscal 27 budget is balanced. Yes. Thank you, Ms. Burden.

[04:42:15] Can you speak to the raises? We always hear the state generously gives us money to give raises to our staff. What's the actual situation with that? Well, the state included in its budget a 4% salary increase, but unfortunately each 1% of salary increase costs us $30 million, which the state kicks in six million so you know we get a 24 million increase with 120 million dollar cost so that'll be something for us to work on again in

[04:42:52] the next budget cycle that would be correct okay and that's different than the 30 million more well I guess it's all yeah part of the money we could choose to spend the same number yeah thank you I also just want to I want to ask, earlier we had a public commenter talk about a grant that had gotten cut. He was on our MSAOC. Do you know anything about that? I just wonder. I saw something about federal grants. Okay. I do just want to mention one thing to colleagues. So there's a program called the Neighborhood School Readiness Team. This is actually where Ms. St. John Cunning

[04:43:26] and I met, I don't know, 20 years ago. And it is funded by the county and Neighborhood community services and to the two FTEs the two full-time staff were cut and Rosemary Kendall's last day was June 30. So while you know it's it's not a cut to education it is because and I know I did ask the superintendent about it and you know the response was it's not going to directly impact our students I would argue differently because having gone just recently to their iftar dinner whom the neighborhood community services team and their family liaisons help,

[04:44:03] those people are part of what makes our students successful. That cut was not communicated to us by the board of supervisors. This matters because, you know, what about one Fairfax? Our children, you know, they're struggling year after year to guarantee them the resources.

[04:44:23] It's the neighborhood school readiness team. It's middle school after school programs, which the county executive has already said. It's going to be looked at, tied to funding. That's a youth safety program. Neighborhood School Readiness Team is a community program. So all these things that aren't education really do harm our children.

[04:44:42] So I just want us to be clear that the county cut that to the detriment of our families and kids. Thank you. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I'm trying to build a little bit more understanding regarding the schools project carryover, 166.1?

[04:45:02] Yes. Where is that coming from? because this is a fairly large number. It is a fairly large number, and it typically is a large number. Last year it was $173 million. That is for multi-year projects. The bulk of those funds are FCPS on, device replacement, because we save for that each year until the replacement schedule has to be implemented, and textbooks as well.

[04:45:32] That's where we keep all of the funds for future textbook adoptions, and so these are just projects that are multi-year or in the future that we are saving funds for, and they are carried forward every year until a textbook adoption occurs, or we replace devices at one of the levels of school.

[04:45:53] So there's 166 sitting in that fund just waiting to be utilized. That's the understanding for either FCPS, for devices or textbooks. Yes. I mean, some things could be a little more near-term than textbooks or FCPS on.

[04:46:12] Those are just the two largest numbers. But there are other things in there as well, like all of their technology, all of the finance stuff, like Focus, Great Plains, all of the infrastructure for technology, we have funds set aside to be able to address those issues because they're multi-year and they're in the future.

[04:46:32] Sure. And I think my confusion is we've been having conversations about not having the resources to do our full adoptions, even as recently as social studies that we discussed just two We are only adopting fourth grade because of lack of funding.

[04:46:52] Help me make this make sense. If we have this, why are we not going forward with the full funding for the textbook adoptions? Well, recall that the social studies textbooks, you know, in fiscal 26, we had to cut $120 million out of our budget.

[04:47:14] and one of the cuts that we did was to defer the social studies textbook. And I don't remember how much that was, but I think it was 12? It was 15-something. 15, yeah. And so there are funds in the textbook fund, but they're for language arts.

[04:47:31] They're for other textbook adoptions that are in the near future. So whatever is in this 166 is not inclusive of – we lost the time, essentially, I'm hearing, for the social studies. Yes. this is for other purposes okay a couple of things that I do want to share because we have you know what is potentially a good news situation with the state funding is to perhaps look at some of the things we were not able to do which is a transportation for our students who are in the phasing process

[04:48:04] I'm glad to hear that this this grant provided 80 buses you said I don't believe I said that's what I thought I heard was that inaccurate that that is NOT CORRECT OH OKAY THEY'RE EV BUSES SO THEY'RE EV I HEARD AT LIKE YES THEY'RE ELECTRIC IT'S A FEDERAL GRANT FROM EPA SORRY 80 BUSES EV

[04:48:39] BUSES EV OKAY NEVER MIND THAT BUT AT ANY RATE ONE OF THE THINGS THAT I ALSO WANTED TO RAISE AND MR MS MARIN ALSO TALKED ABOUT THIS WAS THE the Title II that Mr. Shaw talked about here. I know MSAOC talked about it during their report, which is the equity office staffing reduction, which was meant to come out of Title II funds.

[04:49:05] What is the carryover of Title II funds, and what page can I find that on? You probably can't. That's a level of detail that I don't have, and we're probably going to have to respond to that in writing. If you could, because if we reduce the staffing because the funding was not there, it makes sense. If we have carryover, we should be thinking about reinstating the staffing. So that's a question. Well, when we lose grant funding, there's a decision to be made, but we don't normally just move it into the operating fund positions of which we lose grant

[04:49:45] funding. No, no, no. That's not what I'm asking. What I'm asking is if there are leftover funds from the very resource that it was diminished. And so we had to make some changes in that office. If we have leftover funds, that means that office can be restored to some level.

[04:50:03] Well, that could provide a bridge for one year. But if it's carryover funds from a grant, then it's essentially one-time funds. Right. But we expect to have the funding again next year because I think that whole conversation came out of not knowing that we would get the grant from the federal government and thinking that it would be reduced in some way.

[04:50:22] So if you could get together whatever that amount is, that is a carryover, I would appreciate that. And then the last piece is the state 4% for salary increases. Given what you've just said, am I hearing that we don't have a path to access that?

[04:50:41] Because I know that has happened in years before, and I guess that's a Dr. Reed question. No, I mean, our collective bargaining agreement provided steps plus 3%. Steps are, on average, about 2.5%. That's 5.5.

[04:50:56] So we will fully be able to access the state funding of 4% because our salary increase is greater than what they funded. Oh, okay. So it's not an additional dollars that we'll have to procure. No. Thank you. Already in the budget. Okay.

[04:51:13] Action. I'm sorry. Agenda item 8.03, Academic Matters.

[04:51:18] call on Dr. Reed for a presentation. Thank you. So this evening's Academic Matters highlights

[04:52:02] really how our schools have been advancing inclusion through our Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools program and this is really the growth in this program has really been amazing. So as we think about the strategic plan this is really goal two and our Special Olympics program particularly supports our strategic plan goals around safety support inclusion and empowerment and it's really been great to see how the

[04:52:37] community has come together both communities within schools and outside of our schools to support these incredibly healthy activities next slide please the unified champion schools program is a structured model for social inclusion which really centers on three mutually reinforcing practices first it brings students with and without disabilities together for training and competition and in this case the activities are basketball soccer and track second inclusive youth leadership gives students of all abilities authentic

[04:53:17] roles and planning advocacy and peer leadership and third the whole school engagement extends the work beyond a team or event which uses campaigns and school-wide activities to reduce isolation, increase empathy, and strengthen belonging. And we're proud to recognize Bush Hill Elementary, Woodson High School, and Marshall High School for being recognized as new Special Olympics Unified Champion schools this year. So we've seen a significant expansion of this program which is in alignment with our inclusion initiatives. At the

[04:53:54] beginning of the 2024-2025 school year we had 23 schools that had Special Olympics programming and that number has grown to 49 schools since 2024 or a 113 percent increase. Participation now includes you can see on the green box 30 elementary, 4 middle, and 12 high schools as well as all three secondary schools this is a 113 expansion increase since 2024 a difficult unified sports season includes training and competitions over about 8 to 10 weeks with multiple opportunities to

[04:54:33] participate during the fall winter and spring sports seasons so next slide please the whole school engagement is where the program's impact becomes broader honestly really than just athletics for example at annandale high school practices have been embedded into the school day included during advisory so students can participate without having unnecessary transportation or access barriers over time this has helped build strong participation in basketball soccer and track and has contributed to a wider school culture of inclusion

[04:55:10] annandale's inclusive revolution week is a powerful example of how a unified champion program and move from a team-based opportunity to a school-wide culture-building effort that involves students, staff, and families. So let's take a look at what this sounds like and feels like. So Madam Clerk, if you'd please play the video.

[04:55:38] In order for students to truly be successful academically, ensuring that our students are safe and supported and included, it's a huge part of their educational success and their educational journey, these opportunities like Special Olympics, just like any other like extracurricular or sports or activities that students get involved with, Special Olympics and promoting inclusion is gonna go hand in hand with academic and educational success of all of our students. In order for you to get the distinction of becoming a unified champion school,

[04:56:14] you have to hit very rigorous inclusion or inclusive standards that Special Olympics nationwide sets it's around not just like what you're doing as a coach or a staff member but what the whole school is doing at bush elementary school we have a basketball team and a little feet meet team we also do peer mentors where students have the opportunity to come to classrooms and do either academics or social skills with students with disabilities we have students who are in leadership positions as captains and come up with ideas of what they want to see in our school and how they want to be able to connect with other

[04:56:53] students a little see me is a chance for lots of schools to come together to play field games and track games. They've all been working really hard as a team and getting to know each other and we really pride ourselves on our community that we've built around kids with and without disabilities. We're all one big

[04:57:29] happy family and we're all one community. Bush Hill is a great example of you know making sure that they are being inclusive you know using all those strategies and you know promoting student collaboration and building those relationships and you have a good handful of schools that have gotten that unified champion schools distinction over the last several years and I'm hoping moving forward you know many more schools and FCPS will get that distinction as well. All right I think the video provides a pretty clear view of the student experience and I also want to thank assistant principal Jay Lee at

[04:58:06] Annandale High School has really led the way in this work. Looking ahead the opportunity is to continue growing toward access in every FCPS school by 2030 while ensuring that this expansion is sustainable supported and aligned with our strategic plan so madam chair that is academic matters this evening thank you dr anderson i just want to give some kudos to annadale high school because they have been doing the most fantastic work in this area for so many years and if you have not seen their basketball united unified team

[04:58:42] it is an amazing experience and they'll give you a free t-shirt as well but the kids are excited i mean it's just a whole thing with music and lights and the kids just are cheering for each other in a spectacular way it's really an amazing thing so i just wanted to make sure i gave them a quick shout out thank you all right agenda item 9.0 consent agenda are adopted rules of parliamentary procedure roberts rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all

[04:59:21] board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda the request of any board member prior to the meeting because the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing and seeing no objection the consent agenda is approved agenda Item 10, new business.

[04:59:44] The following are new business agenda items. There will not be a vote on these items this evening, but action is scheduled at a future meeting. Gen item 11, superintendent matters. I'm calling Dr. Reed for superintendent matters. Well, thank you, Madam Chair.

[05:00:00] I hope everybody had a great 4th of July and celebrated even in the heat. And I just want to thank all the staff that worked through power outages and heat and storms even today our weather has given us a run for our money so big thanks to staff want to remind folks that our leadership kickoff is coming up here shortly and if you are a student at home this summer check out our summer resources page make sure you get to a library check

[05:00:36] out a book be reading and that anyhow that's pretty much what I have to say hopefully the weather calms down here and we'll have a little less excitement weather-wise. Thank you. Thank you. And seeing the hour, we will pass on board matters. And at 12.02 a.m., this meeting is now adjourned.

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