Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, October 8, 2026

Date: Thursday, October 8, 2026
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 5h 41m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaAdq2Fu1D8
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 2026-10-26. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:56] This October 8, 2026, a regular meeting in the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order at 7 p.m. In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we will have a special performance of De Colores following the national anthem.

[00:01:11] De Colores is a song that is thought to have originated in Spain and has been sung in the Americas and throughout the Spanish-speaking world since the 16th century. The phrase De Colores means many colors. The upbeat melody speaks to the celebration of creation and the joy of seeking the world's many colors.

[00:01:31] The many colors of nature, the many colors of people, and the many colors of love. This traditional folk song has evolved as it's been passed down through time and from generation to generation. It is a beloved children's song, a religious spiritual, the unofficial anthem of the United Farm Workers, and a union solidarity song.

[00:01:54] De Caloris is a song that celebrates the beauty of life, love, and unity.

[00:02:12] Also please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the National Anthem by Herndon High School Orchestra under the direction of Alison Devereaux, and a performance of De Caloris by Crestwood Elementary students under the direction of Chelsea Heckenkamp and Daniel Cribill. Musical accompaniment provided by Lewis High School Mariachi teacher, Mr. Mata. Of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[00:08:22] Okay, okay, okay. Hello? Hello? Can we have another round of applause for everyone?

[00:12:50] Agenda Item 1.02 announcements, if you would like to review a copy of the meeting agenda, please see the back of the auditorium to obtain copies of any items or supporting materials being presented tonight. Please reference the QR code on the agenda or visit fcps.edu forward slash board docs.

[00:13:07] Tonight's meeting is being broadcast on Cox Channel 99, Verizon Fios Channel 11, and live streamed on YouTube and our website at fcps.edu forward slash live stream. Mr. Moon has submitted a request to attend this evening's meeting remotely due to personal travel out of the country and is located in Yeoju City, South Korea.

[00:13:30] Chair Lady has performed an initial review of Mr. Moon's request and having found it to be in compliance with the school board's remote participation resolution, she has approved the request. Mr. Moon, please check your audio and video. Good morning and good evening.

[00:13:49] Sir, we hear you and see you. I now ask board members who are physically present to vote on the following. All those in favor of confirming the approval of Mr. Moon's request, say aye. Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Mirren, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Ms. St. Sean Cunning, and myself.

[00:14:08] All opposed? Dr. Anderson. Can we quick raise the vote? Vote 7-1. The motion carries. Ms. Lady has submitted a request to attend this evening's meeting remotely due to attending work-related annual conference and is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

[00:14:32] I have performed an initial review of Ms. Lady's request, and having found to be in compliance to the school board's remote participation resolution, I have approved the request. Ms. Lady, can you please check your audio and visual? Yes, thank you. I'm here. Thank you. I now ask for a vote. All in favor? Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Mirren, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Ms. St. John Cunning, myself, all opposed.

[00:14:56] Dr. Anderson, that motion carries. Mr. Dannon has submitted a request to attend this evening's meeting remotely due to attending a family funeral and is located in syracuse new york chairlady has performed an initial review of mr dannon's request and having found to be in compliance school board's remote participation resolution she has approved the request mr dannon can you please check your audio and visual good evening everybody thank you i now ask board members who are physically present to vote on the following all those in favor of approving mr dan's request miss anderson mr frisch miss

[00:15:33] mira mr mckelveen miss dixit mr dunn and miss st john cunning and myself all opposed Dr. Anderson, motion carries. Agenda item 1.03, Indigenous Peoples' Day and Native American Heritage Month proclamation.

[00:15:48] I call Mr. Fish for a proclamation. Thank you. Indigenous Peoples' Day is recognized on the second Monday of October, and Native American Heritage Month is recognized throughout the month of November across the United States and in Fairfax County public schools to honor and celebrate the history, accomplishments, and contributions of the first peoples of this land.

[00:16:14] And whereas in 1990, Congress passed, and President George H.W. Bush signed into law a joint resolution designating the month of November as the first National American Indian Heritage Month. In 2021, President Joe Biden was the first U.S. president to formally commemorate Indigenous Peoples Day as a national holiday with a presidential proclamation.

[00:16:37] And whereas indigenous people have made invaluable contributions in the sciences, arts, public service, military service, and many other fields that are integral to the advancement of our nation and society. And whereas the Commonwealth of Virginia is home to 11 officially recognized tribes whose presence and leadership honors and strengthens our shared history and future.

[00:17:00] And whereas Fairfax County sits on land originally stewarded by the Dog, Manahuac, and Pamunkey tribes and other indigenous people whose stories, traditions, and cultures continue to enrich our county and commonwealth.

[00:17:17] And whereas FCPS serves a diverse student population with many who embrace and celebrate their indigenous family heritage. Whereas Indigenous People's Day and Native American Heritage Month are wonderful opportunities for our Fairfax County public schools community to honor our nation's original inhabitants and their descendants.

[00:17:37] These commemorations further call us to honor the beautiful and rich indigenous communities, traditions, cultures, and lives across the county, commonwealth, and around the world. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board does hereby proclaim October 12, 2026 as Indigenous Peoples Day and November 2026 as Native American Heritage Month in recognition and celebration of the many contributions of our nation's indigenous people to our school system, community, and county. Country. Thank you. Is there a second? I second. Thank you, Mr. Moon. All in

[00:18:16] favor? That's unanimous. And I apologize. I missed an item on the agenda. So I call on Dr. Reed for some brief remarks. All right. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. So I got very excited about our facts, our fun facts today. I want to share the apples here with the board, so we'll pass those down. These crimson crisp apples are from Saunders Brothers Farm in Piney River, Virginia, and this is a partnership

[00:18:55] that Fairfax County Public Schools has had for a little over five years. And fun fact today, this week, the Saunders Brothers Farms provided more than 55,000 apples to our schools for Virginia's 10th annual Crunch Herd Around the Commonwealth Celebration.

[00:19:15] I'm not sure. We can maybe the Crunch Herd Around the Dias. I don't know. Beyond providing fresh local produce, this farm also participates in annual farm-to-school visits as part of Virginia Farm-to-School Week, which is this week, October 5th through 9th.

[00:19:32] These school visits, including one that took place at Hyblah Valley yesterday, provided students with the opportunity to learn from our local farmers about ecology and the farm-to-tray aspects of our food system as an extension of our science curriculum. So thank you to our farmer partners, and let's enjoy the 10th annual Crunch Herd Around the Commonwealth celebration. Thank you. Thank you. I certainly crunched on my apple.

[00:20:03] Agenda item 1.04. Mr. McDaniel? Mr. McDaniel? Yes, sir. Mr. McDaniel, point of personal privilege. Could you save me an apple? Could you save me an apple? That will be the most expensive apple ever sent.

[00:20:19] Just save one for me. We'll save one for you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. I call on Agenda Item 1.04, Hispanic Heritage Month Proclamation. I call on Ms. Dixit for a proclamation. Vairas, National Hispanic Heritage Month is recognized annually from September 15 through October 15 across the United States for celebrating the histories, culture and innumerable contributions of those who ancestors trace through their roots to Spain, Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean nations. And whereas

[00:20:54] nearly one of the five people in the U.S. is Hispanic. The highest concentration of Virginia's Hispanic population resides in Northern Virginia and accounts for 18 percent of Fairfax County's population. Approximately one of three Fairfax County public school students is of Hispanic heritage and whereas hispanic heritage history is in oxal in oxalbury entwined with united state history as california florida texas new mexico nevada arizona utah colorado parts of wyoming kansas and oklahoma were at one point spanish or mexican history mexican territory

[00:21:29] as part of the largest ethnic group in the united states hispanic and latinos have significantly contributed in our nation's identity and have played a vital role in shaping America's democracy, economy, cuisine, and culture. And whereas the 2026 national theme "Unidos Somos Mas" "Together We Are More" celebrates family resilience, creativity, faith, and service while honoring the diverse stories that strengthen our nation, calls upon us to recognize the rich cultural tradition and shared legacy with of hispanic americans while celebrating the vibrancy

[00:22:06] and innovation of younger generation who will carry forward this collective heritage hispanic americans have profoundly shaped the fabric of our nation from military service and civic leadership to groundbreaking contribution in science education entrepreneurship arts and beyond building the nation we enjoy today this resilience and creativity of hispanic communities from storytellers like Sandra Ceneros, innovators like Lina Manuel Miranda, public sermons like Justice Sonia Sotomayor, artists like Celia Cruz and Bad Bunny, to modern cultural traits like Marcelo

[00:22:42] Hernandez, Elizabeth Acevedo, Laurie Hernandez, Becky G, Ellie Ocha, embodies a bridge from the past to an inspired future. Various prominent Hispanic Virginians including Michael, Zahur, founder of the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Susanna Marino, entrepreneur, founding president and chair of the Northern Virginia Hispanic American Chamber of Commerce, and Major League Baseball pitcher Javier Lopez, who attended Robinson Secondary School, and various. FCPS Hispanic American students, staff, and families are valued members of our community whose

[00:23:22] contribution will be enhanced our classrooms, culture, and collective success by affirming our shared commitment to equity and opportunity we empower all students to become the next generation of leaders reinforcing the school board's belief that diversity is the strength that creates resilience open and innovative global citizens now therefore be it resolved that the harfax fairfax county school board hereby proclaims september 15 through october 15 2026 as hispanic heritage month we encourage family county fairfax county

[00:23:58] residents to participate in programs and events taking place in our schools and community to learn about celebrate and elevate the rich hispanic latino heritage thank you miss dixit and i now

[00:24:10] call on miss st john cunning to read the proclamation in spanish mes de la herencia hispana proclamación

[00:24:57] Considerando que el mes nacional de la herencia hispana se reconoce anualmente del 15 de septiembre al 15 de octubre en todos los Estados Unidos, celebrando las historias culturales y innumerables contribuciones de aquellos cuyos antepasados tienen sus raíces en España, México, América Central, América del Sur y las naciones caribeñas de habla hispana y considerando que casi una de cada cinco personas en los Estados Unidos es hispana.

[00:25:33] La mayor concentración de la población hispana de Virginia vive en el norte de Virginia y representa el 18% de la población del condado de Fairfax. Casi uno de cada tres estudiantes de las escuelas públicas del condado de Fairfax es de herencia hispana

[00:25:52] Y considerando que la historia hispana está inexorablemente entrelazada con la historia de los Estados Unidos, ya que California, Florida, Texas, Nueva México, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, partes de Wyoming, Kansas y Oklahoma fueron en algún momento territorio español o mexicano.

[00:26:19] Como parte del grupo étnico más grande en los Estados Unidos, los hispanos y latinos han contribuido significantemente a la identidad de nuestra nación y han desempeñado un papel vital en la configuración de la democracia, la economía, la gastronomía y la cultura estadounidense.

[00:26:44] Y considerando que el tema nacional del 2026, Unidos Somos Más, Together We Are More, celebra la familia, la resiliencia, la creatividad, la fe, el servicio, al tiempo que honra las diversas historias que fortalezan a nuestra nación y nos llama a reconocer a las ricas tradiciones culturales y el legado compartido of the Hispanics, while we celebrate the vitality and innovation of the younger generations

[00:27:23] that will continue with this collective heritage. Hispanics have deeply molded the fabric of our nation, from the military service and the civic leadership, to the innovative contributions in science, education, entrepreneurship, arts y más allá, construyendo la nación que disfrutamos hoy.

[00:27:50] La resiliencia y creatividad de las comunidades hispanas, desde narradoras como Sandra Cisneros, innovadoras como Lin-Manuel Baranda, servidores públicos como la jueza Sonia Sotomayor, artistas como Celia Cruz y Bad Bunny, hasta pioneros culturales modernos como Marcelo Hernández,

[00:28:13] Elizabeth Acevedo, Lori Hernandez, Becky G. y Elena Ochoa encarnan en punto del pasado hacia un futuro inspirador y considerando que entre los virginianos hispanos prominentes se incluyen Michelle Sahur, fundador de la Cámara de Comercio Hispana de Virginia, Susana Marino, empresaria, presidenta, fundadora y presidenta de la Junta Directiva de la Cámara de Comercio Hispanoamericana del Norte Virginia

[00:28:48] y el lanzador de béisbol de grandes ligas, Javier López, quien asistió a la escuela secundaria Robinson. Y considerando que los estudiantes, el personal y las familias hispanoamericanas de FCPS son miembros valiosos de nuestra comunidad, cuyos contribuciones enriquecen enormemente nuestras aulas, nuestra cultura y nuestro éxito colectivo.

[00:29:16] Al reafirmar nuestro compromiso compartido con la equidad y las oportunidades, empoderamos a todos los estudiantes para que se conviertan en la próxima generación de líderes, reenforzando la convicción de la Junta Escolar que la diversidad es una fortaleza que cree ciudadanos globales, resilientes, abiertos e innovadores.

[00:29:45] Por tanto, se resuelve que la Junta Escolar del Condado de Fairfax proclama del 15 de septiembre al 15 de octubre de 2026 como mes de la herencia hispana animamos al pueblo del condado de fairfax a participar en los programas y eventos que se llevan a cabo en nuestras escuelas y comunidad para aprender celebrar y en altercer la rica herencia hispana latina

[00:30:18] thank you mr john cunning is there a second second mr moon thank you i'll call for the vote all those in favor all opposed that is unanimous the motion carries face chairman mcdaniel what is Mr. Dannon's vote. I can't see it. Mr. Dannon's in favor. Thank you. Thank you. In favor.

[00:30:45] Thank you. Unanimous. Agenda item 1.05 LGBTQIA+ History Month Proclamation. I call on Mr. McElbeen for a proclamation. Whereas LGBTQIA+ History Month has been recognized across the U.S. since 1994 and Fairfax County Public Schools since 2017 to acknowledge the often overlooked contributions of LGBTQIA+ people, communities, and movements in our history.

[00:31:11] Whereas the arc of LGBTQIA+ history is one of both struggle and triumph. Despite increased understanding and protections, LGBTQIA+ people still face many challenges, including the threat of violence and their legal rights being revoked.

[00:31:27] And whereas LGBTQIA+ organizations across Virginia and Fairfax County have shaped our Commonwealth's history. Equality Virginia founded in 1989 and now the leading statewide advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights. Fairfax County's Transgender Education Association launched in 1982 and now led by Reverend Emma Chatton to provide education support and advocacy for transgender and gender expansive people and their families. Fairfax Lesbian and Gay Citizens Association established in 1989 by Bart Forbes which sponsored Gay Fairfax, a cable television program

[00:32:05] chronicling local LGBTQIA+ life. Equality Fairfax started in 2001 by Paula Prettyman and Kelly Schlachter to build local visibility and community. FCPS Pride formed in 2017 by educator Robert Rigby as an employee and family advocacy group. And Pride Liberation Project organized in 2021 by then-FCPS student Aryan Rawal in response to attacks on LGBTQIA+ books and students.

[00:32:37] These and other groups' collective legacy has been transformative in the lives of LGBTQIA+ Virginians. And whereas, despite earnest attempts, FCPS was regrettably slow to formally protect LGBTQIA+ students and staff. In 1992, the school board extended modest verbal bullying protections to gay, lesbian, and bisexual students.

[00:32:59] In 2000, the school division removed administrative barriers that kept students from forming and joining gay-straight alliance clubs. In 2002, the school board postponed voting on a measure to add sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy when the state attorney general declared it did not have the authority.

[00:33:17] 12 years later, these legal hurdles were removed, and the school board finally added protections for sexual orientation in 2014 and gender identity in 2015. progress has continued 2016 and 2021 some major inclusivity focused updates to the student rights and responsibilities 2018 and 2021 saw significant inclusive updates to family life education 2020 saw the school division's first recognition of june as pride month and the implementation of regulation 2603 then among the nation's strongest protections for transgender and gender non-conforming

[00:33:55] students and 2022 saw fcps become one of the first public school systems to provide family planning benefit parity for lgbtqia plus employees and whereas the fairfax county school board stands with its diverse community of lgbtqia plus students families and staff recognizing the urgency of its charge to foster a responsive caring and inclusive culture where lgbtqia plus students are affirmed and see their identities reflected in school programs instructional curricula and library offerings now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board

[00:34:31] hereby proclaims october 2026 as lgbtqia plus history month in fairfax county public schools urging all to learn more about the many historical contributions of the lgbtqia plus community not only during october but throughout the entire year as well thank you mr mcleveen zero second miss st john conning i'll call for the vote all is in favor that's unanimous the motion carries Agenda item 1.06, proclamation recognizing Asha Jyoti. I call Ms. Dixit for a proclamation.

[00:35:09] Whereas Asha Jyoti means a ray of hope, was founded in Chantilly, Virginia in 2003 with a desire to help individuals and families facing medical hardship. And whereas, Asha Jyoti has grown into a volunteer-driven, non-profit organization dedicated to improving lives through education, health care, and community service, providing educational opportunities and access to health care for underserved communities while bringing people together across cultures and communities in shared spirit of service, compassion, and generosity.

[00:35:43] Whereas Asha Jyoti has remained deeply committed to the Northern Virginia community where it was founded, establishing its Educate, Innovate initiative to expand access to STEM and STEAM education, providing students and educators with innovative tools, technologies, and learning environment that encourage creativity, collaboration, exploration, and problem solving.

[00:36:08] And whereas the Educate Innovate program cultivates in students' desire to drive to design, experiment, build, and invent, instilling in them the skills and confidence needed to become technology leaders for tomorrow. And whereas Asha Jyoti has forged a strong partnership with Fairfax County Public Schools, supporting innovative learning opportunities and spaces at schools, including Chantilly High School, Rocky Run Middle School, and Deer Park Elementary School, while providing grants, resources, and educational opportunities totaling more than $350,000.

[00:36:45] And whereas through its annual 5K run, walks and kids fun run, Asha Jyoti promotes community interest in and support of technology education for young people, matching and distributing thousands of dollars in registration fee for the events to FCPS.

[00:37:04] and whereas Asha Jyoti's founders, volunteers, donors, and community partners demonstrate the extraordinary impact when people come together in service to others, showing a steadfast commitment to inspire, educate, and prepare students for future success in technology-related fields.

[00:37:23] Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the Fairfax County School Board recognizes and commends Asha Jyoti for its steadfast commitment to STEM and STEAM education and its generous support and service to the student, educators, and communities that are Fairfax County Public Schools.

[00:37:42] Thank you, Ms. Dixit. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Anderson seconds. I'll call for the vote. All those in favor? That is unanimous with Mr. Dunaway from the table. The motion carries. I would like to welcome all those here in support of recognizing Asha Jyothi Proclamation

[00:37:59] to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:39:07] I would like to welcome all those here in support of the LGBTQIA+ History Month Proclamation

[00:39:29] to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:40:30] I would like to welcome all those here in support of the Hispanic Heritage Month Proclamation

[00:40:48] to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:42:07] I would like to welcome all those here in support of the Indigenous Peoples' Day and

[00:43:03] Native American Heritage Month Proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:43:18] I would like to welcome all those here in support of the Indigenous Peoples' Day and Native American Heritage Month proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the

[00:43:31] front of the dais. Vice chairman McDaniel that was our last proclamation photo. The

[00:45:43] 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 and school board regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the school board's website at fcps.edu forward slash school board. During the sign-up process, community members are acknowledged. They acknowledge that they were informed of the school board's expectations for proper decorum when 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

[00:46:19] 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're 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 responding. Madam Clerk, please call the first speaker. Lydia Tabibi.

[00:46:58] Hello, my name is Lydia and I attend Hayfield Secondary School. I came I came here to speak against the whitelist pilot. I know the people proposing this are well-intentioned but this cannot coexist with our education. The current bans are restrictive enough. In my Java education class, all of the videos on the slides provided directly from the state were banned on YouTube. To participate in the science fair, we need safety data sheets we get online for chemicals that we will use in our project. On my school computer, half of the safety data sheets I could easily access on my personal computer

[00:47:31] were blocked. In almost every English class, including AP seminar, as part of my college word score, we have to scour the internet to check the author's credibility. Let's say I get a source with an author named Bob. Here's how research would go under this white list. Oh, here's Bob's, oh, here, Bob's information on a university website, banned, because they did not think to pre-approve a random Midwest college. Oh, an organization Bob found it popped up. I can see if he's biased. Banned too, because the person having to pre-approve websites did not think of the sources I would need. For my Japanese class assignment, I chose to research the city Kanazawa.

[00:48:10] Can you promise that sources about Kanazawa's foods, their prefectures, historical rulers will be pre-approved, or will I have to hope an anonymous person wrote about it on Wikipedia? Under the ban for FCPS students in the pilot program, some students without a personal computer couldn't even enter the science fair because the person approving sites did not think of little Johnny or something who needs the link to safety data sheets to vinegar or Expo markers. The science fair organization and College Board aren't going to change their requirements for FCPS pilot students. Logistically, there

[00:48:46] isn't enough IT staff to brainstorm ideas to pre-approved all the sites needed. I will email you with the rest of my points because I had to cut out a lot of details, but I'm asking you to repeal this because it's counter intuitive. Okay, thank you. Naomi Durst. Hi, my name is Naomi Durst and I'm in third grade. I'm here to tell you why we need less screens in our schools. One

[00:49:24] reason is that screens are addictive so you will rush through your work, your other work, to get back to them because you just want more. It's kind of like candy for your brain. Also screens sometimes give you answers to problems faster than you can figure them out on your own. That shortcuts your brain growth. At the end of second grade, when the computers went away, Ms. Dugan, my teacher, gave us extra time for real-life learning. We played board games like Battleship and Checkers

[00:49:58] and worked on cursive writing. I love cursive. It's fun and challenging, and it's more engaging for your brain than just regular writing, which is better than simply typing, which is better than swiping or tapping, which is why I think we need to do better for all students by only using screens when necessary.

[00:50:19] Thank you. Peter Snelgrove.

[00:50:38] Those comments are hard to follow. My name is Peter Snelgrove. My two boys attend Belvedere Elementary. My wife also works at the school. So my family is pretty tapped into the school and FCPS in general.

[00:50:53] So when board member McDaniel's newsletter came out talking about the $684,000 quantum computer, it raised some red flags for me. I'm a software engineer, and after reading the contract summary and doing some digging, here were some things that I found.

[00:51:09] First, free alternatives exist, including open source simulators and free time-limited access on real hardware from cloud computing vendors. Second, there's no real compute benefit to having a physical machine.

[00:51:25] Any laptop that any student has access to can run these simulators, which is the same architecture as the quantum computer that was purchased, as well as the QIS kit software that they say is available as part of their package.

[00:51:41] The hands-on hardware, if it is necessary, George Mason University, their new quantum Virginia program, excuse me, the Virginia Quantum Hub program already includes writers about K through 12 programs. In the contract there's a sole source justification, which is circular in its logic, basically saying that the CQ contract has all the criteria that only the CQ contract vendor can supply, whereas other companies like Germany's Saxon Q basically offers the same computer architecture.

[00:52:16] This is being paid for by the general classroom budget, and I do think there are some valid procedural criticisms for how this was brought to vote. Quantum computing is a specialized field with practical payoffs way in the future. For me, this is, you guys were either sold a narrative with a computer to go with it, and if I'm being cynical, this was a prestige purchase.

[00:52:38] So I asked the board and legal counsel to pause.

[00:52:57] Eli Ballatin. Good evening.

[00:53:12] My name is Eli Ballatin, and I'm the parent of a second grader. The last time I stood before you I spoke rather passionately about how much my daughter benefited from Lexia. My emotions were a mix of pride that my child found something that worked for her and concern that an effective tool is being taken away from teachers who use it responsibly.

[00:53:32] The teachers I've spoken with are frustrated. They feel they're not being heard and frankly they question if decision makers have spent time recently in a classroom full of very young learners. struggling right now, navigating literacy testing in noisy classrooms, where in the past Lexi and ST Math allowed part of the class to work quietly while others tested. Also, without access to Myon, kindergartners are not able to have a listen-to-reading station. CD players are long gone. Sourcing other digital or screen-free players is cost prohibitive. We're all aware of the dangers of

[00:54:09] excessive unguided screen time. Multiple studies speak to that. For me, after working with my daughter and speaking to teachers, the right answer isn't an outright ban. Instead of having minimum use targets, maybe we should have maximums. Make sure these maximums are looked at across every class the student participates in because it all adds up. This is easy to implement and monitor, can be addressed by admin during weekly CLT meetings with teachers.

[00:54:34] It seems straightforward. Tonight you will vote on a motion to review the instructional efficacy of Lexia. I am all for it. I love data. It makes me smile inside and out. I am excited for future decisions to be made based on this data.

[00:54:49] You'll be comparing tutoring by humans versus Lexia use, which currently is often used independently by students as teachers are otherwise occupied. Maybe consider a third option where Lexia use is guided by dedicated professionals who are not otherwise distracted, who are there specifically to help students who teach effectively. And by the way, if you're looking for a school willing to pilot this, I can guarantee you the teachers at my school would be willing to

[00:55:12] My name is Anne Moken and I work at the Sprague Technology Center.

[00:55:40] Since telework eligible employees lost the ability to telework, there has been a significant change to long-standing working conditions, negatively impacting employees' morale and our ability to work effectively and efficiently. However, I am not here to repeat all the reasons why the removal of telework was a mistake.

[00:56:00] We have done that. We've voiced our concerns through employee conversations, emails, phone calls, meetings, union engagement, and even a demand to bargain in August of 2025, which FCPS leadership rejected. We've engaged directly with you, the board, and you told us you were informed that this is a union issue and that must be handled through collective bargaining. Well, we have great news. Last week, FEU formally submitted a demand to bargain over the removal of telework. The demand was signed,

[00:56:34] by FEU co-presidents and the FEA bargaining chair with a response requested by Thursday the 15th. This formal demand notes that the shift in telework policy was not bargained with FEU and violates the Savings Clause of our CBA, the collective bargaining resolution, and long-standing past practice regarding telework eligibility. This action was not only procedurally improper but undermines FCPS's commitment to collaborative labor management relations.

[00:57:08] We're grateful to the many of you who reached out and shared your support for telework flexibility, and we now ask that you, the school board, help ensure that this issue is fairly bargained and in good faith. I am also here standing in solidarity with my school-based colleagues who are here tonight.

[00:57:29] Teachers assigned weapon detection duty is a step too far. Please let us all all have the right working conditions to do. Julie Landry. Hello, school board and Dr. Reed. I come

[00:58:06] to you today as a teacher concerned about open gate duties being assigned to your educational staff. I'm a learning disabilities teacher. I have many trainings and certifications that allow me to do my job. I'm a MANT certified teacher, and I renew that credential yearly. Because of this rigorous training, I saved a student's life. I am good at special education. I'm the 2025 SEPTA Special Educator of the Year. Currently I am one of only eight model team teaching classrooms in the state of Virginia for the VDOE. I am the me we lead. These are everything I am trained to do as a teacher. IPR, Independent

[00:58:43] Professional Responsibility. This means jobs directly related to teaching and instruction. These are our professional responsibilities. Specially designed instruction, high leverage practice, scaffolding, differentiation, making sure we enable universal design and learning, attending IEP meetings, 504 meetings, analyzing data with our team or our behavior intervention teacher, coach, mentoring colleagues, lesson planning, grading, parent contact, working with ATS.

[00:59:11] Those are all examples of vital professional responsibilities that we have. We are not security guards. We are teachers. Security guards, they are trained on how to assess scene safety, how to assess the threats of people entering a building. Security guards are trained in what to do if a threat enters a building, not teachers.

[00:59:31] This is weeks of training or more for them. How do we know that there's not a 3D printed something hiding in a student's binder above their head? If you continue to have teachers do open gate duty, metal detector duty, you're going to put student lives at risk. We cannot protect students that way.

[00:59:47] I can protect my class in a lockdown drill in a classroom. I have done it before and I will do it again. But if you ask me to protect hundreds of students walking in the door at once, I don't know how to do that, to protect them safely, how to secure that environment. That's not my training.

[01:00:02] Many students and staff's lives are at risk. Emily Vanderhoef. Good evening. I'm Emily Vanderhoef, the co-president of FU and president of FCFT. I'm here to raise the concerns that my colleagues concerns of my colleagues at FCPS has blatantly ignored. Hundreds of workers from across the

[01:00:40] county have asked the school board to end mandatory weapons detection duty for non-security staff. We've emphasized concerns about safety for staff and students. FCPS argues that teachers aren't any less safe when performing the weapons detection duty. The FCPS lawyer argues this duty is comparable to other teacher assignments, it just "happens to involve some machines, that's the only difference."

[01:01:03] That argument is disingenuous. The Partner Alliance for Safer Schools recommends that weapons detection systems ideally be staffed by law enforcement, SROs, or trained district security staff. Our staff and students deserve the ideal safety measures, not untrained and unqualified non-security staff performing such a sensitive duty.

[01:01:24] Similarly, FCPS has refused to listen to the voices of teleworkers. Last year, FCPS unilaterally changed the working condition of over 1,000 operational employees, who for over a decade had the option of flexible hybrid telework.

[01:01:39] This change is a clear violation of good faith labor relations. Since then, hundreds of staff have raised their concern via emails, school board meetings, and personal demands to bargain. Last week, after FCPS failed to respond to these efforts, FEU submitted a formal demand to bargain over telework.

[01:01:56] In my hand, I have personal demands to bargain from dozens of workers that I will give to the clerk. We await response next Thursday. You as the school board are responsible for overseeing the superintendent and her staff to ensure they are carrying out your vision of respectful workers and positive labor relations.

[01:02:13] Our ask is simple: listen to workers, keep our schools safer by ending mandatory weapons detection for teachers, counselors, and non-security staff, reinstate telework, a benefit that should have never been unilaterally changed, respond to the demand to bargain, and bargain in good faith.

[01:02:41] Megan Durst. Good evening. As you may recall, I have now a third and first grade children in FCPS.

[01:03:00] I'm grateful for the work that's being done to ensure that device use is done intentionally in our schools. That said, let's make sure that it's done with a backdrop of sound data from unbiased sources, not just lexia. In raising my children, I strive to do better when I know better.

[01:03:16] When I dug deeper into research behind the device use in general, and especially at young ages, I found a lot of information that truly made sense from my own experience and perspective, and from that of neuroscientists and pediatricians. Among red flags, devices provide artificial dopamine hits and can impede development of pathways in the brain.

[01:03:37] Am I saying never use devices? No, I used one to type my final draft so that I could print it and more easily refer to it as I spoke to you tonight. That said, I started this process and made most of my progress with pencil and paper.

[01:03:57] I also used multiple devices daily for various tasks. However, when given the option, I strive to use deep thinking in my brain and multimodal encoding via my hands to help keep my brain function active and not passive.

[01:04:12] Cognitive decline is real, and we owe it to FCPS students to equip them with a strong foundation of cognitive skills and not simply have them longing for the devices on their desk or even in their classroom. I added that last part because I've been told even first graders will dishonestly skip their unfinished schoolwork in order to access screens in the classroom.

[01:04:33] One could argue the same could happen with a real book that's really good. I'd counter that books don't have the addictive nature of devices. Please rely on sound research and wisdom from mistakes of the past when making decisions around the use of ed tech and AI. The temptation is great. Let our children's future and well-being be greater. Thank you.

[01:04:53] George Becerra. George Becerra. Luke Williams. All right. Okay. All right. Good evening. My name is Luke Williams.

[01:05:21] I serve on the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers Executive Board and a science chair at Rocky Road Middle School. I want to begin by saying that I support measures designed to keep weapons out of our schools. having grown up in the UK where guns in schools and mass shootings are not a normal part of life and beginning my teaching career in England and Germany I'm acutely aware of the ongoing threat of firearms in US schools. My concern therefore is not the presence of these safety systems it is a requirement that teachers operate them as a mandatory duty. Teachers are not security officials many teachers in FCPS have shared that they have received little to no training on what to do when a weapon is detected or when someone threatens them with one. One FCPS teacher who reportedly

[01:05:59] asked what they should do if a student pulled out a weapon during this check, was simply told to duck. That is not adequate training or preparation for confronting a potentially armed individual. The legislative and societal issues that have made weapon detection systems necessarily extend far beyond our schools, and teachers should not be required to assume additional security responsibilities that place us at even greater risk of serious injury or death, particularly when educators in the United States already face firearm-related safety risks that many of our international counterparts do not. In the last five years, there are over 180 shootings at K-12 schools in the United States in which someone was injured or killed by gunfire. That number

[01:06:39] is impossible to ignore. I say this with my own family in mind. I am an FCPS parent with two children in elementary school and the spouse of another FCPS teacher, so I strongly support measures to keep our students and staff safe. But while these safety measures are clearly necessary, how they are implemented matters. Teachers must have the right to decline this responsibility if they have concerns about their personal safety. In addition, any educational personnel who willingly undertake this duty should receive specialized training, protective equipment, and additional compensation that reflects both the responsibility and the additional risk they're being asked to

[01:07:12] assume. Thank you. Tamara O'Neill. Good evening. I'm here tonight to stand with our teachers and ask this board to end mandatory weapons detection duty for our educators. As a parent, I want to start by saying something that should not be controversial. Our teachers deserve to feel safe at work and our children deserve to feel safe at school. We should never have to choose between the

[01:07:50] two. Recently, I attended the FCPS employee grievance hearing at Gatehouse on September 23rd, where I listened to teachers describe their experiences with mandatory weapons detection duty firsthand. What I heard was deeply concerning. I heard from teachers at three different high schools who described three very different procedures for the same serious responsibility. A teacher at one high school described it as voluntary assignment in which teachers felt comfortable and prepared because they volunteered to sign up and they also received additional compensation. This seemed to work well with only teachers who felt comfortable and prepared executing the role. I heard from another teacher at a different high school who

[01:08:26] said she was told weapons duty was mandatory. She received no more than 30 minutes of training and did not feel prepared or comfortable with the duty. She reported receiving no real guidance on what to do if a weapon was detected and felt fearful that she was not the right person to carry out this role. Another teacher, a counselor, said her school also mandated the duty, and it took away from her being able to meet with parents of students who were unable to meet in the evenings.

[01:08:51] As a parent, all of this alarms me. When we as a community send our children to school, I expect that the adults responsible for identifying potential weapons are properly trained, prepared, and supported. This is not simply other duties as assigned. Weapons detection is a serious school safety responsibility and it should be performed appropriately trained by personnel who know what they're doing, not mandated for classroom teachers.

[01:09:16] I'm asking this board to listen to the educators who have spoken up, establish consistent safety protocols across all schools, and remove mandatory weapons detection duty from teachers' responsibilities. School safety is too important to be treated as an additional duty assigned to already over...

[01:09:36] Steve Tunley.

[01:09:58] Hi. I'm here tonight to say thank you. I've had two children graduate from Fairfax County Public Schools, my daughter from South Lakes in 2022, my son from Herndon in 2025. It's doubtful, in my humble opinion, that they could have had a better educational experience anywhere in this country, anywhere else.

[01:10:17] My daughter graduated UVA in May with a degree in computer science with highest honors and landed a coveted position at the hot technology company in the United States these days. She's got a top-secret security clearance at the age of 22, and she can't tell me what she does day to day.

[01:10:36] She mentioned to me how valuable the international baccalaureate degree she received was and how hard the program was and how it forced her to develop skills around managing and prioritizing work. She said that getting through that made her believe she could accomplish anything. My son graduated because of all the AP opportunities.

[01:10:53] He graduated with 42 college credits based on all of his AP classes. When he showed up at Florida State day one, he was halfway through his sophomore year. He'll graduate in three years, and he's looking at a career in health care, possibly medical school. I had dinner with him a while back, and he stopped me and said he had something he wanted to tell me.

[01:11:12] He said, my friends and I talk all the time about how lucky we were to grow up here in this area. I had great friends with cool parents. Here's the part that you guys. He said, I never had a bad teacher in 12 years. Everyone was great. I had great coaches too. Honestly, I couldn't have had a better childhood. In terms of coaches, I'll give a shout out to Jordan Steffi, the Herndon soccer coach. My son was the captain of the team that won the state championship in June of 2025, and it was the thrill of his life. He flew back from Florida to get his state championship ring back in October and see all the guys who had been sophomores and juniors on the team, and it was

[01:11:51] just fantastic. I can't say a bad word about this school district. Thank you very much. I really appreciate everything you've done. Hillary Turner. Hillary Turner. Zach Coe. Hello. I am here today

[01:12:30] to talk about your upcoming decision on the weapons detection grievance. I'm asking that you find in favor of the grievance regardless of the decision made by the hearing officer. That for all non-security workers, weapons detection duty be optional, like it is at my school, and that those doing it be trained. First, as someone who went to the hearing, I found it unbelievable and truly disconcerting that a huge portion of FCPS's argument throughout this process has been that weapons detection duty is no more dangerous than doing anything anywhere else in the school. This is ridiculous and untrue.

[01:13:08] I don't think it's true. The security staff at my school don't think it's true. And I sincerely doubt you thought it was true when you approved these weapons detection stations. If you find in favor of FCPS, you are agreeing with this lie. Why is FCPS telling this lie? It is all in favor of protecting related duties as assigned.

[01:13:30] This is the last entry of every FCPS employee's job description. It is there to protect lazy management and staffing decisions made by FCPS admin that make our schools function worse. Schools are not cleaner if transportation workers are made to clean bathrooms. Students are not better educated if security staff are made to teach AP calculus.

[01:13:49] And of course, neither our schools nor our students are safer when teachers are made to attend weapons detection systems. The workers of FCPS hate duties as assigned, and through the bargaining process, it will eventually go away.

[01:14:05] We are speaking to you as workers and constituents. We are telling you the issues that we are seeing, and we will remember whether you were with us or against us, the schools and the students, whether that be for the workers who have lost their telework or the teachers who are made to do security work.

[01:14:24] - Thank you. - Michelle Butler. - Michelle Butler.

[01:14:48] - Good evening. Our second grade son is at Chesterbrook Elementary School and our daughter is almost in kindergarten next year. We prioritize finding a home in an excellent school district and love our neighborhood school and FCPS staff.

[01:15:07] Our concern is with FCPS's over-reliance on EdTech and screens. In kindergarten, our son scored high risk in the VALS test. Quite surprised, we read the letter repeatedly. It stated Virginia funds that require two and a half hours of intervention.

[01:15:27] Does the state not pay enough to cover fully teacher-led intervention? Thanks to hard work, he is now moderate risk. Yeah, thank you.

[01:15:48] Mr. Hatsianas did not submit his video by the deadline. Please play the video testimony submitted by Bill McCabe.

[01:16:07] I'm speaking tonight to beg you, the school board, to consider three things as you decide what you will affix your names to in the pending grievance regarding weapons duty. One, as you enter the school tonight, I will bet based on past practice that the person standing next to the weapons detector was a uniformed FCPD officer dressed in Kevlar with a sidearm, not a librarian or a guidance counselor or one of you.

[01:16:28] If schools are dangerous enough to warrant $4.2 million in tax dollars on screeners, then isn't it dangerous enough to afford our kids the same level of safety that you provide for yourselves. Two, Dr. Reed, through her lawyer, argued that principals are not restricted in any way by school regulations and what they can ask teachers to do as instructional and professional responsibilities.

[01:16:50] If you sign off on that proposition, then you will have helped Dr. Reed essentially kill professionalism in the teaching core because the title of teacher then would be replaced by just building worker, a person who could be plugged and played into any job that a principal thought needed being done that day.

[01:17:05] Three, we are offered no option in the duties that we are forced to accept. Some of us find weapons duty traumatizing, finding compromises our relationships with students. Physically, it's impossible, but nearly all of us fear for the kids we teach. Given the unqualified and often unwilling personnel, our principal has decided to force into this risky task that is so far removed from any reason we got into teaching in the first place.

[01:17:29] Go ask a friend who is employed by FCPS. What do you think about teachers doing weapons duty at schools? And they'll say, that's nuts. I know because that's what people say when I ask that question. And then when I add, also there are two cops in the building and six security officers, they say that's criminal.

[01:17:45] And you know what, that might be right. May God forbid the day when there are little caskets on a stage and weeping parents and lots of television cameras and Dr. Reed and my principal have to defend their choice not to use proper security assistance at this job, but overworked, demoralized teachers on their planning periods.

[01:18:02] I hope you won't be on that stage. I know I won't. I'll be the first.

[01:18:21] - Please play the video testimony submitted by Summer Johnson. - Innovation drives my work in FCPS. So I was genuinely excited to see our investment in the quantum computer at Skyview High School. That's forward thinking. And not just because students might need this technology someday, but because technology is already shaping their world.

[01:18:39] That isn't just their future, it is their now. And I'd like to bring that same thinking to the way we work. Sometimes innovation costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sometimes innovations cost nothing. Telework is an innovation that costs nothing. already have the in technology and proven track record of operational excellence in a hybrid environment what it requires is a willingness to rethink how and where work happens an innovation mindset and skyview actually illustrates why the quantum computer itself isn't what makes that investment innovative its value comes from what students and educators do with it learning together experimenting and collaborating to solve real problems technology creates possibility

[01:19:16] people create innovation and innovation happens one relationship at a time it depends on creating conditions where people can focus, connect, and do their best work. When we intentionally come together to collaborate, design, solve problems, and learn from each other, I love that FCPS values that as much as I do. What I don't value is commuting to an office to spend hours in online meetings, constantly muting and unmuting to avoid picking up conversations around me, along with the dehumidifier and space heaters we rely on in an aging building without the privilege of being able to close our office doors. That isn't meaningful collaboration. It is simply being physically present and compliant and that experience is not equal across fcps many technology employees work

[01:19:55] at nancy sprague and wilton woods former school buildings converted into offices decades ago yet we apply one workplace policy to all of them fcps asks us to innovate use technology thoughtfully design around human needs and recognize that one size does not fit all those principles should apply to our workplace too innovation should not require a purchase order vice chairman mcdaniel that was our last public speaker. I call on Mr. Agenda 3.01, Student Representative Matters. I call

[01:20:34] Mr. Shostek for Student Representative Matters. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. All right. Good evening, everyone. I had actually initially different plans for what I was going to speak about tonight, but I thought with the support of my peers from Hayfield, I would go ahead and speak again on the white list. I understand that there is a lot of concern from parents about the use of technology in our schools right now, but I fear that with the implementation of the white list that this This is not going to actually act as a restriction on technology use.

[01:21:03] We will be using technology just the same. The only difference is that we will now have a large equity wedge drived into our school system. For students that do not have the means to possess their own device at home, they will be at a huge disadvantage when it comes to research, for assignments, for anything else that they would want to use this device for.

[01:21:23] That would be perfectly legitimate. I mean, right now, we are currently at a state where device use is already incredibly limited. And I think, if anything, we really need to be going in the other direction. There is a significant degree to which perfectly legitimate use has been restricted for students.

[01:21:41] And I think that we have this sort of idea in our heads that this very small fraction of sites that students can access, whether that be web proxies or anything else that gets access to unblocked websites, that that's this huge issue that's causing a lot of distraction and a lot of inappropriate use of technology.

[01:22:05] But to that, I would say if you go ahead and implement a whitelist, the students that are going out there that are searching for web proxies that are using GitHub or whatever to bypass these links are going to find a way to keep distracting themselves during class. And I'd say right now, if you were to walk into a classroom, you would not find any significant amount of students using their technology inappropriately with the current restrictions that are in place.

[01:22:32] If you are in at least a high school classroom, if you come into Hayfield, you walk in the door, you go into any room, you are not going to see a huge wall of students that are playing games on their computers. And I think by further restricting this, we only risk continuing to really limit the already microscopic access students currently have to technology.

[01:22:57] I mean, you have to think about, especially on the older age part of this, that students who are about to go into college, that are about to go into the adult life, the workforce, they're going to have unfettered access to technology. And they will not have learned the discipline and self-control needed to properly restrict themselves and navigate the technological world.

[01:23:15] I guess that is my time. Thank you. Mr. Shostak, you can continue. Thank you. All right. I will continue then. Thank you. Yeah, that was the old alarm, I think, at one point.

[01:23:35] Yeah, so as I was saying that, I think this does present a really big equity issue. I do think we really need to be going in the other direction, if anything, because you have a situation right now where students could be using their device.

[01:23:51] Say they've completed all the work. Say this is not an instructional time. Say that they want to relax, take a break. If they do not have the means to have their own device that they can, say, play a game on, why are we trying to strip that away from students who are at that sort of disadvantage? And why, if we think about what a whitelist would do, the fact that a lot of sites, first of all have URLs that are embedded in them those those could be like graphs or visuals that could be forgotten about they would be blocked they would be restricted pop-ups to other sites could be restricted you would have to think about the thousands and thousands of sites that a small technology team would need to somehow be able to comb through and and go through every niche it's like

[01:24:30] small like different research Avenue that you could look at that at the end of the day would just not be productive and it would take years and years and years as more sites more legitimate sites would be created it would be like whack-a-mole and I don't think that's a productive use of our time I don't think it's a productive use of our resources to just try to restrict students more and what they can do in school and at home with those devices and the the last thing I'll say to that on a bit more of a productive note because I do know that there's a lot of people here tonight is that I am working currently with mr.

[01:25:00] McDaniel staff on hosting some virtual town halls in November I know I've mentioned this briefly before but we're going ahead we're going to divide we're going to have three town halls and it's going to be separated by topic. So we're going to have five topics on student representation, mental health, technology, a few other things as well. So if you are a student that is currently in the audience tonight, if you're watching at home and you'd be interested in attending, I encourage you to do so. If you are a parent that, you know, think you have a child that'd be interested in attending, same goes for you. And same goes if you are a teacher and you want to make your students aware of this, the more the merrier. And I really want to hear from as many students as I can, not just from members of the Student Advisory Council, but from

[01:25:38] as many of the 180,000 students in this county that I can. And so I will leave it with that. Thank you, everyone, and see you soon. I don't know. Thank you, Mr. Shostek. Agenda item 4.01, action item. Superintendent's recommendation for pre-K, K-Tech device use, presentation and vote, and the superintendent will be giving her presentation from her seat this evening. I call on Dr. Reed for a presentation on her recommendation on pre-K and K-tech device use.

[01:26:13] Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. And I did the, just a reminder that the presentation in its totality was provided actually at our last board meeting in September. The team did go back and create some summary slides.

[01:26:32] Thanks, Christina. Who's driving this? Ms. Shepard. Okay, thank you. So just a reminder about the ETRC and its purpose, it was formed in late spring as an advisory committee to the superintendent as a result of a board vote.

[01:26:50] And one of the deliverables was consideration of device use at the kindergarten level. So, Ms. Shepard, let's go ahead and go to the next slide. Thank you. and a reminder that there are state requirements around what we call um erie which is um the early intervention reading initiative and the this initiative generally requires um 1.25 hours plus 1.25 hours essentially the equivalent of two and a half hours i guess it could be two and a half

[01:27:26] hours of reading intervention per week historically FCPS has met this requirement by coupling the 1.25 and 1.25 of teacher-led intervention as well as then 1.25 hours of Lexia intervention on the next slide in this is a little bit of data just as a reminder from the last presentation in terms of the percentage of students that have required intervention services last

[01:28:02] year and I don't know Mr. or Dr. Presidio do we have the percentage this year are we done with testing yet no testing won't be completed until the end of October okay so last year was roughly 30% and the state does provide funding based on a 5-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio.

[01:28:25] Doesn't necessarily require the 5-to-1 in terms of instruction, but that's how the funding is allocated. So again, on the next slide, I asked the team to look at what other intervention options without Lexia they would consider.

[01:28:42] So Dr. Presidio and the literacy team looked at some possibilities, perhaps increasing the amount of teacher-led intervention. expanding group sizes use of additional trained staff and perhaps the use of paid hourly trained staff or tutors so they're prepared to look at some other possibilities and to reiterate the recommendation from our September meeting the ETRC as well as the board motion originally talked about not

[01:29:20] allowing devices for pre-k and k with the exception of IEP students with IEPs 504 plans those requiring translation services or multilingual support in this case the ETRC felt like adding Lexia for those students who need additional reading support up to a maximum of one hour and 15 minutes a week was appropriate in the spirit of the board's original motion we also agree that we're recommending that families of kindergarten students who do receive

[01:29:59] additional support and currently would have been scheduled for Lexia that they do have an option to opt out of that as part of their additional reading support So the recommendation is really on this slide and I'm happy to take any questions. Dr. Presidio or staff are here as well. Thank you. I call on Ms.

[01:30:22] Anderson for a motion. I move that the school board approve the superintendent's recommendation. Is there a second? Second. Okay, Ms. Anderson would like to speak to your motion? Yes, please. When we made the decision in July to prohibit the distribution of tablets to our pre-k and kindergarten students, we did two things. First, the motion allowed for an exception for some students with specific needs as was just outlined and second we amended the initial motion to ask for feedback from the educational technology review committee about our decision and that's where we are we now have more information that a small group of additional kindergarten students may need access to technologies that meet

[01:31:01] clear objectives outlined by the state's early intervention ready reading initiative often called eerie if they are to be found in a high-risk category for literacy. And quite frankly, with a clearer planning, we likely would have made sure to include those students in the original motion. This is not a greater push to put technology into the classrooms for our kindergarten students, and it does not have to be a permanent solution.

[01:31:25] So I will ask Dr. Reed, if we have a path forward to an alternative approach approved by Erie, could the current approach of using Lexia to satisfy the requirement be adjusted later? I believe it could. I think we would want to be thoughtful about adjusting within a current academic year because our staff, you know, they spend a great deal of time preparing for instruction.

[01:31:49] We want to make sure that there was time to make those shifts and that there were adequate resources to support that. But Dr. Presidio, what would your team think about that? Well, I think we've tried to outline the alternatives on slide five of how we would provide the services.

[01:32:09] I think the central point to remember is that if we don't use any technology, it could be Lexia or you could substitute any other technology-derived program for that 75 minutes per week, it is going to have to be staff-led. So we're going to have to increase the capacity of our staff to be able to do that at each of our buildings.

[01:32:28] Thank you. Right now, this is the path we take to meet the state's requirement of two and a half hours. And that is half led with small group work with teachers and half led with a technology that is meant to be differentiated for students.

[01:32:44] Unfortunately, the month staff was given between the vote of July 16th and the start of school on August 24th did not allow for an additional adjustment to our approach. And I look forward to see what we can come up with next. And I'm very appreciative of the time staff has spent to meet the board's request.

[01:33:02] I would also like to thank staff for understanding that some parents would rather not have technology interventions by allowing for the opt-out. And so that is the reason that I'm supportive here. Mr. Frisch, would you like to speak to your second? Yes, thank you. So I'm supporting the recommendation because it includes the opt-out.

[01:33:23] And because later this evening, I'll have an opportunity to vote to extend that opt-out for all of elementary school and to also include ST Math in that opt-out in elementary school when we vote later on Ms. Anderson and Mr. Dannon's follow-on motion.

[01:33:38] And because, you know, we have an opportunity to seek an unvarnished review of Lexia's efficacy with Mr. Dunn's motion and Mr. Dannon's amendment to that motion. So I think the arc of the work here is encouraging and I look forward to the continued progress that we can make this year.

[01:33:59] Thank you, Dr. Anderson, followed by Mr. Dunn. Thank you. One of the things that I've noticed that is different in today's presentation is on slide four that speaks to the state funding for ERIRI. That was not mentioned last time.

[01:34:15] What is that amount? So we'll have to double check with financial services, but it's approximately $4 million. that we received based on the Erie formula of a 5 to 1 ratio. So they provide $4 million so that we can have this ratio.

[01:34:34] And how do we spend those dollars since this is being provided by classroom teachers who are already employed? Yeah, so part of it is spent on curriculum materials for the interventions that are not digital intervention services. So Spire, 95 pair.

[01:34:51] Some of it is spent on reading specialists. So it's a variety of curriculum and staff costs. Okay, thank you. So the ratio is not mandated. It's just what provides the funding. That's the funding level, correct. Okay, thank you.

[01:35:07] I also want to say I'm appreciative of a lot of the research that you have provided to us in the Friday letter. And I spent quite a bit of time digging through the Utah research as well as some of the other things, the Marzano research, as well as some of the other research pieces that community members have provided, and what I believe that I see here is that none of this is definitive.

[01:35:36] This is, it's not necessarily even correlational. I want to ask some questions regarding the internal research that FCPS conducted. But first, the feedback that you received from teachers in this document, you said you received 88 respondents and they have a fairly favorable view of the use of Lexia.

[01:36:01] The 88 respondents represent how many of our elementary school teachers? So those are reading specialists that attended a recent training and we were trying to collect some additional information to incorporate their perspective on the perceived utility and efficacy of the program.

[01:36:21] So those are typically reading specialists with some administrators in there as well. Okay, so these are not the classroom teachers who are delivering it. In some instances, our reading teachers are delivering Erie Interventions, but they're not classroom teachers per se. And what's the end of our reading specialists?

[01:36:38] I'm just trying to make sense of this idiot response. Is it half? Is it more than half? It's a little bit more than half, yeah. Okay, thank you. Do all students use Lexia? They do. Right now we're talking about Lexia for Erie for the reading intervention, so we refer to that as a Tier 3 usage, but all students use it in our elementary grades in a Tier 1 or Tier 2 setting.

[01:37:05] So that's basically Tier 1 is the core instructional block and Tier 2 some additional support during core instruction. So they use it during the independent practice of the core instructional block for, again, 60 minutes a week and it's one of the activities that provides them with targeted instruction during the the independent practice so there's other activities that students complete during independent practice as well so I just want to make sure I'm clear if all students use Lexia we're then talking about all students and kindergarten well kindergarten all the way up

[01:37:42] using Lexia and then the additional intervention component that we're talking about here so the the component we're talking about here is not additional minutes it's just those students do have like 75 minutes as opposed to most students having around 60 minutes a week I'm so sorry can you repeat I know it's very confusing no it's just a little conversation here oh I apologize so it's not your fault it's okay so all students use Lexia in the core setting our students use it approximately 60 minutes a week in the Erie setting the where they have reading

[01:38:19] plans, they use it an additional 15 minutes a week, so they use it for about 75 minutes a week. So all of the conversation we're having, it's not about the 60 minutes that these kindergartners would be using Lexia, it's the additional 15 minutes a day. So there's already a device restriction in place for kindergarten, so in kindergarten those students wouldn't be able to use Lexia, or they're not able to use Lexia now. I would mention the ETRC is following up on the board motion directing the ETRC to look at whether or not there would be device restrictions extended beyond kindergarten so in that case then there

[01:38:56] might be additional conversation to be had about additional use of Lexia for reading plans since that goes through grade three but right now we're just talking about kindergarten and students that have reading plans because the other students are not using Lexia now okay thank you so the kindergarten and usage and outcomes of the data you've provided us. It says here, high-risk students with no Lexia usage, 85% of them remain at high risk, although they have teacher-led intervention. Maybe I'm making a leap here. This is telling me that we don't need teachers to do this work. We just need

[01:39:33] to put them in front of Lexia. I wouldn't interpret it that way. In the September meeting, I tried to explain a little bit more about how Lexia is used in conjunction with teacher-led intervention. So teachers are providing 75 minutes a week of teacher-led intervention.

[01:39:50] Lexia supports the additional intervention time by providing a personalized learning pathway in the five domains of literacy. It's targeted in terms of where students might need to focus, either phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency.

[01:40:06] So it's very targeted. And it provides formative assessment data that teachers use to then target and plan for their small group instruction for the students in the in-person instruction. So it's complimentary to what the teacher-led instruction is providing.

[01:40:23] Those two things work together. - Sure, but if I'm just reading this chart, that's not exactly what seems to pop up. I'd like to go back, please. - Yeah, I think that the data that we provided, again, it shows students in kindergarten that were at high risk, that met their Alexia target, what percentage of those students reduced their risk by at least one risk band, or essentially one grade level.

[01:40:49] So the students that met their usage target of 75 minutes a week on reading plans, approximately 58% of those students reduced their level of risk. The students that used it minimally, only 31% reduced their level of risk. And the ones that used it almost, not at all, only 14% of those students reduced their risk.

[01:41:12] So I think the way to look at that data is there's a correlation between the ability for teachers to target instruction and use the independent practice to address reading risk. Even though they have the teacher leading part of the intervention, they're not making the growth.

[01:41:28] I just want to finish that sentence. Yeah, I have you for a go back. Mr. Dunn, followed by Mr. Moon. Thank you. On slide three, it says historically we've used Lexia. What does historically mean? How many years are we talking about?

[01:41:46] I'll have to double check, but I'm in say approximately five years. We've always had a digital component probably for the last 20 years to provide supplemental instruction for students with reading risks. So before that, we had different products. And I think it was around 2020 that we adopted Lexia.

[01:42:04] Because in reading through the history of the deployment of devices to kindergarten, pre-kindergarten students, elementary students, I mean, the one-to-one initiative was never supposed to reach below third grade. And it was only because of the pandemic that we got to that level. So, before the pandemic, did we use digital devices for reading intervention, even at the pre-K and K-level?

[01:42:27] We did at the K-level. Pre-K, I'd have to double-check on that, but at the K-level we did. But, again, we didn't have one-to-one devices. We had small stations in the classroom. So, one of my frustrations coming to the school board as someone who's non-educator is there's so much that still seems to be more art than science and and there's kind of this utopian vision of individualized learning that Google and other companies have propagated so when I come to a question like Lexi I say well

[01:43:03] well does it work and and you know there was a great compilation of studies that parents for intentional technologies brought forward to the school board 21 studies most vendor-funded and those that are independent show little efficacy so I we know what works because before we had the internet before we had personal computers we had teachers in the classroom and so if intervention was needed we would use extra teacher support so when my question is when we have data from independent studies showing very little efficacy then you know our my personal commitment is and I know everyone shares this a world-class

[01:43:43] education for every child but if we're just having them spend more time on a tool that doesn't work then why would we choose that over some of the other options that are available and approved by a video II well I think there are a number of studies that we've shared and I was just talking about the data internal FCPS data from last year so different studies under different implementation conditions can yield different results for different students. So I think you have to look at the body of data and evidence in totality.

[01:44:16] I think the central question here though is if we want to prohibit the device access for the reading interventions then that will require additional staff led intervention services which will require us to take additional actions to staff appropriately there. And we tried to lay out what we think are the most prudent options for the remainder of this school year on slide five.

[01:44:42] I understand that. I guess just my commitment is, and I'm sure everyone shares this, is to make sure that kids learn to read better and on or above grade level. And I just don't see any evidence that Lexia is going to get us there.

[01:44:58] And so if the kids who need the most support, they need the effective tools, and human teachers are the best way to deliver that from just decades and centuries of human experience. I don't see the evidence supporting dyslexia, so I can't support this recommendation.

[01:45:17] Thank you, Mr. Moon, followed by Ms. Marin. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. My questions go to second part of the recommendation on slide number six, where we are giving families an option to opt out of dyslexia use.

[01:45:41] If this motion passes, when and how will this occur? Dr. Reed or Dr. Prestille, could you comment on that? Sure. So testing, the VALS testing, will not be complete until the end of October.

[01:45:59] And reading plan services would go into effect approximately the second week of November. So we would have to develop a communication plan and strategy to inform families of their ability to opt out of the Lexia use component if they wanted to do that.

[01:46:16] And we would work with our schools to provide probably multiple communications. Is our current thinking probably something centralized with a common message followed by some school-based messaging? And then for those students that are choosing to opt out at any particular elementary school, we would need to work with the principal to determine how we could provide the additional hours of staff-led intervention services.

[01:46:42] So when are we obligated to start providing additional reading support? So that will commence approximately the second week of November. We need a little bit of time to analyze the testing results and get scheduling and services set up.

[01:47:01] So it will probably take about two weeks after the final results come in on October 30th. I mean that is for all students who are required to receive this additional reading support, whether using Lexia or some alternative method.

[01:47:18] Is that correct? second week in november for everyone needing reading support correct that's correct what about those who will be opting out uh will we be ready to provide additional support from same time frame that's my question well we would um i i think it is going to be a little bit of a challenge to get everything stood up com uh completely operationalized across all of our schools but we would at a minimum be prepared to deliver the hour and a quarter per week of teacher-led instruction immediately just like we

[01:47:55] would for any student and then we would continue to try to make sure that we could provide the additional 75 minutes a week hopefully on the same schedule okay I'm not gonna I'm not gonna prejudge how many a families were actually opt out from Lexis Hughes but if entirely was opted out and the last At the last minute, you gave us a potential range of the additional investment we would need to make.

[01:48:29] Yes, would we be able to tap on some already set-aside funding to do that? So on the 24th, we discussed a range, and I know there were a number of board questions about why the range was so broad in terms of costs.

[01:48:46] And largely, again, that's due to, as you point out, we don't know how many people might choose to opt out. And then the options that we have to deliver the services include things like increasing the group size beyond five to one, working to schedule in any additional teachers who are trained.

[01:49:06] And we would try to do a number of cost-neutral strategies before we would work to incur additional costs. And the challenge with estimating all of this is, first, we don't know how many people would choose to opt out. And second, the impact is going to be different at different schools.

[01:49:22] So you might recall, we had talked about there's about 70 schools, elementary schools that have about a quarter of their student, kindergarten students, who needed reading plans last year. There's about a dozen schools that had 50% of their students that needed reading plans.

[01:49:38] So you can imagine that schools that have a small number of students that need the plans, we could probably provide the services in those cases for families who choose to opt out without incurring any additional costs. But at schools that have a large population of students needing reading plans, there might be some additional costs there.

[01:49:57] And it's very hard to estimate without knowing the number of students, where they are, and what staffing levels and resources exist at each of those schools. Okay, so I'm not going to belabor on this issue, but I want to just make sure that I am understanding you correctly.

[01:50:15] In your mind, we will be able to find a way to provide this additional support for those students or families opting out of usable Lexus use around the same time, around the same time, all those students who are using Lexus use receive additional support.

[01:50:38] I'm trying to ask you whether one group of students are not going to be prejudiced by us taking this action. So I think what I'd be able to say today is that all students who need reading plan services at a minimum would get the full level of currently planned teacher-directed support of 75 minutes a week.

[01:51:12] we will need to continue to problem-solve with some schools that might be heavily impacted about how to get the additional services if there's not an Alexia use exception we would do that as soon as practical and we would take every best effort to do that on the same timeframe of mid-November but I can't guarantee that without knowing how many students at each school and working with the principals to develop an individual school plan for each school.

[01:51:42] Well, you seem to be shifting your response a little bit about the timeframe, but I'll leave it there. But one thing that concerns me from one of your earlier statements deals with potentially changing the ratio beyond 5 to 1?

[01:52:07] That is one of the options that we would need to explore without any additional resources. would need to look at any existing staff members who are trained that could provide services staff members who could become trained to provide services or increasing group size outside of those options we would require additional staffing support and I would be very hesitant to support increasing that that ways of beyond 521 that is just unfair to those who are exercising this option thank you mr. moon that was your time I can put you for a go back if you'd like

[01:52:45] Okay, I'm okay so far. Okay, thank you. Thank you, sir. Ms. Marin, followed by Mr. Shostek. I received an email last week from a school employee that I'd like to read. I think it's perfectly relevant.

[01:53:01] This year our SBITS management team has asked all of us to complete an 80-hour ISTE certification, which is a subject area certification, a portion of which involves reviewing the empirical evidence related to current instructional technology topics.

[01:53:17] With the new ed tech policies that have been rolled out, I'd love to take a look at the specific research studies and documentation the board reviewed when crafting these guidelines. It seems like it makes sense to align my own work with the exact research that shaped FCPS policy. I started, she continues, or he continues, I started trying to dig through the recent meeting highlights, but wasn't quite sure where to find the specific background studies or references cited.

[01:53:40] Is there any chance you have those in a document that would be easy for you to share with me or could point me in the right direction? If I'm gonna take the time to dig into the data anyway, it might as well be the research that is most relevant to our schools and families." End of email. I could only think of two resources provided by the superintendent for public discussion with the board.

[01:53:59] One of them was the Brookings Report that was early on, and one of them was a common sense media tool about the dangers of AI agents and teenage friendships. So I'll say again what I said previously. This school division never intentionally decided to give devices to elementary school children as a matter of instructional approach.

[01:54:18] And this board has not yet, even I believe in this school year, started working on the policy. We are right in without a script, in my opinion. The decisions that have been made have been board-driven.

[01:54:33] This decision before us tonight was board-driven, driven without research until it was shared with us last Friday, which I found interesting, but certainly not wholesome enough as one of my colleagues pointed out. You know, again, the use of computer-based technology for instruction accelerated dramatically as a function of access learning during COVID.

[01:54:54] And the research I've seen, actual research, because I've read more than just two things, shows that screens have an impact for any amount of time. So I don't have compelling research from the superintendent stating what is instructionally best, and I don't have it in a timely manner.

[01:55:09] So the way it is looking to me, as I look across a whole host of challenges happening right now, is that we don't have enough instructional staff. So devices are being used to fill the need to keep kids occupied with perhaps marginal benefits to learning, but certainly with an impact from screen time on young minds.

[01:55:27] We know that to be a fact. Screens of any amount of time impact young minds, fact. I think there could certainly be instructional benefit for some kiddos, and that some teachers do find Lexia to be effective as designed. But generally, given the totality of what I'm seeing, it seems that the approach to staffing is the challenge in this situation and others.

[01:55:49] I'm not going to mess around with the directive of the board that we passed recently, and even at that time, it wasn't based in research. So I will not be supporting this motion. - Thank you, Ms. Mirren. Mr. Shostek. - Thank you, Mr. McDaniel.

[01:56:05] - So I would just like to balance this conversation a bit. First, just to clarify, 'cause I think this is a number I hit earlier, around like 56%. So the only group of students where a majority of those requiring intervention that showed a reduction in risk for literacy was the group that met their Lexia targets, right?

[01:56:23] Based on last year's data, that's correct. Based on last year's data? Okay, thank you. Well, then, to me, it seems that we do at least have some evidence suggesting that this works. And I understand that there is a large and justified degree of concern from parents about use of technology at such a young age.

[01:56:42] But to me, when we are looking at roughly 15 minutes or so a day for a group of students that we have data suggesting this works for, that we have parents that have come and spoke at this meeting saying that this has really helped their students, and most importantly, that clearly provides a valuable resource in terms of data for teachers and how they can better use that as a tool to instruct their students and give them the intervention they need when it is during that time.

[01:57:16] I frankly do not see the big issue here. And I think that when we are looking at such a wide range, I think if I recall from last month's board meeting about that it was anywhere from 300 grand to one and a half million dollars.

[01:57:32] I think when we're looking at the opt out, because we don't know what percentage of parents are going to opt out their students in and how that will work across the distribution of schools. We are looking at a wide range of money. And I think that providing this opt out right now without trying to maybe get a survey of parents to see who would be interested in this opt-out to maybe get a better range of what this could cost.

[01:57:54] I think the board is almost burdening themselves with an unknown amount of money by allowing this opt-out currently. And so I guess what I'm trying to say is I do not see how this presents as such a huge issue that the board needs to potentially spend upwards of a million dollars right now without getting a bit more data to sort of discredit its use when right now it seems the data is showing that it works.

[01:58:22] And so I'll leave it at that, thank you. - Thank you, Mr. Shostek. And for the first round, Mr. Dannon, I see your hands up. - Yes, good evening, thank you. So I mentioned this last week, but I appreciate the nuance and thought, and this was my hope back in July when we made the amendments, is that, you know, Dr. Reid, you would do your best to come back with recommendations and consultation with the EdTech Committee and so forth.

[01:58:50] So I recognize that, you know, fortunately, as folks have shared, the research is very limited at best, right? But what I appreciate from this is that you all have taken the time to listen to the teachers and educators that are on the ground.

[01:59:07] And speaking with them, I've heard a couple of things. One is that I've heard from teachers who use Lexia and these tools very effectively and think that they have been great and can point to situations where kids have significantly developed. We've heard from at least one parent tonight in that case.

[01:59:25] I've also heard from other teachers who had used it for the minimum and then put it aside and used a different method that they preferred. And so what I appreciate from these recommendations is that we are giving teachers that kind of flexibility to use it. We've removed the minimums and replaced them with maximums.

[01:59:43] We've been thoughtful about it. One point I would emphasize as we head into the budget planning season is that we continue to prioritize ways where we can develop alternate pathways for this, right, that wouldn't rely on a tool, on a digital tool, especially at the younger ages.

[01:59:59] And, you know, I'm looking forward to the work of the Governance Committee to develop the policy on this. The last thing I'll say is this. It feels sometimes like we are trying to solve a societal problem at the school board level. I remember speaking with one staff member a few weeks ago who talked about staffing the Kiss and Ride line in the mornings and having kids who are screaming getting out of a car because they couldn't last a five-minute car ride without a tablet.

[02:00:25] And I would encourage, and I am a parent of young kids myself, so I'd encourage fellow parents to take a hard look at what we are doing to our kids and how we are preparing and setting up our teachers when we hand our kids off to the classroom to make sure they're set up for success and able to function.

[02:00:41] in a classroom where technology is going to be very limited or restricted so thank you thank you Mr. Dannon and for our second round aka go backs Dr. Anderson thank you Mr. Dr. Presidio can you share with me what do students see on their screen during this 15 minutes because clearly these are four and five-year-olds so they're not readers particularly if they're five-year-olds who have some gaps what what do they see what do they manipulate on the screen with Lexia yeah it's a great question if the earlier ages at kindergarten for

[02:01:18] example they're going to be working more on phonemic awareness what sounds do a letters make what sounds do letters make when you put them together make a letter blend you know blends and like so it's really phonics and phonemic awareness activities at the early age okay I thank you and I'm so glad that I asked that because unlike probably most of the people at the dais outside of dr. Reed I have been in Ellen in an elementary classroom as an elementary teacher there are other ways to do exactly what you've described that does not require screen

[02:01:52] time and I think I'm I'm struggling to kind of not hear those opportunities and those options when we know there's other places who are doing that moreover if we have a number of students who could potentially opt out we have to create some way of dealing with those students my worry is we have parents who are in the know who have access to resources and they're going to jump on this opt-out if they want to reduce screen time for their students and we have other parents who may want the same thing but because of life circumstances they are not

[02:02:30] going to engage in this opt-out so we are going to create yet another opportunity for divide between those who are in the know and those who are not, and their children having some very different experiences. I am really struggling, and I have asked the Mason District, as you all know, I'm very big on bringing forward their voices, and both teachers and parents have responded, and outside of one of the many responses that I received, and that one only said the carve-out is what's making them amenable to it for the opt-out, but everyone else is

[02:03:07] essentially saying we should not be putting computers in front of kids that are this young. That's the mandate that I've received from the Mason District, so I will be a no on this vote. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Mr. Dunn, followed by Mr. Moon. So in my experience managing a $2 billion budget, you know, increased complexity means increased cost. And so I do think there's a strategy here to keep it clean, keep it simple, because clarity is kindness, and clarity and clean solutions mean uniform operational strategies.

[02:03:45] Because if you're allowing all these people to opt out while you're trying to put Lexia some places, and it's going to vary classroom to classroom, at the end of the day, with the opt-outs, you're still going to have to have the increased staffing. So if you're going to need increased staffing, just do it across the board. I mean that the motion was strongly support in July, it's strongly support today. There was nothing in July that showed me Lexia work, there's nothing today that shows me it works. So why don't we actually take the solution that works, that's approved by VDOE, and apply that so that we can get these kids, the kids who need the most support, the

[02:04:21] best solution, which is not a computer screen, but a human being. That's where I'm coming from. We don't need more complexity, that's just going to result in asymmetry of academic outcomes and we're trying to lift up these children to achieve the best possible literacy they can achieve within this academic year. Will it be some bumps? Yes, but so was the introduction of the science of reading. So we really need to think about how we can continue with that progress and and make progress towards next year. We shouldn't think about how we're gonna have a band-aid for this year working to something more uniform

[02:04:57] next year. We can start right now. We're already in the midst of it. It's too late to try to do something different. Thank you, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Moon. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. This question goes to Dr. Reed. The board, back in July, passed a motion directing you to work with the ETRC to come back to the board with the recommendations. And now we have two recommendations. If both,

[02:05:30] If these recommendations fail tonight, fail to pass, what's your strategy for going forward? Dr. Reed? Well, I think we'd have to go back to the ETRC to talk about the original request on the motion, which would go back to probably the original board motion.

[02:06:06] We'd have to go back and talk about what we're going to do to address students with reading plans. Will you then be coming back to the board again or do you take that twice if the motions fail?

[02:06:24] Do you take that as a directive for you to do away with Lexia? The board in the original motion said to go to the ETRC, get their recommendations and bring them back to the board for approval.

[02:06:41] So if the board doesn't approve the recommendations tonight, we would need to go back to ETRC and find out, have further conversation to bring a motion back that the board would approve. And that's going to be beyond second week in November.

[02:06:57] Well, we'd have to put something, right, we'd have to have the conversation at ETRC, then come back and put something on new business, and then come back and put something on for action. So I would have to ask Dr. Presidio, do we have an ETRC meeting between now and the next board meeting?

[02:07:22] We do. The timeline is pretty short. The next meeting of the ETRC is October 21st, and the next board meeting, I believe, is the following day on the 22nd. So we probably, if the ETRC came back with a meeting, they'd have to send the recommendation to me.

[02:07:41] It's not like I could post it then for new business until the November meeting. And then we would have action in the first meeting in December, I believe. First meeting in December. And then you may also need some preparation time to implement actual reading strategies, additional reading support strategy.

[02:08:09] Is that how I see the timeline to be like? I think that sounds reasonable. So that could easily put us in January? Following this timeline, I think that's likely.

[02:08:26] Again, I don't have the board calendar in front of me, but if the next board meeting is October 22nd and the next ETRC meeting is the 21st of October, I don't think I can get it on a new business the next day.

[02:08:43] So that would be the November meeting, and I believe we only have one meeting in November. So it would be on new business in that November meeting. And then be brought to, thank you, it would be brought then to action in December at, the earliest would be December 3rd.

[02:09:02] And meanwhile, meanwhile, will you still be using Lexia? No, sir, we would not because the direction, unless there's a student who is, Lexia is listed on their IEP for special services or multilingual translation or support.

[02:09:26] But otherwise, no, Lexi has not been approved by the board or any device unless it falls into one of those categories. Then how would you be able to provide additional reading support? Because by the end of October, we're going to have assessment research known to us.

[02:09:51] Are we not obligated to provide additional reading support right away once we know the assessment research? Yes, sir, we are. We would, you know, we would, of course, move forward with the recall that we're talking about.

[02:10:07] Let me go back to the timing here. I think it's two and a half hours a week. So the 1.25 hours is already planned for teacher-directed time. So it's that other 1.25 hours that Dr. Presidio has talked about since about 2020 has been provided through Lexia.

[02:10:29] That's that 75 minutes per week that, obviously, there will need to be a conversation with staff and the ETRC about what that would look like in this interim while the decisions are being decided. That gives me a lot to think about, how to vote on this motion.

[02:10:52] But thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Moon. Mr. McElveen. Thank you. Dr. Presidio, if we were to continue down this path that this motion takes us down tonight, by what point do you think we would have a sense of how we'd be handling the opt-outs?

[02:11:12] Would it be by spring, six months, next school year? So are you saying if the board were to approve the motion to allow Lexia usage and parent opt-outs? That's correct.

[02:11:27] Yeah, the goal would be to have that done by mid-November, right? because to Mr. Moon's question, we want to initiate those reading intervention services as soon as possible. So the hope would be that we would be able to problem solve with each of the individual schools to figure out which of those alternative options I mentioned would be possible to implement, hopefully, by mid-November.

[02:11:54] Thank you. This may be more down the HR line of thinking, but is it possible to use the current teacher rebalancing process to solve for some of these instructional issues? At the risk of discussing that topic, I think it is possible for sure. Anything is possible. I do know that, again, it'll take a minute for staff to pause and take a look at what staff may be available that would have that level of expertise to support reading intervention, but certainly we would look at all available staff

[02:12:33] to help support that process. And then another budget question on this. Would it also be possible to use closing achievement gap funds? I think there's $4 million in the budget or something like that. I don't know.

[02:12:49] Those aren't continuing dollars, so it wouldn't be something we could rely on at this point. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. St. John Conning for our first turn. So I want to thank you for the presentation, And this is not an easy topic.

[02:13:08] And whenever we make a decision, I think of three things. How are we going to fund it? How are we going to staff it? And how are we going to operationalize it? And there's challenges on all three levels on this motion. And being someone that worked in schools, when a board would decide something, and then it would come down, and we would say, how do they expect us to do that?

[02:13:33] At the end of last year, we made a decision without maybe adequately answering those questions. And so now our students and our teachers are trying to operationalize something that was not carefully considered. We appointed, we created the ETRC to advise us.

[02:13:54] They have come forth with a recommendation. They have spent a lot of time working on this. And what we're basically, what I've heard from a lot of members on this board tonight say is we're going to reject their recommendation.

[02:14:13] Is this a perfect recommendation at the time? Is this what we want to aspire to? No. But I go back to those three fundamental questions. And remember, this is a small subset of students. These are the students that need support.

[02:14:30] And it's 15 minutes a day. Should we get to a better solution? Yes. I think that operationalizing this, funding it, and staffing it right now is critical, and that's why I'm going to support this motion, and I'm going to support what the ETRC has recommended.

[02:14:51] Teachers have contacted me about this, and parents have contacted me about this, because they want their kids to have the support they need. It is my hope that we come up with a better solution. I just don't think we can come up with it immediately, and kids are in classrooms now.

[02:15:07] They need the support now. This is what we have in place now. Let's work with this as we start. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can be taking this recommendation and exploring the other options without leaving our kids behind and without creating the stress that we need for our teachers.

[02:15:25] And we also have to take into consideration the financial aspects. Is it perfect? No. Nothing ever is. It's a little bit messy. But we were a little bit messy at the end of last year when we made some decisions. And now we're dealing with those consequences.

[02:15:41] so I'm happy to support the recommendation of the ERTC that we appointed to tell us after they've done research what they recommend. Thank you Ms. St. John Cunning. Ms. Marin. So it's the eighth week of school next week okay and the quarter is only 10 weeks. We've heard really well I've heard really terrible stories about the rebalancing reassigning of staff. Can we just realize what we're doing here we're asked we're gonna ask teachers in the eighth week of

[02:16:15] school who have just been moved around morale apparently is really low we're going to ask them to come up with a new solution for our youngest students based on a recommendation we made in the summer based on no data can we just take a pause and do the policy and please let's commit to not changing things that are happening in the school year once the school year started that just seems like a really basic obvious practice once the school year is off and running let the teachers do their work don't add new things for them um i just i really hope that we can be disciplined

[02:16:55] enough to not create a lot of changes and a lot of new things happening in classrooms right now i'm thinking of those kids that were on that stage tonight and what the chaos would be for their teachers thank you miss maron uh mr shostak for kobeck yeah thank you i just well i don't i don't think i properly clarified this earlier um just to say this briefly i would advise the board approve of this recommendation. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Okay, so I have some comments. Snowcrete. When Snowcrete hit, I was laying in my bed, half

[02:17:34] asleep, and I heard pinging sounds, like digital pinging sounds, and my daughter, who's a kindergartner, was next to me with her FCPS-issued iPad, and she was playing ST Math. And we got on the iPad, we kind of started playing with it, and then there was Lexia.

[02:17:53] And I kind of got a firsthand view of what Lexia and ST Math and the Penguin and all that kind of stuff was. So I want to be very clear that I'm the only member of this board who has a child impacted by this decision.

[02:18:08] So I take it very seriously. I voted for the original recommendation to peel back iPads for pre-K and K. And then this EIRI-lexia intervention mess got kicked up.

[02:18:26] So the recommendation, as has been stated, is to maintain my original vote and the vote that passed by this board-- I can't remember if it was unanimous. I can't remember if it was overwhelming-- but to allow a carve out to comply with EIRI.

[02:18:44] Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Am I happy that we're here in, I think, to some points that have been raised in October? I'm not happy, but here we are. So I have to make a vote tonight based on the cards that I've been dealt.

[02:18:59] And to a certain extent, we've dealt ourselves. I think this is a small group of kids that's ultimately impacted. So I'm comfortable supporting this. But a question for the clerk. There is a follow-on motion that Ms. Anderson and I discussed at the last meeting.

[02:19:18] And that follow-on motion to this motion specifically directs the superintendent to allow for a blanket carve, a blanket opt out, a process for parents and guardians to opt their kids out of ST Math and Lexia at elementary schools.

[02:19:37] If this vote right now on this motion fails, is the follow on motion allowed to proceed? - No, it is not. - Okay. - Point of order, a follow on motion could be brought to the member brought motion that follows, I confirm that with the parliamentarian.

[02:19:56] - Can we get clarification on that? Yes, so because the follow-on motion has to be germane because there is Mr. Dunn's member brought motion later on that deals with Lexia. It could be germane that a follow-on motion be brought to that.

[02:20:14] So we would have to move the follow-on to his next motion if assuming that this motion fails. Yes. Okay, that's a very good point of clarification. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to support this motion.

[02:20:31] I'm going to support the opt-out for Lexian ST Math, whether it's with this follow-on or the following follow-ons, because here we are. So with that, I'm calling for the vote. All those in favor of the motion, Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Dixit, Ms. St. John Cunning, I see Mr. Dannen, I see Ms. Lady, and I see Mr. Moon, and myself.

[02:20:56] All those opposed, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Mr. Dunn, and Dr. Anderson. Will Kirk read the vote? 8-4, the motion carries. Thank you. I call on Ms. Anderson for a follow-on motion.

[02:21:21] I move that the Fairfax County School Board direct the superintendent to develop a process for parent or guardian opt-outs from ST Math and Lexia in elementary schools, including instructional alternatives to these specific digital learning tools.

[02:21:37] Is there a second? Second. Mr. Dannen, Ms. Anderson, would I speak to your motion? Yes, please. For me, this is a logical extension of the motion that we just passed that allows parents to opt kindergarteners out of Lexia if they choose.

[02:21:55] We have parents that clearly would like a choice as to whether or not their children utilize digital learning tools like Lexia and ST Math, and this is all that follow-on does. It gives a parent a choice for these two programs. In fact, this option was included in the draft of the educational technology policy I provided to the governance committee last year, and I hope that it will be codified in the version that we will be working on this year as well.

[02:22:18] There are a few things that I want to make note about this particular motion. First, I hope parents will understand that our teachers are never going to be able to replicate the real-time differentiation that happens for a classroom full of students that some of these programs supplement. These programs meet kids where they are in small chunks of time throughout our school year.

[02:22:36] We can replicate the skills the programs strengthen with worksheets and other activities, but I want to make sure we all have reasonable expectations about what real-time differentiation looks like when it's being executed by a classroom teacher in a room full of students. I also want to make sure that I acknowledge that I did not include a specific deadline on the motion intentionally. That is because I expect this to happen as soon as possible and as quickly as possible. Some schools will be able to do this very fast and others might need a little bit more time to get there. I would ask parents to be as patient as we can be while we determine the path

[02:23:13] forward and I ask staff to be responsive here. Finally, I targeted the motion specifically to speak about elementary school because I personally would like the division to reconsider a different approach with our middle school students, particularly in regard to Lexia. For our students in general education and courses in higher that do not require additional supports, I would like our instructional services team to consider the elimination of Lexia completely. I would like to work with my colleagues to determine a path forward to request this change. This adjustment would not only significantly reduce our dependence on this particular computer program but it would

[02:23:49] also give back time to our middle school english classes to allow teachers to expand our curriculum back to teaching long form texts and corresponding written projects thank you mr dana would you like to speak to your second yes just briefly and i'll speak as a parent of two kids who have used both of these programs and really benefited from them and um are now phenomenal readers and really good at math. I recognize at the same time that there are parents who feel strongly otherwise. My assumption is that it won't be a lot and will be an excessive burden on teachers. And as mentioned

[02:24:26] before, I'm looking forward to the Governance Committee taking on the policy work and getting that done this year. Thank you, Mr. Dan and Mr. Dunn, followed by Dr. Anderson. I support this motion. I believe parents should have the opportunity to opt their children out of tools that I believe are ineffective, even though it provides differentiated learning, I don't believe we have the evidence to show it actually works.

[02:24:53] I do want to address that we're here in part because of what's been called an ETRC recommendation, and I think there's a contradiction because the ETRC, as I understood it, was intended to be an open forum for dialogue among community members who are actively involved and often very knowledgeable with PhDs and advanced learning and high professional positions in the relevant industries and sectors to debate and discuss and to formulate recommendations to present to the school board.

[02:25:27] But that's not how it's worked out. Instead, the group is being presented with recommendations from FCPS leadership and being told to vote yay or nay, and there's really no option to vote nay because of the way the recommendations are put forward. So being, you know, to characterize something as an ETRC recommendation is really a false flag.

[02:25:48] It's instead an FCPS leadership recommendation that the ETRC really is not in a position to reject. So that's an important data point because if we had the open engagement, then I would put much more faith in the ETRC's recommendations.

[02:26:04] But many ETRC members have written to the school board to explain that this is not working out the way it was envisioned. So I do want to encourage parents to continue coming forward to the school board, sharing this information, and I do believe, although I support this motion, it will create additional cost complexity that is not optimal from an operational standpoint.

[02:26:28] Certainly no CEO, no COO would allow the chaos that will result from this, and I think we'll be hearing about this in the coming months. Thank you. Mr. Dunn, thank you. Anderson followed by Ms. Marin. Thank you, just happy to pick up where Mr. Dunn left off and I'm very grateful to staff for providing the list of ETRC membership. When I reviewed it, it had five students, 12 community members because we're down one school board appointee, 29 were staff whether

[02:27:00] they be teachers, principals, specialists, so I also want to be sure that we are mindful of that composition that is FCPS staff. Not to take away the need for the expertise that that staff brings to the conversation, but it is essentially FCPS staff stamping activities that FCPS has already been engaged in. It just makes me really question some of the consensus that is being taken in that setting, plus the other things that Mr. Dunn shared. Regarding the motion, I'm happy to

[02:27:36] support the motion, but I have a few questions. Do we anticipate, Dr. Reed, if we have an opportunity for students to opt out both Lexia and ST Math, would that require or rather result in a reduced number of licenses that are needed to run the program? Because right now it's for every student. That's a great question, and I don't know, I'll have to defer to Dr. Presidio, I don't know about the specifics of this particular, those are likely unique contracts, ST Math and Lexia.

[02:28:10] I don't know if they're bundled, you know, in the aggregate or if they're, you know, I don't know if they're in bundles of 10 or 100 or 1,000. So, Dr. Presidio, what? Yeah, so I think we'd have to take a look at the contracts with legal.

[02:28:26] My general understanding right now is that these are site licenses. They're not per-student licenses. And we have a contract, and I'm not even sure we might have already incurred the cost on that contract. So I don't know that there's any short-term savings. But obviously, over time, contracts could be renegotiated, and there might be some longer-term savings.

[02:28:48] Thank you. I would appreciate knowing that because I'd like to think there would be some savings if we have a significant reduction in student use of that information. Ms. Anderson had shared that we are going to be flexible in terms of allowing schools the opportunity to be able to ramp up and be responsive to this opt-out.

[02:29:09] What are the circumstances that would create one school to be able to effectively create an opt-out in January and another school could do it in November? I just want to understand better. I thought this would be a little bit more centrally dictated.

[02:29:30] At this point, I think it's likely going to be a centrally identifiable date. I just don't know that we're ready to state what that date would be at this time. Because clearly we need to go back, the team will need to go back and work with instructional services and school-based staff to determine what some of those alternative activities might look like and to make sure we have resources, right?

[02:29:54] We would want to, and that whatever those new resources are, that there's support for their use before we would move into an opt-out situation. So I don't know how long that will take, but we would certainly move as reasonably quick as possible.

[02:30:12] But it would not be your expectation that schools would begin their opt-out choices at different times? I don't think that would likely occur. I do think different schools may have different numbers of opt-outs.

[02:30:30] And depending on the student's reading and math levels, that might also determine the types of opt-outs. It's a very different opt-out if you have, for example, an elementary student who's reading well above grade level who might opt out to read an independent level reading book on their own versus a student whose family might want to opt them out who requires more support for the reading skill set, right, which might require more hands-on support than someone who maybe is already reading well beyond grade level.

[02:31:07] So I think there's going to be a little bit of a continuum of needs based on what that opt-out might look like. So it's going to take instructional services, I think, a bit of time to put those plans in place. No, thank you for that. I appreciate that response.

[02:31:22] I just want to be sure that we're not creating another opportunity for inequity. I'd like to think in your planning that there would be a set date by which all schools could achieve this rather than kind of having a rolling basis, because I see that as an opportunity for disparity. And the form for opting out, not asking you right now for an answer, but just a wondering, I'd like to think that this would be provided on paper as well as virtually, because we know that it's different for each of our families.

[02:31:57] They're differently situated. So I'd like for that to be part of your calculus as you are planning this out. - I'll ask the team to obviously take that under consideration. - Thank you, Ms. Marin, followed by Ms. Dixon. - Okay, the solution to allowing parents to opt out is to tell them why we're providing instructional technology to their children.

[02:32:22] The parents are not saying, by and large, no tech. They are saying, tell me why the teacher is using tech. Show me how it makes a difference. let me be your partner we are so far away from the actual problem guys our job is to make policy it is not to days before a public meeting propose something that would change the instructional approach of what we are doing for 90 000 elementary school children add a few more for the the mason district or you know with the sixth grade more or less but regardless it's more than half of the

[02:32:57] kids in the system and you think that we're just going to let the school division just going to to figure out how to make it all happen. We are challenged to do things consistently. We heard it tonight. There's not consistent implementation of weapons detection duty. There wasn't consistent implementation of whether laptops were going home. Heck, I've even seen differences in how students have to purchase their own recorders for music class or it's paid for the PTA. If we can't get a handle on that consistency, which is the superintendent's job, we are being dangerous to think that we, with no data about ST math, by the way, we've only talked about Lexia and the state

[02:33:36] requirements. We're not even talking about math, and how about the superintendent's algebra push? This is dangerous. I don't think that this board could seriously consider a recommendation asking to change the instructional approach of the school division for almost 100,000 children without any actual evidence of the detrimental or benefit effect of it, the costs of it.

[02:34:08] Are we going to pay for more professional development? What about all the professional development we already paid for that now the teachers aren't going to use? I am begging this board to slow down, prioritize the AI and tech policies, and keep our eye on the prize, which is what do we think is the role of instructional technology in learning?

[02:34:28] Everything else comes from there. We are way ahead of ourselves, and this will be catastrophic. Thank you, Ms. Meir. And Ms. Dixit, followed by Mr. Moon. So I wanted to speak from a teacher's perspective.

[02:34:51] I'm not a teacher, but teachers do write to us, just like parents do. And one of the teachers who was going to be here speaking to the school board couldn't do it because she was on the waiting list. So I'll just read a couple of lines from her email. And she says, what will individual teachers be expected to provide for each student independent?

[02:35:13] If this opt-out option motion goes through. Teachers need comparable technology-free resources that support the same learning goal, providing appropriate practice, and are available across subject grade level units. These resources also need to be prepared and accessible in advance, not created on the spot while the teacher is leading multi-group instruction.

[02:35:35] I do understand that teachers are seeing this as more on ground, how this thing will be implemented. And I'm having a little bit hard time in understanding the real implication.

[02:35:51] I mean, we can decide here as board members because we are not teaching in the classrooms. We are not the people going and delivering these lessons plans and how to balance this tech, non-tech situation with the same group of students.

[02:36:06] And there's kindergartners who could probably be complaining why this kid has a computer and I don't. So I want to give it a more thought before I want to move forward. So I would like to speak with more teacher representation on this before I make my decision.

[02:36:23] Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dixit. Mr. Moon. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. I am being persuaded by a logic and passion by my colleague, Ms. Merrim, on this motion.

[02:36:39] Let me ask the maker of the motion this question. Is the motion just a directing superintendent to develop a process? Or is the motion directing superintendent to provide families or students to actually opt out?

[02:37:01] So for the clerks, can we put the language up on the board? We are working to do so. Thank you. Point of order. State your point.

[02:37:17] I believe Mr. Moon is waiting for the chair to yield time to Ms. Anderson. Ms. Anderson, Mr. Moon, would you like to yield your time to Ms. Anderson? Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you, sir. Ms. Anderson, would you like to respond to Mr. Moon's question? I worked with staff to create the language for this particular motion to ensure that it was appropriate.

[02:37:40] This is to create a process that would allow students or parents to opt their students out of just these two programs. And so I see it as doing both things that are related to your question. So once the motion passes, there will be no further bold involvement, no more bold decision on this.

[02:38:08] Mr. Moon, would you like to yield your time to Ms. Anderson? Yes, Mr. McDaniel. Ms. Anderson. I am hoping, as I said in my comments, that this will be codified in the policies that are coming to governance at our next meeting. Thank you.

[02:38:27] Thank you, Mr. Moon. Mr. Shostak. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. So it does seem like I got a little bit ahead of myself when I first spoke on this. And again, and just for the sake of time, I don't want to rehash a lot of stuff I said earlier. But I do see this, as many board members have pointed out, as an equity issue.

[02:38:48] And I understand the desire to give parents a greater extent to the way that they can manage their child's education. But to me, I see this in terms of operationalizing this and in terms of implementation as kind of a nightmare.

[02:39:06] And I might be misguided on that, but it seems like this costs an unknown amount of money that will be given to an unknown amount of parents that we're just sort of hoping is not a lot, But I think that if we're going by that premise, then I think already the extent to which this really has an impact is already mitigated.

[02:39:31] And I think that if we are trying to – I guess what I should say here is that this, to me, especially when we're talking about 15 minutes a day, And we are talking about a system that if we were to allow, this is about the opt-out, no?

[02:39:54] Hold up. Stand by. Hold up. Hold up. You can continue. If you would like to yield for a question to clarify things, you can do that. I would like to yield for a question. I might be mistaken then.

[02:40:10] Ask the maker of the motion to clarify. Ms. Anderson, sorry, this is about opting out of the Lexia use for the intervention, correct? No? This is specifically about the opt-out for utilizing Lexia and ST Math as supplemental learning programs in the classroom.

[02:40:35] So these are kiddos that are likely using this during SOAR intervention time and things like that during the day. This is not in place of traditional instruction. This is likely something that the kids are doing while teachers are working with small groups and things like that. So, no, it is not in place of intervention time.

[02:40:55] Oh, no, no, I was, sorry, I was, because I know this is regarding the fact that we have the, it's like the 1.25 hours, no, okay. All right, I guess I was mistaken, then. I'm thinking of just previously discussed.

[02:41:11] Nevermind then, I'll yield the rest of my time. - Thank you, Mr. Shostak. Dr. Anderson for a first round go back, followed by Ms. Anderson. - I just wanna be sure we have some clarification, particularly given the questions that were just asked. Dr. Presidio, I know I asked this during my previous turn in the first motion, can you clarify what students typically, and how much time they typically spend on Lexia throughout the school day?

[02:41:41] So here, with this motion, we would be talking about opting out of any Lexia use. So that could be in Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3. So in Tier 1 and 2, that's about 60 minutes a week.

[02:41:57] In Tier 3, students that have Tier 3 services, about 75 minutes a week. Similarly, for Lexia, or excuse me, for ST Math, it would be used differently and vary by tier, but it would be between 60 and 90 minutes a week, depending on grade level. So at the lower grade levels, 60 minutes per week. At the upper grade levels, up to 90 minutes per week. And by upper grade levels, I'm talking about four, five, and six. Okay, thank you. I've always challenged the

[02:42:32] efficacy of, I've always challenged the efficacy of ST Math. You and I have had conversations about that dr reed i think that was one of our very first conversations when you got here um and i i was super ready to pull the trigger on this and to be supportive i have to say some of the things that miss marron as well as miss dixit have said are giving me a little bit more pause i'm wondering how do we meet in the middle to be on the path to providing this opt-out but to take a little bit

[02:43:08] more time to get some information about their impact. So that is my wondering, and I don't know if there's appetite for such emotion or what that language would look like, but that's what I think I would like to have considered at this time, so that we can be more thoughtful, but still be on the path, because ultimately I agree with what you all have brought forward, but I do feel the sense of not having a full picture on this. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. Anderson? I do not, and part of

[02:43:45] The reason that I gave the information is, first of all, I am a graduate of FCPS, and I fully graduated long before we had computers in every classroom, and what I will tell you is I believe we have the materials on hand somewhere, without a doubt.

[02:44:03] And I do not anticipate that this is going to be for a large number of students. I think it's from the parents that we have been hearing from for the last year that have asked us to honor their request to remove the screens. So I am not suggesting that this takes a screen out away completely. I personally believe that ST Math and Lexia have a point at the elementary level. I would not opt out for my particular child who's in sixth grade. However, I think that parents have a right to be able to make the decision. And I'm just wanting us to be

[02:44:41] clear about what the expectation is, is that we will not be able to differentiate as fast as the computer differentiates. But that doesn't mean that we can't provide other activities during those times. So this is not meant to disrupt the system. This is not meant to cause mass hysteria. This is just meant to give a small number of families the choice to opt out the same way we do for FLE, the same way we do for certain textbooks or novels that kids are reading in high school.

[02:45:11] We do this all the time. So I am just asking to extend it to these two computer programs at the elementary level. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. Ms. Marin. So because I've been on the school for seven years, I can speak to the experience of having to set the conflict of interest policy.

[02:45:32] Not the conflict of interest. My school experience over the years, I've worked on the, what's the word, and it's controversial issues, controversial issues, okay? Controversial issues policy. If those of you were on the board on the last term, you'd know how difficult it was to figure out how to make those decisions.

[02:45:52] At the time, the governor also was saying we had to set this in policy. It was political. It was ideological. It was value-driven. So when a student's parent says, I don't want them to read this Shakespearean play, we say, well, but it's part of the curriculum.

[02:46:09] and it's not on the controversial issues. We had people try to ban books because of what some people thought was controversial or not. Our job is to instruct kids, okay? If kids need math, then let's figure out, is ST Math doing the job or not?

[02:46:26] What if the parent says, I don't want my kid to bring home, my daughter right now, she's dragging home this big textbook. So now what if a parent says, I don't want my kid to bring home their textbook? It's harmful to them. It hurts their health. They have to carry this around. because we don't have a policy with our values, we don't have a direction.

[02:46:47] I don't, the maker of this motion said, quote, I believe we have the materials to supplement taking these away. They said, quote, I do not anticipate it's a large amount of students. I am not going to guess what's going to happen.

[02:47:03] Show me how many people want to opt out. Show me the benefits of the math instruction or not. Again, this is getting far away from the nugget of it, which is parents want to know how technology is being used to the benefit of their child's education. The more we can answer that question, the less parents are going to want to opt out.

[02:47:24] I sat with my dyslexic kiddo as he did ST Math. I saw a benefit, but not everyone gets that one-on-one benefit. We have to inform the parents, and we have to know too. Thank you, Ms. Meir, and that's your time. Ms. St. John Cunning, never mind. I'm calling for the vote.

[02:47:40] All those in favor, Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McElveen, Mr. Dunn, Ms. St. John Cunning, myself, Mr. Dannon on the screen, Ms. Lady on the screen as well, all those opposed, Ms. Marin, all those abstaining, Ms. Dixit, Dr. Anderson.

[02:48:05] Will Kirk read the vote? What is Mr. Moon's vote? Mr. Moon, you're still on the screen. How do you vote? My vote was nay. Mr. Moon is against. 8-2-2, the follow-on motion carries.

[02:48:25] Thank you. Agenda item 4.02, Action Item Motions Related to Instructional Data Applications. I call on Mr. Dunn for a motion. I move that the Fairfax County School Board direct the superintendent to conduct an expedited review of the cost and instructional efficacy of Lexia reading tools currently used by Fairfax County Public Schools to include, first, independent research not funded by the vendor of their instructional efficacy, and second, a comparison with the instructional efficacy of additional staff-led tutoring services to meet EIRI

[02:49:03] requirements. The superintendent shall identify alternate reading tools approved by the Virginia Department of Education or otherwise available for use by the school division that are supported by independent research. Thank you, is there second? Second. Mr. Tom, would I speak to your motion? Yes, there's been extensive discussion tonight about the apparent lack of independent research not funded by the vendor demonstrating the instructional efficacy of Lexia. I'm concerned both with Lexia and other apps and software

[02:49:39] that's in use in our schools that we're devoting enormous amounts of time, especially in recent years and before and since the pandemic to having students in front of screens when these tools are not proven to be effective because every minute we dedicate students to being in front of a screen it's harming their psychological well-being it's harming their academic outcomes and it's putting them in front of something other than a teacher and we know human teachers are the best way to to ensure that students receive a world-class education.

[02:50:16] So for this tool in particular, for Lexia, since this is a core part of our educational approach to literacy, I want to make sure that we are looking at what is, how much are we spending on this per year, and then is it effective? And if it's not effective, as determined by independent research studies that are not funded by the vendor, because we know vendor-funded or company-funded research been shown to produce false results in pharmaceuticals, in tobacco, in the petroleum industry, so we need to make sure we're having independent research done and basing our decisions on that independent research. We don't have to go

[02:50:55] hire fancy consultants, I'm not asking for that, simply to do an evaluation of the evidence that's out there to the extent the evidence exists and to make sure that we're using tools that are effective and independently supported and looking at the full gamut of options that are available through VDOE or

[02:51:11] otherwise. Thank you Mr. Dunn. Mr. McElbeam would you like to speak to you a second? Thank you and thank you Mr. Dunn for your clear and concise explanation of this. I'm happy to partner with you on it. So you know just to take a step back and provide a personal perspective. Lexia has been very effective for my eldest daughter in the classroom but I don't know if it's the most effective tool out there. Certainly it's not going to be the most effective for everyone.

[02:51:42] And as we've spoken tonight, parents deserve the opportunity to opt out, which we have now given them. But I think the public deserves very clear and independent examination of whether this tool is better than other tools that are out there on the market.

[02:52:02] I am concerned about the facts that have been raised about the independence of the research that we've received on this. So I don't think it's a heavy lift to have some internal eyes on this and to determine whether it is indeed as effective as other tools.

[02:52:21] And in fact, that's why we've created the ERTC is to look into these exact issues. So I think we have a mechanism. We have very capable staff to do this. The last point is I do disagree with Mr. McDaniel because my daughter will be in kindergarten next year.

[02:52:36] And so she will be exposed to these tools as well. So I certainly want for her and for all of our students to have the best tools in front of them. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McElveen. I call on Mr. Dunn for an amendment.

[02:52:55] I'm sorry, Mr. Dannen. Dannen-Dunn, I apologize, the duopoly there. Mr. Dannen, I call on you for an amendment. One of us has to change. I just want to offer an amendment without objection, if possible, just to read some of the language to make it a little more specific.

[02:53:12] On the screen should be the proposed revised language. - Mr. Dannon, can you please state your amendment for parliamentary procedure? - You have to read the script. - Okay, my apologies. I move to amend the main motion number one by striking the phrase additional staff-led tutoring services, and inserting the phrase alternative methods of instruction in its place, and striking the phrase tools approved, and inserting the phrase resources approved in its place.

[02:53:39] - Thank you, is there a second? - Second. - Thank you. Without objection, it's order. The motion is amended. We're on the main motion as amended. Dr. Anderson. - Thank you.

[02:53:55] Thank you for bringing this forward. I think this is an important thing for us to evaluate. I just wanted to add to the mix in your evaluation just to also assess the number of minutes that are being used and how that's being done in our schools.

[02:54:13] It's not just the efficacy of the program, but the actual delivery. As I understand it, there's a high level of inconsistencies across our schools. We have some schools where students are encouraged to not be behind on their Lexia minutes.

[02:54:30] We have some students who they may do well in other areas, even when they're SOLs, but they're given Lexia levels that are really lower levels. I just want that to be part of your evaluation, if at all is possible, for us to see what exactly is happening in our classrooms and how different teachers are enforcing the use of Lexia.

[02:54:53] - Thank you, Dr. Ernest, and Mr. Moon. - Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. I need to sign off at 10:00 p.m., but I am in support of this motion. I don't know whether I have a chance to vote on this, but I just wanted to let people know that I'm supporting this.

[02:55:10] - Thank you, sir. Mr. Frisch. - Thank you. So I want to talk about corporate research in a vacuum. You know, to not put a talking point or a soundbite out there that could later be used against me in defense of corporate research, but that's not what I'm going to say.

[02:55:29] Before joining the school board, I ran a consumer financial protection watchdog organization, and during one of our investigations, we found that this widely cited academic paper, which was extolling the benefits of payday loans, Had been secretly funded by the payday lending industry Shocker right news at 11 And it ran counter to basic research on the subject, right?

[02:56:03] And what we knew about the company's profit models, you know, they had to get people on the hook for loan after loan after loan I say this all to say that sometimes corporate-backed research Is just awful, but there are times when corporate-backed research can lead you to wonder I wonder if this is a good tool for us to investigate.

[02:56:25] It's when you take that corporate research in a vacuum that you run the risk of making a mistake, right? And that means check your work. It means check the sources. It means see if there's anything else out there that could draw this into dispute because not every, look, everybody who's selling something has research to try and back up their claims, right?

[02:56:44] It's not all garbage, but we have to do the work to determine whether it's garbage. So, I appreciate the work on the motion and the collaboration to get the board to consensus on it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Frisch. I'll call for the vote. All those in favor? Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Ms. St. John Cunningham, and myself.

[02:57:06] And on the screen I have Mr. Dannon, Ms. Lady, and Mr. Moon. That's unanimous. Motion carries. Our main motion, number two, Mr. Dunn. I move the Fairfax County School Board to direct the superintendent to evaluate the cost and instructional efficacy of all instructional apps and software excluding Microsoft Office, Google Suite, Google Workplace, and similar apps and software employed in the classroom to include, to the maximum extent practicable, independent research not funded by the vendor of their instructional efficacy and additional staff-led instruction.

[02:57:42] Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Mr. Dome, would you like to speak to your motion? this is intended to extend the same concept of the first motion, which was focused on Lexia, to all apps that are other than Office productivity, such as Microsoft Word and similar apps, that are used in classroom across FCPS, because whatever we're using, it's costing us dollars. And from the data I've received, we're using hundreds of apps. I'm very much interested in, you know, are we

[02:58:19] paying for things that we're not actually using and if so could we better use those dollars on hiring teachers or other other school board priorities and also are these actually effective at their intended objectives whether it's teaching algebra or teaching literacy you know there's just so many apps it boggles the mind and I wonder if we really need all of these it's somewhat like going to the cereal aisle in Europe you'll find muesli muesli and rice crispies. You come to the United States you have you know 500 options do you need

[02:58:56] 500 or do you need three? Maybe somewhere in between but we definitely want to be assessing whether we have too much and if we can reduce our costs and increase our efficacy in providing every child with a world-class education. Thank you.

[02:59:11] Thank you Mr. McElbeam. Would you like to speak to your second? So I think this is a question the board is actually actually asked many times I know miss Mirren has consistently asked about compiling a list of all the apps that we use and determining their efficacy so I don't think this is anything new and as I've said previously we do have an ER TC which I think was established for just this purpose so I look forward to supporting this thank you mr. McElveen dr. Anderson just oh I'm sorry I call on mr. Dannon for an amendment yes thank

[02:59:51] you um i'll give the clerks a moment to bring up the amendment but again i i thank you i move to amend the main motion number two by striking the phrase all instructional apps and software and inserting the phrase centrally provided for instructional applications and software for elementary schools in its place inserting the phrase that are widely after the phrase similar apps and software and before the phrase employed in a classroom and striking the phrase additional staff-led instruction and inserting the phrase alternative instructional methods in its place

[03:00:28] Is there a second? Second. Okay. Is that without objection? Without objection, it's ordered the main motion is amended. Dr. Anderson? Yes. One of the things I wanted to ask Dr. Reed is, what do you anticipate would be the timeline to achieve this if this were to pass? Because we could be potentially looking at a massive number of resources. Is there an opportunity to chunk them? Or what are you anticipating in terms of timetable here?

[03:01:01] Well, I think one of the things we had batted around as staff was that maybe this made sense to do as renewals came up for the different apps. If we're going to launch into a full-on review of everything currently being used, whether it's up for renewal or not, I'll defer to Mr. Sethi about how many apps that might be and what kind of a time frame we might anticipate.

[03:01:30] We may know how many apps it may be, how much time it would take would depend on the research strategy, the depth of the research, the amount of researchers we may have who can work on this. So it will be actually coming back with that answer, and it is a minor project in itself.

[03:01:49] Okay. I think that is a reasonable approach. So that would put us in the timetable of potentially five years. I don't know what the timetable would best be. I think we have some apps that are purchased more centrally and some that are school-based.

[03:02:08] So just even, I think we have both. Is that right, Mr. Sethi? Yes. So there would be some apps centrally purchased, some which are purchased at school. There are some apps which are free, used at school. So it's a big mix. As you narrow the scope, it gives us better definition to work with.

[03:02:26] Well, I think you kind of have been taken off the hook a little bit because the amendment that was just provided only centers this on centrally provided apps so that would speak to whatever you have contracts here for which I know some contracts have five years before renewal so I just want to be sure that this is provided before any of those renewals would this if you're taking this approach would this also include the renewal options before those are exercised

[03:03:00] Or would it be before or after the entirety of the contract, including the renewal options? Because then we could be many, many, many years out. If I think I understand the gist of the question is, can we be out of a contract and not have to go to the end of the contract?

[03:03:22] And if I remember correctly, and this may be a finance or procurement question, we can end contracts at a certain period. I mean, you pay for a year, but at the end of that year, you choose to renew, or you can choose not to renew. That contract is not something beholden to.

[03:03:40] Our contractual requirement would allow us to cancel a contract in the middle of a contract term. I'm sorry? A five-year term. No. Thank you.

[03:03:57] My other question, I know this is also focused on centrally provided materials. Do you have any sense of how many of these resources are at schools? that schools procure or classroom teachers procure individually?

[03:04:13] I don't have that information, but what I would say is I think the amended motion that's on the screen is getting at the core instructional applications. And that's about 10% of what we have in terms of the applications in the digital ecosystem library because you have instructional applications, then you have things that are productivity applications so you can think about email and spreadsheets and things like that so if we just focus on the language here in terms of the core instructional I think it's going to narrow the focus down to the types of

[03:04:50] things that are probably of most interest to the board in the community and that might give us a good starting point thank you being that I've asked this since my first year on the board for us to evaluate the things that we spend money on and to assess their effectiveness before we continue to just pile on, I will be in support of this motion. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Mr. Moon. Well, thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Before I leave, I just want to say that even, I don't know whether I get to vote on this, but I'm supportive

[03:05:24] of this with what's been already discussed by other board members in mind that this may be a massive task on the part of our staff. If you could focus on starting with programs that have a larger impact in both student achievements and cost implications. Let's start with those first

[03:05:56] and then go and then go. Board will get from time to time. I expect board to get a report from superintendent could and also make some other some other decisions you know along the way with that with that said i'll be supporting this motion thank you mr moon and you can vote on it because i'm calling the vote now all in favor miss anderson mr frisch miss marron mr mckelveen miss dixit mr dunn dr anderson miss st john cunning mr moon mr dannon and miss lady and myself that's unanimous the motion carries okay i need a break we're calling a five minute recess

[03:06:36] Two-minute warning, two-minute warning. Board members, please return to your seats. Two minutes.

[03:21:28] Board members, please return to your seats. We're starting. Board members, please return to your

[03:25:18] seats. We're going to start in about 60 seconds. Nicole. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. Agenda item

[03:26:31] 4.03, action item 2027, Fairfax County School Board State Legislative Priority Positions. I call on Dr. Anderson for a motion. I move that the board adopt the 2027 Fairfax County School Board state legislative priority positions. Is there a second? Second. Dr. Randerson would like to speak to your motion. Yes, briefly. Thank you. Firstly, I do want to say thank you to the legislative staff. I guess it's primarily Mr. Malloy, who is here somewhere. Oh, there he is. For all of the

[03:27:07] work, as you all are aware, we've moved. We've changed a little bit the way that we've done this work so today we'll be voting on the priorities and then the joint positions with the Board of Supervisors will be to come as well as the main program I do want to take a moment to talk about the fact that the board has nine priority positions for the state many of them deal with funding but there are several that deal with other policy matters primarily I'd like to speak to the to

[03:27:42] the position that speaks to our students, our students whose English is their second language, being allowed to take their assessment in their native language. Currently, as we will see shortly, 19% of FCPS students who are enrolled in FCPS are second language speakers or multilingual.

[03:28:08] That is nearly 33,000 students. And given that the VDOE has recently changed requirements to reduce the amount of time these students have to gain language proficiency from five and a half years to 270 days, any other mitigating factor that can be put in place to reduce access to being successful on these measures would be helpful, and native language is one of them.

[03:28:40] The second piece that I'd like to highlight is the threshold that is used to evaluate schools in terms of accountability. And it's not just FCPS schools. It's all school divisions in the Commonwealth. These thresholds are unknown until after the data has been submitted, which doesn't speak to any kind of transparency.

[03:28:59] These thresholds also move. It's a moving target, and I'd like to take a moment, particularly since I have some issues here to ask Dr. Reed to speak to the accountability and assessment component and why this particular position is as important as it is to us.

[03:29:16] Thank you Dr. Anderson and Dr. Presidio is going to do that as he oversees assessment but I don't see him here so we'll need to get back to you on that I apologize. No worries I will yield my time to Dr. Presidio when he returns and so at this point I will conclude my comments because I know other board members will raise some of the other components of the state priority positions. Thank you, Dr. Anderson.

[03:29:45] Mr. McElbeam, would you like to speak to your second? Well, I would also like to thank Dr. Mr. Malloy and Dr. Anderson for their work on this program. What you see before you is a program that is much more robust and more clear than any program in recent history and that is the result of the work of our legislative staff. So we're very grateful to everything they've done to make this what it is. I will use my time to speak to priority number six, which is ensuring that all of our children come to school ready to

[03:30:19] learn and without hunger. We believe in the importance of expanding access to free nutritious meals, and that is why that is a priority in this legislative program. The evidence is compelling. In 2022, when federal funding made school meals universally free, FCPS served more than 30,000 more lunches and 20,000 more breakfasts every single day than they did the prior year and the year after when the funding ended.

[03:30:50] And obviously the need did not disappear when the funding ended, the access did. So we are asking the General Assembly to expand funding for free school meals, eliminate financial administrative barriers, and to ensure reliable access to nutritious food.

[03:31:06] This isn't simply a nutrition issue. It is an educational equity issue, an academic achievement issue, and an investment in Virginia's future. No child should have to worry about whether they can afford to eat at school. So I look forward to hearing the other priorities as elucidated by my colleagues.

[03:31:23] Thank you, Mr. McIlvain. Mr. Frisch, followed by Ms. Marin. Thank you very much. I'm not going to begin my comments tonight by pointing out that the state legislature, which puts the FOIA burden on our school system and the public meetings burden on our school system, does not itself live within those burdens.

[03:31:46] But I will point out, you know, this aspect of our legislative program, number eight for our state program, our priorities, rather, is about reforming Virginia FOIA, which is the Freedom of Information Act. And when we say reform, we don't mean to limit transparency.

[03:32:05] We don't mean to limit the ability for constituents to get the information that they are owed because they've paid for it with their tax dollars. What we mean is that there is a practical method for ensuring that boards properly function and that the rules governing who can be in a meeting together should scale with the size of the body of the organization.

[03:32:29] And so a board of five members that is limited to have two people meet at a time outside of a regularly called meeting, it makes sense because one more would be a majority and then you're basically colluding behind the scenes before bringing something to the public.

[03:32:48] But to put a two-person limit on a 12-person board or a seven-person board is just ridiculous. And it forces a lack of efficiency that is possible if that number were to be raised. Thankfully, our continued advocacy over the last many years, we're seeing some movement at the FOIA council, and hopefully that will be reflected in legislative accomplishments this year.

[03:33:12] The other aspect of this particular plank of our priorities is to offer relief from some local costs associated with FOIA. As people can imagine, it is a tremendous expense to produce the records that are requested of the school division, and we should be producing those records.

[03:33:35] But it's important to note that great care must go into the production of those records to ensure that the federally and state-protected personally identifiable information of our students and staff are redacted and that other pieces of information that are not to be made public are also withheld.

[03:33:57] And so that takes time. And the more requests they have, for the more documents they have, it costs money. It's a significant burden. Again, it's a burden that the state does not live under. If I could just, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If we're going to be publicly accountable through public records laws and public meeting laws, perhaps the people making the laws should live under them as well.

[03:34:19] But for our sake, the purpose of our program is to make more sense out of the public meetings laws so that larger boards can function appropriately and to ensure that we have proper support for administering records requests. - Thank you, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Marin, followed by Ms. Lady.

[03:34:39] - Well, where would I be if I didn't talk about how we're gonna get the money? So the state's, the biggest priority is to get money from the state. And, you know, the 2023 JLARC report laid clear that the funding formulas are just not working anymore.

[03:34:54] And as we heard earlier this week when we met with the Board of Supervisors, our state elected officials, they are trying to do what they can. You know, there's people I think in Virginia that still look at Fairfax and think everyone is rich, But we truthfully have 66,000 kids eligible for free and reduced meals, which is a proxy for poverty.

[03:35:12] And so those formulas keep adding the burden right here to our local taxpayers, and the real estate taxes go up. And it's a testament to the public support of our schools because we're paying a billion dollars more than what the state thinks it takes to actually educate our kiddos. So we know that the state general assembly is doing what it can.

[03:35:30] It increased funding. It had some protections in or some changes in to better serve students with special needs. It's going to take some hard work to really make these changes. I think I heard, is this correct? Someone could nod to me that they are hiring someone to help them figure out how to reconfigure the formulas.

[03:35:49] Or maybe I dreamt that. Maybe that was a dream. Well, anyway, we support all the efforts that the state delegation is doing. The best thing we can do is talk with our other school board member colleagues, encourage them to advocate, and have the General Assembly work together to update these out-of-date formulas that are not serving us.

[03:36:09] We also know that Fairfax is an economic engine in the whole Commonwealth, and so as we continue to struggle with the tax base, it's going to harm the rest of the Commonwealth. So it's really in everyone's interest that the formulas be righted, and then we will have a more balanced approach here, more money for our kiddos and to pay our staff.

[03:36:31] Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Merritt. Ms. Lady, followed by Mr. Dunn. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Merritt. I want to actually give a shout-out to Ms. Merritt and Ms. Anderson for the advocacy they have done through the VSBA regarding the JLARC study and helping other jurisdictions around the state understand that when the JLARC study is that all boats rise together. You know, we are all being shorted by the state. So, but I particularly want to speak about pre-K for all. When I ran for election, this is one of the things that was a priority for me because we all know that the earlier students

[03:37:09] start learning, the better prepared they are and the better we're ensured they're going to have numeracy and literacy skills by third grade. So we've done some great work in this area, but I believe the state needs to come through and the Fed needs to come through, mostly the Fed. I think I heard a data point at one point that less than 1% of what we spent on defense would allow us to do universal pre-K for the entire country. That is a small dollar amount when you think about the broad scope of the impact it would have on all of the students

[03:37:44] and families in this country uh if kids are reading by third grade the success of them in life they're far less of a burden on society they can can go through and get career pathways educational pathways and so i just am grateful that this is a priority and i hope and dream this could happen at some point but we knew we definitely need university pre-k for all thank you thank you Ms. Lady, Mr. Dunn, followed by Ms. St. John Cunningham.

[03:38:17] - Well, first of all, I appreciate all the work that's gone into this from Dr. Anderson and Mr. Malloy and the FCPS team and everyone on the school board. And I appreciate the united approach that's being taken by the school board to advocate for FCPS priorities.

[03:38:34] I'd like to speak to number four, which is expanding college and workforce readiness programs. What we're seeing right now is a skyrocketing demand for career and technical education. Historically it was regarded as vocational education, which was the ugly stepsister to college.

[03:38:51] But what we're seeing now is college is increasingly unaffordable. Many employers are now actively discriminating against students who graduate from Ivy League schools because they're regarded as not well prepared for the workforce of the modern economy. And for many students who don't wanna bear the almost unbearable burden of student loans, CTE offers a ready pathway to being graduating with a certification, ready to enter into nursing, into other skilled trades and professions where they can make a living wage and be able to live here in Fairfax County and immediately start saving towards a retirement,

[03:39:30] towards buying a home, and it really represents an opportunity to invest in our economic development and maintaining our quality of life, which is the foundation of our economy. I also wanna speak to number seven, increasing state funding for school facilities.

[03:39:46] It's just absolutely unacceptable that there's so little funding available for school facilities, not just in Fairfax County, but across the Commonwealth. There are schools that are falling apart with asbestos hanging from the ceiling or electric wires.

[03:40:02] We need to do more. And I appreciate everything that's been done by the state legislature to make more funding available, but we need to make sure that we expand the continuing resources, not just one-time investments, to make sure that every child can learn in a safe and inclusive learning environment in modern, updated school facilities, including athletic facilities, theaters, everything, not just the classroom environment, but that's essential.

[03:40:28] It's not just about technology, having computers, it's about having buildings that are well-maintained, that are free of mold, that have clean air. This is something we learned during the pandemic, and with all the trillions of dollars that were spent, think this problem would have been solved, but it hasn't. And while we're doing everything we can within Fairfax County, there needs to be more done at the Commonwealth level to solve this, to provide more financing on a continuing basis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Ms. St. John Cunning. Thank you. I want to speak to accountability. It matters and families deserve clear information and schools need meaningful goals that help them improve.

[03:41:07] but the ratings should reflect the full story of student learning, including achievement, academic growth, engagement, and readiness for life after graduation. When the way we calculate performance changes, ratings can shift even as schools are making progress. We should make sure the measures we use are fair, transparent, and focused on improvement. That means balancing mastery and growth in elementary and middle school, giving English learners the time and support they need to demonstrate their learning, and recognizing the complete time that students with disabilities and English learners may need to earn a diploma.

[03:41:46] We should not allow the performance of a single student group to automatically lower a school's overall rating. Every student group's needs deserves attention, and our system should help us target support without losing sight of the school's broader progress. Our goal is not simply to change ratings.

[03:42:03] It is to make sure accountability leads to better support and stronger outcomes for students. I look forward to working with my colleagues, educators, families, and state leaders to build a system that is rigorous, transparent, and equitable, and that helps every student and school thrive.

[03:42:19] And I really want to thank Dr. Anderson for the work she's done and this entire board for how we've all come together to support all these legislative initiatives. Thank you. And our last speaker, Dr. Anderson, before we go back. Thank you. And thank you, Ms. Angel Cunning, for addressing some of the components that I attempted to have Dr. Presidio speak to a little bit earlier.

[03:42:42] While Ms. Angel Cunning has laid out what has happened, can you speak a little bit more specifically to the impact that we've experienced here in Fairfax County with these recent revisions to the accountability and assessment issues that VDOE has imposed?

[03:43:02] So, Dr. Anderson, I'm actually going to take that question. Did you want to say something? Go for it, please. Well, I think one of the things that, first of all, I want to thank both Dr. Anderson and Mr. McElveen for their work as legislative staff.

[03:43:19] I think what you had asked specifically about, or legislative committee of the board, what you asked specifically about was some of the threshold scores that have been honestly opaque, right?

[03:43:35] because we don't know what the threshold scores are going to be until after the students have tested, which doesn't really provide a lot of opportunity for goal setting as the goal keeps moving. So in particular, our students with disabilities, the thresholds have been abruptly adjusted, and in some cases significantly by double digits at the high school level.

[03:44:00] So we have a real concern about that. I know other schools in the region and have also expressed a concern. In terms of the outputs of that, I want to maybe pause on that.

[03:44:17] It'll be part of our school performance school framework report for more specifics. But suffice it to say that to change standards, change test score, or change cut scores, change thresholds, have particularly impacted, I think, our most vulnerable learners.

[03:44:39] Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And I do want to underscore once again that this is not a Fairfax County issue. This is an issue that impacts every single school division in the Commonwealth. So it bodes, it benefits all of us to support these kinds of positions with the General Assembly so that there can be changes that are more reflective of student progress and not punitive and seems to always be on the search to create an underclass, so to speak.

[03:45:10] We shouldn't have a measuring system that does not take under account the gains that students have made because it's on a curve, so there will always be a low group. So thank you so much, Dr. Reed. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Calling for the vote. All in favor? Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. Dannon, and myself. All opposed. Ms. Lady, how do you vote? With Ms. Lady

[03:45:42] away from the table. Ms. Lady is in favor, so that's unanimous 11-0. Action item 4.04, 2027 Fairfax County School Board Federal Legislative Priorities. I call on Dr. Anderson for a motion.

[03:45:59] Thank you. I move that the board adopt the 2027 Fairfax County School Board Federal Legislative priority positions. Is there a second? Second. Dr. Randerson, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, thank you. The board has 11 federal positions and most are related to funding. And again, we'll have other board members who speak to various components, but there are a couple that I wanted to highlight. One, primarily Title I funding. We have at current over a third of our students who are in schools that are considered economically disadvantaged and Title I

[03:46:34] funding is provided to support their needs. At current our Title I funding threshold for schools is 55% Dr. Reed so which means that if a school is at 50% which means half of the school is considered economically disadvantaged there are no supports that are in place through this funding so we are requesting that that be increased. I also want to speak to the temporary the TPS expirations. Dr. Reed I'd like to send it to you for you to speak to the impact

[03:47:09] we have had in FCPS with the expirations that have already occurred in the three groups that will be coming from the federal government on our system and the workforce. Thank you Dr. Anderson I know this summer and as the school year was beginning the school year had barely begun actually we were in our first week of school when maybe second week of school when the TPS status for our El Salvadorian staff was announced to be over right this summer that that would

[03:47:44] end in early September and that affected 92 members of our staff many of whom had worked for us for over 20 years and actually many of whom graduated from our schools because their families had been here for so long. It really created a lot of trauma in different parts of the school division. We met with the TPS affected staff, our HR department, Mr. Solomon, myself and other senior leaders

[03:48:20] And we did receive at the 11th hour, if you will, a pause in that process. But I know our TPS, El Salvadorian staff, you know, every day look for is that pause going to remain.

[03:48:37] So it's really an uncertain time for many of our staff. And had that pause not occurred, that would have brought a total of 135 staff that we would have been separated from this calendar year, which is significant. They have students in our schools. We have many community members who are parents, spouses of staff who are in this situation in other jobs. But in our workforce, 135 staff in a calendar year is significant. Mr. Solomon, can you comment as to the next several groups that are

[03:49:16] coming up. Yes, ma'am. And Dr. Anderson, thank you for the question. Over time, really over the past year and a half, we've seen temporary protected status end for a variety of countries. And the three groups that are coming up are Lebanon on November 27th, Sudan on October 19th, and Ukraine on October 19th. Thank you. What I'll ask is, from a legislative perspective, is sufficient time to transition so that we don't have these difficult impacts onto our schools because these are our teachers. These are the people that our students rely on for their instructional delivery and for

[03:49:55] their other services in the schools. And if K-12 education is paramount, that has to be one of the tenets that is also reviewed by the federal government. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Anderson. I believe Mr. McElwain has a chance to speak to us. Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. McElwain, for your second.

[03:50:14] Well, thank you so much, and not to belabor the point, but just as I said at the state level, I want to speak to the importance of free and healthy meals in our legislative program at the federal level. So we are calling for two critical investments to ensure that no child goes hungry throughout the school day. First, we're going to be urging Congress to restore enhanced USDA reimbursement rates that will allow schools to provide high-quality, nutritious breakfast and lunches to every student at no cost, regardless of income.

[03:50:48] Second, we are calling for the restoration of SNAP benefits and direct certification provisions that automatically connect eligible students with free school meals, eliminating unnecessary paperwork and administrative barriers for families. Some of you may know that the Real Food for Kids program is working in the West Potomac Pyramid on just this issue, but unfortunately the barriers remain.

[03:51:12] So together, these priorities recognize the fundamental principle that we've spoken about already, that access to nutritious food should never depend on a family's financial circumstances or their ability to navigate a complicated bureaucracy. Thank you, Ms. Anderson, followed by Mr. Dannon.

[03:51:30] I want to start by thanking the chair and the vice chair of our newly formed legislative committee for their work so far this year, along with our amazing staff member, Mr. Malloy. While I don't have much hope in our current administration doing anything, to help public education, I do appreciate the care our own federal legislators take to hear our concerns. And I'm hopeful about the possible future ahead. We cannot give up on aligning clear positions for our board to take on these critical federal issues. I want to specifically elevate the need to support maintaining and increasing access to Medicaid reimbursement

[03:52:08] for eligible health-related services provided to students with disabilities. This is both a local school funding issue and a statewide concern. Nearly 1.8 million Virginians are enrolled in Medicaid, and school divisions can receive partial reimbursement for certain health care services provided to students enrolled in Medicaid or our Virginia-specific programs. FCPS projects approximately $3.6 million in Medicaid reimbursements in FY2027, and in our current budget circumstances, this funding is essential. It's also pretty clear to me that this priority

[03:52:46] connects to the long-standing shortfall in federal IDEA funding. For more than four decades ago, Congress established a full funding benchmark for IDEA Part B of 40% of the national average per pupil expenditure. In FY 2025, federal funding reached about 10.1 or 2 percent, just over one quarter of that benchmark. Medicaid reimbursement is a separate funding source and was never meant to replace IDEA funding, but it helps divisions recover part of the

[03:53:22] eligible services. When federal IDEA funding falls short, preserving this reimbursement helps limits the added pressure on state and local budgets. Recent federal changes may not directly change reimbursement for school-based eligible services, but they could reduce student Medicaid enrollment or make it harder for divisions to receive reimbursement.

[03:53:48] I stand with my colleagues to urge federal policy makers to preserve and simplify school-based Medicaid reimbursement and to avoid or to avoid eligibility administration or administrative or funding changes that make it harder for eligible students in school divisions to access these resources thank you mr. Dan and followed by miss st. John conning yeah I want to just uplift my colleagues for putting this together and for our state delegates for their conversations in our federal delegation I also want to call out the board's decision that the

[03:54:25] federal government should increase funding to support um the individuals with disabilities act the fact that it's listed first i think means something and idea contained important federal mandates to ensure that our students with disabilities reach their potential and i say this as a individual with a disability and a parent of a child with a disability um you know idea also established the federal commitment to fund up to 40 of the additional cost of educating students with disabilities um you know unfortunately the federal government has not come anywhere close to meeting that commitment you know the 18 percent more than 31 000 of our fcps students receive special education services the federal government will only fund about eight percent of the cost of

[03:55:05] providing these services and so state and local funds have had to make up the difference if the federal government funded idea at the 40 commitment level fcps would receive almost 165 million dollars more this fiscal year so an increase in federal funding to support idea would make a significant a difference in supporting our students and would absolutely reduce the significant burden on our state government and our local government. So again I want to commend my colleagues for putting this together and for putting it first on our list. Thank you. Ms. St. John Cunning followed by Mr. Dunn. Thank you. I

[03:55:38] actually want to speak to continuing and increasing Title III program funding for limited English proficient students. I want to highlight the immense work FCPS is already doing in this area. Through our language instruction educational program, FCPS serves over 30,000 multilingual students who make up nearly 18% of our total enrollment. Our educators deliver targeted English language development aligned with WIDA standards, integrate language acquisition across core subjects, and provide multi-tiered academic and social-emotional supports. I want

[03:56:15] to place the federal investment in a clear context. In FCPS, the average cost to educate a student is $21,986 per year. Yet for more than 30,000 K-12 multilingual learners projected to receive services in FY2027, our federal Title III grant provides just over $4 million annually, which breaks down to roughly $133 per student.

[03:56:43] Because federal support has not kept pace with inflation or growing needs, local resources are forced to bridge the gap. Our educators deliver robust research-based language instruction, educational programs, but when federal funding covers less than 1% of the cost while state accountability standards rise, local taxpayers are left up picking the tab.

[03:57:06] Advocating for increased Title III funding is essential to ensure federal support matches the true cost of meeting federal mandates. This is particularly personal to me because I know that some of Title III funding goes to fund the incredible work that our family liaisons do, which are an incredible support for our students and for our families.

[03:57:25] Mr. Dunn. Thank you. When I had kids in elementary school every year, we would fill out these impact aid forms, reflecting the fact that I worked at Fort Belvoir.

[03:57:40] And, you know, my understanding was FCPS got extra money, and we have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of federally-connected, military-connected students. But the total amount of money that we receive every year as a result of impact aid is $4 million. 4 million dollars in a 4.1 billion dollar budget which just reflects the fact that we're not receiving sufficient federal dollars to compensate for the additional support that we have to provide to military connected families and other federally connected students especially given Fort Belvoir takes away a large chunk of taxable property right in the heart of Fairfax County and we want to

[03:58:17] support our military families and all the burdens that they carry defending our nation not just the active duty soldiers, but their families who move around the country regularly, the students who transfer from school to school, sometimes within the same year, year after year. So that is a priority for for our jurisdiction. In addition to that, we're seeking to ensure that we can offer more robust career and techno education support to our students. Our CTE budget has been flat for a number of years and that's reflecting fairly flat funding at the federal level through Perkins and

[03:58:51] other grant programs. We need to prepare our students, our workforce for the economy of the future and we can't do that if we don't invest in those students and we don't invest in their vocational education. We need to make sure that as we seek to re-industrialize our economy, bring manufacturing back, you can't manufacture if you don't have people who are who are experts in the skilled trades.

[03:59:14] You need machine tools, you need all those people to set up electricity and plumbing and everything else and without those trades nothing, nothing works and will continue to be dependent on foreign nations. So at a time of unparalleled geopolitical threats we need to make sure that our students are getting the training they need and and their demand is skyrocketing. Let's increase our funding so we can meet this skyrocketing demand. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dante Cotern. On Title II funding, which I had a crash course on today, professional development for our teachers is obviously important because great

[03:59:52] teachers are the single biggest in school factor for our student success how we recruit we train and we retain teachers and right now Congress is considering eliminating this funding and even clawing back dollars so it's very important that we have this in our legislative priority package because we built those dollars into our budget and if they disappear the training and the mentoring doesn't go away, it just lands here locally and local taxpayers have to pick up that tab. So we're urging Congress to fund those Title II dollars and honor the commitment they've already made. So with that I'll call for the vote.

[04:00:30] All in favor, Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Maron, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. Dannon, myself, Ms. Lady, how do you vote? Ms. Ladies in favor, that's unanimous. Agenda item 4.04, award of contracts, synthetic turf who replaces Annandale High School and South County Middle School. Given that this item needs to be postponed again, I ask for unanimous consent to postpone this item until the October 22nd, 2026 regular meeting. Seeing no objections, that item is postponed. Item 4.06, approval of policy

[04:01:08] 5010, procurement of goods and services, except construction. I call Ms. Murren for a motion. I move that the school board governance committee further review policy 5010 in tandem with policy 5011 to define items of procurement and clarify required notice by the superintendent to the school board. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Mirren, would you like to speak to your vote, your motion? Yes, please. I have a question for the superintendent first. I would like if the

[04:01:45] If the superintendent could please speak to the recommendation that she's provided multiple times about the best practice approach for a school board to review policies by series number. If the superintendent could just explain her thoughts on that, I'd appreciate it.

[04:02:09] I think at this point, I'm trying to, are we on 50/10 on procurement? Approval of policy on procurement.

[04:02:24] burden? Do you want to comment? Excuse me, that's not what I was asking. May I be recognized? Yeah, it's your turn. Yeah, I would like for the superintendent to explain what the best practice is for reviewing policies by series number, which she had said several times. I just wanted to confirm if that's the understanding about how to review policies in the best possible way. Well, I think that what I would say about policy review is first and foremost, we would want to make sure policies are current so we would want to review policies that are out of date first and once

[04:02:59] those were all completed I think that it's generally a good practice to look at setting up a cycle an annual cycle and in this case because we have five years by governance we would want to every five years identify which series numbers we would want to address and And as those five-year cycles, we would want to make sure we have subject matter experts and that Governance Committee could spend time reviewing those, with the exception being

[04:03:34] any policies impacted by legislative action, either state or federal, because those sometimes would create an out-of-policy series review necessity. Thank you. So what I'm hearing is what I heard in the last two years, which is that the best practice is to review whole policies by their series.

[04:03:58] Because the challenge is when you only review one policy, say, in a financial set of series then another one is there and they conflict. And indeed that's the problem with the 50/10. And so, you know, from what I understand, the governance committee chair is favoring quantity of review rather than quality of review.

[04:04:17] Every committee agenda so far has included two dozen policies. It's not possible, by the physics of time, to provide a worthwhile review of policies when 24 documents are listed for a 120-minute conversation. And there isn't adhesion to the best practice of looking at things by policy number.

[04:04:35] The October agenda actually includes policies from five different series. So why does this matter? policy 5010 talks about procurement of goods and services except construction. Policy 5011 talks about professional services. And what I've noticed is that both are used interchangeably, and that's confusing. And the whole point of this policy review is not just to say that this government's chair has completed a review of every single outstanding policy.

[04:05:06] The goal is to actually have sound policies and to condense policies together like we did with the calendar committee, with the calendar policy. We put together a number of policies. We sunset what didn't work, and you know what? It's really clear now. Instead, and I'm aware that there was a discussion at governance to come back to this and look at it, but I can see already looking at the agenda for October 27th with two dozen policies, some of which include instructional materials, school food. This is our job to review these policies, and it's unfortunate that it seems that some people on the governance committee think it's okay to just hurry up and push things by,

[04:05:44] but that is not quality and I'm not going to lower my standards so that someone can say that they passed all these policies through. So what I'm simply asking is for the board to pause, let the committee do what it intended to do, which is to put these two together, because I do think there are problems with how contracts are being handled. So, and it comes down to at the beginning that these two policies are incongruent so I hope my colleagues will simply let this policy return to governance for a more fulsome review thank you mr. Frisch

[04:06:16] followed by mr. Dannon I'm running too fast dr. Anderson to speak to your second then mr. Frisch then mr. Dannon thank you one of the things that I wanted to raise I wanted to ensure that miss Marin had an opportunity to share her thoughts but when we discuss policy 5010 in governance I raised the concern about about not merging it with 5011 because it made sense for us to take a look at them together and perhaps create a one policy as we've done in the past

[04:06:54] and we've sunset duplicative or things that were connected just to make it a one-stop shop and the governance policy I'm sorry the governance chair did ask would I be amenable to moving forward with 5010 with a with the understanding that we would come just so we can get the backlog out of the way and have the understanding that we would come back with 5011 at a later time I did not want to say yes without having a little bit more certainty which we did so the

[04:07:33] vote was to approve 5010 because I had to look it up today and come back at the next governance meeting with a date certain by which these two would be merged so it is my expectation that on October 27th we will have that date certain from the superintendent in terms of when these two policies can be merged or reviewed by staff to combine them.

[04:08:00] So, I think we are going to get there. The timetable may be a little bit different, but I do believe the goal, at least that I had, of having these two looked at together will take place. And it's not the only one.

[04:08:15] I also raised it with a previous one, and I can't remember what it is right now, but I did share with the governance chair, I'm holding you accountable so that we are not going to go through this entire year without coming back to these policies, because that was the reason it was contingent on my vote.

[04:08:35] And I think we had a meeting of the minds on that. Thank you, Mr. Frisch. Thank you. I don't typically make it a habit of responding to personal attacks from the dais. But saying that the current governance chair has an objective of just doing as many policies possible without regard to quality would be like me saying the previous Governance Chair had an objective of doing few policies and holding others to standards that she couldn't possibly meet herself. Neither one of those statements is entirely fair and I think it is unfair to disparage the entire Governance Committee because it doesn't align with somebody else's thinking.

[04:09:12] Thank You Mr. Dannon. Just briefly, so I appreciate again having the time to review this and provide inputs and so forth. I support passing as is and I also trust the intent that we will come back to this in line with other policies here.

[04:09:33] So thank you. Thank you calling the vote. All in favor? Ms. Marin, all in favor of? That's it. That is it. That's all the lights I have. Do you want to go again?

[04:09:48] Okay, Ms. Marin for a go back. Thank you. Thank you. Look, I'm just trying to keep things transparent and stay up to speed on what's happening with the core work of policy updates. Governors had a meeting on September 15th. We don't have minutes yet. I submitted recommendations in advance of that. They were considered apparently. I didn't know what happened until I looked at the agenda the other day and saw that things were there. Clarifying the items to be purchased under a policy will make this be more transparent, which will help the superintendent meet the requirement of the policy and law to notify us about forthcoming

[04:10:24] contracts. This is a good thing. We are trying to show that as a school board we care very deeply about fiscal transparency. This is actually should be what we're trying to do more to show the public that we take this seriously. Also I don't know if division council is providing input. It used to be the case you know again I'm drawing from years of governance experience and it's just very hard for me to think that two dozen policies going through are being thoroughly reviewed.

[04:10:56] So I will leave it at that, and I hope again that the board can use this opportunity to show the public that we are very serious about fiscal stewardship and transparency and make these policies better. Thank you, Mr. Dunn.

[04:11:12] Thank you. I am not on governance, I haven't had the opportunity to serve on governance during this term but I did want to say just not having a dog in the fight of what's happening on governance or not that I think it is important and I think we have seen and in recent conversations about IT apps and software as well as a host of other matters over the past three years that it's important that there be a unified approach to procurement through a common analytical

[04:11:47] framework. And I believe, as I understand, the motion is intended to ensure that 5010-5011, which address basically two sides of the procurement coin, are viewed through a holistic perspective. Can I ask Dr. Anderson, yield time, Dr. Anderson, to respond if my understanding of the motion is accurate? Mr. Dunn, would you like to yield your time to Dr. Anderson? Yes, I would.

[04:12:14] Okay, Dr. Anderson. I'm so sorry, can you just please repeat the question? Sure. My question is, by intending to have 5010 and 5011 addressed in tandem, they represent two sides of the procurement coin.

[04:12:32] And so it's intended to establish, as I understand, a common analytical framework. So we're looking at procurement through a holistic lens. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. But if I may expound a little bit, I think and I wish the communication had been a little bit more effective because I think this motion has been overtaken by events because I asked for the same thing at governance.

[04:12:57] I am expecting at the October 27th governance meeting a date by which this exact thing will be happening. Can I, well, I can't yield because it's my time. It's your time. So I am expecting this to occur.

[04:13:14] It's just not occurring today. What I agreed to is let's move forward with 510 just to make it current but 5010 and 5011 will be coming back and we will have a date by which they are reviewed together and potentially merged on the 27th of October. Do I have any time to yield to the governance chair to ask if that is correct? Could be a question for the clerks. He has 35

[04:13:44] seconds. You can yield. Yes, that is the intention. Thank you. Okay, Dr. Ann, did you, okay, calling the vote on the motion. All in favor? Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Mr. Dunn, all opposed? Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Dixit, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. Dannon, myself, Ms. Lady, how do you vote?

[04:14:21] With Ms. Lady away from the table, can the clerk read the vote? Dr. Anderson, can you provide your vote. I'm sorry, we missed it. I'll support it because it's going to happen. It's inevitable.

[04:14:40] So you're in? I'll support it. In favor of the motion. Dr. Anson is in favor of the motion, and then I see Ms. Lady, can you confirm that you're in favor or against the motion? I'm in favor of the motion. Ms. Lady's in favor of the motion. Correct. I'm going to call the vote again to be very clear. The motion on the table, as Ms. Mirren stated, is to move that the school

[04:15:16] Board Governance Committee further review policy 5010 in tandem with policy 5011 to define items of procurement and clarify required notice by the superintendent of the school board. All those in favor of the motion. Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, and Ms. Lady. All those...

[04:15:47] My apologies. I'm opposed to the motion. Okay. Ms. Lady, you're opposed. All those opposed. Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Dixit, myself, Mr. Dannon, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunning.

[04:16:08] Can the clerk please read the vote? 4701, the motion fails. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Since the motion failed, we now consider a motion to approve of the policy. I call Ms. Anderson for a motion.

[04:16:25] I need a second to find where I am in the script. I believe that the script is incorrect for the motion language. If you refresh, we updated it. I can't refresh because I have no internet.

[04:16:43] So, reading the motion for Ms. Anderson, that the school board adopt policy 510, procurement of goods and services, except construction, as revised and detailed in the agenda item on board docs, would leave for the clerk to make technical, grammatical, and formatting changes.

[04:17:01] Thank you. Is there a second? I second. Ms. Anderson, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, please. As we noted at our September 10th regular meeting, the Governance Committee has taken a new approach this year to attempt to clear the backlog of policies that need to be updated or reviewed to bring them into compliance. Over the summer, the superintendent and I spoke to ensure that the approach I brought to the committee for approval was viable because I knew it was a departure from the previous plan. This adjusted approach ensures that all policies that currently

[04:17:37] need to be updated are brought into the newly required format and reviewed by the originating department, legal, and the superintendent before they are brought to the governance committee. The committee has recognized that some of our concerns necessitate further conversation before they are moved to the full board for approval, which we have done several times, I believe including this one, and some of those concerns are noted as further action the committee hopes to take. Policy 5010, procurement of goods and services, except construction, was one of the

[04:18:11] policies that the committee identified that has adjustments we still need to make to ensure that it's clearer, but the version for approval tonight can move forward now. At the time of our discussion, the committee asked the finance team to look back over policies 5010, 5011, and 5017 for a possible merger. In preparing for my comments tonight, I would argue that we should probably also look at 5015, which is actually the policy that we've been referencing all throughout this conversation, and determine if we would have greater clarity if that were included as well. But I will bring

[04:18:50] that back to the committee for consideration on the 27th when we are going to talk about the timeline. For policy 5010, the committee reviewed all feedback, worked through some wording changes, and unanimously agreed to move the policy to the full board for approval in its current format.

[04:19:08] We are very much looking forward to reviewing this policy again when the feedback is ready from the procurement team. I would like to thank the members of the committee for their thoughtful work so far this year. We have set audacious goals for ourselves, and I am grateful for their commitment to this important work.

[04:19:24] I would also say that part of the reason that things were posted on the date, I believe it was two days after the last meeting, for the next meeting, is a full understanding that we do have a lot that we're trying to take on. There is no expectation that we are going to get through all of the policies in the next governance meeting.

[04:19:46] The intent was to have them ready to discuss to move forward if we have time in a meeting. And that was, again, something the committee decided. So I am hopeful that this can move forward. Thank you, Ms. St. John. Conning, would you like to speak to your second?

[04:20:02] No, I think that the chair of the Governance Committee outlined exactly what happened at Governance and how thoughtful everything had been. I also appreciate that a lot of these policies have been forwarded to the Governance Committee with an advanced time for us to really dig into them and prepare and look into them.

[04:20:22] So there is a lot of thoughtful work going back and forth before we even have the Governance Committee meetings to delve deeper into them. Thank you. Ms. Marin. My experience is that I'm asked to trust a lot of people on a lot of things, but I don't see that trust returned.

[04:20:41] So I was asked to trust that Policy 5010 would come back for a meeting. It's not on the October 27th agenda that is posted. It's not. So, you know, I want to give grace, but okay, so I'm going to to give grace for that. I'm going to give grace that there's, I didn't hear back about my recommendations. I'm going to give grace that we did set ourselves up on a trajectory to do these series. And the superintendent talked about that many, many times. And now we're doing something different. I think it's important as a board member to put our values on policies. It's not

[04:21:20] a rubber stamping exercise. When I see policies like instructional materials, programs of studies, health instruction, advanced academic programs, family medical leave, school food service, all of those are on the agenda for next October.

[04:21:37] And I don't think a cursory edit is worthy of our students and our faculty. And so there's some things I can go through fast, but I also, it's very clear that only some people are being involved and only some people are being followed.

[04:21:55] And it's pretty tragic because this is going to change a lot of things and create confusion. And I'll speak to that more during the EL when, in fact, this is exactly what's happened about the de-staffing and the rebalancing or whatever it's called.

[04:22:12] So I will not support this. And I think, honestly, for the board, it would be a professional gesture, a nice gesture, to agree with something that I'm putting out there, having been Governance Chair for three years, having gone through the process of giving recommendations to at least entertain my recommendation rather than just follow whatever is being done.

[04:22:39] It's very tragic, very apparent. - Ms. Mayor, did you have an amendment to bring? - I do. Is now the time you'd like me to bring it? - Yes, ma'am.

[04:22:55] - You know what, I withdraw my amendment. Thank you. - Okay, Dr. Anderson. - Thank you. I've said this before and I'll say it again. think two things can still be true at the same time. I have been, and I just want to be fair, I have been pleased with the way that my input has been received in governance. It's been extensive because you all know I like to edit and the only difference is I just put it on a document and it gets

[04:23:28] incorporated. I am not a rubber stamper by any means. I come in with the ideas that I have, and I hear the other ideas of the other government committee members, and as it happens in conversations, you have that energy of responding to the things that you're hearing to continue to make it better. In that vein, I do see a space where the amendment that has been withdrawn would have made this better to just further articulate that all contracts are the responsibility of the board. All final authorities live with the board. So again, I don't believe

[04:24:08] that either of these things need to happen exclusively of each other. That's what I wanted to offer. Thank you. With that being said, I'll call for the vote. All in favor, Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Dixit, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. Dannon, myself, Dr. Anderson. I am affirmative.

[04:24:33] Mr. McElveen and Ms. Lady all opposed. Ms. Marin. Can the clerk read the vote? Abstentions. Mr. Dunn abstains. That passes. I need to vote. Read. 5.01 opening of schools. I now call on Dr.

[04:24:53] Reed from her chair for the opening of schools presentation. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Hello, everyone. It is the 26-27 school year opening of schools presentation. And as we see and hear these examples tonight I want us all to remember this is all possible because of the power of one team FCPS and that we're very proud of team FCPS and our entire community for all of your hard work and making sure our schools and students were prepared this year so let's roll the first day of school video

[04:25:29] please madam clerk. Welcome back to school. Students back for a world-class education and we're excited to start our initiative around third grade reading and we want every third grader to know reading is an exciting adventure. Good morning scholars. Welcome to the first day of fourth grade. Is anybody else excited to learn algebra this year? Raise your hand. Oh look at that. That's fantastic.

[04:26:33] I will say that nobody opens schools like FCPS, and I will also say, you know, often in our board

[04:27:31] meetings and conversations, there are a lot of business details we have to discuss and debate, and I think one thing that I'm confident about is that everyone at the dais, when we watch a movie like that a video or watch our young people sing this evening all can confidently share the common interest in the excitement of learning so some first day facts that are on the screen 99.7% of our positions that were critical

[04:28:06] to the opening of school year have been and were filled we've maintained our highest staffing rate in the last three years and our HR team has been working hard to make sure that we have the highest quality staff in all classrooms. Close to 78,000 breakfasts and lunches were served on day one with again a reminder that the most popular item was the crispy chicken sandwich with over 35,000 crispy chicken sandwiches served. 95% of our bus routes were on

[04:28:40] time on day one and that's out of nearly 6,000 routes with a bus fleet larger than Greyhound. Again, big props to our transportation team, our routers, our bus attendants, our mechanics. That's an incredible data point on the first day of school, particularly, as we noted, other divisions struggling with that.

[04:29:01] 85% of our 8th graders are enrolled in Algebra 1 or higher to start the year, and we kicked off the year with more than 200 practices and 30 contests on opening day. And I'm grateful for the efforts of all of our dedicated staff in each of their unique roles.

[04:29:20] So let's take a look at our alumni. We've had, I'm really excited about this, 87% of our students plan to attend post-secondary programs immediately after high school. And more than $192 million in scholarships were earned.

[04:29:39] That number was $168 million last year, so we have quite an increase in those funds. 8,700 students enrolled in one or more dual enrollment courses with nearly 17,000 earning industry credentials, as well as 5,300 students successfully completing a career and technical education sequence of courses.

[04:30:03] Fairfax County Public Schools standards of learning results show the division continuing to significantly outperform state averages. And in addition, the pass rates illustrate how FCPS continues to make progress year-on-year across all three core subject areas.

[04:30:20] The high-impact tutoring continued to close achievement gaps, covering 15% of all multi-tiered systems of support plans, and it really contributed to success of our students. So let's go to our third-grade reading initiative.

[04:30:39] Reading on level by the end of third grade is a cornerstone of our 23-30 strategic plan. And you'll hear a bit as board members, you'll be getting a note shortly if you want to have a third grade reading buddy. We have assigned all central office staff who are able to be out in schools this year with a reading buddy, spending 20 to 30 minutes each month with a reading buddy, and I'm very excited about this initiative.

[04:31:10] We have a favorite book Friday as well each week where we identify a favorite third grade book. We have our elected officials who are very excited about identifying and sharing their third grade book. And I'm also pleased very shortly we're going to be highlighting our Oakton High School football team who all has taken on the challenge and have all identified their favorite third grade books and are going to be supporting their third graders and their pyramids.

[04:31:42] So this is a year where every Fairfax County public school third grader is a reader. So we remain the ninth largest school division in the United States with 200 schools and centers. And we continue to have, honestly, one-fourth of the multilingual learners in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

[04:32:03] And we are so excited to build on their strengths. Our students speak 195 languages. Nearly, actually more than one in three are eligible for free or reduced lunch at this time. So we're close to, we're actually indeed reporting more students who qualify for free and reduced lunch than Loudoun Public Schools has students.

[04:32:27] So we continue to support students with high expectations and high support. So as we look at Fairfax County Public Schools, we represent 199 birth countries and territories. On the next slide, please.

[04:32:44] As you can note, 84% of our students are born within the country, and 16% are born outside of the United States. So we look at strong schools leading to strong communities. I mentioned the power of one-team FCPS, and intentional community engagement continues to be fundamental.

[04:33:07] As you can see, we have a lot of exciting engagement schedule meetings, and those are all laid out on the slide. Again, strong communities continue to lead to strong schools. We recognize the strength of having volunteers, mentors, and tutors, and we know that strong partnerships are critical to effective schools.

[04:33:31] As we think about meeting families where they are, we provided some data from the first day of school, Where we've had this year, we launched our mobile app officially, and as of the first day of school, we had just over 34,000 downloads and are now over 36,000.

[04:33:47] We have 30,000 new web users on the first day of school and over 2,000 WhatsApp followers. I actually wanted to get the team's focus on how many parents had already accessed ParentVue, But we decided we'll pause on that data, but provide it sooner than later, as many parents were not checking grades yet on the first day of school.

[04:34:14] So looking at our menus, we know that September and October menu items are packed with classic favorites as well as fresh global inspiration. You can see a variety of our new menu items and a new menu platform, which is called Meal Viewer.

[04:34:32] So we're very excited about our work in food service. When we think about transportation, we're safe, secure, and on track. Again, we transport close to 130,000 students on over 1,600 buses each day, which include 49 electric buses.

[04:34:52] And we're actually driving over 93,000 miles daily as a bus fleet. Our transportation team is doing a tremendous job to keep that work moving. As we think about our facilities, we have roughly 29 million square feet of leased and owned building space.

[04:35:17] And we host approximately 500,000 community events every year. It's a half a million community events. So our capital projects continue to work in terms of infrastructure work as well as completed capital projects.

[04:35:35] So as we think about what's new this year, we are at the midpoint of our strategic plan, and our journey continues to be incredible. Ninety percent of our measurements have seen improvement. A couple key partnerships that are new this year, we have a library partnership for second graders where all of our second graders in Fairfax County public schools will be participating in a librarian-led storytime experience, take a guided tour of our public library closest to their school, and check out a book using their LEAP account.

[04:36:12] So we believe that using public libraries is a key step in becoming thoughtful and excited readers by third grade. Also, today I had a chance to meet with our water safety team, headed up by Dr. Miriam Lynch, who is a coach at Howard University.

[04:36:31] And we are beginning our third grade water safety program, which is very exciting. Tomorrow, we're going to have several Olympians, Olympian swimmers at several of our elementary schools celebrating our new partnership.

[04:36:47] I know I'll be at Mount Vernon Woods, I believe is at Mount Vernon Woods tomorrow. And just very excited for our Olympic swimmers to be there to talk with our students about something that's truly life-saving. And as drowning is the second leading cause of death in the United States for children under the age of 18, I think this is a really key partnership with our county as well as our community partners.

[04:37:14] So we're very excited about that next Tuesday. There's a water safety celebration at Skyview, which will be really fun as well. We have our new secondary math textbooks and are thrilled about that.

[04:37:29] and of course last but not least we opened a new high school which we've owned for just over a year and it's our first new high school in 20 years so madam clerk let's see what's happening at our newest high school with our aviators i like the brand new school it's very nice it's been great the new teachers have been very nice and the structure is very awesome one thing i really

[04:38:09] liked was meeting the people a lot of the teachers are really enthusiastic and happy to be here and It's just like really welcoming to be here in Skyview. The teachers understand how to get to do school and like, they make it easier for us and like, help us fit in faster.

[04:38:24] They basically make you introduce yourself even if it comes out of your comfort zone, but it always works out. They work really hard to like make a community already and just make sure like we're comfortable and we're enjoying like our time here so far. I love how like involved it's been and then I like how our hangers are set up. I think that's pretty cool.

[04:38:43] It's nice that we have time in our pod with all the same kids, and then we come out and we can meet other kids who aren't necessarily in our pod. The cafeteria is really nice. I like that we're allowed to go out in the courtyard and sit out there. It's really nice to get some sun in, that kind of stuff. Everybody's very flexible and open to new ideas. It's a conversation, and ultimately the goal is, are we doing what's best for this school?

[04:39:08] So if we've got a World 1 and an English 9 project that is collaborative, we can open these walls. It's kids who, both sides, they know us. So now we can build a project together in this hangar world, and now we can all come together in this pod.

[04:39:25] The history teacher, the English teacher, the science teacher, and we can do a project together where we're blending social studies with science at the same time. At the end of science, we do a research project. - Well, how perfect is that to have an English teacher write at your hands where we can work together and helping these kids learn how to write a research paper for science?

[04:39:46] - Have you figured out any patterns yet? - So it's been really cool because we've been able to design things and just have time to improve our designs so we can get to the very best it can be. - Yeah, I really like how it's more technology-based and more engineering here. - We're gonna learn how to grow plants in what?

[04:40:02] What did I say? Lunar regolith on the moon, that's right. We hope to really just really kick our curriculum off on a good start, getting students into exactly what they came here to Skyview for, and that's just accelerated learning and learning in their paths and which way they wanna go.

[04:40:19] But right now, it is going exactly the way we hoped it would go. - You know, for us, it's giving kids ownership of this building, our staff ownership of this building, that they have the ability to shape it. And so I hope you can look back 20 years from now and say, wow, man, Skyview's done a lot.

[04:40:34] I hope there's some pride at the end of the day that you are an aviator at Skyview. So, and again, I just want to thank the board for their vision in procuring and opening Skyview.

[04:41:00] Lastly, this is late breaking news. I want to share that Fairfax County Public Schools has been designated a Purple Star School Division by the Virginia Council on the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children.

[04:41:20] The designation was voted on at the council's meeting at the Virginia Department of Education yesterday. Dan Dunham, the Military Student and Family Specialist for the Virginia Department of Education, recognized the division-level support and processes it has established, especially through the Student Ambassador Program.

[04:41:40] This recognition reflects our commitment to supporting military-connected students and their families, and I extend my gratitude to the staff and the communities whose work made this achievement possible. This was Ms. Youngblood-Hall, her team and her staff, Renee LaHuffman-Jackson and Megan Roman and all of the team members who believed that this was possible and took the initiative, all of our principals and school staff.

[04:42:13] This is a large achievement. In 22-23, we had 53 total schools that were Purple Star. In 23-24, we moved it to 69. 24-25, we had 96.

[04:42:29] 25-26, 145. And 26-27, we finished with 200 schools. So really proud of Team FCPS. This is a moment for our students. We'll have a more formal celebration, but I wanted to share that.

[04:42:45] So great job, Team FCPS. Thank you. Dr. Anderson, followed by Mr. Frisch. Thank you. I'm very excited about the WhatsApp. I think that's a great opportunity to meet parents where they are.

[04:43:01] And, of course, so many great things that are happening there. That's just one I wanted to highlight really quickly. Just a couple of other quick questions. The bus IDs, has that begun yet? Yes, ma'am. Okay, wonderful. And speaking of buses, I just want to make sure that I ask this question because it did come to me.

[04:43:21] Do we have any double-backed buses this year or we're completely in the clear? I will need to check back in with you on that. Mr. Muick had an issue he needed to address. No worries. The other thing, I saw the great news regarding the high-impact tutoring.

[04:43:39] Can you speak a little bit to the criteria for that tutoring to occur? How does a student qualify, or is it a school? Well, that program was paid for by the All-In for Virginia dollars, which no longer exists. So the current criteria isn't necessarily connected to current staffing.

[04:44:01] So at this time, we're looking at an alternative for our tutoring program, And I'm going to turn to Ms. Roman, who's been working on that, the Office of School Support under Ms. Roman's been working on that. So we have a couple tutoring initiatives. One is that schools that do receive Title I funding, some of the schools have made the decision to use those funds for tutoring and for high-impact tutoring to continue in those schools.

[04:44:26] We're also pursuing some grants and partnerships that would allow us to expand high-impact tutoring and replace some of the funding that we had received from the All In Virginia funds. Okay, thank you. also the data that we have 200 schools and centers. How many centers have we? I know we have 200 schools proper. Is that a missing your question? Nope. I will get back to you on that because I know we're remodeling Dunloring so it's a center but not a current active center so we'll need to get back to you on all the different centers. People always ask me when I said there's 200 schools and

[04:45:02] Senate, 199 up until this year, and I never know the number. Can you talk a little bit in terms of the enrollment data? We've lost a little bit over 4,000 kids, 4,300 kids, actually, from last June to now. Can you discuss a little bit the impact on staffing and services?

[04:45:23] Sure. One of the things we know, well, there are two things. One, we know that we have, for over a decade have had fewer kindergartners than we have seniors graduating. What's mitigated that traditionally are students moving in, often from out of country in the middle and high school, the secondary years, which we're not seeing this year or last year. I will say that that was really the impetus for the need to do staffing rebalancing because if we have fewer students,

[04:46:00] we don't want to continue hiring more staff. Essentially, we need to make sure that the staff we have, when we have fewer students, are able to be redistributed to open positions so we don't have more staff assigned when we actually don't have the students attend.

[04:46:19] Sure. Thank you. And I know that you mentioned that the rebalancing for teachers was complete at the work session earlier this week. Are there other positions that will be rebalancing in the future? Yes, ma'am. We, you know, as we look at non-classroom based positions, what we don't want to do, well, what we've been very committed to at this time is not disrupting classrooms whenever possible.

[04:46:46] So, however, we are a large school division by public school enrollment larger than 11 states, and we do have staff that go out on long-term leave. We have emergencies that occur. We have planned absences, maternity, paternity leave, spousal support, et cetera.

[04:47:07] So there will be times that we may need substitutes in classrooms that we may have a current qualified staff person who's not otherwise assigned to a classroom that those situations may still be considered and/or administrative positions. I know last year we reassigned a number of assistant principals because we were overstaffed in some of those areas so rather than hiring again from outside we rebalanced our administrative positions so and there may be operational position similarly suited. So I think what I've asked our human resources department, our chief

[04:47:45] of schools, our operational chiefs, we just need to be really strategic anytime we have an opening to make sure that we have, number one, the best possible person in that opening, and number two, that we've made sure we've looked at our internal resources first. Do you see that rebalancing of non-instructional staff to have an end date, or would this continue all throughout the rest of the school year? Well, our enrollment fluctuates all year long, to be honest, and our enrollment

[04:48:19] sometimes fluctuates program to program. So we may have a student gain in certain parts of the county that we'll want to add staff to, and conversely, we may have students that are not in certain classes, so we obviously want to maintain stability to the degree we can, and also be sensitive to making sure that we have, again, the most experienced and highly qualified educators

[04:48:47] and staff in positions. Thank you. Thank you. That was your time. Mr. Frisch. Thank you. Bearing the lead, the Purple Star School Division is incredible. It's huge. Can you state again where we started when you were here, when you first got here, and how many schools we've added in those few years?

[04:49:16] We were at 53 in 22-23, and we moved to 69, then 96, then 145, and this year at 200. All right. So if you're a military-connected family, you can get a great supported quality education at any school in Fairfax County Public Schools. So that is huge news, and I hope, I'm sure the communications team is going to be heralding that from the rooftops.

[04:49:43] I was able to go to a number of back-to-school events as we got off to a start this year, Oakden and Marshall and Volchurch and a bunch of elementary schools and a middle school. But I try to stay out of the buildings during the first two weeks during the instructional day because I feel like the world grinds to a halt when a school board member enters the building.

[04:50:05] And the last thing I want to do is be in the way during those critical first couple weeks. but I've been able to get in the classrooms now that we're a little bit into the school year, and I am very much enjoying what I'm seeing and look forward to seeing more.

[04:50:23] I do have a couple questions about the presentation. As the new routing technology and IDs have rolled out, have we noticed any efficiencies that we were hoping for? We have. I think our...

[04:50:38] Even anecdotally. Our drivers that have been at times had to fill in on routes they weren't familiar with have really appreciated having the turn-by-turn tablet directions and the ability to know which children should be on the bus and when they should be getting off the bus.

[04:50:57] So I think we've seen anecdotally some great stories of the assist that the new software has provided. Yeah, I think some people still don't quite get some of the great features of the ID to help our bus drivers ensure that they're not making a mistake about which kids are getting on and when the kids are getting off so they're not getting off at the wrong place, too.

[04:51:21] The opening of Skyview in the presentation brought up some interesting thoughts for me because it is a unique experience to open a new school for the opening schools report. I'm curious, how do we handle the opening of a school when it's an old school, but it's filled with a lot of new students who were not part of that school community before?

[04:51:46] I ask because part of my community is in the midst of a boundary conversation that will be bringing in an influx of new students. I'll just finish my question at an elementary school, and it'll be basically evenly split between two high schools. So how are we supporting a school community that enters an elementary school in that way?

[04:52:06] I think our principals have worked really hard to make sure they're welcoming and that they are able to explain the new, you know, the culture climate that they're creating. And I know our region offices work very hard and work very closely with principals to make sure that those are great experiences.

[04:52:30] So I think that the transition managed well can be a really exciting time for new growth. Thank you, Ms. Dixit, followed by Mr. Dunn. It's late in the hour, so I'm just going to be very quick and just want to say that I'm impressed with seeing the math numbers.

[04:52:52] 85% of eighth graders enrolled in Algebra 1 and higher this year. So that makes us, you know, very forward thinking and, you know, algebra, math leads to like everything. And, you know, that is where we are going with it.

[04:53:08] So I'm really impressed with that. The only thing I would say is that I wish we had better, higher science numbers than what we have right now. And I know the focus is in math and, you know, reading. but I really would like to see some focus on science as well because again students can learn so much in those early years. Thank you for bringing the focus back to reading and I think we all are very excited to see all these great things happening in the school right now. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you Mr. Dunn followed by Mr. McElveen. Well I'd have to start with the purple star

[04:53:45] school division. I just did a quick Google search said how many purple star school divisions are in the United States and Google said I have no idea. But in Virginia they're 13 and all of those school divisions are much much smaller than ours and so I think it's perhaps a lower lift when you have like one high school and maybe two elementary schools. If 200 schools that's a huge number and the figures you shared, the growth rate, one of those years you added 50 plus schools. That's a tremendous lift and a tremendous accomplishment and a testament to the dedication

[04:54:21] of all of FCPS leadership all the way down to school principals and staff. And the the meaning of that to military families in a region like ours including Fort Belvoir where we have so many military connected families you know the importance of that can't be understated.

[04:54:41] i'm wondering you know i i also did the math just for fun how many miles are we driving in buses it turns out uh on an annual basis 180 school year 180 school days is 35 times to the moon and back in an average year which is a tremendous number of of uh of miles on the bus um i did want to ask you know there's so much great data in here um and you know any one of the figures like the number of merit semi-finalists which is more than I think the rest of the commonwealth combined or if I remember that correctly what what can be done to bring in more volunteers especially I like to

[04:55:21] think of when I was in law school my favorite professors were adjunct professors who were like full-time employed by government or in law firms and they come teach one or two classes and but they brought real real world experience and I feel like it's similar to what you get in CTE where you learn from people who really work with their hands, but it can also apply to advanced mathematics or advanced science.

[04:55:43] Can there be more done within VDOE licensing to make use of the fact we have so many PhDs and advanced degrees in our county and bring our county and our schools closer together? Yes, sir. I think that you're hitting on something really important.

[04:56:01] parts of the country do utilize active working like computer scientists or aerospace engineers in classrooms and I think that's something we really want to work with BDOE on supporting here. Thank you. Thank you Mr. McElveen followed by Mr. Dannon. Oh well thank you is a great thank you for a great opening of schools report as always. On the first day of school I was delighted to be with you and most importantly attend skyview along with mr. McDaniel I believe you were there with me

[04:56:36] so you know there were several observations we had at skyview first the milk machine is a big hit so I'm eager to speak with our our FNS department to see when that'll be rolling out to other schools and then some other things there there is a bit of a gender disparity there can you speak to that and what we're doing to address that so I will defer to miss Roman I'm not I'm not sure I know we saw that in a couple

[04:57:15] classes I would have to go back and check the data to see if that's school wide my understanding is it's three to one three to one male to female male to female. So similar to Colorado School of Mines or some of our other universities. Let me check in with staff and see what special attention is occurring.

[04:57:35] Good. And the one other question I have on that is, I'm sure you don't have the information tonight, but if you could give us the numbers of students who matriculated and have now reverted back to their base high school. Sure. You bet.

[04:57:51] I'd like to see that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dannon, followed by Ms. Marin. Good evening. Really great report, and there's a lot to commend here. One of the things that I think jumped out for me from the work session a couple days ago was, Dr. E., when you first came to FCPS a few weeks before the 2022 school year's beginning, how many vacancies did we have that summer?

[04:58:22] We had well over, close to 1,300, actually, open teaching positions at that time. Okay, and those are teaching positions. Right. Okay. So the 99.7% of positions that had been filled at the start of this year, about how many of those were teaching positions?

[04:58:41] I will let Mr. Solomon answer that because this is work that I'm very proud of him and the HR team and our principals for taking care of. Absolutely. We have about 16,000 teaching positions in FCPS, so it would have been or was at the time a few dozen that were unfilled at the start of school.

[04:59:04] Do you consider if a class is staffed by a substitute, is that considered filled, I guess a long-term substitute, or what's the definition of filled? The definition of filled is having a full-time person hired into the role. Okay. I appreciate that perspective because, you know, and Braddock, you know, as I've shared with you, and I appreciate you having your staff's attention to this, but we've had a number of cases where schools or classes opened and did not have a permanent teacher, right?

[04:59:35] So unfortunately, of the ones that did remain, you know, I think we had at one school, I think three at one point, and one of those was a teacher who had unfortunately had to leave, I think, the first week of school and, you know, things like that can't be prevented. But I do want to commend the work that you all have done to try and make this work.

[04:59:50] I think the, as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, the alternative to the current process is that we would be potentially riffing teachers that we had made a commitment to once they got overstaffed.

[05:00:08] Is that accurate? Yes, sir. That's correct. It really is a measure to ensure that our existing workforce, who's highly qualified, who we've invested in, who have really dedicated their careers to the success of FCPS, get to remain with the school division and, of course, not only get to remain employed, but get to continue collecting their salary, their benefits, and making a meaningful contribution in FCPS.

[05:00:32] Mr. Dan, one of the things that I think is important to recall, I think our memory, we recall things that are amazing and not always the things that were difficult. But back in the summer of 2022 and that start of the school year and 23, we had to assign central office staff to go out at that time and cover classes to start school.

[05:00:57] It was very disruptive to the division when we didn't have a 99.7% employment rate for the classroom. So we've certainly seen very difficult times since COVID where we didn't have enough educators at the beginning of the year to now, with the enrollment decline, having more educators.

[05:01:24] And that's where I think our strategies are beginning to shift again. Well, the piece that I learned is around the 930 cutoff or the 930 state deadline. Can you speak a little bit about what that means? Sure.

[05:01:40] That's the membership count day. And so one of the things we generally do and Fairfax traditionally has done over many, many years is looked at the student enrollment on membership day on September 30th. Traditionally, we've also seen student enrollment increase after Labor Day, which since we start school before Labor Day, we had a number of principals saying, you know, hold off before you make final decisions because we know students are coming.

[05:02:09] so we know those adjustments happen and those numbers were provided this week I believe mr. Sethi reviewed those Monday they were released or posted I believe on Tuesday and they'll be in the Friday letter this week Tuesday as in day before yesterday they were posted but I found that interesting because it you know I heard from principals and others that there was a hiring pause so to speak on external applicants and that once we reached that 9:30 deadline the picture became a lot clearer so I recognize that it seemed like we were on

[05:02:46] our way to opening up a lot of positions but I'm curious I talked to a colleague a teacher earlier this week and she reminded me every everything has to focus on the students right so I appreciate that we've worked to retain teachers is there any other alternatives for us to squeeze that time frame a little bit more mr. that's your time so if you could wrap this up yes I just want to understand and we can talk further about this if there's a way to kind of compress that timeline a little bit further or what the what the cost might be to be able to provide a little more predictability to students earlier in the year on those limited cases we do have a committee we've created that's

[05:03:25] actually what are we calling it Megan and William are doing it's at workforce or workforce rebalancing committee right so what we want to do is we really as As this pendulum continues to shift around enrollment across the country, we want to make sure our enrollment demographic projections are more accurate, and we want to make sure that we have a process in place so that we're maybe more conservatively staffing in the spring, so that as we begin to add staff over the summer and fall, that it would be, hopefully,

[05:04:02] we're going to be able to get the data much tighter because this year we were off by several thousand students, which created a need to adjust in real time, which we really want to be able to anticipate more easily in the future. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Maron. It's wonderful news about Fairfax County Public Schools becoming a purple star school division. It's wonderful to have that goal achieved. I was wondering if Dr. Reed could please speak to the 99.7% of positions critical to the opening of school being

[05:04:38] filled. Can the superintendent please share what data and information is used to tabulate that number? Yes ma'am we can. Mr. Solomon since your department calculates that, can you share the data? Absolutely, so we have roughly 16,000 actually just over 16,000 teaching positions in Fairfax County public schools. So we look at all of our positions that are critical to fill by or before the first day of school. So really of those 16,000 about 12,000 are considered critical, meaning that it's a classroom teacher who's in front of students directly. And we look at the number of teaching positions that are

[05:05:12] filled with a full-time person over that total number of positions. Thank you. Does that include any classrooms that are staffed with substitute teachers? No ma'am. would be all of our classrooms that are filled with full-time teachers. And does it differentiate between programs that are like for specials or is it like grade-level teachers just for that 12,000? Just trying to understand between the 12,000 and 16,000 with that to that Delta is in the 4,000. Absolutely, so the 12,000 does positions that FCPS considers critical for the first day of

[05:05:51] school. So think teachers who are directly in front of kids. Your grades one through three teachers, four through six teachers, those would be considered critical versus other teachers that don't have that aren't directly in front of students so think resource teacher resource or reading specialist and EMER teachers that aren't necessarily I think with a class list on the first day in a classroom okay thank you thank you and without objection I would like to defer

[05:06:27] agenda item 5.0 to academic matters the next meeting seeing no objections agenda item 6.01 financial planning monitoring report EL5 each year the school board assesses the superintendent in part on the basis of school divisions, reasonable progress toward achieving the 2023-2030 strategic plans goal, and adherence to a set of 13 executive limitations found on pages 16 to 33 of the board's strategic governance manual. The superintendent provides annual monitoring reports to the board for each executive limitation. The board then votes on whether the provided report is in compliance or if corrective action is needed. Dr. Reid, I call you for a monitoring report on EL5.

[05:07:04] Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. And please make this two minutes at least so I can get a cup of coffee. What did he say? He said please make it at least two minutes. It was a joke. Make it at least two minutes. Please make it at least two minutes so I can get a cup of coffee real quick. Thank you. All right. Yes, sir. This is executive limitation five, financial planning.

[05:07:21] And at the time of this report, to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief, we have gathered information and evidence that I believe supports compliance with the board's executive limitation associated with this topic. This evening I want to share several of the highlights for those still awake and watching from home.

[05:07:41] The full report including indicators for this EL are posted or the report is posted on BoardDocs. So if we can go to the budget timeline please. I think we're a slide. There we go. Thank you. There are no significant changes planned for this year on the planning calendar.

[05:08:04] This is the plan for the FY28 budget timeline, and these documents can be found in more detail on our website. The FY28 budget timeline continued. We will go through the spring with our budget vote expected to take place in late May, with an implementation start in July 1.

[05:08:28] Because tonight's presentation will be focused mostly on FY27 updates. Any new work, updates, or items newly added, since it was last presented in October 25, will be what I'll discuss. Again, the full report is online.

[05:08:45] In May of 2026, we received the 2026 Gold Award for achievement. This was really exciting. Bless you. Because we were actually able to achieve that on our first application.

[05:09:01] So, the evaluation feedback emphasized a number of strengths and particularly around our strategy development and strategy implementation. The examiners also highlighted a systemic planning process, alignment of school and department improvement efforts within our strategic plan, and the use of research-based frameworks.

[05:09:24] Additionally, FCPS initiated a process of an internal review using the Baldrige Excellence framework to identify opportunities for improved efficiencies. And specifically this process encouraged us to review our budgeting thoughts more as an exercise in balancing revenues and expenditures and also promoted a broader set of questions such as which investments most closely connect to students and the plan, which expenditures protect essential workforce and organizational

[05:09:59] capacity, and so forth. The new or newly updated fiscal year 2027 includes funding for multi-year investments, including academic resources and our athletics and arts programs. It maintains support for additional family liaison positions to strengthen the connection between home and school and fully funds the collective bargaining agreements in fiscal year 27, which reflects our commitment to valuing staff voices and ensuring competitive employee compensation so the budget process

[05:10:39] fy 27 highlights were updated to enhance alignment with our plan and during the september 26 work session the fy 28 budget kickoff was provided to give an earlier assessment of the budget landscape engage the board and community and begin to establish expectations headed into this november's Fiscal forecast want to share the new or newly updated budget awards the FCPS budget documents have received awards from both the association of school business officials International or ASBO and the government finance officer association the GFOA the

[05:11:17] 2526 meritorious budget award MBA from ASBO as well as the distinguished budget Presentation award from GFA way and while I'm walking through those fairly briskly at this hour those are significant achievements and I really appreciate our finance budget and finance office led by the iconic Lee Burden as our chief finance officer with Matthew Norton and we have Seema Arwad here our comptroller tonight so we have the dream team in our budget and finance office so and they keep us honest with our

[05:11:54] planning, and we look forward to partnering with Ms. Dixit, who is the budget chair this year, and Mr. Moon, who is the budget vice chair. So, Mr. McDaniel, that is the executive limitation five summary on financial planning. Thank you. I call on Ms. St. John Cunningham for a motion.

[05:12:22] Can you hear me? It's okay. I move that the school board finds that the superintendent is IN COMPLIANCE WITH EXECUTIVE LIMITATION NUMBER FIVE, FINANCIAL PLANNING MONITOR REPORT. I FURTHER MOVE THAT THE SCHOOL BOARD APPROVED THE MONITORING REPORT BASED ON THE SUPERINTENDENT'S REASONABLE INTERPRETATION OF EXECUTIVE LIMITATION NUMBER FIVE, FINANCIAL PLANNING MONITORING REPORT, AS OUTLINED IN THE STRATEGIC GOVERNANCE MANUAL.

[05:12:46] THANK YOU. ZERO SECOND. I SECOND. MS. ST. JOHN CONING, WOULD I SPEAK TO YOUR MOTION? I WOULD. SO FIRST OF ALL, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK DR. for this report and for the work behind it. Sound financial planning is one of the ways that we honor our responsibility to students, families, and the dedicated professionals who make learning possible. The report shows the difficult choices faced in developing the FY 2027 budget, including the $28.9 million funding shortfall. It also documents investments in staff compensation, academic resources,

[05:13:25] athletics, and the arts, stronger connections between home and school. Those choices reflect a commitment to students' whole experience, even amid the real financial constraints. I appreciate the report's focus on transparent information, multi-year forecasting, and ongoing engagement with the board and community. That works helps us understand the pressure ahead and will help us continue to make the best decisions possible grounded in student needs and our strategic priorities. And thank you to Ms. Lieber as well. Thank you, Ms. Dixit. I want to thank

[05:14:04] you, Dr. Reed, for the presentation. Today I just want to recognize the staff who developed this report and continues managing a budget process. Our budget team is exceptional with a lot of awards and Baldrige, you know, award as well now. And we are continuously, I think, monitoring where we can save money and do the reduction without losing the actual instruction or our staff.

[05:14:32] So it's a hard balance that we don't want to lose the quality, but at the same time we are losing, we have to use our financial resources very carefully. So I know that the team is doing really good work and I'm excited to work as a budget chair this year with Mr. Moon and work closely with you and Ms. Lieberton and the team. Thank you.

[05:14:57] Thank you. Mr. Dunn followed by Ms. Mirren. Thank you. I appreciate the great work done by the budget team and the awards that we've won, but I think we have to kind of recognize where we are in the historical cycle and it's been since 2009 when we had a recessionary environment and And I think we need to be preparing now for what that looks like and what reductions would have to be made in that environment.

[05:15:28] We've had an increasing budget for many, many years now, significantly increasing, but now we have a declining number of students and that looks to continue indefinitely, although of course, you know, immigration situation changes, other things change, the birth rate might pop back up.

[05:15:47] But I, you know, despite the quality of the budget documents, despite the Baldrige Ward, I don't have a clear understanding as a school board member of what are the options for significant reductions in our cost structure.

[05:16:04] We can't keep increasing our cost structure when we have a declining number of staff and a declining number of students, like at some point that math doesn't make sense. In addition, there are things that we want to accomplish, such as adding middle school AAP centers to every middle school, or reinvesting in our world language programs, or doing other things to strengthen the quality of our CTE programs, our literacy, our math, buying new textbooks, getting rid of some devices.

[05:16:33] These are, you know, strategic investments that might need to be made, and every business that's growing will shed some assets or things that aren't priorities, right? Jack Welch used to say, if we're number one or number two in a particular business, I don't want to be in that business at all.

[05:16:50] Now, we can't say that for particular lines of activity, but there are some things that we can look at saying, are we better at doing certain activities like food and nutrition services? Are we more efficient than if we outsourced that? Not advocating for that, but there are different things we can look at in terms of our operations and say, are we being the most efficient possible or are there opportunities to do things differently based on what other school divisions in the United States and overseas are doing.

[05:17:19] So I'd like to have more of a presentation along those lines because we need to start talking about that since we are in this period where we want to invest more in certain areas, quantum being one of the things we're doing, And at the same time, how can we work within their means to make ourselves less likely to seek increases in funding from the county and the state?

[05:17:47] Because the message we're getting from them is there's not so many dollars to go around anymore. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Mirren, followed by Dr. Anderson. Thank you. So, you know, there seems to be systems in place to safeguard and document and report on what's happening.

[05:18:03] I just continue to be unclear about some really important topics. So, for instance, I've spent months trying to get an idea of what the school division spends on software used for instruction. I'm finding it's routinely purchased without disclosing the effectiveness of such software on student outcomes.

[05:18:20] I actually had a student over the summer who was eager to learn about budget and he dug into publicly available budget information regarding technology. He and then myself verifying could not find basic explanations on some topics like the purpose of the technology plan or how much FCPS is spending on instructional technology.

[05:18:39] In just the last two weeks, the superintendent recommended that the board approve a purchase of a computer, the needs and usage plans of which remain unclear and undocumented. So I don't understand what was not funded in order for that computer to be purchased. You know, further, I asked to understand the impact of the purchase on the Skyview budget, and it was said that there was a logistical opening of schools budget, and so we received that in a Friday email and I can't even, I can't even understand it. You know, it doesn't say what it is. And if it says it's 1.5 million in startup operational

[05:19:14] funds and the board just authorized about 800,000 for a quantum computer, what does that mean for the startup costs that remain? That just doesn't show me financial planning. There is also, you know, this recent Friday letter with information that's been requested for months about achievement gap closing.

[05:19:32] there's over six million dollars in legal fees on this. I don't I don't understand where this stuff is coming from and you know we're seeing like what's happening with our staff. We have staff filing grievances over weapons detection systems and it doesn't seem like it was staffed. The appropriate staff was planned for that so when I think of this planning what I'm seeing is a lot of breakdowns of things that it seems like they were in place but maybe the full amount of cost wasn't expected. I don't think it was communicated. So I also just

[05:20:10] want to mention, because I am very particular about keeping our policies, so we have a policy about laying off and recall, and that's under human resources. And then we have one about de-staffing. And the rebalancing or de-staffing, however it's defined, has been said it's a budgetary tactic to save money. But this policy 4250 from May of 2020 says the school board shall authorize the reassignment of personnel. So I just feel like I'm not aware of what's happening

[05:20:44] with decisions to move staff, de-staff, rebalance. I'm trying to understand what the teachers and the public are telling me, but I haven't heard very clearly from the superintendent how that was a budgetary advantage how that's going to help with the financial planning and as one of my colleagues said like how are we planning for the future because clearly things come up and things have to change but if if I'm not being kept involved I just feel like I'm constantly trying to catch up so I'm not able to support this EL report and I hope that more information can be

[05:21:18] forthcoming especially to in a public meeting and not just a Friday email. Thank you Dr. Reed. Oh Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. I want to make a couple of comments because I need to make sure we clear up some misinformation. One, with regard to the quantum computer, the $549,000 purchase for that computer for the actual hardware is coming out of the operating equipment budget set aside for the new high school.

[05:21:48] The $135,000 for the service agreement comes out of the contingency of the $1.4 million. for the Academy programs. In all, we still have a $5.3 million balance, given the Skyview bond-funded equipment.

[05:22:09] As the board knows, all new high schools that we open, in fact all renovations, include a certain amount of bond-funded equipment, either for furniture, for career and technical education equipment, if it's a high school. And in this case, one of the things that I think our board was really thoughtful about is much of the furniture conveyed in the purchase and sale of Skyview.

[05:22:33] So just as a data point, when South County High School opened in fiscal year 06, we had startup and future dollars of a total of $9 million in 2006 money, which we are not even adjusting for inflation.

[05:22:53] And this year, we set aside 7.5, so we set aside less money for the new high school 20 years later at Skyview. Had we continued with inflation, we would have actually doubled that to $15 million, but we didn't need to do that because of what conveyed.

[05:23:14] So there is nothing that wasn't able to be purchased as a result of quantum being purchased. Indeed, quantum is one of the lowest cost CTE workforce development pathways we could cite at a high school. And in fact, with our partnership with our Fairfax County Economic Development Authority and Connected DMV, the workforce learning development options are incredible.

[05:23:39] We've also just recently heard from Inova Hospital, the quantum oncology imaging department is going to be working with us to develop some health care pathways. So this was actually financially one of the most thrifty, frugal arrangements we've been able to take care of.

[05:23:57] And finally, for some clarity on why we would not hire more staff when we have less kids, I think it's a, as I shared with a recent reporter, it's really a math problem. When we have fewer kids, we need to hire fewer staff.

[05:24:13] Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Reed. Your time's up. I can put you on the go back. Dr. Anderson, if you'd like to go back and put your light on. I've got you down. Thank you. I'll try to be super brief given the time.

[05:24:29] I do want to say I believe that in the EL section one has largely been the most successful area because with the new component of the annual budget, we do go into that into great detail. And I think it offers a level of transparency to the community.

[05:24:47] I think that with 1G, I'll talk about that in a little bit, When speaking of annual budget development, I know this has been a criticism from our funders. Section B, that speaks to basing our annual budget on realistic assumptions.

[05:25:10] Walk me through a little bit in terms of how we achieve that, because last time we did receive that criticism from the Board of Supervisors. Sure. I think that one of the things that's really important is we budget, Again, this EL is financial planning, so the looking ahead of trying to anticipate costs, enrollment patterns, revenue, expenditures.

[05:25:32] And so one of the things that has been really important is to think about when we settled our collective bargaining agreement, for example, three years ago. This is now year three. We tried to clarify some realistic assumptions around the cost of living, around the general principle of revenue transfer from the county, the look at the region salaries and what we would need to do to be competitive.

[05:26:07] So I think when we think about reasonable, we really tried to map, for example, a 3% and a step for year two and three around what we felt were reasonable revenue transfers. We were really pleased that the Board of Supervisors instituted the meals tax and hoped that that would help offset some of the costs of the budget for this third year out in the collective bargaining.

[05:26:35] We were very pleased with the VRS hold harmless last year, and we're hopeful that that commission will reach the same conclusion this year, given that it continues to have a very robust ending balance as the market is doing quite well yet. So there are a lot of factors, and our budget team works really hard with our facilities team to look at those demographics and make really reasonable budgets as we monitor state and local revenue.

[05:27:04] Okay, thank you. The areas that I see for growth are 1G. I'm trying to better recall where have I seen an example of this where you have each major, not each major, not 1G, no, that is right, 1G, where we have the most recently completed year, the current fiscal year, and the next year.

[05:27:26] I don't recall seeing our budget being presented in that way. So, Ms. Burton, do you want to take a crack at that for a minute, please? Yes, ma'am. And you could just add to that also 2A, which is the five-year look.

[05:27:44] Yeah, all of that is in the budget document. On page 50, there is about 10 years, five years of actual revenue and expenditures by a major category. And then there's five years of forecast, also for all revenue, major categories, and expenditure categories.

[05:28:06] And it's on page 50. Thank you. I will definitely take a look at that. You would not be surprised, but one of my criticisms, which I've shared quite a bit, is we are stewards of public funds. The public needs to be able to find where it is that we're spending the bulk of the budget, which is not in the new asks.

[05:28:25] it's in the four billion dollar piece and it is so hard to navigate um when talking with um i'll give you a quick example and speaking with a constituent regarding the closing the achievement gap funds i was asked well where can i find that in the budget book i went into the budget book and i'm looking it up i wasn't able to find it if i have if you have a page number for me to point them to please let me know but it's that kind of lack of information that creates an air of We are not being transparent with how we're spending dollars.

[05:29:01] So let me just wrap that up in a question. Where in the budget book can I find information about the superintendent reserve as well as the closing the achievement gap funds that we received this sheet about? So those are one and the same, but Ms. Burton, do you want to clarify those?

[05:29:18] Yes, ma'am. You're not going to find that level of detail in the budget document. We don't have that level of detail for any department, school board office, Department of Finance. You're not going to find that level of detail. Those funds fall certainly under the superintendent's office, but that level of detail is not going to be available in the budget document.

[05:29:39] Is it because it's not practiced? Do other school divisions provide that level of detail? It's rare that some, I mean, we're not talking about that much money in $4.3 billion. It would be rare for another school division to include a comparable level of detail.

[05:30:00] Now, in the approved budget, we do have the budget in a little more detail, but again, it's major categories. And so the funds that are in the superintendent's achievement gap fund do fall in that document under the superintendent's department.

[05:30:18] But as far as calling out just a very small piece of it, that you're not going to see that. While we may not have the level of detail that is included here, I wonder where can we provide some more information? Because, again, these are not our personal coffers. These are public dollars, and the public needs to be able to find them.

[05:30:35] So having said that, you mentioned that the closing the achievement gap in the superintendent reserves are the same. I have two different columns here on the sheet you provided last Friday. I meant that they were reported on the same sheet. I gave them to you on the same sheet in the Friday letter is what I meant.

[05:30:53] They were on one list, two columns. Okay, I'd like to go back because I need to understand this. That's fine. Ms. Mirren followed by Dr. Anderson for gobacks. So, you know, I'm just, again, looking at the EL.

[05:31:11] I mean, it says provide the board with a multi-year plan, projects into five years, is responsive to projections of student enrollment, provides timely advice to the board to allow adequate time to consider the information presented, especially of actual or anticipated material deviations in the adopted annual or four-year budget as early as possible.

[05:31:29] So, you know, as I see it, we've heard that it was on the horizon that student membership was declining. We've heard this since the spring. The superintendent said an approach called rebalancing would be used as a budget-saving effort. That term doesn't exist in our policies that I'm aware of. We have de-staffing. We have layoff.

[05:31:46] I'm not aware, I've asked, of how much money was saved by rebalancing, nor about what was not funded so that money was saved. I feel that we should be able to know that because FCPS rebalanced, the division saved X number of dollars. Was it worth it?

[05:32:02] We don't even have those numbers. There's been an outcry that this year has been unseen before in disruption by faculty and parents. So while it may be 1% of staff or a few dozen positions, it's 100% of those teachers' livelihood. And 100% of those kiddos' class teacher.

[05:32:21] You know, I'm uncomfortable with the brushing off that there's been a perceived chaos and frustration for weeks, and it just seems like that's how we're doing business. I don't accept that. I want to know, for this level of chaos, what was saved and how. That's financial planning, and it says here a five-year plan.

[05:32:43] I also, you know, in this budget that was sent, I see now the $135,000 for the Skyview service. But there's not a thing in here for $549,000 for the opening of schools. I mean, I am trying to follow the process the superintendent is using.

[05:32:59] I've asked my question. I get something back that doesn't answer my question. And I think including what happened in FY06 is not relevant. It was before the recession. It's a totally different time. Thank you. Dr. Anderson? Yes.

[05:33:15] If you could just finish what you were stating about this sheet. I believe we provided both columns on the same sheet. Are they two separate funds, Ms. Burden? No. First off, these are one-time funds that have been carried over. They are not recurring funds.

[05:33:39] And secondly, the superintendent's reserve was the original name of the funds that were set aside to allow the superintendent some flexibility. And then later, it was changed to Achievement Gap.

[05:33:55] And so some of the funds were called Achievement Gap and some are called Superintendent's Reserve, but they make up the same pot of money that is available to the superintendent to spend on things that are unanticipated or that have become a priority. And that's the fund in which we have a little bit over almost $5 million left, correct?

[05:34:16] I thought it was $4 million. It started off at $17 million, and I think it says the balance is $4.6 million. Yes. Okay. Can you explain a little bit in terms of the use of $6 million for legal fees from the superintendent reserve fund? I thought that was done from the division council office.

[05:34:32] When the budget for division council goes over by $6 million, we need to pay for it from somewhere. And we had a number of, I will characterize, unexpected legal issues this year, which I don't know that I'm going to go in much more detail this evening about.

[05:34:51] No, that suffices. I think my question has been answered. I will also say the 4.6 left does not include our continuing to place support in our additional 6th grade algebra classrooms that we're working on.

[05:35:08] As I mentioned to you when I provided this, this was current as of the beginning of the year. So it's very likely a significant piece of those dollars will be utilized for supporting classrooms in the sixth grade algebra.

[05:35:27] Because we have a limited number of certificated staff. And we want to make sure that students across the division have an option to access that program. And there are several other topics around textbooks that we want to support.

[05:35:42] I mean many of these expenditures are exactly what I would expect that you would spend this on whether it be SATs or textbooks and these other intervention measures that what that's what makes sense to me but I would be remiss if I didn't share my frustration over the fact that when we ask budget questions whether it be here or formally they're not answered in a timely manner because to me the budget questions are to help me make a decision as a board member on the budget and when they're received after the budget is approved it's really moot at that point because the whole idea is to inform the process I will not continue with the habit of approving the budget without having my questions be

[05:36:22] answered primarily because I don't ask a lot and I was told that the priority questions would be answered in a timely manner and some of these questions I've been chasing down for months whether it be the closing the achievement gap dollars that you provided whether it be title two remainders it shouldn't be that hard. So thank you. I'll stop here. Thank you. With that I'll call the vote.

[05:36:49] All those in favor? Ms. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Dixit, Ms. St. John Cunning, Mr. Dannon, myself, Ms. Leidy. All those opposed? Ms. Marin, Dr.

[05:37:08] Anderson. Motion carries. Annually the board will review each... I'm sorry, abstentions. Mr. Dunn. The motion still carries. Annually the board will review each executive limitation at the time the monitoring report is provided to determine if provisions are needed. Board members may offer amendments to executive limitations at any regular meeting provided they send final amendment language to the board and clerk at least 40 hours in advance of the meeting at which is to be considered. At this time as no amendments have been submitted in advance of the meeting, executive limitation 5, financial planning monitoring report, was placed on the consent agenda for approval later in tonight's meeting to maintain the current language of the for the year ahead. At this time the board will take a few moments to document their

[05:37:48] individual feedback on the monitoring report. School board members may complete the online form linked in the meeting script. If you would like a hard copy of the feedback form, please see the clerk team to obtain one. If you have any issues accessing the online form, please contact the clerks. Agenda item number seven, 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 and provide to all board members and the public in advance. Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting. The consent agenda items are on the screen.

[05:38:24] Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda? Seeing and hearing none, the consent agenda is approved. Item 8, agenda item 8, new business. The following are new business agenda items. There will be no vote on these items this evening, but action is scheduled at a future meeting. Agenda item number 9, Mr. Dunn, do you have a report on CPDC? Yes, I'm happy to share a report on CPDC. So we had a a great presentation from Mason Trimble, who's the director of the Virginia Energy Program, about ESPCs, Energy Savings Performance Contracts, through which third-party contractors, and

[05:39:01] there are 19 approved by the state of Virginia, can take on certain functions, such as the entire building envelope, drywall, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and make upgrades, which typically don't require any additional monies other than the monies you're already paying for those systems and maintenance, and will do so for over a period of 20 years.

[05:39:25] We also had a wonderful presentation by an outside firm called ModLogic, an associated architectural firm on factory construction of school buildings, meaning building entire schools within a warehouse and building it in chunks so that then they can be trucked to a building site and assembled like lego bricks in a matter of weeks.

[05:39:50] We learned that this approach saves 15% on the total cost of the school and the factory built portions can be built at the same time as the foundation, the gymnasium, theater, cafeteria, like large empty spaces can be built on site.

[05:40:11] and then it greatly accelerates the time frame for building while reducing the overall cost. And look forward to learning more as we continue to explore these topics in the coming months. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Agenda item number 10, Superintendent Matters.

[05:40:26] Dr. Reed, do you have Superintendent Matters? I think given the hour, I'm okay to concede time. Thank you. Given the late hour, we are deferring board matters at 1239 a.m.

[05:40:44] The meeting is adjourned.

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