Coraggio Consulting Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, October 20, 2026 Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2026 Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia Length: 3h 40m (video) Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ucMg6H7m4g 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:00:01] okay will now be called to order at 5:06 p.m. this has been a long-awaited work session as colleagues will remember we were slated to talk about it earlier this year but just to give more time for more fulsome preparation both in terms of the contents of the preparation presentation and the board it has been postponed until today so we're grateful to have Dr. Presidio and Miss Stone here [00:00:37] with us and I will hand it over to Dr. Reed for introductions yeah thank you Mr. McElveen and it is our pleasure to be here this afternoon to talk about this and it has been a while coming we also this week coincidentally had a chance to meet with our Fairfax World Language Alliance group members in our group members we had a meeting what was it Sloan Monday I guess days only two yesterday so it's yesterday we had I know it feels like it's been a week already but anyhow we had a great meeting yesterday at that and had a lot [00:01:14] of discussion and I know that Sloan and Catherine have spent a great deal of time as well as Matthew who's here from finance to run numbers and those types of things so I'm looking forward to the presentation and we'll turn it over to Dr. Presidio all right well thank you Dr. Reed and good afternoon everybody I do want to thank not just Catherine but her entire team for the work that they did on this report we've got like a 40 page report and 50 slides that we want to try to get through to this afternoon and we know that's a lot but this is really the first time probably in about 10 years that we've done a deep dive on world [00:01:50] languages in a board meeting so there is quite a bit of important content so we appreciate your patience I'm gonna go through it as expeditiously as I can but we're excited to share this plan and recommendations to expand access to world languages across FCPS I am gonna apologize a little bit as we we could pull up the slides and yeah to slide two if you don't mind so there are a few highlights in here I apologize there's gonna be a couple slides with some distractions we'll get that cleaned up and reposted but basically we've got two main goals for today's work session the first is that we want to take a look at [00:02:28] kind of the current state of our elementary and secondary world language programs and then secondly we're going to present some strategic opportunities to expand programming and ensure more equitable access across the division and the main thing to point out here is that these goals are in direct alignment with the FCPS portrait of a graduate and goal for in the strategic plan so moving forward in terms of getting started I think it's really important to ground ourselves a little bit in the research about why world language learning is so important so you can see a number of different research citations on this slide but basically research has consistently demonstrated benefits to [00:03:07] cognitive development and executive functioning skills for students who learn world languages academically the research again consistently shows that world language students consistently outperform their monolingual peers on standardized testing and subjects like reading math and science and then there's a lot of additional research around other benefits as well so for example world language students developing proficiency have higher correlations with career readiness lower high school dropout rates and higher career earnings and additionally there's a really strong correlation with higher success rates on AP and IB exams not just world language exams so in terms of [00:03:47] the FCPS program just a few things that we want to point out about our program components really the primary goals of our program are to ensure that students can communicate effectively in languages other than English additionally we want them to gain deep cultural understanding make interdisciplinary connections and be prepared to actively participate in multicultural communities either here locally in Fairfax County or anywhere really around the world so we design our curriculum in ways that really require students to be active learners not passive learners and to actively engage in real-world simulations of using language in actual context that you would use your second language [00:04:26] skills in the world so we're going to start with our focus on secondary world language programming with a look at middle school and high school and to take a look at secondary world language programming research just a little bit more information here than research provided from organizations like the American Council on Teaching for Foreign Languages or what we're going to refer to in our slides and report is ACTFL our secondary classrooms again are those interactive learning environments but classroom instruction also focuses not just on practicing real-world language skills but developing cultural studies and having students learn about real-world customs traditions and [00:05:05] perspectives of native language speakers additionally our program focusing focuses on ensuring that we've got purposeful assessment to actually really be able to evaluate students language development over time and we do use the actful assessment framework which measures students language development skills on a developmental continuum from novice to advanced levels of learning and we make sure that we provide a standardized curriculum that utilizes again real-world resources like newspapers novels in the language podcasts so that students are [00:05:39] having that firsthand experience with practicing in a real-world context in terms of our outcome data we're pretty proud of how our students do we've got 44% of our seniors in last year's graduating class that completed four or more years of a world language that percentage has continued to increase recently in recent years we're also a state leader and the students number of students who achieve the state's seal of biliteracy about 30% of our graduating seniors earn that recognition I think maybe even more importantly that we [00:06:15] actually represent 50% of the students who earn the state seal of biliteracy in the entire state so our students are performing really really well and then again of course our advanced coursework performance is really strong as measured high success rates above 75% on AP and IB exams another factor though that's important to point out in terms of world language course taking among students is our graduation requirements so in order to earn an advanced studies diploma students are required to take three years of a language or two years of two [00:06:50] languages but a standard diploma doesn't require any language course taking at all so that's kind of a big gap so depending on a diploma type that students are pursuing we see really big differences there one way that we tried to bridge that gap is with our credit by exam where students can earn up to three credits of a world language based on past learning experiences and competencies we offer that exam currently in 57 languages but we do realize that access continues to be a gap currently our base schools our base high schools offer anywhere between three and seven different world languages depending on [00:07:28] the school that a student attends. Again, we try to fill those gaps with strategies like our online campus, our academies that offer world language programming. We also enroll some students in virtual Virginia, but again that doesn't address the access gaps and meet the needs of every student in the system. [00:07:46] So again, just to kind of build some context about our current offerings, one of the things that we look at is how well our current, our language offerings really align to local and community interests, and you can see really good alignment here again some of these highlights are just meant to pull out some things that we think are important to note so Amharic is the gap really in terms of top home languages that we don't have a current offering for and then in terms of the domestic workforce needs we've got really good coverage except Italian is the outlier and then in terms of national intelligence and security interests really the outlier is as Persian or Farsi so again I think [00:08:26] the the main thing that we want to point out is really that our central challenges access equity of access to programming so again because high schools vary in their course offerings between three and seven you know that does create obviously challenges again schools have a number of factors that influence what they can actually offer so student enrollment available staffing what the world language feeder patterns are in terms of language immersion all of those things really contribute to some of the variants across our different schools so there's kind of three key proposals or recommendations in this presentation that we would offer to overcome some of these access gaps the [00:09:05] first is the implementation of a language lab you can see on the slide here we're titling it the facilitated interdependent language lab but we're just going to refer to that as our language lab for today and then second we're proposing to expand access to more languages through the online campus and then third a focus on expanding access for middle school students starting in seventh grade to high school credit bearing language classes so the first expansion opportunity that we wanted to focus on is that establishment of language labs this model would basically allow students in a single classroom to [00:09:43] learn different target languages at the same time so for example you might have one classroom of students some might be learning Chinese some might be learning Russians some might be learning Latin and we're able to do that with this model by having a certified world language teacher act as a learning facilitator supporting students in different languages with access to asynchronous curriculum and then a secondary component of that model is to have a native or fluent speaker of the target language provide synchronous live coaching support to students for part of the instructional block so that would [00:10:19] some asynchronous and some synchronous components it this model would allow us to offer less commonly taught languages where we might not have enough student interest at a particular school to be able to staff a full program so for example you know you can think of some of our languages where we would have low enrollment numbers in those cases oftentimes schools aren't able to offer the program because they can't staff a full teacher this would mitigate some of those issues and some of those concerns financially the language lab model is more cost-efficient than our traditional staffing model so in addition to [00:10:56] providing access to more languages at each school it is a little bit cheaper you can see the costs on this slide would be about five hundred and twenty thousand dollars if we were to offer one section of a language lab at each of our 26 base high schools so the total cost per school to combine the curriculum and coaching is $20,000 times 26 schools is 520,000 and that compares to our current staffing model which one section of a language at each of our 26 schools would be about $750,000 so there's cost savings and when you aggregate that up [00:11:33] with multiple sections then obviously there is a more cost savings there so moving on to the second expansion opportunity we're recommending the expansion of online campus course offerings we would suggest that we add German Japanese Latin and Russian and Vietnamese and that would give students at any base school access to any of the languages that are currently taught in Fairfax County additionally if we wanted to close in some of those gaps that we discussed on the previous slide we could also explore adding Amharic Persian and Italian and then everything back on that slide there would be no highlights [00:12:11] Everything would be currently offered in Fairfax our online campus model I think sometimes people think maybe that's an inferior model, but we really have a high student success rate there Over the last five years We've had more than 200 students who fulfilled all of their world language graduation requirements through the online campus and only through the online campus and 90% of those students pass the AP language exams, which is higher than our overall AP IB course pass rate in world languages So what would that cost all of these things bear cost so to offer all eight of those languages that I mentioned [00:12:50] Would require about five hundred and forty four thousand dollars in recurring staffing that breaks down to about sixty eight thousand dollars per language And there are some one-time course costs about two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars to develop all the curriculum materials and everything as well So that'd be about thirty four thousand dollars per language, but that would be just one-time funding For all of these recommendations that you see I just want to kind of state up front We of course are looking at any external funding opportunities pursuing grants looking for any sponsorships But it's difficult to come by we are looking at one grant right now the workforce the federal world language [00:13:28] Advancement and Readiness Act targeted at languages, but we can't you know provide any Best guesstimates as to whether or not we'd get any of that funding, but we'll pursue any funding opportunities that we can so our third secondary expansion recommendation is again around middle school access and over the last four years as you can see on the chart we've had a growing number of middle schools that are offering high school credit-bearing world language courses to students starting in seventh grade so we're up to 19 middle schools that are currently offering that opportunity and then you can see the percent of seventh graders who are taking advantage of that is growing as well over this period of [00:14:07] time from 9% to 17% so if we were to pursue this opportunity to enroll students at the middle school and high school credit bearing courses would that would actually allow students to be able to complete if they started in seventh grade two credits while they're in middle school that would make it a lot easier for them to satisfy the advanced studies diploma or even take up to six years of a language additionally it would provide students opportunities if they wanted to pursue something in addition to world languages more course-taking opportunities at the secondary level because we know students have a lot of competing interests I will point out that this would not require [00:14:45] any new budget funds it would require some minor shifts and staffing at the middle school level but there would not be any new costs for this recommendation so there's a couple program enhancements we wanted to mention as well one that we've recently implemented is the language for career applications course and we decided to offer this course because there's a lot of research that suggests that employers are really in need of workers with second language skills in fact research indicates that nine out of ten employers need employee employees with world language skills and one in four [00:15:22] businesses actually have reported recently losing business due to a lack of language skills in their workforce so we think there's a big need this supports obviously college and career readiness goals that we have in the division as well so this course actually focuses on more technical work based language it is cross-cutting across different industries so healthcare the business sector information technology but the idea is to practice more the types of communication skills that you would need in the workplace another recommendation is around core academic content instruction and languages other [00:15:58] than English and I just wanted to point out that I think there's a dual benefit to this type of programming because students who are studying world languages and maybe have exhausted four years of language study could then take a course in social studies for example in the target language some schools do do this around the country in fact we've got a small pilot with students taking algebra 1 in Spanish in the division right now so this would kind of expand on that model and we think there'd be a dual benefit to target language learners as well as multilingual learners who might be able to access some core [00:16:34] graduation content in their native language all right so now we're going to shift to elementary and take a look at some elementary programming recommendations but before we do that I just want to make sure that we kind of talk about the different models that we offer at the elementary level so the first model is dual language immersion or what we're going to refer to to as DLI in this presentation and it gets complicated because there's two types of DLI programming in the division one is a division-wide lottery program that we offer in I think ten of our schools twelve of our schools Katherine's gonna help me with all the details and the other is a one-way program that schools [00:17:13] offer just to base school students so keep that in mind because we've got some recommendations around that we do currently offer elementary immersion programs in five target languages Spanish French German Japanese and Korean and then the second program model is really a part-time model it's our foreign language in elementary school or FLESS and this program is designed to be part of our Triple T or our specials rotation so you think about students who access part-time programming and art music and PE some of our schools also access the FLESS program as one of their specials we currently offer seven [00:17:51] different FLESS languages Spanish French Chinese Arabic Korean Japanese and German so I think sometimes the different programs do get a little confusing so this slide just provides a chart that compares the DLI programs with our FLESS programs again you can see on this chart that DLI is operating in 17 schools across those five languages in our DLI programs that's about a half-day program students get target language instruction that's delivered during math science and health those subjects are taught in the target language and then there's a partner language arts class where they get [00:18:31] additional literacy development and oral practice communication practice in the target language on the other hand FLESS is currently offered in 56 schools again seven languages and that program is part of the specials rotation which means students only get approximately 60 minutes a week of instruction and FLESS all right so let's take a deeper dive into the dual language or DLI programming and the first thing we just want to point out is you know some of the program components and really what I want to highlight is our program is really structured around research of course but in the national guiding [00:19:08] principles for dual language education that were developed by the Center for Applied Linguistics which is one of the foremost nonprofit research-based organizations focused on world language learning and bilingual development so I'm not going to go through all seven of the program components here but I will point out that our curriculum really serves two purposes and it does integrate the video e content standards so math science as we just discussed but that's taught in the target language so students are also developing their second language skills based on that actful proficiency development continuum that I [00:19:44] mentioned earlier in terms of research on DLI there's a lot of benefits some similar to what I've already mentioned but again we see that in the research base DLI students outperforming their monolingual peers as well as multilingual learners who participate in DLI programs showing superior academic gains as well as faster English language acquisition gains and we also see fewer behavioral issues higher college matriculation rates and overall career earnings for students who participate in DLI programs real quickly on this slide we just wanted to indicate the developmental continuum again that we [00:20:23] use at the elementary level based on the ACTFL guidelines the last time that we measured our student performance 91% of our DLI students met or exceeded the ACTFL benchmarks at the elementary level additional elementary data is provided on this slide again we do really emphasize that DLI participation supports not just long-term course taking persistence but again it does support student development but you can see here on the slide in terms of the number of students who take four or more years of language 75% of our DLI [00:21:02] students compared to just 41% of our non immersion students so a really significant difference in long-term commitment to the language development again briefly some program history on DLI we started DLI programming in 1989 at eight division-wide sites that program expanded really incrementally through 2014 we added German Korean and school-based two-way Spanish programs really making sure that with that expansion of the school-based programs to really support target language learners as well as multilingual [00:21:40] learners and then as based on this school's year enrollment we've got 17 current dual language immersion sites again there is a strong interest I think in our community is evidenced by a lot of people that came out to be here with us tonight in expanding access to world language programming and dual language in particular so we recently surveyed families that was 2023 and confirmed that strong interest the highest level of interest was in Spanish then followed by French as you can see American Sign Language German Arabic and Japanese but [00:22:19] I want to point out that we had over 1600 families who wrote in interest in Chinese which was inadvertently somehow left off of the survey so we had more than 1600 families right in and that level of interest on a four-point scale was higher than three on average so a great deal of interest in Chinese so we haven't done the survey in a while and the fact that we left some languages off the survey we would recommend re-engaging the survey this year if possible so the first expansion opportunity that we really want to talk [00:22:56] about is increasing the number of DLI programs again we've only got 14 pyramids and I tried to highlight some of this on the slide there's only 14 pyramids that have DLI programming right now so what we're recommending is establishing a Spanish DLI program in every FCPS pyramid only 10 pyramids currently have a Spanish DLI program that's the highest level of interest in the community so this was would require us to open 15 new division-wide DLI Spanish programs that would be available by lottery per pyramid for students to access additionally there's a lot of interest in less commonly taught [00:23:35] languages so we would recommend expanding and including at least one less commonly taught immersion program in each of our six regions in terms of implementation I think it's always important to remember we've scale or scaffold these programs in starting at one grade level at a time so it does take time seven years in the K through six school to fully implement the program additionally our DLI programs receive some additional staffing so currently we're providing in our division based programs 3.0 FTE and [00:24:15] additional staffing starting at the intermediate grade levels and we do that because there's traditionally student attrition in the programs for a number of reasons some students start in the programs they move schools they move out of the county other students might choose to attend an AAP Center that's not at their base school some students just lose interest in the program whatever the reason we do have attrition in our program so we provide that additional staffing and the reason I bring it up is this is the only cost factor really associated with expanding immersion programming right now so it's possible that we might not need that same level of staffing investment but [00:24:53] that's what we're currently doing and we need to take a closer look to see if we need to do that but we've estimated all the costs based on that same model one other thing on this slide we are excited that there's recently been some video e flexibility and teacher licensure so that teachers can add the endorsement to their elementary credential which will we think help quite a bit in terms of teacher recruitment all right in terms of costs for the new programs we've provided that information on this slide so you can see here that to do 15 Spanish programs and the 15 pyramids without programming is going to be six [00:25:31] million dollars in recurring staffing costs and again that's why I mentioned it's driven by that additional 3.0 FTE in each of the new schools there would be a 1.2 million cost in one-time curriculum and training but that's just a one-time cost also we're recommending converting four of our school-based programs that only serve students in the base school right now to division-wide lottery programs the idea there would be that students in every pyramid in the division with this model could apply to a lottery to participate in one of the programs which would require us converting those programs so again those [00:26:09] new programs would need that additional staffing that they don't receive now and then finally we've provided the cost for the three regional less commonly taught immersion programs which would be 1.2 million when you factor in the 3.0 FTE for each of those schools and we'd need new programs in three regions okay so in terms of some enhancements at the elementary level one of the things that we wanted to illustrate and we're excited about this opportunity is to establish a pilot preschool immersion program and we'd like to try to do that [00:26:47] as early as next year if possible but we're sitting here at the end of October so I don't know but that would be the goal that's still the goal this model would be designed to be cost neutral so we'd be able to do that by using our Virginia preschool initiative funding along with charging tuition to families on a sliding scale so families that had a certain income would pay a different amount in tuition and that tuition along with the VPI funding we believe could make this cost neutral so if this pilot is able to be implemented successfully we think this is something we could also scale across the division another program enhancement that we're recommending is to reestablish a [00:27:25] standardized assessment program for all of our DLI students this school year we're actually piloting a standardized proficiency assessment it's the stamp assessment and it's based on the actual standards we're piling that piloting that across all five of our immersion language programs so that's going to provide parents with better information about how students are progressing along that developmental scale and it will help teachers with actionable information about how to continue to support students language development needs as well this is going to be funded the pilots funded this year out of existing funds but even to scale that up it would be pretty reasonable cost of it about [00:28:05] thirty five thousand dollars a year okay so switching to our flesh program our part-time program again it's delivered during the specials rotation think art music and PE again it's part-time 60 minutes a week and I think there's some misconceptions about the program so we just want to kind of again communicate that FLESS is not designed to develop communicative proficiency it's developed to provide exposure to language but there's research that says even minimal weekly exposure it's 60 minutes produces gains and target language development as [00:28:43] well as cultural awareness and cultural understanding which of course is tied to our portrait of a graduate outcomes so in terms of the flesh components I won't go through everything that's on this slide but the big thing that I would emphasize is that our curriculum does focus on oral expression and cultural exposure and it is integrated with stem content and stem or I guess I should say steam I apologize steam content and concepts because sometimes there's been a real challenge for schools to try to staff everything so we did develop an opportunity for students to have exposure to STEAM concepts through the [00:29:20] FLES program so that those programs would not be in competition with each other in terms of our FLES outcome data last year we were able to collect some outcome data not in all of our schools but in the schools that participated in the assessment project you do see that the majority of our FLES students again met or exceeded those benchmarks and you can see some differences in terms of French and Spanish students and Arabic and Chinese actually being higher that's because the scales are different because you're learning a different alphabet as well as a different language the proficiency levels are different there [00:29:57] in terms of program history with FLESS this is I think really important for all of us to consider you can see on the chart here that we started FLESS programming 20 years ago in 2006 at seven schools and had pretty good expansion over the next decade to 56 schools but in 2016 we transitioned to full-day Mondays and we did when we did that the Triple T staffing formula changed and schools did not receive the same allocation to support FLESS as they had received previously and that meant that schools that were going to start a new FLESS program had to be able to subsidize that with other funding that [00:30:37] they had available and as a result you can see we really kind of stagnated after 2016 in terms of the number of FLESS programs in terms of expansion opportunities again I would just point out that there's a tremendous interest in the community for FLESS as well in our recent survey 74 percent of families that did not have access to FLESS programming expressed a strong interest even if it meant reducing time in other specials areas like steam repeat or PE so our FLESS expansion recommendation would be to adjust our staffing [00:31:12] formulas and provide more centrally funded FLESS staffing across the 87 elementary schools and you can see the costs on this slide and when we adjust those formulas basically what that would net is an addition of 83 additional FTE which would be equivalent to about 10.8 million dollars in recurring funds so we understand that's a large number so again all of these recommendations we would recommend phasing these in over a multiple multiple fiscal years so a second expansion opportunity that would be less costly for FLESS instead of [00:31:50] expanding to all schools and grades K through 6 would perhaps be to consider expanding just at certain grades so here we've costed out an expansion program in grades 3 through 6 only I do want to point out though when we did prior community engagement on this and suggested that we might do this there was a lot less interest on the part of families and students in a part-time program starting in third grade so again another reason I think we probably need to do a more updated survey so in terms of the cost comparisons between these two approaches we tried to provide that on this slide so basically what you'll see is that to expand FLESS in just grades three through six it would be [00:32:28] about three point seven million dollars compared to ten point eight million dollars if we were to expand in grades K through six real quickly a FLESS program enhancement that we're implementing this year is to provide beginning and end-of-year assessment ratings for all of our sixth grade students again using an assessment based on actual standards that will again help families understand how students are progressing as well as support teachers in program improvements in their local schools another enhancement opportunity that we're suggesting is perhaps rebranding FLESS as I mentioned I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what FLESS is so we provided [00:33:07] perhaps some possible names that we could consider that might get more at what the program components are actually really all about and then all of this is a ton of information so what we tried to do here is provide the estimated cost for each of these recommendations you can see a column for one-time costs a column for recurring costs and then totaling those those costs I won't read each of those to you but what I'll suggest on the next slide is we've provided kind of a five-year phase-in look of what it might look like to phase [00:33:45] in these recommendations so if we just focus on FY 28 for example and if we had funding and I think we all understand and know that we are facing some daunting fiscal challenges but just looking at FY 28 you can see that if we were to implement all of these commitments high school language lab learning at just three schools would be $60,000 it would be about two hundred and five thousand dollars to expand online campus to two additional languages in a single year to expand DLI and four additional schools would be two million dollars and then [00:34:21] depending on the grade configuration from FLESS it would either be two point one six million dollars K through six or seven hundred and forty thousand dollars if we were to expand in grades 3 through 6 so the overall cost range for FY 28 if we did all of these things would range somewhere between 3 million if we only implemented FLESS at certain grade levels to 4.5 million dollars in terms of next steps things that we're working on in the world language office we're going to continue to add languages to the credit by exam we're piloting the language lab that I mentioned we're piloting this year and we're piloting [00:35:01] the external DLI student assessments, implementing new FLESS student assessments, and planning for the preschool immersion pilot. So I really appreciate your attention. I know you're anxious to get into discussion but there was a lot of content that we thought was necessary at least especially for the community so thank you. I think Dr. Reed you want to add an addendum? Well just a couple comments and I think parallel to the work on this presentation which I really appreciate I know a lot of work went into it we also met with families [00:35:37] who are very interested in having Tamil be an immersion program or a language option at high school and we have a larger community that's interested so we are going to be bringing that to the board as one of the new course offerings all four years of Tamil because we have native speakers and so they're really looking forward to that and recently I was provided input from the Ugar community that that was Ugar Uighur Uighur I'm so sorry Uighur the Uighur community and [00:36:15] that hasn't made it fully into the study either yet but I think that that's a language we will want to include in the survey because I know community members have really talked about that and then finally I just I know that the assessment was a conversation right we've talked about both expanding maybe and enhancing the program and I know we had an individual at the meeting yesterday that talked about I think was the pals my correct the pals assessment so I don't know how that's different than the DLI external assessment so that's just a question that we're going to want to continue to discuss because I think whatever we offer we [00:36:54] want to make sure it's robust and that it's meeting, you know, the needs of our students and families. So I just wanted to clarify the Uyghur and Tamil community ads. So lastly, we did meet with the embassy, Chinese embassy officials today, and shared the model that the Korean embassy has used to launch immersion programs. And there is an interest, so we're gonna have a follow-up meeting as well for our Chinese students, Chinese speaking students. So thank you. [00:37:22] well thank you some late late breaking news there so thanks for sharing that I think before we get started I do want to kind of put things into broader perspective dr. Presidio has provided kind of the institutional timeline but I would like to just amplify that with kind of a school board timeline on a lot of this work and I think that goes back to 2006 right and so we saw in the timeline that was really when the Fless expansion started but that's also when the school board adopted the student achievement goals and key in that was [00:38:01] fluency and two languages I mean to graduate with that fluency you know we're 20 years after those student achievement goals and we're nowhere near that goal unfortunately and then and then in 2013 we established the portrait of the graduate which again enhanced that work on languages and made that a key part of what we wanted to see folks graduate with and that same year we launched through the school board's work the internationalization working group and [00:38:40] that laid out a timeline of work and work products that we hope the system would would achieve again we're now 13 years later not much of that has been achieved and finally I would just point to 2016 which Dr. Presidio spoke about which was the work on full-day Mondays when we took the vote that evening we were told at the dais that by adopting full-day Mondays we would be able to get flesh into every school and as we saw from the chart it's been a plateau right so there's been tremendous institutional failure here but there's [00:39:20] also been board failure and not holding the system to account to achieve these goals that the board has set about for 20 years and so I see tonight is an opportunity to reposition and reset and to take on this work in the way that it should have been undertaken okay we're gonna take a brief break to deal with [00:39:43] the medical emergency session and we asked the audience and people conversating to to please quiet down apologize for the disturbance but we think we have everything under control now we have appropriate medical [00:40:19] personnel on the way so I apologize for the interruption so I wanted to just start before we launch into questions to follow on mr. McElveen's remarks I'd like to begin by thanking our world languages staff for the amazing presentation incredibly rich in data and information I also want to recognize and thank all the members of the Fairfax World Language Alliance and CAPNOVA who have been advocating continuously for expansion of world language programs. [00:40:53] Many of them are here today or watching online and their advocacy helped to bring us to this conversation. I think we have a very strong world language program as it is secondary, immersion, and FLESS. It's really-- I look at this through the lens of geographic equity, that we have pyramids with access to world languages programs and then some without equitable access. [00:41:19] And so if our goal is equal and equitable access for every child at every level of school, then this expansion of proposals or a series of proposals offers important food for thought. I think the key takeaway I observed in this presentation is that we're not talking about upfront costs, costing all the money in year one, but spread over time as more programs are added and the length of that introduction and the accordant cost could be changed at the discretion of the school board. [00:41:56] But generally I have found that these programs are fairly affordable and modest and would provide great benefits to our students. And as the research shows, it results in better academic outcomes and benefits our students in a number of ways. [00:42:11] So with that, I'm happy to open the floor to questions from our colleagues. Mr. Moon. Thank you. But I was hoping that we could have Dr. Reed return [00:42:23] to the table if she's right in the hallway. [00:42:59] Dr. Reed is supervising the current medical emergency. Perhaps if you could direct your questions to Dr. Residio pending Dr. Reed's return, it would be appreciated. Thank you, Mr. Tan. [00:43:15] I've been really looking forward to this conversation we are having today. And I want to thank Mr. McAleby, amongst other board members, all of us pushing the school system to have a work session on this pretty important topic, which has been on the minds of many of us for, As Mr. McAvin put it, for 20 years, I mean, I began my board service about three decades ago. [00:43:45] Unfortunately, even in Fairfax, back in 1950s, mid-50s, there were resistance on the part of, large part of Fairfax County about, you know, providing more world language. [00:44:02] Back then, it was foreign languages, foreign language programs to our students. I, as someone who felt very strong about providing world language opportunities for our students for various important, various different important reasons, you know, felt that our county, even the Fairfax County, was so much of Ameri-centric and Euro-centric at the time. [00:44:34] I am glad to see that we are, at this time, we are offering languages, not just European languages but other languages, including Tamar Uyghur, that a doctor mentioned that she's going to propose a school system to offer. [00:44:54] I'm very glad to hear that. I know that I'm limited to three minutes. I only got two minutes left. So put me on go back and some of my comments deal with this. In addition to all this new information that Dr. Presidio, nice presentation, so much to digest. [00:45:15] We probably will not be able to make all the decisions today, but some other things I want us to consider include, should include, perhaps providing, there are many heritage speakers who are fluent in certain languages, maybe because they are growing up and speaking those languages in their families with their peers, their family members, et cetera. [00:45:45] We should also provide some programs. I know that we are currently providing to a certain limited extent for the heritage speakers, I see a value in providing additional programs for heritage speakers to strengthen their language skills, especially to develop their academic language skills. It's not just a verbal fluency, but academic language skills. If they could help them develop, I think it would go a long way in helping them. So [00:46:17] put me on the back. I don't see any other. Oh, Miss Marin. Thank you for this. This is really great, including all of the budget material. So I have a question for my colleagues you know what is the vision for our language instruction what is the goal and what should the experience be like over what grade levels and I come to those questions as a parent with an 11th grader and an eighth grader and as well as a board member you know because to me it looks like we want we it seems we want to offer it like other core offerings that it's instructionally beneficial in school and in life the inherent benefits [00:46:57] of learning world language which we heard of and as well as those needed languages in the workforce and we see that on page three of the report and slides four and ten but we also have programs that seek to bridge a home language gap and then we have programs that seem to want to support heritage speakers do we want students to be fluent and I also have to throw in what about our kiddos with disabilities like my eighth grader who's dyslexic as 20 percent of the population is he is not going to participate he's not participating in world language because it is not aligned for him. [00:47:31] And that puts the advanced diploma completely out of reach. I also wonder, we have limited funds. Do we want to invest more in elementary or the secondary grades? What do the trade-offs say? What does the research say? I think, again, trying to help my eighth grader decide, starting a language at 13 years old, we know that's not best practice. [00:47:52] So do we want to say, look, we only have limited. What should we do? Should we gear up towards the older elementary grade? Because we're going to have to reduce something somewhere to make something else more robust. I also want to talk about the board's role and approach. [00:48:08] We have an opportunity here to set really clear requirements, not just suggestions or guidelines, but outright clear requirements that are funded with processes based on data of how kids can best learn a world language and use it. [00:48:24] And I think that community input is important. But we see, again on the slides, we know which languages are the ones that the workforce needs. And that's going to be the best investment for our limited dollars. When I look at the array of the way that things are funded, you can see, as Mr. McElveen point out, what decades of unclear processes and commitment and reporting, this is what happens, which is why I'm always adamant about policies and stuff, because this is the flip side. [00:48:52] When we don't have a clear policy, we end up with inequity. We have unmeasured outcomes, and we have funding challenges. I also wanted to share real quickly-- there are some recommendations, I think-- oh, no, just one word about secondary course offerings, underscoring the board's role. [00:49:11] So look, that language for career applications, that is on what's coming up in our November meeting for approving secondary course options, which for the third year in a row that I can remember is on consent. And for the third year in a row, I and pulling it from consent to talk about it. [00:49:28] That decision was just going to be made without our discussion. So please, I hope that we can figure out when are we regularly going to talk about this and all instructional approaches. Mr. Dannon, you're next. [00:49:48] I appreciate it very much. I want to couch my questions in the fact that I studied Spanish in middle school and high school and then learned another language through immersion, which was, I think, a lot more effective. and then here in the U.S. worked with Native American tribes to help me to reestablish their programs through a mix of different programs. [00:50:07] So I respect and also want to appreciate Braddock is very fortunate we've got several version programs. And so I want to talk a little bit about the FLESS program to start with, the considerations about, I'll just be honest, I have not heard great things from regarding the curriculum that's been used in FLESS. [00:50:29] And I would love to-- my colleague's point about what's our vision with these. You know, looking at it, I would think a good vision would be something that promotes some basic functional language, right, where I can go to a restaurant or go on a trip and my kids can have some comfort level pushing themselves to use a different language. [00:50:50] And then also building that curiosity so that when they get to middle school, they want to pursue this, or they want to do study abroad, something like that. And I don't think we're getting that now. Have you all looked at that kind of revisions to the FLUS curriculum, or can you talk a little bit about the discussion of what changes might be made to that existing curriculum? [00:51:06] So I think anything's on the table. What I tried to lay out in the slides is why we've organized our curriculum the way that we have. What I left out of that discussion was that when we developed it and did the integration with STEAM, a lot of that was part of a working group that did have a variety of stakeholders and perspectives on it. [00:51:28] I'm not suggesting that everybody agreed that that was the way to go. But at the time, schools were in a position where they felt like they had to choose between FLESS and STEAM. And it was really difficult because you can make a really good argument for multiple types of programming. So we tried to provide something that was interdisciplinary. [00:51:45] Of course, we could change that any time we wanted to. But in terms of this presentation for expansion and enhancements, we didn't recommend that at this time. But we certainly could look at that for sure. slide 38 the third bullet can you clarify the it talks about instruction was refocused on dedicated language learning can you clarify what that means I'm sorry putting you on the spot here that's a slide 38 third bullet yeah let me try to get that sorry this is the problem because I know I'm getting there [00:52:22] I think the number is off on these slides yeah sorry it's there it is this one instruction was refocused on dedicated language learning so what's what's your question about that I can just clarify what was meant by that yeah so again it's kind of getting to the point that you were making like we're trying to do a lot of different things there in terms of the language skills and focus that we are working on with oral practice it is basic communication [00:52:57] skills right but again it's integrated through STEAM disciplines so I think that's one of the you know points that you're bringing up is you know whether or not what's the most effective way to do that if we had more focus on basic communication skills in a way that was content neutral could we develop greater outcomes perhaps okay and then can you clarify does video we have standards of learning for flesh and what are those and they're on their website we can get those to you later on yeah that would help just to understand how well we're [00:53:35] meeting those and if there's flexibility within those to change our curriculum speaking of evasion can you talk a little bit about so switching to immersion can you talk to how we evaluate specifically language acquisition in our immersion programs yeah so again in the slides what we are recommending and piloting this year is kind of an enhanced way to measure student performance in the immersion program so we're piloting the stamp assessment which is an external assessment developed by nonprofit research-based organizations aligned to the ACTFL standards and we think that [00:54:13] that's going to give us a better kind of baseline to measure student performance as we move forward there's been inconsistencies really after the pandemic with how we've done assessment in our world language programs after the pandemic obviously there were a lot of things that we were focused on in terms of learning loss and learning recovery and asking teachers to do a lot of things one of the things we tried to do was have a little bit more flexibility at the school sites around what assessment schools were going to focus on and I think unfortunately that led to a lot of gaps in what we're doing so we're kind of trying to establish a new baseline now with an external assessment for immersion programs okay and then last question on slide 21 it shows the [00:54:52] different models that are used and I forget the exact name but is it is that the two-way model it seems to me would be a lot more effective do we have any information on which models work in terms of again language acquisition so the difference between the one-way and the two-way model is really the composition of learners in the class right so in a one-way model you're going to have predominantly native English speakers who are learning a target language Spanish French whatever that language is in the two-way program you're going to have kind of a balance of 50/50 mix in terms of students so you're gonna have about half of the class that's gonna be native English speakers learning a target language and then you're gonna have half of the class that [00:55:30] are heritage speakers and typically in our programs in our two-way programs we have students that are actually multilingual learners so they're proficient in a home language generally Spanish right we're only offering that in Spanish right now and there's dual benefits for both student populations so again we tried to give some research citations on the dual benefits and the slides but basically you know multilingual learners are developing their English proficiency while leveraging and enhancing their native language proficiency and native English speakers are benefiting because not only do they have access to the curriculum they have access to native speakers in [00:56:07] the class that can help them coach them mentor them work on pronunciation and accent development because they're hearing the natural language so the 50/50 model works really good the two-way model works really good when you have right composition of students is that what it is then why that might not be expanded is just having that composition of students yeah miss Anderson thank you for all the information and the time that's gone into this um I want to start my comments by saying I am in no way against world languages but I do have some pretty significant questions and I'm going to [00:56:46] try to put this in order but it may jump around just a little bit the first question I have is why is Latin is the most significant offering outside of any other language that we offer in the optional why is it not part of the core offered at other every school or why is it not on online campus because it seems like it's a fairly simple thing if we have that many schools that are offering it it would be likely that other kiddos would want to take it too so it would [00:57:19] seem likely that we could put it in online. I think it's a good question I mean there's a lot of factors there it's a complicated language we don't have a lot of teachers that are certified to teach the language schools are making [00:57:57] staffing decisions based on not just student interest in enrollment but staffing availability which has been a challenge so you know it's a good question but I mean it's on the list to expand and we would recommend expanding it but I think some of those are some of the challenges I don't know Catherine in your experience if you have more information on that yeah I think too we need to consider the number of elective classes that a school can handle and as you see in some of the schools they have a lower student population so if we dictate or if we say you're going to have three classes that are required to offer they don't have room to offer some of those elective offerings as well I [00:58:36] gotcha my concern is that I definitely I'm watching it come out of particular schools for a number of different reasons but I would love to see the option still available since it's such an important base for so many other things that we have in our world so I would like us to at least consider ensuring that there is a version on online campus I would also like us I saw the some of the information in the report related to the fact that we were going to try to have during the day basically online campus classes I'm strongly in favor of that because I think that there's a way that we can actually utilize the classes that are already being taught in other areas of [00:59:15] the county to have that teacher that is teaching and and we know well at least I know that synchronous classes go a whole lot better if you have an audience and so if you can see the people sitting in front of you you're a better teacher and so I have a feeling that those online classes would as long as they're in a room that can support that type of learning I think it's a really good opportunity for us to utilize the things that are going on in other locations so that we can have some of these secondary language offerings that are in other locations across the county and give our kids more of a chance my [00:59:51] biggest hang-up with what Fairfax County is currently doing with world languages less it has been since I was a parent just a parent not a board member I unfortunately and I will just get this out of the way we have not had a good experience with less over the last 11 years and five different teachers and so some of the things that we have in the report I believe are aspirational I don't think that they're actually happening I also think that we have set our teachers up for failure because I do not think it's fair to have them teach STEAM as part of their curriculum. I think that if we are going to let that have world language be important that we should let them teach their language [01:00:31] because I can tell you that asking my sixth grader or sixth grader after seven years in Spanish he couldn't tell me what his name was when I asked him in Spanish what his name was. So I just strongly believe that if we are going to expand or read you know reimagine what our world language should be we should allow the world language to stand on its own and not have it and have it be more fun I bet you can put me on a go back because I have more to say I'm missing John Cunningham thank you and I wanted to thank the team for all the work they [01:01:11] did on this report there's a it's it's heavy with a lot of information my three daughters attended a Spanish immersion program so I'm very familiar with the programming and how it works so I have a couple of questions first of all has there been consideration in terms of vertical articulation with immersion programs to progress 7th 7th and 8th grade when you were looking at middle school offerings because there's a gap to your gap there before those kids can [01:01:47] go on yeah so a couple things one of our recommendations is to ensure that every seventh grader and every middle school would have access to high school credit-bearing courses right now 19 of our middle schools offer that but seven don't additionally we have had I don't know for how long certainly it predates me and I've been here 15 years we've had vertical articulation agreements that if an immersion program is offered in an elementary school then the middle school is supposed to offer that language and then the high school is supposed to offer that language that's another one of the reasons that you see some schools offering so many more languages than others because they have immersion [01:02:27] programs that are feeding up through the middle in the high school that's just one factor but we do have those agreements in place and I think we can get to the middle school consistent offerings at seventh grade pretty easily because we're most of the way there already and looking at our dual language immersion programs can you speak to the attrition rate and what that looks like and why that's occurring yeah so we'd have to pull some data on that I think the main issues around attrition are you know in some instances students move out of the neighborhood or might move out of the county some instances students move to a peace center starting in third grade and you [01:03:06] know would unenroll from the immersion program in some instances students just decide that the language environment learning environment isn't really meeting their needs and they decide not to continue and we don't force enroll anybody in immersion so those are the three biggest factors on page oh gosh I'm not sure on page four of the report would you talk about all the students that take dual language and you go to by literacy and we've the students that the [01:03:44] percentage of students that are certified with the seal of my literacy are 32% this is not this is page four not it's not on the slides where they get the seal this is in the past three years more than 4,000 graduating seniors get the seal of bi-literacy so of the 14,000 graduates that have taken this language only 31% are getting that seal of bi-literacy Catherine might oh well [01:04:19] actually I think let's go over that it's 32% for 25 26 yeah Catherine might need to help me with this but I think the total number of graduates there is the total number of graduates they don't necessarily haven't necessarily taken okay because remember standard diploma students don't have to take a language so not all of those students have actually okay the other thing I just want to mention too is that 32% represents 50% of the students in the state who are in the seal of bi-literacy so okay but that's 32% of the students that have taken that foreign language no it's 32% of the graduating seniors so [01:04:55] again some students might not have taken a world language at all because they're on the standard diploma track some might have only taken two years if that makes sense students have a lot of choices depending on what so if I come in and I speak a foreign language and I take the test and I haven't had any foreign language and I get by literacy because I was studying another country and that counts Katherine oh yes okay is there any way we can desegregate those numbers we can yeah we can look at the data and see what we can desegregate there yeah I [01:05:30] think that's important the point that I want to get to here is I am a strong supporter of second third fourth fifth language acquisition but I but I was proponent of it being done well and this report is very comprehensive with a lot of programs and I'd rather do something well on a smaller scale and have a depth to it then have broad and not have the kind of success so that 32 percent by literacy number might even be lower than what it is in terms of because if I already spoke a language I never even took the language here but [01:06:09] I'm still being counted and I say that as a second language speaker because I grew up in a bilingual household but I know that by literacy is the most important factor where it's not just the spoken it's the written and it's the reading and I think that in our multicultural community we have a real possibility to take our multilinguals and leverage that because they already bring something I'm going to have to have a go back miss Dixit so first of all thank you for the presentation it's pretty comprehensive I I'm looking at [01:06:49] this from two lenses one as a multilingual person myself who has benefited for speaking multiple language and and I can adapt to situations but better and I can pretty much survive in many parts of the world but I also see us as a budget chair lens there I wanted to see the financial implication and I am kind of debating here whether can we do this all and it's going to cost a 20 million dollars do we have the money to do that and if not then what can we do [01:07:23] good. Like my colleague said, what we do has to be done right and students have to acquire the language. I agree with Ms. Anderson. My son was also in class, did not learn. But then he is in middle school. He did Spanish 1, Spanish 2, and then continued high school in IB program. But if I talk to him right now, his Spanish is not that good. Like mine is not good either. [01:07:51] but so I I really think that programming has to be from the first grade like if they can learn little by little all you know till the 12th grade it is where they actually can remember the rest of the life their life or maybe it's much better than just four years of of learning so my question is any of the examples you gave is pretty much that they're trying they're starting in the first grade and going to 12th grade is well I think if we could bring the slides [01:08:26] back up and go to slide 47 to get at some of the questions actually around these recommendations again you know as staff we recognize the budget constraints so what we tried to do was provide recommendations at the elementary level in the two types of programming that we have one is the immersion program but that's limited in scope because not every student in the school can take it So we also have the part-time flest program certainly we could always look at changing the curriculum But the reality is without really significant different investments [01:09:03] 60 minutes a week is about all we're gonna get out of bless right if it's part of the specials block unless it's staffed as another subject I don't know where all those additional minutes will come from because We don't even have the amount of time for our literacy block in our math block that we would like to have so we probably are gonna Have a 60 minute Fless block so at the elementary level what we tried to do is provide different options for expansion on here So if you look at the bottom of this slide if we did Miss Dixit to your question about grade level We've costed flesh out if we did it K through 6 and you can see that cost in one year to expand to 17 schools [01:09:40] Would be 2.16 million dollars. However, we could start it at third grade for a Significantly less cost but again a number of board members have raised really good points about the earlier you start a language The more likely you are to develop skills in that language So there's trade-offs with all of these things and the way that we tried to organize our recommendations in the slide is I don't know that it has to be all or nothing right like the board might have some policy priorities around what world language programming would be most important to expand and [01:10:15] Given a finite amount of resources perhaps we would be able to do some expansion next year But not all of these things so that's why we've tried to provide it the way that we did on the summary slide And then also think about scaling in the cost so we've done this over a five-year period of time Could be a longer period of time. It could be a shorter period of time I think it really just depends on the board's priorities and the available funding to do these things So thank you for that response. So when it says two point one six million dollar all grade levels Option one, I'm assuming they're going to learn the language, right? [01:10:52] If we're going to know, right? That's my thing. If we spend like two millions of dollars, then... Well, I mean, I want to be realistic, which is why we provided kind of the program overview slides that we did, is that in 60 minutes of time, you are not going to be able to develop the same level of language proficiency that a student in immersion is going to get with 12 hours a week of instruction, right? [01:11:16] So there are trade-offs. the benefit of FLESS is that every student in the school has access to that program whereas the immersion program only a certain number of students in that school have access to that program so again these are all matters of you know pros and cons and trade-offs the FLESS program really again we could talk about changing the curriculum we're certainly open to doing that but I don't want to promise that students in 60 minutes a week are going to develop you know proficiency in a language so I mean just like how we learn English or math [01:11:52] or science I think it has to be done like part of your core curriculum if the language skills needs to be adapted like for long-term learning it cannot be 60 minutes so I would like to see the numbers for that I know we don't have the money yet but is there a way I don't know if Dr. Reed could maybe you could answer this that we can apply for some grants or any other source where we can get additional funding from yes ma'am I think we did talk about that yesterday and Catherine and the team are looking for grants I think a school [01:12:30] applied for a grant recently from video II around a non-traditional language do you want to clarify that and then I'll continue around some of the less commonly taught languages so that they can start the program in that school we had the programs in the county but the schools didn't have the staffing to be able to do that so they wanted to offer that to their students so they applied for a grant for that and the funds were somewhat limited so we couldn't apply it for the entire division so I think we are actively looking for grants I think that in some languages we've had embassy support and I think in the Korean [01:13:09] language we've had embassy support we may have some support with Chinese we may not right those are early conversations but certainly we're always looking for other funding sources that the challenge sometimes is the grants don't always continue right and then you really once we get things started it's difficult unless we plan ahead in some way which can be challenging to maintain those costs but for startup costs like books materials perhaps the early first extra teacher I think the grants can be very supportive okay thank you and my [01:13:46] last question is that even when we go through flesh model or immersion I think some schools are doing really good with less like for example Oak Hill has a great Chinese program and they they really really like it and it's very strong but then the students go to Franklin or Rachel Carson and they don't offer Chinese and and in those two grades and then they go then after that Chantilly has Chinese I believe so or skyview has online so my consider my question is that we also have to make sure that the continuous you know [01:14:21] learning is also provided if we are doing flas or anyways like some first grade to 12th grade yes ma'am and I think today what we talked about with the delegation was that Chinese for example is offered it Edison Fairfax and Marshall thank you I knew that was the thank you and McLean and but I think with dr. [01:14:47] Presidio's ideas around potentially having it be a an online school option that would provide access to more schools miss lady yes thank you thank you for the report it's very thorough I know it took a lot of time I'm gonna start with quote at the beginning that nine out of 10 employers want bilingual people and this is something I said to all of my students when I was their high school counselor that this is why you continue in world language it's also often if you get a liberal arts education you're gonna have to take a world language in college or also in some business schools [01:15:25] so just pay attention to what the destination is having said that I will echo I have never had children in FLESS but I have lived in this state my entire life and spent all but my time in college and grad school in Fairfax County and I only hear from Churchill Road that they have a phenomenal program and I don't know I need to go figure out what they're doing but everyone else is nobody has anything positive to say and yes learning at a young age is is is the best way to sustain language over time which is why when we talk about having [01:16:03] the native speakers in with non-native speakers at an early age that is great acquisition because it's the listening and it's the accent it's the it's picking up pronunciation so I'm just I'm stymied there I don't want to spend another dime on flesh I don't think we test it appropriately I don't know where my notes are for everything here I think it was slide yes slide 37 there was a reference to we stopped doing junior pals assessment in 2020 in 2020 why yeah [01:16:42] so that's what I was mentioning earlier is that during the pandemic coming out of the pandemic during first of all when teachers were teaching virtually we let go of a lot of standardized assessments in the division and coming out of the pandemic when we were really focused on learning loss you know we didn't reinstate some of those required assessments particularly at the elementary level. So, you know, we are doing assessments now. We're not doing it consistently as we want to, and we think that we need a different instrument that's going to give us better data, so that's part of what we're doing this year. Well, and I guess I just hear there's [01:17:15] inconsistency in how it's taught. Like, I would rather introduce world languages into STEAM than what you talk about what you're doing. I mean, we can research people from all countries in the world who impacted the STEAM world you can learn it just it seems like it's easier to do it in that direction and it's going to incrementally grow so at a minimum I want STEAM classrooms everywhere but I also struggle with the Triple T because FLESS is you can't trade FLESS so to put it in the same [01:17:49] sentence as the Triple T's you can trade some some of those so I mean if we want to get into the Triple T details which at some point we probably do I just I just want to acknowledge I really appreciate Matthew Norton's help taking a look at some of these things because the Triple T formula is really challenging as Mr. McElveen pointed out and as I mentioned when we changed that formula in 2016 we didn't see any new schools adding FLESS really because they didn't have the staffing to do it and some schools have traded some things out [01:18:25] and sunset plus programs and open to other things well again I I'm kind of all over the map here back to slide 37 it did say performance matters was done for 32 schools but so there were 22 that opted out of this and what was the performance matter assessment so that's an assessment sort of like pals that we did in the past that we designed in the world language office they're still going to be using them this year we did it last year as a pilot so that teachers could learn how to use it and then those teachers could be mentors for the other [01:19:01] teachers as they come on board this year everyone is required to use it okay thank you the other thing I want to talk about is two things one immersion I know at Cooper I believe it is Japanese immersion at Cooper can you help me okay we have 22 students is my understanding and that is combined 7th and 8th grade And I got a lot of emails. Well, I got 22 emails. That's a lot. I got 22 emails from these families who wanted a separate seventh grade section and separate eighth grade section. [01:19:40] Quite frankly, 22 is not the threshold to teach a class to begin with. And I'm going to have to take a go back. I'll just leave it at that. It's not fiscally responsible to teach a class at 22 because we're not doing it anywhere in the high school. Mr. Frisch. Thank you to staff and our meeting managers and everyone who were engaged in ensuring that we had a meaningful conversation today. [01:20:13] I'm hopeful that we can have another work session down the road on this because I'm kind of between where Ms. St. John Cunning and Ms. Maron are in terms of like what's the approach here? You know, what's the focus? There's a lot to bite on here that we can't do at all, right? [01:20:31] In particular, you know, I'm interested in, like, thinking, because looking at the FLESS recommendations, for example, the first two, I think, are expansion, and the next two are rebranding and assessment, and I think we agree that we need stronger assessment of the program, and I think one of the things the program has suffered from is bad branding around what its purpose is. [01:20:57] But I think we miss an opportunity to pause and say, if these are our objectives, what can we change within the program to meet those objectives? And that's not one of the recommendations. [01:21:16] So that's something that I will be kicking around for a while and talking with folks about. Because as much as the program, I think, needs rebranding, I think we need to have a conversation around whether the program is getting the support it needs for its objectives. [01:21:42] Because on its face, I'm not interested in expanding the program without fixing it before it's expanded, right? And then if we can do that, then I think it also feeds a lot of the issues that we have upstream, right? if you if you build a impactful program with you know efficacy that you can clearly see then you're going to be creating learners who want to continue to take world languages the older they get and you're going to get people who I didn't have these opportunities when I was in school but my nieces know a little bit of sign language they know a little bit of Spanish they know a little [01:22:19] bit of Japanese because of how they've learned I don't know if they'll be end being fluent or not but I'd be very interested in having and I do like the idea of expanding some of the offerings online which is a lower ticket price for for for much of this conversation but I do want to tackle flefs and I don't think we can tackle flefs unless we figure out what is the goal and are we appropriately positioning the goal for success then I'm on board for getting it [01:22:59] everywhere. That's it for now. Yeah if I could just comment I really appreciate the way you articulated that and certainly as a next step we're happy to provide some recommendations about how we might adjust the curriculum to better meet the goals that we've described here. We're happy to do that. Okay I believe everyone's spoken so I'll start to go back with Mr. Moon. Thank you Mr. Don. [01:23:31] As I said earlier we have a lot to digest and we're not gonna be able to make all the decisions today and I really applaud Mr. Prish's suggestions to have a more discussion on this one, but let's not wait for another eight months for that to happen. So with that said, as Mr. McElveen earlier pointed out, that board, school board, long, long ago set a goal, set a goal for all our students to be able to graduate, to be able to speak more than one languages. I truly believe that's an admirable and that is something, a goal [01:24:08] that we should continue pursuing we're not there yet because it's not an easy goal to achieve but where we need to make intentional efforts to make that happen I think that should start from early age early age I have heard a lot about you know flesh not meeting our goals that let's strengthen that and then have that have the a language acquisition to start from all your age the country where I came from they start from third grade that's a mandatory [01:24:45] third grade they make that happen when I was going to school there it wasn't until seventh grade but they knew that had to start from earlier earlier grade so they are starting from the third grade and then from seventh grade have they have an option to take second foreign languages they call continue on until they graduate high school. [01:25:10] Why can't we? If they can do it, why can't we do that? That's what I'm hoping that we focus on, start early. And if one thing that we could pick amongst many different proposals to start with, I want to focus on being able to start an early age strengthening program so that students could really pick up good foundational skills. [01:25:35] And Ms. Anderson, . Miss Marin so I want to try and identify some questions I know our meeting managers are trying to help us figure out like where to get to consensus on some things and I sure hope that we're gonna have more meetings because this is totally tied to our budget work I think that any recommendation that we're talking about has to consider three factors the instructional validity the budget reality and the HR capacity like maybe we're not even talking about teacher capacity but perhaps there is you know I'm aware that some teachers [01:26:15] can have a World Language Certification, has that been advertised within? We're not even talking about can we actually do this, but I know once we say we could do something, somehow the superintendent usually meets that goal, right? We're aspirational. Just basic questions. [01:26:30] How is it determined what the base school offerings? Why is it Spanish and French? Is that still what we want? Why? I think we've got to answer those questions, because when I look at that list of the languages that are preferred in the workplace, I I don't see some of those languages that is the required two. [01:26:48] Relatedly, is there clarity and consistency about how optional languages are determined? Because I'm looking at this map, and I can't find it. I thought it was in the Gulf War Report. It's also in a facilities document of February 2024 that shows what's offered at middle schools and high schools. [01:27:04] We've got middle schools that have two languages. We have middle schools that have seven languages. What are the criteria for making this more even? Do we have to skim down? And maybe a school doesn't have seven, but they have five. Maybe every middle school has two for a little while. [01:27:20] I don't know, but those are budget questions. Why is it OK that one school has seven and other schools have two? Why? I think if we could talk about those kinds of-- getting to those answers, that will help us then figure out, OK, do we want to focus on elementary? [01:27:37] Do we want to focus on high school? And then, as was said, we've got to make sure there's alignment throughout the pyramid. I really like the idea of expanding making it pyramid base for the dual language immersion that's the kind of stuff we need like we need to think about this for multiple years out which is why we need more than just this conversation miss Anderson yeah one of the questions that I have is about the staffing formula specifically and I obviously this is a huge driver I think that it's time as particularly as we're [01:28:13] going into this very tight budget year for us to look at staffing particularly elementary schools and how it's done and how it's done consistently particularly related and so I'm not going to dig into the actual numbers this evening however I do think that this is the moment that we need to because what I don't like is that this is in our goal to encourage STEAM education it seems like we're trying to pit foreign language against STEAM and that is not a dichotomy that I think any of us want I want our kids to understand the rich cultural world that they live in and I do agree with my colleague that having STEAM education [01:28:52] have more cultural richness added in into what all of the contributions are from around the world is one way that we can ensure more cultural awareness of so that you know kids growing up in Northern Virginia don't think that everything has been done by someone that is in the United States that would be great and so I think that that is one of our opportunities that I would like to at least, and I'm going to work with our budget team to make sure that I'm asking the question in the right way, but I want to get at that just a little bit. One thing that you guys put in here [01:29:27] is that families that don't have FLESS, 74% of them want it. How many FLESS families want to keep FLESS? Because I think that that's a very valid conversation, because right now, I do not think that this thing that we're spending all this time and energy on is working for us, and I just want to figure out how to make it easier for our teachers to be successful and I want to ensure that our kids are getting the benefit that we see because I am concerned and we don't have this data but I am concerned that FLESS programming is actually hurting us with foreign language because I'm watching it happen at least at our school and so I would love to see that trajectory because you [01:30:06] could pull able work to figure out how many of the FLESS kids actually moved on to advanced foreign language coursework so it's just just something I'm going to put out there sorry mistakes it so I'm gonna pick from where miss Anderson you know stopped it's it's a great idea and I like I said earlier absolutely well language acquisition and keeping it for the rest of your life is such a great skill to have especially when you move forward in this global world where [01:30:46] technology is connecting everybody so so much better than we are not living in this remote world anymore and the kids need to learn the culture and I think I'm going to say that it's not the Virginia is pretty diverse if kids are living night of Virginia we know we going to Fairfax County we already know a lot of cultures and school have like international night events and other other events and we get access to a lot of that stuff but mr. moon and my I'm though I guess the only board members here who have studied in a foreign country and the language acquisition while we have our language from the [01:31:25] main country's language English was like other language we learned from the kindergarten so it was all the way till 12th grade yeah we had only one choice that's what I'm saying this is bitter hard here and to pick that one language you can learn right from the kindergarten so that's why I really liked immersion programs I wasn't calling Powell the end with the tour and the second grade I think it's one of the cost-neutral options if we could get the teachers because that teachers is providing the content for science and [01:32:03] math and the language all in in that language and then the teacher just kind of goes back and forth into from Korean to English and that and there are such a a smooth conversation were happening in those classrooms and I think if we want to really really engage our students and in a language and give them this then we have to have 30 and then going from kindergarten or first grade whatever you start to 12th grade and problem is that we stop it after high school after middle mid like elementary and middle school doesn't have offered the same way I guess [01:32:41] the language. So picking back up a little bit on the FLAS stuff, so again I appreciate all the detail that went into this. It was a very, as usual, it was a very long report. So on slide 45, 46, 47, talk a bit more about the cost. [01:33:01] Regarding FLAS, I'm trying to understand, especially in slide 47, is that $740,000 option if we were to expand FLAS just at the three to six level for those schools or that make it district-wide division-wide so if the clerks could pull up slide 47 again so we take a look at it at the bottom of the chart mr. Dannon's asking a really good question about the seven hundred and forty thousand dollars so if you just use FY 28 as example and follow that column down to the bottom you could see that we provided the cost estimate [01:33:38] for 17 additional schools in FY 28 so if we did K through 6 and FY 28 at 17 schools it's one two point one six million if we did just grades three through six it would be the 740 and that's three through five six for every FCPS school changing it to that model or just for an FY 28 it's just 17 schools if you see so you can see 17 and FY 28 because we were trying to spread the implementation costs out and then an FY 29 it would be an additional 17 and FY 30 an additional 18 I'm curious is that I worry about the equity issues right if some kids are getting it at first and second grade and others aren't till [01:34:16] third no that's not that I mean I suppose we should do that but that's not what we're proposing here we're saying there's two different cost structures that are very different depending on how many grade levels get the programming sure right so we weren't saying some schools would get all the way through six and some would just get three through six okay so it's so on net to have it expanded these schools because right now as I understand it elementary schools have it k-6 yes but not okay great but let's let's just assume for a second that we were going to change the programming division-wide to three through six yeah then we would change the existing program at those schools [01:34:52] that are k-6 to be three through six and what would the cost be for that is what I'm wondering is that like a net savings in some fashion there's really a point There's not really going to be a net savings at those schools because, and Matthew, I'm not going to put you on the spot, but feel free to jump in and if you want to and correct anything I say. [01:35:10] What's really important to understand about our Triple T staffing is that is how we're covering teacher planning time. So there's a set amount based on the size of the school and how many teachers are at the school that we need to provide planning time for, and we do it through our Triple T formula. [01:35:26] And then there's some choice right now at schools about what level of programming they offer. We have standardized art, music, and PE. Everybody's going to get the same amount of that. Some schools do FLESS, of course. Some schools might do something else. So that's where the inconsistencies come in. [01:35:43] But if you change at a school that programming from, let's say, FLESS to something else, you still have to pay for the something else. Correct. Okay. Got it. That's awful. Thank you. Yeah, so shifting a little bit to the secondary side of things Which which components is as FCPS piloting this year which schools so there's a number of things that we're piloting Catherine, I don't know if you know I know that I off the top of my head Don't know the schools that were piloting for each thing But we're piloting the language lab and we're piloting at the high school. We're piloting that at TJ [01:36:23] Can you help me with some of the other schools for the things that have multiple sites for assessments and things? So there are some schools that are offering the career applications course this year and that is that is a fully approved course Through FCPS some schools have opted to run it this year We expect that more schools will run it next year this year. We have it At TJ and West Potomac And then it's secondary I think it's just the assessments yeah that we didn't mention yet okay and then the other question is just do other [01:37:02] districts or divisions around the country use this model and what's the research say about its efficacy the facilitated interdependent language learning yes this is something that's growing in popularity around the country there are schools in Delaware that are using this pretty heavily and they do it so that for languages that have a smaller enrollment than some like Spanish for example those students are still able to access the language that they're choosing okay I'm very curious and podges if it was already provided to look at some of the research on how that's working we can provide that to you as well awesome I appreciate that you know at first glance I was a little hesitant relying on the virtual format because you lose that human element to [01:37:41] it but if the data says that it's working and you're getting increased you know I think those are really good questions but again we're already offering like 12 languages in Fairfax as we talk about adding some of the additional languages that we've talked about today you're not going to have sufficient enrollment in a school to be able to staff a program in some of those less commonly taught languages so are there trade-offs in this model sure but it gives access to the languages that students are most interested in taking and our online campus is a similar model it actually has less synchronous support than the language lab model and one of the slides talked about the success [01:38:20] rate there so we've had over 200 students in the last several years complete all of their language learning through the online campus with higher success rates on the AP exams than students who did it in a traditional setting so does it work well for every student no so those are some of the discussions families and counselors would need to have is this going to be a environment that works for you but in terms of the trade-offs there's a lot of benefits and would students be able to take this at their campus I understand that sometimes students if they had an online class we're not able to do that okay the keeps speak a little bit about open enrollment for seventh graders if [01:38:55] you know why don't we do that and what do we need to so we're at 19 of our 25 or 26 middle school so the vast majority are doing it again it's just a change in terms of the course offerings at a school and we're most of the way there so you know I'm pretty confident we've already talked with the middle schools about this that we can get all the way there relatively quickly but a lot of it just has to do with staffing so to add this and some schools they're gonna have to subtract something else right they're not going to offer some courses that they currently offer and sometimes those courses are highly enrolled a lot [01:39:33] of student interest a lot of family interest so there's trade-offs with all of these things and then that's what you mentioned a little bit about the languages that are offered have you all given thought to offering Persian because know that's one of the critical yeah so if the clerks pull up the slide just to illustrate this again because again this isn't the only data source but if you pull up slide 10 it shows the alignment of our current language offerings across different areas right so the first column you see is what we currently offer then what are the top home languages in Fairfax so we've got pretty good coverage except for we don't offer Amharic right and then you go across [01:40:12] what are the languages that are in need in the domestic workforce we've got pretty good coverage we're not currently offering Italian we did in the past we're not currently offering it enrollment dwindled and we phased that out and then the last column is the kind of national security interests and Persian is right there at the top and we're not offering that so we're recommending again that doesn't show up on the top home language list which is usually a pretty good indicator of the types of languages that we can sustain offerings in that we probably would put that in the recommendations we're recommending to put that in online campus and that could also be in the language lab at the high school level all right appreciate it thank you miss [01:40:52] st. chung coming thank you you cited the algebra 8 taught in Spanish was that the function of a language course or multilingual learners multilingual learners so what we're envisioning is not exactly the same thing but it is you know trying to mention it could serve two purposes right so for those students coming out of immersion programs it gives them the ability to learn additional content at the secondary level in the target language but a lot of that programming could also meet the needs of multilingual learners as well because they could get the ability just like they do in our elementary dual [01:41:30] immersion programs to get access to that content in the native language I just was wondering why I was in this report because I think there's a distinction although I do agree with you that that's what we have to leverage in terms of flex the flex program and I've worked at schools that have had this and the report speaks about the importance of sequential language learning so is less taught in a sequential way and can it be taught effectively in a sequential way when you have people coming in and out if you have a child coming into that school as a fifth grader they go to the flex class and they've never had it how [01:42:05] does that work yeah that it that is challenging and we know that the teachers actually talk about this with one another all the time and they you know collaborate together for methods so that they can you know integrate that students into what they are already learning the lessons really align with things that they are doing in science class so the vocabulary is specific to that but they do spend time at the beginning of the year really going over basic communication things so that students can feel comfortable coming into that look I am a great proponent of speaking more than one language I wish I actually spoke more than two because I understand the nuances involved there [01:42:45] but I went to our Fairfax County webpage and the first program goal for flex is to promote academic excellence by providing students a pathway to develop language proficiency to communicate effectively and then you go further down and to increase cognitive skills but then also to develop intercultural global competence skills by supported integrated STEAM concepts instruction with a strong focus on science and this goes to what my colleagues were saying saying, I think we're trying to do two things, and we're not doing either one well. [01:43:21] And again, I go back to, let's narrow our focus. Let's look at what we can do well and get some depth in there. Instead of having this broad focus, then we're doing a little bit of everything, but not doing it well. [01:43:38] And I really want our kids to be global citizens. I see the value of that. I also see the value of our multilingual sometimes in this program and the non tangibles is that they get to be successful in these programs they get to show that they do know things so there are some non tangibles I think are very valuable but I really think we have to dig into this and look at how we can well look at how we can develop it to be successful no I understand and I think a number of board members have spoken about that so as I mentioned after missions mr. Frisch's comment we can as a next step provide some additional recommendations on what we might do in terms of aligning the [01:44:14] less content to its goals a little bit better I do want to say again we the program is not designed to create proficiency just in the flesh program the theory of action is that students will continue at a higher rate to take language learning and over the course of their k-12 experience develop more proficiency so I think that's another thing we need to probably clarify in our messaging so thank you miss lady thank you just to continue with the immersion question. Do we have Chinese immersion? Okay. And again, love my Japanese heritage families, but [01:44:51] with Chinese immersion, I think we need to prioritize that. And I'm not saying that just because Capa Nova is sitting here. I'm saying it because of the number of people who are taking Chinese, and it is expanding, and it is a global language that has a lot of merit to it. [01:45:07] And I believe we would have more than 7th and 11th and 8th once they got to middle school. That's why I'm uplifting that. Did I hear you say that the high school's piloting the language lab are TJ and Edison? Just TJ this year. Just TJ. So just so we're clear, I absolutely love this model because it does allow people to take the language that they want to take. And I think it's fantastic. Question, language for career applications, how many schools are teaching that? Just two this year. It got a lot, big slide for two schools. How many sections at [01:45:45] each of those schools well we'll have to get you the sections I mean it's the first year of the course so so my question is is it intended to be a standard offering it's an optional offering yeah every school has the ability to I understand optional offerings okay so I just want to echo the fact we need to survey families in flesh regarding their satisfaction like what meant benchmarks do they think we're meeting because I just think it's I think it's well-intended I want to have you know world languages in elementary but I think we just knew a better job native speakers versus non [01:46:22] native speakers this is a biggie for me because here's the thing I have one student in my history of doing things who came into Chinese as a non native speaker and made it through AP so my concern is we either need Chinese Korean Japanese you know we have Spanish for heritage speakers but for heritage speakers because if I'm a non heritage speaker I'm intimidated I walk into a classroom. Everyone is speaking the language about me, and I'm going to see my counselor in two minutes, right? So I think we need to think about that, right? I think that's the problem is, you [01:47:01] talked about in India, you talked about in Korea, everyone learned English. It was easy to teach that second language because you're only picking one, but we have, I cannot be out of time. Can I please finish? I just want to also say that program offerings, back to optional, when you talk about smaller schools. There's a difference between offering and teaching. [01:47:24] I can offer five languages. If I don't have enough student interest, I won't teach but three. But to make a decision because it's optional not to add it because it might cannibalize something else, let the students decide what they want to take based on what they pick. [01:47:41] I have more I could say, but I'll online during the day. We do online campus during the day. I've been asking for that for years. But thank you for the report, and I look forward to further conversations because I think this is a really robust conversation around things we care about and we want to do right to our for our family so thank you I'll take a turn I have a few questions the middle school expansion costs nothing is that correct yes but again something will have to be taken out of the course offerings to be able to do that right so it would substitute for something that that school is currently staffing now but there's no [01:48:20] additional staffing costs is there a reason we're not offering American sign language immersion or greater course offerings given that it's more inclusive as an attractive to special ed students I mean I think you know the general thrust of this conversation that I've tried to focus on is a lot of this is just due to cost right so we haven't had any new investments in programming and we haven't had a conversation with the board about policy priorities and goals in ten years so I mean those are really the two factors that are limiting what we're currently offering could one of the regional programs for less [01:48:58] commonly taught languages be American Sign Language well absolutely it could and I think again you know community interest data as well as you know board discussion would dictate what those commonly less commonly taught languages would be and same question about Arabic has there been discussion at any point or exploration of an Arabic immersion program again the interest I believe is there but we haven't been expanding programs due to budget constraints again just two series of miscellaneous questions the attrition rate for immersion in my experience by all three of my children did Spanish immersion at [01:49:36] Forton elementary they all became completely fluent heritage speakers from my wife's side of the family but the main loss of children in our area was to the local AAP Center so it I believe there's been some efforts to establish local AAP local level 4 and immersion schools so you don't have that loss can you talk a little bit about that yeah we're almost at a hundred percent of all of our elementary schools offering local AAP programming there's only two or three that don't do it now and it's really a operational issue more than anything and we're working to resolve some of those challenges and issues but [01:50:16] think the problem is some students are still choosing to go to the center because they do have that option and it fits better some students and families needs than staying at the local school but absolutely having the local AAP has helped reduce that attrition rate but it hasn't eliminated it and I saw the figure that 200 students have completed the online campus only for all levels of the language my question is how many students total have taken languages through the online campus because I don't have good insight into that we can get you a data point on that it's a lot more than 200 okay so so the online [01:50:51] campus is very abundantly used by students is that fair to say yes yes and then the language labs you're gonna have a teacher in the room who doesn't speak the language and then you're gonna have like mentors online where do those mentors come from are they contractors third-party organizations like participate learning or there's a lot of different ways you could do it but what we're piloting now is with the third-party contractor and what's the cost involved with with that so the cost to run a section of that and I tried to I've got it in the slides but I got to go back and look at it it's cheaper than [01:51:29] if we staff it ourselves okay yeah by about I think 25 30 percent cheaper than if we staff it ourselves okay mr. McElveen well thank you my taking my my first official turn here so with with this presentation I really want to thank you for bringing us concrete proposals at what I believe is a reasonable cost like when you spread it out over a number of years you bring the cost down significantly it's what this system has been doing with strategic plan work over many years before this superintendent with this superintendent I mean it's [01:52:07] been very effective to implement things that we want to implement whether it's robotics or athletic trainers things like that so I do think that's a good approach with this work we aren't going to solve this overnight I think and to that point I think that the no-brainer in here is extending language to seventh graders at the middle school given that it it gets us to the goal of having language acquisition earlier and it's at no cost talking about TTT I think that that world language should be core in our curriculum at the elementary level. [01:52:42] I've been saying this for years, dating back to 2016 and before, when we thought it would be core in the curriculum. But we needed to decouple it from TTT. It's what every other country does, to Seema's point, to Robin's point earlier. It should not be lumped in with everything else. [01:52:59] My experience in FCPS was growing up in the '90s, I got to participate in FLEX. And FLEX was a paid program after school very inequitable right and I wish I had had access to FLEX which would have brought it into the school day and giving me that opportunity even having taken FLEX in Spanish I went on to study Spanish for 10 years in formal study so I do think whether it's FLEX whatever doing that at a young age does inspire our students to pursue it later in terms of FLEX my elementary school was invoked. [01:53:37] So at Churchill Road, we made a concerted effort-- and by we, I mean the royal we, the school in particular, not me-- to revamp that curriculum, because there were a lot of family concerns. So it is possible. It's been done at individual schools. So we just need to expand those best practices throughout the system. [01:53:54] And I don't think that's rocket science. It's not going to take a long time. And just broadly, I think languages, and FLESS in particular, are one of the most inequitable things in the school system. I see our chief equity officer here. [01:54:10] And that's the biggest concern to me. And so that's why, when I see opportunities to expand this at every school, whether it's K-6, 3-6, that's where we need to start, so that every student in the system gets that same opportunity. And again, that's what's done in every country except this one. [01:54:29] And so the last point I'll make is on vertical articulation. That was a key point in the 2013 internationalization working group that was commissioned by this board. And we still haven't made it there. So I'm hopeful that we will continue that work. [01:54:49] Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I just wanted to highlight a couple of things as I came in a little bit late into the conversation. So my apologies regarding FLESS. It still stuns me that we have been OK for so many years with most of our elementary schools not having the opportunity to have FLESS. [01:55:09] It's either we have it for our elementary schools or we do not. So to me, that's kind of priority one in terms of an expansion. And I want to echo some of the things that Mr. McElveen just shared. But I also want to speak to the process in which we have added language, changed language. [01:55:27] That needs to be reviewed. Because at current, it is way too grassroots. If the school community doesn't come forward with a proposal to add or change language, then no activity happens. There has to be some central guideline that determines what we're going to have in the division, whether it is, as I've heard some of my other colleagues describe, whether it's one language across the board. [01:55:52] But I think that has to be accounted for. It should not be up to the school to rally to obtain and/or change the language that is offered. That's only if it has the opportunity to do so. And I want to raise back to the ABLE work because when Stephen-- I cannot recall his last name. [01:56:14] Gary, thank you. When he sat here, he gave us-- I thought were really good nuggets of information. We cannot offer everything everywhere and expect for all of it to succeed. We just are not able to do that. He mentioned it with many of some of the core academic classes. [01:56:33] He mentioned-- and I'm sure it is applicable to language as well. And I know we experienced the same not too recently in terms of art and music offerings into our schools, because it does cannibalize. It does offer opportunities for inconsistencies across what our students have access to. [01:56:55] So I would like for that to be a piece that is also reviewed as part of this greater conversation. And as we talked about, again, I apologize for catching some components, potentially having some feedback from FLESS parents in terms of what it means for their students as they moved up in the grade levels. [01:57:15] What do we capture from the parents from schools that do not have FLESS? Yeah, so in our last survey, which is a couple years old, we did survey parents and about 75% of the parents who don't have FLESS would like that programming in their schools, even if it meant less Triple T in other subjects. [01:57:35] But again, one of the things we're proposing to do here is an updated survey with additional information based on some of the questions that board members have raised tonight. We'd like to do that later this year. Thank you. Can you also speak a little bit to the criteria that was used to determine the pilot that I think you said is happening at TJ? [01:57:54] Is that the only place where that pilot is occurring? It is this year, and I think more schools would have been interested. We did offer the opportunity for schools to participate. Skyview we looked at quite a bit as well because students were coming from different places in the county but honestly the timeline for doing that was so late I think it was really difficult for schools to be able to do that but TJ has so many students not just from Fairfax County but you know Northern Virginia mr. McKay jumped at the opportunity to be part of that so there wasn't a criteria per se as much as there was an opportunity in schools [01:58:30] self-selected yeah to participate and you would have been able to support however many at least several more schools but only one came and said me okay thank you for that and as always you won't be surprised I'm going to raise this as we have the conversation regarding local APS we must make that program more consistent across the board not just in the language realm but across all of the other things that are that make up an AP program. Thank you. [01:59:02] Mr. Shostek. Thank you. So I just wanted to take a moment and ask a couple questions. First being that on on slide 25 there's a statistic here that 91% of DLI students met or exceeded expectations with the the junior PALS exam and I know that that was discontinued in 2020 but my question here is for and this is I think with the the actual guidelines did students who who are in in flesh today take this junior pals as well or do we not have any data [01:59:41] from that so we have different assessments for the different programs because DL eyes again like 12 hours a week versus 60 minutes a week so there are different assessments we don't have comprehensive assessment data for either program for all students because of post pandemic flexibilities around assessment so that's why we're reinstating a new assessment for DLI based on actual standards using the stamp external assessment and a new assessment for FLESS. Okay thank you so that was that was my first thing the other is about classroom time and so for classes for schools that do not have [02:00:21] FLESS or DLI they just have no world language education correct? That's right. Okay what do they do with that you know either 60 minutes or 12 hours is that with specials and and Triple T and they might have an additional special or elective or they might have more art time more music time more PE time theoretically okay it varies across schools and is that the same with with DLI like with the the the sort of reduced 12 hours a week what do they so for what do I have to cut a school doesn't have DLI it's not that they're cutting anything it's just that they're instructing all of their core subjects in English okay so the the schools with DLI they have their core subjects about [02:01:00] half of the subjects math science health cool is instructed in the second language thanks and and so this kind of goes into the secondary side of things as well so we have I think you mentioned that there was a pilot for algebra one being taught in Spanish is this sort of is this is there an idea here where this can be used to supplement like core language requirements like instead of taking Spanish one you would take algebra one in Spanish I don't think so because to take a core content class in a second language is gonna require some base level proficiency so for somebody who's a multilingual learner that would [02:01:39] make sense right in that target language but if you just enroll in in Chinese you know a social studies class taught in Chinese and you've never taken Chinese before it's gonna be too so the idea is this is after a couple years or so I guess then there and I guess to that would there potentially be some like syncing issues there because if you take say Algebra 1 or if you take you know you could start taking languages at a high school level in 8th grade and so you could do Spanish 1 8th grade Spanish 2 9th grade and at that point like a lot of people would have already taken Algebra 1 so how does that cycle in yeah so we weren't thinking necessarily of Algebra 1 for this okay that was just [02:02:18] kind of like a model we've already started down this road I think social studies classes are probably the best place to do this for a variety of different reasons we've got more flexibility from the state about our curriculum and how we assess students than we do in other subjects so really what a student would do this is our thought anyway that after you had reached level 4 of a language then you might be able to access a core content class in a different subject okay so this would be particularly for like seniors well students can start taking in 19 of our middle schools students can [02:02:53] start taking level one of a language so okay in seventh grade so you actually by a junior year it could be at that fifth year of a language so to that is that are you saying that you could take because I know at in Hayfield in the middle school side it would be you could take you could start in seventh grade but you would not get the full credit until eighth grade and you could instead do it in eighth grade and that would give you the full credit by itself is that how works in every middle school or is that is that really the model that we're trying to move everybody to is if you start in seventh grade it's okay all [02:03:28] right cool this would be really beneficial for our students coming out of immersion so that they can continue a higher level of language study so now they're taking a content area course in that language okay and I and I might be getting ahead of myself with with this next question but because this is the sort of the the like upper grade level especially junior senior year a lot of students take AP courses would there be an idea of extending this AP courses as well or maybe maybe okay yeah I think oh and this is last thing here I saw that [02:04:07] briefly there's a mention that I know that that we're going back to this or more to more objective assessments but there's a talk of optional observational assessments that were being used prior can you touch on what those exactly were yeah so so last year student our teachers were using observational assessments the option was whether or not they were recording them in performance matters which is our recording software really so all this year all teachers are going to be taking those assessments and putting them into performance matters so that we have that data and we can see how our students are doing and the pant the families have that data as well okay cool all right [02:04:47] thank you that was that was all I had we're gonna go to one minute go backs could everyone put their signs down and then put them back up if you actually want of one minute go back all right mr. moon thank you so I'm gonna be quick just couple of comments to make about since mr. Shostank mentioned about AP tests among the number of different world languages that we are offering there are I believe that four languages for which college board is not offering [02:05:18] AP test, correct? Arabic, Vietnamese, Russian, and Korean college board does not offer AP test, which significantly affects students' decision-making process, and that is unfair. If I'm not mistaken, a college board system may be, depending upon whether offering those AP tests for those languages, realize bringing more profits to the organization, which for a Nonprofit organization with a sitting on more than a billion dollars of assets and more than 200 million dollars of earning plus [02:05:56] Profits it just doesn't make any sense. I hope that we'll do something about that and my Time is out. I might have a little bit of good news on that it does look like College Board is Starting to offer some flexibility not by creating their own assessments because they've made the business decision that that's going to be too expensive on their end and and we've I've worked with two different superintendents to write and advocate to the College Board to expand access but they are opening an opportunity through another external exam that they're saying that they'll [02:06:32] grant credit for which would include its Korean what are the other languages Catherine and it's Korean Arabic Portuguese and I'm trying to think Russian Russian thank you so we might have a little bit of good news we're working with them I could you provide some information absolutely thank you Miss Marin so here's my thing when we when the superintendent proposed that we expand robotics she made it happen for title one schools I just emailed you all and this is in the public report the list the breakdown of high schools and middle schools and where programs are okay we have nine middle schools with [02:07:09] three languages and four with two it's gonna be hard to say this all out loud nonetheless I have seen the superintendent look at programs and say wow this school doesn't have a robotics team this school doesn't have the theater program as robust and make budgetary changes we have to understand where to move money to make this happen we need to understand like what are the teachers say I'm thinking of so many things the boundary work like we discussed proximity to the kid are they going to have to leave their base school do they have to [02:07:45] have transportation it's the same discussion with AAP magnet schools IB we're just perpetuating our same approach and until we really decide what our values are if we value world instruction then that's got to guide everything I didn't just say just just one brief comment I appreciate miss Marin off offering the offerings of where what schools offer what languages in the report in the appendix a on page 28 we have a full chart of the offerings [02:08:16] by school so I I'd like to request sorry any other go backs so we'd like to for next steps request consensus of the board on a few of the options that we've discussed first for the board to develop an implementation plan for review by the [02:08:46] the board for the language lab expansion which can you bring up slide 47 to the language lab is the first option under secondary costing the amounts shown on the lines above per year and again not this would not be a decision but simply a plan that could be reviewed by the board for review is there consensus of the board for an implementation plan to be developed for the language the [02:09:25] language lab option okay yes you have a question I'm so sorry can you just be a little clearer in terms of what we are providing consensus to is it just to develop a plan to see how this could be achieved that we will then review correct would that be the case with each of these options yes okay can we sorry I thought we would use the next step stop document for this and then we get votes [02:10:05] on priority okay we can do that yep we'll get our next steps document together and then I can send it out to the board mr. I was still in my turn but sure but III appreciate wanting to look at the next steps document but that's not where we vote for priority that's supposed to be for questions to help us make a decision and I know we've had this conversation since 2020 so I continue to share it I mean if we're going to make it can can that slide go back up please [02:10:42] if the idea is that we are going to make a decision to try to give staff some direction to move forward I mean this is the moment or the board meeting is the moment I would not want this to be in a next steps document to for us to be voting there on this mr. Frisch so I agree in principle about what the purpose of next steps is that would not preclude the board from having a sheet of a Google sheet or whatever, where I can mark whether I think something should be in the [02:11:20] bucket of things to prioritize, and then maybe even, and I don't think we've done this before, but putting a number associated with the order of priority that I might have. I think if you did that, you'd have a clearer picture of where, not only whether or not a board member, yes, wants or doesn't want something, but how strongly they feel about different elements of the proposed options. [02:11:47] FOIA does not preclude us from having feedback forms like that. And then those results could help inform the board's conversations in the future. But the Next Steps document is designed for the purposes of, as Dr. Anderson said, what do I need to vote on something? [02:12:04] Not voting on something, as it were. We could develop a Google form, basically, working with the meeting managers that we could if Miss Lady and mr. McDaniel are agreeable to to send out as part of chairs notes that's fine with me my concern was I wasn't thinking I was elevating priorities here so I would have to kind of rethink where my brain was I didn't do that in the conversation and I'm not sure my colleagues did either so that's why the next steps seemed logical [02:12:43] to me okay well we really appreciate everyone's thoughtful conversation we appreciate all the work done by staff and thank you thank all the advocates for coming out tonight we'll be coming back with a survey that allows prioritization of different options around each of the options and certainly raising issues such as you know Chinese Arabic ASL immersion and what we can do to strengthen the flesh program as well as immersion I'm so sorry mr. done may I ask a follow-up question I just want to have some clarity in terms of what we're doing next what we're doing next is we're having some time to think and to [02:13:22] kind of absorb all the conversations of today and then the board's going to be asked to prioritize the items that were that continued to disappear from the screen can you just keep this slide up yes so we're going to be one two three there's four areas so I'm going to prioritize number one number two number three four with the four sections here or is it five I think it's five can I Can I answer your question? Yeah, I just want to understand what I'm doing so in the presentation is very dense with information Which I appreciate but also makes simplifying complex [02:14:01] I think there are multiple options that need to receive board feedback in terms of Their support for the development of an implementation plan and what that looks like which would be brought back to the board for review and approval One what one could be the language lab, which is the first line up there The second could be the online expansion, which is the second row The third is the middle school expansion, which is no cost not listed on that slide, but has been discussed at length The fourth is content courses and target languages [02:14:37] Which no cost has been provided to that but has been piloted to some extent. We probably need more information The fifth is immersion expansion, and a proposal has been put forward to add at least one immersion program in every pyramid and three new regional programs in less commonly taught languages. [02:15:00] Six would be DLI assessment, which would be $35,000 per year. It sounded from the discussion that there was support for that. And then I think there's, you know, specific languages that might be explored as possibilities for prioritization, for immersion, such as Chinese, Arabic, ASL. [02:15:18] And then for FLESS, I believe there needs to be, based on the discussion, there should be a consensus developed about whether we want to have staff come back with a proposal how to strengthen FLESS or how to rebrand FLESS, perhaps also to decouple FLESS from TTT, if that's possible within budgetary constraints, and also to develop an implementation plan to make classics accessible and equitably available to all students at non-immersion elementary schools which would be perhaps grades 3 through 6 or [02:15:53] perhaps K through 6 those are those are options that need to be there's a lot of options that we need board feedback on and I think that also highlights the need and we'll talk to the chair and vice chair about having a further work session to discuss some of these options past past the new year okay if I could just in my question the clarity that I was looking for thank you so there are more than five options that is clear yeah so what I believe I'm hearing is as a board member I am going to be provided with this list of potentially 10 things just like we have done sometimes with budget and I'm going to identify my [02:16:30] priorities we all going to do this and collect that collective data is going to come back at a future meeting to say that this is where the board lands which will then indicate what the next action will be by staff is that accurate that that's my understanding and intention subject to the chair directing otherwise is there has a firm accurate okay thank you so at this point we're recessing at 7:28 we're going to take a three-minute recess to reset because we got to jump [02:17:08] right back in with legislation and we will move to the legislative component of our work session Dr. Reed I will be lobbying it to you shortly so sit down [02:17:37] please and thank you okay before we get started I do want to thank Mr. Molloy for his work on this before I lob it to Dr. Reed I do want to share we have two sets of presentations this evening we have the first part which is the priority I'm sorry which is the main program of both state and federal positions the board did approve the priority positions just a couple of weeks ago and the [02:18:14] second set of presentations will be speaking to some of the work that is expected of each school division at the SBA and as the delegate there will be some decisions we I will require from the board in order to represent us during the delegates assembly so without any further ado I would like to turn it over to dr. Reed do you have an introduction for us thank you dr. Anderson just we're very excited to share the update so I'll have Michael Malloy begin mr. Malloy the floor is yours all right thank you and [02:18:52] thank you dr. Reed so good evening everybody tonight we're going to talk about your state and local legislative positions so without further ado we're going to move on into the program I don't want to take too much of your time tonight if at all possible so tonight's objective is for you to have a discussion about and update your legislative program state and federal legislative position language now just as a reminder and to kind of set expectations for what we're going to talk about and dr. Anderson mentioned [02:19:31] this is your overall state and federal legislative program is really made up of three components. The first component is your adopted state and federal priority positions. Those are the annual positions that you identify as among the most important for the upcoming year. [02:19:52] And so it's a subset of the state and federal legislative positions, and those you have already as a board adopted on October 8. The second component of your legislative program is a joint position that you hold in conjunction with the Board of Supervisors, which has historically been focused mostly on education funding. [02:20:10] That's kind of in progress, and we're not going to talk about that this evening. What we are going to talk about this evening is your state and federal legislative positions, which are the broader set of positions. So they cover more ground than your priority positions do. It's much more robust, and it's much more breadth to the positions that are there so before I launch right in because the slide takes us right to where the position change recommendations are you should have two additional documents in addition to this presentation that were [02:20:48] included with the with the agenda item they're both exactly the same document one is a clean version and one is a strikethrough version of your existing legislative positions. A lot of what you're going to see on the document is very familiar to you because you already talked about it at your September 8th work session. There were some changes that were made between then and now. I'm going to focus really only in on the changes that were made between that September 8th discussion and now just to speed things along. I do want to highlight that if you look at the document it looks like a ton of changes [02:21:26] have been made, and that is technically accurate, but most of them are editorial. The program used to be structured so that every single legislative position in the program would have a preamble that said the Fairfax County School Board supports or the Fairfax County School Board opposes, and then the language would follow that. [02:21:49] The new format is now that there is a header that says that, and every position is now just a plain language version of that position. That required a ton of editing, but it didn't change the substance of the positions at all. It just changed the way that they were structured and the way that they were wording, had a lot of verb tense changes and those types of things. [02:22:08] So it looks different, but the position changes. Unless it's redlined on the redlined document, it's exactly the language from your previous legislative program document. [02:22:23] The other thing that you will notice is that a couple of state positions have been split. There was a couple of very long positions, one on state accountability, standards of accreditation, and standards of learning. It's been broken up into those three component parts. [02:22:40] So now there's an accreditation position, there's a standards of learning position, and there's now a student graduation position, which got pulled out of that. And then the state funding position has been broken up into four constituent parts. [02:22:55] So you'll see more headers. But all that is, is that's just a stylistic change in terms of how the program itself is structured. So to get right into the changes that have happened between the September 8th document and today, under the College and Workforce Readiness position, we've rephrased that position to make it clear that the position is about a general increase in state funding for career and technical education programs in Virginia. [02:23:32] Moving on to the next page, in the new standards of accreditation school accountability position, there was a language that you added as part of your priority position adoption. And just as an aside, there were several places in your priority positions, both on the state side in the federal side that did not have language in the main legislative program. [02:23:55] Since you have adopted the priorities, we just imported the language from the priorities into this document so that it continues that this document-- that the priorities are a subset of language in this document. So the one change that was made in the standard accreditation and school accountability position because of the priorities that you adopted included return to long-term goals interim measures of progress for accountability that refers primarily to the federal accountability system where they are recalculating the targets every year and they're not doing it until after the school year has ended so you [02:24:34] no longer have targets to aim at you just have a benchmark that's reset every single year which makes it difficult to plan for the longer term under the standards of learning position we had a recommendation come in from staff about asking for some additional options at the state level for students who are not eligible for the Virginia alternate assessment program but who also have challenges with accessing the full the full SOL curriculum and regular [02:25:11] standards of learning assessments so they're looking for something that might be some sort of a middle ground so that's what that change includes there under student safety you already had a position about pedestrian safety but it was relatively general this adds in a little bit more specifics and it in some ways matches up with some of the things that the county talks about in terms of their responsibilities for roads so just increased coordination on speed limits on state maintained roads and additional state funding for infrastructure [02:25:48] improvements and roadway safety improvements I will just highlight this page. Nothing has changed since the September 8th program discussion. These are all of the positions that have been dropped out of the program either because they were achieved or because they're really no longer issues. Things have changed enough at the state level that the issue that they referred to doesn't rise to the level of needing a legislative position anymore. Shifting gears and moving over to the federal legislative positions. Again, just in [02:26:27] terms of style of the program positions you will notice that there are a substantial number of new headers so each position there's a substantial number of new position headers like for e-rate and for temporary protected status most of those are again stylistic it's just a matter of now the federal program looks a little bit looks more like the way the state program is is structured and again a lot of that had to do with the priority positions you adopted because you adopted some more robust priorities of for things that in [02:27:04] your previous program may have been a single line or even just a couple of words in an existing legislative position so we really tried to flesh that out based on the priorities that you've adopted and you can see that in the E-rate position under ESSA we did add a new position talking about alternative accountability measures for our non-traditional schools. This is a position that's already in your state accountability position. Indications that we've received from the state is that the barrier to making those alternative accountability measures is actually at the federal level not at the state level. [02:27:40] So we wanted to make sure that there was parallel language on both on both sides. And again because of the priority position you filled out a little bit more on your food and nutrition program position, with a reference to the federal SNAP program. [02:27:57] Head Start, Medicaid, same story. These are exactly the positions that you have already adopted in your priorities. They're just being carried over into the state and federal legislative positions. [02:28:12] Again, the same for temporary protected status. And then the last one is one that was teed up for the September 8th discussion, which dealt with just the continued existence of the US Department of Education and its functions, which have been shifted out to various other agencies at the federal level. [02:28:34] I mean, that's what I have in terms of the legislative program changes. Again, these are changes highlighted from your September 8th discussion. Just so you know-- Dr. Anderson, do you want to-- Yes, I'll just kind of talk about this piece a little bit, because I think it's worth mentioning we had the legislative briefing just last Thursday and gathered quite a bit of information. [02:29:02] And so the legislative team we met last week to determine the next steps. Obviously, one of the primary goals is to be responsive to pending work that the legislators are working on or will be presenting. [02:29:21] So we will be, one, completing a summary for school board members who are not present. We want to ensure that you have the same data that board members who were in the room were able to gather. So that's one of the first things to come as a follow up to the legislative briefing. [02:29:39] Secondly, there are some positions that were articulated that require some follow up. So we will be reaching out to those lawmakers to ensure we understand what is it that they are planning, where they're heading. Because the most important piece is the feedback form that we will be completing to help inform their work. [02:29:59] Again, all of this was in an effort to not be behind the eight ball. It's not just be playing defense, but to play offense. So we need to ensure we have clarity, and we provide them with that feedback in a timely manner so that all bills are not filed before we're able to be responsive to their positions. [02:30:20] It may look very similar to the impact statements that we developed to the priority positions, or it may look a little bit different based on where it is that they're heading. At the end of the day, it has to be informative and constructive and details to help craft their bills in a way that is a positive impact to Fairfax County public schools. [02:30:45] Take your legislator to school month is also another opportunity where we're going to be able to have further conversation with legislators on what they've presented to us, which we'll also share with you all. Just by the way, I need to go back a little bit. [02:31:03] Whatever feedback form we provide to those legislators based on what they shared with us last week be reviewed and approved by the board it may not be all of them at the same time we will be prioritizing the ones at the most key but it may be on a rolling basis so look for that to come to you for your consensus with again trying to be timely to being responsive to them can you pass this just give one of each the take your legislator to month opportunities that I think I've sent a [02:31:37] couple of alerts about VSBA has is also a great opportunity, a great chance to share our priorities with those individuals. I remember a couple of years ago when Delegate Herring came to visit a Glen Forest and we talked about the cut scores, something she had not heard about at all. And this was at least a year ago that we've been talking about this. So in that conversation I informed her of things that she had not heard anywhere else and what I shared last year and I thought I'd be a little bit more official is to actually give you a [02:32:15] sense of the data that I provide to all of the legislators that I take to school visits this folder I usually make two copies because I want them to have one to take with and one for their legislative aide who usually comes into the room so if you take a look at this on the left side of the of the folder it's just an at-a-glance just kind of talking points and behind there you will see the priority positions with I I think we have done a really good job of fleshing out so this will be current and in front of them on the right hand side [02:32:49] are some FCPS data we have the sustaining excellence document an agenda a sample agenda an FCPS at a glance because it's striking to them that if we were to pull and this is something that you've shared quite a bit dr. Reed if we were to identify our students with disabilities for example that would be the 12th largest school division in Virginia or our students who are economically disadvantaged that would be I want to say was it the ninth no [02:33:26] seven seven seven it's one is students with disabilities one is is it can obligate its advantage and one is our students who are multilingual just those groups of students would be the seventh ninth and twelve largest school divisions in Virginia that's a striking data point and when you're having those one-on-one conversations in front of you know principals that also informs the principals so that at-a-glance sheet is always very helpful and then what you'll have behind there are some other data points again this is important to them in some way for me to share with them the first one being a Mason district [02:34:03] schools obviously you'll do your own if you are so interested Mason district schools data set as well as a district comparison in terms of where we fall into this category and all of this will be provided for you electronically so you can use it as you see fit the second set this is letter C this is elementary school data and you'll see across the header we have the grades and one of the things that I think is always very interesting is the last column the great schools rating this furthers the argument that the great schools ratings [02:34:41] are disadvantaging schools that are that have high levels of multilingual students and high levels of students and poverty so this is always a piece that goes over very well and these are current information and because we have so many elementary schools not all of them fit so I select the schools that are in regions two and six which is the schools that I serve D has all of the middle schools including the ones that are represented by other magisterial members again it's the same data and it just offers that information to our [02:35:16] legislators just to help cement where we are as a division and E is for high schools and the F this is one that I have found out rather legislators have said that this is helpful to them in terms of being able to communicate with different parts of our community where the main language is something other than English and I congressman Don Beyer when I shared this with him a few years ago it was quite noticeable when he also targeted the schools that he represents in the Mason district he targeted his information and literature in the [02:35:55] languages of those communities so that's a piece that I provide and then we have G which is just some general information about Mason district I love this kind of data and I know it's a lot but it is something that I share to help uplift the needs of the Mason district schools just to help really identify and focus where some supports may be needed so all of this is just a sample for you use it if you choose to parts of it none of it my feelings will not be hurt but it is something that I do use with my with the legislators when I do take them to [02:36:33] schools to visit again all of these documents will be available for you virtually it's already in a Google slide so that you can adjust them as you see fit or not at all but I find this to be a really helpful takeaway for them to be able to speak about the Mason district schools after our visits so that's the piece that I wanted to highlight and the third bullet that is on the chart there we'll have many opportunities that are coming up for lobbying I'm really hoping that this year we not only focus on speaking to the Northern Virginia [02:37:08] delegation but we also branch out and speak to others who are decision makers that are not necessarily Fairfax representatives so when we have these opportunities and we will have a calendar that will be coming out pretty soon for board members to sign up to ensure that we have representation in all of these different events that are happening in Richmond or not or or in other places because Mr. McElveen and I can't be at all the places and there's 12 of us and we could certainly divide and conquer so I think that's what I [02:37:43] have with that piece so thank you okay just to piggyback dr. Anderson and what you just said one other document that you may want to wish to consider adding to this it's a longer document but it has some incredibly good information is the opening of schools report that dr. Reed did recently it has a lot of the same information but it has a lot more detail and data as I said I know it's a lot longer document but there are definitely things in there that are some of the things in here were pulled from that but I didn't want it to be too much but you're definitely correct there are some additional things we could have done together to absolutely make this more robust so before letting you go and [02:38:22] start your conversation about this legislative program is is on the agenda for new business Thursday night and then it'll be up for your final action on November 12th and with that we move on to board discussion all right so folks one of the other things that I want to be sure that we highlight is this program it's not a one and done because that is not how the work is done so while we will be updating this and we have a pretty firm timeline we will treat this in the same way that we treat the governance manual when things come up [02:39:00] up that require our attention or a change in position we will be able to bring up the changes and have the board approve them very similarly to how we approach the governance manual so this is just the first opportunity I do know we have some interest in reformatting and perhaps making this more digital so that lawmakers who are very busy can very quickly access a document and know exactly what the Fairfax County position is particularly if we are going to [02:39:39] treat this as a document that we update regularly it needs to be digital so we're not flying back and forth with various copies to those who are in charge and we're trying to communicate with so having said that if there are any questions comments positions that have not been considered positions that you are considering bringing this is the opportunity for us to hear some of those discussions mr. Frisch that is a relic from the last conversation my apologies [02:40:14] but you can still speak I don't see any any placards placards I don't see any placards that are turned up okay mr. Dunn first of all I'd like to thank dr. [02:40:32] Anderson for all the work and mr. McLean that's been done it's a it's a great improvement and mr. Malloy and his team it's much improved and I do believe that many of the priorities that are articulating here that may have not been there previously such as seeking state funding for CTE provides clarity I also believe it provides an opportunity to have a conversation with other similarly situated school districts within Virginia municipalities county governments and obviously state legislators about what we are trying to [02:41:11] do and to build coalitions so I hope we're not just having you know one-to-one conversations with state legislators but we start to think strategically as a division what can we do with other school divisions who might have similar interests maybe on some things they'll disagree with us but they might agree with us on others and on those things on which they agree what are the coalitions we can build to get that done and I I do appreciate the priorities the kind of shorter list of priorities that says these are the issues where we really want to be proactive in building coalitions because as we shift from [02:41:47] being reactive to proactive that will take some some effort and mr. Malloy if if you require additional resources you know outside lobbying firms or other things I hope you'll come to the board and and share that with us but if you have any initial thoughts I would welcome that so I I think that the the changes in the program is Dr. Anderson's articulated and I think you articulate as well there they are definitely improvements in terms of making it clearer and again being able to subdivide the program back down into some smaller chunks to make sure that legislators have in front of them we do work regularly. I work regularly with colleagues in other school divisions [02:42:26] that are similarly have similar positions to me. We also work very closely with VSBA, the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, VEA, other other statewide organizations, and for the most part kind of the broad top-line positions that you hold in education funding, pedestrian safety, other things there is a lot of commonality across school divisions, large and small, urban and rural is a lot of interest so we'll continue to pursue those opportunities and work with other school divisions for that kind of force multiplier as we go down to the General Assembly and just to add to that mr. done there are two [02:43:06] places where I believe there is high levels of commonality across the Commonwealth one is the school funding because that would apply to everyone everyone is looking for the J Lark study to be realized rather the recommendations to be realized because that impacts all 133 school divisions secondarily is the accountability and an assessment of schools that impacts everyone those are two places where I believe we could begin some conversations [02:43:39] to really coalesce around some issues mr. Dunn will you finish with your comments I'm done thank you okay thank you mr. Dannon good evening I was really glad to see the new addition especially on pedestrian safety and also on career and technical education I had a great call with my c-tech he's on Alexa Krizelle last week about that so I know something we talked early on about and she's very clear like the bottom line is we you know we need more funding right [02:44:16] this stuff you know it's very important and we need the state to so I was glad to see that last week's briefing last week we heard it gosh it's going quick we heard two weeks ago I guess some of the members of the delegation working on bills around use of technology in schools and I know we've been trying to be very thoughtful of crafting a nuanced policy that's going to stand the test of time so I'm not sure what you've heard but I do want to share that you know my hope that we can partner with these legislators to identify areas where we [02:44:50] really could use the state support such as you know testing and so forth as well like we talked at the last board meeting about the Lexia state requirements and so forth for Erie I'm also curious if for opportunities and again nobody has to answer this now but you know video we can can lobby these tech companies to provide some more independent research on the efficacy of their projects as well as providing different kind of age differentiation and so forth and research that we could be using in our own work I also want to commend you know relatedly I'm staying germane you know internally FCPS has done a lot of [02:45:29] work such as blocking the generative AI search results but that's something else that I think we could use our collective power to help advocate on are those kind of changes with some of our vendors right recognizing these vendors work across multiple divisions and we're just one division among many another final thought too is the I'm curious if the general assembly could require or bring legislation requiring ed tech companies to register in some capacity with the video we and get some kind of a you know accreditation based on independent research and so forth and provide something that would include privacy protections so for there's something I think in my home of New York State where [02:46:09] they're providing some kind of standards for divisions that like an accreditation process for those so that's all appreciate all the great work you have really done an amazing job putting all this together and seeing this through you're setting a very high standard for how we should approach these kind of work so thank you thank you mr. Dan and miss Dixit so I'm gonna start with the same thing that you did really good job with this legislative priorities but both state for state and federal and I like this preact preactive rather [02:46:47] reactive proactive approach the one thing I wanted to see is and and I know generally this is you dr. Anderson asking about this but I'm going to take that I wanted to see if we can establish a legislative tracking process that identify our priorities and and outcomes and the next step so the board can evaluate effectiveness of our advocacy that is actually a very good question I I do know two places where that happens. [02:47:19] And I have greater access to one place. VSBA does have tracking. It's just ensuring that we are monitoring the priorities that we've laid out. But I also don't want to take away from Mr. Malloy's job. [02:47:36] So would you like to speak to how you track bills? So when we're in session, we track bills in a number of ways. When we have a main database, we basically literally read through every single bill, identify anything that could possibly have an impact on FCPS. [02:47:53] So we go through 3,000 bills. I think last year I identified maybe 400 or so that could have some sort of nexus. And that's everything from things that are obviously education related, SOLs, standards of accreditation, to things like mandating insurance benefits, to changes in workers' compensation requirements. [02:48:14] So we keep all of that in the database. We identify any positions that kind of link into the board's particular priorities. And we monitor those as they go through. We update as the process goes on. As bills fall by the wayside, they get kind of shoved off to the side. [02:48:32] And that list gets shorter and shorter as we go through. Every week, we provide a report, and we're going to be changing the format of the report based on some of the work that we're doing here, but every week we have provided a kind of a weekly update on the status of bills. Initially it will be a kind of a narrative discussion of here are some key bills that we're paying attention to, and then as we go through that narrative will become a listing of these bills remain active within the process so we we do that and then after session we do go through and [02:49:10] you know you saw one of the slides here were positions that that had been achieved so those are things that were either adopted during the general assembly session or were adopted by the Virginia Board of Education that allows you to take positions that you had pull them out of your legislative program because there's something that has been accomplished so we we do a lot of that we do a lot of that work and but obviously with the new committee we're going to be changing the the processes that we go through during session and how we communicate and we can build some of that into some of the new [02:49:48] communication processes because the goal mistakes it is for us to be more responsive but also more communicative with the board as a whole so we will need to find a way to track that but I also want to say this and I don't think I could say this enough we do a very very good job I think of speaking to the legislators that represent Fairfax County they are not the only decision makers that's not the majority of what happens in Richmond we have to go beyond the borders of Fairfax County legislators in order to tell people our story you know for example in that work plan we've added everybody who's on the [02:50:28] Education Committee. How many people from the Fairfax County delegation is on the Education Committee for the Senate? For the Senate it's two and two out of 15. It's two out of 15 in the Senate and it's one out of 22 for the House Education Committee. That's a lot of people that are not that we're not talking to but are making those decisions. So those are the individuals that we really need to reach to in addition to our local representatives. [02:50:55] and that just just to jump in that's something that we do on on the ground when we're in Richmond obviously because we're attending all of these meetings we're we're in front of these legislators where we go to every single subcommittee full committee meeting so we have those conversations now I think the the next step in that with working with dr. Anderson and mr. McIlvain is to work you all into some of those conversations a little bit more not obviously asking you to come down and live with us in Richmond during the General Assembly session. However, there are there are ways that you can you can be in a little bit closer contact with with legislators and have an impact on [02:51:34] what's going on. One caution that I would make in terms of determining effectiveness is if you've done this job for even a minute you will know that there are a thousand reasons why a bill passes and there are ten thousand reasons why a bill fails. It is very difficult to point to one thing or one person or one statement or one anything that said this is the reason why this particular piece of legislation or this particular budget amendment went forward or didn't go forward so you know we need to be we need to be cautious in [02:52:09] terms of how we how we determine effectiveness just because of the vagaries of the legislative process you've all you've all have seen it that you know incredibly good ideas fall by the wayside for a myriad of reasons and incredibly bad ideas become law and we argue about them for years after they've after they've become law so it's just you know we need we need to kind of make sure that we're reflecting the way the process works if we do some sort of that work thank you for that answer but just to add on that that I know there are other people who would like to advocate for FCPS and funding it's not just the [02:52:49] board members so it but the process a little cumbersome to for general public to understand the legislative priorities. What is the easiest way to get to our constituents so they can also reach out to the delegates and the senators? [02:53:07] I know senators send us emails and the bills they're working on. But I think it's like we hear from them more than we go to them for what their priorities are. So any thoughts? So I would say one part of the process you've already started to do, which is the reconfiguration of your legislative priorities. [02:53:29] Legislative priorities are no longer just a one sentence. The Fairfax County School Board supports X. It is now an explanation for here's why this is an issue, here's exactly what we support, and here are the potential benefits that can come from that support. That, I think, was the first foray into providing information that's a little bit more digestible to the broader public, to be able to take that and say, hey, OK, FCPS is saying this. [02:53:58] Oh, here are the reasons why they're supporting it. And here's the act that they're supporting. That gives them supporting material to go have the same conversations with their legislators. The weekly updates that we do, again, we're going to be making some changes in those. But those can sort of reflect those types of things as well. [02:54:17] So that can be made available more broadly. So it's sent to you, but we can make those available a little bit more broadly just to highlight what the key issues are during that week and a little bit of information, potentially advocacy information about whatever the particular issue is as it's coming up. [02:54:39] So we can build that into the process as we go forward. Just to add to that, I think the public is aware of some of these bills as they're funneling their way through when we have conversations about them. It typically had been, we adopt this program in October, November, December, whatever the timeline, and then we never talk about it again until the next year. [02:55:01] So the public doesn't have an opportunity to come in. It doesn't have to be every bill, because there's thousands of them, and there will be hundreds that make it through. But the ones that are the most pertinent, those could be things that we're having discussions about at work sessions, at the dais, and then giving that guidance to teachers, to parents who are interested in how those bills could potentially impact them, to go and give them a path to making their voices heard. [02:55:30] So I see that as an opportunity as well that we have not yet tapped into fully. OK, my last point-- sorry, this is going to be the last. So PTA is really interested to do their advocacy, and they're already planning their events and going to the legislative assembly and talking about FCPS and education funding. [02:55:52] Public school, the biggest supporter for us is PTA for public education. And CTE, our advisory committee and the members there, they are very passionate about getting more CTE courses. So I just want to make sure like we, SEPTA and ACSD, like all our advisory committee committees are they understand the full breadth of what we are trying to do here and we work together with them thank you thank you you're giving me some thoughts there that just come up thank [02:56:26] you for that mr. fresh I appreciate the work that's been done here one area that I think would be helpful as well as we continue to refine the approach to our legislative program would be providing board members with you know or developing a system for providing board members with toolkits that we can use in our social media and our newsletters not only around the program and our priorities generally but when there are topic areas of interest that are [02:57:00] emergent that might even be more important the other thing as I was sitting here thinking about the comments about expanding our reach I think it's extremely important that we that we try not to bite off more than we can chew before we've perfected the essential right that said I have zero doubt that on this board we have relationships with everybody in the Fairfax delegation and they in turn have very close relationships with their colleagues so [02:57:38] mapping out we I know that you've already mapped out our relationships mapping out the relationships of our Fairfax delegation so that if I'm close friends with X and they tell me I'm that they are friends with this person and that person they can provide an introduction that's a low bar ask for a member of our delegation and maybe we can reach out to the school systems that they represent to partner with a board member from their area area to go to a meeting with them particularly when it comes to the jail like recommendations which impact all of the public school divisions I was talking to delegate [02:58:15] Watts recently and we were going over which is essentially the urban crescent of Virginia and the commonalities across all sorts of regions that one might not even expect in the Commonwealth so I think as we begin to look at that I think the first step is figuring out who has those relationships that we already have friends with or relationships with and then maybe taking it a step further with coordination with others thank you that's a good idea and I know exactly what document you're referring to because I had the same conversation with her at some point when she was just crafting it and I think those are good [02:58:54] start. Dr. Anderson if I can just reinforce one point that Mr. Frisch just made if you can if as much as you can foster relationships with your school board colleagues the likelihood that a legislator is going to listen to someone is going to be a school board member from their jurisdiction they will I mean they will absolutely listen to you all, I mean you know that that's that's that's a given but at the end of the day you know how you know how representation works is they're much more likely to be responsive to the superintendent from their jurisdiction to the to the the school board members from their [02:59:30] jurisdiction so fostering those conversations at VSBA and and other places I think is really critical critical for for your potential success thank you mr. Dunn sorry okay mr. McIlvain okay mr. Malloy did you have any closing statements before we go to the next part no as I said this will be this will be posted for new business for Thursday night and then final action [03:00:05] will come up on November 12th I believe it is thank you and I just want to reminder I did ask some of you to take a look at some small components again we're just trying to find some small ways to attack this very big program to make it more user-friendly more targeted more explicit all of the things and so those of you who've started to look at those small components I thank you and Mr. Malloy has access to to those edits so we will make sure that those show up [03:00:41] and again if there are new positions or if we have a position that we need to present differently please be sure that we get that information as soon as possible so that it could be represented as we move forward in the approval process miss lady yeah thanks I just wanted to take an opportunity to show appreciation for this hard work I know you all have had a big lift with some of the things that we did in terms of making this a committee of the whole so I just really appreciate the time and energy and hours and I think the weekly meetings have been very beneficial so just big thank you to the chair and vice [03:01:19] chair and also to mr. Malloy and dr. Ivey thank you we're hoping to set a playbook so we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel but that's going to be what it is for this year a little bit before you go I think this will be a great time again as we want to lift up issues I had it in the secondary document but an update on the FOIA bill speaking of things that are timely and emerge it so speaking of bills that can die for a myriad of reasons so yesterday the the meeting subcommittee of the FOIA council met their charge was to take [03:01:56] delegate Cohen's bill which at their September meeting the full committee had kind of come to some some consensus about what that bill should look like and that was to move from a meeting is more three or more members to meeting is four or more members. The issue that was coming back to the to the meeting subcommittee was to determine whether or not that should be a blanket change across the Commonwealth for any board of any size, so boards of seven or that, or if there should be some sort of a line that the current rules stay in place for boards of a certain size and the new rules would only apply to boards [03:02:36] of a different size. There were three different competing proposals that were brought to this committee. The chair of the subcommittee is the former executive director of the FOIA Council and had made it very publicly known that she did not support going forward with anything. That committee got themselves wrapped around the axle in terms of their conversation and ended up tabling the legislation or tabling the discussion. Now in legislative world there are a million ways to do away with the bill but there are also several ways to to bring bills back from having been done away with. [03:03:14] And just to let you know that that bill, because it was tabled, can be brought back up off the table by legislative process. So there's already discussions. And I know Dr. Anderson's been having discussions already with Delegate Cohen and with other members. [03:03:33] There are some legislative members on the FOIA Council to have that bill brought back up off the table with a lot more clarity about what exactly it's intending to do and have that discussion at their November meeting. This would be in front of a full FOIA council. [03:03:50] I believe their meeting is on Monday, November 16. So it's right before you all head to Williamsburg for VSBA. But the story's not over. So we're going to make every effort that we can in working with you all and with legislators and other folks to try and get that bill brought back up. [03:04:10] Now, again, because I always like to make sure everybody understands the legislative process. Just because a bill makes it through the FOIA commission does not mean it goes into effect. All that is is that is an endorsement from the FOIA commission for legislation. [03:04:26] Delegate Cohen or someone else would have to bring a bill to the 2027 General Assembly, and it would have to go through the regular process. What the FOIA Commission endorsement does is it allows the member to put on the bill summary, this is a recommendation of the Virginia FOIA Commission, which holds some weight in terms of the legislative process. [03:04:47] Because for an issue like FOIA, the General Assembly won't consider it themselves before they've sent it to the FOIA Commission for vetting. So having that kind of stamp of approval from the FOIA Commission is important, but again, not deterministic. [03:05:03] You still have to go through the entire legislative process in 2027. We've got to get past the first step first. Just to add to that, because on this issue, we already have a board statement that has already been vetted. That was a statement that I delivered in July, August, somewhere around that time frame. [03:05:25] I had planned on crafting-- and again, this just occurred very recently-- I had planned on crafting a plan to share with the board in terms of how we move forward and how to utilize that statement, not just from us to Marcus Simon, who is going to be very key on that committee. [03:05:43] He and I have already been in discussion, because while they can bring it to full committee, the question is, will they bring it to full committee without that endorsement? But I also think this is an opportunity to engage with the other larger school boards that are more than seven who have yet to speak on this issue. [03:06:04] So I'm not saying it's not important to them, but whether or not it's on their radar is a different question. And they're our neighbors very close by-- Loudoun County, Arlington, and Alexandria. So again, just harnessing that collective energy for everybody to speak to all of the people that matter in terms of this decision making to lift up how important this would be and how it would make many of their lives much easier. [03:06:33] So thank you for that. Ms. Anderson. Just to this vein, I agree that we absolutely need to create some sort of joint letter with the supporting boards. But I don't think we should forget about other public boards that are large enough that they would be impacted by this that have similar problems. [03:06:54] And so I know that the Board of Supervisors is in the same boat. There are other boards around the state that are likely going to care about whether or not this goes through. Not because-- I mean, even with three, it's still an onerous task to make sure that we have everybody. [03:07:09] But it's just less onerous than having a one-on-one conversation with our colleagues. Thank you. Ms. St. John-Cunning? Yeah, so if the question is do we want this to be across the board for everyone, then we have failed in explaining it accurately. [03:07:28] And for me, I think it has to be done not numerically, but percentage-wise. As long as you don't have more than a percentage, Does that make sense? That was what our comments that I delivered for on behalf of the board was exactly that. Because currently, if you're a board of five, you're already allotted 40% of your board to be able to meet with that issue. [03:07:51] So 40% across the board makes sense. But based on that July-August meeting, that was not amenable to the decision-making body. And I think one reason that it wasn't amenable is that there's a concern that if there's a change, that it's going to cause confusion in the public. [03:08:11] That, oh my gosh, now I see three members talking. Am I supposed to report that as a potential FOIA violation? If you went to a percentage, that would mean that you would have multiple standards for different boards. So it would be harder to keep track of, OK, this board can meet with three members. [03:08:29] This board can meet with four members. This board can meet with five members. So the compromise that was drawn was to have that bright line that was drawn of moving it to only two members to only three members. But again, when they started to look at what would happen for a seven-member board, if you allow a seven-member board to meet three, then you have three members out of seven, which is very close to a majority of that board coming together. [03:08:55] So it's a compromised position. But there was just a fear that the percentage was going to be too confusing for for the public and for boards in general to be able to manage so so the belief is that the public cannot understand percentages yes the public will be very confused okay just yes mr. Frisch I have [03:09:27] to laugh fascinating to compromise and still get tabled but it brings your your comments are very intriguing and if I wanted to submit a public records request to find out what the legislators were thinking about these this bill as the FOIA Council was considering it what are the odds that I would be able to get records back from a state legislators office from a FOIA request FOIA rules are applied differently to the General Assembly now I will tell you that yesterday's meeting was was live streamed so there's a there's a public [03:10:05] record of everything that was said at the public meeting. But yeah, in terms of a records request, the General Assembly handles FOIA requests differently than other public bodies do. And are there rules around how many legislators can get together for conversations? I imagine the caucus conferences that they have before session would be complicated by the fact that you can't have a majority. I believe you may have asked an answer to your own question. The rules are for thee and not for me in this case the only other thing that I would know is that sunlight is a good thing we are simply asking for a little bit more [03:10:44] efficiency to go with the sunlight and you know in other legislative priorities a little bit more funding to go with the foyers I think one one argument that dr. Anderson had made at that first meeting that I think was persuasive to several members was just to point out that under the current system a chair in a vice chair of a board committee cannot meet with a third member to have a discussion. It has to only be the board chair and only the committee chair or only the committee vice chair that meets with another member. And just that that kind of mechanic is that I think that that got a little bit of attention. [03:11:20] Also this notion that there's like this wandering tribe of FOIA police officers who are looking for people breaking the rules is just foolish. People know what the rules are where they live wondering tribe of FOIA officers you know one of the things that came to mind today's Tuesday so this happened it was yesterday oh my gosh yeah yeah it feels like it was last week but one of the [03:11:54] things that I was engaging with mr. Malloy about is okay let's go ahead and and have each of us send letters to the FOIA Council? And what was the answer to that? So if you go to the Virginia FOIA Council's website, it gives you a listing of all the members who are on the FOIA Council. [03:12:14] There are members who are members of the General Assembly. There are members who are parts of state agencies. And then there are some citizen members. On that website, the only thing that is available for virtually all but not all members is a mailing address for each member of the Virginia FOIA Council. [03:12:33] There is not a direct contact electronically. The only direct contact is through the FOIA Council itself. But it's just a mailing address that's listed on the FOIA Council's website. So absent of being in the room, it's really hard to reach the individuals who are making some of those decisions. [03:12:55] Good luck with that. Are there any other comments or questions on this part? Miss Lady? OK, barring none, let's go ahead and transition to the second presentation. [03:13:12] And I want to be clear in terms of the purpose of that presentation. On Friday, as the delegate to VSBA, I was part of a training that prepares the delegates for their activities at the annual convention. [03:13:28] And one of those responsibilities of the delegates is to vote on the slate of nominees that will be presented by the nominating committee. But most importantly, it's to vote on the positions that will be presented, which will then be embedded as part of the SBA's legislative agenda. [03:13:54] In order for the delegates, who are board members that represent each of these school divisions that are part of the SBA in order for the delegates to be able to vote we need direction from the board otherwise I will just be presenting Riccardi Anderson's position and not the board's position their plan is to you could go ahead and go to the next slide please this is what I hope to accomplish in this part and I think we've already accomplished part three which is the discussed the FOIA bill update so you could just stay here [03:14:29] for a moment there no actually let's keep going to the next slide I think I already talked about this too as part of mr. Molloy's presentation next slide please perfect the plan of VSBA is to offer these seven amendments and new proposals as an omnibus it doesn't mean it has to remain that way if there is a position to which any school division is has an objection we can submit for it to be pulled out the same way that we do our omnibus work but they just like a [03:15:06] little bit more notice which is why I'm putting this in front of you a little bit earlier than typical so this delegate assembly is on November 19th I believe it is 2:00 p.m. and I just talked about all of that so having said this this is what we will need I'm going to one go through some of these positions and this is the same thing that I emailed to you all last night and the reason it was last night is because I just had this meeting on Friday and there are this many pages that had to be reviewed in order to dial to reduce it [03:15:45] to what I'm giving to you here I'd like for us to have the opportunity to just review each of the positions some are amendments and some are brand new and that's been identified the amendments are longer which is why the clerks provided a full copy because it's hard to put to place some of the amendments on this document on this PowerPoint just because of their length so what I'd like for us to be able to do is to go through each of these seven amendments slash new proposals ask the pertinent questions if we are ready to move to [03:16:24] consensus on any parts of them I would like to do that if we need more time if we need more questions then we will also do that at the latest we will have to place our place this on new business for the 22nd for us to vote on these on the 8th so that I am properly equipped to vote on the 19th if we're wanting to pull any of these from the omnibus that's what I'd like to also hear from this board so before I see lots of placards going up but before we do that [03:17:02] I'd like to at least go through the positions that have come up these positions have come through the VSBA federal not federal relations committee their legend thank you the legislative committee these are proposals that are submitted by school divisions the last time I think Fairfax County submitted a proposal was when Karen Corbett Sanders was on the board and she provided a position that this board voted upon which was then sent to this committee and if the committee sends it forward then it becomes part of what the [03:17:41] delegates vote on not all positions have made it to this step there are several positions which did not make it through the legislative committee for it to be presented to the delegates so let me go through and highlight each of these positions but oh you had a clarifying question I do is the consensus that's at the top is that our consistently is that your recommendation of our consensus no I understand that's a little bit confusing what I need from you I need to understand how this board wants me to vote at the delegate assembly on each of [03:18:19] these issues some are I think kind of softballs so are you going to give us a recommendation on each I am NOT giving any recommendations on any of these what I am asked what I'm going to do is present it ask the questions that need to be asked if I need to follow up with the SBA staff I will be glad to do that if we need to follow up internally I will be glad to do that if we are comfortable to say the consensus that that I am seeking is yes this I can vote yes on that amendment or in that proposal if it's a yes then I will jot [03:18:59] it down on on the 19th I'm going to vote yes if it's a no I will jot it down and on the 19th I'm going to vote no and I will complete the proper paperwork to pull it from the omnibus Miss Anderson so that we had a starting place the The clerks just put consensus that the board support legislative so that we knew whether-- because we needed a starting place for us. [03:19:23] So any other clarifying questions? I see two more, Miss Lady and then Mr. Frisch. Well, my main question is that I am comfortable with the conversation and trying to get to consensus, but I would like legal to look at these before I vote on them to see if there's something we're not seeing or we don't know. [03:19:43] Is that a fair question? That's fair. But I don't think they're all similarly situated. Some are a little bit more intensive. But again, these are all priority positions. We're not making rules. It's yes, we are in agreement to this being included in the VSBA alleged program. [03:20:05] And I do not believe that every part of the VSBA legislative program is in alignment with FCPS's legislative program. already have some points of conflict. Yeah and and and also just for point of clarification are you looking for seven yeses and then you vote yes? I'm looking for the majority of the board to say yes then then I vote yes. So that would be seven yeses. I know you'll disclose your opinions with us as well. I'm happy to. [03:20:35] Yeah because you get a vote. Yes I will be the one voting in the room. I know but you get a vote towards getting to the seven so we just want to know where you stand as well sure okay thanks and there are some that I have some additional inquiries about this has been a fairly short turnaround because I received this on Friday mr. Frisch I think and I conferred with mr. Molloy the last time we did this was 2024 yeah we we've submitted we submitted positions to the Virginia School Boards Association well I say that for a reason yeah what are you gonna do if there are amendments are you gonna pull the board to make sure that [03:21:13] at some point can't we trust your judgment that you are voting on things that align with our our legislative agenda because I appreciate the want to do things in a public session but not everything requires a meeting certainly not a discussion of something that was typically done as a an email to the board if you have objections to these these all align with our legislative priorities please raise them and then the board adopted it at a regular meeting you know I have I voted to approve the committee assignments of the board assuming that you and mr. McElveen would be advocating on the board's [03:21:53] legislative program on our behalf in advance of an advancement of the legislative program and I wouldn't I trust you enough to not expect that you would not do that even if even if you had a difference of opinion with the majority of the board I know that you would do what the board will was so yeah to clarify I'm not the alternate right no it is mr. Dan and mr. Dan yeah I'll make sure he knows too but yeah that's just my my general two cents because it flies in the face of how this actually works in practice if there are amendments if it is important enough for you to seek the consensus of the board [03:22:32] on these seven things why is it any less important to do it for any amendments that come from the floor at the actual session I think we just have to have a trust that you and our alternate will vote in alignment with our agenda no I I appreciate that very very much but this was a point in our training that was really articulated I'm not sure if VSBA is revising their processes they wanted to ensure that each voting member had the support of their board whether explicit I my interpretation was that it'd be explicit but I hear what's well [03:23:09] we still voted on it in the past right we just didn't have an entire work session session no this was just fortuitous because we already had this work session set up yeah so this is just an opportunity to add it on to the plate because this was set up weeks ago I received this on Friday don't always need a second helping you know what I mean if there's a plate it doesn't need to be full sure thank you so having said that I'm going to move to priority to legislative proposal number one this is binding arbitration this is a new position and this is in this is consistent with what where I believe the [03:23:47] board was I won't read it to you because obviously you can read if we recall last year we had a conversation regarding HB oh my god 1883 that one yes Somerville's bill and Kathy Tran who talked about it just with us just last week binding arbitration was one that we had a lot of concerns about because it is against what we have in our own CBA agreement so this is very much in alignment with our position I'm just gonna introduce all of them let's go to [03:24:24] number two educational technology equipment this is an amendment it's just the piece that is highlighted in yellow that is an amendment asking for funding I don't think we are going to disagree with any of that position number three this is a brand new position and this is very much in alignment with our new priority position for CTE funding that is specific position number four am I [03:25:01] going to quickly okay position number four this is to support the modernity modernization of Virginia school funding formula this is a new position that has been proposed this seems to be in greater keeping with what delegate Cohen shared at the Board of Supervisors meeting where she talked about finding some ways to work around the LCI which is unfavorable to us the per pupil spun funding I think there are some nuances nuances there but it does seem to be it could be advantages to us I would love for mr. Malloy to kind of speak to what [03:25:40] we talked about last Friday on this yeah so this this dovetails directly with the conversation that JLARC and with the recommendations from the JLARC report if you remember all the way back in 2023 when JLARC came out with its report it It provided two sets of recommendations. [03:25:59] One was a set of recommendations, which we are the most familiar with and the one that we talk about the most, of tweaks to the existing SOQ formulas. So to include labor cost index, to get rid of the support cap, to make changes within the existing formula. [03:26:19] Well, the existing formula in Virginia is primarily based on personnel. So numbers of teachers or numbers of counselors per 1,000 students. And that's the basis for student funding. The majority of other states have switched to a student-based funding formula, which is-- it sets a weight for an individual student and then provides additional add-ons above and beyond for the general per pupil amount based on a student's particular characteristics. [03:26:51] So if they're a language learner or if they're student in you know eligible for free and reduced lunch that's the shift that's been made and that was the second part of JLR recommendation was the state could consider scrapping the existing system and going to that student-based funding formula model that seems to be the direction that the state is headed in just so you know just to let you know the joint subcommittee on elementary and secondary education funding is actually going to have its first meeting in a a year and a half this upcoming Monday and they're going to talk about hiring a consultant to do the kind of the calculation work to look at the [03:27:31] implications of shifting the formula from one version to another. I think Tennessee is one of the most recent states that made a shift in this kind of funding formula to go from that personnel-based to a student-based funding formula so this dovetails exactly with this the caution and it's true of any formula at the end of the day it doesn't matter as much if it's a student-based formula or if it's a personnel based formula what matters is what the actual allocation of funding is to school divisions and at at the baseline of that is to make sure that the state is fairly calculating all of [03:28:11] the costs that we face as a school division, and make sure that if they accurately measure those costs and then fairly share between the state responsibility and the local responsibility, it doesn't matter as much as if it's a student-based funding formula or a personnel-based funding formula. [03:28:31] So it's getting that fundamental piece right. You build from there. This, I think, this seems to be the direction state is headed in in terms of wanting to switch over and to be honest the Virginia funding formula has some components of student-based funding we've gotten additional add-ons for at-risk students we've gotten additional add-ons in the last couple years for special education students and for language learners so they've started to kind of hybridize the existing formula as it is this would just take it to that next step thank you mr. Malloy position number five we'll take questions after I run through all seven [03:29:10] of them position number five this speaks to a statewide health insurance access to public schools again I think we're positioned that health insurance is a huge burden I don't see this being a conflict to our current practices and focus position six this is an amendment to an existing position which speaks a little bit to part of what mr. Molloy just talked about this could be advantages to us again these this is just asking for a review let's go to the [03:29:47] last one because I know we want to get to the questions position 7 is brand new and this is teletherapy and keep in mind VSBA is just writing this as a position it doesn't necessarily mean that there's a bill being written on this it could be but it doesn't necessarily mean so so I want us to kind to put this in its proper context so I will stop here in the last slide please go there this is just more of an FYI this is the group that I will be voting [03:30:19] yay or nay on to be the next leadership of the SBA okay so again I this is your time to speak and ask the questions whether it's me following up with the SBA or following up with internal staff getting more information from mr. Malloy I will start with miss Anderson and then miss no I'm sorry miss lady then miss [03:30:51] Anderson thank you so I'll start with the school funding formula Mike my caution is the support number four number four is that there are some states that went to a per pupil and again everything that mr. Malloy just said has got to be uplifted, right? Because it costs us more to educate kids here than it does in rural parts of our state. But I don't want this per pupil, if that's what it was, to be transferable to private. And there has to be rigid language in there proposing that. And then [03:31:29] it's my understanding that in Texas and Arizona, they actually like take daily attendance. And it's like we have so many days of school, but if Robin misses 50, then I lose funding for the 50 Robin didn't come so we need to make sure that that's not a clause with that particular piece of it my concern about proposal number five is that we have among the best benefits of any school system in the Commonwealth I believe that's also potentially a bargaining issue and as long as there's an option for us to [03:32:07] remain self-insured I'm okay if they investigate this but I'm not okay at all and with the way it's written where it says supports the research of potential creation of I don't know I'm mixed on that because I think that we have amazing benefits then the last one this number eight school board association supports the General Assembly provides the full funding for school-based online health services it's just a dad I'm sorry number seven would be related to data [03:32:45] sharing and confidentiality of our kids I think ledge number one needs legal review and then interestingly enough the number two it seems like is around funding for ed tech but then the red at the very end of the second page of it says the VSBA supports codification in the law of a requirement to fully fund and providing statewide student learning management system they have one we have a system that is free that we are not using the Prince William uses in Arlington uses. And I've been bringing this forward in the past 48 hours. It's called Canvas, not to be [03:33:24] confused with Canva. It's what Virtual Virginia uses. It's what many colleges have been using, but it is available to us. My understanding is we initially didn't take it on because it wasn't robust K-12, but there have been incredible improvements to it. I can send you all the link to the page, but this exists now, and I'm looking at it for this upcoming budget and see if it's a way to save us about two million dollars thank you thank you miss Anderson with okay so I'm gonna echo real fast I just want to make sure that to clarify that the funding for this isn't just in the budget and what they're actually asking [03:34:03] for is to codify it in law and so related to canvas so I'm wondering whether or not it's just one of those things that was added into the budget as funding but it wasn't actually codified in law and so that may be the distinction that they're trying to make I would have to go back and confirm but that's probably the case is that it is only a it's only an Appropriations Act we should just clarify that that's really what they're going for with number three I'm concerned about the fact that this is only for regional centers and the fact that it doesn't provide CTE funding we're big enough that we're our own regional center we don't need to have a regional center and so our [03:34:41] regional centers are the academies so as long as we are in that that includes us I'm fine with that but if it's just for regional centers the way some of the other counties are dealing with their CTE then I don't want to be to negate the opportunity for us to receive the same level of funding because we're dealing with more kids so that is my concern I agree wholeheartedly with number four I know that we are likely going to go towards pure people funding but I am extremely cautious and worried about the easy jump that is to [03:35:16] vouchers and I want to make sure that as administrations and people change that we don't end up down that path and I think that's it I mean generally I think that they're pretty innocuous things that we already had been going down that path but those are just the ones that stood out thank you mr. Frisch miss St. John Cunning yeah I mean the the regional situation with CTE also stood out to me and it also stood out to me in terms of if we are considered a regional [03:35:55] know we are big enough to be regional but does that also then mean that we will have to take students in from surrounding jurisdictions that may not have as robust cte programs so that's something for us to think about like if we're going to go there like then do we have we're close enough like maybe to woodbridge that maybe we have to take some kids from you know from there to our cte programs that might be more robust so just that is a concern i mean we already have a regional program it's TJ and so there's funding that comes with that not as much as I think anybody assumes comes with it but no it's not a CTE program but it does draw [03:36:35] from a I was just trying to make an analogy so if this is a regional program and if it's centered here I would imagine that there will be an opportunity to draw from others but I want to make sure that I share this these are just VSBA's positions that is going to be an alleged program. Having said that, I do know that VSBA's positions do matter a lot to decision-makers because two years ago, going to the Hill to advocate with Senators Kane and Warner, they were very [03:37:12] concerned that school divisions were potentially going to be exiting VSBA because they do look for that collective voice so whether or not we are in agreement with the voice it is a voice that legislators do pay attention to because they're representing so many school divisions but it doesn't mean that we can't disagree with their positions and as long as it comes with the right funding I'm all for it we just have waiting lists for our CT programs and if we're considered regional and we have to take others and we can't even serve our own population that's my concern thank you I do hear some questions that have [03:37:49] been raised over a number of these and I think one is position one we're going to follow up with mr. Foster although I think I'm on pretty strong footing based on the previous discussions we've had about this position - I think some questions were raised about what's already free currently but it doesn't negate support for this position and yeah there's some good questions but I [03:38:21] I'm not hearing unless I missed it objections to any of these okay seeing no objections but there are some positions that we need to clarify unless I'm incorrect is there one of which we are having a strong objection that we would need to give me a consensus whether or not I need to pull this from the omnibus well again I think we've vocalized the concerns with number three and then there's the concerns with the health insurance it's okay to research it but [03:38:59] maybe take out a potential creation and implementation like I don't know because there's got to be a carve out for us I mean we are going to it's I just can't imagine it's going to be as good as what we have for our for our employees right now okay so I hear a potential amendment mr. Frisch I also can't imagine the legislature being like you know all the difficult things to tackle let's create a state insurance program this year so there's also that if so I'd [03:39:34] be like let's get all of JLARC done this this session so I didn't necessarily support all of them but I do cosign the concerns that I heard about the various ones so if there are amendments to be had I think they should be had and you know if you're interested in knowing how we feel if they're not able to be amended or if our amendments are rejected I probably would not support them if our amendments are rejected but I don't think that probably necessarily [03:40:10] influences whether they pass or not if an amendment is rejected it's probably passing anyways any other thoughts or comments on this so there's a little bit of follow-up here to be done before I feel comfortable in terms of how I'm representing this board during this vote but I believe we can and here for the evening. Thank you all for your time. We are adjourned at 856. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com