Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Governance Committee Meeting, Tuesday, October 27, 2026

Date: Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 1h 42m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_e3xdsYGGw
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 2026-10-28. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:10:20] Okay, this October 27th, 2026 meeting of the Fairfax County School Board's Governance Committee will now come to order at 4:40 p.m. Moving first to the approval of the minutes from the last meeting, I move that the Governance Committee approve the minutes from the September 15th, 2026 meeting.

[00:10:49] Thank you, Mr. Frisch. Is there a second? Thank you, Mr. Dannon. All those in favor? Perfect. that is unanimous for board for committee members okay we're now gonna go ahead and start the conversation related to the educational technology policy drafts that were received dr. Reed do you want to kick us off here um sure I think we've attached the current drafts as they are I know that the team both

[00:11:23] mr. Sethi and dr. Presidio shared the policies with the ETRC and there's initial feedback I know there's an intent to send it back again to the ETRC and I think what dr. Presidio mr. Sethi are hoping for is maybe a little direction around sort of buckets of feedback that you're most interested in after having had a chance to review the draft policy so they're both here as is Michael Gillespie who facilitates that committee to answer any questions that

[00:11:57] you all might have as we think about a little bit kind of next steps I don't know if you guys want to you want to hear any kind of summary at all of feedback or not sure how best to support that yeah I think that we're the way that this is gonna go I want to remind folks that I did post the timeline just to understand I did not place the second meeting or the next meeting in December on that initial timeline but I do anticipate that we're gonna need to use

[00:12:33] some of that time to discuss the policies as well so to start I thought that for committee members I think it would be helpful for us to just give just a general understanding at this point of where we think they are and how close to done we think they are and that kind of thing so we're going to keep it high level to start and then we can come back and get a little bit lower I am not asking at all today for any line edits so what I'm going to request because I think this the best way to for us to do it is the way we've been doing it with other policies at this point and so what I'm going to request is that individual

[00:13:10] board members on the committee provide me feedback on any line edits that they would like and I will send you a draft like a word version of the documents so that we can give you a way to give me feedback and then I'm going to ask for that on by no November 17th which is about three weeks before but it's right before Thanksgiving and before we go to the SBA so I'm hopeful that that will give us enough time that you if there are any specific line edits that you would like to see or wording changes things like that and then we can talk

[00:13:43] about those with the real input from the committee because it could be that we take care of some of it as we go through the other thing is that's also the date that I'm going to ask for the feedback from the other policies that I posted for this meeting the intention behind posting those early was just to give the committee more time with them but so for coming up I would also ask for any line edits and things like that before on November 17th and that will give me enough time to coordinate everything get it back out to the committee members and well that way we can have a real-time conversation about some of those things and determine if there's anything that we can move

[00:14:23] forward so we're going to start with general feedback and then we'll get a little bit more nuanced as we go mr. Frisch so I think structurally there's a lot that resembles previous drafts I think they're based on where the conversation has come since the various conversations we've had in various motions that have come forward and past I think there's probably need on some of the restrictions that the board has indicated support for and I think how we

[00:15:02] I'm not going to get into wordsmithing how we do that I think is important too so that you know depending on where we land whether that's getting specific on devices for grade tiers or grade levels whether that's opt-outs for every year as it relates to AI whatever those happen to be I think the language is going to be important because it's gonna direct whether we are suggesting or we are or we're requiring additionally I know I've got I've

[00:15:40] gotten feedback from some constituents about the need to say something about the the potential harms of AI and you know and this is not to get into the wordsmithing but when I read the philosophy and we talk about what the potential benefits are and then we kind of depart from the benefits and say as long as those are human centered and I think that's one way of looking at it an alternative is to say like there are potential because I think he says the word potential benefits right there are potential benefits there are also

[00:16:14] potential downsides and so I think identifying those in the same fashion in the philosophy sends a message about why we need the policy in the first place Because if it's all good, then I think there's less of a need for Policy, but there's clearly not and there's clearly a need and a desire among colleagues, but also among people in the community To be clear about that So I mean that's just my my general feedback. I do like the approach

[00:16:50] You know and obviously colleagues who are not on the committee will be able to send their feedback just as they've done before But it's helped you know just as an example The last time around we did the review of some of our policies, I had several that I did not have suggestions for until I read the feedback from other people.

[00:17:16] And then we had further discussions about those at the following meeting. So I felt like that was a good way of surfacing giving more time to think before the meeting so that the conversation at the meeting could be more productive. and it perhaps one thing to consider as chair of the committee would be like is there a deadline by which our feedback can be in so that it can be posted publicly for committee members but also anybody who wants to follow the conversation from home or wherever that's it for now I'm anecdotally this time for this meeting I think it's gonna be dependent on ever all like the

[00:17:54] timing of other meetings but this one that's why I'm giving you the November 17th I think that gives you guys enough time to give me line edits or you know specific things that you want to tease out more and then it also gives gives me enough time to make sure that they're all incorporated and still posted early enough that everybody else can have a chance to review them so that's the intention behind that I agree mr. Dannon afternoon yeah so appreciate all the work that the staff did to put these together that was my whole summer I kept checking my inbox and refreshing it to see when we'd get these and so looking

[00:18:34] through I mean to answer your question I think I think this these are at the right level of detail and specificity I think that maybe I would say maybe a 75 percent draft but there's probably 50 or 100 things that I would want to tweak like the the shoulds to shales and that kind of stuff but to the earlier point I think some of those dials that we mentioned with these I should also say one things I really liked was I've heard a lot of constituents like was that describes teacher directed usage which I think gives the right level of deference but they're the right level of control for a lot of these things and so I

[00:19:13] really appreciate some language there and that how specific that was for the ed tech policy some of those dials to me were the grade bands such as with regards to one-to-one devices I see the logic and talked to staff earlier about grouping pre-k and k one and two three and four so on but I'm curious about that the ability to tweak those to maybe group one through three to a better line with credentialing and then maybe have upper elementary so that it can accommodate those six seven eight middle schools and so forth for the

[00:19:50] innovation policy I think another one of the dials would be in that table that talks about AI use in section C do we want to break out the higher levels you know 9 through 11 and then have senior year be different if our goal is to make sure kids are prepared if they decide to go to college or in the professional world to use it and then you know some of the definitions and so forth by presuming that a lot of that work gets done towards the end once we know it's actually in the policy so I think that's the big things for now okay

[00:20:23] awesome missing John cunning yeah I want to thank the work that everyone's done I know this this is a heavy lift of something that's moving very quickly I think one of my concerns in terms of just something that we should always keep at the forefront particularly with the community that I represent is the equity and access in terms of some of these technologies there's a perception sometimes that everybody does have devices at home and some people don't some people don't even have access to the internet so when there are certain

[00:21:00] assignments and there are certain things that have to be considered that may not be able to be completed at home and if they don't have a take-home device I just think equity has to be looked at very very carefully because there are so many potential impacts to that and just like everyone here I've gotten a lot of of constituent emails and interestingly enough you know there are people that do want some of these devices and are very upset about the ban and want their kids to be able to have certain things so you know I don't know if staff has also

[00:21:36] spoken with teachers and talked to them about the impact that the ban is having on them and if we can look at some of how that impacts the teachers and what they're doing and how it can impact some of the students because some of the correspondence that I've received is just not from it's from constituents that happen to be teachers that are also interested in having the availability of some use of that technology so I think we have to look at every side of the

[00:22:12] of the equation and everyone that is going to be using this so those implementation guidelines I think are going to be really important I know that there's just a lot for us to consider there's a lot of information a lot of things are moving very quickly some of this I think by the time we get to the end of this new iterations of things may have happened but I really want to make sure that every voice is heard and that is just really important to me and I think sometimes what we lose in this discussion where the people are actually in the classroom and and sometimes the students that are in the classroom and

[00:22:50] what they're doing and the blanket assumption that everyone has access to a device at home. Ms. Barron. Great, thank you. I am here to share my own input as well as Dr. Andersen's who could not be here today. Some of that overlaps. So I too think that the policies have come a long way and I think they're shaping up and in organized ways that are promising. Regarding the use of educational technology, mine and also Dr. Andersen's, you know, largest concern or

[00:23:28] recommendation is there has to be a statement of commitment and expectation that the case for technology and education is being made continuously. There's you know statements like when technology does not advance the learning well how do we know that that happens. So saying in here that it will be measured and even how so like are we gonna look at literacy rates are we gonna be able to dig in that deep I think that's really important. Also not I'm not trying to wordsmith, but I did find different uses of the words in some of the definitions.

[00:24:03] And I did note that in writing, and I'm happy to share that again. But what are approved tools? How does that come to be? What is developmentally appropriate? Who decides that? Where is there a common agreement? There's nothing about screens used in classrooms.

[00:24:20] Like, are we talking about slides and videos? That is part of technology. So some of those things, and then being clear on what one-to-one device means, different than digital device. But evaluation was a big thing.

[00:24:36] Also, and then moving over to just more language about-- or more of a statement about how technology will be guided by instructional goals that, again, that we're constantly measuring and using as a direct link for the need for technology.

[00:24:53] Regarding-- and I have some more, but that's the general gist. So regarding the innovations and instruction with emerging technology, I mean, it seemed pretty good. I think, again, some of the definitions, because the language is new to some people, agentic generative AI, domain-specific trained AI, just getting really clear on what each thing means, since it does get that specific.

[00:25:15] I just found sometimes there was an alignment in that. What are FCPS benchmarking standards? Those are referenced on page three under philosophy. I don't know what those mean. Should we reference a strategic plan instead or an executive limitation?

[00:25:31] There's also reference to a separate implementation guidance. And if that's the regulation, let's just use that language that everyone's familiar with. The biggest thing is that there's different versions of definitions of AI. And they're not all used the way that they're defined.

[00:25:48] And I outlined that in the chart on, I think it's page four. It doesn't exactly match up. But the last thing I'll say is, this policy must underscore the board's role in approving the technologies. We again have a contract with an AI company that has been put into place that the board did not review.

[00:26:09] It just happened with Claude. So procurement, contract, legal, board's role has to be stated in here. OK, thank you. I'm going to go ahead and take a turn. Dr. Reid, I was hoping you could talk with us a little bit about how you see these two policies as a framework and how you see regulation playing in here.

[00:26:33] Because I think, for me, that's the hardest thing, because I don't want this policy to be too operational in nature. And I do understand that regulations need to be agile enough to change with the environment. But I do want to make sure that these policies have the framework that the board is intending for you to work within.

[00:26:54] And so I think that that is also your intention from conversations that we've had. But I just was hoping that maybe you could speak for a second about how you see what's going to be the process after we put this in place to make sure that regulation quickly follows. How would that work?

[00:27:10] Well, I think as with all policies, the policy defines the end goal for the organization in the board's expectation for that end goal, the regulations are simply how, as management, we would operationalize that. So it's whatever the guardrails that our team will feel is necessary to make sure that we reach the goals that the board sets in policy.

[00:27:34] So I think that it's really-- we've been a little all over the map in terms of some policies getting very much regulation-y and others not. But I think, in general, the policy should signal what we want to accomplish as a division, the board's vision.

[00:27:55] And the regulation really is about the how. How are we going to make sure that happens? So we have not spent a lot of time with the regulation yet until we see what the policy is going to look like, because we need to kind of see where that end goal lands.

[00:28:12] And then it won't take, I think, a great deal of time figure out how to operationalize that but that's we would do the regulation following the adoption of the policy and as we get closer I think we'll get clearer about the direction the policy is going but that's generally how we've been functioning okay I the other thing I wanted to remind colleagues and folks that are listening at home is that the board has oversight over regulation like the if the board has something that we want to change that's currently in regulation we can direct the superintendent to do that so just

[00:28:49] because something isn't explicitly in one of these two policies does not mean that the board can't have influence over what is going to happen within regulation for me right now the two drafts I think I agree with mr. Dan and they're probably about a 75% solution I think that there's tweaking that needs to be done I think that there is I see some spots where we specifically need to there needs to be shall language related to what we expect from the division superintendent not just because because I always try to think when we're thinking about policies is that if it's not you sitting in that chair what

[00:29:28] do we what do we want in terms of direction the other thing that I will say blanketly is I do not think that there's a strong enough accessibility connection right yet I think that we have some work to do related to to making sure that all of our students are are captured here to make sure those kiddos that are using assistive devices or technology for other means are captured and protected by what we include in the policies because I think that is the intention overall I will ask and mr. Foster I'm putting you on the

[00:30:05] spot I know you just walked back in but I know that the many of our policies that are related to students with disabilities need to go for a review through ACSD is that I believe personally that this is a reasonable thing to do with these two policies I just am trying to see whether or not it's possible within our timeline and so is that I'm not asking for a legal but it is would it be reasonable for for the committee to request it these two

[00:30:42] policies to be reviewed by ACSD is that within our power to do so so so I'm clear you're are we still on the ETRC we're talking about the two ed tech policies yes yeah I do think that that would be reasonable and within this committee's discretion okay thank you okay mr. fresh thanks I appreciate the conversation about how tight or loose a policy is I mean in my time on the board we've gotten super detailed. I mean the conflicts of interest policy is a good

[00:31:17] example of that. Over the course of many months it evolved and became very detailed because the board had very clear expectations about how we wanted to govern those conflicts. The same thing with the educational equity policy it's very detailed. At the same time you've got like our non-discrimination policy which is very very short and so I'm less comfortable with the idea of if I see something in a regulation addressing it with emotion because it's less likely to

[00:31:54] stick from superintendent to superintendent or frankly from board to board is probably a bigger challenge and so if there's something that we see as something that might be worrisome or that we'd like to ensure is done a certain way in the regulation I think it's important to put it in the policy one area that I think needs to be tightened up a bit in in the policies here is you know I think it touches on various aspects of approval of technology

[00:32:30] and consideration of technology but it doesn't get specific enough about how that works and I realized that this is in a vacuum without the regulation but if the board has you know a if you think of it in terms of like contracting for example the board has said here is our expectation for contracting and we've put it basically in types of contracts and amounts of contracts well if we're thinking about what level of board engagement we want around technology and whether or not certain new technologies are approved or not perhaps the board

[00:33:04] could think about that in terms of scope and scale of the adoption or some other mechanism for needing it what I'd hate to see happen is for and now granted this will depend on our what definitions we're using but I'd hate to see happen that every single aspect of technology requires a board vote versus you know approval of a pilot or approval of something that's going to be rolled out to the entire division or a significant portion of the division or even at a school level or what have you right I don't want a teacher to think

[00:33:44] they can't throw something up on the screen because it's not been approved by the board but I also want there to be a little bit there should be clarity for the teacher so that they know what's allowed and that they're not you know in a position of them having to make the judgment call so I think that's an area that we could probably tighten up a bit and I agree with much of what's been said so far miss st. John Cunningham um just as a quick answer to you I agree that for me it's if we're gonna overlay this over contracting because we're

[00:34:22] gonna talk about the timeline of looking at some of our procurement policies in a little bit and so I guess if we're gonna provide an overlay first we have to decide whether or not it lives here or lives there because part of the reason that we are trying to look at it again is determining whether or not they all need to be connected the other aspect that I would I do think that there's a difference between I I've spoken with a lot of our special education principals

[00:34:56] and they oftentimes need a one-off you know piece of technology to assist a particular child and I don't necessarily think that that's something that we need board direction on everything because I know our IT folks are going through and making sure that that we can utilize those resources but I would say for a hundred percent that if it's something being rolled out across a grade level at it or the division for sure that we would need more more oversight of what was going on or at least notification that those types of things were

[00:35:33] occurring so I do think that that's an important aspect looking at these what information like what quite do you guys have questions that you want ETRC to come back and give us more information about are there specific things the question within these policies because ETRC has two meetings in between this meeting and the next one the next one before at least before the board is gonna have a work session and so we wanted to give them enough time but we also want to give them direction we don't want to just they've had a chance to kind of overview and look at the policies already but if there are

[00:36:12] specific things that the Governance Committee would like ETRC to be looking at that would be a very helpful thing for us to capture mr. Frisch did they have any kind of robust feedback for us thus far dr. Presidio do you want to speak a little bit to that at this point yeah and I apologize I'm not clear as to whether or not Governance Committee members or other board members might have received the feedback but I do not think that writ large we anyone has received the feedback okay we prepared a document and again I'm just not sure if you've

[00:36:51] received it or not but it includes several pieces of information so there's a high-level summary it's a couple pages long of the themes in terms of strengths that were identified in the policy and then additional feedback for other considerations that maybe the governance committee should look at on the next iteration of the policy and then anybody who submitted an individual comment we've provided all of those comments as well so the documents 59 pages long but there's five pages that provides kind of the summary and synthesis of the first review that the committee did so they had a week basically to look at it

[00:37:29] individually submit individual comments and then in the meeting last week we spent probably 30 to 45 minutes in conversation as a committee I don't to preclude them from offering more feedback but I also don't want to put them in a position where they're giving feedback on the exact same written document that they had previously. My hope would be that the feedback they offer is iterative based on an evolving document that they can review. So if there are if there's a revised version that comes out of our next meeting when

[00:38:06] it can you remind me when our next meeting is? December 8th. And then they have a meeting after that before the end of the year maybe that's the engagement point for them is you know we can make a goal of they meet before so it's November 10th and December 2nd do you guys have a meeting scheduled after that as well what do so again looking at the schedule our next meeting is November 2nd right I'm sorry November 10th and then the one after that is

[00:38:42] December 2nd so those are the next to come both of those we do it before yes the intention was is that I believe from what I understand the the feedback that was received was very similar to what we just did where it was more high level and so I would imagine but we don't have that feedback here so it's hard to understand yeah but I'm trying to get it is I don't I see limited utility and having them do that again I understand without having that's why I'm asking whether or not there are specific things in the policy that you would like them

[00:39:21] to discuss not like what my request would be that I would like them to talk about how we can strengthen students like protections for students with disabilities and so I would I would like the ETRC what if they already did that well then it wouldn't need to be done again well sure I mean that's what I'm getting at is that like I'm trying to be economical with people's time I agree and I feel like a better use of their time would be if we are meeting in December and we are going to have a revised policy to or our suggestions for

[00:39:55] revising the policy that may result in a revised draft being somewhat there at the end of that meeting that would be the thing that I'd be most interested in having them respond to I can't say whether I would want them to have another open-ended conversation without knowing what that already resulted in and I think it's just as open-ended to give them a couple topics that board members want to hear about as you know how they may have engaged it in the

[00:40:25] first place. Gotcha. Mr. Danton. Yeah so my initial thinking is that so one of my staff went to the ETRC meeting was able to listen to the discussion and see the presentation there and my understanding correct me if I'm wrong was that there were general there were several areas where they wanted additional clarity and so for example I think they wanted clarity on my colleague mentioned about use of videos and device use at recess the digital reading and writing and so forth so that could be one thing that we would go back to them with is to see if

[00:41:04] they could if staff could provide those scenarios and if ETRC members could comment on them one of the things I'm also especially mindful of are what we faced kind of in the summer where we recognized that there was inadvertent consequences of motions and so I'm just trying to make sure that there's no inadvertent things here is if you know especially from the educator members of that committee if they look at this and say hey this is going to stop me from doing this one critical thing or these two critical things you need to have a carve-out or something like that then I'd love to get that kind of feedback from them I know there's also some differences amongst the the members and

[00:41:42] so I could see this group perhaps giving some general direction one way or the other and then having the ETRC expand on that perhaps so one of the things was brown limits for shared devices and so if we want to push back the one-to-one dates to say fourth or fifth grade I'd be curious to see what the ETRC members think about that so miss Baird yeah I think some questions that could go back to the committee are what do they think about how screen time is to is alluded to does that mean just one-to-one does that include time watching slides being

[00:42:20] presented or videos and in fact is it actually the whole method are we going to validate that the method by which it seems largely our instruction is happening these days at least in secondary is by slides you know again we've transitioned to this implementation that we've never articulated that learning is largely transmitted through slides there's a learning management system that's not mentioned in here either so I think it would be helpful if the committee really talked about, what do we mean when we mean screen time?

[00:42:59] More than just one-to-one, right? What about all the other stuff? I think one-to-one we're pretty clear on. What about all the other stuff? Because that's different. And a parent can't really opt their kid out of that if it's general instruction. So what does the division say about the use of technology in the classroom and the general instruction use?

[00:43:16] I think-- I wonder if the committee thinks that if there should be screen time limits stated per the grade bands. that's been asked before. I really think attention needs to be underlined around AI. So the policy basically says AI is allowed for grades 7 to 12.

[00:43:35] And I would like the committee to weigh in on that, on how they see that going, given every day there's new evidence and concern growing. Is this what we want to be doing? And then regarding the professional development, I'd like, especially for our instructional staff, to talk about, how does this really happen in practice?

[00:43:55] Because I've seen lots of different iterations. You know, staff seem to do what they want to do. Some become Google certified. Some become ISTE certified. What is the division's promise for ensuring that every instructor has the tools that they need?

[00:44:12] Should we go for ISTE certification? I'd like to know what the committee thinks about how do we ensure that our teachers are prepared and supported for the ongoing use. And then also the budget related to that, I think, should be a bit of a-- this is going to be a new recurring cost, different than other types of PD.

[00:44:35] So yeah, again, asking about related PD. And then I wonder if the committee would have input on if the policy should more frequently reference the strategic plan. Because again, it talks about division priorities. And I don't know what those are.

[00:44:50] But I do know what the strategic plan is. And I think using vague, never-used-before terms, we need to either define them or use the terms that we know of. So what are division priorities in their mind? And does that need to switch over to reference to our strategic plan?

[00:45:08] Is that our guidepost? -Mr. Sati, I realize that we haven't heard from you yet. I want to pull you into the conversation, because I think many of the things we're talking about-- want to make sure that we're headed down a logistical path that is possible so when we're talking about a grade level ban on something how feasible is something like that to do I just am trying to understand like I would imagine that's probably easier to do at the elementary level and it is at the upper grades

[00:45:47] because you have kids that are taking mixed that are taking higher level courses and that you have mixed grades in one class so can you speak a little bit to some of the constraints that we have within like with opt-out and things like that I'm just I'm trying to understand logistically what is possible yeah happy to kind of jump in on the hardware side of things so if the ban is device then obviously that's feasible when it comes to what is available through the device then the complexities start emerging right so if

[00:46:27] you're talking about a particular software tool instructional or some other aspect which can be clearly identified we can certainly talk about as you get narrow and granular the the complexity and management gets higher and if it says no elementary school access that's probably an easier journey to kind of complete but if it is this grade at this elementary school you can do the math on that right that's 100 and some schools with six grades that becomes a large complex management system to kind of maintain and supervise because you can maybe set it up once

[00:47:05] but then if something changes and you need to tweak this and add that remove this keeping it consistent ensuring that the policy is absolutely with all certainty being executed will be a complex journey for the teams obviously anything is possible with enough resources time or a tool So if you're looking to invest into a new tool or add additional resources to manage, depending on how complex we want to get with this, that would be another path to take.

[00:47:32] But broadly speaking, if you stay at big, granular levels, all elementary school, maybe all grades to some degree, like all third grade across the entire division, that might be feasible, but it just keeps increasing complexity as you go down.

[00:47:48] And certainly about the secondary schools, right? Students will move in those, and they go to different classes. There is not a clear roster for which teachers is responsible. In elementary, there's a one-to-one association most of the time. And then we'll have students with special needs where their variability also comes into play.

[00:48:04] So it almost, at that point, starts becoming per-student kind of service, which would be complicated. OK, that's what I anticipated just from my experience managing systems on my own and trying to make sure everybody had the right access points.

[00:48:21] I think that the problem-- I'm going to just take a quick turn. But I think the problem that I have personally is that I started teaching in a moment that we absolutely were trying to move to a multimodal system, is that we understood that not all types of learners are the exact same and that we wanted to engage learners in different ways.

[00:48:39] So for me, the move to slides, specifically, was moving away from either handouts or a static textbook. The benefit of that has been that it's far more particular. I'm thinking about history and social studies specifically.

[00:48:56] As things need to change, because our interpretations of history have certainly evolved, we're not embedded in one particular-- we can be extremely savvy with those moves.

[00:49:17] My other concern is going solely back to paper and pencil. It doesn't necessarily catch those kids that need auditory, that need other types of learning. And so that's where I tend to have just a hesitation when we're talking about moving away from any kind of screen use in a classroom, specifically.

[00:49:38] I was under the impression that when we're talking screen time, we're talking about an individual student on a device, and that's the screen time that we're discussing. Because you can absolutely have the type of student engagement that I think we hear about most often when you are utilizing a PowerPoint slide to be able to give a prompt or something like that, that there's not much difference between that and writing it on the chalkboard, because the difference is that oftentimes, visibility-wise, and reader, and all of the things,

[00:50:16] it actually works better for all of our kiddos to have it in that format. And so I am not suggesting that I'm-- I'm not necessarily talking about videos in the same way, but I am talking about the use of slides to facilitate learning in a classroom.

[00:50:31] When I was teaching face-to-face, we fought for those computer labs, man, because we wanted to be able to change things as we went through the day if something didn't work with a class. And if you have all of your handouts printed, it's a whole lot harder to do that. And so being able to be agile with that, I think, is an important aspect that I would want to think about.

[00:50:56] Mr. Seti, I also had a question about whether or not-- I know that our Lightspeed has allowed us to put a designator if we don't want our kids to have access to YouTube after hours so that if someone is using a school device, they can't use it inappropriately at home.

[00:51:17] And so I guess my question is, is that something Lightspeed built in, or is that something that we can be agile related to if you have a family that doesn't want their kids to have any access to AI? Is that something that can be added in when you're talking about at least some of the large language models?

[00:51:42] The current capability for YouTube blocking is with Lightspeed because they create this whole entire parent portal aspect where a parent can get control outside of the school hours. Can they build additional capabilities? I imagine they can with time and resources.

[00:51:59] The challenge would be this AI is not just a standalone tool anymore, right? It's embedded in almost the other tools. Textbooks may have some version of interact and ask questions. We were recently told Encyclopedia Britannica has some options for students to ask questions to narrow their research much more quickly.

[00:52:15] So you will see AI kind of being in different products. And we are also doing a school board motion where we're doing a current state analysis of, but the current state is as of today. and there's 400, 600 tools in a year or two from now, you can imagine all those tools will be moving in the market direction, which says you need to have some version of AI because that may be how others view or purchase their tools.

[00:52:40] So that journey becomes a constant shift, change, check, review, revise, and then who controls that if it's a tool that is in the class used by the teacher and the student has to go reference that at home? It's not like you're blocking chatgpd.com. Then you're going to block Incyclopedia Britannica or whatever tool has that AI capability in it.

[00:53:00] So the complexity kind of keeps increasing. And in future, certainly with the integrations becoming deeper and tighter, you may not even see the AI as its own standalone thing. I appreciate that. Thank you. Ms. St. John-Cunning.

[00:53:17] So I agree that one of the things we do have to consider, unfortunately, because of what our budget constraints are, are all the budget implications, not just in training of our personnel and continued renewal their professional development but also what any of these suggestions are how they're going to impact our budget in terms of do we have the infrastructure now do we have to go purchase charging cards which we had at one point we didn't have I know some someone mentioned the cost of electricity back and forth I know this is like down in the weeds type of stuff but all of this

[00:53:54] adds up to something and I think that those are all implications that we have to look at and consider as we move forward I think what's difficult about this is we want to look very high level and somehow we always get to hold down to in the weeds in terms of what is the definition of screen time and slides are being used like when I was at school it was an overhead projector would that be considered a slide is a slide an advancement over and overhead projector and I know this is a down in the weeds question but in terms of when we're talking about this like let's you know there are some things that are I don't

[00:54:32] want to say equal but a slide may have taken the place of an overhead projector and then there may be in a very intensive slide show that is not appropriate you know so I think those are that's a down in the weeds thing that we have to look at I know I have a parent that's very upset that her child cannot take her white page Kindle to school because she's an avid reader it has no access to the internet.

[00:54:55] And she feels her child is being deprived of being able to read because she reads so voraciously that having 12 books with her doesn't work. So is that screen time? Is that appropriate? Is it not appropriate? So I know that those are the things that parents come up with.

[00:55:15] Whereas there would be a parent that says, I can't have my kid trying to read on a screen because then they're not going to keep reading. They're going to go somewhere else. But I just think there's a lot here. And at this high level, I'm not sure how far down we want to get in the weeds.

[00:55:34] I think we get pulled into the weeds because of all the very specific concerns, but for specific families and their unique situation with their children. But I do think the budget concern is a huge one for us to take into consideration because of the place that we are in right now with what the constraints are for our budget does the committee feel like it would be fair that if staff sees us going in a particular direction that they know is going to have a significant budget impact that you kind of where I would

[00:56:11] ask personally to give us the high sign like tell us what we don't know so if we ask you to do something I mean this is anecdotal but you know for years I've always loved being the collector of con like really good contractors and for me the hallmark of a really good contractor is if I ask them to do something they say absolutely it just may cost this amount of money to do it don't tell me that I'm wrong just tell me how much it's going to cost and same thing here like we can ask what this you know sky's the limit but sometimes we need to be reeled in with how much something is going to cost or how hard it's going to

[00:56:49] be to implement and so I would ask that before we get too far down because then the board can make an informed decision about whether or not that's something worth it to do rather than having an unintended consequence of a decision that we make quickly so I would just ask staff if you to give us the high sign if you see us going down a path that you're concerned about so dr. Reed if you can help us kind of coordinate that message out that if that I want people to feel comfortable coming to you and saying hey the board's trying to do this and we need to tell them this so if you can help you often do but I also know that

[00:57:28] you're very fast to say absolutely we can do what you ask us to do and we can you can but we want to make sure that you're actually getting the correct direction from us to to move down the right path okay miss Marin I just did want to follow up on three things you know I'd love to see us flip the narrative here and rather than talking about opting kids out if we can answer parents' and educators' questions about how technology is useful, as it would be, then it seems there would be fewer students opting out. And this is why it's important to be clear in the policy about how the impact of technology is

[00:58:07] beneficial. If we're talking about opting out, it's like saying we already know that it's not useful. And then I just I can't fathom the operation of this, whether it's an elementary school teacher with 30 kids, whether it's a high school teacher with four sections of 30 kids I mean I don't I wish the superintendent would provide us with more guidance on this but I just don't think it sets anyone up for success so if we could be clearer in the policy that we will only authorize use of proven effective technologies we could probably

[00:58:44] avoid a lot of opting out the second thing is screen time is the more I'm and listening to comments, we absolutely need to ask the committee and talk amongst ourselves about screen time. Because, yeah, it might be-- even reading an e-reader, right?

[00:59:02] How many times have I told my son, put a distance between your chin and your chest, because your neck's going to get straight. Thumb texting, swiping. I mean, people have carpal tunnel. They have neck issues. Childhood obesity, anyone? I mean, there are a lot of things.

[00:59:18] So the kid's sitting at their laptop, and then they're going to go in the class and sit at the e-reader and be hunched over. I mean, there is physiological damage that can happen. So yeah, I do think that screen time should be more than just slides and on the computer.

[00:59:33] Like, little kids will grow differently if they're using devices. So I do, again, hope that the committee can look at that and as well as us to come back to it. And again, I just keep thinking, the last thing my son said to me at the end of the year, it was like the last few days of school in seventh grade, and I said, well, what are you doing?

[00:59:50] He said, well, nothing. We turned in our laptop. There's no learning. Now I get it. He's 13. But that's the impression that they have. That is the generation we are developing, that learning doesn't happen unless you have a device in your hand.

[01:00:05] So that's a whole other level here. I'd like to see that level of sophistication come out in the philosophy and talk about the kind of global leaders, innovators, that we talk about in our strategic plan.

[01:00:25] OK. Is there anything specific that we kind of want to tease out? I am particularly interested in discussing the grade breakdown that we have in here now. So it's on page four of the emerging-- or I'm sorry, on the EdTech policy.

[01:00:46] One of my notes that I wrote to myself is I would love for this page to be reorganized just a little bit. I think that we should have general information that's overarching for each grade level. And then if we want to get into specific grade information in each, then we can do that.

[01:01:02] But right now, we have general expectations, and then we have some stuff related to elementary, specifically. I don't know that the Erie exception that we just did is in number seven on page five.

[01:01:19] And so we would want to make sure that we go ahead and include that in there, unless it's covered by other legally mandated educational services. I didn't know if we wanted to be explicit there.

[01:01:36] I do somewhat like the flexibility that's in number eight for grades 7 through 12 in the fact that they may be assigned one-to-one devices. It doesn't require that they're assigned one-to-one devices.

[01:01:53] But I do know that it gets a whole lot harder to have kiddos opt out or trying to leave a device at school or anything like that because of the makeup of our schools. Right now, we don't start our day where we finish our day.

[01:02:10] And so having-- unless we have a cloakroom where we're checking in computers every night and the power requirements for that, I'm not sure how that would work. Unless we completely reconfigure all of our schedules so that you're starting and ending in a homeroom, which I do not think most of our schools are going to be on board with.

[01:02:29] So that's some of, for me, the flexibility of understanding why we have constraints related to those higher levels but I would like to see us reorganize I agree that I want to make sure that we're keeping track of when sixth grade is in a middle school particularly since we put forward a motion specifically to have staff look at what we could do to move sixth grade up and whether or not it's feasible and I know that we continue to look for those room that room for me personally the reasons that I am I have interest in

[01:03:07] doing that is because I do believe that if universal pre-k is put in place we do need to make sure that we have room in our schools for those kiddos and so opening up some space with sixth grade I think and developmentally it makes a lot of sense to me but for our three middle schools that are in do have sixth grade how does this impact them particularly when we're trying to kind of look at whole school levels so this was one area that I was hoping that we could do some

[01:03:40] more revision of particularly understanding that some of the bills coming through the state may preclude the difference that we have right now between pre-k and K and first and second grade because it looked like some of the recommendations for legislation is just going to lump all those kiddos together I did hear from one of the people that it's bringing part of that that they are going to do a carve out for state testing so we're still going to have to have computers available to utilize for state testing so we'll have

[01:04:17] to take that into consideration as well mr. fresh and then mr. Dannon one thing that I've thought a little bit about is in the innovations in instructional and emerging technology policy draft unlike the other policy we don't talk about ETRC and its potential role and I think for a lot of people there was an assumption that this is where its role would be perhaps most important because they'd be advising before we've as opposed to reviewing something that was

[01:04:55] done perhaps even years ago right or that might just be coming up for renewal what-have-you so I feel like we definitely need a section here that gets into what its role is in this policy and perhaps some of that is drawn from the other policy because it's similar but I would hate for somebody who is not engaged in these conversations to read these five years from now and assume that ETRC because it's not mentioned in the other policy it could even be something that says as noted in the other policy ETRC's role is as follows

[01:05:33] or whatever but I would hate to have it not mentioned at all and that kind of leads to another question that I had as well is related to whether or not community engagement if we're talking about something like an adoption of a learning management system or anything like that I wasn't on the board when that was adopted the last time but did was there community engagement that was done related to Schoology there were surveys there were surveys okay so I think that having some community engagement aspect and outlining when that's appropriate would be helpful for the emerging tech policy in addition to

[01:06:10] looking at I agree that incorporating how ETRC would be utilized and whether or not I mean dr. Reed this is something that I would ask you is whether or not You would want it to continue to be called ETRC specifically because that is specifically your committee.

[01:06:32] And so it may make sense for us to reference that there should be a committee, but that's actually through you. Reclaiming my time? Yes, go ahead. I will note that the board's direction would be that the ETRC is referenced in the policies.

[01:06:49] That was part of the forum topic. Thank you, Mr. Frisch. I forgot that part. Okay, okay. Mr. Dannon. Just briefly, I support your earlier idea about discussing today a little bit, spending a little bit of time today talking about some of those things. So I agree. I think it'd be good to talk about the grade usage and the grade bands as well as...

[01:07:13] You can just go ahead and start talking about it. Okay, let me start talking about it then. So, and I appreciate staff was very quick to provide a response today about this. So reading through the educational technology policy, one of the initial things that struck me around device access was if it would make more sense to have the grade bands and groups, pre-K and K, first through third, to better align with credentialing so that if you've got a teacher that moves from second to third, it's going to be less of a burden for them to know what they're allowed to do and what they're not to do.

[01:07:48] If they have their classroom set up a certain way, they don't have to consider adjusting it. I recognize that the trade-off of that is how testing is done and that could be another thing to get ETRC additional feedback on is just what their impact what they think the impacts would be on testing as a result I know that discussion has come up before about kids who've never used a device before are they gonna be set up for success and if not with this policy preclude us from doing something that would you know set them up for practicing how to use the device and then same echo thing Dr. Anderson's not here but I'll step in and that I would love to know more about if it's possible to do like a an upper

[01:08:26] elementary definition and then a middle school definition and then with regards to the innovations and instruction policy I at the moment would lean towards breaking that table out a little bit more it's in section C where it's it's got k2 3 through 6 again I would same comments about about that and having 78 as middle school but then also potentially breaking out 9 through 12 having that 9 through 11 or 12 and then 12th grade is a separate thing again I

[01:09:04] just I spoke with a leadership group at Woodson yesterday really phenomenal group and they were very direct and honest but I came away from that I actually put this table up there on the screen to them and asked you know different scenarios and so forth and in so anyway I'm trying to reconcile the hesitation with giving access to these which is rightfully so against want to make sure kids are prepared for college and so forth and I think the sweet spot so to speak could be allowing perhaps generally I use at that senior level but

[01:09:39] even again I'm curious what the ETRC would think about if we basically just had no direct student use period all throughout that final column there on the right I think the current allowed with an approved instructional activities language that's in there now captures the general sense of the board from what I understood from June so that's what I'll say for now about great okay going back to that was one of the reasons that I asked mr. seti the question about trying and we have so many younger grade kiddos that are taking upper upper level

[01:10:18] courses so I don't I personally don't see a distinction in grade as a maybe mr. can you speak to that because I know we have some kids that are in specific classes that require use of different technology how do we manage that now so are you thinking from the sixth grade or special education no I'm thinking of like high school students that are taking a specific class that need access to a specific software or program how do we how do we manage that at the kid level primarily through the classroom instructional like if it's a CTE course

[01:10:56] and they may have some specialized materials that may be required the teacher may be assigning them the licenses I can think of AutoCAD as a model top of my head the teacher may assign them the license to use that tool the other variations in something general purpose and I'm going to call it and see if Sloan has any ideas on top of his head but yeah that's that's pretty much how it would be handled by the course level where the teachers are signing them the licenses so they can use those tools so for my recollection recollection in when we spoke about this last year is that we got to where we

[01:11:34] would want seventh and eighth grade only if it was explicitly in the course description as so that parents could make a specific decision as to whether or not they wanted their kids to take a class that was going to utilize AI in any way and then we wanted it to be a little bit more open at the high school level as kids are getting closer to graduating I will say that that is something that I when I was reading in here it was a little bit confusing as to

[01:12:09] whether or not we were still gonna allow individual basically are we are we only going to give AI as an option is the intention behind this is that we're only giving AI as an option for the students whose families have agreed to let them use it how how do you see that playing out in an actual course setting so I mean I'm thinking specifically like an English class or you know anything that would be considered general education dr. Presidio is there some way that you were envisioning that this would be playing out in in a real in real time

[01:12:49] it's a great question so in the emerging tech policy on page four there's the chart that we try to distinguish between the different types of AI usage and I think what you're really referring to is the last column with more general knowledge open-ended access so you could see based on you know the current recommendations from staff is that you know general knowledge AI use would only be allowed in grades 9 through 12 but would require obviously direct teacher guidance and parent approval so if a parent didn't provide that approval then

[01:13:25] the students wouldn't be able to access that technology okay so that is something that we would have to figure out how to manage at the student level then yeah and I think we have a pretty good process we might need to update our process but we have the parent digital consent system now that records a variety of different things that parents give consent to or don't give consent to and that works pretty well so I think we would leverage that as a starting point and I can totally see us leveraging the same process to I mean I do appreciate the fact that we've created that process I guess my question is I know that's only one step I know that the next step is to actually make it happen and that's

[01:14:04] where I get nervous well that the next step really is the challenge of the teachers actually then making the accommodations for students they don't have permission to do something what in this case use the AI tool right so they're gonna have to have an alternative assignment and the teachers gonna have to provide that and so there's some additional workload there associated with that but that's similar to what we do and families opt out of other things like FLE for example and there is a way that we could still give kind of student choice so that even if a child didn't necessarily want to I mean I spoke to you the other day about a very specific case when I was in 10th

[01:14:40] grade I really didn't want to dissect a frog and I was given worksheets to color and then given a quiz based on the same anatomy test that my my classmates were given but I didn't dissect the frog I colored the worksheets and so it wasn't as enriching an experience but it was something that at least I was given a choice that got that met the requirement of the assignment and so I guess what my question is for kids that don't want to participate in AI I could see our teachers giving them a choice between utilizing this path or this path related to whatever the task was and so in that means that kids aren't necessarily outing

[01:15:20] themselves we don't have kids that feel like they're being excluded like it can just be that they pick a path I just it means very intentionally on our side that we would have to set it up that way yeah I think that is most most likely what that would play or how that would play out in the classroom but again we would still want to make sure that parents understand they have the ability to opt out and we're recording that we're honored 100% yeah okay mr. Seti I saw you yeah I was just gonna close the loop on the prior questions and this question, right? When you look at the table that Dr. Presidio was talking about, table four, what you see on the left-hand side, which is why it's sort of broad

[01:15:57] category, is probably a collection of tools which is in volume more than what is on the right-hand side. The general purpose AI tools at best is going to be one or two or three, right? We can imagine Gemini as an example would be what we'll categorize as a general purpose AI tool. So controlling one tool with some variations of the opt outs possible obviously resource and time intensive but not every tool that sits on the left hand side can get into a box and we can have infinite combinations

[01:16:31] without expending energy resources and possibly tool purchases to get that far down into the weeds because there's a mass sort of a bigger collection of tools and they are these very narrow specialized cases which is why we made two different boxes in here just to kind of clarify that no and I appreciate that I definitely recognize that distinction for me it would be like access to chat GPT or something like that as something that absolutely but Encyclopedia Britannica if it's just in theory pulling the same way as any kind of search engine would have previously then it's a little bit different it's a closed environment it's only pull it's

[01:17:11] not going out on the web it's not the same generative discussion it's really just retrieving information from their database similar to the way it was done before it just the way that it was done before it was all canned answers that were programmed into the machine and so it's very similar but it's it's a closed environment so okay um miss Marin yeah I'm just wondering is is a leadership able to provide about how many students opt out of family life education generally what's the regular not off the top of my head but I mean

[01:17:48] we can we're talking like a thousand are we talking tens of thousands they're talking half definitely not tens of thousands okay and it does vary by school so again I mean we could pull that data if it would be helpful well I think another data point we have is in terms of parents that have opted out of having devices go home that might be a more similar well what we're getting at here I thank you I mean I really think we need to differentiate between elementary grades and secondary grades because they're really different animals.

[01:18:22] There is no doubt that a kid in secondary school has to bring home their laptop. There is no doubt. If the student doesn't, they will not be able to complete their work. We don't say that in policy, but that is effectively what's happening. I think we should own up to what we're doing. I personally would like to see that change, but the more we can say this is the expectation, then we know where where the lines are for elementary school kids I mean again how many are we talking about opting out of FLE which is an afternoon or two or three or four in a year and now we're talking about I don't know thousands of parents

[01:19:01] saying they don't want their kids having laptops I I am just surprised at the lack of caution from the superintendent and the staff about going down this road because it sounds like something I would not want to be responsible for implementing.

[01:19:19] I think we're asking teachers to do way too much and not really thinking about what it would take. Again, if we could better articulate why kids need devices, parents could understand that, oh, that 20 minutes of alexia actually will help my kid. Oh, the kid reading Mayan, it's actually better than that student coloring for that day because that student needs intervention.

[01:19:42] I don't understand why we're so silent about this as a board and as a division, because that's exactly what parents want to know. If we answer that question, we can all do a lot of other things, like making sure our teachers know how to use this stuff, creating better places where parents can find the list of programs.

[01:20:04] I also do just want, since this chart on page four of the emerging technology piece, it is important to look at the titles here. And I did put this in writing. So this chart says, grade band guidance on AI and generative AI tools.

[01:20:20] Generative AI tools has no definition in this policy. It says generative AI. Let's just say that it is using that definition. But that's not what's in this chart. What's in this chart is general knowledge AI, which is a difference definition that's defined.

[01:20:41] So even if we say generative AI is defined, the chart says it's about generative AI. But what's actually defined here is general knowledge AI. And if it's important enough to make a distinction in the definitions, it seems important enough to get it accurate in the chart.

[01:20:58] Honestly, I got a little lost because there's many definitions of types of AI. But it has to at least be aligned with definition and chart. Building on that just a little bit on the chart on page 4, this is where I do think that it would be helpful just to have this be elementary, middle school, and high school.

[01:21:24] Because whether or not we're being explicit about it, kiddos that are in sixth grade in a middle school they have much different experiences. They have access to different electives. I mean, they are, for all sense and purposes, a seventh grader.

[01:21:41] You know what I mean? They have more opportunities available to them, which is one of the reasons that I'm interested in looking at that. And so I personally would believe that it would be stronger to break it up differently.

[01:21:56] But Mr. Fresh, and then did I see somebody else? Mr. Fresh. On the subject of word usage and definitions and whatnot, I think one thing that we need to be conscious of as we kind of hammer out a draft along Ms. Marin's point is that beyond us and beyond the leadership team, community members are going to be going to the policy as well to try and wrap their heads around what it is that we're trying to do and so as we get a firmer draft together that looks like it's got legs to go on the full board etc I think

[01:22:34] it'd be good for us to take I've talked a little bit about word economy in the past but I think being intentional with the words we use so that it's you know easily understood beyond the board table I think is also important so that's something that I'm committed to looking at as we get a more solid track.

[01:22:55] Not sure when the best time to share this is, but as I've gone through this last few weeks, I'm trying to think in my head of different scenarios and just running them through this policy to see how what the impact would be, right? So one of those that keeps coming up is around, I guess, I don't know if it's an official term, but I keep calling it like the passive use of laptops, right? So I'm talking about when a kid comes into class that may or may not be able to open they may or may not open their laptop, the teacher is covering some sort of topic, but there's not a specified purpose, maybe it's for note-taking or something like that. How would passive use of, I'm supposed to be talking about

[01:23:33] laptops, be treated under these existing policies? Would that cease to exist, or would students still be able to bring them out to take notes and so forth, or what's your understanding? Well, I think taking notes wouldn't be passive. I think That would be an active teacher-directed activity, right?

[01:23:55] So they'd be taking notes in response to a learning task. I think if you're talking about the teacher maybe is doing a different activity and the student brings out their laptop before instruction has started, that would be passive use probably, right? And I think that's why we tried to, back on the EdTech policy, break down the expectations by grade levels about what level of device access students would have, and tried to do it with this idea of a developmental progression in mind that students at the younger grades wouldn't even have access to devices to be able to do that right they would only have devices when a clear instructional task that the teachers determine there's a benefit to

[01:24:33] using technology would introduce so it's not till you get to the older grades particularly middle school and high school where there would even be the ability for a student to do that under this kind of developmental progression okay and I'm thinking of the high school level again had a great conversation with the Woodson leadership class yesterday and talked about note taking specifically right so that would fall under if a teacher says okay it's okay to use your laptops for taking notes correct but if a teacher didn't give that explicit direction would a student be allowed to open up their laptops well I think a lot of that comes back to like the expectations in the

[01:25:13] classroom right and we've tried to standardize that a little bit more in the PD that we did over the summer and the updated technology use guidelines and we provided like different models where you know a teacher could say laptops are permitted to be out now they need to be off and away now right and you know there's different teachers that have created different you know posters and visuals to support that posted around the room so the students when they come into the classroom they know the expectation may be and you know mr.

[01:25:42] Presidio's classroom is you don't get your laptop out until I announce that time to get the laptop out, right? So a lot of that has to do with classroom management practices. Okay, and I'm wondering, I mean, if that's something we would want to include in here, right? That devices should not be used for note-taking unless there's an IP or some other exception, right? And so what do I hear a lot from from parents especially is around, I got my kids like to speed report and there were, you know, 8,000 hours of, which wasn't actually, I'm exaggerating there but my sense is that if we can cut down on this so-called kind

[01:26:17] of passive use or be intentional where it's teacher directed that would cut down on a lot of those concerns right this I think for example you know if a teacher says you know if laptops were open the entire class but maybe there's only a real 20 minutes there of say no taking dedicate research so forth with this policy cut down on that type of screen time where a student might drift off and browse YouTube or one of the other websites that you know one of the work rounds and all that kind of stuff or be emailing their classmates and so

[01:26:54] forth I think so and you know again managing classrooms with you know so many students is difficult and challenging under any circumstances but if you go back to the ed tech policy on page four at the top with the general expectations What we've tried to say there very explicitly is devices shall be stored when they're not intentionally in use, right?

[01:27:14] Setting that expectation that the teacher should be providing the guidance of when it's appropriate to even have your laptops out, right? So that should cut down on some of the passive use that you're talking about. Now, at the same time, that doesn't prevent a student when, you know, they've been given permission to use the device to go on and do something different than what the instructional task is.

[01:27:35] So that could still happen, but this should minimize that for sure. And that was my thought when I first read through it was a lot of things oh good this will cut that stuff down. I'm curious too about scenarios. I know recess is mentioned but what about using laptops as an incentive for getting work done or I hear that a lot too like student will my student rushes through the assignment so they can get on the laptop and you know play this game that they really like. Is that would that usage be allowed?

[01:28:01] So that's in our updated guidance already not to do that but I mean again that perhaps could be an additional edit to strengthen the language here we could maybe add some more of that language directly into the policy but that's in our current guidance right now. Okay that's helpful what about for times such as like during lunch or so forth is a student allowed to pop open their laptop during lunch under this policy as it's currently written? At what grade level? That's a good point yeah let's say high school level. We'll have them with them right?

[01:28:33] Correct, yeah. So currently I guess the answer to that would be yes unless we affirmatively said that we wanted to take a position not to allow that. At elementary that would not be true because the kids wouldn't be taking their laptops to the lunchroom with them. Okay, I guess one of the last scenarios then is say, you know, my colleague made a great point about thinking ahead five, ten years from now, perhaps there'll be a different superintendent, different folks here in this room. Would this posse as written, what would it look like to get approval for like a supplemental reading program or something like Lexia, would that have to follow a different path? Would that be much less likely under

[01:29:11] these types of things? Say we get a superintendent that really you know loves devices and wants 90% of time to be done on a device, would that be allowed under this policy? Is it broad enough to allow those sorts of things or is there some kind of cap that would restrict devices? In particular I'm thinking about what the board agreed to back in the summer around the importance of human centric education right and that's something that I really think we need to protect and should be throughout these policies so I'm curious your thoughts on that if we get somebody who's not as in favor of human centric education does this policy provide enough guardrails to prevent that sort of thing I mean I

[01:29:48] think several committee members have kind of spoken to that already trying to find the right balance to what's the board's role in approving certain technologies versus what's the staff's ability and responsibility to approve those things and I think it's really a question for the governance committee how tight you want to make those restrictions in the policy.

[01:30:10] Dr. Reed. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I think that this topic of human-centered and being able to spend more face time with children for our educators, which is what they really want to do as well, I think we have to be really thoughtful about our conversations around these policies.

[01:30:34] I was visiting with a teacher today, think an amazing elementary teacher sixth grade teacher who has utilized the professional development he's had access to to create by the use of some AI tools create better communication tools with families homework that's tailored to individual students in his class work that actually connects to our

[01:31:09] standards our curriculum and gives him more time to work with kids directly which is what he wants gives families clearer communication about how they can partner with him to help their children be successful and as data demonstrating real effectiveness and so I I think that we have to be thoughtful about adult use and student use and not inadvertently limit tools that our adults could use to actually benefit the very goal we're trying to benefit which is to be able to

[01:31:49] spend more intentional time with our children one-on-one right and then small groups and in conversation and so I I think this is a complex topic and I appreciate how hard the board's working at trying to sort of untangle I think sometimes competing interests the reality is you think we all share the interest to stay human-centered to be in the community with our children to support our families partnering with us and some of these tools actually will help us with that so I just it's more so a cautionary tale because the staff

[01:32:25] member asked me today am I going to be able to you know as a new policy going to not allow us to keep partnering with parents in this way or supporting work and I said I don't think so right we're waiting we have till February but there are a lot of folks who very much so want want the same things right and still we just have to be thoughtful about how we word what we're doing so I'm just thoughtful and I personally just wanted to make a note about one thing because

[01:33:00] I've heard it from a few parents now as well I cannot strongly enough suggest that it would be a bad idea for us to tell kids that they can't use their laptop at lunch or in the hallways. And the reason I say that is this: are we also going to tell kids that they're not allowed to do assignments on paper during lunch and in the hallways? Because I would hate to ask Dr. King what kind of SR&R violations we would get if we actually tried to tell kids that they, I mean our kids are more scheduled than they have ever been ever in history and

[01:33:37] these kids are trying their hardest to get stuff done and so a kid that is using their executive functioning to actually do their work and get it in on time I would hate for us to stand in the way of that and it it would like I just think that that's wholeheartedly and completely the wrong direction for us to go these are not kids necessarily that are just sitting and staring at YouTube if they are it's likely because they've got something else going on and we probably should identify that they're a kiddo that needs help in some other way or they could just be having a bad day and don't want to interact with other

[01:34:14] people and we I just want us to be careful that we're I've said this before and I'm going to say it again I don't know anyone who's ever had a day at work that every moment of the day has been productive exactly the way we're talking about trying to get our kids to be productive they deserve to have fun they deserve to enjoy coming to school and I'm not saying that screens does that but I'm saying that if we come across as so pedantic that we're not listening to the real-life circumstance that they have we are going to be further out of touch with what they need from us and they will stop talking to us about what

[01:34:52] they need and so I'm just gonna put that out there I really appreciate the conversation that we've had today related to these two policies I look forward to seeing kind of the more detailed feedback please do not think that you have to wait until the 17th to get that to me if you want to get it to me early I will get it back out as soon as I get feedback from everyone and so that and then there are just a few other things dr. Reed can we talk really fast about the procurement policy and I also wanted to ask whether or not we could

[01:35:30] consider whether or not policy 5015 would also make a whole lot of sense because it's kind of the lone wolf that's standing out there at this point if we ignore it so that's just a note that I would want to ask the committee as well so the policies I'm just pulling up the email here real quick the policies my understanding we ready to come back in December and there is let me just pull this up from Lee real quick there was you said 50/15 that's the one in between the mix of all of this so it's 50/10 50/11 50/15 50/17 they are

[01:36:10] all related to procurement and so it makes perfect sense I believe we've been talking about 50/11 as if it's 50/15 but actually because they're very they're very similar in nature well 50/11 has been forwarded to vision council for review but 50/11 miss burden is very clear should be kept separate okay because it identifies the thresholds and approval categories set forth by the governance committee several years ago during the procurement reform era

[01:36:46] additionally an enhanced user-friendly chart has been developed identifying required approvals that will become part of that policy but I think there is a a bit of confusion around the College Board contract which actually came to the board not because of it was a service but rather because it was sole source and greater than 200,000 so miss Burton wanted to clarify that but she did indicate that the consolidation of 5010 5017 and 5105 is nearly ready to forward to Division Council and will be available in December of 2026 for

[01:37:24] governance okay I will make sure that once that we receive it we'll get it posted the same way that we have been and that way we can go ahead and talk about those things as we move forward mr. fresh would it be possible to also get the expected updates or whatever 250 11 which you just referenced in addition to the other ones that are being combined so that we can do them all at the same time I guess is the question that's right yeah I will double check on that I only say that because I appreciate miss burden's perspective on it but there may still yet be options to not necessarily even the board may or may not want to

[01:38:04] change anything that's in there but it still might make sense to have it as part of the the broader policy that wouldn't preclude the benefits that Miss Burden identified in why that policy is is good From being adopted into the other policy if that makes sense. I will certainly Try to have all of those ready by December Okay, I think one of the things that her office flagged is sometimes having them separate from an operational standpoint is helpful because people are going for a certain type of contract and so

[01:38:42] Well, but then they're for two different purposes. I guess the board has a purpose and then trying to make sure that it's operational Obviously is a different purpose, but maybe we can keep the regulations separate, but we'll look I'm not somebody who thinks that just because topics are similar that they need to necessarily be combined I also don't think that they shouldn't necessarily be combined. I just want to have the option to be considerate about it Could you just go over the ones again that you'd like to see next in December?

[01:39:12] You have them? Yeah, originally we had talked about 5010, 5011, and 5017. Those are the ones that were due this year that we were looking at. But what I was recommending is that we also look at 5015 because of the fact that it also sits in the middle of all of it.

[01:39:30] And it's a different type of contract. So if we are going to work on combining, it doesn't make much sense to leave that one out in the wind. So, the last thing that I was hoping that we could discuss today was policy 50-30, and I incorporated the changes from Mr. Frisch from the last meeting.

[01:39:50] And so, the red line that is posted has the version 2 suggested changes, and also there's a clean version up there. So, and I identified where the changes came from on each one.

[01:40:07] So if if we can just talk about this one really quickly Most of the changes brought forward by mr. Fresh is just bringing them into alignment with other policies this is one that was a little bit different because the revisions that we had received from dr. Reed's office were just Correcting the names of which department it was it was coming from which I understand however, I think with our approach Moving to having it just be the division superintendent and then moving from there. It makes a lot of sense with the with the corrections so

[01:40:45] Let's just go through this really fast. So the purpose is there any concern with making the change that mr Frisch is recommended. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna assume that if I don't hear anything that we're good So in the philosophy section everything highlighted was were changes recommended by mr. Frisch except for I believe the one at the bottom of the pit at the bottom and that

[01:41:22] was from missing John cutting any objections to these changes it just simplifies language okay moving to the next page again this is just the division superintendent instead of the chief operating officer same with the other two on the page any objections to these okay then can I have a motion to seeing no objections can I have a motion to move this to new business and consent

[01:41:59] Thank you. Do you have a second miss st. John cunning all those in favor that is unanimous for all committee members, okay? So that's 50/30 that means that we've gone through a majority I think that we have one low-hanging still which is 1203 which I anticipated that we would need a little bit more work on So we'll go ahead and keep that one in the queue that I'll get that back and we'll be able to tease out those areas that we needed to discuss and otherwise at 612. We are adjourned.

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