Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Loudoun Education Alliance of Families (LEAF) Meeting, Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 1h 43m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/801045863?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

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 2026-10-22. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:01:13] Welcome LEAF members to the February 22, 2023, I guess February 22, 2023 meeting of the Loudon Educational Alliance of Families. This meeting will now come to order. As we begin our agenda this evening, seats are set up by planning districts or clusters. Make sure that you sign in.

[00:01:36] We are implementing a new attendance process tonight and appreciate your patience as we transition to online record keeping there are two options there's a computer at the end of each table for your use or there's a QR code and/or URL to access with your phone on the tables and you we want to make sure that everyone is signing in as a reminder staff and the officers do not share a list of contact information so please feel free to share your contact information with those in district is needed if you guys noticed that someone new has joined please make

[00:02:15] sure that you add them to any contact information that you may have had in the past anyone attending who is not a school board approved member or alternate should sit in the public viewing area all right we're now going to move on to public comment leaf meetings are open to the public loudon County residents are welcome to attend the meeting but must refrain from interrupting the meeting's agenda per the leaf charter and bylaws any public comments should address an agenda item members of the public who wish to address items on the agenda may do so at

[00:02:53] this time we do not appear it does not appear that we have anyone that wishes to provide public comment so we're going to move on to agenda item three approval of the minutes minute meetings for the november 21st meeting were posted for review in board docs and you have a few copies at your tables providing another opportunity for review i will entertain a motion to accept the minutes

[00:03:22] from the november 21st 2022 meeting as submitted motion to approve the minutes yeah who said that all right bill all right we have a motion by bill is there a second holly mcterran and second all right Holly second all in favor say aye all those opposed with no changes requested the minutes stand approved as submitted the minutes are approved we're

[00:03:54] going to now move on to agenda item 3.03 approval of an of an amended set of minutes to maintain consistency across school board advisory committees we've been asked to add the names of the members present and absent at each leaf meeting names have been added to the september 6th september 19th october 17th and october 17th 2022 approved leaf meeting minutes i'll entertain a motion to approve the amended minutes as submitted

[00:04:28] for the following set of minutes september 6th september 19th and october 17th 2022 leaf meetings would anyone like to make a motion holly mcternan motion to approve all right thank you we have a a motion. Is there a second? All right, we have a second. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed. All right, with no changes requested, the minutes stand approved as submitted. The minutes

[00:05:01] are approved. We will now move on to agenda item four, action item. All right, we're now going to conduct the election for the new vice chair of planning. We will begin by taking nominations for the office of the vice chair of planning. We ask that candidates who wish to nominate themselves be prepared to speak to your interest and qualifications. We will take nominations from the floor. Are there any members interested in serving as vice chair of

[00:05:32] planning? You get to hang out with all the cool people up here. We don't meet that often. And you get to help set the agenda. This is the actual position on the board along with the chair that helps set the agenda and what items we talk about what informational items we discuss what things we open up for comment is there anyone who who is interested could would you talk a little

[00:06:10] bit about what the commitment amount of time is and if you have set meetings etc sorry I can't thank you I don't know who's it's Holly oh okay it's like I can't see so generally we try to meet at least once before each meeting we have not been the best at that in full disclosure we do those over like teams or or Google zoom yes one of those things so I think it's not a it's not a

[00:06:47] large commitment obviously this would run just from now until August so really we're just looking at the March April May I don't think we have a June meeting yes so just march april may meeting and then setting up things for the you know the august meeting and maybe a few others if needed so it's it's not a large time commitment obviously we would ask that you would come to all of the meetings here if if you can um and you know we're gonna try to you know have a you know a short meeting at least once before every leaf meeting um to

[00:07:25] talk about you know agenda items and then there's some emails and things but it but it's not a a long um intense commitment yes please Jeanette come to the front um all right so um all right

[00:07:58] so would you please state your name for the record and um your nomination so we'll start with you so so just say like my name is just for the record my name is Jeanette Mahud all right and you're going to nominate yourself for the vice chair of planning yes all right so are there any further nominations for the vice chair of planning okay seeing none um do you jeanette tell me how you

[00:08:36] say your last name ma hood consent to the nomination okay um see no other nominations They are now closed. May I have a second motion to nominate Jeanette Mahood as the new vice chair of planning? All right. Any discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? Motion carried. All right.

[00:09:13] Congratulations. Jeanette Mahood is now the new chair of planning. Jeanette, you can stay with your cluster if you like, or you're welcome to join us up here too, whichever one you feel like. Okay, sounds sounds awesome. And I'm so excited that we have a vice chair of planning now Okay, so we are now going to move on to tonight's informational items as we have entered a new year There have been several shifts in division leadership as well as with the school board committee assignments

[00:09:46] Tonight's information items include introductions and brief updates from those leaders first. We are thrilled to have miss Erica B school board member Leedsburg district as the school board representative miss Ogedek B will attend leaf meetings for board member feedback and report back to leaf on implementation of recommendations welcome I was looking for the cue that it was actually okay to speak in the order of things but thank

[00:10:20] you so much I am the representative from the Leesburg district and really excited to be here I remember as a community member when leaf was first announced and learning about that opportunity to have more involvement from community members and parents in discussion about the school system it's a great opportunity and I think this planning position and thinking about what you get to talk about what the topics are and so forth this is I feel like going to be a great conversation and an ongoing way to be able to have

[00:10:57] more of a dialogue one of the things that I noticed as a candidate and then coming in is that it is super important to have public comment at school board meetings but depending on the number of people you have a very short time to say what you want to say and there's no dialogue there's no back and forth so I'm excited to join this group and learn more about all of you and your districts and and just learn about what you're talking about and if there are questions that you have or things that i can come back with the next time we meet i'm happy to

[00:11:34] answer questions and then i'll also be hanging around for a bit afterwards as well tonight so thank you and thanks for welcoming me all right thank you very much we're very glad to have you now i would like to introduce dr daniel smith acting superintendent of loudon county public schools this is not the first time we've met dr smith however it was important that he returned to chat with you in his new capacity welcome back dr smith thank you thank you for having me here tonight um the last time i was with you i was the chief of staff and we talked through some policy review process if you recall at the beginning of this year i am serving as the acting superintendent

[00:12:14] and really my charge is to you know set the foundation make sure our condition our division continues to move forward as our school board searches for a new superintendent and new leader to come in and um really just wanted to share as you know over this time period um my charge again is is to set that foundation but there's really four areas that i'm really focused on one is to make sure that our our schools and our principals and our teachers and our offices have the support they need to do the important work that we do with our kids every single day and so making sure they

[00:12:49] have the right the right amount of support. Two, it's to help to rebuild some trust and from our school division and so there'll be some things that you'll see here in the coming days and weeks that we're doing to try to get out with some listening sessions and really just try to continue to rebuild that trust. Third is around efficiencies and so efficiencies and effectiveness and wanted to make sure as we see areas that we can continually improve our structures, our processes that we are we're making those changes and and we're doing that now and we continue to do that towards

[00:13:24] continuous improvement and then last but not least we have a very strong and rigorous strategic plan 1lcps that's our our roadmap and so my charge is to continue to make sure that that moves forward and so we are an outstanding school division and i want to make sure that we continue to move forward and so we are continuing to do that but those are the four areas that i'm focused on here over the next six months as we search for a new superintendent.

[00:13:51] And so in just a bit, I'll share with you a little bit more about our budget and the overview there. But just pleased to be here tonight and look forward to working with you in this capacity. So thank you. Thank you, Dr. Smith. Next, I would like to welcome Mr. Neal Slevin.

[00:14:08] Mr. Slevin has been with us previously as well. Tonight, he is here as acting chief of staff and will provide some information on policies and what we can expect for the remainder of the year. Mr. Slevin. thank you for the introduction and the opportunity to return to leaf as you've stated i'm neil slevin i'm the acting chief of staff for latin county public schools and i get to support dr smith with all that great and important work that he laid out in his introductory comments prior to this role i served as the executive director of teaching and learning and i believe i've come in

[00:14:44] front of this group at least once to talk through some policies that we were working on in the in the Department of Instruction. I have worked for Latin County Public Schools for 21 years. I've been a teacher, a school administrator, and a division leader throughout that time.

[00:15:00] And I'm really committed into making sure that we get to the future of LCPS, whatever that is. I really appreciate Dr. Smith's emphasis on getting out into the community, connecting with parents, making sure that we're clearly articulating what we're trying to accomplish as a school system, 'cause Loudoun County Public Schools is a really great place for families to be a part of, for teachers to be a part of, and we wanna make sure that they feel supported.

[00:15:30] I'm also a parent myself, I think that's important to note. I have two sixth grade students that'll be going into middle school in Fairfax County Public Schools next year, so I know how important it is for families to be engaged with the public school system, so I just wanna say thank you for your part in being here 'cause you definitely don't have to be here, but it's making a big difference.

[00:15:50] One of my roles as the acting chief of staff is to help with the policy feedback process. We're not anticipating large changes. So you'll continue to see opportunities to provide feedback throughout the spring.

[00:16:06] One of the items that we're emphasizing are some policy updates in response to the grand jury report that came out in prior to the new year. And LEAF has already had an opportunity provide feedback so many of the cabinet members are shepherding those policies through that process now as information items and action items in committee and they're coming up to the through the board with a goal of having most of those done before the end of the end of the school year so I'm happy to address questions about policies I also work closely with our comment and complaint process making sure that constituents needs are being responded to and I work

[00:16:45] closely with the school board as well when they have constituents reaching out to them. So again, thank you for the time, the opportunity to be here tonight to introduce myself and I'm happy to answer questions if that's what we're going to be doing. All right. Thank you so much, Mr. Slevin. At this time, I would like to take about five minutes to see if there are any questions for our guests in relation to what they have spoken about this evening. Does anyone have a question? I recognize Jeanette. So you're talking about the strategic plan. Has anything

[00:17:23] move forward with that because i feel like when it was introduced by mr morris he was kind of like this is this is a piece of paper with information on it but i don't really know the action items that are taking place for those so absolutely so um we have as i said the 1lcps 2027 strategic plan for excellence has been our roadmap there's been a lot of work going on uh towards towards that plan in fact we've shared so the school board started to receive updates this past fall we updated by goal so there's four goals in the plan one's focused on empowered students which is goal one first and foremost goal two is on exemplary staff

[00:18:03] goal three on his own rich division and goal four is an engaged community and so every month we presented on one of those four goals about what's going on what is our progress what are some challenges that we're working through what is some help we need from the school board and so we talked through all of that in each one of the updates. Coming up this Tuesday, the 28th, we'll have goal four. So this will be the first time we've presented on goal four, where we present on where we are. Each time we also, I should add that we have metrics that we're measuring our progress on each one of the four goals. And so we present on those metrics. Here's what the data is telling us now. Sometimes it's

[00:18:40] been baseline data because it's the first time we've reported out on it. Other times we've had that data so we can show some longitudinal growth. And then what we'll do starting in March is we'll go back to goal one again so we'll say we reported out to you I believe it was in October for the first time with goal one now we're coming back with goal one in March to say here's the progress we've made since that time here's what each one of the metrics are we collect feedback around that so that was a kind of a big overview there is a lot of work taking place it's every time we meet with principals we talk through here's some of the work they give us feedback

[00:19:16] when we talk with some of our teacher groups we we've embedded that and so you'll see tonight within the budget that everything is tied every single budget item is tied to one or more of the goals of the strategic plan so that's probably a high level overview but if you're interested in specific areas happy to address that as well are those presentations available like online if I go dig deep into the school board stuff yes ma'am and they're usually in the work session we usually do them at the four o'clock session because they're usually about an hour long so those that there's if I remember correctly, there's usually four attachments. One is the slides, one you'll see

[00:19:53] the metrics, one you'll see disaggregated data, and I think there's a fourth one as well, but there's about four attachments to each one of those when you look in the work sessions. There was one in, I believe, October, November. I don't think we did one in December. We did one in January, so we did it the second meeting in January the 28th was the last one. Mattel had question yes yeah thank you so much superintendent thank you for coming our last leaf meeting we uh spent a considerable amount of time on data and one of the things that came out of that was

[00:20:29] uh the ability for lcps to share data uh especially map data and things of that sort publicly do you can you comment on if uh that's happened because i don't see it happening on the school dashboards yet and uh just a second part of that question have you made any structural changes to your cabinet after after you became acting superintendent the reason i'm asking is i was really surprised to see principles um are like three or four layers below you um and i'm you know i think that they report to an executive principal who reports to someone else who reports to someone else who reports to

[00:21:07] you i'm just wondering if you've sort of streamlined any of that uh reporting thank you yeah thanks for the question so um in terms of the the map data and that accessibility i know that's something that our DDI or Digital Department of Innovation is looking at also with our research and school improvement departments they're looking at seeing how quickly we can make that assessment I mean that data available I know they're looking at that I don't have an update for you tonight I wasn't prepared to share that but I know that is something that they heard and they were looking at

[00:21:40] in terms of your second question was around I know you asked about cabinet but you also asked about Oh, well, so in terms of our principal supervision, so I have not made changes to cabinet at this point.

[00:21:57] We, as we look at principal supervision and where they are, I've spent time in Virginia Beach and in Fairfax, and I have seen some similar structures there. And so I, my personal opinion is I wouldn't say that we're out of, out of sync or it's out of the ordinary in terms of the structure that we have for principals here.

[00:22:15] i will say we have done some things to have intentional opportunities for feedback from principals so an example is i have a principal leadership group that i meet with every other week that represents elementary middle and high there's principal representation there that provides that two-way feedback so that's something we have just started so that they can bring items of concern or discussion and we can work through those and I also bring things to the table too so we started that we also have a I have a superintendent's principal advisory group which which represents one principal from each cluster attends and so I

[00:22:52] meet with them monthly and they've been really critical in giving feedback in terms of things that are going well areas that we can prove a lot of times we'll take to them some things in advance to get their feedback on before it goes out to talk through different things so they've really driven that agenda for the most part um and we've made some changes based on that and so then they go back to their cluster principles and share out and so they take the notes back and share out there so that's been another thing we've done to make sure that we have um the appropriate levels of feedback throughout throughout the structure and throughout our organization thank you all

[00:23:26] right i think we have time for one more question yes yeah absolutely um we are still working on the dates and time so i don't have those ready to share with you tonight but the the idea was that we're going to have one listening session per district.

[00:23:49] So I would go with the school board member to that district. We would do it in a school. We've partnered with the PTAs in each one of those areas. So hopefully you'll be hearing about that. We've reached out to some schools. They've agreed to partner with us, and then they were going to help us with some marketing to get it out to the other PTAs in that district.

[00:24:08] And so we've started that process. We don't have the dates firmed up yet, but it is what I envision is that we might do a little overview here some things going on in the district some things you might want to know about and then we'd have an opportunity for feedback and so we make sure that we can we can respond to some of that feedback that one of the things that we're also looking at I'll tell you is depending on the number of folks there we want to make sure that everybody has a voice in the room and so trying to figure out the structure in terms of how we do that so we make sure that everybody has an opportunity to weigh in to provide that feedback myself and the board member present so I believe most of the dates we're looking at beginning in

[00:24:46] March and working through March and April is what we're trying to get them all scheduled but we're working through each all eight of those districts I've talked all eight of our our eight board members plus our one at large are on board and are committed to doing that so no so my office is working with it so I've reached out to some principals to say hey would you be willing to host us and you know can we reach out to your PTA and then we've reached out to the PTA to say hey would you be willing to work with us um and and help us with this and so we've got tentative agreements i believe with seven of them of the eight so we're working on one more we're just

[00:25:24] waiting to put all the dates and times out at once so everybody can can see those um and where there's where those are thank you very much um if anyone else had a question you can um that wasn't able to be answered this time you can either hold that and see if we can answer it at a later time or if you want to include your question in the feedback form at the end we can gather the questions and either respond directly or follow up with the appropriate person to get those responses back to you guys as well so next i would like to bring dr smith back for our next informational

[00:25:58] item the 2023-2024 approved operating budget there's been a lot of discussion presentation and reporting on the lcps budget so we wanted to share an overview for you um in the event that you get questions or have questioned yourself dr smith test test okay this will be easier for me to be able to see the slides and talk with you through it i will also say before i jump into the budget we did just stand up a page um on the on our website on the superintendent's page it says ask the superintendent so there it is a page there so i know we said there's ways to ask

[00:26:36] questions, but you're always willing to be able to go there to fill out that form on the Ask the Superintendent website, and we'll get back with you. So I was asked to just give a brief overview of the budget. When we did present the budget initially, it was the superintendent's estimate of needs, and so we presented that budget. I believe it was January 10th that we presented that.

[00:26:56] The school board then had a number of public hearings, and they worked through it, and so this now is the school board adopted budget. I believe that adoption was on February 2nd that they adopted the budget. And then most recently on February 16th, we had a meeting with the Board of Supervisors to talk through this again in terms of what's included in the budget. So I am going to give just a high level overview, happy to answer questions that you might have or where you'd like to know more information. Ms. Ogedegbe is here as well as she was a part of that process.

[00:27:25] So this budget is the very first time that we can adopt or that we can request resources that are aligned with our strategic plan. We haven't had that in the past. And so this has really been our driving question all along what is needed to achieve the mission and vision that's outlined in our strategic plan so every single one of the things that are included in the budget is tied to one or more of the goals in the strategic plan and i say one or more because most of them are connected to more and more than one more than one goal in order to have empowered students we need exemplary staff right and in order to have that we need to make sure we have an enriched division and engaged community. So many of these pieces are connected throughout the strategic plan,

[00:28:05] but everything is connected to at least one. So we're excited to have this first opportunity connected to our strategic plan. When you look at the overall increase, it is one of the smallest that we've asked for in years. There is about a 6.9% increase year over year, and this is the total overall, the total budget, the total operating budget, not just what we're asking from the county. And so you'll see, we just went back to FY12 to see just, you can see the highs and lows there. It is a 6.9% increase year over year. When you look at some, some folks like to

[00:28:41] see the numbers this way, here is how the numbers break down in terms of our total revenues and expenditures. You see the budget is $107 billion is what we're looking at. I'm sorry, $107 million is what we're asking year over year. And the total budget is 1.7 billion. So that's where the numbers come from so year over year it's 107 million increase there um this slide wanted to share a little bit about our staffing so when we look at our staffing um one of the things we look at to make sure that our staffing is for the most part school-based we want to have folks that are

[00:29:16] that are working directly with kids we know that can have the largest impact and so uh we also look at the washington area board of education they track a lot of this and so they keep a lot of data that says what this is one of the data pieces they they track to say what percentage is school based and so um last year we were number two um in the area behind fairfax uh this year if this budget is is finalized uh we will be tied for number one with fairfax at 92.3 percent everyone else is 90 ish 91 um all the other areas um in northern virginia and so i think that that speaks

[00:29:53] to that we do have most of our staff in our schools working with kids. And that's the goal here in terms of being appropriately staffed to make sure that we can meet the needs of our kids. So 92.3% are school-based, 7.7% are non-school-based. When we look at our enrollment changes, I wanted to highlight this because sometimes folks will say, well, your enrollment is pretty flat. Why do we need to add more money to the budget? And there's a number of reasons why that's the case.

[00:30:23] And so we'll talk through enrollment here, but there's a number of reasons why that's the case because simply to provide raises, when we provide raises for 13,000 full-time employees and 3,000 part-time employees, just a little bit of a raise costs a lot of money. And most, about 90% of our budget is in compensation and is in personnel.

[00:30:41] So we'll take a look at that in a second. But when we look at our projected enrollment changes for next year, we are looking about a 1% growth year over year. You'll see that elementary school is projected to go down just a bit and our middle school and high school are projected to go up a bit from anywhere from 1.3 to almost 3 percent is what we're projecting the increase there for next year it's also important to note that our student body is changing and so there are a couple of areas we wanted to highlight here you'll see on the previous slide we talked about what levels

[00:31:17] well here you were talking about our english language learners are going up about 12.2 percent Our students with disabilities is projected to go up by about 1% or 0.9 and then our economically disadvantaged students are projected to go up by about 3.6%. And one of the reasons that I want to share this too because in a lot of cases it does require more resources and more supports to educate the students in these areas. And so that is another reason as you look at our enrollment is relatively flat at 1%, we are seeing increases in certain groups. There are a few programs that

[00:31:56] we are planning on discontinuing for next year. As we looked at the budget, as we've had our school board work sessions to talk about these items, there are three items that I'll share that we're planning on discontinuing. They were used with one-time COVID funds. And so if we were to find money in this year's budget for them, we would have to remove something else. And so, for example, Tutor.com, we've been looking at our data throughout in terms of the usage data, who's using Tutor.com, and the decision was that it was not worth the amount of money we were paying to use that for Tutor.com,

[00:32:32] and the state is now coming out with new tools that we can use for tutoring that we're going to access. Elementary Virtual Loudoun is another program that we are sunsetting this year for FY23, and as we looked at those numbers, we had, I'll tell you, I think we had 88 students that accessed that program at the beginning of the year. About mid-year, we looked at it again. It was about 84 students, if I remember correctly, and so we do believe in-person instruction is what's best for our kids. We also recognize there are some medically fragile students that may require other types of instruction, and so what we are doing in this case is we've reached out to each

[00:33:11] of those families. We reach out to all the families, all the 84 families that were still enrolled to talk about a transition, to talk about a plan on how we can help them to transition. If they require alternative instruction, maybe it is virtual instruction because of automatically fragile students, then we're working with them on what that can look like. We have access to several state programs such as Virtual Virginia that can help support that as well. And that's for the most part, it's free to us. And so that's one of the reasons also that we are discontinuing elementary virtual loud in. And then student telehealth. So student telehealth was a program

[00:33:47] we put out an RFP we were going to work towards that did not get off the ground. And so we were not including that in this year's budget because it didn't get off the ground, but then also because the governor did propose a statewide telehealth program that we are planning on accessing. So those are kind of the three big areas in terms of discontinuing that were used COVID funded that we wanted to be transparent about for the upcoming year. This dollar here just shows our operating budget, and you'll see about 90% of our budget is in personnel.

[00:34:20] That's with most organizations. As you probably know, we have about 10% in operations and maintenance, but most of our operating budget does go towards personnel. And with personnel, most of that is around compensation. And so this budget does provide annual step increases and 1% top-of-scale payments for everyone that's eligible on the salary scale.

[00:34:46] It also provides a cost-of-living adjustment. We have some on the universal auxiliary scale and our strategic teacher adjustment so that everyone is at a minimum of 5%. Last year, we gave an average of 5%.

[00:35:01] And as you know, with an average, you have some that are below 5% and some that are above. And so we wanted everybody to be at a minimum of 5% this year. And so that's what this budget does. And so this slide I wanted to share, it does break down our three scales.

[00:35:19] So we've got three scales for employees. We have a licensed, an auxiliary, and a universal. Some folks say, well, what is the 5%? What does that really mean? Well, this is what it means exactly in terms of the dollars and what that could look like in terms of the minimum, the average, and maximum.

[00:35:34] Because there are different scales in which folks are on, different steps there, There is a variance there and there is also within the, I mentioned the teacher strategic step. Our board is focused on, there is a mid year SAG when you look at our teacher scale.

[00:35:52] And so there has been several years ago, there was adjustments made to the beginning of the scale. And now there is a SAG in the middle of the scale. And so they've been really working the past several years to fix that middle SAG of the scale. So there's been some strategic adjustments to the middle part of the teacher scale.

[00:36:08] so that's included there. Bonuses, in the governor's budget, there is a budget item here for bonuses. It's $5.4 million. It requires a local match, so that's where this would require, this would be our local match to that for recruitment and retention. It hasn't really been spelled out what that will look like, so we don't have a lot of information on it, and in fact, in the House and Senate sides of the budget, some of these funds are rolled into other compensations, so we're not sure if that's going to pass yet we wait to see what's going to happen with the state budget and i'll say i probably should have said this to begin with all of this is predicated on what's going to

[00:36:47] happen with the state budget we're not sure um you know when that's going to be passed the session is supposed to be done at the end of february we're hearing that they may need a special session to come back the conference committee is looking at it now but we're hearing that the there may be a special session to come back and the senate and house budgets are very different um in terms of the amount of funding that Loudoun County public schools would receive for funding. And so we're really waiting to see where that state budget's going to fall because it does have big impacts on our budget. Inflation here. So inflation is a big part of our budget this year as we look at

[00:37:23] our costs. These are our projections in terms of our costs. And based on what we've seen, we are hopeful that inflation will go down, but this is what we have to budget for so that we can make sure our maintenance and operations costs that we have those built in. So we have asked for 75.3 million from the county for their funding request. And so our money does come from three different sources. One is from the county, one is from the state, and one is from the federal. And so I'll talk through each of those three. So in terms of the county funding request, we are, I think

[00:37:59] we're right at 7% now in terms of our request. That is one of the lowest requests from the county. In over 10 years, and so we have been working with the Board of Supervisors, I think at our meeting last week, most of them were very complimentary on the budget and what it looks like, because most of it is in compensation, is really what we're looking at.

[00:38:19] We're really trying to provide that needs-based budget in terms of where we are. So $75.3 million is the county transfer request. $38 million is from the state, is what we are expecting. And that's, again, that's the governor's budget because that's really all that we know at this point.

[00:38:37] And you'll see that that budget does include an average of 5% division-wide pay increase, the recruitment retention bonuses that I mentioned, some things around reading specialists and math instructional specialists. Our budget does include five math instructional specialists to be placed.

[00:38:53] A portion of one of those positions is funded in the governor's budget. So we're gonna see where that comes from. But you see, we put the caveat here again that the state funding will likely change based on the, once the state budget is finalized. And then our federal funds have actually decreased.

[00:39:09] And this is really because COVID. Our COVID funds are now gone. So you'll see that there has been a big decrease in the federal funds that we receive. The other note here is that the school board as part of their deliberations did remove athletic fees for next year.

[00:39:26] So that fee was removed as a part of this adopted budget. so those would be removed for next year. So overall, we are looking at, again, you'll see the 6.9% increase and the $107 million increase is what we are asking for.

[00:39:43] In terms of county funding, that's about a 7% increase or 75.3 million. And the 19,900 is the cost per pupil. So again, we're really in limbo in terms of the state and house budgets and where they're gonna land.

[00:39:58] It could have big implications for us in terms of compensation, it can have implications for a number of different programs that are included in that to see what passes through. Some are funded mandates and some are unfunded mandates. And so we've got to find other funds to come up with to support those.

[00:40:17] So we're really waiting to see where that may come. So that's what I have. Maybe I'll ask Ms. Ogodegbe, is there anything you would add that I maybe missed as a part of that? - No, I think, I mean, this was a great comprehensive overview of the budget process this is my first time going through the budget process as a board member but I think the other thing that's probably top of mind and I apologize because I was out of town unexpectedly last week and I'm not caught up on things but would be if I can

[00:40:55] ask a question which is have you heard anything more around the budget issue that happened at the state level with the error and have there been developments on that side of things? Because that's potentially impactful as well. Thanks for that question. So what Ms.

[00:41:12] Ogadegbe is referencing, the school board was scheduled to adopt the budget on February 2nd. On Friday, which I was a Tuesday, on Friday, January 27th, we received notice from the state superintendent that there was an error in the calculation tool. So the tool they send us to say here you can figure out how much money the state has given you there was an error in that formula and so that resulted in about 3.5 million dollar difference for us in this current fiscal year fy 23 and about 7.4 million for fy 24 next year um so i have seen in one side of the budget um i believe i want to say was the house i'm not don't quote me on that but it was on one side that

[00:41:51] they did include 3.5 million but the fy 24 funds have not been included on anything that i've seen published in the house or senate budgets for next year that said we're hearing from um from many of our legislators that they're going to take care of it's going to be taken care of through the budget process but we've not seen anything official um i know the governor came out and asked for them to take action on this and help to fix this but we haven't seen anything official yet so we're we're cautiously optimistic anyone else have any questions for dr smith about the budget

[00:42:30] yes you might want to turn if you click on one of those and just push the button there you go sir breaking there we go so I saw that you were phasing out virtual learning for elementary are there similar efforts to look at phasing it out for middle and high schools I don't know that's the case I have not we have not talked about phasing that out for middle school and high school I think we look at the course selections and the needs there so we have not talked about that mr. Slevin might have a little bit more to add in

[00:43:05] terms of that I don't know if you can add to that so there hasn't been any discussions about phasing that out in terms of enrollment but what has come up related to our secondary virtual loud and program is could we leverage that resource to expand opportunities for students for example we have some hard to staff world language courses that are difficult to offer at each of our 17 comprehensive high schools and so some jurisdictions our size offer more robust language offerings through their virtual high school for example perhaps some more specialized math courses and so we're some dual enrollment courses for

[00:43:43] example that's really very staff dependent you know we may have a staff member at Woodgrove High School that can offer a dual enrollment course but there are students at Tuscarora that want to access it is there some way to leverage the virtual platform so that more students can access those courses so I don't I don't see that necessarily going away the model may change but it's part of our plan for expanding opportunities for students thank you

[00:44:11] anyone else all right thank you very much dr. Smith we appreciate it okay we're now gonna really quickly spend just a few minutes getting an update on a very high level on the superintendent search what is happening how we can be involved and

[00:44:46] so I'll turn that over to you for a brief overview on that great thank you so much so again I will apologize being out of town I'm not completely caught up up on the latest updates but i can share that we are moving forward with the superintendent search as really one of the highest priorities right now for us to make sure that we have somebody in place ahead of the next academic year and so um we will be sharing soon opportunities for community

[00:45:21] involvement in the search the first steps for a superintendent search i think very similar to any executive level searches developing uh executive summary so it's basically the job description what are you looking for in a leader what type of attributes you're looking for information about our school system to make sure that we are um sharing clearly what we hope to find in our next leader as a superintendent and so that profile or job description is something that will be developed in conjunction with getting feedback from the community so we're not quite at the point where

[00:46:01] we have a schedule and all the details about how that engagement will happen but that should be coming out soon and the goal will be again to have somebody all the whole process with doing recruitment and interviews and a selection process ahead of the start of the new academic year to have somebody in place are there questions again it's like very high level at this point but there's more information coming yes so does the school board do all the recruiting and hiring i'm like

[00:46:38] i'm not sure are they become an employee of lcps so lcps puts it as a job or is it the school board that is reviewing is there anybody at lcps that looks at it so ultimately the school board are is decision-making group for hiring a superintendent but that's done with input from the community so typically there would and again I don't know exactly how this will be structured I haven't been through this process before but looking at the way that it's done in others other jurisdictions you would have the ability for community members for example to take part in interviews and

[00:47:16] meet prospective candidates typically in this is my experience I work in higher ed for my day job and when we've interviewed and had people come in for senior level positions say like a provost or a vice president at the university it's pretty typical that the search committees are smaller and they don't publicly announce the candidates because they're often in positions where announcing that they were a candidate for someplace else would be of detriment to them in their current position so there is sensitivity around the confidential nature of the searches so there wouldn't be for example town halls

[00:47:54] with all the candidates just out of respect for the need for confidentiality earlier on in the process so as a school board member you are actively recruiting or you hire a firm to recruit we hire a firm yeah and again I think think information about that should be shared publicly soon as well. So there are search firms that specialize in K through 12 leadership searches and we'll be working with a search

[00:48:27] firm to help and they recruit, they organize listening sessions, they help with a lot of the logistics, but the interviewing and the decision making is not, you know, they're not picking for us yeah any other questions I think we are ahead of schedule so I'm fine if there are more questions it's not have to be about the superintendent yes I'm wondering how we know that the search committee will be in alignment

[00:49:05] with what the community is looking for in terms of because it's one thing for a search committee to look at a piece of paper and a resume but how do we know that that search committee is going to meet the need of our children and our community so again the details for community involvement aren't quite finalized but there will be community members who participate in helping to develop what that executive profile looks like and include so there there

[00:49:39] will be input to help make sure that that is an inclusive process so again Again, I don't have all of those details, but information to make sure that for people who want to be involved, there will be information shared soon about what that process is.

[00:50:01] It hasn't been finalized. So more to come soon. Again, a little premature. And it could be that there's information that I'm not caught up on because I've been out of pocket, as I said, unexpectedly. So just a quick comment.

[00:50:18] a parent and but then what happened in the past few years as a parent I'm not concerned but I would like to be involved in more what's being who's being hired and since but we have seen with Williams and Ziegler we want to avoid the same issues we had so I would really appreciate more parental involvement and community involvement in those situations okay I appreciate that and I'll bring that back as well I think community involvement in this process is crucial regardless

[00:50:54] but I would I I agree with you just in terms of what's gone on over the last couple of the years it it becomes even more important to have that feedback and participation and not just it's not just checking off a box but it's truly being involved and when we get more information to on the process we'll we'll try to make a note to relay that out to everyone as well as an opportunity to become more more involved if you're interested in that particular part of the process and and if that's before your next leaf meeting then I would expect that we can you can communicate that electronically

[00:51:33] so you're getting updates you don't have to wait until the next monthly meeting to get the updates I have a question unrelated to the superintendent search um as you can see my district is not very well represented this week this month um nor has it been throughout the the time that we've been meeting so i was wondering if we could get an update maybe from mr gandhi or just in general of how we can be recruiting more members because i would like my area to be represented and i'm willing to do some of the work that might be

[00:52:10] needed for that thanks i think uh i think we've done a pretty decent job do you know how many schools are left out first of all what district are you dulles north dulles north which is what schools it's where we are physically right now so is it yes hillside briar woods um so you can't blame distance correct how many schools are left off 12 schools are those dulles north schools or they um okay all right well we'll get back to you and just so you know i we've emailed principals

[00:52:49] we've emailed ptas and it's just uh you know if they don't do it they don't do it or they've appointed them and they don't come and that is a big part of uh the agendas because if you heard heather at the first meeting or the second meeting we want to make sure these are productive right that we're not wasting time here most importantly wasting your time and so um i think that as the year progresses they will be more and more productive at the end of the day because we want to make sure you all get answers and the ideas that you have get back to the superintendent get back to the people that actually get things done and so if this is an effective body then

[00:53:29] people want to show up right and they want to be a part of it so i think we are getting there but but I will definitely check in your district and we'll get from there. 11 out of, okay, so 11 people signed up and you're the only one there.

[00:53:53] So 10 people just didn't show up, just so you know. Thanks. We also, I mean, this is the first year of this committee. So I think having been part of other committees from the ground floor up, it is sometimes difficult to keep attention until things are rolling a bit more smoothly.

[00:54:21] people some people are just not the type of person to kind of be in on the ground floor and need things a bit more developed before they can operate and so hopefully as we move forward there'll there'll be opportunities but I mean I definitely would encourage all of you in your particular clusters if you notice that there is a school or even not in your cluster if you notice that there's a school and you you know people there and you've never seen the person or you've never seen anyone you know say they're from that school and you have contacts I

[00:54:57] mean reach out the way that this is supposed to work is that the the PTA or PTO if there is one nominates an individual to be their leaf representative if there's no PTA or PTO then it would be the principal and then that person is then approved by the by the school board so it's really up to to the the PTA and or the the principal so if there is someone um and if you guys have your little district email list serves and you um notice that someone hasn't been coming you know

[00:55:32] reach out and and and see um what's happening um so your term runs through June um or July correct me if I'm wrong June or July June through the school year and then so starting in probably March April there'll be a push to then have new

[00:56:08] people appointed by the end of June so that the school board can approve them similar to what we did last year so that when we start in August we'll start with a not necessarily a fresh roster I hope many of you will be back but that we'll start with that group of people yes I know that we've had some discussion it said one year term so does that mean we then need to pass off to

[00:56:43] another person for the next year no it just means that we get reelected if we want to read by the board okay that was one of whenever we were reading through the bylaws and all that kind of stuff said one year so that a lot of people very good question hard stop okay i mean i think that if this has been we we are really hoping that we don't have complete turnover um because then we just start again from the the ground floor and have to build up so um obviously there's some like you mentioned if you're if you're a senior and you're no longer involved in lcps like that that may be but we're hoping that there'll be a

[00:57:19] some new people and some people continuing yes it was built by talking to pta ptsas first i myself was nominated by the principal because our pta isn't strong in the advocacy side we might want to revisit who you reach out to first because the principal probably would have somebody in mind because ptas are going through elections right now as well and they're some are extremely strong

[00:57:54] and some don't exist so i almost feel that principal would be the first choice to go to to ask and give them the right to then go to pta ptsa sorry um i'll let joan um correct me but i mean i i think we we do need to have a conversation to make sure that the leaf body is representative of the school body as a whole and that we're not that we don't have issues of

[00:58:29] representation where that you know and I I'm a member of the PTA I understand but but I think that the the thought was and I know I can speak specifically for my school so I emailed the principal and said hey Mr. Jakes I see there's this new board I'm very interested in this like what do I need to do about this process and he said great talk to someone from the PTA like they're the ones that are gonna like you know do do this part of it so I think

[00:59:04] that they're supposed to be working in tandem together but I'll let Joan see this one this one's on right yeah so our first ask as staff is we go to the principal and say nomination time is here it's open please approach your PTO PTSA see who you have around as a volunteer because obviously the principal knows their school best so that process is our single point of contact for the school that way they can go to the appropriate people in the school or where they do not have an active PTO PTSA identify volunteers and

[00:59:41] then bring and submit those names back through the form vetted by the PTA or endorsed by the PTA PTSO or where there is not one and then the principal has sent that through to us and then the school board approves those members votes those members and approves them as nominated last year we started about April 19th which was a little bit late but that's the process that we had so we're hoping to start late March with that outreach and plan so we can make sure that we either have those re-nominations and those new names or those people who are graduating matriculating from elementary to middle or middle to high you know

[01:00:16] we have some of those naturally occurring openings so we can get that nominations process complete by the time the school board meets for the last time in june if you guys have specific feedback

[01:00:55] about the process um when you fill out your feedback form tonight if you could put that in there because as this is the second year that we will do this if there is a better way um if you guys have any ideas on how to reach a larger group of people at your school that that would help with advocacy um we would love to hear those things as well because i think we can put that um into

[01:01:27] into place if anybody has any specific um ideas google doc sounds good sounds like a google doc um all right does anybody else have any questions um comments um bill um okay hold on i'm sorry okay all right we'll start yes with you so one thing that whenever i was nominated for this

[01:02:06] position from my PTA, they were requesting members from the PTA to go to three different committees. One was for relief, one was for something for children with minorities, and one was for disabled children, right?

[01:02:21] So three different committees. I mean, I don't know the purpose of those. I volunteered for this one because I'm not a minority and I'm not disabled, so I don't feel like I could represent them. But that is something you had mentioned earlier about, like, okay, we should have representation totally agree but at the same time there is a whole separate literally an entire separate committee dedicated just to that right so in fact two separate committees dedicated very specifically to those things so like it's important but it doesn't need to necessarily be a focus of our

[01:02:57] committee I don't think so that was just something I thought was interesting too because we could not get anybody else to volunteer for those we have many minorities in our pta that come okay okay well i mean maybe i'd be more comfortable doing it like after you know i've spent more time in this process but for sure that's not the first thing that i'm volunteering for so um yeah so i think that that that that is a point we can talk about advisory um groups so there are three

[01:03:33] MSAC SEAC and now LEAF there's also a fourth equity but that's somewhat different as they actually do have a seat at the table there's a committee and they they do things differently than what we do as an advisory group but that is that is a point they do cover different there is some overlap obviously there's also some things that are handled differently just depending on the informational items that are that are discussed but but yes I think while there is those advisory committees that are dealing with those specific

[01:04:09] things it's we still as a whole want to be cognizant of having making sure that we're providing opportunities for if someone is interesting and being an advocate and being on the leaf committee that they know how to do that and it's not just you know a rubber stamp of the same people that you know come in year after year so that's just something that we're that we're working on um for that um all right bill i want to go back to a conversation uh that probably at the beginning of the meeting about the

[01:04:42] strategic plan and it was mentioned that it was um sort of brushed over by jeff when we were talking about this i think what my impression of what was what we really talked about at the time was the fact that there was a dissonance between what a strategic plan and what actual goals are so for For instance, what we had listed as goals were not smart.

[01:05:02] They weren't specific, measurable, attainable. We go through it. They were very broad, general, and soft. And so even Jeff had questions. We brought up questions about what the strategic plan really was. And it wasn't aligned to anything many of us had seen from a business perspective where you can actually perform to it.

[01:05:20] You can evaluate it. Dr. Smith was talking about the fact that there are goals attached to it and that it's being measured. Where do we find that? And that actually goes into another, yes, ma'am. Okay, and we'd love to hear it because what I need is guidance because the next part comes to just a general question for the last two months we haven't met.

[01:05:48] So it's been three months. There's a lot that's gone on during that three-month time period. We haven't communicated at all amongst the group to be able to get back with and talk with the principals and the PTAs and anybody else about any other information other than we see in the newspaper or if we attend a meeting outside of here, let's say it's a school board meeting to find out what's going on or do some other digging.

[01:06:11] this is a suggestion for moving forward how are we communicating internally to really drive key issues that the parents are talking about because one of the concerns I think we all have is that we're not wasting our time here so we are talking about real issues that are actually going on and appearing in the papers every Friday and finding out information there when can we if we're an advisory committee get the information before others do so I'll answer the second part and then i'll i'll let you um go into where to to find that information um i mean so so

[01:06:48] i i will say to give a specific when the the information was released regarding the former superintendent there there was an email exchange with the the the chairs on is this something that we need to have a conversation about and then you know within 24 hours of that there was a decision that had been made um you know to to release him and so there wasn't there wasn't an

[01:07:21] action item that we could advise on um and so I think that's one thing that as someone who has worked with with our wonderful staff and putting together these agendas it is difficult to find action items that are current but still relevant I mean you know what what tends to happen is we

[01:07:53] either have the instance where we discuss for instance the new policy that the governor had regarding transgender students that ended up not being put into place. And so the conversation, it wasn't right for us to discuss it because it was still at the state level.

[01:08:14] We had some discussions. Or you run into a situation where it moves so quickly that all of those decisions were made in, you know, December and there wasn't an opportunity to kind of, you know, do things.

[01:08:30] So I think that to the extent that you all have thoughts, ideas on how to be more reactive, not reactive, be more proactive and not reactive, that is really something that we're, I think that we're striving for.

[01:08:53] I know that it is Mattel's number one other than getting everyone represented goal to be more proactive in this and it is difficult though given kind of the way that the school board works with even certain policies and given that we're only meeting once a month unless everyone

[01:09:13] would like to vote to meet like twice a month or okay so I think that that's a very good point I think that, you know, I know for our, so you all are in my, that's my district there.

[01:09:45] Okay, yes, that's the, anyhow. So I know that on occasion we've sent around emails saying, like, where is this document? Or does someone know how to do this? There have been some infrequent but happening emails that we've gotten.

[01:10:02] So either, maybe we need to update that list. That could be part of it. Okay. um so so i think that that's one of the things that we have struggled to figure out is how how you all want to communicate outside of these meetings um so if there are things that happen that you think necessitate or that affect the entire um school system and not like your one

[01:10:37] you know particular district then um you know i'm open for yes thoughts i'm sorry did you you had your hand raised right yeah yeah oh oh i'm sorry wait before you say that erica do you want to answer bill's other part of his question so i'll just say it if you felt like um the initial presentation on the strategic plan was missing something my understanding is that when the strategic plan was first approved it didn't have some of the specifics in terms of the metrics and

[01:11:13] and the measurement it might be worth thinking about adding that to perhaps the next month's schedule to have dr. Smith come back and speak to the specific metrics that were developed and that they are measuring against there are more specifics now I I think there and we'll be getting our we'll be hearing again he mentioned next week the fourth goal and hearing the progress update on that for the first time next week and then we'll start and we'll get on a

[01:11:50] monthly basis and update on one of the goals I I think it would be worth doing that walkthrough and I this is the first year of the strategic plan and so as I've been listening to updates I've also asked questions about some of the specific metrics and you'll hear if you listen in for the hours of the school board meeting other school board members asking questions about how some of those metrics were developed and kind of asking questions around that as board members were not stipulating the metrics per se but the guidance from the school

[01:12:28] board was higher level in terms of the overall structure of the strategic plan but I think that would be a great topic to come back through here and certainly like yourself if people have experience in the business world and I have questions around smart goals and having things be more specific and tangible I think that's great feedback to share yeah I would appreciate that and I would also say you know Heather Mitchell none of this is an indictment I'm trying to think through how we best do this when we take two months off this is about a muscle memory and with a new organization like this taking two months well basically three months off takes away any of the muscle memory we started

[01:13:06] get and understanding where to find things how to find things how to go after it and I'm just trying to think through how we best communicate we also have to be sensitive to I think in whatever communication goes on because of let's call it Roberts rules in here but then also discoverability of anything that goes on in communication that's official leaf type stuff we need to make sure I think that that's really clear about how it's being communicated to so I know there's some sensitivities around that but again I'm just trying to think through how we best get information out understand what's actually going on instead of hearing rumors and you know there's i don't have an answer i wish i did and i don't

[01:13:42] expect you guys to have an answer right now hey bill i just wanted to tell you i appreciate your remarks and uh december 6th i had to pull up the email we did have conversations and uh like heather said um i think we even talked about polling our members to see how many support our superintendent after the grand jury report on lcps and so those conversations were happening but you know things moved relatively quickly and so we didn't need to do that but i wanted you to know that we do take all the input really seriously and i'm it's not just talk about making sure that our voices heard

[01:14:21] and i hope you know by now i'm not afraid to step on toes right you know i'm sure joan looks at me because i've done foyer requests and it goes through her office and she's like oh man i gotta deal with this guy you know what i mean but like it doesn't matter you know what i mean uh what matters is your opinions and because you all represent your schools and so we are trying our best and like Heather said it's our first year and I think it's just going to get better and better but we do need more involved people up here too so I know that you know no one really uh wanted to do this uh planning the membership position or the planning position but like you know we need

[01:14:56] involved people to get this done so thank you for your remarks though we appreciate it so um To Ms. Agabee's comment earlier when she stated that how important public comment is, particularly for the board, and that unfortunately in that public comment period, there really is no opportunity for a back and forth.

[01:15:21] I do wonder if, and maybe this would go to the new planning committee chair, if there might be an opportunity to have some of the board members come in and have a back and forth and whether that means that we submit larger questions ahead of time or we pull our districts just so that we can get a better understanding and feel like we're actually having that conversation because what I'm hearing at least from at least a few members and I haven't pulled everyone in the room is that it I mean it does feel a little bit you know that the agendas are planned and I think that we're given a lot of valuable information absolutely but I think being able to hear some of

[01:15:59] feedback directly from the schools would make us personally I think would make me feel like you're hearing us because I guess on top of that I know when I have emailed or tried to communicate with the school board I often don't get any I've never gotten any feedback or responses and that might just be my district member that might be the level of concern that it is it might be just understaffing at the school board and I think it's probably that last component um and so when we're not getting that information back right it it does make it makes me feel like

[01:16:35] my voice isn't being heard so as a representative if we can have that communication i think that would go a long way into feeling like we're making some progress on some of those concerns so i um so i'll just up first like also i'm so behind on my emails but i was doing really good for a long time and had like zero unresponded to so some of it is it's individual responsive the ability to get back to folks i think um i so and some of this is also per district so i after

[01:17:09] i was elected had a meet and greet i think the next weekend or two weeks later i had another one in january february's like gone so i guess it will be early march but people do schedule sometimes more informal so I just show up in a conference room in a library and literally just have conversations with people so come as you are ask the questions be able to have that engagement I think there are some again back to the Roberts rules question if you have more than two school board members coming to one place and talking about school board business technically

[01:17:47] it is a public meeting and should have been announced in advance but we could plan for that and announce and say that we're going to have school board members multiple at a leaf meeting and I'm looking and I think that that's accurate so that could be something that's planned out I also think again I mean I am just generally personally more informal and so I was thinking like can we have snacks afterwards and just sit around and talk and chat because you I think the ability to just be able to have conversations in small groups and one-on-one and hear what people have questions about or feedback is something

[01:18:25] that I am seeking to continue to gather that feedback and it's one of the reasons I was so excited to be able to I asked to be with leaf and was excited to be able to get this liaison a site assignment this year because I do want to hear from folks more generally and not just on on agenda topics too so I think that's a good um that's a good planning step and um jeanette will get great kudos from all of you when she is able to organize that and get multiple school board members here to answer

[01:19:00] questions and i think structure wise it's probably helpful to have some questions in advance just to organize it because you're not a small group either yeah i should just say real quick so we are we are running into um we probably have time for about two more comments and then and then we need to do we've got a few housekeeping items that we need to address I think idea of having questions is is great I like the idea of being able to even if we can't have someone for a dialogue if there are specific questions that your

[01:19:35] school has maybe we can start to categorize those so that we could send them to the appropriate person and then you know even if it's just you know somehow relaying that back so we'll definitely I think that's I appreciate that comment and we'll all right so last one sorry like laryngitis but I'm not

[01:20:09] sick um I'm just gonna say to tag on to that so when we started the year we had an issue at our school in the cold spring and Joan very kindly I put a whole pack of information for Joan to kindly send it on to the right people and then we never heard back I never heard back and I never knew how to follow up on it so like all the goodwill that I kind of generated like oh leaf can really help you and listen to your concerns and it was like silence and I've tried multiple times since and the contact various ways so I really do think we need a way for our opinions to go to people and to get even acknowledgement that they were I'm

[01:20:47] sorry that they read them so when we're talking about all this I just want to throw it out there I feel like that is also the piece that's missing you know and the whole point is to represent our school our school is very concerned about a very specific issue and then for months I'd be like I have no idea no one will get back to me. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Yes. So I'm going to say two things. And there's no one in this room. I'm not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I just want to say two things. So one, part of, I will say that we have tried to focus on district wide issues as

[01:21:21] opposed to school specific issues because of the committee and the time that we have. And it would be it would be difficult to address issues that are just and it may be that your issue is also happening at other schools and I actually we did communicate as a group our sector and I included comments from everyone in our sector too trying to get that broader view it was a school it's a county-wide issue okay all right and but then I didn't you know I mean that was the end okay if that makes sense yes all right so so I think now that we have a planning person I think that is

[01:21:59] going to to really help and and well that coupled with in full disclosure the fourth quarter is the worst quarter of my life every year and so anyhow so that also but I think that that is a I appreciate that feedback um i think that if you do have particular issues we will um we will work to make sure that we have some type of communication that goes to multiple people so that we can um

[01:22:32] you know to work on that so we'll we as the um the chairs will take that um and and figure out the best way to relay that information back um yes erica and and can i just ask i mean if you can follow up with me as well I believe you're all in the Leesburg district and so let me know what that issue was I'm happy to talk with you all right Jeanette I'll let you wrap up all right everybody there's sticky notes on your tables so write down what you would like to hear about a lot of things I feel like this year been informational like what is map testing what do we do and things like

[01:23:10] that but I have a lot of questions that you probably have noticed over the meetings I do want to find out what they're doing with the strategic plan because we talked about it and when it was presented there was no metrics so I do want to find out what they're talking about so I I guess I have to go back to the old school board meetings but that would be great to be presented here also I have a question about school security we're using an outside firm to answer the door and run IDs at high schools and I don't know why every school now okay every school we hired this person so I don't know I want to

[01:23:47] understand that for school security I want to talk about what they're doing to prepare students for college and the real world and showing up for a job on time and late assignments I also want to talk about them taking classes at a different school if your school doesn't offer it why you can't take it out of different high school if you're like the one kid that wants to do it so I have a a lot of things that i would love to be talked about but if you have more please i'll stick around and you can just write it on a sticky and give it to me um that is amazing let's hear it for

[01:24:22] some planning all right yay um all right no in all seriousness um i think that um it is very helpful to have different perspectives on how the leaf committee can operate um i obviously bring whatever background that I have to to you know the to this as you know an attorney and working in nonprofits and and I think that everybody else brings their own kind of you know experience to this and so really nothing would you know make us happier than really having this be a the the advisory the place

[01:24:59] where you get all of your information and where everybody takes the school board takes notice nothing would make me happier than if that's what this committee turns into and so I think that all of those are great suggestions if you want to fill out sticky notes and you want to give them to Jeanette that's lovely if you want to fill out the feedback form and put your comments and questions into there we can aggregate them all and we can give them to Jeanette if you want to put things on the parking lots that are over there we can fill those out and and make sure that they're all aggregated together so regardless

[01:25:31] And then we will meet as a committee chairs and have a conversation about what we want to see short-term and long-term. So just a couple of things since we're running into time for our debrief and next steps.

[01:25:48] Our LEAF handbook is online. We have updated some of the information. We have made changes to the logo, the logo usages, school handouts to reflect certain current information. It looks really nice. We presented about the LEAF handbook to the school board in January, the first January meeting.

[01:26:12] I went and talked about LEAF, and everyone was very excited about what we're doing. So in addition, just real quick, the book review committee is looking for a few high school parents who would be interested in helping with a book challenge. The challenge process may also include parents outside of LEAF.

[01:26:32] you're asked to review a challenge book or resource that's offered at grade level that matches their leaf roll so high school if you submit your name as being willing to volunteer to participate in the resource review process when a challenge your school level is received they go down the list of volunteers on a first come first serve basis and check with you on availability then the library media services supervisor would provide a copy of the book or resource to you as well as information on selection objectives and criteria some basic facts about the resource in the schools and a way to capture your notes for the review process and then you would

[01:27:07] read the book or resource in its entirety the reviews the author information and any awards it may have received and then you participate in a virtual or in-person meeting that usually lasts about an hour during the meeting committee members discuss the resource and vote to determine any appropriate placement of the resource and then those recommendations are given to the superintendent along with a summary or I guess the superintendent and or the principal depending on if it's at the school level or the district level along with a summary of the meeting and after the meeting staff contacts the committee members to coordinate the return of the books if you are

[01:27:43] interested in this please let Christina know I have participated in this I think think that it was very um eye-opening to um hear concerns and thoughts that did not match mine in any capacity and how the process works so um it was it was nothing that was the most interesting hour because nothing went like how I thought it was going to at all whatsoever so um I think that

[01:28:19] And you get to, like, pretend you're back in high school and read, you know, Of Mice and Men or whatever the book is of this time. So if you're interested, please let Christina know. And then before we break for the evening, we ask that you take a moment to complete the meeting feedback form.

[01:28:36] As we've discussed, your feedback will really help us continue to plan valuable content for the future. The link will be closed after the meeting, so there is no time like the present. Our next meeting is set for Monday, March 20th, 2023 at 530, right here in this room.

[01:28:56] Thank you for your participation this evening. I'm happy to stick around for a little bit. It sounds like Jeanette is going to stick around for a few moments as well. If anybody has any questions or comments, and otherwise, we are adjourned. Thank you.

[01:29:12] Thank you.

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