Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Legislative and Policy Committee Meeting, Monday, March 6, 2023

Date: Monday, March 6, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 45m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/805354720?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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[00:00:07] Good afternoon I'm calling to order the March 6th meeting of the Legislative and Policy Committee. Our first order of business is public comment and I see that there's no one signed up for public comment today so we're going to move right on to approval of the minutes. Could I get a motion please? Mr. Sorotkin. Thank you Madam Chair. I move to approve the minutes from the February 6th 2023 meeting as posted in BoardDocs. Second.

[00:00:38] motions been made by mr sorotkin and seconded by mr baity all those in favor is there any discussion sorry all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that motion passes unanimously with all board members present committee members present sorry moving on to our discussion items we're starting with item 4.01 which is a legislative update from jackson west mr jackson's going to update the committee on the general assembly activities during this past session including an overview of where we are in

[00:01:15] the budget adoption update on lc the leiden county school board's legislative items plus any top line k through 12 legislative items and key dates remaining in this session i will turn it over to you charlie thank you thank you ms reeser and hi illinois board members and staff appreciate the time being with you today and appreciate you guys again entrusting me and my firm with the ability to trust or to work in the general assembly for you I sent Ms. Reeser, Dr. Smith, and Neil just earlier today sort of a wrap-up of session and where we are.

[00:01:49] And as you know, session doesn't end when the adjourn sign-y die. There's a veto session, and this year, like in years past, there's a budget that still needs to be hashed out. And that may or may not happen, and I'll get to that in a second. But I wanted to start sort of where we ended, which is with a spate of retirements in the General Assembly, not just for your delegation but statewide.

[00:02:11] I think it's about 20% at minimum, 20% of the seats at minimum in the General Assembly will change hands, whether party or individual, in this year's elections. And that's a significant number, probably more than we've had, certainly in recent memory, that this is true for your delegation.

[00:02:29] We expected Delegate Wendy Goditas to retire. She had been pretty open about that. But it came as a surprise, I think, to many last week when Senator John Bell, who represents really the heart of Loudoun or the central part of Loudoun anyway, announced his retirement to focus on prostate cancer treatment.

[00:02:46] I share that, and not just Loudoun, right, it's Northern Virginia as a whole. Senator Jenna Howell, who has overseen the state budget for years and advancements in K-12 funding, she's overseen the Senate side of the budget for years. She's stepping away.

[00:03:01] Senator Dick Sasseloff from Fairfax is stepping away. Delicate Ken Plum, Delicate Kathleen Murphy, who represents a portion of Loudoun County, also stepping away. I start there because that's where everything begins now, and want to just share that in my view, and I think in many folks who work in the General Assembly's view, the folks that are coming into office, their fresh eyes on old problems and items in your program, like retooling the state school funding formula and other big items like that, I think you're going to have new eyes on those problems.

[00:03:38] And I just want to share that with you, that while those requirements are daunting and I think going to be challenging, I think presents an opportunity for folks like yourselves to share your vision of how things should change and putting some items on your agenda. Moving on to the discussion that was, there's a tracker, and I'm not sure all of you have it, Chair Sorokin, I'm not sure if you have it and every board member has it, But, you know, I know Neil and Dr. Smith and Atusa do, of the 250 bills that we sort of tracked for y'all and weighed in on some of them, 48 passed the House and Senate.

[00:04:12] So that's not a great clip, but 48 of those did. And you can go through on the spreadsheet and sort by the pass tab and look at all those you'd like to. The vast majority of contentious legislation died in the Senate finance, excuse me, not Senate finance, Senate Education and Health full committee or subcommittee.

[00:04:30] A couple examples of those, Senator Amanda Chase, for instance, had legislation dealing with parental rights and educational transparency. The legislation was pretty complicated. Essentially, it would have given parents the right to have advanced notice of a variety of school activities, not limited to, but including school library book lending, after school activities, field trips, et cetera.

[00:04:52] That bill was killed 14 to 1 in the Senate Education and Health Committee. Senator Mark Peake had a bill that was killed 9 to 6 in the Senate Education and Health Committee that would have related to participation in female sports. The legislation would have required a definition of biological sex prior to participation in scholastic sports. The bill also would have created a civil action if that had passed, and I share both of those, and there are examples that the other party, the Senate Democrats passed and House Republicans killed, and I can share some of those internally as well, that depending on which way the legislature goes, Those pieces of legislation, while they did not pass this year, certainly will keep coming back.

[00:05:32] It certainly could keep coming back in the hands of a different General Assembly path. A few bills moving on that we sort of had some direct impact on. Senator John Bell, who, again, is unfortunately stepping away, had legislation related to codes of conduct and bullying.

[00:05:53] And the final version of the bill, we were able to, Dr. Smith, appreciate your weighing in with me so we can weigh in with John to get this change. The bill is specific regarding each school board to include in the Student Code of Conduct Policies and Procedures that include a prohibition against bullying.

[00:06:11] Such policies and procedures shall, one, be consistent with the standards for school board policies on bullying and the use of electronic means for purposes of bullying developed by the board pursuant to subsection A and direct the principal or a designee to notify the parent of any student involved in an alleged incident of bullying within 24 hours of learning of the allegation of bullying we were able to add that we're able to add the learning for a portion of that into it into the language for that for that bill so your principles were required to notify parents of something they hadn't even learned of yet so so we appreciate Senator Bell's willingness to work with us on that and that was something that he was he was

[00:06:49] disgraceful about Delegate Davis on the House side carried the House companion if you all remember this this panel included in its agenda as the school board did as well related to the VRS and return to work and Delegate Subramaniam had legislation that was actually left in committee that would have reduced from 12 to 6 the number of months for the required break in service for a teacher or bus driver or school administrator to return to work in a part-time or substitute capacity.

[00:07:23] Delicate Coyner from Chesterfield had similar legislation that did pass, and so we supported that legislation moving through. That legislation is in front of the governor's desk for signature. Both the House and Senate positively looked at that bill, and your weighing into it was helpful.

[00:07:43] There was legislation that Senator Boisco had considered carrying at the last minute decided not to, related to crimes, certain arrests and convictions for students in public schools, and when they need to be reported to, when school officials need to report them to the parents, that legislation was not filed at the end of the day.

[00:08:07] Senator Butcher decided not to file that, and we can talk about reasons why, but Senator Bell, excuse me, Senator Surabell and Delegate Rob Bell from Albemarle had a bill that required each school division superintendent to annually designate an employee in the local school division as a division safety official whose duty it is to receive all reports of school division employees that have been arrested for various crimes so so this dealt with adults and not students and dealing with students might be something we need we can tackle in years ahead but that was what passed this year related to adults within the school division um there's

[00:08:43] various legislation report related to posting and and requirements for school divisions to post things related to free and reduced meals and and SNAP benefits and I don't think I need to get into those in too much detail but but they're in in the in the memo I sent earlier today and I wanted to spend a little bit of time and it will back and forth with y'all on the current budget stalemate um so we we all i think know where we are um budget negotiators uh um ended session and i think you probably read the press coverage um that there's not a deal on the budget they did

[00:09:20] pass what's called what they called a skinny budget and and legislators including members of your own delegation um are still learning what that means and i want to i want to thank dr smith and neil um and your staff for helping helping me and and delegate david reed shared a lot of information with me from House Appropriations staff. I think help your folks really understand it. But from our understanding, and Neil, I'm not sure who's all in the room. If you have finance staff in the room, help explain a little bit what the skinny budget does. But for all intents and purposes, we know that the skinny budget does not fully hold harmless allowed for the state's

[00:09:58] failure to allocate what it had promised a year ago. So I communicated that to your delegation this morning. Senator Pavola has already begun engaging with your, with the Senate Finance and Appropriations staff. Senator Pavola had not heard that similar concern from Arlington yet or other jurisdictions. And Delegate Reed, we've communicated a little bit and Delegate Reed was a little bit surprised that what Senate Finance staff and House Appropriations staff had communicated was a full hold harmless, was not the actual result. I know this is a big,

[00:10:34] a big top-up conversation during y'all's lobby day and important to not just y'all but every school division across the state and before i hit on coca and support cap i wanted to see if your staff want to chime in a little bit about that uh before i move on mr slevin do you have anything you'd like to add so we didn't arrange for anyone from business and finance to be here but obviously we're spending a lot of our time paying attention to what's happening and we're putting information together so we'll definitely i'll check to see what updates has been have been provided to the board um and if there's additional information we could share we'll make sure the whole board gets

[00:11:08] that thank you mr jackson yes ma'am so so two a couple items that have been central to y'all's um agenda the last couple years later the budget uh putting the whole harmless uh issue aside uh having the support cap in coca the cost of compete adjustment um as you know a couple years ago with delegate reed's support on house appropriations and chairs then chairman tory in Prince William. We were able to partially restore coca. Our effort to continue and fully restore coca was not successful this year, and that's not a surprise. Go back to the beginning

[00:11:45] of this presentation. I talked a little bit about the changing dynamics of the legislature. Prince William and Loudoun County have been the two counties most strongly pushing on coca, and the two that I believe are impacted the most by a full restoration of coca. So as your general assembly changes, that may be something that, again, is something that we can tackle and have success on. Support cap, last year, as you know, the Senate budget and then eventually the budget that was passed did make a substantial dent in the support cap. And the Senate budget this year

[00:12:23] intends to do the same thing. But what we don't know is how much revenue the state is dealing with. The governor is seeking significant tax cuts, and the Senate budget, I think it's about $1.2 billion.

[00:12:39] It's about $1.2 billion in additional spending than the House budget. So as they figure out how much revenue they have, that will determine how likely it is any further advancements on the support cap are made within a final budget or not. And then one thing I think I would stress is just that there's a strong likelihood that no budget will be agreed to, that the underlying budget will be what remains.

[00:13:06] In my 10-plus years working in the General Assembly, I've not heard chatter about that before, but that's been a pretty strong sense among some pretty smart people that follow the Assembly that they may not come to an agreement at all. And so, which, if you want to read key leaves, maybe why they passed a skinny budget this year when years passed, they have not, you know, funded certain ongoing responsibilities in a quick way before the session ended.

[00:13:37] We will know in a matter of a few weeks, it's not, I reported earlier today, I think, to Atusa, Dr. Smith, and Neil, that I talked to Senator Barker over the weekend, and I know that conferees have not met since session adjourned. That's not surprising. As we head towards a late April veto session where they review the governor's amendments to various bills or vetoes, that's around the time where I'd expect a budget compromise if there is any.

[00:14:06] Legislators don't want to have to come back more than once. They don't have to. But we will see as the spring here goes along how much companies are meeting and if there's any progress. And back to the hold harmless for one second before I wrap up, it's my intention to continue to communicate to your delegation with Dr. Smith, Chair, and today from your finance staff.

[00:14:25] She says the hold harmless doesn't quite hold you all completely harmless and work for a solution. And again, as I said, Senator Favola had jumped on that this morning, and Natusa and Chair Sorokin and others, I will communicate that to you as I know more. Thank you very much for the update.

[00:14:43] I'm especially grateful for having you liaise with the legislators to be able to have the legislation such as the one that you highlighted regarding the 24 hours that the time frame was adjusted, the language evolved to include from learning of the offense rather than just 24 hours because often our legislators may not have the details of how implementing something at the local board level will play out and later you have to fix things, and we appreciate your help in getting it right the first time.

[00:15:16] I'm going to open the floor to other questions or comments from committee members. Could you just remind us the dates for veto session? I'm going to get it wrong if I sit up at the top of my head, so let me look it up one second.

[00:15:46] I'm going to let Mr. Beatty does have a question for you while you look for that, Mr. Beatty. I think there was an acronym you used, COCA, or you talked about, could you explain that? That is, no, it's okay. Sometimes it's used interchangeably with COLA. It is the cost to compete is COCA, or the cost of living adjustment is COLA.

[00:16:07] So it's used interchangeably. Did I get that right, Mr. Jackson, or is there anything you want to add to that? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. It's the cost of compete adjustment. Thank you. And I don't have the calendar right in front of me.

[00:16:25] I can email the date of veto session, but it's in April. Okay. I can look it up, or if you get a chance to let me know, just so when I give my board update, I can let the full board members know. And I guess I'll just pause here and see if anyone from staff has any questions for Mr. Jackson.

[00:16:44] Well, we appreciate your time down in Richmond representing us and all of the communications back and forth with the staff and myself throughout for your time today, and look forward to visiting with you again when there's further updates. and please don't hesitate to let us know if there's anything that you need from us in the meanwhile thank you all thank you we will move to our action items item 5.01 revision of policy 1030 a code of conduct for school board members and

[00:17:18] this item comes back to us to give us an opportunity to reflect on or make any other changes that we might want to make after having the community feedback so I'll just pause here a moment and see if either of the other committee members has any comments to make or questions for staff on the policy before I, well, I guess I can turn it over to Mr. Slevin first and see if you want to add anything to our discussion from last time or just refresh our memory.

[00:17:47] Sure. So you were alluding to this, but this item was brought to the full board on December 13th. This is one of the policies that are recommended to be reviewed and updated as a result of the special grand jury report. Since that time, the policy has been sent out for feedback.

[00:18:03] There was feedback that was looked at in the development of the policy. One piece of feedback had to do with staff and community, I'm sorry, board and community communication, and that's actually covered in 2510 would be the appropriate policy for that particular piece of feedback.

[00:18:21] I'll ask if Mr. Falcone has anything he'd like to add with this particular policy. I do not. So that would be the only updates the staff has. Okay are there any questions or comments from board members? Mr. Sorotkin.

[00:18:38] Thank you madam chair. I had a question about a clause on line 73 of the red line so it's not the new section but just as I was reading it over it says that the administration of the educational program conduct of school business shall be left to the employed superintendent of schools and his or her professional and non-professional staff.

[00:19:03] so can i ask what non-non-professional staff i don't know what that means so i want to i know it's been a while since this policy was reviewed but i want to see if there's a reason for that distinction or whether i'm planning to amend to just take that out and make it more general but i want to understand what what that term means mr falcone thank you i'll i'll take a crack at it I didn't write it or review it at the time, but I think it's intended to capture support staff, but I'm venturing a guess there.

[00:19:40] So I would imagine it's also trying to draw a distinction between licensed and non-licensed, or perhaps licensed and classified. And I just wonder if – I'm kind of interrupting you, sorry. Would you like to finish your question?

[00:19:56] Well, I finished my question, but I'll make an amendment once we have it on the floor. Okay. So I just wanted to, piggybacking on Mr. Sorotkin's question, just clarify, would the terms licensed and classified encompass everyone?

[00:20:14] Or do we want to use, could staff, or do you know what language you want to use? Yes. I feel like we can just say staff and take the rest out. So, yeah. And I would like to address, if, Mr. Beatty, you don't have any questions, you do.

[00:20:33] Go ahead. thank you um one question about the manner that this is coming for since it's an action item are we considering its uh display to the board as the information item for this correct okay so we would make a motion to to recommend or not recommend it to the board and that's where it would go next so i i was just going to take a moment to address some of the feedback from our advisory committees

[00:20:59] and otherwise some of the changes that are being suggested would require board members telling other board members how to do their job and i think that topic as far as mandating town halls or using shall versus will have come up with this board in several other instances before the full board and it was not the consensus of the board at that time to there was not majority support for telling other board members how to be a board member so i think that addresses some of the

[00:21:37] comments that were made by our advisory committees of course any board member is free to make a motion to do that but i just offer that by way of explanation as to why those changes are not being included in the policy revision at this juncture any other comments motions to amend mr sorotkin Well, I will move to – We don't have a motion to – we don't have a motion on the – I was going to make the base motion.

[00:22:11] Yes. I move to recommend that the staff recommended changes to policy 1030 be brought before the full board. Second. Motion's been made by Mr. Sorokin and seconded by Mr. Beatty.

[00:22:27] Any further discussion, Mr. Sorokin? Thank you, Madam Chair. I move to amend by striking the words professional and non-professional on line 73 of the red line so that it would just read left to the employed superintendent of schools and his or her staff.

[00:22:45] Second. Any discussion on the amendment? All those in favor, please signify by raising your hand and saying aye. That amendment will pass 3-0 with all committee members present.

[00:23:03] So we're back to the base motion. Any further discussion on the base motion? okay seeing none all those in favor please signify by raising your hand and saying aye that motion will pass unanimously with all committee members present so that will go now to the full board as an information item as the chair sees fit to calendar it and we will move to our information items 6.01 adoption of new policy 3310 which is the evaluation of new and established

[00:23:40] programs and this comes to our agenda at the request of staff the division of research assessment and school improvement is seeking to establish a policy to support the culture of continuous improvement that aligns with the one lcps strategic plan so this policy will provide guidance for assessing the development implementation and impact of new or existing programs practices and initiatives in lcps i will turn it over to dr tyler or dr ellis i'll turn it directly over to

[00:24:16] dr tyler and dr blakelock for a brief presentation before we turn to the policy thank you good afternoon as mr research described this is an opportunity for the division of research assessment school improvement to support this aspect of the strategic plan that deals with the core value of of continuous improvement. And what we are attempted to do in framing this is to ensure that we've seen in other divisions situations where program evaluation policies are viewed as kind of

[00:24:52] a program attached to a research office. And sometimes there's a spirit more of compliance to a policy and it's driven by one office. It's clear from what we've seen in the strategic plan commission by this board is that the idea of continuous improvement is something you want to and the culture of this division.

[00:25:09] So this policy is being presented with the opportunity for the board and other stakeholders to shape what that looks like and how we actually carry that out. And as we had mentioned, within our vision and mission, we have core values that drive it. And when we looked at the definition of continuous improvement, the idea of that culture that drives the fulfillment of our mission, the question is how can a policy that looks at the implementation and impact of programs be consistent with that

[00:25:42] to where any new idea or initiative or program that is meant to support this vision and mission has a certain culture around when it's introduced, how it's introduced, how we look at the implementation, how we make decisions about starting or sunsetting programs or making revisions, scaling down or scaling up those programs.

[00:26:06] So to give you an idea of what we see, and there's many different examples and definitions of continuous improvement. This is one from some research done by Tony Brake and others. and the idea is that they looked at six core principles of improvement, and they mentioned things like making sure the work is problem-specific.

[00:26:25] I'm just kind of touching on some of the items here. The idea that we cannot improve at scale what we cannot measure. The idea that if you're looking at introducing a pilot, before you scale it up, you really need to measure the extent to which it is accomplishing what the initial goal was.

[00:26:41] And the idea of accelerating improvements through networking. So these are just examples of six core principles that these researchers found when they were looking at what it takes in successful school divisions, successful organizations. So this is not presented as a model for the board to follow.

[00:26:59] It's an example of what does it actually look like to carry out a continuous improvement culture in an actual policy program evaluation. So some are very familiar with the Plan, Do, Study, Act model.

[00:27:18] There are many different models like this. But the idea that continuous improvement could be described as a cycle where you set clear goals, you implement ways to improve upon that, you evaluate its effectiveness, and then you adopt or you abandon the process kind of based upon the results.

[00:27:36] Whether it's a four-step process like Plan, Do, Study, Act, which is something that has been prominent in our school improvement plans for the last eight plus years, or something else identified by the board and stakeholders that could actually drive the work. So you get an idea of, as we look at the policy, the policy exists to really implement certain core principles of what it means to engage in continuous improvement.

[00:28:00] And the cycle could look like this, the Plan-Do-Study-Act model. It doesn't always have to be linear like this. There may be moments where we're in the middle of implementing a program, and we may have to engage in some study when we see an adjustment in the field accordingly.

[00:28:18] So it gives you an idea of how a framework of continuous improvement, however it is defined, is critical for actually guiding the policy. So those other strategic goals listed here, and in this particular case, because it's kind of an all-encompassing practice of looking at continuous improvement, it could involve any number of initiatives in any of these goal areas.

[00:28:41] So next, I will hand it over to Dr. Blakelock, again, who is our supervisor of research and evaluation and also has extensive experience with different divisions around strategic plans and how to actually implement those. So he has kind of two skill sets to bring to this conversation.

[00:28:58] Thank you, Dr. Tyler. Looking at this slide here, we speak to collaboration and distributed leadership. And the two bullet points I really want to bring your attention to, even though all these six of them go to the six core principles, is how is stakeholder voice being lifted to guide continuous improvement of a program, meaning that a lot of different folks are involved in a program from a lot of different angles, and you want to make sure you have consensus amongst all of them as far as how to approach that PDSA cycle. The other one I want to bring your attention to is the one that is second from the bottom, which is how often is progress being discussed or measured,

[00:29:34] and that gets into the study of the Plan-Do-Study Act, where we're looking at the continuous improvement being where is where what needle is being moved and if not what do we need to do to adapt a program to make that happen so there's a variety of different kinds so looking back at this we think about continuous improvement and to put it in action that brings us to program evaluation as you can see on the slide there are a variety of different types of program evaluation the ones I really want to bring your attention to are going to be the first three with the first one

[00:30:11] being formative evaluation, where you're looking at a program, seeing how it's being implemented, making sure it's being implemented with fidelity, and providing any tweaks that you need to continue it going so it's efficient and doing what it is you want it to do. You're also looking at some short-term outcomes related to that.

[00:30:29] The second one I would bring your attention to is going to be the summative evaluation, which is looking at the results. And that's going to be your big picture, taking a big study and saying, okay, what is the overall impact of this program. And that's when you get to a point of, do you want to change the program, do you want to keep the program as is, or do you want to sunset? So that's really the big comprehensive evaluation to look at your outcomes and seeing what it is. And then the third one I want to bring your attention to is going to be that third bullet, which is developmental evaluation. And what that ultimately is, is before a program begins, taking a look at the program

[00:31:07] itself and drawing out what the evaluation plan for that would look like. That's something that we're working on right now with the dual language immersion program as well as the pre-IB-IB program, getting a sense of what evaluation those programs will look like to make sure that those frameworks are in place going in and they're getting the metrics that they need on the front side of that.

[00:31:27] The research office, the LCPS research office, has done many program evaluations over the years. We currently right now have about eight active program evaluations looking at a variety of different specialized programs, including NJRTC, Propel Level Up, EDGE, just to name a few.

[00:31:50] In the past, we've done multi-tiered systems of support as well as Propel and Level Up as STEM programs. We did those a couple of years ago. So we've been doing this work for some time now, but it's a matter of bringing it to a broader place. And that brings us to the policy agenda, or the policy itself in the agenda, to take a look at and take a look at that connection between continuous improvement, where you're constantly looking to make sure that you are accomplishing what you need to, to the actual codification of that inside the policy.

[00:32:26] So at this point, we're going to head into the draft policy. The way it's built into the slide deck, that if you open the link and then you go from the Google document to a Word file, you'll see the actual numbered version of it.

[00:32:43] So what I can do now is I can adjust, and we can actually look at the policy. And to give you an idea of kind of transitioning to that, we don't expect that there's a core set of continuous improvement principles that you've already defined.

[00:32:59] I know you've embedded it into the strategic plan, but the question is, if you think about some of the core principles, what's the role of the board and different stakeholders in ensuring that we get feedback from folks before we take something to scale? Those are the types of questions that we have for you as you look at the policy to think about how does continuous improvement manifest itself in our actions and our culture.

[00:33:23] So at this point, if you have any questions about the policy, we are happy to receive questions and talk about next steps. Thank you for the presentation to both of you. I did follow the link, and the copy of Policy 3310 that I get still does not have line numbers.

[00:33:41] So in both board docs and in the slideshow, I'm getting the red line version without that enumeration. I don't know if other board members have enumeration or not, but just it doesn't look like we can access that.

[00:33:58] So I'm grateful that you have it up on the screen. So maybe just for when it comes back to us, if we could make sure the version in board docs, just so we can all follow along. I do have several questions, but I'm going to let the other board members go first if someone else would like to start. Mr. Beatty.

[00:34:15] Thank you. So I guess looking at line 14, it talks about this policy is not applied to new or established programs that are funded solely through school-based funds or managed by school. So this would only apply to programs that are sort of division-wide or are going to pull in students for the whole division?

[00:34:33] That is correct. That's the way it's written. Of course, that's up for discussion and revision. And again, just to give you some background, we followed a lot of guidance from Virginia Beach that's had a policy in place for 10-plus years. So that's the way it's written, and it's definitely up for review and revision.

[00:34:51] And then speaking of existing programs, could you provide some of the metrics that you use for the existing program evaluations we have? For example, you mentioned NJROTC, I think the tiered systems of support.

[00:35:07] Could you provide the metrics that are used in those situations? I'm sorry, I'm thinking three things at the same time here. So if you think about the Propel Level Up evaluation in its first couple of years, and the idea of having a STEM program that's designed to identify students who we might have missed through traditional kind of gifted selection, we actually looked at growth fall to spring on the MAP assessments to see if students who were selected in those programs compared to a comparison group actually grew at a faster pace.

[00:35:36] And what surprised us early on with Propel Level Up, which was heavily science-focused, was that students grew as far as their MAP progressions. they grew more quickly in reading as far as their reading growth. And the premise was that the Propel level of program was so reading intensive, impressed students to read and to look at content, to do experiments.

[00:35:58] So in that case, we were looking at fall to spring map growth on math and reading. And we have other programs, MTSS over the years, looked at the correlation between high levels of implementation of MTSS and the culture within the school looking at referrals, looking at climate data.

[00:36:18] So depending upon the actual evaluation, it could be differences in climate. It could be differences in student growth. It could be differences in students going into accelerated pathways. Thank you. Before I move on to Mr. Sorak and just follow up on one of Mr. Beatty's questions regarding solely funded by school funds, could you give us an example of what would not be included then if we left line 14 as it is?

[00:36:47] So there may be, years ago, we had a school, a middle school, that implemented an assessment program that later became Performance Matters. And the idea was that the school was implementing a pilot with school-based funds.

[00:37:05] And in that case, it was not part of a larger program evaluation. And we learned that having an assessment program that created a common assessment practice actually strengthened our CLTs. So whether it's something that is school-based or it's something that's starting with a pilot amongst maybe three or four schools as part of a community schools initiative, it may not be a division-wide initiative that goes on the schedule.

[00:37:29] Where do their school-based funds come from? So in the case of the middle school I was thinking about, it was kind of a small set-aside they had in some of their discretionary funds they may use for professional development or some software program.

[00:37:45] Thank you. Mr. Strachan. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I think for new programs, that's a discrete list that I can wrap my head around. We've got IB, elementary world languages, early literacy, middle school sports pilot, math interventionist.

[00:38:04] That I can wrap my head around, but I'm trying to figure out the scope for the evaluation of established programs. Are we talking about literally defining every program that we have in LCPS and putting them on a schedule? Because that seems bigger than your small team can currently support.

[00:38:25] So I want to get a sense for what the plan is there, what the thinking is for how that would be accomplished. So what's interesting, looking at Virginia Beach, in that case, there are distinctions and decisions made around, of all the major programs, what are the most substantive and impactful that are part of programs you look at in a five-year cycle?

[00:38:47] And that might be reading or math initiatives that impact a lot of instruction, or it may be something that's addressing a particular pressing issue. So you're right. You may identify 30 or 40 major initiatives throughout the division, and in this case, you may have to determine what reaches that level of scale where you conduct a formal program evaluation, others that you monitor or you do off-schedule.

[00:39:12] So the idea is which programs you actually evaluate is part of what we have to determine because even if we have the bandwidth of 30 program evaluators, how much value do we get out of doing 12 or 13 or 15 evaluations a year?

[00:39:28] How much bandwidth can we deal with as far as decisions you need to make? So you're talking about prioritizing basically and picking and choosing from among existing programs which ones would be put on a program evaluation schedule. I think that needs to be made a little more clear because the way I read it the first time where it says established programs will be evaluated based on the program evaluation schedule developed by the division.

[00:39:54] So if it's – and there's no way you could evaluate all 5,000 programs or however you define it. So if it's going to be a subset that's proposed by staff, approved by the school board or run by the school board, something like that, that makes sense.

[00:40:10] I just think the language needs to be clear to reflect that and I will also follow up on your last statement about mr. Sorokin mentioned approved by the school board I don't see the role of the school board in this policy at all I noticed that in the beginning it starts off by saying programs that are approved by the superintendent and then it goes on when it talks about ending some of the programs it talks about the superintendent has the discretion to do

[00:40:42] that both in section A and section D so I think that when we think about foreign language immersion or international baccalaureate they both began at the initiative of the school board and I I think that we need to have a role in the decision to end programs as well perhaps it would be ended by the board upon the recommendation of the superintendent or something along those lines as we've seen in other policies. Anything further from committee members? Mr. Beatty. Thank you. Going back to the

[00:41:22] established programs and Mr. Sorokin sort of bringing the point that there isn't really a clarity on that. Would this be, could this be construed to mean something like a particular charter school, maybe the special ed program or a specific subsection of the special ed program if it's the contained students, the gender population students. I would assume this would also include like our nurse practitioner program that we just stopped. Is that some of the, I guess the splits that you might come up with so I'm just going to jump in and say I think charter schools would be treated separately because we have separate policies around charter schools but

[00:41:59] from my understanding and I'll let Dr. Tyler correct me everything else you mentioned would be a possibility I would agree with that I know Dr. Blakelock would like to chime in so the idea of what we've seen in other divisions if there's a particular practice say in special education whether it's a new kind of professional development to support a practice evaluating the implementation of that practice. In our situation, we do have to balance it with specialized programs and centers. There's a different policy regulation for that, so this policy has to align with it.

[00:42:35] So it could be any number of topics dealing with our practices and how we utilize resources. The idea of an entire program itself would still be kind of drilled down to what practices do we think are making the impact and which practices need to be revised or updated. And a lot of that practice is built around capacity building. Program evaluation is very much a team sport, so it's something that we do with the programs themselves. We work with them to develop the logic model. We work with them on data collection systems, but they really have a lot of the responsibility as far as making sure these things happen with our support and guidance.

[00:43:14] And ultimately, what we're trying to do is just draw a through line from the goals of the program through the activity, what's happening in the program, to the outcomes and making sure that there's a direct through line from start to finish on that thank you and I do want to in case someone's listening but not following along with the policy there's plenty of reference to the school board being notified or information being shared with the school board so I see that the school board was by no means left out of it but I just think there should be maybe a little additional participation I want to thank you for bringing this forward I think

[00:43:52] really important to put processes in place and and and this does that if there is additional information that would be helpful to understand about how this policy would interact with anything having to do with special programs i haven't served on that committee i think mr beady has and i and i think mr suratkin has but when we bring it back for action if there's anything that you think would be useful to help me understand that better i would i would appreciate additional information but if it's not really relevant then then that's all right as well is there anything else from committee members thank you very much appreciate it so we'll see that go out for community feedback well I guess we'll have some changes first

[00:44:32] and then put it out for community feedback thank you we'll we'll move on to item number seven which is new business seeing no new business we are adjourned thank you

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