Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Loudoun Education Alliance of Families (LEAF), Monday, April 17, 2023

Date: Monday, April 17, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 14m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/818521537?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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[00:00:06] - Good evening and thanks for coming out. Heather Ward, our chairperson is ill tonight. My name is Karen Miller. I'm the co-chair of communications. Unfortunately, we don't have forum. We require 41 bylaws, 41 members to attend.

[00:00:23] And currently I think we have 31. And so it's unlikely that we're going to get 10 more people to show up. So we're not going to be able to hold a meeting, But I am going to share some information just because I don't want you guys to have come here and not get anything out of it.

[00:00:44] So these are not on the agenda, but it was some housekeeping information that we had. There were several topics that we had provided to the staff regarding some interested things that things that LEAF members were interested in getting additional information on.

[00:01:05] So I just wanted to give you a status of where we stand with those. Teacher retention. Staff is working with HRTD to schedule a presentation regarding teacher retention at our May Leaf meeting. In the meantime there was a presentation on teacher retention and a Goal 2 strategic plan update during the April 11th 2023 school board meeting.

[00:01:30] The recording and corresponding documents are in board docs. And, as a reminder, there is a tutorial on accessing board docs in the LEAF handbook starting on page 25. The Annual Family Survey. Results for the Annual Family Survey are in the process of being analyzed.

[00:01:49] A survey of this size takes some time to disaggregate. Once the analysis is complete, results will be shared with school leaders and made publicly available on the research website sometime over the summer. Superintendent Search. The information regarding the superintendent search is open and public on both the LCPS and GR recruiting websites.

[00:02:13] Links to the stakeholder feedback meetings and results in analysis are in board docs in the March 28th board meeting information. School safety. Staff is working to schedule safety and security to present at May's meeting.

[00:02:30] And just as an aside, the bathroom policy falls under school safety. So for those interested in getting additional information about that, FOIA, we have had questions about FOIA and how it works. Just as a reminder, in our September 6th LEAF meeting, which is archived in BoardDocs, additional information, we discussed it at that time, additional information is also in the LEAF handbook, accessible on the LEAF website.

[00:03:02] I think that's the items that we wanted to cover. Oh also yes Tedra Richardson was scheduled to do a presentation tonight on special education and her presentation is still going to be in board docs under today's meeting.

[00:03:22] So are you still going to hang around? Okay so Erica Ogadegby, Erica Ogadegby our board representative is willing to hang around and converse and have any conversations that you guys are interested in.

[00:03:41] Again, I'm terribly sorry. Yep. Question. I think we're running out of time. So, for instance, my youngest is a senior. There is no LEAF rep.

[00:03:57] These have to be voted in or supported by PTSA, and we still have yet to get the feedback on how next year reps. So, we're running out of time as far as, like, PTSA meetings. Like, they're scheduled, but we have no information on how we're supposed to do that this year.

[00:04:14] So the LEAF representative term is from July through June, which means that over the summer is when the board approves the nominated folks on to the LEAF to become a LEAF representative.

[00:04:32] So as long as your school's PTA recommends somebody by the end of the school year, then they should be— We were waiting on the clarification, if it was allowed to be nominated by the principal and supported by the PTSA, or it was fully of the PTSA, because that's what happened last year to some of us.

[00:04:53] We were nominated by our principal, then we went to vote, and then we were told we couldn't be voted in, so we had to have information from the PTSA. So there's still really no formal guidelines on how this is to happen. Great, thanks. Can I jump in?

[00:05:09] Yep. So thanks for that. So all the advisory committees are streamlining so the principals and the PTAs get like one message. So we're going to be actually this week advisory committees will be sending out an email to the principals and letting everybody know that it's time to contact your PTOs and or if you don't have an active PTO that's where it defaults to the principals and to let us know.

[00:05:37] So if you do want to be come back for a second year please please you might want to shoulder tap your principal and say hey it's you know you're going to look for an email from the admin building that says it's time to nominate your folks for the advisory committee.

[00:05:53] I'd love to you know be a member or I'm not able to be a member or whatever it is. But that is going to be happening this week and then we'll be able to share more information as to the status next month. but um but all the advisory committees are trying to make it so they it's like one spreadsheet it's one one email so there's not a bunch of emails but that that information is going to be going out this week so the emails will go to the principals and then they will work with their ptsas and then those people will be voted in over the summer and in the email it will state what they need from the

[00:06:28] ptsa in order to vote someone in and it's just they're nominated right they're not it's not pta it's being approved by the school board. I believe it so they'll so we so basically we just need the name of the person and the contact information which will all be in the email that we send to the principal.

[00:06:49] And then once the information is shared my my thought is that we'll reach out. But over the summer that's when it will be approved. And once those names are approved we have support docs and like we'll send a letter out to those people who are nominated if they're new and so forth.

[00:07:07] And even if you're not new, we'll make sure that we continue to send you emails. Does that make sense? Yeah. I just know that last year, PTSA had to send something in to say that they, yeah, they did. So they'll be, so they're streamlining it this year. So yeah, so it's going to be a form.

[00:07:24] So yeah, so, and thank you for that. So having been the first year, last year, like now we're kind of, we didn't know what we didn't know. So now we're streamlining it all. So thank you. So just to clarify that, is it the PTSA or the principal who is making the decision in the nomination?

[00:07:44] Like what's the, how does that supposed to work? So it's the PTSA or the PTO, and then there are some schools that don't have an active PTO or PTO, so then it will default, but they can work together. So it's not like a, it's not a separation, so hopefully they're having those conversations, but we want to make sure that the principal is the one who contacts and says, you know don't forget PTA if you know we want to make sure that those communications are are going on but it's it's the PTA and and or the principal does that make sense because there are some as we know there are some schools

[00:08:19] that don't have very active PTAs or PTOs so we want to make sure that support that I saw a question over here earlier yeah it's already up yeah is there a way to do an RSVP so that some of us don't come next year next month for nothing Like can we get an RSVP to make sure we're going to have quorum like can you send that out on the Friday before asking for a request because You know sure all these lovely people would rather be doing something else than

[00:08:54] So yeah, I also think it would be important for people to look at attendance records So there are leaf reps that want to be leaf reps next year that didn't come to meetings It would be helpful to keep that Thank you. Thank you. How is the quorum set?

[00:09:12] Are we setting it based on the total potential number of representatives or the actual that were sent in do you understand my question? Because there are some I missed the first part of what you said How are we setting quorum? I think it was 41 you said in my quote So my question is are we doing it based on the actual number of potential representatives? And we know some schools don't have them or the actual number of representatives that were assigned at the beginning of the It's the actual members who have been a board approved by the board. Thank you. You're welcome minus the alternate minus the alternates

[00:09:43] so there's yes thanks clearly we're going down this is the first time we haven't had quorum so I don't know I think we know actually we bring pretty steady this is actually the first time that we've had to call a meeting we've had we've been looking at Kim because she yeah between 41 and 45 at all the

[00:10:17] meetings hi one more thing the presentations that we've been getting throughout the year I'm hopefully I haven't missed them but we've been getting them in here and then they're putting board docs when we're finished right can we start getting them a week ahead of time for a number of reasons if we're planning ahead and we know or we know it's on the agenda and people are supposed to present we can get that to our schools for potential questions to the PTOs or we can look at them and with potential questions and so what I think about is the effectiveness in these meetings we spend an hour

[00:10:53] generally with presentations and they're pretty thorough if we plan better maybe we could do 30 minutes and actually have 30 minutes of real questions and understanding and get right into that stuff so we're all prepared and can make them even more productive so it's just a thought about how we conduct the meetings I can answer that the intention is that you know the subject and that you can ask those questions about the subject like it's student services there were some questions that were brought up by the sticky notes and the feedback form that in theory should be answered just like last time with the transportation he literally just went through and answered

[00:11:30] all of the questions that were asked by you guys. But how do we know what questions we have about special education? Well, and I think about the bathroom policies and the review that we went through last month.

[00:11:46] I mean, that's a hot topic, right? And so we basically breezed right through it because all decisions related to that topic are done. We're getting a presentation that, in essence, says this is what we're doing, and this is where parents don't necessarily feel like they're having any input.

[00:12:03] And I'm suggesting that if LEAF is an advisory committee, we get this stuff ahead of time so we can actually say, and this is a broader subject even for next year, we should be aligning what we're doing in here with whatever the school board has as part of its agenda for the coming six, eight, nine months so that we can be three or four months ahead of it to put positions out.

[00:12:22] If we're advising then we should advise board advisory committee. We're getting information out and I'm not saying that the information is bad There's good presentations and there's a lot of information, but if we now move it forward we can act as an advisory group Maybe if it's presented at the school board meeting like the bathroom presentation was given at a school board meeting prior to the leaf Committee seeing it so I had already seen it in full because it was at a school board meeting So maybe if it is available and it's not a new presentation we could be made aware.

[00:13:01] So that you could review it. Just a suggestion. Because a lot of times it is just a trickle down from a school board meeting that's happened so.

[00:13:22] Unfortunately with the schedule sometimes it doesn't always align up. And so we try as best we can to align accordingly. And I think now moving forward to next year we have a better idea of the cadence.

[00:13:41] And so we'll be able to free. That is the intention. So again, thank you, Joan and Heather.

[00:13:57] Send their apologies for not being here. And again, I even said to them, I'm like, oh, I feel so bad, especially for those of you who came from Western. So thank you, everybody, for coming and waiting. I appreciate all of you. And if you have any questions, let us know.

[00:14:12] And safe driving. Thank you.

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