Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Equity Committee Meeting, Thursday, September 7, 2023

Date: Thursday, September 7, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 1h 41m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/862553306?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 2026-10-21. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] Jill sorry Michelle all right are there any changes to the draft minutes all right seeing none all in favor of the motion to approve the minutes from June I believe it was June 1st 2023 please raise your hand and say aye anyone opposed and abstaining all right we have three abstentions

[00:00:28] that motion will carry 15-3 or 15-0-3 with three abstentions thank you all right let's get to the fun part of our meeting first of all welcome back everybody hope everyone had a really great summer and we're back to doing the business of our committee that is really important to Loudoun County Public Schools so this evening we are very excited to welcome our new superintendent Dr. Aaron Spence and at this time Dr. Spence if I'm going to just turn it over to you to say hi to everyone

[00:01:02] and and oh I'm sorry my apologies Dr. Spence I'm going to ask you to hold off for just a second I checked public comment it is my fault I checked the box and should not have so we do a public comment we have one speaker this evening we'll give you two minutes miss weiskopf and you know the drill so i won't go through it all and in my apologies and i really thought i was the problem story of my life just go with it you were appointed to the equity committee because of

[00:01:40] your connections to a marginalized group but as a member of this committee it is your duty to advocate for all marginalized children. With the release of Governor Youngkin's targeted attacks on our LGBTQ students, this committee must work to promote the dignity of all students.

[00:02:03] If you cannot wholeheartedly advocate for our LGBTQ students, you don't belong on this committee. Dr. Spence, welcome. Why have you not yet assured our LGBTQ students that they belong in LCPS?

[00:02:23] Why have you not yet renounced Youngkin's policies? Stand up for our students. This would be an excellent place for you to make that statement. Thank you. Black Lives Matter. Thank you.

[00:02:39] And that concludes public comment this evening. Again, my apologies for skipping. I didn't actually skip it. I checked it by mistake. So we'll move to item four, introductions, and I'll go back to item 401, welcoming our new superintendent, Dr. Aaron Spence. And I am just going to turn the mic over to you to make comments.

[00:02:57] You can stand up and address everyone, or you can sit there. I don't know if we have a portable mic available. Sure. I'm sure we can get help if we don't have a portable mic available. There we go.

[00:03:22] Okay. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, good evening. It's my pleasure to be here with you all this evening. I appreciate the opportunity to join the equity committee meeting. It is really important to me that I'm able to participate fully with our committees and with folks who are standing for equity and for our children.

[00:03:45] And so I'm pleased to have the opportunity to be here tonight and just start with an expression of gratitude. Thank you for committing your time to and energy to the work that is happening in this committee. Let me say first, I look forward to learning more about that work as we move forward and to supporting you in your efforts.

[00:04:03] You know, everybody has different definitions of equity. I recognize that LCPS has a definition of equity. My definition of equity is this, it is that we need to eliminate predictability of outcomes for students and we need to ensure that every child has the opportunity to be known and seen and loved and heard in our schools and that in fact they know that they belong in our schools.

[00:04:25] And so I do recognize that it is incumbent upon me as a superintendent to work with our school board to create the conditions for that in our buildings and to work with our community and to work with all of you to make sure that that's happening. It's been a central part of my work as an educator over the last 29-some years, and it will continue to be a central part of my work as superintendent of Loudoun County Public Schools.

[00:04:51] It's important work. I recognize over the last few years there have been some challenges. We just heard about one of the conversations that we have to have that is a challenging conversation. I'm no stranger to those challenging conversations. We're certainly happening not just in Loudoun County but across the Commonwealth and across the country.

[00:05:12] And I think it matters that we do talk about those things. Equity is not a four letter word. Equity is what ought to be the lived experience for all of us in our school division. And it's my goal and my job to ensure that that happens. And so I'm looking forward to working with you to make sure that that's the case.

[00:05:30] And I appreciate the opportunity again to be here with you tonight. - Thank you so much. And we certainly appreciate your attendance at our meeting. And we look forward, I'll just put it out there right now, we look forward to you to join us every month. Of course, we welcome you every time.

[00:05:49] All right. Now I would love to introduce to everyone our new Director of Equity, Dr. Letitia Ellis-Williams. And I don't know what to say, except we are all going to love this experience. So sit back and we'll let.

[00:06:07] What I neglected to tell both Dr. Spence and Dr. Ellis-Williams is that this committee, in order to create a comfortable atmosphere, is we do first names here. We don't do the Dr. Spences and the Mrs. Sheridans. So from here on out, unless you object to it, which would really look bad, you're going to be Leticia and you'll be Erin, and I hope that's okay.

[00:06:29] Well, I can start by saying that it's definitely okay. I'm so grateful to be here this evening, and I appreciate the opportunity to be the liaison for this group. We talk about affinities, but I definitely have an affinity for allyship. I have an affinity for persons who are willing to stand up for, speak out for, or on behalf of, to make sure that we move whatever needs to be moved out of the way as an obstacle or barrier for any student.

[00:06:55] As you know, our new logo for the Division of Equity is Each and Every. And on the T-shirt it says, Each and Every with a hard period, because we want to make sure that we serve and support each and every student. So again, I thank you for this opportunity. My office is open. My admin assistant, Helen Randolph, is here.

[00:07:12] Please make an appointment. If there's something on your spirit or your heart that you want to talk about, unpack. And I do love to unpack historical information because that informs my work and it also lets me know exactly what it is as a lay-in-the-land here. So I appreciate you all in advance.

[00:07:29] My door is open. My division is ready to get to work. Thank you. Thank you so much and welcome, obviously, to everything we're doing here and very happy to have you on board as our new director of equity and, of course, as our superintendent.

[00:07:44] We look forward to all the future conversations that will happen around this topic. So let's get to it. Item 5, our information items. We'll start with 501, our SEL presentation. And are you going to introduce that? I think that would be great.

[00:08:01] Thank you. And SEL is social-emotional learning. Didn't mean to just throw an acronym out there that people might not be familiar with. Oh, sure. Absolutely. Thank you, Brenda.

[00:08:20] It was. So I have the pleasure of introducing two staff members from the Department of Student Services. I'll start with Dr. Megan Green. Dr. Megan Green is our coordinator of psychological services and formerly a practicing school psychologist.

[00:08:42] But to lead us off tonight is Dr. Lindsay Orme. Dr. Orme is the SEL coordinator for Loudoun County Public Schools. Previous to this position, she served as assistant principal at Arcola Elementary School.

[00:09:03] All right. Good evening, everyone. It's great to be here with you tonight to share about social-emotional learning, about our journey where we are now with implementation. We are now starting our fifth year in Loudoun County Public Schools with SEL.

[00:09:20] So, Megan, if you don't mind, thank you. So we're just going to go over what does it look like at the elementary school level? What do we have in place? Middle school, overview of middle school. We'll look at how families are invited to engage in social-emotional learning with our students in our schools.

[00:09:39] We'll take a look at some of the data, some high overview implementation data. And then we'll look at high school advisory. So that's just a rundown of what we'll cover over the next half hour. So at the elementary school level, this is where SEL started back in 2019.

[00:10:00] we started with the second step curriculum and what you're looking at here are the units that are covered through the curriculum there's a community building unit that was put together by our sel team using the second step community building materials that they put out during during covid back in 2019 when we first went through that experience and then followed by that are the four units that are actually a part of the Second Step curriculum.

[00:10:34] We have growth mindset and goal setting, emotion management, empathy and kindness, and then problem solving. And what's nice about this curriculum is that it is aligned grades K through 5. So while our kindergartners are learning about empathy and kindness, so are our fifth graders. So it really helps with that school-wide messaging and learning so that across settings students can have their they can practice their skills and skills can be reinforced whether they are in the classroom PE you know and so on it is

[00:11:10] delivered through morning meeting by the classroom teacher so those that that instruction happens during that time so across our division and our elementary schools that first 20 minutes is dedicated time for SEL instruction I I mentioned morning meeting and what that structure looks like.

[00:11:35] So this is just a glance of what that is. So when students begin their morning meeting, they start with a greeting, some way to connect with each other. Everyone has the opportunity to participate. Then it goes into a share. This is really about, like, building the community.

[00:11:54] The teacher then creates a message that is, you know, ultimately tying in what are we going to do today? When might we apply the skills that we're learning here in morning meeting? And then there's a lesson, and that's where we do our second step component.

[00:12:10] The lessons are, if you were to teach them all at once, they take about 30 to 40 minutes, and we don't have that amount of time for morning meeting. So we break it down throughout the course of the week. They'll do the entire lesson because morning meeting is every day.

[00:12:28] There's an activity, so just a fun way for the students to apply the skill, and then a reflection. This also might be like having students think about how they have used the skill or how they might be able to apply it that day or throughout the week.

[00:12:45] So that's what our elementary looks like. What I'd like to do now is show you what a lesson looks like. If we could, thank you, Megan. Yes. Okay, so when teachers log into this curriculum, it's completely digital.

[00:13:03] So right now we're in unit one, and if we could, I think I have another tab. No, no, if you would, sorry, Megan, click on resume. Thank you. All right.

[00:13:19] So each lesson has a lesson presentation, and that's what we just clicked into right now. And it's going to load. Yay. All right. So they all follow a very similar structure.

[00:13:35] So it starts with a brain builder. This is a fun game that kids do that really helps to build executive functioning skills. So if we want to, Megan, that where it says brain builder on the bottom, if you'll click the next tab.

[00:13:52] I don't know what to call it. The little, oh no, there's Jeff. Oh, okay, there we go. Thank you. No, no, it's okay. All right, so if you want to just play that, I'll just play a little bit of it so you can kind of get an idea. Oh, I don't hear sound.

[00:14:42] Let's build a brain builder.

[00:16:14] Okay, I'll just stand back here. So for each of these videos, again, it just takes them through. It's a fun little game.

[00:16:30] Sometimes teachers will do these multiple times throughout the week because they can be challenging. So they just practice them, and it's a great opportunity, too, for students to work through challenges. So they're applying those skills, like they may start to feel frustrated. It's just a great practice for them.

[00:16:47] So there's a brain builder, And then there's a getting started, which just introduces the concept. This is what we're working on this week. In this case, it's goal setting. So it introduces the idea, and then they go through a practice, which may look like a series of videos, scenarios, where the students are really engaging.

[00:17:08] The teacher is facilitating the learning, and students are asking questions and answering throughout the week. And as they go through the practice, again, like I said, they break it up throughout the week. So there's a little bit each day.

[00:17:24] And at the end, there's some kind of check. So a check for understanding how are we processing the learning from the week. So that is what a lesson looks like. Get out of there. And something that I did not mention around the slides, the slide decks, is that those are available for teachers every week.

[00:17:49] We have, on one of the slides I shared, there's a little screenshot of a scope and sequence. So we have every week there's a slide deck, K through 5, that teachers can use that helps pace out the lesson and also provides that community building aspect as well.

[00:18:10] All right. So we'll move on to middle school where it looks, we have some similar things, but it does look a little bit different at the middle school level. So middle school, we are using Second Step. It goes six through eight in middle school. They also, we have a community building unit that, again, that was put together by our team using the Second Step resources for community building.

[00:18:34] Their units are recognizing bullying and harassment, thoughts, emotions, and decisions, mindsets and goals, and managing relationships and social conflicts. So there are some similarities, but some differences in those units.

[00:18:51] You can see the units are not in order. Our suggested scope and sequence kind of moves things around a little bit, and that's just trying to ensure alignment with what's happening at the schools. We know October is Bullying Prevention Month. We have bullying and harassment lessons, so we try to align that.

[00:19:10] So that's the suggestion that we have for middle school. This is also what can be used at the middle school level. You know, we have morning meeting at elementary. We have advisory at the middle school level.

[00:19:27] So this is a suggested format or framework for having your advisory. Advisory can be around 15 to 20 minutes. So it can be a little bit shorter because of announcements and so on. So not everything always gets into that advisory time.

[00:19:47] But if they were following a responsive classroom type of format for advisory, this is what it would look like. And this also looks familiar to us because the format or the way in which the lessons are presented for middle school second step is the same as elementary.

[00:20:12] There's a presentation that's ready to go for teachers. Really, the preparation for teachers is to preview the lessons and become familiar with the content, but the actual materials, What is needed for facilitating the lessons is ready. So we can go through this lesson.

[00:20:33] If we, will it, oh, you know what? I didn't pull it off. Yeah, if we go to second step. If you go, yes, if you click on the S.

[00:20:49] Oh, there you go. Look at you navigating there. All right. And then go to, yep, exactly the same.

[00:21:22] And if we go down to lesson one, which is starting middle school, we click on that one and open it up. I've already gone through it, but if you click review, and that's what's great. You can keep going through these. You can revisit these.

[00:21:39] But this is the lesson that our sixth graders are doing as they're entering middle school. So there's a little, for their format, there's a little warm-up. There's sometimes a video, sometimes not. So if we want to play, if we have time, we can play the video.

[00:22:59] So that just introduces students to the Second Step program. And if they're coming from our elementary schools, they're familiar with it. And just another reintroduction. And this lesson is getting students talking about, like, what might be making me nervous about middle school?

[00:23:17] Like, what's on my mind? And it just creates that safe space for students to talk about that. And in these videos, they are real students in these videos sharing about the things that make them feel nervous. Like, what if I can't open my locker? What if I don't get to class on time?

[00:23:34] like just things that may be common so it just kind of helps students feel comfortable and be able to talk through those things for the middle school lessons we do recommend that it be facilitated like a conversation though these are slides they're not meant to be you know click through and read from it's really to help facilitate a conversation and the learning with the students because as they're learning these skills they're also building community all right we can go back to the slides great thank you with the

[00:24:11] middle school program with elementary school we have you know we have morning meeting every day with middle school there's advisory every day but not every day is second step and that's where middle schools have some ability to create the advisory program that best meets the needs of their school as part of that so second step may be one or two days to cover a lesson with the time that it takes on the other days a school may choose to use some of these

[00:24:45] additional materials so there are class challenges and there are class meetings that go along with the lesson those are optional they're not a required part but we do have some schools that are using them as a regular part of their advisory program all right this is just an example of what a middle school calendar may look like just to kind of to show that there are other lessons and activities that happen during advisory again and for second step we have 26 lessons at the middle school level and we have

[00:25:24] way more weeks than that so schools are building their advisory program using either the class meetings where they have other things that are being created by the school-based teams. A lot of community building. We have a school that's really focusing on goal setting. They may use Monday for goal setting. Fun Friday is a popular one. So there's a lot of different things that are incorporated into the advisory program. Family communication is a very important part

[00:25:58] of our work with social emotional learning we have worked very hard to to ensure that our families have access to the materials so that they can they can see the the materials so that they can engage in this work with us and so some of the things that you see here are the materials that are available through second step every lesson has a weekly summary it's just three sentence summary this is what we're doing and then a little try this at home those come with all lessons k

[00:26:34] through eight and we ask that when we meet with our schools that they have a solid plan for family communication and that that is a regular part of how they're communicating with families sometimes it goes out through a school newsletter at other times it's coming directly from a grade level team There are schools that post it on their website, sometimes all of the above, but that is how families receive communication.

[00:27:02] We also have a family code where families can create their own second step account just as teachers do, put in their school-specific code, and they can view all the lessons at home so that they can see exactly what their child or children are engaging with during morning meeting and advisory. And we also, we, our team has also worked to create some additional materials that make this process easier for schools, including we have a weekly announcement guide that goes out

[00:27:37] to elementary and has all of our lesson slides linked there so all families can view, gives a little overview and then some things maybe to ask about at home. All right. So we're doing all of this social emotional learning and how are we measuring it? So this is what we, these are some of the things that we look at. It's hard for me to stand still. I'm struggling with that. These are some of the things that we look at when it comes to implementation. So how do we know that what we

[00:28:12] are hoping to do is happening. We have an SEL implementation rubric, which looks at four focus areas of implementation, teaming and planning, adult SEL, student SEL, and continuous improvement, which is really looking at the data and the conversations that we're having around social emotional learning. We have the second step progress report, so we can go in and see how are are schools moving along? How many, you know, are we on pace with teaching the lessons? Do we have some areas where we need some help? So that's, that's a great tool for us to keep on, on track

[00:28:51] with the fidelity of implementation. We also have a PBIS SEL walkthrough where we do alongside our PBIS friends. It involves, you know, look fors and also talking with students and talking with staff. So asking questions and really kind of getting a pulse on where we are with social emotional learning. And then you also see the teacher perception of impact survey, which is administered in the spring. It goes out to every staff member that teaches the second step curriculum

[00:29:25] and it asks questions around professional learning, implementation, looking at competency development. So how are they developing in these five competencies and demonstrating these skills, and culturally responsive SCL. And then we look at, so that's looking at implementation, and this is looking at some outcomes.

[00:29:50] So we look at multiple data sources. One of those is the climate survey, so our student survey, looking at the social-emotional well-being subscale there. We also look at our teacher perception of impact. I mentioned that it asks teachers to rate the demonstration of skills across the five competency areas.

[00:30:14] We have two items for each competency, so we look at that as well. We've also been sharing with schools the Bright Bites data because there's some social-emotional learning data there where students themselves are rating how difficult it is for them to do things such as manage emotions, complete work and patience I think is one having to wait so this is a snapshot of not this past

[00:30:50] year but the year before when we were coming out of our first year of middle school implementation and what you're looking at here is elementary and middle and elementary from the from the data we saw that elementary was had higher levels of implementation meaning that they were teaching more of the lessons and they were they were reporting that they were integrating sel concepts outside of morning meetings so they were extending those concepts and allowing students the opportunity

[00:31:27] to apply them in content area and middle school was reporting doing that not as much yet so we can see right there that the demonstration of the skill is much higher when there's higher levels of implementation and when teachers are taking these concepts and extending them. And this is more current data. So this is coming off of last year. We have high implementing schools, and what you're looking at here are the items from the teacher perception of impact survey. So these are

[00:32:05] the items where teachers were asked, you know, looking at my students, were they able to show empathy through words and actions? Our high implementing schools show higher rates of that than those that are developing schools. So our high implementing schools are those that are completing the most lessons and the SEL implementation rubric they're self-reporting how how they are on their implementation so that's how we distinguish between or we define

[00:32:43] high implementing and developing schools but you can see the outcomes there I think we have another slide that shows those outcomes as well so this is just a continuation of what we can see solid implementation okay these are culturally responsive instruction questions again looking at high implementing and developing schools what we're what we're noticing and that concludes elementary

[00:33:15] and middle school so I'm going to pass on to my colleague Megan all right thank you Lindsay um so I'm going to talk a little bit about elementary or high school advisory it is a different beast it's much more fluid than what we see at elementary and middle school and it lacks the consistency across the county. So there's a lot of variability in both the frequency in which advisory is delivered and the duration of advisory across schools. So it really varies school to school.

[00:33:51] That being said, there are specific programs and initiatives that have countywide input and are implemented across the county and use advisory as a mechanism. So I'm going to focus a little bit on those. So first up is PEER, which stands for Positive Experiences and Educational Relationships.

[00:34:12] And you'll notice a theme that high school advisory really relies on student voice and harnessing student engagement and input in designing advisory that's relevant for students. PEER is a student-driven program. It harnesses the network of students that exist in LCPS that really hope to support each other and their peers.

[00:34:32] And at the core, PEER is a mentorship program. It's mentorship of students by students who are trained and supervised by adults. And it works to promote healthy behaviors and habits and attitudes. And one of the ways that they do that is through advisory.

[00:34:50] So last year, there were 28 peer advisory lessons across 13 high schools that address topics like stress management, anti-bullying. There were unity days and wellness weeks at several schools that were joint efforts between peer and other student organizations or clubs and healthy relationships.

[00:35:14] Sorry, and peer is implemented in all high schools. Sources of strength is another program that's implemented across the county. It's currently in 16 of our high schools and 15 of our middle schools. And sources of strength also harnesses student voice. It's a student driven strength based program that targets wellness and resiliency and helping students spread messages of hope, help and strength.

[00:35:32] And it really relies on these eight pillars of strength or the different areas of the wheel that you see here. So one of the ways that students work to spread these messages is through campaigns.

[00:35:48] And typically campaigns address a single triangle on this wheel. And oftentimes advisory is used as one of the vehicles by which campaigns are launched. And so in the last year's data, we had 32 sources lessons launched through advisory across 11 high schools and also many middle schools.

[00:36:10] so this is another vehicle that uses advisory. Some of the lessons addressed showing your strengths so this is more of a students looking at the different strengths that they have based on this wheel and talking about their individual strengths. Also what helps me which is similar it's like which of these strengths can I rely on what works for me. Introductions of sources of strength are a big advisory lesson just introducing the concept and the fact that there are these different pillars or areas of the wheel that you can focus on and then there's also advisory lessons

[00:36:47] that target the individual components of the wheel so there's ones that target mental health or positive friends mentors generosity and so on we have a really cool program called the student advisory planning team and this is an initiative again that harnesses student voice and engagement to create advisory lessons that can be implemented in schools and address the needs that are recognized both by school level administrators and others as well as the students themselves

[00:37:19] so last year a survey went out I think over the summer that helped gather information both about what advisory looked like in different schools and what the needs were what are the lessons that schools really need to be pushing out to their high school students then each school identified a contact or a sponsor and that person helped to facilitate an event in which students came here and we worked together to create lessons and those sponsors identified and recruited students to participate who they thought would be good representatives for this project. In the first

[00:37:59] series of lessons we had a set group of topics. The students came and first they received education about SEL and about what makes an engagement or engaging advisory lesson and then they broke up into small groups with students mixed by school, so it wasn't just, you know, Stonebridge's kids here and Loudoun Valley's here. It was really a combination of different schools working together with an adult facilitator to help kind of oversee those lessons and make sure that the content being created was appropriate and relevant for the advisory lessons, and then those were submitted to a central team here, and we reviewed them and put them in a Schoology group. A similar thing

[00:38:38] happened in the spring we we surveyed students who had participated and we got their feedback about what went well what didn't what other topics they would like to be included brought students back I think we were at Loudon County High School in the spring and again we did a similar process where we had some time for education of students reviewing you know what what went well what didn't how we want to strengthen this program and then the students really worked together as a group with adult support to create lessons that schools are using on a variety of topics. There's also a variety of other sources that create high school

[00:39:16] advisory lessons or that participate in pushing out advisory lessons. So there's equity lessons. There are lessons created by UMHT members on topics related to mental health or social, emotional, and behavioral issues. Academic planning lessons. Lindsay mentioned a school that was really into goal setting. I know that those types of things also happen at the high school level. Student code of conduct was something that came up a bunch last year that several administrators were hoping to get advisory lessons that go over specific aspects of the student code of conduct to really help

[00:39:49] students understand what that means and make it more relatable. And then community building circles are another thing that happens during advisory. It's not a lesson per se, but it is another way that advisory is used in the high school. So that is our presentation, but I'm sure that Lindsay and I are both open for any questions that you may have about advisory and SEL.

[00:40:15] Thank you both very much for the presentation, and usually we have lots of questions coming, so if any committee members want to follow up with any questions. Tom, we'll start with you. So I have two quick questions for you.

[00:40:31] One, it sounded like SEL is delivered pretty much consistently across the division at the elementary school level. Why is there variability at the middle school level in terms of how SEL is delivered, in terms of when things are scheduled and when lessons are happening and so forth so why would you have a different experience at one middle school versus another um i think the variability

[00:41:04] we see is primarily at the high school because the high school advisory was engineered to meet school specific needs and so we don't have a core curriculum that sort of binds or creates a cohesive of program, but there are some commonalities that I think exist across almost all of our high schools.

[00:41:28] Middle school is, I do believe the expectation for the middle school office is advisory four days a week. Okay, four days a week, most do five.

[00:41:45] Second step certainly provides content for two of those days. I think it depends on how they're able to deliver the lessons, and that provides some real estate for middle schools then to provide school-specific lessons that meet their needs.

[00:42:06] I don't know if that's an issue of consistency, but it does give a little bit of a tight structure for our core curriculum and allows schools some loose structure to include content that's important to them.

[00:42:26] Second question was, and this may have just been a mistake in the presentation, but you had said that it was implemented, Sources of Strength and some of these other programs are implemented at all high schools in Loudoun County. And then you said 16 high schools. And my recollection is we now have 17, I think.

[00:42:42] Yeah, PEER is implemented at all high schools. Sources of Strength is implemented at 16 of our high schools. Okay, so there is one high school that has it implemented. That's correct. Okay. Arjun? First off, I would like to thank you for this presentation.

[00:43:00] I think social-emotional learning is a very important part of our school system, and I especially like the family access in Second Step. I did have two questions. I know you mentioned that there were lessons on equity and culturally responsive instruction.

[00:43:16] Could you provide some examples on maybe what that would include at the elementary school level, at the middle school level, and the high school level? So the equity lessons that I mentioned would be for middle school and high school, and those are created by the school-based equity teams.

[00:43:39] And so I apologize, I don't have any examples to share with you this evening. All right, and my second question was, I guess speaking for more personal experience, different advisory lessons have mixed reactions from students. I know some are very popular, like we did restorative circles at the Academies of Loudoun, which a lot of students enjoyed and some didn't really, they're hit or miss, I guess.

[00:44:05] I was wondering if there were any statistics on how students felt about these lessons, whether they were satisfied, whether they were interested. - Thank you for that question.

[00:44:22] So yes, we are in the process of working on gathering student feedback, as that's extremely important to us. I know that at the school level, there are some schools that have created surveys, provided them to their students to gather that feedback.

[00:44:41] As another part of Second Step, at the very end of every lesson, there's a feedback survey. And we have encouraged all teachers to go through that survey, especially if there's a time where it's like, it's really fantastic.

[00:44:59] You know, it's engaging the students. And if it's missing, you know, if it's flopping, we want to know. So that's an opportunity for teachers to go through that with their students and get that feedback. And that goes directly to Second Step. They're able to get that to us.

[00:45:16] However, we also appreciate real-time feedback. So as part of the slides that our division team has created, there's a survey there at the end to gather feedback from students and teachers as well.

[00:45:34] and we check that weekly so that we can respond to if needed. All right, thank you. Mark, go ahead. Thank you. Lindsay, in your presentation, I keyed in on the outcomes, metrics, and measures that you had reported.

[00:45:54] And maybe I just didn't understand it, but it seemed to me that the way that you're measuring success is by the number of lessons, how we're implementing perceptions of impact, some surveys and feedback.

[00:46:10] And I think that probably tells you that the program is pervasive, but I don't know if it tells you if it's effective. So the question is, what metrics and measures do you have in place to tell you whether these programs are actually effective, apart from some of the subjective sort of surveys and that sort of thing?

[00:46:37] - So we also look at other areas where social-emotional learning has shown positive outcomes for students. So we can look at academic outcomes. We can look at office referrals and suspensions.

[00:46:58] And we also know that social-emotional learning is one thing that contributes to those outcomes. But we do look at those when we look at social-emotional learning. But we don't have like a direct, I would say, a direct measurement.

[00:47:19] I don't know if I'm making that clear. No, no. John, hop in. The closest we have to a direct measure is inquiring with our teachers their perception of impact. So do they see these skills being demonstrated in the classroom?

[00:47:35] We occasionally get anecdotal information. We had a parent who emailed us last year excited about the two kids arguing in the back of their van and employing some of the second-step skills to navigate that conflict. And the mom was very impressed with the learning that was taking place.

[00:47:56] I will say, just to kind of highlight the fact that we adopted an evidence-based curriculum. I mean, we're not in a position to do random control trial studies in the schools where we have control group and those who get it, those who don't.

[00:48:13] We leaned on the data from research that demonstrated programs that had efficacy, were value in the educational setting, and we would never adopt anything that didn't have like a proven track record for improving teaching and learning outcomes but I do say it is challenging to get direct measures of impact aside from some of the other objective data such as office discipline referrals and so on and so forth.

[00:48:49] So great question, one of which we're open to ideas and suggestions and working with those who can find other ways to measure the success of this program. - Thank you, and definitely think about ways that we can, any suggestions to help with that.

[00:49:07] One final follow-up, I guess. When it comes to participation from the student body, is there, is this, are all the students engaged in this?

[00:49:22] Is it part of their grade, let's say? I know it's not part of their grade. You can't grade some of this stuff. So how is it, if I were a student, would I be, guess required to participate in this apart from my other academic you know math social studies literature and stuff or is this something that's is this is this treated separately from all those other academics or is it incorporated into it um and does the student really have i guess a choice

[00:49:58] or a say in whether they participate in this so it is it is a part of the of the school day so it's It's not something that's, like, elected into because it comes through advisory and it comes through morning meeting. And teachers are working to integrate the concepts throughout the day.

[00:50:16] So when they may be talking about a concept through morning meeting, it could show up later during language arts. So it is a part of the school day. You know, as far as participation, all students are invited to participate.

[00:50:34] Like, for example, if they're doing a share and they're going around the circle, someone, you don't have to provide an answer. You can pass. We'll come back to you if you want the opportunity. So it's really meant to be an opportunity for students and not where they feel that they have to, but they get to the point where they want to.

[00:50:57] Any other questions, comments? Just a comment. For us, I participate in morning meetings, and it's a chance for me to get to know a little bit more about my students.

[00:51:17] And I put it on my agenda. I go into different classrooms. And that connection with the kids, knowing if they had a game or what happened at home, I think helps us as educators to get to know the kids in a different way. So I think morning meeting is very effective in terms of building those community relationships.

[00:51:39] Thanks, Michelle. it's always nice to hear the perspective of our principals that are part of that. So thank you for sharing that. And then Dorothy, you had your hand up. It's implemented through the elementary schools far more greater than the middle and high schools. How is it implemented throughout the day in middle school and high school where they have different teachers and they have, I mean, elementary school is easy to go throughout the day and implement it, but I don't see what's done throughout high

[00:52:15] school or middle school? I can speak to middle school and where we are now. And that also relates back to that level of implementation. So when all teachers are doing the lessons at the same time, then there's an opportunity for teachers to incorporate that into their instruction. So if um for example the lesson is on perspective taking um teachers know that that's you know

[00:52:50] that's what that was the lesson that day so i know that my class that comes to see me whatever block that is i can refer back to that lesson or i can find a way to bring that in whether it's naturally or it's intentionally planned um and that's i mean that is how it's done it's through sometimes it's intentionally put into the lesson plan other times it's really just using explicit dialogue that calls out the the skill that the students are are applying or having to apply

[00:53:25] is is it based on is it school-wide implemented or is it teachers pick and choose in the school whether they're going to participate or not it is intended to be school-wide yes so all so all teachers and whether it's middle school or as i mentioned elementary school it's a set scope and sequence at the middle school level they should have advisory calendars so that if it's you know this week we're doing lesson two then everyone that has an advisory would be expected to do

[00:54:03] lesson two does that help answer your question okay it just seems like it's kind of a flop for middle and high school and elementary school is kind of solid with what it's going so continuation from where you say we're continuing on from what they've learned in elementary school to what they're learning in middle and high school.

[00:54:24] I mean, I have a scope of children from high school to elementary school, and I can see the success in elementary school. High school, I can go home and ask my high schoolers, you know, what are you learning, what are you seeing? And I don't think she's going to be able to answer these questions, and it's not coming home or it's not being taught or implemented the way that I think you guys foresee it or want it.

[00:54:49] But I think given the scope of the schools, the seven different classes, eight different classes, teachers, different, you know, so it's whether they're picking and choosing to participate or not. And who's holding them accountable for? Is it the principal that's holding accountable for our school is going to participate in this and this is what we're doing?

[00:55:08] Like who's holding accountable from the school down across the teacher to make sense? So to speak to high school, I can say that I think you're right that there isn't consistency right now.

[00:55:29] there's not a set curriculum and it is variable both within and between schools in terms of consistent implementation and delivery of advisory lessons I think that's still an area that we need to work on and figure out what the high schools will benefit from and what we can do to get the buy-in that it'll be consistently utilized across across and within schools in terms of delivering it throughout the day I think right now we're still at the beginning stages of just making sure that the lesson itself is delivered before you know trying to build out

[00:56:05] from there is where I think high school is right now I have a question as well I'm curious about professional development available to provide some of the consistency to the teachers that we're asking to implement it in their classrooms whether it's elementary middle and high school is there professional development offered and we're not just asking them to click on a lesson if you could speak to the professional development yes I'm happy to speak to the professional learning of teachers.

[00:56:35] Since the beginning of implementation, we've had school-based trainings on what is social emotional learning, how are we going to implement it, and then really diving into the curriculum and best practices for engaging students in this learning.

[00:56:58] We continue to do that each year. There are refreshes that our team develops. At the school level, there are SEL leads that help to facilitate this training. We have very frequent touch points with our schools, so we're providing specific learning related to the needs of the school.

[00:57:28] Great, thank you. Are there any other questions? Tony. Hi, Tony Simona-Johnson, theater teacher at Rockridge High School. I just want to speak to advisory as a high school teacher. I think the biggest challenge, and perhaps you can explore this as you continue to develop high school advisory, is that students are typically given to us for only 30 minutes a week, and we might never teach them again.

[00:57:55] And so we're asked to develop these really close connected relationships with students that we see for 30 minutes every week, and that's it. So perhaps allowing affinity groups and clubs to implement advisory where students are with their mentors or their coaches would be a more appropriate place to implement advisory lessons as opposed to a standard advisory practice.

[00:58:23] And I don't know if that's something that you could explore where students already have relationships with those teachers and those mentors. And then we can really get some data on, okay, well, what students aren't connected to the student body and how can we get those students connected to the student body as well. And that will provide you with a whole other set of data on how to get students connected to the school as a whole. Just to respond to an aspect of that, I think one of the reasons why we've not had consistency at the high school is we have varied opinions on the most effective way to impact our

[00:59:01] students in the way you were describing. For example, I know we have some principals who believe the type of community and connection can only be built in the classrooms where subjects are being taught and teachers have close relationships with those students. So asking a teacher 30 minutes once a week to build those relationships outside of the curriculum is a tough ask.

[00:59:26] We're in the process of actually developing a survey to get more information from our high schools on better ways to deliver. And again, we're open to ideas on this, but we just know that there are a lot of ideas on how to do this work well. So I appreciate voicing what we've kind of experienced ourselves. Thank you. Any other questions or comments on the presentation?

[01:00:00] All right, great. Thank you all so much for being here and for the great information. And I'm sure that if any of the committee members come up with ideas or suggestions, you will hear from them. and so we really appreciate you being here tonight thank you all right we're now going to move to item 502 quality loudon and candace is left so we are here with jennifer and i'm not sure how to say your last name boudray um the education director from equality loudon so i guess going

[01:00:36] up to the podium is the best place to do your presentation thank you for being here hello i'm I'm Jennifer Boudre. I'm the education director for Equality Loudoun. I'm a former educator, former school librarian, former District of Columbia Public Schools director of school libraries, the parent of three adults, one who is bisexual and a bonus parent to a trans man.

[01:01:04] So I come to this from a lot of different perspectives, and we're here just to let folks know that Equality Loudoun exists, and Equality Loudoun is here to support all the LGBTQ plus community in Loudoun County and we are very specifically interested in the model policy that will be adopted for Loudoun County public school students in order to keep them safe, in order to keep their teachers safe, in order to keep the families and the parents connected and we want to make sure that we're very clear that we

[01:01:42] feel that the model policy that has been presented by our governor is harmful and potentially not legal for our students. So if we are as a school community focused on the best interest of our students, that needs to be the view and the lens that we look through and not be distracted by very specific opinions. And I will also go as far as to say when we look at our policies around

[01:02:15] school libraries and curriculum, ensuring that there is a balanced approach and that we are looking at protecting the rights of all students. So thank you very much. And I'm here for anybody having any questions or information that we can provide. Thank you, Jennifer, for being here and for your statement. I think it would be great if you could share a little bit more about what equality loud and does with in partnership with lcps but also within the county just to get maybe

[01:02:51] for those who aren't familiar with the organization sure if you go a little farther i think that's really helpful so quality loud and provides advocacy support and training and community events for the entire community but specifically focused on the lgbtq plus community if you were lucky enough to attend our pride festival this past june was huge and amazing and wonderful at Claude Moorpork. It was the second annual one. We don't have a partnership. I want to be very clear that we don't necessarily have a partnership with the school system, and that's been intentional because, quite frankly, I was at that June school board meeting a couple years ago, and we want to

[01:03:30] be very clear that we are not working directly with students, okay? When we are coming in and doing training, we are working with adults, and we are teaching the reality of gender identity, gender expression sexual orientation and the information and making sure that folks understand the need to respect folks individual identities and the value that that has the the affirming value for students and for adults so we have worked with we actually have done a presentation

[01:04:05] for the school resource officers for loudon county so that they have are better equipped to understand the students that they're interacting with we have provided training and information for loud and county mental health organizations we've worked with religious organizations we are working with child protective organizations really truly trying to get folks to understand that these children are at risk when they are put in dangerous situations and that means making sure

[01:04:38] that their privacy is protected and that their identity is protected. We also provide access to our Equality Alleyes program. So there are organizations, companies, businesses, faith, houses of faith, medical providers that we have vetted to ensure that they are safe for the LGBTQ plus community. Thank you. I appreciate the more expansive explanation of what you do.

[01:05:09] appreciate that for everybody are there any questions for jennifer say actually i have one more generic question and again i appreciate you inviting equality leiden loudon and they're sharing their concern or their what they can do but my question is that do you have any plan to invite some of the faith communities because i know every community faces their own challenge and especially i'm from the muslim community and i see a lot of students from the muslim community they face challenge where in the religious accommodation? Because depending upon the time, there may be one

[01:05:48] or two prayers that fall within that school time. But I have gotten the report from many schools that where our students, or especially the Muslim students, they are facing challenges in performing their religious obligation within the school time. So just I wanted to understand, is there any plan to invite people from the religious community to share their experience and what challenges they thank you for the question and absolutely we are this is what this committee is here for to hear from anyone who wants to provide that information it's why you're on the committee so that you can express and advocate for the community representing and any member when I and when we first

[01:06:27] got together here and every year I reiterate the fact that I'm a mom I'm a school board member I'm a community member I have all you know I came from a poor background and was raised on welfare so I have different perspectives and while I'm the school board member and the chair of this committee, I come with all different life experiences and perspectives as a parent and all the other facets of my life.

[01:06:52] And so whatever you bring to this table, it isn't just if you're a principal or if you're a parent or you're representing MSOC, it is all the different facets of your life that you bring to the table and your experiences. So absolutely, if there is someone that wants to come and speak to our committee and provide experiences, whether it be our students parents or a group absolutely and we'll work with um leticia to get more more of that representation here at our meeting absolutely and as as a member of this committee you are always welcome at the end particularly when we say new business or through an email to say i really need to bring

[01:07:28] this forward and bring bring forward any topic that you think is important for the committee to address so absolutely thank you oh sure appreciate that thanks absolutely does anybody have any questions for Jennifer. Arjun? So I was wondering if Equality Loudon offers sort of educational or information sessions particularly for parents because I know a lot of parents from different ethnic backgrounds often don't fully understand like concepts regarding the LGBT community and I was wondering if Equality Loudon provided resources for these parents to learn more about

[01:08:06] this conference absolutely um so we are in the process of developing a library of training uh my other hat that i wear i'm a parent educator and coach specifically for parents of lgbtq plus so that's literally what i do all the time so yes we're going to be doing uh some free workshops specifically for parents we just we did a couple weeks ago a um back to school you know keeping kids safe and so yes we are going to continue to do that so we'll be happy to share all of that

[01:08:34] information um and if you you know what i'll grab you give you a card on my way out tom i know all of us here represent lots of different constituencies as all of us probably touch lots of different communities in various aspects of our life um i was really honored by one of my children this year asking being asked to take her to the pride event which was a fantastic event that you guys put on there's also a very active facebook page i know you guys post a lot of stuff there that's that's very helpful as well uh thanks for the work that you guys are doing and thanks for

[01:09:12] coming here and talking to us thank you appreciate that any other questions or comments and i'm sure contact information for equality loud and of course any educational piece that people are interested in they can contact you absolutely so education at eqloco.com that'll get right to me so we can make sure all that contact information ends up in our minutes so that it's made available to not just the committee but to the public as well okay thank you for being here Jennifer. All right, we're going to move to item 503, update on racial slurs and hate speech

[01:09:47] incidents, and... Oh, you are here. I missed you. Yeah, I think so. I think that's the best mic to present from. So good evening, everyone. My name is Shaheed Muhammad. I am one of the supervisors in the Office of Equity, and the purpose is to provide a little update and some review and background on the approaches in responding to racial slurs and hate speech. If you recall,

[01:10:26] Some of you were here in the spring when we did an overview of the total numbers and action steps that were taken throughout last year. And so I want to give an update on that. So just for background and recall refresh, in 2019, there was an LCPS protocol for responding to hate speech and racial slurs that was created by various administrators and division leaders based on board policies.

[01:11:03] And that protocol really outlined what schools should do when a racial slur or hate speech incident occurs. Through that, from the 20, I believe the 21, 22 school year, we started to collect data on the numbers of incidents that are happening in schools.

[01:11:23] I believe that year it was around 100, 140. I could be wrong. I know Dr. Ellis might be able to. But the following year, last year, 22-23, we used a reporting tool or a Google document that was housing all the incidents that were reported by administrators at each school.

[01:11:48] At the end of the year, there were 890 total incidents that were reported. So there has been some changes, and we've created a standard operating procedure that is hopefully going to communicate the different changes to the process.

[01:12:09] But also we are using a new reporting system where all racial slurs and hate speech incidents will be reported into our Phoenix system, Phoenix SIS system. This approach is to streamline data, to be able to actually analyze data a little bit more effectively and answer very specific questions that might be asked regarding what is happening in the school division when it comes to racial slurs and hate speech.

[01:12:40] As of today, we have 19 as of today since the start of school, four reported by elementary schools, five by high schools, and 10 by middle schools. Their type or the types of incidents that have occurred, six due to sexual orientation, nine by race, and three by national origin, and one other.

[01:13:08] I'm not sure what it is. So I want to go over specifically the standard operating procedure steps. Of course, step number one is that a principal or the principal's designee will notify on the day of the incident or the day that the incident was reported to the parent or guardian of the students impacted by the incident who are directly or indirectly affected.

[01:13:32] Step two, there will be an investigation that will occur, and the principal or the designee will also contact members of our Division of School Leadership, whether that be the executive principal or director, to notify about the incident that has occurred.

[01:13:54] If it is an incident that is involving a staff member, HRTD will be directly involved to investigate all incidents involving an employee. Step three is inform the parent or guardian within five school days or sooner of the status of the investigation into the reported concern.

[01:14:16] Step four involves the denouncing of the event or the act, and the level or what that looks like is really aligned to the scope of the specific incident that occurred. There can be phone calls made that denounced the incident up until a broader school community message that may be sent out.

[01:14:40] All administrators and principals have been briefed on the level of supports that they have in terms of understanding what those steps should be, if there is some confusion around it, and considering what's in the best interest of the community in terms of what type of denouncement will be made.

[01:15:02] And they will either call the equity office or communications and community engagement office as well. Step five is to provide, step five and six of the procedure is to really involve our counselors, our United Mental Health Teams in providing supports for students who have been harmed and witnesses of the incident and also to look at the possibilities of the use of restorative

[01:15:36] practices or restorative conferences as appropriate to repair harm. Step seven is following the school code, student code of conduct and discipline protocols and as it applies to the incident and if there are any derogatory language or racial slurs or graffiti, there is a process that is taken to remove that.

[01:16:08] Step eight is where I spoke earlier about the major change in the process, and that is all student incidents of racial slurs and hate speech must be recorded in the Phoenix SIS, and our school building administrators have been trained on what that looks like and how to do it.

[01:16:31] Step nine is in addition to if any disciplinary sanctions are passed out the students who caused the harm. We also looked at what is the education for those students, how will we get students to reflect on their behaviors, and what are the steps that we can put in place to make sure that there is no recidivism of those types of behaviors.

[01:16:53] Step 10 is to notify the parent guardian of the students directly involved once the investigation is completed. And step 11 is continuous support for students and staff who have been directly involved in the incident and really trying to get an understanding of the scope of how much support will be necessary in order to provide that and continue the follow-up with the students or the staff. From the Office of Equity's perspective and the action steps that we're taking, it is

[01:17:28] continuous and constantly evolving and we have been providing more professional development this summer at our wonderful alt conference we did have professional development around addressing racial slurs and hate speech there was also this summer professional development for sports coaches and athletic directors on how they are handling it on the fields and in the in the gymnasiums with sporting events and we are continuing our front-facing dialogue with

[01:18:06] our administrators every chance we get to bring to the attention on how to actually support and follow the proper guidance when an incident occurs. One thing that we have put in place and that we've shared with our equity leads and our school administrators is an infographic that we really hope accompanies with some learning or some new learning regarding how teachers can in the moment be able to address racial slurs and hate speech. And those three steps are really how do

[01:18:45] we interrupt and intervene, how do we question and educate, and what does the follow-through look like? So the big takeaways from that is that we continuously want to remind all staff how to be prepared to respond. Understanding that hate isn't always behind all hateful speech, so we need to seek to understand intent, but prioritize the impact of hate speech over intent, and always

[01:19:20] intervene. Prioritize the impact, not the intent, and definitely put in place actions to support anyone who is speaking up in schools, and we want to also make sure that we are avoiding ignoring the incident or excusing the incident and never using a racial slur when intervening.

[01:19:43] That's something that we continuously we talk about. So I can open up for questions at this time. Actually far less a question than just a comment because I know we talked a lot about this last year and your office has done a great job of gathering and organizing this data. Just a reminder we basically have a single point of data which is last year as a result of that and right now of course we have 19 incidents already this year that's far too many but if you

[01:20:19] were to take that statistic and run it out that's 360 incidents for the year roughly which is already half of what we had last year but of course those statistics can't possibly be projected that way we know that a lot of these incidents front load at the beginning of the school year oftentimes and so it's going to take at least another couple of years before we can really start to get an idea of what our trend is or really how we can continue to tweak the processes you guys have been doing to really fine tune and get the data that we're looking for.

[01:20:51] So great job of continuing to collect it. But I just would again remind us as a committee to try not to come to many conclusions because there just isn't enough information year over year yet to come to those conclusions. Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

[01:21:09] Mark and then Arjun. Thank you. I remember from the presentation a while back and I mentioned this at the time, one of the, I think it was the sources of the hate speech and racial slurs was social media.

[01:21:27] And I think at that time I voiced concern about, I understand that the school has a responsibility to act on things that impact the school day, but I do believe that's, how do I put this?

[01:21:45] There's a concern about perception, I guess, or potential to overreach into a person's protected speech that happens outside of the school.

[01:22:01] So I would hope that, especially when we're talking about investigations into certain allegations that students' rights are respected and also not just their rights from the manual, but also their rights under their First Amendment.

[01:22:22] So thanks. Thank you. Arjun? My question was very similar in nature to Mr. Lucero's. Say a student were to use hate speech or a racial slur over text message, that these are two students within the same school.

[01:22:42] Would LCPS respond to that using the same process that you described earlier, or is that a separate incident that LCPS will not investigate? That's a very good question. I think really what the determining factor would be is what does that interaction between those two students impact other students within the school day.

[01:23:10] It doesn't necessarily mean that there would be a disciplinary investigation, but there could be other steps taken to address how that is affecting others. And we do know that text messages, social media posts travel, and they don't always give immediately the background on how it was created or how it started.

[01:23:37] But definitely if an incident that took place, let's say, at 10 o'clock in someone's home through text messaging someone else came to be brought to the attention of multiple students or a large number of students, and that then created an issue with the learning environment for that day, school administrators, teachers still have to work through that, as it could be lingering and be a detriment to instruction.

[01:24:12] So I understand what you're saying. I don't have a specific answer for you, but I do know that our school administrators work very hard to protect instructional minutes, the learning environment that has been created by the entire student body in the school community, so that it does not become something that will create such a huge distraction or potentially harm a great deal of others because of what happened.

[01:24:44] So if I'm understanding you correctly, if this incident via text message were to somehow impede the instructional environment then the county will take action but in other cases it might be like maybe a conversation with a counselor or something less direct sure i'm thinking what your your scenario that you're presenting is that two people were text messaging each other outside of school hours are you saying that and i'm just trying to get clear clarity on

[01:25:21] the actual scenario that then one of those students comes into school and shares that content with a number of students or sends that text to a number of students or it's just between those two students. Between those two students and one of them reports it to a trusted individual in the school. Sure. I think depending on how that student is feeling, what is the impact to that student, even though it happened outside of school hours, we still would want to provide supports for that student because we know that not all students have the agency or the wherewithal to

[01:25:58] sometimes speak up for themselves or to go to an adult or their parents about how they're feeling so of course if if a student came to a counselor or a teacher or someone about something that affected them we would want to make sure we address that in the school that doesn't necessarily have to be a investigation with disciplinary options involved all right thank you yes Anna

[01:26:32] did you have your hand up? Yeah. I thought you waved at me when I called on Arjun, so I just want to make sure I didn't miss you. Yes, I would say there are probably hundreds and thousands of messages that go student to student or on social media on any given day that a principal would never hear about. And that is not to say that they don't fall under the category of hate speech or a racial slur. If they are coming to the principal's notification, it is because they are

[01:27:10] already causing harm to the instructional day. And that is when we act. And what I say to my students is that you absolutely have freedom of speech, but speech has consequences. And you need to be able to understand that just because you say something doesn't mean that there are not consequences for it so like i said if it's coming to the principal there's a reason and it's affecting the school thank you i appreciate you weighing in on that do you have any other questions

[01:27:46] raquel um yeah so my question is um more along the lines of the protocol and the steps that you guys take what if those steps go into the end of the school year and it's not necessarily resolved by the end of the school year how is that handled um especially like if those kids are still in the same grade and they could potentially be in the same class again next year but that incident from the previous school year has not gone through all of those steps and so um the

[01:28:23] process uh would still need to continue in some form or fashion in terms of how in the level of support and um correct me if i'm wrong you're speaking of this incident or multiple incidents has taken place through a school year, and now it hasn't been addressed, there has not been a conclusion to the relationship between the students involved, and now we're moving into another school year, and those things are still going on, or have the potential of going on, and I think that's what we're talking about with the follow-through.

[01:28:59] I don't believe that there is a timeline for follow-through. I believe it is the timeline for the follow-through with completion is when we've sort of stopped this behavior or we've been able to repair the harm between the students.

[01:29:18] And also, if the students have learned from their past mistakes and they're no longer committing these types of incidents, I think that's when we would look at the end of the timeline of the follow-through.

[01:29:34] And I think that's an important step because the way that these situations land on particular individuals and students cannot be calculated by a specific timeline. We know that the trauma that can be caused by these incidents have long-lasting effects throughout life.

[01:29:58] So it's not something that I think we can put an end point on, if that makes sense. Yes, thank you. So just I want to understand that from when we started collecting this data, and do we have any data that shows that any specific segment of our student body is facing this kind of incidents more than others are in not right proportion?

[01:30:33] And do we need to take any specific step if that's the case? Yes, currently we do not have that data. I think what this recording procedure will do will help us to provide more intentional supports and monitoring of specific students where we can see there's a pattern or a trend of these types of behaviors.

[01:30:58] And it also allows the possibility of more plans being put in place for individual students that continue to cause these incidents in schools.

[01:31:16] We don't have that data in terms of the equity office, but now that it's being housed in a separate application that is used for the entire school division, I think it makes it easier to be able to pull data, analyze it, and put action steps in place for students.

[01:31:36] I think it will be good to have that insight. Yes. I will go on to say that from our perspective, we're not looking to see if there's one particular demographic of students who create the most types of incidents.

[01:31:56] That's not what we're looking for. We're looking to be able to address it appropriately and really get to an intervention type level that can be implemented in schools and working with families and communities so that it is something that we can actually stop.

[01:32:20] Because, of course, this is a societal ill that impacts our schools. It's not something that it creates in schools and impacts society. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Haley?

[01:32:36] - Hi, thank you for the update and information. I was wondering about the Phoenix SIS program. What is exactly is being recorded in there and how does that work? If you could elaborate on that, that would be helpful for me to understand a little better.

[01:32:54] Thank you. - Yes, that's the portal where all student behavior discipline incidents are recorded in. There's many types of incidents or violations. I'm just speaking to one particular, which is a relationship behavior that is a part of our Virginia Code of Conduct, the state of Virginia.

[01:33:15] So it's just the housing database for the recording of disciplinary incidents. So would that help with, like, last year when we were looking at it, we looked at, like, the different schools and the different, like, just where the data was recorded.

[01:33:38] We were having some schools had a lot of data recorded and then some might have had less. So it would be, the principals would be held more accountable to doing that in that program, or is that the goal? Yeah, the goal is to make sure that all racial slurs and hate speech incidents are recorded into that database.

[01:33:58] We do know that out of the 890 last year, we can't really quantify how many specifically were inputted into the Phoenix database. But by this being the one place where all of the incidents go into, and like I said, it's vast in terms of the types of referrals and things that would go into this portal, it does allow us, it still gives us some of the same information that we got from our Google document, but it also helps us with the analysis piece,

[01:34:37] and then also how do we confront the situation. If it is multiple situations in a school or by one particular student in a school, it helps give that information a little bit more clearer. Mark?

[01:34:59] I would assume that some of the data that's contained in the database would include information about the students, like their names and certain other information. Would that database, the information, be exempt from FOIA requests?

[01:35:15] There's confidentiality when it comes to the students. So anything that is going to be naming students by name or student ID would not be allowable. So individuals in schools and in central office that are reviewing data are looking at it with a particular lens, not particularly specific to highlighting or addressing or informing anyone about the confidential records for that student.

[01:35:46] Any other comments or questions? We certainly appreciate the update and taking a question. I'm sorry, Denise, did you have your hand up? I kind of turned and wasn't sure.

[01:36:04] And I just want to make sure. Thanks. I just want to make sure also I'm going to address something with you, Denise, in just a second. But thank you again for being here and presenting the data and keeping us informed about what the division is doing to track it and address it.

[01:36:20] Thank you. Look forward to coming back at a later time and giving another update. Thank you. Thanks. All right. So we flowed right into item 601 with our question and answer on the presentation of racial slur and hate speech incidents.

[01:36:39] I'm not even going to try and say that again. So thank you, everybody, for your comments and discussion there. We'll move to item seven, announcements. So I'm going to start with Denise. I just wanted, I wasn't sure if you're aware that when there's a presentation up on the board, I can't see you. So if you have a question or comment during one of those presentations, I'm going to need you to just start talking or at least say my name and get my attention okay i wasn't sure if you're aware i can't see you so thanks i just want to make sure that you're aware um other announcement is our next meeting is october 5th right here at 5 30 and because we're out of practice please

[01:37:16] leave your name tags on the table don't take them home with you we'll pick them up and bring them back to the next meeting for you all right and then we'll move to item eight is there any new business from anyone tony tony simon johnson rocker tricycle theater teacher uh i just want to thank everyone for coming today uh it's good to see everybody and also to see dr spence and leticia thank you so much it's great to see you um this is a really low-hanging fruit that i think

[01:37:51] brenda's kind of been championing on the school board and also as dr spence and dr ellis go into the next budget cycle something that they can might be able to partner with the equity uh the the director of equity on is uh fees for the performing arts um so over the past couple years the school board has been diligent on eliminating as many fees as possible which has really helped our families uh but we have not yet tackled fees for the performing arts and i think it's because we're uh an enigma so the performing arts live in both the department of instruction

[01:38:28] and also in the department under Doug Fulton's office with like activities and co-curricular. And so one of the things that I would suggest is that we really take the next couple months to explore how we can eliminate marching band fees that can be as high as $900 and performing arts fees that could be as high as $150 or $200 of production.

[01:38:53] As we look to our athletic peers and our athletic students and they continue to thrive under the new structure of fees. I hope that we as an equity committee can take this up so that all students have access to the arts.

[01:39:09] We know that the arts change and save lives. We know that the arts is a place for a lot of our students who are outliers within their community and a lot of our marginalized students. So making sure that every student has access to the arts is going to be really, really important.

[01:39:27] And I hope that as we develop a budget for this coming cycle, it is a really important piece. And I think we could tackle it with under $2 million, which is such a small percentage of the overall $1.6 billion LCPS budget.

[01:39:44] So I want to thank Brenda for championing that, and I hope that we can continue to move forward with that. I know that she's been working with a couple of people to make that happen. And so thank you, and I look forward to seeing that being addressed in this year's budget cycle. Thank you for bringing that up, Tony.

[01:40:04] And I know I did, in the last budget cycle, ask for a study on that. So we're going to follow up with the Department of Instruction for that. And I think we'll collaborate between our committee and the curriculum and instruction committee and put it where it belongs, but we certainly can get information brought here as well.

[01:40:20] Okay, thank you. Any other comments or new business or anything anybody wants to bring up? All right, seeing none, we will see you here next month, again, October 5th. Seeing no further business, we're adjourned. Thank you.

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