Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee (MSAAC) Meeting, Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Date: Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 1h 51m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/875811326?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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[00:02:36] - Okay, good evening everyone. Thank you all for joining us this evening. We're here, it's Wednesday, October 18th. I had to get the date right. A lot of stuff has been going on lately. I don't know about you, but the schedules are only getting busier, it seems, as the school year goes on.

[00:02:54] Thank you all for joining us. I'm very excited to see you all here. I'm very excited for our discussion and the information we're going to hear tonight. Tonight starts our series. We're doing our series, breaking it down into two separate series, but we're covering both of them throughout the year.

[00:03:11] This first series is breaking down racial slurs and hate speech, and so our topic of discussion and table topics tonight, we're just going to start wading into this topic. I know it is a very sensitive topic. I know it can bring up issues of trauma and upset, and we want to be mindful of everyone in the room as we have these discussions to please listen, be patient to hold space for your fellow delegates and family members and people that are joining us in these conversations we all have things to share and we all have things to learn but we want to be respectful of each other as we go through these conversations this conversation tonight is going

[00:03:48] to kind of fuel where we go in the next conversation when we come back in the new year in 2024 because we only have one more meeting for the 2023 school year and that's next month so we're going to get started um if i could if i could get a show of hands of the number of msac delegates in the room please okay thank you we needed that headcount um this is just a gentle reminder to those of you who

[00:04:26] are in the room and those of you who are watching and joining us either through the local cable stations or the live stream um we have a quorum that we have to meet in order to vote on msac business and this evening we will not be able to vote on the meeting minutes because we have not met quorum so we are going to table those meeting minutes until next month if you know of other delegates and other people who are delegates please encourage them to come and join us in these meetings this is a simple vote but if there was a bigger vote to happen we would have to table that business until we came to quorum and we want to be mindful that we we have to fulfill that

[00:05:02] that goal we have to meet that number in order to reach quorum so just please if you are not able to make it. I understand schedules, children's illnesses. There's all sorts of things going on, but please, um, please endeavor to make these meetings so we can come to quorum and we can vote on the, um, the meeting minutes and any other pressing MSAC business. Um, I also want to, as a little housekeeping thing, there are snacks in the back, there's water, there are little munchy goods, there's a hot pot that is making tea and hot chocolate. Please feel free at any time to get up and get something these are long nights the sun is setting faster so we want to

[00:05:42] make sure that everybody is comfortable and at least has something to nibble on and something to sip on as we go through these meetings so our agenda for this evening is we're going to begin again welcome thank you for coming um for announcements we have a couple of um announcements again the first announcement was about the quorum the second announcement is an email went out to all of the delegates. If you would, please take a look at it. This email went out, I believe it was yesterday. We're going to start working within our subcommittees, our MSAC subcommittees,

[00:06:19] and we need volunteers to step up. Again, 15 minutes does a wonder. If you have hours to commit, that's amazing. We know just every little bit helps, and so any time that you can give us to help us read through policies, to help us plan our outreach, to offer feedback about outreach, to listen in on school board meetings and school board committee meetings, that little bit of time helps because, again, this year it's not just the executive board and then everybody else. We want everybody to chip into this work and everybody to help carry the load and lift the load and contribute to it. This evening we have three guest

[00:06:58] speakers um we are very fortunate to have them uh they our first speaker is going to be miss carrie williams the lcps ombuds if you were here last year she came and spoke to us in her first year as she was just getting started with lcps so she's back this evening to kind of share her insights and offer more um updates on what her role is in the school district and how it works with us because she is a resource that we can use as MSAC delegates that if we are presented with an issue from a student or a family member that she's a resource that we can direct these

[00:07:34] families to and having Ms. Williams come and speak to us helps us at least speak on that resource with some authority. Our next guest will be Mr. Shahid Muhammad, the supervisor of equity. He's pretty awesome. I've had a couple of conversations with him and so he's going to share with us some of the processes about reporting on these issues of racial slurs and hate speech, and he's going to kind of give us a breakdown so we have an understanding.

[00:07:59] And our final speaker is Dr. Doug Fulton. He is from the Student Behavior and Accountability, and he's going to talk to us, again, some more in-depth about these processes, what the reporting system looks like, because there are new changes that have been made, and we're going to get that information as well tonight.

[00:08:19] And then once we have that and some questions and answers, if there are questions and answers in the room, we're going to switch over to our working session and table topics. And because there are a lot of empty tables, I'm going to ask people to fill in the spaces and fill in the gaps so we can have in-depth conversations.

[00:08:36] And we'll go through how that's going to work and what it looks like. And so before I turn it over to Ms. Williams, we always want to be mindful of the MSAC mission statement, and so I'm going to read it one more time, again, for the multiple times, but we're going to keep reading it so we all know it and we all are aware of what our work is and what our goals are. The Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee, MSAC, is dedicated to partnering with Loudoun County public schools, parents, and the community to acknowledge and promote the needs of minority students. MSAC is also dedicated to building a school system that is culturally and

[00:09:12] socially competent in position to provide fair and equitable learning experiences for all students. And we always, when we read our mission statement, when we go out into our communities and our schools, we always want to remind everyone that this is for all students. Every student, we're advocating and we are working to make change, and this change affects all students.

[00:09:36] And so we want to just be mindful of that. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Williams.

[00:09:47] you get to meet my husband and my children let's see here all right well thank you I am proud and privileged to be here this evening to speak with all

[00:10:25] of you this is my second time coming to speak with MSAC last year it was about the same time I believe in October that I came and everything then was kind of hypothetical I was just opening the office getting my website up and running writing my charter or my policy getting that drafted and so I I really was sharing what I intended to do and I feel like I'm in a much better position this year to come back and share what I have been doing and how all that has played out. So my name is Carrie Williams. This is the beginning of the second year of the Office of the Ombuds and a little bit of history around the Ombuds role.

[00:11:03] This began in Scandinavia back in I believe the late to make sure that the government was was running in a way and if they had issues and concerns or if if they wanted to elevate their voices, that there was an impartial confidential resource that they could reach out to.

[00:11:30] When it came to the United States, it started in the collegiate setting. A lot of colleges and universities, I believe University of Hawaii and University of Montana were two of the first universities to have an ombuds, and that has grown throughout corporate, government, collegiate, and in the K-12 public school setting, only about 35 of us in the United States, so we call ourselves a strong but mighty group, and I'm lucky to have colleagues in the DMV area to lean on. Our friends in Iowa, there's

[00:12:04] just one or two of them, so I have about 13 colleagues locally, and we actually work together to make sure that we are supporting our school divisions in similar ways. The work that I do is governed by the International Ombuds Association, and we have our standards of practice and our pillars that we adhere to closely, and those kind of four core values are confidentiality, independence, informality, and, sorry, confidentiality, independence, impartiality, and informality. And I do work with students, employees, community members,

[00:12:43] and most importantly, well, everybody's important, but families, that's why we're here today, to kind of noodle through and have an opportunity to learn more about and come to resolution around student concerns. And it can be anything related to LCPS. The confidentiality component of my role I think is the core value that people come to me for and really appreciate the most that whatever is shared with me, unless it is in and around CPS reporting, Title IX, or imminent risk of harm to self or others.

[00:13:18] Those are the three areas where I would have to break confidentiality. But what is shared with me stays with me. And it's really an opportunity for individuals to have time and space to thoroughly communicate what their concerns are, to talk about what options might exist, what have they considered, or what they might not have considered because they don't even know that it's an option.

[00:13:39] I'm independent in the sense that I sit within the superintendent's office. I do work for LCPS, but as a director, I do not have other roles or responsibilities that would keep me from being impartial or neutral when working with a visitor. And I use the term visitor. We didn't want to use client. We thought, like, as a profession, they felt like client was a little bit too sterile, that we want to welcome visitors to our office, to our space. And when a visitor comes to me and if they have another if I had other roles and responsibilities and they had a concern about that it would be very difficult for me to be impartial when working with them so my

[00:14:19] sole role is to impartially and neutrally serve visitors who come to me with concerns that are in regard to LCPS and I am informal so by coming to me and talking with me the visitor is not starting a process they're not at the beginning middle or end it doesn't matter when they they come to me for support and they're not putting the division on notice. And so outside of Title IX and NCPS and imminent risk of harm to self or others, if they share things with me, that stays between us.

[00:14:51] And I think that's important for people to know because it is really just a place to do your best thinking, to consider your options, and then determine how you want to best move forward. We try to link everything that we do in LCPS to our strategic plan. And while I believe that I support all of our core values I really focus in on trust through listening and continuous improvement and we'll talk a little bit more about how my role does that and in goal four specifically goal 4.3 the office of the ombuds is directly linked into our strategic plan

[00:15:27] for engaged community to make sure that not only our employees but our families have a place where they can engage and oftentimes when people come to me there there's some type of a communication breakdown or a perception of a communication breakdown and they don't know who to talk to or they've tried elevating their concerns and instead of shutting down they can come to me and we can talk through who the right people are and I can either help connect them directly or make sure that they have the most specific and appropriate information so that they don't feel like they are constantly being passed from office to office or that their emails are going

[00:16:06] out into space and not being reviewed or heard. So what do I do? Because I don't have six, seven, eight other responsibilities on my plate, my schedule builds out day by day. I have plenty of time and space to spend 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes with an individual when they call or to schedule time for a follow-up if needed. So there's plenty of time and space to give individuals as much time as they need to share their concerns and to feel heard. I identify and I kind of take

[00:16:40] brief notes as I go through to highlight what are the underlying issues or concerns and then talk about possible options to support those concerns. I give a lot of information, resources, connect to policy or regulation or to community resources or options within the school. Oftentimes people just don't know where to start. And so they can start with me so that they have a better understanding of what pathways that they might be able to take. I explore those options with them. I empower them to advocate for themselves. And my next slide, when it says, what does the ombuds not do? I don't, I'm not an advocate for individuals, but I advocate for fair and equitable processes.

[00:17:19] And depending on what options they choose, I might elevate concerns on their behalf. I might elevate concerns anonymously. I might do some research and ask and inquire and get some information and share that back with the visitor because they might not be ready to come forward and talk about those concerns on their own. I facilitate conversations. I am the designated individual in LCPS for staff-staff conflict, but I also help support staff-parent conflict, and our restorative practices team usually steps in if there is student-student conflict or student-staff conflict.

[00:17:58] So I have been facilitating conversations with employees and with employees and parents. And then I identify trends and themes and report those to the chief of staff and the superintendent from kind of a high level. If I start to see repetition or patterns within my data and I'm seeing it from across the county in different areas or maybe it would be within a school, depending on what the concern is, then I can gather all of that data and share that as a high-level trend while still maintaining the confidentiality of those who reach

[00:18:30] out to me. As I said, I don't take sides. I don't advocate. I am a designated neutral. I listen. I often say that I believe everything and nothing all at once because there's always two sides of the story, but I don't oftentimes get the other, the full other side of the story. So I'm listening to the perspective of the person that reaches out for me and helping them navigate their concern from their perspective. I'm not a recipient of legal notice. I don't take formal complaints, but I could help somebody figure out how to file those formal complaints. I don't conduct investigations or make decisions, and I don't oversee or I don't overturn decisions that might

[00:19:10] have been made. I don't make set or change LCPS policy, but I do give input to those policies depending on some of those trends and themes that I'm seeing or if individuals share input with me around a particular process. I might bring that up to the person who is in charge of the policy to say, hey, you know, I received this really valuable feedback, and I'd like for you to consider it as you're revising this policy. And then I don't maintain records, provide legal advice, or participate in litigation. I do, under the Virginia records process, the ombudsman is listed, and I

[00:19:48] have my own specific procedures around how my notes, and I don't take a lot of notes, I don't keep file folders, I don't have records on hand, but those just kind of anecdotal notes that I do take to keep myself straight, I do shred those at the end of a case when it's closed out and it's no longer administratively useful, and that is all within alignment of the Virginia records destruction process.

[00:20:14] So when should you contact the ombuds? It can be any time. I think originally people thought that I would be kind of the end of the road resource after you had exhausted all of these processes, and I see that as causing a lot of frustration. I'd rather talk to somebody early on so they know the steps that they're going through are going to be appropriate and that it's going to get them to the right individuals.

[00:20:36] Sometimes people just want to know more about a process. They want to understand what we're doing or follow along with the, you know, the conversations and then the outcome of those conversations. people just want to bounce things off of me. I've had employees reach out because they had to make a presentation to their boss and they didn't know if it would make any sense and they were like, can I present it to you? And I was like, sure, why not? And then I would give them feedback based upon somebody who didn't know anything about the topic or the conversation. I can be a thought partner. I coach people. Sometimes they want to proactively address an issue on their own, but they're not quite sure how to say it or they're not quite sure how to approach the topic.

[00:21:16] So I can also coach in that manner. and there are multiple ways to reach out to me. You can email me, I have my website has all of this information documented up there. I have a direct phone line on my website. There is also a form that you can fill out and on that form, which is through Let's Talk, you can actually hide your information there as well.

[00:21:39] So that's probably the most completely anonymous way to connect with me and go back and forth because if you hide your user information, We can communicate, but I still don't know who you are. You can give me a call, and I might see your phone number pop up on my phone, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I know who you are.

[00:21:55] So there are multiple ways to reach me. I think the most confidential would be using the Let's Talk form because it hides that information. But if you give me a call, I clear my video phone. I clear all that out at the end of each week so that I can make sure that people can remain as anonymous as possible.

[00:22:15] And for our families that might need to be served in another language, I encourage anyone, but also I've been working with our family liaisons to make sure if a family needs support in another language, as long as the name of the individual, the phone number, and what language they need gets to me, then I can call them with a language line and support them.

[00:22:38] So I typically, my year runs from July 1 to June 30th for my data collection, and last Last year I started on August 23rd, so I was missing a few weeks, and I have not reported out my annual report to the board. It was supposed to be October 10th.

[00:22:54] My original slide deck that I had prepared for you had some of those slides that I was going to incorporate and dig into a little bit more. However, the board has not yet seen it, so I don't want to kind of spoil that. I don't want to do a spoiler alert, but high-level data, I've been sharing with internal departments that I reached, or 207 contacts reached out to me, so visitor contacts, but sometimes that's a group. So that's why on the left you see, is that your left? Okay. So on the left you see 207 contacts, but on the right you see 232 constituents because some of those

[00:23:30] individuals or groups that come to me, sometimes it's eight, nine, ten people, depending on the concern. A complete case is when I talk with the person, get the background information back and forth, and I have time and space to gather those details. Sometimes people just need a quick piece of information that I can quickly email them back, or they cc me on a concern, and so I capture those as quick inquiries because I didn't necessarily delve deep into that issue or concern with them. On the right, you'll see who am I serving. Last year, pretty much the entire

[00:24:08] year it was pretty even employees and families a couple of community community members reached out and then that tiny little other blue sliver that you see there is i did work with a couple of students so that last 0.5 that's missing there is the students that have reached out so that helps me determine where i need to focus my my outreach for this year and that is in and around our multilingual families who might need support as well as going back to our middle school and high school students to let them know through their advisories and through their student councils

[00:24:42] and as well as their as well as their equity leads that I am an available resource. The students I think typically have trusted adults within the building that they can go to but they might have more of a big picture item that they want to talk about or a policy thing that they might want to noodle through or talk about with somebody at central office and I'm a great resource for them if they want to advocate for themselves centrally.

[00:25:07] I would be a good place for them to reach out and to start. So that's kind of my high-level overview. My report will be posted probably on the 24th, if not by the 25th. So if you want to check board docs or if you want to go to my website, it will be posted there as well to see more of my high-level observations that I will be making, my efforts for this year.

[00:25:32] I just kind of highlighted those a little bit, but there will be more specific data available next week. And then if you would like for me to come back and share further, I'm happy to do that as well. Do I have time for a couple of questions? Okay, so the floor is now yours if you'd like to ask any questions.

[00:25:49] Yes, ma'am. Thank you for sharing all that. I learned some things that were new. How are you held accountable? It seems like so much stuff is off the record, confidential. How do you know you're doing a good job? How does the board know you're doing a good job?

[00:26:05] Great question. So, a lot of it is anecdotal feedback. I do have a feedback form, so when I close out a case, there is an opportunity for visitors to share feedback with me. It is kind of a nebulous, kind of open-ended job. So, sometimes when I go through options with a visitor, they take that information and they move forward and I might not know which pathway they take.

[00:26:28] Or I might not know if the resolution was closed out in a way that they wished. So as far as, I think, accountability, as far as am I reaching those that I need to reach, I'm hoping to see that with my numbers this year.

[00:26:44] Last year was a baseline year. I do get feedback through not only Let's Talk. People can kind of rate my services just quickly with, like, a Likert scale, 1 through 10. They do have an opportunity to find more in-depth feedback and give me suggestions for improvement.

[00:27:00] That's a very open-ended feedback form. That's on my website in my email signature, and it's sent to them at the closure of a case. And I think also with the way that I'm able to help individuals navigate connecting with a lot of directors, assistants, superintendents within the division.

[00:27:19] So that's a good question. I'm evaluated by my supervisor like anybody else is. I have to set smarter goals for myself to make sure that I'm reaching more people and continuing to market and do my outreach. But as far as, is it like I have SOL scores, like a teacher might to say that I'm hitting this mark, it doesn't really lend itself to that.

[00:27:43] But as we move forward, and now that I have this baseline year, I'm hoping to continue to see those numbers grow, and I'm hoping to continue to push that feedback. Sometimes I don't close out in the way that I would like to, but sending those follow-up emails, asking them to provide me feedback so that I can have my own personal continuous improvement within the role thank you thank you again for this presentation with respect to confidentiality to what extent or what are some of the major themes I would say or topics that people come to you with just kind of better understand what are

[00:28:22] the major concerns of people who do approach your office but and then the second part of the question is where can you put like percentage-wise or or relevant minority student issues and equity diversity issues compared to the other topics? So I would say that some of the student-centered themes it's all it's all very specific to those cases I know that like bullying, discrimination, harassment as far as those topics when I share my data next week those will all

[00:28:59] be broken down by category bullying might fall under discrimination harassment safety concerns it might fall under discipline behavior and discipline so my subcategories that will all be broken out in my annual report i do not take that level of demographic information to be able to break it out by percentage by minority students or families but i have been able to i do know that i only worked with limited individuals last year that needed additional support in another language and so that's why I'm focusing on that piece as well.

[00:29:32] But because I do want people to be able to come to me anonymously, I don't ask them for their demographic specifics. Sometimes I don't know the school that they're linked to, and you'll see in my report that some of that is just unknown because I feel like they should have the space to share with me what they are comfortable with.

[00:29:53] So I do capture high-level topics, and I try to capture school and school level, so I at least know if I'm hearing from elementary, middle, or high, and from what region of the county, but I do not capture that level of data.

[00:30:10] Any other questions? All right. Well, there will be definitely more in-depth information for you to dig into available next week, and like I said, if in the spring, if you want me to come back, and I can already say right now, and at this point in time last year I was really just figuring everything out and starting my outreach and marketing, but I've already met with almost 80 families or employees this school year, so I had set a goal for 250 visitors beyond my 207 contacts

[00:30:50] this year, and I think I'm going to blow that out of the water, so I'm excited about that, but it really does take word of mouth and having individuals like you share back at your schools or with your neighbors or with your friends. So continue to spread the word. In the back there is a little poster up on the ledge and then I have like a bookmark. So feel free to take a couple of those. Keep one for yourselves and hand one out and I will replenish those. So if you want to take all of them, go for it. All right. Thank you very much and I look forward to engaging

[00:31:21] with you in the future. Thank you, Ms. Williams. We appreciate you taking the time to come and provide an update to us and give us a little more clarity um on your role as ombuds um as she mentioned this is a great um resource that we should take back to our schools and let everyone know about it and let everyone know um that if they are in need um that this is an avenue that they can take um as they go through whatever issue or situation that they're going through

[00:31:56] or even, as she said, if they just need an ear to listen to whatever they're thinking or whatever need they have. Before we continue on, I forgot a little housekeeping note, so I'm going to circle way back.

[00:32:12] I would like to take a moment to acknowledge all of the administrators, principals, equity leads that are in the building and in the room with us today. thank you so much for coming. And I would also like to acknowledge Ms. Erica, and if I butcher it, please correct me, Ms. Erica Ogudegmi from the LCPS school board. I had a wonderful conversation with her a few weeks ago, and she actually gave me quite a few ideas that have fueled some of the things that we're seeing come to fruition in this meeting. So I thank her for coming on out and joining us this evening. Again, to anyone that wants to join us, the door is open. We are here

[00:32:48] to conversate and collaborate and so I thank you all for joining us tonight and helping to push MSAC to be better and helping us to advocate for children and families within the district and now I will turn it over to Mr. Shahid Muhammad. All right well good evening everyone happy to be with you this evening. I want to give a little bit of overview and context background

[00:33:22] on how our school division responds to racial slurs and hate speech. First I wanted to start off that, very lucky that we have some guiding documents that really undergird how we approach this issue. First, starting with our policy 8030, which is about student discrimination and harassment. This work is also tied to the holistic support for students that's outlined in our strategic plan and our LCPS commitment to equity. And I know sometimes it's kind of rude to read

[00:33:57] to people but i think that this is important to to kind of highlight from our commitment to equity so lcps centers equity as one of its foundational core values for our community equity means being committed to providing a safe supportive inclusive affirming and respectful environment for each student and staff member with the goal of fostering success growth and academic rigor the cultivation of this environment requires us to reject and condemn hate speech racial slurs anti-semitism and any action or behavior that is discriminatory based on race, ethnicity, national origin,

[00:34:37] gender, gender orientation, gender expression, socioeconomic status, religion, ability, or other cultural identities or expression. Such non-inclusive speech, behavior, and actions do not reflect who we are as a learning community.

[00:34:55] So I want to preface that this work really is foundational to our commitment to equity. And lastly, a document that should be on your tables for the protocol for responding to racial slurs and hate speech in schools, which I will review, which really highlights how do we communicate with parents when these incidents happen in schools?

[00:35:22] What do we do when we investigate? How do we also denounce these acts in schools? And then lastly, how do we provide social-emotional support for students who are harmed and students that are affected by these incidents?

[00:35:39] We can also talk about the discipline protocols that are put in place and administrative response when these things happen in schools following the student code of conduct. So I want to give like a little overview of our working definition of a racial slur or hate speech.

[00:36:00] A racial slur is insulting, offensive, or degrading remark often based on an identity group such as race, ethnicity, religion, ethnic gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Hate speech in common language refers to any kind of offensive communication in speech, writing, or behavior targeting a group or an individual based on inherent characteristics such as race, ethnicity, color, religion, or gender, and that may threaten social peace.

[00:36:33] So, last year, we had a total of 890 incidents throughout the entire school year. And I want to give you a little bit of background on the types.

[00:36:51] The major types of incidents that occurred last year were directed towards race and gender, identity, or sexual orientation. This year, currently, as of today, we have 146 total incidents.

[00:37:09] And I'll break it down for you by school level. We have 40 elementary, 79 middle, and 27 at the high school level. And 93 of those incidents are based on race and 23 on sexual orientation.

[00:37:27] I just want to give you that background and the data so you can kind of look at where we were last year and where we are now. And then I'm going to go into some of the things that we are doing to intervene and eradicate and reduce these incidents. On your tables, as you can see, our schools and school-based administrators and teams, teachers, are working very hard to not only educate students, but also to put things in place, interventions in place, to reduce recidivism of these incidents by specific students.

[00:38:03] That's one of the big things that are being worked on in schools. And our division is responsible to consult and work not just with principals, but with school staff and our wonderful equity leads that are in every school to figure out what are the best ways to help support and educate our students on this issue.

[00:38:23] We are very grateful that anyone in our division is someone that a school employee, a staff member can reach out to for help and support. So, for the first step, we look at the principal, the assistant principal, the dean, or the principal's designee is to notify on the day of the incident the parent or guardians of the students directly and indirectly affected.

[00:38:50] So, we know that there are witnesses to these incidents that are affected and feel harm. We know that there are students that the slur or the hate speech was directed to a particular student or group of students. And so it's very important that those parents of those students involved are notified on the day of the incident.

[00:39:11] And then we start to investigate. We really make sure that contact is made not only if the investigation is started by an AP or a dean, that they contact their building principal, but we also contact members of our division of school leadership, potentially any members of our division, and also folks in communication and community engagement.

[00:39:38] Then next, we denounce the act. And that can look very different based on the scope of the incident, what particularly happened. Sometimes denouncing the act could be just really talking to the parents involved, or sometimes it's a community message. And I think most of you may have seen probably a community message that might have gone home based on an incident that might have happened in a school.

[00:40:03] The next comes, which is a very, very important integral part, is how do we provide the social-emotional support for the students harmed and the known witnesses? And we involve our unified mental health team, which is constructed by our principals and schools.

[00:40:19] On our UMHT teams, we have counselors, school psychologists, social workers, teachers, equity leads, and administrators to really kind of debrief, break down what exactly happened, and then what are going to be the supports for those students that were affected, victims and offenders.

[00:40:40] And then identify what could be the future impact of the harm done. And then lastly, it is up to our administrators to really look at what are the discipline protocols that are involved. We do also look at using restorative practices to repair harm and conferences as appropriate.

[00:41:05] So as I mentioned before, one of the big pieces is really working with school-based educators on how do we put things in place that are going to elevate school culture, not bring it down.

[00:41:27] And our principals are doing a really good job of really thinking these things through, understanding how impactful these incidents can be to students and not placing a timeline on the healing part of it. So we know that sometimes students are subjected to these issues as early as first grade, kindergarten, and then as late as a senior in high school.

[00:41:53] All along that continuum, we try to make sure that we're not saying, this is over. We've put in the work, we've put in the pieces to help support you through this. We really make sure that we are having these emotional check-ins on a regular basis with students to make sure that they are feeling comfortable so that they can thrive academically.

[00:42:15] We also have our culturally responsive instructional practices. We use the cultural responsive framework to really embed the things that are going to allow students to feel welcome and create an environment, create activities, create messaging that's going to really open up the doors for them to understand acceptance and also understand the ramifications of their words and behaviors towards each other.

[00:42:50] One of the things that we have put in place this year is really trying to provide, in the moment, resources for teachers and administrators on how they can interrupt, question and educate, and then follow through.

[00:43:07] We know that not all these incidents are intended to be hateful, so we have to really look at the specific scope, the students who used the speech, the intent, and then also who was impacted.

[00:43:25] And that would be the area that we put in place, some of those reflective lessons and resources for the educational piece. It's very important that we make sure we identify specifically that sometimes the hate is not behind all hateful speech.

[00:43:45] Sometimes it's students that have heard something, they're getting something from pop culture, social media. They're repeating things sometimes without really knowing the serious ramification of what they're saying. And then we have the other side where they know exactly what they're saying, they know exactly what they're doing, and the intent is there to harm.

[00:44:05] And so because of that, it creates a lot of complexity for our school staff to really unpack these things and take their time in making sure they get these situations right. And so I will let that be sort of like the end of my information, and I'm free to open up to any questions you might have.

[00:44:30] Yes. Sorry, I'm chatting today. So, one, thank you very much. That was very informative and very helpful. Curious in terms of, we saw some data right at the end of last year that we didn't have a chance to dig into enough, but are incidents increasing?

[00:44:48] Are you seeing it at all levels? And it seems like we have a very strong program in place. How are the kids doing? That's a very good question, and thank you for that. I think the kids are, for the most part, being resilient.

[00:45:06] face of some of these issues I think the kids are doing sometimes better than the adults but we do know that it isn't something that we can sort of quantify on a particular number but we do know that a lot of students are still suffering and are in pain and it's not always immediate that's the one thing that we really have to stress is that for for some individuals even through adulthood. So there are triggers based on things that might have happened to them throughout their lives where they felt denigrated by

[00:45:45] speech or actions of others. So for the most part, I think that students are more resilient and it also really depends specifically on the nature of the incident. Like I said, there are situations where these things are being said out of joking, sometimes trying to be a term of endearment, but it's all based in essence in hate. So we have to look at

[00:46:19] it from that standpoint to educate students on that. So it really all depends on the incident itself in terms of how the students are doing. I will say that our school staff is getting better, feeling more comfortable. They're feeling more empowered to be able to speak up in the moment because sometimes it is shocking, and not everybody is prepared to be able to stand and hear something that they know is pretty harmful, and then what do I do about it?

[00:46:51] So that's one of our goals is to make sure we're putting that kind of resources and agency in the hands of the adults. At the same time, utilizing student voice and student leaders to really be on the foundational level of working this through, talking to their peers and colleagues, using statements, I statements, and other statements to really show to their peers that this is not allowed.

[00:47:21] We don't condone this. We shouldn't be doing this. And I think as that starts to grow more, where students are really feeling empowered to stand up for each other and not fall victim to any kind of like bullying behaviors, then we'll see a much sharper incline of success in decreasing the incidence.

[00:47:42] But to answer your question, I do think that students are getting better with this, but it's difficult. It's challenging. Thank you again for this presentation.

[00:48:02] My question is when emergent events happen, political, racial, in which tensions arise around our communities, all I'm seeing here is what happens after the incident happens.

[00:48:18] But what does your office do in terms of preventative and proactive measures to mitigate and alert the staff and the communities that the environment is tense, that situations can arise?

[00:48:35] And I can give an example of that. The unfolding events overseas right now is causing a very tense environment in our community. And the potential for anti-Semitic and Islamophobic rhetoric and incidents is very possible. And we have not heard anything from Loudoun County.

[00:48:52] I have seen school districts around the country issue statements to their community. And we have not heard anything from Loudoun County to address any, or at least I didn't receive it. Yeah, well, we have responded. Our superintendent has made a statement. But I'll let Dr. Ellis Williams, our director, speak a little bit more about that.

[00:49:10] Hi, so, yes, so I did work with our communications division and Dr. Spencer. out front-facing on our school website to the community earlier this week on Monday we also as you see me looking at my phone just finished crafting new information based on parents concerns that were raised as well as principal concerns directly related to what you just asked about so we definitely address and in both documents I vetted personally up to eight documents to help family support to talk to their students as well as educators what we're asking our educators to do right now is to just take a pause and if it's not

[00:49:46] your content area in your area of expertise to not engage because you could cause both harm being reactionary based on emotion but to as my husband would say keep your powder dry so that you can anchor in on a guidance being provided by our division and the communications office and office of the superintendent so there will be tomorrow another statement and there was one released on Monday as well which is on the website so that is something that we can take into consideration with our office of communication to have that sent directly

[00:50:21] to families. They came home from the school. Yes absolutely and I think that the premise is that we have our front-facing communications and that that's something that happens but to your point if that's not something that was that was accessed that is something that we need to revisit and change. Okay. DEIA. Right and just so you know moving forward communication from the division

[00:51:00] comes from the communication office. In the past, some circumstances were brought to the Division of Equity, but that is no longer like as we are all refocusing what's happening under our new leadership. Those correspondents will not be coming from the Division of Equity unless it's work that we have done in isolation, which is not going to happen. All communication will come through the Communication Division. Thank you for that feedback, though, because has anyone else not seen this no one no one you saw it you might be asking me how did you did you know to go look

[00:51:36] or you just happened to be and you she stumbled upon it so i think when you first go to the first page it has dr spence right there um but to your point it's it could be missed and so we need to

[00:51:50] to figure out how to better yeah and you look fine there was another yes yeah i think one of the

[00:52:36] things would be to contact your school's counseling office. And I'm pretty sure that the UMHT has resources and documents that they can share. But to your point, I think it would be something that I believe that we might want to work on to make sure that those things are more front-facing and out. There's quite a bit of information, and it's really a family choice, a parental decision on what you want to bring to your child's attention but some of the resources are very very clear in terms of what I just kind of spoke about with our commitment to equity and that is that we

[00:53:15] we have to have a safe and respectful environment for students to learn and what does that mean to be safe and respectful it's not just your physical safety but it's also your social emotional well-being and mental safety and so I think you can start there and talking about how harmful it is with some of the things that we're saying to each other. You can also really look at specifically some reflective questions to your children about how do you feel? Are these things happening in your school? What do you do when you're in the situation or in the space when these

[00:53:52] things are being said to other students? And really just have that open, honest dialogue on a consistent basis about how are you feeling when you hear these things How do you feel when students are called these words? And really talk about it from your parental perspective of what they should do.

[00:54:08] And then what supports can they look for in their school? I think that's one of the first steps. I also recommend, oh, can I just respond to the parent here?

[00:54:24] I just also recommend, and I'm not sure if you were talking about this as far as a resource, the LCPS, the Student Code of Conduct. I don't know if that's what you're referring to as far as a resource. I would encourage every parent to review that with, you know, yourself, but also with your students so that they know what's expected of them and what they should expect of other students that they engage with at school.

[00:54:51] So definitely hands down that, you know, they should be familiar with that document and it's available online. I think you can also request a copy of it if you can't print it out. So just sharing that.

[00:55:13] Thank you for your time this evening. I have three questions. The first is, is there any, and this might be a broader question, is there any consideration in including MSAC delegates and the school leadership teams that you referred to?

[00:55:31] And then also, what is the most beneficial or effective role MSAC delegates can play in both the response and recovery process? So to your first question, I think that that is a school-by-school decision. And I think that that idea should be broached with the school administration or even at your PTSO meetings and bring the idea up in terms of how are we doing as a school with this problem.

[00:56:00] and then look to see if there could be some committees or programs that could be created in conjunction with parent leadership in terms of how we would help to be able to help respond and engage the community a little bit more in the preventative side and the proactive side of this.

[00:56:21] And then I'm sorry, your second question. We answered those too. The last was who maintains that school data and can that be freely shared? Thank you for that. So that school data is maintained in the school. We don't know for confidentiality reasons, specifically students' names, IDs, grade levels.

[00:56:42] We don't know that information. So that's housed in our school databases. And for confidentiality reasons, only administrators and folks that have been delegated to have that information within the school know that. We have an overview of when these incidents occur, but the specific details we're not privy to.

[00:57:04] So a lot of that is, outside of what I've shared with you this evening, is more specific to the school. And that is actually controlled by data security. So we're not, even to the extent we're, situation with free and reduced lunch, persons in the school do not have access to that, only the persons that need to know that.

[00:57:28] So we can't take information that we don't even share internally and share externally, despite if we're trying to mitigate other circumstances. And as Dr. Tyler reminded me today in a meeting about this very topic, it's punishable by jail time and a $1,000 fine per person.

[00:57:45] So it's not something we take lightly. I like stripes, but not that. You had one more question. Oh, okay. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you for your time. Just back to the statement that the county put out, obviously, as we've seen, so many parents have not received that.

[00:58:08] As MSAC delegates, are we empowered to take that statement and ask our PTO to put it out in the weekly communications, or does that have to be like an intentionally pulled thing from the specific parent?

[00:58:24] Yeah, I think that it's fine to take that statement and then have a conversation with your school's administration and leadership on how can we get this information disseminated to our community. Of course, anyone can print off that information and share it with anyone they like.

[00:58:43] However, if you want to do this in a formal way to really represent the school, I think it would be in collaboration with the school administration. But as Dr. Ellis Williams has said, that information is coming, and I think we want to make sure specifically this go-round, How do we make sure that folks don't miss it?

[00:59:13] Thanks for this information. So one of the things I noticed is that I know of a recent incident where I don't feel like this actually happened, but that could just be an outside thing.

[00:59:28] But one of the things is last year we got a really cool presentation from Willard School of how they actually did something. Instead of a slogan, you know, some schools have a slogan, no place for hate or what have you. they actually did a actually exercise with their students and it was really well received by the community they were in and I'm wondering how do you I know every school doesn't have to do the same thing but how do you then get in conjunction with this something like that because last night I was at the

[01:00:03] superintendent's session and I happened to sit at the table with two high school students um and their comment was um they feel that the adults are afraid to have the real conversations and so they don't get to have actual conversations and i was sitting there like oh wow i didn't have to say that they did so i'm just trying to understand how we because the kids are hearing it they're putting assemblies to talk about this but they're not actually i thought that exercise was very well received by that school and the kids realized oh that's me actually doing

[01:00:40] that so I'm just wondering if there's more road shows or if the principals are encouraged to do similar activities at their schools I'm so each school as you have so eloquently articulated have their set of governing principles that they live by which is led by their building leaders our division strives to create a level of fidelity of baseline so that we all know what document we're consulting, the procedural steps that were taken. We've created standard operational procedures when these situations happen. Outside of that, we don't micromanage what they do. It's almost like you want

[01:01:19] to make sure that you have the spark to have it come to a place where Willow was able to do. But there's also capacity building that has to happen because all of this, all of the, some of the things that we're dealing with now in our schools just came up. Like they just emerged, right? And it wasn't a part of anybody's teacher preparatory program it wasn't a part of anyone's administrative training because it landed in a line of discipline but we're talking about a very particular type of hate speech racial slur incidents where there are persons that are comfortable with approaching

[01:01:53] and some that are not as willing to do so because right now we recognize the climate in which we live And sometimes administrators who have spoken with us will call a household and the family will co-sign the slur or racial hate speech that was propagandized.

[01:02:12] So we're up against a lot of different types of beliefs and attitudes to actually create fidelity. It actually is a barrier at times. So we can't control how families will respond to support their children or their student.

[01:02:29] But we can arm principals with the arsenal of tools to be able to be proactive in their approaches. But we share a partnership with pouring into our students. We don't have 51% of the vote, per se.

[01:02:49] Thank you so much for your time. I noticed within this policy that it focuses on the social-emotional coaching counseling of those who were offended or who witnessed the offense.

[01:03:09] is there a place where there can be a focus on the social emotional coaching of the person who was the offender and that's it yeah yeah that's in there it is yes oh that's first and well inside that and my I have students who are an elementary level will have multiple incidents of this so if we feel like there are repeated offenders and they're not receiving the correct level of coaching or support to denounce that.

[01:03:48] To your note, we don't control what happens with those students' parents. How do we advocate for our students who have been offended and feel like there's no level of accountability from the staff to protect them?

[01:04:05] I'll start and then you can chime in. You cannot let it go, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many people you have to speak to, because the importance of advocating for your child is paramount.

[01:04:25] So sometimes it's a matter of getting a collective mindset and people to really talk this through and work with you on it. But holding us, the school system, accountable is something that we need to have a more convergence and a larger idea around that.

[01:04:50] And I would say that if being a part of the seeking for solutions and problems and opening yourself up to being a support to the school in these issues will also help further that along as opposed to just saying what you guys aren't doing right.

[01:05:10] And I think that that's just something that really has to continue. And if it hasn't started, it needs to start, because this is not a school issue per se.

[01:05:26] It's a societal issue that seeps into our schools. And so we all have to be accountable in how we're going to work through this together, not looking at the school as, you didn't get this right, because society's not getting it right.

[01:05:45] Ditto. And schools, as we all know, being a microcosm of the larger community, we recognize that attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions also are in the classrooms, corridors, and buildings.

[01:06:02] And to Mr. Muhammad's point, it's a school issue because it becomes on top when all of our students are in a space and the harm is caused. But the harm is happening in communities and being practiced and then brought into schools.

[01:06:18] So in our efforts to combat, to inform, to develop proactive approaches, to dismantling some of those beliefs and mindsets, it's of utmost importance that we continue to not only support our students, but we also go back and check in with them.

[01:06:37] It's not a one-time situation. There's two days, 10-day check-in, 15-day check-in, when done right, up to 30-day check-in. Because sometimes trauma will manifest again. It emerges as a behavior, rarely as an emotion.

[01:06:57] And behaviors are language. And so we have to make sure that we have the capacity building within teachers who actually come to school to teach. So this other aspect of the work that has evolved was not on top five, ten years ago, but it is.

[01:07:16] And my last point is, as a microcosm of the community, children watch. They watch for examples. They emulate, and they bring that into the corridors of our schools. And it is a collective effort for us to communicate, to consistently communicate, show up, have a voice to be able to support the persons supporting students in this building so that it's reciprocated for us to be able to provide supports for students when they're not in our buildings.

[01:08:08] One of the things I really appreciate about coming to the MSAC meetings just over time is one role here as vice chair, but also as a delegate at my son's school is that, you know, we're able to come and get ideas to take back to our schools because we are serving in the capacity to bring this information back to our schools to help hopefully impact change there.

[01:08:24] And so one of the delegates mentioned the example of Willard, which was really powerful. And so you mentioned that there were some schools that were principals that were helping to elevate culture at their school. So if there are other examples, I don't know if you're able to share, but, you know, maybe in the future, if there are other examples of those types of schools, that would really be wonderful because for me personally, I was able to take that conversation about Willard back to my principal and we were able to incorporate, you know, together with the equity, equity leads at the school, some of

[01:09:00] those components into addressing some of the concerns at our school and, um, work those into like a three-year plan at our school. So I think it's really powerful. So, um, I just applaud what Willard is doing and it was exciting to hear you saying that other schools were doing some similar work.

[01:09:17] So thank you for that. Off the top of my head, because so many schools are doing really, really good work, but I would point to Light Ridge High School, John Champ High School, Countryside Elementary, Meadowland Elementary, and that's just off the top of my head, but there's quite a, I mean, there's the numbers I couldn't tell you, but I think that's a great idea for us to be able to bring back some examples of some of the interventions and programs that the schools are doing.

[01:09:55] Just adding on to that last thought, we at Goshen, Goshen Post Elementary, have been doing this work for a really long time. We've really launched the work in classrooms about five years ago, which laid a foundation for us to really go deep now. And what has been really helpful is that every elementary principal actually received a presentation over the first week of the summer that ran down how we did that program.

[01:10:21] So all of your elementary principals should have that information available to them. And be able to kind of act on it. So that's there for you. Thank you. I just wanted to thank you for giving this presentation.

[01:10:39] About two years ago, my daughter, she was in middle school at the time. And she brought home an issue. There was some banter between, it was three girls, banter between her and a second girl in their group. And the response from the girl was racially coded and coded.

[01:11:03] And what you mentioned earlier, I don't think the intent was hate speech, but it was hate speech. And I asked my daughter, I said, well, coaching her, how did you feel about what was said?

[01:11:22] And she was like, oh, well, I didn't think it was right. But later in the day, the third girl who was within that group brought it up to my daughter like, that wasn't cool what she said. So you've got this other person who's also exposed to that.

[01:11:38] And I said, well, how do you plan on handling it? And she was like, oh, you know, kind of like, oh, I'm not going to worry about it. But it bothered me. So I contacted the school because I thought it was a teachable moment, even if, like you said earlier, that some households would co-sign that.

[01:11:57] And I said, it's a teachable moment, because not only are you at school learning in an academic environment, but you're learning how to be a person in society. As you're growing up, you're learning to be a citizen of your community, your city, your country.

[01:12:14] And so I contacted my daughter's school counselor. I had no idea how this would be handled. And they actually, the woman actually followed some of the principles here, though I didn't know that it was like a set program.

[01:12:30] And I described the situation based on what my daughter had mentioned to me. And she said, do you mind if I talk to your daughter? I said, fine. And so once she talked to my daughter, she then communicated back to me saying that I had a conversation with her.

[01:12:47] And I will also talk to the other two girls that were, you know, involved in that conversation. But I also talked to my daughter about, you know, um what you may have said to the girl you know they were joking with each other my daughter made a comment on you know her all her friends are short and she responded back well at least i'm not black those two don't measure up but trying to explain it to seventh graders is kind of challenging because we're jaded i've lived on this earth quite a long time so trying to explain it to

[01:13:21] her at her level so that um that it resonates with her so i was very grateful that the counselor had some steps i didn't know you all trained them on these things and um not so much to get the other girl in trouble because that wasn't the point but it's an it's a moment to provide some education unfortunately in this situation the girl never talked to my daughter again but that's okay But at least that intervention was there.

[01:13:51] So I do appreciate that. And I don't know about all the schools, but in my particular daughter's middle school, the process works. Thank you for sharing that. You had your hand right? Can you use your microphone?

[01:14:16] Does that work? Oh, that's cool. Okay. I was just saying that when I would think about something, someone would touch on what I was thinking. But I still feel like this is still more of a reactive situation instead of being proactive about it.

[01:14:34] And I still think it kind of starts, not even with the principal, but with the teachers who kind of see the students. Because for kids to either feel comfortable enough to say this as a friendly gesture or uncomfortable enough to say it as an unfriendly gesture, it's still a point of there was a separation that they tried to close by themselves having the knowledge of YouTube and Twitter or whatever it's called now.

[01:15:01] So is there a study going on for the teachers to let the teachers know how to kind of see situations before they happen? Because it's in a situation where they feel comfortable, they say this to try and close a barrier.

[01:15:18] But they don't know that the person sitting next to them may have been offended by what they say. So is there a study going on to kind of see, let's stop this beforehand? Because catching the kid who says it, I don't know how much you get out of them. And even stopping them from saying it still doesn't stop the feeling of the reaction I got when I did it meant something.

[01:15:38] So when I'm not being watched, I'm going to do it again. Yeah, I don't, in terms of a study, I can't speak to that. But I do know that the data is being analyzed and schools are utilizing that data to inform what kind of proactive strategies can we put in place.

[01:15:53] How can we more effectively communicate with our student body and our community around why this is harmful and what we can do to helpfully stop it? So I guess the study is ongoing. But to your point, and you're exactly right, we still are more reactive than proactive.

[01:16:14] And I think that's where we're trying to get our buildings to be that welcoming, affirming, an inclusive environment where the staff and students are saying there's no place for that here and that that's not an overnight thing so i think that uh that's the continuous work that we're trying to get to to your to your point when we talk about school culture we're not talking about what the mascot is and who's on what team and who's um you know just existing in that space it truly has to do with the way in which you are accepting and respectful of and embracing of what's

[01:16:53] alike and what's different despite the fact that oftentimes when people think about school culture they relegate it to culture which then interprets to race and it's not it's everything that makes up the individual person from what they wear to what they eat to what they believe in to how they study or not study it matters and it is the like we talk about the thing right and they say well you know that's one more thing that teachers have to do and it's not it's actually the thing embedded in every aspect of what it means to be a part of that community from welcoming and affirming environments

[01:17:31] that are able to be controlled by the adults in the space to making sure that we are ensuring that students have access to pathways because those are controllable factors. There are two circles of which one of control and one of concern and as we move through this work we have to focus on what we can control and we have to be prepared for what we're concerned about. So everyone in here is here because they have the fruit of their loins or someone that they love and care about.

[01:18:01] You, as a singleton, with engaging with your person, you're responsible for loving, caring, and providing safety for, you can't predict what your child's going to do. You can have consistent expectations that you want to have met, and when not met, you can redirect. As educators, we have a couple of hundred of kids showing up each day. So you can imagine that magnified to your point that how can we combat? We can only prepare proactively, but so far, because at each developmental stage, we recognize that who's going to come across the threshold. Our little people

[01:18:38] who are excited about the world, our middle schoolers who are trying on different versions of themselves every day, and our high schoolers who are trying to preserve identity. So it's very hard to predict what's going to come up top for them, how they're going to respond, and then therefore how do the adults respond to those behaviors we we we thank you for the time and we look forward to coming back and uh participating and furthering the discussion um because it's it's

[01:19:13] very important and we just really appreciate you being here tonight so thank you thank you mr muhammad um we are now going to move on to our last guest of the evening it is um dr doug fulton he's going to come speak to us even more about these processes and how these

[01:19:40] situations are handled so here is good evening everybody hi my name is Doug Fulton I'm the director in the office of school administration or OSA I'm an educator so I speak with a lot of initials and acronyms so if I say something you don't understand just raise your hand and ask what it stands

[01:20:15] stands for. Our office handles student behavior all the way through, from prepping and working with school administrators to how to address it, your deans, the new positions that we have at the high school level are student support advisors and one that we want to add at the middle school. We go all the way through that, including if students get into situations where they have suspensions out of school or placed elsewhere, where we work with them to make sure they're they're getting provided the social emotional and academic supports while they are not in their current building so our role has

[01:20:53] expanded in that way we have an administrative assistant and then three former school administrators that do work in this office mr. Daniels our hearing officer he is an objective hearing officer so if a student comes before and has a hearing his role is to be an impartial decision maker in that decision process. Ms. Floyd and I work directly with school administrators addressing student behavior. When I'm talking about addressing student behavior, we are not addressing the wonderful behavior that most of our students exhibit every day. Ms. Ivory Brown has incredible students over there

[01:21:32] at Harper Park, but Principal Brown calls me up tomorrow. She's not calling me up to tell me about the wonderful behavior about some of her students. She's calling up because she's scratching her head saying what do i do with this situation and that's what our role is we do a lot of emergency response to things that do occur and even though we're part of the school leadership team we work with multiple other offices we really don't fit into one department we work so much with other departments we also do a lot of the policy writing some of the policies mentioned today working that and miss ogadegby is chair of our student behavior and

[01:22:10] and Accountability Committee. Mr. Mejedevy has been part of that committee for a couple of years too. Both of them are active members that we work with in going through those policies. And we meet the fourth Monday of every month to discuss. And we're meeting next Monday. And you're all welcome if you'd like to come talk and be a public speaker at one of our events. We get pretty lonely sometimes because unless it's controversial, we don't have a whole lot of people showing up to our meetings. Our role, when it comes to responding to the hate speech protocol, to give you a little bit of background, prior to SY-21-22, that school year 21-22, we did not really have an effective reporting document on anything

[01:22:50] that did occur. It came in multiple different sources all over the place. Towards the end of SY-21-22, we built a Google document, document our office did, where administrators were to enter any incident that fell into these categories into that Google document, and then it was sent to the appropriate of parties that was in place for a little bit and that's why 2022 and then 2223 that was a document that we did use that document there's a decision made to retire that document so we needed another reporting system so we worked with department of student information systems and ddi i worked back there with dr tyler because we have to file reports to the office of civil rights at both the federal

[01:23:29] and the state level and i don't know if you would believe this or not but the federal government and state governments don't always communicate with each other so the information that we had to give to those two offices was different so we had to create a document or a way to track that so that would be effective for both their what their protocols what they wanted to do and i'm going to show you some things from behind the scenes and what this may look like how our administrators respond to something we have something called the office of school administration toolbox

[01:24:03] This toolbox, don't want to show anybody's personal information in here, has a list of all kinds of things that an administrator may come through to address student behavior and what they would have to use during the school day. So everything is in there, including something developed by our equity office here is a step-by-step standard of operating procedures when you're addressing hate speech or racial protocols.

[01:24:27] It's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here's your steps, here's how you do it. Because we have to document that, all student incidents that have to do in these areas have to be reported in the student information system. Every single one of them.

[01:24:44] This will be the best documentation for these incidents that we've ever gotten because they have to be entered in that. Now, data is only as good as how well it's data entry, but the administrators have been trained when these incidents do occur, they're entered in a student information system and that way we can also track our information for what the federal government needs what the state government needs and data that we can then provide for the schools to look at it as they go through the process of dealings and I know a lot of people mentioned this already and we try we know we are reactive at times and what we're

[01:25:19] dealing with things school systems sometimes are that way if you look at the history of school systems. I wish I could control student behavior. It would be wonderful. I always said if I could do that, I would be best friends with Oprah. Richer than Musk and Bezos would be getting deliveries from me. Oprah didn't text me before I got up here, so I know I can't control it, but we are working on addressing it. So a lot of the things in our toolbox do have preventative measures, things to do, response to, and I like somebody mentioned about the social-emotional responses for the offender. Those are pieces that are in there in that documentation that are addressed

[01:25:56] because we don't want re-citizen or repeat behavior. If it does occur, we address it, we work on it, and then we want to make sure we improve it so we're not dealing with it again, especially from the same parties that are involved with that. So those pieces are available to our administrators in their toolbox that they can use. The deans have these, the student support advisors, full-time position at the high schools, it's a stipend position at the middle school which we hope will be a full-time position at the middle schools next year, and the student support advisors work directly with tier three students, our students that are struggling and making sure those supports are in place.

[01:26:33] So a student who has repeated the behavior, that SSA would be working directly with them to make sure they're meeting all those social, emotional, academic requirements and progressing along the way so that we are not dealing with that behavior again. The other piece I wanted to show you is if the administrator has an incident that does occur, we have something called the Student Behavior Administrative Response, which we lovingly call the SBAR.

[01:27:01] So we talk about this. This is a code of Virginia. This is Virginia's efforts to formalize the discipline response process across the Commonwealth. So they required all school systems to use this, And then they required school systems to develop a level response.

[01:27:23] A lot of our level response comes from a multi-tiered system of support. We work with the equity office. We work with other offices, administrators. Everybody came in and said, these are the required level responses as required. So if an incident does come up, and there are 16 different SBAR incidents that possibly could fall under the racial hate speech protocol.

[01:27:45] There are 16 different incidents that can fall under there. So if an administrator picks one of those, there's some guidelines on what they need to do. But when they enter it in the student information system, there are also then seven drop-down menus that come down for tiers as whether it was racial, national origin, religion, disability, gender, sexual preference, or other.

[01:28:12] So there's seven different categories they pick from to pick that. So when we get our data at the end of this year, every incident, we'll be able to tell exactly what that incident was from and be able to respond to that. And we look at data per school so they will have that. So we've helped out a little bit because we took a step that administrators had to enter this both and into Google Documents.

[01:28:34] But the part that we have here now is this is the most accurate data we're going to have over the last couple of years. And that was a lot of work with people working with our office so that we make sure we're meeting those guidelines. but we're also providing good data and information for schools to look at in their response. I went really fast. Do you have any questions? Yes ma'am. Just thank you for your time tonight but just so I'm clear are we all talking about the same data it's just the different offices hold it so is this the same data

[01:29:09] that the schools are collecting that's confidential? Okay so a couple things the confidential piece is about the offender but the data about the incidence is actually there and so that'll be there so schools do enter I will say we enter the data exactly we may not write the exact word that a student said that was offensive because the the they may use an abbreviation for the word we've had parents because they can see their students discipline say hey we want that removed we don't remove it it stays in there it's part of their discipline records so it is there with the student the idea of you know if we

[01:29:48] didn't want it to be there you shouldn't have said it to begin with type of thing so and so that is in there so that parent can see that data in there students are also victims parents are able to see if they're a victim in a student information system in phoenix and that they can't see information about the offender FERPA laws prevent us from sharing that information so are schools able to or willing to freely share the statistics so example yeah schools will be able to do this so they will actually, they can run at, we encourage our schools to do what we call, I call them equity audits. They call, I was told an audit is a nasty word because people think they're losing money,

[01:30:27] so we call them equity reflections, and so we encourage them to do those either every couple of weeks or every month to go back and look through their information and what they're having to respond to them when they do their administrative meetings. So schools can be able to pull this information out right now based on what's happened in their school and how many incidents they had.

[01:30:44] Just a clarifying question, because I feel like all of these are stored in a central tool.

[01:31:00] I think the nuance is that there are some specific details about the incident that aren't available outside of the school administrators. Is that accurate? So, for example, the list of all of the incidents is available for central staff to do reporting on.

[01:31:18] So we don't have to go to each school to get the statistics on what's happened. And those are the statistics that have been shared before. So they are, I think, like it sounded like they weren't available except for in the school. So maybe if you can kind of clarify the nuance there.

[01:31:34] So what we were speaking to was specifically racial slurs and hate speech. So the data of number of incidents and types of incidents is held in-house. We do publicly report out to committees we did here as to what types of incidents happen.

[01:31:51] What we have not delineated is by whom, by ethnicity. So that's the area we're working on with our division, with Dr. Tyler, to be able to hone in on that. But we're a step away from what was articulated when it was housed in a Google Doc.

[01:32:07] We have more specificity. We know the school. We know the code. We know exactly where it happened. We know what level. So the first month of school, for example, we knew we had the most in elementary, unfortunately. It has now evolved to middle school being the highest numbers of that particular incident.

[01:32:24] What Dr. Fulton is speaking to is overall LCPS incidents across the board, which include what we spoke to specifically. And there are multiple behavior codes. What we're speaking to is what we call relationship behaviors.

[01:32:42] So there's different types of relationship behaviors. Racial slurs and hate speech is one type of relationship behavior. but uh dr fulton might so many different codes yeah there are if a student if there is an incident and we also have developed a way that if there's an incident there's no known offender or no known victim it still can be recorded so an example of graffiti on the wall does that get reported or not yes we've developed a system where you actually can record report that so that incident it will be there which is the best of most effective reporting system that we have had so far Your school, I said there are seven drop-down menus,

[01:33:20] your school would be able to break down the incidents and tell what kind were there. So if you were to ask your administrators if you had that data, yes, they would be able to. And they would be telling you how many were based on race or national origin or gender. And we can't control everything.

[01:33:37] You know, the incidents that recently occurred in West Asia and what is going around, there was some worry on my part that we might see some increase in things that occur. We know we have passion and people concerned about that and people making comments. So, you know, those are types of things that do come up during the school year that we talk to administrators about being prepared for.

[01:33:59] But still, there might be something that occurs that they do have to address. And that's part of what our role is, is we know the behavior is not going to be perfect every day. And we do need to address it when something does occur. You mentioned something about, and sorry, my details are a bit fuzzy.

[01:34:22] but you mentioned something about going into the system and if your student has an incident you can look that up is that publicly available yeah yeah we made that live and SY 22 at some point where parents can see any incident whether student was involved with so if their student had a violation that would occur they're also if they were a victim of an incident that their their name would coming there. We can't share information about the other student or other party. I will say though the state law and federal law does require

[01:35:01] if your student was a victim of a threat, we are required to let you know that. Okay, so if there was a physical threat or a sexual threat, we are required to let you know that and you have a right to know that information. This might be just silly, but following up on her, are there any behavioral issues, incidents here in which the parents might not be notified so if i go into you know this database i can see things that my child was involved in that i wasn't aware of you better have been notified if they put something in here you

[01:35:36] better have been notified if you're not getting notified usually they're calling our office and asking what's going on shouldn't be a surprise to parents to go into this database it should not be a surprise to see that something was in there that was entered with your about your student and you were not notified about it yes um to this delegates point how are parents notified and who should they look to receive that notification from uh if it's a if it's administrative response they should be receiving a notification from the school administrator so it's assistant principal dean principal sometimes a counselor in some situations depending on on the level what has

[01:36:16] occurred a school counselor may be the one notifying at some cases an elementary teacher because they were really involved with it but didn't enter the actual discipline incident may be the contact for a parent but there's we do say there needs to be our our message is when possible get the message before the student comes home to the parent okay that way you have what occurred with what information your the student may share when they get home and compare but we do say within 24 hours there needs to be a notice i know there's some times where some situations that

[01:36:51] they're dealing with take a little bit of time to review it and to find out what the truth is and what did occur but we would like to and also there's a new state code that if the incident may have involved bullying or suspected bullying the school does have to notify you within a 24 hour period so that you might get a standard letter from a counselor or somebody saying this is what's going on we'll give more details when we can and it gives a list of resources for students um no matter what role they were in in the incident i guess my follow-on question to that

[01:37:29] um what system are parents able to log into to view these incidences they um in the parent phoenix system so the parent information system they should be able to go in and find their student and find their student discipline and student records same place where you're looking for grades and everything else will be available for the parent view yeah if you don't have any in

[01:37:59] there, that might be a really good thing. Okay. Don't get worried. I had a, uh, students when their senior year who would purposely get a detention so they could get one entry and they wanted me to put it on paper so they could take it home and frame it. Questions. All right. Sorry.

[01:38:35] Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you for your time. What if you know of an incident that you reported and it's not logged in parent view okay so if you've had an incidence reported you mean as a teacher referral that it's been sent to an administrator or of an incident that involved your student or your child incident that involved my child okay uh if it's not listed in parent view that's a good question because if they are listed in parent view they might have to been listed as a victim if they were not a victim it may not be but the one thing you can contact your school is ask if there's an incident number for that every incident has an incident number tied to it and

[01:39:14] they should be able to tell you the incident number that did occur and then if that's the case should we push for them to record that incident okay i'm sorry could you repeat that if it's the case that there was an incident they were involved in and it's not been reported should we be advocating and pushing for them to i think if you say this was an incident and by the way administrative response doesn't have to be a disposition like a detention or suspension or anything it can be a conference with a student so if they've done that and they haven't recorded it yes they should record that as an incident and that's student information system thank you so

[01:39:48] much is this only for incidents that happen within the school building what about on the buses okay uh school authority by the way that's a policy that's coming up this monday um school authority is transportation to and from school so whether they're walking riding driving that's covered in there during the school day and any school of activity or event and on school campuses so all of those meet the criteria ones that wouldn't is if it happened outside of school and the administrator can't say it caused a disruption within a school day so the bus is covered on that and we did work

[01:40:26] with bus drivers we we simplified the system for brought drivers to report things this year one entry that they picked and then it gets sent to administrators we also encourage our drivers to address things you know the bus driver is driving a moving classroom and so if they have to address things they might be a short period of addressing

[01:40:47] it and then referring it to the administrator to follow up with those pieces yes can you use the microphone did you say that parents are allowed to advocate for the situation to be for other students or is it only for teachers and I guess staff okay so advocate if an incident did occur

[01:41:23] for it to get recorded or right yeah it just seems like that's a slippery slope for well i i would it's still up to the administrator to do the review as to what they're going to record and do that but if you have an incident that you're asking you can request if you make it involves your child you can make sure a request that this is reported and recorded the reason why we advise administrators to do that is if we see repeated behavior that happens again that it's documented So it might be in a counselor's log, it might be some other report, but it's also that it's documented, that the information is documented when it did occur.

[01:41:59] Now, for any of these incidents that fall under hate speech, racial protocols, or any of the other offending things that we listed of those seven items, those have to be reported by an administrator. So when we did the training, we just said there's not a, even if there is a disposition that's not found, even if they have gone through things and have done some other things in that process, if it did occur, they do need to record it in that documentation.

[01:42:31] The only time it wouldn't be recorded if they found out it was a false report or the information was inaccurate or something like that. Can you just, sorry, I keep asking questions, but can you just remind us when that became a mandatory reporting thing?

[01:42:55] So when was that expectation set in terms of when we can say that the data is more accurate? The state did say that any time there's administrative response that we do have to enter something a few years ago.

[01:43:12] but because we had multiple we had two systems of reporting incidents it really became mandatory using in the s bar incident for this school year for sy 23 24 and so when we did training with administrators this summer we made it the documentation clear that these have to be recorded and this is a system that we do use so when we get phone calls from administrators who are dealing with incidents and sometimes the incidents might fall under multiple categories when we go through these that remind them this has to be recorded in a student behavior responsibility. Again, if we have the graffiti on the wall that we don't know

[01:43:48] who did it because it happened over the weekend, it has to be recorded in there. And we let them know it has to be recorded in there because this is our mandatory documentation log to address it. So that started day one this school year.

[01:44:21] Okay. I thought you wanted to talk for a little bit. It's an election year. Well, good evening, everybody. So I know the staff sort of talked about the incidents and the tracking systems, and I'll just kind of touch on a little bit.

[01:44:42] I don't want to go deep into it, but from a school board member perspective. And I think going back to the superintendent's email, I'll give Ms. Ogdegwe credit. I think she's already started the thread with Dr. Spence having to make sure that the communication goes out in the newsletter hopefully soon on the international events that's happening. From a school board perspective, I mean the staff, and I think you heard they're doing amazing work, but I think the initial sort of from my perspective or the school board perspective was we're hearing all the incidents that are happening as you as your

[01:45:18] parents knew about it, but there was no central way of tracking at least the racial incidents. So I think that's something that been instituted, at least we have the data now. There are many approaches we talked about, but I think from a policy perspective, it's still a, we need to have all hands on deck.

[01:45:37] I know it sounds cliche, but in terms of a comprehensive strategy from a policy perspective, from education perspective, from training perspective, how do we go solve the problem? I mean, Ms. Williams sort of talked about like schools are a microcosm of a society. And I mean, that's where we are.

[01:45:54] So we alone cannot solve the problem, but at the same time, we have a duty to help bring the change about that happens. So I think that's where at least my, and I know my fellow school board members' perspective is on that.

[01:46:10] So I just want to touch quickly on that. I was going to talk about the bullying, but I think Dr. Fulton took the sort of the thunder there. So the law is, and I think now LCPS is implemented, before we didn't have that. But I think now, if there's a bullying incident that happens, if your child is either victim or, you know, again, hopefully all, you know, sitting up here, God forbid that they're a victim, but you should be getting notified within 24 hours.

[01:46:36] I mean, that's, hopefully that's something is in place. So if that's not happening, I think you should definitely reach out to your administrator and make sure that happened. My only thing to this, delegates will share that. I know I was with Ms. Tanya Smith yesterday.

[01:46:52] So there is a superintendents listening session happening. I don't know if you have, I'm sure many of you attended that, but if you haven't got a chance to attend that, I would really, really encourage all of you to attend that and provide your sort of feedback. I think it's a really good session to come along with the community to do that.

[01:47:10] Outside, you've probably seen the literacy textbooks that adoption is going on. So I don't know, Aaron, if you guys are looking into it and providing feedback. So that's something going on. We have started the special education audit. There's two different audits that are going to go on, and I'm looking forward to seeing results from both, from an auditor general's office, and then Dr. Spence is going to have a comprehensive audit of the special ed department, too.

[01:47:36] So there's some good stuff happening. We got, again, it was nice enough to get some additional money from the state. So I don't know if you saw the board allocated the dollars to the teachers' staff pay.

[01:47:54] So this year, we would have sort of a good raise for the teachers coming in. AOS, AOL, and TJ admissions are open. I'm sure you guys are talking about that, too. I know folks are excited. And last thing, from a school board, the big thing's happening in the next two months is the CIP, where we do most of the stuff from all the enhancement to school.

[01:48:22] I mean, we talk about building, upgrading, et cetera. So if you have things in your school that you'd like to see or improve, and this is a great time to reach out to your leadership or even to your school board members so we have at least a perspective on how we address that.

[01:48:39] The last thing we want to do is we want to have Parkview kind of incident what happened last year, that we are behind the ball, And, you know, again, the parents had to really come and organize that. I don't think we want to do that. So I will hopefully, you know, hear from all of you and if there are challenges or things that you need that the school needs to have and address that.

[01:48:59] So those are the only things I had to share with you. And I'm happy if you have any questions or, you know, I think you can definitely know how to reach me. But that was my hope. Thank you. Well, I would like to just take a moment again to thank all of our guest speakers.

[01:49:20] And thank you all for your your questions. And I took a lot of great notes. I hope you all got a lot of great notes. We're going to wrap up for the evening because it is 10 minutes to nine and I won't keep you any longer than than that. But I just want just a couple of final notes. Next month in November, our theme is going to be equity, access and advocacy.

[01:49:35] We have a lot of different presenters that night. It's a family night and we're calling it family. dinner night because we're kind of moving into the winter and holiday seasons and so I figure it's a great time for us to just enjoy our time together as delegates as a community and we're going to be hearing from academies of Loudoun in addition to other programs that are have their applications open just that have opportunities available for your

[01:50:13] students and for the community and please invite other delegates please invite other community members please invite families um again we're we're working on building it up but we have our little corner over there i've dubbed it for the moment the kitty corner but we've got legos we've got connect four i've got a whole box of books that i just got from some family members in texas that we're just going to set up so families can come and they can participate in these meetings and the children can be in the room nearby so if they need their family members, they can just kind of come on over and they don't feel separated or anything like that. But please plan to join us. We'll see you in November. Everybody have a safe

[01:50:51] drive home. Thank you for attending tonight. Have a good evening.

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