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Loudoun County School Board, Student Behavior and Accountability Committee Meeting, Monday, January 29, 2024

Date: Monday, January 29, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 45m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/907676663?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-21. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] good evening i'd like to welcome everyone to the very first meeting for uh the 20 24 school year of the student behavior and accountability committee i assume we all have agendas and packets and i am carrie labelle i'm the chair of the committee this is dr linda deans and this is dr samara rasheed we are the three committee members uh tonight we are going to begin with

[00:00:31] public comment did i do something okay well we will call that complete all right and um as for the meeting of minutes of the meeting let me get that paper out and we will deal with it okay we

[00:01:10] need to approve the minutes of the last meeting which was held under the previous board and the Chairman of that meeting is, or was, Erica Ogedebi. I can't, what is it?

[00:01:27] Ogedebi. I never knew how to pronounce that, so we've got that solved. Are her minutes in here? Okay. Let me go ahead. I found them. I'm slow, but sure, steady. I apologize.

[00:01:45] As I said, this is our first meeting. The staff members that were present at the time were Douglas Fulton, Marne again Gettleman and the chair other people there were Ray Mitchell Shanna Brown Aaron Pinero Amanda Hudson Jennifer Brooks the meeting was called to order at 6:00 p.m. no one signed up for public comment mr. Mahadavi made a motion to approve the 2020 October 23 20 2023 meeting minutes miss

[00:02:22] politko seconded it the motion passed three to zero their action items was the meeting discussion the chair made a motion to cancel the december s back meeting seconded by mrs politko the motion passed three to zero dr fulton noted that they would move forward with policy 8273 the student's speech and expression in january after the new school board members began their terms then they had a motion to convene the meeting and close it let's see they

[00:02:57] entered into a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2 - 3 7 1 2 of the Code of Virginia for the following purposes discussion or consideration of a recommendation for disciplining a student or students enrolled in Loudoun county public schools as authorized by section 2.2-3711 a2 of the code of Virginia following that was a motion to adjourn the closed meeting they moved that it be closed and they would reconvene its public meeting and that

[00:03:37] the meeting of the public meetings reflect that no formal action was taken in the closed meeting then they moved to certify the closed meeting and they moved that the following resolution certifying the closed meeting be adopted and reflected in the minutes of this public meeting and it was resolution number 11-23/24 whereas the School Behavior and Accountability Committee of the Loudoun County School Board has convened a closed meeting on this date pursuant to the affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and whereas section 2.2

[00:04:16] 2-3712D of the Code of Virginia requires a certification by this committee of the School Board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law. Now therefore be it resolved that the Student Behavior and Accountability Committee of the Loudoun County School Board hereby certifies that, to the best of each member's knowledge, 1 only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the executive meeting to which this certification applies and two only

[00:04:52] such public business matters that were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the student behavior and accountability committee of the loudon county school board the motion required by the closed meeting at 8 10 pm the committee came out of its closed session and Chair Ogadebgi moved that the committee of the school board's finding and decisions included in the attached report be adopted and reflected in the minutes of this public meeting. Mr. Mahadavi

[00:05:28] seconded the motion which passed three to zero. There was no new business and they adjourned at 8:15 p.m. Is there a motion to accept the committee report submitted we have a confirmation that this was the notes as reported by the

[00:06:03] chair of the previous board and this was signed by dr. Fulton and I have another one from miss Ogedebi did I get it right oh good so both of those are there certifying that if this is what they know as their meeting or remember as their meeting notes all right so moving on we have verified the draft minutes and we're moving on to item 4 which is information items and I had

[00:06:40] asked at that time that the discipline and data presentation based on things that were covered the previous year to bring all of us up to date as to what was taken care of what was worked on what was approved be presented so if you would like to go ahead with that we would certainly appreciate that thank you my name is Dana Scanlon I'm the director of the office of school administration it's nice to meet each of you in person and we are very pleased tonight to have dr. Ryan Tyler with us he is going to present the discipline data overview to you and he is the director of research assessment and

[00:07:20] school improvement thank you good evening so what we're gonna do over the next few minutes is go over a summary of what was shared with the previous school board so we're going to touch on a number of topics that were discussed the previous couple of years so it's a it's looking at some key items of interest some of the formatting that we use is based upon their preferences and we're happy to hear from our new school board maybe some of the tables and methodologies that they prefer to see so this is what was and we're definitely

[00:07:58] open to hearing questions from you and also feedback from you about how you would like to see discipline data what what trends and patterns are important to you so we're going to take you through some some trends we're going to look at some of the root cause analysis of some of the trends that we saw and And again, this was as of, I believe, November of last year.

[00:08:16] And the topics were chosen by the previous board. And of course, there may be different directions the current board would like to pursue. Next slide, please. When we're looking at discipline data, you always have to remember the idea of the context. There's violations. There's students.

[00:08:32] There's discipline outcomes. There's also incidents. So an incident can involve multiple students, can have multiple violations, and a number of different discipline outcomes. So often, remembering the actual context and the actual data you're viewing is important. It gives you an idea of what's possible to analyze and the context of it.

[00:08:51] So we're looking at violations, students, and outcomes in the data we're going to share today. So violation trends. Next slide. Historically, we have somewhere around 20,000 to 20,000 violations that occur in a particular school year.

[00:09:06] And you see there, the 18, 19 year was the last year before the pandemic. We're right below 21,000 violations. The 2019-20 school year, we spent much of that year in the hybrid setting. Many of the students were in distance learning mode. So the data we're providing here you see is from 21-22, our first full year back after the pandemic.

[00:09:28] You see the violations were down significantly. But last year we see that there was an increase, not quite at the pre-pandemic levels, but approaching that. The board was interested also in looking at the first quarter of the previous year, not the whole year, just the first quarter of the previous year compared to last year.

[00:09:49] And you see there the trends that we saw for the whole year. We're seeing increases approaching what it once was before the pandemic. During 2019, 2020 was when we had an adjustment to the discipline codes and there were new violation categories created.

[00:10:10] So what the board was interested in was seeing whether there were any patterns. Meaning, when we look at behaviors or safety concerns, did we see any increases or decreases in the violations based upon that? And what you see here is that in the top four categories, the area in which we saw the greatest increase was behaviors that impede academic progress.

[00:10:30] And you see a summary of that. So you see the top three categories didn't change, but we actually did see slight decreases in those with an increase in academic progress behaviors that impede that. that include unexcused tardies, scholastic dishonesty, and other areas, so I'll give you an opportunity to actually look at the detail of some of these categories.

[00:11:03] So the history of this is that many years ago, I believe in 2013, when we had our discipline task force, there were questions from the community as far as when we suspend students, were we suspending students for relatively serious behaviors?

[00:11:19] And so the long-term history is that historically, the incidents that occur in Loudon have been less of these so-called gun violations and other infractions that don't give administrators much discretion, and more things like disorderly conduct, and now things like relationship behavior, school operations. Important because we have some latitude in situations where we're not required to remove a student from the building for specific safety concerns. Next slide. So when we're looking at dispositions and outcomes in school restriction is when the school the student is in the

[00:11:56] building but may be removed from the typical instruction but they're still in the building versus out-of-school suspensions where the student is removed from the school attendance for a sufficient cause this this has been an important distinction because in the past the last several years most of our requests have been around students being removed from the building concerns about the disruption to the students instructional experience if you go to to the next slide, we actually started to get more requests from the previous board looking at in-school restriction, because even though the students are in the building, that is

[00:12:33] a different experience than normal instruction. And you see here, we reminded the previous school board that changes to the Virginia Code essentially forbid staff from removing students or suspending students based upon unexcused tardies, not going to class as assigned.

[00:12:51] We need to define other ways to ensure that the students remain engaged. Next slide, please. So suspension trends. In this particular case, the school board was interested in numbers. Oftentimes, we present suspensions in the form of a rate, percentage of students who are suspended in any particular year.

[00:13:10] Our suspension rate several years ago was around 2%, and it's dropped to around 1%. In this particular case, the school board members wanted to see actual numbers, so we can provide that both ways. And you see here, we did see a decrease, as we did with violations from pre-pandemic.

[00:13:27] And we see now that that's slowly started to increase since two years ago compared to last year. Number of students in blue and the total suspensions in that reddish color, understanding that some students are suspended multiple times. Next slide.

[00:13:44] So the board was interested in just the first quarter of two years ago compared to last year. And again, the trends that we're starting to see increases in suspensions from the beginning right after the pandemic. Next slide, please.

[00:14:02] So in-school restrictions. In this particular case, this is something that we've documented over the years, but this is one of the first times we got a request from the school board. In-school restrictions are when students are removed from the general classroom setting. They're kept in the building, and they're provided with alternative instruction.

[00:14:19] And you see here, that has gone up continuously. even before the pandemic, right after, and that has increased over time, over several years. Next slide, please. The same you see here for looking at just the first quarter of two years ago compared, I'm sorry, from last year compared to the first quarter of this year.

[00:14:42] Next slide. Also, when looking at suspensions by race or other groups, we often provide suspension rates, and we do what's called a comparison of suspension rates to look at whether there's disproportionality. this case the board wanted to see actual numbers and you see here over time our actual enrollment did not increase dramatically if you remember we were at a certain level we had a slight decrease during the pandemic and it's kind of leveled off so in this case the board was looking at a significant decrease in the number of white students suspended compared to the green the

[00:15:17] number of hispanic students has been the only significant increase uh from a year ago two years ago compared to last year. The next slide you will see just looking at quarter one of last year compared to this year. So you see in some cases we were looking at whole years and in other cases we were looking at first quarter of last year compared to this year and you see the same increase for Hispanic students. Next slide. So for one of the first times we started recording along with female and male in the student system non-binary.

[00:15:52] So you see two years ago for the first time we started recording that data and you see there were a small number of suspensions involving students who are non-binary and we had conversations with the previous board. When do we start reporting out on data when we have very small student groups making sure that we're respectful of the identity of students but we want to start documenting this. I believe the first time the system went live with recording that data we immediately recorded like 60 or so non-binary students and it hovers between 70 and 80 depending upon the day, and that's across the whole division.

[00:16:27] Next slide. The suspension counts by gender, again looking at the first quarter only, increases for male students. Next slide. So subjective violations, and you remember the discipline task force was established in 2013 and presented recommendations.

[00:16:47] The idea is that for many years we've been very conscious of the idea of if we have the opportunity to show some discretion with the student, that we take the option when we can and to keep students in buildings and provide services. So subjective violations are situations in which we're not required necessarily to remove a student from a building for a safety issue, and we have the option to consider alternatives to suspension.

[00:17:11] So the next slide the board was interested in wanting to see the suspension rates for certain very detailed situations, meaning for the, looking at the top, for the five cases in which we had a possession of stolen items, the first quarter of the previous school year, we had zero suspensions. So the idea of in certain cases where we had some subjectivity and we had some discretion, how frequently were we choosing to suspend students? You see here that even though some of the numbers are very small in certain cases, for example, refusals comply with staff requests, the suspension rate has hovered between 5% and 6% over the

[00:17:51] first quarter of the previous school year and this current school year. So the board was looking at In situations where we have very detailed circumstances, to what extent are we suspending in those cases? In that school operations, the next slide, you'll see relationship behaviors.

[00:18:10] Again, some of these cases are a little more prevalent than others. To what extent are we suspending in situations where we don't necessarily have to remove a student from the building because of a safety issue? And again, each scenario, as our administrators here could tell you, has its own story to it.

[00:18:29] So you can't necessarily compare each situation student to student. Sometimes there's definitely a history. Sometimes there's a pattern leading up to a particular student outcome. But the board was interested in seeing, for example, you see you're using profane or vulgar language.

[00:18:47] It's a low suspension rate, and the questions are around. In each of those cases, maybe there's mitigating circumstances. There's other things that occurred that led to that. but are we using alternatives to suspension when we can? Next slide.

[00:19:03] So the next steps, we started considering the idea of when we look at this data, what do we think of some of the root causes? And these are just summaries of the last couple of years of what we saw in some of the patterns. The idea of changes in state reporting, bullet two.

[00:19:20] Administrators are reporting and recording all instances. The idea of maybe we're just accurately recording more of what we're seeing as opposed to always seeing an increase. Looking at the next last bullet. Reports the school administration office indicate that perceptions from principals.

[00:19:37] This was actually a couple of years ago where in the beginning of the year, we had an increase in pretty serious behaviors from even younger students that actually tailed off during the year. And we talked about that time students still returning to school from the pandemic and getting used to new routines.

[00:19:55] but also students who might not have been receiving services that they greatly needed from schools when they were in the pandemic and still recovering and struggling from being separated from a support system because our students come from all kinds of different backgrounds.

[00:20:11] So the next slide, some of the action steps. A school administration office had partnered with multiple departments to provide professional development, working with school leaders to look at our responses and make adjustments accordingly. We looked at year-end analysis of perceptual data.

[00:20:29] We actually look at data from teachers about perceptions about how behavior is managed in buildings. And we found that sometimes teachers felt that there were variations amongst teachers in looking at student behaviors. Students had different perceptions about fairness based upon the group they were a part of.

[00:20:45] So we did look at the outcome data as far as the behaviors, looking at the actual perceptual data and actual experiences and the opinions and the perspectives of different stakeholders. And finally, we did receive equity reflection training across the school levels.

[00:21:06] And looking at situations in which you're dealing with a student with an IEP, for example, do we have people who are knowledgeable about special education to be able to understand whether what they're seeing is defiance or a manifestation of a disability? So that was, I believe, what we shared with the previous board.

[00:21:22] It gives you an idea of not just what the patterns have been, but give this board an idea of, okay, what have we learned in the past, what patterns do we want to look at moving forward, and the data that we share, what works for you, when is a rate more important versus actual numbers. So that gives you an idea of what some of the different patterns and discussions and topics have been the last couple of years, and we're happy to answer

[00:21:48] any questions.

[00:23:17] So regarding the training that administrators receive, that would be something we have to go back into the records, and I'm sure school admin and other offices, including special education provided I know that some of the analysis we've done in the past is that when and it's been a few years we have looked at situations where we compared the actual category of the student with the disability to see if some of the behaviors might have been related to that but that was only on a statistical level so the answer to the question as far as the training and supports that would be in the records from dr. Fulton and and special education

[00:23:53] over the years but I know they provided training to administrators as far as and also for students of disabilities and looking at any potential racial biases that may exist as far as patterns any any any data related to I know when I read the policy they talked about restorative mediation or what have you

[00:24:31] the child had a choice the child didn't wasn't required so my question is how much restorative kinds of mediation is taking place when the conflict is between two or more students do we have anything related to that I do remember and this would be for student services I know we have someone in that division who provides training and restorative practices and I do remember a a presentation that was made to MSAC in the previous year or so on that so we can get the

[00:25:10] numbers as far as the number cases and a breakdown of the actual violations that were involved but so the short answer is I have to go back and look at the numbers by senior members being somewhere around 200 or 250 somewhere in that range across the division but there have been presentations made to different advisory committees about the nature of it and what happens in those cases and and the kinds of violations that they focus on.

[00:25:37] But I can look up the numbers and then we can reach out to Student Services to the individual who manages that.

[00:25:44] Name escapes me at this point though.

[00:26:18] - Thank you for that presentation. Thank you, Chair. I found the data very intriguing. It's very interesting looking at that and how it compares to pre-COVID and then after COVID and then all the years, how it differs sequentially each year.

[00:26:42] My question was, and maybe you mentioned this during the presentation, there was a slide on there, I think it was slide five, and it mentions how in 2018 and 2019, it started off with there, kind of like a vector, and then you explained how it was in comparison to the present versus from 2018 to 2019.

[00:27:08] But I was just wondering, out of curiosity, what was the data, or if you know, before that like did it plateau or was it still exponentially increasing before it hit 2018 and 2019 I just wanted to know because it makes a difference with how we can anticipate like behavior trends with the current years in one of those slides and then I had a couple other questions but oh yes and then in a couple of slides that you mentioned slide 11 for example and then a couple slides after that with the data, you mentioned students suspended, but then you also wrote

[00:27:46] total suspended. Maybe you already mentioned that. Can you tell me the difference between the two? Is it multiple suspensions by one student? Is that what the total suspensions are? So the first question, our suspension rate was a little like 2.2% right around 2020-2012.

[00:28:04] And while the enrollment continued to increase, our violations kind of stayed around 20,000, 21,000. I think it might have been 22,000 in a particular year. So even while the enrollment increased, the violations didn't necessarily match the enrollment increase.

[00:28:21] So, yes, we did see a significant decrease with the pandemic, and it's starting to approach that pre-pandemic level. And regarding your second question, I think the numbers are there's maybe 10 or 12 percent of kids were suspended multiple times.

[00:28:39] So you will always see more suspensions compared to suspended students. But I think the vast majority of students who are suspended, it's like 1 percent, are suspended just once. And then there's a small number of students who have significant numbers of suspensions. Thank you for that. And also, in slide five and in other of the graphs that you showed, with the non-binary, do you think that the results can also be perhaps kind of skewed because on reports of who reports to be non-binary?

[00:29:09] Okay. And then in one of my other questions, like, for example, in slide 21, you were mentioned, like, cyberbullying, for example, that was mentioned in it. Do you think that the results also could be varied or skewed because of, like, who reports it and how they report it?

[00:29:26] You mentioned perception, so something along that line. Who perceives it to be cyberbullying? So is there, like, a system that you know about that what determines that? Or is it just plain training? Or is it something up to, like, how LCPS educates the staff and educates the teachers as to how they report cyberbullying?

[00:29:48] And what is the definition of this? That was my question along those lines, if you know that answer. So I know that school admin can speak to, there's guidance in the codes that explains each incident and what it entails. And there's a lot of training about interpretation for that. So I'm sure school admin, as far as the records that Dr. Fulton left, and I know the new leadership can share with that.

[00:30:12] So, yes, there are clear definitions of these based upon the code, and then there's significant training provided, too. central office, and school-based staff. Okay, do you think there's a factor of it being arbitrary? Like some of that could be up to the person reporting it? Like can that be varied?

[00:30:30] I would leave that up to the experts to speak to that. I have my own perspective as far as someone who looks at data, but I would leave that up to those who provide the training as far as dealing with consistency, it sounds like. You want people to be calibrated, be able to, they see the same thing, and they can give the same response.

[00:30:49] But I leave it up to those who do the training. Thank you. I have a question on slide 13, the in-school restriction trends. And we notice that they're pretty stable considering from 2018 through 2023.

[00:31:08] Can we tell, or do you have the data on, how many of those students are repeat ISR students? Because I remember being and monitoring ISR often and you got on first name basis with some of those students.

[00:31:28] And is there any information that we have? To me, this seems that ISR then is ineffective. Is there more data that would improve its effectiveness in dealing with these student behaviors? What can we do to try to reduce the number of repeat visitors?

[00:31:51] So it sounds like there's two concepts you're getting at as far as what percentage of students with ISR have multiple incidents, and it sounds like you're also interested in looking at maybe students at the beginning of the year or at a certain time frame and seeing if ISR helps to curtail additional kind of follow-up behaviors.

[00:32:14] Okay, so we can do the analysis and provide feedback on both of those. Okay.

[00:32:33] Hi, my name is Darnell Barber, and I'm an assistant principal at Freedom High School. And the question about ISR, one thing I was wondering earlier was that the data focuses on first quarter. We as administrators don't believe that consequences change behaviors.

[00:32:52] It's connections. And so you will see repeat offenders in ISR first quarter, maybe into second quarter. But as administrators and school psychologists and school social workers start making connections with those students, then we start to curb that behavior.

[00:33:08] So even though the data may show repeat offenders in ISR, ISR is not going to change the behavior. Suspensions won't change the behavior. It's connections with teachers, school administrators, support staff that truly makes a difference on students repeating the behaviors.

[00:35:13] I think I'd like to know more about the impact of restorative practices for children who are in conflict with others.

[00:35:38] I know it's voluntary, but with all the new social, emotional training, are kids now more willing to participate in restorative conflict resolution so that they can move forward with better relationships?

[00:36:10] That restorative piece just jumps out at me as a positive impact going forward, and that's because I'm a grandparent.

[00:36:29] My kids are not in Loughton, they're in Fairfax, but that restorative piece seems to be important to kids who want to know if they can move forward without the burden of the conflict continuing to be involved in their lives.

[00:36:56] And I have a middle schooler, so you know how they are. But that restorative practice is something that both of them are very concerned about. I think our point of contact may be Jen Evans for restorative practice, who we'll reach out to.

[00:37:33] Motion to adjourn. Chair.

[00:37:55] I can look it up real quickly. Jen Evans is the Director of Student Mental Health Services in the Department of Student Services.

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