Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Loudoun Education Alliance of Families (LEAF) Committee Meeting, Monday, March 18, 2024

Date: Monday, March 18, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 1h 30m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/924639214?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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[00:01:01] Good evening, everyone. We're going to start it in about three more minutes, and I'll explain

[00:01:06] our seating situation. I know.

[00:02:13] If everybody could find their seat, we'll get started.

[00:02:41] It's about 535. Well, welcome, LEAF members. Thank you for attending on this very windy afternoon. I realize it's a really busy time. Hope everybody is getting ready for March Madness and has filled out their brackets. I know I'm excited about that. So welcome to the March 18th LEAF meeting. This meeting will come to order. The first item on the agenda is public comment. LEAF meetings are open to the public. Lowndes County residents are welcome to attend the meeting but must refrain from

[00:03:17] interrupting the meeting's agenda. Per the LEAF charter bylaws, public comment should address an agenda item. Members of the public who wish to address items on the agenda may do so at this time. do we have any public comments tonight we do not okay great all right let's move on to our action item the february 12th 2024 meeting minutes are on the leaf website and a few copies are at your table for those of you who would like to take some additional time to review it it is my hope members review the minutes prior to the meeting as it was posted online specifically please review the

[00:03:54] attendance as those in attendance recall that we had some technical difficulties and members were asked to sign in just write their names and sign in so but today the computers are up and working so please make sure you sign in um i will entertain a motion to accept the minutes from the february 12 2024 meeting as submitted motion we have a motion is there a second great we have a second All in favor say aye. All those opposed. With no changes requested, the minutes stand approved

[00:04:30] as submitted. So we'll go ahead and move on to our next agenda item. I will explain the interesting seating arrangement that we have this evening. Right now, we needed the microphone so people could be able to speak into the microphone, but during our collaborative conversations with Dr. Ellis and Dr. Spence tonight, what we're going to do is be able to turn your chairs around and hopefully have a little bit more of an intimate setting. Sometimes we feel like the tables kind of break it up and so we are going to try something a little bit different this evening

[00:05:02] so we'll try to set more in a semi-circle to kind of see if it could be a more intimate setting where people can share their ideas and it'll be a little bit easier to hear everyone. At this time I would like to welcome the school board representative for LEAF, Lauren Chernoff. She's going to say a few words and give us a school board update. Hello everybody welcome back it's good to see everyone we have been busy at the school board we are actually on a little bit of a break till another full board meeting on April 9th because of spring break so we won't have our fourth Tuesday board

[00:05:39] meeting you may have seen some highlights in terms of action items the last board meeting we did vote to turn off cameras for public comments so you might have seen that um that was a six to three vote so you might want to follow up on that and then additionally uh something that I'm working on is soliciting feedback for early start times we've been hearing a lot of from the community about the staggered start times for elementary and so we've been getting hundreds of emails at this point about the different start times and so if you have any feedback feel free to email us um like I said we are also kicking off the collective bargaining joint committee this week is going to start meeting that committee will be

[00:06:18] looking at the different items at lea i believe it was eight items that they proposed for as in terms of looking at a collective bargaining resolution so in an effort to work towards that resolution and include the stakeholder feedback that will begin this wednesday i believe they are meeting at five o'clock and then dr spence is here tonight he has three listening sessions left is that correct three or four four okay three more okay and then awesome and the one this week Wednesday is at Heritage High School so again in Leesburg's neck of the woods and then I think it's Briarwoods following that and then the last one will be at Loudoun County which was

[00:06:56] rescheduled after the snow day so you guys get full access tonight but encourage your your schools and constituents and just a reminder the there's two sessions for each listening session there's a staff session at five o'clock and then a community session at seven o'clock so any LCPS staff even if they're not in that cluster, can still attend one of those listening sessions. So if you want to report that back to your principals to get the word out for staff and for community. So appreciate you being here. I actually have to scoot right at seven tonight, so I won't be here for extra

[00:07:31] questions, but please reach out and email. All right. Thank you. All right. Before we engage in tonight's collaborative conversation activity with Dr. Spence and Dr. Ellis, I'd like to discuss real quickly recruitment and membership so it is that time of year we only have two more meetings left and so we want to get a jump start on our recruitment so information about recruitment for the 24-25 school year is being sent to principals this week we have started earlier this year with

[00:08:05] hopefully our goal of meeting 100 representation if you're interested in returning as your school community's LEAF representative and I hope you are for another year please get in touch with your local PTA or PTO president of your school and depending on what's available then you can see if maybe you'll be serving next year as well. The principals need to submit or resubmit the names for approval by the school board. Speaking of membership we wanted to we're still getting some questions about like what's LEAF's role how are we making an impact so we really just wanted to

[00:08:40] review some responsibilities and roles as LEAF members and I know some of you are new to LEAF this year but just as a review there's also a reminder it's in the handbook as well a graphic of the communication loop for LEAF members and basically what I what we're talking about as LEAF members and as an advisory group it's really about this two-way communication so you can see up here the graphic that we as LEAF representatives, we attend the meetings, we gather the information, we're just taking this very basically, and then you share that information out to your schools.

[00:09:18] That might look a little bit differently. I'm an elementary representative, so I share out my meeting at the PTA meeting, and then my struggle, however, is, and I'm not sure if all of you are sharing the same sentiment, is when I go to a PTA meeting, there's like seven people there, right and so those meeting our meeting notes I also share with our PTA president which gets posted on our PTO website there is a section for LEAF and then we push out anything important in the principal's email I will say I'm the representative for Sickling Creek but I feel like I'm really

[00:09:54] struggling getting my voices from the community and I don't want my voice to be the only voice right I'm the representative so my wondering is I'm for the next meeting I'd really like everyone to think about what are you doing to get your community voices. I'm sure all of you probably have some really good ideas. Maybe some of you are really getting a lot of feedback from your community, which is great. But we're the representative, and I just want to make sure that I'm getting the voices from my community. And I know I'm struggling with it, so I'm thinking maybe a few others might be struggling with it, and it might be good to take some time to talk

[00:10:29] about how can we really engage the community. And I know it's difficult. Community engagement's difficult parents are busy and trying to get them engaged in certain things usually doesn't happen unless it's directly affecting them right so I think it would be advantageous for us to take a little bit of time at the next meeting and talk about that once we collect that feedback from our communities then it is our role to bring it back here to leave we're fortunate enough to have a direct school member that is involved and cares about listening to our voices so that she can

[00:11:03] take that back and we are here to inform and give feedback around this policy so specifically from the bylaws just to remind our roles and responsibilities as LEAF members and this is from our handbook is to be a voice for the parents from their school communities providing valuable parental perspective to the school board and to communicate school board questions recommendations or decisions back to their communities and to serve as an advisory by bringing the school board's attention to existing or emerging issues expressed by parents in their school community. We also have the responsibility to develop and shape

[00:11:42] recommendations on improving student experience in schools. The other question that we get quite often is like well what happens with our feedback? The other issue we seem to have is that we we're not getting a lot of feedback even from our own membership so we need to work a little bit more to provide feedback from our leave membership. What I wanted to show you was a policy feedback example of where you can find it and what this looks like. This is policy, I should have brought my glasses, I really can't

[00:12:14] read that. What is it? 8010. Here what you can see, can you guys see that? Jeez, I'm like, I know I'm getting older, but my goodness. Can we make it a little bigger? So what is up on the screen is policy 8010. And so here you can see the PDF of what the clean copy was, what the red line looked like, and then what the community feedback was. Now we have a direct link because we're LEAF members, right? So when we put in our feedback, it is going to specifically say that it came from

[00:12:51] LEAF. So here is, I don't know, can you make that any bigger so we can see it? That would be great. Okay, perfect. So you can see here, this is showing from this specific policy. You can see here, that was a LEAF member that provided that feedback on January 3rd, 2023. And if you go across, it tells you what the feedback was, and then what the, basically, the question gets answered through committee, and then any additional information that they wanted to share. So what I

[00:13:26] wanted to show was that our feedback does get looked at, right? And it does get considered in committee but I think sometimes when we provide feedback we're like well where does it go and I just thought it would be important to show where it really does go yes question yeah no I happen to witness that firsthand attending the student services committee meeting the other day and they I had personally provided feedback on several policies that they were looking at through leaf and the only feedback that they looked at in that committee was from MSAC they

[00:14:04] did not look at our feedback at all well I know that there are different committee so i can't speak to what each committee does i just i just saw that example where we saw our leaf feedback in there so but you know what i can explore that a little bit more and see like why would our leaf feedback not be in that commit like did they present a graph like that my understanding is each committee does it a little bit differently so i don't know but that's something that can absolutely look into and see because i think it's important that if we're providing that feedback that it should make it to where it needs to go so thank you for sharing

[00:14:43] that that's that's good to know yeah and and also uh you know the last like almost the last three four meetings i've provided input on the form like if you have anything to talk about in the meeting and then it never got talked about in the meeting until like i brought it up at the end and got kind of like breezed over because the meeting was ending so i'm like i don't know what we're doing like i don't think we've done anything here the whole year except to get talked at i just you know I do not see anything that this committee's done or provided input on or accomplished other than just get briefings on things.

[00:15:15] Okay, we appreciate that feedback. Thank you. Well, we'll be talking about new business towards the end of the meeting. That's always on the agenda. Yes.

[00:15:45] Yeah, go ahead. Do you guys know how to access board docs? Like, can I get a fist of five? Like, zero being I have no idea, five being like I feel very comfortable navigating it, just to see board docs, where you can go through and find all the policies, all the agendas, all the presentations, just trying to get a gauge.

[00:16:04] Sorry to teacher on you, but perfect. Okay, great. That's good to know. Do you feel, I get a lot from the community that's like, I have no idea where this stuff is. So I don't know if that's, it's something that we did through our PTA meeting when I was a LEAF rep, is I walked people through how to have access to that just so that they could see where the feedback was going and they could see the agendas.

[00:16:22] So just a suggestion maybe, as so people know that it's all there. It's just, it's a lot. Yeah, sometimes it's just being able to navigate it. Right. And knowing when it happens. Right. It's true. Because it is all there. It's just sometimes it takes, yeah. Are there any other questions about that? Yes. I just wanted to say I was on the equity committee and we would go over specific policies related to the committee on that committee. And I found that really helpful for just like getting kind of the juices flowing of

[00:16:58] communicating with the rest of the group. Like sometimes I would look at a policy and it didn't really mean much to me but when I could hear other people I'm like that's a good point and now that you say that I want to add this to that and so like sometimes when looking at those policies it's you know like it feels more foreign to me than I think it is and so I think if we had a few that we pulled we could have some examples for the group of what that looks like sure and I think that's I think that's a great suggestion I don't know how many of you struggle with when you read

[00:17:34] the policy or not like you have questions about what type of feedback you should give because I know that happens to me I'm like I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do here so maybe how many of you feel like it would be um just as your suggestion looking taking a look at policies before maybe we have to provide feedback in having maybe a discussion time around that how many feel like that that would be a valuable use of our time by show of hands I'm always looking for feedback my goal is to continue to evolve and make sure that we're making an impact and I want your suggestions I want your feedback I read all the feedback forms I

[00:18:11] want your feedback we're going to talk about some new business on the feedback for in the new business section on the feedback form later but thank you for all of that feedback I do appreciate it next we are going to move on to our collaborative conversation because want to move on to that and be respectful of Dr. Spence's and Dr. Ellis' time. So we are going to engage in an activities discussion, which is why we're in this seating arrangement. So we do have our two guests this evening, and we're going to discuss high-interest topics that all of you have shared, including all-in Virginia tutoring

[00:18:47] that Dr. Ellis is going to speak to. And then we've also invited Superintendent Dr. Spence to lead a conversation as well. Like the last meeting, this is a different format to facilitate conversation in your input as requested. Rather than a presentation, groups will converse, ask questions, offer feedback, and connect with the speakers. We'll start conversations with one group and then we'll rotate after about 15 minutes so you do not need to move. Each group will have a note taker so that we can capture our conversations, and then we'll provide a three-minute wrap-up

[00:19:23] warning, a one-minute warning, and then prompted to go ahead and shift. Are there any questions before we move into this part of the agenda. So you can turn your chairs around so you feel like you're having a little bit more of a collaborative conversation, and we'll get started.

[00:19:43] Do you want me to take notes, Christina? Did you want me to take notes?

[00:24:14] Excuse the interruption.

[00:34:20] You have three minutes left. Three minutes.

[00:35:19] One minute.

[00:36:43] This is your one-minute warning.

[00:37:43] I'd like to ask each group to wrap up

[00:39:12] their question and answer period so our presenters can shift from group to group.

[00:54:45] Excuse the interruption.

[00:58:38] This is your three-minute warning.

[00:58:39] three minutes remaining. A note that we all have one minute left. I apologize, but it's time to

[01:08:40] wrap up our conversation so that we can move on to the remainder of the agenda and keep on time so that everybody gets out on time. I really appreciate Dr. Ellis and Dr. Spence's taking their time to speak with us this evening. And I felt like we had some great discussions. So thank you both again for your time really appreciate it really appreciate it so if everyone wants to return their seat we're just going to do uh some housekeeping items to wrap things up uh again we

[01:09:20] want to remind you of the superintendent's community listening sessions they're quickly wrapping up we do have three left there's a session at heritage high school on march 20th briar woods high school on april 4th and loung county high school on april 18th for our next meeting we're reaching out to the gifted gifted program our athletics department and technology departments to join us for another conversation about what's happening in lcps in

[01:09:56] those areas so that's our agenda for this evening and again we always welcome your thoughts and feedback on the feedback forms. We are going to move to some new business. One new business item that was on the feedback form is someone had mentioned the possibility of moving our meeting time instead of 530 to 6 because it's difficult to get here at 530. So we are definitely open to thinking about that for next year. So if we want to talk about that at our next April meeting along with bringing your thoughts about LEAF and how we can improve our community engagement within our

[01:10:35] schools just something to think about and we can kind of get everybody's pulse on that is there any other new business that anyone would like to discuss which ones do you want to discuss oh yeah yeah yes go ahead hello hello hello um when I was at my last PTA meeting I encouraged anyone who wanted to take my job from me next year to come to the public portion so they can sit in and see what this meeting is like and i know that lots of people but i don't think people even know that

[01:11:13] that's an option and so if you think joining a committee at the school board you know or at the at the at education court they don't necessarily know what they're what that's all about but if they come and listen and join and we only have two more left so my encouragement would be to you if you're if you can't do it next year and you're looking for your pta your principal to find a replacement encourage them to come so they can sit in and listen and then see like we're not that scary i mean i don't know what dr spence thinks of us but i don't think we're that scary no that's a really good point so that's a really good suggestion to your point about getting feedback i was like we'll just come listen in so i know i mean even at my school we don't even have we

[01:11:48] haven't had an msac representative for two years i'm just like okay so anyways it's i know it's it's hard engagement's hard and people are busy I get that but yeah sure hey so we also met um last week and uh that was really great we are going to try to get the meetings online any update on that we don't have an update yet we'll have to have because we for me it's easy I'm sure it's easy for some of us but some of us it's not easy right to get over here so you know how can we do that uh I think the school board does it really nicely right Lauren um and so it's nice if we could maybe do it online because also that gives us exposure, right? Everyone's like, what's LEAF

[01:12:27] about? But hey, maybe if we can promote ourselves a little bit better, they'll understand what we're about. And then we talked about awards very briefly. Maybe we could talk a little bit about that next month as well. All the other committees do awards, right? They're like, oh, MSAC person of the year, agency of the year. And then they're like, oh, what's MSAC, right? And then they always wonder but if maybe we need to start a leaf award like right you know what i mean so let's let's think of that as well just just for you know promotion of our our committee that's all so

[01:12:59] thank you thank you have you been able to go to your pta and share the information that we've had and and what i know but in what way do you pass back that information and then gather that and then gather opinions from your constituents i'm just curious so you give them notes and has anyone responded? Do you have an email set up for them to communicate with you? So all of our meeting

[01:13:38] topics were topics that come from what we asked all of our LEAF members what they wanted to be informed about. So if there's a different topic that you want information on, but the whole point of LEAF is a two-way communication loop. So once you are a member of LEAF, your responsibility is to take that back to your community, whether that be through your PTA or whatever channel you decide to make that and then your constituents need to have that opportunity to have that interaction with you for you to then bring it back to us because we have not everybody has access to a school board member that's so willing to listen and so we have a direct line this is a really

[01:14:14] great opportunity I know things aren't perfect nothing's ever perfect and we are open to suggestions we are in our second year but that really is our goal is this two-way communication loop and I feel like we're starting to get some more traction we got a long way to go I understand that we got things that we need to improve but you've got committee members that are willing to listen and make changes and adapt and we have a board member that's willing to work with us so that that's our purpose it's that two-way communication loop so that we can help advise policies if you're not reading policies and giving feedback then i mean right you have to

[01:14:51] well the advisory piece is you providing feedback within the policy on board docs so if there's something that's missing there that you need our help with we can do that yes hi hi the one of the conflicts i guess that i see are all of the policies that come out for review by us and we can get them out and they're of course open to the public many of them i'm not going to be careful how i say this many of them don't matter to us right okay so after a while it's a flood of emails that say review this policy i remember when the first few came out a year and a half ago whenever

[01:15:28] it was right I reviewed a couple of them and there was some things that could have been changed in them I sent the feedback in but again when I think about the impact that we could have when you say when we say it's a two-way communication it's actually three ways it's up to the board that's the piece we're missing and the things that are most consequential to our kids one person's opinion with a bunch of feedback to me right are things like collective bargaining are things like the relook at 8040 are things like the pilot programs for the what are those bathrooms called procreation single stall single cell no procreation stations that's how our kids refer to those

[01:16:07] things okay so creation station that's how the high schoolers refer to those bathrooms okay so there's a lot there's a lot of things that are going on that we are not providing feedback to the board lauren will hear it and lauren was a part of it last year and is a part of it this year But that two-way communication is really three- and four-way communication, and there's nothing coming out of here going up because we're not necessarily spending our time prioritizing the things that are most important to our kids.

[01:16:41] So how would you like to address that? How could we restructure in a format that we could make that happen? The last two meetings have been good in the ability to have interaction with certain individuals who have influence within the county.

[01:16:58] So that's good. That's a good start. But there are things like I think about collective bargaining, and just as an example, go anywhere in the country and look at the data where collective bargaining has been instituted and see how those school systems perform compared to those where it's not, all right?

[01:17:14] So let's start there. And so as we're having all these conversations, it would probably be helpful for everybody in here to be really up to speed on what's going on with collective bargaining so we're not reading about it in the local papers a week or two later after the board's made a decision.

[01:17:31] That's the kind – when we've had information pushed to us over the last almost two years, it's fine. It's good to know a lot of this stuff. Give me the real information on the conversations that are going on around collective bargaining and the relook of 80-40 and the things that a lot of people feel got shoved through under the last school board and the last superintendent, all right?

[01:17:54] Those are the things we need to be getting more information on. Once we get that information, we can turn around like the other committees and put forward positions to the school board. So what we need to know is what's the school board working on now that's in committee, three levels below, that's going to come through in four or five months because that's what we need.

[01:18:16] Is that something we can go ahead and learn? Yeah, I agree with that. And something that I'm hearing you say is that what you would like to see is what's going on in committee or going to happen in committee. one of the things that is a struggle and I'll just be honest about this process as a school board member is something that I've learned is that we don't get that information until those agendas are posted two days before the meetings so a lot of times we don't know what's coming ourselves unless we're on the committee so like for curriculum instruction I'm the chair I'm driving the train right like that's easy I could tell you all the things from here till December

[01:18:52] that we're going to cover, and I'm happy to share that, but with the other committees, I can do a little bit more legwork on my end for my introductory report to just kind of outline some key policies that are going on. You know, 80-40 is being talked about tomorrow in student services, so that's probably something you want to pay attention to at three o'clock tomorrow, and then collective bargaining, the joint committee is on Wednesday, so we do have an ability, I can do a better job of reporting those things out to you.

[01:19:22] The other thing that Sherry and I have talked about is meeting with SEAC and meeting with MSAC about how they review policies because it is my understanding, at least SEAC for sure has a policy review committee. I know there's a lot of nuances there and it has not been a super smooth road. It's a little bit with timing and things to get things on time, but we could venture into that space and really spend some time looking at policy.

[01:19:47] Is there a way to get the people who are on these committees for collective bargaining or the 80-40 relook and get them in here to the next meeting to talk about the progress or the discussions that are going on. I know some of it may not be able to, depending on where it is in the process, right?

[01:20:04] That would be my role, would be to collaborate with them and get the information to you. So that's my job, is to sort of be the conduit of that. So I will do a better job of that, and I will include those specific things, especially policy-specific, because if it's in committee, it's not being voted on by the full board. So you will have time to give feedback. What they're talking about with 80-40 tomorrow is specific to the focus groups, how the focus groups are going to roll out. It's a point of clarification to figure out what that process is going to be and how the board is going to be involved in that process. That's not a vote, right? So we're

[01:20:40] talking about something down the line. The collective bargaining joint committee, those meetings are public. Those meetings are going to report back to our legislation audit policy committee. But I can do a better job educating you all of how that process works and bringing those policies in to our meetings and potentially putting those things on for feedback.

[01:20:59] Yeah. Thank you. Kind of related to your 80-40 question, I'm just wondering where LCPS is with Governor Youngkin's model policies, because they passed Northam's pretty quickly. There seems to not be decision yet and I feel like that could be very frustrating for the teachers because as a teacher myself not for LCPS where I work they sent out a letter in August and basically said this is where

[01:21:34] we are this is what's expected of you and that was good because I knew where I knew where the school landed and I feel like for teachers in LCPS they wouldn't know where where to go because on one cent on the one hand Governor Youngkin's policies are saying one thing but LCPS's policies are saying another thing and so that's that's a tough situation to be in for a teacher and that's part

[01:22:05] of the reason I'm not teaching in LCPS. 8040 is the policy it's written it's approved it's voted on by the last board that's where we stand that is the standard right now until it is voted and changed revisions are maybe in the works we're working through that process student services is working through that process the last board stalled out and punted it so there was no movement on their end or appetite to revisit revisions so that has that work restarted again at the end of january and the the proposal right now is to do focus groups through a third party that would

[01:22:43] include members of the community educators and students um that would be facilitated and that is the discussion that is happening in student services tomorrow and then after that we will we will see what the decision is but it will be up to the committee to decide whether we go for revisions or not and then it will go to the full board ultimately for us to decide so i think we're a little bit of a ways out but we're on the path but in terms of what teachers should adhere to 80 40 is the policy so i'm new here and forgive me if this is a woefully ignorant question but who i

[01:23:20] know that you we have a way of communicating with you know 30 or 40 of us have each individual ways of communicating a meeting topic right who actually decides the meeting agenda so what we what we did was we took all the topics and then we saw where there was overlap and also um who we can get in to come in and speak and so that's how the agenda gets formed and then we always we always have our board update because that's something important we wanted to plug in and then i think my question is who is we oh i'm sorry the committee in our communications department i work

[01:23:56] with them as well okay so kind of the five of you work together to set me right yeah no problem and that that was a great question anybody else have any other questions before we wrap up tonight yeah go ahead I just have a quick comment sure as far as the people who feel like LEAF isn't doing what you want it to do or isn't being effective as you hoped it would be I think we have to keep in

[01:24:27] mind two things one is LCPS is a huge organization there are lots of moving parts and so a lot of the things that people feel like we should be able to have direct conversations with someone about and be able to influence a change. It's not realistic based on the size of the organization and there are processes to get some of these things done. And I think that both the leadership

[01:25:01] of LEAF, and the communications department is doing an amazing job of making these processes work in our favor, doing as much as we possibly can to get the things that we as parents want.

[01:25:16] That being said, we are still parents, so we aren't limited to the communication efforts that are happening through LEAF, which means that if you've got a specific issue and you can't go to your students school leadership then there is a conduit to which to make that to resolve those types of issues there's the let's talk platform there's the ombuds office there's so many other

[01:25:48] ways to address all of these things and leaf isn't the sole means that parents have to address these issues I have now I'm on my second kid going through LCP as a father I have a graduate and a kid that's in the ninth grade and the amount of conversations I've had both through the front door and the back door and the window and up the sewer pipe however it needs to happen that's what you got to do sometimes to make it work for you and complaining because or and it's not really the

[01:26:27] complaining it's the having the expectation that the carpet is going to be rolled out without effort on our parts to ring the bell and raise the alarm and say hey this is what we want and they can't read our minds and so we some of it is going to have to be that if it's something that's truly important to you and it you feel like it needs to be addressed have four or five other parents come and and speak at the um because because guess what the um elementary distance

[01:27:04] louton didn't happen because people complained about it and didn't come to every board meeting and speak up about it and make sure their issues were heard and go and complain to their principals and complain to the the counselors and complain to the teachers and make sure that because that's a huge budget outlay, matter of really a very short period of time, they've been able to make a difference about. Thank you. Appreciate your comments. Thank you. Yeah. And we, we're a new board, you know, and I can only speak for my actions, but I'm really open. I've been asking

[01:27:39] for lots of feedback. So email us, talk to us, we're here. Um, and I, I know that advocacy is happening at many, many levels. So it's, it's walking that line of, you know, building back that trust of communication and I think there is, we're a little bit broken in that area and so there's a little bit of a hangover from the last four years and all that that brought and I know we're trying to work against that to get back to the work of the schools and to really value your feedback so keep it coming and hopefully, you know, tonight you had direct access with the superintendent and Dr. Ellis who is, you know, the top of academics here so I think that the fact that they came here and spoke with us is

[01:28:17] super valuable and I had a lot of takeaway. I learned a lot so I appreciate that. Well I appreciate everyone attending the meeting today. Our next meeting is set for April 15th right back here in this room and again thank you all for attending tonight and hope you have a safe trip home. We are adjourned.

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