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Loudoun County School Board, Loudoun Education Alliance of Families (LEAF) Committee Meeting, Monday, May 20, 2024

Date: Monday, May 20, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 26m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/948753598?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] Welcome, LEAF members. I know it's a chaotic time of year. We've been saying it's May-cember or May Madness. I feel like if you're a parent and you survive May, you could survive just about anything. So I appreciate your time and coming here for our meeting this evening. If you haven't done so already, please sign in using your phones. There's a QR code on your agenda or on your handouts. We don't have the computers at the end of the table today, as you probably noticed, so go ahead and sign in that way. I will call to order the May 20th LEAF meeting. This meeting will come to order. The first item on the agenda is public comment. LEAF meetings are open to the public.

[00:00:38] Lowndes County residents are welcome to attend the meeting but must refrain from 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. Okay, moving on to our next action item the april 15th 2024 meeting minutes were emailed to everyone this morning and are included in the handouts we are experiencing some website upload interruptions but we'll upload tonight's materials as soon as we are able to i will entertain a motion to accept

[00:01:14] the minutes from the april 15th 2024 meeting as submitted is there a second we have a second all All in favor say aye. All those opposed. With no changes requested, the minutes stand approved as submitted. At this time, I would like to invite Mr. Aaron Smith, Chief Technology Officer, to share

[00:01:40] a thought exchange about social media on our school campuses. Thank you, Mr. Smith.

[00:02:04] Good evening. So I'm here real quick to have a conversation about social media. So currently, social media is blocked for all students, K through 8, but we do allow Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, X, in pinterest for high school students so we're thinking of changing that going into next school year so we're just looking to collect some feedback is that link are you guys able to get

[00:02:32] to that you'll see the first page give some brief introductory comments about it it references the surgeon general's comments about student mental health and social media and then we're just asking for some feedback on potential benefits and then what could some things that are negatively impacted

[00:03:08] by this. Examples would be clubs, after school use, theater, publications, journalism, marketing, anything like that so we can kind of collect that before we make this. So I'll give you guys a few minutes to fill out the thought exchange. Correct. Right now it's currently blocked for students in

[00:03:40] elementary and middle. So we're really collecting feedback from the whole group. Well, I'll probably need to look into that more directly, but it is blocked in our content filter for K through eight students. Yeah, we're just looking to collect feedback from our advisory group. So even though is focused on high school. We're looking for anyone who can fill it out and kind of give us

[00:04:18] some feedback there.

[00:04:52] Can you get the QR code back up from the presentation?

[00:05:08] If you choose your role, choose however you want your response viewed. So we really are just using that to theme responses by role. So it doesn't have a direct impact on really what responses are or how they're rated.

[00:05:35] It's just so we can theme them based off of groups.

[00:09:44] We'll leave this up for another minute

[00:09:45] if anyone needs a little bit of extra time.

[00:10:43] All right. Well, thank you all very much for your feedback we will collect this again any changes would be made at the beginning of next school year so we're really collecting feedback to do some communications around that so that we can let schools in community know what those changes may be so I appreciate the feedback and I will turn it back over thank you and I'll take this back over to you all right now Lauren Chernoff is going to provide us with a school board update hey everybody how we doing we survived last week

[00:11:22] all the things all right awesome it's great to see everybody I can't believe it's the last meeting of the season, and we're very grateful for you serving this year, and it's been fun jumping in here in January and being in this new capacity. I wanted to give you a couple of quick overall school board updates and then just dive into a little bit about the policy work that we're going to continue to do. Thank you for a lot. We got a lot of feedback about that last time, some concerns going forward, but also some encouraging feedback that you liked that addition, so hopefully

[00:11:55] we can continue to tweak it. I wanted to give an update on a couple big items. So the first one is I want to talk about the focus groups for our transgender policy for 8040. So procurement is currently soliciting for RFPs for different third-party vendors to come in and facilitate those groups. That deadline is May 22nd. And once that closes, a panel then will be established to review the RFPs and then one will be chosen. So hopefully at the June student services meeting

[00:12:30] there'll be an update about what that's going to look like. So I know last time I had told you that 8040 is in committee and it is, but feedback from the public is not currently being solicited because procurement is in process. So once that ends and the focus groups have convened and that's reported back, then that policy will go back to revision and then it will open up for feedback.

[00:12:54] And once that link goes live, that will likely be the time that we can have that conversation here, as it was the number one policy that you all emailed us about discussing. So I didn't want to dismiss your feedback, but there's no place to put it right now in terms of LCPS.

[00:13:09] So we're not just kicking the can for any reason. There is reason behind it. I also wanted to update you on where we are with collective bargaining. You may have been hearing about that as well. So the former school board had kind of punted that, if you will, to the Legislation Audit Policy Committee.

[00:13:29] And we, as a committee, I'm on that committee, decided to host a joint committee that was established to bring all the stakeholders to the table. So it was made up of LEA reps, LCPS employees that are not LEA members. There was LCPS administrator, admin staff, and then there was also school board members on that committee.

[00:13:50] And it convened multiple times, so it was March 20th and then April 15th and then May 2nd, or no, April 15th and then May 2nd, I think. And what the goal was was to come to consensus, if you will, from the LCPS staff side and the LEA side.

[00:14:10] The LEA had submitted eight things from the resolution that they were not happy about and that they wanted to reconsider. and then they were going to have some conversation with the mediator to come to consensus. The first two meetings were held to just sort of get all the ideas on the table, and then the last meeting was supposed to be held last week with a mediator, but per the recommendation of LEA, they decided to walk away from a mediator and not use one, just in the way that the conversations were going, and you can listen to that online if you would so like.

[00:14:43] It's eight hours long. And they just could not reach any consensus on any of the eight items. There was no compromise. And so they decided to forego the mediator. And now that work will be back in committee, likely May 30th next week when LAMP meets.

[00:15:01] It will be discussed at some level, but that's up to the chair's discretion. So I just wanted to let you know that the collective bargaining resolution portion of where we are is now back in committee and the joint committee has concluded. Okay? So that's the update on that.

[00:15:18] And then obviously last week after the board meeting, during the board meeting, a professional development plan was released for feedback to the public with 16 two-hour delays. You might have heard about it. I don't know, maybe.

[00:15:34] And quickly within 24 hours, LCPS had received over 2,000 emails. I personally had over 500 comments on my Facebook post about it and 65 shares. I mean, 55 shares, and we quickly went back to the drawing board, and hopefully you saw on Friday from Dr. Spence that we are going back to the drawing board.

[00:15:55] We're going to try to find some other options. But to that end, the feedback link is still open because now we need new ideas, and so we will be talking about that tonight in our group. So if you have suggestions or things to think about, like I said, we're kind of back at the drawing board to get that going.

[00:16:13] So I wanted to make sure that we talked about that. I know it's not policy, but it is a really unique situation where the feedback is open in a tight window and LEAF happens to meet. So we thought this was a great opportunity to show that we can be responsive and pivot, just like we're going to pivot with the two-hour delay, and show that we can take that feedback.

[00:16:33] So tonight we're going to be taking in that feedback and putting it in the thought exchange so that they also hear from LEAF and designating it from you all. And then, additionally, I just wanted to, the other policy we're going to talk about tonight was the second most requested, which was the cell phone policy, personal use device policy, which, unfortunately, was supposed to be discussed tonight at the Student Account, Students Account Discipline and Accountability, is that how you say it, committee?

[00:17:01] obviously I'm not on that one and that meeting got canceled due to some unforeseen circumstances so we are working hard to reschedule because if we don't get that rescheduled the policy won't be in place for next school year and we really want it to be so I want you to know that we're working hard to get that done but so we're so but the feedback is still live so we're going to make sure we get that submitted for you all tonight and then I just wanted to address one particular thing that kept coming up in some of you all's feedback about the policy process. In some committees like SEAC, it's my understanding that special education, it's my understanding that they try to come to

[00:17:39] united consensus about feedback and then present a united vision to the board. I would like to say I don't think that that's really what LEAF is going for. I think we represent a lot of diverse opinions and the feedback from us is more to represent your school committee communities you're supposed to represent that voice and i doubt that we could get all 100 schools on the same well 98 100 in the fall on the same page about one singular issue um just being realistic thinking about that so really the idea for us for sherry and i when we tackled this was

[00:18:15] really to give you a place and space to share and digest some of your feedback during the meeting record it in the meeting so that we have a lot more feedback you know we can get more feedback to our committees and have that so i just wanted to address i think there was some confusion that we were trying to come up with one proposed policy recommendation um and that's just really not the purpose of this advisory committee um so with that that's all i have and we will pass to sherry sherry knows what's going on not me thanks lauren all right so our next item for this evening is our

[00:18:52] collaborative conversation activity these conversations are a result from our member feedback but before we head into our activity I just wanted since this is our final meeting of this 2023-2024 school year I wanted to share what we have accomplished thus far this year so this is our eighth meeting all eight meetings have included LEAF member suggested agenda items all those items we have discussed and asked to be shared with your representative school communities are listed on the slide above me. So I would like to thank Superintendent Dr. Spence

[00:19:28] for taking the time to join us for two of our eight meetings. Members have been sent policy review notifications and before every meeting members are sent an advanced comment and question form followed by a post-meeting feedback form. Leave leadership reviews and discusses to help inform our next meeting and our meeting content. For each we have received a total of 10 items from six members on the advanced comment and question form and 17 responses on the post-meeting feedback form. So next year our goal is to increase those numbers and also increase our

[00:20:03] participating schools. So we just wanted to recap where we were and we do have lots of room to grow and we really look forward to next year hitting the ground running. Lauren's a great thought partner. We've worked really well together. We'll be working this summer so that in our first meeting in august we will be ready to go so that is the wrap up for that now we are going to move on to our collaborative conversations tonight we are sitting according to cluster groups lauren and i and then we have joshua tom from the instructional technology team

[00:20:38] and aaron smith dr mr aaron smith we just heard from and we're going to rotate among those groups our topics tonight again in response to membership interest in these topics include current school board topics and technology. Like our previous meetings, groups will converse, ask questions, offer feedback, and connect. Staff will start conversations with one group and then rotate to the other after 15 minutes. LEAF members will not need to move, and we will provide a three-minute wrap-up warning, one minute, and then a prompt wrap-up for presenters to shift. Do we have any

[00:21:13] questions before we get started? Are we going to do two? No, three. Two this way. Okay, so this half and that half so we need well we don't have enough room for everyone to fit at that one and that one right so do you want them at the would you say joe i'm sorry oh just pull up chairs okay so we're just going to pull up chairs for two groups there and there okay and then we're the to our group and

[00:21:47] the technology group we're not doing three groups okay so we're going to be over here okay we'll start over here so pull up your chairs in the circle here pull up your chairs in a circle over there and we'll start and us as presenters will move good evening excuse the interruption everybody has three minutes left in their discussion group. Three-minute warning. One minute left in our groups, one minute remaining, and then we'll wrap up. All right, everyone. I hate to stop conversations, but we are coming up on time. Thank you so much for engaging in these collaborative conversations.

[00:22:26] You guys can go back to your tables. I hope everybody enjoyed the conversations. I heard a lot of great ideas. All right, so before we move on to our new business, I wanted to remind everyone that the 2024-2025 meeting dates for next year are on your handout, and they have been added to the website. I hope I see everyone back next year. I've enjoyed working with this group, so

[00:23:04] it would be great to see all of your faces back next year. I don't know. Let me see what this is. Also, I wanted to remind you that your membership will be still active through June 30, 2024.

[00:23:22] So during that time, you are free to engage with me as your LEAF leadership, our school board member, Lauren, thank you so much, and our staff. We will also send any additional information that comes our way, like policy reviews, book challenge, committee volunteers, or any other division needs.

[00:23:41] And then Christina has something that she's going to share.

[00:24:13] Thanks.

[00:24:57] All right. Now we'll move on to new business. Is there any new business at our last meeting? Okay, I do want to take the opportunity to thank Lauren for being so involved and engaged. I feel like she's really helped move this forward.

[00:25:14] If you have been a part of a LEAF two years in a row, you know it's a big difference, and I really appreciate her time and really engaging with us. I feel like it's moved us in the right direction, so thank you so much. I appreciate it. Our first meeting of the 2024-25 school year is on August 19th here in this room for those of you returning I really look forward to seeing you again I hope you have a wonderful summer for those of you who won't be returning maybe your kids are are done we really appreciate your time and contributions and congratulations if you do have kids graduating at this time I'd like to bring our last meeting of the 2023-24

[00:25:52] school year to a close and we are adjourned thank you

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