Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Specialized Programs & Centers Committee Meeting, Tuesday, August 6, 2024

Date: Tuesday, August 6, 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/995654132?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] - All right, good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call this August 8th, 2024 meeting of the Special Programs and Centers Committee to order. My name is Dr. Samara Rashid, and I am the chair of this committee. We appreciate your presence here today, and I've been notified that Arben Estreffi would like to remotely participate in tonight's school board meeting.

[00:00:20] Mr. Estreffi, please state your location and whether this is a medical or personal matter. - Hi, this is a personal matter, and I'm in an office space, in a private space. Okay, so therefore I will entertain a motion that Mr. Estreffi's request to participate remotely be granted.

[00:00:49] So moved. And then I second it. All right. Okay, so this will be Mr. Estreffi's first remote participation for this calendar year in the Special Programs and Centers Committee using a personal exemption.

[00:01:07] Any questions? We're good. All right. So the purpose of today's meeting is to briefly, yes, is there a question, Mr. Straffi? No.

[00:01:23] So the purpose of today's meeting is to discuss some information items, which is the BEAM here, which is the Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics Summer Math Discovery Program, and the HCA or Hillsborough Charter Academy Lease Renewal, and the Special Programs Update.

[00:01:42] Before we proceed, we value public input. If there's anyone from the public who wishes to address the committee, you can fill out a speaker card at the registration table. But be it that there are no public comments or public commentators, we will move on. So we need to approve the minutes from our last meeting, which feels like a while ago.

[00:02:03] But from June 4th, 2024, has everyone had a chance to review the minutes? Are there any corrections or additions? Okay, okay. If there's no objections or corrections, I entertain a motion to approve the minutes from June 4th, 2024. All those in favor say aye.

[00:02:22] Aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay, and the minutes have been approved. So I believe let's begin by reviewing the agenda, which is not very long, not very long.

[00:02:39] Are there any adjustments or additions to the agenda? If so, please raise your hand and state your proposed change. So be it that there's none, let's move on to our agenda items. The first agenda item is the Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics Summer Math Discovery Program.

[00:02:59] I'll turn it over to Mr. Slevin. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Rasheed.

[00:03:21] We are excited to be back here at the Special Programs Committee to kick off the fall of 2024 in working with you all as we continue to support the progress of our opportunities for students in LCPS. The first information we have tonight is on our Bridge to Entering Advanced Mathematics, or BEAM, Summer Math Discovery.

[00:03:43] Fresh off our summer break, our students and teachers have been busy with many different activities. BEAM is one item that we wanted to share with you as a committee to get an idea of some of the preparatory work we do for all of these special programs that we're trying to create within LCPS.

[00:04:00] As you know at times different options for students in terms of course course pathways math being one of them can either open doors or create barriers for students and so early on in our pursuit of more advanced opportunities for our students we realized the conversation with families and our students who really need to start at the elementary school level so the beam program is one of the innovative programs that we have started at LCPS and that has been in place for the past number of years as a big part in big part from of course the work of staff but also the Loudoun Education Foundation and external

[00:04:38] supporters such as the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation so members of the math department are here today to kind of give you an update on what happened this summer what is the goal of beam and how it supports the bigger picture for when it comes to opportunities for our students so I'm going to turn it over to Nicole our math supervisor who will introduce her team and go through the presentation all right thank you for having us here to share with you an update on our BEAM program. I'm Nicole Agoni. I am our math supervisor, and I have with me Brittany Sholeen, who is our math programs coordinator and really does all of the work for BEAM. She runs everything. And then I have Brett Johnson with us, who is a math resource teacher for us, but had

[00:05:14] the opportunity to intern and do his admin intern program with us this summer and supported BEAM. So they are both here and are going to share a little bit more about the program. So Jack Kent Cook, as Mr. Slevin said, brought BEAM to our school system in 21-22. So summer 22 was our very first year that we had our BEAM program. The BEAM program is run out of the Academies of Loudoun, which we're very lucky that we partner with that school and we're able to use the facility.

[00:05:43] And we're lucky that Jack Kent Cook funded the program. The students that were with us in the summer of 2022 are now entering ninth grade, and that was our inaugural year. Also, next slide. Also, as Neal said, Mr. Slevin said, we are funded by a number of people, including our local funds, our Loudoun County budget. We partner with LEF, which is, we're very lucky to additional funding from like Equinex, Raytheon, Google. So there's a number of funders that are funding our program so that we can support these students for our five to six week summer program.

[00:06:22] And I'm going to turn it over to Brittany now. So the purpose of the program is to really close the opportunity gaps that we typically see with historically marginalized students we do that by preparing them for high school mathematics we differentiate give that giving that that opportunity for students to engage in rich mathematics that they may not have experience with in regular school and then we're looking to have a greater participation with our special programs in Loudoun County and a higher advanced math courses next slide so how we do that is we really work in three ways we work to improve the confidence

[00:07:01] of our students you get nominated to be a part of the program you have to take an admissions test we go to the academies of Loudoun and we do that for a variety of reasons but one of which is to so that they can see themselves in that building that they know that there's programs available to them and so it really does improve their confidence when they see oh I was nominated I took this test and now I'm invited to participate and now I get to come to this amazing building and meet all these people and really strengthen my skills we also work to increase the math content knowledge Brett's gonna talk a little bit more about that and the courses that they take and then we

[00:07:39] develop their problem-solving skills through a variety of activities so I'm just going to run through a quick kind of overview of the program so it is a full-day program students get to the academies at about 8:30 and leave at about 3 o'clock all students take four math classes so every student took a course on fractions and then they get to choose some other courses of their interest all students there's open math time every single day where students can play different games with each other that are related to math by the end of the program students will participate in over 80 hours of math over the summer

[00:08:16] which is amazing and then finally we have activities that students can choose some we have outdoor activities indoor activities we have tie-dye so every student gets an awesome tie-dye shirt which is a really fun activity that the students loved. And finally, meals. Meals are something that is very important to us. Over 75% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch. So we provide all the meals. We provide breakfast, lunch, and snacks throughout the day. We provide lunch from different restaurants

[00:08:50] throughout Leesburg and Ashburn. It is a big hit. And then finally, we partner with the LEF Fueled program to provide families with supplies and different food that they can bring home to families over the weekends um so we just wanted to kind of share where our students end up the whole purpose of this program is to really set them up for success on an advanced math pathways to give them those opportunities so on this uh just the data display you see a graph for all students who were in math 6 in 21 22 and what course they completed their eighth grade year

[00:09:28] in the blue are students who attended lcps beam so you can see that the majority of our students from the program were in Algebra 1 or higher. We did have one in Geometry and then the majority of students who did not attend LCPS BEAM ended up in Pre-Algebra. And then we also have some data for the group that was with us, the rising eighth graders. If you go to the next slide, you'll see these students were in Math 6 the following year in 22-23 and this is what they took in their seventh grade year last year. Again, the blue is the LCPS BEAM students. The

[00:10:06] majority of those students going into pre-algebra so these students went from math 6 directly into pre-algebra which is math 8 skipping math 7 and so the majority of our students chose to do that in this following school year we don't have the enrollment data for this next school year but that is something that we are going to look at in addition to we always look at SOL scores map scores all of the achievement data as well and then we wanted to give an opportunity for this for you to hear from the students and so we have a video

[00:10:40] for their voices it should be able to there's a video on the slide deck that's attached all right and so we're gonna go ahead and go to the next slide we can't watch the video so here are plans for the future so we'll continue our mentorship program for the students that were with us last summer both the

[00:11:17] seventh and the eighth graders we have a variety of teachers that were with us this summer who will keep in contact with these kids and then I go out to the schools as well and then I'm really excited that we'll if we have the program next summer we'll be able to invite our inaugural students back to volunteer for us and so that will be a really cool experience to see them back for in a different way and then we are still looking for funding for the next

[00:11:43] summer and beyond I'm gonna try mr. Steffi I'm gonna try to show the video problem may be sharing through WebEx so you may not be able to see it so I

[00:12:05] apologize if that's the case no problem at all thank you great attempt it was

[00:12:47] great attempt we're gonna take questions and any comments from the board right now let me make sure mr. Steffi still in the meeting mr. Steffi you still there yes I am we are open to questions or comments okay thank you so much for that excellent presentation and giving us an update and more details about about all that is yet to come and all that's continuing that's continuing and happening currently. I'd like to open up the floor for discussion. So members of the committee, do you have any questions or comments? Yes, Mr. Estreffi, please. Thank you, Madam Chair. I

[00:13:25] really appreciate the presentation and all the efforts that go into programs like BEAM. Just wanted to get a little bit more information about the selection process and what that looks like across the schools and just kind of speak to how many seats are available and how the selection works, as well as transportation for this program. Okay, so selection, we make sure that we are pulling students from all of our middle schools. We start by saying that there are five students from each middle school, so we hold five spaces for each middle school, and then we open it up

[00:14:04] to have 180 students. That's the number of students we have available. We start by going out to the schools, meeting with all of our sixth grade teachers, and talking to them, the students that are in Math 6, a non-accelerated path, and seeing what students might have a passion for mathematics or could possibly do more and love math, want to try new things.

[00:14:27] And then we invite them to take a challenge. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that? And then I'll talk about transportation. So we have this problem-solving challenge. It's more about creative thinking, and every student that went to BEAM is a part of that.

[00:14:42] so we go around to all 17 soon to be 18 middle schools to administer that and then we score that as a team and then we look at we look at that we look at we also have an interview portion that talks about what they're interested in what they want to be when they grow up so we have that portion and then the problem-solving portion and then they get either an acceptance or a wait list and we as nicole said we have 180 seats i'll add one more thing before i talk about transportation We are also looking at students that fall in those historically marginalized communities.

[00:15:16] So we're looking at Black, Hispanic, special education, EL, and free and reduced lunch. And when we wrote our grant, we said that the grant requires us to have 75% in free and reduced lunch. So that is a big qualifier for students that are enrolled in the program.

[00:15:34] And then you asked about transportation as well. We do use LCPS transportation. Transportation and staffing is probably the most expensive part of the program. You would think lunches and catered lunches from all these wonderful places would be the most expensive, but businesses will often give us discounts or donate things to us.

[00:15:53] So transportation, we cover that. We use local funds for our transportation, and then our staff is funded through the grant. Thank you.

[00:16:09] Any other comments or questions? I had a question. Is there any plans to have this at another school rather than just Academies of Loudoun? I know that's something that we want to look forward in the future is to bring part of these programs to the summer school opportunities for the middle school.

[00:16:34] I don't know the extent of all of the entities that create BEAM, but I do know that the foundational classes are good for every middle school student to be a part of, and the curriculum is good. And then also for the bar graph, I know you said blue, and the blue and the red.

[00:16:53] With the blue, if you can interpret that for me again one more time with the data. So the blue bar represents the kids that attended LCPS BEAM. And so it talks about their courses that they're in. So the first bar, the left -- are you on -- all right.

[00:17:13] So for this one, the blue bar on the left shows that 80 percent -- about 80 percent of LCPS BEAM students took Algebra I their eighth grade year. And then if you look at the other bar, it's about, I can't really read that, maybe 20%. So together that makes up all the students that were in LCPS BEAM, 80% chose Algebra 1, 20% chose pre-algebra.

[00:17:34] And then for the students that were in Math 6 and 21-22 that were not a part of BEAM, about 25% ended up in Algebra 1 in 8th grade, and 75% of those students were in pre-algebra. Can you explain what the trajectory would have been for these students if they did not participate in BEAM?

[00:17:53] What would their general progression be? So if you are in math six, your progression would be math seven and then pre-algebra. And so what that does is it really limits your options for if you want to go to the Academies of Loudoun, if you want to go to AET, TJ, if you want to eventually take AP calculus, you really need to be in algebra one by eighth grade in order to have those opportunities.

[00:18:25] Okay. Just have to be patient. So we are seeing, to us, this shows significant success in this program. Our goal is to empower these students to build confidence and to open the door of an opportunity to take an advanced level math course.

[00:18:42] And we're seeing almost 75% of the students that are participating are taking that option. We alluded to it somewhat, but there's also a lot of collaboration with the schools in terms of these are the students, here's what they did over the summer. And there's some adjustments the middle schools have to do with their master schedules to accommodate these students.

[00:18:59] But we're seeing, you know, we talk about putting students on an advanced pathway. This program is doing that. I think that's what I'm seeing in the data. Thank you. Yeah, sounds very promising. And I can't wait to, you know, find out more data in the future and how the kids are going in this program.

[00:19:18] Really exciting. Any final thoughts or comments before I move on to the next agenda item? so i would like to take the opportunity to point out and this is something we talked about somewhat in the fyi 25 budget development process this is one of those innovative programs that we were able to do because of external funders over the past few years we have put some money in the operating budget in terms of supporting the program but as nicole mentioned there are significant costs for transportation for part-time hours that are still part of the grants and our grant partners at some point want to know well is this what you're going to do like is this a program that's

[00:19:55] working and are you seeing success and so while i wouldn't say this is going to have a huge impact on the fy 26 budget this is an example of a program where we might need to start offsetting some of the grant funds with local funds thank you mr slevin um okay and then we'll transition over to our next agenda item and that is the uh hillsborough charter academy lease renewal department of academics i'll turn it over to dr ashley ellis good afternoon dr rasheed and committee

[00:20:31] chairs as mr allen makes his way over to a microphone i will briefly introduce this item and turn it over to him to talk through the specific changes so you all will recall that we were very involved in the hillsborough charter academy's charter renewal in the in the spring and that was renewed before you all recessed in july what we did not do and need to do is update the lease agreement with hca and so division council has reviewed this and we have shared it with

[00:21:07] the hca board and they um just you they do have we do have in writing that they have reviewed it and are in support of the recommended changes.

[00:21:24] - Good afternoon, committee. I'm going to walk through the proposed track changes document on board docs and I'll entertain any questions. So again, most of our changes were cosmetic in nature or technical changes to correct inaccuracies in spacing or punctuation or spelling as you'll see.

[00:21:51] And again, the purpose of this is to extend the lease from July 1st, 2024, to June 30th, 2029. And we've done this previously for our other charter school as well.

[00:22:07] Moving to age one, we just cite the charter school renewal agreement that was executed by both the school board and the board of directors for HCA last month after the school board approved that at its June 25th, 2024 meeting.

[00:22:32] The next substantive change is on page 2 under paragraph 2. Again, it updates the term of the agreement and going through June 30th, 2029, changes references to the charter school agreement, to the charter school renewal agreement, and and then provides language that is consistent with applicable language from the Charter School Renewal Agreement.

[00:23:04] Next on page three under paragraph five, Changes and Improvement, we've updated 5A to include section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as it's applicable. That's consistent with the change we made to the Charter School Renewal Agreement as well.

[00:23:28] to page six under paragraph six c we've updated the school year from 2019 to 2020 to 2024 2025 we've corrected a spelling error on paragraph d and then in paragraph e under capital investment we've proposed language that is consistent with language that was updated through negotiations with HCA's board of directors, and is included in the charter school renewal agreement that the board approved back in June.

[00:24:10] Scrolling to page 8, paragraph 12, we provided, this is entitled law and just sets forth which law governs, which is the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and provides for jurisdiction provision on where any lawsuits or claims or legal actions could be filed should they arise, and it includes now the federal court, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, rolling to page 10. Paragraph 19 was previously

[00:24:50] titled indemnification. We've updated it to liability so that it's consistent with section 37.3 of the Charter School Renewal Agreement. Paragraph 20 was previously included was waiver of jury trial, which essentially took away the option to have a jury trial if there's ever a lawsuit that's filed for either party. So given that, so as not to take that option off the table for either party should a lawsuit arise, we propose striking that. And then paragraph 23,

[00:25:27] the law provision, you'll note that that's duplicative of paragraph 12 that we just looked at on page eight. So we went ahead and proposed striking that. And that concludes an overview of the substantive changes. And as Dr. Ellis indicated, these proposed changes were shared with HCA principal and HCA board of directors. And HCA board of directors president indicated there were no issues with these. Thank you, Mr. Allen. Right now I'd like

[00:26:06] to open the floor for any type of discussion questions or comments for this item all right and if there's no further comments or questions we will we will move on to the next agenda item which is special programs update i will now turn it over to mr slevin just confirming that we'll we'll bring that back in september as an action yes that will go to the school board um come back to the special programs committee for yes special programs committee for as as an action item rather

[00:26:39] than an information thank you so before I hand it off to Ms. Clark our director of academic programs we are excited to give you our first special programs update of the year Dr. Rashid and I have had a chance to talk a little bit about the agenda planning and upcoming topics for the special programs committee but one of the things I really want to connect to is Dr. Spence's entry plan and the school board strategic plan when it comes to providing

[00:27:17] opportunities and pathways for students so much of that work is going to be grounded within conversations we have in the special programs committee and the perspective of the board members here as we inform and seek approval through the capital improvements budget process through the operating budget process and through through board action and so today we want to give you kind of an update on the current status provide you some information on our most recent special program that we are planning with our access Academy then we want to give you a preview of a work session that is scheduled for August 13th for the full board in terms of the conversation and dialogue we want to have with the

[00:27:56] full board which hopefully we can bring back some of that feedback into this room as we make plans and decisions moving forward as a committee so with that I'm going to turn it over to miss Katie Clark thank you mr. Slevin and welcome back I hope you guys had a great summer thanks for giving us some time to talk about the agenda items that Mr. Sullivan just covered. So we'll go ahead and jump down to slide three. This is our updated special program status chart that you have seen before, but we do continue to make updates. I would like to call your attention to our second

[00:28:34] column, the proposal phase. We have two new program proposals that have come to the special programs office. An achievable dream, which is an elementary school program, and global and Linguistic Studies, which would be a high school program. They have been added to our proposal phase in that second column, and we will be sure to share additional information as we move forward with those two proposals at future committee meetings. I would also like to point out that you'll see a strike through on Air Force JROTC from our proposal list. We have heard that there

[00:29:09] is not any current expansion at this time. However, we will continue to look into additional ROTC programs that we might be able to bring and expand here in LCPS. Now I would like to give an update on our accelerated college and employability skills known as Access Academy. As we've shared before, the Access Academy is a lab school focused on supporting the transition of at-risk learners into college and high-demand careers in the field of information technology. This initiative is a

[00:29:47] collaborative effort between George Mason University, Northern Virginia Community College, and LCPS. The academy will be hosted by one of our LCPS high schools, and we'll share that in just a moment, and it is open to all students in Virginia. The program will commence in the 25-26 school year, where we will enroll 30 students at each grade level, 9th through 12th. So just some updates about the planning process for this Academy we successfully held the kickoff meeting with the different departments within LCPS we have

[00:30:26] scheduled and will hold regular monthly meetings where we will do status updates with all departments within LCPS we have ongoing weekly meetings with George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College that are held to address program logistics such as curriculum building transportation criteria for entering this program. We do have consistent weekly meetings focused on developing and refining the curriculum that's going to be offered through this Academy. We have conducted site visits to review and access

[00:31:02] potential locations for our students during the 11th and 12th grades and we have identified that the George Mason Fuse Center will be where our juniors and seniors will be hosted for their daily learning. And lastly the LCPS host site selection committee was held and we have a school selected that we will share in just a moment so here is our process for making the school decision for the access academy this process is the same that we have used for other programs when deciding so we held two high school principal

[00:31:37] sessions where we provided information about the program high school principals were sent the interest form and had until close of business on june 18th to submit their form if they were interested in hosting this program we held a committee we had a committee that met and looked at the following criteria to make a recommendation for the host site the criteria included four key areas it included alignment with the community survey that was done in 2022 ensuring that academy would support the local population school leadership interests played a pivotal role

[00:32:14] ensuring commitment and support from those at the helm building capacity was considered to guarantee the academy's feasibility within existing resources and lastly transportation and location were weighed into the decision to ensure accessibility and convenience for all students so with that we would like to announce that our lcps host site is potomac falls high school and i want to recognize that we have with us today, Dr. Brandon Wolf, the principal of Potomac Falls over here. And we

[00:32:50] appreciate his showing interest in hosting this program and look forward to his leadership with Access Academy. So thank you for being here today. Next, I would like to give an update on program admission timeline. So this graphic here shows our program admission timeline for all of our special programs so we worked really hard and to align our admissions especially for our high school programs so in March the first round of offers went out for all of our high school programs you'll note there that the DLI our elementary

[00:33:27] program they those offers did not go out till May they were on a different timeline April through July we had ongoing program enrollment right now currently we are each coordinator is working on finalizing admission for the first day of school making sure that we have transportation in place is crucial as well at the September SPC committee meeting we will share some just initial data about our program enrollment and then in November we plan on sharing out our final and mission data with the SPC committee and now I will turn it over to mr. Sullivan to give you a preview of our presentation for the board work

[00:34:06] session next Tuesday thank you miss Clark as has been mentioned we do plan on on having time at the August 13th full board meeting during the work session prior to the six o'clock meeting.

[00:34:22] So there's one other item, and this will be the second item discussing two topics. One is course planner, and the other will be around special programs and pathways, and the presentation is gonna be called Instructional Pathways. Course planner will be of interest to the members of this committee, 'cause I've had conversations with each of you individual courses for example where we have opportunities for certain moral languages where are there opportunities to innovate when it comes to courses and how can we increase transparency about the selection of courses for our students in the latter half of the presentation will be focused on special

[00:35:00] programs and instructional pathways particularly what it might look like in terms of building on a roadmap over the next few years when it comes to special programs we have shared this slide in the past but we will also be sharing with the full board all that goes into the planning process when it comes to the development of special programs we share your aspiration and providing as many opportunities as possible for our students but we also know that there is a process and there's a strategic way that we want to approach the development

[00:35:36] of these programs over the next number of years in LCPS starting the top left focusing on student interest if we build it will they come you know if we start a program and students don't apply for it then that that is something we probably want to know at the gate before we even start that this is something students want to do family and community is also very important are we capturing the identity of LCPS are we engaging in conversation with our families about what they're looking for in terms of opportunities for their students the business community is essential we want people to who graduate from Loudoun to live in Loudoun we want them to be gainfully employed we want to add to the

[00:36:15] community that we're building here in LCPS so are we meeting the needs of our workforce when it comes to labor demands in Loudoun but also the Northern Virginia region the budget process of course is going to have an impact in terms of what we're able to do when it comes to space when it comes to transportation when it comes to personnel for these special programs where do we start and then how do we build out over time in existing constraints school leadership has an impact in terms of the readiness for certain programs as well as school capacity and also thinking about school

[00:36:52] location when it comes to placing these programs and then of course the overall vision for the strategic plan because about while while I recognize special programs are certainly a priority for our school board you also have many other priorities that you need to think about strategically when it comes to all the all the work that you all would like to accomplish while on the board so we'll be talking about these inputs to the planning process with the full board we'll also be engaging in some level of conversation and we're hoping for a little bit of back and forth with the board next year around next week or the

[00:37:29] 13th when we meet in terms of where are you all at when it comes to thinking about our priorities when we plan for special programs and so we picked we kind of landed on five guiding principles that we're thinking about one is you know balance versus consistency meaning you know for hampsi we took the approach where we have multiple locations of health and medical sciences and so we have a school kind of in different parts of the county IB is something that comes up in terms of an interest in expanding into the eastern and southern part of the county but there may be times where we have a program in one school for

[00:38:05] example if with access Academy we're not anticipating to be able to put that in multiple schools so do we want to find regional participation in our special programs or are we okay with having really specialized programs in the East but maybe not in the West but maybe then we're planning something else for the West being responsive are we being responsive to student interest are we able to identify maybe there's a region in the county that that demands a certain type of special program or are we looking for parity I'm similar to what just shared are we aligned to industry need is that what is that what's going drive us like a big component of any special program is engagement with our

[00:38:41] local community is the industry interested in supporting our program is it sustainable meaning is there long-term success do we see students wanting to do this over time or is it driven by a teacher or student or school interest even with teachers are we going to be able to sustain it in terms of finding a teacher that's qualified for the program so we need to think about is it sustainable and then lastly it's cost-effective is it cost-effective as As you can imagine, depending on the scope of the academy, you know, do we go big, do we do multiple medium-sized programs?

[00:39:17] And so we want some thoughts in terms of how much these principles matter when it comes to different board members, if that makes sense. Then we also want to spend some time talking about scope, time, and budget.

[00:39:34] And this is where you may have asked about certain things, you know, do we want to have a fine arts program? Do we want to have a transition center for students with IEPs? Do we want to have a special program at high school 14?

[00:39:50] All of those decisions are impacted by decisions we've already made, meaning we still need to figure out the plan for alternative school long term. We still need to figure out a plan for our recovery school long term.

[00:40:05] We are working, we have a solution for our Access Academy, but there are existing commitments that the board has already made that have an impact as we think about new opportunities that may be in front of us so these three variables can work to determine what we do when they include the scope of the work that means what is included how large or small of an effort is that in terms of the order of magnitude of what we're trying to pull off how long will it take to implement what is the cost how much budget will we have to work with and then of course a big part of this is location. So I appreciate Mr. Lewis and his team being here but in terms of

[00:40:44] location do we have an existing space? An example that I plan to bring to the full board is we do have some space kind of earmarked at high school 14 and so we have a little bit of time to develop a scope within the existing space constraints at high school 14 for a specialized program but if we were talking about for example a fine arts academy we don't necessarily have a scope yet. We don't necessarily have a location that's ready to go so are we talking about new construction are we talking about lease or purchasing space are we talking about an addition on a building all those things impact the time and the budget in terms of what we're actually able to accomplish and so we're going to try to

[00:41:22] kind of get the board to understand we need to be thinking about this in terms of multiple years when it comes time when it comes to where we want to go when it comes to special programs like what can we accomplish in the short term what can we accomplish in the median term and then what can we accomplish in the long term with these three factors kind of staying in balance and so while we're going to be talking about this with the full board this will definitely be part of the conversation here in the special programs committee as we move forward and then we asked we're gonna ask for a little bit of discussion from the full board what are your thoughts of with regard to the guiding principles and then maybe which two are rising to the top in terms of your thinking about

[00:42:02] special programs and opportunities for our students and then thinking about what we discussed about scope time and budget what do you think staff should be considering as we plan future opportunities and so the board will have an opportunity to give us some written feedback and then we hope for a little bit of dialogue on board member priorities we then see us coming back with that information to the full to this committee to where we start putting together some proposals that we feel are workable and I can move forward successfully in service of our students and families so with that that is our updates um we are hopeful for a little bit of feedback on what we're thinking about on our

[00:42:42] approach with the full board if we're asking the right questions and hitting on the right topics or if you have any comments or questions on anything we've presented in this update okay thank you mr slevin any any discussion i'd like to open the floor for any questions or any comments that's very thorough um okay yes oh yes mr streffi um thank you um just wanted to um say i do appreciate the discussion at the full board level and kind of a facilitated uh workshopping

[00:43:20] of this because i think it's really important um as you've stated that we all understand each other's um uh priorities and guiding principles um i think it'll allow us as a board to move a a little bit faster in terms of, you know, setting whatever that on-ramp looks like for what's to come. I think creating the opportunity for us to have a more facilitated discussion. So we also understand each other's priorities when it comes to special programs. And we can kind of come together and compromise and, you know, narrow this a little, narrow the discussion a little bit

[00:43:59] more. I think that that's what we've been missing. So I really appreciate and look forward to the board discussion. Thank you, Mr. Streffi. Okay, and then that being said, any other questions, comments? All right. Okay. So our next meeting is scheduled for September 3rd, 2024 at 3.30 p.m. Mark your calendars. Is there any new business before I move on? All right. If there's no further, if there's no new business, I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting.

[00:44:35] All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And those not in favor say nay. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you for coming out.

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