Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Legislative, Audit and Policy Committee Meeting, Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Date: Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 41m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1010584887?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

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

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[00:00:00] Good evening. This is April Chandler calling to order the Legislative Audit and Policy Committee meeting for September 17th, 2024. We will not have public comment tonight as we have no speakers. The meeting will be audio recorded and posted in board docs.

[00:00:19] We are going to move on to item 3.01, approval of the August 20, 2024 draft minutes. May I please have a motion to approve the August 20, 2024 meeting minutes? move to approve those minutes. Second. I'm here, I promise. Thank you. This motion has been made by Ms. Donahue and seconded by Ms. Chernoff. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.

[00:00:53] Aye. Seeing none opposed, the motion passes unanimously with all committee members present. At this point, we'll move on to our information items, starting with item 4.01, Office of the Auditor General 2024 Annual Report. The Office of the Auditor General was established in October 2022. The department reports its activity summary to the school board pursuant to policy 3410, Office of the Auditor General. Mr. Ahmad Woods, the Auditor General, will present. The floor is yours, Mr. Woods. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Chandler and members of the committee.

[00:01:33] Today, I am honored to present the Office of the Auditor General's annual report. The purpose of this report is to maintain compliance with internal audit standards and provide transparency regarding OAG operations which can aid the strategic alignment of the office with the one LCPS strategic plan for excellence. Next slide, please. Topics we'll cover today include providing a brief background on the OAG, describing the office, discussing the insurance engagements commonly referred to as audits, offering insight into the upcoming year's initiatives,

[00:02:12] and concluding with a recap of the My Concern is Hotline. Approved by the Loudoun County School Board in May of 2022, the OAG consists of one Auditor General, two internal auditors, and one additional staff member. The Auditor General assumed office October 12, 2022, and soon established the My Concern is Hotline in January 2023. Shortly thereafter, the OAG became fully staffed in April of 2023. Program description. The OAG provides independent, objective assurance, and consulting

[00:02:52] services aimed at increasing value and enhancing the division's accountability and transparency. It designs, manages, and executes the division's audit plan. Its efforts focus on operations through these independent and objective services. In a shortened fiscal year of 2023, the OAG began two audits, the Audit of Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 and an audit of the Fine Arts Stipend Program. These engagements marked the first audits executed by the OAG, with the

[00:03:27] Form I-9 audit being issued on September 27, 2023. The fine arts audit is still in progress and will lead into our board approval fiscal year 2024 annual audit plan. The approved FY24 annual audit plan consisted of six audits. We recently issued the special education staffing audit with the audit of student software applications coming soon, followed by the audit of student placement policy and procedures. After these reports are issued, the stipend audit will follow. Once the

[00:04:03] stipend audit report is issued, we will have cleared our backlog. Next, we have our achievements, beginning with the appointment of the Auditor General in October 22, which marked the start of a new division within LCPS. Shortly after the Auditor General assumed office, the OAG created an audit committee tasked with overseeing the office. This committee has since merged with the Legislative and Policy Committee to form today's LANP committee. Other achievements include launching the My Concerns hotline to help prevent fraud, waste, and abuse, securing approval for the FY21

[00:04:41] and the FY25 annual audit plans, and completing the OAG's first internal audit engagement. We also became fully staffed during this period and joined the professional organizations of Association of Local Government Auditors and the Institute of Internal Auditors.

[00:05:00] During our introductory 20 months, we also faced several challenges. These include developing a framework for the office, defining the scope and objectives within the school division environment, establishing processes and communication channels, building credibility, and ensuring timeliness of our reports.

[00:05:23] This brings us to our fiscal year 2025 initiatives. During the current fiscal year, the OAG will complete its Office of Audit Manual. This internal audit manual will include the requirements for conducting audits within the OAG, and will also provide guidance such as work paper templates, standard operating procedures, and Policy 3410.

[00:05:45] The manual and its distribution to audit staff are key components of any external peer review that will eventually be performed on the OAG. This year, we will enact a formal quality insurance and improvement plan, also known as QAIP, where once we had nothing, now we have something to improve upon.

[00:06:05] The QAIP will be an ongoing process, including continuous reviews and lessons learned to identify areas for improvement and enhance efficiency and economy. Beginning next fiscal year, the OAG will adopt new audit standards released by the Institute of Internal Auditors.

[00:06:27] To prepare for these new standards, the OAG will conduct a conformance readiness assessment during this current fiscal year to identify gaps in our current practices and the new standards. This will ensure the OAG is properly prepared to adopt the new standards beginning July 1, 2025.

[00:06:46] Lastly, the OAG will continue to perform audit engagements under its current LAMP-approved annual audit plan, two of which have already begun, the audit of IT third-party risk and the audit of LCPS staff support and advocacy resources. We will now move on to the final stages of our presentation and discuss the My Concerns is hotline.

[00:07:10] The My Concern hotline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and provides a convenient and anonymous way for employees to report suspected instances of fraud, misuse of LCPS property, unethical conduct, and other workplace concerns.

[00:07:28] The objective of the hotline is to ensure compliance with all applicable laws, LCPS rules, and policies, and to combat fraud, waste, and abuse. Next page. Since it's launched in January of 2023, the hotline has received a total of 13 concerns, nine of which have been categorized as closed, and four are still remaining as open.

[00:07:57] Who is reporting to the hotline? Well, out of 13 total concerns, seven reports have come from parents, guardians, and family members. Three have come from LCPS staff, and three have come from the community, meaning these reports were either completely anonymous or from individuals without any established direct relationship to students, staff, or others within LCPS.

[00:08:22] Next slide. In the annual report itself, you will find a more detailed account of everything discussed here. This concludes the OIG's presentation, and I am happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Woods.

[00:08:39] Are there any questions or comments from the committee? Ms. Donahue? Thank you, Chair Chandler. Thank you, Mr. Woods, very much for this presentation and the information. I am curious with regard to the hotline, and I presume that there are confidentiality issues, but are you able to give us any vague general descriptions of what kind of complaints that you're seeing through there?

[00:09:08] - Yes, without identifying any one particular concern. A lot of the concerns we receive are concerns that aren't really suited towards our office. In other words, they're not really a concern that's related to fraud, waste, or abuse.

[00:09:25] They are more concerned with general issues. So a parent may call and want a student's grades released before graduation so they can have that to get a scholarship or submit paperwork. And so many of the things they call us for are not geared or not something we can look at or is not under our purview.

[00:09:50] - Thank you. And so this is 13 totals since the hotline opened in January, 2023. Has there been an increase the longer that it's been open in the frequency of the complaints? - I would say the reverse. In the first several months, there was a spike and then it's slowed down.

[00:10:10] So I'd say in the first eight to nine months, so through September 2023, is when we saw probably most of our concerns. And since the start of the year, there's probably been a slight decline. - Thank you very much.

[00:10:28] - Ms. Chernoff. - Thank you, Chair Chandler, and thank you, Mr. Woods. One of the things you mentioned on slide nine, and something that I've learned more about in working with you and your office is about one of the challenges being timelines and timeliness, can you speak to a little bit, I know you try to do a great job of projecting out when things are gonna be delivered and just recently we delivered the special education staffing audit, which I know a lot of our special education staff have been kind of monitoring when is that gonna come out.

[00:11:00] So if you could just speak to what those challenges are and how that kind of all works as you interface with the different departments and LCPS. - It's kind of two-fold with timeliness. One, it's starting a brand new office within an organization with all new employees.

[00:11:17] In setting up an office, we need to establish standard procedures and standard work parameters. And my staff is, they do have experience, but they don't have experience working with me. And so one of the staff members I did work with in a prior organization.

[00:11:35] And so the way we do standard work papers here is different than where she came from. And so I take a federal employee approach. That's where my experience started. And what that looks like is a pyramid. And so by the time you see an audit report, that is work paper A.

[00:11:52] And everything funnels down from A through Z. And everything has a categorized. And so that alpha numeric way of categorizing things are things I have to teach the staff. And so even though they have experience, they don't have experience maybe doing it this way.

[00:12:08] And so when we did the first three audits, we all worked together. And so I had to go in and actually do all the work papers and set them up and then show them what to do on the first three audits. And that doesn't really lend itself to efficiency. And so that's what we were doing the first three audits.

[00:12:24] And so now they kind of understand what I expect and how the work papers are. They're standardized. And so now they each have their own audits that they lead. So that's one aspect to timeliness. The other is a challenge of working around schedules of organizations.

[00:12:43] So management and senior leadership, those individuals are busy. They have their own tasks that they're supposed to do on a day-to-day duty. And being a new internal audit function and coming and knocking on the door, they just simply have other priorities, rightfully so, that they need to address.

[00:13:01] And so working around those schedules, especially on something like the SPED audit, Where you have three departments, you have HRTD, you have business and financial services, and you have office of special education. These are three areas that are highly busy and trying to coordinate meetings, trying to coordinate feedback.

[00:13:23] It does take time. Also, because we were a new department or division, they might have unclear expectations of what we're asking for them. So when we do send them items and they're like, well, I've never had an audit, an internal audit report provided to me, I don't really understand how I should respond.

[00:13:45] And we can't really lead the witness, so to speak, in my department. And so once I give you a finding, I can kind of tell you, okay, well, this is how you should respond. This is the date we expect to give back. And we can also sit down and discuss it. But I cannot tell them what to put in the response.

[00:14:01] And they're trying to figure that out as they go along. top of everything that they have to do on a day-to-day basis. Thank you. Are there any more questions from the committee? All right, seeing none, we'll move on to our next information item, 4.02 Policy 1040, Equal Opportunity for Equitable, Safe, and Inclusive Environments.

[00:14:24] This policy is being reviewed at this time to be in compliance with recent changes to the Virginia Code as a result of legislation in the 2024 General Assembly, specifically House Bill 18. Changes are being made to comply with updates from the Virginia State Code and also include staff suggestions.

[00:14:44] Dr. Smith will be presenting. Dr. Smith, the floor is yours. Thank you, Chair Chandler, board members. So policy 1040, equal opportunity for equitable, safe, and inclusive environment. I just want to note before I start in board docs, you do have one, you have actually two red lines that are there.

[00:15:02] We have one red line that was posted earlier, and then in working with staff, we have some additional suggestions that was posted. So you'll see a red line 1040 with today's date that was posted today. And I'll talk through both of those, but I'd like to focus on the 917 version just to talk about some of the suggested changes there.

[00:15:23] It was in working with staff, like I said, we have a couple of suggestions we'd like to share. Dr. Ellis Williams, our Assistant Superintendent for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility is here and her and her team have been really helpful in working through this policy. So, as Chair Chandler stated, this policy is being revised in order to be in compliance with recent changes to Virginia Code, specifically House Bill 18.

[00:15:48] And so we have incorporated that change, which adds ethnic origin as a protected class, and we've also updated the legal references here. In reviewing this policy, we also noted that military status was not included, but it's a federal protected class, so we wanted to make sure that that was included, so we've added that to this policy here, too.

[00:16:07] In referring to, again, the version that has the 917, we are suggesting a couple of other changes to the language for clarity. Specifically, on line 16, we've added language to be clear that every policy shall reflect this commitment, and in partnership with district leadership, every practice and procedure is equally aligned to our affirmations.

[00:16:27] And really, we felt like this statement also helps to communicate that setting policy and direction is the responsibility of the school board. And it's the responsibility of the superintendent and division staff to align practices and procedures to those established policies. And so we felt like that provided some more clarity there.

[00:16:43] Detail was also added to line 20, stating that mistreatment, bullying, harassment, and otherwise harmful actions are prohibited. And we believe that this provides more clarity to the current language, which only describes the actions as demeaning. Additionally, staff are suggesting that on line 23, removing the standalone terms of sexual orientation and gender identity as they're already captured within this sentence when we look at perceived sexual orientation, perceived gender identity.

[00:17:11] And so those are the recommended changes from staff for policy 1040. It is an information item, and we're happy to hear any questions you may have. Thank you, Dr. Smith. Dr. Ellis-Williams, would you be comfortable providing some context to us at this time? Thank you, Dr. Smith.

[00:17:38] You did a great job capturing all of the thoughts around how we came to the conclusion. I realize afterwards it is not embedded in the Virginia VDOE, but citizen status was not included. And so just to bring that to the attention, thank you, Chair Chandler, Ms. Chernoff, and Ms. Donahue for giving me this opportunity.

[00:17:58] But in doing so, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for giving us the opportunity to socialize the document and really give a lens of equity as it relates to what we want to do and what's the ethos of mission for LCPS. So if I could indulge you with your permission, I wanted to just reiterate with a lens of gratitude.

[00:18:17] Of course. Thank you. So I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to socialize the identification and appropriate protected classes within this policy. Implementing an equal opportunity policy and recognizing that in doing so requires continuous assessment and adjustment.

[00:18:34] is not just about creating rules, but also about embedding these principles into the organizational culture of LCPS. Further, this involves training, clear communication, and a willingness to address biases and barriers that might hinder the fairness. So thank you for endorsing equity. Achieving equity can be complex because it requires a deep understanding of unique needs of different groups and an ongoing commitment to addressing disparities. It often involves tailored approaches rather than a one-size-fit-all solution.

[00:19:06] Policies need to be dynamic and responsive to the changing needs of the population. So again, thank you. Thank you for endorsing equity. Achieving equity can be complex because it requires a deep understanding as well. But thanking you for endorsing safety because safety in the workplace or any environment is a foundational element of trust and well-being.

[00:19:27] Policies must not only address safety in a broad sense, but also be protective in preventing and responding to incidents. This includes having clear reporting mechanisms, which we do, providing supports to those that are affected or impacted and taking decisive actions against those violations.

[00:19:45] And lastly, thank you for endorsing inclusivity. Inclusivity goes beyond just accepting diversity. It's about actively fostering an environment where all voices are heard and respected. And this requires an ongoing effort to break down barriers to participation and to celebrate and leverage diverse perspectives.

[00:20:03] So, again, thank you for allowing us to engage, and we look forward to continuing to do so. Thank you, Dr. Ellis Williams. Mr. Allen, if I could, I guess, take a point of preference. Would you be comfortable explaining to us some of your recommendations in terms of the modifications in the third paragraph?

[00:20:29] Thank you, Chair Chandler. Yes. With the proposed deletions on lines 23, the thought there was that with respect to sexual orientation and gender identity, those are included in the protected classes that are set forth earlier in the second paragraph on lines 12 through 14.

[00:20:52] So it's rather duplicative to include that. It appears on the plain reading that the intent there to include other personal characteristics that are not protected classes, such as socioeconomic level, perceived sexual orientation, perceived gender identity, or gender expression, those aren't necessarily protected classes under the Virginia Human Rights Act, but it appears that the prior board viewed these as personal characteristics that fall within the board's purview for equal opportunity for equitable, safe and inclusive environment.

[00:21:29] So to avoid any confusion, that was a rationale behind deleting those two protected classes, just to avoid the duplicative nature of those. - Thank you so much, Mr. Allen.

[00:21:45] With that, are there any questions or comments from the committee? Ms. Chernoff? - Thank you all for your work on this. And I apologize, I'm working off this new red line version. I'm gonna try and toggle, it's not the one that I printed.

[00:22:02] I just have one question about the, just the reasoning of why the protected class, the protected categories from the Virginia Human Rights Act are not all additionally listed in the bottom part of the policy.

[00:22:18] I just wanna ensure that they are also covered in not being mistreated, bullied or harassed. So making sure that we're covering it in the top, that we have a commitment to those things, but that those also those categories would also be in. I understand the nuances of adding the new ones that weren't included necessarily in the Virginia Human Rights Act.

[00:22:38] But I just want to ensure that the language of this policy, as it's written, still gives coverage for the above categories as well, if that makes sense. Thank you, Ms. Chernoff. I understand the confusion or potential confusion or concern.

[00:22:55] Hearing that, one recommendation or proposed language that this committee could consider is revising this last sentence to read mistreatment, bullying, harassment, and otherwise harmful.

[00:23:11] And I believe harmful was accidentally stricken from that, so we'd want to include that. Otherwise harmful actions are prohibited, particularly if on the basis of the personal characteristics listed above, period. And then to the extent this committee would like to retain perceived gender identity, gender expression, and perceived sexual orientation, moving that up into the earlier paragraph, if that would provide more clarity, that could be an option.

[00:23:40] Is there anything that would preclude us from doing that? Do we have to have a separation of those groups because of the Virginia Human Rights Act? We can add those into that list ourselves, correct? Yes, Ms. Chernoff, that's correct. And the previous board's will was to include those as characteristics that would be kind of, quote, protected.

[00:24:01] Yeah, I think it makes it a little bit clearer and cleaner if we just include everything as part of protecting and honoring. I think those all deserve those things. So I want to make sure that the policy covers that. So I would ask my colleagues if they would agree or not.

[00:24:20] I would be in support of that. Sounds fine. I have no issue with that. Are there any more questions? Ms. Donahue. Thank you, Chair Chandler, and thank you to all of you for your work on this policy and the presentation and discussion about it.

[00:24:40] I cannot say that it occurred to me prior to Dr. Ellis-Williams commenting on it, but I would like us to consider adding perceived citizenship or immigration status in the list of personal characteristics that we're addressing here.

[00:24:59] I would be amenable to that as well. Me too. So we'd be happy to make those changes and bring you back the policy with those changes at our next meeting.

[00:25:19] Thank you so much, Dr. Smith. Are there any further questions or comments? I've missed on you. I guess I was just wondering if it's going to come back for action and presumably be circulated for public feedback.

[00:25:36] Yes, ma'am. If that's the will of the committee, we'd be happy to send that out for feedback, but we would send it out for feedback with the changes that you've discussed today. With that, we'll move on to item 4.03, policy 2420 meeting procedures. Dr. Smith will be presenting. Dr. Smith, the floor is yours.

[00:26:04] Thank you again. So policy 2420 meeting procedures is up for it for review. It does require some change from the recent General Assembly session, specifically by House Bill 1040, Senate Bill 85, and House Bill 894, and Senate Bill 734. And so here again, you do have two red lines. We noticed We have one word that's addition that I'll speak to in the 917 version and a couple of capitalization errors that we'd like to correct there.

[00:26:33] So I'm going to be working off the 917 version there. So you'll see that we did add language regarding quorum, including remote participants with a disability, acting as a caregiver here. And so that is included there on lines 30.

[00:26:49] So that is now required for Virginia codes. We've added that to that policy here. the one additional word like I shared the 917 versioning comes on line 80 which we are adding the word proceeding after administrative appeals just to be clear there and then you'll see under section d there was a couple of each one of the the bullets there we needed to change those to capital letters so we added those for each of those items there so this is just the first review today as an information item and happy to answer any questions you may have thank you dr. smith Are there any questions or concerns from the committee?

[00:27:26] Ms. Chernoff? I have been thinking about meeting procedures a lot since I took office. But I have been kind of wondering about one thing, and I'm not 100% sure that this actually, like, fits perfectly into this policy, but I think it could.

[00:27:46] And so I'm just going to put it on the table, and maybe we could just see where you all are at. But I've been wondering why we don't, at the best, live stream our committee meetings or, at the very least, video record our committee meetings. And I know that that is not necessarily referenced in this policy.

[00:28:04] It's actually referenced in, I believe it is, correct me if I'm wrong, 2450 in Section B4 where we talk about our recordings. But I'm wondering, in terms of Section A in this policy, if this would be a place where we could maybe address recordings as well in terms of just the meeting content.

[00:28:24] And I just wanted to give the committee just a couple of reasons for why I'm thinking about this. First is that I know we audio record, and I am grateful for that, but sometimes it's challenging for me to follow up on items and listen through the recording and find exactly what's happening.

[00:28:43] opening up the slide decks and trying to reconcile where they were going through the presentation versus what they're talking about and it it's a lot of work to kind of try and align that and that's for me who's someone who's engaged who's following the process and so I'm wondering if the public would have that same issue or have access and this again comes on the heels just sort of reflecting on last night we had our Loudoun Education Alliance of Families Committee meeting where we are really pressing into getting our parents and our community members involved in the committee level process with policy. So many people think that all the policy work happens at

[00:29:22] the full board meetings. And the truth of it is the background and the context and the important conversations about why things are changing and the different ideas that are put on the table, a lot of that work is happening in committee. And so we are really encouraging that process through our committee to try and get parents to engage with policy long before it reaches the full board so that they can actually give authentic feedback that can be heard. And I'm just wondering why we don't do that or if there would be an interest in having that be part of it. And I,

[00:29:57] again, I don't know that this is exactly the place for it, but I was just thinking about meeting procedures and wondering if it's not the place for it, if maybe I should bring up looking at policy 2450 to bring it up. But I'm just curious about my colleagues' thoughts on this in general.

[00:30:15] I wanted to see if there was a desire for us to explore this in committee, either as part of this policy or another. Thank you, Ms. Chernoff. Is there anyone on staff who would like to speak to any of Ms. Chernoff's suggestions or questions, concerns?

[00:30:33] I'm happy to speak a little bit. I think it definitely could fit in this policy if that's the will of the committee to take a look at this and to bring it before the board. I would I would have some concerns around staff capacity around that as you know we have nine now nine different standing committees and we have a select committee and so there is a lot of that so I I would need to do some more research and talk with staff around staff capacity to really support some of that and the work that goes into the recording the posting and all of that that goes in there goes into that and so I don't have that today but I'm happy to bring that back if that's the will of the committee if they wants to explore that happy to do that.

[00:31:13] i appreciate that mr smith dr smith and um i um i know that it would be an added load like i get that i understand there's a reason why we don't do it right now um i know siak is i believe still streaming their meetings live i don't think anybody else is though so um i and i know even that's an extra lift that they have added in as part of the work that they do so i appreciate that and i do want to respect the burden on staff but i also want to make sure that we're you know able to access the other committees.

[00:31:47] I think one was meeting at the same time as us right now. Like we can't be in two places at once and a lot of us try to do our homework and be informed before things come to the full board and that's really where I'm thinking about this. Ms. Donahue.

[00:32:04] Thank you, Chair Chandler. I support Ms. Chernoff's questions, I guess. I've wondered the same thing and I believe I've had one-on-one conversations with possibly with Dr. Smith before about why we don't video record and or live stream the committee meetings for the reasons that you cited that in the interest of access to the public and increased transparency I had that question early on in our tenure and then the longer that I've been in this position going back and trying to make sense of what happened at a committee meeting when I wasn't present is

[00:32:40] challenging me on the basis of only the recording the the audio recording so I I share your concerns. I don't want to cause excessive financial burden or excessive, you know, any other issues for the staff, but I would be curious if you all could provide some information for us about whether it would be feasible to have either video recording or live stream or both of committee meetings, and if so, what would the cost in manpower, dollars in whatever else be to the division so that we can make an informed

[00:33:19] so we can have all the information that we need to weigh whether the cost is worth the benefit and I may I ask one other question thank you so I had a question there's nothing to do with the proposed edits but in line 21 of the the 917 red line, it states that for remote participation that a board or committee member may only participate remotely from a remote location that is not open to the public.

[00:33:54] And I was just curious why we have that restriction in there since the meetings themselves are open to the public. - Thank you for the question, Ms. Donahue. I think I would wanna go back and look at Virginia code in terms of that and see if that's where the language came from, but I don't have the answer right now.

[00:34:17] happy to look into that and get back to you. Thank you. Okay, to go back to the previous topic, I would just say I am always happy to explore and to ask questions and to research and see if we're offering the best practices. And with that, I would ask that you please include information on the number of people who tend to watch our live streams, right, as just a context point and that you know I would I would be supportive of that if we had more

[00:34:56] information just as a point of clarification I think so I heard information on for video or live streaming and the costs and I think that's for all standing committees am I correct are you asking for a did the advisory or the others as well just so I think I would include it all and so we can make the most informed decision okay and then we'll include the viewership as well. Yes, thank you. The other point that I would make, I think in general members of our committee are very exploratory and tend to do a lot of research and reviewing past meetings. I

[00:35:34] mean, that's just a fact, right? One of the things I think that could make that process easier would be, and again, I apologize. I'm sure I don't have the appropriate terminology for what the video editing process is but with the school board meetings you can use the agenda item to go directly into the video um but with the committee meetings you don't have that capability um so i would be curious if we could look into that process as well i believe someone is manually

[00:36:12] doing that to set up but um we could definitely look into that and have that for you at the at the least thank you for taking um the feedback from the committee to explore options around this issue i think it will give us a chance oh oh miss allen yeah i was just gonna mention also we can also pull um to your point about data driven decisions um previous data related to other committee meetings and um viewership so that you can see one of to the point about juice being worth the squeeze are people listening in and so i know we have data from um the past that we are

[00:36:49] happy to pull for you and add to that thank you miss allen i'm so happy to hear from you all right uh any sure um so i would ask you chair chandler it's uh and committee members if you feel like this is part of this conversation because what i don't want to happen is if we don't feel like it fits in this policy to hold this policy up i don't feel like that's necessary i did sort of like insert it in there because i've had the wondering and i felt like it was sort of an in um i think it could fit here but we could also look at it in terms of the other policy that actually talks about recordings which is about the school board minutes and that's policy 2450

[00:37:28] section b4 which we could bring as the lead into this conversation so i would kind of defer to your discretion on that as the chair if it where you see it to fit best i think it's possible that we can have this conversation with that oh dr smith no i just wanted to mention policy 2450 is up for its five-year review um it is i think the last time it was reviewed in november of 2020 and so we are anticipating that in the in the winter to spring this year through this committee and so 2450 we are planning for that um in the near future well um would it be inconvenient to staff

[00:38:08] to tie those two together and do them at the same time would it be efficient to tie both of these policies together we're happy to take a look at that and bring it back it does take us some time to kind of get a policy ready um and we have not started on that one but i'm happy to start working on that one and bring that to this committee.

[00:38:25] Okay. Great. That works for me. Yeah. Good. All right. Thank you. Are there any further comments on 2420? No? Thank you. Chair Chandler, just for clarity on this one, we don't want to put it out for feedback.

[00:38:41] Do you want us to hold it? Do you want it to put it out for feedback as it is, just in terms of next steps with this specific policy? For this particular policy, I would bring it back as an information item next month so we can continue to discuss and determine the best path forward. So we will not be putting it out for feedback at this time. We'll bring it back. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Smith. With that, we'll move on to our final policy of the evening, item 4.04, policy 2440, order of business quorum rules voting. Again, Dr. Smith, the floor is

[00:39:17] yours. Thank you. So policy 2440, order of business quorum rules and voting is being updated as a result of Virginia code changes, specifically around House Bill 1040, Senate Bill 85, House Bill 894, and Senate Bill 734.

[00:39:34] Specifically, language has been added that remote participation cannot prohibit or restrict a board member for voting. And so you will see on the red line version here on line 30, we've added that language to make sure that that is included here in this policy.

[00:39:52] Thank you, Dr. Smith. Are there any comments or questions from the committee? Ms. Donahue. Thank you, Chair Chandler. My extremely thorough staff aide pointed out that she was not able to identify a legal cross-reference connected to the added language for those lines 30 and 31. So that was my only thought was if that was intentional or an oversight and would we want to add a cross-reference. Thank you for that question. I do have the

[00:40:29] the code section it looks like we may need just to add it here at the bottom it's code section 2.2 dash 37 point 3701 and 2.2 dash 3708.3 and so we'll we'll take a look at that and add that there to the legal reference at the bottom any further questions or comments all right with no further discussion and without objection with the exception of policy 2420 which will come back as an information item. These information items will return next month as action items. We do not have

[00:41:06] any action items tonight. Is there any new business? Nope. Seeing no new business, we are adjourned. Thank you.

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