Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Legislative Audit and Policy Committee Meeting, Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Date: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 1h (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1031377334?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 2026-10-20. 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 November 19th, 2024. Seeing as there's no public comment this evening, we will move on to item 3.01, approval of the September 17th, 2024 draft minutes.

[00:00:19] May I please have a motion to approve the draft meeting minutes? Second. Thank you. The motion was made by Ms. Chernoff and seconded by Ms. Donahue. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye.

[00:00:34] aye all those opposed see uh the motion passes unanimously with all committee members present at this time we'll move on to our discussion item 4.01 legislative breakfast debrief dr smith will provide us with an update on the school board's legislative program for 2025 thank you chair chandler um this item today is just a discussion item and wanted to get your feedback on our 2024 legislative breakfast as you recall we had our legislative breakfast on october friday october 25th at the Douglas school and it was a great event well attended and just want to use this

[00:01:13] opportunity as we continue to reflect and continuously improve on our work and would appreciate any feedback that committee members may have on that program it is a lot of work goes into that that breakfast to make sure that it we are able to advocate and support the priorities of the board and so just would welcome any feedback you might have on the legislative breakfast Thank you, Dr. Smith. And also I'd like to offer a heartfelt thank you to Hope Casserly, who made our vision for the breakfast come to life by creating such a warm and welcoming environment for our discussions and for our Loudon delegation.

[00:01:48] So thank you so much for all of your hard work on that event. With that, are there any comments from the committee? Ms. Chernoff? I just wanted to make note of one particular item was that we invited an LCPS teacher to the breakfast and she is someone who has been staying really engaged with our legislative program and talking with Dr. Smith and myself, meet multiple meetings and Dr. Smith extended an invite to her because of her interest in all things legislative and it was just really nice.

[00:02:22] It was a really nice touch, nice thing to have her there and to have her support for the things that LCPS are pursuing on behalf of the employees. So I thought that was a really nice touch and hope to see more of that in the future. Thank you, Ms. Chernoff. Well, with that, it looks like we've completed our discussion, seeing no further discussion.

[00:02:44] Thank you both again. Really was so pleased with how the legislative breakfast came together, and it was a very meaningful conversation with our delegation. with that we'll move on to our information items starting with item 5.01 broadcast and live streamed we are joined today by mr. Aaron Smith our chief technology officer department of digital innovation who is here to offer the committee requested insight into the level of effort and system capabilities for broadcasting and live streaming of school board committee meetings mr. Smith the floor is yours awesome thank you for having me this is

[00:03:22] topic near and dear to my heart as we ran into a pandemic and had to really ramp up what our capabilities were we've kind of transformed in five years what we were able to do versus what we're doing now and how these rooms are configured and all of those items so happy to share our current practices and some of the standards and capabilities and and some limitations that we do have across our rooms so first we'll start with terminology then we'll just so everyone talks because we use terms interchangeably sometimes current standards and meeting process technical capabilities and then other considerations as we have this conversation and we're really just here to provide an overview and some

[00:04:00] information items tonight so for us broadcast is broadcast of audio and video on the LCPS public education and government the peg channel you may have heard that call we are actually in the process of getting HD channels for both of our peg channels Comcast I believe is live and Verizon will be live in in january so that'll be nice to have those available to the public live stream is anything that we put on the website so that would be to our lcps website there is a news and we do live stream board meetings and other content there and then recorded is when we do an audio or a video

[00:04:38] recording that is posted for viewing at some other point so broadcast we usually encompasses all because we will be broadcasting on our PEG channels, we'll be live streaming on our website, and then that video will then, like a typical board meeting, but usually the next day it's posted in board docs and linked to agenda items.

[00:04:57] We do share this responsibility, so Ms. Allen and myself, our teams support these meetings from a video production side and from a technical configuration side, so it is kind of a shared responsibility across our teams. So our current standards are we live streaming broadcasts of full board meetings, really anything with a full board is there should be a budget meeting tonight's CIP meeting for example we 100 B is our most capable room so that's we we default to that for meetings because that's where we have that the cameras and everything else that we can do the broadcast booth is all in that

[00:05:34] room and then that video like I said is posted to board docs we do have closed captionings and other items that we do and that into that into that afterwards and it does take 24 hours for videos to render we are basically live streaming to a Vimeo channel that then we have to take that video and they have to render it for us to be able to download it to import that into board doc so it does we try and get it done as soon as possible but it can't take up to 24 hours depending on the meeting length and we've had some long meetings that we've had to pull out of there before audio only recordings for all other meetings so we do this for school board committee meetings what we do is we take that audio and we overlay it on a

[00:06:13] a video so we can provide closed caption to that so when we post those video those audio recordings inside of board docs they're posted as a video which really just has the audio playing and the closed captions available for accessibility and we do that for school board committee meetings and then we have a couple of different meeting types so SEAC we do live stream MSAC we record so it depends on the ad hoc nature of those meetings and what the request is it also depends on the location of those meetings. One thing to keep in mind is we 102 A and B where we're at now and 100 B are the primary rooms. We've had requests in the past to like come to Academies of Loudoun

[00:06:51] and live stream a meeting and we just can't do that. That capability only exists in these rooms and that's why we have racks of equipment in that closet, racks of equipment in the back of the boardroom and then racks of equipment over there and then also a rack of equipment downstairs. So it's pretty substantial investment in order to make these rooms work like that. So technical capabilities videos can be recorded in both 100 b and in 102 a and b but there are differences when we do a board meeting and we are doing video recording ms allen's team is actually doing video switching between presentations vote to board so there's a lot of video production i like to think

[00:07:28] of it as like that truck on monday night football where they are directing which tv to do things to they have a wall of feeds and they're directing which feed is coming up and it it takes someone invested to do that for other meetings we may just do a single room view and then that's all we get is one camera view and that's a video but there's no WebEx participants there's no vote tally boards there's no presentation capabilities and so it depends on the complexity that's being asked and then only one room can broadcast or record at a time even though we have two rooms they both go through all that equipment that I talked about we also have one live stream and like I said those peg channels we can't do duplicate content

[00:08:06] on the channels at the same time so we have a lot of meetings like committee meetings tonight for example lots of going back and forth so we are able to record but we're not able to live stream and broadcast the two meetings at the same time so some other considerations every meeting that has a that we are live streaming or broadcasting it requires multiple staff here into the building and then add an additional staff if we have to do like a webex support that's one of the reasons we asked for those by noon my teams who mr. Jackson you see running around all the time supporting these meetings I'm really happy he's here because I had to

[00:08:43] do all of that like a hundred hours a week before but we only have one individual to do that and so when he has a doctor's appointment or something like that I really need to be able to call someone in and be aware of that so we can have those configurations so we do have limited staff and also we have flex time so my team is not paid overtime they're salaried staff for being here so every staff member we need to have here pulls them out of operations during the day because we really are trying to get them to eight hours and not spending 16 hours here even though it's fun but um so we have uh one staff member um and the reason one of the reasons we can support as many audio recordings

[00:09:20] is we can support those remotely it really is just set up the mics and and switch on the recording remotely we don't need to be here to support that so anything else a webex or or video recording would require staff to be on site to support those meetings and like i said we flex them so more staff here after hours is left staff in the morning so how do we handle that with with the load and we are at 150 meetings so far this year since january 1. we anticipate over 200 each year we had 211 in 2023 and as we get into if there is other topics we've gone as high as 256 so we it depends you

[00:09:57] think how many work days and how many meetings there are and it just gets to be a lot of meetings pretty quick so here's just some information we use this to kind of help us determine like what we want to do and what we're going to audio record versus what we're going to broadcast this i had the team pull some numbers um so this is as 10-4 i think we're supposed to come in october and then we got pushed to this so that's why these numbers are from that we should really see we had one one view for CNI after the video was posted because it's it's recorded so no one's live watching it so these are after the video is posted view numbers for F&O we had three on one meeting but mostly zeros down the

[00:10:36] board for support services or sorry Student Services Committee SSC we've had about six we do see a larger view when you get into SEAC where they see a lot viewership so one of the reasons we do live stream SEAC is they do have significantly more viewers and so we kind of use that viewership numbers to determine where we're going to make staffing investment and how we're going to provide that so you can see this was a special programs committee which we had about three so a couple questions when we do these we staff fill out a

[00:11:15] form and my team gets that and then they go through that and see what that looks like it's actually both of our teams get that and we go through whether be virtual participants how will we handle video do we have presentations if we record video and that's not a part of the presentation in that presentation is not a part of that video what does that look like a static feed like I was saying one large camera view of the entire boardroom versus camera switching among which we do for full board meetings also microphones would be used like any audio recording we don't pick up anything that isn't on microphone so if you think of a lot of times in the larger committees they may have work

[00:11:52] sessions where they'll work in a small work group at a table none of that audio is being recorded because there are no microphones capturing that so it really is an introduction of the meeting and then they go and do work and then they come back there may be a summary so there's sometimes we could ask why there's dead space in those meetings and it's because we only record things that are spoken into the microphones in the room and then closed captioning we do provide closed captioning for all the meetings that we live stream it is we pay per hour for that because we have two individuals that actually closed caption from a company that we contract with and we have to give them a schedule in advance because so they can schedule closed captioners and we have to give an

[00:12:31] estimate of time so we've been in the past we've run into there's not a closed captioner available like 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. to be continued with that so sometimes we lose closed captioning and we have to embed that in the video afterwards because we we just don't they don't have staffing available to have some of those meetings that we had previously that were you know 9 10 or 12 hours worth of meetings and again we pay per hour so however long a meeting goes we pay for that hour and it's about two hundred dollars an hour I believe that we pay for closed captioning so as we're doing these meetings there is some costs that we're incurring to handle that with that I don't know if miss

[00:13:09] Allen has anything she'd like to add from the presentation no I think you you pretty much covered it I did want to mention so for example on my team we have four folks who can do the video portion of what mr. Smith's talking about and they get paid over time for those hours so it's just something kind of a is the bang worth the buck related to some of you know what mr. Smith shared and so they do get paid over time and then they also get burned out just to be really candid if there were going to be over 200 meetings you know you're talking about time away from their families and those kinds of things so it's just

[00:13:48] something to consider with that I know there was a lot of information and we kind of flew through that so happy to revisit any slides or answer any questions and just appreciate the opportunity to talk about it it is a little invisible sometimes of all the work that goes on behind the scenes to do these things so I appreciate I know Jeff Jackson is listening I appreciate him for all the work he does and how he will continue to support it tonight and how he will do virtual public comment and all of those type of things too so happy to take any questions thank you so much mr. Smith and miss Allen and And thank you so much also to Mr. Jackson, who's listening for all your hard work.

[00:14:25] We are grateful for the presentation and the opportunity to have this conversation. And with that, I'll ask the committee, do you have any questions or comments? Okay. Ms. Donahue. Thank you, Chair Chandler. I want to echo Ms. Chandler's thanks.

[00:14:41] I very much appreciate the information that you shared with us this evening. This is, it's a complicated issue because, right, the background of what happens in these committee meetings is important for us and for the public to understand issues that are before the full board.

[00:15:03] And unfortunately, the current limitations of having only audio recordings for many of the committee meetings when we have, you know, WebEx participants and we have PowerPoint presentations and that's not available is is definitely limiting and I would like to try and find a way to maybe it's through more robust meeting minutes but I I do feel pretty strongly like there needs to be a better way to document more of what is going on in the committee meetings but at the same time like I I don't want to incur significant unnecessary expenses for the division

[00:15:43] And I don't want to burn out employees to have to listen through 200 meetings. Definitely didn't realize that's how many we have. But that's where I'm coming from. And so this information is very helpful to, you know, as we're kind of analyzing these discussions. I do have a couple of, I have a question and I have a comment, I guess.

[00:16:02] So my question, Mr. Smith, is you mentioned when you were talking about the ad hoc meetings in MSAC and SEAC, you mentioned that some are recorded and others are live streamed. When you said some are recorded, did you mean just the audio recording only or those are video recorded but not live streamed?

[00:16:18] So as we began taking this on, standardization was something because we were doing all sorts of things before 2020 when we started to have to really ramp this up. So it depends on meeting size, meeting location, what the duration of the meeting is, requests from that chair or the school board chair or from Dr. Spence or someone who would drive that.

[00:16:42] So there hasn't been like equity committee versus other ad hoc committees. We've had committees that are created for like there was academies of Latin committee for a while. And so it just depends on the nature of the committee and what the request is and what we do.

[00:16:59] Because there is going to be a scheduling challenge like for if things were to change, we would really have some limitations on what that could look like. So it is, yeah, it just comes down to what sometimes people get the room that they can get and they have a meeting and we can even sometimes do like just a handheld audio recorder where they're not even using mics, they're just speaking into a tape recorder type device to record audio for that meeting.

[00:17:25] Thank you. Mostly that was, I was curious if we ever video record any meetings if we are not also simultaneously live streaming. So, and my comment was the statistics that you've provided us about recorded meeting recording views.

[00:17:45] For example, you have here, it says that the FNO has had almost no views of any of the meetings from February through June of this year. But, for example, my aide listened to the March 5th meeting more than once in preparation for some other events, and that seems to not be reflected here.

[00:18:05] So, is there a reason why her viewing or her listening to that meeting more than once would not be reflected in these statistics here? So, I can go back and look at that. These were numbers that we pulled of views of streams.

[00:18:21] So I can go back and just make sure that the team validates those numbers. We may have removed like two views for each because we have to view the video and DCE has to review the video. So as far as like actual viewers, so I'll just make sure that that wasn't included in that count of us kind of like level setting what the actual viewership is versus us watching it for video production capability.

[00:18:44] Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that we have the data, but I want to make sure that we know that it is accurate. when we're making our decisions thank you that's all I had thank you and I just to follow up on Ms. Donahue's question I was wondering if you could clarify exactly what the term I mean like how are you capturing the number of views is it views by live stream or is it views after the fact are we able to access the information for the number of people who watch them after they're posted so because these are all recorded they don't get to watch them until after they're posted

[00:19:20] So these would be views minus administrative views, like I was saying, and those would be basically just like you would go to a YouTube video and you would see how many views the video has. That's a similar report that we're running. We use Vimeo as our technology, but it's a very similar video streaming platform.

[00:19:37] So these numbers were from a report from Vimeo. So I'll just go back and make sure that those are accurate. But they would all be, since they're recorded, no one would be live watching it, and they would all be after the fact views. Thank you for that clarification. Ms. Chernoff? Ms. Thank you so much.

[00:19:55] I echo the thanks from my colleagues. I realize that a lot goes into this, and I do appreciate you doing the work to bring this to us today. And I see that it is a heavy lift, and I'm weighing that as I think about some tweaks and changes. And I largely agree with the comments by Ms. Donahue.

[00:20:10] I think mine are almost verbatim the same. I can also tell you that I have listened to every single one of my CNI meetings. I have not listened to them in full, necessarily. So I'm wondering, is it have to be listened to all the way through to count? Or is it just you tune in and tune out?

[00:20:27] Because often I'll go back to reference different things for teachers or things that were discussed. So I'll go back and we'll verify all of that information. Like I said, we are reliant on Vimeo to highlight some of those for us. So I'll make sure that there wasn't some issue or some...

[00:20:44] There's also not 75 views. I think you're going to see sub-10 views on most items that we publish, and we do have a lot of content that is available. So think about every meeting that gets posted. We're also paying to post all of those videos in perpetuity as we have them linked to board docs for whatever the records retention link is.

[00:21:06] Thank you. And again, for me, it comes from two different places. One is wanting to be as transparent as possible, and maybe that's more on the communication end of thinking about how do we get out information. when the meetings are how you can access those meetings what public comment is like and there's certainly work on our end I think as representatives to communicate to the public when important things are coming up and advertise that and try to get more engagement the biggest piece for me is what miss Donahue mentioned and that is the preparation piece for me I mean there are circumstances and I'll give one that happened last week we had the Student

[00:21:42] services committee had to suspend the rules to put 8155 into full board because of timeline constraints if we're going to roll out the new requirements for that policy and as of Tuesday at 3 45 p.m. before the board meeting it was still not posted and so in order for me to prepare to listen I think it was a two and a half hour meeting to prepare for all of those conversations that went into that meeting and know what I need to ask or what was asked it puts us at a disadvantage to do the work well and that is frustrating and so as I think about this more I

[00:22:19] I realize that based off the viewership and the data and the heavy lift that this is that live streaming is probably and video recording every single thing is probably not the best use of our funds or our employees time but is there some way that we could get a faster turnaround time on committee meetings so that we can be better prepared to allocate the time to sit down and listen to it beforehand to also then ask questions of staff and be prepared for board meetings because right now it's a stumbling block for me so i will speak that our 24-hour time frame far exceeds any of our neighbors or what they are doing i believe when we surveyed them they're like seven days

[00:22:59] after the meeting happens that they post inside a board doc so trying to get something done in 24 hours and also thank you again to Jeff who will do that work like whenever he's I've gotten emails from him at 1:00 a.m. that he's converted meeting files so I just want to be really cognizant I'm not setting that expectation on staff that they're to work 24 hours a day but I do think if there's something important or we can be more prepared if to post something because we usually will have a shorter video a committee meeting of an hour doesn't take as long to render when we're doing closed captioning but we still have to render that closed captioning because it doesn't exist when the meeting is recorded so there's

[00:23:38] still like technical processing that occurs on the video but you know that we do try and get that done within 24 hours and I'm guessing that was probably like right at the 24-hour mark from the day before when they had those videos so but we can go back and talk about how we can get those in and I see I do think it's important to give context to just having worked in other school divisions the way that we turn around video here is kind of remarkable most school divisions it's like sometimes three or four days even for like full board meetings and so the content that we're producing it and I know that obviously like we have a

[00:24:14] little bit more capacity because we have a larger school division and more staff but I do think it's worth noting that I think we hold ourselves to a high standard and commit to it here versus if you were to potentially compare other school divisions I don't know that most even record their committee meetings at all I'd be interested to kind of dig deeper on what other school divisions do as well just because it's not something that I've come across before I appreciate that I just I want to keep it in mind I understand all those things and I know the art like I know we do excellent things here and I appreciate

[00:24:51] that but we have to get this work done and we're a massive division and there's a lot of preparation more than I ever knew was going to land on my plate but if we're going to really hold ourselves accountable as elected officials and do our due diligence on behalf of the people like we have to have access and I know we've made great strides in certain areas so I just want to continue that dialogue and and make sure that you know maybe in those special circumstances since the meeting was already public maybe because we can't have information before the public does maybe we could get some kind of preview are listening I don't know so that we can be prepared to really speak to those

[00:25:30] items so that's all thank you and with that I guess my question is more a point of interest I guess but in the presentation on page 5 when you mentioned the ad hoc meetings where's the video archive to does it belong to the ad hoc committee so it depends on the committee I believe some of them might depend on their bylaws but they that is not posted inside of board docs because they're not official LCPS meetings that are held so some of those are posted on our website and it has shifted through the years at one point SIAC had a wiki

[00:26:07] site that they were managing that they were posting the video I believe that's been transferred over we provide that video to the chairs and to the committee so that they can do with it it's it really is a Vimeo link so just as you would send a link to a video so they can post that anywhere they can send that link to their community they can include it wherever it's just a link to a video thank you for that that's interesting context um and i will say i as someone who's been engaged with the school board for many years i appreciate the effort um to really bring everything together and make it sort of a standardized process um that's definitely

[00:26:43] something that has improved over time um and you know i think it's very helpful to the community And I'll say, I also enjoy sometimes revisiting the meetings.

[00:27:00] Right? Sure. But it is helpful, and also, given the information that was included in this report, it's hard for me to see justifying further expense when it is something that's beneficial to us, but it doesn't appear to be something that the community has a large appetite for so are there any other questions or comments if I could make one more point just keep in mind too that these rooms are also used during business hours so usually we're turning them around and there'll be an 8 o'clock meeting of a

[00:27:37] teacher PD session that's occurring and they're using all the same AV equipment so when we're looking at coverage really stretching that from like from early early in the morning till late at night with one individual to try and keep things up and running so I just want to kind of they're not just for school board meetings there are also for all the other things that we do in these rooms and 102 a and B and 100 a B and C and just the whole the whole picture that goes into that I appreciate that clarification around expectations that is a very important point and of course there are many things that the division is doing every day that that are exceedingly important so thank you for

[00:28:13] that okay seeing no further comments or questions we will move on to item 5.0 to policy 2420 meeting procedures i believe this policy was brought forth for an update to comply with recent changes to the virginia code dr smith smith you are presenting the floor is yours thank you chair chandler yes we did bring to policy 2420 meeting procedures to you last with our last meeting in september this policy there were some changes to virginia code you'll see

[00:28:48] those changes starting on line 30 that just talks about the termination of quorum including remote participants with a disability or acting for a caregiver so that changes there there's a couple other minor formatting changes there was a change on line 80 just providing some clarity and then there was just some capitalization changes within the policy we've also made an update to the code reference at the back at the bottom of the policy so this was back again brought back at our September meeting we did have a discussion at that time you asked us to bring back information on the the presentation you just received along

[00:29:26] with the next policy that we're bringing forth and that is policy 2450 board minutes happy to answer any questions you might have thank you Dr. Smith and with that I'll open the floor to the committee I'm sure enough I believe it was me who was pondering about the presentations and whether or not these things would fit and I am willing to table that for now based off of the information that we have and the belief that we're going to continue to work together to get the information that we need. So I appreciate that. Thank you, Ms. Chernoff. Ms. Donahue? Thank you,

[00:30:00] Chair Chandler. I was curious on line 78 through 80 that lists the exceptions. No member shall be permitted to participate by electronic communication from a remote location in a student disciplinary appeal hearing or administrative appeals proceeding is that required by Virginia code or is that our rule policy thanks to the court for the question miss

[00:30:30] Donahue I'm not to defer to miss Ewing on that question of course so I'm looking at the red line version of the policy at Lions 70 to 80 on page 2 which states that board members are not allowed to participate electronically or remotely in cases of a student disciplinary appeal hearing or administrative appeals proceeding and I was curious if that is if if we have this in policy because it is required by Virginia code or if it

[00:31:07] is our decision as a division that that is how we approach it. I believe that it's our division decision because the code isn't specific to the types of committees or meetings it's just specific to the percentage of time that you're going to be electronic. Okay thank you for that and my understanding is that the the other that the broader requirements of there must be physical quorum to allow remote participation is required by Virginia code yes thank you Smith did I see you had a point of clarification I did just

[00:31:44] wanted to raise a point if that's something that the committee is interesting and making a change I would appreciate the opportunity to go back and work with staff it's not something we were anticipating today and so I would just want to make sure that we were we're fully exploring the the pros and cons of that and any ramifications or unintended consequences if you were considering changing that because that's not not something we've previously discussed um yes may i respond thank you um thank you dr smith uh i i was also not planning to suggest that right now um but it

[00:32:19] was it did strike me as it struck my curiosity as to i can envision very logical reasons why we have requirement but it is obviously different than the rest of our quorum and remote participation rules so I had some curiosity about that but not I'm I am not right now advocating for a change I was just curious thank you I guess just in terms of following up on the conversation I would wonder if it's due to the nature of the information that is required to participate in those

[00:32:58] committees and and to have a little bit more control over whether or not that information was handled properly but I also don't have any interest in changing this aspect of the policy okay of course I'm sure thank you I part of why I was curious about this was kind of a broader picture my understanding is that the s back procedures right now require that it is only the three members of that committee who hear

[00:33:33] student discipline appeals and it struck me is that seems like it may be somewhat onerous for it to be for that burden to fall entirely only on those three board members and they seem to be only during business hours and have to be in person and it made me wonder if that is ever problematic as far as finding people who are available to conduct those hearings.

[00:33:59] So I'm not making any suggestions right now, but trying to keep an eye out for potential problems, if there's opportunities for improving our processes. Just thank you for satisfying my curiosity.

[00:34:16] And thank you for your comments, Ms. Donahue. That context actually makes a lot of sense and seems reasonable to me. Ms. Chernoff did it? Okay. Well, great. um i am also good so with that we will now move on um to item um oh wait well i tend to do that at the end but um although i'd be happy to do that if you'd like me to yeah that's okay

[00:34:50] um our last information item is policy 5.03 um i'm sorry item 5.03 policy 2450 board minutes this policy similarly is also brought forth for update to comply with recent changes to the virginia code i believe and dr smith will be presenting again the floor is yours thank you chair chandler yes you are correct that we did have some changes in virginia code that put this on our list to review this year we actually had it coming up in january february you also note that it is due for his five-year review next november so it was it was on our list to review

[00:35:26] and then the code changes and so we have taken an opportunity to update this this policy and make some suggestions here really to align with our current practice you'll see that on lines two and three we felt that we could offer more clarity it originally just said minutes shall be kept at all school board meetings and we wanted to provide clarity in terms of what types of meetings and this did also apply to committees and subcommittees and so the remainder other parts of the changes do bring this policy in line with our current practice especially around line 29 special

[00:35:59] coding to indicate policy matters some pieces around the signatures with the clerk and so we've updated some of that and moved that into lines 42 through 48 and we moved around some of the information around so specifically line 68 and 69 where it talks about they're posted within seven days that was also moved to put to underline under b2 um under lines 46 and 47 so that was moved there just for clarity to have it all in one one location so um happy to answer any questions but

[00:36:37] we did take the opportunity to update this this was a request i believe in ms shirnoff last time to bring this back along with policy um 2420 as we were talking about meeting procedures thank you Dr. Smith. Are there any questions or comments from the committee? Ms. Donahue?

[00:36:54] Thank you, Chair Chandler. Thank you, Dr. Smith. I had a couple of hopefully quick questions. So where it says minutes shall, at the very beginning where it says minutes shall be kept at all open meetings and meetings held by committees or subcommittees, if we are including specifically committees or subcommittees, do we need to also add joint committees? Does this apply things like renaming committees or school naming committees also I don't know do you want to happy to know thanks for the question and you know it's my

[00:37:34] understanding by including this we also included the language appointed by the school board so it would apply to those committees as well and so that's kind of some of the same questions that we encounter when it just said minutes shall be kept at all school board meetings and so we did want to offer that clarity around any committee or subcommittee appointed by the board so it is my understanding that that would include those that you just mentioned thank you and for committee meetings it looks like you've clarified at the bottom of page one while the clerk or deputy clerk is the one tasked with recording the minutes at the full board meetings that obviously does not extend to committee

[00:38:10] meetings so that's that's why we have staff designee I assume yes ma'am that's correct and that's where again where we felt like it was not clear here it talked about the clerk and that's just really not our practice and so that's why we want to provide that clarity I I will say I have some concern with adding the language on lines 30 to 39 of the red line that states and shall otherwise be brief and simple as possible which I raise because some of the minutes from

[00:38:44] some of the committees are very bare bones and I personally find them not as helpful as I would like when preparing for for board meetings especially for committees that I'm you know committees that I'm not on and don't usually have the opportunity to be able to attend in person and I know we've talked about this before offline about possibly having some guidelines on how minutes should be which I'm and I'm not necessarily suggesting that that needs to

[00:39:21] be in policy but I do have some concern with that addition shall otherwise be brief and simple as possible when I already have a concern that some of the committee especially committing committee meeting minutes are perhaps a little too brief to be particularly useful I think that's all I had happy to provide a little bit of a response to that I know we have discussed and are working on providing more consistency of committee meeting minutes one of the things we are waiting for is to get this policy done and so we make sure that

[00:40:00] everything's in compliance and so we have we have started that work to have a template we've looked at committee meeting minutes across all of our standing committees and what they look like and so we have started that work but we are waiting for this policy to come into place and I would want to go back and check with and I'm not sure if Miss Ewing is prepared to respond to this but just look at look at the code section what it says there in terms of that in terms of this specific section because I do recall reading some language around this there might have been the VSBA template so I would want to go back and reference that just to see where that language may have come from it originally said as you can see the minutes should contain a record of

[00:40:37] what was done at the meeting not what was said by members and so that was the original language I would want to go back and take a look at that but I don't know if Miss Ewing has anything to add I can just add that I believe the language was included because it's current practice that the minutes are brief FOIA does require all the board and all of its committees to have minutes so it may have been just part of practicing simplifying what's practicing putting in and actually in the policy but FOIA itself does not specify the length of your minutes how long or how detailed so if there is a desire to have more information it would be great to just detail that so that there's direction and also determining if you want that to apply to the school board

[00:41:17] and also to committees because those are not necessarily handled by the clerk but handled by staff members so that's just something to consider I thought of one other question if I think thank you chair Chandler and I'm sorry mr. no I imagine you have some too so as far as everyone should be having minutes my aid was attempting to find MSAC minutes in preparation for this meeting actually and was having difficulty locating them so I was just curious if anyone could

[00:41:51] speak to that and does msac keep minutes and how do we find them i will i will take i'll start with that um you know i know that we did shift to having our advisory committees they're all now consistent in terms of having a website and i did um go to their website to take a look i'm happy to work with msac msac to get you some answers on that um i'm trying to see if there was any listed minutes and i know um i know we have some msac members in the audience and happy to work with them afterwards to try to make sure we can identify where those are held or

[00:42:29] where those are posted and get that to you. I was trying to look on the website to see, but they are all, I don't see them right there, but happy to look into that. Ms. Chernoff? Thank you, Chair Chandler. I have two questions. One is more of a suggestion after listening to Ms. Donahue's comments. I tend to actually agree, and I didn't really think about it that way, even though I went on my rant about needing more information so that's kind of hypocritical um i'll own that uh but i'm wondering

[00:43:03] if i mean normally in policy i i veer towards the side of being as specific as possible so that there isn't a lot of gray area but i actually am going to argue against that in this case i think that adding those words on in the red line version on 38 and 39 and shall otherwise be brief and simple as possible actually creates more gray area because who determines that what does that actually mean how do we keep that consistent so I would actually prefer that number one on line 38 just end at the word meeting with a period and therefore operationally we can figure that out but I don't know legally if that poses an issue or if we

[00:43:41] need to go down the list of actually having a bunch of criteria no you don't necessarily need to do that at this point but it is helpful if you want a certain standard in all of your minutes so that they're consistent across not only the school board but all of your committees okay I know we've had this for information now so go ahead dr. Smith well and also note I just pulled up the code section around this and it does talk about minutes shall be in writing it talks about some things that it must include and I think we've tried to just so you kind of trying to reference back to section a so it does talk about capturing the date time and location of the meeting the members that the members that are present and absent a summary of the discussion on the matters proposed

[00:44:20] deliberated deliberated or decided and the record of any votes taken so we've tried to capture that up in a and so I just wanted to kind of reference that back that while it does say it's just what's done at the meeting in brief it is also referencing back to the contents that's up in section it still would need to include those categories absolutely all right I'll think on that then my other question is about on line 14 I know number four in section a we struck a record of the presence and absence of the superintendent mostly because he's not required he or she should be the case in the future is not required to be at committee meetings or I was wondering though is it a

[00:44:59] requirement for him to be at full board meetings and should we specify that so that the public knows when he's there when there's not and when there's a sub out thanks for that question mr. off it is he is required to attend meetings of the full board there's some specific instances that are carved out if there certain topics that are being discussed say in closed session or those types of things but it is also but in terms of full board meetings he is required to attend unless the board the board decides otherwise okay so I think a record of that and just in terms of general accountability would probably be something to think about and keeping just with that language for full board

[00:45:37] meetings and then we would have to separate out that that wouldn't necessarily apply to committees I'm wondering what my colleagues think about that thank you chair Chandler that's a good point miss Chernoff and I would I think I would likely support restoring the language on line 14 perhaps adding where the superintendent's presence is required something like that to make clear that it's not we don't expect the superintendent to be at all of the 211

[00:46:13] meetings that apparently we have every year but but I that's a fair point if the superintendent's presence is required at certain meetings we probably should be making some official record or notation if the superintendent is there himself or has a designee. Yeah I would just just was going to come back to this is the reason we struck this was one of the reasons you've mentioned but also is we in our minutes currently we don't have that notation and so we have not even in the full board minutes it has not been and that's not something that's required that we have that notation in terms of I read kind of what was what

[00:46:52] should be recording in the minutes and so that's why we struck it happy to go back and take a look at that look at other language or kind of clarify around full board meetings or as designee because there's debt there's a superintendent doesn't need potentially to each committee meeting so happy to work with you on that language I would appreciate that I'm Miss Donahue or I'm sorry pardon me I'm sure enough have you completed your questions thank you I thought you said to but then I didn't want to overstep or be impolite I wonder, I guess I'm not quite sure how I feel about this.

[00:47:28] I think given that it's specific to minutes and it's not part of our practice, I might be a little bit hesitant to put this language back in. But with that, I am curious, and I believe I have seen in other places where it's spelled out where the superintendent is expected to participate.

[00:47:45] And I was wondering if anybody would be willing to speak to that. It's not anywhere that I'm familiar with. I think it's a good change if you just want to specify school board meetings, superintendent or designee.

[00:48:04] But while I have the mic, I did want to draw your attention. One of the reasons why we did make some of the changes to this particular policy is due to 2310. That is your committees where you establish your standing selected advisory. Each one of those, they are required to have minutes.

[00:48:19] Specifically, your advisory ones have to have minutes that are in compliance with 2450, this current policy. So that's just something to be aware of. The school board requires it of all of its committees right now. And if we do want to make additional adjustments, we may want to also make them to 2310 as well.

[00:48:37] Thank you, Ms. Ewing, for that clarification. That's an excellent point. Let's see. Are there any other comments or questions from the committee? Okay.

[00:48:54] I think that's it for me at this time, too. With no further discussion and without objection, These information items will return as action items for the committee next month. And with that, we will move on to our action items starting with 6.01 Policy 1040, Equal Opportunity for Equitable, Safe, and Inclusive Environments.

[00:49:19] Similarly, this policy is being reviewed to comply with recent changes to the Virginia Code due to legislation in the 2024 General Assembly changes being made to comply with updates to the Virginia Code and also to include staff suggestions.

[00:49:35] Dr. Smith is presenting. Again, Dr. Smith, the floor is yours. Thank you, Chair Chandler. So this policy 1040 was brought to you back in September for information. You provided a good amount of feedback on this policy, and so we bring back the policy today with those changes.

[00:49:52] And so if you'll recall, the reason this policy is coming forward is that there was a code section chain that did require us to add ethnicity to this policy, which we added on line 10. As part of the discussion last time, we talked about a number of the personal characteristics that were listed in the third paragraph as well as the second paragraph.

[00:50:11] You asked us to combine them into one, so we did include all those characteristics up in the second paragraph. We also pulled out perceived or actual and put that at the front of that list, and at your direction we also added citizenship or immigration status we also added military status there from last time so you'll see that we did receive community and in committee feedback we did make some of those adjustments there and they're highlighted there based on some of that feedback and we also updated the code sections at the bottom bottom of the policy so happy to answer any questions you might have thank you dr. Smith are there any questions or

[00:50:49] comments from the committee? Thank you, Dr. Smith. I am curious if you could speak to both SEAC and MSAC submitted fairly extensive feedback and suggestions for edits and additions to this policy, most of which were not adopted, and I was wondering if you could speak to that. I'm happy to talk

[00:51:27] through these is to the extent you'd like me to I felt I guess I felt like we did take a look at those and address some of those so for example I'll speak I have the SEAC one in front of me recommendation was number one was to include disability and perceived disability so you'll see online 13 is where you have the word disability and then on line 10 you have perceived so it covers perceived or actual disability so that's included there the code for Recommendation number two includes the code sections that SEAC recommended, and you'll find those down at the bottom of the policy, those additional sections there.

[00:52:05] Let me see to the MSAC ones. I think in reviewing the MSAC, they have general comments.

[00:52:24] I can go back and look through some of those. If there are specific ones, as you said, this is pretty extensive with 10 pages. I'm happy to address specific ones that you'd like. I just don't know that if there are specific ones you'd like me to go through and speak to. I'm happy to do that. the interest of time perhaps we should circle back well I will say I was hoping that we would conclude the meeting I was planning to conclude the meeting at 6

[00:53:01] o'clock given the fact that we have another meeting in 30 minutes and I want to make sure that everybody who's here has the opportunity to have dinner I will say after sitting with the ad hoc committee comments for a couple of days I'm not sure that I'm ready to vote on this policy I feel like there's more work that could be done and I want to make sure that we get it right and we take our time so I would agree yeah okay could I see a thumbs up it looks like

[00:53:35] we're we want to we're in agreement and we want to keep it so would you like to have any further discussion on this at this time your radar and I put it I I posted it in board docs, but I just wanted to speak to it.

[00:53:53] If we're going to bring it back, I think this gives you some more time to marinate on it. So I was going to propose an amendment to add the language on, hold on, I just had it up, to on line 15 to add the words political affiliation after military status. And my thinking on that is just actually I'm thinking in line with adding gender expression as well is the way people express their political affiliation and different things have arisen pre- and post-election in this climate and of course I would expect them to adhere to all the other policies that address dress code and different ways to express themselves politically but I thought that might be something we might have a dialogue

[00:54:32] about if that might be a consideration to make sure that people are protected and not discriminated against for their said political affiliation. So just something to think about in this time that we're in that was on my mind. So I appreciate your thoughts on that as we move forward, but certainly we don't have to discuss it tonight. Thank you, Ms. Chernoff. May I ask you a question? Have you come across any precedents for that language in any of your research? So it more comes from a response from my community pre and post-election about some of the things that kids were wearing or how they were wearing buttons or supporting different causes and different experiences that different children had,

[00:55:12] students had. Also, I did have a lengthy conversation with Mr. Allen, our division counsel, about whether or not that that would be problematic. And given that we I'm going to speak on his behalf now and summarize, so I'll just make that caveat. But given that we have so many other policies that protect those kinds of expression, adding it in, he did not feel was problematic. I don't know, Ms. Ewing, if you want to chime in additionally there. No, not in general, but we would need to talk about the application of it because it could butt against certain policies that both impact students and faculty staff and teachers yeah and that was something I was hoping we could address in the meeting but given the time

[00:55:50] constraints probably best to do more research and bring it up next time I would agree thank you miss Chernoff I would ask staff to please consider if you could research what the precedence is if there are any other localities that have anything any comparable language and again I think we should definitely be prepared to discuss where adding this language would perhaps create tension and operationalizing several other policies that come to mind but I'm happy to have the discussion and I really do believe that we should take a deeper look

[00:56:29] at the ad hoc committee language to make sure that we've captured what so many committed members of our community have offered such thoughtful suggestions so with that I will move this action item back for our December meeting we still have a few minutes and we have one more action item so we'll move on to item 6.0 to policy 2440 order of business quorum rules and voting I will ask my committee

[00:57:06] members if they feel they need more time with this one if we would like to bring it back or should we proceed quickly go for it sure okay missed on you thank you chair Chandler so with regard to lines 31 to 35 I believe it was discussed at our September meeting not to delete those lines but in the red

[00:57:44] they're still deleted so I was wondering if anyone could address that I'll be honest miss down here I'll be honest I don't recall that I did go back and look at the transcript and listen to it but we're happy to go do that again if that's your recollection and we can make any adjustments accordingly so that was not on my radar I apologize thank you dr. Smith I I might be misreading my own notes as to whether it was that language or the code site that is related to that language that was going to be added it might have just been the code

[00:58:23] site that relates to the AV technology that I don't think was added so I guess that would be my only my only suggestion would be can we can we add that code site to the to the legal references are you comfortable with the draft as it stands if we add the code site yes would you like to vote on this policy now okay

[00:58:55] then with the request that we add the appropriate code reference and seeing no further discussion could I please have a motion to approve policy 2440 and send it to the full board as an information item I move to approve policy 2440 use proposed revisions to send to the full board for its consideration second thank you so much the motion has been made by Miss Donahue and seconded by miss Chernoff. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Seeing none

[00:59:35] opposed, the motion passes unanimously with all committee members present. With that, as many of you know, this is Dr. Smith's last meeting as the staff liaison to the LAMP committee before he moves on to become the superintendent of Stafford County Public Schools. Dr. Smith, I want to congratulate you and also say thank you for all of your hard work here. It has been a pleasure working with you and um you have been just a steadfast and steady support um not just for me as chair but i think also for the committee and and we're so grateful um for all of your work here at lcps

[01:00:12] um over the last several years and uh with that we want to wish you the best in your new endeavor and share with our friends in stafford how lucky they are

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