Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Finance & Operations Committee Meeting, Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Date: Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 13m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1040215467?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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[00:00:27] - Hi, everyone, welcome. I'd like to call to order this December 17th meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee. My name is Arvin Estreffi, and I'm the chair of this committee. I'm joined by Chair Mansfield and Mrs. Griffiths. We'll start off with our first item, public comment.

[00:00:43] Is there any public comment for today? Seeing none. Move on to the approval of our meeting minutes. Board members assume that we've had a chance to review our meeting minutes. Are there any questions or comments for December 3rd meeting minutes?

[00:01:01] Seeing none. - Yes. - Did we correct that one item? - Yes. - Okay, thank you. That's what I was looking for, sorry. Okay, no, I have no questions.

[00:01:17] - Okay, any other comments or questions on the meeting minutes from December 3rd? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to a vote. All those in favor, well, we'll make the motion first. I move that the Loudoun County School Board approve the meeting minutes from December 3rd of the Finance and Operations Committee.

[00:01:40] Do I have a second? - Second. seconded by Mrs. Griffiths. That motion has been properly moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll move on to a vote. All those in favor, aye?

[00:01:55] - Aye. - That motion will pass unanimously. The meeting minutes have been approved. Move on to our action items. 4.01, Business and Financial Services, RFP, R2-5314, Auditorium, and Black Box Dimmer System Services.

[00:02:15] Do I have a motion? - Yes. - I move that the Loudoun County School Board awards RFP number R25314 Auditorium and Black Box Demer Systems Services to Artistic Concepts Group of Chantilly, Virginia from February 1st, 2025 through January 31st, 2026.

[00:02:37] - Chair, Mansfield has made a motion. Is there a second? - Second. - Seconded by Mrs. Griffiths. Is there any discussion? And I'll just defer to Ms. Filia in case you want to present. Yes, I'd like to start by saying thank you.

[00:02:52] I know that this is a short agenda today, but this particular item is being brought before you as an action item as opposed to an information item due to the number of available meetings in January. With this contract expiring January 31st and only one school board meeting in January, we needed to make sure, if passed by you, that it gets on the consent agenda in January for the January 14th school board meeting.

[00:03:17] this vendor is a incumbent vendor that has done this work for us and this is a new contract for them to once again provide those services but like I said I'd just like to thank you for taking the time to review this this evening and pass it forward. Thank you very much for members any questions or comments yes Ms. Griffiths thank you so much this is regarding the dimmers and lighting for the theater it is okay perfect - Correct, thank you, that's all I wanted to know, thank you.

[00:03:52] - Thank you, any other questions? Seeing none, we will move on to a vote. All those in favor, aye. - Aye. - That motion will pass unanimously.

[00:04:08] Board members, based on Ms. Filial's comments, are we all okay to move this to consent in the next school board meeting? Yes, okay. Moving on to item 4.02, support services, revision of policy 6320, Playgrounds.

[00:04:24] Do I have a motion? I move that the Finance and Operations Committee recommend the Loudoun County School Board approve the staff recommended revisions of Policy 6320, Playgrounds.

[00:04:43] Do I have a second? Second. So that motion has been made by Chair Mansfield and seconded by Ms. Griffiths. Is there any discussion? And perhaps we can pass it on to Mr. Lewis to maybe summarize the changes that were suggested from last meeting.

[00:05:02] Thank you, Mr. Streffi. I'm going to turn that microphone to Mr. Stocks, who will give you that summary. thank you. Thank you. As a result of the last meeting and understanding and realizing that we had edited language in section B, I believe, under design and construction to standardize 5 to 12 age inclusive and 2 to 5 age inclusive playgrounds, we have also added in section A1 on lines 14 through 18 to add language to include both five to 12 year old and two to five year old

[00:05:41] inclusive playgrounds as well as a statement at the end on line 17 that inclusive playgrounds should be located within a fenced area where space is available so that was in regulation planned to be in regulation but it was a it sounded like the committee had an interest in pulling that into policy as well and and we support that recommendation so have added that language Thank you very much for our members.

[00:06:07] Any questions or discussion? Yes, Chair Mansfield. Okay, so on line 136, I just need a little bit of a clarification. Where it says, or other LCPS managed funding, does that, will include like PTA funds or end of year funds and grant money?

[00:06:27] End of year funds, potentially grant money. We build a lot of playgrounds with proffer funding. So that's money that is managed and facilitated by LCPS. PTA, PTO, or outside funding is still acceptable to supplement a playground or to add a piece of equipment.

[00:06:46] It's not typically building an entire playground, but we're just saying that this criteria will be utilized when any time we're managing the funding. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that that encompassed. Thank you. Any other questions or discussion?

[00:07:03] Seeing no further discussion, - We will move on to vote. All those in favor of this motion? Did you have something else? - No, no, no, just about five minutes. - Okay. - Five minute minutes.

[00:07:19] - All those in favor of this motion, say aye. - Aye. - Aye. - That motion will pass unanimously. - Yes. - Any new business? - Yes.

[00:07:34] - Thank you, Chair Estreffi. As far as new business goes, I did have a conversation with Mr. Lewis about renovations in the schools. I want to know how I can go about adding um certain renovations to the cip program as far as the um and i understand life cycle uh okay life cycle and maintenance that's scheduled but sometimes things come up um and things need to be replaced as you know chillers boilers that sort of thing that they break down um you know i'm going to bring up again the uh the bleachers over at sander's corner as an example um i feel

[00:08:12] like it's a I know you've had inspectors out there but my understanding is it is a safety hazard and I don't want something to happen first and then we make a change I would really like to devote funds to getting new bleachers over at this particular school and I think they're the motorized bleachers that we discussed you hit a button and they come out and then go back in if you could just discuss that and tell me how we can get that into the budget I think it's very

[00:08:47] necessary I know a lot of schools have issues and they they come to us one by one this happens to be one of my schools and I'm very concerned about the safety hazard thank you yes ma'am thank you so the the typical place for those repairs and replacements to be done are handled through the cap which the school board just adopted the other night and so the the one in particular the bleachers that you were referring to are not in that first year of the cap so at this point they're not planned for to be in our capital program if the board wanted to direct us to use other funding somewhere then then

[00:09:24] you could do that and identify that funding source at this point we have not seen them to be a safety hazard I've talked to with our facilities folks a couple of different times but what I will do is make the commitment to you that I'll go out and look at those myself. We believe the one in particular is just an operational thing, and we've given instructions on how to do that so that it's not a safety issue.

[00:09:46] But I will go out and look at those myself. Is it possible for me to meet you there? Sure. And take a look as well? Can we arrange that meeting? Absolutely. I'll be happy to go out there. I think the issue is when they didn't pull them out for me because it's too difficult to push them back in.

[00:10:04] So if we're there and you're doing an inspection, They can be pulled out, and we can go through what the issues may be as to whether or not it does call for them to be replaced right away. And I do want to point out again, well, I've said this previously, they're over 30 years old now.

[00:10:22] So I think it's time that maybe we take action on that. And I'll look forward to going out there with you. Thank you so much. Yep, absolutely. Mr. Lewis, how much are those? If I had to guess, they're somewhere between $75,000 and $90,000 to replace what is there existing, which are the manual ones with the motorized ones.

[00:10:47] So is that something that we have to have a contract with in order to use end-of-year funds if that becomes available? I'm not sure we need a contract for them separately, no. But if it was into your funds, we could certainly do that. Okay, so last time we were using end-of-year funds, we had, for the solar panel, sorry, the issue was that we needed to have, like, a contract and that kind of thing.

[00:11:12] It's a different issue, I know, solar panels versus this, but I guess what I'm asking is, do we have to have something in place first to say, okay, we can use that for end-of-year funds? No, this would be more of a component replacement type thing, so it's not something we'd have to bid and put out on the street.

[00:11:30] I think it's probably what we were talking about before. It takes a while to put the design together and then have a long solicitation process. I'll ask Mr. Traynor and Mr. Woehead that we have a co-op contract. So we have a co-op contract we can ride for replacing that unit in total.

[00:11:45] So we would need all we need is funding, and we can make that. And then the last thing for me is I'd be interested if those conversations get accelerated, if there's a defect or if we start talking about a replacement to understand the condition or the number of years that other, you know, bleacher systems are, you know, if there are others that are 30 years old or just a little bit more of a comprehensive understanding of what the situation is across other schools from an equity lens?

[00:12:17] Sure. We have a running inventory of all of our bleachers in many of our different components, and so we can identify those. The ones that are being replaced because of their age and or their condition, we do know which ones of those have been replaced already and which ones haven't and which ones have the motorized and which ones don't.

[00:12:36] So we can provide that information. Thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none, we'll now adjourn this December 17th meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee. Thank you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com