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Loudoun County School Board, Finance & Operations Committee Meeting, Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 15m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1062535880?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 2026-10-16. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:22] - Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call to order this March 4th Finance and Operations Committee meeting. My name is Arben Estreffi, and I'm the chair of this committee. I'm joined by Chair Mansfield, and Ms. Griffiths is also a member of this committee. She's not here at the moment. We'll go ahead and get started and see if we have any public comment.

[00:00:40] No public comment, okay. We'll move on to item three, minutes. Hopefully we've had a chance to review the meeting minutes from February 18th. Are there any comments or revisions to the meeting minutes?

[00:00:55] Yes, Chair Mansfield. It was just that the two links that were there for the audio and transcript went to SBAC as opposed to this committee. That's all I have. We'll just update the links in the meeting minutes. But I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve the February 18th, 2025 Finance and Operations Committee meeting minutes.

[00:01:18] Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Chair Mansfield. Any discussion? Seeing no further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. - Aye. That motion will pass unanimously with Ms. Scriffith's absent for the vote.

[00:01:41] Meeting minutes have been approved. We'll move on to our three action items for this afternoon. We'll start with 4.01, Business and Financial Services, RFP, R25267, back of envelope audit.

[00:01:58] I will go ahead and start with the motion. So I move that the Finance and Operations Committee recommends the Loudoun County School Board Award of contracts to CMTA Inc and the McClure company to serve as LCPS's energy performance contractors.

[00:02:14] Do I have a second? - Second. - Seconded by Chair Mansfield. We'll go ahead and open it for any discussion. Maybe we can start with Ms. Filia or Mr. Lewis in case there's anything else to add from the last FNO meeting.

[00:02:33] - Thank you, Mr. Streffi. So the only thing I would add is that during the last conversation at the last meeting, Mrs. Griffith asked for some breakdown of the information, and we provided that in the first paragraph with what the values of the contracts are or the particular projects are, and we're just happy to answer any questions you may have about that.

[00:02:51] Okay. Any other discussion or questions on this item? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And that motion will pass.

[00:03:10] Two in favor, and Mrs. Griffith's absent for the vote. - So, I can hear whispers of consent item. - That's what I was gonna say. - So, let's do a temperature check.

[00:03:27] Is this okay to move to consent for the full board? - Yes. - Yes. - So that item will be on the consent agenda for March 11th to the full board.

[00:03:43] Moving on to 4.02, support services transfer of county-held LCPS-CIP contingency funding to the CAP for the Loudoun County High School HVAC replacement project. I don't believe that anything else was added to this, so I'll just go ahead and make the motion.

[00:04:03] So I move that the Loudoun County School Board requests the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors transfer $2.5 million from county-held LCPS-CIP contingency funding to the Capital Asset Preservation Program for the Loudoun County High School heating, ventilation, and air-conditioned HVAC replacement project.

[00:04:21] Do I have a second? - Second. - Seconded by Chair Mansfield. Is there any discussion? Seeing no further discussion, we will go on to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye.

[00:04:36] Aye. Aye. That motion will pass unanimously, with Ms. Skripis absent for the vote. And this will go to consent. Thumbs up. Yes. So this will be a consent item on the March 11th full school board meeting. Moving on to 4.03, Teaching and Learning, Think Big Spaces, agreement with Amazon.

[00:05:00] And I'll start us off with the motion. I move that the Finance and Operations Committee recommend the naming of the four Amazon Think Big corners and forward the resolution and agreement to the full school board. Do I have a second? - Second. - Seconded by Chair Mansfield.

[00:05:17] And now we'll open up for discussion. Mr. Slevin, would you like to present any additional information or comments or do I open it up for discussion? - Thank you, Mr. Streffi. I would just remind the committee that we are bringing this item to the FNO committee and eventually the full board in line with policy 6510 and naming school facilities, as well as 4160 commercial, promotional, and corporate sponsorships for the agreement component.

[00:05:47] We did receive the feedback from the committee last time we attended, and in response, we did include a sample material list within the agreement that was not present the last time, the specific designs for the corners, so you could see what the space would actually look like, and we've also included a sample lesson from our ongoing support from the science office.

[00:06:08] The science team, Ms. Timothy is working with our accessibility team on this collaboration in addition to our regular collaboration with that team. And I would just note that we are not considering this a new program. It is a renaming and it's an extension of our current science approach at these particular schools that are being afforded this opportunity through LEF.

[00:06:31] So we're here to answer any questions or respond to any comments if you'd like. - Thank you, Mr. Slevin. Any additional discussion? Yes, Chair Mansfield. - So I have a couple of things. So the resolution that would be have to be read at the board meeting, if we pass it here, that would need to be read during the consent agenda, or would that be another thing?

[00:06:54] 'Cause I have a resolution here. - So generally I would, the practice has been to read proclamations. I'm not sure what the school board approach has been on resolutions, but we could read it if that's something that would align to practice.

[00:07:12] Gun safety, the safety we did was a resolution, and we did do it proclamation. That's why I was, during that time, that's why I was wondering. And just to provide a contrast, the budget resolution we did not read.

[00:07:28] So I think it really is up to the school board. Because, okay. And then the second thing was on the agreement. On two, yeah, section 2G, I guess this is really an attorney question.

[00:08:00] So the recipient will provide still photographs and audio video recordings to Amazon to be used for Amazon's purposes. Amazon may also take items in the think big space, including but not limited to items taken through the use of a photographer hired by Amazon or Amazon's employees.

[00:08:18] Recipient hereby represents that all necessary consents from participants have been obtained for any items taken in the Think Big space. And it hereby grants, recipient hereby grants Amazon and assigns an irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free right and license throughout the world and in perpetuity to reproduce, edit, publish, distribute, or translate for advertising, publicity, and promotional purposes or for any other purpose relating to Amazon's business.

[00:08:47] And then it's the rest. So my concern is the consent. How are we going to make sure that the kids who use this space have consent? If I may, Ms. Mansfield. So the recipient here would be LEF.

[00:09:03] So it would be basically saying LEF would provide the photographs. Before anything is taken, I would recommend that LEF make sure that they have students that are there whose parents want them to participate, are willing to have them in photographs and understand the implications.

[00:09:19] I think it's common for different programs that we have releases that are provided. We can definitely make sure that we have one that clearly states what happens with their photographs. If you look at the Amazon Think Big Space website, they do have pictures of students in classrooms. And I think they use them to promote the program throughout the state and the country.

[00:09:39] But we would want to be really, really sure that we receive that specific consent. LCPS already gets a consent from students when they sign up as part of the handbook and, you know, registering with the division. But I think here it would be important for the parents to understand how that photo may be used.

[00:09:57] So I definitely think that's something we would work with LEF to make sure is in place before any photos go to Amazon. And that's even allowing them on the premises to take their own photos. The same thing would need to apply. Yeah, sometimes I think that we forget that it's just a checkmark off that box.

[00:10:14] And sometimes people don't go back and relook. And I would hate for anybody to not want their child to be photographed. And then it's all over everywhere regardless. So I just want to make sure. Yeah, and I think LCPS's uses are different than a third party.

[00:10:30] So we would definitely want to be clear about that. The other item that I had was looking at the, I guess, the Frederick Douglass proof.

[00:10:49] I guess it would just be in that space that's there. one of these A through D. We just don't know yet which ones they picked. So they specifically selected the wall two option A mock-up. And I guess the other one was at Guilford. It just looks like it's just right by the door. It's not really a space space. It's right by the door. Is

[00:11:28] that what was contemplated here? So that was through continued conversations with Principal Tillman. And so on the onset, we were in conversations around space, and then we realized space needed to be utilized for classroom instruction. So they indicated the library area because it's a common space that all the students would be passing through and interacting with. Now, knowing that these are corners, the expectation isn't that the students would be working in these particular, you know, small corners, but rather they kind of serve as the branding, but the experiences would be happening school-wide.

[00:12:04] And then, Mr. Slevin, thank you for the sample STEM lesson, and I'm assuming that we could probably make these PDFs, accessible PDFs, and all the rest of that.

[00:12:22] Yes, are you able to speak to that? So, yes. I actually did have a chance to meet with the assistive technology team, and based on their consultation and guidance, I'm going to be actually in constant communication as we're supporting the schools.

[00:12:37] They had said to us that it's most helpful if we can provide more specifics. So we did provide the sample equipment list so that they could give us some considerations. But those conversations will be ongoing as schools are looking at equipment and or elevating the current curriculum so that we can ensure all resources and materials are having that assistive technology lens.

[00:12:58] Thank you for that. Okay, that's all I had. - Thank you, Chair of Mansfield. I don't have any other questions, but I just want to thank everyone for all of the work that went to this behind the scenes, L.E.F., Ms. Timothy, obviously Mr. Slevin, and anyone else who got us to this point to make these experiences possible in more schools.

[00:13:22] So thank you. With that, any further, any other discussion? Okay, seeing none, we'll take this to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. - Aye. That motion will pass unanimously with Ms. Griffiths absent for the vote.

[00:13:42] So that takes us through all of our action items and we'll move on to new businesses. Is there any new business? Seeing no new business, we'll move on. - Chair Struffy, if my interject. - Please. - Excuse me, choke up.

[00:13:58] On that last item of where it would land on the school board agenda, if it would be an action or a consent item. - Oh, Chair Mansfield's dropping the ball here. She's usually poking me. So, we'll do a temperature check.

[00:14:14] Do we want to have this go to the full board? So, I do want to revisit that resolution, I think. I don't think we have any proclamations for next week. So, this would be a resolution that we should probably add to the agenda next week.

[00:14:36] But that would be on consent anyway. Right. So, then I think it could go on consent. And if somebody wants to pull it off, they can. Okay. Sounds good. So, yeah. Consent. Okay.

[00:14:52] Okay, and seeing no new business, we will now adjourn this March 4th meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee. Thank you all very much.

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