Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Student Services Committee Meeting, Thursday, August 21, 2025

Date: Thursday, August 21, 2025
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 59m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1112738003?rel=0

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 2026-10-13. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here at the August 21st, 2025 meeting of the Student Services Committee. I apologize for being late. I am the chair of this committee, and Donahue with me are Ms. Melinda Mansfield and Ms. Carrie LaBelle.

[00:00:18] This meeting is being audio recorded, and it will be posted, the recording will be posted in the future for anyone to listen to through the LCPS website. this meeting is not being live streamed and also is not being video recorded with that we will move on to item number two on our agenda which is public comment do we have any public commenters today seeing none madam chair we do not thank you very much ms richardson in that case we will move on to item number three on our agenda which is approval of the draft june 5th 2025 minutes from

[00:00:56] that student services meeting. Hopefully my colleagues have had time to review the draft if there are any changes that need to be made now is the time and if there and if not I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes. Ms. Manfield.

[00:01:17] I would like to make a motion to I move to approve the minutes from June 5th

[00:01:26] 20-25.

[00:01:58] There is a motion. Is there a second? Second. Thank you Ms. LaBelle and Ms. Mansfield. The motion has been properly moved and seconded. All those in favor please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. Now we will move on to item number four. Our information item. Presentation on the revisions to policy 8155 school assignment. Mr. Dolson the floor is yours. Thank you very much Chair Donahue. Happy first day of school. just wanted to say that publicly it's been a great day so there's not a lot to update in the sense of what we discussed in back in June versus what we will see before you this evening there is a couple of data points that I do want to go into a little bit more depth with you and I have my colleague Donna here with me that can just help us extrapolate a little bit more of the information regarding some of the requests for special permission but just

[00:02:35] to summarize very quickly policy 8155 you all did a very nice overhaul on policy 8155 again the overview and feedback regarding this policy implementation has been very positive and we will go over some of the current data for this school year as well as some of the staff suggestions for revisions and again it's going to be very similar to what we discussed back in in June so overall the feedback for policy 8155 but like I said has been extremely positive the updated timelines have really helped us be able to in my

[00:03:14] opinion and in many of my colleagues opinions start this school year off very smoothly adding the elementary schools to the over enrolled list also helped define really and truly what it means to be over enrolled the ability to avoid applications instead of allowing families and students to appeal when they are applying to an over enrolled school has helped tremendously it is limited our appeals and also limited the appeals that come to you again the overall feedback from principals has been extremely positive and then we've had a significant reduction in the number of appeals and you'll be able to

[00:03:54] see that in the next few slides. So in regards to the data set that you really have for you I'm going to speed through these because there really is no update to these except for the end number which is different because we basically were looking at data based on June 5th and now we have data that is based on I think we did this back in like earlier this week which was August 18th maybe so this is as of the start of the school year so the only change on

[00:04:29] this slide is the end of 3948 so that's the total number of special permission requests that came through my office for the 2526 school year that first slide I apologize let me go back the first slide really was for students without disability so those percentages represent students in the general education population and again that end of 3948 includes everyone that applied for special permission the next slide we have students with disabilities or our students that are receiving specialized instruction and again same number but

[00:05:08] we're just different percentages slide after that is our approvals so students with disabilities for this school year we had a total number of students that applied for that were 489 and you have extrapolated there the percentages for elementary middle and high school and those percentages represent that number of n which is 489 and then we have the students without disabilities or students within our general education population again that n number has changed just

[00:05:48] from June so it's a total of three thousand four hundred and sixty-nine and then the percentage is represented for elementary middle and high school yes miss low do these numbers include the students were returning to the schools there you know from like out of district so that includes them okay thank you so

[00:06:26] now I am going to so now we're going to dive a little bit deeper into some of the data that we have been able to examine throughout the this past special permission window which would be from January of 25 till August of 25 and looking at specifically some of our special education data as it pertains to special permission so so I will say my data does not end in August I didn't

[00:07:05] grab the newest one so just as a point of reference I think this this there was one appeal at the time that I did this data but when we had our first presentation the last time on special permission and the data was presented I I was concerned without the story behind the numbers like we have just the numbers that are in the system but there's quite a number quite a robust story behind a lot of it so I wanted I broke it down to elementary middle and high school and I want to kind of explain some of the things that were considered denial and like they weren't approved they were students that were voided and there are various reasons why students were voided in the system some

[00:07:41] of them were they were applying to an over-enrolled school a parent request to withdraw it or to avoid theirs one of them at the elementary level was a preschool and actually a couple of them were preschool parent parents asking for special permission in preschool and that's not one of the grade levels that we do special permission for and then the other one was we have there were a number students who were students who were program placed and parents requested special permission but they were already being placed at that school that was being requested by the Office of Special Education so it was a program placement and not a special permission placement so we voided those because

[00:08:20] they were going with transportation and it wasn't part of that process but in the original presentation of the data it was looking like they were denied but they were actually voided because they were approved and there was a pretty large number of those at the elementary level so that was the voided part of them and then ones that were just specifically considered for caseload capacity and that special education caseload capacity out of the 242 212 of them were the only consideration was special education caseload capacity so it wasn't the over-enrolled it wasn't it wasn't the voided students or the

[00:08:59] withdrawn requests and of those 212 89.6 were approved so we approved 190 of those students so that looks a little bit different than sort of the data that we presented before because some of those things were really not special education matters at all yes ma'am okay so could you say some of that again so we're looking at like elementary school I have like for 2025 for students with

[00:09:31] disabilities 13% applied for special permission 75% got in it looked like for students with disabilities but then you're saying like here the total request was was that for just for special education or that was for the total request for this slide 242 was just special education with special education and I will say some of this is a little off as well in the system because sometimes parents don't accurately indicate whether their children are or are not students with disabilities so sometimes in the original data set it's gonna say they're not a student with a disability but then when

[00:10:10] we dig in they actually are a student with a disability because we review all all of these students so I mean the numbers are only as good as the data that goes into the system but our team really dove into every student with a disability to get the story behind what exactly happened with each student. So the 242 is the elementary students that applied for special permission and of those 242 26 were voided out for those various reasons overcrowding, parent request, parent error sometimes there was a parent error and some of those are middle and high school there was a parent error they may have put the wrong grade or requested um like an elementary

[00:10:47] school but it was a rising sixth grader and that threw off the data so they asked to avoid it and then they would have resubmitted an application and for this over enrolled is this over enrolled for special education or over enrolled period no ma'am over enrolled for the school not special education if it's something to do with caseload capacity for special ed that would have been and that next bullet considered for caseload capacity so it's just over enrolled at the grade level for the school is what so that's really the gen ed what we do for all students so that's the elementary data do you have any other questions for that

[00:11:20] and then the middle school there were a total of 90 requests for special permission students identified as students with disabilities 13 of those were voided out and then 77 were considered for caseload capacity and of those 77 48 were approved which is 62.3 percent I will I would also like to say at the middle school and really at each of the levels but at the middle school

[00:11:55] because that number is so small there were 90 students one student counted for three of these denials so they were denied for the original request then they were denied at the appeal level at the Department of Student Services or the Office of Student Services excuse me and then they were denied by the the school board. So that's three denials for one student in this calculation. So it's not that we denied, you know, my brain is not going to do math this late and I've been playing with children all day long. I'm not even going to attempt to do it. But the denials are actually not that many students.

[00:12:33] It's that many actual requests in the system, which could be multiple requests for the same student. And we have that across the level. Sometimes a student would be denied for one building. So then they would apply for another building and another building. So there would be three sort of lines for the same student for three different requests and then at the high school there were 150 students with disabilities that requested first requested special permission 28 were voided out again some of them were already program placed some of them were parent error or

[00:13:07] request to withdraw or void the request and then the over enrolled of the school itself not special education. And then out of that 150, 121 were considered simply for special education capacity. And of that 121, 90 were approved, which was 74.4%. So moving a little bit further into our presentation, again, this is a slide that you saw back in June. And we did not have our updated

[00:13:47] data. So this is just our updates as of our last appeals committee meeting. So the total number of special permission applications that we had go through our office was 3948 23 percent of those were not approved or they were voided and then 77% of the applications that we received were approved and that's across all entry levels so it could be approved by just outright could be approved by me on appeal or it could have been approved by the school board on appeal and then

[00:14:25] specifically for your purposes and your the committees that exist within the appeals committee you had a total of 21 appeals that came before you over the months of appeals that were available and 43 percent of those appeals you approved and 57 percent you denied and you will see a drastic change in the number of appeals that have gone through previously versus present if I could ask a couple of questions before we move on one going back to you miss

[00:15:04] Smith could are you able to tell us in general any of the reasons why with regard to your elementary middle and high school slides of these requests you know 62% approved at middle school for example what are some of the reasons why those requests might be denied so it would simply be whether there is capacity and the for the CrossCat staff members teachers whether there's capacity in the program for the student or whether the school has the program to meet the needs in general sometimes a parent will request that their student

[00:15:41] go to a particular school and the needs of the unique needs of that student can't be met at every school because we have specialized programs not in every building so they may have been requesting a school that didn't have a program for student with multiple disabilities because we don't have those in every building so that would be a denial just because we don't have the appropriate level of services in the building to meet that need for the student thank you that's helpful and then for the the slide before this one does it say pending because that's the data from June as that 2024 so back yes

[00:16:19] back in 2024 yeah we don't have any that are pending absolutely so that was just because sorry we did not take that out because this slide was created prior to us having if you recall this time last year we still had an appeal I think three or four days into the school year so we did have some pending applications out there okay that's what I thought I just wanted to confirm thank you I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised by the reduction of appeals that are coming to

[00:16:59] the board or have come to the board but I am you know looking at the end numbers that's there's not much change from 24 to 25 and it is it is an increase of almost 200 from 23 and I was I was wondering if you had thoughts about that number staying kind of static slash not decreasing I honestly don't have a

[00:17:33] thought I was actually surprised as well I do think that some of the changes that have occurred with the Virginia High School League have caused us to see an increase I also think that they increase if I'm sort of reading the tea leaves we're going to see an increase in middle school applications for that purpose and I think in collaboration with the Department of School Leadership specifically with Mr. Ferry in the Department of Athletics and Activities

[00:18:09] we have joined forces and are using our knowledge base and we are looking at some of the situations very carefully and trying to communicate openly and transparently about what our application process is but also understanding that it may impact it does impact your ability to participate in VHSL activities we started that communication and I will say that strategy well into January once we started this whole process we did not have the new VHSL rules and

[00:18:47] regulations at that point but we were very transparent with this may impact this could impact your ability to participate in those activities so I also think that we still have some school-based professional development that needs to occur with people that are really trying to be very very kind to our constituents and say we welcome all kids I think we need to do some professional development that say you need to stay in the school where your attend your your zone attendances and so that's something that we have been

[00:19:24] discussing as a team on this side along with our colleagues in Department of School leadership and I appreciate I see both sides of that because when you are a registrar you're an attendance person you have a parent that is trying to you know attend your school you certainly don't want to turn them away but you also need to be well versed in well this you really need to go to this school and there may not be capacity in our school to be able to serve you for all the things that miss Smith said but as well as you know we'd also don't want to be regionally assigning students families if we can help that and I think

[00:19:58] that's a process that will play out well as long as we continue that professional development for our school-based staff thank you mr. Dolson that that makes sense and to your point of whether additional training may be needed in individual school buildings or with individual staff I I see your point but I also was thinking it's it's completely fair for them to write there is no official position right now that special permission is discouraged at all or that there has to be a reason to request it or to grant it so I you know

[00:20:37] from from that lens I applaud them for wanting to you know serve the community in the best way that you know that that they can and try to make everyone happy but but you know how I feel about well I'm sure Donna you bring up a very good point because if if sufficient capacity exists and a family or a student does apply that student is granted special permission so your point is very well taken and we know that there is sufficient capacity some of our schools so that I think that's that's a fact that again if unless the permission is

[00:21:17] taken away these numbers probably are not going to change drastically unless boundary changes occur or or whatnot thank you sorry to sidetrack you but thank you mr. Dolson please continue so on that note it's it's not a surprise that I don't like gen ed different than special education the one way to equal

[00:21:47] that is 90% at special education is as well as 90% at the at the so if you can't come in because of special education nobody can come in if that makes any sense and I would like to know what those numbers and those numbers may be if there's a way to do that so we use 90% as our threshold for both gen ed and gen ed grade level capacity and special education capacity but there are so no

[00:22:21] I mean if there is 90% if if but there is a difference there because if you're 90% agenda that's bigger than 90% okay wait words what I'm saying is that I don't I think that there are more special education students who are denied because there is a capacity there that there's less capacity if there is less capacity for them then I think it should then it shouldn't be it should be the same if you don't have a capacity for special education kids then you

[00:23:01] don't have capacity for anybody if that makes sense so I would y'all are the experts but I was thinking that's more of a staffing staff ratio issue right because sped students have to have a lower employee to student ratio so So that could explain, at least in some circumstances, why there's-- Yes.

[00:23:27] And there's also-- you get more special-- I mean, we're getting more and more special education students. And they become special education students usually later in the year, typically. So there's a lot of becoming special education students later, where you have to restaff anyway for CrossCat.

[00:23:50] So that's why I'm thinking what the numbers would be, how to and that might be another way to decrease special permission to your point that it's we've talked before that in some right when we're looking at these we have the indicator of the student either is a sped student on an IEP or isn't but we've also discussed that if if the student is in on an IEP that doesn't necessarily mean that it would affect the right the staffing ratio depending on what the supports are that are in place for that student there might not actually be an impact so but I don't I don't know if there's a good way

[00:24:30] to to find out when a special ed student applies for special permission if there is an easy and non privacy invading way to find out you know is is it fair to look at that at the sped staffing rate and capacity at the school because it might not I don't know if this is making any sense it's been a long day right hopefully y'all know where I'm going with that with that inarticulate thought yes we you know we absolutely do understand where you're going because

[00:25:08] 90% for sped theoretically is not 90% for general education because general education classrooms can have a staffing standard of 1 to 22 1 to 23 1 to 25 right where our cross categorical across categorical staffing as as approved by by the board is 1 to 10 for elementary 1 to 11 for middle and 1 to 12 for high school so that does reduce the ability for students with disabilities to have a broader range of choices and flexibility with moving in so to just

[00:25:42] help you guys sort of think through this our process is we are we found out very quickly 22 23 school year that we needed to start tracking this data almost on a weekly basis and so thank you to Mrs. Smith for doing that for this team ever since then she's looking at it weekly and then feeding it to sped so our December 1st child count is December 1st but we have a date in October where we take the September 30 child count for every student right and then we go

[00:26:20] back and look at our three to five year trends and we grab a date in the middle of October and business and finance does a projection, right? So what has past years told us about the growth that we typically experience throughout the school year? So we know going into every school year what our projected student count for students with disabilities is as of June 30th. The past three years we have surpassed that projected child count based on that methodology. So by us tracking

[00:26:57] it every week, and so we're not just tracking how many students, we're tracking how many are referred, how many are found eligible, how many are found ineligible, how many stay on intervention plans, how many shift back to 504s, and then looking at that growth, trying to predict, because we as a division are trying to get staffing to schools sooner rather than later so that we can be very competitive in our hiring practices. So this year we have a target of getting that information to

[00:27:30] schools by the end of January. So while you all are working on budget, we have already done the work necessary to say this is how many special educators we need. Now that is based on current students sitting in that school and then what our data trends have shown us on a weekly basis throughout the year and students that are in the eligibility process thank you so well and and we start this process remind me of the date

[00:28:09] so January for staff and then February for families okay so does that mean potentially we won't have as many appeals for special education students because I see more special education students in appeals, sorry, than gen ed, just because they are, they're said, they're told no.

[00:28:41] Yes, because of everything you've said about capacity and staffing ratios, yes, that is, so everything that you've said is correct, yes. So would it be. Well, that's a shocker that I'm correct on anything, but okay. no and I and I know miss Mansfield that you've said this time last year you were I think hopeful about staffing and being able to see a reduction so actually your points well taken I don't know if if miss Richardson or miss Smith has have been able to track that like back in looking at 22 and 23 but I understand

[00:29:17] where you're going with that in looking at staffing the preemptiveness of getting staffing to schools faster or sooner but then also looking at where we are with eligibilities and also looking at the increase in special education students across elementary middle and high I don't know the answer I can't predict but I I wonder if we went back and looked we could see with 22 and 23 at least if there was a difference and there if there has been a reduction because I do

[00:29:52] know just from previous jobs I've had in the school district that schools have been granted staffing sooner specifically special education staffing to help reduce the need for the overcrowding of special education classrooms across the district whether it's a specialized program or a cross categorical situation and that would actually be an interesting thing and I can work with our friends in Rossi to see if we can extrapolate that information and take even a deeper dive. Ms. LaBelle you've been very patient.

[00:30:31] I was wondering quite a few of the denials and the appeals that come to the board a lot of the argument is that well the school is under enrolled how can special ed be over enrolled or you know and we're getting a lot of that back is there any way we can make that more clear or just because the schools over enrolled maybe special ed isn't them I mean we get both arguments in both directions and that could cut down if we could make that more clear I don't know

[00:31:08] maybe something to continue noodling and discussing as we move forward conversation I think that would help with that one more thing it was July and we had appeals is there any way that we do not have that we are done done done done with appeals so you'd

[00:31:41] have to based on policy 2350 we would have to end our application process even earlier it'd be March instead of April right now it'd be it's April 30th we would have to make it March 30th in order to remove the month of July completely just based on a calendar and if if you take every end date or Or, you know, there's a 10-day and then a 30-day.

[00:32:12] If you use that 10-day and 30-day marker, we would have to go back to March 30th. I would like to share, too, even through this process, like if we have denied a student, Dr. Engstrom's been great.

[00:32:32] If a student moves out of the division from a program and she knows that there's been a special permission denied, she will reach out to me to say, we now have space available, and then we'll overturn that. We'll reach out to the parent and offer them that space in a program. And that happened a couple times this year. And if I rework the numbers and we see that there's capacity, I'm constantly in that data.

[00:32:52] And we will notify Ms. Carpenter that we have another space available, if it's CrossCat or program. So we're constantly looking at that data. And that's not what we do on a regular basis when we're looking at it. But we do that for special ed. Your idea of we're out of room for SPED, then we don't approve anybody.

[00:33:10] The only place where I think that would be problematic is when parents are asking for a placement for a student requires a specialized program that just doesn't exist in a building like a multiple disabilities program because we don't have those everywhere we are having to say no because there's not a program to meet that need but if you're looking at cross cat that might be different and I do have the data that separates how many denials were cross cat versus program as well because program really is you guys it's and I you guys really do do that placement it's not really we have parents asking for special price special permission to attend program as well so that is part of our data it's not just cross-categorical

[00:33:48] it looks like we have many areas that we can continue to dig into as we work through this but I will ask Mr. Dolson to move on to our yeah so the next two slides I'm just going to breeze over because these are the reasons that exist in our portal you all have asked for that information and again we just updated the end that ended this special permission window and then the other selection analysis we have toyed with you know limiting that that character

[00:34:25] field a little bit so we get a little bit I think more granular information that we can sort of categorize specifically if we want to keep that on our portal we've discussed that with the research office and then finally really it's just the suggested revisions that we have actually in the policy and we did go over these last time so I will just hit these very quickly and then open it up for any more questions but our suggestion from our planning office is just to keep our language similar to what the planning office uses so using that base capacity in section a removing the phrase at any time from section B

[00:35:05] really to help define what outside the window really means clarifying the application requirements which we have done well in and other factors in section D adding that special permissions rescinded by the office of student services are not appealable under 2350 and then making language in section D5 more concise to reflect our new processes and then a request from our LCPS planning office has been to move our staff access to special permission

[00:35:42] back approximately two weeks in January just to allow them time to plan for possible changes that might occur with boundaries or situations that might occur because that rollover that does happen after the winter break is really important that we do have all the pertinent information to make those rollover smooth for parents to see and for schools to prepare I think that is all of the information that I wanted to share in regards to some of the revisions

[00:36:21] and we can certainly open it up for further discussion if you have anything else to ask or suggest thank you mr. Dolson just a couple of clarifications so the the red lines that were that we have that that is the suggestions that Wow all right so that is this okay yes ma'am okay and I'm also gonna ask you a stupid question the last bullet move staff access process back two weeks in

[00:37:01] January we're talking about moving it to yes so we would be suggesting more than likely January I was looking at a calendar I didn't write it down January 20th or 21st which coincides with the opening of the second semester which would make sense but that that is two weeks ish later than it would be normally which I think is like the sixth or seventh of January would be our first

[00:37:39] day back we have that as the first business day of January and then two weeks into that would be after the Martin Luther King holiday I believe so and I believe that is the second the first day of the second semester this

[00:37:51] year Thank You Miss Donohue I just have a quick question I'm looking at if a

[00:38:38] special permission is contingent upon student being in compliance with school rules and regulations and that it may be rescinded when do the letters for this go out with acceptance and if it's student commits or is found after that letter has been received by the parents can we still rescind it so I think your question is we we if once we either have an appeal that goes through or there is capacity we send out that information immediately we let the the families know

[00:39:15] that they have been granted special permission if the student is granted special permission and throughout that time frame that they are at that school they are maybe tardy a lot they are not coming to school or there is disciplinary infractions we take them through a process through my office where myself and/or Miss Carpenter reach out to the school or the school may reach out to us and we walk them through there's a there's a little bit of a warning timeline where we give them the opportunity to understand that they are on special permission it can be rescinded this is your first warning and

[00:39:55] then there's a little bit of remediation time if you will for the the student to improve if that doesn't occur or the attendance still is continues to be a concern then we assist the school with rescinding the special permission it is something that comes to me as for their its approval and then I and the actual office that rescinds the special permission piggyback off of that so it is the principal's responsibility if there's an infraction of any sort yes

[00:40:28] and so I think that needs to be said here okay in line 212 or we're in that area the other thing is 236 they can't ninth grade is not a thing anymore for VHSL I don't think is that correct so we need to delete that I agree I believe the only reason we have that currently is because it would impact this particular ninth grade but I echo your sentiment and I will get with mr. Ferry to ensure that what we have here is reflective of what VHSL has in its new rules and regulations the other thing is I think I would totally be in favor of

[00:41:08] March 30th okay so what we can do we can we can project a new timeline and we you can at least see what that would look like based on a March 30th end date and we can move everything back a month mr. Dolson I have a couple of follow-up a couple of

[00:41:42] follow-ups one from what Ms. LaBelle from Ms. LaBelle's question so the special permission process right they apply in the spring but it's for the following school year so if they apply in the spring and they're approved right so they get the letter in May which says you are approved you will now be on special permission when the new school year starts in August if there is a discipline infraction during that spring like between May and the end of school in that year prior to them actually starting on special permission at the new school is that a basis to rescind

[00:42:22] the grant of special permission so what I would say is that we would work in collaboration with all of those schools given your scenario that you just presented I would probably counsel the school to provide a warning now if you are talking about a renewal then 100% it would be we we would look at that examine it and if this was repeated behavior then that principal would have

[00:42:56] the right to propose a recension of that special permission if I'm just to use elementary schools here as an example if this student was going from Selden's Landing Elementary School to Ashman Elementary School on special permission and there were concerns between May and the end of the school year it would be something that we might encourage the principals to have conversations about and then the receiving principal in this case Ashman Elementary could the first couple of weeks of school send that family a

[00:43:32] warning letter basically extending the expectations based on policy 8155 understand mr. Donahue that you are here on special permission it is incumbent upon you to follow all of the school rules but we would really try to work with that that school and that family to hopefully again remediate the behavior remediate the attendance and then move forward hopefully on a positive note so that's what everything that you said makes sense to Ms. Mansfield's point I think we need to make that really clear if that is potentially a basis for the rescission of special permission I think

[00:44:11] that needs to be very clear in the policy whether it is or not and a couple of other things that I would information that I would be interested in having as part of our discussion next month would be if we were going to perhaps include language that says you have to have a basis to request special permission, would staff be in support of adding language like that? And if so, what categories would you recommend or support as being this is an appropriate basis to exercise

[00:44:49] a grant of special permission regarding possible changes to the timeline I would be curious how how it has worked the last couple of years is there is there a rush like near the end are there a lot of people complaining because they somehow missed the window are there if we shorten it again this year especially because we would be starting the process later if we start with staff later in January, is there a potential downside of doing that? And broadly speaking, I am very happy that

[00:45:29] other people are generally pleased with how this has been going, but I am deeply skeptical that everyone is happy with it. So if you have also some negative feedback to share with us about previous revisions and how they have worked out on the ground this past season, I'd be interested in what the concerns are and if there's a way to address them as we go forward not for today none of that for today so let me just get a I have a clarifying question from the committee's perspective um I heard you say possibly we would be supported in a possible end date for the window

[00:46:08] to end March 30th is it the will of the committee for us not to then move the window opening earlier but keep it so we're basically making the window more succinct and smaller, compacting it.

[00:46:25] Thank you, Ms. Richardson. I do wonder, this is just my speculation, if going back to a previous comment that was made, you're not seeing a drastic reduction in the applications. I do wonder if shortening the time frame, as long as what I said to you about this time last year, that no really does mean no, because we've been very very adamant about you missed the window sorry and we've been pretty strict on that this go-around and again with your support

[00:47:00] it's it's made a difference but I just wanted to clarify that so we would be only presenting a calendar that would end sooner not start sooner to that to your points Mr. Dolson the the reasons put forward to move the start date later make sense operationally I I wonder how much of an impact it would it would have

[00:47:35] ultimately on the rest of the process because this may be another data point how many of how many of the requests that we get are from staff compared to the rest of the pool so if if it's a small number or a small percentage then I wouldn't think that the starting later would have much of an impact on whether or not we should adjust the end date that makes sense we definitely can get that for you because I feel like we share that with you in previous yeah we

[00:48:11] gave you that that data and then miss Smith just brought up a good point that there is a provision in our policy that specific to staff that staff that are hired after the window they do have a time frame where they can still apply and again we've we've sort of opened this up as a perk in some cases and so we can definitely get you that information because as I look miss Carpenter says it's it's quite a few staff members do use this as as a perk I also just want

[00:48:48] to remind because we are going to be doing some boundary redistricting kind of a thing and so between gum spring and so there might be a little bit kind of weirdness later because we are going to be asking the eighth graders if they want to stay we're asking the ninth graders that you know that kind of thing so we'll see what happens thank you I think we'll put a pin in that for now and would like to have this on for information again please in September

[00:49:23] Thank you. With that, we will move on to discussion item 5.01, which is selecting an alternate date for our November meeting because our regularly scheduled November meeting date happens to fall on VSBA weekend.

[00:49:41] Yes, you guys should see a calendar in the back of your packet. So aptly provided for us by Mrs. Winslow in her absence. She made sure that you knew the dates for consideration where we could get a meeting room.

[00:49:58] So you guys need to look at your calendars and consider November 6th, November 12th, or November 13th. I'm good for 6th or 13th and not the 12th.

[00:50:29] It's one LCPS counselor. Are we not invited to that, right?

[00:50:44] which one is that I'm sorry one LCPS counselor and something what day is that on the 13th I I wouldn't say that you're not invited I just don't think it's been I don't think the invitations have been sent out yet okay okay the six six

[00:51:17] six the works thank you very much so we've come to consensus on this appreciate that right thank you and my thanks to miss okay and moving on to discussion item 5.02 proposed policy items for the 2526 just wanted to give you an overview we actually through student services it's kind of light for us this year which is nice so before you in September you will have policy 5310 on special education you will also have policy 8-19 which is dismissal during

[00:51:56] the school day staff are proposing a deletion of 8-19 because a great deal of dismissal procedures during the school day are already captured in our attendance policy 8140 so we'll also bring 8140 to you so you can review the to and feel comfortable that we have covered all aspects and i do apologize for the clerical error i'm not taking us back to the year 225 i promise sorry in in october we anticipate bringing to you

[00:52:35] policy 5330 student eligibility and placement procedures and that is for students with disabilities specifically. Then in the spring, we anticipate working collaboratively with the Department of School Leadership to bring you policy 5120 on alternative education. I put here that I thought that 8155 that we just discussed would sort of be a standing item for revisions for information until you guys are able to give us direction to move it forward for

[00:53:13] action and then I would like for us to have a conversation about the new policies we talked a great deal about isolation and exclusion I do believe we have a more supportive policy name policy on safe and supportive separation of students and so remember this conversation came up as it pertained to policy 5345 restraint and seclusion we identified some scenarios that happen within the educational setting that were not not seclusion but removals and

[00:53:52] wanting to put some parameters and expectations around that so when with the committee like to hear that policy it has been drafted I do need to get it through legal so I mean I we could do September if you guys would like to give you some time to work on it if that's okay if that is feasible and it does not put too much burden on your staff or on legal September should work another one that I anticipate is maybe on for information sure absolutely I'm I'm expecting a lot of information and comments from CX so certainly and then

[00:54:30] it was also recommended that we create a policy on observations in the educational setting so if we're going to do our policy on supportive student separation in September I would kindly ask the committee to consider bringing the observation policy in October that seems reasonable thank you Richardson thank you one one question that I don't expect to have an answer right now but

[00:55:01] But it will be helpful, as we are continuing to discuss policy 8155, for you to tell us if we want to have revisions in place for beginning of January 2026, when would be the date that we need to have it on for action in this committee?

[00:55:25] So we pushed it, right? We pushed it this past year, and the full board did not make a final vote until December. So we were working on all of the communications proactively. I would say that it should be to the full board in November for information and action so that we have those three weeks prior to winter break to really get the communication out based on any changes that the board might adopt.

[00:55:58] Thank you. Only one meeting in November, so we're going to have to bump it to the last meeting in October, the second meeting of the full board for information and then action at the November meeting. Thank you. Yes. Okay. And then the last item I had for you guys, given the policies that we're working on this fall, would you like us to proactively plan additional work sessions?

[00:56:31] Two additional work sessions. Yes.

[00:56:47] Safe and supportive separation of students. Safe and supportive separation of students. I do think that would make sense also that I do think that would make sense. Correct that's why we wanted to proactively ask the question today. So last year

[00:57:26] we did fit in two work sessions if not three definitely two that I recall one in September one in October. It may have felt like it was five. So we will review availability for September.

[00:57:42] I'll send those dates out to you guys, you can get back to me, and then we'll look at another separate date in October as well, just for work sessions. Is that okay? Sorry, would you mind letting SEAC know as well?

[00:57:58] Oh, of course, I always do. Yeah. And I've already met with SEAC leadership to review the proposed policy schedule, not just for our committee, but for all committees. Thank you. Thank you for doing it. You're welcome. All right, is that, are we good on discussion items?

[00:58:15] all right then we will move on to item number six new business is there any new business but on the agenda uh so seeing no new business uh we will move on to item number seven which is adjournment our next meeting of this committee will be on september 18th at 4 30 thank you everyone for coming and get home safely

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