Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Finance & Operations Committee Meeting, Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 17m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1123341194?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.

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

[00:00:03] Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call to order this October 7th meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee. My name is Arben Estreffi, and I'm the chair of this committee. I'm joined by Chair Mansfield, as well as Mrs. Griffiths. We're also members of the committee.

[00:00:19] Can you guys hear me okay? All right, now we've got more echo. All right, we'll start off with public comment. Is there any public comment for this afternoon? No, seeing none, we'll move on to the approval of the meeting minutes from the September 16th meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee.

[00:00:40] I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve the meeting minutes. I motion to approve the meeting minutes from the September 16th meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee meeting. Do I have a second? I'll second. Seconded by Mrs. Griffiths.

[00:00:56] Is there any discussion or any comments on the minutes? Seeing none, we'll take it to a vote. All those in favor of approving the meeting minutes, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And that motion will pass unanimously. The meeting minutes have been approved. We'll move on to the approval of the consent agenda.

[00:01:14] I'll go ahead and make the motion. I move that we approve the consent agenda. Do I have a second? Seconded by Chair Mansfield. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote.

[00:01:33] All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. That motion will pass unanimously. Consent agenda has been approved. And we'll move on to our one action item for this afternoon. Business and Financial Services, RFP R25310, Construction Support Services, Renewal.

[00:01:53] Do I have a motion? Sure, Chair Mansfield. I move that the Finance and Operations Committee place this item on the school board meeting consent agenda and renews RFP number R25301, Construction Support Services, effective November 1st, 2025 through October 31st, 2026.

[00:02:16] Do I have a second? I have to recuse myself from this one. Okay. I'll go ahead and second. And that has been properly moved and seconded. Is there any discussion or Ms. Filial, would you like to add anything to this item?

[00:02:38] No, I do not have anything to add at this time. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Chair Mansfield. If a board member, I don't know if an attorney is here, but if a board member recuses themselves, do they have to state why if there's a conflict of interest or anything? There's no attorney here. It's not a formal vote.

[00:03:06] - Okay, any other discussion? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please say aye. - Aye. - Aye. - All those opposed?

[00:03:23] And then Mrs. Griffiths, you're abstaining? Okay, so that motion will pass, with myself and Chair Mansfield in support, and Mrs. Griffiths abstaining.

[00:03:40] We'll move on to our information items. IFB, I-26101, custodial supplies and equipment ongoing needs and I believe this is presented by Mrs. Messilia. Thank you. This is an annual contract that we bring before you every year. We go out to bid for our custodial supplies. This is all the materials and equipment we need to keep their schools clean and in top-notch condition.

[00:04:11] The average price increase we saw this year on this contract is 3 percent and the estimated value of this award is 1.4 million dollars which is in the facilities operations O&M budget. We are We're asking that you move this item either along to your consent or action agenda for the next Finance and Operations Committee meeting.

[00:04:35] - Thank you very much, board members. Any discussion? Seeing no discussion, are we all okay with this item going on to the consent agenda for our next meeting?

[00:04:51] Thumbs, so yeah, this item will go on consent.

[00:05:06] Moving on to 6.02, support services, Waterford ES renovation and addition, schematic design update. I believe this one is for Mr. Pasquarelli. - Good afternoon, thank you, Mr. Streffi.

[00:05:24] So I'm gonna walk you through the Waterford Elementary addition renovation project. So this is an information item. This project is in the design process and we like to bring this to this committee to update everyone on what's going on with the project.

[00:05:41] So if you look up here on the screen or your attachment, you can see what I'll talk about. So this project includes both an addition and a renovation to this school, and if you look at where I'm pointing my cursor now, so this line represents where the existing school is here.

[00:06:01] So the existing school is about 20,000 square feet, and we're adding about 19,000 feet of addition, so it's almost doubling the size of the school. What we're getting with that addition is we're getting two classrooms per grade, we're getting a dedicated art room we're getting a dedicated music and we're getting a dedicated special ed classroom so again a total of 15 classrooms when the projects complete we're getting a new multi-purpose room a jamming an auditorium here in the back the school doesn't currently have that the admin

[00:06:36] area and the front is being expanded we are adding some additional restrooms the The school is in need of additional restrooms, so we are doubling the amount of restrooms that the school currently has. We are updating all of the existing spaces to bring it up to current code, bring it up to accessibility codes.

[00:06:59] One thing we are doing here at the cafeteria, the kitchen will be renovated as well. The outside of the building, you'll see the addition stays with that traditional style of architecture that really is appropriate here in this part of the county this is a view from the front of the building which we're not we're just refurbishing the front of the building this is the side showing the addition where we're showing the you know similar brick and window pattern that we're currently having the existing building and here's a rear of the building you can see in the back of the gym multi-purpose room natural light the

[00:07:36] claire story glass up there which which would be really great we're expanding the traffic flow a bit on the site so the area to the right when you come in we're rework reworking that parking lot so we have a dedicated area for buses to drop students off and we're creating a new a new field with walking track here in the this area of the building so that's a quick update on where we out with the design, so I'll stop there and answer any questions or comments you may have.

[00:08:09] Thank you, Mr. Pasquarelli. I always wonder when it comes to additions and renovations of older schools, how do we factor in some of the fact that this is an older school? How is the current HVAC systems factored into an addition of this size, given that this is an older school? How do we make sure that that that addition is sustainable and given the how old the school is so the the existing HVAC system will be will be replaced with a new system that's compatible with what

[00:08:46] we're putting in the addition okay and that could and that's the same for all systems including fire alarm systems we're putting a sprinkler system in the building as well so we're bringing everything up to current code okay got it four members any other discussion or questions yes Ms. Griffiths. Thank you, Chair.

[00:09:04] I was just curious, in case I missed it, what year was this school? I know it's older, but what year was it built? Yeah, I think it was in the late 60s, but I'm not sure about that. We can get that information for you. Yeah, if you can get that to me, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Any other questions or discussion? I'll also share, as far as dates are concerned, we're in the process of design now. We'll eventually go into permitting.

[00:09:36] The permitting process for this is a bit lengthy, and we expect to start construction next summer and complete the project within a year. So that's where we are with that. In a year, wow. Yeah. And this is being done while the students are going to remain at Waterford, right?

[00:09:55] Correct. Yeah, this will be an occupied remodel addition project. So we'll have to phase the work. We'll do the addition first, and then we'll work inside the school off hours during the summer, that kind of thing. Okay. It's interesting.

[00:10:13] I've been thinking a lot about the critical systems updates on older schools and that list that we have of schools that are prioritized, and just thinking about when you add the addition piece, like expanding the spaces or redoing the spaces, in my head, I think the only question I have is, if we were to do the critical systems updates and renovations across maybe older schools, given that we're doing that at this school plus the addition, How should we be thinking about the cost difference of that?

[00:10:53] Again, I'm thinking about the list of, I think, almost two dozen schools. When you do an addition like this, not all properties can manage that versus just the critical systems updates that are needed in some of the schools.

[00:11:10] What's the difference in the cost? Again, I know this is just a random question. Yeah, I'll start that answer, and if anyone else wants to jump in from the facilities end. So in general sense, there's an efficiency in redoing the existing systems when you're putting an addition on because the contractor's already there, scope of work's bigger, that kind of thing.

[00:11:35] So what we try to do generally, and you'll see this when we talk about the upcoming CIP, is we try to bundle these projects in such a way to create those efficiencies. So that works here at Waterford. In many other cases, we can't do that, or there's not a need for other work at the same time.

[00:11:53] But I will say the critical systems renewal projects are pretty efficient the way they're done in the sense of the time frame that we have and the work that's being completed in that short period of time. So I think they're still very efficient, but when we have the opportunity to bundle projects, we will do that.

[00:12:09] And I'll just add, Mr. Pasquarelli hinted a little bit, but we will be digging pretty deep into that very question when we meet on the 28th and present the CIP, because we've structured the CIP this year to help probably maybe illustrate a little bit better how we go about those discussions, because we know that we have those, we don't want to do a critical system replacement now, then do a system, a big addition five years from now, and then be tearing out stuff that we've just done.

[00:12:40] So one of the things we're doing is working very hard to try to coordinate those projects so they are done at the same time and when they're most efficient. And then we don't have an old system and a new system in the same building, and then try to work those two things out to work together. So hopefully we'll be able to explain that a little bit deeper.

[00:12:58] And I have a couple birds whispered in my ear that the building opened in 1965. Thank you very much. Any other discussion? Seeing none. so there's no action on this.

[00:13:15] Do we expect any further updates to the full board? Okay, all right. Thank you very much. That is all for our action. Oh, yeah, sorry. Okay, that is all for our information items.

[00:13:33] We'll move on to new business. Is there any new business? Yes, Chair Mansfield. It's not exactly new business, except that I want to, as a way to try and protect school board members, I wanted to be certain that there was disclosure that happened as well so for transparency and when and what we should disclose and if there's a conflict of interest and we have Miss Ewing here and so I wanted to have her explain if there's a conflict of interest and what that means if it's our you know significant others or us or whatever and

[00:14:08] what our duties are and this is an effort to protect us. Good afternoon members of the committee Janice Ewing, Deputy Division Counsel. So under Virginia law, the Virginia Conflicts of Interest Act requires certain abstention and disclosure statements to be made if any member of a governing body has a conflict. Generally, a conflict is considered if you have a personal interest in a transaction that's before you. It's just a preliminary matter, and there's exceptions,

[00:14:46] of course. If you have a personal interest would be at least $5,000 worth, so of services rendered or if you have an income from a corporation and then that corporation comes before the governing body for approval of something like a contract or as far as like the board of supervisors a land transaction type action. Another way of having a personal interest is if there's a three percent interest in a business and as far as personal interest they apply to not only you as a governing body member but also the members of your immediate family. Immediate family is anyone

[00:15:23] one that you provide at least 50% support to and that reside in your household. You may be familiar with the conflict of interest, like the statements of economic interest forms that you fill out annually. That's one of those exercises of reporting. But as far as anything that occurs during a meeting, if it's a personal interest in a transaction, you should state that personal interest and ask the clerk to record it at this and/or future meetings that this item is discussed.

[00:15:51] You may recall that many of you make those disclosures whenever we discuss or have any type of budget meeting related to your health insurance or other benefits you may receive as being a member of the board. So as a general matter, if you have a personal interest, it's recommended to make it right before the transaction occurs and to not involve yourself in any discussion of the item or vote on the item.

[00:16:16] Everything related to COIA, of course, is self-reporting. So it's up to each board member to provide such disclosures. Thank you, Ms. Ewing. Thank you, Ms. Ewing.

[00:16:32] Every school board meeting that I feel like there's a conflict of interest, I do read my card up at the front. There is no formal vote today. I have not even been a part of the discussion. So per what you just said, I think what happened here today was appropriate.

[00:16:48] Thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion? Any other items for new business? Seeing none, we'll now adjourn today's October 7th meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee. Thank you all very much.

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