Coraggio Consulting Loudoun County Public Schools, School Board FY 2027 – FY 2032 Capital Budget Work Session, Monday, December 1, 2025 Date: Monday, December 1, 2025 Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia Length: 24m (video) Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1142279514?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 2026-10-12. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:01:00] Good evening. I call to order this December 1, 2025, Loudoun School Board, FY 2027-2032, Capital Budget Work Session. At this time, I'll start with disclosure. As a member of the Loudoun County School Board, I make the following disclosure to the school board and to the general public in connection with the item on tonight's agenda regarding the budget and or health insurance and related benefits and any other discussion that may include or affect benefits for LCPS employees. [00:01:29] Specifically, as a school board member, I am eligible to receive health insurance and related benefits as an LCPS employee. These benefits, however, affect thousands of employees while in excess of the statutory three employees whose interest may also be affected, of which I am included. I can and will participate fairly objectively and in the public interest. [00:01:49] This disclosure will be reflected in the public records of the Crocker School Board for five years. Ms. Chandler. Thank you, Madam Chair. As a member of the Loudoun County School Board, I make the following disclosure to the school board and to the general public in connection with the item on tonight's agenda regarding the budget and or health insurance and related benefits and any other discussion that may include or affect benefits for LCPS employees. [00:02:13] Specifically, as a school board member, I am eligible to receive health insurance and related benefits as an LCPS employee. These benefits, however, affect thousands of employees well in excess of the statutory three employees whose interests may also be affected, of which I am included. [00:02:29] I can and will participate fairly, objectively, and in the public interest. This disclosure will be reflected in the public records of the clerk of the school board for five years. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Chandler. Mrs. Griffiths. Thank you, Madam Chair. As a member of the Loudoun County School Board, I make the following disclosure to the school board and the general public. [00:02:49] connection with the item on tonight's agenda regarding the budget and our health insurance and related benefits and any other discussion that may include or affect benefits for LCPS employees specifically as a school board member I am eligible to receive health insurance and related benefits as an LCPS employee these benefits however affect thousands of employees willing to access of the statutory three employees whose interests may be affected if which I am included I can and will participate fairly objectively and in the public's interest this disclosure will be reflected in the public records of the clerk of the school board for five years thank you thank you mrs. griffiths mr. [00:03:28] straffi thank you madam chair as a member of the love and county school board I make the following disclosure to the school board and to the general public in connection with the item on tonight's agenda regarding the budget and or health insurance and related benefits and any other discussion that may include or affect benefits for LCPS employees specifically as a school board member I'm eligible to receive health insurance and related benefits as an LCPS employee these benefits however affect thousands of employees well in excess of the statutory three employees whose interests may also be affected of which I am included I can and will participate fairly objectively and in the public interest this disclosure will be reflected in the public records of the school board of the clerk of the school board for five [00:04:05] years thank you mr. Struthi miss LaBelle thank you madam chair as a member of the Loudoun County School Board I make the following disclosure to the school Board and to the general public in connection with the item on tonight's agenda regarding the budget and or health insurance and related benefits and any other discussion that may include or affect benefits for LCPS employees. [00:04:22] Specifically, as a school board member, I am eligible to receive health insurance and related benefits as an LCPS employee. In addition, as a former LCPS employee, I as well as my spouse receive Medicare Advantage insurance benefits through LCPS. [00:04:43] These benefits, however, affect thousands of employees well in excess of the statuatory three employees whose interests may also be affected, of which my spouse and I are included. I can and will participate fairly, objectively, and in the public interest. [00:04:59] This disclosure will be reflected in the public records of the Clerk of the School Board for five years. Thank you, Ms. LeBell. Ms. Chernoff? Thank you, Madam Chair. As a member of the Loudoun County School Board, I make the following disclosure to the school board and to the general public in connection with the item on tonight's agenda regarding the budget and or health insurance and related benefits and any other discussion that may include or affect benefits for LCPS employees. [00:05:23] Specifically, as a school board member, I am eligible to receive health insurance and related benefits as an LCPS employee. These benefits, however, affect thousands of employees while in the excess of the statutory three employees whose interests may also be affected, of which I am included. I can and will participate fairly objectively and in the public interest. [00:05:40] This disclosure will be reflected in the public records and the clerk of the school board for five years. Thank you, Ms. Chernoff. All right, we'll move on to item three, staff briefing 3.01, superintendents recommended FY 2027, FY 2032, capital budget presented by Kevin Lewis, our chief operations officer, Mr. Lewis. [00:06:02] Thank you, Chair Mansfield. So tonight I have a very short presentation, not a lot of information, looking forward to conversations with the board i will start with a quick housekeeping thing as soon as i get this up turned on for information that you have in your folders um so we have the the presentation copy the presentation a copy the q a from the november 10th document and then there's a white paper on artificial turf and then we have the funding sheets and there are two of [00:06:38] the 11 by 17 funding sheets one is yellow and one is pink and I will explain those in a little bit more detail in a few minutes so I don't have a lot of information I won't go through all the Q&A in particular but I think we've we've provided hopefully enough information for each of the board members on those we do still have one question that's in progress and so if board members have any particular questions about any of those we'll be happy to address those as always I have my trustee staff with all the content uh technology with me tonight so if something comes up that i can handle they're here to help [00:07:14] us with that as far as the capital budget update what's on the screen right now which is too small to read but it is what you have in your document or in your folder as the yellow 11 by 17 document it was provided at the november 11th update sorry november 10th update and it shared things that change you see the blue areas and the blue squares those are things that have changed since the original superintendents recommended CIP what is also with you tonight is we're very pleased to it to let you know that in [00:07:53] conversations over the holidays with county staff and they were continuing to work as they do every year on their funding capabilities have allowed alerted us that they have more capacity in years 2030 2031 and 2032 a significant amount and so you'll see that reflected in the on the pink sheet you'll see there in years 2030 2031 and 2032 the top three rows are highlighted in blue and those are lines lines that have been changed as an example in 2030 you see now there's [00:08:30] ten million dollars in line one and it was two before and so we've taken the information they've given us and spread it out over those areas and because of the short notice and literally some of this was happening as late as this afternoon we put that all in the school renovation and replacement program because we can essentially have all that in that modernization category and use that for the other projects that you see listed there however it turns out we'll have a little bit of time over the for next year CIP since this is in year 3 4 and 5 or 4 5 and 6 there's there's time to adjust those for the particular [00:09:06] projects also call attention to line 48 where we've put in an updated Loudoun County funding projection as of December 1 2025 and that's just allowed us to make our math work at the bottom to show that we've reconciled every year now if you remember on the November 10 update we had 2030 was still out of balance with the county's projections by I think it was 40 million dollars yes and so now we've been able to reconcile all those years so much good news it's always good to have more funding and so we've put provided that for you tonight for your consideration [00:09:45] and that's really all I wanted to share about those documents at this point you'll see now that in the next time we meet about the capital budget it was on December 16th the day we plan for adoption of the of the budget and at this point in time I am happy to take any questions comments suggestions you may have board members do you have any questions comments concerns okay go ahead mr. enough thank you madam chair and thank [00:10:24] you mr. Lewis for your work on this I appreciate it I also just wanted to thank you for answering the question so specifically with the chart about the signage and the marquees for schools and that was something that the Leesburg schools had specifically felt like they were left behind on in particular but seeing that 61 schools which is more than half don't have that I think is really helpful and I see that you know in the next five years there sort of begins a slow rollout plan so I'm thankful for that I'm thankful for the context I think people understand that that might not be the highest need right now after after talking to them but I do appreciate you doing the research and [00:11:01] consolidating that information for us and you know we'll we'll stay tuned on that anyone else anyone other questions well I would like to say how much I I appreciate you guys doing the white paper on the PFAS and artificial turf because I do think it's a conversation that we need to continue to have whether or not the board decides to continue to fund the artificial turf for the secondary for the you know my understanding is that every school [00:11:39] site has a an artificial turf field it's just this would be for a second one for everything for everyone? That's correct. And so, and I appreciate the, I guess, Woodgrove High School, we have not, it has not been tested yet, and we don't know when that is going to happen. [00:12:02] That's correct. We have given to Town of Percival permission to do so, and they have not yet taken the test. My understanding is that perhaps we're going to be talking to an expert in another day or so? So yes, we have a scheduled call with one of the folks that provided, Chair Mansfield, So you provided some information from a couple of reports, and so we've reached out to two of them to have conversations. [00:12:26] One of them has responded, and we're talking to them tomorrow. Yes, Dr. Teens. Concerned in artificial turf, it seems that we are in compliance with a standard that's from California. Do we have any standards from a state closer than California that we might compare ourselves to? [00:12:51] So if I understand, this might be one of those places where I get help from my trusty team. So California has made some provisions on some standards for that, and essentially what that is is the chemicals that we're concerned about, these PFAS chemicals, the forever chemicals, are now being able to be tested for – well, I'm sorry, the manufacturers are now making turf fields that do not have detectable levels of that. [00:13:22] I don't think we're to the point of being able to say they're free of those things. And so what they have done is establish that as a standard in California. And all we were doing is saying that we're complying with that so that the turf fields that we are purchasing now from manufacturers are in that category where they are saying that they are non-detectable at levels of the PFAS chemicals. [00:13:42] So we're just making alignments with that. That's the only standard that I'm familiar with. And just to be fair, I am wondering, you know, we have a very large school district and we have a lot of needs for sports. [00:14:00] Does anybody want to talk about the hours that we are on a field and how that affects the use? I'm happy to share the information that was in the white paper that we did. It's essentially that anything where the study that was done, and I'm not sure who did that, but the wear and tear on a natural grass field can typically take about 1,100 hours of use, and it's estimated, and Mr. Ferry is here with us from the athletics department, that our fields will be susceptible to over 2,500 hours of use. [00:14:37] Essentially what that does is it makes, and that's one of the reasons we ended up having turf fields years ago. I was here for that implementation is our fields were in disrepair and we were wearing them out in the fall sports and we're not able to get them back into usable shape until late in the spring, early in the summer, and by then the seasons were almost over. [00:14:58] So we did not have good fields to play on for the spring sports that offered opportunities for twisted ankles and knees and all kinds of things. So we had some injury concerns about the condition of those fields. And so at this point, we believe that the usage that LCPS needs on our fields exceed that which the natural grass is capable of handling. [00:15:22] And that's the reason for the expert to talk about it. Yes, Dr. Deans. And I did want to share an observation. We have a kid on our traveling soccer team that has a severe allergic reaction every time they play on real grass because of the chemicals that have to be applied to keep the grass green and smooth. [00:15:59] So that was something that I have observed over the past 18 months. I think there are different kinds of fertilizers and there's different kinds of thoughts and technology out there for turf that I think can be explored. [00:16:16] And I think that we have to keep the conversation going because if we don't keep the conversation going, innovation doesn't happen. And so the only reason innovation is happening now is because people had that conversation before. So I think you still have to have the conversation. [00:16:32] You still have to and maybe, you know, do the research and everything else and talk to the experts and continue to have that. Yes, Ms. Chernoff. Thank you, Madam Chair. I do appreciate the conversation. I mean, it really hadn't even crossed my radar. I'm not really in tune with, I guess, PFAS and all the things going on with it. [00:16:51] But I was more intrigued by the stats about what we would lose, because sometimes it's not so much about how much time you're spending on the field. But I thought what was really interesting about the white papers is eliminating turf would require 60 percent reduction in field usage and no winter play, which to me puts us at a complete disadvantage competitively in terms of our neighboring districts. [00:17:17] I mean, and I just don't think that that would ever fly in Loudoun County. And I'm wondering, too, if the innovation needs to come in terms of assessing drainage options and looking at other ways to help eliminate the different toxins that are in this that can be minimized or hopefully eliminated. [00:17:39] But I will be anxious to see what the experts say. I'm supportive of moving forward with turf fields. I think that that's what we have to do with the information that's in front of us. and in terms of what we require with athletics. And I don't necessarily think that's even unique to Loudoun County. [00:17:55] I think that high school athletics is a big part of the high school experience, and for now that information is enough to keep my support for turf fields going forward. I guess when you know better, you do better. [00:18:10] If you know that you're contaminating well water, I think that you have a responsibility to do something about it. So, well, but drainage, not only that, it's also, what are you going to do after, I mean, we're already, the contaminator is already there. [00:18:27] So, yes, Ms. Lavelle. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was wondering, when we're talking about artificial turf, are we also referring to the materials that are used to lay the track around the turf? Are they contamination also, or are they not of a concern, just the turf part? [00:18:47] I am not aware of any concerns about the track materials. I mean, the base of that is made of asphalt, and then there's a topping that's applied to that, and I've not heard that there's any concerns about those materials. Is that the same type of material we're using in our new playgrounds, our adaptive playgrounds? [00:19:06] No, ma'am. That's a different type of surface. Okay. Thank you. Yes, Mrs. Griffiths. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm shifting gears just a bit here. modulars where do you think and this might be in an email modular classrooms might go because we're going through rezoning redistricting and the modulars are to for overcrowded schools where students can still be in a classroom at their zoned school so if you know off the top [00:19:43] your head where we're spending this 2.2 million in 2027 where they might be going is this per a projection of overcrowded schools and enrollment and I did have a another question after that thank you mr. Griffiths I'll point the rest of the board members to line 16 for the modular classrooms if you look the section of the of this paper right in the center where you see the orange header for a capital budget year one and you'll see in that left column that FY27 [00:20:21] adopted calendar CIP with a date of December 10 of 2024 which was last year and so what that was is like in last year's FY26 adopted CIP we had the 2.2 in for FY27 and now that we're doing FY27 if you look to the columns to the left or to the right of that you'll see that we've removed that so at this point there's no money in the capital budget for modulars thank you for that i was in the wrong column i appreciate that um and also for elementary school additions i guess you don't have money um [00:20:57] for 2027 there um because again we we have the redistricting so i was just curious i know you're doing eagle ridge middle school um and i see you don't have money for a roby and with they're in dominion so is that why there's no costs for them i'm just i'm just curious i mean i this is stuff i could probably just email you no problem so um the first question on the the elementary school additions you're correct we don't have any money in that until we have design money in fy 29 and [00:21:36] then construction money in fy 30 and that's to be determined and we are still working through that as you pointed out through the boundary process and so those schools may end up having an addition based on the assessment through the facility condition assessment next year and so we'll continue to follow that up if you recall I think maybe at one of the work sessions I mentioned that as we get the year before we'll start doing a deeper dive on where the where additions may be needed. And as for Robey, there is money. There's $5 million in FY28. And that is in anticipation [00:22:13] of finding a new location for Robey. And so we're still looking for that location, but have not secured that at this point. So we would move them out of Dominion, basically, at some point. At some point, that's the goal, right, to free up that space for FY28, or school year 28, when we have the secondary boundaries take effect. And so we are working closely with the County of Loudoun staff to try to find a different location for them but as i mentioned at this point we haven't identified it thank you and i could just email you just little questions here and there thank [00:22:45] you so much okay anybody else no okay are you sure okay all right um then i guess we are done with our i mean our staff briefing and our work session kind of all together um then we'll move on to adjourn it, seeing there's no more business, the Loudoun, the December 1, 2025, Loudoun [00:23:23] County School Board, FY 2027, 2032, capital budget work session is now adjourned, and please drive safely home. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com