Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Finance & Operations Committee Meeting, Tuesday, December 9, 2025

Date: Tuesday, December 9, 2025
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 29m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1145014014?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.

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[00:00:00] Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call to order this December 9th meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee. My name is Arben Estreffi. I'm the chair of this committee. I am joined by Mrs. Griffiths, and I believe that Chair Mansfield will not be with us today. We'll go ahead and get started and see if there's any public comment for this afternoon.

[00:00:22] Seeing none, we'll move on to the approval of the meeting minutes from November 18th. Do I have a motion to approve the meeting minutes? I motion to approve the meeting minutes from the last meeting. Thank you.

[00:00:38] Thank you. Motion has been made. I'll go ahead and second that motion. Is there any discussion or edits to the meeting minutes? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And that motion will pass unanimously, and the meeting minutes have been approved.

[00:00:58] We'll move on to the approval of the consent agenda. Are there any changes to the consent agenda? Seeing none, I will go ahead and make the motion then. I move to approve the consent agenda. Do I have a second? Second.

[00:01:15] And so that motion has been properly made and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And that motion will also pass unanimously.

[00:01:32] The consent agenda has been approved. We'll move on to our list of action items for this afternoon. We'll start with 5.01, Business and Financial Services, RFP R25271. Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP, Software and Implementation Services. And I believe this is presented by Ms. Filio, Director of Procurement and Risk Management.

[00:01:52] Yes, thank you very much. This originally was to be on consent today, but we pulled it down to your action due to a couple changes we made in the item. The first item of note is we wanted to clarify the funding source and how that was going to be done related to this project.

[00:02:08] The funding is CIP funding, of which we've already received $18 million. The additional $4.4 million is coming from CIP contingency funding to the Capital Improvement Program for this project.

[00:02:26] The reason we have done it this way is we now have on this a dual motion where one of the motions is related to the approval of the contracts with signature by Chair Mansfield. Since this is a CIP project, we made that change to have Chair Mansfield sign the documents as she does with our construction projects.

[00:02:46] The second item is approval to go to the Board of Supervisors for the additional $4.4 million in contingency funding. The last change we made on this item is that now we are asking that it be as an action item at your December 16th school board meeting instead of a consent item since we do need the vote on the item for the Board of Supervisors and then also approval for Chair Mansfield.

[00:03:13] so those are the changes to this document that I wanted to bring to your attention we still do need to get everything processed and through at your December 16th meeting due to the prices only remaining firm till the end of December and our need to get the contract signed before that due date and we're happy to answer any questions you might have thank you Ms. Filio thank you for clarifying all of that any questions or discussion nothing for me as well well we should probably

[00:03:48] start with a motion. So having clarified all of that, I'll go ahead and make the motion for this one. I move that the Finance and Operations Committee recommend the Loudoun County School Board approve the award of RFP, R25271, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP Software and Implementation Services to International Business Systems, IBM, Oracle, and Time Clocks Plus for $22,464,093, effective from January 2nd, 2026 through June 30th, 2029, and authorizes the chair to sign the final documents upon presentation.

[00:04:23] Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Mrs. Griffiths. Is there any discussion, any further discussion? Mr. Struffy, if I may, there was the second piece of that action. Oops. There was the further.

[00:04:39] Further that? Okay. So I'll go ahead and make the motion and continue the motion, adding further that the Finance and Operations Committee recommend that the Loudoun County School Board request that the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors transfer $4,464,093 from county-held LCPS-CIP contingency funding to the Capital Improvement Program for the Enterprise Resource Planning System Upgrade Project.

[00:05:04] Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Mrs. Griffiths. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that motion will pass unanimously, This will go to action for the December 16th board meeting.

[00:05:24] We will move on to 5.02, business and financial services, budget transfer request, communities in schools. And I'll pass it to Ms. Willoughby.

[00:05:42] This is returning as an action item versus consent, as I believe there was some questions related to the All in Virginia grant. The agenda item and board docs include some additional information associated with those questions.

[00:05:58] I'll just remind the committee that the action this evening is really just to approve the budget transfer from the Department of Teaching and Learning over to this other department in support of the community and schools program.

[00:06:13] The other information was more background of how a surplus occurred to even facilitate the transfer. Again, this is purely just a budget transfer request in line with our policy. Thank you for the clarification. Any further discussion?

[00:06:33] Yes. Mrs. Griffiths? I believe this is for the FACE program. Is that correct? This is for maybe Ms. Dawson. Do you mind? If you don't mind, if you could just go over. You know, I see you are receiving, you're going to be receiving money from LEF.

[00:06:54] But if you could give more details on the FACE program and, yeah, go ahead. Yes, I'm happy to do that. Back, I believe it was in May, we signed a memorandum of understanding, and we did this in partnership with the Loudoun Education Foundation.

[00:07:12] Can you hear me? So the Communities in Schools program provides embedded coordinators at Seneca Ridge Middle School and Dominion High School to address some of those identified needs in the school improvement plan and the LCPS strategic priorities.

[00:07:29] So what the coordinators do, they are site-based. They are at each of those schools. And what they've done is they went through an entire plan, a comprehensive needs assessment, and they identified areas at each school that would require some targeted support. So, for example, and this is based on their school improvement plan, so Seneca Ridge wanted to target chronic absenteeism.

[00:07:52] And so they wanted to reduce the chronic absenteeism from 14.3% to 12%. They also looked at academic performance for some of their gap groups, school climate, family engagement, and outreach. And those coordinators provide targeted tiered intervention and supports for those areas identified in the SIP at Seneca Ridge.

[00:08:14] The same thing for Dominion High School, chronic absenteeism, academic performance for gap groups, graduation rates. and student engagement. So those two coordinators that are at Dominion High School have groups, have caseloads, and they're targeting very specific areas for their school improvement plans. Thank you, Ms. Austin. Thank you, Chair Streffi. I would like to

[00:08:46] work with you on this program and see pretty much what you're doing to improve the attendance. um i want to make sure you know we're transferring this money i want to make sure that um um i i know you said it went down i think in one of the in seneca from 14 to 12 is that correct um i do want to see what you're what you guys are doing i want to go in there go in and view and see how you're making this happen um so maybe if it's successful we can share it with other schools so i um i'm

[00:09:26] wondering is this just like kind of like a pilot for the two schools and are you expecting this to expand further? Well our hope is is that we are going to see some measurable outcomes. It's early on in the process but we have seen some improvements. I have checked in with the coordinators so our hope is is that if this is a successful program that we would be able to expand that. But we will definitely bring all of the data back to the board and share out what our successes are with the program. And this is an everyday thing, working with the students? Absolutely, every day. Are they

[00:10:03] having special programs with the students separately, or are they working, I assume they're working directly with the parents? They are working with both parents and students, so some of the programs, they have advisory support, they have lean-in girls, they do backpack buddies, so it's comprehensive. Some of the things are needs-based, some of them are academic-based, but they do it every day they did a really wonderful um they partnered with our family liaisons at both of the schools and so for our thanksgiving they worked with um amazon provided um some additional

[00:10:39] resources for them and they did i think it was about a hundred families that they provided meals for over thanksgiving so it depends it's varied the types of supports that they do so various support very much so all right uh thank you um i will be revisiting the program just to see if it's successful but thank you for that i appreciate that ms dawson thank you ms dawson i appreciate also the team highlighting the communities and schools initiative in our in one of our previous school board full school board meetings as well i think last month um and definitely supportive

[00:11:13] of the work and i also look forward to hearing more about the success of the program and um definitely support this budget realignment and also expect it to come up in the superintendent's estimate of needs and in the next budget anyway. Awesome. Any other discussion? Seeing none, we will go ahead and make the motion. I move that the Finance and Operations Committee place this item on the school board meeting consent agenda and recommend that the Loudoun

[00:11:48] County School Board approved the proposed FY26 budget transfer of $125,000 from the Department of Teaching and Learning to the Department of Communications and Community Engagement to fund the Communities and Schools Program. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Mrs. Griffiths. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. That motion will pass unanimously, and we will move on to the next item, and our next item is 5.03, business and financial services, new policy 4190, other post

[00:12:28] employment benefits, OPEB funding. And I will pass this to Ms. Willoughby. Yes, I'll take this one as well. So this policy is returning after being brought as information at the last committee meeting. There's just been one change, and it was the change that was discussed during the last meeting, incorporating on line 69, a notation that the contributions to the plan are expected to be made in regular quarterly installments and that also that it would be reported to the school board is what we added just providing additional information to the school board. Other than that

[00:13:06] one notation there have been no other changes to the policy and I'd be happy to take any questions. Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, I'll go ahead and make the motion. I move that the Finance and Operations Committee recommend the Loudoun County School Board adopt the new policy 4190 other post-employment benefits OPEB funding do I have a second second seconded by Mrs. Griffiths any further discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye

[00:13:40] aye aye and that motion will pass unanimously we'll move on to 5.04 business financial services revision of policy 4350 vendor relations I'll go ahead and start with the motion on this one I move that the finance and operations committee recommend the Loudoun County School Board approved staff's recommended updates to policy 4350 vendor relations do i have a second second seconded by mrs griffiths um open it up for discussion i don't know uh miss philia would you like to add anything to this the only thing i would like to add as you know this was out for

[00:14:18] public comment msac and cac both did respond msac had no changes and appreciated the ethics in public contracting being added. We did get a late submission from SEAC regarding a question that I wanted to just make sure I got on the record. They had a concern that there are times contracted service providers may need to set appointments with staff, case managers, special education staff, for purposes of professional collaboration. We need to distinguish between a sales appointment and a support services meeting. It appears the intent of this policy is to address sales conversations. We don't want the sales prohibition to preclude collaborative discussions

[00:14:56] regarding contracted services. So their concern is this relates only to the sale of goods and services, but I just want to bring your attention to line 24. Let me double check that, please.

[00:15:11] On the clean copy, line 24. This does not prevent vendors regularly supplying goods and services to LCPS from having access to the schools in the course of their routine business duties in accordance with the law and contract. Therefore, it is believed that that does meet the requirement if they're there to perform a business, a service, professional development, this clause is what allows them to do that.

[00:15:36] Therefore, there was no revisions made to the policy. Thank you, Ms. Filial. I appreciate you bringing up SEAC's comments as well and helping us to think about that.

[00:16:01] Any discussion or questions? I'm not sure. Would we implement it into the policy? Or, I mean, do we need to decide that? We need to implement it? I think my understanding of your comment, Ms. Villia, was that that line that you referenced covers that.

[00:16:23] Yes, the lines that I referenced takes care of that concern. Yes. I'm sorry. I missed that part. That's okay. All right, that's fine. And I would agree as well. And I don't have any other comment to the changes to this policy, including the ethics piece.

[00:16:45] Seeing no other discussion, we'll go ahead and take this to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. - Aye. - Aye. And that motion will pass unanimously. Move on to 5.05, Business and Financial Services, Revision of Policy 4170, Insurance Management.

[00:17:06] I move that the Finance and Operations Committee recommends the Loudoun County School Board approve staff's recommended updates to Policy 4170, Insurance Management. Do I have a second? - Second. seconded by Mrs. Griffiths. We'll open it up for discussion.

[00:17:22] Ms. Filial, would you like to add any context regarding the changes to this policy? It seems pretty straightforward. - There was no public comment and we did incorporate Chair Mansfield's request regarding the workers' comp where it says on line nine, coverage may be provided for certain or all school board members with the exception of workers' compensation.

[00:17:47] She had asked for that at our last meeting So that, therefore, is incorporated. I was going to ask about that, and then I realized that I just can't see the blue in the revised version. That's all. Oh, and we did also, in my item, line 21, the chief financial officer or chief financial officer's designee, as requested.

[00:18:08] Thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And that motion will pass unanimously. We move on to 5.06, Business and Financial Services, Revision of Policy 4340, Procurement Procedures.

[00:18:36] I move that the Finance and Operations Committee recommends the Loudoun County School Board approve staff's recommended updates to Policy 4340, Procurement Procedure Exemptions. Do I have a second? Second.

[00:18:53] Seconded by Mrs. Griffiths. Ms. Filial, would you like to comment further on the revisions to this policy? Yes, actually the revisions to this policy, in addition to what was recommended at the last meeting, we did hear, get feedback from MSAC and SEAC.

[00:19:13] MSAC brought up the reference to, they had a question on, does Regulation 4340 still apply to the exempted items in Policy 4340? The answer is yes. The contract terms would still apply, whether the contract is exempt from a formal method of procurement or not, because those are the requirements of the contract.

[00:19:34] The second item was in relation to the use of the words unauthorized alien. Unauthorized alien is used in the state code of Virginia and written here verbatim. One of the things I would like to recommend is that in the regulation, we look and instead of titling the item unauthorized aliens, in the regulation we could use the term compliance with federal immigration law.

[00:19:55] So we could change the wording within our regulation, but since it is part of state code that is why it is spelled out that way in our policy.

[00:20:12] So that was in reference to MSAC. SEAC had feedback as well related to policy 4340. Their concern centered around, bear with me just a second here, their concern was related to the deleted provisions at the end of the policy related to the certification regarding sex offenses.

[00:20:36] I think we talked about this at the last meeting. That's part of the Virginia Public Procurement Act written in code that we get that. And also, in addition to that, with the VPPA, as you know, outlines the requirements and is incorporated into the regulation to ensure all vendors, contractors comply with these requirements.

[00:20:56] Therefore, we have it in the regulation to ensure that no matter what the contract is, we're still getting that certification of contractors. It's not limited to just those things that we do solicitations for formally. It is not necessary to include it in the policy since it is covered already in the VPPA, which mandates procurement requirements related to the procurement of goods and services.

[00:21:20] So it's in the right place because we actually also use this regulation when working with vendors. We send them a copy of it to let them know what we can't agree to, what needs to be in our contracts. So it's a very powerful tool, the regulation. And that's the case for both.

[00:21:35] So we're not referencing unauthorized aliens or the piece around sex offenses in the policy any longer, but they are in the regulation.

[00:21:53] Yes, and in the regulation, unauthorized aliens is still in the policy written per Virginia Code, but we have ability within our regulation to modify that wording, which is not, the regulation is based on LCPS, not state code.

[00:22:13] You said in the revised version, it's still in the policy? It should be still in, hold on just a second here. And I'm looking at the red line version where it seems to be removed.

[00:22:29] Yes, in the policy line, well, let's see, wait, sorry, that's the regulation. My apology. I may have misspoke there on that. Let me look at MSAC's comments again.

[00:22:57] Oh, it is, it is on line 67. Oh, that's the regulation still. Yes, the unauthorized alien within the policy, the wording. It's the same. Yes, so we struck it out.

[00:23:24] I apologize. I'll have the policy, and it's in the regulation, and we're going to soften the title of that section of the regulation. Okay. Yes. Understood. That makes sense. Okay. Thank you. And it doesn't need to be in the policy because it's in the Virginia Procurement Act. That is correct, and we must comply with the Virginia Public Procurement Act.

[00:23:45] And the vendors will receive the regulation. The vendors do receive the regulation as part of the contract work that we do. Okay, thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we will go ahead and take a vote.

[00:24:10] I made the motion. We'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. This will not go to consent because it's a policy. Aye. Aye as well.

[00:24:27] So that motion will pass unanimously, and we will move on to our last action item, 5.07, Business and Financial Services, Revision of Policy 4310, Purchasing Authority.

[00:24:43] And I move that the Finance and Operations Committee recommends the Loudoun County School Board approve staff's recommended updates to Policy 4310, Purchasing Authority. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Mrs. Griffiths. We'll go ahead and have any discussion.

[00:25:03] And I believe, Ms. Filia, this is pretty straightforward. Do you have any updates or thoughts on this one? No, the only change, no public comment. The only change that was made was putting superintendents in front of designee in two places within the policy, as requested by the committee.

[00:25:21] Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that motion will pass unanimously as well. So we'll have quite a few F&O policies for information at the next meeting.

[00:25:44] All right, so moving on to our only information item, support services, 6.01 support services VIEW Transition Academy lease agreement. I believe this is presented by Mr. Lewis, our Chief Operations Officer. Yes, thank you, Mr. Streffi.

[00:26:00] So we are thrilled and excited to let you know that we are continuing to work with the County of Loudoun who have, I think you know, purchased a property for the VIEW Academy to be built upon, and so we're working through the lease process. The one thing that we're working through that was not planned, and one of the reasons we have it here on the agenda tonight, is when the property was originally purchased, we felt like there was room for our academy and possible another public use by the account board of supervisors.

[00:26:31] So the idea was for us to lease a portion of the site, and the rest of it would stay through the county. During our preliminary design and zoning review, it looks like the majority of that site is going to be leased to us. And so there's really not enough property left as we look at the existing building and what we need to add on.

[00:26:50] And so the county staff is going to take that back to the Board of Supervisors to confirm that they're okay with leasing the whole thing since they purchased it with the idea that it would be a joint use. So it's not really a delay in the projects, just another process that wanted the Board to know, the Finance Committee to know that process is going to happen publicly through the supervisors in January and just wanted to give a heads up what it was about.

[00:27:13] So no issues or no concerns on our part. We've talked through with the county staff, and it's just a formality with that board. I just want to make sure I understood. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. I just want to make sure I understood. So we will be the primary user of that property? Yes, sir. There will be one clause in it that says in the future we may revisit that if there's a future use that the supervisors could do, and we're happy to do it.

[00:27:36] We've had those in lease agreements in the past, and so that's one thing that we're working through with the attorneys on. Okay, and will that be board action at the supervisor's level? I don't know that they have to take action on the lease itself. They are taking action to confirm with the staff that they're okay with us being the primary user.

[00:27:55] And that's up to their process whether or not they have to approve it. We will bring that forward to the board, though, to this board for your approval. Okay, thank you. Well, very excited about the future home, regardless, but appreciate the updates. Any other discussion or questions?

[00:28:14] I believe that is it. um, we'll move on to new business. I don't really have any new business, but I just want to say, I think this is my final finance and operations, uh, meeting. So I just want to thank all of you guys. It's been such a privilege to be sit on this committee and chair it for the last two years. So really appreciate the hard work of everyone who kind of reports up to the finance and operations committee. Um, you all do wonderful, wonderful work. And I know how much, you know, how much it really takes to um do what you all do and make it look so easy so thank you and we thank you this

[00:28:50] we know that this is not an easy committee to be on there's a lot of technical and difficult things and so we appreciate that and your leadership here and much appreciated well you all make it easy for us so thank you mr streffi for your contributions to the committee thank you mrs griffiths all right everyone with that um is there any other new business seeing none um we'll now adjourn this december 9th meeting of the finance and operations committee thank you all very much

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