Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Specialized Programs & Centers Committee Meeting, Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Date: Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 44m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1154688042?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. I am calling to order this February 3rd, 2026 specialized programs and centers committee meeting. My name is Lauren Chernoff and I am the new chair of this committee and I am joined by my esteemed colleagues, Miss Anne Donahue and Mr. Pepper. We will go ahead and get started. We would normally start with public comment. However, we do not have any today. So we will move on to item number three, the minutes item number 3. 01 approval of the draft minutes for the December 8th, 2025 meeting are there any additions or changes at this time sure yes dr. Ellis

[00:00:37] so sorry so mr. Allen has advised me that well he's checking so we may be able to come back to it I believe that the clerk of the board needs to present the draft minutes to the previous chair to a test for their accuracy and then you can approve so we may have to defer this to the next meeting noted if I get different information before the end of the meeting, I will let you know. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. We will not do that. We will move on to item number, or we will move on to our information items. We will start with item 4.01, which is the Middleburg Community Charter School

[00:01:16] 2026-2027 calendar. Presenting today will be Ms. Elaine Lehman, Director of Elementary and Charter Schools. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everyone. You'll see in the attachments. We have the Middleburg Community Charter School proposed calendar for the 26-27 school year. Each of the charter schools presents their calendar to this committee. At about this time of the year, you'll be seeing Hillsboro next month most likely. Just things to note here in the Middleburg calendar, they start slightly before the Loudoun County Public Schools calendar and end very slightly before we do. They have additional what they call

[00:01:52] intercessions throughout the year where they offer students additional days of learning around various subjects. Their calendar has been reviewed by me and meets all of the requirements and the recommendation is to approve it. Thank you so much. Colleagues, are there any questions or comments for staff? Yes, Ms. Donahue. Thank you very much, Chair Sherna. I see on here there is an event on December 5th marked Breakfast with Santa. I was hoping that someone could Tell me a little bit about what that is.

[00:02:31] I cannot. But we can always ask. I did ask, you'll notice on December 7th, there's a delayed start on that day. And I did ask about that because I noticed the delayed start. And he was saying the response that I received from Mr. Robinson, the principal, is because they have a huge event in December.

[00:02:52] I'm assuming the Breakfast with Santa must be a part of that event. And I will find out more information for you. And they want to they move everything around the building and they want to make sure it's all put back together and ready to go. So I will find out more information for you. Thank you, Ms. Lehman. My concern is less with delayed start or not versus the regular LCPS schedule and more around is this December 5th?

[00:03:20] Is this a student holiday, a staff holiday? Is this a school-sponsored event? Having something on the calendar that references the predominantly Christian holiday gives me some amount of pause. So I would just appreciate having more information.

[00:03:37] Absolutely. Let me see if I can find out for you. Yes, Mr. Pepper. Thank you, Madam Chair. I did notice that the breakfast with Santa actually appears to be on a Saturday. So I'm not even sure why it needs to be on the school calendar as it's not necessarily a school day.

[00:03:55] So that's my one question about that as well. All righty. It sounds like there are some questions and concerns, so we will address those next time, but I think we can probably still address it as an action item next meeting.

[00:04:10] Is that all right with you all, Ms. Donahue? Still make it action for our next committee meeting? We don't need information again. All right, so that is what we will do. Thank you, Ms. Lehman. If you could answer those questions for us next time, that would be wonderful. All righty. We are going to move on now to item 4.02, which is the Charter School Accreditation and student achievement reports.

[00:04:33] Again, presenting is Ms. Lehman. Thank you. Also, annually, we present information on each of the charters and their academic standing within the Commonwealth of Virginia. And as you know, as board members, we received this information on all the schools in Loudoun County early December.

[00:04:49] So this is the report on both Hillsborough and Middleburg. They are both falling in the distinguished category and have no academic concerns. And the full reports are attached. I don't think you want to get into it now, but I'm happy to answer questions offline or even direct you to Mr. Scott Meisensal, who can give you a deep dive into academic performance reports.

[00:05:14] Thank you, Ms. Lehman. I have a question for Dr. Ellis, actually. With a lot of our data that we use for our schools, I know when we report all that out in terms of SOLs and MTSS and all those things, If you could just refresh my memory that charter schools are included in all of that data as well.

[00:05:36] Yes, ma'am. Okay. And then that also usually has some level of like measures over time. So something I would sort of like to see maybe in the future is just like three years at a glance so that we can see how they're doing comparatively.

[00:05:53] I think what I'm asking is in those school profiles is the charter schools. We give that at that report in October as well, Dr. Ellis. Because we usually have the school profiles in there, too. This is the new version of that. So what you're accustomed to seeing with the three-year average and the previous year and the cumulative three years, that no longer exists.

[00:06:16] This format is what we now get. That's from the state. Yes, correct. And this is the first year we've had this format. That's why. I thought it was different because it was chartered. No, this is what everyone received this year. This is what it looks like for each school. To match the new accreditation. Okay, so internally, though, I'm sure our wonderful Razzie team could probably help us with that other data.

[00:06:40] Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I don't need that for these purposes. I have every year's data, so it would be easy. I see that they're distinguished, and I can make sense of this data. I may do some offline questions about numbers of students in different demographics at the charter schools, just to have an understanding of what some of the, usually when you see 100%, that means less kids.

[00:07:01] But we can talk about that offline. but that is good to know. I would add one thing you'll notice in their reports where there is a less than sign on the mastery indicators, the second page of the report, that indicates the subgroup is too small to measure, and that is indicated for most of their subgroups.

[00:07:21] Do we know what that number would be of students? Less than 50. Okay. But their entire enrollment is? 150. Right. Yes. Okay. So that makes more sense. 15 students now okay 15 yes okay so even so with 150 students would have to be at least 10% of the population okay yeah appreciate that yes colleagues questions yes Miss Donnie thank you miss Sharon off I have a couple of questions with

[00:07:54] regard to the summary reports for both of the schools so on page two of those school summary report for 2025 under EL progress there are there's no numbers there which is causing me some curiosity as to whether there are any whether there are any students enrolled at either schools who are identified as EL students and along those same lines on the next page the growth indicators right

[00:08:33] reading growth math growth there are the percentage numbers here are listed only for the students who identify as white but then when we look at chronic absenteeism there are percentages listed for Asian students Hispanic students and students with disabilities so I'm curious as I said if we know the numbers or percentages for the two charter schools of the numbers of students who identify as white or Asian or black Hispanic we can students with disabilities you know and once we have that information I will also be curious

[00:09:12] about the the chronic absenteeism statistics and we'll get you those numbers thank you thank you miss Donahue my thoughts were about asking about the demographics were similar in the similar vein mr. pepper do you have anything okay all right yes dr. Ellis I'm sorry so the membership for each school is located in the public facing video e schools quality profiles you can see the percentage breakdown of student groups and so so that is public

[00:09:49] information already and we can provide that link to you so you have access to that and then follow up with the data in terms of the attendance and achievement as well appreciate that thank you I don't believe there's any further action needed for us correct and that's just a report all righty thank you so much miss layman for being here and for the information now we will move on to item 4.03 special programs overview and to present today is miss Katie Clark the director of academic programs thank you for being here good afternoon thank you

[00:10:27] for having me today I'll be providing a brief high-level overview of our special programs to support your review we've shared a folder that includes all documents that are referenced in board docs for this afternoon i will cover an overview of special programs policy and regulation current program status community outreach data overview and special program timeline louden county public school board policy 5115 was adopted in january of 2022. special programs and academies outlines the guiding principles for new and continuing

[00:11:05] special programs or academies; the process for special program or academy proposal development; the process for special program or academy proposal evaluation review; termination of the special program or academy and exclusions.

[00:11:22] The five guiding principles are equitable access, variety of age-appropriate programs, strategic goal alignment, student interests, and lastly, sustainability. This policy allows for the establishment of special programs or academies that provide opportunities for students to focus on their interests, talents, and strengths while meeting the goals of the LCPS strategic framework.

[00:11:47] The special programs regulation outlines the approval process for new special programs and academies. Our special programs continue to experience steady growth in both enrollment and student interests.

[00:12:02] This trend reflects the district's strong commitment to expanding opportunities and pathways that align with students needs, workforce priorities, and our shared pursuit of educational excellence. We are deeply grateful for the work of this committee in helping move these opportunities forward for students across LCPS. Next we have our status chart. This status chart provides a clear overview of the current status of various special programs and non comprehensive schools within LCPS. It categorizes programs into four distinct

[00:12:41] phases. First, the proposal phase. Second, the planning phase. Third, the partially implemented phase. And lastly, the fully implemented. So in the first phase, we currently have the following programs in proposal phase. Environmental Science Academy, DLI Expansion, IBCP Program, and JROTC Expansion. These programs are currently in our review process and need to be reviewed and approved by staff before bringing the final proposal to the Specialized Programs and Centers Committee.

[00:13:18] In the second phase, in our planning phase, we currently have four programs that are in the planning phase: Global and Linguistic Studies, the IBDP expansion at Parkview High School, Recovery School, and the Transition Center.

[00:13:33] The next phase is our partially implemented programs. We currently have three programs that are in the planning phase: Access Academy, I'm I'm sorry, in the partially implemented phase, Access Academy, Dual Language Immersion, and Health and Medical Sciences Academy.

[00:13:49] In the fully implemented phase, we currently have our AOS, our AET, MADA, International Baccalaureate at two high schools, and our NJROTC, along with also sending students to TJ.

[00:14:05] These are all fully implemented and operational and actively contributing to student education and development. At the very bottom, we have additional programs that are under consideration. You'll see that these are based off of student interest and community survey results, and we'll talk about survey results in just a moment.

[00:14:28] Programs listed here are entrepreneurship, visual and performing arts, aviation, law and public safety, and information technology. This timeline highlights the evolution of special programs in LCPS.

[00:14:44] It reflects our longstanding commitment to providing diverse, high-quality learning opportunities for students across the county. see here our long-standing program, the Monroe Advanced Technical Academy, was established in 1977. In 1985 we began participating and sending students to Thomas Jefferson High School, the Governor's School. And then in 2005 we opened the Academy of Science, followed by our NJROTC program that was established in 2009. Next we had in 2016 the Academy of Engineering and

[00:15:20] technology. In 2018-19 is when the academies of Loudoun opened, bringing AOS, AET, and MATA together under one roof to foster collaboration and innovation. In 23-24, we launched the dual language immersion program, beginning with kindergarten, to support bilingualism and biliteracy from an early age. In 24-25, we had both international baccalaureate, IB, and HAMSci offered, expanding both access to globally recognized academic pathways and responding to strong student interest in health careers.

[00:15:56] In 25-26, the Access Academy launched with its first cohort of 9th graders, and next school year, the 26-27 school year, we are proud to open the Academy of Global Linguistic Studies, also starting with 9th grade, focused on global leadership and global business.

[00:16:16] Just want to thank everyone for their strategic planning and collaboration between our board and staff. We've been able to significantly expand the opportunities available to students as clearly demonstrated on this timeline. As we continue to grow, we've continued to strengthen our outreach efforts to ensure families are well informed about the wide range of special programs available in LCPS. As far as increasing awareness, we hold eighth grade assemblies each September at every middle school. We do those visits, we bring the coordinators along, and we introduce and make sure all students know about all the opportunities they

[00:16:55] have as they are entering high school. We have program information nights for every program, and presentations are also done at committees such as LEAF and SEAC, along with others. We hosted two special program fairs this year, one at Heritage and one at Parkview, and we had student panels and breakout sessions at those events. Program advertising through postcards, the special programs magazine, and school events are also ways that we have increased our awareness. Improving access to information, we have dedicated up-to-date websites for every

[00:17:31] program we have short program videos that launched this year in school links giving students and families another accessible way to learn about their options communication is done through elementary and middle school counselors and lessons and principal updates are used to include information in their weekly newsletters communications along with division-wide communication and lastly simplifying the application experience for our community we We streamlined the application process with the support of DDI by consolidating all special

[00:18:06] program applications into the student opportunities portal in LCPS Go, making it easier for families to navigate. Back in 2022, there was a special program survey that was completed by parents.

[00:18:25] The Special Programs Committee last spring asked us to do a new survey. So this past September, we surveyed both students and families regarding special programs. This survey is just one of the things that we use to look at program expansion and new opportunities for our students.

[00:18:41] The survey presentation from last December is located in your folder for you to reference. I want to give you a quick overview of what to expect from our special programs updates throughout the year.

[00:18:57] In the spring, both the April and May meeting, we will provide our annual program updates that are required by policy. these sessions each program owner or coordinator will share a program overview, review key program data, and highlight major achievements from the year. In November we will return again with an admissions data report for the newest cohort of students entering each program and our research office supports us with that data. I also want to highlight the admissions timelines for our special

[00:19:34] programs so you know what to expect throughout the year. These dates do change from year to year and are published on our websites and advertised to students and families through multiple channels. First, each program has a specific deadline for families to show interest or submit an application.

[00:19:52] As you can see here, this year, AET and AOS was opened from August 28th and closed on October 16th. For all of our other programs there, Access, Advanced AET, AGLS, HAMPSI, IB, MATA, and NJROTC, They opened on December 1st and closed on January 16th.

[00:20:13] And our DLI for kindergarten and first grade opened on January 20th with kindergarten registration starting and will close on March 27th. As you can see there, we did streamline, so all the offers go out at the same time.

[00:20:29] We are looking at planning on releasing the first round of offers during the first week of March, and we'll continue with rounds of offers until programs have reached their capacity. Just to give you some initial data, this is as of this morning.

[00:20:47] We had currently, or we have 1,735 AET applicants, 1,575 AOS applicants. For ACCESS, we have 463 for all four grade levels. For ADVANCED AET, we have 171.

[00:21:06] For AGLS, we have 319. For HAMSci, we have 950. For IB, we have 649, and for MATA, we have 2,823. So just giving you a sense of where we're at, and as you can see, that's why we continue to expand programs, because we have students who have an interest, and we want to continue to provide opportunities for our students at LCPS.

[00:21:35] So with that, that concludes the special program's high-level overview, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you so much, Ms. Clark. Mr. Pepper looks like he has a question. Thank you, Ms. Clark, for that presentation.

[00:21:51] It's really just nice. I'm just going to say it's nice as a new member of this committee and of the school board to kind of have a high-level overview of all the special programs that we offer. It's really helpful. In terms of, I know you just gave us some rough numbers, and the one that kind of, I think, blew all of us away was AMSI.

[00:22:07] As a percentage of slots available, is that far and away the most popular of our special programs right now? Yes, I mean, along with AET and AOS, AET only has 150 seats, and we have 1,735 students interested.

[00:22:24] Same thing with AOS. They have 200 seats for 1,575 interested. So, yes, behind that would be HAMSI. We do have 75 seats at each site, so 150 seats available for that rising cohort, and there's 950.

[00:22:40] But we are working in collaboration with Dr. Grubbs and the CTE plan, and this is all talking about obviously we have a high need for health care high interest from our students it's the highest I believe on our school links survey from students so we are looking at ways to expand health care opportunities miss Donahue did you have any questions or comments I as one does did sort of a I was really interested in the data and looking at you know the

[00:23:18] different enrollment particularly with the changeover from the admission process before to now it being a lottery for certain programs and seeing some more equitability across subgroups I think is really encouraging. I feel like that was part of the goal to make it more accessible to a lot of kids that may not necessarily apply or may not always rise to the top at first glance. So I'm grateful to see that. Something Mr. Slevin and I have talked about in the future is not just looking at who wants to be in the programs and who ends up the programs but i do think it's important to look at who unenrolls and to sort of look at you

[00:23:56] know if there's some kind of exit survey or you know things like that so that we understand kids that you know choose to get into it is it interest is it too rigorous is it not rigorous enough did it not meet their expectations those are some things that i would be interested in so that we can make our programs as high quality as possible and begin to find to fine tune how we give even more access to students across the different levels and then I sure it was in there but just off the top of your head do you know how many of our high school students percentage-wise are in special programs across the division participate if not we can you can get that to me later not off the top of my

[00:24:36] head but I can definitely get that quickly for you yeah I'd be curious to know what percentage apply as well just to see what percentage are applying and have interest versus how many are actually what percentage of the population are participating I mean clearly we have a trend here I think we're all seeing it with the CTE expansion and obviously excited to see some of the expansion here but yeah I'm excited about the conversation excited about expanding elementary looking at middle school as an exploration year I'll save those for later topics and later meetings but just to give you a preview of some of the things that I'm thinking about in terms of how we continue to help

[00:25:14] kids navigate and find find those pathways is really exciting and important and so I appreciate all the work that you did I also appreciate the high-level overview to kind of see where we are so thank you so much I think that's good for now but this gives us a good springboard I think into our next conversation so we will now move to item 4.4 which is the JROTC and dual language immersion expansion update and presenting miss Clark are you presenting

[00:25:50] again alongside with I can kick it off Kelly and mr. president who are joining us as well and I will go ahead and give those titles so miss James is joining us she's a supervisor of world languages and cultures and mr. Grizzata is joining us he's a supervisor of CTE thank you and mr. Slevin I'm not I'm gonna insert myself okay because we are getting ahead of ourselves a little bit this presentation is budget tested recognizing that budget adoption is tonight in here are dependent on the flight 27 budget but these are the proposed programs and where we're headed when it comes to

[00:26:29] jrtc and dli so just being thoughtful with our language but if the programs are adopted in the budget tonight this will show with the committee where we're headed thank you for that clarification that meeting is at 5 30 p.m we'll know soon thank you for that reminder on the meeting i

[00:27:01] look forward to jumping into that meeting madam chair uh good afternoon uh i'm very excited to talk about um an expansion opportunity we have with the rotc program um next slide please uh as miss clark alluded to there was a survey sent out to the community recently and this was the feedback that the community sent us back with regards to expansion interest with rotc as you can see on this chart there was a lot of interest in expanding the program into air force

[00:27:42] followed by navy followed by army the marine corps and then space force we do currently have an Air Force application submitted and as Ms. Clark and Dr. Grubbs like to say sometimes it takes an act of Congress literally to get some of those applications approved and so we're calmly waiting for the Air Force submission follow-up what we would like to do next slide please

[00:28:15] is talk to you today about an opportunity we have with pursuing expansion with ROTC on the army side now on this side with the opportunity you'll note this is there are some differences with our navy rotc program so the issue that we have on this slide is that an rotc program requires long-term wait lists and decisions rely on influences beyond our control

[00:28:51] such as congressional funding and the availability of resources from the specific military branch so under this option what we're looking at is a national defense cadet corps and ndcc which is an alternative to the junior rotsy um program so while rotsy units receive federal funding and support from the army ndcc units are entirely funded by the host school or school district so just wanted to put that difference out there for everyone today so while the financial burden

[00:29:27] falls on the school the army does provide some support to the NDCC units next slide please so what we were able to accomplish with next steps we were able to meet with the high school principals this afternoon and share out this information we did share out an interest form and are collecting responses right now a final recommendation will be shared at the March SPC meeting and once we have those results from the schools and we have

[00:30:03] that recommendation that's where we kick off the next step which is an official application to the army for the NDCC program and then of course this will be examined as a 26 27 cost sharing in the budget proposal so at this time I'll take any questions you might have any questions about yes

[00:30:31] Thank you, Ms. Chernow. Thank you for the information. It's exciting to hear that there may be a viable option based on, as you know, the large number of requests and interests we get from the community about expanding ROTC opportunities.

[00:30:50] I do have a couple of questions. So you mentioned that we have submitted an application to the Air Force. Is there any idea roughly when we might get any kind of response on that? Not at this time Sorry, sorry, just a little historical context we originally had conversations back in 2017 and were approved in terms of facilities and other

[00:31:25] Requirements at that time and then put on a wait list and we have heard maybe two times from them since 2017 about the possibility we are still on the wait list and no more news thank you for that background dr. Ellis that's quite helpful in an informative background to decision-making kind of way so especially in light of that information

[00:32:01] you mentioned if if the recommendation of staff that is made to us and I assume If you approve or the board approves applying for an MDCC program to the Army, do we have an idea of how long that application process would take?

[00:32:22] Dr. Grubbs? So those are fairly quick turnarounds. We've already had two discussions with the Army.

[00:32:38] One of the timeline processes, they come out in the inspector facility. So whether it's a JRTC program or it's an MDCC, we need to make sure that we have the square footage for the program. So no specific timeline, but they're much faster than a traditional application.

[00:32:54] It could be as soon as three to six months is what they shared, depending on their team members. Thank you. And then you mentioned the school division would be financially responsible, but there would be contributions from the Army.

[00:33:11] At this time, do we know what the Army contributions would be to the program? I can share some of that, and I've had some experience with the NDCCs. Our strategy, too, I want to share is that we'll prove a concept, and then hopefully convert this to a JRTC program down the road.

[00:33:28] Sometimes these applications take, as you heard from Dr. Ellis, up to 20 years to get an Air Force program, 25 years to get a Marine Corps program. Once a school system loses a service branch, you never get them back. This is kind of a back doorway in to get a JRTC program.

[00:33:45] Where they will provide resources is technical support, and then they'll work with the surrounding branches to offer support such as surplus uniforms, those types of things, like equipment and things like that. We also work with them on hiring a JROTC certified instructor.

[00:34:01] We just split the bill. So in a traditional JROTC program, we split the bill with them 50-50. With a non-cost sharing, we pick up all the costs of those. So they're providing the technical support, the curriculum access, and we run it as an official JROTC program. The main difference is we're just picking up the costs.

[00:34:18] But this is a way to fast track yourself into a branch, an official branch down the road. Mr. Pepper? And I know that, once again, kind of putting the cart before the horse, as Mr. Sleman said, do we know roughly what the cost is of the NDCC program?

[00:34:41] We estimated about $300,000, probably 30% to 40% of that is the instructor's cost, where you hire a 20-year service recent retiree. That's the majority of the cost. Facility uses, it's pretty much a typical classroom. Classroom supplies, textbooks, those kind of things.

[00:34:58] So we budgeted, I think, $300,000 for the planning year with some sustained costs for the instructor largely after that. And if we do get this NDCC program, which sounds like a great opportunity, how many students would be able to enroll in this specific one?

[00:35:14] We're looking for about 100 to 150 for the NDCC program. If we officially convert it to a JROTC program, we'd be looking up to about 200. JROTC has really specific criteria for a number of instructors. So, for example, Loudoun County, once we hit 151 students, we're eligible for a fourth instructor.

[00:35:33] So between zero and 100, we'd have one instructor, and then we'd have to start looking at an additional instructor between 100 and 150. So, again, we're looking at about 100 to 150 students out of the gate with a max of 200 long-term is the plan. Thank you.

[00:35:53] I have a couple of questions about the wait list. So my background knowledge in this is pretty limited. So when you said you have applied for the wait list, you've applied for Air Force JROTC or just JROTC in general? It was specifically Air Force.

[00:36:08] Okay. Who came out and did the site review and we submitted the application to the Air Force. Okay. So the NDCC would be Army, correct? Correct. So that wouldn't be a case of, like, if we get approved for Air Force, then this would not impact this.

[00:36:23] So do we have to do a separate wait list to add Army? Well, so each branch runs their own. So as Mr. Grazita shared their Space Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Army, you would have to do a separate application for each of the branches. Army tends to be the easier to stand up.

[00:36:40] Northern Virginia doesn't have a lot of Marine Corps retirees, and so you tend to see those more on the West Coast. I actually had five Marine Corps programs in Baltimore. We had a closed two because we couldn't find senior military instructors. Army, I think, is our best strategy.

[00:36:56] It's just, if you look around the region, we have a lot of retirees from the Army community. We already have a Navy program. Air Force is very tough to recruit and stand up. Hence, we've been waiting since 2017 to start a program. And we've already had conversations with the Army. So if we do the NDCC route, if we prove successful in terms of facility and instructor and space, you would almost be fast-tracked to submit an official application for a JRTC program.

[00:37:22] That makes sense. And then if we get the approval eventually for Air Force, doing this program, the NDCC, would not be a hindrance to starting an Air Force program as well. Yeah, absolutely. It could do both. Yep, separate programs. That's great. All right.

[00:37:39] That's all I have. Thank you guys so much for being here. And I guess now we will move on to DLI. I'm excited to talk to you about a potential dual language immersion expansion. Just to give you a brief overview of our current program, We have dual language immersion at two schools, Potomac Elementary in Sterling and Sanders Corner Elementary in Ashburn.

[00:38:05] We have a 50-50 model, which means they spend half of their day learning in Spanish and half of their day learning in English. And it's a two-way model, which means that our program is made up of heritage Spanish speakers and non-heritage Spanish speakers. They're learning Spanish at school. They're selected through a lottery process, and it begins in kindergarten, and then they continue up through fifth grade.

[00:38:28] Transportation is not provided for students who live outside of the attendance zone. And on October 7th, we provided an update at SBC regarding a need to shift Potomac Elementary to a school-priority dual-language immersion program due to capacity constraints.

[00:38:47] This next shows you the difference between a school-priority model and a regional model, and the school-priority model prioritizes students who are zoned to that school. And so since October, we have been looking at options for ways that we can continue to meet the demand for continuing to offer this program.

[00:39:06] Both of the models support the language immersion but have different priorities. One strengthens neighborhood schools and the other expands access across communities. So in regards to a potential expansion, we will be looking at a school priority model.

[00:39:23] going to need to be school priority as no other elementary school in Loudoun has the capacity to accommodate a regional model which would bring in an additional 150 students from outside of the school's attendance zone. So that would provide local access first with opportunities for out of zone as school capacity allows. And the goal being to address the community demand for this program while ensuring that we can support the program and continue that.

[00:39:55] So we conducted a decision process for potential expansion for dual language immersion. We held an elementary principal virtual session in October where we provided information about the dual language immersion program.

[00:40:11] Principals sent the interest form and had until mid-October to submit their form if they were interested in hosting that. Then so Leesburg was recommended as a site based off of these current school population that can support our two way model, which is made up of heritage speakers and Spanish learners and a new location in Loudoun to meet the demand of that program, as well as the interest in school leadership, which paid a pretty pivotal role in sharing commitment and support from those at the support of the center of the school.

[00:40:46] Any questions do you have? Thank you, Ms. James. Do you guys have any questions? Yes, Ms. Donahue. Thank you, Ms. Chernoff. I was just curious, how many principals expressed interest as potential hosts for an expansion?

[00:41:04] We had two principals who had expressed interest. I guess I'll just ask this because I've been asked this by people. Do we see this program expanding further to other portions of the county right now?

[00:41:25] It's at Sterling and Leesburg and kind of the northern region. So it's currently in Sterling and Ashburn, so this would be a way to provide it to bring it to other parts of the county. That is something that we're looking to address to address that need and the request of the community. I think to respond a little bit further, I think in general this might be something we want to bring to the committee for further discussion in terms of strategy for dual language immersion.

[00:41:53] Ms. James briefly mentioned the 50-50 model. There are other approaches when it comes to DLI programs done in different parts of the Commonwealth. There are interests in other languages as well. And so if the committee is interested in having a more broader overview of opportunities for dual language immersion expansion, that would make a good agenda topic.

[00:42:16] Speaking for myself, I definitely think that's something that I'm interested in. Probably my committee members may agree with me. Yes, I will note that. I think I saw like Mandarin and French for the top two when I looked at like the survey, the data.

[00:42:34] That was very interesting. Yeah, I'd definitely like to continue the conversation. I also hate to be this guy, but I think that this also relates to the conversation of rezoning. I think as we're thinking about giving access, it's part of the conversation about, you know, when we think, at least for me, as I approach those decisions, I definitely want to be mindful of that because I feel I don't mind that we're doing school priority model, especially as we see populations that can support what the goals are of the program.

[00:43:06] but in terms of opening it up to make it more accessible which I think is a priority this board seems to have that's an important note that there's not a single school that could take that on right now and we are having those conversations about enrollment at the at the board level so I've certainly will keep that in mind and yay Leesburg super excited can't wait to see it in action should it pass at 5:30 p.m. but I'm really that's just great news for for that community. And I do think it's a good fit. I know you don't need my approval, but yay. I'm

[00:43:42] always happy to see when Leesburg schools can support special programs. So I am with that. Is there anything else? Okay. Thank you very much, everyone, for being here. And with that, we will move to item number five, new business. Is there any new business? And with that, we will adjourn this meeting. February 3rd, Specialized Programs and Centers Committee meeting is adjourned. Have a good evening.

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