Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Curriculum & Instruction Committee Meeting, Monday, April 6, 2026

Date: Monday, April 6, 2026
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 57m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1177101453?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

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 2026-10-11. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:05] good afternoon everyone I'd like to call this April 6th meeting of the curriculum and instruction committee to order my name is dr. Sheer Rashid I am the chair of this committee I appreciate you all being here the purpose of today's meeting is we want to review and approve the minutes from our last meeting and we have two updates we got world languages and cultures and we have the office of visual and performing arts update as well we do not have public comment and we have no one signed up for that but we need to approve the minutes from our March 5th meeting has everyone had a chance to review the minutes and

[00:00:42] are there any Corrections or additions okay if no objections or Corrections I entertain a motion to approve the minutes from March 5th I move to approve the draft minutes of the March 5th 2026 curriculum and instruction meeting you miss Shurnoff all right all those in favor say aye oh I second thank you spring break has got to me so all those in favor say aye aye and all those opposed none so the minutes have been approved okay great so let's go on to our first agenda item which is 4.01 office of world languages I will first turn it

[00:01:21] over to mr. Slevin thank you thank you dr. she'd I'm happy to have mr. Rounsley and miss Kelly James joining us this afternoon to share an update on what is happening in the world of world languages. So I think Mr. Ramsey is going to start.

[00:01:38] Good afternoon. So as Mr. Slevin just said, Ms. James and I are going to talk a little bit about what's happening in the world of world languages. And on the next slide, you'll see some of the things that we're hoping to highlight today. First, to look at our enrollment trends and give an update on our offerings around world languages, some exciting additions that we've made and changes. Second, to explore considerations for expanding world language options, new options division-wide, and also highlight some really, I think, exciting work that's happening right now around alternative pathways that recognize and build on students'

[00:02:16] language, already students' gifts around languages that they have and how we are recognizing and supporting that. So Kelly will give some updates on that later. We first wanted to talk about our enrollment trends that we're seeing around world languages across LCPS. And on the next slide, you'll see a graph of where some of our bigger languages, so Spanish is represented by that purple line, French by the blue line, German green, Latin purple, and American Sign Language is red. Now that slide on the graph on the left shows all the languages, which can be a little

[00:02:51] bit deceiving because Spanish greatly outpaces all of those other languages. And we have seen a growth in Spanish division-wide, about a 7% increase in students taking Spanish since the 21-22 school year up till this year. If you look on the right, that's a much more zoomed in because we're talking about much smaller numbers in French, German, Latin, and American Sign Language, and those languages all have seen some declines. Latin especially has seen a more significant decline as has American Sign Language but I think most something

[00:03:29] we're excited about is you see a growth a small growth in American Sign Language for this year partly that's because of the centralized staffing in the world language office that the board approved for this year there was two new American Sign Language positions that were created that have been used to start programs at schools that didn't have American Sign Language positions to start with and we are seeing some growth for this year and also continuing growth in the next year which has been a really exciting development that we've seen in the support for being able to offer smaller programs without taking away from a school's staffing as well. On the next slide

[00:04:07] you'll see languages by school and the enrollment of languages by school and again I think across the board you can see that Spanish is by far that purple line the most enrolled language across the division. But I think you also see here really some pockets of other languages that have been really are important part of communities, really have teachers who are committed to building and recruiting and retaining students in their languages. So if you look at, say, John Champ's French program or Stonebridge's French program, there's lots of strong growth there, or Freedom's

[00:04:43] German program, or those red blocks that represent American Sign Languages with teachers who have been really committed in growing their programs where we see multiple teachers teaching those classes. So we see really strong, in everywhere we see these languages represented, maybe not in every school, but when we have teachers who are really dedicated to building and supporting these programs and recruiting and retaining students in those programs, we see really good strength in them as well. The right column shows middle school, just quickly, and again these are the feeder programs and to some of those other programs. At the high school level. Again, Spanish is by far the language that most students are enrolled in. And Kelly,

[00:05:23] a little bit later, is going to talk about the languages that we offer in middle school that feed into these as well. But across the board, you see strong numbers for students taking world languages at the middle school level and strong feeder programs building on each other between middle and high school. This is a theme we'll return to a little bit later when we talk about the visual and performing arts as well. Getting into our course offerings and our course progressions. So students can start learning a world language in seventh grade. Many of the languages are available through six levels, which is the six years often an AP level course.

[00:06:03] Some of our high schools are able to offer dual enrollment courses if the teacher is certified to teach that, and that's usually in the fifth year of the language. And students who are native or heritage speakers of Spanish can opt for Spanish for fluent speakers, which progresses through a level four, which is an honors course. So as we look to expand our world language course offerings, this chart shows a comparison of districts in the world languages that are available to students in person at the middle and the high school levels the bold languages in red are the less commonly taught languages that are a little bit more difficult to staff in lcps arabic is currently

[00:06:39] offered at one school it's our pilot year of offering that mandarin is at two schools and russian is offered at one high school so as we look to support and expand world languages we're We're really excited to offer a new course at the middle school next year that's going to be a year-long course called Exploratory Languages, which will build exposure to all language opportunities, giving students a little bit of a taste if they are not ready to commit to one language or if they're unsure of what language they do want to take in high school.

[00:07:16] We're also using centralized staffing to support languages, as Mr. Rounsley shared. We already saw growth in ASL from those centralized staffing positions and being able to start programs and sustain those through centralized staffing. Of course, strengthening curriculum development and consistency and collaborating with HRTD and school leadership to support and staff those smaller programs. So when we're considering expanding world language offerings, there's three things that really need to keep in mind. That's interest, location, and

[00:07:49] resources. So it's really important to have a demonstrated community interest in a potential new language. This includes not only enrollment demand, but also meaningful engagement with families and community stakeholders to understand the cultural connections, student motivation, and long-term program viability. So we have some data from a 2022 survey that indicated a very strong interest from students in Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. So this strong interest ensures that programs are not only just launched successfully, but they're sustained in time with consistent enrollment and support. We want to ensure that these expansion opportunities incorporate

[00:08:26] workplace readiness skills. So an example of that is that we do plan to pilot a Spanish for health care workers course we're going to start piloting that at our hand-sized schools and look to expand to other schools as there's interest in that going on to locations expanding offering requires a strategic approach to placement so that students access diverse language programs is equitable for students in different regions of lcps so that includes balancing new programs with existing ones avoiding over concentration of certain languages in specific areas and ensuring that students across the county have reasonable access to a variety of language learning opportunities.

[00:09:06] And then finally, it's also about having strong resource and the availability of those resources. A big part of that is recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers with both linguistic and pedagogical expertise in the target language, which is particularly challenging in the less commonly taught languages, and also ensuring that we have the teachers to sustain up through multiple levels.

[00:09:30] partnership with hrtd is essential for recruiting these hard to staff languages and we have to have high quality standards aligned instructional materials that support proficiency-based learning and reflect authentic cultural perspectives there's also partnerships in the community and potential grant funding that could help to offset some of the startup costs for expanding new languages and lcps so as we talk about some alternative pathways to world language credits we have done a lot of work in this area over the past year a little bit of a background on world language credit through testing it's a way for students

[00:10:09] who have a background in a world language who speak another language at home or learned it elsewhere to earn high school credit in that language which could fulfill the advanced diploma requirement and potentially meet the requirement for the Virginia Department of Education seal of biliteracy at graduation so previously we had offered credit through testing in 28 languages which is a good list but by no means fully representing all of the languages

[00:10:44] that are spoken in LCPS so we went from offering credit through testing in 28 languages to 130 with by working with an external partner working with an third-party service for this assessment also expedited the receiving of results of our assessment which allowed us to provide a second testing window so we have a fall testing window and then a spring testing window we have six different dates in the fall and we had six different dates in the spring this

[00:11:20] was the first year that we were able to do a spring testing and we offer the look date that the locations at six different high schools across the county to provide access for students they're not having to drive necessarily all the way across the county we try to ensure one testing location in the fall and a different testing location in the spring at our Leesburg schools our schools out west our schools in the east and our schools in Della South so that all areas of the county are represented and so students have a opportunity for that so we had 130 languages that were available to students and these are the new

[00:11:55] languages that were assessed in the fall and in the spring of 2026. So going on this is a history of our students who have registered for credit through testing this year having two windows provided a huge record-breaking number of students who took advantage of this opportunity and we're really excited especially since this is just the first year that we were able to offer spring testing we still have some families who don't necessarily know again it's a slow process of getting this out to our families who don't necessarily know that we now offer the assessment in the language that they speak or as we only

[00:12:33] just recently added our languages. Going on to talk about the CELA by literacy which is one of the other benefits of credit through testing. The CELA by literacy is an award from the Virginia Department of Education to recognize a student who has attained proficiency in English and one or more world languages by high school graduation.

[00:12:54] So the SEAL serves to certify attainment of biliteracy for students, employers, and institutions of higher education. It's a statement of accomplishment that helps signal evidence of a student's readiness for career, college, and engagement as a global citizen. And as of July 1st of 2025, Virginia House Bill 2360 became law, which designated the Virginia SEAL of biliteracy as a workplace readiness high-demand industry credential.

[00:13:21] So we're really excited. That's really great news for students who are earning that. This next chart shows the number of SEALs of Biliteracy that were awarded over the past five years. It's important to note that this includes students who are seniors that year only.

[00:13:38] So while we have the second line indicates students who earned that through the process that we have through LCPS, there are other ways that they can earn the SEAL of Biliteracy. A lot of students earn the SEAL through an AP language exam, or if their school has a separate assessment that's approved by the Virginia Department of Education, they're able to run that at the school level, and we have students who are earning the SEAL that way.

[00:14:00] Great news for us is that of the 387 seniors who have earned the SEAL of Biliteracy just this year, that's only for our fall testing, as we just completed our spring testing in March, and so we're still getting our results back there. But 39 of the 387 students who earned the SEAL so far are in 11 of the new languages that are offered, So that's really exciting for us that we have senior students who previously weren't offered that opportunity are taking advantage of that opportunity and have that.

[00:14:29] So I am anticipating awarding over 800 seals of biliteracy in LCPS this spring just for the seniors. I am happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you so much for that presentation.

[00:14:46] I have some questions. Well, just before we move on, I did see with that graph chart, I think it's, Mr. Roundsy, you had mentioned that there were two new ASL positions. I just wanted to know where and if that correlated with the graph at all.

[00:15:07] In ASL, our programs this year are at? We have a program at Briarwoods, Rockridge, Potomac Falls, and Parkview. And all of those programs started with an ASL 1 this year, and we'll be adding ASL 2 next year.

[00:15:25] So we will be further increasing those numbers. One of those schools had actually two classes of ASL 1. So they had the numbers in two requested. That course was worth two classes. Great. Yeah, I know it kind of goes with if you build it, they will come, you know, type of thing. But, yeah, thank you for that.

[00:15:41] I just wanted to know how many students take advantage of the CTT per year? I think you already said it, but I just wanted to see. So we have, it's on 16th, is that those are the numbers of students who register. They register themselves through a portal online to sign up.

[00:16:01] They pick their date, their language, their location. And how are students informed or families informed about the opportunity to earn the CTT? So previously, we had primarily communicated through world language teachers through that.

[00:16:18] But a lot of the students who need to take advantage of the opportunity might not be enrolled in a world language. We have a lot of EL students who need to take advantage of this opportunity, and they're not necessarily in a language. So we have made it a priority to work with communications. There's been, it was in the LCPS newsletter.

[00:16:36] We also partnered with the EL department. We had a presentation at the FACE Empowered Conference for families and students that was on a Saturday in the fall to inform families about this opportunity.

[00:16:52] We have presented at those FACE, it was like the family, it was like a Zoom family evening that was presented. They have it in multiple languages. I don't know what it was called. The family room, yes, so we presented the family room so that our families are made aware of this, since that's a big percentage of the students who would be taking advantage of this opportunity.

[00:17:22] Also partnering with school counseling so that the counselors are aware of this opportunity to inform their students whether it is in meeting for course selection for following year so that they know that this opportunity is coming up. Awesome. And are they informed of the barriers, like what could be the cost, or is there a registration fee along with it?

[00:17:45] So students are able to take this assessment twice over the course of their high school career. They can only take it in high school grades 9 through 12. They can take it once per academic year. So if a student tested in the fall, they were unable to test in the spring, but they can test again next year. And it is free of cost to students.

[00:18:01] Oh, awesome. And what percentage of students who take the exam successfully earn the credits? I don't know if we have data on that. So we are in the process of collecting that as we get our results back. I would say that I don't have – we can get you the specific number, but they can earn, depending upon their proficiency level, it's not like a pass-fail test.

[00:18:23] It gives them a proficiency level. Depending upon their proficiency score, they can earn one, two, or three world language credits. And are we exploring any avenues or pathways so that students can take advantage of CTT at the current moment?

[00:18:39] I know we've exhausted quite a lot of measures, but we're heightening awareness through all the pathways you had mentioned. But is there any other that we're possibly exploring? I can't think of any because you really covered it all, but I was just curious about it. I know we're always open to new ideas.

[00:18:55] But at this time, we're looking at ways to expand this and to make sure that all of the students who need to take advantage of this opportunity are provided a way to do so. Thank you so much. If I could just add to that, I think that this year also is a significant expansion of CTT. As Kelly mentioned in her presentation, we did go with a third-party vendor this year that does the testing for us, which really enables us to go faster, to test more students.

[00:19:20] And the tests are more rigorous. There's now a speaking portion of the test that wasn't on there before. And so being able to – we had kind of a local process that we used that required recruiting and hiring staff to read, not staff, community members, to read and score these exams.

[00:19:36] We're now going with a national vendor who does this in other local school divisions, which really, you know, students were waiting a long time to get their results. The results now come back a week or so. Some of them more commonly spoken language, like Spanish, we get Spanish results in a matter of like three or four days, and their results are automatically uploaded so they can see how they did.

[00:19:58] But we had all of our testing was complete, I think, within all of the results were back within six weeks in the fall window so so we do believe this is the first year of doing it this way and this will continue to grow as well because we have seen some strong growth and I think the process is much more streamlined for families to participate had been previously so exciting I'll I'll now turn it over to my colleagues any questions yes thank you Dr. Rashid thank you Ms. James for being here I feel like you've become a frequent flyer and i'm enjoying it um my questions do honestly kind of surround around some of those

[00:20:35] other programs so a couple of just logistical questions one is for the new middle school course that's more of an exploration is that starting in seventh grade would that be offered in seventh seventh or eighth seventh or eighth okay and then what is the requirement for students with languages is it three years or four for um the virginia advanced diploma it is three years to earn an advanced diploma okay so if or two years of two different languages oh okay they have two options so if you choose to do the exploration year in seventh instead of starting your language

[00:21:12] it would potentially delay your elective choice ability down the road yes potentially okay but if their student is not they're not unsure if they're not sure what language they want to take or um if they are not quite ready to to commit to learning a high school credit bearing course in middle school this would be a great option for them yeah i love that we're doing it i think we need more of these kinds of things um in middle school i think it's a great way to expand these programs and to get kids on the right track to where they need to go we had the wheel i'm dating myself but we did the wheel in fairfax county when i was in school and that's how i ended up choosing spanish so i think it's a great option i'm glad to see it kind of making its way back

[00:21:51] into our public schools and then my question really and you probably don't have this data offhand but maybe another time once people do we have the data on once kids have met those three year requirements what the drop-off is then like our kids continuing I would love to see what that looks like because a lot of this sometimes feels like kids are doing the requirement and then they're moving on to other electives and the reason I ask is we're we're really shifting gears here to a pathways-based, program-based model in LCPS.

[00:22:24] And so if we're going to be doing that and we are going to be competing, and we're going to have this conversation with fine arts too, so I'm queuing you up, but it feels like there's so much competition for electives. So when I hear you say, like, we need community buy-in, we need the teachers, we need to think of all of those things, don't we also have to think about what it's competing against in order to make sure that these programs are sustainable?

[00:22:49] that may be more of a Mr. Slevin question but yes but I think it's a question I think it's a question for all of us across the board within content areas being thoughtful about what we're putting in front of our schools in the program of studies but that is that's definitely on our mind and part of the conversation we're having internally about what is what is impacting what is impacting are they actually yeah because we are looking at these kind of in slices we'll look at fine arts development next but when you compare them all there are a number of factors

[00:23:26] that are influencing it besides just them eating each other and competing yeah I mean in isolation I want all these things right and I want DLI and I want fine arts and I want all the things but I also have we have to recognize that kids time is their the students time is limited and the electives are getting thinner and thinner it feels with these programs so I just want to be mindful and And that leads to my sort of last question, which is we have now, I guess because DLI has advanced now through third grade, so parents, I think, are starting to think about it going to middle school.

[00:24:00] And we had the meeting, and then there was an article about it. So I think we've been getting emails in our inbox, support for DLI in middle school. So how do, I know you talked about we're starting to noodle on that a little bit, but DLI does not count as a language.

[00:24:15] How do those two overlap, or do they? So as it is right now, it wouldn't count as a high school credit-bearing world language class. Okay, so they'd still have to do the full track. Like once they got into middle school, they'd still have to do the regular language courses?

[00:24:34] That would be, again, depending upon the middle school model. If we were able to go into middle school, that would be dependent upon the middle school model that we'd choose. But there are ways for them to earn world language credit in middle school through DLI courses. Well, hats off to you all.

[00:24:49] This is a lot to manage. There's a lot of moving parts, and I'm really excited about the credit through testing. I know we had that presentation last year, and it was so exciting to see what that third vendor offered in terms of us being able to expand. Clearly, it's expanding, so that's really exciting, especially for our English language learners.

[00:25:05] Very impressive. Really excited to see how the middle school stuff goes and appreciate the work. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Chernoff. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. Spenson. Thank you, Dr. Rasheed. The credit through testing program is great.

[00:25:23] This is really exciting. to see the numbers on the charts here. I had a couple questions about the offerings for Arabic, Mandarin. I know that we're offering that at the Academy of Global Linguistic Studies and was wondering for the model currently, is that taught at particular high schools outside of AGLS?

[00:25:45] Are there particular high schools that are offering that and what's the plan to expand those offerings? Because when you look at this, it does strike you as it's a little old school, languages that are still taught in lcps and it's great that we're expanding and curious about what the plan is going forward so the two schools where we have mandarin currently are not our agls as agls is going to be starting next year um and the arabic school is also it's a different school and we as we are looking at next year there are other in high schools who have indicated interest in course requests to offer arabic so we're looking at arabic expanding to additional high schools

[00:26:21] beyond our pilot school and our AGLS host school next year as well. And is that the same for Russian? Because I saw Russian on the chart as well. And I guess to follow up on that about Arabic, Mandarin, and Russian, I maybe don't have on hand the particular schools, but are they all taught at different schools?

[00:26:44] Or are those programs housed at the same? Yes, all at different schools. Yeah, I think that would be great to expand those offerings further. in addition to agls but continuing for the general population of students and i also was curious this is also a question i had about the visual and performing arts slides um but is is there data do you all have data for before the last five years to compare the enrollment in world languages pre and post covid just because i was curious uh you know i see we kind of are the starting point

[00:27:22] for the graphs is post-COVID. I was curious if there was a drop-off or not of these electives and what the impact has been in terms of getting folks back enrolled in these. I appreciate it.

[00:27:41] Thank you, Mr. Spence, and thank you for answering the questions. All right, we will now move on to our next item, 4.02, an update of Office of Visual and Performing Arts. I will move it over to Mr. Roundsley. So we are going to follow the same model with the Visual and Performing Arts that we just did in talking about world languages, And so on the next slide, we have a few of the key outcomes that we'd like to talk about today.

[00:28:09] Same as we did with World Languages to talk about enrollment data for the visual and performing arts across our secondary schools. Also try to understand a little bit around why we're seeing some of these trends and the factors that shape them. And Mr. Pearson, who is down here, our visual and performing arts supervisor, will share some division-level actions that we are taking to strengthen our visual and performing arts programs and discuss potential enhancements to support the co-curricular aspects of the visual and performing arts. So just as we did with World Languages, we'll start with some enrollment trends across the three big areas of the visual and performing arts, which are band, art, and

[00:28:47] theater. We do see a rise in the enrollments of students in our music programs from 2021 to 2022. There is a sharper decline in art, and there's a slight decline in theater arts. But one of the things that's really important to recognize with these slides, to add a little context, is that unlike some other content areas, the visual performing arts has a rich co-curricular aspects as well for students. These are students enrolled in these classes. Our count is that somewhere around 4,000 students are actually enrolled in theater arts because they participate outside

[00:29:22] of school. They're not enrolling in the electives. As Ms. Chernoff noted, there is steep competition for many of those electives, but they are invested and part of the programs. It's just not reflected in our course enrollment data. The next slide, again, shows our programs across our schools.

[00:29:41] And once again, you see the pockets of some real strengths where these programs are invested in a part of our communities. If you look at some of the theater programs, you'll notice very large numbers of students enrolled in some theater programs. And again, Mr. Pearson is going to speak to this, But I think that speaks to the relationships that teachers build with students, the sense of belonging that we create in these programs, the sense of community and tradition that are part of these programs.

[00:30:10] And so while not every school has strong programs across the board, we do see a lot of strength in the visual and performing arts in some of our programs everywhere. On the right-hand side, you'll see our middle schools. It's important to note there, if you look at Willard Middle School, there's over 2,000 students enrolled, which there are not 2,000 students enrolled at Willard Middle School.

[00:30:28] but the reason why is because in the middle school in sixth grade every student takes art and every student takes music so there is a double count of our sixth grade students in those classes but once again we take a lot of steps to make sure students do have broad exposure to the visual and performing arts in middle school and some of those same themes that we just talked about in world languages around strong collaborative feeder patterns and working together and recruitment efforts across the middle and high school will come into play as well to keep those programs growing. For example, at Willard Middle School it feeds into Light Ridge and while those are both large schools, I know there's a strong collaborative bond between those two schools and working together

[00:31:07] to keep students enrolled and invested in these programs. The next slide shows the growth over the last five years of different visual and performing arts programs at each of our high schools and I think something worth noting here is that we do have some schools that are seeing really strong growth in the visual and performing arts. If you look at Parkview, Light Ridge is a new school, which explains that very large growth. But if you look at a school like Parkview or Riverside or Stonebridge, you see continuing growth in the visual and performing arts programs. And I think what this highlights is that our teachers are doing some really great things to keep students involved and invested in this, that there

[00:31:46] is a lot of expertise in the room to talk about how we keep students involved and invested in these programs. And while this is all visual performing arts, it doesn't go to the nuance of art versus music, we are seeing places where we have strong growth, and our teachers are really leading the way in helping to recruit and keep students as part of these programs. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Pearson, who's going to talk about the support that his office provides in making that happen, and some of the things that we are seeing schools do to help build on that success. Thank you, Jeff. Of course, the first part of that support is being aware of what's out there situational awareness lots of conversations over the years 18 years for

[00:32:25] me in this position and doing what's happened on the ground level there's so many factors that come together but on this slide here we've identified just a few challenges and success factors that keep coming up amongst those are already referenced this evening the competition that's created through additional electives as we keep adding things to the plate to provide opportunities for students and there's only so much room in the schedule that they can add so they're having to make tough choices sometimes we do hear feedback from our especially to secondary level that once students finish their two credits in the

[00:33:03] arts then there's pressure to move into other courses and things and so we do lose students to that into early release if the band class is scheduled in the afternoon their students aren't in that program anymore as a result probably the biggest thing here we talked about staffing the FTE and how those are utilized we've referenced previously there's sometimes a philosophical component decisions have to be made at the school level that have impacts but if we pull back FTE let's say from the art program without a change in the enrollment we will see it drop enrollment because there are a few fewer

[00:33:41] courses offered by default at the same time when we have a program at a school that only has one art teacher it's hard for us to offer all of the offerings that we have available in the program of studies so maybe that school can't offer ceramics because there's not somebody to teach it so those are challenges there's a reason the VP office VPA office of support is in the middle because we try to bridge those problems provide supports I will come back to that success factors include again as mentioned earlier there is research it shows that one of the strongest indicators or factors in a student staying engaged in these programs is their connection with their

[00:34:20] teacher and so that's that's hugely part when that culture is built you spend a lot of time out of school especially in the music program and theater so there's kind of a bond and family that's built there and that keeps students in the program again we referenced earlier where we have the ability for let's say the high school orchestra teacher to come down occasionally and engage with the eighth graders at the high school level or at the middle school level get to know them that that increases the the chance that those students are going to stay engaged in that program so again personal connections of course there's the broader thing we see this happen where there's a sense of pride not just

[00:35:00] in in the school but in the broader community that they're proud of the programs that they have and that we have that it kind of feeds on itself in the whole entire community in between when we become aware of issues we stay in contact with our teachers we we are open to administrators over the years I've offered on many occasions guidance to administrators to encouragement to offer programs I recall one instance when we were open a new high school program orchestra program was getting off the ground it was still small at the time but we had the court the decision was or the question was are we going to

[00:35:38] offer an orchestra block for these students well if we didn't that meant the students that were pulling from the previous high school as they open the new high school we're not going to have that opportunity so it took it took a while but that that school eventually before is all said and done offered one black one block of orchestra now it's a full-fledging very successful program so we we intersect at various points along the line remain available so I want to go in to the support we provide for courses and programs especially on the financial and I want to thank the school board most grateful to each of you for

[00:36:16] the credible support you provided us over the years but certainly this year and it seems like it wasn't that long ago I was sitting here talking about proposing telling you what we needed with allotments and to see that come to fruition and most grateful we all are and we're very excited we do we do recognize with the model that we use especially for the music program that our largest programs need additional assistance from our office and that's the message we're giving the staff because it's the increase is a flat amount for those programs like a orchestra program regardless of the size of the program but the larger program more ensembles they're going to

[00:36:54] have some additional expenses so we're just so you know we're aware of that and working on that so so again thank you very much for that a few years ago three or four years ago we eliminated fees for beginning instrumental books but with this effort and the support you provide we're able to eliminate feeds fees have been charged in various amounts across various schools very consistently for sketchbooks and in some cases for the music arrangements we strongly believe philosophically that we should provide the music for the classroom for the students to play and the students shouldn't have to pay for that so so

[00:37:30] we're we are we are also moving to support schools with the uniform uniform concert attire again about four or five years ago school board voted to provide funding for dry cleaning for these garments so now what we're taking the next step of going to replenish these inventories as we go forward and replacing items as they're needed there was a time we did that and then we kind of moved away from it so I'm pleased with that next slide speaking we're kind of on a band theme here for marching band we've talked a lot about our course

[00:38:07] enrolled classes and marching band is unique in that in most school divisions mark if you're in band here in marching band right here it's a little bit delineated separately but I would say ninety nine point eight or ninety nine percent of the bands students in our marching band program are in the band program that's where the co-curricular connection comes from from the connection between the two right now we're we we do provide uniform replacement the band uniforms it's on an 11-year cycle of replacement and the dry clean I just mentioned our office provides most probably 99% equipment you see on the field in terms of the instruments sometimes they'll buy

[00:38:46] additional things with school funds the division provides each high school when it's open with a 20-foot equipment trailer you've probably seen those around emblazoned with the school logo and then we have these staff stipends up the school board presented to us about three years ago so that's been very impactful so with that there are some opportunities collected a lot of feedback had a lot of conversations with directors and we've had in the conversation about student fees we've talked about marching band fees okay what did what do schools charge or programs charge and what are they

[00:39:24] charging for and underneath that these are some of the core components of those costs these are things that currently standardized as support from the division the color guard we fund the band the wind instruments and things like that but there's a cost for the collar guard uniforms it's very customized and unique to each school the that cost can range up to about six thousand dollars per school there's all of the flags and the rifles that you see then there's the drum heads and sticks and mallets a whole array of things equipment that the music is going to be customized these days for each program you pay people to write that and when you do an arrangement you're changing an existing

[00:40:03] song that requires licensing and copyright permissions they can cut that can cost two or three thousand dollars for each song then there's the registration for a competition which could run up to let's say a thousand dollars for a standard competition and last but probably the biggest chunk of this here especially for my larger programs is the cost for charter buses and box trucks charter buses because by when a program is competing like the University of Delaware which is closer than Virginia Beach but by much we we have to take charter buses if we go competing University of Delaware because

[00:40:40] it's outside of the 99 or 100 mile restriction limit to be able to service those buses if they break down so that's a cost but we've mentioned the 20-foot trailer really we only have two schools two of our smallest programs that that works the rest of our high schools 15 of them rent box trucks you'll see at least one maybe two possibly three at Light Ridge box trucks supplementing what we provide so we've had many meetings with the fleet management transportation office on looking at solutions for that but that's an area of support that we've identified with that then so as we move towards the

[00:41:16] elimination of margin ban fees we we want to look at a feasibility of a per pupil model I referenced that earlier recognizing there's variation in size of the programs we want to kind of get this right for each program and what we're looking at like well how do you define this we want to set parameters for what a standard robust program might be providing let's say it's three or four competitions a year there might be programs that do more and that's fine but like we have to have something that we can hang our hat on to to to identify a funding model for and so so with that I'm going to turn it back to Jeff

[00:41:53] Roundsley to wrap up so the last thing we just wanted to emphasize was that we are continuing to build a really collaborative relationship with the Office of Athletics and Activities to build stronger bridges between our extracurricular activities and these robust activities that Mr. Pearson was just speaking about, and to make sure that we do have some cohesive guidance for our schools and our communities around what to expect from our programs. So here's a few things that we have implemented this year to build a stronger

[00:42:30] relationship there. The first is that our student activities and engagement coordinators meet regularly and we have included our performing arts specialists as part of those meetings to make sure that the visual performing arts are included as part of those discussions and the visual performing arts office is aware of some of the expectations around activities and then in guidelines that our schools are following. We've also worked to make sure that the visual and performing arts have representation in the student activities handbook and that We are working to align the guidance that is included in the activities handbook with the visual and performing arts to make sure that we have a clear guidance for communities and schools around that.

[00:43:09] And finally, we have been working closely with them on a new regulation, 8350, on student activities to make sure that language really takes into account some of the unique aspects of the visual and performing arts and is supportive of all students participating in activities.

[00:43:25] And so that was a lot of overview to the visual performing arts, and happy to take any questions that you might have. Thank you so much for that elaborative presentation. Very helpful. Also makes me happy, all that stuff that's going on and all the changes that have come about for years past.

[00:43:44] I just had one question. I know that Light Ridge has, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, a marching band, and I remember they were asking about or rather mentioning that they needed assistance with those people that, I don't know, didn't have the finances to travel abroad, because I understand they were invited by the London Parade for next year or later this year, one or the other.

[00:44:09] So I was just wondering, in cases like that, what does LCPS do? I know that so far we don't have the funding, and I know that we keep referring to PTA or PTO, so it's a little bit out in the clouds. We have, I'm sorry, thank you, Mike.

[00:44:26] Okay, sure. So we have worked with our partners in business and finance, and we actually are sending out a principal update this week, so it's very timely, where there is an allowance for high schools to use their differentiated funding to offset a portion of travel for March and May competition.

[00:44:49] So we are working with schools to try to meet that need to some degree. That's great. That's assuring. Thank you so much for that. I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues. Any questions? Yes, Mr. Spenson. Thank you, Dr. Rashid. Thank you very much for the presentation.

[00:45:06] I was wondering for the chart where we see the change in total enrollment across the different schools. And, you know, it's really impressive the schools that have, you know, consistently gone up over the last few years. And we were talking about how sometimes that could be attributed to the strong student-teacher relationship and the quality of the program at that particular school.

[00:45:28] I guess I was wondering what, if any, collaboration there is between those schools that are growing and have that high-quality student-teacher relationship and what their collaboration is with schools that may be decreasing in enrollment at this time and kind of exchanging ideas about how to stop that backsliding at the schools that have seen some decreases.

[00:45:48] So I was curious what best practices are shared and what that looks like on your end. So one of the first things we did when I came into this position several years ago was I presented some data to our staff it was 400 find our staff auditorium and showed them where the retention rates because they were very low we were having significant drops drop-offs between 6th and 7th grade and then 8th like 50 percent every time and just putting that on people's radar I saw them perk up and then they really some of folks really worked hard and turned it around increase those

[00:46:22] rates to like 80% and 90% so what we've done over time is part of our professional development opportunities like in August and it when we come together during the year is we've we've many times provided opportunities for people to share ideas how to recruit for your program how do you what do you do keep students in your program so there is a community network and it's something that we never take our eyes off of because I mean it's critical to what we do if you don't mind i want to i want to add to your question about the covid dip earlier yeah uh there there was a covid dip i just gave it away right there was a covid dip and and i have

[00:47:00] some numbers on that uh it was significant what we've seen since then is that some schools many schools have recovered uh and are doing well some never quite recover from that and again there's all those issues that we talked about are variables and other variables as well but certainly uh in In many, in most cases, we have, particularly for music, seen that growth.

[00:47:23] In art, it's not been as consistent since COVID, but it was a dip. Thank you. And following up on both those pieces, I guess, you know, the post-COVID dip for some schools that haven't quite recovered yet in terms of the enrollment in the programs and then also schools that are seeing a decline.

[00:47:41] I guess what are the – is there a follow-up kind of a year in, year out about here are some of the best practices you should implement? Based on what's going on at the other schools, or what does that dialogue look like after the initial idea sharing in terms of a follow-up and accountability?

[00:47:58] I think part of that is, like, we will actually connect people together or small communities. Maybe it's within a cluster or a couple regional clusters. A program is having success sharing what they do with the other program. And underneath that, there's, again, a number of variables that are attributed to this.

[00:48:15] Sometimes it can be the teacher's engagement with the classroom, but then there are other issues beyond the teacher's control about staffing decisions and things like that. And so each situation, it's the same recipe with different measurements of the variables that you have to work with to get a positive outcome.

[00:48:40] Go ahead, Mr. Robinson. I'd say a good example of that reflective work that you're talking about happened last year when we had some required training around the Virginia Literacy Act that didn't apply to our visual and performing arts teachers, and so we were able to allot for each of those days where we gave teachers extra time to work.

[00:48:59] There were some collaborative meetings across different clusters for teachers to meet together and talk about some of these issues that are especially pertinent to the visual and performing arts. These are usually very small teams within a school, and so finding opportunities for them to connect across schools at our county-wide staff development days or when we have opportunities such as that are really important for them to hear other voices and to connect and make those relationships with people who are seeing that success to help build on individual programs.

[00:49:27] Yeah, and to Ms. Sharnoff's point earlier about kind of the competition between electives, the visual and performing arts teachers and the world languages teachers have their work cut out for them more than the core subjects because they're an elective. So it's really important for that work to happen.

[00:49:43] that's with more languages we mentioned working with HR TD you know we stay in contact with HR TD but whenever we have an opening like I know that this is critical because oftentimes that program in that school is one person and it either is going to be successful or not be successful for those students and so we're we reach out to principals and we will support them to the level that they want us involved and make suggestions we have really high quality people out there wanting to work here and that's where the I think the investment in our personnel is helpful well thank you and just I just wanted to say thank you for

[00:50:22] the work you're doing to study the the marching band supports I think that's really important thank you thank you mr. Spenson yes thank you dr. Sheed and thank you mr. Pearson and for being here and you know I'm really proud of the work that we've done too over the last few years with fine arts it's near and dear to my heart and to my children's heart this is the heartbeat of our home is the theater program at Harper Park middle school so shout out to the amazing educators that are rocking it over there and for me from it it comes from a couple of places I I'm really wondering about this engagement the

[00:51:00] enrollment slide I'm wondering if this is like a national trend too if this is just something that's happening in our schools with the development of stem and the different programs and just sort of the pathways thing that we're seeing so I don't know if you know that anecdotally but I'm definitely want to do some digging into all of that if it's just sort of a trend that the arts are waning I think there are some trends or pressure some of that is just a can start with the source of it could be local funding lack of local funding in populated school counties that are more rural or declining but you know comparable counties always look at Prince William and Virginia Beach and I

[00:51:36] I think we're seeing and experiencing similar trends in a similar environment. Okay. So can I jump in there? Yeah, please. And I'm going to cue Mr. Roundsy up. Okay. But this zooming way out, we're very fortunate to – not way out, but zooming out a little bit.

[00:51:54] With the implementation of school links and the work that we're doing with school counseling, we have much more visibility in not only what people want, but decisions that schools are making after that course request process in terms of how staffing is allocated. So over the next couple of years, we're going to be able to have much more specific dialogue with schools about how they made decisions about programming, what supports they might need, do we need to ask for flexible staffing.

[00:52:17] The school board has given us a lot of tools to help schools with programs. But we need to kind of look at it universally as opposed to, like, fine arts on the wane, like, because we actually see an increase. In a lot. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But when you look at CTE, CTE is not here to talk, for example, or STEM, but we're seeing similar trends in terms of flatlining.

[00:52:37] There's a lot of influences in terms of electives. So Mr. Rounsley has done a little bit of early looking at that, if he could share some of the trends he's seeing, and maybe this would warrant a future conversation about this topic. Yeah, that was going to be my follow-up, is are there reverse trends that are in the other programs that we're seeing similar dips and increases?

[00:52:58] Yeah, you would see a similar decrease in enrollment in CTE programs as well to what you're seeing here. I think places where you would see growth are in early release, which was brought up earlier. We do see an increase in the number of students using early release.

[00:53:14] And I think another point you see is an increase in enrollment in advanced programs like AP classes, dual enrollment classes. And there's lots of reasons for that. There's that GPA bump that comes along with that. There's the students finish the requirements of these courses and take these other courses that lead to a rise in their GPA.

[00:53:36] So there's lots of factors. I mean, the space is tight for electives, as we've referenced over and over again here tonight. And I think there's a number of factors that might lure a student from taking a program in the visual performing arts and maybe take AP economics instead.

[00:53:53] And so there's lots of factors. Some of them are within our control and our course offerings, and some of them are, you know, larger issues, as Mr. Pearson was referencing. So glad you brought up early release. I think it's a huge issue.

[00:54:08] I think the, you know, kids are talking about how they can't squeeze it all in, but then they're leaving school early. So I have lots of beef with early release, but I'll save that for another time. My other question is about middle school in terms of the theater program. So it's pretty expensive for parents to have their children participate in a middle school theater program.

[00:54:31] We're paying a fee to buy the show, the playbills, and then costumes. It's not really boosters, but it's starting to kind of feel like middle school has boosters and we're it. So is there any thought, because kids do get the exposure to the music programs and the art, and they get art in middle, do they have any is there any way to think about pouring into some of these middle school programs I know Simpson has reached out to me obviously I'm at Harper Park with my kiddos but the Leesburg schools are now starting to build pretty robust feeder programs into the high schools that's a goal I think that the clusters have how can we support our middle schools with fees to

[00:55:11] give access to more kids or to help grow those programs at a lower level I think like at the high school level outside of the stipends that were provided but we've we're still working on a model for for the theater programs we provided some additional you're increasing allotments we've also supplemented allotments in the last few years because the needs what people the the thing we're dealing with the budget wise with the theater program is there's some varying amount of the gate ticket income that they just what we can provide and trying to figure out a gap that a number that's worked across all

[00:55:47] division has been something we spent a lot of time on but I would say that that the middle school program was something that's came on our radar that the one thing we were able to do was get the increasing the stipend amount there but we recognize that there's some other needs especially where programs grow and I think similarity there are some we're still trying to find make sure we're fine-tuning what we're providing for the theater programs at the high school level but we definitely that's on our radar thank you I'd like to dig into that more I guess as we get into the budget for sure very appreciative of marching band think it's so great that we're finally having that conversation I think

[00:56:25] there's some board of supervisors members who will be very excited to hear that as well that comes up a lot and then you know we've talked a lot about flexible staffing and I I do think a lot of this has to do with staffing and you know dr. she said if you build it they will come I think you know we've referenced that in the past you know programs they you can see I mean I've been to Light Ridge I've seen their program and there's a fuel there behind it there's a fire kids want to be a part of it and that doesn't just happen you need the spark and then it has to grow and it starts for me it starts with staffing so I want to thank mr. Slevin who's been very open to the different

[00:57:02] conversations that we've had about you know different unique school situations where enrollment is just a little bit wonky and been able to kind of backfill some of that with flexible staffing so I'm appreciative and hope we can continue that dialogue but thank you so much for your work appreciate it thank you any other questions all right our next meeting is scheduled for May 7th any new business I entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting I moved to adjourn the meeting is there a second second thank you motioned and second and

[00:57:41] all those in favor of adjourning say aye all right meetings adjourned thanks for coming out guys

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