Coraggio Consulting Loudoun County Public Schools, Special Education Alliance Committee (SEAC) Meeting, Wednesday, October 7, 2026 Date: Wednesday, October 7, 2026 Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia Length: 2h 04m (video) Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1233842838?rel=0 Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting. Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-13. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:01:25] No, I'm not. Oh, you're not okay? Ladies and gentlemen, let's go ahead and kind of get ourselves organized so we can get started. [00:01:49] Okay, so good evening and welcome, everybody. Again, I'm Erin Rosalpo. I'm your SEAC chair. Before we dive into our presentations this evening, if members can go ahead and scan the QR code, let me know that you're here. [00:02:12] Also, the public sign-up or public comment sheet is in the back. So, if anybody is here to give public comment this evening, please sign up on the back. So, we're going to go ahead and start with our connection activities. [00:02:44] So, is Ms. Bridget Gorey here? Hello, everybody. [00:03:01] I hope you're having a wonderful evening. So, I don't know if you remember, last time we were together, we listened to some music and we answered some questions. And these are all the words that are on your tabletops, as well as in this beautiful capturing of all the things we said that were important to us. [00:03:22] So, as I shared, we're going to come up with an anthem. So, tonight we're going to start with using the words that we answered the four questions from. Create two lyrics with the words in it. Okay, make sure that when we do this together, we capture our students' strengths, how we support one another, ensuring our voices are heard, and how we are going to make this the best year ever. [00:03:52] So, because I figured everybody needs a little example, I'll leave this on, but this was an example that I thought of using the words that you came up with. We listen to every voice. We see the strength in every choice. With grace, we meet each brand new day and lift each other on the way. So that could just be an example of two lyrics. When we bring this community together and which we do constantly and what we do for our students, it really is an amazing song. So next time together, we're going to have a song to listen to. So I'm going to [00:04:31] challenge you in your groups we have about five ten minutes and if you are alone because if you're not musical like i'm not musical um please join another group and let's write two lyrics that using the words that are on the papers in front of you any other words and we are going to create those lyrics together we will share out a couple of lyrics tonight so you have five minutes but i'll [00:05:03] give you five to seven minutes. How's that? And I didn't give you the word. [00:06:00] I forgot to tell you [00:06:01] there are index cards on your table to write down your lyrics. [00:07:25] Everyone, if you want, is it okay if [00:07:28] I move on and put examples so you kind of get the idea? Okay. [00:09:47] We have about three minutes. Does [00:11:58] anybody need any additional time? Okay. Okay. Extended time is granted. Got it. Thank you for [00:12:08] advocating for your accommodations. [00:13:04] Everybody, are we good? Okay. So thank you very much for our lyrics. We've had a lot of suggestions. So no, I will not be the one singing. So that's number one next time. Number two, there may be dancing because there was a suggestion of dancing when we get our song. So I'm okay with that too. However, who would like to share one of our great lyrics that we are going to add to our anthem any table oh if not i i will voluntold you [00:13:44] oh okay people are going to show off a little no i'm also not gonna rap it but you have to imagine that it's being rap so if this was not intended to be a rap song we're going to be like the rap breakdown in the middle okay see look at how we're building a song together. [00:14:10] So, stand tall in the mirror, that's self-advocacy. I honor communication, speak my truth with honesty. Walking with courage, I move with grace. They want the transparency, no mask on my face. Woo! All right, and now the mic drop. [00:14:30] Okay, anybody else want to share? Ours is more of a ballad, so... Oh, this is going to be hard. No. With grace and love, we honor our students. [00:14:49] We help them feel valued with humor and prudence. Ooh. Okay, one last one. Oh, way in the back? [00:15:07] We could share them all out. Not as impressive as the first two, but we'll go. Hand in hand, we'll grow. [00:15:24] Side by side, we'll stand. Building a future shaped by every hand. Ooh. Guys, okay. One more. One more. These are amazing. It's going to be an amazing song. [00:15:46] We celebrate self-advocacy even when staff calls it audacity. To see through to our community, we value transparency. Wonderful. Right. [00:16:02] So, yes, maybe next time we'll also vote on maybe the genre. We'll see. We'll do it in a couple. Yep. Right, a ballad. So thank you very much. I appreciate it because I think in the celebration of music and our anthem together, We are going to do great things this year. [00:16:21] So thank you. And next time, we will not be singing it yet. So maybe it'll be We Are the World eventually. However, now we are not going to also get a copyright because we're not doing like Ice Ice Baby. Remember when they did that and they stole? [00:16:37] We're not going to do that. So I appreciate you all and have a really wonderful evening. Thank you so much, Bridget. Here we go. [00:16:54] Okay. So now I'd like to invite up Ms. Jennifer Miller, from the Office of Ombuds. Good evening, everybody. [00:17:12] I have a few slides just to share with you today, just in case you've never heard of the Office of the Ombuds or if I haven't met you personally. I am new to the position myself, but the Ombuds office itself has been around for about four years in LCPS. [00:17:28] So what is it? It operates on four core values, confidentiality, impartiality, independence, and informality. And so just to highlight a little bit of that, all visitors to the office, conversations are held confidential. [00:17:44] One of my main roles is really to help our community members, our students, our parents, and our employees to navigate the school system. See what questions they might have, but also have somebody who can just be a thought partner or who can help them navigate some tricky situations. [00:18:01] This is very tiny up here, I'll just highlight a few, but what do I do on a daily basis is just listen to visitors' concerns, complaints, and help seek some resolutions. A lot of times those are through informal methods, but we can talk about formal ways to raise concerns as well. [00:18:20] And the goal of this office is really to operate with a goal of resolution, but also a goal of building positive relationships as a result. So, if you're having trouble communicating with a particular department or a particular staff in a school, I can be a good starting place to consider what options you might have, especially if you're feeling like you're in a sticky situation. [00:18:40] But what the office does not do is it does not take sides either way. That confidentiality and impartiality extends to anyone who comes to the office. So, therefore, I don't act as an advocate on any part of an individual. However, I like to say that I advocate for a fair and a timely process. [00:18:57] So we have a big school system, and sometimes it can be really tricky to navigate some of the complicated procedures we have here, and so when people have questions about where to start, I can be a really nice resource to get the ball rolling. I also do not have the power to set or change policy. [00:19:14] However, I do make a lot of policy references or help you navigate what might be written in policy and see which office you can reach out to for additional questions. When should anybody contact the ombuds? when you need help resolving an issue, when you want to understand a process or learn more about it, or when you just need an impartial resource. Maybe you want to find out information, but you're not quite comfortable coming to the people that you work with on a daily basis, or the families that you support. Or if you are a family and you're reaching out to a school, and you're not quite ready to reveal who you are or what your issue is, we can do all of that anonymously. You don't have to collect names, don't have to move to formal processes, but you [00:19:53] still find information. So I've put some things there and actually in the back where you checked in on your table and there were all your handouts, on the corner is a little sign that says Office of Ombuds and there's some little brochures there. I'll leave those in the space in case you want to grab one of those. They're bookmark size and it has this information on the bottom. The website, which is really simple, lcps.org/ombuds. So is the email, ombuds@lcps.org. And then the direct phone number, that is my line. So if you call, an assistant does not pick up, although I might go to voicemail if I'm on the phone already. But just so you know, truly reaching out confidentially, you're not going to get [00:20:32] another person on the end of that line, and you're not going to get another person on the end of that email. So nobody else sees that communication other than me. Family liaisons are also a really great resource within the schools. I've visited with family liaisons and presented to them already a couple times on how they might use the source. So if you do have questions they're a good person to go to inside the school buildings as well I wanted to bring a little bit of data for you from last year I mentioned I'm new to the role prior to me the former ombuds was Carrie Williams who is still here in LCPS but in a different role and so this is her data [00:21:08] from last year just so you can see she served about 524 contacts last year and so 524 is the number of times somebody reached out the actual number of people that that served was about 689. So sometimes people would reach out and there was a whole team that wanted some support or there might be multiple members that are involved in something, and so that number is a little bit higher. [00:21:31] But you can see the highest group that reaches out is employees and then followed by parents and family. Just to see where the representation is, that chart, the bar chart shows you voting districts for school board voting districts and where some of the outreach came from. [00:21:47] And then there's also a breakdown from elementary, middle, and high. The details don't get too much more than that because I don't keep a lot of data. Don't write down names, don't write down notes on all of the issues. In fact, any notes that I might take during a conversation are shredded at the end of the month. So I'm not an office of record and I purposely do not keep records like that. [00:22:08] Just so you can see out of the parents and families and community members that reached out, that was a huge number. Most of them had some general concerns but you see special education concerns were about 14% last year. And then some of the big categories that came up out of those concerns were staff issues, lots of questions about policies or regulations and how to navigate those. [00:22:30] And then you see special education in 504 being at the top. So sometimes that's simply just where do I go when I have a question like this, or it could be I'm running into some roadblocks and I really would like somebody to talk to to see what options I might have. So zooming in just on special education contacts, out of those, remember that was only 14% of the total last year, A lot of those were the top two categories, 504 and IEP matters, followed by some issues with staff or places that they wanted to share, maybe some roadblocks or things that are really sticky situations. [00:23:01] I won't go through too much with the employees, but the data is there in the presentation. And out of most of the actions that happen from the ombuds office, many of them, the majority of them, are providing information, referring them to another resource, or just listening to the concern, just having a listening place. [00:23:22] Some people even decide at the end of the conversation, I'm not quite ready to take an action on this, but I wanna know what options I might have in the future. And that's how a lot of the conversations end right there. The number of days to close out a contact, usually within one to two days or three to five days, just depending on the issues. [00:23:38] You can see her numbers from last year were the majority of those, just about one to two days. So I make it a rule to try to at least get back and schedule with people within 24 to 48 hours. So, just wanted to thank you for, it's always nice to meet people face to face. [00:23:53] Again, I'll leave some of those little bookmarks in the back of the room there. But should you have any questions, even just about the services, please reach out through ombuds@lcps.org or give me a call, and I'd love to chat and meet you personally. Thank you. [00:24:12] - Great, thank you so much. And at this time, I'd like to have Ms. I'm sorry, Ms. Janice Uwing come up. She is our LCPS Deputy Division Counsel. She is stepping in as our presenter this evening for FOIA. [00:24:32] - Good evening to everyone. So I know a lot of you all probably have had experience with FOIA and FERPA and there's also a lot of questions. So I'll just go over the highlights and leave time for any questions. So Virginia Freedom of Information Act is state law governing access of all citizens in Virginia to public records. [00:24:55] It also requires that all public meetings be open and that all records are presumed to be open, with the caveat that there are exemptions to that. So what is a public record? A lot of times we get a lot of questions about that. [00:25:12] It's anything that's in writing, in any format, video, audio, notes, a post-it could be considered a public record, so long as it is something that is done and the content is related to the public entity, In this case, school or scholastic related information. [00:25:34] So what's a FOIA request? This is any request for public records. This can come in any format. It can be a passing comment. It can be a formal submission into our GovQA platform. It could be an email. [00:25:49] It can be a phone call. Any request for a public record is automatically deemed a FOIA request. They do not need to say the magic words. this is a Freedom of Information Act request. So the general rule is that public records must be disclosed upon request. [00:26:09] Now there's some stipulations that I'll get into in a minute. So who has the right? All residents of the Commonwealth. Whenever someone submits a request into GovQA, that's gonna be one of the questions, is verifying the identity. A lot of times we'll receive requests from people that are outside of the state, requesting contracts. [00:26:29] With respect to parents, even if a parent is outside of the Commonwealth, we will still honor their request to access their students' records. Also, representatives of newspapers and magazines, they must have general circulation within the Commonwealth of Virginia, and also radio and television stations and broadcasts. [00:26:49] So, the general process for filing a FOIA within LCPS is either email the lcpsfoia@lcps.org, email address, or submit your request through our website into the GovQA system. Even if that's not, even if that doesn't occur, and a person just says to a staff person at a school, hey, I'd really like to get these student records for my student, that should still be honored. [00:27:14] And that staff person should reach out to either lcps, FOIA, and lcps.org, where the FOIA officer will input that information into GovQA. The reason why we use GovQA is 'cause it's our centralized platform for tracking so that we can communicate with the requester, provide the deadlines, and request an extension if needed. [00:27:35] So what are the timelines? So a public body has to respond within five working days. Working days means days that the administration building is open. We count the first day as day zero, that's the day we receive the request, day one starts the following day, and again we do not count any holidays or days that the administration building is not open. [00:27:57] If for some reason due to the volume of the request or the time it's going to take to gather the records, we may reach out to the requester and ask for an extension that's an additional seven working days common exemption if you've ever received records you've probably seen black out marks on the document we commonly invoke several exemptions they will be personal records so this would be information that's concerning another staff person or other employee of lcps student records of other students if there is a dispute between two students student a [00:28:35] is a request for student any information about student b will not be provided to student a in that request in those responsive records if information was subject to a closed meeting of the school board that also will be withheld along with proprietary information of contractors and attorney crime privilege or work product um i want to just mention tests and examinations because sometimes this comes up there is a next a there is a specific exemption for test tests so while a school division may release the results and a parent may come in and discuss the results [00:29:11] with their teacher we cannot provide a copy of that test to a person why because you they want to avoid someone learning the test being able to share it with other people or creating a disadvantage among other students so costs for producing records so there's a code section here and a public body may make reasonable charges for the actual cost incurred so that's pulling the records reviewing redacting as a as a general matter LCPS does not charge parents for [00:29:46] their students record some divisions differ but LCPS does not however if a parent asks for every substitute teacher that's ever subbed at this school that's a personnel record that's outside of the scope of their students records therefore depending on the size of that request they may receive a cost estimate that cites out the specific charges if charges reach over $200 we will request payment of a deposit before we will proceed if a requester says hey can you let me know if this if this is going to exceed $50 before you proceed we will [00:30:25] honor that let the let the requester know and then they have to let us know whether or not they want to proceed we want to avoid giving someone sticker shock when they receive this bill of $100 and they did not anticipate that so things to remember about FOIA remember it does not have to be in writing and this also applies to members of committees established by the school board a lot of times people think oh I'm a citizen I'm exempt well when you're communicating about committee business that's considered a public record and so your emails can be subject to release even if you are discussing CX business [00:31:02] with another school board member or with another member of staff all of that can to be subject to release under FOIA. So we also, when in doubt, please do not include any sensitive information about students in communications. [00:31:19] We take the time to do the redaction, but we always stress, please don't, try not to do that. And whenever possible, try to have conversations in person or on the phone, but just always be knowledgeable that your communications, even with private individuals in the community, could be subject to release under FOIA. [00:31:38] So right now, our prior FOIA officer, Dan Adams, is no longer with LCPS, so we have an acting FOIA officer. His name is Mr. Chad Quinn, and I have included his contact information and number, along with division counsel, Wesley Allen. Both Mr. Allen and myself review all of the FOIA responses that go out, specifically electronic communications. [00:32:00] So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Any questions? Are parents allowed to have a copy of their children's SOLs and things like that? [00:32:23] Parents can have a copy of the test results of any standardized testing. And the students' responses. If they're part of the test results. However, if they're not populated where they include the question prompt and the response, what we would encourage any school staff to do is have that parent come in and review it in person. [00:32:47] If they wanted a copy of that, we would have to redact the portion that's the actual question, the test question. I'm confused. So if there's a test question and the student is trying to learn areas that certain subject areas, how's a parent supposed to help them with that if they don't have the question and the answer? [00:33:14] Well, I can't speak to teaching methods, and I won't because I am not a licensed teacher. But I will speak to FOIA, and there's an exemption for withholding that information. But we always encourage school staff, meet with parents, sit down with them, go over the test results in person. [00:33:31] FOIA is very specific to providing copies of information. I'm not talking about FOIA. Well, that's the only realm that I could provide information. But I would definitely defer to our school team and school administration on any specifics about testing and what can be provided. I think I'll thank you for your response. [00:33:54] doesn't really answer my question okay so when it comes to SOL results the state doesn't usually give us a breakdown of a question by question so certainly we can meet with you we can go over what is provided to us by the state but in order to help your students study on the video we website there are [00:34:22] previously released SOLs that can be used for practice right and you can also get a breakdown of the standards that were covered on the standards of learning assessment and which ones your student did well in and which ones they need areas of improvement but it's not going to give you a question by question [00:34:49] breakdown what recourse do people have if a FOIA request is denied if it's denied so often FOIA requests aren't outright denied we always have to provide a response so it's either it could be denied because the requesters not a citizen of the commonwealth um it can be denied if the records aren't sufficiently clear the royal officer will reach out and ask for clarification and you're given 30 days if you [00:35:27] do not provide clarifying information then it's closed um or if there is a cost estimate and it's not paid now if records are requested and they are not available or maintained by the school division then the response will be there are no responsive records that's not necessarily a denial but it's saying to the requester hey we reviewed we don't have anything that can be released at this time. So I would mean specifically when an exemption is claimed. [00:35:56] So when an exemption is claimed so it depends on the type. So under FOIA we have to be as open as possible. So the first step is always to review the records and make redactions only to the portions that are exempt. Again if it's student records personnel. If that record cannot be adequately redacted or it impacts the entire document, that entire document will be withheld. We have to let you know the number of records and the reason. The reason is the exemption code. [00:36:29] So it would be scholastic records, personnel, superintendents working papers, but that has to be part of the response. Yeah, so say you actively disagree with the exemption that's been claimed on a document. For example, LCPS has denied release of their suicide prevention policies under the tests and exempt tests and examinations exemption so thank you for clarification so under foia the remedy for a requester that does not receive records either they feel like they disagree is to file a writ of mandamus with [00:37:07] the circuit court it's essentially an injunctive action that says to the court hey i think i was due records the school division or other public entity because it's also applied to the county or any other public entity hasn't provided those records and then that goes before a court and so the court will make a determination of why weren't these provided what was the reason and then that's essentially the recourse FOIA does provide a civil penalty for any willful or knowing violation that's assessed against the FOIA officer so thank you so much for coming tonight and talking to us [00:37:45] about VFOIA. This has been an issue for our SEAC membership well over a year now. I can't remember exactly. It may have been two years now. This body voted on a very detailed document of all the ways that LCPS was in violation of VFOIA and not providing appropriate information to parents. For example, you mentioned that internal policy or whatever, Loudon doesn't charge for student records I mean in fact by law Loudoun County is not allowed [00:38:19] to charge parents for their students records there I noticed on your slide at one point it was talking about how you make a before your request in real small it talked about click here on this FERPA form well the problem is that FERPA form is being given to parents on a regular basis and that FERPA form has zero information about a parent's rights under VFOIA for example FERPA says that the school has up to 45 days to provide those records VFOIA it's five working [00:38:55] days they can ask for an exemption within the five four seven additional but anything beyond that the school must go to court to get additional time to write the records under VFOIA the parent can request how they receive those the parent wants those documents emailed to them they get emailed to them unless loud and wants to claim we don't use email in the regular course of business which is of course is silly all right and and FERPA does not provide that right to parents and so you know I know we have some new leadership regarding v-foya and we've talked about sending you guys again a copy of our [00:39:31] again our very detailed report this body voted on and approved to be sent to lcps which unfortunately has not been acted upon um the all the website this ferpa form incredibly misleading and not informing parents of their actual rights under v foia so i'm very hopeful that the district will choose to go ahead and make those corrections and get appropriate information to the families thank you i do want to add a caveat to that so right now there's been [00:40:03] it's a little bit difficult so Loudoun County had a circuit court case in 2024 I believe that there was a question of whether or not a request for student records specifically data raw data could be provided under FOIA or was FERPA sufficient so the parent may have requested it under FERPA but did not provide it within the FOIA timeline at that time the judge said hey, it's a scholastic record, it needs to be responded to within the FOIA deadline. [00:40:38] So that kind of sat in Loudon. It wasn't really widespread. So then this past May, the Virginia FOIA Advisory Council issued an opinion basically upholding that. That's a huge change. [00:40:54] So right now, even if there is a FERPA that comes in, it is going to be processed as a FOIA. That is the communication that's being spread out to all of the schools, the principals, as much as possible. It is a hard habit to break because a lot of people are used to those 45 days under FERPA, and to go from 45 to 5 is a big undertaking. [00:41:17] So thank you for bringing that up. Even though it doesn't quite say that on the website, our actual practice is processing those within that FOIA deadline. Full disclosure, just so it's not awkward, that's my case. Nice! And I'm also Melissa Waugh. [00:41:34] I'm the one who sought out and received that advisory opinion from the FOIA Council. One clarification and a question. So the Paquette case that you were just referencing where it was found that we were over-relying on FERPA and some other things to not be responsive. [00:41:54] The FOIA advisory, which I thought was February, but May, whatever time frame it was, on, again, advising us that we're over-relying on FERPA to not be responsive. Are you suggesting, I think I heard you say this, but I just wanted to clarify that to an earlier question, a parent's path forward, if they feel that the county is not being responsive to a FOIA request, is only through the civil courts? [00:42:23] How do we basically, how do we avoid the step of filing a legal action against the county? Is there something in between? Yes, I would really recommend an open dialogue with the FOIA officer, because a lot of times there are actual issues as to why the records are not ready. [00:42:41] So there could be a backlog. If a parent requests, I have one right now, they've requested 10 years' worth of communications for their three children. So that is a huge, massive, massive amount of data that our DDI is just trying to process, and that takes a long time. [00:42:58] because not only are they processing that they're processing anything that special education needs they're processing subpoenas they're processing um purpose because we still have parents that say no no no i want it under herpa i don't want anything under foia so there's a lot of process that happens behind the scenes so really the we are encouraging the foyer officer to reach out provide updates explain what the delays are so that we don't have to get to the point of parents having to go to court that is a bit extreme but um that is currently something that's going on just because of that that crunch from 45 days to five is creating a lot of strain [00:43:37] just on our review and everyone's review because it's not just us it's every school every ap the special education team any person that touches those records there are several eyes that look at that so i i had one more thing myself i'm sorry um uh guards a directive that i've been that has has been described to me of including student IDs in subject lines when it comes to student matters. [00:44:07] Is that correct, is that your understanding that staff is supposed to be using IDs in subject lines? - I believe I would mean to staff that that's what's being recommended. I would encourage-- - I would like to know how that does not run afoul, not only of things inside the intelligence community and DOD, but even civilian agencies like the IRS that says never ever put those types of things subject lines because subject lines are not encrypted when they're being passed across servers so that's a that's a potential exposure how are we fulfilling these FOIA requests if we are based in any way upon student IDs how we are how [00:44:45] are we avoiding the miss entry of student ID and subject line are we using an IDP tool or something like that to fulfill the FOIA requests or are these just simply searches because study after study shows that when you talk about a a six digit number, your error rate's around 15, 16% in terms of data entry. [00:45:07] How are we fulfilling from an automation standpoint and from a classification standpoint? - So I'll ask several questions. Oh, I'm sorry. So several questions there. [00:45:22] As far as the security, our student identification numbers are assigned to each student, but they do not correlate with their social security number, which, but I still understand student security extremely important however it is one of the best ways to ensure that we are gathering all of the communications related to a student for example we had a parent request the keyword my child or M child or ML child that will create a huge search results because there's many many children with those initials so [00:46:00] generally speaking when we put in a request through our DDI department not Not only do we use the student ID number, but we use their first name, their last name, a combination of that, and if they have any nickname. Also, if a parent requests other additional keywords, we will include those in the search. [00:46:19] So are we using something like Purview or something like that as an IP product? I believe that that's what DDI does. Okay, so we're not just searching emails. No. And I can't speak to all of the nuances with it because we do have at least two of our IT specialists that work on it, but yes. [00:46:35] target for you thank you um so a family goes ahead and does a foyer request for whatever they're seeking um and they get a response back that documents are being withheld for an investigation once the investigation is completed do they receive those documents for their foia and how long does that typically take it depends on the type of investigation so if it's related to for example, in HR, number one, the HR exemptions are quite narrow. There's either personnel or there's one that if there's a violation of discrimination or a violation of the Human Rights Act. So if there [00:47:15] is an investigation and it includes records that are part of one of those, then it can become released to the subject of that investigation. But if that investigation is still part of that person's personnel file, it will not be released to the parents. [00:47:40] I don't believe you've touched on FERPA yet, but my question relates to that. And then I also have an additional follow-up question for clarification. Sure. My daughter would like to say hi. Hi, my name is Addy. I found China. I found China. [00:48:00] You may remember Addy from a couple years back that she was here. I have a dog named Sophie. Okay, let mommy ask her question. I think we're done with Addy's comment now. [00:48:19] So thank you, Addy. Addy, my question is, if we had requested on the FERPA to see our daughter's file, I went to, this was several years ago, I went to the principal's office. [00:48:39] It did not include any kind of email exchanges that I know we had with the school. and not any email exchanges of an internal nature between school officials themselves. Would those be subject to FOIA, in your opinion? [00:48:58] And also, in FERPA, would we be entitled to see all the complete emails that go on that discuss our daughter amongst school— What do I do? Your daughter. You. I don't have a— amongst the teachers internally absent the emails that they send to us because I think that we might be interested in those in the future and I'm just wondering to get your opinion about that and then [00:49:32] I had a follow-up question. Yes and that coincides with Mrs. Waugh's comment about cost. So previously I think it was understood among a lot of Virginia school divisions that emails were not necessarily part of a student's elastic file unless they were printed out and put or attached to that student's record. So when a parent requested emails, often the school division would charge that person for those emails. So when I say LCPS does not charge, yes, a parent has a right to free access to their student's records, but emails were always like an asterisk there. LCPS still does not charge for [00:50:07] emails. However, with the difference between FERPA and now with FOIA, because FOIA's, because FERPA's have to be construed under the FOIA lens. A request for emails includes parent to any staff, staff to parent, and internal communication. [00:50:25] That's part of all of the email polls now, any time a parent requests communication. Now, if a parent just says, I want their Scholastic file, and they don't mention emails, that might not necessarily be put in. We look for that trigger of someone asking for all communications or all emails. [00:50:43] They can request Teams, they can request text, as soon as we see that, we say, oh, okay, we put in that request, request the necessary names from the school, and then pull that, start the email pull through DDI. An email pull will also obtain Teams messages, but we also will reach out separately to request text. [00:51:03] - Okay, but would parents be charged for that? - No. - Okay, all right, good to know, thank you. And then here's my question for clarification, And I may have misheard you, that you, were you advising school officials that anything verbally that they say on the phone, to have that be verbally, because then that, I'm going to, you didn't use this word, I'm going to characterize it so you can correct me if I'm wrong, to circumvent having a FOIA be triggered. [00:51:41] And just for full disclosure, I'm a lawyer myself, I'm no longer practicing. I've dealt with FOIA, so that's the reason why I'm asking. We don't encourage unnecessary conversations to happen. So for example, let's say a teacher, two teachers are talking and they get into an argument about something. [00:52:03] We don't recommend that be written down and be part of, because that's not pertinent and not related to scholastic records. So conversations like that we recommend, let's not have it. Or if there's something that's particularly sensitive, because all of that information gets gathered. [00:52:21] And so we wanna limit the inadvertent disclosure of something that's not related to public business, not related to a student, that type of thing. So no, we don't encourage people to have a conversation to avoid a paper trail. [00:52:37] No, we want teachers to include all of the records related to that student, related to that student services. But a lot of times we'll have private conversations, we'll have people that may use their LCPS address to shop or to do other things that are not related to LCPS or the school division business. [00:52:55] So we don't encourage that. Ms. Wong? - Yeah, I'm back. Don't disagree with anything at all you said about emails, but I just wanted to provide the group a little bit of more background information. [00:53:12] So while technically throughout the country under FERPA and the way courts have interpreted it, the way the Virginia Department of Education interpreted it was accurate, that unless the school division chose to print and put these emails in a paper file, who even keeps those anymore, but whatever, then they didn't count as scholastic records. [00:53:34] What makes Virginia unique, however, is this is another area where in Virginia we have expanded parents' rights to include in the Virginia special education regulations. There's a statement that says that school districts must maintain emails and facsimiles, who does that anymore, but whatever, it's in the regs. [00:53:56] But emails and facsimiles regarding anything related to the student. Now again, this is just students who are protected under IDEA, right? 'Cause it's the special education regulations. But so for those students, yes, by Virginia law, emails related to anything connected to the student with disabilities protected under IDEA are part of the scholastic or educational record. [00:54:21] And so that's what kind of makes things a little bit different here in Virginia from other places. But yeah, it's taken a while for all of us to figure that out. In fact, VDOE had an FAQ for many years that talked about printing paper copies. And the US Department of Education came in about four years ago doing their regular monitoring of state educational agencies, which Virginia Department of Education is. [00:54:46] They found lots of violations. one of which was this issue that that FAQ was misleading and was not in compliance with federal or state law because it gave school districts the option to even choose not to print or consider any emails. [00:55:02] And that's just completely antithetical to what our actual special ed regulations say. So just a little background on that. - Thank you, Ms. Wall. And now not just students under IDEA, but all parents can have access to their electronic communications. So not just IDEA, just in case anybody has a student that does not receive services, they still have, as a parent, you'll still have that access. [00:55:30] Any more? Okay, in case you all think of something later, feel free to reach out to LCPS FOIA email address. Chad is very, very, he has lots of energy and he has really been trying to tackle and be as responsive as possible. [00:55:47] So also, I did not include this on the slide, It's actually Zan Slots, but also there is, as Ms. Waugh is aware of, Virginia FOIA Council. In case you have any question about LCPS's practices, you can also reach out to the Virginia FOIA Advisory Council, who will render an opinion. [00:56:05] Thank you. Okay, and then last up, I'd like to invite our state SEAC rep, Ms. Kelly Hushniner. [00:56:32] Two minutes, so I'll be really fast, and I don't want you to go past, because I know you have business. I am your state SEAC rep. my term I all the information is there I've been to three meetings so far this year it's an interesting process I go down to Richmond and I spend two days in Richmond and they lob a lot of information at me and what I do is I liaison between all the the SEAC chairs in our region what I did find out is region four though the state is divided by into eight different regions region [00:57:12] four has 25 percent of special education students in the state so we have a great SEAC here in loudon i've been to Fauquier county SEAC last week i have a couple more meetings i'm going to in the fall there are some SEACs that i have not heard from yet here in this region what i've learned when i go down is there are some regions that there are no SEACs in any of their districts So we go to these meetings, we ask questions, VDOE comes back to us with information, presentations, [00:57:51] and I could sit here and spend the next three hours telling you about all this good information we get. What I do is I try to compile a report and send it to my SEAC chairs, and they take it all in, and if there's something that they need from me, then I go back and ask VDOE about it. [00:58:08] That's just generally what I do when I'm sitting in meetings. I ask questions just like all the other representatives do. And we're not just parent reps. There are reps for higher ed, juvenile justice, homelessness, military. So it's a very interesting process. [00:58:27] Each meeting, Samantha Hollins comes in. She's at VDOE. She gives us some updates of what's going on. Dr. Conway is now in the process of a strategic plan and she'd like feedback. I did give Erin that QR code. So the big, I'll just cover the big things right now. [00:58:48] Assessment updates, they've gone out with an RFP for new assessments. They will award a contract by July 1st and transitioning for the next year. They're hoping that it's going to be transparent. It's going to have a lot of assistive technology and they're hoping for a smooth transition. [00:59:08] We'll just leave it at that. They had a work session that they presented for BDOE that's date SEAC also does an annual report that was presented to and at the work session in September. [00:59:25] I have not seen it posted yet. So I don't have a copy of it. Once I get a copy, I will make sure Erin knows about it. They also had a report scheduled for release on October 1st about restraint and seclusion, but they are also releasing reports on academic performance, chronic absenteeism, discipline and graduation rates in the month of October. [00:59:51] Beginning this year, SOLs will be administered no earlier than two weeks before the end of the semester or the end of the year. There are exceptions for students that will have alternative assessments, for example, like read alouds. [01:00:07] They will not be part of that last 10 days. The mandate requiring SOLs to count for 10% the final grade is being delayed until 28 and 29 and the vibe i got from that is they would love to hear from parents because they would like that probably to not happen at all ever and then last but not least funding came up always the bottom line funding i think the next meeting i have in december they are in the process from between now and september and december is they are reviewing [01:00:43] the jlark study and they might look at funding being student using a student weighted formula than local so that is about it i we had a number of different presentations sdi dispute resolution partnerships with higher ed lots of resources i will compile that report and get it to aaron and that's it but also at state seac is public comments now granted most people can't drive down to richmond to make a three-minute public comment but they do take them in writing and they read them off to us during the meeting so it's all recorded so that's it um i'm always available [01:01:20] if you need to reach me ask aaron and uh i'm around and i generally come to the meeting the loud meetings so thank you look at that it is seven o'clock so let's go ahead and maybe take a five minute break we do have a lot to cover in our business meetings so quick water bathroom break [01:01:46] and then we'll get started okay i'm going to have you guys start wrapping up and find your seats [01:10:42] okay thank you everybody so again before we jump into the business meeting if you go ahead and scan the qr code let us know that you are here that would be great okay and just a quick overview [01:11:11] of the agenda it's also in the back all right so regulations governing seac education program for children with disabilities in virginia reflects the state and federal requirements for the provisions of special education and related services the regulations mandate that an act of SEAC exists as well as specific functions of SEAC as specified by section 8bac20-8123d.2 which are as follows advise the local school division of needs in education of students with disabilities participate [01:11:47] in the development of priorities and strategies for meetings and identify needs of students with disabilities submit periodic reports and recommendations regarding the education of students with disabilities to the division superintendent for transmission to the local school board assist the local school board division in interpreting plans to the community for meeting the needs of students with disabilities for educational services review the policies and procedures for the provisions of special education and related services prior to submission to the local school board and participate in the review of the local school [01:12:23] division's annual plan. And again, an introduction of our SEAC officers and liaison. Again, I'm Erin Rozelle Poe. I'm your SEAC chair. We have our SEAC vice chair of planning, Laura Colossi. SEAC vice chair of membership, Tom Ketchum. SEAC vice chair of communications, Marsha Kelly. Our SEAC secretary, Katie Rosenberg. SEAC past chair, Shanaz Khan. Our SEAC liaisons, director of special Education, Nakia Purnell. Our school board liaison, Ms. Carrie LaBelle. And our school [01:13:01] board liaison alternate is April Chandler. And again, if you weren't here last time, this is just your school board members and it relates to where they're, what district they're representing. Okay, so now I'd like to go ahead and admit our virtual attendees. [01:13:21] Can I get a motion? Second. All in favor? Opposed? Okay. We are admitting our virtual attendees. We sent out the September 9th meeting minutes to the body. [01:13:40] Can I get a motion from the floor to accept the meeting minutes? Second, any discussion? All in favor? Opposed? Okay, thank you. [01:13:59] All right, public comment. SEAC uses public feedback to inform our work and advise the school board on special education needs. Focuses on system-wide issues rather than individual concerns or specific situations. Please do not use student or staff names. [01:14:16] Verbal comment may be given. Please complete and submit comment form tonight. The sign of the form is in the back. Hand your public comment to our secretary. And then written comment may be also read by the author or myself, the SEAC chair. [01:14:33] And please limit your remarks to three minutes. And I do believe we have one public comment this evening. Samantha Zaboli. [01:14:59] So I am concerned about partial consent as far as IEPs are concerned. I have been working with our IEP team on an IEP that has been updated in a meeting to incorporate new goals and accommodations. [01:15:17] However, the present levels were not done in a meeting and it left out comprehensive testing that we have been doing over the past couple of years. Despite written acknowledgement via email from LCPS on detailed specifics of the partial consent that I was giving, the instructions to write them on the IEP and turn it into the school has been deemed unclear and it has been denied. [01:15:45] Explicit details have been verified in writing, however, LCPS claims that the clarity on the partial consent is not enough to move forward with it, and my student is on an IEP that is now more than a year old and this is not adequate or acceptable accommodations and prohibits his quality of education. So ultimately it's just the steps on partial consent. [01:16:22] And now an update from the Office of Special Education with Ms. Mirkia Purnow. Hey guys. Good evening. So we shortened our presentation for tonight because we really thought you guys were going to take much longer with FOIA. So I don't have a ton for you because I was going to save all those other updates for next month, but I only brought one thing because this was really important to share. [01:16:59] So Friday, some of us had the opportunity to participate in the VIEW Academy Local Business Partners Roundtable. If you were there, it was so exciting. It was so good to have potential business partners in the room and different representatives, staff representatives from across the division who represent LCPS in very different ways. [01:17:31] So during our time together, everyone there had an opportunity to engage in some exercises around how we can align our student experiences and skills with the ever-changing workforce needs. [01:17:47] We participated in some brainstorming activities around a lot of things, and we also talked about, you know, making some promises, some commitments to one another, and, you know, what that looked like is people were able to pledge where they are right now and how they think they can support the VUE Transition Academy. [01:18:12] So whether that's like, hey, I'm just at a point where I just need to know more, I need to figure out a little bit more about what's going on, or you know what, I can come and speak, or I can provide some job shadowing experiences, or I can work on a think tank to start helping write curriculum, because I'm really gifted in that area. [01:18:35] so giving people different opportunities to be a part of the community as we build and so it was really exciting so there was one really nice thing that I mean I think there were some tears I don't know my allergies were acting up I'm not sure why everyone else needed tissues but I have really bad allergies and it's hay fever season. But we watched this video and it was so lovely. So I thought I would bring it here to see if any of you guys had allergies. And we also got to hear from one of our [01:19:15] LCPS graduates and her mom, who happens to also be an LCPS educator. And it was so fabulous to hear. And she participated in CAST and also in one of the programs at MATA. [01:19:35] And she drove herself to the roundtable. And I was like, if she's driving, my 20-year-old needs a license. So that was like a highlight for me. So next month, I will come back with our usual updates and some really nice information about what's going on. [01:19:55] We'll get some DSS updates. so we'll have a ton more to share with you the next time since we decided not to include that this month to give more time for what I know will be an exciting business meeting and policy updates. So we're going to start with all the feels and I'm hoping this works because otherwise Jenna's going to have to prepare with her phone because we had a little technical difficulty. [01:20:20] So here we go. Shut your mouth. Y'all how did we get blocked? We just showed this. This is not funny who's playing a joke okay yeah this is for all of y'all's allergies okay we're we're gonna [01:20:48] get this video give give me one second oh my god this is like a joke okay we will watch this video [01:21:00] why is it working for you don't play it yeah we're all right that's perfect i was one of the [01:24:01] wonderful lucky people who got to be here on friday and i think i remember committing to go out, visit businesses, and I said what I'd really like to see is have more advertisements like the one you're going to see, maybe, yes, and have those things go out maybe on local TV, the Loudoun County local channels, and have some paperwork and things like that that we can hand out, you know, showing what can be done by our students. [01:24:41] So, yes, I was, yeah, that's me. Look at that. I'm not the advertisement. But I would like to see a lot more people going out, talking with businesses, talking about and talking up our students and finding out more about our View Academy because that's going to be a very big plus when we get it up and running and people can come and see what our students are learning and what they're capable of doing and how well they perform. [01:25:14] And we know from all the years that I've been working in special education transition, developing transition programs here in Loudoun County, that here and in the rest of the state, probably even nationwide, that our students are known for being capable, wonderful attendants, always asking for help if they need it and very reliable employees so having that to work with that should get us lots of people volunteering to work with our students so thank you we're ready [01:25:52] i knew it okay so as you're watching this what we charge you with since some of you were not able to attend on friday is as you're watching this think about how your strengths remember it's not that you have to be a business owner or an entrepreneur or any of those things you have skills and strengths so in what ways might you be able to make connections that will help us move this forward or might you have a side gig or a side hustle or know somebody that knows somebody [01:26:28] that knows somebody that is able to support this initiative so i think we are ready [01:28:16] So that is an example. I know it's flu season and you know how quickly you touch the thing. [01:28:32] That's how quick you can catch on to a good thing. One person gets it, and then another person gets it, and then another person gets it. And instead of creating something that we all don't want, like the flu, it really creates opportunities for our individuals with disabilities. [01:28:55] So again, you can fill that video, you can go to YouTube and find it. And so when you're reaching out to your friends, send the video with it. because I think it helps to explain exactly what we're trying to do. Thank you, guys. My name is Leanne Kidwell. [01:29:30] Highlight are this month. [01:29:54] We had one on October 1st and families on October 16th. And if you can't come to the daytime one, don't worry. They will be offering the same workshop both during the day and in the evening in December. [01:30:19] It's for my workshop for October. Douglas School, all my information. So I welcome any phone calls, any questions. Thank you. I also have one more because I don't, I'm not sure if we're going to be here before this event happens, so I didn't want to forget. [01:30:51] We will have flyers soon, so we'll try to get them dispersed. But remember last year, we had our first art exhibition at a place to be from our learners from those non-traditional school environments. And we are having our second. [01:31:07] We're not going to call it annual yet because we've got to kind of get it going a few years before we start calling it annual. We hope that it's going to be annual. But we've expanded some of our artists this year, which is really nice. So that opportunity is going to be on November 12th from 5.30 to 7.30 at 6 o'clock, again at a place to be. [01:31:35] And this year, the title is Beyond the Sentence, Beauty in the Unexpected. So we will have flyers, we will get those out electronically, and we will have paper copies. I am so sorry, I would have had it up, but we were trying to move through. [01:31:57] So more to come, and we'll be sending out emails, and I know Erin will get that pushed out to the community. We've been meeting a few times with our EC and our policy sub-communities, and we are bringing CEAC's budget priorities forward today for the full membership to consider. [01:32:33] At the end of this, we are going to do roll call to make sure we have forum so that we can vote on our budget advocacy efforts, and we can take this to the school board. Our recommendations address both immediate program needs and long-term protections for special education services. [01:32:54] We are recommending increasing special education and instructional facilitators. Our SIFs provide important supports to teachers, particularly new teachers and staff implementing specialized programs. They help ensure that specialized instruction and interventions are implemented effectively and consistently across schools. [01:33:15] We are also recommending additional assistive technology SIFs to provide individualized technology, data materials and other specialized supports for students we're advocating for the protection of special education teacher staffing including secondary cross-categorical teachers staffing should be based on students needs caseloads required services and program demands maintaining these adequate teaching staffing is essential to managing caseloads and ensuring students receive the services they need we've identified the need to expand what's [01:33:53] currently being coined the tweener program. These are students who remain on the general education curriculum and SOL track, but many require significant adaptations, interventions, smaller instructional setting, or social emotional support to successfully access grade level content. These supports are currently inconsistent across schools with a particular need at the elementary level and some additional need at the middle school level. [01:34:23] We recommend prioritizing CAST transportation needs. Students in CAST programs need safe, reliable, and accessible transportation. This includes replacing aging vehicles to ensure appropriate accessible transportation is available to those students. [01:34:43] We are recommending adding adaptive PE staffing and scheduling. LCPS should have sufficient staffing and dedicated scheduling capacity so that those students who require APE can consistently achieve those services. [01:34:59] We are advocating for the development of additional public separate programming within LCPS. There is a gap in the current continuum for students whose needs cannot appropriately be met in their current school setting, but for whom private day placement may not be the best option. [01:35:19] An additional LCPS public separate option could provide the right environment and programming for these students. We recommend strengthening and appropriately compensating special education dean positions. [01:35:34] These positions carry significant responsibilities related to special education programming, compliance, staff support, and school level implementation. We believe individuals in these roles should have appropriate special education knowledge and experience and their compensation should reflect these responsibilities. [01:35:58] We also recommend reviewing and clarifying the role and the reporting structure for this position. In addition to these immediate budget priorities, the Executive and Policy Committee identified an important long-term concern. [01:36:16] As LCPS faces declining enrollment in possible future budget reductions, we believe special education should not automatically receive the same percentage reduction simply because overall enrollment has declined. [01:36:35] A decline in total enrollment does not necessarily mean corresponding decline in the number of students requiring special education services, the complexity of their needs, their IEP requirements, or the staffing necessary to serve them. For that reason, we are advocating for LCPS to establish a protected core of special education staffing and direct student services. Any future staffing or budget reductions [01:37:08] should consider actual caseloads, student needs, required services, specialized programming, related services, and special education obligations, not enrollment numbers alone. [01:37:25] The goal is to begin this advocacy now before significant reductions are proposed, so that protections for students with disabilities are built into LCPS budget planning rather than addressed only after positions or services are at risk. [01:37:43] Now, since this is SEAC's budget proposal, we do need to take a vote as a SEAC body to move this forward, and so I can present this at the November school board meeting. So at this time, what I'd like us to do is go ahead and take attendance and do a quick roll call, Tom, and make sure that we have quorum. [01:38:07] Adams? Here. Elizabeth Crotty. [01:38:17] Jen DiDonato, Marcia Kelly, Dom Ketchum present, Janaz Khan, Rosina Katak, Laura Kowasi, Craig Metz, sorry, I apologize, Stephen Meyer, Catherine Moran, Kelly Ralston, Erin Roselle Poe. [01:38:53] Here. Catherine Rosenbrook, Jaren Trump. Here. Melissa Waugh. Okay, and now I'd also like to go ahead and admit our virtual members so we can take our vote. [01:39:08] Can I get a motion from the floor? Second. All in favor? All right. So, having presented the budget to our SEAC body, is there a motion to approve the budget advocacy items as presented? [01:39:27] Is there a second? Is there any discussion? [01:39:43] - For the, if we go to the slide before, where we have the adaptive PE staffing and scheduling, I think we also wanted to include elementary specials as well, like including music and art, because that's been an issue with not having sufficient staff to handle programs that can't push into gen ed okay so do you want me to make an amendment or is this just more of an edit make an amendment all right i'll move to amend [01:40:18] to add elementary specials in addition to adaptive pe staffing all in favor any opposed any abstentions virtual members carrie adams aye sharon trove aye all right any other discussion hearing none [01:40:54] the question to add the edit as well as to approve the budget advocacies put forth by our SEAC can i get a motion for all those in favor second all right all in favor opposed carrie adams aye [01:41:28] sharon trove aye any abstentions okay great tom i'm going to pass this over to you so as noted there. We have currently 17 voting members. We have two applications that we're going to be considering to add to the membership, which still leaves us a couple of open slots for those that would like to join. There are applications on the back table, as well as available online if you'd [01:42:05] like to join SEAC. That, of course, requires that you attend these meetings, as well as subcommittee meetings as well. If you have any questions about that, feel free to reach out to either myself or aaron we are at about 85 or so uh seac representatives across the district not all of those have confirmed but they do seem to be receiving the talking points and communicating with their membership so again if your school does not have a representative [01:42:37] please reach out so that we can make sure to have 100 coverage okay so um our cx subcommittee meetings we have policy and compliance the next one's gonna be October 28th at 6:30 meaningful inclusion it's gonna be virtual October 21st at 6:30 specialized rain and math we messed up on our end so we're go Margaret I'll own it so we are actually going to postpone our October meeting and we will reconvene [01:43:14] in November transition in person December the 8th at 10:00 a.m. and then of course our EC meeting will follow tonight's meeting over at Clyde's at 8:30 and all are welcome to join. So let's do some quick updates from our I guess first subcommittee meetings. [01:43:40] We do have our work sessions so it looks like our November meeting is going to be the work session but we'll be able to have time to talk about other issues as well. That's work sessions are the 12th january 14th march 11th and then we have transition subcommittees um their sessions are going to be december 8th february 24th and april 28th all at 10 a.m now i am going to let steven and rosina talk about these amazing pictures that are up here if you guys want to come [01:44:17] up here really quick so we had our uh last uh wednesday i guess it was we had our meeting here at the transition in-person meetings are here at admin with Jenna and her staff and they basically [01:44:52] presented us an exciting view of where we are with the view and as you can see on the left hand side is sort of a bird's eye view of an architectural sketch the front entryway basically what they did was figured out a modern building with color codes and all different kinds of things to make our students really welcome and be excited to be there. [01:45:27] And it includes, if you see in the front entryway, rather than having steps, there are ramps to go to different levels. As Jenna said, the architects really picked up very quickly what it meant to build this building, including where the windows should be, how tall they should be. [01:45:54] And so it was really, we're really at an exciting point. I think the groundbreaking is to start in January of this coming year. You have anything else to say? Okay, and we'll give you a transition report later. [01:46:17] So the most important thing was we were invited with Erin to attend the meeting on Friday, the round table on Friday on The View. [01:46:34] I thought it was excellent. They handed out for all the participants a very nice brochure with all the pathways in them as well as a card so that businesses could say, hey, this is what I wanna do. [01:46:51] And included things from, I wanna help create programs, I want to create classrooms, I want to have students shadow my business for a day, I want to hire someone possibly in the future. [01:47:07] And the best thing is that we were invited by LCPS, by Dr. Grubbs and others, to attend the business breakfast next Friday, where SEAC will have a table and we'll be able to hand this information out and actually talk one-on-one with business leaders about how it's important for them to get involved in the view and I think that's really the most important thing okay thank you so really quickly I'll go [01:47:45] ahead and give our quick update from the first reading subcommittee we had we talked about a lot and there's a lot floating out there again we heard a little bit about the SOLs and what's happening with that from Kelly I do know that there is this phrase common assessments starting to present into the schools and in November we actually are going to talk more about that just putting that out there but we did reference it we did talk about touch math being piloted in 13 schools and half of the secondary schools are [01:48:16] piloting trans math we're gonna see how these roll out and maybe utilize this in our secondary schools we started talking about conversations for writing interventions writing mastery is what we have currently in place and we kind of left and finished the meeting with almost an ask that LCPS is still looking into more writing in for interventions and that LCPS is contacting video ease [01:48:51] dyslexia contact to help bring that into the division meaningful inclusion And Tom, Liz, do either of you want to give an update? Liz gestured toward me. [01:49:08] I guess I will do that. So our first meeting this year was basically to establish some of the goals and things that we are looking at this year, and in particular, to address some of the gaps that we see around specials, meaning things like art and music and adaptive PE and so forth. [01:49:30] The first step in that process is to really approach this from a very data-driven perspective. So we are assembling a list of the items that we would like to get in terms of data to be able to support that investigation going forward. [01:49:50] This is definitely a full-year project, so that first step in terms of gathering the data We hope to have concluded in the next couple of months so we can, as we proceed through the rest of the year, come up with some recommendations and some plans to address some of those gaps. [01:50:08] That's the primary sort of goal for this year. And, of course, as you see, we're meeting next Wednesday. The other item that we were talking about was the double rostering issue in Phoenix for our program classrooms. [01:50:29] We are still trying to figure that out, so I may be reaching out to you, Nakia, to see if we can get a really good answer that we can then socialize to all of our schools. And for those who don't know why we want double rostering, I'm looking at you and you're like, what are you talking about? [01:50:49] So basically, we want kids who are in these program classrooms to receive the same information that their gen ed peers are receiving. And, you know, what if it is wear yellow to school day? That item always stuck in my head that Shanaz gave me. [01:51:06] And they push into their gen ed classrooms, and they're the only one not wearing yellow. And, like, how does that lead to it? It's a silly example, but there's so many of these things, and they actually aren't silly. We want to make sure that they are getting all the same information as their peers. [01:51:22] And everything goes by rostering. So if you are not on that gen ed teacher's roster, you are not getting that email. And then it's just one more thing for the program teacher to try to have to figure out how to get that information and make sure it's getting pushed home. [01:51:37] So let's figure out a way to make that simpler and more streamlined. Great. And now our policy and compliance. Craig, Melissa? Yeah. Yeah, come on up. We are meeting again, again, October 28th at 630. Come on up, guys. [01:52:13] We don't have a slide for this one, so I'm just going to talk this one. [01:52:32] Virginia law, the Freedom of Information Act, requires that public bodies do their business through an open public vote. But it does give us some flexibility to determine how procedurally we wish to do that. [01:52:48] One of the things that we've been talking about for years is how we balance openness and transparency and also just involving the community and involving the members with not having us here until 9:00, 9:30. So we are, after some talks in the EC and some talks in the policy subcommittee, we would like to try using a parliamentary procedure that the school board uses called the consent agenda. [01:53:15] What this would be would be when we look at a policy in subcommittee and we determine there's a unanimous vote, so there's no controversy, and we're looking at the subject matter and it looks kind of more boring, not particularly worth highlighting to the community. [01:53:33] We would put it on the consent agenda. We would email all this information out before the meeting, and we would really ask that you do your homework, and just have one vote to adopt the entire consent agenda, and hopefully we're done with all of those items, and we can move on to the things that either there was some differences, opinions in subcommittee, or we think that there's a reason why we want to involve the entire membership or the entire community in the discussion, either because Other people, you know, sometimes we've found that having this open discussion, that having [01:54:09] more experience from the community helps us find things that we didn't think of in the subcommittee. And other times we find that it's worth highlighting to the community to educate you like that this matters to us. So we'll have to kind of make a judgment call as to what goes on the agenda. [01:54:29] Critically, when we email that out, if you see anything and you say, hey, I want to talk about this, you email the chair and say, I would like to take this off of the consent agenda and have it discussed. So we would operate this just the same way as the school board does, and we're going to try to do this so that the hope is about half the things we currently talk about here in the policy reviews can go on the consent agenda and be one quick vote and on to the interesting stuff. So we're going to try this, and we'll see how it goes. But that'll be for next month, something to look forward to. But luckily, there's not a whole lot happening today, [01:55:09] so this should go pretty quick um so we have three policies that the uh the policy and compliance subcommittee reviewed uh that we felt there were no concerns or recommendations that needed to be made um as you guys know we as a committee look at all of the policies that come up for review by the school board um and and the reason we jealously guard that that that that privilege to be able to do that is because sometimes things on the face the title may not automatically invoke something that might be related to our community of students with disabilities and then it does. [01:55:41] Come to find out when you read it, it really does have a big impact on our kiddos. So anyway, but these were reviewed by the committee and we found no concerns or recommendations to be made. So can we do it as a package? Yes. All right. Do I hear a motion to adopt the recommendations of the policy and compliance subcommittee of no concerns or recommendations to policy 3130, 4125, and 5170? [01:56:04] Okay. Thank you, Erin. second. All right. And so is there any discussion? Nope. Hearing none. All those in favor of adopting the recommendations of the subcommittee say aye. Aye. All those opposed nay. Any abstentions? [01:56:26] Sharon Trove? Aye. Carrie Adams? Aye. All right. That passes unanimously. All right. The next policy that this is an example of one that on its face may not seem like it would be related, but it we did have concerns um it's policy 4340 procurement procedure exemptions um so we have reviewed this actually december 2025 um in our previous concerns we had said that the deleted provisions at the end of this policy related to certification regarding sex offenses unauthorized [01:57:05] aliens and discrimination is addressed in regulation 4340 but we feel like this should be left in the policy itself this does remain the concern of our policy and compliance subcommittee right it that those references are in the policy that is more accessible to the community regulations we worry first of all we've raised many times the issue with regulations as far as transparency and the fact that regulations can be changed with or without any school board input [01:57:39] or review. So we feel like this part of procurement and contracting is important enough to protect our students who many of whom are very vulnerable if they were exposed to any contractors who maybe had sex offenses. We feel like this is significant enough it should remain in the policy itself and not be delegated to a regulation. So our recommendation one do not remove the text at lines 94 through 148 regarding required contract provisions for certification regarding sex [01:58:12] offenses unauthorized aliens and discrimination sure okay so that was it for that one so do i hear a motion to adopt the concern and recommendation to policy 4340 and thank you aaron do we have a second oh sorry aaron seconding okay so any discussion okay hearing none uh all those in [01:58:43] favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions sharon troff aye carrie adams okay great so the one for concern and recommendation uh passes unanimously i think this is yeah this is our last one okay uh policy 8140 student attendance requirements and procedures our first concern [01:59:14] Again, we had made this recommendation back in October of 2023, and we said if absences are due to a manifestation of the student's disability, reasonable accommodations are required per federal disabilities law. This is still our concern. [01:59:32] A superintendent's memo to staff across Virginia, which was dated February 1st, 2024, addressed the application of the Virginia Regulation at 8VAC 20-110-130 that, quote, when a pupil has been absent for 15 consecutive days or more, then the student is to be disenrolled automatically. [01:59:58] and the memo reminds schools and this is a quote directly from that memo from the superintendent of overall of Virginia schools when a student with an IEP or 504 reaches 15 consecutive days as long as the student remains a resident within the jurisdiction of the LEA the school division must implement the requirements for a faith. Please note that if a student attends a medical facility or day home outside the county they're still considered a resident of their home county School division should have a process to monitor students with disabilities experiencing chronic absenteeism while ensuring IEP case managers have access to students' records, even after the student is withdrawn. [02:00:39] An IEP meeting is recommended to be scheduled to address whether the student's disability is having an impact on their attendance, and failure to do so could result in a denial of faith. Residency, not enrollment, determines the school division's obligation to provide faith to all students with disabilities. And so continuing, reasonable accommodations should be considered by school personnel for students with disabilities when this regulation is being invoked or applied to disenroll a student who has been absent for 15 or more consecutive days. [02:01:10] Now, while we realize that the school division takes this obligation very seriously and things are generally being addressed, we do feel like it's important that this be reflected in policy. as we have said time and time again while we're grateful for the leadership and special education that we have we aren't guaranteed to have these folks forever and so we want to make sure that policies are reflecting the practices and our morals and ethics as as a community and that that [02:01:44] is in writing in these policies so that's why we brought this up again so recommendation number one after quote in accordance with at line 28 add federal and state disabilities laws and and then concern two um our previous concern and recommendation dated october of 2023 stated quote the current law does not address extended absences that may be related to a student's disabilities it does not um this is again a virginia regulation that applies to all students And there is no exception for absences that are excused or due to disability or whatever. [02:02:23] That's just, it's a flaw in the way the regulation was written. So we just want to raise this as a concern and, again, have these things reflected in the policy itself. That was it. Okay. So do I hear a motion to adopt the recommendation and concerns we have for policy 8140? [02:02:45] And do I hear a second? Okay. So, any discussion at all? Questions? Okay. Hearing none. Then all those in favor, say aye. [02:03:01] Aye. Any opposed, nay. Any abstentions? Sharon Trofe? Aye. Kelly Adams? Carrie, sorry, Carrie Adams. Aye. Thank you. All right. And that passes unanimously. [02:03:18] Thanks, guys. All right. Thank you, Craig and Melissa. All right. So coming up next month, we are doing our annual resource fair for our SEAC presentation. [02:03:37] It's going to be November 4th, back here at 6 p.m. Past two years have been amazing, so spread the word, especially since we're going to be having our SEAC meeting coming right out of a break. I think we have like a day or two off, but we're still going to make this an amazing event, so please come out, spread the words to your friends and families. [02:03:58] It's a great opportunity to see all the resources available to our families here in LCPS. And again, thank you. And we are finishing early this evening. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com