Coraggio Consulting Loudoun County School Board, Loudoun Education Alliance of Families (LEAF) Meeting, Monday, October 19, 2026 Date: Monday, October 19, 2026 Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV) Length: 1h 12m (video) Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1236226786?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 2026-10-21. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:00:00] Okay, we're going to go ahead and get started because we definitely want to make sure we're honoring everyone's time this evening. So good evening, LEAF members. Thank you for joining us tonight. I am Renee Dawson, Director of Family and Community Engagement. [00:00:17] I am very excited to be the staff liaison to LEAF moving forward, so you'll see lots of smiles from me. If you haven't already done so, please take a moment to sign in using the QR code at your table or on your note catcher. [00:00:36] So I call this meeting to order. Welcome to the October 19th, 2026 LEAF meeting. Unfortunately, Dr. Spence had a last minute conflict and so he will not be able to make it this evening. [00:00:52] However, he will be here for our November meeting. This meeting is now officially in session. Brooke is unable to be here tonight so Sarah and Monique will be running our meeting for us and now I'm going to turn over the mic. Good evening. The first item on our agenda is the public comment. LEAF meetings are open to the public and Loudoun County residents are welcome [00:01:29] to attend. We kindly ask that all attendees refrain from interrupting the meeting agenda and to remain respectful in a productive environment. Per the LEAF chapter bylaws, public comments should address items listed on the agenda. If you wish to speak on an agenda item, now is the turn to do so. [00:01:50] Since we don't have anyone in our public comments section, I'm going to move on. We will move on the next agenda item, which is the approval of our minutes. [00:02:05] Motion to approve the minutes. Can we get a second? thank you the minutes are now approved now we are moving on to our action items the approval of the [00:02:34] minutes which we've just done sorry about that I will hand it over now to Sarah hi everybody welcome to our meeting tonight we wanted to make sure that we pointed out we have included the policies for review for the 2026-2027 school year in your packet as in previous years this outlines most of the policies the school board will review and their expected timelines we will continue to flag [00:03:11] policies which have a broad impact on our communities to provide opportunity for feedback and discussion and at this time i would like to welcome our school board representative for leaf frost fenson to provide a brief update from the school board thanks so much sarah um hello everybody uh good evening um i wanted to just cover a few things that have been going on um recently for the school board um first for folks who are in eastern loudon elementary schools as as you're probably aware, we're looking at the attendance zone boundaries for Eastern Loudoun. [00:03:46] There's a series of public hearings and work sessions over the next couple months where we're looking at that. And so we had our first meeting this past week where staff presented two staff proposals for rezoning those attendance zones. [00:04:03] One of the staff proposals actually recommends no change And then another proposal recommends a few changes. So those are available online. You can take a look at what those proposals are. And if you are in Eastern Loudoun and want to participate in that process, please take a look at the schedule for the public hearings and work sessions. [00:04:22] The community input is always important for our policy discussions, but especially so for the attendance zone boundaries so we can take into account the community feedback and what's working on the ground for families in those communities. Second, I wanted to talk about revisions that we made to the out-of-zone transfer policy. [00:04:42] This was a big topic of discussion at the last full school board meeting. We, as you all may know, had a previous policy, sometimes informally called the special permission policy, through which families could apply to have their student attend a school that was not their zoned home school. [00:05:02] And so now the new policy as revised sets out specific criteria that a student would have to meet in order to apply and go to a school outside of their home attendance zone. And then there were some amendments during that process that ensured that students who are currently at a different school through the old process are grandfathered in, so there's not an immediate change for those students, but there will be changes for students going forward in terms of the way that process works. [00:05:34] And third, I wanted to talk about we received a presentation from the academics office on student achievement data. We have a lot to celebrate in LCPS. We had made some really impressive gains on student achievement across the board. [00:05:51] Loudon continues to outperform the state across all categories, all subject matters. And it was really impressive to see a jump. We have around 20 more schools in the distinguished category for the state's framework than we did even last year. [00:06:06] So really impressive work by our students, and our teachers, and our families. So I wanted to celebrate that, and also acknowledge that as you look at the data, there are still areas for improvement, particularly for students with disabilities and for English learners. [00:06:22] And so that's something that I know my colleagues and I are really focused on in budget discussions, is making sure that we are prioritizing the interventions and staff and supports to make sure we can close the achievement gap in particular for those student groups. Finally, I wanted to talk about the policy that's in your packet. [00:06:41] So that's at the back of your packet policy 5430, use of generative artificial intelligence. And this is online under the policies under review webpage, which is a great webpage because it always has the policies that are up for public feedback at that point in time. [00:07:00] And so for folks who are new to the group, if you just check that every two weeks, there'll be new policies that come on that you can then submit feedback on to the extent you have thoughts. This is the policy that's on there right now. And we had a presentation about this policy at the curriculum instruction committee meeting. [00:07:18] And so I think my ears perk up and I think a lot of people's ears perk up when anything AI is referenced. So I wanted to just briefly discuss this. I think the major, you know, to the extent it's a significant change, I would just direct you to section D4. [00:07:41] This is really kind of the substantive change for this policy. And I also just want to be clear, this change is not related to like student use of generative AI. This is related to how staff can utilize AI for their work and just makes clear that it continues to be the case that you cannot use public-facing consumer AI products and put personally identifiable information in those public consumer products. [00:08:11] That's not allowed. But LCPS now has our own enterprise-managed applications for AI, so basically, you could think of it as a walled guard in a closed loop, like as if you would have your own internal LCPS Google Drive or something like that, now we have those AI products available to us. [00:08:33] So this is saying we can use generative AI with information in that closed loop way, but we still cannot use it with the public consumer product. So that is the update to that policy. So to the extent folks have feedback on that policy, it's up on the policies under review webpage. [00:08:54] If you would like to provide any comments curriculum instruction we'll be taking up as an action item in committee at our meeting next month so with that those are the topics I wanted to cover and looking forward to our conversations today thank you so much now on to membership highlights and updates just a few highlights we have 41 out of a hundred members we are continuing to work with our schools to ensure that we [00:09:31] We have representation across all the schools in Loudoun County, and we are seeing a good impact and hoping that more members will join us. As we've mentioned, LEAF does not meet in December or January due to the winter holidays and the sport, but the school board is organizing and the school board is out in session. [00:09:58] However, we have confirmed that LEAF will have an opportunity to volunteer with the Loudon Education Foundation filling backpacks for students in need in January. That opportunity is limited to 20 people. Please be on the lookout for a sign-up sheet. [00:10:13] Additionally, we are still working to sign up those that are interested in participating in outside opportunities with LCPS for feedback and dialogue. At this time, we would like to introduce, tonight we do not have Dr. Spence, unfortunately, because he could not be here tonight. [00:10:34] So we will be going straight into our conversations. - So tonight for our collaborative conversations, we have Dawn Trainor from Support Services to discuss the Capital Improvement Plan and Jennifer Miller from the Office of the Ombuds. [00:10:56] And each conversation should last 20 to 25 minutes. - I don't think we need to split by elementary and middle and high, any opinion? Yeah, we can all be together, excuse me. [00:11:11] So support services, we'll start over to my left and ombuds over to my right. On your table are some note cards that should be in the middle. So sometimes as the conversations get going, time gets called and you don't get to ask your questions. If you could write those questions down and our goal is to get the feedback and then send it when we send out the notes for everyone. [00:11:34] So that way the questions do get answered for you. So that's what those cards are. Are there any questions before we begin? Yeah, we'll, I think we'll do that. Do we have a timekeeper? [00:11:51] All right, beautiful. So yeah, if we could, we'll need two groups. So if you're in the middle, if you wouldn't mind maybe splitting either left or right. The right's a little full for there. Thank you. [00:12:08] Do you want the, you want the, yeah. [00:12:10] Well, I figured that they're further. [00:32:21] Sorry to interrupt. This is a five minute warning before we switch places. This is a courtesy two [00:35:12] minute warning. [00:37:18] It's time to wrap up. Please remember the postcards are on the table if you [00:37:47] want to write down any questions we need to follow up with. [00:39:41] If you have any questions that weren't [00:39:43] answered, please fill out the note card on your table. [00:56:44] Excuse the interruption, just a warning [00:56:46] that you've got 10 more minutes. [01:03:00] Two minute warning to wrap up your sessions. [01:05:54] Okay, it's time to wrap up if you didn't get all the questions answered please remember to fill out the little note card [01:06:19] that's on the table well thank you all very much for your engagement and participation this evening [01:10:25] i will have to say i enjoyed both of the speakers like the sessions were really good um and so as a quick reminder please take a few moments to complete the meeting feedback survey we really do look at that information so your voice is incredibly important in that regard and if you're able I encourage you to fill it out before you leave tonight we do truly value your thoughts and your suggestions and as part of our commitment to two-way communication please also take a moment to share what you've learned tonight with your school community that's what's really important [01:11:05] I know we got a lot of really good nuggets of knowledge tonight in both of those so go back and share that information with your parents, your colleagues, friends, just so that they have a little bit of that information as well. A short recap will be emailed to you as soon as possible to help support those conversations. So you'll get all of that information and we'll make sure that we have the link to the ombuds in that recap. I know that was what some of our parents were [01:11:36] asking for do we have any new business that we'd like to bring out for the group seeing none thank you again for your time and partnership and have the most amazing wonderful meeting and also do not forget you're going to be getting a link if you're interested in signing up to do the pack event for fueled you can do that have a great night guys ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com