001Right. But it does provide me with tremendous um honor to come forward to share this monitoring report uh with you all this this evening. I first like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate the support that Mrs. Kathleen Clark has provided us as our board liaison for this particular monitoring report because you know one of the foundations that we hold um as a significant responsibility is making sure that our schools are safe for our students. There isn't a day that goes by that we don't turn on the news to see the unfortunate um unfortunate or recent tragedies or results of violence in schools. And it is it's a tragedy that I believe each of us as individuals, as parents, as community members, as educators take very seriously. Most recently, just in our region at
002West PTOAC High School, we had an incident where a student was um fatally was stabbed. And so when we think about weapons and making certain making certain that we remind our community at all times that any weapons that are brought into our schools, students will face the the maximum consequences as it relates or as it is uh written down in our APS code of conduct. And for instances where those weapons fall under a violation of any criminal activity, we'll be working directly with our police department to um make certain that we do as much as possible to reduce or to um eliminate any opportunities for those incidents to happen in our school communities. And that also doesn't even reflect on the the importance of the safety that we hold um for all of our our
003students. And so, um, as we continue to really s look to support, um, creating structures and making certain that we are creating in a learning environment where all of our students and staff are safe. Um, our work continues, uh, to be driven by that purpose and by that um, drive. Um, I'd like to welcome up Director Aaron Queen and assistant director Jim Miller who have played an extremely instrumental role in some of the changes that we have seen across making sure that that responsibility and that foundation that we hold dearly in APS is is coming to reality and um fruition. Um they are two of some of the most hardworking individuals that I have had the honor and privilege of working with and they have truly um been instrumental in shifting and changing um the
004direction of our community here in APS. They have still quite a bit of work that needs to be done but they have done a tremendous job in what they have um been able to accomplish in this short period of time. I won't even begin to look out and acknowledge the amazing team and staff that they lead. I'm looking right at them because they know that we couldn't do it without them. There isn't a day that we don't hear from our students and our staff about the important role that you all play in making them feel safe. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome up Director Queen and Assistant Director. Miller to provide you all with this update around our safety, security, and emergency management in APS. Sorry. Uh thank you, Chief Graves, uh for
005your kind introduction and as always, thank you for your leadership and support. Good evening, Chair Cadera, esteemed school board members, Superintendent Don, members of the superintendent cabinet, and public here and watching at home. Tonight, we present our annual monitoring report, a comprehensive overview of our department's progress and key initiatives. This work directly supports our Arlington public schools strategic plan, priorities of operational excellence, student well-being, and a student center workforce. As a parent of three adults who graduated through Arlington Public Schools and a proud parent of a Wakefield senior, I take in safety and value it deeply, the safety and well-being of all our students and staff. Our commitment remains steadfast in creating a secure and supportive learning environment for everyone in Arlington public schools to feel safe. Tonight, we will cover the following topics. Uh
006we're going to highlight some bright spots, progress monitoring data, talk about our systemsbased approach for safety and security, discuss our core services, then invite our community partners from Arlington County Police to speak on tonight's focus area, Arlington Public Schools and Arlington County Police Collaboration, three years post school resource officers. Lastly, we will conclude with next steps and then open up to the board for questions and comments. Uh, thank you to AETV and our team for that awesome video we saw earlier. While school safety coordinator's primary role is safety and security, the video highlighted a few of our SSC's, but offered a powerful and personal perspective on the dedication and expertise of our school safety coordinators. Here tonight are some of the dedicated lead SSC's who help lead our program. Trayvon Jolly, Alyssa Macawan, Raymond Ways
007Ayala, Thomas Johnson. We also have Miss Sharon Good with us at home watching and they will take a test tomorrow is Dr. Sabrina Swan and Ian Smith. This slide represents our progress towards goal number four, the strategic of our strategic plan focusing on enhancing staff safety. As you see here in last year's your voice matter data, which shows the percentage of our staff who reported feeling safe at work. Our goal is to significantly increase these percentages by 2030 with incremental increases each year. We are doing this by using a multifaceted approach by enhancing our threat assessment procedures and implementing our systembased security framework. Both of which we will discuss later on in the presentation. We have already completed two key steps by hiring a threat assessment specialist and leading our second annual emergency preparedness week.
008I am thrilled to share with you tonight according to the 2025 your voice mattered data survey we are proud to see a 91% favorable rate for our student so our school-based staff 87% for our teachers and 92% for our central office staff that reported feeling safe and secure in their work environment. This slide outlines our progress towards goal five of the strategic plan focusing on enhancing student safety. We are dedicated to creating learning environments where all students feel safe. The baseline your voice mattered data shows the current percentage of students who feel safe at school. Again, our goal is to significantly increase these percentages by 2030 with incremental increases each year. Our primary strategy is to enhance the threat assessment process and focus on making reporting safer and more accessible to students. Similar to the
009staff data from your voice matter survey, we are proud to say that 88% and 85% of our students feel safe in schools. The work our office does directly impacts the well-being of our students. Systembased approach. The fundamental principle behind our safety and security is this layered approach. Think of it as not just one single barrier, but multiple safeguards working together. This intentional layering is designed to achieve several critical outcomes. effectively manage risk, ensuring our ability to respond swiftly and decisively to any potential threats, proactively deter incidents from happening in the first place, and lastly, to prevent a single point of failure from our security framework. Ultimately, the integrated and layered system is driven by one overarching goal to safeguard our most valuable resources, our students, our dedicated staff, and the broader community. Every measure we
010implement, every procedure and every protocol, every partnership we cultivate is created and maintained to secure supportive learning environments for all our students, staff, and community. This is why we do what we do. Now, I would like assistant director James Miller to continue with the presentation. Thank you, Director Queen. I have the awesome responsibility of supporting our school system and safeguarding it alongside Director Queen and our amazing security, safety, and emergency management team. And like Director Queen, I am also an APS parent. And the work that we do matters to me personally and professionally. First, I'd like to talk about our physical and technical security portfolio, part of our systemsbased approach that Director Queen highlighted just a second ago. Our physical and technical security equipment and technology that is installed across APS helps us create a
011safe and secure learning environments, ensuring that our schools are equipped with strong range of technologies to keep our schools safe to respond to incidences and to support our day-to-day operations. These systems are designed to deter potential incidences and threats to occur, monitor activity in and around our schools, and provide timely alerts when a safety incident may arise. Some of our key components part of our physical and technical security portfolio includes our security cameras. We have access control systems, critical notification systems like our public address, which goes far beyond just bells, but also communicating within our schools in case of an emergency, and of course our radio program. I would like to highlight some of the notable successes we've had in this past year regards to our physical and technical security portfolio. It really outlines, this
012slide particularly outlines our commitment to enhancing physical and technical security through strategic investments in technology and infrastructure. These upgrades directly support strategic plan goals of operational excellence and student well-being. The completion for example a few of these notable highlights working alongside our facilities and operations team in design and construction. And we are proud to say that all of the secure vestibules have been completed across APS really increasing the safety of our students and our staff and our visitors. Also, I want to highlight notable cost savings that were achieved which shows our commitment to fiscal responsibility. Dr. Don highlighted today the incredible work that is occurring at the new Grace Harper Center. Part of our core service is a security basis of design. We are so proud of that work that we've did. In fact, the
013security basis of design was very purposefully put in place to ensure that when new construction happens, like our incredible new Grace Harper Center, that the physical and technical security systems are incorporated during the design phase, saving us on costly upgrades later. I'm quite proud of that work. Again, working alongside our design and construction team to make that happen. Next, I'd like to talk about our emergency management portfolio. Emergency management in our schools is the ability for us to plan and coordinate our efforts to keep our students, our staff, and our visitors safe. We have a robust emergency management framework with focus on preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. This is an allhazards approach. No matter if an incident should occur, whether it's severe weather which happens, a medical emergency or a building issue or a security
014threat, our staff and team are wellprepared. I want to highlight that first. We are an institution of learning and our emergency portfolio, emergency management portfolio focuses on staff training. some of our notable highlights this past year. First and foremost, I'd like to talk about some of that that training that we delivered. Director Queen and I alongside our incredible partners from Arlington County Police Department last year facilitated tabletop exercises and specifically focusing on our standard response protocol that we launched this past year officially. We trained over 600 staff in every facility and every school across APS. purposefully. We spent some time this year to train our teams in over 40 hours. That's 40 hours of training in the reunification method was adopted by the other day. I love you guys. Also, we've worked alongside our partners
015with Arlington County Emergency Management Team to plan several times a full-scale emergency management exercise, really focusing on reunification to strengthen our ability to respond to an emergency. We look forward to continuing those planning efforts this year. And as we get to focus again on the support we've seen from APS leadership for our annual emergency preparedness week. Now I'd like to talk about our threat assessment portfolio. Our threat assessment portfolio is a proactive process that our schools use to identify, assess, respond to behaviors when someone is at risk of harming themselves or potentially others. The goal within threat assessment is not to punish. It's not a punitive process. Our goal is to identify concerning behavior early so that we as a team can rally together and identify the interventions that are necessary to get them off
016a pathway of violence. Our school-based threat assessment teams are comprised of administrators, counselors, psychologists, and others where they manage and deal with those types of situations together. Our threat assessment absolutely supports and promotes a a healthy and safe supportive environment where all students can learn. Some of our notable successes within our threat assessment program. First and foremost, I want to recognize Jared Hagnau, our threat assessment specialist that joined our team this year through, by the way, the support of the Stronger Connections Grant. Really proud to have him, Jared. Every single day, he works alongside our school-based teams to provide them one-on-one support to manage, assess, and create interventions intervention methods for our students that are at most risk. We are so glad to have his expertise on our team. our threat assessment oversight committee that
017Director Queen leads alongside our partners within Arlington County Police Department, school support, school psychology are joined together each week to talk about the most concerning and threatening behavior around our school system. Together, this multidisciplinary team, we create interventions and talk about how can we best help support and understand these students and others that are at risk. On the screen is a notable 34% rise in reported concerns from last year to this year. I want to be really clear that 34% rise in reported concerns is not an indication of risk. In fact, what it is, it's telling us that our school-based teams and our training efforts are working well. When we are aware of concerning behavior, were allowed, it gives us the opportunity to identify intervention methods. It lowers our risk. It does not rise it.
018So, that rise in reported concerns means that we've removed some barriers for reporting and others are taking the opportunity to tell us how we can best support. Lastly, we this past year we launched our second annual mid-year threat assessment review. We worked very hard on this review. It's quite comprehensive. We published this throughout APS and you're available to go on to staff central and please do watch this great video that I produced. And then alongside Jared where we talked about some very key recommendations, I'd like to highlight some of those key recommendations. expanding early support programs in elementary schools, for example. We also talked about making it easier for staff to report and follow up on concerns. And our last recommendation for this year is working closely alongside our law enforcement partners to strengthen our
019safety strategies. With that, thank you for the opportunity. I'd like to turn it back over to Director Queen. All right. Thank you, Jim. All right. As you saw from the video, our school safety coordinators are security professionals, dedicated staff members who help create and maintain safe and welcome environments for our students, staff, and visitors. They are often the first to respond to an emergency situation. Our SSC's build rapport with students and foster foster positive relationships with staff members. They work closely with our school administrators, emergency first responders, and our community partners. The goal is prevent a problem before it happens, but we want to also make sure our schools are prepared to respond and recover from any emergency situation. Our department has a 92% retention rate amongst our staff. Our high retention rate and our
020specialized training demonstrate our commitment to a student centered workforce and student well-being. This year we have incorporated a new triore security contract to help support evening coverage in our comprehensive high schools. Two of them are with us today. We also have three full-time positions solely dedicated to our aquatic centers and also weekend support. We continue to strengthen and re and refine our security practices to ensure every student, staff member and visitor feels safe in our schools and also in our facilities. Schoolbased staff receive regular training on security protocols, emergency response training, and preparedness across all campuses. Each year, we conduct a safety audit to understand our current practices and look to identify ways to find opportunities for growth. Our department is committed to the role of clear security procedures and policies. As Dr. Duran has
021shared through various updates this year. We maintain open dialogue about our security initiatives. This slide highlights some key examples of new procedures that are in in place this year. For example, we strengthened and improved our visitor management procedures, specifically at our aquatic centers and comprehensive high schools. These measures underscore our pro proactive approach to school security and our commitment to keeping everyone safe. Now I would like to introduce Deputy Chief Wayne Vincent and Lieutenant Elysio Pilco to focus on the collaboration between Arlington Public Schools and Arlington County Police Department 3 years after school resource officers. Thank you, Director Queen. And good evening, everyone. How are you? Hope you're all well. Uh, I'd like to begin by thanking Superintendent Duran and Chief Graves for their leadership and continued support of our partnership with APS. Their commitment
022to student safety and well well-being makes our collaboration both meaningful and truly effective. I also want to extend our thanks appreciation to Director Queen and to assistant director Miller. Uh they while they serve APS with dedication and care, they have been trusted and partners and thoughtful partners to ACPD. Their ongoing support and open communication have strengthened our shared efforts to maintain a safe and supportive environment for all students and staff. Lieutenant Pilco and I would like to outline several key initiatives uh ACPD and APS have implemented to strengthen communication and coordination this past year. I'm going to start with first ourou. Over the past four years, APS and ACPD have worked together to review and strengthen ourou. This agreement clearly outlines our roles and responsibilities and annually every summer it's reviewed to give us the
023opportunity to reflect on the past year, but more importantly to identify ways to continue that improvement in our collaboration. Want to talk about engagement? Yes. So, uh, good evening. I'm Lieutenant Alicio Pilco. I am the day-to-day liaison with working with this fine crew. Um, so as far as our engagement is concerned, we have different programs and initiatives. Most of them are collaborations with what's already going on in the schools, substance abuse prevention, violence prevention, um, safety like bike rodeos, career affairs at, um, health fairs. And this year we launched a a program with Dorothy Ham called Great Choices working with middle school students. Um overall since the SRO program has ended, we've u worked hard to make ourselves available um not just the community engagement division but also patrol officers whenever there's an opportunity to
024work within what's already uh which are already good programs and initiatives inside the school system when it comes to uh regular joint training sessions. And I think assistant director Miller has spoke a little bit about it. But I I just want to say too that we were unable to coordinate a all county and APS uh exercise, a major exercise this year. We hope to have done it this past uh last 6 months, but we hope to have one before the end of this year or early next year. That being said, when this last a uh AVI exercise was cancelled, I did come to APS um and actually observe myself and Lieutenant Pilco observed Director Queen and Assistant Director Miller's exercise with their staff. And I want to tell you, I told them then and I'll
025say it again publicly, truly outstanding job by everyone involved. I have no doubt that uh APS was prepared for those worst case scenarios, at least from the safety and security. So, very nice job on that. Roll call. Yeah. a uh we have also had the opportunity to have officers briefed in roll call about the standard response protocols and other initiatives in the schools. I think it's a wonderful opportunity to have assistant director Miller come in speak with the officers answer questions not just about the standard response protocols but about how to interact with APS with regards to safety um also requesting um videos or any documentation for investigations. uh we've made they've made it as seamless as possible. There's limited interaction sometimes with police but the roll calls have been a wonderful opportunity to engage
026u with you know whatever is uh needs to get out to the officers that's relevant and timely. We've talked already a little bit about or director queen has talked a little bit about the joint threat assessment meetings but so I'm just going to go down to regular meetings. So, I will say this in addition to the meetings that Lieutenant Pilco meets with with uh your staff, the meeting I also want to mention is at the highest level. So, the chief the chief pen and myself meet with the superintendent and with Chief's Graves quarterly. And there's a reason behind that because we want to ensure that we're all on the same page and collaborating at the highest levels. And so, it's from the top all the way down that we're continue to work together. And those
027meetings are very meaningful and it's and we want to actually continue to do that. Next slide. Okay. Okay. So, uh, communication and coordination. I'm amazed at how much we are seamlessly working together. Um, the addition of the threat assessment specialist Jared uh has been fantastic. Uh, I I can tell you that our threat assessment meetings have taken on um an expanded dimension. We meet now twice a week. Uh and the reason being is that there we really are working hard towards identifying students that really need help as far as um their behavior as far as things that are happening not just in the schools but in the community. I think that's one thing that um has done uh the SSC program has done very well now is really integrate themselves with the kids the community
028work with us. they've been instrumental in helping us with regards to investigations and you know ensuring that what happens in the schools in the community vice versa uh all works towards keeping us safer and getting kids the services to include some wraparound services um when we meet and talk about these kids but uh yes I'm very happy with our improved communications and collaboration next okay which one's uh oh so uh the data driven strategies so what we're doing is we're really looking at where we need to improve areas of concern. So, if we're talking about um you know, I think you were talking about the the edged weapons and one of the things that we looked at with expanding our threat assessment is focusing on kids that are getting a little bit of extra attention
029whether it's in the community or whether it's in the schools before it rises to something bigger. So, we meet on Wednesdays for one hour prior to our threat assessment to really take a deeper dive into some of these kids. What we find are that a lot of these kids are not um misbehaving in a vacuum. Meaning that there's something going on in the home, in the community, which when we meet and um focus on the reports of concern, focus on the reports that the police are receiving in the community, it really does help us address those issues a lot better. So that's I think one of the best ways we're using data. Our priority remains and will continue to be firmly on proactive prevention and intervention efforts and and I can't stress that enough and
030we know how important it is on both sides. Um for us and for you working together we aim to address potential issues early on and I can't emphasize how that how important that is. Fostering a culture of safety and support that reduces the likelihood of any kind of incidents or major incidents. And I think when director queen went over some of your numbers early on, I think that kind of proves kind of aims that point even early on. So again, that to us, we will continue to prioritize that as well. When it comes to regularly evaluating and refining collaborative strategies again, I think you just can't look at it when we look at theus every year or even our regular meetings. I will tell you that Lieutenant Pilko, he briefed me almost on a daily
031basis because he continues and he works with your your staff so well. It's almost daily to be quite honest with you. And I think having that collaboration between APS and ACPD is so key that our that we know it and I think our community knows that. I can't I probably I probably attend several close to over a hundred meetings a year in our community whether it be civic associations or our own initiatives that we do. Um even tonight I will tell you tonight is graduation for our community police academy. And when I addressed them on day one, several questions were from parents about our collaboration with APS. That's how important it is, not just in this room, but also in our community training. Yeah, with regards to training, um we every summer provide training. Uh
032we have detectives that come in. Um they talk about um uh from special detectives from our special victims unit trafficking um as far as mandated reporting different topics uh drugs um substance abuse things to look out for. Um I think that what we're trying to do this year is take it up a step with the SSES and provide a little bit more training to them because that program has really grown. They have showed uh tremendous amount of um just capabilities. So, we're really looking forward to continuing with that. As mentioned before with the tabletops, that's something that also was a unique opportunity. Um, we regularly uh debrief incidences in the schools where the police respond. That's been a great tool as far as having the administrators and staff sit with police, sit with the folks
033from the SSE's, um, the assistant director Miller and, uh, Director Queen to really flesh out what happened, what could work better. uh the communications, the protocols, and you know, sometimes it it gets a little contentious, but people are asking why did this happen? Why did that happen? And we know we're there to answer those questions. And if there have been some instances where we've changed some of our protocols and we've really made recommendations so that we can have a better response and, you know, improve the safety and the outcomes. And then finally, I just want to add that and Lieutenant Pelco said is correct that, you know, training with your SSCs and your staff is important, but I want to emphasize it's not just a one-way training. It's a two-way learning street. We like to
034learn and we are always willing open to learn from them and your staff as well because again, it's been it's been almost four years now. Um, so again, all the work that's been put into keeping us keeping our school community safe, that's a two-way street. It's not just one way. And so that's very important to us. And I I hope I look forward to this relationship continue to grow and I think that's important to all of us involved. So with that, thank you very much. Um and I'll turn it back over to Director Queen. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Lieutenant. All right. Uh looking ahead, we have a clear set of priorities to further strengthen our safety and security framework. Our next steps for this upcoming school year and beyond include gathering feedback from our
035staff on our effectiveness of our current security policies and procedures. Finalizing and planning a fullscale emergency management exercise with our first responders in the department of emergency management. The development and implementation of the school safety audit committee before the end of this school year. And lastly, planning our third annual emergency preparedness week for fall of 2025. Uh thank you for the opportunity to highlight our core services and notable successes that help safeguard Arlington students, staff, and the community. Now, open up to the board for questions and comments. Thank you so much to all of our presenters. We appreciate the information that you've shared with us and uh this has been a really um useful and comprehensive rundown of all of the activities of um of this division. I'm going to open it up for questions
036in just a second, but want to make a couple of quick introductory remarks. Um many of us were parents in APS or involved in one way or another in APS four years ago when the decision was made um that we would not have school resource officers in our schools. Um, but there are plenty of APS families who have joined our school system since that time and may not have the context for how that decision was made, which involved a task force of many people and many hours. Um, but if you're curious about that decision, I would invite you to go to our website and I believe you can still find the uh report about the work of that task force online. So that would be context that might be important for folks who are newer
037to our school system. Um the other thing that I wanted to say and and the sort of editorial comment I'll say about that is having school resource officers in school buildings is only one model of a collaboration between school divisions and local police. And I think what we've seen tonight is that there are other ways that we can maintain close and productive connections to to in the name of school safety. um it can it can look different um in different ways. And I think that what we have been working on and developing here over the past four years is a demonstration that you can have a close and collaborative um an effective collaboration between schools and police. Um that's that you know even falls outside of that. Um uh the other thing I wanted to
038say before we open it up is we mentioned these comprehensive exercise um called tabletop exercises that we do um in the school system and we do in partnership with the county many times. I just wanted to note that our elected officials are part of those tabletop exercises too. So the county board members, the school board members have participated in those and will continue because it's important for us as the elected leaders to know when we should plug in and when we need to get out of the way um in order to make the response as swift and as effective as possible. So that is something that we engage in as well with you. Colleagues, the floor is now open for questions. I'll start with Miss Clark because she was the liazison to this report. Well,
039first of all, um, when I when I think about what really solid collaboration between various teams looks like, I think about the vital work that you guys do every single day in the office of safety, security, and emergency management. You're literally triaging between all of our various schools, teams, working with our um, wonderful Arlington County PD. Um, and you guys are doing this every day. I appreciate how your team proactively creates this strong impression of controls in our schools. Um, you set consistency and safety expectations and ultimately this creates a safe place for our students to learn and our educators to teach and I appreciate that. I was there at Wakefield about a month ago as a liaison school and the strong impression of control coming in every single day um was very impressive and
040I could you know do do my quick scan and I could see every student being checked in doing the ID checks and um they have the pouches and it was an amazing process to see how the students worked and they played music and it was fun and um we still had this very strong impression of control and that is the proactive approach that I so much appreciate. So not so much of a question because I asked lots of questions as we were putting this together um but more um uh gratitude for the work that you guys do every day. Thank you. Colleagues to my right uh Miss Tapia Hotley. Thank you. I have pretty straightforward question especially with our in our partnership with with law enforcement. That's great. I believe you said you mentioned you
041have a partnership with Dorothy Ham or there's some sort of um like work that's done with Dorothy Ham Middle School. So I was curious if it's just one school or if we have this uh opportunity with all the middle schools or or how you know I I can speak on one program and uh Alyssa if you want to stand up. Alyssa, she works with uh the sheriff department and the community engagement department for Arlington County Police and together they have a program for uh self-defense for female students. Uh me personally as a director, it was at Washington Liberty and then it went to Yorktown. I received several phone calls from parents trying to figure out how can they sign their daughter ups for that for that program. So that's just one example of building empowerment
042for our youth and uh teaching them valuable skills. So the the great program uh started from Corporal Alam. She was interested in work in creating something from the the ground up. So she worked with um uh the athletic uh activities coordinator from H Dorothy Ham and their administration. The program started in December and it's graduating um sixth graders at the end of this month. There's we're still work with like second chance you know other programs that are built in the framework in our APS but we really like to exploit programs like great we we you know a lot of it is the bandwidth you know how what can we do as far as with our staffing and being able to make that commitment because that's the part of the the other part of it is
043we want a solid commitment consistency we don't want to spread ourselves too thin but um yes if we can duplicate some of these programs moving forward by all means Thank you. Thank you. And I asked because it sounds wonderful. It sounds like a great program. So would love to ensure that there's uniformity across the county um availability for students to partake. Absolutely. Thank you. I was just going to add to that just that those programs come out come out of our division which is the community engagement division and because of staffing like Alicio said, it can be very challenging to go across all. But I I also want to just remind everybody too like this summer we're putting on four camps for our schools. We have our patrol camp. We have our team police academy.
044And for the first time this year, we're putting on a a basketball camp because we have several athletes, former basketball players in our unit. So, they want to do a basketball camp. So, we're very proud of that, but we're very limited to what we can do. So, thank you. Thank you. I think Miss or Miss Sucker Sutton had a quick followup and then we'll do another round. Don't go don't go don't go away. Come on back. Um, no, I just I I wanted to say a couple quick things um to our friends from ACPD. Um, uh, in fact, Lieutenant Pilco, you may not remember this, but I, um, launched the food pantry at Randolph Elementary School during the pandemic, and that's when you and I met, and I just looked, and I no longer have
045your cell phone number in my phone, but I did at that time. Um, I, you know, the community engagement programming is terrific, and I, I think it's, um, you've highlighted a number of things that you're doing. I, we're grateful. Um, we appreciate it. Um, collaborating takes a lot of time and so we are really grateful for your willingness to collaborate with us. Um, the other thing that I wanted to acknowledge while you're both here is simply that we also are seeing extremely prompt response times from ACPD and your EMS partners um, when we are having incidents in our schools. And I just wanted to state that for the community and to you directly because we really do appreciate that expedited response. As soon as there is something at a school, you all are there. And
046we often get asked about, you know, not having SRO's. And what I say is an SR, it would take as long for an SRO to get one end of a high school building to the other. The ACPD is there. So, uh, we really appreciate that and I just wanted to acknowledge that. Thank you. Um I had a question and then we'll we'll go around again if there are more. Um uh my question is about the numbers that were in the slides and um you know you you mentioned um you mentioned about there's difficulty in assessing from year to year whether our schools are safer and whether students feel safer and staff feel safer. Um and one of those confounding variables is um as as you noted as we educate people about reporting and the importance
047of reporting and we improve the way the ease in wi with which people can report it's then difficult to tell if a rise in numbers is about um we're doing a better job of spotting it or there's actually a change in behavior. And I in my day job I work for a nonprofit that's focused on mental health. And we talk about this a lot in that context too where is it that depression and anxiety are on the rise or have we reduced the stigma around reporting those things um and the rate really hasn't changed. Um, and so I guess I'm wondering, you know, as your team tries to do this work and you're trying to gauge year overyear whether our schools are are safer or or staying as safe would be another way to put
048it. How do you account for like because it's hard to make sort of very clean, precise interpretations of data, how are you guys having those discussions about whether schools are um are safe and improving? It's a great question and how do we best assess in particular look at the data in regards to risk overall within our school system. We're quite thankful for our partnerships with our strategic planning teams. The data that we highlighted and in fact I think chair I think we're talking about a couple things. Uh you mentioned are your the threat assessment data that we talked about the rise of in reported concerns of 34% rise this year. Um, I'll come back to that in just a moment. I want to talk about the notable and very very encouraging uh 2025 data from
049the your voice matters survey from this past year. 92% for our staff and then 88% for our students. Very purposefully this year, we took an opportunity to ensure that that exact question was asked. How do you feel safe in school? We cannot compare this year's data with last year's data. It's not an apple to apples comparison. What you did see up and perhaps we can put slides four back up on the presentation is that what you did see was a very notable rise. Yes, it's not apples to apples. However, that rise is significant. So in the aggregate from last year, our baseline data for teachers, for example, can we go to slide five? Can we go to the next slide, please? that data in particular around students at 67% for grades 6 through 12. That's
050an aggregate and there's a lot of questions that were asked to create that 67% as we look at now for 2025 85%. That is by every measure even without that big aggregate of notable success for us. So I want to come back to that point on threat assessment. This has been a multi-year approach to shift and change the culture across our school system whereby reporting concerning behavior is accepted. Reduce barriers to make that happen. Create a stronger, more robust framework and a multid-disciplinary approach to identify intervention methods. Even last year during our mid-year threat assessment review, we talked about how are some ways that we can improve reporting in our elementary schools and our high schools and we saw a rise in that as well. And this year in response to that report and that
051data, we were very successful and thank you to the board and thank you uh to Dr. Don and Chief Graves for supporting us in increasing our SSSE allocation specifically three dedicated to our elementary schools. So in some we utilize that data to advocate and to understand where do do we see a re a rise in reported concerns and risk across our schools and this particular year we advocated for it and you supported us. So that's one example of how we utilize data to make better more informed decisions. Great. Thank you so much. I'm looking around to see if my colleagues have Miss Ecker Sutton. Uh thank you. I wanted to um so first of all, thank you for the detail about uh what a threat assessment is. Um we hear that term quite a bit
052and I you know I think certainly we don't necessarily always remember what the details of it are. Um but I suspect our community also is not familiar with the term and the process. It was really helpful to have that laid out. Um I the idea of of early interventions and the idea of um uh designing the the threat assessment as a as focusing on ways to catch potential problems before they become serious issues um is something that really resonates and I think you know we all in thinking about youth and student well-being and safety and wanting to see people feel safe in schools um it is the case that if we can do early intervention that's the the best possible thing. Um, a couple years ago I participated in the youth mental health first aid
053training that was offered through I believe through the office of student services. Um, and I just wanted to sort of give a shout out and um, confirm with Dr. Crawford that in fact her office is still offering youth mental health first aid training because that was a great um uh half a day or day or so um that parents could do, community members could do uh staff and schools could do. I will I will also give a shout out because I took it in the summertime and there was an APS library assistant Amelia from Thomas Jefferson Middle School who on her own time came over to Scipfax in the summer and did the youth mental health first aid training because uh she felt that she wanted to know the signs of when a student was
054in trouble. So Dr. Crawford um if you could speak to that for a moment. I absolutely can. Thank you uh for bringing that up. Yes, it is um still offered monthly. Uh we have an upcoming session I believe May 16th in English and this year as the board may remember we're also very excited to offer youth mental health first aid in Spanish. So we have two sessions in June in English and in Spanish. Um we do promote them heavily in partnership with um the county of course and um I will just share that our partners have come. We've had Edu Futuro come in the past. we've had different outreach to different partners um as well as our um extended day staff and other staff members. So I thank you for saying that. Obviously prevention and
055early intervention is critical in identifying any behavior and mental health needs so that we can intervene and prevent any escalation. Thank you Dr. Duron. I think he wanted to say something. Just in closing, I do want to just say very much a huge thank you to Chief Penn, to Deputy uh Chief Vincent, and Lieutenant Pilco, who I am very proud of our partnership with our police department. Um, I know of many school systems across the country that don't have the type of relationship that I'm proud that we have here. And it's because of the dedication and the time that they put in that go above and beyond to really get to know our schools, to know our needs, and to spend time in our schools. And really that is an exemplary um relationship that I
056want to highlight for our public and our community and share that. And thank you to Director Queen and and Mr. Miller. Appreciate both of your leadership. I hope that our community and the board saw tonight the amount of work that Miss Graves opened up to talk about that we've seen some change so much change. I hope you saw it tonight. And I'm really really pleased to hear from our students in the survey also a change in feeling safe. That is not just because it's because of the efforts that have been put in place by our team. and I'm very proud of them and I'm very very thankful for our relationship with uh the police department. So, thank you. Thank you. I had one or two quick last questions and I'm looking at my colleagues. One
057of them is um the work on both the county and the schools side. I'm curious the extent to which uh a lot of the things that you the good work that you're talking about what to what extent are we dependent on grants and as we think about things at the federal level like you know in the county and in the schools both is there is there concern or discussion about that as an impact on our ability to do our work? Yeah. Uh as we mentioned earlier the reason we got Jared is because of a grant. Uh, so I'll let Jim talk more about the grant funding since he brought a few grants this school year. Yeah, quite it's a great question specifically around grants supported. Our grants have been all of our grants have been
058supported through VDOE through the Virginia Department of Education. Quite notably since 2023, our department has received over $600,000 in grants. When I just say that again real quick, is that since 2003, our department has received over $600,000 in grants. And part of that effort, of course, is through Stronger Connections grant, which is well over $300,000. And then also for several years in a row, we've received security equipment grants supported by the Department of V uh the Virginia Department of Education. And it's through that effort, we have utilized that grant to make significant upgrades and changes to our physical technical security infrastructure. Um I I can't look in the crystal ball to predict on whether or not that will continue. But I will say that our school system is by far stronger and our physical and
059technical security systems are stronger and better prepared because of that grant funds. I think what you heard in the answer some of it is not ongoing funds. So that's helpful and the one-time purchases of our equipment about half of the grant money has gone to that but for the ongoing very necessary needs of our threat assessment specialists those are things that we do want to monitor and make sure about grants. So, it's a combination of the two. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. And then my last uh question is as a parent in APS um uh you know of a student who's now a senior over the years I have seen us use some different language when we talk about um emergency management and and safety in schools. So, at different times as a
060parent I've heard uh you know I've heard my students and and you know gotten emails that refer to lockdown uh reshelter in place. uh we talk about having holds now in in our schools. And I know there's been some effort to kind of standardize and make clear sort of those levels and that terminology. And I guess the question is um where would parents find that? I think it's on the website. And is there in policy? It's in policy. Bethany reminds me because she's our policy chair. Where could parents find that? And and if you if there's a 15-second version of that you can share right now, um it would be great to hear it. Yeah, absolutely. Another great question. Thank you about emergency management in particular and our standard response protocols. So the SRP models,
061standard response protocols, there are five. Anyone can go right now to our website and go to the emergency management section and there is a very captivating video which will explain the standard response protocols. This past year, we launched one in particular that was student supported specifically around hold, but there is a DCJS produced video which explains each standard response protocol. And real quickly, I'll go over all five. Hold, secure the building, lock down, shelter in place, and evacuation. It's an allhazards approach. So, right there from our website, you can watch this video and learn about that those methods. answer your question. Yes, thank you so much. Um I don't believe we have more questions from my colleagues. The last the last suggestion I'll make is just that I know that we in our local law
062enforcement, we're looking for ways to recruit uh new folks to the police force. Um I know that we have activities like the police camps in the summer. I'm just really uh interested in this idea that we can create opportunities for some of our students to learn about careers in this general field of emergency management and law enforcement and security and whether that's through job like shadowing in the schools or working with the police. I just think that there I know we're doing some things in this area and I think that it would be interesting to try to expand that and we would be remiss if we also didn't say crossing guards. I'll let Deputy Chief Benson talk about but also Dr. Man can talk about that because there is some of the work that we're
063working on for our new Grace Hopper Center as well. So, one program we're going to be working on this this is now about a year and a half ago we started a cadet program. The cadet program is was made ideally for college 8 for students attending colleges. But the goal this summer is to integrate into a high school cadet program. And the idea behind that program is to again get with high school seniors, juniors and seniors, although you I have seen it work with freshmans and sophomores um and integrate them into the police department as far as showing them what we do, how we do it, and how the department is so broad. It you know a lot of we find that a lot of students these days they may not want to be a
064a a police officer, but they want to come into our profession. And there certainly our profession is not just run by by police off by officers. So, you know, our professional staff, we could not do our job if not for all of them. So, whether it be forensics or whether it be administration or whatever, that's the idea of having that that cadet program. And I actually got the idea because of Director Queen. Um, in his previous role, um, he actually had a law enforcement club at Wakefield. And so, I kind of took that idea to kind of push, you know, we now we have a a college cadet program going. We need to get one going in the high schools. So you can look forward to us proposing that and hopefully getting moving that forward
065this coming next September. Dr. Man, if you can talk a little bit about the planning that's going into the new Gracehopper Center and in that area. Yes, thank you Dr. Don. And we are working the CT department working with um our county partners on um filling some of the needs like in the call center also with um EMS. And so it's really been uh eye opening for uh our CT staff and really figuring out where we go with some of our career clusters. We have some of the starts, but how do we build it out and then a direct line as uh the officers just said that from a cad program, but really making sure that we connect them to it so they can see that there you don't have to be an officer. There
066are many other ways. And so also um so we'll have an update for you in our fall work session on this too. That's excellent news. I'm so excited. Um, thank you for that good news item and uh, thank you to all of you for being here. Thank you to our school safety coordinators and SSREM staff members who have joined.