FCPS School Board Meeting - 09/9/2021

001Good evening everyone. The school board is currently in a closed session and they will be joining us just as soon as possible. Thank you. School board members please take your seats so we can begin. The September 9th 2021 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order. Please rise and join our student representative Pranav Chowdhury as he leads us in the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the national anthem by members of the Laurel Ridge Elementary fifth and sixth grade courses under the direction of Jessica Stowe, Katherine Morgan and Jan Smith. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for

002all. Thank you students. That was a wonderful treat to have you here in person. Agenda item 2.02, certification of closed meeting compliance. In order to comply with section 2.2-3712, section D of the Code of Virginia, it's necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on September 9th, 2021, and to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such... Public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the board during the closed meeting. Is there a motion? Moved by Dr. Anderson. Is there a second? Seconded by Ms. Corbett Sanders. All those in favor? Dr. Anderson, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, Ms. Cohen, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Kizgmara, Ms. Omash,

003Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Pekarski, and that is unanimous with everybody at the table. All those opposed? And now. section 2.03 announcements. If you'd like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight, that information may be found at the back of the auditorium or on the website at FCPS.edu slash school board slash board docs. Tonight's meeting is also being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website. at fcps.edu slash tv slash ch99. Mr. Nat Koufax will not be in attendance this evening due to a family medical issue. Item 5.01 minutes has been pulled from tonight's agenda at the request of a board member. And as a reminder to all, masks must be worn by everyone in attendance this evening. Ms. McLaughlin has submitted a written request to

004virtually attend this evening's meeting due to planned travel. Ms. Marin has submitted a written request to virtually attend this evening's meeting due to a personal conflict. I will call for a vote for those board members who are in person this meeting. All those in favor of approving Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. Marin's request for virtual participation in the September 9th regular meeting, please raise your hands. Dr. Anderson, Ms. Toland, Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, Ms. Cohen, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Quisgamara, Ms. Omesh, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, and myself. Those opposed and those abstaining, and that is approved. Okay. Agenda item 2.04, Stone Middle School Science Hallway Naming Resolution. I call on Ms. Bukarski for the resolution. naming the science hallway at Stone Middle School, the Sue Niedzgorski Science Wing. Whereas Sue Niedzgorski passionately and faithfully served Stone Middle School students, staff, parents,

005and community members for 23 years from 1993 to 2016 as a science teacher, bringing the school and community together through a common love of science and experiments. And whereas she was committed and dedicated to improving the entire science department and Stone School community. mentored and coached countless students and made a lasting impact through her remarkable appreciation for science, as well as her profound love for teaching and building strong relationships with all. And whereas Ms. Nitzkortzky was a leader who constantly found ways to build, sustain, and enhance the Stone community through the exploration of new ideas, incorporation of field trips, guest speakers, and assemblies to bring science into every And whereas she inspired students and colleagues to be the best version of themselves by making each day count, ensuring her classroom environment was one of excitement

006and positive energy in which her example lives on in the countless lives she touched over the years. And whereas Ms. Nitzkorsky's incredible sense of humor and positive outlook on life was infectious to those who had the benefit of being in her presence and where each person was able to learn and grow from her strong example, as she was an amazing mentor and role model to all. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the science hallway at Stone Middle School be named the Sue Nitzkoski Science Wing in honor of this incredible educator, leader, colleague, and friend. I so move. Is there a second? Ms. McCorsky, would you like to speak to your resolution? Yes, I would. First, I'd like to welcome Ms. Corsky's family and her colleagues and everybody who has come out to hear this today.

007We're really glad you are here. And it really is an honor for me to bring this tonight. And as I read through the packet of letters of support for this resolution. tonight describing the stories about Ms. Needs as she was affectionately known. It was evident that she was not only an incredibly engaging and inspiring educator, but a remarkable mentor, a friend, and a colleague to so many. She was repeatedly described as unique, caring, supportive, enthusiastic, with a larger than life spunky personality that touched everyone with whom she came in contact. She made science come alive for students and she sparked their curiosity and their critical thinking in ways that have benefited them well beyond the classroom. She brought joy to her classroom and to the learning process, focused on relationships and community building, positively engaging

008even when she became ill. It was really a pleasure for me to walk through the hallway yesterday at back to school night that will be renamed in her honor. And I'm also excited that so many children, including my own, will get to learn about this incredible human being and her commitments to science, education, students, and to Fairfax County Public Schools. Ms. Keys-Camaro, would you like to speak to your second? Yes, just briefly. I want to, first of all, thank your family. for sharing such a treasure with us. There is nothing more valuable than teachers who come into our communities and support and build our students exactly the way every parent or guardian or family member would want for their own children. It is clear to us, to myself and this board and Ms. Pekarski, that

009she stewarded that position well. And I am so grateful that you lent her to us to enrich the lives of our students. And I want to say thank you to your family. And I look forward to walking down that hall when it has it has been renamed in honor of her hard work and the love that she extended to our community. Are there any other board members who wish to speak? Miss Tolan? Just a very brief comment. I would like to just thank the entire Stone Middle School science team. You know they have an incredible reputation. I was on the ISD science in the ISD science office for many years and we always liked working with Stone Middle School. So congratulations to all of you. Any other board members who wish to speak. Seeing none

010I will call for the vote. All those in favor please raise your hand. Dr. Anderson Ms. Tolan. Ms. Bakarsky, Ms. Cohen, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Quiscomara, Ms. Omish, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, and Ms. Medeo, can you tell me from the, Ms. Marin and, Ms. Marin with Ms. Nairnok-Kofax, Ms. McLaughlin away from the table. All those opposed? Abstentions? That motion passes. I'd now like to welcome Ms. Niedzgorski's family, her dear friends, and all of her Stone Middle School colleagues and Stone Middle School principal Meredith Norris and anyone else here in support of this resolution tonight to join me and my colleagues up at the dais for a picture. Thank you. Agenda item 2.05 resolution recognizing the 20th anniversary of September 11th. And I now call on Dr. Anderson for the resolution. Thank you. Whereas Saturday, September 11, 2021 marks

011the 20 year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. and United Airlines Flight 93 that went down in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Since this tragic day, the United States has been defined by its resolve, its values, and the resilience with which it has overcome this tragedy. And whereas Fairfax County Public Schools continue to embrace democratic values and fundamental liberties instead of fear and oppression. And whereas Fairfax County Public Schools and the entire nation honors the memory of those who lost their lives on the 9-11 attacks. A special moment of silence will be observed in every Fairfax County Public School on Friday, September 10. And whereas in remembrance, September 11 has been marked, has been nationally declared Patriot Day. a day for the nation

012to remember and honor those whose lives were lost and by volunteering in our community in honor of the first responders and those who defend our nation. And whereas Fairfax County Public Schools encourage all educators to share the history and lessons learned from this tragic day with their students and to correct misconceptions and stereotypes about all cultures and religions in a sensitive manner. And now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board encourages students and families to honor the memory of those who died by observing September 11th, 2021 with an act of service, whether that act is volunteering at a local school. mentoring neighborhood students, visiting a nursing or veterans home, volunteering at a children's hospital, donating blood, or some other act of giving. I so move. Is there a second? I second. Thank

013you, Ms. Marin. Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your resolution? Yes, briefly. I'm really honored to present this resolution this evening. The tragic events on September 11, 2001 will forever be etched in our minds and in our history. I've always been proud of growing up in New York City, a city known for its grit, tenacity, and determination. On September 11, that resolve was tested. The grid of the city, the nation, and its citizens, both natural and foreign-born, was bent to its most breaking point. For folks of a certain age, we can easily recall where we were on that fateful day, the day that most of the country watched unfold in horror with pain and fear in our hearts. But that day also revealed true heroism during a calamity of enormous magnitude, specifically a

014group of individuals whose bravery had been on full display. The members of the Fire Department of New York City exemplified courage and commitment to others. They, without hesitation, rushed into the buildings in chaos and rescued countless individuals and sacrificed their lives as civilians moved past them to protect their own. They continued to illustrate their selflessness in the subsequent weeks as they searched day and night for survivors in the rubble. These firefighters continue to give their lives as many succumbed to sustained injuries and long-term health effects from their work at Ground Zero. This level of courage was also exhibited by firefighters in D.C. and in Pennsylvania. In the dark days that came after, the city and this nation tapped into its reserve of grit and determination to literally rise from the ashes. We came together that

015day and in the days, weeks, and years to follow, we found our way out of the darkness that had been thrust upon us to a brighter, stronger, and more resilient place, united and hopeful. This weekend, we remember those who were taken from us and honor the courageous first responders and the heroes who continue to serve our community and country. The September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance is an opportunity to reflect and come together as a community through volunteerism. In Fairfax County, Volunteer Fest will bring together hundreds of volunteers to complete in-person and virtual projects on Saturday, September 11. Anyone interested in participating will find opportunities on the Volunteer Fairfax website. Just Google Volunteer Fest. This day always lives in my memory because of my personal connection with what happened in New York that

016day. And with that, I am so thrilled to be able to offer this resolution. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. Marin, would you like to speak? Yes, thank you. I certainly echo Dr. Anderson's remarks and can say we can all remember where we were in our experience on that terrible day and in the days that follow. As a New Yorker, my own personal experience was and continues to be intermingled with the work of commemorating, healing, and learning from the horrific actions we recall now. Recognizing the state annually is a complex endeavor, and work happens not just on 9-11, but every day to progress as an inclusive and strong democracy and American. culture. In my two decades of work in public education since, I've seen efforts made to acknowledge and examine this complex action that happened that

017day, the military and first responders, remnants of the personal impact and changes that came with restructuring of government and policy. the ongoing medical issues our first responders have, and of course their straight-up loss of life. Our Muslim families fearing harassment, violence, and hate crimes. Students being anxious or confused about this day as a day of facing the tragedy of lives lost and lives forever changed, or facing the fear of future terrorist attacks, whether domestic or from abroad, and of facing expectations by some to rally around patriotism. When inequities persist, the notions of American exceptionalism are being adjusted. So we try to process these insurmountable acts of courage as well that men and women undertook to help people. At a time when humanity was experiencing its worst, the best of humanity also rose. It's important that

018students understand the role of helpers in the community. And we can do that by honoring the legacy of heroic acts and, as Dr. Anderson said, participating in volunteer work in our community. When we say the phrase, there's no place for hate, This is true as we reflect on these events too. We cannot teach our children to hate other people because of their beliefs or even their actions. What we can do, what we are obligated to do, is to present history in as full a context as possible and facilitate students' learning so that they may grow to make things better in the world than how it's been presented to them. I think FCPS is on the path to being more candid with students about America's complex history and geopolitical impacts. having observed and advocated for the

019expansion of learning content to include different perspectives and facts will help our students gain knowledge and analytical skills to disarm stereotypes to foster inclusion and respect and to seek good government worthy of its people and respects its counterparts worldwide thank you thank you miss mehren are there any other school board members wishing to speak so much go ahead thank you I am happy to follow the sentiments of Ms. Marin that I wish could have been reflected in our resolution today. We certainly can't grow beyond the pain and divisions caused by 9-11 if we don't acknowledge them, learn from them, and actively seek to heal them. I join in our desire to recognize the honor and honor the nearly 3,000 lives lost on 9-11, as well as the first responders who bravely served on that and

020after that day. My father actually happens to be among them. I also join my colleagues in commemorating what has marked a historic turning point in our nation's history and recognize the role that our families in uniform played in the aftermath. An alternative resolution which I had shared with colleagues and which I will make available to the public shares in that as well. I do ask, why can we not also explicitly recognize the extensive and unwarranted structural discrimination and ethnic and religious profiling following 9-11 that tens of thousands of FCPS students experience on a daily basis? The pain that trillions of dollars have gone into creating and perpetuating and that continues in our very classrooms today. As patriots, we must confront our realities so that we can build better together. Indeed, love of country, of county,

021of community demands it. Last board meeting, we acknowledged the heartbreak of our children abroad in Afghanistan and our spirit to welcome the many refugees fleeing the aftermath. These pieces are all related. The harms stem from the same problem. The reality is that 9-11 has caused these layers of state-sponsored traumas from discrimination, xenophobia, and ostracization that hits home for our students. It led to an erosion of due process in the law that harmed all of us. It justified wars, including what we now know to be a failed war on terror, and fomented targeting like the Patriot Act, countering violent extremism efforts that we live with today and that I know the harms of way too personally. Why is this relevant? These realities have justified narratives, media messages, and tropes that have led all of us to

022hold deep biases that continue to harm our community and that have reflected themselves in this resolution today. Over a full quarter of Arab Americans report abuse post 9-11 that harmed them physically and psychologically. Over half of this country after 9-11 holds unfavorable views towards Islam. According to the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding, a study in 2020 found that Muslims are the most likely religious group to experience discrimination at a whopping 60% after 9-11. And this hits close to home, too. Many of you know that just over two years ago, even I was profiled as a threat in one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. The current resolution ignores the nearly 5,000 victims of reported hate crimes since 9-11. It ignores the tens of individuals who were attacked in the days following 9-11,

0232001, right here in Fairfax, as cited by the Department of Justice, which also documented that on September of 2001, a Sikh man, Sikh being the religion, was discriminated against at a restaurant right here in Springfield. It ignores the surveillance, the targeting, the profiling, the entrapment, and the other state-sponsored discrimination of our constituents right here in Fairfax until today as a result of that day. Our job as board members is to advance what's best for our students and their academic and mental and socio-emotional success. The American Psychological Association documents that post-9-11 sentiments are among the most significant mental health barriers to learning. Over half of Muslim students experience this in the form of bullying, which is twice the national average. A survey of parents finds the same results and adds that one out of every three

024incidents involves a school official. perpetuating it. Right here in Northern Virginia, early findings of a study presented to the Department of Education shows that students experience targeted bullying during September 11 lessons throughout this week. We have the risk of this happening. And that these trends of religious and ethnic-based bullying are experienced by FCPS families, staff, and students on a daily basis through our curriculum. I have heard too many stories, and I have too many for my time here from the dais today. of cases of no instructional value, unfortunately, that introduce harm. But I will tell you that just today, as I was looking over the language of what I wanted to share with everyone, my own brother in FCPS sent a message to our family WhatsApp group telling us that he's sitting through harmful content

025and what's being presented. And last year, he had to sit through watching a video of why they hate us. As we recognize and honor the legacy of those lost. We must remember that we allow these events to bring us together, and we have to recognize the harm so that we learn from these lessons for the future of our country. I vote against this today because our omission of these realities causes harm. We are elevating a traumatic event without sufficient cultural competence. The token phrasing around 9-11 is never forget. As a nation, we remember a jarring event, no doubt. But we choose to forget, as this resolution does, the fear, the ostracization, and the collective blame felt by Arab Americans, American Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus, and all brown or other individuals who have been mistaken for

026Muslims since that day, over the past two decades. Why are we forgetting the experiences of these families, their traumas? When we use language invoking the same rhetoric used to justify the very discrimination and criminalization of entire subsets of the population in our resolution, we show selective empathy that renders invisible the pain of FCPS families that would have cost us nothing to do. Why? This is counter to the anti-racist, anti-bias work we all strive to achieve and sends the strong message to educators who we rely on to prepare our students for the realities of our world. I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed. We need to work together towards the inclusive classrooms we all want and take bold stances that are consistent with our one Fairfax commitment that I know we all agree about. 20 years

027later, it's not too late. Just like it wasn't too late when I presented the idea of an alternative resolution, it's not too late for this board to join the work needed to create an inclusive FCPS for all students where we can feel welcome, where all trauma and pain is acknowledged, is legitimate, and worthy of recognition. It's not too late to accept an alternative resolution the next time, and not too late to show that Arab, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, and other brown students of FCPS matter too. I trust that Dr. Williams and her team, the equity team, will follow up with Dr. Amara DeCure and other state advisors whose expertise enlightens us on this topic. I hope that we can include these considerations as a core component in our broader anti-racist, anti-bias work to engage in our

028own learning to understand how we got here. And I do believe in our ability to do better. I know that my colleagues intend the same and share these values. Let us invest in a patriotism that helps our country heal and advances all of us together. And I look forward to serving alongside everyone on this day of service and honoring it differently. Thank you, Ms. Corbett-Sanders. Ma'am. Ma'am. Ma'am. Ma'am. Ma'am. Ma'am. I'd ask you to please sit down and stay quiet or we will have to take a break. Thank you. Ms. Corbett-Sanders, would you like to go ahead? Ma'am, if you would like to register to speak, we would love to hear from you. Go ahead, Ms. Corbett-Sanders. Please, offer your comments. Go ahead. Thank you. First, I want to address a bit of context as

029to a substitute motion that was presented. Ms. Omish, I have the highest respect for you. But when a substitute motion doesn't come in until just briefly before the board convenes, it is very difficult for any of us to be able to analyze the substitute motion and to come to some sort of common shared language in that substitute motion. So I understand your pain as your concerns, but I, as I mentioned to you before, I will be supporting this resolution. And the reason I will be supporting this resolution is because I believe that in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy of 9-11, this country came together in a way that had heroes from every walk of life and in every area of every discipline of professions coming together to support each other. And it was a

030unifying moment in which people did not have the immediate reaction which some would have thought of being of prejudice, but rather of how can we together work. to A, save those victims that could be saved, and B, to provide those much-needed supports to the families that were impacted by the tragedy of 9-11. And there were heroes. There were Muslim heroes. There were Christian heroes. There were Jewish heroes. There were Sikhs. There were heroes from every walk of life. And so, to me, It is capturing that spirit that we as a nation need to continuously strive to capture, which is that together we can do great things. And together we can achieve and we can beat anything. And now, 20 years later, we are faced with yet another challenge that I believe this country can beat.

031by coming together and working to solve those difficult, the difficult situation of a pandemic. And so it is something that the Jesuits say, be a person for others. And that spirit of being a person for others is what we need to capture in how we tackle difficult problems in this country. And so we came together to tackle difficult problems. We may not have been as unified long-term as I would like to have seen us be, but I do hope that as we look at 9-11's 20th anniversary, we look at it as an opportunity to come back together again. And as our educators educate those positive stories of heroes from every walk of life, that we should also be vigilant in ensuring that the bullying that you expressed concerns about, which I don't discount because it

032does occur, that we're vigilant in ensuring that that bullying doesn't occur. And so with that, I am happy to support this and just once again, we'll be doing service this weekend in recognition of all of the lives that were lost in Shanksville, New York and Washington, D.C. Thank you, Ms. Corbett Sanders. Are there any other school board members wishing to speak? Dr. Anderson? Thank you. As the person who's presented this resolution this evening, I do want to say thank you to Ms. Corbett-Sanders for your statement. It is very much appreciated. And Ms. Somesh, I just want to briefly say, while I realize you are disappointed and that there was not, your version of the resolution was not included, I have to share my disappointment. When we have these conversations that are going on for several

033days, if not weeks, and then a resolution is provided shortly before the meeting begins, your failure to communicate with this board does not give you the right to chastise us in this session. And that is my disappointment. And it does not speak to the collaborative spirit about which you just spoke. So I obviously will be supporting this motion. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. McLaughlin, I think you have your hand up. Go ahead. Yes, thank you. I'm sorry that I am traveling with family and not there in person, but I do appreciate this opportunity to speak in support of the eloquence of Karen Corbett Sanders and also to the remarks that Dr. Anderson just shared. I feel for our community and what 9-11 meant to everyone affected and for those of us who lived through it.

034My husband was down working in the city at the time when that happened. And like everyone else in our Washington metro area, no one will ever forget the terror and the fear. And this was just meant to be a resolution. to bring honor to those tragic lives lost. It's not meant to be about division. And I do think that what I would reassure Ms. Omish is there is a time and a place for this board to continue its desire to bring unity to our community. But tonight was to bring a solemn resolution like the Board of Supervisors are doing in recognition of all those lost. One of my dearest friends, her brother was one of the firemen crushed and killed at the World Trade Center. This is what we need to be remembering is the

035loss of American lives and the innocent people. So thank you to my colleagues who will be supporting the resolution. I join you with solemn pride in doing the same. Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Ms. Tolan? Yes, thank you. I just wanted to build a little bit on what Ms. Karen Corbis-Henders was talking about and that... a big part of what this resolution is is to celebrate the heroes of that day. And I mean, I think like a lot of people, you can remember exactly where you were 20 years ago when you heard about what was happening. And interestingly, my children were very small and at Great Falls Elementary at that time. And just yesterday, I was reminiscing with my oldest son about that day. That was again a situation where our educators were asked to step

036up and do amazing things with rooms full of children. And he can remember. you know, very clearly that something was wrong and something had happened, but that the staff at Gray Falls Elementary kept him safe. And I remember as a parent, we had information out to us immediately about what the schools were doing and what was happening at the schools and that the schools were the safest places for our children to be. So again, I just want to thank. are amazing educators. They've been at this for a long time and they did an amazing job on September 11th, 20 years ago. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Kuz Kamara. Thank you. I want to make sure that this recognition of this solemn moment is not lost in this conversation. The reason that I am speaking and

037supporting this language is because of the perspective that I think perhaps many of us have. I'm the mother of a son in the military right now, and I know that at any moment he could be called to dedicate his life to serve his fellow man. And I honor that every day with my prayers and my hope. And when I think about 9-11, I know that there are many cultural issues or concerns, but what stands out most in my mind are those people who didn't just think of themselves, but thought of their neighbors, thought of the people who sat in their offices, thought of their family members, and in the face of complete confusion, dedicated their lives. to saving not just themselves, but reaching out to serve humanity. That's who we are. And those people came

038from every stripe, every community, every religion. We on that day perhaps were the most I have seen us united in my lifetime. And we saw each other as brothers and sisters. And so I did not want that to be lost because years later today in these recent times, we have somehow, perhaps some might say, lost sight of that. But I still have hope in this nation. I still have hope in my community. And that is what we are honoring today. It is not a disregard of the issues that we have among us. I too am passionate about fighting for those who perhaps have not had a voice. And I know that my colleague is speaking up today because of her passion. But there are days that are simply solemn, where you simply acknowledge where we

039have all been and how we have healed. And we say thank you. And that is what I hope this resolution does today. Thank you. Thank you. I will also be supporting this resolution. You know, like everyone else said, of course, many of us remember where we were on that day. And actually, I was in the classroom and it was near the beginning of my career in the classroom. And I just remember, you know, learning about it. you know, adults trying to maintain calm and continuing about our way because that's what educators do because they. think about the children in their care. But the reality of it was that many of us didn't know if our own loved ones were safe because they were in some of these places impacted. And it's you know, this day

040is extremely solemn. And as I reflect back and when I talk to my children, what I really tried to bring to the forefront is that in this tragedy we really saw the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. What happens when we lose sight of the fact that we are more connected, we are more similar than we are different. And that when we allow those differences and that hate to take over who we are, nothing good comes of it. And in fact, in this tragedy, we lost thousands of innocent lives. We can't lose sight of that because those struggles continue to this day as Ms. Omesh did bring to the forefront in her comments. But we did see the best of humanity too and what happens when we remember that. taking care of our

041fellow neighbor human being. That is really more important than anything and that's what connects us. So thank you for the resolution and I will go ahead and take the vote. All those in favor? Dr. Anderson, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, Ms. Cohen, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Kies-Gamara, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. McLaughlin. And Miss Marin, are you in support? Okay, do not see. And myself. All those opposing? All those abstaining? Ms. Omesh, all those abstaining? That motion passes with Ms. Marin and Mr. Kofax away from the table. Agenda item 2.06, Hispanic Heritage Month Recognition. I call on Ms. Sizemore Heiser for the recognition. Each year, Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month by celebrating the histories, cultures, and contributions of Americans whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. This observation started... in 1968 as

042Hispanic Heritage Week under President Lyndon Johnson. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan expanded the observation period to 30 days starting on September 15th and ending on October 15th. It was enacted into law August 17th, 1988. National Hispanic Heritage Month is a wonderful opportunity for our schools and community to celebrate the various cultures and traditions and a tangible reinforcement of the school board's belief that our diversity is a strength that creates resilient, open, and innovative global citizens. In FCPS, one in four of our students is of Hispanic heritage and boasts ancestry from a variety of countries and cultures. These cultures, in turn, enrich our own school community. I encourage you to participate in the programs and events taking place during this time in your schools and community. Thank you. Agenda item 3.01, community participation. The next order

043of business is community participation. Speakers must limit their remarks to no more than two minutes in length. At the conclusion of two minutes, the microphone or video will be turned off. School board members will be listening but not responding to individual speakers. The school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings, such as the capital improvement program, budget and boundaries. Comments targeting, criticizing or attacking individual students are not permitted during public meetings. Complaints regarding school based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school official. Speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information in connection with an individual student or school-based employee. Additionally, speakers should be respectful and observe proper decorum in their statements, avoiding profanity, inappropriate gestures, shouting, and comments that run counter to the

044spirit and letter of the school division's non-discrimination policy. All statements should be directed to the school board, and speakers should remain at the podium until concluding those remarks. In-person speakers should wear a mask when addressing the board. We are grateful for those who have come to speak to us today and we thank you for your cooperation. Our first speaker is Yanae Berta. Yanae Berta. We'll come back to her. Our next speaker is April Selenskyk. Hello, how are you? Thank you so much for letting me speak and address you. Will you just start the timer, Lake? Okay, well, I appreciate the opportunity to come and share my comments. I'm a teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools. I work in Annandale High School. I'm a teacher of French, math, and special education, and I'm a graduate of

045Mount Vernon High School, and I went to Yale. I'm also a mother of five children age 5 to 20, and I'd just like to give a few comments about the vaccine mandate for children that we've recently enacted in our county. I'd like to give a few points that I'd hope you'd reconsider. regarding this policy. According to the Penn Medicine Center for Evidence-Based Practice, December 2020, mRNA vaccines have had few or no long-term studies, and they have many adverse reactions. The federal law that created the emergency use authorization makes two important caveats, which is that there are significant benefits, but risks are unknown, and that people must have the option to accept or refuse administration. of the product. I would like to note that the FDA has only approved the Pfizer vaccine for ages 16 and

046older. I'd also like to note bias. Pfizer is a company that is a $50 billion a year company that is a donor to the CDC and has been a donor to the American Academy of Pediatricians. Is this not a bias? So when we mandate vaccines, parents are given pressure in lieu of informed consent. like us to return to our core values in this county family empowerment, student centered decision making and responsible citizenship, forced vaccination of students, especially those under the age of 16, violates all three. Thank you for your attention. Our next speaker is Amit Madan. Good evening, folks. Thanks for the opportunity to talk here today. I want to thank you all. I think you guys are doing a fantastic job to keep our kids safe, to keep the school open. And we're facing

047a pandemic and it's hard for making the right balance between what is the right thing to do for a student and to protect them from going to hospital and getting through this pandemic. So I want to thank you for doing that. Unfortunately, we're in a different place right now. We're in a worse situation right now in this pandemic today than we were a year ago. And we're in a worse situation right now for children being impacted day in and day out because of the pandemic. You know, I've sent you guys numerous emails, and I think you guys have seen all the stats, so I won't put it up there, but you guys are very well aware Fairfax County is now officially in the high level of crisis mode in terms of COVID-19 with the spread

048in the community. The Fairfax County and Virginia Health Department absolutely attributes this to the Delta variant, which we know is extremely contagious. It spreads more easily between people, and it absolutely impacts kids. It's known all over the country. Yes, we talked about vaccination rates in the south being low and the children being impacted, but the south has peaked and it's moving up to the northeast and all over the country at this point. All of the indicators in Fairfax County currently, I work with the CDC, I work with the government, are all pointing negative. They're going in the upward direction. Hospitalizations, cases, deaths are all increasing. Experts and doctors are again and again emphasizing the importance of prevention. While we appreciate the layered prevention strategies that comes into play, there are concerns and gaps in every

049school. Let me give you some stats here, folks. The new weekly COVID-19 cases in children are 205,000. today. The percent increase in children is 27% of the total COVID cases today. The CDC has tweeted recently about from June to late August, there's a 10% increase, 10 times increase in hospitalizations for children. I urge you to please consider our option for virtual or distance learning, not to go away from in person, but just to do it together. So parents have... Our next speaker is Sri Kumar Palankami. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for the opportunity. I'm here today to request the school board to provide us an option to choose between virtual and in-person learning for elementary school kids based on what's best for our families. Please leave the choice to us. There could not be

050a more inopportune time for opening up schools in person for unvaccinated kids at full strength. I repeat, at full strength. Reason being, we have not been able to maintain proper social distancing due to this full strength back in school. We have classrooms that have been combined due to teacher shortages. We have crowded buses and indoor cafeteria. And we have classrooms in the same seating they were in during pre-COVID times, with kids sitting around tables facing each other. Gone are the days when COVID was less debilitating to kids. There have been more than 500 cases within FCPS alone. since the school started this year, whereas the total number of cases the whole of last year was just 1,666. So we have managed to reach almost 30% of that number in just less than three weeks of

051school at full strength. Knowing how we have limitations on logistics to maintain proper social distance in all of our schools, and variants like Delta being unforgiving even to kids, I request the board to kindly open up virtual learning as well along with in-person learning for elementary school kids. While in-person learning is the best for kids, but given the situation, if more students move virtual, we will be able to provide a safe environment for kids opting for in-person learning and we can bring down the number considerably. All I ask is to extend virtual learning for more kids in elementary school, at least until a vaccine is available for them so they would have more than just a cloth mask to protect them. Thank you. Our next speaker is Srinivas Katori. Good evening, folks. Thanks for giving

052me the opportunity. My name is Sri. I have two kids, 12, who is vaccinated going to middle school and another 10 who is actually going to elementary school. And I work with National Institute of Health. And we have vaccine mandates throughout the federal government pretty much at this time. I'm seeing a similar pattern across all the commercial and everywhere where, you know, you're not vaccinated. You do not have to come to work. Having said that, with the new variants of COVID that are mutating pretty much on a monthly basis, whether it's with Delta or Mu or Lambda or Epsilon, whatever you say, the population who is not eligible to get vaccinated is the most vulnerable. All of us have access to public data, and I'm sure we can look at that. However, you know, the

053COVID cases surged after the schools have opened in every single county in the country. And some counties have actually done a virtual school, including in Texas. Yes, Texas. That's correct. As recently as last week, Spotsylvania County was actually contemplating going virtual. And we have seen what happened in Herndon High School just two days back with the soccer team. All of them got positive and are quarantined. My question for the school board is how long should this go on? Do we need to make a statistic out of this? And are we waiting for some disaster to happen? A single kid infected is cause of stress and huge trauma to the family. We're waiting until my kid comes home to kind of understand what happened for the day and then, you know, shower them up and everything

054to make sure that, you know, they're not exposed. Well, can't really do anything if they're exposed. All parents who should... you know i'm i'm not advocating for a 100 virtual forever all i'm saying is the population that are not have not gotten vaccinated they should be eligible for a you know hybrid option and if there is an option like that if parents wants to send the kids to school so be it the density or the per square footage of the of the students in the in the school will reduce whoever wants to go virtual can definitely go virtual so that's what i'm requesting i i really urge you Our next speaker is Nick Conley. Nick Conley. Our next speaker is Shruti Trivita. Hi, good evening everyone. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm Shruti and a

055mother of three, ages 2 to 11. My humble request is to please open up virtual learning option for parents who are able to and want to keep their kids home and continue schooling. I do understand that the schools are following all protocols and doing an excellent job to keep the children safe. Kudos to all the principals and teachers for their dedication and commitment. However, my biggest concern is that new information is released almost every day about this virus and we are still unsure how this is going to affect little children. Since it has already been proven last year that a combination of in-person and virtual worked effectively, why not now? Especially for kids under 12 who are not eligible for vaccination yet. Please do consider the virtual option for parents who can and want to

056keep their kids home at least until they are vaccinated. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Rajat Kala. Respected members of the school board, respected superintendent, I would like to start by thanking the FCPS teaching as well as non-teaching staff for all that they've been doing in these unprecedented times. I am here today to request the school board to reconsider the clause that allows virtual learning only for students with recorded medical conditions and which explicitly excludes medical conditions of siblings and families. I would like to present to the board the predicament that families like mine find ourselves in. I have an elementary-aged kid who is not eligible for a vaccine yet, and her younger sibling is not eligible as well. However, he is at high risk for COVID. And now we are forced to

057choose between education of one kid versus life of the other. And I'm aware of families who are in the same boat as mine. Families of elementary school kids with siblings who are pre-MEs, with family members who are cancer survivors, with siblings who have fought and who are still fighting for their lives every day. And none of these families have had an easy childhood nor parenthood due to the myriad health battles we have to put on constantly. And all of this without adding COVID to the equation. Telling these families to go figure out for themselves does not seem to be a fair solution. I understand that our SOLs are low since we were virtual last year. I also understand that my kid would be missing out on social connections in a virtual school. However, we do

058not have the luxury to worry about all these because we are constantly struggling to keep our kids alive every day. I understand and acknowledge the importance of in-person schooling. It's beneficial for students in general and I thank FCPS once again for opening up schools in person for families that do need it, but I sincerely request the Board to reconsider opening up virtual options for families that do not feel safe. Our next speaker is Lavanya Madhaven. Lavanya Madhaven. Good evening. I would like to begin by thanking the board for giving me this opportunity. I'm Lavanya Madhavan. My child is enrolled in Greenbrier West Elementary School. So today I'm representing a group of parents who send their kids to various FCPS schools. This group has about 2,500 parents with common requirement of virtual learning option for our

059children in FCPS, especially the elementary school students who are not yet vaccinated. We value all precautionary measures taken by FCPS like masking and social distancing. In spite of all these measures, we still notice increasing number of COVID cases due to severity of the Delta variant. We also understand the importance of in-person schooling for children to learn and grow. But safeguarding our kids during this pandemic and their well-being is, we feel, more important. We noticed that maintaining social distancing inside the school buses and classrooms are really challenging. FCPS officials have also noticed that more parents are moving towards private transportation due to lack of social distancing in school buses. So this adds burden to parents in terms of time and effort. And also presently, almost all students are required to come to school for in-person classes

060and there is the issue of crowding in the classrooms. So, classrooms are challenged when operating at full strength because social distancing is practically not possible. By offering a virtual learning option, the school management will have lesser in-person students and can effectively follow all preventive measures recommended by CDC. So, this ensures students who are interested in virtual learning are benefited as well. Without a virtual learning option in the FCPS, concerned parents are forced to unenroll their children and look for other options like homeschooling, which is also not accessible for all families due to socioeconomic challenges. And also, it severely adversely impacts the child's education. So we request the board to honor the petition of 5,000 online signatories and provide virtual learning option, not on a permanent basis, but at least till we get all the... Our

061next speaker is Jason Rotondi. Thank you, ma'am. All right, I think that's high enough. Good evening. I'm here to further what was spoken about earlier about the forced vaccination. I bring a unique perspective to the gathering tonight, given the fact that I'm a recent graduate as well as a former student athlete. The latter is important for what I plan to touch on briefly tonight. While doing research on the FCPS website, I came across a page stating that vaccinations will be mandatory for high school student athletes. You are asking students who may not wish to receive the vaccine to either sacrifice their beliefs or sacrifice their well-being. Now, you may think that I'm being dramatic, but I assure you, as somebody who struggled with depression in high school, sports were the only thing that got me

062through. And I know that there's a lot of students in high school right now coming out of a lockdown that feel the same way. And if you are asking them to sacrifice their beliefs to get a vaccination, I would only assume that it would be worse. I will just say that. I am also here to ask you to consider a counter to the mandatory vaccination, and that would be the antibody test. On the website, I saw that it was a frequently asked question that somebody had proposed that an antibody test could be used in place. And the response was, no, this will not be accepted. And I am really here to ask why there's no reason. There are reasons for almost everything else that was asked on that website. And if the antibodies do just

063about what the vaccine will do, a very similar goal is reached, how come that's not even an option? I believe that students should have a choice. I'm not here to debate about the efficacy of a vaccine or natural immunity. It's more so just why not give students a choice. We're in a public school system in America. and i think a choice is something that makes this country so beautiful so i'm here to ask you and i hope this doesn't land on deaf ears that you at least consider as a group that these students and parents of students have a choice whether that be a choice of going to school as was touched on before or getting vaccinations or not i just believe that america choice i mean that's what this country is so thank you

064our first speaker was having technical difficulties so i'd like to call her name again yanae berta um hi can you hear me now Go ahead. Good evening. I'm a senior at FCPS in the Lee District. I'm a queer student who's part of the Pride Liberation Project. We're a coalition of LGBTQIA plus students advocating for safe schools for everyone in FCPS. I'm here today to talk about the need for an inclusive environment for queer students. First, I want to thank you for the steps you've taken to protect LGBTQIA students in the past. this past year. The protections you've passed have already had an impact on my school environment and my own comfort in being a part of the LGBTQIA plus community. At the same time, school is in a completely affirming space for queer youth. While

065I haven't experienced intense discrimination, I question if I would really be accepted at a school if I fully came out. The last time I took an FLE course was freshman year. We never talked about LGBTQIA issues, creating a disempowering environment for so many students and leading them to question their validity within the school environment. On the note of making students feel disempowered, I've also seen SROs engage in aggressive behavior towards students, often making unwarranted comments in the hallways that have made students, said they have made them very extremely uncomfortable. Administration has also targeted female students in regards to their interpretation of excessive skin as outlined in the FCPS dress code. Many female students were shamed and called inappropriate names, including a whore, by the staff, leading me to question how safe I feel at school.

066You've taken some truly great steps to affirm LGBTQIA plus students that are having an impact. Please don't stop. But there's so much more that could... that can be done when 50% of queer students reported being depressed. We need to make sure that transgender students are talked about in the youth survey and that we're creating an unequivocally accepting spaces in our school, including FCPA FLE curriculums. Moreover, we need to start having real conversations on making sure that students are safe in schools by limiting funding for SROs and making sure the dress code is not sexualizing students. Finally, you need to make sure that you're fighting for our rights, especially in the upcoming superintendent search. We will now move to our wait list. Alla Malou. Good evening, members of the board. Thank you so much for all

067of your efforts during these really challenging times. I'm Alla Malou Devanagam, and I am a mother of two kids in elementary and middle school, and I also represent the over 2,500 families in Northern Virginia that are requesting for the virtual school option. I'm going to just build upon very quickly data that others have provided. So we are in less than three weeks and we have 537 cases, right? And if we kind of extrapolate that, there are three kids who have been quarantined for all of that. We essentially have between 1,600 and 3,200 kids quarantined now. But the total enrolled in virtual school is 400 people. So this is really the math doesn't add up. FCPS has mentioned when we have reached out that... they're not legally required to provide a virtual option because of SB

0681303. This, the law in reference was developed during Jan and March 2021 when Delta was not the predominant variant in the United States. Currently, Delta variant is a predominant variant and FFX County is in the high transmission from August 25th when school reopened. So we're really asking for a virtual option for elementary schools when community transmission is so high, when elementary students are not vaccinated, and when the Delta variant impacts especially those populations. Teachers are not also fully vaccinated, which public colleges such as GMU have required, preventing METRICS, DAILY SCREENING AND TESTING IS NOT OFFERED AS PUBLIC COLLEGES HAVE ALREADY IMPLEMENTED THAT. THERE COULD BE A VARIETY OF ISSUES. I KNOW CPS IS DOING THE BEST THEY CAN. BUT WE'RE ASKING THAT WE DON'T WANT TO CHOOSE BETWEEN REALLY THE HEALTH AND THE EDUCATION OF

069OUR KIDS AND GIVE PARENTS THE CHOICE FOR A VIRTUAL OPTION. I WORK WITH OUR NEXT SPEAKER. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. Good evening. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. Today I've come to speak about how COVID is well ahead of the steps we take and why FCPS board must consider giving online option for kids below age 12 in elementary grade. I had one of my close friend in India who has lost a family member due to COVID. So I used to have a lengthy conversation with them and he used to tell, don't send your kid. who's age 10 to school. Life is more precious than education. You can always get the education later. For more than a month, we had a lot of arguments. One of the things he said is, you can have all

070kinds of protocols. See what has happened in White House. The person who is fully protected, he had it. The First Lady had it. The Prime Minister of UK, Canada had it. They have all the protocols but COVID is well ahead of them. You have to remember that. We can follow all the protocols, still sometimes the virus knows how to sneak in. So for these reasons, I'm requesting FCPS board to consider online option. See, as a finance professional, I understand that there are budget constraints, there are administrative constraints when you go for online option. Please consider an option which is highly effective and economical in nature. You can have one teacher. per grade. That means for sixth grade, it's six teachers. Give them one way communication of teaching. That way you open up for the entire

071community, whoever wants to go online. It doesn't have to be every 30 students, one teacher. It's like they just need some kind of videos to just learn and leave the option to the parents. And all kinds of situations are there. You've got elders. All those things have not been factored. So it is not the, it should not be a case. Our next speaker is Anastasia Kulin. Is Anastasia here? Devana Kotla? Shauna Yasha? Tracy Compton? Madhu Kodaru? Thank you for the board members giving me the opportunity. So I'm here to requesting you to give at least a virtual option for the kids. So I'm the parent of 10 year old and six year old. They are not vaccinated yet. So I request board members to consider providing virtual option. So I'm not against the in-person, but

072whatever you are doing, it really great. We wanted to have an in-person option. The majority of the parents are choosing it, but we need a virtual option for our kids until vaccinated. So. The COVID Delta variant is more dangerous for kids than previous variant. So when you replay the COVID-19, so instead of adults for previous year, but this is more dangerous for the kids affecting. So because if we have the virtual option in the class, at least like. somewhere around 10 to 50 percent of the parents at least they can able to select this kind of option so that way less number of students in the class it's easy to maintain the social distance whoever is there and also it's the teachers and then staff members every lives matter so reducing the spread we can

073reduce the load of the health system as well FOR THIS, I HIGHLY REQUEST THE BOARD MEMBERS TO GIVE US A VIRTUAL OPTION. AND FOR THESE CASES, I MEAN, INITIALLY THE FIRST ONE WEEK I DID NOT SEND MY KIDS TO THE SCHOOL AND THEN I TALKED TO THE PRINCIPALS AND THEY CONVINCED ME I SENT MY KIDS THIS WEEK. BUT THEY WERE SAYING IT'S NO THREE FEET DISTANCE, AS THEY MENTIONED. ESPECIALLY, I MEAN, COVID AND RECESS, IT'S A MESS. Thank you. We also have two videos this evening. Our first video is Maeve Korngold. Good evening, school board members. My name is Maeve Korngold, and I'm a senior at West Potomac High School. I'm an out lesbian and a member of the FCPS Pride Liberation Project. By the time I graduate in June, I will have been an

074FCPS student for 11 years. I will have endured over a decade of words like gay and lesbo being thrown around by classmates. I will continue to battle the anxiety and depression that intertwine with my feelings of internalized homophobia and to seek out the stories of incredible historical figures who weren't included in my primary and secondary school education because they, just like me, have the ability to fall in love with someone of the same gender. I acknowledge and appreciate how much progress has been made for the rights and respect of LGBTQ plus people. I am grateful for the handful of affirming teachers who I know I am completely physically, mentally, and emotionally safe with. The community that is available to me through school-wide GSAs and this opportunity to speak today. But throughout this county and this

075country, LGBTQ plus students continue to be physically, mentally, and emotionally unsafe because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. At the three Fairfax County schools that I have attended, there is no protocol for the treatment and effective support of LGBTQ plus students that I have been made aware of. Administration preaches about zero tolerance for bullying, yet my queer friends who experience bullying are brushed off and told that the instigator just doesn't know how to react to our differences. As I mentioned before, LGBTQ plus people are left out of curricula, save for a few sentences in USVA history that teachers are free to make disparaging remarks about or completely glaze over. The short and shallow advisory lessons we receive about mental health and suicide awareness fail to communicate how much having an LGBTQ identity and being

076exposed to harassment, bullying, unsupportive and dangerous home environments, and lack of representation in the lessons we're given every day contribute to the mental turmoil that leaves extremely disproportionate amounts of queer youth depressed, anxious, and suicidal. The education provided by Fairfax County Public Schools should equip all students with the support, knowledge, and confidence in their worth. This includes LGBTQ plus students. Our next video is Nirvana Nihad. Good evening. I am a high school junior within Fairfax County Public Schools and of the Hunter Mill District. As a queer person of color and a member of the Pride Liberation Project, I would like to begin by appreciating the work you have done to ensure an inclusive school setting for people like me. For me, personally, school has become one of the... few places that I can express myself

077semi-freely. Though I cannot say that being a lesbian amongst my classmates leaves me completely free of judgment, I will not be able to display my face or name as I have not shared this part of me with my parents. For this reason, I would like to specifically ask the board to consider queer students with potentially unsafe home situations when acting upon issues that affect them. Being queer, for many, means to realize from a young age that your parents' love may not be as unconditional as promised, and that something that defines you could be the very thing that may permanently separate you from those who raised you. It is already difficult and restrictive to turn off a part of your identity within your own house, so accommodating to the many others like me is not only

078impactful, but essential. On top of that, I, as a cisgender person, cannot even begin to imagine how much worse this feeling is for trans youth. I applaud you for the work you have put into creating a welcoming FCPS for queer students, but there is still work to be done. Please continue to center queer people in your work, particularly in the superintendent search. Thank you. Agenda item 3.02, student representative matters, and I call on Mr. Chowdhury. Good evening Madam Chair, board members. In Fairfax County, we begin tracking students and their capabilities very early on in their careers. In second grade, our county administers IQ testing to all students in order to determine their placement through the end of middle school, whether they'll be in general education or advanced academics. With the way that this is set

079up, Second grade essentially serves as a cutoff point for students. While there are some opportunities for students to enter advanced academics later on, those opportunities are primarily there for students whose parents have the knowledge and the financial means to enter. I've had experience with this as well. I was in the AAP program throughout elementary school, but in sixth grade I was told, surprise, you're not actually in full-time level four. And so I was in the open enrollment honors classes throughout middle school, while most of my friends who went to the same school were in the AAP classes. And when I was there, my middle school in particular was really big on Oh, the AAP students, they need all of this enrichment and these engaging cross-curricular projects and an extra field trip to truly provide them

080real-life experience. The honors kids, on the other hand, did not get the same experience. Oh, the honors kids, why would they ever need those things? Those kinds of experiences weren't just limited to one school or one community, right? just kind of thinking a little bit. Why is it that when you walk into Luther Jackson during the school day, you see tremendous diversity, but when you walk into an AAP classroom in this building, you could easily mistake it for a room full of Langley Pyramid students? Additionally, at the middle school level, to have two groups of students, the honors kids and then the gifted kids, What kind of message does that typically send to any student, let alone 12 to 14 year olds? At the high school level, we have a blanket honors program that's open

081to everyone, regardless of whether or not they were in AAP beforehand. And it works really well. And I know a lot of students who were not in the program who have done amazingly for themselves during high school. And I'd like to add that even though it hasn't been called GT for about a decade now, kids do see this program as a reflection. of how gifted they are or how capable they consider themselves. I was even talking to a friend about this last week and she is one of the most intelligent, brilliant people I know and one of the most successful people in my grade, but she also didn't go through the program and she said, you know, I felt stupid because even though I was there and I was trying my best and I was

082in harder classes, I wasn't at what was considered then the top level. And kids who are overlooked often have to have a why to do something. Why take honors English if you got a B in regular English last year? You know, why would you choose to pursue this kind of a course load if we don't know how you're going to do yet? Kids who are believed in are asked why not. Oh, it's a tough class, but you'll be fine. And so even in just talking to students from all corners of the county and all different life circumstances, just about everyone I've talked to has been profoundly impacted by their placement in some way. And granted, this was four years ago for a lot of us at this point. Change doesn't happen overnight. But there are

083ideas out there. Something as simple as a universal rescreening later on in elementary school could make a major difference in kids' lives. Or maybe even just having general education teachers submit a report at the end of each year asking, hey, did you have any kids in your class this year who you think might do well in a more rigorous environment? It could be providing a path for young scholars to enter the AAP cohort once they reach middle school. Accessibility is really the key. Even just ensuring that every family knows their options, really being out there and active in every community could connect so many kids with limitless opportunities. Even things like TJ's new holistic admissions process and programs like Young Scholars have shown that all kids can prove how capable they are if they are

084just given the opportunity to do so. Thank you. Thank you. Agenda item 3.03, Superintendent Update, Return to School COVID and Health Update. We know that there have been many concerns and questions regarding health and COVID-related matters, and to be responsive to these concerns, Dr. Brabrand will be presenting a brief health and COVID related return to school update today to our public who will be able to hear it live or watch later via our YouTube channel. And I'd also like to remind my colleagues that we do have a meeting scheduled on Tuesday if further discussions were needed after tonight. Thank you, Dr. Brabrand. Thank you, Chairman Pekarski and members of the school board, members of the community. It's great to see all of you this evening. I am happy to provide some updates to the board

085and to the community on the first few weeks of school. The excitement of having 99.5% of our kids back in person, but also the challenges that we're seeing as we see the Delta variant here in our country and in our community. And I want to share with you some adjustments that we have made. and that we are considering to make as we continue to be responsive to the needs of our students, our families, our staff, as we navigate the continued impacts of the pandemic. So as I said, we are excited to be back five days in person. If we can go to the next slide. 100%, if we can go to the next slide, please. 100% of our schools, oh, if we can go back, please. Thank you. We are super excited. Yeah, I'll do

086numbers from here on slide number two. 100% of our schools open for five days of in-person learning in August and 100% of our schools remain open for in-person learning today. This is truly a testament to the efforts our staff, students, families, and our greater community have all made to ensure that our schools remain open and safe. And to our community and our community members, I want to thank you for your partnership. Our students and staff are happy to be back. As a Mount Vernon student said on my very first day back with the students for the first day of school, she said, I belong in school. And we share the sentiment of wanting and having our students back. As I said, 99.5% of our students are back for in-person learning and we've been focused on

087building relationships with them and developing new routines. Now I know, we all know, and it is clear from our community and national discussions that we recognize that COVID is not going away. It is still in our country and community and it will remain so for the foreseeable future. We all have had to adapt and adjust to changing conditions and will need to continue to do that, prioritizing health and safety and prioritizing in-person learning. Even over the last two weeks, we have worked with our staff and the Fairfax County Health Department to make additional adjustments to best support our students. COVID has certainly reinforced the importance of flexibility, innovation, and collaboration. I do want to take a moment to acknowledge some of the concerns that you have heard, we have all heard over the last few

088weeks, that we're seeing nationally and in Fairfax County. If we turn to the next slide, please. And this is looking, while we all talk about data nationwide, it's very important to stay focused on our community data. Our community data here is outlined with Fairfax County community transmission since March through the summer and now as we are returning to school. And yes, the community transmission shows that we are still very much in the pandemic. We saw dramatic reductions as we were closing out the school year and celebrating our graduations and going and doing our summer school and summer programs, but we did see a rise in COVID community transmission. over the summer as as you can see on this graph you do and can see that community transmission now is at a substantial level and we

089know that there will be cases when an individual who is unknowingly covet positive will enter our school and that is a reality in our pandemic We are hopeful at the very end, if you look at the graph again, just in the last few weeks that we're starting to see what we hope will be the beginning of a decline in COVID transmission in our community. You can see that curve is beginning to go downward and we will continue to monitor that. very, very closely. Our focus is on limiting the risk of spread in schools through layered prevention strategies such as universal indoor masking and having students and staff stay home when they are sick. We know a great deal more about COVID now than we did last year. And we also have now vaccinations available for

090those who are eligible. I'll also be providing updates about testing at our work session on 921, which I know is another question that many in the community have. I know is that we continue together as a school board and a school administration and frankly as a school community as we continue to lead in this pandemic, our parents and students and colleagues, we must continue to have a commitment to what I call the three C's. First, we must continue to remain calm in this pandemic. We've been through 18 months of challenges and we will have challenges before us moving forward. We must continue to remain calm and acknowledge, though, the frustrations and challenges that many in our community are facing. We also need to continue to seek clarity to provide you the information and detail so

091that you can understand why and how we are making the decisions that we are making. And we need to continue to engage one another in caring. We really do talk about our caring culture and we need to continue to try to do everything we can to demonstrate that as we go through this school year. Now I'd like to share with you our FCPS COVID data since students and staff have returned that shows that we are successfully limiting the community transmission that you just saw. Before you now is a chart that shows the total positive cases since August 13th, just before as we began the beginning of the opening of school up until September 8th. We've had a total of 501 positive cases, which represents about 2.4% of our total number of students and staff. And

092you can see the percentage of cases, .2, what did I say? 2.4, I'm sorry. That's what happens when you have a social studies teacher as superintendent. Yes, it's .24%, less than a half percent. of our total students and staff have had positive cases. This is an extremely low, extremely low case rate. And you can see the division by students, staff, and visitors. You can see the number of epi-linked cases. Those are cases that actually represent transmission in schools is at 21.01%. And that's from seven outbreaks since school started. You can see the information for student athletes and for our athletic staff and also a few cases in our SAC community. Our in-school transmission is incredibly low and our layered prevention strategies are working. I do want to go ahead to the next slide and talk

093about some key definitions as we go forward. And I promise you that the data that I've shared with you tonight, both community and school, I will continue to share with you as we move forward. Some key definitions for folks as we continue to have these discussions. First of all, the word isolation. This is keeping someone who is sick or is tested positive for COVID without symptoms away from others, even in their own home, directed by local health officials. That is isolation. Pause is where FCPS, directed by the local health department, to pause a student's in-person instruction while contact tracing is implemented as a matter of public health. And quarantine is a word that means someone that we keep who remains at home, who was in close contact with someone who has COVID-19 away from others.

094Again, directed by local health. officials. These are very important words and we will continue to work with the health department as we do the identification for these students. The health department will direct individuals who've been in close contact with someone again for COVID-19 to quarantine and again the cumulative impacts of isolation quarantines and pauses is greater than the total number of positive cases we know that and i want to speak to that a little bit now as i share with you another chart with very important data for this board in our community what i've done here what our staff has done is we've begun to flesh out for you those three words and provide data where we haven't and we'll be updating of course the data as we move forward first of all on the

095pause data we realize that that is information that is very important and that we are working together we are having that information gathered as we speak through our principles we know that the covid positive case data doesn't paint the whole picture because it doesn't include students and staff who may be paused or may be quarantined now the quarantine data is actually provided by the fairfax county health department it indicates that 393 students and staff members were directed to quarantine in relation to closed COVID-19 cases between August 13th and September 9th. The isolation data represented on the chart is the same as the total number of cases, the total number of COVID cases I shared with you earlier. Now the data is not mutually exclusive as students may be initially directed to pause or quarantine and

096ultimately may become positive for COVID-19 and directed to isolate. So we are developing a database to capture information on the number of students who are asked to pause. And of course, we're developing an automated database to capture the quarantine data so that we can have our database talk to the Fairfax County Health Department's database for that quarantine data. And we'll have additional updates to share with you soon. I do want you to see. as you look at the numbers to also do data in context in terms of percentages even if you were to add up and again we said the numbers overlap but it's not a complete overlap at all not everyone who is quarantined ultimately who was a close contact ends up being a covet positive individual but the numbers there expressed as a

097percentage of our total students and staff again all of those numbers are below half of a percent even if you combine them even if you combine them it is still less than a half of a percent but let's be honest the caring part that we need to acknowledge if you are part of that small percentage of students or staff being asked to isolate or quarantine it is impactful on your ability to work or your ability to attend school but I did want you to see that those numbers and we will continue to show you these numbers as we move forward. One of the things we are doing with the data is working to be responsive. And if we can go to the next slide, while the percentages of COVID positive cases in FCPS remain low,

098as I said, for those families impacted, the need to have a quick resolution is essential. We have heard clearly from a number of families about significant delays in contact tracing. delays that cannot and will not persist. We have a collaborative relationship with the health department and we will continue to collaborate and we will continue to hold ourselves and our colleagues working with the health department mutually accountable to improve and expedite the process. We know that returning our students to in-person instruction when they're paused or ordered to do so by the health department and being able to return as safely and efficiently as we can is very important. We have worked directly with our Fairfax County Health Department to address concerns that we're hearing and to expedite the contact tracing process with changes implemented just this

099week on Tuesday. So we're only a couple of days into it, and we need to see the impact of our changes on the ability to accelerate the amount of time or limit, rather, the amount of time that students are out by accelerating the contact tracing process. We did announce last week changes to our process of returning fully vaccinated students who are asymptomatic to instruction when they have been paused or quarantined. They'll be able to go to a portal. to submit proof of vaccination status and they'll be prompted to complete a survey from the health department the health department will review this and if the child is asymptomatic a clearance letter will be provided no later than the next business day we're already implementing that this week and getting more of our vaccinated asymptomatic kids back

100in school and not on pause or on quarantine This is important. This new process will not only speed up the return of our fully vaccinated asymptomatic students, but it should cut down on overall contact tracing timelines as the contact tracers can now redouble their efforts on focusing on the cases that require an additional investigation. We've also worked with the health department to expedite the transfer of any necessary information to the health department to complete contact tracing. We're working to eliminate any unnecessary wait time, for example, when the health department has questions about seating charts or the teacher who needs to answer those questions in the classroom. The health department contact tracers work during the day. They were often calling during the day. Our teachers during the day are teaching. Now we have a point of

101contact at every school if they can't reach the teacher because the teachers teaching in the classroom and obviously can't take a phone call then or having difficulty reaching a teacher on a cell phone where connectivity and some of our schools is challenging. There's a direct point of contact to the school for the school to be able to get that staff member and follow up immediately with the health department and we've implemented those changes this week. I also want to talk to you about quarantine length, not just things that again that we've done with this new process for asymptomatic vaccinated kids, this process about giving points of contact to the health department to contact our folks or administrative folks if they can't get through to our staff. But we know the board and community have questions

102about quarantine lengths and working to cut down the amount of time students or staff members are required to stay out of school. Quarantine lengths are determined by the local health department. And at this time, the Fairfax County Health Department continues to recommend a 14-day quarantine after the last close contact to a person with COVID-19 as opposed to a shorter quarantine period. The state superintendents, including this superintendent, have shared feedback with the Virginia Department of Health on a need for a more consistent quarantine guidance. The CDC and the VDH right now continue to recommend 14 days. but suggests that a shorter time can be done, but leaves it as a local option. This is currently being discussed at the state level, and we will provide additional updates when they are available. A quick check this evening

103in full transparency is that the majority of our school districts in the northern Virginia region continue to have a 14-day quarantine period. Checking anecdotally downstate, some school districts are shortening that period to 10 days or seven days with counsel from the health department. I do hope to have an additional update to you in the weeks ahead around seeing if we can get greater consistency across the Commonwealth on this important issue for those that are placed in quarantine. I also want to talk briefly about FCPS COVID-19 communication updates. Based on feedback from our community, we are updating some of our communication protocols. Families can and will and should continue to access information about individual cases daily on our FCPS COVID dashboard, which we have continued this year just as we had last year. Community messages will

104be sent out weekly as opposed to every time there is an individual case that week. Staff and potential close contacts will continue to receive direct communication for those individual cases in addition to the weekly community message. Outbreak letters will continue to be sent to the community as they occur. We believe these new processes will help provide more clear information to those who are directly impacted while also maintaining the transparency for community members who want to have access to daily individual case count updates. In many cases, when those letters were going out, many families were keeping their kids home, wondering if their kid was the kid that needed to stay. I want to also provide you some important numbers as we look around the country, but look to our own data and our own narrative, if

105we can go to the next slide, around staff vaccination. I am proud that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors asked County Executive Brian Hill to explore the vaccination mandate for staff and that just before school started, the county and the school system agreed for a vaccination mandate for our staff. We have begun to do the surveying of our staff to fully implement this mandate. As of 8.30 this morning, 80% of our contracted full-time and part-time staff, this is our full-time and part-time staff, of the 80% responding to the survey, and we're trying to wrap up the survey here in just the days ahead, 97.3% are fully vaccinated. We will be following up with those. That is a huge number, 97%. is on par with the highest vaccination rates in the country for any organization. We

106will be following up with those that who have not responded to the survey and it will be finalized and compiled for your review in the communities by the end of this month or into early October. We will begin regular testing in late October for staff that are unvaccinated or did not respond to the survey. If we can go to the next slide, I also want to talk a little bit about vaccinations and athletics. And I know you actually heard some community conversation about that tonight. First of all, as we saw students return to school this fall, on the very first day, the highest number of pauses affecting the largest number of kids was not an elementary school. but it was in our high school athletic programs. With 40 kids at one high school, 100 kids

107at another, we cannot continue to operate our wonderful programs, first, our primary program for instruction, and secondarily, our wonderful additional athletic programs that we have for kids with those kind of pause impacts going on in our school. Athletics or high contact activities with increased risk of spread and vaccinating student athletes adds another layer of protection against the virus, particularly as the majority of students are not wearing masks while competing. This additional strategy should minimize the time students have to be paused from in-person learning, our primary focus. At this time, since the Pfizer vaccine is fully authorized for individuals 16 and older, only students 16 and older will be required to be vaccinated. We've shared that FAQ this week with our community, and I'm sharing it with the board and community again tonight. Only students 16

108and older are required to be vaccinated who are participating in our athletic program. It's highly recommended for our students age 12 to 15 to get vaccinated. This will be in effect for our winter and spring sports program. And as you know, in the winter is when we have most of the sports that come inside where transmission becomes even more of a challenge based on all of our CDC research and guidance. Student athletes who remain unvaccinated will be required to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test every week. This requirement is limited to high school athletics as the state mandates the vaccination requirements for the instructional day as opposed to activities where participation is voluntary. I don't have authority as the superintendent to make student vaccination decisions for the instructional program. We will be providing additional

109information to families and student athletes in the coming weeks about submitting proof of vaccination prior to November 8th. I also want to share with you, and by the way, just as I leave athletics, of the seven outbreaks that I shared with you, and remember, outbreaks are those transmissions happening in the schools. Five of the seven, five of the seven since school started have been tied to athletics. Vaccinating our athletes is the right thing to do. And I predict that later this week, other districts in Virginia will follow Fairfax County Public Schools' decision. to do this because it's the right thing for kids to support instruction, to support student safety, and honestly, to continue to support athletics so that in some places right now across the country, games aren't even being played because games are being

110paused and canceled. And that's not fair to kids who do dream of being able to be able to be out on those fields and perform, not just now in high school, but beyond. I also want to go to the next slide and talk a little bit about, of course, community conversation and board conversation in all candor about revised expectations for schools on eating. I want to be clear that we know to this board. I know, let me put it this way, I know from this board and our community that lunch and snack time remains an area of concern for our families, especially for those with children who are not yet eligible for the vaccine. Our schools have been making adjustments and will continue to make adjustments to lunch and snack procedures, taking an all-hands-on-deck approach

111to spreading out our kids. in their unique indoor and outdoor spaces that each school and facility has. And we've talked about and shared again with our principals. The revised expectations, social distancing to the greatest extent possible during eating time at lunch and snack, the use of outside areas with as much supervision as possible, and the $10 million you approved just a week or two ago is now going directly into school accounts to support with those supervision activities. Alternative areas such as gym, lecture hall, and foyers, alternative seating, alternative furniture, staggered lunch and snack schedules, use of plexiglass where available. and again the all hands on deck approach part of helping to support these revised expectations is expanding our outdoor capacity if we go to the next slide i want to give you what i know

112would be the will probably become the monthly tent update we have uh in terms of tents installed we have them installed at 103 elementary schools 16 middle schools 15 high schools and two centers We have pending installation at 36 elementary schools, 7 middle schools, 12 high schools, and 2 centers. And yes, just to be absolutely clear, tents will be available year-round for all of our facilities. Finally, I want to talk just a moment to you about, if we can go to the next slide, about instructional support during COVID-related absences. We talked about pausing, quarantining, and isolation. I have a proposal that we are continuing to engage our teachers and principals and our stakeholders, including you all. around how we can provide instructional support when students are deemed by the health department to need to be

113absent we are looking at again a proposal where we would adjust the instructional supports to students who are unable to attend school in person due to COVID-19 infection or possible exposure In this proposal, we would look at moving from just the asynchronous instruction for those students who can now currently access Schoology. to be able to have a proposed limited live streaming that we would be able to do into this school year. And the idea behind this proposal would be no later than the third day of a pause or quarantine or isolation, the school would provide limited live streaming to classes. Elementary kids under this proposal could have live streaming access to the daily morning meeting and the focus lesson for language arts and mathematics. In secondary school, middle and high school, there would be limited

114live streaming to the introduction of the lesson at the beginning of the class and any additional direct whole group instruction that happens, except for the advisory period or when instruction is in a setting that streaming is not practicable, like outside for PE courses. This live stream is not and would not be the same as concurrent instruction that our students participated in last year. So I want to be clear about that. They would be able to observe the lesson as opposed to participating in the class. Families would have the option under this proposal to have their student participate in live stream and additional class assignments would continue to be posted online. This approach would allow for continuity of learning and continued engagement for students. We do know that this is again a proposal we're working to

115finalize. There are some additional suggestions where instead of limited streaming, could we have a full recording of the lesson for the teacher to be posted on Schoology? um as an alternative to limited streaming and we're continuing to have those conversations with our staff and i'll be able to provide some additional updates to you at our upcoming work sessions so finally i just want to share with you a thank you we do have a additional work session as i said scheduled for 9 21 well i'll provide further updates to the board and there will be updates coming throughout the year I want to thank our incredible community, our teachers, our principals, bus drivers, custodians, food service, central office, all of our professionals tirelessly inside and out working to make this a successful school year. And I

116want to thank our parents who are continuing to partner with us, including those, yes, yes. including those who came tonight. And I do want to just take a moment because some did come tonight talking about wanting us to expand the virtual program that we've had. We've had a limited virtual program following CDC guidance for those students with medically documented needs. And I want to just emphasize that at the national, state, and local level, the guidance continues to be. The guidance continues to be that students need to be in school for in-person instruction. So much so that the American Academy of Pediatricians sent a statement to the CDC, again supporting the CDC guideline that only students with medical documented needs needed virtual instruction. But I do want to just explain a little bit more about, well,

117why don't we just look at doing virtual by choice? It should be a really simple issue. but I want to unpack it for just a moment. First of all, as I said, all of our medical officials at the national, state, and local level continue to support that in-person instruction is what our school districts need to be doing this school year. We need to continue to follow the layered strategies, and I showed you that our data remains exceptionally strong with low COVID transmission in our schools. I also want you to know that staffing, as much as we would want to be able to do an expanded virtual, staffing remains an issue. As you may know, the Virginia General Assembly passed Senate Bill 1303, which required in-person instruction in Virginia this year. It also required anyone who

118wanted virtual to be able at any time to return in person. We simply can't staff and stand up an in-person Fairfax County Public Schools while simultaneously trying to staff a full virtual program as well in Fairfax County Public Schools. Those districts that are trying to do it right now, some have opened with almost half of the teachers being substitutes. That's not the high-quality instruction that we have to deliver and need to deliver to our kids. Some other districts that have opened have opened with waiting lists in the thousands. Why? Because there's simply no staffing to provide for that virtual option. Again, if we felt that there was the need by national, state, or local health authorities to return to virtual because schools in person was not safe, I would absolutely be following that guidance. But

119to do that in absence of that guidance would be returning to only a concurrent model, a concurrent model that was thoroughly discussed and experienced last year with a clear verdict that it was back-breaking work on our staff. And I do not believe it is a sustainable model this school year and moving forward. I do want to again thank all of our parents and we need to continue to listen to our community as we move forward and help reassure and show the data and tell the story of how we can successfully continue in our school year. But make no mistake. Just as Delta has come and required adjustments, we will continue to monitor the variants. We will continue to make the adjustments. And we will continue to make sure that we bring you the data that

120shows that schools are safe. And if directed by health authorities to make other decisions to return our students to virtual, we will do that. Again, I want to thank you all this evening for listening to this presentation, and I look forward to taking any board questions and know that I will have a much more full update at our return to school work session in just a few days, just another week. So thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Brabrand, and we will begin questions with Dr. Anderson. um thank you um i'm so glad that you talked about not school board but senate bill 1303 because there are a lot of rumors in the community that schools are going to close i think there's some miscommunication and misunderstanding with pausing or maybe certain classrooms versus the

121entire school closing that is not something that we have the latitude to do because of that bill schools will not close and go entirely virtual So I think that's important that that be communicated as much as possible. I kind of have three buckets of things that I want to talk about. And the first one is the health issue, as we've heard quite a bit regarding the students, the student athletes and the impact that that's had on the outbreaks, etc. If you could just please again reiterate the options that are available for students who elect not to vaccinate. what can they do to still participate without feeling as if we are mandating that they have to vaccinate in order to participate while we still want to keep them and everyone else safe what can they do

122right so let me just be clear again we are only going to require the vaccine for students 16 and older it will be highly recommended that our students age 12 to 15 get vaccinated Student athletes who remain unvaccinated will be required to show proof of a negative COVID test every week. And we'll be providing additional information about all of this in the weeks prior to November 8th. And again we'll have more information about that but it will be submitting proof of a negative covid test on a weekly basis. Thank you. The other big question is for students who are on pause or on quarantine. Those two terms parents are really concerned that when they're calling the schools that the schools are not releasing them to return back into the buildings even though they may have

123a negative covid test. Can you also confirm who is the only body that is allowed to clear students to return to school? I think I know the answer pretty clearly, but I know that Dr. Boyd, our amazing assistant superintendent for special services is here and I'd like Dr. Boyd to address that question. Dr. Anderson. Thank you, Dr. Braybrand and good evening. Dr. Anderson is correct. The Fairfax County Health Department does have the authority to release students when they are placed on pause or when they are placed on quarantine. Once we receive that information from the Fairfax County Health Department, we then subsequently communicate with our families so that they know that their child can return to in-person instruction and activities at that time. Thank you. The frustration from parents is that they are not hearing.

124from the health department? What is the backlog? Where are we in terms of clearing our students who've been on pause since August, since school started? What is the status? So we're working closely with the health department. We do continue to monitor our data. All of the students who were paused on the week of August 22nd through the 28th, those pauses have concluded and those students have either been directed to quarantine or return to school. Also for cases for the subsequent weeks or a second week of school, those cases have closed. We do know that our length for closing our cases is certainly more than we want it to be. And so we're making those revisions to the process in collaboration with the health department that Dr. Brabrand spoke of earlier this evening. And we continue

125to make some additional enhancements and are in discussions about some additional things to make the process a bit more succinct for our instructional leaders so that they can spend more time focusing on teaching and learning while also making sure that we can return students and give students about their current status while they're on pause as quickly as possible. So some additional updates will be forthcoming as well. So parents who are listening to us speak tonight who may have had students pause during that week of the 22nd through the 28th, if they have not received a clearance. Since you said we've caught up to those dates, what is their recourse? Who are they to call? Yes, those students can contact the school or they can send an email and we'll provide that information. But all of

126those students from that week have either been directed to return to school and some students who are on quarantine will still be completing their quarantine process and will receive a clearance letter directly from the health department when their quarantine period is concluded. So for the other students who've been waiting since possibly 9-1 and now it's been eight days, we expect that some of the efforts that you put in place will help expedite that. What was the problem? I guess I have to ask this question. Was it a matter of not having enough contact tracers? What was the issue? Because inquiring minds do want to know. Certainly. So we're continuing to work collaboratively. Our cases, as Dr. Brabrand shared, did significantly increase from week one to week two. And so I think all organizations were making

127shifts. We had approximately 150 cases during our first week of school, and that increased significantly. And so response time was impacted. And as a result, that additional process with the vaccine verification was really implemented to address some of those issues so that those students who are fully vaccinated and asymptomatic would be able to be almost automatically released so that the time could be spent doing the contact tracing and investigation. for the other students. So again, making those adjustments because the process and the volume increase and it's different than last year. So trying to make those real time adjustments to respond to families. And we know, I just want to acknowledge that we know that for students and for families and really for the whole community that the long wait times has impacted people academically, socially

128and economically. And so we do want to acknowledge that and we continue to work on making that process more efficient. while again still maintaining the health and safety for all involved. How long do you anticipate that we'll be able to feel the changes in efficiency based on those revised asks? Absolutely. Absolutely. So we're hoping that the changes should be able to be felt somewhat almost immediately for some of our students who I know some of our athletes were excited to be able to be released even as early on Friday when they submitted those surveys. We had about 300 students released between Thursday evening and Friday morning upon implementation of the system. And we were able to clear up a number of cases over the break while we were out of school this week. And so

129I'm thinking that within this next week, we should see those times being decreased. And again, we're going to continue to partner and get feedback from different stakeholders to continue making ongoing enhancements to the process in collaboration with the health department. Thank you. The next set of questions that I want to ask are regarding the snack recess, the lunch, not recess, the lunch situation that you talked about. As always, I know I'm kind of a broken record on this, but I know that there have been a lot of... plans that are in place particularly at the elementary level because our students they're none of them are vaccinated so their seats in the cafeteria that's every other there is more emphasis on outdoor use for lunch but at our middle schools particularly in mason district where we

130have sixth grade students who are in elementary school everywhere else that has been the forgotten group and they are mixed in with seventh and eighth graders who many of them may have access to vaccination. And I think we need to be very thoughtful in terms of how we are engaging with those students at Glasgow, Poe and Holmes, because they would be anywhere else in elementary schools benefiting from some of those additional efforts that are not present necessarily in our middle schools. So that's one of the things I wanted to read. That's very fair feedback and I will work with Dr. Ivey, our deputy superintendent in our region, assistant superintendents around those sixth graders at those middle school sites. That's a very... perspicacious comment. I appreciate it. Thank you. And as a parent of one of

131those kids in those elementary schools that it is not eligible for vaccination, I continue to be concerned with some of the language that I see here. I can't find the page. It's not coming to me. But the one that speaks to the extent to which possible that students will be socially distanced during time that they're consuming food. That is very, very broad and open-ended and does not, I don't think, encourage or foster the confidence that we want for our elementary school parents to have in those kinds of efforts. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Mr. Frisch? Thank you. Dr. Brabrand, thank you for your leadership on moving forward with our... vaccination requirements for athletes. I'm heartened to hear that other school divisions will be taking our lead. And I know in our work session, we discussed other

132opportunities. So I hope you will continue to look for other opportunities that are not instructional, where we can require vaccination to show our commitment to putting this pandemic behind us. A question on the live streaming. Can you talk in a little bit more detail about how this is not the same as concurrent? Yes. Actually, I'm going to have Dr. Presidio, our chief academic officer, share a few comments. But let me just start it generally to say that limited live streaming would be one way. concurrent would be two-way so the student would be watching and listening in a limited live streaming format not a back-and-forth with the teacher as they experienced in concurrent in the spring I don't know dr. Presidio if I have I hit that right or is anything you would add No, I

133think that's the major distinction that we would want to highlight. And, you know, just also the fact that, as Dr. Brabrand already mentioned, we're looking at several different options to get the important instructional content to our students. So it could be live streaming. It could be teachers recording the lesson and posting the lesson. So we're looking at several different options right now. As a child of the 90s, I was familiar with live streaming. I just wanted to make sure that everybody watching at home understands the distinction. And how quickly do we think we'll be pushing this into implementation? I'd still say we're probably at least another week or two away, something hopefully by the end of this month in place. What we do know is quarantining and just having asynchronous is not enough to support

134our students and their families. So we do want to get something up very soon. I'll have an absolute update for you at 921. work session around this because I know it is a topic that the board has heard from many people about. Thank you. On the pause data, I'm glad to see that we'll be getting it. I know it's difficult to gather. To kind of head it off at the pass, I hope the data we get will not just be the number of pauses taking place, but also the length of the pauses as well. because I think that's almost a more critical factor when we're having these conversations. Because the number one thing that we're hearing obviously is these extended pauses with no clarity. And to that end, we talked in our work session about

135test and stay and screening tests and other things. I'm wondering why we can't do a modified test and stay for our school population that is not eligible for vaccination. Why can't a parent provide proof of negative COVID testing, if it's good enough for our athletes to do, why can't our elementary school students and those under the age of 12 have parents provide a negative COVID testing to show that while they may have been exposed that they're negative and asymptomatic? Right. You know, Dr. Boyd, do you want to respond to Mr. Frisch's question? Sure. Thank you, Dr. Braybrand. And thank you, Mr. Frisch. So the difference between the fully vaccination verification process for the secondary students is that they are fully vaccinated. And that's a component and an option per the CDC and the VDH as

136an option for fully vaccinated persons. And so that's why they're able to return, even if they've been exposed with the caveat that they wear their mask and take some additional precautions. as they return and just monitor their symptoms. For students who are not fully vaccinated or individuals who are not fully vaccinated, that is not an option at this point that is available. There are some different quarantine options when folks refer to test and stay and talk about submitting negative tests. And Dr. Brabrand shared that a piece of it briefly during the presentation. The CDC does recommend that quarantine lengths be 14 days for persons who are exposed. They provide some alternative options and those were some of the options that were shared by Dr. Brabrand the 10 days out or the seven days out with

137a proof of a negative test. But the CDC and the VDH give that decision making as to what quarantine period is appropriate to local health authorities. And at this time, our local health authority, the Fairfax County Health District, is continuing to go with the highest standard recommended by the CDC and the VDH with the 14-day quarantine period. So that's the distinction between the secondary ones that are fully vaccinated and our younger ones who are not yet age eligible for the vaccine. So the question was specifically around the athletes who choose not to be vaccinated, who are allowed to basically test and stay on the team. Right now, granted, they may not have been exposed. So is that the distinction there? That if they are exposed, they'll still be subject to the normal quarantine that everybody

138else is? Yes, sir. That is correct. Okay. And I guess what I'm trying to get to is avoiding this conversation that we've been having for the last several weeks of people hearing from county health department that it's our fault that their kids are not back in school and people hearing from the school system that it's the county health department that their kids are not back in school. How can we break this logjam creatively? Can we use us or money to hire contact tracers in the school division to assist with this, right? Can we bring in nurses to assist with contact tracing or hire extra people to help? How can we help this move along? Yep. So a couple of things, just like we shared, the vaccination, what I'm calling it, it's the get out of

139jail free card, frankly, get out of quarantine free card if you're vaccinated asymptomatic, done. Point of contact list with the school's done so they don't keep calling a teacher who has their cell phone off every day during the lessons. But that's when the health department was calling during, you know, business operating hours. So the two were never connecting. I'm just saying, just being real, right? Transparently. Hey, and you keep calling. There's no message. Message returned. Hey, if you can't get that staff member that day, you call the school and we're going to get that teacher out and get whatever question you need on that seating chart. The other thing is your $10 million is already going straight to schools, and we will be hosting or posting a specific job as a contact tracer monitor or

140support person. We've done the job description. Mr. Smith and his HR team have. We're going to be hiring for that. We have a job fair coming up, I think, next week. Can you say a little bit more about that position? uh yeah even just a little mr smith do you want to talk a little bit about the work that you guys did pulling together that job description for the monitor uh a little bit about what that position will entail and how many etc so so we've worked to provide additional staffing within schools for monitors and they can use those positions using esler funds to do a variety of roles within the building one of those can be to follow up and work with the health department on contact tracing So for some schools that choose

141to invest in that they might have quicker Clearances for their students than schools that need more lunch monitors Say that question one more time So if school a chooses to invest in lunch monitors because they really want to get the kids outside Yes, and does not invest in this new position just to finish my question And another school does the opposite, invests in these helpful contact tracing jobs and not lunch monitors. Their students may have lagging. Well, we don't want to make it either or. If we find out that schools have lagging times, we are going to want them. and recommend to them to get the monitors to speed up contact tracing. And to clarify, these are not individuals who will be doing contact tracing in schools. This was in reference to our principals who

142are asking for additional supports to help them manage the work of tracking students within the building so that information could be shared with the health department. So I want to clarify that those individuals are not engaged in contact tracing at all. They're doing the prep that the schools put the material over, the seating charts. You've got to go around and get those seating charts from the teachers or the seating chart for the cafeteria in elementary. You've got to go down and get that from the right person. Staffing is going to continue to remain a challenge as it is in a lot of our jobs right now. Subs, bus drivers. We want how the community can help us look at these positions, come out and say, I will be a monitor in my child's cafeteria. I

143will be a prep worker to help speed up getting the information over the county health department. And I'm confident that our Fairfax County Health Department wants to produce better results just like we want to. I know we have moments where we're all frustrated and the tendency is that we might want to blame, right? But blame and shame is not going to get Fairfax County Public Schools where it needs to be to keep our students and staff safe. It's collective collaboration. and mutual accountability and I promise to be accountable to this board every day every week in my final year as your superintendent to answer these questions and work with the health department and ask them hard questions if the things that we've done are not working what else can we do and that would include

144even recommending to them though i'm sure they're on top of it do they need to do any resource act reallocation they have 41 contact tracers dedicated right now to our schools is 41 enough the health department will have to answer that question and i'm confident that if it's not enough they will redirect resources accordingly so that we can speed up this contact tracing process thank you miss keys gamara Thank you, Dr. Brabrand, for this presentation. I know we've had a lot of anxious parents who, you know, are just trying to figure out how things really work. So I want to make sure I make some clarifications just to try to avoid some problems. We had a lot of discussion in the past about concurrent. And you mentioned in your presentation that we received a lot

145of concerns regarding from staff. But I think it's also important to say that we received a lot of concerns from the community. Having our staff members try to serve students both in and outside of the classroom was simply too great of a burden. And so I know there's been a lot of comments in the past about what some of our staff members are willing to do. I just want to make sure that people understand. that concurrent was a problem across the board which raises some concern for me when we start talking about simultaneous streaming because while i know today you are sitting here and explaining that that is one-way communication i can almost guarantee within 48 hours we will receive complaints from people who are not getting two-way communication and so i don't know what

146we can do to avoid that to accept to communicate as clearly as we can, which is part of the reason I'm bringing this up, because I know we certainly want we want to do everything we can. But I heard you say we are having staffing problems. I happen to know we're having a teacher shortage. It's not just in Fairfax. It's in the state of Virginia. It's in the nation. And so when people say just get somebody else, I heard one of our staff members say there are no more people. So we've got to have some of this balance. And I really want us to try to the best of our ability to manage expectations of our community. So having said that, I do hope that in your presentation next week, there will be some very

147detailed supports, especially for the elementary school students. They are the ones that cannot be vaccinated. You know, many of the folks who testified today, I believe, were elementary school parents because the fear is greater when we don't have. all of our mitigation strategies. So even if we can't find appropriate testing facilities for the whole system, I would think that there would be specific supports for our elementary school students to make sure that we can keep as many students in class as we can to make sure that if there are any outbreaks that we're providing as much support as possible. Thank you, Miss Keats-Gamar. And I want to say parallel to the limited streaming, one of the other things we are giving consideration to is a full recording that could be done for the class that

148the teacher would post to Schoology. We haven't asked staff to do that. Or it could be a choice of the teacher. where specific to the content and the class needs whether limited streaming or the recording of the whole class what would be better and again if it were a recorded class it would be posted on Schoology and then the teacher as needed could interact through email with the kid for follow-up so we're exploring both of those models and I do hope to have some final clarity by the time we meet on the 21st for our full regular return to school work session Just wanted to point out our elementary students are not similarly situated to our middle and high school and so I hope the plan accommodates. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Omesh. Thank you.

149A number of my questions were actually addressed by my colleagues specifically to do with clarifying this piece on concurrent virtual, what is it going to look like, and the other piece being what Mr. Frisch raised earlier. I did want to thank you for being responsive, especially on the revised expectations. I know that was a question of mine and several of my colleagues, in particular with elementary school eating procedures. I also wanted to thank Dr. Ivey specifically because I know that Karen and I had conversations in our region meetings. Much of our feedback seems to have been reflected. So I do appreciate that. I did have a question regarding the care rooms and how that's being implemented. I've certainly heard community concerns around administrator time being spent there that should have should be spent elsewhere. uh

150maybe if you can provide some clarity there and whether maybe we have planning in the future i don't know if even monitors could be used for something like sure sure i'm going to actually invite dr boyd i'm sorry dr boyd to bother you one more time but on care rooms or or dr ivy if you have any additional comments after dr boyd on care rooms to share but dr boyd No worries. That's why we're here as a team. So with regard to care rooms, we do have school health assistance as well as P.H.N.s that support our schools. But we now and starting on last year, we had health rooms where we provide our regular medication administration and your routine first aid and care that typically happens if kids fall and get hurt on the playground

151and the like. So we have our health rooms and we also have care rooms where we send students that have COVID-like illness. So the sneezing, the coughing, the runny nose, those things, so that those students can be separated. Our SHAs, our school health... aids they do support one of the two and the place that they support could vary based on the direction given by the principal but while they're supporting one area and FCPS personnel will need to support the other area so that we continue to provide the services and supports needed for our students and so as you had already said Ms. Omesh that Some schools may be electing to use some of the additional CARES funds. They may choose to have additional hourly persons to provide assistance in that way to support the health

152room if the SHA is supporting the care room or vice versa, while others may need support with that pre-work and collecting the data. for contact tracing and others may need supports in the for meal times. And so we're allowing our schools to be able to make those decisions because everyone is situated a little bit differently so that they can develop those individualized plans to support a robust process and support system in their schools. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I would hate to see schools have to use their ESSER funds that could be used perhaps for academic or socio-emotional development for students. On that specifically, perhaps we can look into that particular need because I do know administrators are having to step in in those cases. uh and i appreciate that thoughts started there um and

153hope that we can consider that and miss omesh if i could just add in addition this is an area where the health department has been going under a reorganization and how they are supporting our schools and adding in additional staff to support they're still hiring people and and it's not it's going to take some time for full fruition but they recognize that more staff is needed to support our schools and particularly these rooms. And it's much appreciated. No, I appreciate you. Was that? And I also wanted to note that the funding we provided for monitors was separate from the academic and SEL funding. And so those. The board did provide that additional funding and so that has been pushed out to schools and they can use that funding to support their needs in their building.

154Excellent. Okay. Thank you so much. I also wanted to just ask, I know we've kind of moved past and now we're working with the population that we have, but even in looking at the drop in enrollment that remains, I wonder if you all have theories or ideas or thoughts around how to explain that from what you've seen on the ground. Just thinking in terms of potential fears people might have, concerns as to how things are playing out that could be addressed. I'm just looking at that 178,000 number. Can you give me the first part of your question again there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm looking at slide four. Okay. Just in terms of the in-person student enrollment. Uh-huh, yes. And I'm just curious as to whether we've dug any deeper to see. what caused that

155our theories to what that might be attributed to what what those numbers are well that's that's our 921 that's our annual uh school board presentation report in just a week and a half i have to admit you've caught all right i put a number in but i'd give you the the short quick is we still didn't meet our projection that we had kept from the year before the pandemic but this number of 178 000 represents about i'd say 7 000 more kids that were here with us now than were with us when we closed the school year last year in May or June. So we did return more of our kids and families back to in-person, back to FCPS, which was part of our whole campaign, even if we fell short of our projection, which

156was based, again, two years ago of hoping what our real pre-pandemic numbers return. We did fall short of that. I'll have more to say about it in another week. but we did see a significant increase, over 7,000 at least at this point, of families back with us, back in the FCPS family. And we're hearing from principals anecdotally right now that they are waiting, as we all are waiting, for the FDA. to have the urgency to share the data and make a decision to allow that age to go down from 12 to 5. Emergency authorization for families to choose and kids to choose. We have known for a long time that we were turning kids to school and we're being asked as school superintendents to wait for months. We don't have months to wait. We need

157the FDA to share the data. Be honest about what the risks are. We understand some of the issue is about the risk of myocardial inflammation among 12 to 17 year olds, particularly males. But what is that risk compared to the risk of an elementary school kid contracting COVID or being hospitalized? We need to better, I think, as an American community, understand what that risk is. uh and and again we understand the medical community has a a a big big role to make sure that these vaccines are safe but just what is the data saying that's causing more time because right now every day that we're in school where we could have access to that vaccination it will be a game changer as it was for staff as it has been for middle and high school

158kids it will be for elementary we need that vaccine approval as soon as it's safe to do so. So I really am hoping the FDA, the American Academy of Pediatricians wrote to the FDA asking for an expedited review and we need that review. We need the data. We're not asking for things to be hurried or data to be ignored. But what is the data saying? Let's compare the risk and let the public know what the risks are and then make the decisions that they need to that are best for their family. No, I appreciate that. And speaking of the data, I think, you know, I'll leave it for now, but hopefully in that conversation we do have on our back-to-school report, doing maybe some analysis or just some digging on the causes, you know, of

159why we fell short from that projection or relative to the years. Sure. Yeah, we'll have some analysis, absolutely. And what I shared tonight is not official. Official enrollment actually comes... I know I'm just saying this just because I know how the numbers are. Official enrollment will come actually at the end of September, which will help determine our state funding. But we'll be closer to that date on the 21st and I'll have more nuance and analysis for you then. Great. And since you did emphasize vaccinations, I just wanted to bring back that point on some of our community members. And while I may not agree, of course, and we want to make sure we're all safe and ready, but who may truly have different beliefs or concerns or fears around that, whether we can, in fact,

160look into that antibody test. I know Mr. Attendee, the former student, had mentioned that. I'm and I'd like to elevate that a little bit just to yes and in my remarks I said I would I would bring some updates around testing to our next return to work session yeah okay thank you so much thank you miss Corbett Sanders Thank you. And thank you, Dr. Brabrand, for bringing this presentation to us this evening. I know that it was not originally planned, and so I appreciate the work of both you and your staff in bringing it to us. And it is fairly comprehensive. But because it's comprehensive, it also means that we have a lot of questions. And so we appreciate your patience with us. Sure. I've had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in

161my community and speaking with parents and students about their experiences. And one of the biggest challenges that I see continuously is the enforcement of the mask policy. And it's not only with our students not wearing it. And many you can give them the prompt and they will put it back up over their nose and they will wear it appropriately. Especially our younger kids are very good at learning how to walk in lines and now they're learning how to wear masks. However, some of our teachers are not as well. And so what are you doing to ensure that the mask policy is actually fully enforced? Well, I really appreciate you bringing that to me. You know, Dr. Boyd, I know we've spent a lot of time sharing with principals our expectations around universal masking this year.

162And Dr. Ivey, I know we have as well. One of the things I'd like to say to our community, honestly, as you're hearing this, and again, board members, of course, you too, and I know you will let me know, or Dr. Ivey, when we're hearing of a pattern, this happening at a particular school we definitely want that information so we can follow up with the school leadership and it get a prompt quick response but I want to be clear We went with universal masking the governor mandated universal masking and kids need to wear a mask if they want to come to Fairfax County Public Schools with the exception of those that have the medical and religious religious exemptions that we have always provided for them But the choice not to wear a mask is not

163a choice that's going to be entertained this year by staff or students and I want to be clear tonight to the community and to our Fairfax County staff and students I expect you as superintendent to be wearing a mask every day inside the school building. And if not, we are going to have to follow up and find alternative experiences for you if you willfully refuse a mask after being asked to have it on and have it on appropriately by an adult at the school or supervisor. Thank you. I appreciate that clarification. Additionally, I know that there was some state guidance that was released at the end of August, and it has some recommendations on how school systems should respond given the pandemic. And one of those recommendations is limiting large group settings. We do know

164that in some of our schools, we're continuing to have events in our auditoriums. and that we're having all staff meetings. What are you going to do to address that? I want to say that we have shared, Dr. Ivey, some information. to our principals about looking to try to limit those large gatherings of faculty and students. And I may need to follow up on that one and give you more information on the 21st. But I know that's come up as an issue already by some of our staff members. and i don't know it's probably best dr ivy do you have anything to add or we can bring an update at the next work session brought it up i think we can look at it and and reinforce and and provide additional guidance and expectations we have

165said that for any especially staff meetings or large ones offering a virtual option in addition to in person and to make sure that we're having these meetings in settings that have are very large rooms and so we can follow up and and just this we've had continued to revise and refine our Guidance we can we will be doing so so if we can get an update on that. I'd really appreciate it now You've heard me talk about this quite a bit, the outdoor consumption of food and beverages. I continuously hear from students and parents that we are not consistently ensuring that our students are consuming beverages and food outside. I'm also hearing that some of our beautiful tents that we're putting on the grounds we're having all four walls down. So it essentially is an

166enclosed space. can we get some guidance on expectations on how those tents sure are to be used and along those same lines some guidance as we go into the fall of what we can expect as it gets cooler and whether or not we will be ordering heaters for the outdoor space as well because Yeah, we can do an update for the next one on that. Yes, we've got the tents and now perhaps some additional guidance about the tent use and how much how many sides to have, if any, especially as the weather gets cold. I mean, we're still a little bit away from it, but the weather will turn cooler. And I know the board had some discussion just at the last board meeting about how cold can it go? Well, you know, I do

167think we can do as much as we can and should. monitoring our data but still encouraging kids to go outside you know with a coat on or a jacket and and we need to bring in can bring some additional guidelines around how tents will be used as the weather changes into the fall from I think that would be helpful and it would be better to be able to get that get out in front of this rather than it happening to us and I do have a number of other questions but one that is of particular importance is the notification to families when And what we're hearing from those families is that it's a form letter which really doesn't give the level of detail on the expectations, what they can expect. I know that some of

168the work you've been doing has been on developing a flow chart and a process. I think we need to not only have that flow chart and process, but timeframes, expected timeframes. and what to do if things aren't working. Okay. Who do you call? Because it really is important for people to be able to understand how that works. Sure. What they can expect. It sets those expectations. Same way Ms. Kies-Gamara mentioned about the live streaming. You could put as part of the live streaming a almost like a ticker tape that says this is one direction. If you have questions, you can send an email and expect to have a response back from the staff in 48 hours, 24, 48 hours. But I am concerned that that is putting extra burden on our staff and how we're

169going to compensate them for that extra time. Yes, we'll keep looking at those models as we said and yeah, we'll look at the form letters and we are working on a flow chart that we can have outward to the community that builds in some additional clarity and some expectations. So thank you for that feedback, Ms. Corbett-Sanders. And if we could get it done sooner than later just because it's been a persistent task. Absolutely. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you, Ms. Tolan. I didn't know if you said Tolan or Cohen. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Brabrand, for bringing this update this evening and for all the staff that worked on this. I'm happy to follow a number of my colleagues. And as having one of the high schools in my district that had the

170entire football team out with two positive cases. But everybody else on pause for a very long pause. I'm happy to hear about the new procedures and the new systems and Dr. Boyd thank you for talking about your close work with the health department. And I appreciate Ms. Corbett-Sanders also talking about just the overall communication with families. I think that's a big part of it. You know especially for our working families to have some idea of you know how long is this going on and you know how do i plan and you know make things work for my family so i appreciate the work that has been going on um I did want to ask a little bit about the instructional supports that of course was a big concern too for families you know in particular

171with high school kids and AP classes and dual enrollment and you know etc. So I see Dr. Presidio walking away. I'm just going to ask him. I'm right here and I'll get Dr. Presidio, I promise, if we need him. I was just going to ask, I've had a number of conversations with my regional assistant superintendents too about all of the materials and resources that I know teams put together last year, recording lessons, you know, teams in our schools put things together. I know instructional services put together lots and lots and lots of materials that we used in our virtual program last year. You know, where are those? How quickly can we get them loaded up in Schoology? Is that part of what we need to deal with right now? How can we make these instructional

172materials available as quickly as possible? Our ISD team has just done tremendous work over the summer in preparation for this year. And Dr. Presidio, do you want to talk a little bit about what we've done to really get Schoology off to a great start as it's gone now division-wide from the pilot that we had last year in a number of schools? No, absolutely. And thanks, Ms. Tolan, for that question. And we do still have access in the schools to all those resources that were developed centrally or even developed in the schools that are shared through some of our electronic curriculum repositories. So those materials are still there, and we do encourage schools to use them and post them for asynchronous assignments as well as some of the materials that the board approved in the budget

173for us to purchase, like ST Math and Imagine Learning for literacy. that are more self-directed and differentiated for individual student progress. At the same time though, we also know that a lot of our students did come back to us after the pandemic with some significant learning deficits that we want to make sure that we're addressing and closing. So we also think it's really important for students to have access to the materials that are being taught in school when students are out of school. So it's really trying to have a combination of those materials that are classroom centered and focused. making sure those are available and supplemented with the other materials that we have. Great. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that combination of numbers of materials and, you know, giving the staff some flexibility in figuring

174out what will work for them and for their students. I wanted to ask a little bit about the, or just make a comment really about the outdoor spaces and the tents. Of course, we have had the rainiest August in history. And so I'm hearing from principals that, you know, the floors of the tents are muddy or, you know, the tents are heavy when they're wet. I mean, the tents are really high quality. I don't know if Mr. Plantberg is here. He's been very gracious in allowing some of my principals to put in work orders to take care of some of those situations. I don't want that to be an excuse or a reason for people to not be taking kids outside and not using their tents. So maybe as part of your tent update. we

175can you know i will get a tent update and a mud update on tents yeah for the 21st or just overall tent use of how we can keep using those i just want to make one other quick comment my staff aid provided to all of you a really comprehensive chart of about 12 school districts and what they are doing around quarantining pausing instruction and I you know I think it shows that we're doing some pretty good work but it's a really great resource that we can take a look at maybe for our next meeting too. Thank you no absolutely will do and thanks for sharing that with us. Absolutely. Colleagues if there's no objection I'd like to let our student rep Mr. Chowdhury go next because I know it's late and he does have school

176tomorrow and he's got some comments and questions. Thank you so much. First off, I just want to give a huge thank you to Dr. Brabrand as well as staff and leadership for all of their work in making sure that it's a priority for students who are quarantined to not miss out on more learning. So I really appreciate that piece. And from that, my little bit of feedback is I think it could be really beneficial to look into something where it was on demand so that students could look back and watch a recording and I know that from my personal experience it is a lot easier to watch something that has active teaching in it rather than just kind of reading through PowerPoint slides on your own. But also with that hopefully if it were on

177demand it could be a little bit more flexible for the teachers in terms of Let's say a teacher has four English 9 honors classes. Well, then they could just record that one class and then have that cover all of the students who they teach. And then the other piece with that is, of course, when a student is sick, they might not be able to watch something at the same time as while class is going on because, well, they're sick. Hopefully they're vaccinated. They're a secondary student, though. And then my other just kind of catch-all suggestion, like Ms. Corbett-Sanders mentioned, is with masking, I think we could really, really benefit from some clear guidance on what the expectations are during lunchtime. Because in not just my experience, but also from what I've heard from kids throughout

178the county, it's really common for kids to... be unmasked even when they're getting up and going around the cafeteria or when they're traveling. And so really making sure that it's clear, hey, mask goes on if you're not sitting at your table, that could be major. Yeah, that's really helpful to hear that extra. Part of what we're doing two weeks in is now refining expectations and being clear where we weren't clear enough to get the additional clarity. and i do think you know your point about gosh if you're not really feeling that well is limited streaming i think as we continue to dive into this it's is it a menu of things that we may be able to do we need to really figure that out look at the age appropriateness as uh miss keys gamara

179said and uh again we hope to have a refined approach or approaches to share with you uh on the 21st at our next return to school work session so thank you And I hope, do you have tests tomorrow? Fortunately, no. I have three free periods and then just math. Good. I'm glad you stayed for this, though, to hear this presentation. Thank you. Ms. Cohen? I'm not ceding my time to Pranav anymore. Just kidding. It's a joke. It's a joke, Pranav. I know you're not going to be surprised with what I have to say, but I'm just going to say to you that my grandfather used to say, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. And I just, this limited streaming, Ms. Quiscomara said it much better than I did. I

180give it 48 hours before it turns into concurrent. And we sat here and we said to our families and our staff, we're not going to do that because it's not best practices. And so I just. I can't. I just, I can't. We got to figure out how to work with our principals and our staff. I totally agree we need to be able to better support our kids. Part of that is exactly the work that Dr. Boyd is doing and trying to limit how many are home, how long they're home. You know, we need to get support from ISD to give some good asynchronous materials like they did last year, which was wonderful. People, I mean, we just keep hearing everybody's stretched past maximum capacity and we pile it higher and deeper. And I know we're

181just trying to be responsive and do everything we can to make sure that if kids are home, we're not losing them. But we also got to make sure the kids that are in that we're not losing them. We've got to make sure that the teachers are able to teach in the way we keep saying there's magic in the building. There's magic in the classroom. Nothing's worth. Screwing that up. We've worked too hard to get here. I also worry and I, Mr. Sethi, who's been so amazing, has been going to some of our schools that I've been complaining to him about, but we have huge connectivity issues and I, in many of our schools. And I look and see how on earth are we going to live stream when we got kids who are being kicked

182off the Wi-Fi on the regular. So Mr. Sethi and his team have been wonderful to go out and try to come up with some solutions. But this has been bandwidth, as we know, has been a constant problem in many of our schools. And some of them are just constructed in a way that is not. conducive to having Wi-Fi travel well. So I just encourage that every time, you know, I know you are trying to build a bridge. I know you're trying to work with our principals and our teachers. I want to hear their voice in figuring out how do they best, they don't want to lose these kids for 14 days either. The work on them to help make that up is monumental. So let's work with them to figure out what's the best strategy

183of how we help the kids who are at home. We put one more thing on, we're going to topple this. And I just, I can't be here for it. The health department, I mean, we got to figure out, I hear you, Dr. Boyd. I know you're working your buns off trying to get them to do a better job of getting back to us. But we do, we have kids who are sitting around for 14 days who were just somewhere. you know a lunch table away and they're losing time so we got to figure out whatever this board can do to help if it's conversations with our board of supervisors colleagues and trying to work together to make sure that if they do need to reallocate resources as you said or what needs to happen there's

184money out there there's desire to make this happen and we want to be part of the solution we want to help you fix this so let us help you fix this thanks miss cohen Ms. Marin. Yes. So I'm hopeful and encouraged about this data. I'm not gonna say everything's gonna work out as we all hope, but I'm encouraged by the data. I think that the piece that's missing for me is about that the data presented don't include all the students' impact by pausing. And I just wanna share one example and Dr. Braber and I know you're familiar with this because I've been trying to find relief for this family for since this started on September 1st. We have a family with a third grader who was on pause because possible connection to another third grader.

185That third, his parents are FCPS teachers, both of them. collectively they serve 279 students in our system, high school instructor and a kindergarten instructor. So 280 total plus the student himself who was out. I talked with the county supervisor, I talked with our staff, Dr. Boyd, you, I talked with parents and them every day, did you get the release or not from the health department? When he finally got the okay that he was not a close contact and he did have the negative COVID test, he's still out of school. He has missed two weeks of school. And I think that while we've made some progress in the, you know, in moving the cases forward, and I want to get to that we in a second, quarantine date, quarantine policy disproportionately impacts elementary students and the

186staff who have elementary students. So I'd like us to be clear, because Dr. Boyd, earlier you said just earlier we are able to clear up cases. It's the health department that is the we that is tasked with clearing up the cases. And we need to be clear on where the action is or isn't happening, primarily so that families and staff know where to go to seek the answers about their status. I think we've made some improvements there, but I think that if we can stick to terms of SCPS. health department or county that will help parents figure out where to get their questions answered as well as us you know similarly when we say terms like partner and collaborate with how to county health department i'd like to underscore that we are dealing with it's

187a public health issue And FCPS needs more from Fairfax County and the health department. You know, as I understand what's transpired in recent weeks, it's FCPS that's had to create a workaround for how the vaccine status is transmitted from families to the county health department to speed up the process of that work being backlogged in the county. And that's what kept students out of school for days. So maybe they better know that FCPS has created some workaround. It was FCPS that is leading a plan to obtain and implement COVID testing in our public schools. That is public health. That's public health work. I think that the County Health Department can demonstrate its partnership with FCPS by having its Chief Health Official, Dr. Adewa Iensu, make what would be, I believe, a first visit to our

188schools to understand the challenges and resources that we have to maximize educating children during COVID while keeping everyone as safe as possible. And also, Dr. Brabrand, I'm heartened to hear you talk about, well, let me put a pause, let me hold on that. I believe it's within your purview to request that the county government revisit its implementation of the CDC's recommendation of 14 days of quarantine, knowing that tens of thousands of unvaccinated students who are COVID negative and not eligible for that. I'm not sure if the board needs to give you a motion or whatnot. Ms. Marin, I know you haven't been able to hear the timer go off, but it went off quite a while ago. So if you want to wrap up your thought. Excuse me. I wasn't aware that these remarks were

189timed. Everyone says have been time and I'm happy to put you on a go back just so everybody gets a chance to speak. Sure. I didn't hear you make that. that announcement and usually in meetings we are in times there there are a lot of questions tonight so we wanted to make sure everybody could have an opportunity but i'm happy to put you on a go back and and you know without objection here allow you to finish your thoughts so dr braybran can go ahead and respond just just just very briefly and then dr board if you wanted to add anything to the comments pause data we are collecting the pause data right now we're going to capture all the pause data from up from the first day of school And then it's going to

190be an ongoing collection that we grab, that we grab. We'll control that data, have the database, be able to do the analysis. You know, we are going to continue to work very closely with the health department around improved efficiency. I don't know, Dr. Board, if there was anything else you wanted to say to Ms. Marin's point. We certainly understand it. And as far as the idea of the board indicating support, I am hopeful that we'll continue to have a productive discussion with the health department about whether we can shorten the quarantine time from 14 days to less than that, to 10 or 7. with a negative test and perhaps let me continue to work with the health department around that issue and if we feel dr boyd and i that additional board review or engagement

191is necessary then we can engage you appropriately at a later time but right now i'd like to continue to try to do the efforts that we're currently have ongoing and see if we can have some additional news to report to you soon thank you dr bray brand miss mclachlan Good evening. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Go ahead. great thank you um first of all dr brabrand is you're aware and the board and uh my braddock district constituents i sent you a list of about eight items that i was concerned about um related to our coveted challenges and to return to school so my first question is um three weeks ago before the board came back from its break i had asked for the return to school project management plan It was not

192made available on August 24th at our first work session. I wanted to check on the status of that today. Well, I share with the board weekly, as you know, Ms. McLaughlin, a weekly project management plan, and perhaps we can discuss what additional pieces you're looking for. We also agreed a couple of weeks ago to create a project management team. to do project management even more deeply than we're doing it already. And we are working on hiring that staff and I should have an update on that for you all very soon. That will include the ESSER implementation project work that we're doing as well as all other project management activities. I appreciate that, Dr. Brabrand, respectfully from talking to project management plan experts. A plan is a plan. Updates are different. I have not seen the

193plan. And so updates on a plan, I need to see the plan first in order to then cross-check it with the updates. So I won't take up my three minutes now on this, but I wanted to raise the public's awareness and the board's awareness that I'm concerned that that's still outstanding. And it is. um in terms of my list of eight questions one of the most pressing one that um i asked two weeks ago at our business meeting and parents have continued to write to this board about and that is a virtual learning option especially for elementary school students in light of the delta variant um you know i had suggested that there are other third-party uh online k-12 programs that if we don't have the staff thing and the teachers which i completely understand

194and we don't have the bandwidth to stand up a second campus but where is that information and opportunity because just telling our families that we don't have enough staff i don't i don't think that's really a way of helping to address the legitimate concerns that parents have brought forward in light of Delta variant, which arrived while the board was actually on its summer one month recess. And we count on you and your team to bring to our board if we're going to need some virtual options here. And I'd like to understand more why we're not talking about that and bringing more options to our families to consider for the K-6. So could you comment on that? Can you specifically tell me what you want me to respond to the piece about concurrent or about? No,

195no, no, no. About virtual learning for families who've been all tonight are citizen speakers. And we've gotten hundreds of emails from parents talking about a virtual learning option. for their unvaccinated elementary school kids, similar to Prince George's County, where they were offering it to 12,000 kids. And right now we only offer it to 400 kids. It's in keeping what I asked two weeks ago as well. Well, I mean, as I shared. Staffing is the issue about trying to create additional virtual. We have gone out to look at outside vendors. All of what is left and most stuff is booked. They are already wait list. It is all asynchronous, which is what we are offering right now in FCPS when kids are out. So I don't know, Dr. Presidio, anything else you would add to that?

196I think those are the major issues. Other things that we've looked at when we did a comprehensive review of vendors that might be available over the summer was the lack of provision for special program services like special education services, English language development services, which many of our students in FCPS do require. So the fact that... You know, many of these programs don't offer those services if they do have availability. Many of the programs actually do not even have availability. And then trying to expand the capacity of our program, we come into the limitations with staff availability to staff the programs. So, in other words, if we can't do it for some, we won't do it. for any well i i think the challenge there and i know what you're saying miss mclaughlin but the challenge

197is is to offer it for some we're legally obligated to provide it for an english language kit or a special ed kid and we have to have those supports in place if we can't provide it then we're liable for not providing a free and appropriate public education well i i know we don't have time this evening to go in depth and i i apologize for that dr bray brandon that's why i'll go offline to talk to you about getting the full project management plan i just before i lose my time i just want to emphasize some things other colleagues have said i think we absolutely need to be hearing from you more about these test and stay options especially for as miss dr anderson and mr frisch said kids and families producing um negative covet

198tests and still sitting home and losing instruction and we do need to be looking at surveillance testing and we haven't heard anything about that yet um you know i i knew tonight was not going to be sufficient for us to go into all the issues and challenges related to our covid reopening but i do want to say for our families listening i have been hearing from you especially when your children are out of school for five seven eight twelve days so respectfully where we're concerned about mclaughlin Your time has been up for a while. So if you don't mind just wrapping it up and then we can, you know, at Board Matters have an opportunity. Yeah, I'll wrap up my comments that I think we have to be very careful about telling our families that

199we don't know how to work out the live streaming that isn't going to put a strain on teachers, but with 21st century technology and 50% of our kids were out doing hybrid and virtual learning at the same time. I don't buy it that we can't make it work and try telling a kid to sit home. for 14 days and no instruction at all that is not putting kids first thank you um ms eismorheiser thank you um I appreciate all your team's hard work, especially Dr. Boyd. I know you've been working really hard with the health department, trying to work on trying to streamline our processes and work with the health department so we can get our kids back in school as quickly as possible. I know there's a lot of frustration by families whose kids

200are paused for a while and not hearing from anyone as regarding how long they may take to be paused. So I guess. The first question is, I know our administrators are very overwhelmed trying to sort of do their part in the contact tracing process, and they're working very hard, but can we get some help for our administrators who are doing that contact tracing to, you know, initially do the red capping and then respond to the health department as needed as the health department does their job? What's the plan for that? Well, a couple of things, as we said, we're giving money for school administrators to have folks to help with that, what I call the pre-prep for contact tracing for the county. And we've released money. We're going to have a district-wide position and job

201fair for those positions for schools that need that extra help. So that's one big thing that we're going to do. We're continuing to look at the REDCap process and if there are ways that we can speed it up. And I know Dr. Boyd's been actually meeting with the health department. What else can we do in that REDCap process that gets the right information that lets the contact tracers get moving quicker? I don't know, Dr. Boyd, if there's anything else you'd want to say about that now. We're still looking really, we're going back to look at REDCap. to see if there's anything else that we can do to make it more efficient so the health department can get their cases resolved quicker. Dr. Boyd, anything you would add? Just to echo what Dr. Brabrand said, we

202continue to look at how we can make the submission of positive cases and the corresponding information more efficient. for both parties. So on our end as FCPS submitting the information and then on the health department's end to be able to use that information to contact those potential close contacts. So we are looking to make some revisions. And as Dr. Brabrand said, getting the additional support for buildings is going to be key. This is, you know, former principals, former superintendents, nobody has walked this path before. We had COVID last year, but we had a small number of kids in school. So now this is truly the first time that we have the volume of students that we have, as Dr. Brabrand shared with the data, while we have small transmission. just having one positive case impacts

203the number of students and so there's a lot of response to go with that to make sure that we're keeping everyone safe and so we're continuing to look at that process and i know we talk with our principals we know that it's It's like none other year that they've experienced before and we know that they've been working extremely hard. We're trying to make things a little bit easier and a little bit simpler for them, but also making sure we're being responsive to families and students in our community with the health and safety component. Thank you. And I'd make an advocacy of using some of our ESSER funds if we can to hire floating admins, floating subs that are permanent full-time just to float around to help fill when our admins and teachers may have to

204be paused or go on quarantine as well. So I'm going to put that out there. We need to get support for our people in our building. I want to ask about safety teams. When we bring back safety teams, I keep hearing concerns about masks not being used properly. I hear concerns from teachers who say they want an anonymous way to be able to report this because sometimes it may be their admin and they don't want to do that. So what do we do for safety teams? What are we doing for anonymous ways of reporting? How are we supporting to making sure people are using masks properly? Mr. Smith, can you provide an update about the safety teams? I know we've begun activating them. So I'll start with you, Mr. Smith, and maybe perhaps Mr. Planberg

205has some additional. comments after you yes certainly so we are in the process of hiring and training our safety teams we as the board knows we were able to use ESSER funds to work with an outside firm to help support that safety team work in our schools this year it's important to note that our processes have changed since last year and so we are doing the training on those teams this week we've hired about 16 of the 34 individuals who will be managing that work. We're also hiring a project manager for that work as well as some other support so that we can provide good information to schools. We'll be looking for the correct usage of face masks. We'll be providing feedback on hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette and also cleaning and disinfecting within the

206schools. So as these teams are brought up to speed, we are pushing them out into schools as soon as they are trained and they'll be providing that information. to our administrators about the mitigation strategies in their building. In the meantime, may I suggest using the ombudsman as a way to have some anonymous reporting or some sort of immediate way to at least let teachers and staff be able to report concerns that can then be looked at? Yes, and if I could just add just a little bit, Ms. Seismohuizner, one of the things that they will be doing is taking a look at mask wearing, appropriate and proper mask wearing, which I know is one of your concerns that you've articulated with me before. And to add on to what Mr. Smith had said, with the

207training of these individuals, we have had... anonymous calls to the ombudsman who has reached out to us in the past and I'm sure that will continue in addition to individuals reaching out to members of the school board and that being forwarded on to us to go ahead and bolster some of our practices so thank you for bringing that up perhaps maybe advertising to our teachers this is a way to do it in the meantime would be good if you haven't already I appreciate that I want to bring up the issue of concurrent live streaming, recording. I know you're still exploring. I would say it's really urgent, especially for our young kids as you're exploring to keep in mind that not everybody is self-directed. Right. And so if we're going to record or for just continuing

208asynchronous, we need to have some sort of office hour type thing where there's more than an email check in. And so I wanted to ask, are you considering using intervention time for office hours, using ESSER funds to pay staff to stay after school, to provide a math teacher a support for elementary school kids? What are we doing around that? Whether it's live streaming, whether it's recording that live. touch in that's not concurrent. Right. We have had some discussion about office hours as a potential menu. And so again, as I said earlier, I think we need to. finish working collaboratively with our associations and come up with a menu of recommended options or preferred options and share that with the board on the 21st and then move forward and implement those. Whether it's one or a

209combination of a couple of things that a teacher could, again, tailor to the age appropriateness, the special needs of the kid, we'll work to have more. information at the 21st work session and i have heard bandwidth concerns as well about live streaming what i don't want to get into is promising live streaming and then having it fail right like like i want to make sure if we're going to go that route that the technology will support it and if not we're better off recording perhaps and i'm not trying to put more on teachers with office hours can we use us or funds to part-time things like that so just sure to be creative to provide that support to our students especially with multiple quarantines is my time up oh So one last thing I just

210want to ask about our athletes and the mandated vaccines. You said that if they don't want to get vaccinated, they can submit to weekly testing. Is that also for 12 to 15 year olds who can't who we can't mandate vaccines? Can they do weekly testing? Yes, that's correct. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Brabrand. I know it's late and we actually have another meeting tomorrow and I appreciate you bringing this, putting it together last minute. I think it is very important for us to be nimble and responsive to the things that parents and staff actually are worried about as this pandemic is evolving. And I think this is helpful. And as you see, there are still many outstanding questions that we will have to... have to address. I will say the virtual option that Ms. McLaughlin

211brought up and as you heard there's still a very large number of families who for different reasons still feel that their needs are not being met. And I think the difficulty here is when they see other school districts like Prince William, et cetera, who are using some of these outside vendors, understanding why it works there, but it cannot work for their children here. So I would like some more details, some more follow-up on that. I just still feel like... I don't understand what the difference is. And I think we owe it to those families to explore and to at the very least be communicating why and how in the guidance, et cetera, some of the things you shared tonight. Just a couple of questions. Lunches, are we still allowing schools to put up plexiglass instead

212of going outside? Yes. Okay. That doesn't work for me only because I don't think there's any research, you know, basis for plexiglass. I don't really know what that does. I'd like to understand why we're doing that and what the limitations in the schools that are still doing that are. And I know there are a number of them. Regarding the live streaming, we paid millions of dollars for this technology, millions of dollars. And I'd like to understand what some of the concerns from staff are, but from where I'm sitting, if students are not able to get to class for long periods of time. We owe it to them to do as much as we possibly can to allow them to access. Was that my timer? Okay. So I am very interested in exploring and trying this

213out and finding ways to make this work for kids because they need it, because asynchronous doesn't work at all. I've heard concerns about masks on buses and what we're doing. You know, bus drivers, I think, feel very overwhelmed having to take that on. So I'm still unclear as to what our procedures are and what the communication is to administrators and how we are following up on that. So I would love feedback from that. And I think I will cede the rest of my time and I will say thank you. Well, thank you Chairman Pekarski. I know it was your work with Vice Chairman Seismurheiser to say that we needed to do this tonight and have these pieces of information for you. And again, it remains a work in progress. We don't have everything all tied

214up and we probably even won't in a week or two because there'll be new issues that emerge. What we need to do is continue to model the hard work that everybody is doing to continue to support our kids. they're in school and we want to keep them safe and we want to keep them secure and share with the community our work to do that so we'll keep doing that and we appreciate everything you all asked us tonight and we look forward to following up with you at our next work session Thank you, Dr. Brabrand. Agenda item 4.01, confirmation of action taken in closed meeting. This is a portion of the meeting where the board will confirm any action regarding issues that were discussed in the closed meeting. These issues may include action taken regarding student

215disciplinary matters. Board members have discussed each individual case and at this time will make several motions to confirm the recommended action. I call on Dr. Anderson for a motion. I move to excuse from attendance at certain at school certain students identified in closed meeting pursuant to Virginia code section 22.1-254B1. Seconded. Seconded by Ms. Corbett-Sanders. All those in favor please raise your hand. Dr. Anderson, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Omesh, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Bukarski, and if there are any virtual votes, please say them. This is Melanie Marin. I'm abstaining. Thank you. Okay. All those against, please raise your hands. All those abstaining. Ms. Seismorheiser. Ms. Cohen, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Kies-Gamara. Okay, my motion passes. And Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. Marin. Thank you, Ms. Marin voted yes. But thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. No? I heard her say abstaining. Okay.

216Ms. Marin, did you abstain? I did abstain. Thank you, Ms. Marin. This technology is not working very well for us tonight. Okay. Agenda item 4.02, ESSER II, follow on motion. I call on Ms. Emesh for a motion. I move to direct the superintendent to explore modification of the bonus disparity for hourly contract workers from 2021 summer school retroactively to reflect $1,000 instead of 500 using ESSER II funds and to report back to the school board on this action at the following public board meeting. Is there a second? Seeing none, that motion fails. I will now turn to Ms. Sizemore-Heiser to go over consent agenda and new business. Our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure, Robert's Rules, provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion. Many items listed

217have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance. Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting. The consent agenda items are on the screen. Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda? Seeing and hearing no objection, the consent agenda is approved. Agenda item number six, new business. The following new business agenda items, there will not be a vote on these items, but action is scheduled at a future meeting. The new business items are on the screen. Agenda item 7.01, superintendent matters. I call on Dr. Brabrand. I'll be super quick. I know the hour is late. I do want to thank the board for referencing 9-11 earlier tonight in conversation, which was a very

218important conversation to have. And we are commemorating and acknowledging the loss of life, the heroism of our first responders, and the continued resilience of our country 20 years since 9-11. Schools will have a special moment of silence tomorrow. and all students in grades three through 12 will have the opportunity to learn about and recognize the significance of the anniversary of 9-11. And I just wanted to say that we all were affected in profound ways, our society was, and I certainly remember it too as a young administrator at Herndon going classroom to classroom. And I would just say this, I walked in one classroom with social studies just as the towers fell. And I just turned to the class I remember and said, you know, we'll get through this. And 20 years later, as we're in

219a different challenge that we face, there's a chance for our humanity to come together as messy as it's been, I still think. the best of us can come through even this pandemic and we can we can be a better school system of better people and a better community and uh it happened before at 9 11 and it can happen again so thank you very much and thank you for um your questions uh this evening around return to school i'm confident we can have a successful year and we will defeat We will come out of this pandemic. It's just taking hard work from all of us to do it, but we can do it and we'll do it with this board in partnership. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Brabrand. Agenda item 8.01, board matters. And I

220call on Dr. Anderson. Thank you. Being that the hour is late, I'll be very quick. And the essence of the conversation this evening that we are honoring folks who have lost their lives. I do want to send our heartfelt condolences to one of our instructional coaches at Justice High School. Her son was one of the five sailors that was killed in a Navy helicopter crash off the coast of California earlier this week. And so we thank her and him for his service and we offer our condolences to the Friedle family and their friends. Very quickly, we're accepting applications for the Mason District Representative for Basel Resources Review Committee. If you're interested, please get in touch with me. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. Next, I will go to this side, Ms. Corbett Sanders. Thank you.

221Today, this community laid to rest a community hero, George Alba. George was such a passionate advocate for social justice. He served on the county's Human Rights Commission, the county's Semi-Quincentennial Commission, and was an avid historian. George inspired a group of young girls in 2014 to advocate. to the school board for changing the name of their school. The work led to the development and refinement of the school system's name change policy and subsequently the change of Justice High School. I want to extend my condolences to the Albor and Spain family and know that you have, that George has left an indelible mark on Fairfax County. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Corbett-Sanders. Ms. Marin. Yes, thank you. I did just want to finish the one piece of information about return to school and just underscore, Dr. Brabrand,

222that, you know, we really need direction and not guidance about the issues that we're seeing, you know, direction on the outdoor spacesuits, direction on keeping 10 flaps up, direction to keep every other bus window open, direction to correct mask wearing. And I think in some instances maybe has been formal direction, but we learn a lot about guidance. And I think that we need to realize we can't please everyone. We know we can't please everyone and that everyone's going to be able to execute everything, you know, perfectly. But if we keep the direction rather than just a suggestion, I think that that will help. I don't know that I have much more to say this evening. It's been a lot of very full days. My children are really enjoying being back in school. Teachers are wonderful.

223And I just hope we can all stay safe and keep up our vigilance in being healthy, mask, vaxxed, tested. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mayor and Ms. Omesh, followed by Ms. Tolan. Thank you. Happy to follow comments made by... Ms. Corbett Sanders about our late friend Mr. Albor, as well as Mr. Langer, who's another we lost, who was a champion of English language learning programs and students. I did want to make sure I highlighted and reminded everyone that September is National Suicide Awareness Month, and tomorrow is actually National Suicide Prevention Day. I remember I think back at my first personal experience around this topic in high school when hearing from a friend of mine in Girl Scouting who shared just how shocked she was at losing her own friend. And I bring this up because

224we hear the word suicide and think that it's distant. We think that it's far from home. You know, I remember how my friend shared how impossible she thought it was that this person who was so bubbly and full of life would have experienced so much pain and difficulty to take her own life. And research shows us really that it could be anyone, that it's not always predictable and that it might be the person we expect least. According to the CDC, each year more than 41,000 people pass by suicide, and it is the second leading cause of death amongst youth ages 10 to 24. It's also the highest gun violence outcome by far, with 60% of adult deaths to guns being to suicide. We need to work against the stigma associated with getting help. Over a

225third of our FCPS students have experienced depressive symptoms and 15% have contemplated suicide. That's tens of thousands of our students. About half of them have actually attempted it. And that's all before numbers that are before COVID. I remind folks that there is help. We have hotlines, we have texting services in the county. We also have our school psychologists, our social workers and our counselors who are available in our schools. I hope we can exhibit kindness to one another and take the chance to talk about this in age-appropriate ways as we take one step against the stigma. Thank you. Ms. Tolan. Yes, thank you. I want to encourage everybody to get up and watch Fox 5 tomorrow. The McLean High School band, cheer team, and football team will be on TV to celebrate our return to

226school. We talked a lot today about the health issues around returning to school. In our Langley and McLean pyramids in particular, we've had a lot of issues with transportation. And I was very happy to, just in the last few days, go to Great Falls and Forestville, and I want to encourage people to use our Kiss and Ride. to follow all of the Kiss and Ride rules and to note that we've had incredible improvements in our Kiss and Ride times in the last week or so. So I was at Forestville the other day. We timed it. It was 15 minutes for everybody to get through Kiss and Ride, which was a huge improvement from the week before. So please listen to your principals and what those... procedures are for Kiss and Ride to keep it moving

227smoothly. We're still working on transportation issues. I know we're trying to hire more bus drivers, and I'm really looking forward to getting them on the road and continue to work with transportation on creative issues, our creative means to get around some of these transportation issues. To our Herndon families that dealt with the very long pause and quarantine issues over the past two weeks. I'm sorry that we weren't more prepared as we started out the school year, but I'm very happy to hear about the improvements tonight, and I thank staff for working on those. And I will be working with our Region 1 staff to be sure the school missed by these students will be made up as efficiently as possible. This Saturday I'm excited to be at Lemon Road and stopping by Dranesville Elementary School

228for their September 1 service events. So I'm really excited to participate in that. And congratulations to Jesse Kraft, our Coates Elementary School principal, who was just promoted to be a Region 3 executive principal. It's a promotion well-deserved, but we will miss him. And we'll start our process to find a new principal for Coates Elementary School on September 14th. And I also just wanted to close by wishing our Jewish families happy holidays. you know your holiday season has already started and proceeds and i hope it's going well for you thank you miss kisgomar followed by miss mclachlan Thank you. I have just two things I want to mention at this late hour. I too do want to extend my condolences to the Spain family at the loss of a real hero in my eyes, Mr. George

229Alba. When I joined the board in 2017, he was one of the first people to reach out to me to... to impart wisdom on the importance of the name change of the Justice High School. He has been a friend. He has been a supporter. He and his lovely wife, Evelyn, just represent kindness and friendship. But more than anything, well, not really more than anything, but in addition to that, George was really just a great leader. He was dedicated to creating change and making us look at what needed to be addressed to make sure that every child had access to education that they had. people who represented who they were. And he has been a real champion for Fairfax County. And I hope that we consider perhaps recognizing him at some later date after his wife

230has had some time. But I do just want to honor their family and to let them know that they both have been so very, very special. to me personally and I believe to our school system. Next, I want to point out that as in every year in Virginia, we have yet another election coming up and our seniors can register to vote up until October 9th. So those who will be 18 before election day, you can register and I want to encourage you to do so. Thank everyone. I thank everyone for this discussion tonight and I bid you a good night. McLaughlin. Yes, thank you. I first want to thank Dr. Anderson for talking about the loss of Navy sailor Paul Fridley. Paul Fridley was a Woodson High School graduate in 2011. He played sports with

231my oldest son and was highly revered as one of the most wonderful young men to pass through Woodson in decades. His loss is being deeply felt by not just the Woodson faculty and all the alumni and students who knew and loved him, but our neighborhood community in the Woodson Pyramid. It's truly a tragic loss of such a young man who leaves behind a wife and their unborn child. I also want to acknowledge the loss of another Woodson graduate, 2015. who was also a classmate and friend to my boys. And that too is hitting our community in Woodson very hard. And it's been brought to my attention that we also recently lost a 2019 graduate from TJ. And that too has been very hard on the teachers and the students who knew and loved that young

232person. So I do want to echo what my colleague, Arora Amesha, said about National Suicide Prevention Week. That is near and dear to my heart and something I've championed with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention for many years now. And I hope that we will all. continue to promote the importance of removing the stigma that comes with talking openly and really supporting all those who have experienced this loss. I also want to again say to what Ms. Toland said to all of our Jewish community. a blessed and happy Rosh Hashanah and a solemn Yom Kippur during the High Holy Days. I do hope that our families are finding that our teachers and school staff are being supportive as they celebrate these most sacred holidays of their faith. And finally, I will just say that while

233I appreciated the board was able to have one hour to ask questions and comment on the return to school and the COVID challenges, I hope my colleagues will join me in continuing to ask the superintendent to provide us with far greater details about all of the important questions we asked. It's essential. Our families are counting on it. Our employees are counting on it. And we barely scratched the surface tonight. So I look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow for the working retreat that we have. And I hope in the afternoon we will focus on our number one priority, which is returning to school, learning loss, and working from there. Thank you and good night to everybody. Mr. Frisch, followed by Ms. Cohen. Thank you. I'll keep it brief. I want to thank Providence District families for

234continuing to reach out and share their experiences with the return to school this fall with me. It's been an integral part of the work our board is doing to make sure we get this right and that we fix the problems as they come up. And it's enabled us to work with the superintendent and his team to smooth the rough edges that have popped up along the way. It can be very frustrating. after being in this pandemic this long to finally have the end in sight and to have it just lingering off there in the distance like it's some kind of a cartoon mirage. But if we all work together, if we all wear our masks and get vaccinated and do our part, we can see it through to the end. And that's my hope for

235the year ahead, that we all do our part, that we get this right, and we work together. Thank you. I like that you mentioned the year ahead because as many folks mentioned, we just began our new year of 5283. And this 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are our days of repentance. And it's not about just thinking about the past and what you reflect on, what you might have done differently. It's also about making sure that you don't repeat the same mistakes again. And this year, our rabbi gave a sermon about community. And it was incredibly meaningful to me because I think at the heart of all we're doing, even when we're at odds with one another, we're all just trying to do the right thing for our community. and everybody's trying to

236do their best. And so it's in that spirit that I certainly say to all staff, I know everybody's working their hardest and the frustrations that you hear from all of us is not because we think you're not giving it everything that you have. We know you are. And we know that you're just as anxious to get back to precedented as we are. And we appreciate all the hard work that you're doing to help us get there. And this is no small feat here that we're a few weeks in. I just want to bring us back again that I every single day see happy kids walk into these school buildings and see happy kids walk out. And thank you for making that happen. Ms. Eiswarheiser. I'm finding it really difficult to follow Ms. Cohen because she's

237just so amazing in being able to say anything I want to say, but so much better. So thank you for your great sentiments, and I share them. And so I will keep this as brief as I don't normally do and just say that. Well, I appreciate the community reaching out and sharing with us the experiences, the frustrations, the need to improve. I appreciate our staff being willing to listen with calm and patience and work incredibly hard to improve. I know that we all left here. at the end of last year and in a very different sort of state of being with COVID. And it seems like overnight we came back to, you know, it's like back to the future kind of thing. And it's a whiplash that was hard mentally for all of us to

238adjust to. So I appreciate the fact that you guys. leadership team, our principals, our teachers are keeping on keeping on and making those adjustments and changing even as we're frustrated, our community's frustrated. I know our health department's working hard. You all are working hard. I just want to say thank you. I want to say thank you for adapting the procedures, our lunch plans, and just thank you for sticking with it. even though the unprecedented times weren't supposed to be unprecedented as much as they still are. And I just want to make a real shout out to our transportation staff and Jeff and Francine and Paul and I know it was a huge mess at the beginning of the school year and it seemed like very quickly things turned around and there's still work to be

239done, but it was miraculous how quickly things were turned around. So thank you to them and. We all want to do what's best for kids and I hope that everyone who's out there knows that we're all trying to do what's best for kids. We know when you reach out to us that it's from the vein of wanting to do what's best for kids. And if we can keep that centered in our work and in our wearing our masks and our safety, I think we'll get through this together. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank Ms. Corbett Sanders and Ms. Kees-Gamara for talking about Mr. Albert. He was my constituent and he has given a lot to this. School division and I do look forward in the future especially when his family may be able

240to join us about doing something to honor his work and everything he's done for us and and the students here so I would love to Make that happen. Thank you. I Had some great back-to-school nights this week and I am Looking forward and invite all of you to come to the rocky run middle school run walk being sponsored by the nonprofit ASHA Geotheon on September 19th at 8 a.m. in Fairfax Corner. And for those of you who don't know, this is a nonprofit based in my district who has given many, many. many thousands of dollars and invested in our schools at rocky run at brookfield they sponsored the innovation lab at chantilly and they continue to give back to the community so i would love to support them because they support our schools at every

241chance. I also want to just give a quick congratulations to some of my students, Chantilly High School student, Jitike Gorthy, who was a summer intern at NASA. And she's incredible. You can read about it in my newsletter, as well as Chantilly High School sophomore Rudra Devey, who earned his Eagle Scout rank this year. He's also, his story is in my newsletter. And of course, a shout out to Thomas Jefferson High School Social Club Juniors, Sophia Lee, Ananya Bandaru, and Drishika. Bosye and Jaya Gupta, and sophomores Harika Kundu and Anika Holder, who created the club and provide space for students to discuss ongoing social issues and current events. And they're doing some really great work that I've loved them sharing with us. And I hope to share with all of you. We've got so many great

242students. I love showcasing them when we have the opportunity. Thank you, everyone. It was a long night. I think it was. was productive and I look forward to seeing all of you tomorrow morning. We're adjourned.