001It is four o'clock and Mr. Frisch and I are very excited to be here today to discuss the joint environmental task force goals and our plan to move forward. So let's take attendance to make sure we have all of our board members here and microphones working. We have Dr. Anderson, Ms. Cowan, I'm not sure if I see her, Ms. Carpet-Sanders. Good afternoon. Ms. Dernot-Kofax, I saw you. There's Ms. Cowan. Ms. Cowan, can you check your microphone? Sorry, I'm here. Thank you. Mr. Frisch? Hello. Ms. Kees-Gamara? Good afternoon. Almost evening, everyone. Ms. McLaughlin mentioned she may be a few minutes late, so we'll watch for her to join us in a little bit. Ms. Marin? Hello. Ms. Amesh? Here. Ms. Bukarski? Hi, everyone. Ms. Sizemore-Heiser? Hello, everybody. And Ms. Dyrna Kofax. Hi. Good afternoon. Hi, there.
002Thank you for being here, everyone. Okay. As I mentioned, a huge welcome to our discussion on the Joint Environmental Task Force Goals. I would like to... In this case, put a big thank you out to the community members that have worked with us over the past almost two years on these goals. And those community members included a number of our students from our high schools that participated in a huge, huge thank you to them. Also, a huge thank you to supervisors Dan Stork and Penny Gross for serving on the Joint Environmental Task Force with school board members over the years. And a special thanks to our school board member, Karen Corbett Sanders, who worked with Sharon Bulova to have the vision to start the Joint Environmental Task Force in April of 2019. Thank you, Karen.
003And thanks, too, to previous board members, Pat Hines and Dahlia Palczyk, for their early leadership to form the community group and to get JET going. We have made progress working on these goals for over one year with significant community input. In October 2020, this board voted to allow staff to collaborate with county staff to evaluate and develop a plan for moving forward with these goals. Today, we will hear where staff is with this work. FCPS and Fairfax County are on the forefront of thinking about environmental stewardship. We submitted some information to the Virginia School Board Association to do a short presentation on this effort at their July conference. When they saw what we were doing, they reached out and asked for not just a short presentation, but a one-hour webinar. So both Mr. Frisch and
004I and Mr. Plattenberg participated in that on just this month, June 8th. One unique aspect of this work that I'd like to point out is the countywide collaboration and for FCPS, the cross-departmental work that is happening. Our ISD and Get to Green staff is working with our energy and our design and construction staff to jointly provide opportunities for our students to be engaged. And I'm, of course, super excited about that because that was one of the main tenants of our Get to Green programming from the very beginning. We have a few new people at our jet table and working with our team that I just want to mention today. Brady Rausch is our new SCPS Sustainability Coordinator. And Heather Dietz is new in Design and Construction as an Assistant Director. And they have both been
005instrumental in helping us work on moving these goals forward. Today we are here to bring the board and community up to date on work that has been done with county staff since the fall. We will vote at our July meeting on what our next steps will be in this work, accepting these goals, regular monitoring of progress, and perhaps developing updates to our environmental stewardship policy 8425. We'll make a decision on that or just talk about that today. So today is informational. Although it is tempting, and I certainly am one that could talk about this for hours, today we don't want to get into all of the technical aspects of how these goals will be implemented. We do have some significant reports. Some of them are on board docs. We have a big net zero report
006that was produced earlier this year that outlined a lot of those, the nitty-gritty details of how we might actually implement this. Our conversation today should center around where we are, where we are heading, and how we are coordinating with the county overall. The goals you will hear about today are aspirational. They are a stretch, perhaps, and will take a concerted effort across the county to achieve them. I think what you'll hear today, though, is that staff is really excited to work toward this. With uncertainties around changing and enhancing technologies, state and federal legislation and funding, budgetary constraints, partnership opportunities, etc. Just when these goals may be obtained may be uncertain and some of the goals we may even achieve earlier than what we talk about today. The goals are worthy and we will monitor our
007progress toward them regularly as FCPS works hand in hand with county staff, the Board of Supervisors, and the community. So with that introduction, I will turn it over to staff, and then we will follow our usual work session protocols where we have each board member have three minutes for questions and comments, and we'll move forward with that. So Mr. Plattenberg, if you would like to start us off with the presentation, we're happy to move on. Thank you, Ms. Tolan, and thank you, Mr. Frisch, and all the members of the board, and also Dr. Brabrand, for giving us the opportunity, really, to talk about the Joint Environmental Task Force. So, really, what is it? So, as we advance through these slides, I'll try to be brief, because I'm sure you're going to have lots of questions
008that we're going to be getting to. The first slide really talks about having a look at what the school board has been asking us to do. all across the division through budgetary process, through program implementation. And it really is talking about bringing all the right voices into the room. The JET, as you heard from his tone, was established in April of 2019, and it was established by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the Fairfax County School Board. And the mission was for us to join the political administrative capabilities of the county and the school system to proactively address climate change, environmental sustainability. In the spring and summer of 2019, the JET Executive Committee solicited community members to round out the membership, drafted the mission statement, and developed focus areas. The JETS, composed of 13
009members from the Board of Supervisors and the School Board and the community at large, as was mentioned by Ms. Tolan, the Executive Board consists of Supervisor Dan Stork, Supervisor Penny Gross, School Board Member Elaine Tolan, and School Board Member Carl Frisch. Task Force members include Richard Aiken, Karen Camblin, Richard Clayton, Meg Maul, Susan Stillman, Samita Shamra-Thomas, Greg Ulces, and Task Force student members include Winnie Gao and Ari Kim. Well, the next slide really talks about what it is in our implementation priorities that they shall be implemented, as it says, through the one Fairfax lens and recognizing the importance of environmental justice. All county and school initiatives undertaken as a result of these recommendations shall be implemented through that one Fairfax lens with a prioritization on equity. So as I said, the next slide really is
010our mission and the mission of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, School Board, Joint Environmental Task Force, or JET. is to join the political administrative capabilities of the county and the school system to proactively and equitably address climate change and environmental sustainability. The JET will include community partners from higher education, industry, community, and student advocacy groups to recommend aggressive goals in areas of common county and school operations and influence, such as workforce development, infrastructure and sustainability of public facilities and transportation, land use planning, communication and community engagement, and other challenges and opportunities as they arise. The JET will provide a forum for informing, advising, collaborating, and addressing countywide issues and allowing institutional policies and practices pertaining to climate change and environmental sustainability through the lens of the one Fairfax and to appointing bodies. So the
011area focuses are identified on the next slide. And really, the area focuses, excuse me, include energy, transportation, waste management, recycling, and workforce development. Those are the four overarching focus areas, and they were chosen of priority focus by subcommittees which were formed to work with staff to understand existing practices and policies and to draft recommendations. The next slide, we talk about establishing the goals after we identify the areas of focus. We establish the goals. In the case of energy, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, the Fairfax County Park Authority, the Fairfax County Regional Housing Authority, and the Fairfax County School Board should commit to being energy carbon neutral by 2040. In the areas of solid waste and recycling, Fairfax County government schools should set an aspirational goal to be at zero waste by 2030. In the
012area of workforce, the Fairfax County government schools should provide additional resources for students and adult learners to know about and pursue green career paths. And in the area of transportation, they have Fairfax County Connector bus fleet transition to electric or other non-carbon emitting alternatives by 2030. And the Fairfax County Public Schools bus fleet by 2035. And all non-bus fleet vehicles that have electric alternatives should be transitioned by 2035. This was recently modified by the Board of Supervisors, and we'll get into that a little bit more in just a bit. In regard to the energy goals on the next slide. As we mentioned, the carbon neutrality. The JET recommends as an overarching goal that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, the Fairfax County Park Authority, the Fairfax County Regional Housing Authority, and the Fairfax County School
013Board commit to being energy carbon neutral by 2040. Now, carbon neutral is an overarching goal. It covers many areas that will require multiple actions and responses across FCPS as an organization, and really across the county as a whole. Carbon emissions. to achieve 50% emissions reductions by 2030 as compared to the 2019 baseline. And we've been talking about that baseline in some of our reviews, but that was the goal that was agreed upon. Greenhouse gas emissions inventory is something that we've done in Fairfax County Public Schools since 2008. And in that time, we've experienced a gross reduction over 30%, which is massive. It's best in class. And I would submit to you that no other school division at the scale of Fairfax County Public Schools with the growth that we've endured during that period of time
014has had a similar reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint. Clean renewable energy produced 25% of the county energy use from in-county renewable energy generation by 2030 and 50% by 2040 using the 2019 energy base as the baseline. Number four, building energy performance standards for existing buildings to decrease the total energy usage for all county facilities by 25% by 2030 and 50% by 2040 as compared to the 2019 baseline. Since 2014, the baseline year used in Better Buildings Challenge, Fairfax County Public Schools has exceeded our goal of 20% reduction in energy use. Number five, the net zero commitment. All new county buildings and major renovation projects beginning planning and design in 2021 and after must achieve net zero energy performance, or NCE, as defined by below, unless the county staff advises
015that the board prior to the 30% design phase, why that project cannot meet the NCE standard. And we did that because we have a number of aging facilities that may or may not be able to achieve that, and we want to be realistic in that goal. The next energy goal is transportation goals. And the transportation goal, when we talk about bus and fleet replacement, as we'll go ahead and talk about bus and fleet replacement, the JET recommends that the Fairfax County Connector and diesel bus fleet be transitioned to electric alternatives by 2030 and the FCPS fleet by 2035. Appropriate benchmarks will be determined to help measure progress toward achieving these goals, determine which vehicles have electric or other non-carbon emitting alternatives, and transition them by 2035, and to develop a plan for mitigating the carbon
016footprint of others. Appropriate benchmarks will be determined to help measure progress towards achieving these goals. Number two on this slide is the charging infrastructure. Necessary charging infrastructure will be installed to scale as the fleet grows. Wherever possible, charging infrastructure will serve FCPS and the county. Number three is clean fuel. To develop a plan to fuel these electric vehicles using non-carbon emitting fuels and carbon offsets with a complete transition to 100% clean fuel by 2030. And number four, improving options and programs for safe biking and walking. The forthcoming active Fairfax plan should prioritize increasing safe, well-designed, ADA compliant, and interconnected, including with mass transit options for biking, walking, and running. expand and promote programs that incentivize biking and walking to school and work, ensure adequate bike racks at schools and transportation hubs, hold countywide events promoting
017trail systems including bike rides, walks, etc. Then the last one is grant opportunities for us to apply for grant funding for electric buses and affiliated charging stations wherever possible. Now, FCPS is not a lead agency in all of these. And several jet transportation recommendations, the lead agencies would be the Fairfax County Department of Transportation, for example, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and the Fairfax County Park Authority. And this is what's so amazing about the overall jet. It takes all of us. As we say, it takes a village to raise a child. It takes all of us when we talk about these jet goals. So the next slide, we'll talk about zero waste. The JET recommends that the Fairfax County government and schools set an aspirational goal to be at zero waste by 2030. A plan
018for achieving zero waste by 2030 must be prepared by staff by the end of the second quarter of current year 2021. And the plan would be prepared for staff and should include staff ideas, possibly via preliminary survey, about how to reduce the amount of waste in their offices and classrooms. Incentives should be considered for the best ideas. Number two, trash and recycling audit. FCPS is not a lead agency under goal number two because of who provides the refuse and recycling through the county. It's done by the county. The audit should be planned and implemented to get a better idea as to how and what residents and businesses are throwing away and or recycling. And an audit would examine representative samples, for example, 200 pounds of trash and recycling, with several staff dedicated to sorting and
019examining over a period of several days to get better data. In the time of COVID-19, a trash audit obviously would require many more limitations and stipulations. But as we progress ahead of that, such things as Tyvek suits, et cetera, may not be necessary. But it points out that there may be additional budgetary and requirements to deal with the health component in addition to the solid waste sample survey that staff may be requesting. Procurement number three, the county government schools should undertake a review of purchasing. What's being ordered and what's being used? And I can tell you, we've already started doing that. especially paper supplies and other items that can be recycled, and develop a sustainable purchasing program to include recycled content, paper, and plastics, and elimination of single-use plastics. Of particular concern now is really
020the number of electronic devices, laptops, cell phones, and other electronic peripherals that are needed for teleworking and really the modern way for us to provide any type of distance learning and so forth, and our implementation of the advancement of more technology. Although many devices still have value in the current market after the hard drive is wiped, e-waste must be considered and addressed. Number four, composting. Composting is a simple, effective, environmental-friendly activity that should be a significant part of any zero-waste plan. County government and schools should encourage expanding composting in both public and private venues and should undertake a strong educational program in multiple languages about waste and recycling for the general public. Number five, schools recycling. These recommendations focused on schools and really most likely would need to be delayed until we get back to
021the in-person classes. But to find an advocate for recycling and reduction in each school, expand and continue our amazing school partnership with the Green Flag Program and of the Natural Wildlife Federation to seek and expand our business partnerships and find a model for sharing school supplies. In the next slide, we'll talk about the workforce development goals. In the first one, we talked about the Green Career Toolkit. The JET recommends that Fairfax County Public Schools counselors and Career Center staff be equipped with a standardized toolkit for talking with students about the range of green careers and the background necessary to enter those careers, to ensure the presence of green career professionals in career days and also on student interview days. Item number two is solar job opportunities. Work with local solar installers to investigate job opportunities
022for new high school graduates, those with a two-year degree, and those graduating with Fairfax County job programs. determine what training is needed for job entry and how jobs can be advertised to the potential employees. We have a major solar program underway, but having this conversation beforehand and a result of these JET goals in the committee would have given us the opportunity to build in that procurement such things as possible job exploration opportunities with the vendors responding. That's the type of comprehensive approach that we're outcropping from the JET committee goals and the criteria. Number three, the green career programs. Develop a comprehensive plan to offer one or more green career economy-related programs for high school students to encourage participation in this emerging job market. Opportunities could include specialized training or certificate programs, job shattering, internships, and
023real-world workforce experience in fields such as electronic vehicle maintenance, solar panel installation, LEED Green Associate Certification, sustainable landscaping, and much more. This could be done as a model to an existing course, an after-school program, curriculum submitted as appropriate in an existing course or program or new course or any other ideas that may come up. Number four is utilizing buildings as learning tools. We've been talking about this for quite some time in facilities, and we definitely have opportunities there to develop a plan to utilize county buildings and schools as learning tools. As solar panels are installed or net zero building practices are utilized, and the county continues its use of sustainable building and architecture, is really to utilize those as learning tools to ensure building occupants have the opportunities to learn about all of the building's
024sustainable features. their educational tools such as signage, dashboards and interactive models. So what we do is those were the different goals that were provided. And then we transition to, OK, the next slide about how do we conceptualize the take that into the operationalizing of all of these concepts? And we identify where we are and the considerations after the committee work is where I think the real work begins. It was amazing bringing the groups together, the diversity of input, the voices that were raised up in those meetings and the ideas that created these goals. But to operationalize it is really getting on to how do we make this really work in the workplace? And it takes taking this planning, working with the budgeting and the phased approaches and then tracking our process and doing that 360
025review. As was mentioned, there are going to be reports that will be committed and provided as an ongoing portion of the operation of the actual Jet Committee work, because it doesn't end with just the goals being established. What happens and what we've done is when we were looking at the purchase of our buses, we went ahead and stopped that procurement. And we worked with the county to say, look, if we're going to go ahead and make this purchase that we do annually, we have to look at what that would involve. Do we have the ability to start the conversion to the electric buses immediately? And what we found is that we don't have the infrastructure in place, but it's the type of working together, getting the voices in the room. So we actually stop, we
026look at the landscape, we look at the procurement, we see when and a formal commitment on when we can actually go ahead and move forward with phasing in our electric fleet. Because if we buy buses now and we take a look at 2021 and what the goal was as to when we were going to go ahead and have the fleet phased out, when you looked at the average age of a bus is 12 years and beyond, 2021 and 12 years long is 2033. So when we were talking about phasing in all of our bus fleet to be electric by 2034, 2035, when you're looking at that time frame, If you don't begin now, you won't get there. So begin with the end in mind, as Covey says, and really bringing everybody into the conversation. So
027what we found is we were still in our infancy. But having this conversation at this point, we've not only gone out and had, I call them field trips, where we've gone to Montgomery County, where they developed a business plan that we're looking at very seriously and analyzed. We've looked at their business plan as to how to take a look at all their operational costs and their lease costs and their maintenance costs. And they've invested that in their fuel costs into what the total cost would be for them to convert their entire fleet of buses to electric buses. Well, they had a leasing agent that came in that provided them what they felt was a very good financial opportunity. And for the same cost of all of those total cost of ownership components, the fuel, the
028maintenance, and the actual bus costs themselves, they could go ahead and lease their fleet with converting it over a period of time, which is exactly aligned with our jet goal. In addition to going over and visiting with them and talking to them and getting copies of their RFP and looking at how that would best be approached here in Fairfax County. We've also had conversations where we've gone ahead and brought other lending agencies to come in and take a look at our fleet, to take a look at the infrastructure that we've had put in place in our partnership with Dominion for the eight electrical buses, and to see where we can expand those programs. We have a draft of a, as was mentioned, apply for individual grants. We've taken a look at that draft. Unfortunately, that
029initial grant application that we've done a lot of work to get prepared. It requires a significant capital outlay that really doesn't seem to be cost effective right now because we as a school system would have to pay in addition for the installation of the charging stations and the way this grant was was phrased. It is that we'd have to pay half of the total cost of the electric fleet. However, looking at those options, looking at those possibilities. exactly is what I'm talking about when we talk about operationalizing. There are many more examples. Our solar initiative is just one other example. I'm remiss that I wish we had had the JET committee work done before. We partnered with the county. It was their procurement, actually. But before the county and schools and park authority got together
030on that solar RFI and RFP. and went ahead and included the learning component of that because that would have aligned with what you have heard in this presentation. So really the last slide that I get to is when we talk about dreaming of a better future, right? We have two ways to go. And Mr. Frisch was really good about saying that we can go a clean way or we can go a dirty way. And the reality is the school board and board of supervisors may be two separate entities and have many different responsibilities, but we both have the common thread and our common interest in the environment. It's going to require collaboration on all sides, the park authority, the schools, BDOT, the county and school board working together to make this positive impact in our
031environment. And the JET is going to continue to provide a forum for informing, advising, collaborating, and addressing countywide issues and allowing institutional policies and practices pertaining to climate change and environmental sustainability through the lens of One Fairfax and the appointing bodies. So I'd like to conclude by saying thank you for giving me the opportunity to present. Again, I'd like to recognize Ms. Toland and Mr. Frisch for their excellent work and the rest of the committee members that are all here present today. Mr. Smith and Dr. Brabant for their support because this, although we do have some significant aspirational goals, if we don't begin working on those, we will never achieve them. And this sets the undergirding framework for us to actually get. to those achievements. So thank you, Ms. Tolan. So thank you, Mr. Plattenberg,
032for the thorough presentation. You actually left a number of staff people off the hook. They were planning to talk through the various goals, but we're super fortunate to have So staff people here with us today, I'll mention their names in the particular goal areas that they're working on. But let me just mention first for board members and for the public, on board docs, we have listed, there's a list of all of the recommendations. There was a lot that Mr. Plattenberg just went through. There's also something called comparison charts that staff did a really great job of putting together that lists the main goals. a few details of the recommendation and if there's any difference between what the Board of Supervisors and FCPS is doing and then different factors that we need to kind of keep
033in consideration moving into the future dealing with these particular goals. So on the set of energy goals, we are super fortunate to have John Lord, who is our FTPS energy manager, here with us today that can give us additional information or talk us through any questions that anybody has around our energy goals. We also have Allison Cohane is here. She is our Get to Green. coordinator works in facilities and maintenance in that coordination work. Joey Welburn is here with us from transportation and can help us get into any details there. And we also have Matt Bechtel and Rachel Dahmer from our CTE department to talk to us about. the areas of workforce development. So a huge thank you to everyone for being with us here today. So I think with that, we will go into
034board questions and I would like staff, if you're answering questions in your particular area, if there's points of clarification or things that you would like to add in addition to the presentation, please feel free to do that because I know you've done lots and lots of work over the last several months. So with that, just a point of order. Yes, point of order. Miss Tolan, you have this great chart. Is this what you want us to address in our comments? Because you have a lot of recommendations here that you want feedback on. Is that where you want to focus our conversation today? So I think the chart is a good place. It's a good like working tool for the board to use. That's kind of what we were thinking about when we put it together.
035So these are the key recommendations out of JET. And the factors may be something you want to get clarification on or ask questions about it. Yeah. So it's really a working document. And I see your hand is up. Oh, for that question. That was my question. I'll wait before I actually provide comments. All right. Thank you. So, Ms. Marin, would you like to start us off? Yes, sure. Thank you. I've been looking forward to this for weeks, if not my entire time on the board. So thank you for all that have contributed. The chart is really helpful. I think, you know, as budget chair, I'm always thinking what's budgetary location, what's the reality here. And I think as we go into the fall and do our initial board two by twos on priorities for budgeting,
036I think it would be helpful to understand what's the low hanging fruit here and what can. can be done and could we actually make a plan for how to tackle this in the next short term and long term of years? I just want to share some thoughts about a few items for my colleagues more so. Yesterday I went to the house that was built by the program, the Applied Technology Education Program. So I'm very much in the mindset of career tech. the green jobs. You know, I think when I look at the JET materials, you know, having talking about an academy for green jobs, you know, I'm really eager for later on in the conversation this evening, we have some updates from our career tech committee and Title I and adult community ed, because this
037all ties together. And we certainly shouldn't be doing different strands here of how we approach career tech. You know, and what I see from the CTAC report is we have academies in certain places and doesn't seem like we have them anywhere else. And we've heard our students at public hearings when we had the CIP public hearing talking about that they want green job experience. So how can we get beyond an academy model that is place-based to something that really gets to more schools at middle and high? So that's one of my big things. Recycling, I have to say, having helped students paint trash cans and dump out trash and sort it myself. with them. My new mantra is reject, reduce, and reuse. I think the time for recycling, I'd like to not have that be
038so prominent because the data show that it's not happening, it's hard, it's a lot of active time. So what can we really do to take some of that energy and reintroduce this or introduce the idea of reject, reduce, reuse? The notion about increasing transportation and porta potties, I'd love to tie this into a need in our communities to put in bathrooms on our sports facility fields. How can we do two things with one action? I think that's a great place. And also, you know, thinking about behavior like student parking. how what's the data on how our students are using the parking are they really using it because they need to get somewhere after like a job or some other commitment or is it more of a luxury i don't have any any understanding of that
039so um but i love this county partnership that we've got going let's maximize it and let's put dollars where it's going to produce action so i'll leave it at that for now thanks miss corbett sanders Couple things. One, I would love to hear from both you and Mr. Frisch your vision of the jet of the future and where it goes from here, because the initial framework was really it hasn't been modified a whole lot. And I know that we've got two great brains on this committee and we've got two great brains from the Board of Supervisors. So it'd be helpful to hear your vision of the future. The second thing is regarding some of your recommendations here, would like to have a better understanding of what you're thinking about in updating policy 8542, because I
040think that there's always room for improvement on all that stuff. The contract issues, very interested in. I would like us to look at more than just solar and look at just all sorts of renewable and sustainable energy, including perhaps wind. And then cost estimates in the various areas. I think Mr. Plattenberg gave us a great, you know, some expectations there. I do have a question regarding the parking and whether or not we should be looking at a more extensive rollout of parking of solar canopies in all of our parking lots, because I think that that is a big area. But I do worry when we talk about charging a different fee structure for students that have a hybrid or electric car. because of the equity piece of that. Those are always more expensive cars based
041on the technology that has been deployed in them. And so when we have a bifurcated pricing system, then we may be inadvertently. charging students that have the least ability to pay more, but they'll have to pay more. I would also like to hear a bit more about impact on the current policies and regulations affecting apprenticeship programs and journeyman programs, because we know that many of them have an 18-year-old requirement and our students exit our school system at 18. And so as part of that green careers. it would be helpful to have some input from the JET on what we need to do in our legislative program to create more opportunities for our students so that they can take advantage of them, as well as partnering with the Chamber of Commerce on how we can have
042a more... a constant flow of information on how the jobs in this sector are changing what the demand for those jobs are. So that's just a few comments that I have. I really appreciate all that you're doing. And I think that the timing of this is perfect, given that we're going to be talking about CTE next. Okay, so a long list of questions there in that three minute timeframe. Mr. Pritch, do you want to start out talking about the vision? Sure. Two things to respond to. One, I have little doubt that there will be developments in the issue areas that JET has worked on over the last two years that will necessitate perhaps the county and the school division thinking through in conjunction with the community how we might approach future issues. Additionally, The early
043JET conversations included other issues that were not tackled in these recommendations, like land use. So, you know, there's probably room for picking up other issues as well to go through the same kind of work that JET did on these four broad issue areas. So I would say that on what's the future vision of JET. So it's a going concern. Yeah, I would think so. In terms of... 85-42, the policy, it sticks mostly to energy usage. And as you can see from the JETS recommendations, are far more expansive than simply just energy usage. So not... Putting the recommendations in the policy, because obviously we want flexibility to achieve those goals and grow those goals. But putting similar language about like we have for energy usage around transportation, waste and rejection. Thank you, Miss Marin. And other
044topics that Jet has recommended goals on, I think, is the appropriate approach. It puts the board, the weight of the board's policymaking behind. the objectives and the intent of JET. A framework document. Right. More of a comprehensive framework, I think, than what we have now. We're doing so much more in the area of environmental stewardship than what this policy currently deals with. And I think we want to try to just update it and make it a little bit more all encompassing with what we're doing. I also see a rule. for the check group maybe over the next. couple of years even in monitoring, you know, where we are, what kind of progress are we making? What are the new technologies? What are the new opportunities that we have available to us? How are we incorporating
045those? What is staff working on? Just in pulling that, you know, community group into, you know, give us feedback and understanding and more information on all of these topics as we're moving forward, just to kind of, you know, keep us in check as we're monitoring all of this. So I think that's all part of it. I would love to call on maybe Matt and Rachel to talk a little bit about maybe even some of the comments that Ms. Merritt had and then the... Questions that Karen Corbett Sanders had around apprenticeships. They've done some really great work, our beginning work on how do we even determine what jobs are important. So I'm gonna let Matt and Rachel maybe jump on and talk about the work they've been doing. Thank you, Ms. Tolan. I can handle the
046apprenticeship question that was asked. So what we're doing with the Workforce Development Program to support the apprenticeships is we're going to be looking at our youth registered apprenticeship program that's available to high school students ages 16 and over. So we're hoping that we can connect with some of the solar installers or, as was mentioned before, bringing in additional... bringing additional contractors to support any efforts we might have and getting them to be through a partnership with the lead Department of Labor and Industry so that we have a pathway for some of our students in some of our trades and industrial courses, as well as some of our technology and engineering courses to have a pathway to specific jobs while they're still in high school. And then also if there are opportunities for students that graduate
047from FCPS to move on to these different careers, that we'll be able to advertise those as well. So we would definitely need to work with the Department of Labor and Industry to kind of work on some of those things that were mentioned earlier, as well as like the age requirements and things like that. But there is a great youth registered apprenticeship program that starts students early off in the junior and senior year. to gain some work experience paired with the academic content that is being covered in some of those CTE courses, as well as some science courses. And then ultimately, any of those experiences can then transfer on to what we call a registered apprenticeship program that we can connect to into the future. So we have some big goals as far as what we
048can do there, but legislation needs to change in certain areas. And we definitely want to keep ahead of that. on our end in CTE and in the greater office of counseling college and career readiness we're doing what we can to stay on the front end and working with the also with the commonwealth or I'm sorry the northern Virginia chamber of commerce you know any other workforce development committees that are available to us and seeing what new trends are available and what what things will be changing in the future so that we can start to act on some of these these goals that we have And also, I will mention that we're also exploring, I guess you would say, non-traditional paths for some of our students in the high school grades. So juniors and seniors, if
049there's not opportunities for students to get in some of these specialized CT courses and skilled trades, we will be looking to, as mentioned earlier, adult community education programs through ACE. We've done a lot in the last just in the last year to really promote some of their apprenticeship type programs where students can ultimately we can look at scholarship opportunities where we can cover the costs for students that could enroll in those programs after the traditional school day so that they can get involved in these programs, because that's one thing that. is typically an oversight in education where, you know, the kids need opportunities to work. And if there's not available opportunities within the school day. you're taking away opportunities outside of the school day, where those would be some cases, opportunities where these students are
050working to support their families or to, you know, and we don't want that. So we want to make sure that we're equitable with the opportunities that we provide. So, you know, anything we can do to support that in the future is what we're going to try to do. Thanks, Matt. Rachel, Domrin, do you want to talk a little bit about some of the work that you're doing to even determine if we would have a new CTE course, a new unit, some of that work? Rachel, we can't hear you if you're talking. Ms. Tolan, if we can come back to Rachel and perhaps she can also address whether some of these are dual enrollment, that'd be great. Oh, can you guys hear me now? Yes, we can. Oh, there we go. I apologize. I just got
051a brand new computer today. So this is the first time I'm using the mic. So right off the bat, I'm happy to answer that for the dual enrollment opportunities, we need to make sure that we're partnering with... you know, like Nova Community College. And to my knowledge, I'm not aware of any green or sustainable energy, renewable technology courses at this time. It's definitely something that I can add to the list of things that we're doing for this summer. So what I was trying to say before I was trying to get my mic situated. So, you know, we want to be really intentional with the courses that we're offering in. the course offerings because we don't just want to keep piling on courses. We want to make sure that, again, we're being very intentional. So what
052we're going to do this summer is we're going to reinitiate a needs assessment for new course offerings through the Technology and Engineering program, which is within the CTE program. What this is going to allow us to do is to look at updated information and compare it to the last time we did this assessment on green careers, and that was about five years ago. What the needs assessment is going to include is looking at the labor market and employment data for our immediate and surrounding areas and what the anticipated 10-year job projection is going to look like. If the data shows significant demand and growth, along with interest from student surveys, we can definitely look to possibly replace our electronics pathway courses with courses in the renewable and sustainable energy area. If there isn't a large
053and immediate job demand or interest from the students, what we're going to do is we're going to look to start work this summer to embed content and concepts from the renewable energy and sustainable energy courses. into the existing STEM energy pathway, which is offered at every single high school. And it's a very popular course offering for our students. So this summer we will also begin discussions around the possibility of creating an independent study course framework, which is something that Matt is familiar with doing. And that would allow for additional internship opportunities for students who are directly interested in green careers. And lastly, we're open to collaborating with the science department and any of their earth science courses that they have to work on integrated activities. and also supporting any after-school programs that align with the
054renewable and sustainable energy courses. Great. Thank you, Rachel. Karen, does that take care of your questions? Most of them. The next piece was the equity piece on parking fees and whether or not we're looking at solar canopies for all of our parking lots. Yeah. Go ahead, Mr. Plantberg. I can really address that. The parking fee equity is the budget question that I believe has been asked of finance. I don't know exactly where they are on that. And in regards to parking lot canopies, with the transition with the solar, that will be more of a viable option with the vendor that we are going to be navigating to. But before we do that, I do want to fully bring some markups of what that may look like. One of the fears and concerns is just to
055make sure that everybody is aware and that if we, you know, principal input and so on and community input and also the board, if we're going to move in that direction to take a look at whether or not that's going to create any administrative issues for parking in the morning or if it's just going to be like a bus duty or something, you know, we want to make sure we have a full conversation about that before we implement it because we didn't as staff. I'm rather bullish on that stuff, but I felt remiss that I didn't bring it before the full board to get feedback and also the cabinet to the superintendent. But yeah, I mean, we're definitely going to explore all opportunities. John, I didn't know if there was anything else you wanted to
056add. And I apologize for interrupting. No, that's fine. That's a great answer. I think that canopies should be an option that's available and we can look more closely at it moving forward. Thank you. All right. Thanks, everyone. Ms. Cowan. Sorry, I was having trouble unmuting too. I have a few questions. This is awesome. Thank you guys so much for being here. Doing all of this hard work, I know it was really exciting to get to see Elaine and Carl presenting and kind of representing Fairfax and is a really great indication that I know we're sort of on the leading edge of this, which doesn't mean we can't be doing better. I definitely am super excited about some of the recommendations that are coming forward, but it is also good to know that we're helping create
057some of this work as well. One of the conversations, I guess, since we just talked about canopies, I just wanted to quickly go back to solar. Can you just explain for us the return, though, on the canopies is not quite as good as roof installations. Is that right, or am I wrong, and canopies is better than roof? Will you enlighten us a little bit there? Yeah, the difference is really it's all about the solar panel. So and the amount of space that you have where you can have solar gain. So when you have solar gain exposure, the square footage that we have on our properties, if you take a look at the roof and the ability to go ahead and really collect more solar emission and raise, that's why there's people talking about the different
058comparisons. You know, when you talk about solar bottom lines, it's a solar farm. If you look at the solar farm, wherever you can put more panels, you can put the more you gain, you can achieve. Notwithstanding things you have to take into account, such as natural obstructions, tree canopies that might impede the solar rays and anything that you might, you know, intuitively, you know, contemplate. But it really is just about the square footage area that you can provide for those farms. And to that end, when we look in the fall towards our legislative packet, are there further recommendations than that you have? I know we've kind of been as a Commonwealth moving a little more and more trying to push Dominion and other users about the percentage of power that we can use and then
059keep for ourselves and what we have to bring back. And there was some change with what had to be contingent use versus being able to supply more of a grid. Are there more pieces that we need to do at the state level with our delegates and senators to make this even better for our schools? Well, I would always say there's always opportunity there and working with Michael Malloy in terms of the platform and what we might want to present. There are opportunities that can be made. The biggest issue is you've got this convergence, as Mr. Frisch was alluding to, where the legislative issues of today may not be the ones of tomorrow. So it is, yes, those are components that are very important about how much electrical generation you can do as a system. on
060a type of grid and how much you can give back or give to yourself to offset your costs. In addition, the technology advances. You know, I mentioned solar farms, but I anticipate the solar collection panels to, in terms of their scale and scope and their capacity, to become much like computers were before laptops and before your iPhone. or your the phones that we have today and i think the storage and distribution are going to be areas for expansion and opportunity you know they do it in areas like california and they do it because they get incentivized they get incentivized because the state will give credits or investment opportunities for investment into more solar expansion i think that's a huge opportunity for us legislatively to see more partnering with not only utility companies because they've been
061great as a part of that bus electric bus program that didn't that we were hoping would get more legislation on, but we did not. But yeah, there's there's certainly more opportunities and we'd be happy to work with Michael Malloy to be that conduit. And anything down the pike when we're talking about our new electric buses, I know they haven't had quite as much use this year as we would hope that they would in a normal year. Are there further opportunities that you see with companies like Dominion to potentially expand that programming? Do you all hear anything about that? The only thing I heard was that Dominion was a little disappointed that they didn't get the legislative support. There were so many things going on with COVID that has passed legislate. session was kind of a
062bust in that regard from what I've heard from them. However, the elements that I mentioned about leasing agencies, in fact, the leasing agency that's working with Montgomery County was a former solar leasing company. And they see that as a huge market. So I can't help but think that the price points will come down. And if you think about it, the same thing happened back in the 80s when we talked about Fairfax County Public Schools in 85 used to just purchase outright the educational cottages or trailers or temporary buildings, whatever you want to call them. And leasing agencies identified a way that you could lease them very cost-effectively to do a lease purchase. So I think those leasing companies looking at different ways to finance, to invest those long-term costs, while the technology costs start coming
063down, we'll all come at a convergence where we're going to see a lot of gains. So that kind of addresses, I was going to ask if you think PPAs are still the way that we're going to wind up going, but that kind of speaks to that question. My next one then is about our schools that are in planning. I know when we were in FPAC a few months ago, Justin mentioned that Mason Crest is potentially an opportunity for us to go net zero at that building. But that was really kind of the only one of things that have been renovated recently that kind of wouldn't be like a huge, huge, huge cost expenditure to make it that you all had done things to get us in a good place to be ready there. For the
064schools that are in planning, are in the planning phase, are we looking to a more net zero component for those schools? Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because the report that was referenced by Ms. Tall at the beginning that we have on our website. is really our net zero energy report that we've done. We commissioned an engineering firm to take a look at, and they used some samples. I think it was two elementary schools, if Mr. Fersh had clarified with me once before. And yet, when they took a look at that, they looked at renovation of existing schools to become net zero. So yes, but beginning in the 2021 bond, we're including that in the design. to be a part of the design for all of our projects to identify to be net zero or
065net zero ready. There may be, as was mentioned in my presentation, some cost considerations or physical considerations that may make it financially disadvantageous, both short and long term, that we may not want to go ahead and look down the road. But for the most part, the whole plan is that all of the projects within the FY within the 20 21 bond referendum this year's bond referendum this november are going to include the component where we will begin making sure that all of them are net zero ready or net zero design Awesome. And my last question is just about composting. I was excited to see that on the recommendations. I'm hoping as a county that we're going to move more in that direction. Our little neighborhood started this composting service and it's been awesome. I'm super
066impressed by people who would not normally consider themselves environmentalists that I see carrying out their coffee grounds and their banana fields. so um you know i just wanted to ask about that is that something you see more as a county centralized program we would participate in or as like an arm that would be more like a get to green where that's a component that just gets pulled into it i think more the latter but also uh yes it's a short answer no i don't know um If Allison Cooley has any additional information, do you want to add anything to that about composting? I agree with Mr. Plattenberg, and I would just add that we have, or at least pre-COVID, we had 44 schools who were already composting on site. So this is something that has
067been happening in FCPS already. I don't know how many of those schools resumed this spring. I'm guessing a lot of them might wait until this fall to start getting back into that again. But it is something that we have already been doing and that I think will continue to expand. Great. Thank you. So Ms. Cowan, I think we took care of your question. Ms. Darnot-Kopax. Hi, yes. Thank you for this excellent presentation. I do appreciate it. I am concerned about the bike routes and what has been talked about that. You know, in the recommendation number 12 talks about expanding and promoting programs that incentivize biking and walking to school. I can say for my area, and I also will speak for some of Ms. Corbett Sanders' area, there are no safe ways to ride a
068bike to school. And I am curious as to, I know there have been lots of talk over the past 10 years, not lots of action, and just curious about what the conversation has been there with the county. Well, that's a great question, Mr. Arnott-Kofax, because as you mentioned, a lot of our communities were designed with that rural-urban kind of look and the tiebacks are basically ditches on the side of the roads and having, you know, for being such a densely populated area, Fairfax County, to be able to provide that. But there are bike pathways within Fairfax County and across this county. And the county has done a good job to provide maps where those are for bike routes. The idea of expanding it really is when we look at revisioning for each of the areas,
069when we talk about Tyson, when we talk about any type of program and we talked about the Dulles Technology Quarter. When there's any revisioning and replanning, it's part of the comprehensive plan. That's why it's not just us with schools. It is, in a lot of cases, VDOT and FCDOT all working together where they are making improvements, looking at it, not only with that equity when Fairfax lands, but looking at where can we go ahead and provide the opportunities that are aligned with our goals? Because you mentioned, you know, if we don't start planning. When we go and make improvements, we won't be able to look at ways to accommodate biking in the future. That's why some of these, when we mention aspirational goals, when you talk about the Mount Vernon area, it's extremely, yeah, your
070region that we talk about, Ms. Karen Corbin-Sanders and others. It's challenging at best to see where we can go ahead and provide that immediately. But that's why it takes planning and forward thinking to see how, either in the short or long term, we can go ahead and accommodate the walking and biking paths. That's the intent. Because as you say, there's some very pragmatic realities that may not be able to be overcome in the short term or the long term. Right. And I think for that in particular, it's been a concern of mine for quite a while, particularly in our area. Bike paths were added, but the speed limit was not lowered. You have to be, I will say there have been three deaths, and one recently, on the bike path lanes, kind of where, and
071during my tenure on the board, three total and one recently. Not all. Not school children. There was one, one was two or school age children, but one, one was not a death. So it is significant. I've been working. I've been talking to highway safety. I've been talking to a lot of people, but it seems that this is, this continues to get stalled. So Jeff, I really think if this is going to be right, I get aspirational, but. This would be a great addition on so many ways and levels if we can really make the community understand if we are going to do this, there are so many levels that have to be conquered, if you will, in order for this to be a reality. Because it is adding bike path lanes to a, I'll just
072tell you, Franconia Road, where people typically go 50 miles an hour. there's not one sane mother that would let their child drive their bike to school, to Mark Twain Middle School or to Edison High School. And they don't. And we've talked about this for quite a while. So I am hopeful that we can find a path forward on some of those kinds of issues because that's extremely important. And I do want to mention, I don't, maybe I misunderstood. I know I saw here that we could have, you know, there could be additional parking spots for green cars. But I, as Ms. Corbett Sanders stated, I do think that there's an equity issue there. I don't know if that was going to be a less cost or a free cost. I didn't quite understand that because
073I unfortunately didn't read the lengthy report. So could you expand on that a bit? Well, I'll certainly open it up to any other members of the committee and to address it further. But as I said, some of these are aspirational. I mean, the reality is when you take a look at concerns about equity, when you bring those voices into the room that say we need to make sure that we're equitable, that we provide it at school A. And it seems to be not an issue. Students can do that. You know, we provide power and so on. We need to be able to provide it at school B that may be less fortunate or not able to or what have you. We need to find ways to level the playing field. And that's one thing that.
074We as a community and as a school system have been extremely focused on with Lisa Williams and the work that she's done with our staff and everything is always making sure that we have that equity focus. So I know there's not a plan, Pat, for either one of those, but your points are germane and spot on about the importance of not doing something just to do it, but to do it and to do it right. And that was the reason why I'm so bullish about the JET in its comprehensive approach. By having all of the stakeholders involved in the conversation, it's making sure that those voices are able to be raised up and represented where they haven't been in the past. All right. Thank you. So one thing I wanted to mention just from the
075student and school engagement perspective, is that the design of the Get to Green program, where we're looking for student engagement in sustainability projects that are important to them, is we're partnered with the National Wildlife Federation Eco-Schools Program, which has 12 different pathways. And one of them being transportation, where you might look at bike and walk to school options. Others are around waste management, learning about your watersheds, et cetera, et cetera. And we're very cognizant of the fact that no school can work on all 12 of them for exactly the kinds of things that you're talking about. You know, there are some schools where it would be dangerous to, you know, have kids biking to school. So then those schools have, you know, 11 other options of things that they would do that are important and
076workable for their community. So, you know, from that overall student environmental stewardship perspective, you know, we're definitely cognizant of that. I see Mr. Krish has his hand up and he specifically. worked on our transportation goals. So I don't know if you want to add something, Mr. Frisch, to- I'll keep it very quick and just address the parking question. I think parking generally, and this is something that came up in our subcommittee conversations, is loaded with all sorts of equity questions for staff and for students. That said, one of the things that the subcommittee felt strongly about encouraging was the ability for folks who- have more fuel-efficient vehicles to have parking or to somehow encourage the adoption there. I would note that, led by students, Delegate David Bulova passed legislation a few General Assemblies ago that
077would allow schools to house charging infrastructure for vehicles, and that was something that students led him to do, and that has not yet been adopted on any of our campuses. um so um this is simply for consideration and as as was said in the presentation all of these things need to be taken into consideration through the one fairfax lens um to see if they even make sense thank you i'm miss karen keys gamara Thank you. I'll be really brief. I wanted to respond to a comment that my colleague, Ms. Darinette Koufax, made with respect to the biking paths and mentioned that, as I recall, the biking paths is actually part of the comprehensive plan for the county. However, I'm not sure that they have direction from us as to where priorities might be. So I
078just wanted to submit to my colleagues that perhaps we want to think about having specific, having specific. Excuse me. Having specific lobbying with our county board of supervisors as we do with our state legislature and others to say these are our priorities for safety reasons. And so I just wanted to say it's already a part. Dear Lord. I don't know how they know to call me. So I'm just wondering if we want to think about expanding some of the way that we lobby and including the county so that we are not just talking to them about going with our budget and the other things that we've done in the past, but literally saying these are some of the concerns that have arisen. We've got safety concerns in the Lee District. We've got safety concerns in
079the Mount Vernon District. And as you're thinking about implementing the comprehensive plan. can these things be a priority? Thank you. Okay. Yeah, I wanted to ask Jeff if he had a comment for that. Okay. No, I totally agree. It is a part of the comprehensive plan. It is something that is included, the walking and biking trails. I mean, even in Tyson's, that was one of the components of the refreshment in the area, and some of those objectives couldn't be met. So it's definitely something we can further that conversation. I know it's an interest. How to get there, again, with many of these things is going to be the challenge and the realities, the stark realities of how comprehensive, to what extent. looking at even the baselines. You know, we start with the conceptualization. That's why
080I say conceptualization to operationalizing, because when you conceptualize, you dream and you dream big. And yet the jet goals are the right dreams, the right big dreams. The timelines, you know, if you don't set a roadmap, you won't ever get there. And if we set the roadmap, we might have to adjust it along the way, some advance and some delayed. but it's moving forward all the while. And that's why having a comprehensive group like JET come together and really Matthew Bechtel, Richard Domer, John Lord, Ali Kohane, the work that they have done, and Joey and Francine from transportation has been amazing. But the JET, having the student voices in there and the members of the community, Susan Stillman, and she's been... you know, she's been a friend for a long time. Having everybody working together
081and coming up with a document that we can actually start to figure out pathways forward. even with the challenges that have been brought up here, even with looking at it through the one Fairfax lens, even looking at the financing from Lee and Joe Monduro, Mr. Smith. And I know Mr. Smith and Joe Monduro got immediately on it. Once this was approved and came out of the committee, they got together and talked about, okay, where can we go ahead and start working on this? What can we do? It's that type of leadership at their level. that requires us then taking a step back and seeing what we can attain and what we can't and then reporting about it because working together i believe we can eradicate all obstacles but yes to miss keys tomorrow's question it
082is something that is a comprehensive plan um they are important i think talking having further conversation perhaps through the planning commission subcommittee of schools or the liaison of the school's subcommittee planning commissioner um to the the planning commission might be a good way to advocate okay i am not seeing um other board member hands um so what i may do at this point is turn it over to mr prish um to kind of close this out um maybe mr plant ever did a nice job with that we get our turns as well comments to kind of close out and have us think about what we need to do when we report it for the future. So Mr. Fritton, I'm going to turn it over to you. Well, I'd be remiss, Ms. Toland, if I didn't
083note that you and I both get turns as well before we close things up. So I'm going to go ahead and take my turn, I guess, unless somebody else has their hand up. On the subject of bikes and walking and multimodal, Jeff and or our transportation folks, can you speak to the fortuitous timing here? The county is currently engaged in updating the strategic plan, which is, you know. great timing when you consider where we are as a county working together. So when we do have questions about safety and how do you connect areas that are not currently connected, if at all, this is the perfect time to be working together with the county because they're in the midst of a massive overhaul of the, you know, it was called the bike plan before, but now
084we're thinking of it as multimodal, trails, bikes, walking, et cetera. Can you speak to that, Jeff? Yes, Mr. Frisch. What's amazing about it is that in any conversation, we are, I know there's some revision that's been going in a number of your magisterial districts. And when we're brought into the table with county staff, we're working directly with the FC DOT folks and the VDOT folks about how can we go and accommodate providing multimodal pathways. And they are looking at the safety. And they have learned about some of the experiences about For example, speed limits. It seems like, you know, from our perspective, from mine at least, it seems like an obvious, duh, perspective that you can't just provide a bike lane on 66 and expect it to be interstate 66 or something with really fast
085speedways and expect it to be a safe environment. So it's really taking a look at all these things and seeing where we can achieve them. and and it it has been as a part of the design review so in the piece that miss karen kees uh tomorrow spoke of is being former planning commissioner she knows well that in the comprehensive master plan there are some things that are uh there are items that are called out to be looked for. And when developers come in to develop certain things like parks, libraries, and when we look at multimodal pathways, schools, they are components that are, they have to be addressed as part of the design review submission to be in accordance with the comprehensive master plan as amended. So I don't know if that totally addresses some
086of the comments that you wanted, Mr. Frisch, but I do know that we have taken a look at it. Any revisioning I've been a part of, that is one key component. And I know in the Mason District, when they were looking at a revision initiative that's been underway for quite some time, they totally, the plans that I saw of roadways were totally... different than what they are right now. And it was to accommodate all of the things that were mentioned to provide safer pathways for multimodal. Thank you. I'm going to ask Mr. Lord, if you don't mind, a leading question. Mr. Lord, as was indicated in the presentation, we have reduced our energy usage by about 30% over the last decade or so. Can you tell my board colleagues and me how much that has
087saved the school division each year and how that money is? you know, put to other uses within the division to help our students succeed? Absolutely. Just this last fiscal year alone, we're going to have a reduction of about $12 million in energy use, which is an unusual. I didn't catch that. Can you say that again? $12 million. And since the inception of the program that we started back in 2014, there's been a savings of over $50 million. And so where that money goes, there's lots of places you can put $50 million. And the way I always tell people, because I'm really not privy to some of those decisions, is you can reinvest it in what the school system's main purpose is, which is educating children. And so where the school board and where senior staff
088decide to put it, I don't always know that answer, but I know it's being reinvested in investing the future of education. And my understanding is that most of it is going towards that purpose, while a little piece of it is being reinvested in our efforts around sustainability, but most of it's going into educational programming. And that's like $8 million a year. I can imagine when these decisions were made before you or I were with FCPS, that... Many people had the same considerations about making these changes around energy use, that it might cost a lot of money, but look at the savings we're yielding. And I would then pivot to talk about net zero a little bit and our buses, right? Technology is going to improve. Things will continue to get cheaper and more cost effective.
089So you've got like this bell curve where things kind of ramp up in cost and then they plateau and then they come right back down. And all of these individual programs that we're talking about, at least when it comes to transportation, energy use. and Net Zero Design and Ready all have the ability to reap financial reward for the school division so that we have additional funds to invest in our students. I encourage my colleagues to read the report. I believe it's on BoardDocs about Net Zero. school construction because it talks about how there's a financial imperative around the work that these things pay for themselves eventually and then end up saving us money and i don't have to say that there are many intangibles that we never consider when we're talking about these things whether
090it's the health of the children who are on the buses or in the environment whether it's how many days out sick they're no longer going to be calling in whether it's what do you do you know if a school building is fine is energy independent and capable of running without a connection to the grid for a day because it's got reserve power, these kinds of things that you might consider. It doesn't have to close when there's a power outage. So you get that extra day of in-person instruction. There's so many tangential benefits. Perhaps anybody on staff could speak to benefits to our work that we've seen thus far that they weren't necessarily expecting. The only thing I can add, Mr. Frisch, is that you're spot on with your comments, really, and I could go on
091and on. You know, I always looked at it as the energy cost avoidance that we had, we should reinvest back into facilities. But I know that's not our mission, and I know you hear me cry that battle cry because of how far behind we are. And the challenge is the balance. Mr. Frisch mentions about the short-term or the sticker shock investment. but the long-term paybacks. So those are the conversations. That's why we did the net zero energy study. That's why we have it in our design to look if it's financially advisable in the future. You know, we've got a 37-year average renovation cycle, $180 million a year. We need over $220 million a year annually in order for us to achieve what we need to be doing to begin with. Okay, well, people hear that
092and they get so mesmerized, they don't think along the lines of what Mr. Frisch just mentioned. So looking at that holistically, making sure that we're doing the best that we possibly can with the resources we're provided is the goal. And it's also the reality of how we're going to operationalize it beginning in the 2021 school year. Those ancillary effects are massive. The unintended consequences, if you look at the Get to Green program, and Ms. Tolan can speak to that, as well as Ms. Cohane and the rest of the team, when that started out... Those seeds that were planted, and I call them karma seeds, because that karma was passed on and on and on. We have a program that is so significant and such a game changer in the lives of our students because the
093student-led, the relationship with the National Wildlife Federation, the partnership, it's recognized internationally. In fact, I've even spoken to it internationally. So the unintended consequences of these things are not only good for us now and good for our investment now and our communities now, but they're absolutely necessary for our communities of the future. Sorry, Mr. Frisch, you got me a little bit. My final comment is about our buses. And I feel like perhaps the conversation around Montgomery County was kind of glossed over, and people may not have heard how big a frigging deal that is. One of the biggest impediments to transitioning to an electric or non-carbon emitting vehicle fleet has been the cost and the technology, right? And so the technology is getting better and better every year, but the cost is expensive but coming
094down. And Montgomery appears to have found a way to partner with the company and for the financing to where they are not experiencing an increase in costs as they transition their entire fleet. That is a frigging game changer. It is. And we I spoke with Todd Watkins, the director of transportation, personally. And the fact that they have bus depots, which we've got three garages, but we don't have bus depotting for all of our fleet, really gives them some opportunities that we don't have. But still, the fact that he was able to identify and work with the individual leasing company. to make the math work. If we can make the math equations work through other investments, we can make it happen. And by being creative, by having the finance people involved with the transportation people, involved
095with the vendors, involved with our community, that's how they're making it work. And he's nervous. But Todd Watkins, I can tell you from knowing him for years, does not recommend any investment from board authorization unless he thinks he can deliver. And we're looking at that. We're watching that. We do have the documents. We do know there's some nuances in Maryland that are different than Virginia. And, you know, I can tell you that Joey and Francine are doing a great job. We've even brought in other vendors other than the one that they're working with to take a look at, to conceptualize. And we have an RFI, request for information, that we've prepared, that procurement has, to go out on the streets so we can go ahead and bring in groups that can give us ideas. and
096help us as we navigate down that path. Anyway, thank you, Mr. Frist, for mentioning that. My last comment is simply that when we are halfway done with this work, Our view of the technology and the costs associated with the technology is going to be wildly different than it is today because things are moving so quickly. It really will become one of those things where our work builds on itself very quickly as we approach the goal. So I have appreciated all the comments from my colleagues today and their questions. I know that there are a few people that want to speak and have a go back. So I will finish up there and then we'll pick it up on the other end. So, Mr. Frisch, I may jump in and just answer that question that you
097had about some of the benefits to some of this work that maybe wasn't expected. I actually just put a note out to our colleagues. There's a new book out called Schools That Heal, which I think is particularly timing, particularly good timing, talking about things being fortuitous. As we're looking at moving out of the pandemic and bringing our children back into our schools and our, you know, our outdoor spaces. This new book that came out does have a chapter on Marshall High School and talks a little bit about the renovation there and, you know, the improvements in indoor air quality, the sustainable practices that were put into place, and how that just made, you know, the building much more hospitable for students and teachers. And, you know, there's a lot of national research on... teacher retention,
098student engagement around, you know, those types of things. And then also just using the outdoor spaces and getting students and teachers out into those spaces and having that student engagement and the student pride in the work that they're doing around environmental stewardship. You know, we've seen so many positive things happening across the entire district around that, more than I think I may have expected. So it looks like Ms. Omish has her hand up and since she hasn't spoken yet, let's start with her. And then next we'll have Karen Corbett-Tanders. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Tolan, Mr. Frisch for your efforts on this. And of course, to all our staff, Mr. Plattenberg and everyone else who joined. I think a number of the things mentioned just now lend themselves well to a question I wanted to
099ask about. For one, I should also note, I appreciate the equity focus, of course, as always, the prioritization of One Fairfax and how we look at it. And I would venture to say that hopefully not just an equity lens, but also thinking of climate justice as an essential component within that equity piece, right? The entity that is our earth is another one of the many stakeholders in that One Fairfax project. But in any case, I wanted to ask, I know that in the past we have found ways to actually employ or involve students to learn a little bit more about the work that's gone on, to engage them in it. So I was just curious to see if in a number of the opportunities here in the grid, if we're thinking about that. I know
100that that didn't continue for some reason at some point, but perhaps if that might be possible. Mr. Lord, do you have any comments? Or perhaps Matt. Go ahead, John. The idea of employing students in the efforts is definitely part of our energy education program. The idea is to have people who can work with schools and to work with students and to integrate best practices into the schools. You know, one of the things we actually talked about internally was the idea of having an energy education team champions program, which would be something similar to what I know the Get to Green program would very much like to see, where we have local champions, local advocates who aren't just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and doing it because they volunteer that that's what
101they believe in. but that we provide them a stipend similar to like a coaching stipend where they would then be the local champion and to have the idea of not just doing it because they love it. but doing it because the school system has kind of put their money where the mouth is, for lack of a better word. And I think it's a really nice idea, and the idea is in place with our energy education specialists, with the Good to Green program, and with so many volunteers all around the school division. But implementing it in a more institutional way is something that could be a really great outcome from this program. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, you know, it's definitely great to hear that certain components of it exist. I think as we look ahead
102in implementing this, I hope that we can consider additional ways of incorporating it. Yeah, thank you. It's because it's our education goals too, right? It meets a lot of different goals at the same time. So thank you. Matt, I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that from the student engagement. So, yeah, we can add to that. So for student engagement, we have, as we mentioned earlier, we've created a... A toolkit, a green career toolkit that can be used in all of our high schools to support the college and career specialists and our school counselors and helping students find opportunities that were created through this work, through JET. Some of the contacts that were given to me to provide for like guest speaker experiences so that students are getting to hear. directly from
103the professionals that live and breathe the work, learn about the qualifications that they may need to, you know, the skills, you know, how those are transferable skills, our soft skills that are necessary for the workforce, this in-domain workforce as we start to help these students to be ready for that workforce. And then ultimately just looking at ways that we can, you know, work with. the different companies that support us through this work or even just within our own county. So Office of Facilities Management, you know, there's the opportunity that we have our apprenticeship program there where it could be expanded to support additional opportunities like we're seeing hopefully for students. But yeah, there's just a lot that we can continue to explore in the future. But just, you know, starting early, getting students interested in
104these careers early on. is really the biggest push that we've been exploring and, you know, providing workplace tours, guest speaker experiences, get students interested in these opportunities, and they can refine those career interests and start to figure out what would be the next path or that would be essential moving forward. So, yeah, there's definitely a lot that we can do in the future, but it's just a matter of seeing what types of new relationships we build with, like I said, the solar installers, for example, or other different you know, different businesses and organizations that we work with and try to get them on board and have them see the value of creating a talent pipeline of students that will hopefully go on to pursue opportunities in these green careers in local universities so that we
105can then, you know, expand our Back to Fairfax program and bring those students back and support some of these, you know, and work in some of these opportunities that we have. in FCPS. So there's a lot of different options we can explore, like I mentioned earlier, but we'll continue moving on. Thank you. I'm Ms. Karen Carver-Sanders. Just a very quick question, because we were talking about school buses and bus routes and the challenge of bus routes for electric buses over in my side of the county. One of the questions I have is, have you looked at the efficiency of the overall distances that students are spending on buses? Because we do know that there are certain areas where students are spending 45 minutes each way on a bus. And so that there's an economic cost
106and there is a environmental cost and there's a health cost. Has that been any part of the JET work or are you planning on looking at that at all? Well, I can tell you, we do look at that annually as part of our transportation routing process to begin with. And I think it's absolutely necessary that we look at that because, Ms. Corporate Sanders, you had said that from the inception when we were talking about this grant. And you pointed out that, hey, we've got this infrastructure within the Mount Vernon District where we have charging stations, understanding that they were different than the charging stations for the buses. But the desire is we need that expansion down here. So we've got to look at an infrastructure throughout the county because we create and we talk about
107one Fairfax and equitable distribution. that there's a desire, there's the same impetus. Supervisor Stork serves on the jet, and yet we are unable to get one of those eight down there just because of the infrastructure and working with Dominion and because they were providing the charging station. So it's a very good point you make. I don't know specifically, and perhaps, Joey, if you might have any knowledge about whether or not the jet... is taking a look at any of that as a part of the JET work. But I do know when we look at our routing, we always look at the length of runs, the length of transportation. Because we have such a specialized transportation service delivery model where we have AAP programs and we provide transportation for students and academies where we provide transportation
108for students that are pretty long distance and outside of a specific area. it does create some challenges but we look at it annually and mr weber and i don't mean to put you on the spot joey but if you have anything you want to add now's the time to unmute your computer and make a comment or you can just say i don't have anything bad no i mean uh we did look at the distance for these routes and place these buses where they would best serve us but for future purchases that is something that we're going to have to take into consideration because currently these not meet all of our transportation needs. But that is something that we're going to have to devote some time and effort to figure out how we're going to make
109it work in those areas. But unfortunately, that was not one of the goals or recommendations from JET that we look in that. The goal simply was to start getting these buses in and figure out ways to make them work and then focus on the areas where they won't work. kind of down the road thank you joey mr smith i'm sorry i interrupted you And I was just going to add that I think that as we work with the county, our county partners down the road, as they look at expanding their need for electric vehicles, whether it's buses or sanitation vehicles and a plethora of other vehicles that they would be using, we could certainly and will certainly need to look at expanding that infrastructure across the entire county. If it's okay, if I could add
110one or two things, having served on the Jet Committee, I know the county looked at the efficiencies of a electric vehicle powertrain compared to the efficiencies of a diesel powertrain. And frankly, you lose a lot of energy to heat when you are burning it. And so you actually... I don't want to get into the math too deeply, but if you convert everything to British thermal units, you use about one third the amount of energy to move a bus that's powered by electricity than the same bus that's powered by diesel energy. And at that same time, you're not putting the emissions from the tailpipe into the atmosphere at that bus. And another item that I know is important to the jet, if you look at the 14 transportation recommendations, the fifth one. is that we would
111actually require eventually that all of the power used to have an electric bus or any other electric vehicle in that case to be coming from a renewable energy source. So these things were looked at by the jet and they're being looked at by the county. But I think Mr. Wellborn and the county staff is all of the parties who've looked deeply at it agree. There's advances in technology that need to occur for us to really fully implement the transportation goals. Thank you, Mr. Lord. At this point in time, I don't see additional board member hands. Just giving you one more chance before I think we're done again. Okay. Mr. Frisch, would you like to give us a sense of what we'll be doing over the next couple weeks leading up to our meeting in July?
112I believe it's going to be July. Yeah. And close us out. Absolutely. So first, I want to thank our colleagues for today's conversation. We also heard today that our colleagues on the Board of Supervisors will be voting in July on the adoption of JET's recommendations. So this conversation and our action in July is rather fortuitous. At our July 15th regular meeting, Ms. Tolan and I will bring a motion to adopt these recommendations, commit to annual review of our progress, and move forward with draft changes to policy 8542. Before we conclude, this portion of the work session. I want to be clear that these goals are as bold as they are critical to the proper stewardship, not only of our environment and the climate, but also the financial future of the school division. We simply can't
113afford to delay. And after the July 4th holiday, Ms. Tolan and I will be calling each of you to discuss next steps, answer any further questions, and we... Definitely look forward to those conversations and moving forward at our July 15th meeting. Thank you all. Thank you to everyone. It's my understanding, Dr. Anderson, are we starting our next conversations at 6 p.m.? We are. So we have a little bit of a break before we start at 6 because we're going straight through until 9. Okay, so with that, we'll adjourn this portion of the meeting and we will reconvene at 6 p.m. A huge thank you to all of the staff members here with us today. Thank you. Ms. Cohen, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, I see you. Good evening. Ms. Darinat Koufax, Mr. Frisch. Hello. Ms. Keyes-Gamara. Hello. Ms.
114McLaughlin. Good evening. Ms. Marin. Ms. Pekarski, I see you. Hi. Ms. Seismorheiser. Hello. Ms. Tolan. Good evening. All right, let's go back around. Ms. Cohen. Hi, good evening. Ms. Darinak-Kofax. Good evening. Ms. Marin. Okay. So today, now we're going to be hearing from TPAC, the Title I Advisory Committee. As you guys know, Title I are schools that are eligible for additional supports based on the percentage. In FCPS, it's been 55%, which was a recent change, but it's what we had. And just over this past year, that's 41 elementary schools and one middle school. So I'm going to pass it on to Mike Waltz, who's the chair of this committee. And I believe Nina Van Ghanem is here too, who is the vice chair. But Mike, go ahead. Thank you, Ms. Amish. And I will share
115my screen. Okay. So I'm not going to go through the report in great detail. It's not that long. Hopefully it was a quick read, even if there's a lot of content there. I will just briefly refer to the recommendations and hit some high points, and Nita will make additional comments. But we really wanted to have time for discussion. So this past year, actually, let me go to the next one, because this was for 2021. So the charge was to increase parent capacity, comprehension of Title I services and opportunities, including providing information and materials in various languages, exploring the impact that behavior, health, and well-being have on students' educational success, and examine the curriculum and all elements of staffing to ensure that they are anti-racist in content and implementation. So I am pleased to say that
116we did have language services for all of our meetings in Spanish. We always want to increase what services are available, but it's an improvement from previous years. So we're very glad for that. Sanderson, do you have a comment? Is he your handle? No? Okay. This is going to go right to the recommendations for this upcoming year. So the first one, and I'll speak to each, ensure more robust delivery of advanced academics to all students, developing data among Title I schools that illustrates whether AAP services are being provided with greater equity and create opportunities for greater collaboration and engagement between the TPAC and the AAPAC. So I think what stuck out is really two parts. One is communication, and the other is really purpose or mission. In terms of communication, you know, I don't, being that
117I have a high schooler now and middle schooler who are no longer in the AEP as, you know, we know it in the elementary level, it's not something that I pay attention to anymore. But the fact that it was so low, I think it was like 0.12 out of the News You Choose email and something that gets as much attention and discussion as advanced academics. I even remember a return to school PTA meeting last spring of 2020 where, you know, regardless of whether the child was in person or not, parents would just, so I just want to make sure they have access to AAP. And whether we like that being the reality, we know it is. So being that it gets all this attention, it has so much focus. Communication has to be commensurate with
118that. not having at least a standard practice whereby schools have to have this information prominently displayed in their communications or in singular communication or even more. I looked through my phone and saw all the text messages I got that were not relevant necessarily to our situation, but they were countywide. Why couldn't there have been a text message about AEP? And maybe because I have a fifth grader and eighth grader, maybe it's targeted for K through two or K through five or K through four. But it seems like that type of information should be something that we communicate in multiple platforms in multiple ways. And the fact that we found out about it just through one of our members happening, who is very meticulous in checking things, and they almost missed it too. So, you know,
119that was a real concern about how many people do we really want in this program in terms of diversity. You have to use different methods, multiple methods, and you have to test those methods. I don't ever remember getting, through the times that my children were in the program, any type of surveying or information gathering to assess how we knew about the program. You know, how is the application process? What was our engagement with our advanced academic resource teacher? I don't ever remember any of those things. And if there's an intention or a desire to improve representation, then you have to be able to talk to those that are in the program and figure out what's working and what's not. And I don't know that that's ever happened. The other part really is just the function.
120You know, instead of having... committees of folks who determine which children will have access to full-time level four. And the reason why that's relevant is because the math that students have access to through level four sets them on a different path as soon as they get into middle school. Instead of having a committee determining what kids can get there, we need to get the content and we need to get the academics to all students. And I don't know that I'm taking a step back to really look at how that's being done, whether it's an equitable manner. You know, are there certain schools that are delivering it more robustly across the board than others? That's a big problem. If we know certain schools are getting certain students and schools are getting things that others aren't. I
121mean, I think that's a broader discussion, but it's one that we have to have if the intention is to diversify the access. Second. Point, developing a comprehensive marketing education preparation strategy around the CTE program starts in elementary school. So there's greater access to participation across all racial and ethnic groups within the county. Also explore opportunities for greater collaboration between TPAC and CTEAC. That just reminds me, I'm going to jump right back to recommendation one for a second. There really should be, I don't know whether it's a liaison from the TPAC, T-A-P-A-C. But if students of color throughout the county are a group with whom representation is thought to increase, why is there not more concerted efforts to partner and work with groups that large constituent base are students of color, families of color? Even if
122we don't have somebody going to each meeting, there should be some type of parallel track or reporting or information or even facilitation to the school board where we are informing and measuring and evaluating through feedback in our experiences how effectively it's being done. All right, so I'm going to jump back to two now. The CT, I got to say, I knew very little about the program. It's something that when we think about topics to make PTA meetings or even whatever other information sessions that happen in elementary school more engaging, this is something that should be front and center. If there's access and if there's support and if interest is sparked, CTE is a spectacular option for many students to take advantage of. But there's a lot of ifs in that equation. It has to start
123earlier. so that parents and students are socializing it, thinking about it, and anticipating and preparing while they're in new school. If you're only finding out about it at the end, you're really not going to be in the best position to take advantage of. Because part of it is, since there's not a uniform offering at all schools, whether students need to transfer because they want to be in a certain program or whatever decisions families want to make, they need to have time to make those. If we want CTE to have legitimacy on par with college, then we need to treat it as such. And it needs to be something that PTAs talk about, that, you know, back to school night, whatever, I mean, whatever methods that we have for large scale communication with families. that needs
124to become part of. But with the existing program, there doesn't seem to be enough interrogation of how effectively courses are being offered to all students in the program and what can be done to improve what is currently there. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of data. And if we want to improve what we're doing, we have to measure what we're doing now. And the fact that we don't know you know, specifically the race of students who are in certain programs and not in other programs. There's a lot of always conversation about, you know, improving non-white student access to STEM. But do we know whether in CTE program, they're having access to cyber, other IT related courses? I can't really tell you what that looks like, but I know that we need to investigate
125and inquire what it is if we want to actually improve. In terms of greater collaboration from TPAC and CTEAC, I say the same thing as with APAC. If there is a desire countywide to become more anti-racist, to increase equity, then you have to have groups that really specialize by lived experience, if nothing else, speaking to the areas in which that equity is lacking. So whether that's somebody, again, listening in on meetings or attending quarterly. There has to be some way that we know what's going on. And right now, there's some good communication and relationships between the two committees that I've mentioned, but it should be greater than just a relationship of individuals. There needs to be a process in place that no matter who's sitting in the chair, that information is flowing, that there's opportunities
126for collaboration and input to meaningfully improve what a program is providing. And I think, I don't know how long it would take, but I know we're a long way from that. Recommendation three, that FCPS make ongoing anti-racist training and development for staff mandatory, which must include more time dedicated to this training. the necessary expertise and human resources and required funding to meaningfully implement this as a core value of FCPS. In addition to providing resources for staff, there must be ongoing engagement, requests for feedback and collaboration with students, families and members of the community so that efforts to become more anti-racist can be undertaken with fidelity. I know that there's staff training and development now, and it may be some around bias or cultural proficiency, but with anti-racism, it has to be ongoing, continuous. It has
127to be measured, needs to be surveyed, be evaluated, needs to be challenged. And the only reason why I'm better at racism than many people on this call is because I've lived with it. And if you don't live with something, you're just not going to be as good at it and you're going to need a lot more time and exposure and work with it. So it doesn't do any good to staff if they just have Ibram Kendi speak at a high level at a leadership kickoff that gets filtered down several levels and may not even make it to staff. And even if it does, that alone is not enough. I did not see the talk, but I don't know that what came out of it was anything challenging folks, making them uncomfortable, moving them to take
128more drastic measures than are currently being taken. And this is something that's really incumbent upon our elected leadership, you school board members. Thus far, there really hasn't been any serious policies yet approved or implemented with anti-racism, yet there's been so much noise. I don't want to just call it criticism. A lot of it's noise because it's uninformed. It's ignorant. It's racist. And there really needs to be a recognition that it's just beginning and that it's going to get worse in terms of the volume and maybe even the number and the types of criticism. But you'll have to take a stand. You know, there's a two-way message sent by taking a strong stand on something. You communicate to people what you're not going to tolerate. You communicate to other people what you're in support of. I
129think this past year, some of that messaging has changed, but I always chuckle when I see in a statement about something that happened, you know, there's no place for that here. There is a place for it here. But if we don't want there to be a place for it here, we're going to have to say it in policy. And we have to say it in operations. There's no place for this type of racism or sexism or lack of respect for gender identity, sexual orientation, all those things. If we don't take strong stances in terms of policy and operations and accountability, then there is a place for it. And that place will still be here and there'll be quite a comfortable place. While this wasn't a recommendation, I think it kind of flows into the charge
130for. 2021 and 2022. It's about the public, not only just what the public engagement committee process, and I have to say I'm somewhat in the dark on it because I was reached out to on behalf of the public engagement committee, and I was never followed up with. I reached back a few times and never heard back, so I don't know where things are in that process, but there has to be some consideration, contemplation on what is the purpose of these committees. Are we just to meet, talk amongst ourselves, and present recommendations or just present, you know, a recap of what we talked about to the school board? Or are we to have a say in how FCPS is going to be run? Our children are the ultimate stakeholders and are the ultimate clients. We are
131stakeholders. They are as well. They are really the foundational stakeholders in this, but there just doesn't seem right now. There's no real clarity. And I think part of that comes to, you know, I think the process by which this structure even was formed or evolved. I think it preceded most or all of your tenure on the school board. But it wasn't something that I don't think was deeply contemplated at the time. It was probably more of a bureaucratic box checking exercise to where we have community input, we have community feedback, we have community participation. I mean, even the name of this committee was previously called the District Advisory Council. And nobody had any idea what that meant. At least now, even if we're not doing what we want to get done. At least folks know
132if your Title I parent advisory signals enough about who is the core membership of this group and what is our area of focus. But it doesn't seem clear how folks even gain membership on these committees. I know that with TPAC, it comes from principal. We call it nomination. Sometimes it's begging and pleading just because I think a lot of principals. don't have a clear understanding of what it is we're supposed to get done. And, you know, they may look to it as, oh, it's like the PTA. It's really not like the PTA because unlike the PTA, we do have a direct line to the school board. And that's really the power in what we do. We have a direct voice to our elected leadership in a way that other groups don't. But I think the
133question is, what is going to be done with that voice? The other committees, I got to say, I'm not really certain as to how they're populated. I don't know if it seems to be school board nomination, but I don't know if this is a process where in each magisterial district folks are reached out to for if they're interested in to apply this way. I've never seen anything to that degree. The current method of populating and running these committees is guaranteed to keep us from getting the voices that are most needed at the table to have decision-making and influence over the operations. So wherever the process is, I say it needs to have broad community input. I don't know how much of a step back needs to be taken if these committees just need to be...
134I don't want to say tweaked. I would say we probably need to add more committees. But I think the process by which people get to these committees needs to be overhauled or created, because I don't know if there is a process right now. But I think there's a lot of power and experience and talent and wisdom amongst families in this community that are far from being leveraged to their full capabilities. I think that's all I have. I can keep the screen up. Let me just get one to the charge. And I think that kind of basically said it, but just to be clear, we want to empower this committee, more influence over policy development and implementation through more regularly scheduled collaboration with school board and other FCPS senior leadership. We do a lot of it
135ad hoc, but it has not become embedded institutionally. And it really does need to be. so that the type of changes, the type of issues can be something that, you know, when we're meeting, I mean, just imagining what our membership would think of, we're talking about something that's going to be implemented in schools in a year. That has a whole different framing than these are topics of interest that we're going to talk about. And I think we need to really think about how, you know, how that's going to be done. But if we really want some of these longstanding issues to move forward in a positive direction, I think it's going to have to happen. I want to give my vice chair the opportunity to add any comments that she has before we take questions
136from board members. Sure. Thank you, Mike. And you've said this, but I just want to emphasize that we make these recommendations, but oftentimes we don't get follow-up. So can we get a commitment today from the board to have a follow-up meeting at some point to discuss the progress on these recommendations? What work is being done on the ground to implement these recommendations so that we as... members of a citizen advisory committee, we can report back to our membership, to our school communities that there is actual action being taken on these recommendations. All right. Thank you, Ms. Ben-Hanim. Dr. Anderson, perhaps we can have board members' comments in response to that question. Folks, if you'd be amenable to a follow-up meeting about these recommendations. And then Dr. Anderson, obviously, you know, maybe that's something you guys
137can discuss in chairs just to consider. But for now, let's go around and have our board members comment. So Dr. Anderson. Okay, thank you. If I may respond to that piece, just not for my time, just to talk about the follow-up. That is something that has come up in chairs, and Dr. Brabrand, who I'm sure is here, maybe he'd like to speak to this as well, did talk about having a session where we do this in the fall, where we have the opportunity to respond, where staff also, as well as the board. get an opportunity to respond and have some structured time to all of the advisory committee's feedback that we've received in these reports. If Dr. Braver does not want to add to this, I want to have my time be started and just
138jump right in. Thank you, Mr. Walts, and committee for this report. I have a number of questions that I'm hoping that I have a chance to get to. The first recommendation where you're speaking about how to increase. opportunity for our students to advance academics. I definitely am in great support of this idea. It's not just shoving more and more kids into the program, but it's providing opportunity for all. So I wanted to make sure that I articulated that. But most importantly, I wanted to also lend my support to the idea of having someone from the TPAC committee to the APAC committee, because that will help to really address the situation that is before us, which is how do we increase participation in our Title I schools. So I would be happy to continue to carry
139that, to champion that idea to whomever it needs to be championed to. But to have that happen. You talked very quickly regarding other committees. Other committees, magisterial members are, and at-large members, are all provided with an opportunity to appoint a member to the committees. Title I is one that does not happen, that is handled differently. I do want to point to the, I believe, the recommendation that speaks to the CTE. You talked in the report regarding demographic data. I wanted to point to that two of our colleagues, Ms. Tolan and Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, during the last CIP did put forward for a program audit, which I think we also, no, we did this in a forum. which will also speak to this because this is good information to have. We need to know what programs are
140available where and who are attending. So definitely on the right track with that. And the board has begun some of this work in terms of putting it in front of staff as a priority. I also wanted to talk a little bit about recommendation three. This is work that definitely has begun. And if Dr. Williams is with us, I would love for her to give some sort of summary in terms of where we are in this part of the process. I'm here. Yep. Good afternoon. And thanks for the opportunity to speak to this recommendation. Certainly the work around the anti-bias, anti-racist curriculum development is going to be seminal to this recommendation. But in addition, there is cultural competency training that has been ongoing. Principals this year received training around leading for equity. and how to coach
141for that type of transformation. So it's just important to lift up all of the efforts that are happening at present, but certainly this recommendation and the policy environment will strengthen this work as we move forward. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Williams. The other piece that you talked about in the report, I believe on page five, talked about standardizing the practice for communication. Could somebody on staff speak to what is the current practice? Because I know this is constantly a conversation where we want to ensure that all of the information is translated, that it's provided, and different practices are in place throughout the division. But what is the general expectation when it comes to the communication that we send to our families in this realm? Well, Dr. Anderson, I'm not sure we have Ms. Lloyd with
142us this evening to answer that question. We certainly do have a lot of our major communications in seven languages, and we've continued to enhance the number of communications that go out in those seven languages. I'd also just like to reference your earlier asked just for a quick comment. This is a structure like Mike said, this has been around for multiple boards. We have advisory meetings at the end of the year, right at the end. And then we do provide a staff response that's provided by the end of the summer, the beginning of the fall. I think the board's actually been exploring this issue in governance or impact about how to better close the loop after the presentations are done in June and then we respond to the board in fall? How do we bring everybody
143back together to say which of these recommendations the administration is moving forward with and which ones are not and they're not and why not? And I think there's room to explore how to have that conversation. And I think it has been one of the... one of the tensions and one of the opportunities for improvement in communication and the way the structure is set up. And we'll be glad to work with the board as you all look at the best way to do that follow-up with these committees and their recommendations that they bring you each year. Thanks. And Dr. Anderson, if I could just add to answer your question regarding the AAP and the whole process. All of the materials are prepared centrally and including the translations and then the timeline for dissemination and the windows
144when they should be going out. are provided to the schools to then put out to their communities. I do know that there has been some further discussion around how can we more centralize this process to make sure we're reaching everyone and I the instructional services folks would have to speak to the progress on that. Thank you so much, Dr. Ivey. The other thing that I wanted to share is I believe that we had a very similar conversation last time we had a presentation from TPAC. When it comes to standardizing some of the communication pieces, there's a space here where we can make this a little bit more robust because this is a topic that is very important to many parents. Whether it's at the bottom of an FCPS news you choose, when we're talking about
145standardizing, all of the things you've provided, plus including our parent liaisons, plus a text message. We need to add some additional things to have better access, or rather, better outreach. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. McLaughlin. Great. Happy to follow Dr. Anderson. So I do appreciate all the hard work put in by TPAC this year, the committee and the recommendations in front of us. I did want to share with the committee chair, Mr. Waltz, as well as the other members who might be watching that in my nine and a half years on the board, we certainly have heard from just about every one of our advisory committees. a similar concern that you put in a lot of hard work, provide recommendations, and then it's unclear what will happen with those recommendations. In particular, people
146know that our committees, whether it's advanced academics or whether it's school health advisory, whether it's the Minority Student Achievement Oversight Committee, we frequently get the request on where do things stand. And part of it is because we do this right at the end of a school year, then we roll into a new school year. And so it's really tough for staff to get these reports during the... the bridge between the end of a school year and the start of a new one. And they're ramping up to start the next school year. So I do think that we are long overdue as a board to really work with our senior leadership and the superintendent to really look at what's a logical time so that we can build that in and make that happen because we appreciate
147the amount of time people put into this. I will also ask Mr. Walts on how much detail did our school staff and central office provide you in all three of these recommendations about what we currently do? Because I know our CTE advisory committee would like us to continue to improve on this. And it's not just our TPAC communities, but around the county. access and awareness to CTE is an ongoing challenge, as well as even people being aware of AAP, AAP services, accessing AAP services, again, in our non-Title I schools. So I know it's like a... school system dividend wide challenge. So could you maybe comment a little bit on that on how much presentation and information you received about what we're currently doing? And did the community or did the committee then decide that what
148we're currently doing is insufficient? I'm just wondering what level of detail you got? Well, we've had presentations. Let me try and mute myself. Okay, good. We've had presentations from staff from AAP office for several years. And it's not the information per se. It's how effectively it's reaching everybody and how well the program is being implemented. I mean, I think if you read a book, if you read the FCPS book, a lot of it's good. But if you use it as an implementation guide, it breaks off. So it's really not in terms of CTE. It came from more communication with the chair of that advisory committee. And, you know, I don't know that we don't I mean, it's not even feasible to have enough time to even as it is. We had to have this report
149much later than it was originally scheduled for because I work for a living still. So this is volunteer and we need time to be able to do this. And because of that, it was like, there's no way we're going to be able to meaningfully put things together middle of May when we've just met. So that's part of why that collaboration needs to happen earlier and often, because it's not even, you know, Title I staff is great support for us, but they can't be expected to run around and get all this and get all that information. I think that it would be more helpful if we could access all the information on a site, you know, that broke things down. demographically, socioeconomically, whatever, then in compiling our report, our discussion, then we could have that, I
150think, greater collaborative process where they can inform this, inform that. I mean, a lot of this comes through systemic experiences. You know, it's not just anecdotes. Year after year, different person, different school, same type of break off an experience. I mean, that's what really, you know, brings us to these recommendations. You know, I mean, some things go on really well. Other places they don't. And what does that tell you? Individuals can be great, but a system fails if it doesn't have standardized practice that's reaching everybody in the method that it's supposed to. So, if I answer, go ahead, Nina. Oh, I just want to say we have basically empirical data, right? We have members all over there. They have children all over the county in Title I schools. And specifically regarding the CTEC data, we
151asked the chairman of that committee for the data on demographics. which students are in the cybersecurity program, which students are in the auto mechanics program, for example. This data does not exist yet, or it wasn't provided to us. I mean, someone said, oh, it will be, he asked, I think, two staff members who work on this, and they told him it's not available at the moment. They will send it to him, and that was, I think, over a month ago. So that just tells you the uphill battle it is to get data. In terms of demographics for AAP, the same thing. But we actually know the answer because I was told whenever the number of, we could say minority students or any really any student group is less than 20, they will not share that
152breakdown publicly, at least online or, you know, I'm not sure how to get it otherwise, but. It just tells us that the number is so small. Like, for example, at my child's school, the number of African-American students in the AAP program is so small that they don't do a breakdown. So that, for me, answers my question, that there are not enough minority students in that school, because although it's 60%, I think, Latino, we still have, like... the numbers that they can't share them for Latino students. So that tells me the answer that there are less than 20 students in that program who are Latino, although the school is 60% Latino, for example. Well, again, thank you both. And I do agree with you that one of the things we continue to look at is how
153do we take our best practice guidance at central office, bring it down to 150 elementary schools and then another, you know, 25 middle and 25 high schools and try to then have that standardization of practice. So you're capturing. Thank you for your work and service this year. All right. Next is Ms. McLaughlin. She just spoke. I'm sorry about that. Okay. We have Mr. Frisch. Thank you. First, let me say that I applaud the work and the recommendations around expanding AAP. I'm not sure if our program review will give us a clear picture of how we're doing in terms of equitable implementation of AAP across the county, but I'm hopeful that will happen and then we'll have some serious conversations to have. On the... The question of CTE, I want to applaud your committee for collaborating
154with our career and technical education folks. I think it's great to see committees collaborating together. and how critically important it is to begin that conversation at a very young age to encourage students to think about all of the different paths that are open to them and all of the great programs that we have in Fairfax County Public Schools. I know it was said a question about standardizing communication to make sure that these and other things. are being communicated to all families, I would argue that you certainly want to standardize like a base level of communication, but we're going to have to think outside the box in some places where we're not going to have to think outside of the box in others. So my hope is that we'll have more thoughtful communication as opposed to
155checking the box, standardized communications where we're doing the same thing everywhere because we're going to get wildly different results just like we currently do. Do you have any thoughts on the types of communication that might work better in other places that may not be needed elsewhere? That's a good point. And I think maybe a better word is really standard practice. You know, it will not be the same method if a school is 90% English speaking. far fewer resources are going to be devoted to language support. But that doesn't mean you should overlook them altogether. And usually if the percentage is small enough, you know, it's a term I heard years ago, a statistically insignificant population, which means they just don't get counted. So I think the biggest shortcoming of current communication is there. Unless it's
156happening and just not revealed to us, there doesn't seem to be a good way of measuring if it actually reached your intended audience or targets. I look back to the decisions that were made like mid-July about whether return in person, virtual hybrid, whatever those options were. And I don't know what the rate of response was. But I think the problem with that entire endeavor is that I think the county as a whole has been taking for granted how effectively its message reaching its intended recipients or audience. It's just something as vitally important as how are you coming back to school came up. We had never developed a really good system for reaching out to folks, making sure we reach them, what the follow-up is. We even had a discussion, I think, in the wintertime about
157just kind of doing a diagnostic of how families, actually, I think to track or measure and see if families who are no longer in the school system, if there's a way to even know who's there, how do we know they're there or not there anymore? I just think that communication as a whole has to be measured for effectiveness. It can't just be, let's try these three ways. And if we get 60%, it's like, why aren't we getting the full hundred? What's happening? And I think that takes a lot of trial and error, but I think it has to be intentional so that when the real situation comes, it has to get across to everybody. We don't have to wonder and hope, you know, of how many people it's going to reach. I can appreciate that.
158And I think. You know, it comes down to a question of strategy versus tactics. If we're focused entirely on the tactics, we're missing the forest for the trees, right? We're thinking about, well, I checked the box on social and text messages and phone calls. Therefore, outreach has been done versus a strategic approach, which looks at the adequacy of those outreaches to see if they need to be supplemented. So I can certainly appreciate that. And that's something that we've obviously talked about as a board in meetings about other types of community engagement, you know, the limited perspective versus trying to get out there and get more. One of the things you mentioned, Mr. Waltz, that I really appreciate is how we can better set up our advisory committees for success. And I'll let our PEC chair,
159Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, speak to this, but we did meet today. um the public engagement committee and one of the things that we've been talking about um is formalizing a process process for formal feedback um and progress reports um uh for our advisory committees and that's not something that peck will do unilaterally it's something that they will ultimately come up with suggestions for the board to consider and then the board will go forward from there so i think that's uh going in the right direction additionally We've been talking about ways to set the committees up for success, whether it's some kind of formal onboarding for committee members so they know what committees do. Right now, you nominate somebody and you give them the best information you can. Maybe they sit down with the chair before the meeting
160starts, and then they begin their service to the community. we could be much more thoughtful about how we do that so that we're arming our committee appointees with the tools they need to succeed on the committee and a full understanding of what what the commitment to those committees are because right now it's just like any other volunteer endeavor um people give their time and some people give a lot of their time uh for the cause so uh pecs moving those those balls forward and um I'm hopeful that in the near term, we'll be able to make some progress there. All right. Ms. Corbett-Sanders. Thank you. And I'm glad to follow Mr. Frisch. And I know Ms. Seismar-Heiser is following me. So all of us at PEC, and you were there as well, Ms. Omish, can
161add a little bit. But one of the things that was very important about the dialogue. at PEC, and it's something that I learned when I was the chair of the Advanced Academic Programs Advisory, was the importance of cross-collaboration between the advisory committees. And that is something that will also be coming forward as a recommendation on how we can more closely have our advisory committees collaborate on different projects and different areas of importance to the school system and the school board. But Mr. Walts, I found your report very well written and very helpful. I look at it as something that you could summarize your recommendations in essentially three buckets. One is the importance of communications, not only strategic communications, but ongoing communications. And I would urge that the superintendent working with Miss Lloyd make sure that
162this communications piece is built into the communications plan that is going to come forward to the board soon, because I think this is critical. The second is access to opportunity. And when I say access to opportunity, we talk about access to opportunity for advanced academics as well as career and technical education. opportunities in the field of math. But what we're talking about is access to opportunity from the moment that students walk into our buildings. And so often what happens is we have gateways and we don't talk about the future opportunities until our students are at the precipice of taking advantage of them. And what we really need to do. is start early on from the day that students walk into our buildings. And I would love to hear your input on this and actually have
163almost an individualized plan that we begin to work with our parents to develop that opportunity pathway. You know, is it through advanced academics? Is it through a more robust CTE? Which means that you have to clear up opportunities in your schedule in high school, which means taking courses in middle school. And then finally. You mentioned about what the availability in different places, and that really is something that this board has consistently talked about, which is the fidelity of implementation, because we do know that the opportunities are not consistently available, that the FCPS promise is not realized at every one of our schools. And so we do need to do that audit. But I am glad that we'll be talking a little bit later this evening. with the CTE advisory, and they have started that audit
164process. So we can unpack that a bit more. But Mr. Waltz, would you like to talk about, respond to my comments? Yes. And I think the main one is what you said about from the time children enter school. I like that idea a lot. And I think what it actually does, it creates more of that village that we talk about because it's a continuation. But it's also, it's a potential, it's an asset-based approach, it's value-added, it's, you know, we're going to help this child, this student build what they want. And I think the importance of something like that is when decisions would normally be made at the end of a second grade year. I think that process itself will say, why are we making this decision in second grade? We don't know what's going to
165happen by the time they're in ninth grade. And even though their, you know, their reading scores or whatever aren't a certain level, they really do like this thing in math. We're about to take them away from that because of this. And how is that going to affect them down the road? You know, there's a lot of students who. have no interest in something because somebody snuffed that flame out. Early on, the student doesn't remember. You know, they don't know exactly when it happened, but they just consider a certain, a whole area not for them. And I think if we start with, you know, boundless opportunities for them and allow them to pursue it through, you know, whatever. I don't want to say program because programs can be too restrictive. It's multiple pathways. Right. I think
166that that will it will help spark and maintain their attention and interest throughout grade years as they promote. I think we look at we don't look at discipline. Well, there's a lot of issues I have with how it's looked at. One that we seem to overlook is. How engaged is a student in their classroom experience? You know, a lot of times if you are turned off for this or that reason, you'll find yourself in trouble or whatever else. But how often are kids just bored, not connected, disaffected, you know, detached from what they're learning? And we don't appreciate the impact that has on them or what we're setting them up for. So I think if. We really listen to them and let them tell us what they're ready for, what they want to do, and
167give them access to it. We're going to have more engaged students. The word behavior, which is another problematic word, will not become uttered as much as it is now. There's just so, you know, more useful ways that we could be starting their path. So I like that concept that you mentioned. whatever form or where that's at now, that's definitely something that I think our group would be thrilled to take part in. I will tell you that I have been an advocate for ensuring access to those opportunities for well before I was on the board. And one area in particular is the access to advanced math opportunities. The previous board did make two boards ago, made some changes, too. But unfortunately, the implementation limited it to only ensuring advanced math at the sixth grade level. So
168we want to. pull that back and see it being pushed down into all elementary schools. Thank you. Just a reminder so that things don't happen again. Please lower your hand if you finish speaking. Ms. Seismorheiser. Thank you. And I'm very happy to follow both Ms. Corbett-Sanders and Mr. Frisch, as well as you, Ms. Omayesh. As the chair of the Public Engagement Committee, it's really fortuitous that you brought up some of the... thoughts around our advisory committees because um miss mayor and i actually brought a forum topic around this last year on really looking at our advisory committees and how they can better um you know how we can increase and improve the functioning the collaboration the ability to get um you know ongoing advice from our experts on these committees on policy and issues so
169i'm really glad you brought that up and many of the things i'm not going to repeat so um miss corbett sanders and mr fresh they shared many of the good things that peck is doing but we literally We literally had a long conversation today about many of the things that you discussed, including how do we do some of this cross-committee collaboration that you recommend in Recommendation 1 between TPAC and APAC. We're really looking holistically at all of our committees and where are there natural places for cross-committee collaboration and how can we encourage that, as well as how do we have systems and processes built in place for regular, if not formal reporting, but at least regular collaboration. conversation about issues that are going on. So we're not just waiting, as Ms. McLaughlin said, to the
170end of the year for the report, but we get information year long, as well as a more formal report at the end of the year that we can act on. We're talking about follow up actions and having a process for that follow up. for committee recommendations. So, you know, not just sort of a response, but also a follow up on actions taken in response to those committee recommendations. And I think it's helpful that many of us on this board were members of these advisory committees before we became on the board. So we're familiar. I know Ms. Omish was Ms. McCarthy, myself, Ms. Corbin Sanders, Ms. Cohen, and I know others. I apologize if I miss any names. But so we're familiar with, you know, the desire as. to give back and to bring expertise and
171the wealth of knowledge our advisory committees can support. And one of our next steps in PEC, now that we've sort of come. almost finishing what we're calling an operating manual is to get community feedback on this operating manual. And of course, bring it our recommendations to the board for their feedback. So I'm really excited you brought that up. And it just shows really the need for this work that PEC's been doing all year, the public engagement committee. I just wanted to sort of mention one other thing. I really like your recommendation too, around the marketing education and prep strategy around the CTE program. And I think that's, you know, not just our academies, but all of our CTE classes. Because I've said to others before, I really think we need some sort of exposure or
172information or something to upper elementary or middle school for our students. Because sometimes, you know, if we're trying to help our students find whatever their path to success is, sometimes they don't know what they don't know. Right. And so much of our education is focused around, you know, sort of traditional academics that our students may not realize that they have a passion or interest in CTE if they don't. I don't see. So I think that's a really good recommendation and I hope we can sort of flush that out further. So that's just my thoughts. Thank you very much for this great report. Any response? No? Okay. Ms. Pekarsky. Thank you. Thank you for all your work. Now following the Scorbid-Sanders and the Seisbohr-Heiser, I'm going to sound redundant, but really focusing on this recommendation number
173two around CTE, I agree with what they both have said. I think we have a systemic problem here when it comes to parent education about opportunities and student education and really... understanding what is available to them, understanding how they can harness their strengths and their interests to kind of set a plan for themselves. You know, we have opportunities in these programs to perhaps earn a certificate and then you can go off to work and perhaps pay for college. We are not, I know we are not doing a great job of ensuring that our students and our parents have this information and can look forward. So I am one who is very interested about seeing what we can do earlier in those early grades to really provide a more individualized. you know, kind of transition plan,
174if you will. And I know Ms. Seismore-Heiser and I have talked about this a lot for students with opportunities once they move on to middle and to high school. And I just, I am, you know, I think this is an ongoing problem of communication and one where if we can find a way to individualize more. It will really help our students in terms of access and in terms of just planning out what they want to do, what their goals are, and finding ways to actually fulfill those goals and be successful. And I, you know, I definitely see areas for things like parent education videos. I know we do academy open houses, but a lot of those things just don't trickle down. So I'm really interested in ways that we can use some of this technology
175that we have all gotten so good at utilizing during the pandemic to disseminate more information. And parents... feel like they have control and understanding of all of the many, many wonderful offerings of our school system. And I know even I, every day as a long time parent would learn about new things. Thank you. I'm going to speak to that real quickly and a few other previous comments. The importance of getting this earlier is that we never know when that spark is going to happen in a place that a student may have never appreciated, never understood that it was going to be. And if they're able to see early on, this is what you could be, and, you know, it helps to, you know. Be strong in this area. You can motivate them to have a
176different level of focus and engagement for a subject they may not have had before because they need to see that connection. Why does this matter so much for this? I mean, as functional adults, most of what we do is not beyond fifth grade math. But if you tie other things to certain careers and think about Ironman, he's an engineer. But nobody thinks about the STEM aspects of him because he's cool and all those other things. We have too many examples to make things tangible for students. And we're not taking advantage of. And they continue to be our greatest marketing tool. So during whatever they call, you know, my son's middle school is Panther time, whatever period they have for. I'll be honest, I don't even know what the total purpose is. If it's like a
177free period study hall, just overall development. How about you slip a video to a student? They'll tell parents everything. If they see something they like, they'll tell us everything we need to know about it. Like we do not use our best marketing tool as often as we do. And I go back to attending concerts. Every time there's a concert, anytime there's an award ceremony, there is standing room only. And we don't think parents really are engaged or care, but they do. We're not communicating as effectively why they should care about this and what this means. That same energy, you know, that same type of movement could take place if we're doing it the right way so that students very simply, oh, I want to do this. Listen to this. There's many ways we can bring
178more people to the table. Thank you, Mr. Walts. Next, we have Ms. Tolan. Thank you. Thanks for this report. And just to, as I've been listening to the discussion, you know, happy to hear these comments. I have a question is probably for staff, actually. I'm just trying to think about piecing things together and things that we already have in place. I know there's, there was considerable work done, you know, a few years ago on. taking our system that we had for kids to house their ACT or SAT scores and general interest and information about colleges to bring that down to the middle school level and do like a Myers-Briggs kind of thing with the middle school kids. So they would get some ideas about careers and areas that they might be interested in. And that
179that was available to the students and the parents. You know, I'm just listening. And of course, middle schools, you know, I agree. We want to get the kids earlier than that. But at least that might be another avenue where if a student. It goes through this process and it's identified, you know, for a particular interest in a career area or something like that. That may be a time to bring up these various opportunities that we have across the school district, whether it's a CTE, you know, offering or advanced math or whatever might be available. It's going to be poured through the system. Can anyone remind me what that system is and what some of the potential might be for that? Looks like Dr. Presidio has this. Yeah, Dr. Presidio can. Thank you, Ms. Tolan, and
180good evening, everybody. And thanks again for that question. So we actually have our academic and career planning process, which is an elementary, middle school, and high school process. But we've mostly focused in the implementation at this point, as you pointed out, Ms. Tolan, at the high school level and to some degree at the middle school level. It's been a goal for really the last couple of years to expand that work down into the elementary school level. And there's career exploration work that happens. We have different programs that we use. One of them is called Naviance that helps students investigate different career pathways that they might be interested in and set goals. So there's really a lot of resources and infrastructure that we have built in, but we're just a little bit behind our timeline for
181expanding that work. As you can imagine, we didn't really take that additional expansion work on during the pandemic. So, you know, as we come out of the pandemic, I think these recommendations definitely would support the work that we're trying to implement around academic and career planning for all of our students. Thank you. Yeah, just looking for ways to, you know, utilize systems. I mean, even like Percy said, we brought up this technology out there that's used what we already have. So I'm happy to hear about that. Thank you. Was that all, Ms. Dolan? Yes, other than just a huge thank you for all the work that this committee has done. I always appreciate the advisory committees and the work that they do. Thank you, Mr. Wolfe. All right, Ms. Janakovics. Yes, and let me begin
182by thanking the committee chair and its members for all the hard work that you do. We do appreciate it. And I will say as I go through the recommendations, I'm going to start with number two about the CTE. And we have worked very hard, I think, to try to make this happen, but I think we have fallen short as far as one thing that's been difficult. And for me, when I was a new board member, I realized the disparities of the CTE programming. And we still haven't gotten to the point where we are able to have offerings, at least in each. region so everybody can access it easily. I know as a parent, my daughter was not able to access something that she really wanted to because there was no way to get her a
183bus there and it was impossible for her to drive there without missing two full school periods. So that has been a frustration of a lot of people, I think, for that. And I know that part of it has been financial reasons, but... I think Dr. Brabrand and Dr. Presidio, this is something that we as a system need to continue to look out for. Number one, I am the liaison this year to the Advanced Academic Program Advisory Committee, and I'm certain that group and its staff would welcome any type of collaboration your group would like, TPAC would like. One thing I think that I am very happy about and I you probably already know this but I do want to say that you know two budgets ago we were able to add advanced academic resource teachers
184in all of our Title I schools this year even in a restricted budget we added them to another cohort it's our goal to get them everywhere we also have been talking about front loading making certain that we have advanced academic programming at some level available to every child so they need it so that every child is getting the most rigorous thing that they're needed. Again, I think we continue to fall short there, but I think with the front loading of the Young Scholars Program, adding a lot of teachers and physicians to support that in this year's budget will help us some. And I am concerned a little, not a little, a lot about what you said about the model not being spoken of. And maybe, Dr. Presidio, you can help me talk about how do
185we. how to connect families and how do we communicate to families about advanced academics. I know APAC a few years ago, that was their sole purpose, how to change communication strategies. And they feel like we've upped our game, but maybe we're not quite there. But Dr. Presidio, if you could kind of just speak to what we do on that level. You know, I mean, I think there's definitely areas that we want to continue to improve. And so I think these recommendations are very helpful and we certainly appreciate them. But as you point out, we have worked really hard over the last several years to really expand our family engagement. So there's a lot of things that happen from school based events for parents in terms of information sessions to help them really understand the programming,
186the four different levels of service. the application process for students to be identified for services and to apply for level four services. We've really done a lot of direct outreach to individual families using our AARTs for students that maybe need a little bit of additional support and assistance. So our young scholars, for example, level three students that might need information. about how to be considered for level four services, receive direct outreach from our AARTs. And we've done a lot of work to integrate AAP in the general education setting with advanced academic curriculum and teachers, again, engaging families about the curriculum that they're using that is part of the AAP program. So there's a lot of different things that we've done. Certainly a lot of multilingual communications that have been increased, but Again, there's always certainly
187room for improvement. Absolutely. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you again, Mr. Walts and your team for this report. We appreciate it. All right. I'll go ahead and take my turn. Thank you, Mr. Walts and Ms. Van Lannum. I think Ms. Van Lannum had a comment regarding it. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, please go ahead. to add a couple of things. You know, when I look at things like on paper, on the website, everything like looks good. The AP program, I looked through the Arabic, the options. If I was an Arabic, a parent who preferred to communicate in Arabic, it was messed up and they shared that with Kirsten, right? Like when I click on something, it becomes the English again. In Arabic at least, there is a lot of usage of Google Translate that
188is not accurate. A lot of times it doesn't even make sense. So we really can't say we're serving the families if this is what's happening. And sometimes the quality of translation is an issue and families just give up, honestly. They're not even willing to take the time to read. So there needs to be like more accountability there. And in terms of the AAP program, I think I can speak from my child's experience. When you have like one teacher in one school and you don't have options, you know, this person is going to be there maybe all seven years of the child being in this school. And I didn't feel that person, for example, like... had the cultural sensitivity or awareness or whatnot. And if this is the experience that other parents have at other schools,
189it probably does a disservice to our... students and our families and without the data, you know, this thing that I spoke about when there is less, I was told when there is less than 20 students from a particular demographic group that the data will not be broken down. That already tells us, you know, we're failing, right? If a Title I school is, you know, over 60% students of color and there are not enough in the AAP program, we already know we're not doing enough. So I believe there needs to be more oversight, more accountability. And I mean, hiding the data really doesn't solve the problem because whatever is hidden is clearly like not something that the school system wants to share with parents. Honestly, I mean, as I've learned now being in this committee for
190a... couple of years. So I just wanted to highlight and emphasize that. And lastly, about the recommendation for anti-racism, it would be remiss of me not to mention one thing that I've seen time and time again in the meetings I attended about equity in FCPS. We cannot pick and choose the kind of hate that we want to fight based on what's cool at the moment. So with the death of George Floyd, of course, anti-black racism came to the forefront. It's long overdue by centuries that we address that kind of hate. But we must also address the other kind of hate that our students and communities face for being Arab, for being Muslim, for being Jewish, for just really being different. So I just wanted that to be highlighted because there is no anti-racist curriculum. If
191we're just thinking, oh, let's just be cool and help this one group that's getting all the media attention right now, when our school system is so diverse, and I think the attacks on Abra really highlight to me. Just they bring back memories of my own trauma as an Arab American Muslim woman, visibly Muslim, and the hate I face, the worries I have for myself, for my child, for my community. And I just hope that's always addressed in PD, in the staff development, because there is really a lack of, I mean, virtual learning exposes us to how the teachers are teaching our children. And what I've heard from parents is, you know, sometimes a complete lack of sensitivity to cultures that are not the dominant culture in this country. Okay. I'll go ahead and take my
192turn. Thank you, Mr. Waltz and Mr. Naranjian for your presentation and emphasizing these points. A lot of the work on which has been long overdue. I did want to just address, you know, in speaking to the family engagement, I think that this committee is unique because you also have representatives from every one of the Title I schools. And so I just wanted you to touch on that a little bit, Mr. Waltz, if you could just help clarify. You mentioned earlier that you have the data at the table in the committee. And I just want to make sure that that's clearly delineated, especially in better understanding what these parents feel and think, having represented all these schools around that family engagement piece. I mean, what's their feedback on that? Make sure I understand your question. You
193said we have the data. Can you? You said that there was a comment made earlier. I think it was you, but about saying how you have the data available to you because you have representatives from all these different schools who are on the ground and understand the realities. It may have been Ms. McGahn, it was one of you. Oh, I think that, I don't want to speak for Ms. McGahn inaccurately, but I think what I'm saying is we can speak to our communities, students and families can speak to what's really happening. I think because of lived experiences, we can talk about how students are being ushered away or led to advanced academics, being over-disciplined, facing racism, Islamophobia. I mean, I think that, I don't know if I'm really answering it in the best way. I
194just think that there's such, you know, in 40 schools across the county. there's in one middle school, there are such varieties, such variants, but still similar stories, similar situations. And if you're 30 miles apart, but you have the same situation, then it's not about kindness. It's not about how someone was raised. It's a system failure. And we're able to often diagnose how effectively something's happening just based on what our families say. And I think that's why in speaking and talking about collaborating with other committees, like it's essential. If everyone's specializing or if each committee is focusing on a certain area, but you don't have a committee focusing on the group that's supposed to be receiving it, you're definitely going to miss. I don't know if that answers what you're saying or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
195No, no, that's exactly, I mean, your point on being able to kind of diagnose the extent to which we're implementing effectively because people on the ground are speaking to that. And let me, so I can tie that to even recommendation three. It's really important that staff has time. They need time for this training. And it's really, it's learning. I think training, I think of training as something that, you know, it may be a set time, set period. Learning, I think, is more an ongoing process. And that's what it really needs. It needs to be learning. Through my two children's experience, and I only have a rising high schooler. Even though we're at a different socioeconomic level that Title I is defined by, because they're black boys in the school system, there's volumes of writings documenting
196how many ways the racism in this county manifests itself every day. And these are both AAP, the good black students, if you will. A teacher hung up on us. because they were confronted over not following the grading policy that the board recently implemented late winter. If that's happening over following policy that you all implement over grades, really have to take a close look on what it's going to be when it comes to anti-racism. What's the pushback going to be then? What's the possible retaliation going to be then? What's the blowback going to be again? One of my children reported discriminatory treatment from a teacher. The follow-up action that alerted us to it was the teacher yelling at him in the hallway, waving a clipboard in his face. And it was only for his counselor who
197came by and defused the situation that we ever knew about it because the school, and I want you all to really appreciate this. We talk about engagement, engagement, engagement, but it seems like after elementary school, it's like, okay, you're on your own. We need more engagement the further students go because they're transitioning into adolescence. They're more independent. There's, I don't want to say opportunities, but there are going to be situations for more confrontation because they're getting closer to adulthood. And it just seems to be a free-for-all. And the danger is that suppose an SRO saw him react negatively being confronted by somebody who he already said was discriminating against him. What happens to him then? Because we force the issue, because we take things proactively, you know, we can ensure more successful paths for him.
198But it's that very reason why I'm on this committee, because I recognize that I'm unique and a lot of people are not comfortable or familiar experience in this path. And those are the people, those are the students that need this more than anyone. You're on mute. Yeah, thank you. Ms. Smith, I see your hand. Sure. Mike's been doing such a beautiful job, you know, sharing thoughts. But one thing I want to lift up a lot of what Mike is talking about and and a common theme I'm hearing is two way communication. And as you recall from that family engagement survey we did a few years ago, that is an area that we're so large. We do a lot of talking to talking at. We are not co-designing with. We are not talking with. And so
199I'm hopeful and I'm excited and looking forward to the work around the family engagement policy, which with subsequent regulation, because that is where we may be able to get not only our values down, but some expectations to Mike's point around doing things with our families, not to our families, co-designing, co-creating. And so I just wanted to lift that up as a connection to some of these charges as some possible future work. But I appreciate all the things that. Mike and Nina have shared. Yeah, no, thank you for that. I mean, yeah, to my colleagues, you know, I would share that having worked with this committee, I guess, for two rounds now, the two words I think about in describing, you know, how they characterize their experiences are frustration and confusion. There's a lot, I mean,
200the stories that, you know, our chair and vice chair shared, there are many, many more that get shared in these meetings. And I'm just really concerned about what we're doing on that front. The language piece, there was some testimony today that the quality is a concern, but even the extent to which translation is available, what is translated, I mean, these are all places where there are major gaps and we have to commit resources. So I just want to flag this because I know this time around we committed certain positions to ESOL, which is another neglected area, which we continue needing to support. This is another one of those places where bridging that gap for families to provide the best opportunity for kids to be successful is going to be essential. And we have to commit
201those resources the next time around we look at that budget. I also wanted to touch on the advanced academics piece and the anti-racist work. I had a question for you guys. From your understanding, what is the biggest hindrance to accomplishing these pieces, especially expanding equity and access to AAP? I would say for AAP, I think it's the discretion and the oversight or lack thereof. I don't know outside of, you know, there's supposed to be information sessions. You know, I never know what it's like on the back end or what families understand or experience or what sense they get of whatever was delivered and presented to them. You have to be on such a high level of awareness to even sit where I'm sitting right now that. It's hard for me to appreciate what somebody who's
202not sitting here, what it's like to navigate and to understand and to parse out what's important, what's not, what do they need to know. I mean, I talked to somebody this past spring who's like, oh, I totally missed the whole thing about AAP. And they were looking into having appeal or a test at George Mason. I just think that with, and maybe somebody can inform that. But I think there seems to be a baseline in terms of what has to be provided and not a measurable goal on how effectively it's being provided. Like we know the same way, as I said earlier, there may be a school with 90% native English speakers, so they're not going to need the same language services. There are families, community schools where... Large percentages of the parents there are
203already keyed in to how to get their students connected to opportunities. So they don't need as much support, if you will. But for those that don't, I mean, it's like they're there, but they're not really there. And I think this is part of why we talk about this advisory committee structure. We will not get people who we need if we don't look harder, broader, wider, and deeper. We need to have people on an advanced academic committee who applied and didn't get in. We absolutely need to have people there because they can identify what's missing, what's wrong, what didn't go right. The only reason we were able to be successful in getting our students' grade change to what it should have been, I happened to be on a focus group about grading policy, secondary grading policy.
204And I literally said out loud, I said, I feel like I need to do an audit now because when I saw certain policies, I was like, huh, late work should be accepted, minimal penalty. I wouldn't have known if I wasn't on it. And based on the communication had with teacher, we were not the only one. We were not the only one. And I know we're not the only school. So that's one big component. The other, it was regarding, I think, anti-racism, the biggest hindrance is the willingness to be criticized for doing the right thing. If anybody going into it thought it would be, let me think of some, boundaries are always a controversial, heated topic, but if they thought it would be, close to as bad as boundaries. They really don't understand racism. This is
205going to be the fight of your tenure on this board, because this has been the fight of this nation's soul since before it started. If we are not recognizing, leaning into all the opposition that's coming, but more importantly, finding all the support that's there, but doesn't believe that you really are going to. are going to do what you said you're going to do, that we're missing an opportunity, and we're also kidding ourselves. This will be the fight of your tenure to make this school division more anti-racist. It's funny that the county that I grew up in, Loudoun, you know, they're talking about the CRT, which none of this is. It's just basic history. I mean, reading a book that one of my college professors wrote about, it's called Ebony and Ivy. It talks about how
206the earliest universities, the most prestigious ones in this country, did not just benefit from slavery. They were dependent. There was a relationship, a deep relationship. And that's something that we should be teaching students. They should know and understand why is Harvard so prestigious? Because it was the first university that profited, was created. from the slave trade. That's why. It was the first in time, first in line. We don't teach that. And what's interesting is that one of the criticisms said about CRT, oh, it'll teach you to hate white people. I'll tell you a little story. I was in my AP U.S. History class, 11th grade, and I remember that at the end of our two-day or so lecture on slavery, our teacher decided to editorialize. And, you know, if you're back when you wrote with
207a pen, I guess, in class, taking notes. And I remember she said not all aspects of slavery were bad. Some masters really loved their slaves. I can tell you one person who hated white people at that moment. I stopped writing, but the danger was not even me, to me, as much as it was for all the other mainly white students in my class who kept writing. Internalize that. They're the people out here now. who think the soul of their country is being challenged because they were so poorly taught. We have to be steadfast. We have to correct inaccurate depictions because this is not close to CRT. That's another discussion. That's another time. We're not ready for that. This is the foundation. I think there has to be not just a survey that went out in
208the spring. But there needs to be more partnering, more engaging with community organizations that are committed to this and members of the community to get our stories. I've written plenty to you all. You've read them. You may have forgotten them. And I'm just one of 100 plus thousand stories of racism played out in this county. But not because this county is unique, but because it's in the United States. I really think that's... Those are the biggest challenges. And that's something that we will in partnership have to fight against together. No, I appreciate you outlining that. I mean, I think, you know, in kind of putting together here as a board, what we want to take from this one, as we said, committing the resources, especially for language access and having depth and quality. But two,
209based on what you're sharing, you know, with advanced academics, I think we've had opportunities where this has come before us and really thinking about how we want to expand that access beyond, you know. I've been pushing for us to really consider opening the gates and allowing people to opt into that. And I would urge my colleagues to consider the same since we keep hearing it from MSAC, from TPAC and various other committees. And the second piece, it's going to be our role to clarify some of the confusion out there, as Mr. Woltz pointed out, around some of the anti-bias work, because that is going to be essential. And I hope that we can be thoughtful, maybe collectively at our retreat coming up. whether or not that happens, being thoughtful before we speak on these issues,
210just so that we get the language right and don't shoot ourselves in the foot and undermine really important work that's been happening for a long time, or has been waiting to happen for a long time. So with that, I know that we are short on time, so I'll pause there. I hope that, you know, Dr. Anderson, we can follow up on this meeting as they requested. I feel strongly that that's something we can and should do. But otherwise, I want to hand it off to Ms. Corbett-Sanders for the next session. Thank you, Mr. Walts and Ms. Van Gannon. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you, Ms. Omish. I know that we are now about a half an hour behind schedule. And so I apologize to the members of both the CTE Advisory Committee and
211the Adult Community Education Advisory Committee that we are going to try to catch up a little bit. I ask from my colleagues that instead of ending promptly at nine, if we could go till 9.15, and that way we'll get about 50 to 55 minutes with each of our advisory committees, because like the TPAC, these committees have put in an extensive amount of work, and there is a lot of intersectionality between what the TPAC did and the work of the CTE advisory committee and the work of the adult and community education advisory committees. So with that, I would like to introduce everybody to the chair of the CTE Advisory Committee, Mr. Charles Britt. He is known to many of you and has been a devoted member of our community and a leader on CTE initiatives with
212the county. And in addition to Mr. Britt, I would like to. Make sure everybody knows Whitney Ketchledge, who has been the school system liaison to the CTE Advisory Committee. And with that, I'm going to let Mr. Britt take over. Good evening. Thank you, Karen. Appreciate the introduction and good evening to everyone. In typical fashion, I'm sure I can help you make up about 15 minutes of that. With my presentation, particularly since I talk rather fast, I will defer to you all how many questions you ask afterwards, but I do agree that that was a very timely and important conversation. So, and as she mentioned, there are certainly intersectionality with the work that we did as an advisory committee to the conversation that you just had around equity in programs within the school division. Whitney, I'm
213not sure if there was something you wanted to add before I get started with the presentation. Now, good evening, everyone. Thank you for having us tonight. And I'll let Charles kick us off. Okay. So I think I've been given the capability to share my screen. So let me find the proper screen here. I believe I am sharing a PowerPoint presentation. Is that visible to everyone? Yes, Charles, it's very visible. Thank you. Okay. So let me... So I am going to provide the annual report on behalf of the Career and Technical Education Advisory Committee for the 2020 and 2021 school year. This is our charge that we were given by the school board in collaboration with key stakeholders. We were to ensure and look into equitable access, inclusion, and participation in all CTE programs. I was
214the chair of the committee for this year, and my vice chair was Alexa Crazel. On the next slide is a list of all of the committee members. Once again, we had the pleasure of having Ms. Corbett Sanders as our school board liaison, and their respective school board representatives are listed in addition to community representatives from the PTA, business and industry, and as well as representatives from the central office from special populations. teachers as well as career and transition services. These positions were not, or I say these slots were not filled last year. So it was certainly a added benefit to the committee to have input from those specific representatives to the work that we were doing. And we appreciate FCPS giving the flexibility for those individuals to participate in our monthly meetings. In addition to
215what you have read in the annual report, I just have a summary here of the committee activities. This was the first year we actually, or I should say, conducted a new member orientation. We had several new members, thanks to new members coming to the board and some members of the committee that had been on for a while resigned or stepped down. So with that, there was a conversation during our September meeting that those individuals sort of wanted to get some history, some background on the things that the committee had been doing. As you can imagine, we have a very short timeline with which to do our work, and they wanted to get up to speed as soon as possible. Alexa and I had talked about the idea of the orientation on numerous occasions, so it
216was very fitting that this year, early in October, actually held a virtual orientation for the new members, where we went over the purpose of the advisory committee, the history behind a lot of the recommendations that we had given in the past. recent changes that had taken place in the CTE program and also provided them insight into the work that we were going to be doing throughout the next year and why their role and the background that they had was important to the work that we were doing. I did receive feedback from those attendees that it was very helpful and they had anticipated and hoped this would be something that could be done in future meetings and I've shared with the new leadership that they may want to consider having new member orientations moving forward. Typically
217each year we also do an endorsement of new courses. I should have taken this bullet out because I did talk to Whitney and the school district did not present endorsements of new courses this year, but I know that that's always a part of our agenda in the early part of the year, but she did confirm there were no new courses added. However, the one thing that did take place was the endorsement of the 2021-22 Perkins budget request. as well as, as you may have heard from the last committee, I took it upon myself to actually give presentations to the Minority Student Achievement Oversight Committee, the Title I Parent Advisory, the FCC PTA Ambassadors Program, and the Northern Virginia District PTA. As you can imagine, during COVID, there were a lot of virtual presentations going on,
218so I received invitations from each one of these groups. to come and talk about the work of the CTAC and why it was important for their specific stakeholders to understand the value and benefits of the CTE program. And you may have, of course, seen in the last presentation and you may have heard through your own community channels that there has been a lot of talk about the need to expand those CTE offerings, as the school board member indicated, to all parts of the county, as well as ensuring that parents and materials that are distributed actually communicate the program in such a way that folks are aware of those offerings and can easily sign up. And you'll see some of that discussion come out a little bit more in our recommendations. So once again, this year,
219we broke into subcommittees. Again, like every other committee, we worked virtually throughout the entire year when we were face-to-face. It was very important for us because we have such a large committee to kind of break down some of the work that the committee does into these subcommittee structures. This year, we focused on program resource gaps, communications and outreach, as well as program accessibility and content delivery. I certainly can't speak to everything that each one of these subcommittees did, but if you read the annual report, I did a better job of sort of outlining and bulleting what the output was of each of these. But at a high level, I myself was a member of the program resource gaps, and we looked at analyzed labor market data and research from the NOVA Workforce Division and compared
220that to CTE course enrollment to determine where there may be gaps, where we see large gaps. growth around certain occupations, but not necessarily large growth and engagement and enrollment at the CTE programs. In addition, that data is appended to our annual report, and you'll see that we also, we have a chart of the CTE enrollment, and there's a chart that was created that shows you the numbers as they are mapped to the occupational, the top occupations in the Northern Virginia region. Next was the communications and outreach. This particular subcommittee looked at how the school division was actually getting word out about the CTE program. And they reviewed and sort of had conversations around current activities focused on educating parents and community stakeholders about the CTE program. There was sort of some cross work between this
221committee as well as the program accessibility because it all focused on. reaching out to the PTAs, having conversations with the counseling staff, as well as ways that other community groups and organizations can be engaged to help spread the word, but then also help support the school district in developing after school as well as summer learning opportunities that give students greater exposure to the CTE program. Next was program accessibility and content delivery. And the specifics of committee research, how CTE is communicated and promoted specifically at the middle school level across different regions. used anecdotal data that they were able to find from the middle school websites. Some of them had conversations with middle school counseling staff and others just basically used what they knew about their own regions based on their participation in the PTA and
222other community groups to identify best practices and then discover possible inequities across those, across the specific regions as it pertains to how CTE is communicated to the parents. And a subset of their work, again, this committee was busy. We only meet once a month, and that doesn't include December and January. They also slid in time to discuss how the CTE program was pivoting to adapt to the virtual learning. So there were a couple meetings where they got briefings from Whitney and other staff members about how all the programs were pivoting to virtual learning and the impact that that was having on students' learning, not only learning, but also access to... certifications that would need to be passed and those students who are participating in more hands-on programs like the fire academy and construction how those
223programs were adapting to ensure those students were engaged and received proper credit for their enrollment in those programs and courses The next two slides will basically summarize what our recommendations were based on all the work. Again, in the annual report, there's more specifics around this. So I gave you the high level of what those specific groups did, but I think the recommendations kind of flesh out what our findings were and where there's need for continued growth and support to the CTE program to address inequities or potential inequities. as well as other areas for enhancing support for the program as it continues to grow and seek new participation from students across the entire school division. So I won't go into, I won't read sort of quote unquote line for line, but recommendation one. The topic of
224how it's communicating consistent messaging keeps coming up over and over. This is, I think, a sort of different variation of the recommendation we've given about two or three years in a row about how the program is actually communicated to the communities. We've received a lot of feedback from the groups that I spoke to that I told you about, where they talked about having materials about the CTE program translated into other languages, opportunities for presentations such as town halls or information sessions around the CTE program that can be held in all the regions, particularly at the elementary and middle school level, and not necessarily in high school when students have already committed to a specific track. And there are other examples there that we have pushed and recommended that I know the CTE department has heard
225us talk about before and are working with their internal and external stakeholders to develop social media campaigning around the program and ensuring that. I know a couple years back there was a constant communication about the CTE program through Keep in Touch. So expanding those so that it reaches, again, the largest audience and also investing time into potentially doing division-wide information sessions, the committee has heard and believes would sort of support this need to expand how the program is communicated across all regions and all communities. Recommendation number two talks about expanding resources and learning experiences focused on highlighting the connection between regional occupational outlooks and CTE programs. If you look at the data, I'm not a statistician, but it wasn't difficult to see that there are certain occupations that are growing significantly in our region. It
226had been highlighted by workforce boards, the Virginia government and other folks around the nation. But that... does not necessarily seem to translate to enrollment in those courses within the CTE program. And of course, there are a number of factors that go into that as far as the size and how many students can be enrolled in a particular course. We didn't dive into those details, but I think the new committee leadership has already talked about sort of taking more of a deep dive into those numbers and ensuring that if we are trying to prepare the student population for careers. for access to college in these high demand fields, then there certainly has to be more of a robust effort to ensure that enrollment matches that so that the workforce demands are being met. And that that's
227also communicated to parents and others when students are thinking about which courses they're going to take and what they're going to enroll in. And we sort of did give a nod to the fact that we're not trying to sway students away from the particular career paths that they may have a desire and interest in pursuing, but It goes without saying that if the goal is to place them into high demand career fields and fill the pipeline of employment opportunities in the region, that there has to be, of course, increased. emphasis placed on the courses that the county has invested money in, such as IT and STEM and robotics and other programs that I think were highlighted in the report, as you see, that don't necessarily correlate to the demand that's in the workforce. And that
228is across all the programs. That's not necessarily just the ones that are technical in nature, but I think the data that we showed clearly shows that there's a need to enhance that across. all and also think about which programs may need to be sort of tailored or cut back. I'm not you know we're not necessarily advocating getting away with doing away with programs but there may need to be a sort of shift in resources toward re-skilling teachers to be able to teach courses that are more in demand and give them that professional development so that the school district can meet the need for those courses once the word gets out that there is a demand for those. Recommendation number three speaks to the committee's desire for the school central office staff and teachers to collaborate
229with industry professionals to update course descriptions to include language that reflects current industry and career terminology. I know this one was a personal passion of mine as we were doing research. and talking to schools and the committees that I mentioned to you about the courses and what's being offered, there's clearly a disconnect with the language, whether it's being borrowed from standard language that comes from the state or if it's something that's done internally, there's a need to ensure that industry, I won't call them buzzwords, they're just industry terminology around certain technologies, certain skills and knowledge that should be infused in those courses so that folks have a better understanding of what students are being exposed to. So if you have a course in programming or coding as we would call it you actually call out
230those coding languages that are being taught and just don't say we're teaching coding but we're teaching java or we're teaching sql things that folks in industry and parents in the community may understand and recognize as being valuable skill sets just based on their own interaction in the workplace the other reason why this is important is because it ensures content ensures consistent learning across all the regions and classrooms. If you make the description generic, someone could be teaching one thing at one school and someone teaching another based on teacher skill sets or just desire of what they want to teach. But if we're able to infuse those industry and career terminologies in that lexicon, we'll see that there is a, of course, consistent way that those courses are taught and that curriculum is developed so that
231every student is getting the same access to the same knowledge and skill sets across the school division. And then last but not least, investigating the feasibility of expanding access to Naviance to sixth grade students. That was something that the committee was a real champion behind. This came out of that group that was looking into how CTE is promoted at the middle school level. And we did also get this feedback from the Title I Parent Advisory Committee that information about CTE and courses and what that means as far as how students are mapping out their... career interest through Naviance should start in the sixth grade because by the time of course they're in the seventh grade or students who may be entering the ninth grade there's a lot of loss of information and knowledge that would
232be helpful as they're thinking about their course sequences particularly for those programs that require a prerequisite or you know combined a session one course with a session two in order to earn some type of career credential. or certification. And if you aren't armed with that knowledge early enough, you will not have the opportunity to then be able to take advantage of that because you didn't have the information. So expanding that access to Naviance to the sixth grade is something the committee feels very strongly about. And I think as we spoke with folks from the counseling staff, they said this was something that they're already investigating and looking into as they're continuing to address the number of recommendations we have given over the last couple of years. So this is a new slide. It's new because
233in years past, I was always going to be the new chair. But I thought I would highlight the fact that I am passing the mantle this year. After eight years on this committee and four as the chair, I am passing the baton to Mr. Joseph Parker with IntuSTEM, who's been a committee member for the last three or four years, has been elected the new chair of the committee. The committee's new vice chair will be Irvin Bracone, who is in the supply chain operations education space. Both of them have been members of the committee for quite some time and have the full support of the membership, have a good vision for where they would like to take the committee. There was certainly a vibrant conversation following our last meeting about what the charge will look like
234and the things that they would like to tackle in the new school year with the support of the school board. So I think the committee, as well as the central office staff, are excited about the relationships that they will build with these two individuals as they continue to push forward the work of the advisory committee. Again, it's been, as I explained to them, it's been a pleasure working with all of them. And I'm just excited that we do have individuals who are just as energetic and passionate about the CTE program as I am to continue the work that we're doing to make this one of the best, or if not the best, CTE programs in the region. And with that, I will turn it back over to Scorpius Sanders. Thank you, Charles, not only for
235this excellent presentation, but more importantly, for the many years of service to our community, not only as the chair of the CTE Advisory Committee, but also with your work with Northern Virginia Community College and other organizations here in Northern Virginia. We are forever grateful. So thank you. I am now. Go ahead. no i say it's been a pleasure it has been a pleasure i've known you for many years i'm now going to call on board members so that they can provide comment uh miss marin followed by miss cohen Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Britt. I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation. And again, having been to the construction site yesterday for the Foundation for Applied Technical Education, I'm really jazzed about this. So what stands out to me about your report is it's curious to me,
236having been on the board for a year and a half, that I'm seeing all this data about the offerings through an advisory committee. um because i really think that this should come from staff from instructional services during the course of the year or during budget work so um you know that that's a curious thing for me um What I'm hearing from tonight and what I've heard from the board, board colleagues and constituents and students and staff is that we need more career focused learning. But I think that it's we need to clarify the definition of career and technical ed and what the goals are. Because for me, I think of CTE largely as an alternative pathway from a four year college that helps students even get fast tracked onto credentialed works and after high school
237and whether that's upon graduation or with one or two years. Yet I see the opportunities in the report that, to my knowledge, would require someone to obtain a four year degree or more. And that's fine and could be desirable to have options like that, like engineering or marketing. But the school division needs to be really clear about this and the intention of what's offered. And as it's advertising these experiences, because it's worthy to have students sample different occupations. But if this is students like almost, you know, career path, I don't want to say lifeline, but. If this is their way to make their way in life, it can't just be this smattering of nice to try things. It has to be real intentional. What are we doing to help students who are not going to
238do that four year career path? Secondly, we need to expand these offerings. You know, we have about 58,000 high school students. And in some of these programs, we have handfuls of students in them. And in several cases, only one location for a type of study. And that's just not OK for FCPS. I think the model of how we offer CTE has got to change. to allow for more interest. And I've heard, you know, barriers and things that need to be addressed, including we likely, you know, need to add central office staff or we can pick your central office staff to manage partnership and programs. We have to have space and compliance with OSHA, of course. We need communications and marketing to inform students of opportunities, yes, and transportation. But, you know, yesterday I saw these
239amazing houses and a common refrain was, well, you know, there's no more new space. We don't have any space left in the county to build. Well, let's think of it differently. You know, let's find ways to partner. Could we, when we issue RFPs to do updates and renovations on our FCPS buildings, could part of that RFP be that the contractor has to allow for us to do some... construction and CTE work. And of course, all this is going to have to be done safely. But I think we really need to be way more creative and way more expansive with this. And that's got to come through in the budget. And I just want to say lastly, my two minutes, my one second, I think it's up. Darn it. But that'll have to be for that.
240It was an administrative thing for the committee. Thank you, Ms. Marin. Does Mr. Britt or... I mean, really, I'd like to hear the staff. I mean, I was about to offer that, Ms. Marin. I was just about to ask whether or not Ms. Ketledge wanted to answer. Thank you. So first, Mr. Britt and then Ms. Ketledge. Yeah, well, I'd really like to hear if Dr. Presidio is on or Ms. Klamenko. I'd like to hear one of the leadership team members of ISD, please. Thank you, Ms. Marin. So with that, Dr. Presidio. Well, I think, Mary, you raise a lot of really good questions and a lot of really good points, and I can't really address them all right now. A couple of things I would say, though, just for board members to know that we
241do have these issues on our agenda and are working on many of them right now. So, for example, we are doing a study with an external consultant of our CTE programs. We've completed the RFP for that and we'll be working to collect more stakeholder feedback about equity and access to our programs, looking at the programs that we do offer in terms of alignment to really labor and industry trends and developments and looking at national models of best practice. But overall, I would just say one thing to keep in mind is that our career and technical education programs are very, very broad in scope, right? So, I mean, we have programs from cosmetology to carpentry, right, and to cybersecurity. So our programs are really built around the national model of career academies, and there are essentially
24216 different areas of career academies. So we have very broad programs, and I do think that the intent of the study that we're doing. is to bring some information to the board and to the community for us to you know do a comprehensive review of the program offerings that we have in Fairfax County and see if there you know is a possible need to refresh some of our programming and also to really talk about you know the long-standing equity challenge of making our programs more available and more accessible to students across the county so that work will be work that will do with the community and with the board next year. I mean, I certainly would be happy to address more specific questions, but I see other board members have their hands up. And I
243don't know, in the interest of time, maybe I would just leave it at that to start. Sure. Thank you, Dr. Presidio. Mr. Britt, do you want to respond? And I also want to call everybody's attention that Ms. Glazer is here and she oversees the CTE department. Yeah, I'll just add by, similarly as Dr. Presidio said, because of the breadth of the programs, it does take sort of this work that he talked about, the committee had been recommending years ago, that there be some more additional studies done on the program to ensure that the programs that are meeting workforce and labor demands are the ones that are growing and that the resources apply to those. It is, you know, as she stated, The CT program nationally is a pathway to both college and career. It's not
244just to folks who are not going to college. It's for folks that also are going to college that have opportunities to go there. So when you think about who needs to hear about it, who needs to learn and be involved, it is a larger group that may not necessarily be getting that information today. So I certainly agree with the comments. and excited to see or learn in the future about what the study finds about how the program could be sort of further enhanced and tailored to make sure that it is meeting the needs of the school district without necessarily having, you know, 17,000 programs across 16 schools, but more so focusing on eight programs that could really provide added benefit to the, not only the school district, but the community as a whole. Thank you,
245Mr. Britt. I'm going to go on to Ms. Cohen. Thank you so much. Well, we are really going to miss you on CTAC. I feel really lucky to have gotten to serve with you. You were, we all voted best chair and the report was awesome. And as Melanie said, I think so full of so much information that is incredibly helpful to us as we go forward. And we're really appreciative of that. You know, I think a few things, nothing new. I think you probably fall in the same camp that I do, that it's a little bit frustrating to see year after year some of the same recommendations, but I'm super excited to find out about the program review. I think placement is a really big issue. We've all had this conversation, I think, pretty continually
246as a board of. looking at where programs are placed and do they make sense where they are or do we need to expand access? What is the limiting factor here? If it is really that we need like Boeing to come in and do some massive lab, like got it. If it's just that we need some space and a teacher and there are some barriers, then. I think, you know, one of the things I hope that we'll look at is maybe some additional collaboration with the county. We talk a lot about county spaces and county, the county, Fairfax County having, you know. some office buildings and spaces that are empty. And so maybe there's a way for us to reimagine some of our spaces, because I think it's highly unlikely, as you said, that we're going
247to wind up with like a brand new Chantilly Academy type program, you know, somewhere else in the county. So trying to be creative on that is a big one. And the other thing, you know, just speaking. to the the placement as well and availability you know the idea that in so many parts of the county that our kids would have to give up three class periods to be able to access these opportunities And we're certainly that way in my part of the county to be able to go and access any of these. And they're just outstanding. And I agree with you. It's the same conversation we've had again of trying to expand the information so kids know what is available. And I do feel like particularly with our sped kids. at least the way that
248our current school counselors are working, I don't think that we're hearing as much as some kids who are already going to be getting all kinds of opportunities tend to know more about these opportunities. And I think that's a shame. I think we need to do a better job of getting that information out because they are just unbelievable. It's amazing to me that you can walk out with certifications. or this new lease on life and a direction as you walk into college that has become so incredibly expensive to have a direction walking in is pretty remarkable. One thing I would say though, and I hope the program review is gonna... is, as you said, tying in what is what we're offering, what businesses really need right now to fulfill the workforce. So thank you again. You
249guys are amazing. And we're always excited to have you come present. And best of luck, Charles. Thank you, Ms. Cohen. Does anybody want to provide a response to that? I think Dr. Presidio, given the comment about the review. and whether or not that review will also look at availability in different regions and accessibility for different groups. Yeah, it will. And, you know, I would say that's not the only, you know, partnership that we have looking at some of these issues. We also do work pretty closely with Northern Virginia Community College and George Mason University and the county looking at workforce trends. And we actually have a meeting coming up with them to do some of this collaboration work in just another week. So we can continue to, you know, to try to do a better
250job briefing the board on that work. Thank you, Dr. Presidio. And I would also hope that we bring in the Economic Development Authority as well. Dr. Anderson. Thank you very much, Ms. Carpenter-Sanders. Like my colleagues before me, Mr. Redd, I do want to say thank you for this very comprehensive report. It was quite... It was quite interesting to go through much of this data that is here. And I'm sure many of the points that you've shared with us will be incorporated in the program review, which staff is also going to be working on. I just really want to echo my support in terms of some of your recommendations, which is the expansion. of programs and areas of the county where our students can most likely have access to them. I think that's imperative so that
251we have students who have opportunity. And so I'm really looking forward to see some of your response to that as well, Dr. Presidio, when we have that program with you. I do have one question. I believe it's in the executive summary. You talked a little bit about the use of CARES Act funds. to help with the resources and to fast track implementation. Can you be a little bit more specific in terms of what is it that the committee is thinking about when it comes to this budgetary implication? So the idea came from the newly elected. It started with the newly elected vice chair Irving regarding opportunities for students to get additional hands on training or hands on learning that they may not have received virtually during the school year. So if there are courses that
252are going to be offered or certainly summer learning opportunities that those funds be used to sort of maybe curtail the cost of the teachers or the cost of the space that may be. Students may have been charged or may not have charged. I don't know. I mean, that's something I know that you all are working on how that summer learning is going to look. But if those funds were available, the committees, I believe, was that it's a lot. Some of that should be allotted toward addressing that loss of loss of learning that happened because of the virtual learning where students that are in the hands on did not get that or may need it in order to study and pass the certification test that are associated with it, because some of them do come with.
253hands-on requirements that you have some have so many hours of that so if that's needed that funding could be used to support that and then in addition on a broad perspective i believe the community committee's um belief was that if there are costs or barriers that have prevented um the cte department from implementing recommendations that we have presented in the past that maybe some of this money could be used to help fund those things and we often hear that there are resource issues which you know working in you know the private sector and government space we totally understand all times recommendations come they sometimes come with needs for resources so this is what the committee felt was an opportunity that if they're going to be um you know discretionary funds that could be spent maybe
254it could be used to address some of these systemic challenges that the district is having to expand the program and increase the communication that's going out about the program if cost has been a prohibitor in the past No, thank you. I very much appreciate that comprehensive response, which leads me to a question for Dr. Presidio. I'm not sure if we had some in-depth conversation in terms of how we are going to recoup that learning loss for students and programs that do require the hands-on practicum. Can you speak to that a little bit in terms of what our plans are? Maybe I've missed it. Well, and I would say, you know, we're still continuing to Well, let me say it this way. We're looking at a long-term approach to address learning loss for students. So not
255just focusing on what's going to happen this summer, but focusing on what we can do to continue to support students next school year outside of the regular school day and even in probably to the following summer and the following school year. So we're really taking a longer-term view of this. For those students that did need support for some of those certification exams, we've been... try to make sure that they have that additional support even before the school year wrapped up and will continue to try to do that during the summer. So we really are working with students on a, you know, individual student by student basis, make sure that they get the support that they need. Some of it has to be now, some of it has to be immediate, but we're really also looking
256at a longer term view and approach to that support. Okay, thank you. I'm very glad to hear that. The only other piece that I have is how are we communicating to parents that this is available for students to reach out to on a case-by-case basis? Who are they reaching out to? Somebody centrally at the school? No, at the school level, teachers and counselors and administrators have been working with individual students really for the last several months to this end. And we did make, and again, the other thing just to remind folks in the community is that our summer programs are all free. There's not a charge this year. There are some enrichment programs that are charging tuition, but even in those programs, we've created scholarship opportunities for students to make sure that students did have
257opportunities to participate in those enrichment camps free of charge. Thank you very much. The last thing that I wanted to point out, I chuckled a little bit when I saw recommendation four, which is to expand access to Naviance to sixth grade students when this was a conversation that we had with the prior committee report from TPAC. Again, Mr. Brent, thank you so much for this wonderful work. This was very comprehensive and very thorough. We're very grateful for all of your service and best of luck to you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you for your service as well. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. McLaughlin? Happy to follow Dr. Anderson. First, Charles, thank you for your service as well. I also want to give a shout out to my Braddock District appointee, Alexa Prezel,
258who I know served as your vice chair. And also a shout out to our own board member, Karen Corbett-Sanders. I heard really great things, Karen, about your work this year as a liaison. Very, very helpful, very hands-on. And a shout out also to Whitney. who I was told she stepped in for long serving staff member Beth Downey, that Whitney did a great job. So Dr. Presidio, you've brought a good team together on this work to support our appointees. I cannot emphasize enough what board members have said about the experts here in our community serving on CTE. And Charles, thank you for capturing something very important that for nine years, I know our board's been talking about, which is what is CTE? And it really is career and technical. It is meant to serve every single
259child, regardless of where their career education path's going to take them. So I thought you captured that really well. And we do need to keep growing it. As the parent of two recent college grads, I know that data science, cyber security, a lot of the computer science fields, we need to do better in FCPS to really expose kids sooner, earlier, to what Ms. Cohen said. Here in the Braddock District, right next to Springfield, we really don't have enough curriculum options. Maren has talked about, you know, how do we make sure that we get that access and that students aren't going to be having to give up two to three classes in order to access them. So I think we'll want to look at really the delivery model to it. But overall, I just am very
260grateful to everyone who served on CTEC this year and everything that you're doing to help us bring this to a 21st century learning model for our students. We know with the cost of going on to university, even students need exposure to careers. So I really second the notion that let's bring this down to the sixth grade level. Let's make sure that by the time they hit middle school, they can start taking these CTE electives and starting to understand where their passions lie. They can often spark their academic passion by getting exposure to, again, CTE level courses. But overall, I guess I would just say, Dr. Presidio, if you could make sure that your team works with our communications person, Helen Lloyd, I'd love to get the specific language about the summer enrichment camps. We can
261go ahead and send those out in our school board newsletters and make sure people don't miss the summer option. So do you know the registration deadline? I believe the registration deadline actually might be passed. It's been open for several months, but I'll have to double check on that. And if it's not passed, we'll be happy to get that information out to the board. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Ms. Tolan? Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Charles. It's always good to see you. Yeah, I had to laugh when I saw the recommendation number four after the question I asked in the last session about Naviance and what it was and how we were using it and would love to see that expanded and perhaps used as part of the educational tools for
262our communication tools for recommendation number one. very sensitive to how powerful the CTE courses can be. My younger son went all the way through FCPS and is currently a civil engineer. and could have benefited so much from some of the engineering courses offered at places like Marshall High School. But we didn't find out about it until it was too late really for it to plan for him to be able to take those courses and do the transportation and have everything else he needed in order to graduate and go on to engineering school. you know, very sensitive to that and hope that we can do a little bit better with that because the opportunities are incredible. I did want to mention also earlier today we were discussing our joint environmental task force goals and we have
263a set of goals around workforce development and working with CTE staff. you know, Rachel Dahmer and Matt Bechtel are on our team looking at, and we'll be looking this summer at potential opportunities. I was very interested in the data and information that you collected around, you know, what is our workforce really needing here in the geographic area? What are we offering? And this is the kind of work they'll be adding. We could potentially add to your chart. So I just want to put that on your radar screen, that they'll be looking at careers and sustainability and renewables. And what is the demand here in Northern Virginia? And what is the student demand? And can we move forward in offering some courses in that area as well? So just want you to think about that. I
264am yesterday when I toured the house that, you know, the phage program put together, had a great conversation with CTE staff there. And one of the things we were talking about was the great expansion of the entrepreneurship courses across the county. And so I said, oh, you know, you really need to talk to our CTECH representatives. You know, I mentioned in particular our Janesville representative, you know, Juan Pablo. Gonzalez and his connections with the venture capital community and entrepreneurs in the tech industry. And so I hope that I see you guys as a really great potential real life people for our CTEK students to talk to. So anyway, thank you for your work. Really appreciate it. Mr. Britt or Ms. Ketledge, would either one of you like to speak about how we would go about
265expanding the CTE to include the green careers that Ms. Toland mentioned or referenced? I'll defer to Whitney on this question. Yeah, good evening. I'll also second all the third or fourth, all of the thank yous to Mr. Britt for all of his hard work this year and for welcoming me to the team. We have looked at quite a few courses that are available and coming from VDOE. There's a whole pathway and a new career cluster for power energy. And we're bringing on a new trade and industrial program manager very soon. So finding ways to connect all of the trade and industrial courses that we have, some of the IT courses that we have, technology education courses that we have, and pull in the power and energy and environmental elements into those courses, along with adding
266additional courses. So those will be part of our review of the occupational outlook and new course opportunities and new curriculum to add to our current courses coming this fall. Excellent. Thank you so much. Would anybody else like to add to that or shall we go on to Ms. Bukarski? Okay, let's go on to Ms. Bukarski. Thank you. Just want to offer thank you, Mr. Britt, for your work and wonderful leadership on the committee and for everyone's time and expertise. This is an incredible report, and I just found the data within it so helpful to me to really understand where a lot of these gaps are. and the discrepancies between high schools and who is accessing CTE offerings and who isn't. So I'm very much interested in what we will hear from leadership. I know Dr.
267Presidio is working on many of these issues. And this did come up in the prior committee. but the need for better communication, earlier communication, as you said, with Navion starting in sixth grade, and not only having the conversations, I think, with our students, but really broadening that and making sure that we are also bringing in our family, because I think sometimes there is that missing connection. And while our students may hear some of it in school or they may get it from counselors, you know, it doesn't it doesn't click. There is not that that long term term thought that really families can help solidify. So so I'm very, very interested in the work that we can do as a division with, as Ms. Corbett Sanders said earlier. that individualized approach for each student because I
268mean just beyond the opportunity to to try different things learn different things I mean our students can actually earn certificates and earn money. I mean, have a great paying job. That's regardless of whether or not they go to college afterwards. That is, that's amazing. And we have to ensure that that is trickling down and people know that that is a real option in this, in our school system. So I'm very excited about a lot of the work that is happening. and the recommendations that you have put forth. So thank you to everyone. Thank you, Ms. Pekarsky. I'll take my turn just briefly because I've had the pleasure of working very closely with the CTE Advisory Committee over the past year as its liaison. Just a couple of comments. I do think that your highlighting or
269your focus on the importance of early and more frequent communications is appropriate. And also... changing the lexicon to be updated with the terminology that professionals are using in today's workforce, I think is critical, as well as the Naviance. And I'm just hoping that not only the availability of Naviance is... earlier age, but also that it's multilingual communications. So it's not limited to just English because I've had the benefit of speaking at a couple of our non-English speaking PTAs. And when I raise the availability of the CTE programs, they are always very receptive and also very surprised at the availability. all that is available. So I encourage that we do that. And before I close out this portion of our work session, I also want to thank staff and thank Mr. Britt for including this robust
270amount of data in this report. It is only with data that we can have informed decision making. And sharing data with our advisory committees, even if it doesn't reflect everything we'd like it to reflect, is critical so that we can get the best advice from our advisory committees in the form of their recommendations. But it also is essential for us as board members to be able to do the work that we do. So I encourage you. Dr. Brabrand to make sure that in the future we continue to not only make the data available to the advisory committees, but also share it with the board. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, Mr. Britt, you're certainly welcome to join us for this next part of the session where we will talk about adult and community
271education. And we are very lucky to have this year's chair of the ACE Advisory Committee, Brian Graham, with us this afternoon or this evening now. as well as uh miss williams who is the staff liaison to uh the advisory committee and that's karen williams and i am also would be remiss if i didn't also welcome lois passman today to uh this meeting as the long-serving uh appointee from the mount vernon district and so um brian you guys have done some incredible work and there's a lot of uh overlap between the work that you all are doing and the work that the CTE Advisory Committee has done, as well as the work of earlier TPAC. And so I hand the microphone over to you, and I hope they've shared, given you the privilege of sharing your
272presentation. Thank you, Ms. Sanders. Thank you. I'd also like to point out that the CTE Vice Chair Irvin Varconi from the Providence District is also present, as well as Ken Balbuena, who is the appointee from the Braddock District as well, in addition to Ms. Lois Passman. So thank you for that introduction. I will share my screen or make an attempt to at least. There we go. Okay, so I'm going to go just through a kind of a reset. I think most of the members of the school board are aware that there are kind of two portions that are under advisement from the Adult and Community Education Advisory Committee. areas that are funded by the ACE fund, but also areas that are funded by the school operating fund. So just wanted to point out and remind
273members of the school board about the difference that the adult high school completion program that's on the top right of this graphic here is from the school operating fund, but the community education and adult ESL components of ACE are funded from the ACE fund. So a separate fund that receives a transfer from the school operating fund each year. So just to... reminders we took as questions about finances and things like that kind of come through that a lot of the operating costs and things like that are for adult esol and community education are run through the ace fund uh and not through the school operating fund and just a very very quickly uh remind folks about the things that are in these areas community education has some k through 12 programs um career development programs
274which you know is a connection to tie into what we just heard from cte um in adult enrichment programs as well right so there are um obviously the driver education the behind the wheel i think all of you would be familiar with and there are some ace components as well with test prep although um a test prep for various tests um kind of classes that bridge the gap from one grade level to another when for helping uh prepare students for the next level in math uh and and then of course some world k-12 world language programs a lot of those k-12 programs uh did not happen this year or started kind of very late because of uh of covid and a lot of the other programs didn't happen or happened in kind of new or
275different online delivery methods compared to a lot of the in-person delivery that we saw from community education in the past. Adult ESOL is also a huge important component of this. Of course, the school system is required to have an adult ESOL program, but there are There's teaching of practical English skills. There are tie-ins to important skills for workplace readiness, which are tie-ins to some of the funding from the grants. And then it's just always important to remind everyone that ACE... for FCPS, administers the grant regionally. So FCPS gets a million of the 2.3 million for the regional grant, which includes Loud and Prince William and Arlington, Alexandria, and the MNASIS systems. And then finally, adult high school completion. I think you all are aware of the Fairbanks County Adult High School and the options to
276earn a diploma, either advanced standard or adult diploma, depending on kind of how the requirements are met. And then also the opportunity to earn an equivalency credential through the GED. So just a quick refresher on what we're talking about here. The school board's charge this year was to talk or for us to assess to the advisory committee was for us to assess how community education, adult ESOL and adult high school completion, those three components can be better positioned to serve the lifelong learning needs. given the new learning environment necessitated by COVID-19. So of course, at this point, all of our meetings were virtual because we had the impact of the coronavirus. So as a result of that, we did kind of internal discussions about what information we needed to gather to understand how well we
277were doing this. And we kind of decided... to focus on the digital divide as an important component. A lot of ACE programs are meant to be kind of easy to access, not inexpensive, but also can provide similar credentials and things that can turn into real money-making opportunities for Fairfax County residents. So reflecting how well did we reflect the needs of those things? We created surveys for ACE instructors and for adult students to kind of ask. how they thought things were going, whether or not they were still able to teach their classes in COVID or whether they didn't really adapt to COVID. And also kind of whether or not students and teachers preferred those methods, whether they thought that there was better engagement or not. And Ken Balbuena from the Bragg District is invited today. because
278he did a lot of the analysis, statistical analysis as a result of that. So if we do have questions, that's kind of an appendix to our report, but there is some real data that the advisory committee created in addition to some of the data that we've been able to see from staff over the year as well. And then we've obviously in our meetings had discussions with staff about how the programs were adapting to and responding to COVID-19. I think just generally speaking, we felt like the high school completion programs, especially with their access to being able to provide computers to students, it adapted like everyone else in terms of providing virtual learning and actually had a fairly successful year. So the recommendations that we have today are not focused on the high school completion program
279because we didn't see dramatic. uh kind of issues or concerns there um we we we hope to kind of do a a more critical look at the high school completion program uh well all of the all three programs next year uh as well so um uh just a just a note um the uh just another The ACE community adult ESL programs did pivot to online classes, but did not collect enough revenue from the tuition to cover all fixed costs. We have kind of issues where we don't have the same access to K through 12 programs in terms of providing laptops and internet and a reliable internet to students. So there's certainly, there was kind of a mix of new opportunities for students who now had access to classes where they would have to drive across
280the county or whatever else because now they're offered virtually. And also students who you might have lost opportunities because they didn't have a good enough computer or reliable internet or whatever. But there were students that were taking classes on iPads and phones and all kinds of things in addition to laptop computers. So finding ways to adapt to that was interesting. If we have more questions, more specific questions about the survey. And the results, we'd be happy to entertain them later. But just to be brief, I do want to get into the recommendations. The first recommendation that we have is to consider additional coronavirus relief funding to enable ACE to restore previous programs moving toward full in-person classes while maintaining a virtual option. So I think this recommendation also, because it was originated by Mr. Varconi
281as an idea, as you see from CTN here. But I think the justification here, obviously, is we had some programs that were not able to. keep running. So to kind of maintain some momentum, a little kickstart from some of the CARES tax funds or maybe elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act could potentially be used to maintain some resources and programs to help kind of fill in some of the gaps that were here, kind of kickstart things. that were interrupted from the pandemic because not all the programs and offerings were able to continue during that virtual period. So that is generally our first recommendation. And I guess it kind of related to that there are... If there are ways to add an emphasis on continuing education requests for the
282legislative appropriation packages, I think that there could be a good tie-in, obviously, to what the ACE programs offer. Recommendation two is to ask the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for direct funding of the ACE Fund to demonstrate support of ACE program alignment with the One Fairfax Policy and draft Fairfax County Strategic Plan. So I know the strategic planning kind of got interrupted, but obviously there are a lot of ties to kind of equity programs through ACE. ACE has, I think, and I think the committee thinks clear value. for the county in general. If the county is saying that these things are important, if lifelong learning and their educational learning is important, if providing residents with new economic opportunities and empowerment and support for residents facing vulnerability, we see that ACE programs kind of fit into
283a lot of these areas. And instead of... asking for FCPS operating fund to pay for some of these things and for them to be kind of put up against the core mission of FCPS, that is K-12 education. We thought there might be some willingness for the school board, for the board of supervisors to directly fund some of these things from the county budget as well. So both the first two recommendations are kind of money related. And if we get into questions about that, there is because of the downturn and in courses, in enrollments, in revenue related to those things, but also because there is a kind of a base level of staff that is necessary to kind of maintain the program. There is going to be a gap in there that. that we need to
284find some way to resolve in the funding. The next recommendation is recommendation three, which is to continue to support virtual and hybrid instruction as a desirable class format using data-driven decision-making to determine which programs can sustain enrollment and generate revenue as ACE adjusts to a post-pandemic academic setting. A lot of the virtual class offerings that we kind of switched to during the pandemic era were new experiments for ACE. A lot of classes were never provided or offered that way. Most of them were offered in person. So we think that there's kind of a balance in... And some students feel like they learn better this way or that this provides them an opportunity to learn something while they're at home dealing with their children or whatever else. So there is kind of an access component that
285this has opened new opportunities. So we think that this is a way to kind of continue to maintain some revenue or potentially increase the revenue that's run through the ACE Fund. by continuing to offer some of these programs in virtual formats or maybe some in-person lab formats with virtual instruction or whatever. If you look at the new... I think the program is really already doing this. If you go look at the latest ACE catalog, it talks about how we have classes in person, but we also have classes hybrid and we have fully virtual and even self-based options as well. So I think they are really embracing that, but we do want to see kind of data pushing the adoption of those things and selection of offerings as well. The fourth recommendation is to implement a
286curriculum that expedites the completion of ACE career pathways, providing opportunities that allow students to pursue specialized skills. I think this is kind of a follow-on from a recommendation that we had last year in terms of identifying what I think we call career pathways. But there are a lot of growth areas in Northern Virginia that require credentials and certifications. And if we can find easier ways to connect members of the community with these offerings. to seek employment in these high demand field areas as quickly as possible without having to take several years of classes to do that. I think that is an important increased focus that we can, and my understanding is that this is also potentially in the works from staff as well. And then our last recommendation is to expand outreach to the community
287leaders, local human services organizations, and county agencies to increase the impact of ACE programs and inform the work of the advisory committee. So previously, the advisory committee had last year, the advisory committee had asked for the advisory committee to be expanded. And there was some discussion. I know we've been kind of talking around how advisory committees work and engage with the community just in general. But we did spend some time talking about organizations that we thought would be good to reach out to. And we and we had kind of an experiment. where we had invited the United Community from the Mount Vernon Lee areas at Lois Passman's urging to a meeting and kind of we formed a connection between the organizations. So the... The United community now kind of understands and we understand what the
288United community is dealing with and they understand some of the offerings that ACE has and it kind of has. Just in this short period of time, this happened a couple months ago, we already have a number of students that are enrolled in ACE courses for certification as a result of that. So we have some in the pharmacy technician and some in the certified nursing assistant courses. So we think that was really great, but I think we view this as an opportunity for... for staff in the advisory committee to engage with the diverse groups of Fairfax County that are helping to support vulnerable populations and help connect people to new career opportunities. So we look for the school board support in continuing to do that. Just really to wrap things up. We know that adult learning
289programs are important to Fairbanks County. ACE is not just adult learning programs, though. It also has K-12. support as well. Equity really is at the core of the education that is provided by all three of the program components of ACE. And we feel like with One Fairfax and with other discussions that have happened that there is a kind of a clear need for ACE. So all we're really asking for is continued support to help. drive for maintenance and growth of ACE programs. And the challenges that we had over the last year with some programs interrupted will need some financial support for continuance and relaunching. So I think that wraps up my presentation. And I will give the floor back to you, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, for questions. Thank you. Thank you so much, Brian, and thank you
290for all of your hard work and the hard work of the whole committee this past year, because I know you have brought a lot of innovative thought and approaches to the work. We do have a couple of board members who would like to speak. I'm going to start with Mr. Frisch. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Graham and Mr. Verconi, both Providence District residents. So welcome to the meeting tonight. One of the areas that I'm particularly interested in hearing a little bit more about is the first recommendation and leaning into the virtual or hybrid option. I imagine when community colleges began very heavily pushing students toward, you know, adults towards virtual online instruction, that there was probably a hesitancy by those who had always gone the traditional route. What advantages do you see by the
291school division, what advantages do you see with the school division leaning heavily into maintaining a virtual option? And I can't tell from the recommendation, maybe this is something I missed, whether this would be like a concurrent hybrid situation or would we offer both in-person and virtual versions of the same classes? So I think just in, thank you for the question. I think that in the past, the ACE programs have kind of operated from a, if there's enough enrollment, then they'll run a class model. There aren't loss leaders. Classes really only run if they have enough enrollment, right? So if the class is close to enrollment, they'll spend time kind of trying to push. trying to either through social media or whatever else, past students trying to find, connect people to opportunities, right? So I think
292really the idea is that they can offer both and kind of let market forces decide, right, whether or not students want to continue virtual instruction or whether or not they want to go back to in person. Obviously some... Some, like adult ESOL, especially with kind of the beginning levels of adult ESOL, does not translate very well to online instruction. But the recommendation really is to encourage multiple channels, to provide options, to have the most flexibility, because we know Fairfax County is a large county. Traffic, if you're not close enough or if you don't have a car or whatever else, like sometimes the computer is the equalizer that provides an opportunity. Whereas, you know, if you're close enough to a place to be able to take a class, you might not be able to go if
293you don't have a car or if you're broke or whatever else. So we view the virtual learning experience as a silver lining, as an opportunity, and we are encouraging, and it looks like staff is embracing that as an opportunity to potentially offer more classes to more Fairfax County residents. Well, and to that end, if there are programs and classes that are not best done online, there are clearly other classes that can be done entirely. online and marketed properly, you could certainly amp up the number of slots available to students if there was significant interest, which would bring in significantly more funding for the operation. Beyond the course catalog that gets mailed out, how are we marketing these opportunities to the general public? I think I might want to let staff respond to that or maybe
294respond to the previous question. There has been a growth on social media just from ARC because we do have some discussions about marketing. Sharing or paid, do you know? Sorry. Not paid to my knowledge. But I could let Mr. Steiner or someone else kind of respond about marketing efforts better than I ever could. Just to chime in. Thank you. Just to chime in very quickly. All of our marketing on social media, it's all what I would call organic. We don't have any paid marketing at this time. So it's retweets. And I know a lot of school board members retweet us and we really appreciate that support. Well, I appreciate anyone who thinks that our retweets are as valuable as some might. I ask that question because technology has evolved a great deal over the last
29510 years in how we can approach people, right? So, you know, years and years ago, if you were a trial lawyer and you wanted to reach people, you would buy the back of the yellow pages for a full page ad. And that's what your marketing would be for the year, right? And if you're a trial lawyer who is still doing that, you're wasting your money, right? You're doing very strategic targeted advertising for far less than you ever paid to run your full page ad in the Yellow Pages. So when I think about all the data we have for families that have signed up for our ACE programming, that tells me that we know exactly the types of people to be targeting with digital advertising to sign up for these programs, especially programs that are online.
296Perhaps that's something worth exploring in a little bit more detail now that that technology is so readily available. And I'm sure Mr. Frisch will offer his expertise in this area to anybody in the ACE program office that would like it. Can we count on that, Mr. Frisch? Sure. Happy to have the conversation. I would just note that, you know, that the staff is making an effort in this area, at least to our parents, in trying to understand kind of where web traffic is coming from and things like that, right? So I think there definitely is. And then there are kind of, there's information that we can look at based off of, you know. class information that comes through after people take the catalog and look at the catalog. The catalog is cheaper. I don't remember
297the exact numbers. The catalog that they made and produced this year was way cheaper than it's ever been. It's much more lean. It really recommends or leans on sending people to the website to sign on or sign up. more things. But it really kind of highlights some of the key opportunities that are made by the program. And they also changed the paperweight so that it was cheaper for mailing. Dr. Anderson, please. Thank you. It's at the end of the day. My voice is totally going. Mr. Graham, thank you so much. And thank you for the entire committee for all of this work. And definitely a major shout out to my representative, Ms. Jessica Strelitz, on her work with you on the committee. Recommendation number one, where you talked about using some coronavirus relief funds to
298help support some of the efforts. Do you have ballpark any numbers that we can start to ponder? or staff? Can anyone provide what this may look like? I don't know that the advisory committee does. Maybe staff does. But I don't think we have a specific number in mind. I think the idea was that there might be some funds available that could help maintain some of the programs that were potentially lost during that time period. Not to put anybody on the spot, but I remember at some point I saw a report and maybe Jessica provided to me. It had the budget page. I can't put my hands on it, but maybe staff can provide some idea of what did it take to provide all of the options virtually this year so we can get a sense
299of what this may mean when we're talking about how to disperse and use our ESSER funds. The other question that I have is you talked quite a bit regarding the online options. Obviously, there are some convenience and feasibility for some of our participants who may not be able to get to an online class. I know that you also mentioned it earlier that there was a survey that was distributed regarding the online offerings. Can you give a little bit more specificity regarding? what the participants talked about as highlights or challenges of the online offerings? Sure. And if Ken is amenable to this, I'd like to throw this to a fellow member, Ken Balbuena, to talk about some of that. Of course, we can make the actual survey responses available to you as well. Dr. I appreciate
300it. I was just about to do the same thing. So, Mr. Bob, Elena. All right, Dr. Anderson. Thank you very much for your question. The student. There is a student survey as well as a teacher survey. The instructor survey. It did have a little bit more meat, I would say, to the qualitative as well as the quantitative data in terms of the qualitative like some of the comments there. The comments were talking a lot about how some of the classes were not necessarily optimal for online instruction. And that reflected a lot of the data that they also said in the quantitative findings. Some of them talked a lot about that there may be a negative impact on the students, but they didn't really specify it too much. As far as the student survey goes, the
301comments on the student survey were mainly geared towards a small little error in one of the One of the questions where they were asked to check all that apply, but they were not able to check all that applied. And then their other comments were really geared on how wonderful some of their instructors were. So there wasn't anything that was super informational about how an online format really impacted them. I would say that the quantitative data, however, did provide a lot of insight into that. And I'm happy to expand on that if you would like. Oh, definitely. If you have anything that you could share with the board regarding those surveys, I think we would all appreciate having the opportunity to review the data that you spent considerable time collecting. I do have another question, and
302I'm not sure who this goes to, because earlier Brian shared that the options that would be provided next year, virtual, in-person, and also a self-paced option. Was that also an option that was provided this year? And is that with or without an instructor? I think I don't know exactly when that was put into place, but I think Mr. Steiner probably could answer that question. I believe a lot of it is through a partnership and the name of the company is failing me. So Mr. Steiner. Please help. Mr. Steiner. Yes, we are using a vendor. Ed2Go is the vendor that provides actually a variety of online courses that are focused on career pathways and some enrichment courses, primarily what we've been focused on at this point is career pathways. And they have a mix of offerings
303from a self-paced course that would almost be like an online correspondence course to something that is instructor supported where a student could interface with an instructor and then instructor led. And in our conversations with them, they are actually in the process of retooling their offerings and how they describe the self-paced versus instructor-led versus instructor-supported. So that nomenclature that I'm using with you is actually changing. So there's a variety of what we would call self-paced options. And in that... What we mean is generally a student would be able to choose, I'm free on a Tuesday night at 8 o'clock. That's when I'd want to take this course. So that's the option that we are extending to students as opposed to we have a class Wednesday at 3 p.m. or 7 p.m., but you have to be
304there Wednesday at 7 p.m. So that is what we're extending to our students utilizing this vendor. And did you find that. participation was greater in those classes or was it just fairly equitable with the classes that you offered that were teacher-led that were the more traditional classes? So at this point I would describe participation as growing. We went through an RFP process that completed and then staff has been implementing these ed2go courses in various ways. For example, it's very hard to find a networking or an IT instructor. So we are utilizing a lot of their network and IT courses to serve the need in the region. We are also looking at ways that we could improve upon our pathways, add subject matter to some of our career pathways that would help. broaden or make sure
305that the opportunity for students is more concise and they can complete this and complete the career pathway in a more concise amount of time. So in terms of student participation in one or the other, at this point it's still growing and I really don't have a very large sample in one or the other to give you. In time I will. Well, I'm going to invite you to ponder on another question. When we're talking about finances, I know every year we have this conversation because ACE does draw from the operating funds of FCPS. Which one of these options were the most budget friendly? Was it the to-go offerings or the more traditional offerings that ACE provides? That's a tough question. And I believe our finance manager, she's probably listening in on this meeting also, and she
306may be able to chime in on this. But in terms of the best budget-friendly options, I think we're looking at probably some virtual programming that we were able to run that maybe did not utilize some of our costs for building use. So building coordinators and other things like that, that we would have to incur if we are hosting classes on site. Those are most likely our budget-friendly options. Also, with what we've learned from this is I can tell you that a virtual component of classes is something that we are always going to have going forward. Looking at our apprenticeship classes, which is a large section of our business, a hybrid option makes a lot of sense in terms of allowing someone to complete the pathway faster access because You know, we offer in-person classes across
307the county, but traffic may be a barrier, location may be a barrier. So the virtual component is going to be something that we are going to utilize going forward, and that will change our financial model going forward. So that's, you know, my answer is I think it's a hybrid component going forward, but I think virtual was probably our most cost-effective option thus far. Okay, thank you. And my final question is regarding membership. I don't know if this is a question for you or for Brian. Can you speak to us a little bit in terms of what did membership look like during this COVID year as compared to the years prior? Just to clarify, membership of the advisory committee? No, I'm sorry. Participation, enrollment. Thank you. Oh, enrollment. There we go. Yeah. I mean, enrollment is
308certainly down. I believe we have enrollment numbers in our report in an appendix. I would also add, Dr. Anderson, that kind of to your original questions, that the appendices include kind of statistical analysis and tables from the actual data that was generated from the reports as well. um that were so there is uh there is more information in there um if you have kind of more specific questions about enrollment i think we'd have to defer them to staff um but but there is a report that came from staff as we looked at multiple reports from staff over the year as an appendix to the report okay thank you i seem to be missing that page for some weird reason what i printed so i will definitely look for that Okay, if not, of course, we
309can get it to you. No, I see that it says it's on page 10, but my printout doesn't have page 10, oddly enough. So that's why I may be missing it. But thank you for all of the information and for all of the work. I'm very appreciative of this very difficult task that you had before you for this year. because we had the pandemic and that really impacted the participation of students in the program. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. I now have Ms. Darinette Koufax and followed by Ms. Seismurheiser. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Graham and your entire committee for your hard work on this report. We appreciate this very much. I don't really have questions per se, but I have comments. I do think we have. There have been many supporters of
310this adult programming for a long time, and we have struggled. And one of the things, you know, how much to invest versus what we get in return. I think this is the opportunity for our community. And as a school system, we have a role to play with it, play within it. I do appreciate your recommendation, number five. to expand the outreach to community leaders, and also to asking the Board of Supervisors for more direct funding. Now, perhaps one way you could do this is if, have you, I guess, so this is my question, have you ever approached the SCIPS committee? It's not particularly their charge, but your comment about reaching out to United Community. and the United Community, SCIP, they are intertwined there. So have you reached out to that group at all and all
311their partners as to how this could be, you could develop more partnerships all at once there? So a simple answer, no. It was recommended by Ms. Karen Corbett-Sanders at one of our meetings as our liaison, actually, in the last. last meeting or two of this year to do so. So I think it is something that is kind of on the agenda for subsequent meetings. Yeah, because I think that's very important because it's a joint school. The leadership is joint school board members, community members. Ms. McLaughlin's hand is up. I see her shaking her head. Ms. Bukarski are also. I was the liaison for many years. I stepped down this past year. But I think that would be very, very important. And I also think it is time for an investment. somewhat word of mouth is
312not going to continue to be our way forward to promote this program because there are amazing opportunities here for our adult learners, both young right out of school and those who are older. So I appreciate this work and I do think those. I appreciate the recommendations. I think they're well thought out. And I think we need to keep moving forward. Don't get discouraged just because I think the majority of this board is behind you and we're going to continue to make improvements to this program because it is so important. I know. Good timing, Ms. Darinat Kovacs. I was like, whoo. Ms. Seismurheiser. Thank you, Ms. Corbett-Sanders. And thank you, Mr. Graham and everybody for this really great work. And I just wanted to mention, I knew you had started a conversation about looking to add
313other. committee members this year or organizations this year. And I'm the chair of the public engagement committee. And we've been working on our forum topic around our advisory committees actually in that process. So we're actually had a lot of good work today, really close to bring our recommendations to the board. So hopefully you should have a good process soon for adding additional members or bringing those suggestions to the board. So I just wanted to kind of update you on that piece of it. And then I really appreciate these recommendations, especially around, you know, let's take the lessons we've learned from what we have to do virtually and try to use that to expand access to our really great ACE programming. Just a couple of thoughts. My other job is actually a college professor and I
314teach a lot of online courses and I have since 2006. So I was, you know, kind of there well before we were in this world. And so one of the things you want to think about as we're going and continuing the. online is accessibility, right? And to make sure, and sometimes it can be quite expensive when we're looking at accessibility issues for people with disabilities in the online platform. So just something to put out there as you continue to work on that is how do we ensure accessibility issues and that our online class are accessible. The other thing I'd put out for something to consider is looking at our driver's training programs. and looking at issues for students with disabilities. I have two emails today in my inbox around students with disabilities and driver's training.
315So I think it's a room to look at just to make sure that. Our programs are differentiated and scaffold in a way that is accessible to the needs of students with disabilities. So something to put out there for you as well. And then the other piece I think would be really great when we talk about marketing our great ACE programming is to do some intentional collaboration with Department of Special Services. Right. And our special education students, especially those who are leaving Davis and fully and step and maybe graduating and looking for additional, but may not have had access to our academy programs, for example, to take back from the previous report because of the need to take intervention classes and other classes that may benefit from the great programming ACE has for certifications and career.
316So I think that's a really great place to do some. sort of intentional marketing. So just a few suggestions, but I think you have some great ideas. And I love the idea of trying to expand accessibility and marketing by using that online platform. It's actually following along the lines that a lot of colleges have done to expand access to students who didn't traditionally have access to college degrees and also expand the pool of students available for colleges to help with enrollment at colleges. So it really mirrors really what higher education has been doing for a while in the online platform. So thank you very much. And I welcome any comments. comments or thoughts you have on what I shared, but really, I appreciate all the hard work you've done this year. Thank you. We have
317had conversations about accessibility, but I think probably not specifically, well, especially with online and also with driver's ed. So I think those are important and interesting things that we should continue to look at. So thank you. And just one last thing. I've done some work with some of our county supervisors around practice traffic stops for students with disabilities, but it's something that I think would actually be very valuable for a lot of students, both our you know officers and our students so just something to consider as well as part of the driver's education programming thank you thank you very much thank you miss seismer heiser uh now we have miss keys gamara or i'm sorry miss mclaughlin followed by miss keys gamara Great. Thank you. First, not only do I appreciate the committee's hard work
318and Brian's leadership, but also very much appreciate my Braddock appointee, Ken Belduano, doing significant amount of research analysis. And I know our time hasn't really allowed for that, but I will want to ask him to just. Just before I finish my comments, can you just spotlight for us what you felt were some of the most impactful findings from all that research that you did that the board really should take under careful consideration? Sure. And thank you for the appointment. I really appreciate serving on the committee. It's been a great year. I would say the biggest takeaway really from the data analysis is that in general, the instructors preferred to teach in person over virtual, 100% virtual. That said, When you compare virtual versus hybrid, if you break the classes down into which classes are classroom
319based and which ones are more tech or lab based, for example, there is a preference to teach hybrid over virtual. In some cases, and then there's a preference to teach, you know, in person over hybrid and in other cases. I would say the classroom-based classes, there's a preference, a greater preference to teach hybrid than virtual. And then... For tech-based classes, they obviously prefer much more in-person over hybrid. So that's definitely something to consider when you're looking at that. And I have all those summaries at the very end of the report as well for the quantitative findings. Also, instructors who feel prepared to teach online or feel like they have the necessary tools, they also prefer to teach virtual over hybrid or in-person. So that's a consideration for... a staff when they're hiring instructors, if they're
320looking to increase the number of virtual sections that they are offering, they may want to look for teachers who feel more confident and more prepared to teach online. There's also an increase in perceived student engagement for that. When you look at the student surveys, the student surveys greatly mirrored the exact same findings of the instructor surveys, except when you measure for statistical significance, there's greater statistical significance in the instructor. surveys than there are in the students. And I think a big part of that is because there was a greater representation of instructors and disciplines in the instructor survey versus the students where you didn't have as great of a representation of the various different disciplines. So I think that definitely impacted things. But I think what was most interesting is to see that there were
321some mirrored findings between the instructor surveys and the student surveys. Great. Thank you. Well, I'm going to encourage our superintendent and his team to dig a little deeper with you on the data because everything we, the decisions we make need to be driven by that, especially when we're looking at costs. Switching over to costs, I know we just don't have time tonight, but I want a spotlight for my colleagues. Ms. Darinette Koufax in particular knows for our entire time on the board, there's been a real understanding that unless the board of supervisors want to give us more money, we've got to be really mindful where our K-12 mission is. And so I really appreciate page nine, Brian, you and your team making sure that we had the net income. changes and I encourage the superintendent
322that your team come back to us sooner rather than later about the net income drop and challenges that ACE is facing. I also noted on page nine, exhibit one, the enrollment numbers that Dr. Anderson was asking for. They're significant. So I would ask our chair, Brian. What conversations did you have with FCPS staff about this dramatic drop and how is that going to impact then the budget needs rolling in from this ending cycle going into the next FY22 budget? Right. Well, there's still, I mean, there is going to be significant budget need. And I think that's kind of why we were asking. basically anywhere money can come from to help support and fill in the gaps because there were a lot of programs that were not offered. Basically, I think all of the G-12 programs,
323except for eventually behind the wheel, were suspended. for the Stein Parages as an example. So if you look at the year to year, there's kind of a huge decrease in that. And then some of the courses really just were not able, you know, if they have in-person, you know, like plumbing classes teaching you how to do certain things or whatever, obviously that doesn't really translate to an online version. Discussions that we had in the committee that talked about, you know, why some things were not offered. But on top of that, there were just reduction in enrollments. And, you know, maybe, I mean, there could be a variety of reasons for that, but there's certainly kind of a gap left from that that basically need to find a way to resolve and get back to where
324we were before the pandemic, at the very least. Yeah, the FY 2019 year enrollments and looking at the big drop in 20 and the bigger drop in 21 fiscal years, it's almost staggering. You know, prior boards, we've talked about the importance of adult ESOL is a core mission for a strong community. That's always got to remain a high priority for ACE and for our board to support. And then CTE development. But, you know, we also talk about how NOVA, Northern Virginia Community College, and also FCPS's CTE offerings, how those then overlay with ACE. I think we're going to need to really have some intentional work as a board with the superintendent and ACE. This is going to be a critical year for that. And the only other thing I would say is, overall, I really
325appreciate the fact that there are areas like behind the wheel that are... And that's where ACE, I think, is really successful along with the ESOL. Sadly, I've run out of time. If I just may briefly respond, I mean, we do have discussions about kind of preventing overlap and things like that. We view kind of ACE programs. I mean, ACE programs are much cheaper than a community class course, as an example, right? So if that's not something that we want to provide that way, we need to look for ways to provide. and maybe this is not just FCPS mission or whatever, but that's why we talk about the county as a funding mechanism for this. If these are things we important, we want to connect residents to educational opportunities to help them build their own careers
326and provide for their families, then we need to find some ways to do those. Obviously, the division is required to have adult ESL, adult ESL has its clear purpose, but there's also, you know, it's covered with the grant but you know i mean personally i would like for us to have free adult assault right like why shouldn't we be teaching people in fairfax county English, but that takes an investment from, you know, that's going to take a huge investment. And, you know, you can't rely on just the school transfer or the K-12 school budget to do that. So there's certainly opportunities and things that we still need to have serious conversations about. So I think that I do see that Mr. Polio has his hand raised. So I'm assuming he wanted to address some part
327of your comment as well. I'm going to actually, Mr. Graham, I'm going to actually suggest two things. One, obviously, Mr. Polio does have his hand up so he can address the adult ESOL. But your comments about the synergies and the disconnects with Northern Virginia Community College class offerings, I think Dr. Presidio should just briefly talk a little bit about the conversations with Northern Virginia Community College. And the difference now having those conversations with the G3 program in which community college courses are paid for by the state under that get skilled, get a job, give back. And so really more closely aligning all three aspects, the CTE, the ACE and NOVA. Dr. Pucidio. Brian, let's make sure we get the skipped meeting together with Supervisor Lusk. That's definitely an important one. Yeah, just real briefly, because
328I think Ms. Corfis-Haner, she did a good job kind of setting that up. But just again to remind. Well, not to remind, to let folks know that we are continuing to have conversations with NOVA and George Mason University about how we can continue to partner to help use our programs like our ACE program as a stepping stone and a starting point for adult learners to get re-engaged with education. And oftentimes it happens through the context of upskilling, basically, for their current jobs that they're currently in, which will then get them on a track, hopefully to complete certifications and degree programs both at NOVA and at George Mason University. So we've been partnering in this effort for a while. Previously, what our partnership oftentimes has looked like, and Brian has already mentioned it, is not overlapping
329in the programs and not competing for the same students. But what we're really attempting to do now is to align and articulate our programs through ACE all the way through the community college and the four-year university system. We're excited to continue that partnership work. We do have another meeting set up coming. I think it's actually next week again. And I do want to thank and acknowledge Ms. Corbett-Standers' work and leadership in helping us along the way in this partnership. And we're also working with county staff and board of supervisor members in this work as well. Thank you, Dr. Presidio. Mr. Polio? Thanks, Ms. Corbett-Sanders. I just wanted to, I guess, maybe piggyback a little bit on something that Ms. McLaughlin said earlier in just talking about adult ESOL and then also Brian, that I think
330one of our challenges, probably our biggest challenge for adult ESOL in the past year. was, you know, we had computers, we had teachers that were ready to teach, and we, you know, we kind of ramped up very quickly, but our community did not have access to laptops. Our community did not have, so that's, I think this is definitely an area of advocacy for both the board and for us as staff with the county and with our community members. that our families, when some, many of our families, as you know, the only laptop they may have is the laptop that their child is bringing home. with them from FCPS. And for many of our adult ESOL students just weren't able to participate in our virtual classes because they didn't have access to laptops. So we would
331love to be able to continue, as Mr. Graham said, I think moving forward, both in-person and virtual classes, but that will definitely be contingent upon our ability to... provide either provide laptops or just work with the county so that more members of our community can have access to technology. So thanks for that. Thank you, Mr. Polio. It's so important. And now I have Ms. Keys Gamara followed by Ms. Karski. Thank you. to the ACE Committee, Brian Lewis, and the Central Vocals Order and this initiative for so many years. Ms. Kees-Kamara, we're having a little bit of a challenge hearing you. It sounds like you're speaking through a wire mesh. Could you maybe adjust your... Is this better? Let me turn my camera off. Is this better? No, unfortunately it's not. Could I please go to
332Ms. Bukarski and have you... I'll come back in. Great, thank you. Ms. Bukarski. I mean, you can thank me again later, but yes, I did hear you. Thank you. I'll go ahead and thank you, Mr. Graham and everybody on the committee for your work and your time, especially this year, which has been unlike any other. I found your report very, very helpful. And I agree, we need to use the data to kind of catch up to, you know, where we are now after the pandemic and being able to offer more individualized approaches to really expand the reach of these courses and the number of people who can. participate. I'm also supportive of. helping to advocate to our Board of Supervisors for greater resource allocation. Lifelong learning is part of their strategic plan goals. So I
333definitely see a space there for collaboration going forward. And I'm also interested on our end how we can... utilize some of our family engagement strategies to help market some of these ACE courses more, especially to our parents, because the reality is that if we can you know, ensure that our own families know that there are options out there for them. You know, ultimately, it does support our kids. It is kind of a circle, but at the end of the day, it really, really does come back. Stronger families ultimately support all our students. So I don't have any questions, but I really wanted to share those thoughts. I look forward to speaking through the skip or how we continue this conversation and advocacy. So thank you to all of you. Thank you, Ms. Pekarsky. Ms. Keyes-Gamara.
334Is this any better? Fantastic. Okay. All right. Well, I want to start by thanking Brian again because he told me to. But we really do appreciate. All the hard work. And I'm glad to go behind Ms. Pekarski. It was, I think it's Providence because, you know, while we are truly in the purest form directed at K through 12. This is something, these services impact adults who need to be a vital part of our economy, our community, be able to support their kids. And if we don't support them, then they can't do any of those things. So the more that we have these conversations tonight, the more that I... am finding myself advocating for, you know, specific programs that our board of supervisors needs to be aware that we need their support and funding for. And
335so I just, I throw that out there for my colleagues to consider because I, for one, would not be comfortable to see this go away without a broader discussion. You know, is it going to be provided through NOVA? Is it going to be, how is it going to be provided? Otherwise, we're going to have parents who can't contribute, who won't, probably won't be able to enter the workforce as successfully. And so those are all really big concerns. So I did, I know that this is not a part of... tonight's discussion, but we had a headline from ACE this week with respect to expanding locations. Before I go into that, I do want to say I fully support the expansion of the use of virtual where appropriate, and we can get perhaps the county to pay
336for some laptops. But speaking of money. But if you could speak to that expansion that happened that was recently approved, I think it might be helpful to the community or if anyone could speak to that so that we have maybe greater understanding. Yeah, I think probably it would be helpful if I could speak to that a little bit. So the board did approve on the consent agenda at the last board meeting the expansion of a new lease that will allow us to expand our program offerings in the Herndon region. And essentially, the existing lease space that we have is expiring. And we have a significant need. Right now, our programs in the Herndon area are confined to some pretty small space, including some trailers at Herndon Middle School. So this new lease is going to
337give us the opportunity to expand our adult ESOL programming, our registration and assessment for incoming English language learners in our system, as well as additional ACE classes and additional adult education classes. So basically what that article was referencing is a new lease that's going to replace an expiring lease that the board approved in the last board meeting. Okay, well, thank you. I know. In years past, we reduced the number of locations for ACE. And now we have, as far as I recall, and now we've had more virtual. And so I wanted to make sure the community understood exactly what that meant because we never had a discussion. But overall, bravo, support the recommendations, Brian. Really appreciate all the hard work, all the research. And I'm looking forward to, excuse me. us collaborating to make sure
338that we can get continued support for these programs. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Keys. Gamara, before I close out this session, I do want to just briefly provide some comments because this committee is an amazing committee made up of dedicated professionals who are passionate about ensuring that we have a lifelong learning culture here in Fairfax County. And so we very much appreciate all you're doing. And I am glad that you are going to meet with the SCIP team. As part of that SCIP team, you will also be meeting the Opportunity Neighborhoods folks. And the Opportunity Neighborhoods folks are people that actually have monthly meetings with people that include groups like United Communities, but all the groups that support. populations in those areas that have some of the most challenging situations with food security
339and housing security. And so I think this will be great for you all to do that. But I would urge that going forward, in addition to looking at making sure people in those communities know about ACE programming. that we also ensure that our counselors at each of our secondary school levels are aware of the certificate programs available through ACE. Because some of our students may have a full academic schedule, but would like to get certificates that allow them to earn more than a living wage. as soon as they graduate from high school, and also to support their college experiences. And so I don't know how we make that happen, but perhaps that might be part of your charge for next year is to how we infuse the, or we more closely align our CTE work
340with the ACE programming work as well. I know that's been mentioned in past years, so I think spending the focus on that would be helpful. I would just like to thank again Mr. Ken Balbuena for his numerous hours looking at the data, analyzing it through statistical tools and things like that, but really the full committee for their support and Mr. Varconi and Ms. Passman since they're here. for their support this past year. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Brian, for all of your hard work as well. And with that, it is 9.30. I wasn't able to catch us up, but this meeting is adjourned. Thanks.