FCPS School Board Meeting 10-8-20

001Hello, hello. Hello. Hi, I'm just testing my mic. Thank you so much. Hi, I'm testing my mic. Can you hear me? We are ready. Before we certify our closed session, I would like to take roll call. Ms. Cohen? Here. Ms. Robert Sanders? Glad to be here. Ms. Dana Kofatz? Here. Good evening. Mr. Frisch? Here. this keys tomorrow here miss McLaughlin good evening miss Mary yeah miss Omish here miss Bukowski sorry I'm here I'm here inside more Heiser good evening I'm here miss Tolan I'm here thank you good evening all this October 8 2020 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come order Our student representative Nathan Onobudo is absent this evening. Please rise as Ms. Kees-Gomara leads us in the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by a moment of silence. I pledge allegiance

002to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. In order to comply with Section 2.2-3712D of the Code of Virginia, it is necessary for the Board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed session on October 8, 2020, and to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters, lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements, and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the Board during the closed meeting. Thank you, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, for moving the motion. Thank you, Ms. Cohen, for seconding. All in favor? We have Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Eisenhower, Ms. Pokarsky, Ms. Dernot-Kofax,

003Mr. Frisch, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Zomash, Ms. Marron, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Gies-DeVara. All those against? Ms. Pokarsky, please lower your hands. I think you've already voted. Thank you. All those abstaining? That would be me, Anderson. Thank you. Tonight's meeting is being broadcast on Channel 99 and live streamed on the website at FCPS.edu slash TV slash CH99. I call on Ms. Bukarski for an announcement. You're on mute, ma'am. Of course. I'm in technical difficulty. I do not have the language of that announcement at the moment. It has not been sent to me. I don't know if we can move on while I pull that up. I apologize. Thank you. Okay, I will now read the National School Lunch Week announcement. National School Lunch Week is officially scheduled for October 12th to October 16th and was started by

004President John F. Kennedy in 1962 to promote the importance of a healthy school lunch in a child's life. And I'm sorry, in an act. I'm sorry, I lost myself. In an act of Congress, using the theme Now Playing School Lunch spotlights a wide variety of flavors, dishes, delivery options, and tastes that can be customized in today's school lunch. National School Lunch Week promotes excitement about the benefits of students consuming wholesome, healthy school lunches of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and milk. The 2020 event... is designed to help students and school nutrition professionals connect and share with parents, school officials, the media, and the public what each loves most about school lunches. The National School Lunch Program is dedicated to the health and well-being of our nation's children and has been joined through the years

005by many other excellent child nutrition programs. There is a continued need for nutrition education and awareness of the value of of school nutrition programs. And the school board encourages all residents to become aware and concerned about their children's and their own nutrition habits in hopes of achieving a more healthful citizenry for today and the future. Ms. Bukarski, I'm now calling you for the announcement. Sorry, Dr. Anderson. I'm waiting for that to be sent to me. It is not. I'm unable to pull it up right now. I'll jump in when I have it. I'm sorry. We will come back to that announcement. And I still call on you now to read the Disability Employment and Awareness Month announcement. Having technical difficulties tonight. I do have that one. Did you know that October is National Disability Employment

006and Awareness Month? This year's theme is increasing access and opportunity. Celebrating 30 years of the American Disability Act. and 75 years of National Disability Awareness Month. Each year, Fairfax County Public Schools participates in the NDEAM, which promotes career development for individuals with disabilities through hands-on career exploration and job shadowing in the following fields. Administrative support, animal care, business management, communications, information technologies, and parks and recreation. And DEAM strives to encourage students to explore potential career or employment opportunities to learn more about business in their community and begin to plan to achieve more successful employment outcomes. Thank you, Ms. McCarskey. I now call on Ms. McLaughlin for recognition. And the recognition will be for LGBTQ History Month. Ms. McLachlan, go ahead. Yes, I'm trying to, like Ms. Pekarski, find the script that was being sent to

007us. I believe it came from Ms. Moberg? No, it came from Ms. Medeja. Medeja. Medeja, and I sent it to Ms. Pekarski. She hasn't. I'm sorry. Thank you. Much appreciated. Okay, it's pulling up. So here we go. And if you don't mind, I would like to put on my video. That would be fantastic. Okay, here we go. According to the National PTA, negative attitudes towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students put them at an increased risk for violence and bullying. Negative attitudes also impact a student's ability to learn at school. LGBT History Month is recognized in October nationwide and FCPS to encourage and celebrate our LGBT students, staff, and families as an integral component of our nation and at Fairfax County Schools. This special month was first recognized in 1994. October was chosen to commemorate

008National Coming Out Day on October 14. and the first March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights on October 14, 1979. One of the first gay-straight alliances in Virginia was founded at Hayfield High School in 2000, and now students are involved in clubs at many of the high schools in the county, welcoming not only LGBT students, but their friends and those interested in creating safe schools. More than a dozen Fairfax County schools have active gender and sexuality alliances or gay-straight alliances through which students are able to network, socialize, and educate their communities about inclusion of the LGBTQ community in our schools. Students do this through forums, posters, announcements, and activities such as Ally Week. The existence of the GSA is an asset to our schools. Educational research indicates that students and schools that have the

009GSA have better mental health outcomes for all students. The equity liaisons in our schools also help to make sure our schools are more welcoming for all students and staff. In addition to student clubs, Fairfax County Public Schools boasts an organization for its LGBTQ employees, its parents of LGBTQ students, and LGBTQ family members. FCPS Pride holds monthly coffee houses and an annual picnic for the community and supports activities such as holiday celebrations and the LGBTQ prom. LGBT History Month in October is an opportunity for Fairfax County Schools staff, students, and the school board to celebrate and learn more about these important constituents in our schools and neighborhoods. And as the mother of a very, very, as a very, very proud mother of a very, very proud young gay man, I am so, and gay son, I

010am so happy to be able to personally share this very important recognition this month. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. McLaughlin. And now we will go to Ms. Pekarski for the announcement. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. The board would like to update the public. I have no sound, Ms. Pekarski. Ms. Pekarski, you have no sound. I apologize. I'm having issues tonight with this. Okay, can you hear me? Now we can. Yes, ma'am. Go ahead. The board would like to update the public that it recognizes the importance of conducting its meetings in public. FCPS staff is finalizing a safety and logistics plan similar to its planning efforts for in-person instruction. The board intends to review and take action on this safety plan as soon as possible. Thank you, Dr. Henderson. Thank you. And I'll call on

011Ms. Keys-Gamara for a recognition of National School Bus Safety Week. Ms. Keys-Gamara would be looking for that recognition. I believe that the script was just recently sent by Ms. Malberg and just a little while ago. And while you find that, I will move to Ms. Marin for the resolution on honoring food and nutrition services. Just one moment, please. Thank you. Hi. Hello. Let me also pull mine up. So honoring the work of food and nutrition services staff, where the food nutrition services or FNS has served over 3.4 million meals in Fairfax County since March 2020. Whereas every Monday through Friday, FNS offers meals on 74 bus routes, 40 live grab and go sites. at five Fairfax meal kit sites, and at 37 schools hosting the county SRS program. And whereas breakfast and lunch are also

012served on Fridays, or Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at all locations. And supper and snack are available on 11 bus routes and at 12 grab-and-go sites. Whereas on September 26th, FNS offered meals at all high schools as part of student testing. Whereas on October 2nd, FNS reached their highest participation day and served more than 120,000 breakfast, lunch, snack, and supper, averaging on over 6,000 meals per day that same week. And whereas new grab-and-go and Fairfax meal kit sites are in the process of being expanded, supper and snack will soon be available at all locations. And whereas FNS staff has assisted with school-based work, distributing laptops and books, and planning collaboratively with school administrators in anticipation of the phase-in of in-person instruction. Now, therefore, be it resolved, the Fairfax County School Board expresses tremendous appreciation for all

013staff of Food and Nutrition Services for their diligent efforts to ensure that all children in the FCPS community are always fed and ready to learn. I so move. Thank you, Ms. Marin. Is there a second? Mr. Frisch, thank you. Ms. Marin, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, I just have to underscore 3.3 million total meals served to date. Our FNS staff were the first staff or among the first staff to get into the community to help our students and families when schools were closed on March 13th. I have seen the work that they have done firsthand when visiting schools and on the weekends, the amount of food being provided it's needed in our communities. We have a third of our students who are eligible for free and reduced price lunch. And we're

014just getting closer now to our FNS staff from reaching all of those students through all of these different delivery models. I think it also underscores the necessity of having our support services staff. We need them. They are part of the equation that helps children be ready to learn. Kids can't learn if they have hungry bellies and they're scared that they don't have what they need. But thank you so much to staff and we're really indebted to your service. Thank you, Ms. Marin. Mr. Frisch, would you like to speak to your second? Yes, thank you. I agree with everything that Ms. Marin just said. And I too have visited these food distribution locations in Providence District. And what I've seen is very dedicated employees doing something, you know, especially in the earlier days of this pandemic

015that nobody ever thought they'd be doing. And they showed up every single day and they handed out. millions of meals to families that need them, to students who need them so that they can focus on what we want them to focus on, which is their schoolwork. So I'll leave it at that. We have a full agenda tonight, but I only wish we could do more to recognize the work of these important members of our team. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Frisch. Any other members of the board who would like to speak, please raise your hand at this time. Ms. Corbett-Sanders, please go ahead. Yes, thank you so much. It is a great pleasure to speak to this motion because I want to thank personally all of our frontline workers that have been in our communities

016from day one. And I also wanted to make sure that the public understood the scope of what they are doing every single day. We have served over three and a half million meals. But to give you some context, Over the summer, we were serving between 12 and 15,000 meals per day. And now that we have our students back in school, virtually that is, we are serving between 49 and 50,000 meals every single day. That just shows the very important... work shows the importance of the work that they're doing. It also highlights the fact that today in our world we have food insecurity and the food service workers are a lifeline for our students. So I thank you from the very bottom of my heart for everything you're doing every single day. Thank you very much

017Ms. Corbett-Standers. Ms. Bakarsky? Thank you, Dr. Anderson. I, too, wanted to make sure I do not let this opportunity go past to personally thank these very dedicated, hardworking people who serve our children, who serve our community, and who really prepare our kids to be ready to go to the classrooms and learn. Our families, our kids depend on the meals that they get. from our schools and it is an imperative service that we provide to these children. And as Corbett Sanders brought up, especially in the days when we have very little information about COVID, these people came out. They were volunteering to make sure that our kids did not go hungry, and I am extremely appreciative to them. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Pekarsky. Ms. Darinat Koufax? Yes, I can only add, echo the comments of

018my colleagues to thank our food service workers for all that they do for our community. I have had the, as many of us may have, the privilege this summer of watching the meal distributions in our local schools. And you have never met a more gregarious community you know helpful cheerful group of of people they do their job well they do it with a smile and as my colleagues have stated they provide a lifeline for so many of our families who are in need of of the meal assistance so i thank you all for doing what you're doing in this time um where this time of grave uncertainty. So thank you for continuing a job well done as you always have done. But we really appreciate you just a little bit more this year as we

019always appreciate you. But thank you so much for what you've been doing for us. Thank you, Mr. Notco facts. Miss Tolan. Yes, I just wanted to be very quick and You know, I can't echo what my colleagues have already said enough. It's a thank you to all these people. But I think something that lots of people probably don't know about is they've gone above and beyond in creativity in trying to promote nutrition for our students as well. Our food and nutrition staff partnered with our instructional services staff. And throughout the summer and into the fall, they've been providing... for kids that are picking up their lunches, an opportunity at many schools also to pick up seed packets and soils so that the kids can grow their own vegetables at home. So I just wanted to

020thank them for that collaboration as well. Thank you so much, Ms. Tolvan. Dr. Brabrand? Yes, just very briefly, huge thank you to Food and Nutrition Services. They are heroes. And tonight... in the audience is the Director of Food and Nutrition Services, Maria Perrone. I'm so proud of Maria and her leadership team and what she has done for our community. She's a true hero and I just wanted to lift her up tonight as someone that has done tremendous work in this pandemic and I am proud of her and her leadership and all of her team and her managers for what they have done. for all of us here in Fairfax County Public Schools. So thank you, Maria, from the bottom of my heart, our hearts. I know we are truly appreciative of your leadership. Thank you

021very much, Dr. Brabrand. At this time, I will just take a very quick turn and say thank you so much to our nutrition services team. Living in Mason, where we have a number of pop-ups and sites that deliver, that have been delivering these meals since March, I have seen your work up close and personal each and every day. We cannot thank you enough for the efforts that you put forth during this time and continue to put forth. So this resolution is more than well-deserved. At this time, having said that, I will now call for the vote. All in favor of this resolution, we have Ms. Danak-Kolfax, Ms. Marin, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Omish, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Kees-Gamara, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Osmohiser, Ms. Bukarski, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Tolan, and myself. And that is unanimous. Thank you. The

022motion passes. And again, congratulations to Maria Perrone, the Director of Food and Nutrition Services, who is here with us. We're very happy that you're here. We will go back to the previous agenda item and call on Ms. Kizgamara for the recognition. Thank you. The week of October 19th through the 23rd has been designated as National School Bus Safety Week. Based on the theme, red lights mean stop, the week focuses on student safety when waiting for and boarding a school bus. School bus safety is an issue for all citizens of Fairfax County. We need to be aware of laws requiring them to stop and wait behind a school bus. It is loading and unloading student riders. The major responsibility for school bus safety is Fairfax County. Fairfax County best firmly in the hands of our school

023bus drivers and attendance daily transport more than 144,000 students in over 1,625 school buses on more than 6,800 separate routes traveling over 16.8 million operational miles each year. Motorists are encouraged to practice patience and drive gently around school buses in our neighborhoods and schools communities. Thank you to Francine Furby and all the staff from the Department of Facilities and Transportation for their continued hard work to keep our children safe. Thank you, Ms. Kizgamara, for that resolution. I'm sorry, for that recognition. I also was remiss a little while ago in not recognizing the bus drivers who have also been part of our food and nutrition services during this pandemic and delivering meals throughout Fairfax County. So I do want to extend a very special thank you to them, even though the previous resolution was in recognition

024of nutrition services. But this year, their support has been invaluable in ensuring that. Our students who needed the most are provided with the resources of just a meal to ready themselves for instruction. So thank you for that. Okay. The next order of business is citizen participation. Speakers are requested to limit their remarks to not more than three minutes. The school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings, such as capital improvement programs. budget, and boundaries. Complaints regarding individual students or school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school official. Speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information in connection with an individual student. Speakers are expected to deliver their comments with the decorum and respect appropriate to the conduct of the public's business. Thank you

025for your cooperation and thanks to those who have come to speak to us today. Tonight, 15 citizens have signed up to address the board and our clerk will call those speakers. I will now turn it over to Ms. Mulgir. Our first speaker is Susana Hampton. Thank you. Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I am Sujatha Hampton and I'm the Education Chair for the Fairfax County NAACP. I come today to ask you to be strong and determined on behalf of the thousands of children in your district and all over Fairfax County who have never even thought to dream of what amazing opportunities exist in our school system. You may not hear their voices and you may not hear the voices of their parents, but that does not mean that

026they don't care and they don't want big things. It is nearly impossible to dream of what has never been available to you. We have communities whose middle schools have zero applicants to TJ. Because you don't get emails and letters from their parents, do not believe that these families love their children any less or that their dreams with their children are less precious. Because you don't hear their prayers does not mean that they don't pray for opportunities, for resources, for access. I am begging you to remember them. They are your constituents too, even though they may not even know that the board exists to serve their needs. Please do not send this out to an external body or delay. This is your responsibility, not consultants, yours. The Fairfax NAACP implores you to instate the merit lottery

027with a pyramid or school-by-school allotment, which serves multiple purposes. First, it allows us to find passionate children with an aptitude for STEM from every corner of our division, which will ensure that we build a TJ class that reflects our diverse community. But the real magic is the impact that such an approach might have on every school in our division. If 200 kids are deemed meritful and they are all entered into merit pool and 100 of them get a seat at TJ, these students realize that there was an element of chance and they no longer feel that they are so much better than their peers who didn't get in. For the students who don't make it through, they realize that there was an element of chance and there is no longer a referendum on their worth.

028Better even than this is the impact these 100 students and their families might have on their base schools. Now that families have every right to demand that FCPS... FCPS provide rich STEM opportunities for them, as they have been deemed equally meritful and deserving of such enrichment. This is in this way. Finally, we may fix the inequity of resources division-wide. Also, knowing that a certain number of seats are allotted for your community, elementary and middle schools also have an imperative to work hard, to invest in high-level teaching and learning, and students of all stripes can begin to entertain dreams that they never had before. Maybe one day I will get to go there and study. A new world is born with this one change. Further, we implore you not to include any number of set-asides for

029the most gifted students. To paraphrase Chairwoman Anderson, if they are the most gifted, it wouldn't be determined by a test that students prepare for for years. or be determined by extracurriculars some children never have access to. Too giftedness is not determined in this way. Further, any set-asides determined by any means puts even more pressure on these same children to now become one of this arbitrary number, and it creates a two-tiered class, the worthy and unworthy. And considering the biased means we use to determine this worth, we reject the set-aside notion altogether. Please remember your duty to all the children, not just those who have loud, powerful champions to scream and threaten. Remember the silent ones who need you very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Srinivas Akella. Forgive me for the pronunciation. Thank you,

030Madam Chair, Vice Chair, and members of the board for giving me this opportunity. My name is Srinivas, and I strongly oppose Scott Berrigan's plan to discriminate against Asian Americans by changing the TJ admissions in the name of equity. He claims that CJ student body does not represent the demographics of the community. I want you to tell me what represents the demographics of the community. The workforce at the schools, FCPS, the county government, the sports teams across the county. Pick any of these and try to implement these drastic changes through a racial quota-based system. And immediately you will see that it's unfair for everyone who worked hard. The superintendent does not want to take a drastic measure to change the diversity of FCPS workforce since he is concerned about the impact this change will have on

031their careers, but is not concerned about the same impact on the hundreds of Asian American children and other hardworking married students. He and his administration had been telling the eighth grade students and parents for the major part of the year about the admission process, while in the background working to eliminate the test, he has misguided many of the families by not informing changes that has been discussing for the major part of the year. This has caused tremendous stress for all the current eighth grade parents since September when the admission window was not opened. This board, if this board votes for any change to the TGA admission process, it will be voting on institutionalizing the very racism that it claims to fight against. You're putting the future of our kids in the hands of administrators who

032are torn deaf to the needs and concerns of the Asian American community. have an anti-Asian bias and a workforce that is not diverse itself. If that happens, please don't begrudge us when we fight this through the last branch of government, the judiciary. I want everyone to understand this very clearly. We, the Asian Americans, have not caused this issue. We have navigated around the barriers that every minority has across all socioeconomic levels, and everyone needs to understand this very clearly. We are also not going to take this injustice sitting down. We will fight for our civil rights and the rights of all minorities. And I request everyone here to focus on the real issue that we all face, the inbuilt systematic racism that exists in FCPS against all minorities. Scott claims he wants to bring in

033more blacks and Hispanics, but these changes will actually reduce the number of minorities in D.J. and will increase the number of white students more than even the blacks and Hispanics combined together. and at the cost of the Asian American students. This is neither equity, equality, or justice. If this is how equity and One Fairfax looks like, then it's unconstitutional. The Asian Americans of Fairfax County were never told that One Fairfax does not include them. Otherwise, we would not have voted those who discriminate against us. How can you believe someone who has not done anything in his career to bring in equity to actually make any changes that will have a positive impact for minorities? the admission test would have been a race-blind indicator of math, science, and reading aptitude. If you think that the QuantQ

034AAC-T Aspire and reading test is not the best indicator, use any other standardized test. Everywhere in the world, these tests are used to run in some very... Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Julia McCaskill. Should I start now? Yes, please. Okay, good evening. I am a Fairfax resident and a mother of three kids in FCPS. I have four points to cover today. First, no lottery. In Mr. Braybrand's words, there is not enough data to support the theory that the lottery is better than the current process. Being a former high school teacher, I understand the importance of education. I know there are talented kids of all races, and it is educators' job to recognize their talent and challenge them further. A lottery trashes the meaning of hard work. I was also appalled to hear

035some board members reason to get rid of the teacher's recommendation letter because they think teachers are biased. It is disconcerting to know that Mr. Brabrand does not trust FCPS teachers. My question is, can we trust the school board to make the right decisions for the thousands of students and the families in FCPS? Second, no region or pyramid. Reasons behind these proposals are the complaint over... pipeline schools. It is a slap on the face to students and the teachers in grade achievement middle schools and the communities where those schools are. It is the school board's job to build more pipeline schools instead of tearing down existing ones. If any new plan were put through, there should be only one pool. Third, what is Virginia Governor's School Program? I looked through the description about the Governor's School

036Program. It claimed Quote, the foundation of the Virginia Governor's School Program centers on best practices in the field of gifted education and the presentation of advanced content to able learners. End of quote. No mention about mirroring racial demographic, and that is clearly unconstitutional. Fourth. bring back the test. I was disappointed to hear that the school board wants to remove the test because they believe it is not fair to underrepresented students, especially with the false rumors surrounding the $15,000 annual cost for prep classes. The best solution to that is to allow a minimum of four students from each middle school's admissions into the semifinalist pool, then utilizing the round of essay writing to get a better look at their holistic views, along with the teacher's recommendation. letter of course. Education is a long-term commitment with no

037quick fix. Altercations must be made solely on behalf of the students. Education is not a political game. Trying to change the admission process in the last minute during a pandemic is questionable. The deadline for the planned registration has passed and we are running out of time. Any new plan needs time. data collection and knowledge of the consequences. And that is why it is smart not to push for any big change this current year. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Rebecca Golden. Hello, school board members. I want to begin by thanking all of you for your time, thoughts, and energy toward making TJ an excellent and diverse school. I'm a professor of mathematics at JMU, and I have four kids, two of whom graduated from TJ and one who is a current TJ student.

038I've volunteered extensively in our schools and in the community for many years, including coaching math clubs and running math circles. I'm a committed educator who is intimately familiar with mathematical development among gifted children. I'm also past president of FCAG, the Fairfax County Association for the Gifted. One of my deeply held beliefs in education across all levels is that excellence and diversity are not in conflict, but we only achieve both when we actively pursue both. FCAC has suggestions for improving the newly proposed admissions process. The first relates to identification of students who most need TJ, our gifted students. The Virginia DOE states, the Virginia Governor's School Program has been designed to assist divisions as they meet the needs of a small population of students whose learning levels are remarkably different from their age-level peers. Gifted children

039are creative and multi-step thinkers. None of the proposals address how to identify this essential and mandated constituency. We suggest that FCPS add an additional problem-solving essay so students can show several facets of how they reason. One essay could ask students to interpret data and offer their opinion, while another could ask them to use their proportional and algebraic reasoning in context. Insist that T.J. admissions evaluate the essays for their multi-step and creative reasoning, together with demonstrated mathematical insight. site. Arrange student interviews to assess how a student engages creatively with unanticipated questions. We also recommend administering an opt-out math test to all eighth graders, inviting students who reach a threshold to apply to TJ. A universal test would encourage students who may not otherwise see themselves as TJ potential, encourage them to apply, giving them confidence and

040a stronger sense of belonging at TJ. It would also ensure that all students admitted to TJ have the skills they need for success. The lottery models for admissions are woefully under-researched. More than half the students in FCPS take Algebra I or higher in eighth grade. Large changes will impact our whole system, changing the advanced courses offered at each base school and at TJ. A lottery may result in average students from well-represented schools throwing their hats into the ring as outreach fails to convince students from underserved populations to apply. We need to pay attention to why TJ has had so much trouble recruiting talented students from across the county. FCPS needs to focus directly on finding exceptional academic prowess and TJ readiness as they exist in every region. FCAD implores the school board and TJ admissions

041to assess exceptional quantitative skills and excellence in the context of equity integrated with the mission for which the Governor's School was established. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Norma Munoz. Ms. Munoz? Okay. We're on mute, Norma. We'll move on to the next speaker and we'll come back to Ms. Munoz. Soesic Ramanini. Good evening. My name is Swiggy and I'm a junior at TJ. Along with many people in the TJ community, I oppose to the current mayor lottery proposal. And I have three simple points for you today. First, this proposal is not holistic. While I don't believe that the previous system was fully equitable, the previous administration system had a degree of holistic evaluation. with his test teacher recommendations, student information sheet, and problem solving essay. The new system

042eliminates the test teacher recs and nearly remove the problem solving essay. And it only adds a review of experience factors, which is necessary, but certainly does not make the process holistic. My second point regards the mental health implications of this proposal. The two-tiered system will result in disparity of experience and knowledge between some groups of the class and others, resulting in increased mental health issues. This divide between those who got in through merit and those who got in through lottery will contribute to feelings of inadequacy which are already present in the TJ community. The current proposal will undeniably take in students to have a weaker scientific and mathematical background because the system no longer assesses STEM-based skill sets. By thrusting students who will not be fully prepared for the rigor of PJ, we will undoubtedly

043increase stress and mental health issues among the incoming population, the opposite of any intended effect. The current outline steps for mental health and wellness do not contain any new measures for promoting student well-being. This leads me to my third point. The quality of TJ will be negatively affected by a merit lottery system. The current proposal says that there will be a rolling admissions until the end of the first quarter to ensure that a class size of 500 students is always there, even in the events of dropouts. These new additions will not be able to catch up missing an entire term of instruction since the curriculum at TJ is certainly more difficult than that of base schools. The current system is very effective at admitting students with extensive backgrounds and high-level math and science courses. By

044not providing more rigorous math and science courses for students in middle schools and slapping through a merit lottery instead, there will be an insufficient number of students to participate in TJ classes that have a high level of prerequisites. For example, machine learning and quantum physics require multiple prerequisites. These courses will have to be discontinued in favor of more remedial and base-level classes, which is certainly a cause for concern. So what's the solution to all these problems? I propose in conjunction with many of my classmates a new element of the admissions process to test their critical thinking. Students will be given a concept to learn to the system with new arithmetic operators or invented language. The students are then given a set of problems and must create solutions based on these new concepts. Many prestigious math

045competitions such as RML, PUMAC, and CMIMC use a version of this testing structure. This form of testing quantifiably measures a genuinely useful skill of prospective TJ students. It directly measures their ability to handle the rigor of TJ and ensures that people have a strong STEM-based capacity while not letting the test be preparable. I strongly urge every board member to consider before voting if the proposal that they are voting on is actually holistic. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Glenn Miller. Good evening. My name is Glen Miller and I'm speaking on behalf of the Coalition for TJ representing nearly 10,000 citizens of Fairfax County. I will seek to provide a holistic review of where we are to help this board's decision making. This board has eliminated the standardized test, which according to community activists

046was the chief impediment to increasing the number of underrepresented minority groups at TJ. You can now tell the community activists that you have done your job. You as a board, having made this decision, now need to ask whether the further step of imposing a lottery is worth the political cost to this board, is worth the potential legal trouble to the county, is worth the academic damage to TJ, and really solves the problem. And I would argue in each case, the answer is no. The lottery is bad politically. You have 10,000 plus very angry people arguing that the lottery unfairly targets Asians and benefits primarily whites. If you go to a lottery and it produces a bad result, which is likely, it's going to be the fault of this board. There will be nobody else to

047blame. You, this board, will be held accountable by the voters. On the other hand, if you go to a holistic system, it produces and it produces a problematic result, which is possible. That is the fault of Scott Brabrand, who you can simply not renew his contract for. Frankly, that is precisely Scott Brabrand's intention, to pass the buck for T.J. admissions to the board so he is not responsible for the ultimate result. Politically, this decision is quite easy for this board. The lottery is also problematic legally. T.J., as a governor's school, is required to be made available for a small population of gifted students whose learning levels are remarkably different from their age-level peers. State funding is contingent on this being a gifted school. Scott Brabrand has repeatedly said that TJ does not reflect the merit

048elsewhere in the county and that so many more students have merit in Fairfax County that only a lottery can fairly choose among the multitude. That fundamentally misstates the role of a magnet school for gifted. A gifted school is not intended to pick merely meritorious students. It is intended to take truly gifted students. Select the most gifted students at that. A random lottery choosing among 7,000 kids not sufficiently selective to be a magnet school type. The lottery will damage TJ academically, as already said. Either of the two lottery proposals will substantially reduce the average GPA at TJ. The vast majority of TJ students has a 3.9 or a 4.0 GPA at the middle school level, despite taking rigorous classes. standardized test sure of that a random lottery will by its nature reduce that GPA level adding

049stress to the unprepared students or stances below their peers and the holistic component of the revised lottery is too vague and completely forgets to vet students for one critical issue a passion for STEM look for any mention of STEM whatsoever in these criteria other than the essay question you won't find any finally the lottery makes TJ less diverse thank you Thank you. Our next speaker is Brandon Kim. Hello, can you hear me, Simi? Yes. Great. Hi, my name is Brandon Kim, TJ class of 2015. I was raised by a single mother who spoke no English, had not gone to college, and worked as a cashier for her living. Couldn't afford to do any extracurriculars growing up due to financial constraints and my mom's working schedule and it wasn't until I got to middle school when

050I could finally join some free after-school clubs. She was very hands-off about my education due to her being tired and working and not knowing the ins and outs of the FCPS system. For example, she didn't even know what the gifted and talented program was when I was accepted. So she actually opted me out of it for a while. I could go on about how different aspects of my upbringing made it an uphill battle for me to get into TJ and how I faced new challenges as a result of attending TJ. But then I realized I would be beating a dead horse. I trust that you all acknowledge at the bare minimum that there is a problem with TJ's demographics and its pipeline. So I believe where the disagreement stems from is not whether... a problem,

051but rather what approach will work to resolve the problem. To distill this question even further, the question I believe that we are all trying to answer is, who deserves to get into TJ? The current narrative of the Merit Lottery argues that the student to do the best on a test deserves to get into TJ, a standardized test that is transparent, prepable, and formulaic. This is a way to counteract quote-unquote luck in the admissions process. With hard work, anyone can get into TJ. But this narrative ignores the luck that is already omnipresent in the admissions process. It ignores the zip code that you were born into, the education level of your parents, your parents' ability to provide a stable and healthy learning environment. No eighth grader built that for themselves. They got lucky. And to put

052the onus of hard work on a middle schooler who is inextricably tied to their parents' circumstances and decision-making and a product of their social environment is to believe in a false sense of self-determination. The full merit lottery actually helps to diminish this luck to some extent and levels the playing field. 20% of Asian American FCPS students are currently economically disadvantaged and as a former one myself, I want to represent their voices because their voices and their parents' voices like my mom's are often drowned out and are missing in these conversations due to a lack of institutional political connections, English literacy and so forth. American voices speaking out against the Merit Lottery do not speak for all of us in the FCPS system, and they are speaking out solely to preserve the status quo that benefits

053them. Some people are saying this feels rushed, but what does a non-rush process look like? Another incremental change to the TJ process that has no bearing on TJ's demographics? Another forming of some ad hoc committee that comes up with a lukewarm compromise for no effect? The time for change is now or we will continue to have this conversation for another 35 years. The proposed solutions may need tweaking, but we can still try. And if it needs to be changed and improved in the future, let's make those changes. But the perfect should not be the enemy of the good today. Thank you. Chairwoman Anderson, Ms. Muñez. Ms. Muñez. We're working with Ms. Muñez right now to get her on. Thank you. Our next speaker is Himanshu Verma. Trying to turn on my camera here. There we

054go. Good evening, everyone. Can you guys hear me and see me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Excellent. Hi, school board members and Dr. Braband. My wife and I are immigrants and small business owners. We run a data analytics firm. And quite so many years back in 1998, I borrowed money to get here to the United States. My wife was born in Ethiopia. I am bilingual. I speak Hindi as well, and she also speaks Telugu. Our oldest daughter applied to TJ, and she enjoyed math discussions with her science Olympiad friends. And a lot of these discussions happened in the middle of night over text messages. We did not spend thousands of dollars on TJ prep. My wife and I believe in equal opportunity for everyone. My wife marched in the Black Lives Matter and women's rights

055demonstrations. We want all students to have equal opportunities and achieve their very best potential. And we have a lot of creative ideas on best ways to increase the number of well-prepared Black and Hispanic students at TJ. Both of the proposed lottery plans are not the right approach. FCPS has about 14,000 eighth grade students and superintendent Braden's data shows that 60% of those students are taking Algebra I or higher. Staff has not yet given you data about percentage of 8,400 FCPS students who also have at least 3.5 GPA. However, based on historical data that I've seen, almost all may be eligible to apply to TJ. The percentages would be similar for students in other counties and about 29,000 eighth grade students in total here could apply. The pie charts that staff... created were based on data

056from 3,000 past participants. These pie charts are misleading and tell us nothing. Since we have no idea on how many applicants we will have this year, you have no idea about the race and no idea about where they're at. In short, the lottery could yield very unpredictable results if close to half of 29,000 eighth grade students apply. The critical information regarding the estimated number of eighth grade students who are eligible to apply has not been released. The expected count of number of students that apply from each middle school has not been released. It is very, and I was really surprised when some people in the TJ11i Action Group believed all of these numbers without any verification. You know, I expected better from TJ11i. Over half of TJ's future students are taking non-honours or honours Algebra

0571 and 8th grade. Will we even have enough students to take differential equations or more advanced science and technology courses? If not, why should the strongest STEM student go to TJ in future? I request you make decisions based on some data. If any of you would like to talk to me or understand the data I've created, please feel free to do so. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker number five is now back in, so we'll call her. Norma Munoz. Yes, good evening. I'm sorry about the technical difficulty. Apparently, I was muted, but I'm back. I have come tonight to express my firm opposition to Superintendent Brabant's lottery proposals. They are technically flawed, as the Coalition for Strategic Data Scientists have demonstrated. It is clear that the chief beneficiaries of these proposals would be whites, not Hispanics,

058Latinx or black students. The proposals were submitted without proper consultations with relevant members of the community, in particular leading voices in the Hispanic Latinx community. And they hide an unconstitutional dark agenda of imposed racial balancing that discriminates against Asians in favor of whites. I oppose the use of Hispanics Latinx as tokens. as if the addition of 30 such students to TJ would have any impact on the school system's failure to provide adequate STEM education to the remaining 50,000. Superintendent Brabant and his board. care so much about providing STEM education to Hispanic, Latinx, low-income students. Why they don't provide STEM education starting in first or second grade, as the specialists have recommended? That is when early students start developing interests. I founded Hispanics for STEM some weeks ago. We have already secured the buying of a

059top Hispanic robotics educational firm that is willing to address the Hispanic Latinx community appalling lack of access to STEM education for its elementary students, school students. Now, in principle, I'm in favor of an admission test. However, given the concerns expressed by the detractors, I can accept that more study is needed. In regard to the proposed reliance on holistic assessments, I would like to share with you two main concerns. Will they be conducted objectively and transparently, or will they be done subjectively behind closed doors? The real reason that I'm here, in reality, is to remind the members of this board that you were elected by the people, and you are accountable to the people. Your performance at handling the superintendent's proposals is closely monitored and evaluated. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Susan Danowens.

060Good evening. Thank you Susan for the slot the board for your time and consideration My name is Patricia Bassett-Wolfe and I am the proud parents of two African American boys who are in the Fairfax County school system at the heart of this Controversy is the question on how to choose the students for Thomas Jefferson's freshman class each year In 1990, there was a concern about the low number of African American and Hispanic students at Jefferson, and the Fairfax County school system had initiated an affirmative action plan. But in 1998, the school board had eliminated the program, worried about the possibility of a reverse discrimination law suit. African American and Hispanic admissions dropped significantly. The school board found that the student body became had come from just this i'm sorry you you we couldn't hear you

061continue the school board was and tried a tax argued ma'am you're going in and out we can't hear you with a stop man 2001 admission and over again miss smallburg let's please have the speaker send her comments since we're missing most of it um due to the technical issues Fairfax County Public School System. This is the year of George Floyd was murdered. This is the year that the school board is reading Kendi. This is the year of electing a full slate of progressive candidates. This is the year to put to rest the racial bias promoted by TJ's admission process. A merit-based lottery is the solution. A lottery is cheap and effective. It doesn't require extensive training of admissions officers. It doesn't require children to prep for years. It can be fine-tuned. It can be weighted.

062But first, it needs to exist. Thank you for your time. Ma'am, your connection had you going in and out, and we missed a great deal of that. and email your comments to us at citizenparticipation at FCPS.edu. We'd appreciate it. Citizen participation. Thank you. Our next speaker is Prakash Yarladatta. Hello, FCPS board. Hopefully you can hear and see me. Thank you for your efforts and this opportunity to speak with you. I want to start off with a personal journey not very dissimilar to many immigrants. My wife and I started our journey here in the U.S. with literally nothing from zero. At school, I scrubbed dishes from 6 to 8 and ran to school at 8 a.m. So if you think we're privileged, you're mistaken. We work hard, and that's what we teach our kids. And as

063a family, and that's what we've prioritized, we've prioritized education and working hard over other expenses. We believe in what the great American inventor Edison said, genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. The way this proposal is presented, the rhetoric being used is absolutely shocking. I request you not to believe in the half-truths that you're hearing, the characterizations on nations or PrEP fees and PrEP has performance-enhancing drugs and false analogies with George Floyd are wrong and demeaning to the parents and kids here. My kids spent a summer for prep. It cost us $600, not the $15,000 being claimed. I know so many black high schoolers who spend summers getting strength training, skills coaching at Endzone and Chantilly. I play with them sometimes. And kudos to them for all the hard work to play better and make

064it to the team. That kind of prep and hard work is not taking performance-enhancing drugs. Please do not forget this school is a magnet school for kids who love STEM, have the aptitude, and love working towards it. The student population should reflect that, not the race distribution in the region. When your decision is so impactful across all these counties, shouldn't you take the time to read all the proposals, test them out before implementing such drastic changes? This is a governance school, and what about fair representation for kids from Loudoun, Arlington, and other counties? It's also disturbing to note that some of you may have already made up your mind and are jamming this through with no real input or sharing any meaningful data. There are so many wonderful and impactful ideas to increase opportunities for

065disadvantaged kids, from second look to maybe creating another high school that's focused on STEM. I urge you to review them. I'm completely opposed to either luck or color of skin be determining factors. A lot of parents like me are not opposed, again, not opposed to having special consideration for kids that are passionate and are disadvantaged. We need to encourage them and do a lot more to get those kids in and help them thrive. If you think standardized testing is in the way, please change the approach to better identify these kids with passion, the aptitude, and importantly, the willingness to work. Don't leave it to chance. Please remove the lottery and merit lottery. To the board members, step up, have the courage, and be a leader and make the right choice for all our kids. Thank

066you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Hanning Chen. All right. Can you hear me or can you see me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Yeah. Good evening. My name is Hanning Chen. I have three kids in FCPS. On behalf of them, I'm speaking against the admission policy change proposed by Superintendent Brabant. My position to this proposal arises from three serious concerns. First, the proposal adopts a two-tiered admission process, which will divide the TJ students into two mismatched groups, and I call them well-deserved and simply lucky. How come you can implement the same curriculum and rigor onto these two different groups of students? You either see a huge dropout rate as high as 60%, like many failing SDM high schools in the nation, or you have to drastically lower down the teachers' academic

067standard, eventually disbanding TJ, the nation's number one high school. My second reason to oppose the proposal is the lack of quantifiable assessment in the student portrait sheet, which is full of critical skills such as communicator, creative thinker, problem solver, and global citizen. But how can a married lottery quantify these skills in an effective manner? What seems more charming to me is the abandonment of teacher recommendation letters. In a recent town hall meeting, Ms. Karen Kees-Gamara, an FCPS board member, told us the important reason why the recommendation letters are no longer collected because fcps teachers are biased i agree with her that everyone including myself are person bias But how can a board member insult the FCPS teachers as a distrusting group while they are risking their lives to educate our kids over the pandemic? It

068is our FCPS teachers who know what is the best for our kids. My last but not the least concern is the malicious goal of this proposal, which claims to meet more underrepresented Black and Latino students. However, according to public data, The only beneficiary is white students at the expense of Asian students, black students, and Latino students. All minority students will become collateral damage and we are penalized simply because we are too many in TJ. By the way, does anyone know why there are so few black and Latino students in TJ? Because of the decadal failure of STAs on educating those underserved students whose STEM outreach program has shrank by 50% since 2011. Over the last 10 years, those abandoned students lacking SDM resources were not even mentioned once by the FCPS leadership team until now

069when poster kids are suddenly needed for political show. Taken all together, this ridiculous proposal belongs in a trash can and Mr. Brabant must go. Mr. Brabant. TJ is not your political playground. Get out of here. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Our next speaker is Carrie Jackson. Thank you, Dr. Harry Jackson. I'm a father of two FCPS students whose grandfather, through the Civil Rights era, was actually fought for equity, was able to get admission to be one of the first black law students to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, and then became the judge, and still does me hard work, where I actually became the first African-American student that received an appointment to the Naval Academy, and I went on to have a 20-year career. As an African-American professor and as someone

070who stood for American ideals in military service and the intelligence community, I had to convince others to give their life for the country we stand for. I knew that these aspects of my character were not only formed because of growing up as an African American boy interested in math and science, I developed a confidence because I never questioned my own abilities, and I knew that hard work would pay off. I appreciate the intent to uplift all children, but we must radically change the superintendent's current approach because it does not uplift African American and Hispanic children. The issue of proposing a lottery system was addressed back in 2012 when the percentage of black and Hispanic students were lower than they are today. But back then, the percentage of the white student population was 26%. Today, the

071white demographic of TJ is 18%. This is important to note because with both proposals, with surgical precision, targets the aging community, decreasing the representation by more than half under the guise to help underrepresented minorities such as blacks and Hispanics, while hiding its true intent to dramatically increase the white population, thus answering the call of certain TJ alumni and parents to make TJ white again. Dr. Brabrand states that the purpose of raising the GPA requirement of 3.0 to 3.5 to ensure the merit of qualified applicants, the data suggests a more malicious purpose. On October 6th, Dr. Brabrand admitted that his staff did not study or have to collect data regarding the racial demographics within Fairfax County of the students by race that have a GPA or a 3.5 or more that would qualify for the merit

072lottery. When you look at the data that is available, it was collected from back in the TJ. the TJ class of 2010, it reveals that the average GPA for black students who applied to TJ was 3.33 and 3.48 for Hispanics. The average GPAs for whites and Asians was over 3.6. The requirement to have a GPA of 3.5 is designed to deprive previously qualified black and Hispanic students to admission to TJ, thus again answering the call to make TJ white again. The people of Virginia, through their legislature, state the purpose of a governor's school is to give gifted students academic and visual performing arts opportunities beyond those normally available in the students' home schools. The current proposals do not address the need of exceptional African-American STEM students denied admission via the random lottery process that can

073be met at their base school. The proposed plans do not address how people moving from one household to the other. And in closing, this proposal was gerrymandering arbitrary requirements. would make the white demographic the largest applicant pool across all regions. We have to worry about having necks on our knees. Now we have to worry about having necks on our brains. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Asra Nomani. Hi there. Can you hear me fine? Yes. Okay, great. My name is Astra Nomani. I'm an investigative journalist and mother to a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. I came before you at your June board meeting to warn you about an organized campaign by ideologues to hijack Fairfax County Public Schools to launch a race war and lay siege on TJ,

074using a controversial ideology called critical race theory and its buzzword of equity to promote social engineering based on race. They are a woke army. And indeed today, in response to their assault, TJ Admissions just announced it has canceled the merit-based race-blind admissions test to TJ in the name of equity. We are witness today to the death of meritocracy. We are witness today to the death of the American dream. Yesterday, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, I received 900 pages of emails from FCPS that confirm what I have observed. Since June, Discontrolled TJ alumni have worked with activist school board members, the school superintendent, the Virginia Secretary of Education, and even the TJ principal to target admissions to the school in the unconstitutional practice of racial balancing. On May 21st, FCPS officials received

075a template for a, quote, diversity report due by October 1st from Virginia governor schools such as TJ. The email said. The report should end up rather simple. But today, Scott Brabrand, the superintendent of schools, uses the diversity report as his Trojan horse to dismantle TJ admissions. I asked him last night at a town hall meeting, what happened? He said two words that said it all. George Floyd, killed four days after the email about the simple diversity report. Indeed, activist alumni weaponized Mr. Floyd's death to start their attack on TJ. By June 18th, when a TJ teacher wrote that the iron is hot to raise diversity issues at TJ, the principal of TJ responded eagerly, appreciating the hot iron metaphor, and she lamented in another email the school's too few black and brown children. In fact,

076eight of ten students at TJ are minority students of color. Seven of ten are Asian. For the activists, they're on the wrong side of Brown. By July, the fix was in, with the Secretary of Education holding his secretive task force meetings with the superintendent, a school board member, the principal, all over TJ admissions. And in August, I discovered that you all had paid an ideologue in critical race theory, Ibram Kendi, $20,000 for a one-hour conversation with school leaders. The woke army made the TJ test a foil for years of failure by the superintendent to provide high quality education to black and Hispanic students. You have opened the gates for this woke army to seize the crown jewel of America's educational system. But you can still act. You can keep the merit test. You can keep

077merit based admissions to TJ. Find real solutions. You can still defend the American dream. Please do so. Thank you. Our final speaker is Didi El-Sayed. Hi, my name is Didi El-Sayed, T-Day class of 2021. I may be the only black student speaker tonight, but I'm not just speaking for myself. I'm speaking for the silenced majority whose talents for decades have been overlooked. I wanted to first thank every school board member for pushing to remove the test at admission speed. That is a huge first step. But how can we fairly identify gifted students when we live in a world where being Black or being neurodiverse screams the opposite? There is no way that we can handpick the best of the best in the eyes of the system and have it be representative diverse. The lottery is

078the best way to eliminate the bias in the system. I wanted to personally thank Ms. Omish, Ms. Kees-Bomara, and Dr. Anderson for seeing that. But for everyone else, I'd like to replace Pug of War with how to manage our relationship with the court system. that as long as we have a merit threshold, students who look like me will not dumb down TJ, will require remedial support, lower its ranking. The implicit bias underlying these conversations goes against everything you tout about equity and inclusion. The most painful thing for me is listening to Ms. Corbett-Sanders. You are my representative. My district, your district, is underrepresented at TJ. We gained seats for the exceptionally gifted Mount Vernon kids from the lottery plan, five times as many. Do we not have enough talent to belong there? Are we not

079worth fighting for? A compromise is not enough. Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, on Tuesday, you said that we should be looking at the whole person. You know better than anyone on this board that when part of the whole person includes black or neurodiverse, recognition of giftedness gets thrown out the window. Ms. Marin, Ms. Patarski, Ms. McLaughlin, and Ms. Dana Koufax. You claim that this solution is rushed. You say, let's wait, let's get our facts straight. Never mind that we've been talking about it since June. Never mind that we've sent you pages upon pages of data to back up the full lottery plan. When you say this is rushed, I hear that these kids aren't worth including, that this cycle isn't worth breaking. This isn't rushed. It's long overdue. We've tried so many moderate reforms in the past and

080they didn't work. Mr. Frisch and Ms. Cohen, you know what the right thing to do is. Please just do it. To pawn this on a committee that would be a dereliction of your duty as a school board. You were elected to make the tough choices. Please do right by the students, not those who are afraid of losing control. TJ is segregation in its modern form. History is being made this year. You made history by renaming Robert E. Lee to Justice to John Lewis High School, and those choices were applauded. You can be on the right side, on the just side of history again. Thank you. Thank you. That was our final speaker. Thank you very much to all of our speakers. At this time, we will move to our state and federal legislative program. I

081call on Dr. Brabrand for the introduction. Thank you very much, Chairman Anderson. It's a real pleasure to present the state and federal legislative program. And we have Michael Malloy, our Director of Government Relations, who just simply outstanding. Dr. Rambrin, I'm so sorry, but we don't have your camera at this time. My apologies. I'm sorry about that. It's an honor tonight to introduce to you our Director of Government Relations, Michael Malloy, who will present the annual update around the state. and federal legislative program for the Fairfax County Public Schools School Board. Mr. Malloy. Good evening, everyone. So hopefully we'll be able to get the presentation. Excellent. Thank you very much. Madam Chair, members of the board and Dr. Brabrand, I'm very happy to present to you tonight. What really is intended as an introduction to your

082legislative program and really to set the stage for the conversation you're going to have on October 20th at your legislative program work session. Your legislative program includes position statements and priorities that are related to policy issues of interest. to federal and state policymakers. So this is basically the foundational piece of your advocacy at the state level, at the federal level, with the Virginia General Assembly, with the governor, with the Virginia Board of Education, and with federal policy actors at the Department of Education and also in Congress. The process you're going through right now is an annual process. There's kind of a staff component of it, and we've solicited input from staff on the potential changes that they're looking to recommend. And then we also are interested, obviously, in getting information from you all in terms

083of the types of positions that you're interested in seeing addressed or changed as they're in the program as it is right now. This process is intended to allow for changes in legislative language that are reactive to changes that have happened in the policy environment over the previous year. So previous General Assembly sessions, actions from the State Board of Education, actions from the United States Department of Education and others. And it also reflects new board and new FCPS priorities and interests. And I know one thing that is a little bit different about this year than a number of years past. is a number of you, this is the first time you're going through the full process of looking closely at the legislative program. Functionally, the legislative program carries over from year to year. So we use

084the 2020 board legislative program as the basis for all of our recommended changes, which means that if there are not changes made actively, either from staff recommendations or by board action, language from previous years carries over to the next. I mentioned that just to make sure that everybody has the time to take a look at the existing legislative program. I will be frank with you. There are positions in there that I can probably trace back to at least the 1970s, which is the last time the Virginia Constitution was kind of revised. That's not necessarily a reflection of our activity at the legislative level, but it is a reflection that some of the issues that the legislative program deals with are perennial. There are always budget issues. There are always issues of policy to be discussed.

085So just very quickly, the structure of your current program is really broken into a few constituent parts. Your program does include positions on both the state side and also on the federal side. On the state side, you have a series of positions, a lengthy series of positions, everything from after-school programs through vouchers. You as a board will go through those positions, and in addition to the revisions that you make in those, you will also select out a subset of those positions that you wish to identify as your priorities for the year. So, when you look at the legislative program as a whole, it's a 25-page long document. But by the end of the process, you will have a 25-page long document with a lot of positions, but you will also have windowed down in five

086to 10 or whatever the board decides, priorities that you hold going into the next calendar year and, functionally speaking, the next General Assembly session. You also have a joint priority position that you jointly adopt with the county. That position is largely based on funding issues. Obviously, it mirrors other positions that you have in your own program, but we try and highlight a number of areas where you and the county are in alignment. So there's language that's very similar, if not exact, in your legislative program as well as in the county's legislative program. Same structure exists on the federal side. So you have a series of federal positions, but then you identify a few of those federal positions as your priorities. When you read through the legislative positions themselves, you'll see that there's a range of

087how they address issues. There's everything from very broad statements of philosophy to very detailed requests for change, getting down to the point of... We're asking for a specific change in a specific code section with specific word. But it just kind of depends on the issue and it depends on the topic as to how detailed or not detailed some of those positions are. Mr. Malloy, this is Dr. Brabrand. I know I did it, but if you could, could you put your camera on for the remainder of the presentation and for the Q&A period? Oh, absolutely. I apologize for that. Thank you. All right. There, I think I get that right? Thank you, Mr. Molloy. Absolutely. So just by way of background, a lot of people ask, you know, why does the board have a legislative program

088to begin with? And really, it kind of stems from a fundamental tension between your authority as a school board. You are vested as a school board with a certain set of constitutional authorities. I'm invested with the authority of the supervision of schools. But there are also a number of other policy actors, everything from the General Assembly to the State Board of Education, that are vested with similar authorities, and those authorities oftentimes overlap, and oftentimes those authorities will collide. So that's kind of the crux of the policy discussions that are held at the state and at the federal level. It can have a funding component. You all, as a locally elected school board, actually have no revenue generating capacity. So you are entirely dependent on other levels of government for your funding. There are perennial issues

089over the not only amount of funding that is available, but also the split of who is responsible for funding what. So what's a federal responsibility? What's a state responsibility? What's a local funding responsibility? And then when you get into the rocket science part of education funding, you can start to talk about education funding formulas, which are... universally very complicated. Sometimes I think purposely so, but those funding formulas are very important because the inputs, the way the funding is calculated can have a vast difference in the amount of money that's generated and the amount of money that's sent to localities. There's also policy, the policy side of it. Oftentimes we'll talk about mandates. And I want to highlight mandates just for a second. Oftentimes, we'll have a discussion about mandates and or unfunded mandates. I think

090the terminology of an unfunded mandate is a little bit of a misnomer because, and this goes back to the funding part of the conversation, anytime there's a mandate that's placed on a local school board by the state, by virtue of how education funding works, There's always a component of state funding. There's always a component of local funding. So the state can say that they have fully funded a mandate that they're passing to you, but that does not mean, that still means that you as a board have to come up with the resources at the local level to be able to fulfill that mandate. So using the terminology of an unfunded mandate, I think is a little bit misleading because that terminology really... focuses only on the state side. It doesn't focus on what falls to

091you as a board. And any of you who have seen the process, the General Assembly will, in either nine weeks or seven weeks, go through roughly 2,000 to 2,500 bills. Of those bills, we annually pull out probably 500 to 600 of them that could have some sort of impact on FCPS budget or operations. And that's everything from instructional impacts, but on transportation, on employment. So obviously, the General Assembly deals in a number of different areas. And so there are a lot of bills that could have an impact on FCPS that we try to address each and every year. To set the stage for your conversation about the legislative program and the kinds of issues that we kind of project we're going to be facing going into the next session. Right now, as you're aware, the

092General Assembly is still in special session. The special session was called by the governor to address some of the effects of the pandemic. The governor had set in motion a series of emergency actions, but he also brought the General Assembly back to look at some budgetary implications. The state did a revenue reforecast, and also there have been some policy discussions at the state level. So on the budget side, the revenue re-forecast, as you're aware, a downward projection in sales tax revenues and also downward projections in the number of students that are attending public schools. Both can have a budgetary impact. So those are issues that are being addressed. There have been, as I mentioned, a number of pandemic-related flexibilities and requirements, everything from your ability to do what you're doing tonight, which is hold an

093electronic meeting, which you were not allowed to do prior to the pandemic, regulations on how much seat time is required for students, how we measure attendance, DOLE, so the Department of Labor and Industry regulations in terms of how buildings and employees are being kept safe. flexibility for us to be able to provide food, grab-and-go food from the U.S. Department of Education or Department of Agriculture. So a number of those pandemic-related flexibilities and requirements that are in place now, and I think part of the discussion going forward is going to be... Are some of those flexibilities things that we want to advocate to continue into the future, or are they things that will just expire when the state of emergency expires? On the food and nutrition side, Because we're not operating normally, we don't have revenues

094coming in in the same ways as we would in a normal year with mail sales. All of our revenues are predicated on reimbursements from the federal government, at least through the end of the year. So that's a discussion that I think everybody needs to have in terms of how that revenue is going to be addressed. And then the General Assembly did, as part of its special session, did add some new layers to the community eligibility provision, which is the process by which a school with over a certain threshold of poverty can actually provide meals to all students as opposed to just to free and reduced lunch students. They've added a new level of requirement in terms of the Virginia Department of Education being involved in kind of a financial analysis. So that's something else we're

095going to have to address going forward. Issues that came up but that were not resolved at the special session, which I think is probably a pretty good indication that they will come back in January. Issues on workers' compensation and how that relates to COVID. Issues about paid leave and issues related more on the social justice side of the world to school resource officers, both funding and also the role the school resource officers play in schools. So that's kind of the special session part of the conversation. And then from there, the things that we would project that would be the general focus areas, budget already mentioned, COVID-related flexibilities, that discussion about which flexibilities will continue on, have some of the changes been helpful? Because some of the changes actually do. parallel some of the requests that

096you have in your legislative program right now for additional flexibility along the lines of the electronic meetings. So you do have some positions which are related to those flexibilities that you may wish to see these put into place for a longer period of time. There will be equity conversations. The equity conversations will be on both the social justice side of the ledger and they will also be on the funding side. And this is where I want to make sure that you remember in terms of education funding, when you have an equity conversation at the state level, because of things like the local composite index and the measurement of ability to pay. That debate is really a debate over whether or not the state should be sending additional funding to high poverty school districts, to rural

097school districts, which given the fact that you've got a fixed pie would potentially mean less funding for Fairfax. So that equity conversation, when it gets into the funding arena at the state level, may look a little bit different than what we typically... through an equity conversation in Fairfax. Student discipline will definitely be part of the conversation going into the next year. There have been a number of changes in student discipline requirements at the state level over that last few years. And I think you'll see a continued move for some additional changes. There have been all the way to the point of there being bills introduced. to outright eliminate things like out-of-school suspension. So that will definitely be part of the conversation. I don't need to tell you about the next bullet. That will be a

098topic of conversation. For the standards of quality and staffing standards, I just want to make sure that you are aware that the State Board of Education, both last year and this year, have prescribed a new set of standards of quality. Some of which are aligned with what you're already doing here in Fairfax, but some of which would go above and beyond or be different than some of the things you're doing here in Fairfax. So there are some, there will be some discussion of that and the discussion of that could have some both fiscal and operational impacts. And then finally, I just want to highlight a couple of other areas, possibility of discussions about new registration requirements and the new teacher licensure and or professional development requirements for our teachers. Thank you, Mr. Malloy. And I

099believe at this time we are ready for some school board questions. Ms. Anderson, I apologize. I was pausing just because I saw someone's hand had caught up. I didn't know if you wanted to call on them as we were going. I still have a few slides to get through. No, go ahead. Please complete the slides, and then we will go ahead and call the questions. I simply will finish when you pause. I apologize. I hesitated for a moment because I wasn't sure if we wanted to jump into questions or if we wanted to finish. I only have a few more slides to go. Yes. We will wait until the end. Thank you. Okay. Oh, thank you. So the next couple of slides I just wanted to put up, this is a little, a tiny bit

100of a preview of coming attractions for the agenda item that you'll see for your October 20th work session. The next two slides detail what we would consider successes during the previous general assembly sessions. These are areas where either an objective that you all had in your legislative program was entirely achieved. And the two that I've identified here on this is the state did adopt the recommendations that we had in terms of considering both dual enrollment and high quality work-based learning options as advanced coursework for student graduation requirements. And they also granted us the flexibility that you all had requested to be able to delegate the authority to do school safety audits so you did not have to, as a board, go through every single one that you could have professional assistance as part of that

101process. So those two are ones that are completely achieved and can be dropped out. I highlighted a number of other areas where there's been partial achievement of your goal. It may not have gone all the way to where you all had advocated, but progress has been made. And with some of that progress, it does change the character of the legislative asks as they were. So you'll see changes on the position for enhanced staffing for the learners. They did bump that up a little bit in the budget, in the state budget. The state did start to address some of the issues that we raised on limited or interrupted formal education students or SLIFE students. They are going to adopt a statewide definition. They are going to start to collect data on the students. And the State

102Board of Education, as part of its accreditation review, is looking at those students and their particular needs and how they're incorporated into state accreditation just to... ensure that they're being both appropriately served and also appropriately accounted for in accreditation ratings. That was achieved. And then on the next slide, you've got everything from solar cap, energy, net metering cap. They didn't remove the cap, but they did raise it to the point where some of the initiatives that you all have here in Fairfax in terms of solar projects would fit under the cap at this point. They did adopt a... a piece on collective bargaining allowing you to choose to enter into collective bargaining agreements. They did provide some additional county taxing authority, but they didn't completely equalize city and county taxing authority. Culturally relevant and inclusive

103education practices advisory committee was responsive to your request for the state to look at assessment bias and some other things as part of the standards of learning process. And then the state did ratify their Equal Rights Amendment. That language probably is best placed back under the federal side because it's now in the federal purview. but the state side of that has been achieved. So those are just a few areas where you will see changes based on things that have been achieved during the last General Assembly session and with the Board of Education. This slide, I just wanted to put it up for a moment. Obviously, your legislative program does not exist in a vacuum. The County Board of Supervisors has a... legislative program alongside you in exactly the same way. In addition to the joint

104formal position that you have, which is focused on funding, there are a number of other areas where the board is supportive of the same types of initiatives as you are. Everything from college readiness to environmental sustainability to school construction to student health and wellness. So I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of that. The county goes through its own process of updating its legislative program. They are currently in the process of doing it exactly the same way that you are. And then finally, I will leave you with the calendar of kind of where this goes from here. We have the presentation tonight. You have your board work session on October 20th. Final action on that legislative program is scheduled for November 15th. The House and the Senate have their money committee retreats

105in kind of mid-November. Those are actually very useful meetings that the General Assembly holds where you get a preview of coming attractions. The governor will send down his amendments to the budget, which you will see in December, but you will get a clearer revenue picture and a clearer projection on policy needs. out of those two committees. So that gives us kind of our first glimpse as to what the 2021 session will hold. I think we tentatively have your briefing with the Fairfax delegation set for Monday, November 23rd, which is the Monday before Thanksgiving. We'll be sending details out on that. The General Assembly technically can pre-file bills now. Members can pre-file bills all the way until November 30th. So you will actually have your legislative briefing. So your legislative program will be completed and you

106will have your legislative briefing prior to that pre-filing window. So if there are specific initiatives that we wish to address or take to individual members of the General Assembly, there's definitely a window of time to do that. As I said, the governor's biennial budget comes out in December 16th, and then we're back to General Assembly session January 13th, 2021. If anybody were to ask me as to what that session will look like, I can honestly tell you I'm not sure anyone knows. I think there's a likelihood that there could be a virtual component the same way that there has been for the special session, but we will be prepared either way. And that completes my presentation, and I'm more than happy to answer questions. Thank you so much, Mr. Malloy. We appreciate your presentation very

107much and look forward to more conversation in the coming week. We do have several board members with questions, and we will start with Ms. Corbett-Sanders, followed by Ms. Marin. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you so much, Mr. Malloy. We are so lucky to have you as the... top policy advocate slash lobbyist for schools in Richmond. I know that your work is not only appreciated by our school system, but school systems across the state, as well as our local elected. So I appreciate it. I do have a couple of questions for you. If I can just lay them out. One is if you can give me an update, I saw great news out of the governor's office today that we would get $175 per student out of CARES Act funding. And if you could confirm

108that, that would be great because if that's the case, it's over $32 million. Yes, I mean, I think I saw the same release that you did. It did look like there would be about $175 per student, a little bit over $30 million. I don't know if Lee Burden or anybody else is here. I don't think we have any details as of yet, kind of as to how fast that funding has to be spent and what it can be spent for. I think we're still waiting for those details, but certainly good news coming out of the governor's office today. Thanks, Ms. Beloyed. I think Ms. Burden is here, and I'm not sure we've heard from the state. They were looking at three funding approaches. Ms. Burden, do we have clarity on that yet? Yes, we do

109have clarity. It is about $32 million because the Fairfax City allocation comes to us for usage at those schools as well. We do not have any definitive information at this point as to allowable usage, nor do we have definitive information about deadlines for spending. Although anecdotally, we've heard that the timeline to spend those funds is going to be relatively short, unlike the CARES grant, which goes until September 30th of 22. So we're working on that. And as soon as we know more information, we'll share it with everyone. That's fantastic. Thank you so much. And I would recommend that this board send a letter of appreciation to the governor on that one. Additionally, I know that we have the... the Joint Committee to resolve any budget issues and if you could provide us any updates on

110where you see things happening in that, that would be great. Of particular interest is a rumor about the cost of competing being a bit of a challenge. And then I have a suggestion regarding, you talked about the unfunded mandates and that they really aren't unfunded. I think that we might want to change our lexicon to say the underfunded mandates because it's not only what the state does but the federal government certainly is the number one offender on the underfunded mandates when we look at things like IDEA and impact aid. Okay so on the budget itself, budget conversations This is the point at which you would be, the General Assembly would be appointing conferees, so they'd be appointing a subgroup of House appropriators and Senate finance members to sit down and hash out the differences between

111their two budgets. And there are some important differences between the two budget proposals. The House budget, I'd say by and large, addressed most of the concerns that we had shared. They did include a hold harmless for sales tax revenues. They did include a hold harmless, at least a pause in how they're going to deal with student population numbers, which could start affecting our actual disbursements. And so it addressed those two issues. The Senate did address the sales tax issue, but did not address the ADM issue. I understand there's still conversations between the two as to the approach that they're going to take. um but that's the kind of the primary difference between the two um the senate also includes some contingency funds i don't know if you saw an article uh the other day in

112the richmond times dispatch um they include some contingency funds which could include the possibility of some uh depending on revenue benchmarks being met which means that conditions have gotten substantially better they want to spend the money on that um the things that their priorities and one of their priorities could be a possible bonus for teachers. I tell you that because it's actually in the budget. I don't know how likely that is to happen, but it is part of the Senate conversation. But that article detailed the fact that the governor was not, was not. comfortable with the idea of pre-allocating funding. I think he wants to retain some flexibility. So a lot of those things are still in stay tuned mode, but I know that conversations are happening all the time and I'm sure we're going

113to see something relatively soon on the budget. In terms of your suggestion on unfunded mandates, I'm trying to just get away, I'm just trying to call them mandates. I think you're right. I think that you can... use the terminology underfunded. But I think we just want to make sure that people understand that, and legislators understand too, because legislators... Most of the legislators that we work with, they have their hearts in the right places and they're trying to do things that are helpful for public education. I mean, you can dispute the means, but they definitely are trying to do things that are right by students and right by school systems. But I think even they sometimes don't kind of fully get the split between how much something that the state does costs at the local level.

114because it costs every locality something different. If you go to Wise County or Lee County, they're getting 80 to 90% of their funding from the state, as they should be, right? Because of their demographics and their tax base. But in the Fairfax of the world, they're getting 25% of their funding. So a lot of it falls to you all in terms of coming up with the resources. Thank you and I look forward to our conversation next week. Once again, you do a great job and we really appreciate it. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ms. Marin. Good evening. Hi, Mr. Malloy. I'm very excited to have you join us tonight. So I just have a few comments and I appreciate that you've scheduled board members as they've asked to talk about the upcoming general session.

115I believe we're actually talking tomorrow. So as budget chair, I want to underscore that I'm ready to keep up our advocacy in Richmond and it is so necessary. I think that one of my biggest concerns is that we need to be very streamlined in our ask. The legislative agenda, it's 20 pages. I've seen it. here and I think that we've gotten to the point where we really need to prioritize what we're asking for, especially in the budget climate that you have identified. We need to be focused on what we're seeking and strategically reaching out to our state representatives to educate them about what their support will mean for their constituents. Regarding federal advocacy, it's unfortunate, to put it mildly, that we have a federal government that is hostile to supporting public education. I hope the

116outcome of the election will bring in leadership that wants to build up our public schools and then we can advocate at the federal level with some advancement. There are some things related to housekeeping for our school board, I guess you'd call them, to better work and function. This summer, I asked for a motion that my colleagues approved about us being able to meet virtually. It's very ironic that the governor has tasked us, the school boards, local school boards in Virginia, with deciding when schools can open and close during a worldwide pandemic. And yet, we cannot decide whether or not we can meet virtually. That needs to be changed by law. um so while we're able to do that in emergency session and have that flexibility which is um you know very needed when we have

117weeks where we have 20 hours of meetings i would like to see on those kind of that kind of housekeeping thing in there also the ability for us to meet no more than two at a time it's very hard we have a very large more so than other jurisdictions and the general assembly itself meets in any kinds of configurations that they want but these housekeeping items really hamstring us from being able to work more effectively in this 21st century. So those are things I'd really like to focus on. But I'd really like more regular briefings and strategic guidance from you and your office on how to seek. that we need to support our students. For me as an individual and the board as a whole, but so we can also support our constituents so that

118their voices can be lifted to their state elected representatives and also educate the public about the very complex funding situation in Virginia, especially in Fairfax County. And there's a world of challenges on the backs of our school boards and our public schools that only the state is able to rectify. So I think we really need to, again, be strategic in what our solutions are that we're seeking. forward to helping you generate that and advocate for that in the general session. So thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Marin. Mr. Malloy, did you want to respond to Ms. Marin's comments? Just to let her know that I've got, I know that you all had adopted some language and the program was already responsive a little bit to the virtual meeting idea. So that you'll definitely see

119language that's altered to extend those flexibilities that have been granted during the pandemic to just regular board operations. And as part of the process, and I'll be talking with your legislative chairs, with your state and federal legislative chairs on your board prioritization. you know i i think i think you know a number of members have identified over the years the need to kind of streamline um i think that there is a that that there is a significant amount of utility in having a a lengthy legislative program simply because of the pace of things that happen and the number of issues that come up um i think you'd you wouldn't necessarily be doing your due diligence if you didn't have at least some sort of general statements in a number of different areas. But I think

120the board has been very intentional over the last few years on streamlining those down to the one page asks. And I think I'll work with your legislative chairs and also welcome anybody else's suggestions in terms of paring that down even more. uh you know i think you're right the more focused you can be and the more you can point to a few things uh the more the more effective you can be at least on uh obviously depending on the issue but i think there's definitely a correlation there so thank you thank you mr mulling thank you miss tolan please go ahead followed by miss darren kovacs Awesome. Thank you. And Mr. Molloy, thank you for our meeting the other day. It was very helpful to go through this lengthy documents and see all the work

121that you've been doing over the years. I just wanted to bring up a couple of points from our discussion that we had. One of the things that we really talked about was, you know, a lot of these things have been standing in this document for quite some time and are certainly priorities, but... what have we learned from our experience with COVID-19 and virtual learning and distance learning. And so I'm hoping that Dr. Presidio and Dr. Seti will be working with you, as we talked about, collaborating to really take a look at Are there things that we need to change or think about happening at the state level for technology or for more flexibility in instruction and using what skills we now have in virtual learning in our instruction? I don't want to put them on

122the spot, so I'll let, for the sake of time tonight too, I know you'll be collaborating with both of them to maybe get some ideas on this, and I won't put them on the spot tonight to answer that question. The other thing I was just going to mention, I'm very much looking forward to working with you and Mr. Frisch and the rest of the board to flesh out a few items to support our joint environmental efforts with Fairfax County. So, Carl and I are working on some things we'll be getting to you around that. Thanks again for all of your efforts on this and look forward to working with you further. So, I guess not really any questions buried in there. Well, actually, I mean, I can't at least partially answer the first question that

123you asked in terms of kind of what lessons have been learned and what flexibilities I think are... would we be interested in seeing going forward? In addition to the conversation about electronic meetings, which is obviously separate, I think a couple of areas that have been identified, and interestingly enough, these are areas that already were covered by your legislative program with us asking for flexibility from the state in these areas. So these are kind of situations where flexibility has been granted, and we would like to see that flexibility continue on. uh two of the areas that i can think of off the top of my head are one or seat time hours like so the the specific required number of hours that a student has to sit in front of a teacher in order to prove

124that they have mastered course content there's been some flexibility there and that's been something that this board has been interested in asking for for a long time And I think also on the matter of attendance. The state a few years ago, the State Board of Education added chronic absenteeism to the accreditation standard. And chronic absenteeism is a very broad measure of absenteeism. It's not simply truancy. It's literally the amount of time that a student is out, even on excused absence. So even if they have medical conditions or whatever their excused absences are. So they still measure attendance by physical presence. Right now, because of our virtual situation, they're allowing attendance to be measured more in terms of student engagement. And that was a position that the board adopted, I think, last year, asking the state

125to revisit that decision on absenteeism. And so this new flexibility kind of provides a template for the possibility of taking that forward. So those are a couple of areas that I can think of where there's a direct nexus between legislative asks and the flexibility that's been granted that we may want to see going on. Those are great. But I'm thinking there are probably other areas, too, where we could be creative with courses and things that we could offer in a combination of virtual and in-person learning down the road. We may need some flexibility at the state level for things like that. So I just hope we're thinking about those and talking to our experts here in FCPS to see what we can come up with. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Tolan.

126Ms. Danakoffax, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Malloy, for being with us tonight. And I am honored to be working with you again as the board's representative, as the state legislative liaison. I do want to thank you for reaching out to all board members this time because this is a new configuration of this board to make sure everybody's ideas are heard. Just so my colleagues know, Michael and I will be meeting after he He meets with all of you. I met on a two, he's doing a lot of two-on-twos, two board members working with him. And I did that with my colleague, Ms. Tolan, the other day. And so I look forward to hearing via Michael all of your... suggestions and then of course I will be reaching out as well prior to our work session

127on October 20th and I encourage you also to reach out to me if you have anything that is really new or something that hasn't been mentioned tonight so I would appreciate that. Michael I do have a question and I think you were the one that shared with me about you mentioned the bonus and where that is the house side I mean, the Senate side, but the bonus is again, one of those. it wouldn't be completely funded. Is that correct by the? Yeah, absolutely not. We would only get a small fraction of the amount that it would cost. And it's the same as if you were to do a salary increase. Anytime the state prescribes, provides money to localities for a salary increase, it only provides the state share of that salary increase. The locality has

128to come up with the remainder of it. And for, you know, for any salary increases in Fairfax, as you know. even a small percentage change can have a large price tag attached to it. But yeah, it would only fund the state's portion of that. Okay. All right. Thank you so much for that information. And I just want to also say that I had in an earlier conversation, you'll see that some of the things in the presentation, he said, you know, areas for changes or deletions, these have been achieved and can be deleted. I asked Michael to go back just a few years because... We have had a lot of successes as a board, and this is due to no small part to Michael's work down there on our behalf. So I would love for him

129to show you a little bit just getting together by the time we have our work session. not even an addendum to our legislative program, but just a document that shows the successes that we've had. So you realize and understand. So this current board understands the hard work that Michael has done on our behalf and the success of previous sports I've had. So I think that's that will be really important. And I think to all my colleagues who have great ideas and I think some of them are well. past time do. And I look forward to putting together this program in a way that we can move the needle on some of these things are important, are even more important now as a result of where we see and how we need to meet and communicate

130in COVID, but also some of the equity items that we've been asking for a long time but have not yet. been successful on. So thank you. And thank you, Michael, so much for being here tonight. Thank you. Ms. Eisner-Heiser, go ahead. Great. Thank you very much. And I'll just be brief because I know the hour is late. I know I'm meeting with you, Mr. Malloy, soon as well to talk about more in-depth on these. But I just want to say I'm really glad to see graduation requirements on possible 2021 session focus areas. And I know on page 13, in the report post for 2020, there was a discussion about multiple pathways to earning a diploma. And I think that is really, really important. I think we're showing in this era, um with between our colleges

131on sats and our you know the state's movement away from sols and relying on sols that multiple pathways to diploma is the best way for all of our students to have ways to demonstrate competency rather than just on a test and i think that's really important especially for our slice students for our special ed students but really all of our students and especially given the long-term impacts of this pandemic Right the you know, the reliance and so wells for graduation is not going to be just a waiver of one year, but there's long term impacts around that in terms of students who may not have passed one abilities to. To remediation second chances, so I think that's a really important thing to think about in the era of that may get lost. So I just

132wanted to put that out there and I'll be happy to talk to you more about that. And just again, thank you for all your hard work down for us down in Richmond. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much miss. Seismohaizer, seeing that there are no more hands, we will say thank you to Mr. Molloy for his presentation this evening, and we look forward to speaking with you again very soon. And I'm very also interested in what Ms. Dernak-Kofatz shared regarding the successes that have been in place due to your efforts. I'm looking forward to seeing that if you have the opportunity to put that together. Thank you so much. outstanding. Have a good night. At this point, it is 938, and we have been going for a little while. And so without objection,

133I would like to initiate a five-minute recess, and we can pick up with the rest of our agenda in five minutes. Seeing no objections, it is now 938. Let's go ahead and make it a round number and come back at 945. Let's come back at 945. So please, folks, be on time. Let's take care of all of the needs that we need so we can continue with the rest of our meeting. Thank you. All right, we are back. It is now 945. Just to ensure that we have all of our school board members with us, a very, very quick roll call. Ms. Omish? Here. Ms. Tolan? I'm here, thank you. Ms. Corbett-Standers? Ms. Quis-Gomara? I'm here, just not quick on the draw for the mute. Sorry, I'm probably going a little bit too quickly. Thank

134you. Ms. Quis-Gomara? Ms. Caprish? Here. Ms. Cohen? Here. Ms. McLaughlin? Ms. Marin? Here. Ms. Stasmalheiser? I'm here. Ms. Pekarsky? Hi, I'm here. Is there a knockoff ask? Here. And Ms. Kiesgara. Okay. Since we have quorum, we will go ahead and proceed. And I'll call on Dr. Brabrand to present the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology admissions presentation or discussion. Dr. Brabrand, please go ahead. Yes. Thank you, Chairman Anderson. We had a significant presentation at our work session earlier this week on Tuesday. and I have just a brief presentation for you this evening. At Tuesday's work session, the board requested that I share the diversity goals that will be submitted to the state in our required governor's school diversity goals and report. And I'll be sharing that report with the school board tomorrow in

135my weekly Brae Brand briefing, which is public. In November, we will be presenting a revised admissions process to you all in a work session. And incorporated in that, we will be, from consensus on Tuesday's work session, removing the standardized admission test, eliminating the TJ application fee. supporting a capacity increase at Thomas Jefferson to be more comparable with the capacity that exists at other schools in our school division. And we'll be sharing at the next work session in November the initiation of an admission process timeline for the class of 2025 that will begin no later than the end of January 2021. We look forward to sharing our additional work around TJ admissions at our November work session. and I appreciate the board support for removing the standardized emission test, eliminating the fee, and increasing capacity at

136TJ moving forward. So thank you very much. I really appreciated the dialogue that we had. I know this is just the first step in a continued partnership with the board to move the emission process in the direction that will serve the best interest of all of our students and of fairfax county public schools so thank you very much thank you very much dr bray rand for that update um at this time i call on miss seismohizer for a motion sorry give me a second i'm just pulling it up you're fine i move to direct the superintendent hang on put my camera on so people can see me i move to direct the superintendent To develop and implement a public engagement, I apologize. My mouse keeps moving my. The screen, so I want to make sure

137I'm reading it as it's written here. It's on the screen. This is my highest. Okay. Thank you. Yes, I was having trouble with my Google docs, which I have on my other screen. Let me try that again. I apologize. I move to direct the superintendent to develop and implement a public engagement plan regarding T. J admissions prior to bringing the updated T. J plan to the board. I have in December, which is my original thought, but we'll say in November. This plan should allow for more thorough community input and dialogue on T. J admissions. This public engagement can include public hearings, interviews, panel and focus group discussions and other forms of collaborative discourse. At minimum, input should be solicited on how to best determine merit, design an admissions process aimed at ensuring the demographics at

138TJ are more representative of our regional student demographics, and how to communicate the TJ opportunity to our communities. Thank you, Ms. Seismohizer. Is there a second? Thank you, Ms. Tolan. Ms. Seismohizer, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, please. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Tolan and I talked about, as we've been discussing TJ admissions and the initial plan was presented to the school board, our superintendent, we have all received thousands and thousands of emails and participated in town halls, phone calls from constituents, and clearly there's a need. to have some community input and discourse with stakeholders as we're finalizing our plans towards TJ admissions. This plan for public engagement is in no way designed to slow down our process or change our timeline around this. It is really just designed to make sure

139that we include our communities and stakeholders in our discussions. The suggestions that are written in here regarding public hearings are just suggestions. the idea really is to allow for dialogue around TJ admissions with our communities and stakeholders around the different pieces. So that is the intent and the idea behind this. And that is, I think it's very, very important to give room for our community to be heard and to listen to them as we go through the process. And I feel like there's need for more of a interactive dialogue around this process. Thank you, Ms. Asmelheiser. Ms. Toland, would you like to speak to your second? I just have a couple of things to add to what Roxanne Seifereheiser has already said. You know, Mr. Karski already mentioned that we have received reports, analyses, data

140from a number of sources on both sides of the table, across the board. And I just want to make sure that we're taking a look at those. People have spent time and energy and have really done a lot of analysis, and they've got some really good ideas, and we need to listen to that. And I think the biggest thing we're really looking for is a two-way communication. I mentioned the other night our TJ students, even just last week, I guess actually this week, it's been a long week, on Monday nights had a town hall where it was really a dialogue and people were able to converse and share information much more than I think we do in our usual town hall situations. you know that's what we're looking for thank you very much miss Moberg

141would you please post the motion again so we have that to refer to during the rest of this conversation miss McLaughlin go ahead yes just wait a minute I'm going to pull up my video so I do want to thank miss eisner heiser and miss Tolan for bringing this forward I know that the board has been time-pressed in just the Tuesday work session. So regrettably, I didn't have a chance to talk with them about this. I would have preferred to have made the language a little more expansive. In addition to absolutely having robust public engagement, it is my hope and expectation that this board will direct the superintendent, that we will also engage key researchers like the Dr. Plucker's group for AAP gifted education. and that we will also be engaging our TJ faculty who

142will be instrumental in talking to us about what they know right on the ground, educating our TJ students, what's working well, what maybe we need to be doing better in our holistic selection process. That has been deficient to date and I feel very strongly that if we want to have truly an effective change and improvement to our admissions processes for this coming year we would be deficient if we do not include experts And I also want to add that I'm deeply disappointed that we have 30 to 40 years of elite universities in this country, public and private, who successfully initiated admissions processes where you have high achieving students who are demographically diverse, geographically diverse. And those methods are well known. I have almost 10 years of experience knowing it. No one ever on the administration

143came to speak to me about it. I'm not aware that they spoke to the colleges about it. I will tell you that the plan they put forward absolutely doesn't reflect it. I am absolutely disheartened that our entire community on all sides of this argument have had to wrestle with a false notion that we can't achieve both. It has been just destructive. I also think it's terrible that people think we're trying to kick the can down the road when in fact we want to make sure that for this year to achieve both of those truly important goals of diversity and high achievement we should use data analysis and our superintendent told us on Tuesday his team doesn't have that data analysis and when you're talking about a selection process that through our policy and procedures says

144we are supposed to be selecting students with exceptional quantitative skills. Those two metrics alone that he has provided that we can see with no data analysis, but the public tells us is about 60% of our eighth graders. That is not an example of a merit based selection process. Dr. Brayburn, I know you care deeply and I appreciate it, but you needed to have done better. Thank you so much. I would say, give my sentence like you've told us we can. Thank you. Thank you. I don't believe there was a question there, so thank you for your comments. Ms. Pekarsky? Thank you. I have no questions, but I'll be very brief. I do want to thank my colleagues for bringing this to the table. I know many in our community have felt this has been rushed

145and they have not had an opportunity to fully engage with... our school board members and our FCPS staff on this extremely important and consequential change for many. And I have spent many, many hours speaking to constituents who have reached out to me personally, but I think that will benefit staff to also engage in a more systematic way. I've been a vocal advocate for that from the very beginning. I do not believe this has to in any way slow down the progress. And I want to also make very clear that that is not my intention in any way for supporting this. But we have an engaged community of parents who are interested and invested, and we need to leverage that. So thank you. Thank you, Ms. Pekarsky. Ms. Omish? Thank you. You know, I'll start by

146saying it's difficult for me to not be in full support always of my colleagues' initiatives. I do have some questions. I think the easy option for me here is to say absolutely more public engagement. You know, I always want to be mindful of hearing from the public. I think up to date in our terms, you know, to get here, this has been the issue I've received the most emails for, if that's fair to say. I think the point now is synthesis. I want to be mindful when we look at this. I believe the original motion said December. So we're looking at the presentation is going to be in November. We're looking at just a month's timeline. I'd prefer for the superintendent to have the opportunity to really focus on the synthesis of the research, to

147reach out to the experts that are warranted, that he seeks to look for the best solution. And just being, at the end of the day, we might have the option here to pick the best plan possible by studying it well, or engaging the public and ending up with kind of a last minute synthesis of that. Not to mention, of course, back to school and everything else that, sorry, return to learn and everything else that's on our agenda. So I just want to be extremely mindful that this actually might slow us down and channel our resources in a direction that's not best for the work and ultimately choosing what's best for kids. I'd love to hear any thoughts on that. And Dr. Brabrand, I'd love to hear your perspective here as to whether this is even

148feasible with the understanding that as a board, we could always host a public hearing. That's an option we have and that's available to us aside from requiring this to be a system-driven effort of a plan and multiple steps and things like that. So Dr. Brabrand, you could please speak to that. Well, obviously the motion is for the board to review and decide. We have done public engagement. I've done two town halls. There have been numerous town halls by TJ, done by board members and by the students. There have been town halls conducted by Secretary Carney. as he was doing his work. But we can certainly look at doing some additional public engagement. It does give me the ability to develop it given the timeline. I'll do the best to do additional community input and dialogue.

149I'll work with our executive director for communications and our strategic consultant for additional supports here and doing this communication work and engagement work. So I will do my best to balance the need for additional engagement that's being asked here with the timeline that is a short one. And it is a balance and I would work to do that if this motion passes. If you would kindly, I mean, does this help you? Do you believe this helps you develop a more thorough plan? Or perhaps do you think that... you know, being able to focus and channel your energies where you see fit would be more conducive. And I'm happy to support whatever direction is gonna give us the better, you know, more thorough analysis. I, listen, public engagement on a topic of this importance is very

150important. It's... This has been a topic, frankly, for 30 years and making sure that people feel heard, included and respected as part of the equity work that we're committed to doing. So I can support this. Again, one thing that Ms. Seismarheiser and Ms. Toland said, there really is... a balance here of multiple tools and it's not prescriptive as to how many or how often or which ones. And so I will work within the time that I have. to come up with the appropriate additional engagement. So I can make it work, but being mindful that there is a short timeline. And as some of the board members already said, this is not about slowing down the work. It's just about making sure that as many voices have been heard that can be heard. And I will

151work to do that with staff. Thank you. And thank you to the initiators of the motion. Thank you. Ms. Cohen, go ahead. Hi, Billy Voughton, the next Madam Chair. I'm so sorry for some reason I have the 2 of you backwards. Please go ahead and they're not co facts and then it's Cohen. Thank you. Thank you to the makers of this motion and. I will be supporting it as well. I think it is. extremely important that we hear from all stakeholders on all sides and I think it's even more important when we hear stories like our one young man who came to talk to us and said his mom was not able to be engaged and I think it is really important that we reach community of parents out there whose kids are going to

152be impacted this year, next year, or a few years from now. So they really do understand that we want to hear from everyone. um ensure that as we change this process to get the diversity that we all seek we are hearing from all sides as we make our decision and i think that's a a best practice and um i appreciate um again um miss seismor heiser and i miss tolan for bringing this to us thank you mr not kofags um miss I'm so sorry, but the list that I have had here is slightly different from what I see right now. So please bear with me, even if I'm out of order. Ms. Cohen, please go ahead. Thanks. I'm having some technical difficulties. You know, I'll honestly say I struggle with this. I feel like we

153have absolutely heard from stakeholders on every possible format. emails calls um you know conversations in my driveway um you know twitter facebook every possible way that we as a board have heard people's opinions um and their feelings on it so i certainly feel like hearing the voice of stakeholders has not been an issue um you know i would feel more inclined to support this if it did capture what miss mclaughlin said about bringing in more experts in the field to have conversations but you know my big piece that I really struggle with in this is that it says at minimum input should be solicited on how best to determine merit And, you know, I guess my confusion is, are we on every time that we're talking about merit programs, are we going out and we're

154going to defer that to the public? You know, at the end of the day... making sure that we have information from everybody about best practices, have experts in the field, use our team at FCPS, use what we gather from all of our constituents. All that is so key in decision-making. But the wording here, I don't feel comfortable with how this is worded here about that the public engagement is going to be used to determine merit. So I unfortunately though I super appreciate the intent of it and I always want to encourage our constituents to reach out to us on everything and certainly continue in this process helping us refine this. The wording here is a bit troubling to me. Thanks. Thank you so much Ms. Cohen. Ms. Quis-De-Mara? I thought Ms. Corbett-Sanders was ahead of

155me. I'm sorry, I have her after you. I'm not sure what's happening with the screens, but things are jumping up and down after I've listed them. So everybody will get a turn. So just bear with me for slightly out of order. So please go ahead, Ms. Keith-Samara. Okay. All right. Well, I'm actually, I'm happy to follow Ms. Laura Jane Cohen because I have similar concerns. Having gone through a number of contentious, discussions where our community is absolutely a part of the community is absolutely opposed to something. I become concerned because sometimes hear the cries, this is too soon, or we haven't had enough engagement because it's not the answer that is really wanted to be that they want to hear. And while I truly appreciate public engagement, I am very concerned about our staff ability

156to truly adopt what is being asked here. I am hoping that the communications department, Dr. Brabrand, can really help you out here. But I also know that this board has asked you specifically to help us figure out the historical context of these issues. And so I'm worried about how you're going to be able to do all of this. in this short amount of time and the community feel as though we had a fair opportunity. I'm also one of those people who received those thousands of emails, participated in as many meetings as possible, communicated with people on social media. And so I certainly want that to continue, but I think that it may be inevitable that this slows down the process. And I'm also concerned about this word merit. Because ultimately that is something that the

157board needs to determine the information put before it. And so, Dr. Brabrand, can you speak to how you might balance some of the questions, the many questions and data requests that this board has placed upon you along with this request? Well, it's certainly going to be a bouncing act and I'm not going to over promise and under deliver here. I mean, I, as I said, I have done public engagement and we've taken thousands of emails from TJ comments, email on the website. I've answered personal emails as I know many board members have. So it is going to be a balancing act. There's no doubt about it. And our staff is dealing with multiple things right now. As Mr. Smith shared, our T.J. admissions office is an office of two full-time folks and a 0.5 outreach

158person. Again, we'll do, if this motion passes by the board, Bill do what we can in the timeline has been provided. Um, so, uh, it is it is something that is a concern. I think we do some additional work that we have done around community engagement. Um, again, the bottom line for me is that this did not prescribe what the actual additional public engagement has to be. It suggested what it could include, but it didn't make it required. I do agree the input around how to best determine merit is already one of the great discussions that we're in the middle of having. We can continue to get more input, but part of where I do believe you are correct, Ms. Kees-Gemara, the board. will have to define what is merit, what is exceptional. What does

159exceptional mean? Does that mean solely academics? Does it mean being exceptional for passion and interest? We talk about twice exceptional kids, right? So we've really got to start to think about words that we've had in our policies and better define them. And I think frankly, our community has a varying view about what certain words like merit and exceptional mean. And I think that's going to be the work. We can continue to get input, but I do think we're going to find a range and it's going to be left to this board working in partnership with my team to determine what those definitions are and how to best move forward based on those definitions. Okay, I'd like to ask some questions of the makers of the motion because I think I understand the intent. And if

160it is your intent to make a statement at this point to the community that you want their input, I think that's one thing. But my concern, as Ms. Cohen, Ms. Laura Jane Cohen stated, This specific language with respect to you must gather information on these particular topics. I am not those seem like apples and oranges and so I wonder if you would consider deleting that specific language so that we could simply be making the community about engagement. I want to also put this on the table before Ms. Seismohizer responds. If you're also thinking of an amendment to this motion, Ms. Quis-De-Mara, we will be sure to come back to you for that. Ms. Seismohizer, go ahead. Yeah, I appreciate the comments of all my colleagues on this and I'm sure Miss Toland does as well.

161We had initially sent this out on Tuesday, so this has been out for a few days. I'm not opposed to taking out that last sentence, but I just wanted to sort of talk a little. I appreciate Miss Kees-Gamar asking the question and Miss Cohen's comments, but I want to be clear that this is not a motion for the board necessarily to do more engagement and all of the thousands of tweets and emails and town halls and things. have been held by the board i know stupid brain brand has held you as well but a lot of the two-way dialogues have been held or attended by the board this is directing the superintendent to gather and do public engagement so i just want to be clear because i know miss cole talked about the thousands of

162tweets and things which we have all gotten um but it is it is not about the board public engagement so it's not really about the board or making a statement to the public but the things that i heard consistently from the public in the town hall that i've attended in the emails and phone calls is they feel like there's not there has not been room for dialogue with the superintendent around this piece of it and i actually agree with what um ms mclaughlin said about tj teachers is something miss hola and i actually had discussed about whether to list that in there and we decided actually to make it a little bit broader to not be as prescriptive mr to dr brabrand's point um so we didn't list um really a huge list of particular

163stakeholders but that is something she and i discussed i am not opposed to taking out the last sentence about at minimum input should be centered on and just leave it on a it disappeared from my screen so i can't see uh see it i'm gonna leave it on just dialogue the key to this is two pieces one it's not for the board not directing the board to do a dial engagement yeah unless we want to of course and the second key is that it's really to get more of a dialogue opportunity than a little more what the community feels like they ask the question it gets answered but there's no time to sort of have a discussion um and that was a piece of it i'm not opposed enough to ask miss tollen if you

164know someone wants to do an amendment to take off the last sentence so it's just really dialogue about the tj admissions plan Thank you, Ms. Eisbauer-Heiser. Ms. Kies-Gamara, I'm not sure if I heard the bell, so Ms. Mulberg, can you please confirm if the timer went off for Ms. Kies-Gamara's turn? Yes, the timer went off. If I could just get clarification as to how you would like me to go. If I could just add, do you want to go back, Ms. Kies-Gamara, because we have several other people who have not yet had a turn. I just wanted to use the time to follow up on what you asked me to do is all. So if you want, regarding your impossible amendment, I will hold you to that on a go back. Let's just be sure

165that everybody else has a turn and I will come back to you. Okay. Ms. Corbett-Standers, go ahead, followed by Ms. Marin. Thank you, and I'm glad to follow Miss Keys, Gamara and Cohen. But I want to first thank makers of the motion because I understand the importance and what you're trying to achieve here about the public engagement. It's actually something that is supposed to be included in our plan that gets submitted to the governor and the budgetary language adopted by the legislature clearly states that public engagement must be. part of what we submit. But I do think that this Is maybe a little bit it's wonderfully written, but because of some of the terminology, it sends the wrong message or may be misconstrued about what is trying to be achieved here. And so there are

166a couple of areas that I would love to hear from the makers of the motion 1st, in would you be willing to put in specific language? I believe we need specific language that this that. solidifies that this is to be done, but that we are not delaying changes to the process for the admission, the 2021 freshman class. So that we are implementing changes this year, and I think that we need to be explicit that that will happen. The second thing is, and I have the same challenge with the term merit and defining what merit is. Because merit tends to also reflect a broad array of opportunities available to people. And so what we often talk about when we look at the programs available at TJ and at other higher institutions, we talk about aptitude and

167whether or not our students have the aptitude to be able to excel at TJ. And that is different because that is a different metric, a different way of assessing the whole child. And so we really do, I get worried when we overemphasize merit. versus aptitude and so i'm wondering if we could put in that language there um and uh see what else um those are my my two big areas um as well as when we say um tj is more representative their aim is ensuring that the demographics at tj are representative Of our regional demographics, it's not are more representative than they are today. The aim is. Do you have and this board has stated it is to have a representative population. And so I'm wondering if you would also be willing to drop out

168a drop the word more. Before you start, Ms. Seismol-Heiser, and I did list everybody whose name is on the side here, either for their initial turns or their go-backs. So I will ask for everybody at this point to just lower their hands so we can get some consensus regarding the next thing that I will ask. Since Ms. Seismol-Heiser shared that she had no objections to striking the last line, i will ask if there are no objections then we could um remove the period i'm sorry the section that begins at minimum and push should be solicited on how to best determine merit design and admissions process aim at ensuring um yes aim at ensuring um pretty much the last sentence was that what you were amenable to removing miss seismohizer Yes, that's the last. Yeah, that's

169the part that should get to a couple of his corporate standards issues. Madam chair point of order. Yes, ma'am. Um, once the motion has been seconded, don't we have to just amend it? I think we can't. We can't. I actually, I did consult with our parliamentarian who is here with us. Mr. Morgan, if you'd like to just jump in, I anticipate that if there aren't any objections, we are going to be able to make that change. Would you confirm, please? Yes, Madam Chair. If there are no objections and it's clear that they're comfortable with removing that language, then that can be done as a matter of unanimous consent. However, if there are any objections, then it can't be adopted by unanimous consent and someone would have to make a motion to delete that language. Thank

170you so much. So I'm asking at this point, are there objections to striking that last line? Because if there are, we will move on and make this a regular amendment. I see that Ms. McCarsky objects to striking the last line. So... No, no, sorry, sorry. Okay, there are no objections to striking that last line. So we will do that at this point. and then have Ms. Seismohiser respond. We do have several people who have not had their initial turns yet, and we need to be sure that that happens. Ms. Seismohiser, very quickly, please respond to Ms. Corbett-Sanders' statements. I apologize. I think most of her statements were on part of the line that we just struck. So if I could ask if there's anything else. I know the other statement she said was that original

171motion to make sure that we say that we are not delaying the change in the TDA admissions process. And I didn't write down her exact words. But I would say that the intent of this is to not delay because I can't guarantee that we are not delaying. I don't want to say that it's not delaying. But I would say the intent of this is to not delay. So, Ms. Seismor-Heiser, the amendment that I would introduce would be one that would say, I move to direct the superintendent to develop and implement a public engagement plan regarding TJ admissions prior to bringing the updated plan to the board in November. This plan will allow for the... for the 2020-21 freshman class to go on as scheduled. Thank you, Ms. Carver-Standers. If you have an amendment, let's go

172ahead and at least have everybody else speak to it, and then we will start with the amendments. Mr. Frisch, I believe you are next. No, I'm sorry, Ms. Marin, and then Mr. Frisch. Thank you. So I really would have expected this. This suggestion is a good 1, but honestly, it's late to the game. And really, I would have expected this kind of thoughtful approach from the superintendent in. Proposal about admissions that was given to us on September 15th. Until June, I knew nothing about the intricacies of TJ admissions. And really the most I've learned has been since September 15th, when I've been deluged like my colleagues in less than 24 days. And all this happening during a pandemic. It was only yesterday, as others have said, with the thousands of emails, I mean, it was

173only yesterday that I was able to sort out with my part-time assistant. which emails are from my constituents. And most emails did not say that, so I made it very hard. I want to include the multitude of Hutter Mill voices. And as Ms. Picarcy pointed out, other constituents have excellent input. And I think as their elected representative, I have to do the due diligence to hear them and deliberate with all of you, my colleagues. You know, I think there's this tension I am hearing about the board to be courageous. You know, there's being courageous, but courageous doesn't equal taking actions that are uninformed or for the sake of taking action in the moment. And I realize our community has waited a long time for this, but, you know, this motion about public engagement, this is

174again, it's kind of piecemeal and we already have a plethora of information. And so what do we do with this information we have? What is staff able to do with their bandwidth? I still don't have a full plan of the whole timeline of all sorts of adjustments to access to opportunity. So I'm just, again, 24 days I've had my head in this amongst everything else that we're dealing with. So it's really hard for me to conclusively say, yes, we should have a public engagement. But I don't know what that plan is. The superintendent hasn't given us that plan. He said that staff are stretched thin. I think it's a good idea, Ms. Heisman, Ms. Tolan. I just feel like a lot of this work has been so segmented and it's been 24 days. And I

175just, I want to honor all the input we've already gotten and how does that feed into this? So I'm still on the fence. And if anything, I might have to abstain because I just don't have enough information about it. Thank you. We have two more speakers who have not yet had a turn. That would be Mr. Frisch and then myself. Mr. Frisch, go ahead. Thank you. I'm happy to follow Ms. Marin. So by my account at the work session, we added 14 items to the next step agenda. We've not finished going through that yet, but 14 items directing the superintendent to do various things around his proposal. We also gave him a series of consensus votes directing his thinking. I've asked for very specific data to be returned. Dr. Brabrand, how many emails have you

176received about TJ? A lot. More than a thousand? I don't know if it's as many as school board members, but it's several hundred. Because I've received 1,457 emails from people around Fairfax County, 116 of which are from Providence District. I've read every single one of them, including the ones that are duplicative. And I think that my perspective on this has been shaped by those emails. It was good to hear Ms. Sizemore-Heiser talk about how this is not so much to inform the board as it is to inform staff. And that crystallizes where I'm going to come down on this. I think that the superintendent and his team can always do more to reach out. I think we all can and to be more engaged. But we have asked for very specific things from the superintendent

177to inform our conversations in November and December. And I would hate to add things to the plate that will delay the return of that vital information for our decision making. And I have no expectation that the other things that are already happening in terms of engagement are going to stop. We will continue to have phone calls with our constituents. Dr. Brabrand will continue to get emails and respond to emails and talk to parents and everything else. But we need to get the information we've already asked for from him in order to make our decisions in November and December. So I will probably have to respectfully vote against this. Although the amendments, I'll have to see where I land when the amendments are finished. Chairman Anderson, in the future, we could probably expedite conversations around things

178if we allow motions to amend to happen organically during the conversation so that we're not relitigating through every step. Thank you, Mr. Frisch. I just wanted to be sure everybody had their opportunity to speak before the entirety, the landscape was changed. I will now take my turn. So please start my timer. I'm very glad to follow what Mr. Frisch has said. And I agreed with much of what was articulated by him, as well as Ms. Cohen and Ms. Kizgamara. One of the things that I am concerned about is not having more communication, because that's always better than not having enough communication, but also having the communication with the same groups over and over again, where it becomes an echo chamber. I would be concerned if this were to move forward that we would reach out

179to those communities that are not emailing, that are not protesting, that are not... tweeting and on Facebook, because those are the people who have not yet made their voices heard. I think there's been a lot of input to all of us, and we have relayed those things to Dr. Brabant if he has not received them. And so I want to be sure that I articulate that. The other piece that I wanted to speak to is regarding rushing this process. I think expediting and rushing this process is in the eye of the beholder. It's who has been waiting and who benefits by continuing to wait. I'm very concerned that this significant workload will delay this process because best laid plans, once we begin and we're talking about maybe even regional support, regional conversations. I'm having a

180hard time seeing how this does not delay what we need to do by January 21 to impact the next class that is coming in in September. So respectfully, I'm not at the point right now where I feel that staff has the bandwidth to do more of what we have a lot of information around, unless it's going to be very, very different. We're targeting specific populations who have not yet spoken. We have other bandwidth issues with Return to Learn and organizing that. There are only so many resources to go around in terms of capacity. So respectfully, I will not be supporting this motion at this time. Okay. And that concludes my statements. I do know we have a number of amendments. I will ask if you have an amendment, if we could send it in writing

181really quickly to Ms. Moberg so that it can be viewed by all to facilitate all of us being current on what is being proposed. Now, Ms. Kies-Gamara, I believe, was one of the first folks who may have had an amendment, because at least that's where her questioning was heading. So I will start there. Ms. Kies-Gamara. Madam Chair, by taking out the bottom sentence, that addressed my concerns. Thank you. Ms. McLaughlin, you also had something to share that you said would be vital to help us. So please go ahead. And then the next will be Ms. Corbin-Sanders. Yeah, mine is... a very quick and easy one and it's just more clarity for me um and listening to what other people said um terminology like public engagement and community doesn't speak to stakeholders and as i noted

182in my first comments and i didn't know through jason's now guidance that if there's no objection it can just be added here and i was trying to avoid this kind of back and forth but it would be my request that the first sentence is going to be changed instead of saying implement a public engagement plan it's a stakeholder engagement plan and this goes to that board members are correct we are hearing from the public um through their emails and all of that and we're taking their input in But what we have not done is key stakeholder engagement. And that included, as I said, our AAP university consultants and also our TJ faculty. And I know having spoken to TJ faculty, they stand ready, willing, and wanting to bring their key stakeholder input. If our superintendent

183does not bring key stakeholder engagement and input to this process, I think that harms him. I think it harms the board. So I would ask if the makers and the board as a whole, since it belongs to the body, if we would just change public engagement to stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder means you're talking about all the people who have a stake in what's happening here. And that includes experts and people who the community know we're wanting to be thorough. um so i think if you change that um from public engagement to stakeholder engagement and then um you go again to i think it's the third sentence where it says this stakeholder engagement can include note that it's saying interviews i would expect him to interview to focus groups with tj faculty and our consultants so that

184would be my advocacy to mr frisch's concern i completely hear you but part of our job as the board is to as the elected body to let our constituents know that we are making a commitment to them and a directive to the superintendent of what our expectations are for the engagement process and that's why i really do like this amendment and i think it's really important we we communicate that in a formal setting by voting on it tonight thank you thank you miss um corbett sanders and then miss mccarskey apologize i needed to get off mute um so i'm still working on the language but it would read to especially to take into account um most recent suggestions it would be i moved to direct the superintendent to engage stakeholders regarding the tj admissions plan

185um prior to bringing the updated admissions plan to the board in December for implementation for the 2021 freshman class admissions. Does that make sense? Sanders, would you please very quickly as we have, I believe 1 more speaker after you send that to the clerk so that she can post that. And. Thank you while that is happening, I see that we have the makers of the motions their hands are up. So you're noted miss McLaughlin. You've already spoken. So go ahead and lower your hands. And I believe miss was the only other hand that was up. Because I'm going to ask a question regarding. Objections to the change that miss McLaughlin just shared. I would like for everyone to please lower their hands. Without objection, if we could go ahead and and. substitute public engagement. Thank

186you. It is happening right now to substitute stakeholder engagement. If there are no objections to that, I would like, Ms. McLaughlin, are you objecting to what you have proposed? I need the hands lowered. Ms. McLaughlin? Okay. I'm not sure what's happening. She is not there. So Ms. McLaughlin, last call. Okay, I'm going to assume she's not going to object to her own proposal. So without objection, we will make that change. Seeing none, we will continue. Dr. Brabrand, your hand was up. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. I just wanted to let the board know that I have met with the TJ faculty prior to the presentation at the invitation of Dr. Bonatababas. We set up a mutual time. certainly can engage them moving forward as well. But I have met with them already prior to my presentation.

187Thank you. Thank you. And I would imagine now that we have the amendment that was shared. Ms. McCursky, did you still want to speak or no? Because of the late hour, let's just go on. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. While we are waiting for that language to be added, Ms. Seismohizer or Ms. Tolan, did you want to quickly speak before we take the vote after the amendment's been made? I was going to ask Ms. Tolan if she wanted to add to this first, but I will be happy to speak. to this. Ironically, we actually had a list of stakeholders and it was originally as a stakeholder engagement plan and based on some input from people we talked to, we made it broader. So I'm perfectly happy taking it to a stakeholder engagement plan because I

188think that is what we were actually trying to get to. We'd originally had a list of current middle school families and students. We had a list of current TJ students and families. teachers, admissions. So many of the things my colleagues who brought up was originally in this list. And we, again, try not to make it so prescriptive, had pulled that out. So stakeholders, actually what we're trying to get to. And I just want to, again, remind my colleagues, while we have been getting thousands of emails, this isn't for sort of the board again to engage. And while you are right, we need to work with Dr. Brabrand on determining the definition of merit, holistic admissions, whatever all of this looks like, we are here to represent our constituencies all of them and so it's important

189to make sure that we and dr braybrand are informed by stakeholders that have a say and also you know knowledge about tj so i think it's very important to make sure that we've had that stakeholder engagement we continue to have that stakeholder engagement on a systematic and planned way so this i think i think this is very very important and to be honest i think the thousands and thousands of emails we've been getting in the last two weeks are indicative that perhaps stakeholders and may them all stakeholders have not yet filtered and need to feel heard and part of the process thank you um at this point miss mclaughlin we are not going to be able to have a third go back because we do have several other items still on the agenda um at

19010 30. so if you would allow us to just go ahead and have the amendment and then have the vote i think miss oh i'm so sorry go ahead miss tolan I was going to add one thing on to what I was saying because interestingly enough we did post on the specificity out of this in deference to the lack of staff time that they would have to implement you know a global process. I did really like the comment that Karen Corbett-Sanders made about the timing, that we wouldn't necessarily look for all of these conversations to happen before the scheduled November presentation. We have still time after that. I don't think that presentation is going to come to us with everything completely ticked and tied. We would have time for additional conversations. until we're ready to

191start this admission process. So reaching out to our underserved communities, making sure they understand a lot of the things that Mr. Sugar has already talked about. But anyway, I wanted to make that comment. And I also wanted to just say, we also don't think, at least when I was looking at this, I don't necessarily think that Dr. Brabrand is going to be doing all of these. incidents of outreach. I know that our TGA office is small and strapped, but just as a matter of conversations, et cetera, I would expect that they will be talking to experts and reaching out to some of these, to hear some of these voices that we haven't already heard. So I think that is the most important part of what we're trying to put forward here tonight. Thank you, Ms.

192Toland. Ms. Corbett-Sanders, if you did not get a chance to send the language to the clerk, we're just going to go ahead and have you read it for us, please. I think, Ms. Malberg, did you get my language? Yes, and it's up on the screen. And it looks like I'll keep the last sentence, Mrs. Corbett-Sanders. I'm sorry, what? You would like to now keep the last sentence at minimum? No, ma'am. The red, the... That was in your, that was in my... Everything that's red, oh, I'm sorry. Everything that's in red should be deleted, and it's only the yellow that should be inserted. Okay. Okay, so Ms. Corbett-Sanders, while she's typing that up, can you please read the language? Because I believe we may still, we may be in good shape to have this vote. Go

193ahead, please. Sure. Revised language would read, I move to direct the superintendent to engage stakeholders regarding changes to the TJ admissions process. Forgot to put the word process. For the 2021 freshman class and beyond prior to bringing the updated TJ admissions plan to the board in November. It's not December. This plan should allow for more thorough community input and dialogue on TJ admissions. This public engagement can include public hearings, interviews, panel, focus group discussions, and other forms of collaborative discourse. And that's where it would end unless somebody thought we needed multi-language in multiple languages. Thank you. All in favor of what is being proposed by Ms. Corbett-Sanders? Madam Chair? Yes, go ahead, Mr. Goughlin. For consistency, Ms. Corbett-Sanders didn't capture the second part where it's using the old language of public engagement. It's supposed to

194consistently say stakeholder engagement. I just want that. Thank you very much, Ms. McLaughlin, for that clarification. Ms. Corbett-Sanders? Yes. That's consistent? Yes. Thank you. Okay. All in favor of what's being proposed? That was just read with that substitution. Is there anyone? Is there any way we could see it on the screen? Ms. Mulberg? Yes, I'm about to pull it up. Okay, my screen is totally warped at this point. Okay, so Ms. Corbett-Sanders, one last time, please read your motion. I move to direct the superintendent to engage stakeholders, develop and implement a stakeholder engagement plan regarding changes to the TJ admissions. process it should read prior to bringing no to the TJ admissions process prior to bringing the updated DJ admissions plan to the board in November. This plan should allow for more community input in

195dialogue on TJ admissions for the 2021 freshman class admitted class and beyond. Okay, and do we have a second for this motion? I see Ms. McLaughlin. Thank you. All in favor of this motion, we have Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Pekarski, Ms. Sosmohuyser, Ms. Tolan. Okay, and that is four. I'm sorry, and Ms. Corbett-Sanders, and Ms. Deranak-Kofax. That is six. All against? Ms. Marin, Ms. Omage, Ms. Cohen. Mr. Frisch and myself. That is five. All abstaining? I'm sorry, did I miss Ms. Kiesdemare? That's all 12. It fails. Perfect. Thank you. I call Ms. DeRnock-Kolfax for a motion. No, I'm sorry. I think I'm out of order here. I'm terribly sorry. That last vote was only 11. There were six yes, five no's. Ms. Kiesdemare's vote was not recorded. Ms. Keyes-Gamara, would you please just articulate what your

196vote was? I did not want the amendment. So your vote was a no. Yeah, I voted with a second. Okay, so we have six yeses and six noes. The motion fails. So now you have to go back to the main motion. We will go back to the main motion. All in favor of that main motion? None. All opposed? Ms. Marin, Ms. Cohen, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Omish, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Kees-Gamara, and myself. All abstaining from the main motion. Ms. Holden, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Zendaya-Kolfax, Ms. Pokarsky. And I believe that's only 11. Are we missing someone, Ms. Mulberg? Ms. Corbett-Sanders, I believe we didn't have for this round. Where did you vote for Ms. Carpet-Sanders? You called my name out in the first one. Oh, did I? Thank you. Who is missing from the first round? Oh,

197I'm sorry. I didn't call for the abstentions. Please lower your hands and whoever is abstaining on the main motion. I'm sorry. A lot of these hands that were raised already voted. I had my hand up every single time to abstain. I hadn't called it yet, but so I'm so sorry, folks. I must be definitely messing this up. Please lower your hands. I need to start this again. The main motion is now on the table. If you are voting yes for the main motion, raise your hand at this time. None. If you're voting no on the main motion, raise your hand at this time. Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Smearin, Ms. Kiz Gamara, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Omish. Thank you. If you are abstaining on the main motion, raise your hands at this time. Oh, I'm sorry.

198I'm also voting no on the main motion. If you are abstaining, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Denach-Kofax, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Bukarski, Ms. Seisalheiser. I think that gets us all. Thank you. Please lower your hands. At this time, I would like to call Ms. Corbett-Sanders for a motion. Ms. Corbett-Sanders? I apologize. I didn't realize I was still on mute. That is fine. Thank you. Madam chair. I move to direct the superintendent to develop a plan for establishing policies and procedures for instituting a regional governing board for TJ High School for Science and Technology. The governing board shall be comprised of a proportionate representation of the school boards, which send students to the school. The regional board shall be responsible for ensuring current Virginia Board of Education regulations relative to jointly operated schools and programs are adhered to. superintendent's

199plan shall be referred to the government's governance committee no later than march 2021 the government governance committee will review the superintendent's proposed plan and bring its recommendation to the fairfax county school board for final approval prior to implementation thank you is there a second miss tolan thank you for your second uh miss corbett sanders would you like to speak to your motion Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. This motion is really a good governance motion. It brings to the board an approach that is used throughout the state of Virginia in its governor schools. And the purpose of this motion is for us to begin the process of instituting a regional board similar to those implemented elsewhere in the state for governor schools. But it allows us to do this in a thoughtful manner, which will not

200interfere with the scheduled and very important work that we are doing to change the admissions process for next year. And so I would welcome the support of my colleagues. in having this work begin with a plan from the superintendent in the march time frame and then allowing the governance committee to do its work prior to bringing it to the full board for approval and as you all know we have had recommendations or requests for a regional Regional board from our neighboring jurisdictions who feel that after this many years that it's important to institute this approach. Thank you very much. Miss Tolan. Would you like to speak to your second? Actually, Dr Anderson, I still had mistakenly kept my hand up from our voting. I believe Karski was going to second us. Okay, I apologize. So

201right now, this motion does not yet have a second. So I'm going to start again. And you can skip speaking to your motion. Ms. Corbett-Sanders will get that point. Do we have a second for this motion? Ms. Fikarski? Thank you. Ms. Fikarski, would you like to speak to your motion, to your second? Thank you. I don't want to belabor the point. I think Ms. Corbett-Sanders did a great job, and I appreciate her sharing with everyone that we did receive those letters of support from neighboring jurisdictions. I think this is a positive step forward, and I hope our colleagues will support the motion. Thank you very much. Any speakers to this motion? Mr. Frisch. Thank you. I'm happy to speak in favor of this. I mentioned the statistics for how many emails I've received and I've

202received a very large number of emails from outside of Fairfax County from neighboring jurisdictions, from parents who are concerned about this policy. And even a few of them have expressed an interest in having their boards having a seat at the table in a more direct fashion like our our head and other jurisdictions so i'm happy to support this and i look forward to the governance committee picking this up on its workload in the near future if it should pass thank you Thank you. Ms. McLaughlin, go ahead. Before you start, Ms. McLaughlin, just a little note from our parliamentarian there, Mr. Morgan. If there are amendments to any motions, he's happy to help support by sending it to him directly so he can help with the crafting of any amendments to the motions being made this

203evening. So thank you for that, Mr. Morgan. ms mclachlan go ahead great thank you um i'm very much supportive of this um motion from ms corbett sanders and ms bakarsky i do have a question for our superintendent um as we know the the school board provides governance and oversight of the school system but the superintendent and his administration um control the day-to-day operations of the school system. And so, Dr. Braeburn, I was hoping you could maybe speak to the board about your awareness of these governing bodies and your team. And if you weren't aware, why was that, given that this has now come forward by a board member, and yet we're not actually directly responsible for day-to-day operations of TJ. So if you could speak a little bit about... how we don't have one of

204these in place already, certainly not during my eight years on the board. I wasn't here at the founding of TJ. I didn't come until 94 as an intern, 93, excuse me. And it just got set up differently. There's a wide variety around the state. When I was a superintendent in Lynchburg, There was a regional governing board for their Central Virginia Governor's School. There was actually a regional special education center. And superintendents in the regions rotated into those jobs for two-year terms. So frankly, it really varies across the Commonwealth of Virginia how these things are set up. In the end, the governing decision is left to the governing body. And so I think this board. just needs to determine whether it wants to continue to have the governing authority for Thomas Jefferson or whether it would

205prefer a regional approach. I have worked, of course, here where the responsibility is just with us, and I've worked in another system as superintendent where it is a rotation of the superintendent. to operate that to be the superintendent designee working with that governing body for the operation of the system, including a governor school. Thank you. I'll just reframe my question. My question was that the Virginia Board of Education is very clear about its governor schools and actually provides this stipulation in it. I'm disappointed that with the chief equity officer who oversaw TJ and that we have a director of TJ admissions, I just would have hoped from your administration over time that certainly even before you arrived in your crat, but in my eight years no one in the administration has ever brought this to

206the board's attention that this is actually a recommended best practice for our governor schools i consider it a lessons learned You're not allowed to do a point of order. I am so sorry. Please hold on. Miss Mary is still having her turn. Miss Marin. I'm so sorry. I cannot hear you. I said, isn't it the point to support the motion or not rather than go through the history of this matter? That is not a point of order. I'm so sorry. That's not a process. I just raised an objection at this late hour. I do not think that the questions are in order. Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. I will note that objection. Thank you. Ms. McLaughlin, please continue. I just have to say, I hope everybody in the public watched that in my three minutes where

207I have every right, where I represent the Broward District and one of the most senior members on this board to talk about important history and how we continuously improve as a school system to be cut off like that was really disappointing and frankly, uncollegial. And I really hope it doesn't happen again. Ms. Merritt, please, we are not going to do this at this point. We have to allow Ms. McLaughlin to finish her turn. And your objection's been noted. I'm happy to add you to the list for you to make your comments. Ms. McLaughlin, please finish. No, I'm done. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. Fumish, go ahead. Thank you. I have a question actually for the makers, perhaps if they can comment to this, but I definitely like the idea of including additional voices in this

208process, in particular those who represent other areas. But I want to be judicious about the expansion of bureaucratic bodies. I mean, we have, you know, many councils and boards and agents, you know, different commissions that work on reviewing various things for the school system. So I... I'm worried that this turns into another formality where you have superintendents that come and end up getting very little out of it. So that's one hesitation I have. And the second is looking at this timeline. So we're working right now towards developing some kind of plan that the idea hopefully is refinement over time, making sure we get this right, monitoring the data. And that's led by our superintendent, our division. i'm not sure why we would defer you know defer later to involve folks and and have it be

209uh led by a team that's different than the team originating it and how that will fit into our supervision and proper refinement of the process so those are some of the areas i'm i'm uh you know having some trouble so miss amesh those are excellent questions and um what Need to understand about this. This is about proportionate representation. It is not about outsourcing our responsibilities and the beauty of the way that this motion is framed is that we decide on the roles and responsibilities of that board and that board. Um, it recommendation and air board will decide. what is the specific task that this regional board will do and what it won't do. But it brings us in line with the proportionate representation that is used elsewhere with governing boards. This is not delaying our

210responsibilities, but it's putting into place best practices. It does not take away the fact that this board had a consensus vote just two days ago to ensure that we have an annual plan for TJ that we review and that we ensure that we continue to move forward in making sure that that school is achieving the goals that this board establishes. But what this would do with a regional board is it would supplement some of the work that we do and be able to provide us additional voices of governance. But it is not taking away anything from this board because this board is the one that will define the roles and responsibilities of the regional board. Ms. Omage? Yeah, no, I mean, I appreciate the explanation. I think, you know, when we look at the constituencies,

211overwhelmingly, we're looking at Fairfax kids, right? So I don't know that it's actually proportional given that, you know, if we were to look at one person from each district, that's already not necessarily proportional. But I mean, as a member of governance, you know, alongside you, Corbett Sanders, I'm sure this will come along and we'll be able to look at it in more detail. So I don't want to take up more time, but I'm always concerned about building more elements to the established structures that tend to be very slow and get limited things done. Thank you. Thank you very much. I saw that Dr. Brabrand's hand has been up for a while. I apologize, Dr. Brabrand. Go ahead. Did you want to respond to the phone? clear, you know, I, the TJ came in 85. So

212Bud Verlaine, Dan Dominic, Jack Dale, Karen Garza, and now I have inherited a system. I did not realize that there was the issue about a regional governor board. And so I I just want to make that clear. And the admissions issues around TJ have been an issue for prior administrations. And so board members who participated with prior administrations, we've shared the work that's been done. It's not had an effect on what we wanted to see around diversity. And that's why I brought the recommendations. I do want to ask Mr. Foster, if I could, Chairman Anderson. I don't know all of the rules around governing boards. Again, I told you that as a superintendent in Lynchburg, there was one. It wasn't proportional representation. There was a member from each school district that comprised the governor's school.

213So again, I have not had a time to review the governance structure for governance schools across the Commonwealth. And we may ultimately need to just review that whatever decision is made. But Mr. Foster, do you have any comments on the proportional piece or the governing board structure in general? Mr. Foster, please go ahead. You've been recognized to speak. I'm sorry, Madam Chair. I stepped away. Could you repeat the question, please? Dr. Boyer, go ahead and please repeat your question. John, two quick questions. As this dialogue is going on, I don't purport to be an expert in the governing board structures for governor schools or other regional entities. And I didn't know whether you had a legal insight, any insights or advice for the board in that, in this motion. The other nugget that I did

214share, proportional representation. And I don't know the rules around that. I simply shared in Lynchburg, I sat on multiple regional bodies, but there was only one representative. For the board for that regional body, and the superintendent was rotated, but I don't know if there is state guidance or to the school district or districts to decide that. So, I don't know if you had a legal analysis of that. And already seen, you know, I think that we can review it. I did not see a specific allocation. At the state level, so I don't think there's a specific limitation on that. Thank you Mr. Foster. I just want to confirm. Is it just me or was Mr. Foster's response garbled? Garbled. If it's just me, I'll leave it alone. It was difficult to hear him, but we

215were able to hear him. Okay, thank you. We are going to move along to our next speaker. I'm so sorry, Ms. Omish, did you have more time? I did. I mean, yeah, just the final thing I believe Dr. Brabrand touched on was that, you know, there's already collaboration amongst the various leaders of our, you know, different school districts, but that's all. Thanks. Thank you. Ms. Cohen, go ahead. I just wanted to quickly say, you know, I think One thing that we touched on is the idea that this proposed plan would potentially pull students out of neighboring districts. And I find it only fair that they have some piece in it. You know, I look at like, what's the role even of Falls Church? They're being cut in theory from two. And where's the role for

216their board to be involved in that decision making? And so, you know, to me, I support this. I appreciate. Ms. Corbett-Sanders bringing this forward and I think it gives us an opportunity to have more input and more interplay and maybe even more buy-in from other districts to make this a truly regional school. So I'm in support. Thanks. Thank you. Being that I see no other speaker, no other new... Ms. Quisgamara, go ahead. I just had a question for the maker of the motion. Ms. Corbett-Sanders, The governing documents for governing schools, does it outline what this regional board should consist of? At the state level, it's pretty light in what it consists of. And that is why what we're asking for is the superintendent to provide a plan which would then go to governance so that

217we could flesh it out and clarify what we're looking for, what we expect. And then because what this does is a two-step process. One is to flesh it out. It's to indicate that we are going to do this, take the time to do it in a manner. that achieves a responsible governance board that is something that this board can accept and would be approving. So I'm just trying to, actually I'm trying to understand if it just simply says that the board, this regional board shall exist? Or if it gives greater direction, no, it does not give great direction and there are some governing document. Each board is established with governing documents. But what we have today is in our regulation, the, which is established by our superintendent and and I want to make it very

218clear. This is not something Dr brave brand or, you know. Dr. Brabrand made a mistake in not having. This is a situation that has existed since 1985. No, no, no. Let me clarify what I'm asking. Are you saying that these documents simply say that this governing board shall exist? But the documents say is that they call for a governing board and in that language, and this is why I took it directly out of the application process for governor's schools. It says that the regional board shall be responsible for ensuring current Virginia Board of Education regulations relative to jointly operated schools and programs are adhered to. I'm sorry, Ms. Quicamara? Are you complete in your statements? I think I guess, but I guess I'm trying to understand how that. Has been applied because that sounds like.

219It's language allowing that governing board to tell us how to run the school correct? No, it isn't. And that's the beauty of what the way that this motion is written. We get to determine, we get to structure that governing board. We get to give it its charter and its, you know, its responsibilities. That's why it's going to go. We're going to get the input from the superintendent and then it will go through the governance committee structure. And what this does is it also responds to the request from our neighboring jurisdictions who send students to TJ who have asked for this as well. And so this is not- I want to make sure that this board understands what that language entails. And so I would ask that our council would make sure that this board receives

220that information. Absolutely. And if you see what this does, this does not set up a regional board tonight. What this does is set the process, have the superintendent provide us a plan, and then the governance committee will work within its committee to flesh out that plan clearly to clarify what we're looking for and to bring that plan, the proposal from governance to the full board so that the full board. will adopt it or reject it. This starts that process and I would suggest as is typical for our governance, the work of our governance committee is once that work is completed we will have a work session where we will have that discussion. Ms. Corbett-Sanders, if I may, being that there are a lot of questions regarding this motion, all very worthwhile, and being that this

221is not a time-sensitive motion because it is not going to impact the action of moving forward with the TJ admissions plan, if I may suggest for the board's consideration to postpone this motion until our next meeting? I prefer not. I'd like to get a view from the board as to whether they support this motion. Okay, fair enough. Miss Dr. Bonita, I'm sorry, Dr. Bonita Tibus, I believe your hand was up. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak because as a director of the Governor's School, because those are our titles, I regularly sit around the table several times a year with all of my counterparts who do have governing boards. And I would like to offer that in all of the circumstances, with the exception of Maggie Walker in Richmond,

222that many of them operate as almost like an independent school. And those directors really work directly with those governing boards. And they write policies and regulations directly with those governing boards. Maggie Walker has a bit of a hybrid in working with Enrico. and then sharing some responsibilities with the governing board. And I would just ask the board to be very thoughtful in the construction of a governing board for TJ. Be very clear what the reporting structures would be. So would I as a director be now reporting to that governing board as many of my other directors do? You know, just explore the configurations is just my recommendation for this. And I think that there's value and merit in bringing in other counties, but to proceed with full knowledge of what that governing board might look

223like and how it might impact funding implications as well. And then I will also affirm the fact that this has been a recommendation that when I first came in to my role as director, the state... department of education did talk to me to let me know that they were very interested in getting a governing board up and running for tj because we had never had one and it's in our regular accreditation reports as a standing recommendation for 30 years thank you thank you miss keys gamara was that all helpful for you your turn was still pending I think that must have been running. I just I do think that it's important that we look at those documents and I, you know, given the framework, I'm sorry, the Miss Corbin Sanders has provided the board would

224have an opportunity to look at that, I think. And so I just wanted the board to consider all the applicable documents as we consider this motion. Thank you very much. Miss Marin, go ahead. Yes, I'd just like to call the question, please. Thank you. Can we have a vote on calling that question? We do need two-thirds of the majority to make that happen. If you are willing to call the question, we have Ms. Kees-Gamara, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Marin, Ms. Pekarski, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Eisler-Heiser, Ms. Omish. Ms. McLaughlin? And that is eight. So we will have enough to call the question. At this time, I'd like for all of you to please lower your hands and those who are able to support the motion as it is presented, please raise your hand.

225You know what, at the guidance, please, nevermind. At the guidance of our parliamentarian and to make things a little bit easier, I will just call for the vote. So when your name is called, please say yes, no, or abstain. Thank you. Ms. Cohen. Yes. Ms. Corbett-Standers. Yes. Ms. Zanacofax. Yes. Mr. Frisch. Yes. Ms. Quisgamara. Yes. Ms. McLaughlin. Yes. Ms. Marin. Yes. Ms. Omish. Yes. Ms. Pekarsky. Yes. Ms. Seismolheiser. Yes. Ms. Tolan. Yes. And myself as well. I'm happy to support it. That is unanimous. Ms. Anderson, a point of order. On the fly here, we changed how we are voting all of a sudden. I'm confused. It was just suggested by our parliamentarian because the last vote was fairly confusing because of the hands of being raised and some were coming in slowly and some were

226fast. It created so much confusion that we ended up doing it twice. So it was stated that this may be a little bit more expedient and I believe it was. If it's a problem, we don't have to do it. It was just expedient to just collect the votes. I just continue to have, I shared this with you before. I just think sometimes to change process on the fly is disconcerting. And I would rather not have that not happen. I would rather do the vote the way we typically do and read it down. So, but I'm... because I think it's confusing. Thank you, Ms. Arnott-Kofax. And now I'll call on you for the next motion. Before you start, I'm so sorry, we have one more hand up. Ms. Marin, did you have something to share? Yeah,

227I just have a question. Ms. Arnott-Kofax has put together a very comprehensive motion. Given that we only last Tuesday, just about 48 hours ago, we're discussing TJ admissions, I would really like to have a more thoughtful conversation about this than we could possibly have at 11.20 at night. And I'm wondering, or if I have to make a motion, are we able to schedule this to a better time of day when we're more alert? Because this deserves proper attention, and I know that I can't give it the attention it deserves at 11.20 at night. So if I need to make a motion or perhaps Mr. Koufax can respond. I just want to honor her work in this topic. Hold on one second. Let us check with Mr. Morgan. Do we need to make a motion to

228postpone this motion? The motion, my understanding is it hasn't actually been made yet. You could make the motion or just say without objection, we'll consider this at the next, you'll consider this at the next meeting. Thank you. So your guidance at this point is to either say without objection, we will pick this up at the next meeting or allow the motion to be made and then for Ms. Marin to make a motion about postponing it. That's correct. Okay. I will make my motion. I move to direct the superintendent to establish a plan for student talent development and put into action means for student potential identification and outreach. This motion is intended to address the systemic issues that impact diversity at TJ. It is not intended to and shall not impact the immediate need to change

229the admissions process we are currently addressing. This plan may include, but not be limited to, strengthening the equity of access to advanced academic curriculum strategies for all students regardless of AAP level of service. This will require professional development for all classroom teachers on advanced programs pedagogy. Establishing a plan to have a full-time advanced academic resource teacher in all remaining elementary schools and a .5 in each middle school. Increasing administrator and teacher awareness of our young scholars program in FCPS and strive to ensure it is administered uniformly and with fidelity with the goal of expanding it to all schools. Developing a communications plan to help parents understand how their children can benefit from participation in AAP and invest in family engagement. to facilitate participation of historically under representative students in advanced academic programs, providing an analysis

230of math and science curriculum offerings in all elementary and middle school and providing an analysis of extracurricular STEM opportunities in all elementary and middle schools. We would ask for regular reporting from the superintendent on these items as part of the strategic plan goal reports. is there a second miss tolan has seconded the motion miss mayor did you want to offer your motion at this time because this is when it could happen yes i do i move to table this motion until the next available time very respectfully is there a second to that motion we have a second to that motion so we will deal with this one did you want to speak to your motion miss um marin No, I believe I mentioned it in the interest of time, which is what I'm saying. But

231why didn't I get to speak to my motion? I'm so confused. I'm having the parliamentarian guide us. Mr. Morgan, would you please speak to how this is proceeding? Yes. Actually, Ms. Darren Koufax probably did have priority to speak to the motion before Ms. Marin made her motion. But afterwards, it would have been in order. So go ahead and Ms. Denrock-Kofax, please speak to your motion. And then Ms. Marin, we'll start up with you and Ms. Keyes-Gamara. Thank you, Madam Chair. As I stated in the opening paragraph of my motion, it is intended to address the systemic issues that impact diversity, not only at TJ, but in our AAP programs. Development of this plan shall not impact or slow down the immediate need to change the TJ admissions process. This plan will require a long-term strategy

232and will have budget implications that our entire board will need to deliberate on. I see this plan beginning after this year's TJ admission changes are complete. Through this motion, it was my intent to put the excellent strategies that have been provided to us, but not acted upon in a plan for Dr. Brabren to consider. TJ, as I have stated at our work session and for many years, is simply one data point that highlights the fact that there is an imbalance of academic achievement and equity across FCPS, and we at FCPS must take responsibility for this imbalance. The ideas presented in this motion come from several years of recommendations from our Minority Student Achievement Oversight Committee, our Advanced Academic Programs Advisory Committee, various consultants. our AAP staff, as well as teachers and parents. We must work

233to ensure that we have the rigorous programming opportunities in place for our students as soon as they arrive at our doors. This is the best way to level the playing field and to close opportunity gaps. The items in this motion will begin the needed work to get to the systemic issues, to help with identification issues, and to differentiate between potential and performance. And we'll work to make certain that enrollment in TJ or other future potential FCP magnet schools or academies reflect the rich diversity of our county and our student body. And I ask for my colleagues to support this motion. Thank you very much. Ms. Marin, now will be the opportunity for you to make your motion. Sure. I move to table this important motion to the next available time. Postpone. Postpone, yes. Thank you.

234Second for Ms. Marin's motion. Thank you, Ms. Keyes-Gamara. Ms. Marin, would you like to speak to your motion? I already have. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Keyes-Gamara, would you like to speak to the second? Just briefly, as Ms. Merrim mentioned, this is really a really important discussion. And it really is a continuing discussion. I think it has implications related to our advanced academic study, recommendations involved in there. And so I would like the opportunity for this board to be able to gather that information in the sense of a discussion and have time. And I really would hate to rush through this because these are matters I know that I've advocated for a number of people of this board have advocated for. And it is, I think the move, the board, this particular board have been

235trying to bring together efforts so that it is more comprehensive. And I don't believe that we will be able to adequately address that tonight. So it is not a slight. to either of the makers of the emotion of the motion i think uh it is actually a great idea but i would like for it to be a more complete discussion that i don't think can happen uh particularly tonight when there may be additional aspects that we would not thoroughly discuss tonight so i would that's the reason i support delaying the discussion um rather than um going into it at this point Thank you for your second on postponing this discussion. We have Ms. Corbett Sanders would like to speak to the second motion. Yes. I appreciate that it's 1130 at night and we are embarking

236on one of the most important issues that we can talk about, which is about the pipeline, because that is the. one of the three pillars of success for ensuring that we have a representative student body at TJ. And my only concern about the motion as it was made and I asked for for help from the board is if we could set a date certain. We know that this, if we are going to postpone this discussion and we need the date certain and the date certain would be our next available board meeting, which would be on the 15th of October. And I would only do that if we had the support from the makers of the motion as well. Just a point of clarification. Our next regular meeting is October 22nd. No, ma'am. We have a

237work session on the 15th. I apologize for using the wrong terminology. So you're asking for the postponement to happen to October 15th? Only if that's something that the makers of the motion could support, but I don't think we want to postpone it beyond that. Okay. Hold on one second, and we'll have the makers of the motion speak to that. Ms. I'm sorry, Ms. Dara Koufax. Well, is it to my motion though, Dr. Anderson, or is it to the? Oh, that's right. I'm so sorry. It is your motion, Ms. Varon. Okay. You know, we have a multitude of priorities on this board and I know our chair and vice chair have done a ton of work to try and make it somewhat tenable. We are all very passionate. It's almost midnight. Clearly, we show that passion.

238not knowing the October 15th schedule offhand other than it is the return to school update, which could be the only thing, right? Or one of the other things more important, you know, I'm hesitant to add this to that work session. That is our penultimate responsibility is return to school. And there again, are we just crunching this into time we don't have? So, you know, this motion is made out of respect to these topics and getting the superintendent to move on this work. I think we need to look at the calendar and figure out how quickly we can do that in this month. Apart from calendaring right now with the entire board, which I don't think is effective. I don't feel like I can say, yes, let's do it on October 15th. That time is reserved

239for return to school. And that affects every student, every family. Thank you. We're going to continue with the debate as to whether or not to postpone this for our next meeting. And I believe as per the guidance of our parliamentarian, this needs to be postponed to our next regular meeting. Are there any other discussion points? And then we'll miss Dana Koufax. Go ahead. I asked the clerk right now just looking at the schedule is that something that would be able we would be able to do at our next meeting on the 22nd the next regular meeting on October 22nd. Ms. Daron-Kofix I have to go into a few other screens so it'll take a while. I'll wait thank you. I'm looking very quickly. Is there not COFAX at that screen? It doesn't appear as if

240we have other action items at this point on that date. Okay. All right. At that point, because it is, I'm certain colleagues have questions on this. And because of the late hour, if I can get the assurances from the chair and vice chair that this will be put on the October 22nd meeting for me to once again bring it forward as a motion and we can discuss it, I would be willing to do that. Thank you, Mr. and our co facts. I will give you my insurances that we will add this to the October 22nd agenda. And without any objections, we will move it there. So if you want to lower your hands. Oh, there is an objection from a so much. Yeah, not an objection, but I didn't want to suggest that we consider

241combining this with the AAP. I'm sorry, Miss. That is not the point of order for this part of the discussion. I mean, I guess in that case, it's an objection, right? Because I'm saying- So you're objecting to us postponing it to the October 22nd meeting, which means we will, we're not moving. So which means we'll take a vote. Thank you for your objection. At this point, I would like for folks, for our school board members to please show their support if they are willing to move to postpone this topic to October 22nd. Excuse me, that wasn't my motion, Dr. Anderson. My motion was just to postpone it. Okay. So you don't have, thank you, to postpone this conversation. Thank you. If you are in favor of postponing this conversation, please raise your hand at this

242time. Ms. Tolan, Ms. Kizamara, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Omish, and myself. point of order dr anderson go ahead is it possible to add a friendly amendment to say to october 22nd before we vote or should we do it after we vote it's a motion that is already on the table so it belongs to the board so yes but we started voting so we will suspend voting to take that Dr. Anderson, I'm sorry, but this is something that I've raised before, that this board has a problem with asking questions and changing votes in the middle of voting. The amendment that is on your motion that is on the table, Ms. Marin, is subject to amendments. Yes, once we start voting, though, can Mr. Morgan confirm that, that once voting has started, the motion is able

243to be changed? Mr. Morgan, go ahead. It's not good practice, but based on what was just discussed, the only places that this could be moved to would be either later in this meeting or at the next regular meeting. And so just taking the intent of how it was moved and the discussion that follows, it seems like this is actually a motion to postpone to the October 22nd meeting. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. So we have a choice. It's either postponing it for later this evening or automatically to the next regular meeting, which is October 22nd. Can I ask that? I have a question. Go ahead. Are we setting precedent because this motion was made and in the future, then if we don't get to motions, are they going to automatically get bumped to the next regular

244meeting? I don't believe that to be the case. This is just to postpone. It was a very specific motion to postpone, not to fail. So because we're asking for a postponement, not a cancellation of the entire motion, as Mr. Morgan shared, it would fall to the next meeting. Okay, but this board has precedent of running over agenda and not finishing all of its work. So it seems likely that this could be a precedent for what happens in the future when this happens. I am not able to answer that at this time, Ms. Merritt, but we are going to go ahead and take the vote at this time regarding postponing this motion that Ms. Darinat-Kofax has provided. We are going to vote on your amendment at this time. Well, my motion with Ms. Sizemore-Heisman's amendment, do

245we have to vote on her amendment? We actually, as per Mr. Morgan, we don't even need to make that amendment because it automatically falls to the next meeting. Okay. So, all those in favor of postponing this motion to our next meeting, because that tends to be part and parcel of this, please raise your hands at this point. Ms. Kees-Gamara, Ms. Smiren, Ms. Cohen, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Derenat-Kofax, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Pokarsky, Ms. Seismohiser, Ms. Tolan, Ms. McLaughlin, and myself. All of those against? Ms. Omish. And I believe that is 12, so we have no abstentions. This motion has moved forward. Ms. Derenat-Kofax, we will take up your motion during the October 22nd meeting. We still have a full meeting left in front of us. Thank you. I'd like for us to return to the next part

246of our meeting, which is, let me just get there. The confirmation, we did not have any action taken in close, so we do not need to have that. Dr. Anderson. Yes, ma'am. I'm so sorry. I didn't see your hand. That's all right. The point of order is that the main action item was Dr. Brabrand's official filing to the state, which we did not actually as a board see and discuss and approve. And it does require our direction to him. So I want to make sure we speak to that. The public's expecting to know if we're directing and supporting his filing. His presentation is not necessarily up for a vote, but we are certainly open to have the questions. And if we do not want it to be moved forward, we will need to make a

247motion to direct the superintendent to suspend it. So, I'm sorry, Ms. Moberg, if you wouldn't mind placing that document on the screen, please. I'm sorry, which document are you referring to? The actual formal proposal, it says the school board proposal and it's what we're sending to the state for October 12th. I don't believe it's in the actual template, but it's the language that's going to be placed into that template. Dr. Braeburn, can you confirm that? Yeah, I'm a little confused here because I'm reading the school board action as information and consensus. And it's not requiring a vote. I shared with you earlier a summary of what you all shared on Tuesday and that that would be put in the template. It's a standard template the state gives to everybody. And I will take the language

248exactly as I shared it. I will stick it in the template for the piece where it's supposed to be put. And I will share it with the board tomorrow on the Braebrand briefing. But what I shared. will just be cut and paste into that document. So, Dr. Anderson. I think Dr. Brabrand, you sent us a document earlier if we could have that be posted because I think that outlines what you stated earlier, correct? Yeah, it's probably just a bit longer than what I stated earlier, which I did in a few less sentences. Yes. If we could have that be posted, Ms. Moldberg. So, yes, Dr. Anderson, I'm happy to wait my turn, but process-wise, I just wanted to make sure that the board members were able to speak to this because, as Dr. Brabrand said,

249he believes he's captured what the board discussed at the work session. I do have some current concerns, and maybe other board members want to make sure, but this filing will certainly be at the... approval of the board regardless. Otherwise, that's the whole point of a superintendent is he takes his direction from the board. So if you want me to proceed, I'll just ask my questions to Dr. Brabrand. Go ahead. You could proceed. Okay. So, Madam Clerk, you'll start my time? Yes. Thank you. So, Dr. Braver, and I really appreciate that you posted this publicly and got this together so quickly. And I do believe much of it captures our conversation from the work session. What's particularly concerning for me, though, is that the way in which you've worded this. when we talked about the application

250fee yes we talked about the test yes but when you talk about the student profile sheet that it's designed to elicit the qualities of portrait graduate there isn't anything in here about the student profile sheet is going to be capturing students passion for stem and so i was wondering if you could speak to that first why you're only eliciting the qualities of portrait of graduate when that's not the mission and primary focus of what TJ is. Dr. Waybrand, go ahead. Yeah, we're calling it the portrait sheet and... Megan, Ms. McLaughlin, I'm really not sure. Can you restate your question? It's 1140 at night. I'm not sure what it is that you think. I don't know if you can. Yeah, Dr. Brayburn. I'm sorry. Ms. McLaughlin, one more thing. Is anybody, is everybody else able to

251enlarge this document on their screens? I'm enlarging it now so I can see it. So I'm sorry. That's okay. Where is it, Ms. McLaughlin? First paragraph. Last sentence as it sits right above the portrait of graduate qualities. It says the process will continue to assess student responses to math, science-based problem solving essay and a student profile sheet designed to elicit the qualities of portrait of graduate. Nothing in here says what we understood, or at least I understood and the public understood is we're still going to use in the student profile sheet assessing passion for STEM. Correct. So if you want to just add that in, I will have less reservations of what we're filing with the state. I'll be glad to do that, yes, to include passion for STEM, absolutely. Passion for STEM, okay. Great.

252And then I think in terms of the rest of this, I want to just know intent-wise, the way you write the next paragraph underneath the portraits of a graduate. We will then continue to work with you on everything else. So to your mind, things like the metrics and then the process itself, teacher recommendations is another example. All of that is something we'll continue to work with you collectively before final decisions? Correct. Okay, I just want to know intent wise if that was the case. That is correct. We can add back in that other sentence about the passion for STEM. We'll be glad to do that before I submit it and I will include that in the Braebrand briefing tomorrow so the public can see it as well. Thank you. So I would just like to

253say to my colleagues in the public that I just, I do want everyone to know from all sides of this issue that I believe, and I'm so proud of the 12 board members and Dr. Braebrand's approach and mindset from all of this, that we are deeply committed to making sure that we have a highly effective admissions process that preserves the two primary goals of tj that it's a high achieving stem magnet school for the gifted but with students who have exceptional quantitative skills and aptitude but also that it reflects the demographic diversity that we know and love and appreciate in geoffrey county so thank you thank you mr karski go ahead followed by miss eismohiser Yes, I would just like to piggyback on Ms. McLaughlin's point. I also have a bit of an issue with

254the section about the student profile sheet designed to elicit the qualities of POG, 21st century skills. I guess I'm uncertain as to how this correlates directly. to STEM or to aptitude for STEM. I think, I guess maybe there's correlation with some of these, but considering these are skills that we hope our kids will graduate having, I guess I'm having a hard time figuring out when we have honed in on this to this level. for the purpose of this application or? Well, we shared that we were calling the student information sheet, the student profile sheet. And as Ms. McLaughlin just said, I'll be glad to have Mr. Smith add another sentence about the passion and skills for STEM, Ms. Bukarski. There was no deliberate reason not to include it, honestly. We're turning around after 2 days

255and we can absolutely add a sentence in that speaks to what you and Mr. McLaughlin have said. And no, Dr. I didn't think that at all. That is. Not my intention, I'm just saying, I'm finding. I'm finding I'm taking some issue with using these as. Part of an application. But I'll just put it out there and see what other board members think about this. Okay, understood. I mean, we did share that the... this would be a sheet as part of our process. So that is what we shared that this is one of the components, not the only thing, but one of the components. I just did not know if we as a board have built consensus. So I'm just saying that I, as a board member have an issue with these being defined as part

256of the student profile when we're looking for aptitude and passion in STEM. So let's just get back. others to consider. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Heisman-Heiser, go ahead. Great, thank you. And I'm very happy to follow along with my colleagues, Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. McCarsky. I'm honestly, Dr. Brabant, and I, again, do not think anything was intentional, so I don't want you to think that, but I'm very confused why portrait of graduate is there when you look at what, even when the governor's school's mission of TJ is supposed to be, which is to provide a, you know, education for those highly gifted or, you know, really advanced in the areas of STEM. and i very much agree that we need to look at our the issues around diversity of our pool of applicants and um

257but i don't portrait of graduate skills are those that we want for all of our students when they leave fairfax county my understanding is that's why portrait of graduate was developed to say these are what our graduates look like so i'm honestly at a loss to know how those are now the qualities we're looking for for applicants for tj which the mission is around um high you know potential aptitude and passion for stem so i i actually would maybe go a step further than ms karski and say i i don't think that seems to fit when this is really the goal for all of our students. I think it makes more sense to talk about the diverse pool of applicants who have an aptitude, passion for STEM education and using more of the words around

258what the Governor's School talks about for TJ. So I'm really kind of puzzled how this became, it seems to me at least the way this is written, a large part of the application process for TJ. And I would add that we certainly do want our students to have a passion for STEM and as we want all of our students to graduate with these particular attributes that it would give them an opportunity to frame their passion around these particular attributes and so it's certainly not something that we would see as being the only way for students to explain or talk about their passion for TJ or their passion for STEM, but we felt that it was a good vehicle for students to describe that passion. And again, it is something that we want all of our

259students to be able to know and do. I guess I would feel much better about this if it said a student profile sheet designed to elicit aptitude and passion for STEM around the qualities of a Portugal graduate. I'm not trying to wordsmith here, but it... Leaving out stem and it seems to completely change what we're talking about here. So I'm just I'm. Absolutely. I think Miss size more hyzer. That was the point that was made by Miss McLaughlin and Mr. Sorry, Dr Ray brand has agreed to add that statement. It let's do this perhaps if we can expedite if it's helpful. I'll go back tomorrow. We'll add a sentence or two in. I will not submit it until I've sent it to you. You know, I always share a Friday communication with you. And before,

260you know, I will send it tomorrow. And if there's any feedback on that extra sentence, please let me know. But we'll incorporate it in, and I'll send it to the state on Monday, which is when it's due. Thank you, Dr. Faber. Ms. Corbett-Sanders, followed by Ms. Omage. Dr. Hernandez, is my time up? I wasn't sure. Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought you were finished. I apologize. Ms. Milburn, how much time does Ms. Seismohizer have? Please make sure she has that time left. One minute and 20 seconds. Thank you. And I won't take up that much time at this late hour. I just wanted to say that I am fully on board with making sure that we address the issues of diversity that we've been struggling with for TJ for 30 years. But we want to

261make sure that we are doing so in a way that makes sense for what the mission of TJ is. So when we submit these plans, let's keep that in mind. I think these skills are great. just keep that in mind. And I think we need to, I like the part about the outreach. I think that is super important and I'm really glad to see someone to work on outreach for our students to make sure that all of our students who have aptitude and passion, especially those who have not been represented at STEM are reached and encouraged and provided enrichment. So that was all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Buffett-Sanders followed by Ms. Tolan. Yes. First, thank you, Dr. Brabrand. We know how hard you've been working and how hard your team's

262been working, and you have turned around an enormous amount of work in just like 48 hours. And so we would be negligent if we didn't take the time to thank you for that. I appreciate the one pager. I think you captured much of what we talked about. And I do appreciate your focus on the outreach piece. The piece that I'm a little concerned about that I would love for you to take into account as you develop your input is that we talked a lot about aptitude. and experiences and how students coming to that students with varied experiences and varied backgrounds don't often get the opportunity to be part of the TJ class because of numerous barriers that go well beyond a test or beyond the test and the application fee. And so if you could,

263when you submit the plan, also include some of that very important work that you had included in the board documents the other day where you talk about experiential, taking into account varied experiences that will contribute to ensuring we have a representative class at DJ. And that if you could be more explicit that we are, our goal is to have a student body at TJ that reflects the demographics of Northern Virginia. Sure. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll be glad to do that. Thank you. And you have a great evening. We only have a little bit more to do tonight. I know. I know. Thank you. Ms. Tullin has lowered her hand. So Ms. Omish, go ahead. Yeah, thanks Dr. Weybrand. Quick things. Number one, I really appreciate the outreach piece, although obviously it's not

264the only source of problem. I'm not particularly against the portrait of the graduate piece, if that's what Mr. Sugar has pointed out is how we've been doing these essays. I wanted to see if we could... just clarify the point here mentioned about problem solving essay in the student profile sheet. I do see that it says we could continue to assess the role of these elements because I really want to be mindful of not creating a new quasi-test situation that... ends up being its own filter and source of disparity. So I'd like to clarify that on your end in terms of the understanding we're capturing. And if we are going to go to include more specificity, as folks have been pointing out, we may want to indicate that we've considered things about school or pyramid, opt-in,

265opt-out, just to show where our thinking is for the state. If I may, one of the things that I want to be sure that I share to kind of frame the questions, on Tuesday, we were very clear that we wanted for this piece to be as streamlined as possible and based on what we provided consensus. So if we did not have an opportunity to provide consensus around that, it is not going to be present in the document at this time. So I want to be sure that we have that framework with what we are discussing at this point. I'm sorry, Mr. Smith, you were going to... Oh, I'm sorry, Dr. Anderson. You shared my thinking exactly that we were taking the direction from the board to add these elements as this part of the report

266and that anything else we would be bringing back in November for a full board vote. I very much appreciate the clarification. I mean, in that case, I don't believe we've gathered consensus on utilizing. you know, a problem-solving essay or a student profile sheet to be the primary elements in, you know, in advance of those subsequent parts. So I'd like some clarification on that. That would actually be accurate, Ms. Omish. We did not. We did not. We can take that sentence out and just leave it for further discussion from the board if that's a preference. I mean, you know, we'll be glad to take that sentence out completely and we can just revisit it when we talk to you all next month, if that's the preference. No, thank you. I mean, I don't want to be

267difficult. It's just going to be influential on how we look at it when we come back around, right? So that's all. Thank you. Thank you. And I think our next speaker, Ms. Kees-Gamara. If you've already spoken, folks, please lower your hands to reduce confusion. Ms. Kiskamara, it's Megan. Can I just ask a quick clarifying question to what just happened? Are you okay? I want to ask you. Madam Chair, I'm confused. Hold on one second, Ms. McLaughlin. I will come back to that. Let me go ahead and have Ms. Kees-Gamara have her turn, and then we will qualify that for you shortly. I had my hand up for that reason. You asked us to put our hands up. I put it up because process-wise, I'm confused by what Dr. Brabrand and you just agreed on behalf

268of the board. Is the sentence being pulled out everything in reference to the SPS? One of the things, what I clarified as based on Ms. Omeish's question is what we talked about on Tuesday was that this filing was going to include a very narrow set of information. And Ms. Omeish brought up the question, and she's correct, because that was a consensus last Tuesday, is that we would only have what we provided consensus on. and she articulated that there was a section that we did not give consensus on on Tuesday. Yes, I just want that the section we're talking about is we all agree to the fee and the test and that we would do everything else with further deliberation. So the process where it's naming things like the student information sheet, the problem solving essay,

269that's being stripped, that whole sentence and section, correct? I believe so. We agreed on the fee, the test, the capacity, and I'm just pulling up my document here. Yes, yes, we can take that sentence out with the bullets. And while we talk about it, the board did not formally vote on it. We can take it out and I'll give it to you guys tomorrow in the Braebrand briefing and we'll submit it to the state and talk to you all in November in the work session. Thank you, Miss. I just wanted to make sure before you spoke that everybody was clear what he just committed to pulling out. So you wouldn't spend time talking about something he's pulling out. And Megan, just the last piece was also the timeline. Those were the things that we agreed

270upon that makes sense for this document. Thank you for the process clarification. My apologies to Miss. And I'm so sorry. I saw your hand was up, but it looked as if it had been up the entire time. And so that's why I thought you were just on for perhaps a go back. Ms. Keyes-Gamara, go ahead. Your time will start now. Okay, so I too want to thank you, Dr. Burbrand. I know we've been hard at work trying to figure this out, along with some pretty other major things that are important to the community. But I know that when we start talking about submitting something to the state in accordance with what is requested, we have to start with what is requested. And I am not sure given the parameters that we have given ourselves in

271our meeting that we're only going to include what we narrowly agreed on that we also are meeting the requirements of what is requested. And so if you could clarify what that is. i i thought that it included a plan uh annual review possibly measurable targets but i'm operating on memory right now so if you could just clarify i'd like to make sure that we are actually addressing the question submitted by the state mr smith you're aware of the template from the state and i am not um I think the annual review is something the board talked about on Tuesday. I don't remember that it was a vote and I don't think in the annual report is a requirement to speak to, is it? So in the report to the state, there are sections where we

272provide data points, provide current data points regarding diversity at school for students, data points for diversity with staff. And again, there are questions about the plan moving forward. Based on our discussion yesterday, or Tuesday, I apologize for not having my camera on. Based on our discussion on Tuesday, uh we shared that we would be providing uh as high level uh response to that report as possible given that we didn't have all of the details for how we would move forward and wouldn't have those details until november um but the due date is october 12th that's correct the due date is october 12th and we don't have an extension an additional extension Not an additional. We believe this will suffice. If the state comes back and asks for more information, we're simply going to say that

273we're continuing to work with the school board and we'll provide additional updates. What's required is an initial response by this October 12th deadline. In light of the late hour, and I know, Dr. Brabrand, that you want to submit, you want to put something out tomorrow, I would like for the board to know what the state is asking for. So that we can move forward appropriately. I too thought that there was some discussion about an annual report. I don't have, you know, with respect to how we review things. I'm happy to put my give you my notes as to what my concerns were possibly shared with for. I. I am a little uncomfortable as a board member to say if the state wants more, they can ask when we already know what the question is. So,

274um, yeah, I. Yeah, one thing that I think it's I'm on our 17 to be honest with you all in full transparency. The, the, there were several things on Tuesday that I believe miss Corbett Sanders had. And some of them were consensus from the board. There were two or three things. That's what we're sharing with the state. There was a point here that this one sentence about, well, what will all be in the admissions. And so we can remove the problem solving essay and student profile sheet. Even though we spoke to it on Tuesday, we did not take a final vote on Tuesday. We can take that sentence out. I'm not objecting to any of that, Dr. Brabrand. I simply want to put you and FCPS in the best position possible. And so if there

275are things that we are leaving out, I think that perhaps we want to, Madam Chair, think about how we might be able to get him the answers he needs so that we can submit something that is in compliance with what has been requested. Marty, can you help with Miss Kees-Gomara? Is removing the sentence that we had, are we meeting all the goals? I don't have a problem with, I'm really trying to get to the point, Dr. Braver, and I know this is 17 hour for you and me. I'm just saying, it sounds as though from the last time I looked at this document, that there are questions that that document asks that we're not answering. And so perhaps we need to set up a mechanism to address that. Just also one question to follow up

276what Ms. Kies-Gamara shared. After submission of this original filing, which is due on the 12th, are we precluded from offering revisions? Mr. Smith? I don't have the answer for that. We can certainly ask the state for that answer, but I don't have the answer for that. And again, to be clear, we planned to take feedback from the board from Tuesday in order to develop the plan that we would add to the final report. uh and again from the feedback that we received from the board that we wanted to put a very high level uh amount of information in for the state uh while we were still working on the finalizing our plan so uh again we simply took that direction from the board uh to to put this information if i could ask for 30

277seconds more as to offer a resolution i think that it might put That's in a better position without objection without objection. We will allow them as keys tomorrow these 30 seconds. So, if we could just know what those additional parts are. And that could be communicated perhaps to the chair. Hopefully, the board can find a way to communicate possible solutions, but. When I take a test, I try to answer the questions on the test. And I want to make sure that we are in the best possible position. So that is my offering. And certainly anybody else, Madam Chair, please ring in. I know it's very late, but I am concerned. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Kies-Gamara. Oh, okay. There we are. I don't see any other new hands. And because we afforded Ms.

278Kies-Gamara an additional 30 seconds, we will do the same thing for Ms. McLaughlin. Just quickly, I appreciate where Ms. Kees-Gomara is coming from, but both Dr. Brabren and our Chief Operating Officer, Marty Smith, have said that what we have... taking out that sentence fulfills that what we saw is about a one or a two page sheet it's not a detailed report the board agreed to high level i do not want this board to do work outside of the public's view this is what we agreed to this will suffice and if the state needs more information i'm certainly will come back to us but ms keys kamara with all due respect we cannot be doing work independently of another it's board direction not independent board input thank you mr smith did you have a final comment

279on this matter yes i i've been able to pull up some language from the template itself and so it talks about including goals for our actions collective action of participating districts and district level actions and we can subdivide that by district if desired but that the initial plan does not need to include elaborate actions by districts individually or collaboratively And we can include those approaches to promote access for historically underserved students and outreach and communication efforts deployed to recruit historically underserved students. And so they're not asking for at this point necessarily elaborate actions by districts. Thank you very much. That is the last speaker on this section. We've made our amendments, so we will then move on to the next part of our agenda. I call on Mr. Frisch for a motion regarding the consideration

280of renaming Mosby Woods Elementary School. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the board vote to proceed with the name change for Mosby Woods Elementary School. Is there a second? Ms. Omish? I'm sorry, Ms. Kees-Namara? Mr. Frisch, and I do realize, I do want to say this before we get into this discussion, it is very late. So the more succinct and concise we can be moving forward, that will be very helpful. Mr. Frisch, please go ahead and speak to your motion. Good morning. Following the Supreme Court's landmark decision of Brown versus the Board of Education, Virginia adopted a racist policy of massive resistance to block efforts to desegregate public schools in the Commonwealth. It is in that backdrop that Mosby Woods Elementary School was named. The Washington Post reported in 1961 that a new housing

281subdivision would be named Mosby Woods in honor of John Seagleton Mosby, a Confederate Army Cavalry Battalion commander known for his raids on Union troops in Northern Virginia. A new elementary school in the subdivision adopted the same name two years later. In the nearly 60 years since Mosby Woods Elementary School opened, thousands of students from all walks of life have passed through its doors. Today, more than 1,000 students attend Mosby Woods, and more than half of them are Black, Hispanic, or Asian. They represent 40 countries and speak 28 different languages. And each and every one of them attended the school named in honor of the Confederacy at a time when Virginia and Fairfax County were actively resisting efforts to allow these very students in our schools. In recent months, I've had conversations about renaming Mosby Woods

282with the school's principal, PTA leadership, stakeholders, many community members, and my school board colleagues, including Kiran Kees-Ghomara, who brings this effort before you today with me. I have also spoken with Mosby's descendants. In fact, the great-great and great-great-great grandchildren of John S. Mosby later sent a letter to the school board endorsing the removal of their family name from the school. They wrote, quote, in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and the peaceful demonstrations against the continued oppression of people of color, we respectfully request that you change the name of Mosby Woods Elementary School. In the FCPS strategic plan, we commit to fostering a responsive, caring, and inclusive culture. We cannot live up to that standard if we force students to attend schools named in honor of the racist vestiges of our past, especially as we seek

283to be anti-racist in our present. In other words, a school system that honors the Confederacy cannot honor black lives. My partner Evan and I live next door to Mosby Woods. It is an amazing school with exceptional teachers, staff, parents, and students. It deserves an equally exceptional name that shows respect for the richly diverse community it serves. As important as these name changes are, we all know we must do more to demonstrate our commitment to equity and inclusion. It is not lost on me that this vote is being taken as the board considers ways to address the lack of admission for underrepresented communities at Thomas Jefferson High School for science and technology, that this vote is being taken as the board acknowledges the need to address issues like the lack of access to advanced academics and

284the need to hire more far more teachers and administrations of color but this vote is being taken as we continue to grapple with discipline disparities impacting black brown and special education students i hope we as a board can grab on to the urgency of this moment and address these and other issues without delay thank you miss miss keys gamara would you like to speak to your second yes i will try to abbreviate my comment Today we are reckoning with our past and as Mr. Fritz has said, we are recognizing that the weight of that past is far too much for our students today to have to bear. Let's face it, we are dealing with a name change that is really the easy part. It's the low hanging fruit. I fully support and thank my colleague,

285Carl Fritz, for bringing this action forward. And I recognize that this action is but one step to correct the wrongs of the past. We must also recognize that this is a continuing beginning, a doorway that... boosts our credibility as we seek to tear down systems that hinder those true access to opportunity and education for all students. We must use this action as yet another cry and signal to the community that we will not stop here, that we will finish the work of healing the divide among us, that we must attack pipeline issues. where students don't have access to advanced math or critical thinking skills in certain areas of our county, that we will attack the lack of diversity in our hiring at TJ, and that we will continue to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and focus

286our efforts on building the school-to-excellence opportunity, higher education, and the career pipeline. We will work... to assure our care, I'm sorry, to assure that each of our schools has a caring culture in every way, and that we will not delay in stopping the harm as we have made people wait for far too long. Today, we dismantle that low-hanging fruit. And as we go forward, we dig up the weeds in the garden of this institution so that every... plant within its realm as a soil nourishment and care that our students deserve. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Keys-Namara. Are there any board members who would like to speak to this motion? Thank you. At this time, we will take the vote on this motion that is before us, which is I move that the board

287approved the deletion. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm in the wrong side. We move to change the name. The motion before us is I move that the board vote to proceed with the name change for Mosby Woods Elementary. All those in favor. Ms. Pekarski, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Marin, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Seismal-Heiser, Ms. Omish, Ms. Kies-Gamara, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Darinat-Kofax, Ms. Tolan, and myself. That is unanimous. Thank you. And now I call on Mr. Frisch for the motion regarding the governance committee's recommended revisions to the composition of ACSD and the strategic governance manual. Mr. Frisch, go ahead. Thank you. One second. I move that the board approve the deletion of the language added to the governance manual in December 2019. and restore the membership of ACSD to 33 members, including one FCPS teacher. Is there

288a second? Ms. Bukarski, thank you. Mr. Frisch, would you like to speak to your motion? I will just let folks know that we're doing this because the changes made in 2019 made it so that this portion of the governance manual was not in compliance with state code, and we are simply reverting those changes back to be in compliance. Ms. Pokorsky, please go ahead and speak to your second. Nothing to say, thank you. Those who are wanting to speak about this motion, Ms. Corbett-Sanders? I apologize. I was ready to vote. Okay. And seeing that there are no other speakers, the motion before us is I move that the board approve the deletion of the language added to the governance manual in December 2019 and restore the membership of ACSD to 33 members, including the FCPS teacher.

289All those in favor? We have Ms. Marin, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Gies-Gamara, Ms. Bokarski, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Eisenmohiser, Ms. Omish, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Danak-Kofax, Ms. Cohen. and myself, and that is unanimous. Ms. Pokarski will now go ahead and present the consent agenda. Okay, thank you. Our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure, Robert's Rules, provide for consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion. Many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance. Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting. 5.01, approve the minutes of the July 23rd, September 3rd, September 17th, 2020 regular school board meeting. 5.02 award a contract for the cooper middle school renovation

290project to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder color brothers inc in the amount of um 37 million 688 thousand dollars and authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent facilities and transportation services to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board 5.03 award the contract for the automatic temperature control system replacement at king's glen elementary school to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder engineered services, Inc. in the amount of $469,742 and authorize a division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute and administer the contract on behalf of the school board. 5.04, appoint individuals to serve on committees as detailed in the agenda item. Is there any? Okay. I'm sorry, I was just getting my camera back on. Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda?

291I see two objections. Okay, seeing none, the consent agenda is approved. And now I call on Ms. Pekarski to offer the new business. Thank you. The following are new business items. There will not be a vote tonight on these items. The action is scheduled at a future meeting. 6.01, award a contract for the Chantilly High School roof replacement project to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and authorize a division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services. to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board 6.02 award the contract for the rooftop unit replacements and marshall road elementary school for the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and authorize a division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute and administer the contract on behalf of

292the school board 6.03 award a contract for the high blood valley elementary school renovation project to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and authorize a division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board 6.04 award a contract for the old creek elementary roof replacement project to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and authorize a division superintendent or the assistant superintendent facilities and transportation services execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board 6.05 award a contract for the pole middle school roof replacement project to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and authorize a division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board

2936.06 award a contract for the graham road community building synthetic turf field replacement project to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder Authorize a division superintendent, the assistant superintendent of facilities transportation services to execute, deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board. 6.07 adopt the 2021 Fairfax County School Board state and federal legislative. Program. 6.08 approve the recommended changes to policy 2150 prevention of alcohol and other illegal drug use by students as detailed in the agenda item. 6.09 approve the recommended changes to the policy 1501 public access to information as detailed in the agenda item. 6.10 approve the recommended changes to policy 2701 student personal data. as detailed in the agenda item getting my mic back um thank you At this point, we would call on Dr. Brabrand for Superintendent Matters. Dr. Brabrand,

294given that it is very late and we've had a lot of discussion, I would offer you the opportunity to pass on the matters for right now if you are so inclined and perhaps submit your statements in writing. It's your choice. I'll share another time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now we are up to the board committee reports. And again, because of the late hour, it is running on 1230. Barring any objections, I would like to move the three committee reports to the next meeting on the 22nd. Ms. Seismohiser, Ms. Tolan, and Mr. Frisch, are there any objections? Raise your hands if there are any. Otherwise, I'm moving on. Thank you. And also, Board Matters, oh, Ms. Cohen, you have an objection. No, ma'am, I had a motion. Okay. If I may, I'm also going

295to also share, barring any objections, I would like to postpone Board Matters. If there aren't any objections, if there are any objections, it's late, please raise your hands at this time. There are no objections. It is 1226. This meeting is adjourned. Good night, all. Good night. Good night. Good night, everybody. Good night, everyone. Happy Friday. It is officially Friday. Not bad, not bad. Happy Friday. Good night, John Boyd. You took my line, Mr. Largene. Oh, my God. Good night, you guys. Bye-bye.