FCPS School Board Meeting 17, 4-6-17

001If there are any Boy Scouts in the audience, if they could please approach the dais, if there are any Boy Scouts in the audience. Would board members come to the meeting table, please? This April 6th, 2017 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance, a moment of silence, and the performance of the National Anthem by the Oakview and Bonnie Bray Elementary School Band under the direction of Kim Andre. United States of America, and to the Republic. for which it stands, a nation under God. Thank you so much. And I'm going to call on Mrs. Huff to make a brief comment. I just want to give a special shout out to Miss Andre and this band. I have a personal connection and a deep

002understanding of how hard you all have worked, and that was beautiful. So thank you. Because her child is on the stage. That was the personal connection, yes. I'd like to also thank our wonderful students for that performance tonight and just a quick thank you to Oakview Principal Sarah Brooker and Bonnie Bray Principal Kathy Bruce. I'm not sure if they're in the house this evening. I'm sorry, April Cage, that's right. My apologies. I'm not sure if they're here tonight, but thank you. Thank you again, students. Beautifully done. And thank you, parents, for bringing your children out and sharing them with us tonight. The board held a closed meeting earlier this evening and certified compliance immediately upon reconvening in the public at the forum work session, which preceded tonight's regular meeting. We will continue our closed meeting

003to consider other closed meeting items at the end of this regular meeting. A few announcements before we begin. If you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight, that information is on the table by the auditorium entrance. Tonight's agenda is available by going to school board on the FCPS homepage and selecting board docs under upcoming school board meetings. The meeting is also being streamed live online. Select school board from the full menu, then click on the watch live button on the school board meetings webpage. Please turn off. or silence your cell phone. I will now call on Ms. Chu for announcements. Thank you, Chair. The week of April 23rd to 29th will be National Volunteer Week. Established in 1974, National Volunteer Week has grown exponentially

004in scope each year since, drawing the support and endorsement of all subsequent U.S. presidents, governors, mayors, and other respected elected officials. National Volunteer Week is about inspiring, recognizing and encouraging people to seek out imaginative ways to engage in their communities. It's about demonstrating to the nation that by working together in unison, we have the fortitude to meet our challenges and accomplish our goals. National Volunteer Week is about taking action, encouraging individuals and their respective communities to be at the center of social change, discovering and actively demonstrating their collective power to foster positive transformation. During the 2015 to 2016 school year, 194 schools, centers, and alternative high schools reported that over 64,000 volunteers donated over 1.5 million hours of volunteer service to FCPS schools. That's quite an accomplishment. In addition, the National Sleep Foundation is celebrating

005its annual Sleep Awareness Week from April 23rd to 29th to raise awareness of the health benefits of sleep and its importance to safety and productivity. This year's theme is Sleep Better, Feel Better, and encourages people to consider how sleep affects their daily lives, as well as reinforce the many benefits associated with making healthy sleep habits a priority. The National Sleep Foundation believes the value of a good night's sleep, which carries into one's day, to improve not just health, but mood, productivity, well-being, and overall quality of life. Most of us know that getting a good night's sleep is important, but too few of us actually make those eight or so hours a priority. So many of us have forgotten what being really, truly rested feels like. And to further complicate matters, stimulants like coffee and energy

006drinks, alarm clocks, and external lights, including those from electronic devices, interfere with our natural sleep and wake cycle. Sleep needs vary across ages and are especially impacted by lifestyle and health. To determine how much sleep you need, it's important to examine what lifestyle factors are affecting the quality and quantity of your sleep, such as work schedules and stress. For more information on healthy sleep, visit the National Sleep Foundation's website at sleep.org. That is all. Thank you, Ms. Chu. Item 2.04, National Library Week Recognition. I call on Mr. Wilson for the recognition. Thank you, Madam Chair. Sorry, I wasn't quite prepared. National Library Week and School Library Month, April 2017. National Library Week is a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association and libraries across the country each April. It is a time to celebrate

007the contributions of our nation's libraries and librarians and to promote library use and support. All types of libraries, school, public, academic, and special participate. This year, National Library Week will be observed April 9 through April 15 with the theme Libraries Transform. School Library Month is the American Association of School Librarians' celebration of school librarians and their programs. Strong school library programs play an essential role in a student's educational career, and FCPS school librarians are dedicated to meeting the needs of all students through literacy development and relevant inquiry-based instruction that fosters curiosity, innovation, and lifelong learning. The school board welcomes this opportunity to commend Fairfax County Public Schools librarians and to express its gratitude for the energy, knowledge, and vision that they tirelessly and unselfishly provide to the school system. At this time, I would like

008to invite the librarians and the audience to join me at the dais for a photo with the board. Thank you so much to all the librarians who came out tonight. We so appreciate everything you do for our kids. 2.05, month of the military child recognition. I call on Mrs. Corbett-Sanders. Thank you, Madam Chair. Each year, our nation designates April as the month of the military child to recognize and thank children from military families for the sacrifices they make living the military lifestyle. The recognition is part of the legacy of former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, who established the commemoration in 1986. During the month, one day is selected as the day to purple up for military kids, and all are encouraged to wear purple in recognition of the strength and sacrifices of military-connected youth, the MCY.

009Why purple? Purple is the color that symbolizes all branches of the military, as it is the combination of Army green, Coast Guard blue, Air Force blue, Marine red, and Navy blue. This year, Purple Up Day will be celebrated on April 21st. Military-connected youth face unique circumstances living the military lifestyle. By understanding the lifestyle of military-connected youth, we can better meet their needs as they transition with their family members who serve our nation. Currently, over 11,000 military-connected youth call FCPS home. Celebrating the month of the military child provides a powerful opportunity to raise awareness and build support to help these children meet the unique challenges they face. It is an opportunity to recognize and thank military children and youth for their heroism, character, courage, sacrifices, and continued resilience. At this time, I would like to invite

010any military families, students, DSS staff, and representatives from our Military Connected Youth Process Action Team who are with us this evening to join me at the dais for a photo with the board. Dr. Lockhart, we would like to present this to you. We were given this by the Virginia Department of Education military liaison, and we would like to present it to you in Fairfax County School District on behalf of Governor Terry McAuliffe in appreciation and all you do for our military children and their families within Fairfax County. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here with us tonight and for everything you do. I'm now going to turn the gavel over to Mrs. Strauss. Thank you. And I will call on Ms. Evans for a resolution. This

011is item 2.06, resolution in support of Fairfax County's statement on diversity and inclusion. I'm going to read the resolution that was approved by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors unanimously on Tuesday. Resolution in support of Fairfax County's Statement on Diversity and Inclusion. Whereas the Fairfax, oh, I'm sorry. Whereas Fairfax County is and will continue to be a county that exemplifies values of respect and acceptance. Whereas we welcome and celebrate one another's differences and cultural backgrounds. Whereas, while immigration is a federal matter, Fairfax County does partner with federal authorities on serious criminal matters when required. Whereas we do not ask, nor do we have the resources for our police officers to become immigration officials, nor for Fairfax County to assume the responsibilities of federal immigration officials. Whereas Fairfax County police successfully engage in community policing, which

012requires the trust of residents who are not afraid to call law enforcement if their safety is at risk, or to report information that may help to solve a crime. Whereas it is the responsibility of our police officers to ensure the safety of Fairfax County residents through community policing rather than through immigration enforcement. Whereas Fairfax County Public Schools complies with the federally mandated requirements that we educate all children regardless of immigration status. Whereas the school board is committed to maintaining a safe, inclusive, and welcoming learning environment for all children in our public school system. And Fairfax County Public Schools values the richly diverse backgrounds of our students and families. Whereas Fairfax County's diversity makes our community strong and vibrant and we are proud of what every resident has to offer. Therefore, be it resolved that the

013Fairfax County Board of Supervisors does hereby affirm our strong commitment to maintaining a community culture that values and celebrates the similarities as well as the differences among our neighbors. I move that the Fairfax County School Board formally support and endorse the Fairfax County Statement on Diversity and Inclusion approved by the Board of Supervisors on April 4, 2017, which affirms Fairfax County's strong commitment to maintaining a community culture that values and celebrates the similarities as well as the differences among our neighbors and affirms a commitment to a safe, inclusive, and welcoming learning environment for all children in our public schools. Second. Second. Second by Mr. Moon. Ms. Evans, would you like to speak to this? I do, just briefly. I very much appreciate the Board of Supervisors initiating this resolution. I fully support it. I believe

014that it's important for us to understand and believe that our community is one that is inclusive and we have a welcoming environment for all of our children. We do in fact value diversity and we educate all of our children with compassion and understanding. We do have children and we welcome all children from various backgrounds into our schools and we do think it's important to treat each one with respect and not allow discrimination or harassment of any of our students or any of our employees. We do have children who come to our doors from all different kinds of backgrounds and it's important to educate and cherish every one of them. So I do fully support the resolution that the Board of Supervisors passed on Tuesday and I hope that our board will agree to join them

015in that statement. So I ask my colleagues for their support. Mr. Moon, would you like to speak to your second? Just briefly, Madam Vice Chair, that I would like to thank Chairman Evans for bringing this to our attention to be voted on tonight rather than waiting for another two weeks or a month. For County Board of Supervisors, unanimously, it's a bipartisan support. of this resolution a couple of days ago. It is only timely that we do take an action this evening rather than again waiting two weeks or a month. Earlier today, we all received, I believe, the letter from a very reputable community, a service and human rights advocacy organization in this area, DC. DC chapter of a decision national organization very reputable in my Korean American community. So let me read part of the

016letter, the letter into record. Dear Fairfax County School Board members, it's a daily April 6, 2017. This is from NACASEC, which stands for National Korean American Service and Education Consortium. Came from the executive director of a DC area, DC chapter. Dear Fairfax County School Board member, we are writing to commend the Fairfax County School Board's commitment to a safe, inclusive, and welcoming learning environment for all the children we serve. The intolerant rhetoric made over the course of the 2016 Presidential race coupled with immigration and refugee policies implemented by the current administration has resulted in countless immigrant, refugee, Muslim, and other students and families in Fairfax County and throughout the country to express fear, sadness, and concerns for safety. As an organization that works with the Korean and Asian American youth and families in Northern Virginia,

017some of whom are undocumented and or live in mixed status immigrant families. We believe that this resolution and the resolution recently passed by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is an important step in the right direction. This is right on point. As an immigrant myself, as a minority, thank you for bringing, thank you to NACAAC for sending this letter of endorsement to all Fairfax County School Board members. I would like to urge my colleagues to support the resolution tonight. Thank you, Mr. Moon. Ms. Huff? Yes, Madam Chair, I have a motion that we would make this new business tonight to vote on as an action item at our next regular business meeting. Second. So is your motion to postpone until a date certain which is the next? No, it's not a motion to postpone. It's

018a motion to follow our normal process of putting this on as new business to then vote on as an action item at our next regular business meeting. Okay. I will recognize that as a motion to postpone action on this until the next regular business meeting. And Madam Clerk, that date to be specific is? I'm sorry, April? April 22nd. April 22nd. There is a motion to postpone date vote on this resolution until the next regular business meeting on April 22nd. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Ms. Evans? Oh, Schultz, sorry. All right, Ms. Huff, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, thank you. So I appreciate this coming to us and I think it's important for us to understand our governance and our process and how we normally operate. When we want to

019bring something to the board and to the public, we go to a forum topic which happens prior to our regular business meeting. From there, we as a board come to a consensus as to whether we'd like it to become an agenda item or go to a work session or go to one of our subcommittees. In this case today, we had a forum topic on it. And it was already put on our agenda as a placeholder before we had the actual wording of what we'd be voting on. And here we are ready to vote on it. And I think that in respect to our public, that the appropriate thing is to just follow our normal process. I think if we place it on as new business tonight, as we would normally do, it signals to the

020community that we are following up on what the Board of Supervisors are doing, but we're doing it within our own process. And I'd like to point out when we did one Fairfax resolution, we put it on as news business on May 26th, and then we voted on it as an action item on July 28th. That is our normal process. That was two months, not asking for two months, just asking for the normal process. We are elected officials here. voted in to represent and to be a voice for those in our community. If we're throwing things on the agenda and voting on them right away, I don't know how I'd do that well. And just to be clear, we have people signed up as citizen participants to speak on this after we vote on it. I

021just don't see how that is good governance and that's good process. This was voted on unanimously by the Board of Supervisors. They went through their process and they got it done and they did it with unity among their board. I'm asking this board to follow our normal process like we always do so that we can go into this with unity and express the importance not only of this but of process and of good governance. And so I would ask for support on this. Ms. Schultz, would you like to speak to your second? i would um and i appreciate the eloquence with which miss huff addressed this you know mr moon read from a letter from somebody who's a dc resident who I'm not exactly sure how they got a copy of the resolution that we're

022voting on tonight because it wasn't on our board docs on an agenda for this meeting 24 hours ago. And frankly, if that individual were here, they wouldn't be allowed to speak because you have to have a special dispensation if you're not a Fairfax County resident to speak. So we've had one person weigh in before we vote and the public hasn't even been made aware that we're voting. We voted to put this on tonight's agenda even though there was already a placeholder roughly 35 minutes ago. That's not good governance. That doesn't represent the public well. That doesn't give us opportunity to engage the public. It doesn't give the public a chance to address us. And it's difficult to look into an audience and say to you, well, you get to speak, but we're gonna do whatever

023we're gonna do first, and then you'll speak later. So that's... That's backward governance. I found it peculiar that this made its way onto our regular business agenda, but not even onto our, it's not even on our action item. It's on the opening of the meeting. And so it's not, we haven't even advertised this as action by the board. And if it were anything else, there would be, you know, frankly, an outcry of how this happened. It's only because the board of supervisors acted on it this week. But the board of supervisors acted on it after many weeks of multiple iterations of a resolution that was started by one of their board members, was passed around, they had opportunity to comment, they had opportunity to refine, they had opportunity to follow their process. The board of

024supervisors process isn't our process. and them following it and navigating a resolution by and amongst themselves does not represent this board. So we are in a position where if we act tonight without putting this onto new business and giving the two weeks, we are acting outside of our governance. We've said that rules don't matter, that you can throw governance to the wind and... and go outside the governance structure and not have to follow anything that the board does. Once this board starts playing wild, wild west and not following any governance structure and you all can hold all the signs up that you want, it doesn't mean that we don't want to vote on it. We just want to vote on it within accordance with the policies and processes that this board has established for itself.

025And that's how we govern. such a large school division and how we handle the annual workload of the school board that's how we respectfully govern it's how we respectfully work with each other as the board of supervisors did but that same level of respect has not been demonstrated by forcing this onto the agenda outside of our regular business processes. And so I respectfully ask that we adhere to our governance structure, that we put it onto new business, and that in two weeks hence we vote on it in accordance with the way we typically do the board work. Ms. Hines? Thank you. You know, ordinarily, I am a big believer in process. I think you protect the process. You can trust the product, right? That's the idea. And we are all about process here. But I

026also think... Sometimes you can adhere so closely and be such a stickler for process that you kind of, you know, flies in the face of common sense. And I think it also, in this case, risks having us look like we are divided and not supportive of something that our Board of Supervisors has done unanimously in support of the diversity in our schools. I think the statement that the Board of Supervisors made is... you know, kind of mom and apple pie. This is who we are. This is what we do. I don't see the need to wait. It would actually be three weeks that we'd have to wait to support a statement. We're not even drafting anything. All we're doing is supporting a statement that the Board of Supervisors has already made. And so I think

027now and then it's the right thing to do. The timeliness of something matters. I have heard from parents. I have heard from teachers. I have heard from administrators. I have heard from social workers. There is fear in the community. There's fear among our students. This is an important statement. It's a simple statement. I appreciate our board chair laying this out for us in the forum this evening. You know, we've had like a 48-hour turnaround. from when the Board of Supervisors finished their work and adopted this. But our Board Chair wisely gave us time in our forum tonight to be prepared to talk about this. And to me, it's just to get caught up in process over something like this sends the wrong message to our community. So I won't be supporting the substitute. Thank you.

028I have Mr. Wilson, Ms. McLaughlin, and this Ms. Evans. And again, right now we are speaking on the motion to defer action until the next board meeting. Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Madam Chair. I actually support the motion made by Ms. Huff. As many of you know from the forum that I had questions that were raised. In particular, there's one statement in the Board of Supervisors made a couple of statements about Fairfax County Schools, and one of them is that the FCPS complies with federal requirements regarding immigration. And so the questions that I had, could be answered if we had a break of a couple of weeks to find out what the answers are for the community. Those questions are, I won't go into detail with them, but Questions include sort of how is FCPS complying

029with federal mandated requirements operationally? Is there any tension between what FCPS is doing versus the governing state and federal law? Are we at odds at all with any neighboring jurisdictions in terms of our policies and procedures? And what does the Virginia Department of Education say about policies regarding immigrants? I think all of these questions are worthy questions and worth our discussion as a board before we vote. And so I would support the delay. Ms. McLaughlin and then Ms. Evans. And this is again on the motion to delay. So I do very much appreciate the motion before us to delay. And as someone who... joined this board because I believe so much in community engagement and accountability and transparency. I understand where some of my colleagues are coming from and trying to just look at when

030we are going to vote on something as a board. That we really do work together as a board to develop consensus and that we do have an opportunity to make sure everybody understands what's in front of us. So I'm conflicted on this one. I think where I see it slightly different from the motion to delay is that we are not changing policy. We are not taking an action to change the way we operate in our schools. So when it comes to community engagement and informing me as a board member on how I can best represent Braddock District and how can I best represent and be a good steward of Fairfax County Public Schools, I ask myself, well, does my vote impact that and do I therefore need to know where my district is on something?

031In this case, I believe that Chairman Evans has brought us something that's simply saying our Board of Supervisors have made a declaration on diversity and inclusion. And as someone who is a social worker, and I'll speak to this later on, I think it is very important that we look at What do we message and signal as public officials? And so if I thought that we delayed this by two weeks, it might change something. then I would understand the need for postponement. If I thought again that we were going to actually take action where I have been unfair to Braddock residents because they didn't get a chance to inform me about how they felt about this, but I do believe that Braddock District residents did vote me in for my inclusive perspective in how we serve

032our community. So tonight's vote, I do think the voters are going to look to me and want to understand where is Megan McLaughlin on this? Does she support what our Board of Supervisors have to say about diversity inclusion? And it is because of that that I think it's really important that as colleagues we not get caught up necessarily on are we circumventing a process? I think we absolutely have a process when we are talking about taking action. This is simply saying... where do we support something that the supervisors have done at one point there was before the board that we might have our own statement and that absolutely I would have put my hand in the air to say to postpone because that when this board is speaking and the language that comes out of

033this board we do need to work together on that but for me to affirm what the supervisors have done I don't need two weeks and I don't believe the Braddock residents want me to necessarily take two weeks I've got a focus on other things, but I need to know where I stand on these types of issues and so I apologize if I wasn't a little more eloquent, but I did want everyone on this board to understand where I am, which is we do follow Robert's rules of order. There are times when things develop right before board meeting, and I have always supported colleagues that if they wanted to bring something to the table that wasn't vetted, it was last minute, it happens. And this tonight, you know... I always believe in lessons learned and we

034can learn and do better, but I don't believe a postponement is going to change what the outcome is. Thank you. I will call on Ms. Evans. So I want to thank Ms. McLaughlin for her comments. I think that was very well said, Ms. McLaughlin. I did just want to address the process question because we have, in fact, followed our process. I circulated this initially to board members on Monday, March 27th. I alerted board members that I would be putting a placeholder on the April 6th agenda and that we would be discussing at our forum. Our forum was an opportunity for board members to decide whether we would consider this tonight, whether we would delay it, whether we would do something else. And that is in fact consistent with our process. I also followed up with

035another to board members on March 31st, elaborating a bit on that. And then as soon as the board of supervisors had completed its action, I made sure that board members had that in hand as well and knew that it had passed unanimously. So I do believe we have followed process. We do have the ability as part of our forum to put something on the agenda. And this I believe is something that we will be something where we as believing in one Fairfax, we are supporting what the Board of Supervisors has passed unanimously and our board believes that this is appropriate for us to consider tonight. So I will be. Ms. Corbett. Thank you. Ms. Corbett Sanders. Sure. I too believe in process and I think that we have. you will often hear me say we

036need to go back to the process. We need to adhere to the process. This is actually somewhat of a unique situation and it's a unique situation for a couple reasons. One, this is not new policy. There's nothing in the statement that the Board of Supervisors has, and I'd like a confirmation of this. I don't know either from Dr. Lockhart or guess Dr. Lockhart, the two statements that we have here regarding Fairfax County Public Schools are Fairfax County Public Schools complies with the federally mandated requirements that we educate all children regardless of immigration status. Whereas the school board is committed to maintaining a safe, inclusive, and welcoming learning environment for all children in our public school system. And Fairfax County Public Schools values the richly diverse backgrounds of our students and families. Is there anything new?

037Is there any new policy there? No, there's not. That's what I thought. So this is really an affirmation of policy that this school board has adopted over the past. We are not being asked whether or not we can modify the Board of Supervisors statement. What we're being asked is whether or not we agree with the statement. And so it's not really a new policy or a new debate. Would I have liked to have had two weeks yeah that would have been great but the board of supervisors didn't give us two weeks they adopted this on tuesday and it's now come to us on thursday we had an opportunity to adopt new policy tonight or to entertain new policy and this board unanimously said no we don't want to go down that path and so we've

038really restricted it to a yes or no vote as to whether or not the two statements about Fairfax County Public Schools are accurate reflections of Fairfax County School policy. And so thank you, Dr. Lockard. I do appreciate that you clarified that that is existing policy. I have Ms. Balchak and then Ms. Schultz. Thank you. Just speaking to this motion, my thoughts are that we have already waited too long for this. There have been incidents at at least two of our school sites where false rumors have been spread because of regular routine police activity or people in uniform being on school property who are unknown and that causes panic. It could also cause very unintended consequences, which is what mayors around the country have said. We want to ensure that we continue to be able to

039do our duty to ensure that all of our students are safe, our families are safe, and here in Fairfax, want to make sure that all of our students feel free and safe to come to school. i will speak more on the motion itself later that we're passing but i fully support doing this now i know we wanted to wait to do this in cohesion as one fairfax with the board of supervisors so for that i do thank the chairman i know we've had discussions in the past and i appreciate that you had us wait in order to do this together i know it's not easy we are working very hard this year to try to do more together as the two boards and so i fully support As Ms. Corbett-Sanders said, this is not new

040policy. If someone wants to bring up new policy, would like to write our own resolution, I would support doing that through our regular process because that would be our own resolution. But as this is in support of what they are doing, and just as when the General Assembly is in session, things happen quickly. This was not as quick, but it was quite speedy on their end. And I want to make sure that we are supporting them and that our families and community know where we stand. Ms. Schultz. So what I just heard from Dr. Lockard is that it's just affirming what we're already doing. I've heard that we're not changing any policy and we're not introducing any policy and that we're not taking any action. Then I'm not sure what we're doing. Because if we're

041not taking any action, but the community is in fear, then we should take action. We should do something that... That's affirmative. I mean if the community is in fear and there's something wrong by the lack of action by if there's something that we need to be doing Then we should be addressing new policy and we should be considering action to abate that fear But the words aren't abating any fear because we've just said that the words are doing nothing. We're going to take no action. It doesn't change any policy and there's nothing that's going to outcrop from this. So then it just becomes words. I also find it curious that there is a large audience here for and clearly in support of this motion when it wasn't on our agenda. No, I'll let them have

042their, they have every right to clap. I have nothing wrong with that. That's their first amendment right. I'm happy for that. But if this wasn't on our board agenda 24 hours ago, I don't understand how there's been a spontaneous. you know eruption because the very emotion that um uh chair evans was talking about that had been previously passed around is not what's before us tonight and we're not entertaining it um it isn't a new action of the board we're just responding and we're only responding to something that was placed on our public agenda 24 hours ago i'm not even sure how that comports with our three-day advertising requirement under the open meetings law. Just because we put a placeholder that said we are going to talk about something doesn't mean that we actually advertised what

043we were going to talk about. So we're right back to if... we want to fully engage and represent our community, then let's do it, but let's do it meaningfully. Let's not do it in a hollow fashion where we give 35 minutes notice about what we're actually going to be voting on because we're over in a side room that a lot of people don't really necessarily know what the forum's even about. If this is something that we want to entertain and there's also a problem in the community, let's be good. stewards of this system and if there's something that we can do to help assuage any concerns in the community, let's do it, but don't try to force onto an agenda. out of the regular cycle of the business, out of a lack of advertising to

044the community, what we're even discussing, something that we're pre-admitting we're going to vote on before the public even gets to vote, talk to us about it tonight, and that we say doesn't do actually anything. Thank you. I will call for the vote on the motion, the motion on the table. I'm sorry. Okay. All right. I'm sorry. i can't see it mrs hoff that's okay um i just i'm uncomfortable with the fact that we're making this about a conversation of we have to do it now the fact of the matter is when we intend to do something we make it new business we let the public know we intend to do it and we do it for a set amount of time and then we do it so i'm not asking for a delay and i'm

045I think it's inappropriate to couch it that way. I am asking for us to post it and to then act on it, because that's what we're doing. It's what we did with One Fairfax. That was a resolution. It was not new policy. The Board of Supervisors passed it first, and then it came to us. And we did it together, but not simultaneously. And so I am uncomfortable with the fact that it's being couched as, if you don't do it tonight, you don't care about it. I've received questions as well, and I've been in great communication with Dr. Lockhart and his communications to the individual schools and principals. It is not as if we've been passive on this. We have acted, and now as a board, we are considering bringing our voice to what has already

046been operationalized by Dr. Lockhart. I have no problem with that, but I don't think it's acceptable to say now and then it's the right thing to do to not follow our normal process. process because one of these days that now and again is going to be it's going to hurt maybe someone in this room here supporting this tonight so if we get to choose now and then then we then become not representative and I don't want to become that I was elected to represent and part of what I am representing is good governance and process so I think it will be very unfortunate if we can't do this around the right process and then do it unanimously like the Board of Supervisors. So I am asking my colleagues to respect that, and I hope that

047we can get a vote on that. Thank you. Ms. McLaughlin and then Mr. Moon. I just wanted to provide a little clarity and maybe a different mindset from what Ms. Schultz was saying. You're correct, Ms. Schultz, in terms of is this about action. I don't think this is about we're going to do any new action. I think what we are trying to do is clarify and communicate to our communities that as they have shared that there is fear out there, the supervisors developed this diversity and inclusion statement, and we're simply affirming. As individual board members that will take a collective board vote, do we affirm this statement of diversity inclusion? Honestly, if we had before us the Fairfax County School Board statement of diversity inclusion, then the 12 of us should absolutely have the opportunity

048to look at this language and make sure it speaks as a board. But this is what the board supervisors decide to say. We've each individually had a chance to read it. If individual board members don't like the language in it or have concerns about it individually, I fully respect that they should have the right to vote in support of it or not. But as someone who... does believe in robert's rules where there are things where we're going to have to come speak to and we're about to vote on a budget in less than two months and i don't want to shut down any single board member who's going to bring a budget amendment that might be within a few days of the budget vote and that would be just as much about process as what

049the motion is here so i very much appreciate the good place that ms huff is coming from i know ms huff is a deeply caring individual as are all 12 of us up here so i don't want anyone in the audience to think that how people are voting on this motion has anything to do about their character it does have to do sometimes with people's comfort level and how we you know process action before the board um and i i i do hate to disappoint any one of my colleagues on this but i i think this is the right thing to be voting on tonight i want to call the question I want to call the question. There is a motion to call the question. Is there a second? It's not debatable. All those in

050favor of calling the question? Okay, that's Heinz, Palchak, Corbett-Sanders, Strauss, Evans, Moon, McLaughlin, Darinette, Koufax, McElveen. Those opposed to calling the question? Huff, Schultz, and Wilson. The question is called. Therefore, we will return to the vote on whether or not to postpone the vote on this. approval of this resolution to move this to action on the next meeting in April, which is April 27th. All those in favor of moving this to action to April 27th. It's Huff, Schultz, Wilson. Those opposed? It's Hines, Polchek, Corbett-Sanders, Strauss. Evans, Moon, McLaughlin, Derenette Koufax, McAleen. Therefore, that motion fails and we are back to the main motion, which is the resolution to support these Board of Supervisors resolution in support of Fairfax County Statement on Diversity and Inclusion. So that is, we are back to that. Are there any

051speakers on this? Mr. Moon? I just want to clarify one thing about the letter I read, part of which I read earlier, that the letter came from the director of a DC area chapter of this national organization whose office is in Fairfax. And I do not personally know where. That director actually resides, but the director represents DC area chapter whose office is in Fairfax County. Okay, then seeing no, Ms. McLaughlin? Oh, and Mr. Wilson has his light on too. I would just have a clarifying question and just a few statements. Mr. Moon, you mentioned that this letter came to the full school board, but I looked through my email inbox and I didn't see it. So did it come to us via email? I got it and it was addressed to Fairfax County School Board

052member and I also believe that Chairman Evans also got it and forwarded the letter to all of us. I just looked through my inbox again today and I did not see it, so I'll look through it again. I just wanted to know because we have a new client communication process and sometimes things come into the full board, but we don't necessarily see it right away. Certainly appreciate hearing from all organizations in our community. I mentioned earlier that I am a social worker by training. something that was very important to me in the Board of Supervisors statement on diversity inclusion that I wanted to highlight and say that I think it is extremely important for our community and our county is that There is a statement about where as Fairfax County Police successfully engage in community

053policing, which requires the trust of residents who are not afraid to call law enforcement if their safety is at risk or to report information that may help to solve a crime. My brother-in-law happens to be a professor of criminology and worked with New York Police Department. Fairfax County Police Department and other departments around the country. And it's through him that I know how essential community policing is. It is how we keep our communities safe and strong. And so this statement in particular for those who may not be aware, maybe it doesn't relate directly to your lives, couldn't be a more important message as we try and really look at some of the challenges that we've been hearing in the media and making sure that our community knows how to work together. And then I also

054just want to say that I do think from listening to input I've received from my Braddock district, people have asked, where's the board, the school board's voice on what we're doing in this climate? That's a national climate in talking about diversity and inclusion. And we have had our superintendent. Send a message of what it means to educate every child in Fairfax County But and now we have the board of supervisors having a statement here So I do think it's valuable that each of us as board members look at this statement of diversity inclusion We honor our commitment to a one Fairfax mindset I've worked on that joint policy team with county officials and to me this is further support of that and so while as stated earlier It's ideal when we can get the 12

055of us to be comfortable with any item that's before the board where a vote is being taken. I do think that it's important from a timely perspective to simply say, do we support what the Board of Supervisors have publicly announced? And for me, that's an easy vote of yes. Okay, Mr. Wilson, and then Ms. Corbett-Sanders. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am actually the grandson of immigrants through Ellis Island, and I'm also the father of an immigrant from Asia. So this is an important discussion that I think this board is having, and it's very personal to me. And I want to say first that I greatly appreciate the Board of Supervisors' careful preparation of their statement. It's clearly a very carefully drafted document. For example, one of the things that I appreciate in it is that

056it makes clear that while immigration is a federal matter, Fairfax County partners with federal authorities on serious criminal matters. That's important for the community to know that and for our schools to know that. It also says that FCPS, the Fairfax County Schools, complies with all federal requirements related to immigration. That's important to know that it does make that statement. It does not make a statement that says Fairfax County is a sanctuary county. It does not make a statement that our school division is a sanctuary school division. So while I will be abstaining from this vote, because I believe that we do need more time to talk about the questions that I mentioned earlier, and while I do think this is an important statement, I am greatly appreciative of the care that they put in drafting

057this resolution. Thank you. Ms. Corbett-Sanders and then Ms. Schultz. As we sat down and we talked about what happened in the forum discussion, Ms. Huff mentioned to me that we voted against the two-week delay, and I said we never actually voted on the two-week delay. What we voted on was whether or not we would put a discussion of this document or an endorsement of the Board of Supervisors position. off to a further date or if we would endorse it. There's never been a discussion about whether or not we would modify or edit this document. And so I had actually said, well, you know, I would consider it. I would vote for a two-week delay. And then as I heard my colleague speaking up here and I thought about it, wait a second, I'm delaying something

058that there's no reason to delay because it's an actual, it's either a yes or no. Do I agree with the two statements here on this paper regarding Fairfax County Public Schools? That's easy. I do agree with those two statements, and so I don't see a need for delay. However, I do welcome a discussion, as Mr. Wilson has suggested, that we as a board need to always keep in our forefront, in our mind's eye. a policy discussion on how we ensure that we address the evolving needs of our student population. And that's really what you're talking about, Mr. Wilson, is how do we address a changing environment. And as things come up, I do think it's healthy and important for this board and all elected boards and policymakers to continuously to revisit and re-look at things

059and see whether or not we need to modify. or more importantly, if we need to actually take a look at areas that we may not have looked at in the past. And so a decision tonight, the support of the Board of Supervisors statement doesn't... forego any possible discussion of immigration in the future and how we ensure that we continue to have a caring culture in our schools. This is just yes or no. Do you agree with the two statements about Fairfax County Public Schools? Are they accurate? Yes or no? And I will say yes. Ms. Schultz and then Ms. Hines. I'm so grateful that my colleague from Mount Vernon just spoke because very eloquent and if we were voting on just the two statements about Fairfax County Public Schools, then that would be the motion,

060but we're not and so already I have confusion about the statement that we're just voting on what it says about Fairfax County Public Schools and affirming it. but we're not. And actually, this is where the rubber meets the road for me in terms of the vast number of inquiries that I've had after we had... a situation in Rockville, Maryland that hit the national news and was in the national news cycle an awful lot. One of these statements here at the bottom says specifically that the school board is committed to maintaining a safe, inclusive, and welcoming environment for all children, et cetera. I'd like to know where the resolution is on keeping children safe in our schools. I just had an article come out where a Fairfax County teenager was murdered in Springfield, Virginia. In Springfield,

061Virginia. And he wasn't just murdered. His hands were chopped off. His throat was cut. His tongue was shoved through the back of his neck. He was stabbed 16 times and he was run over three times. He was one of our students. And so for me, I think addressing... Fairly, how we are actually going about, that's the action, is addressing and affirming in the community that on the one hand, there are federal laws with which we comply and we educate children under Plyler v. Doe. We bring education to children who have lived in what amounts to extreme educational poverty. But on the other hand, we have an extreme obligation to keep children in our school buildings safe. And when you learn that there's 10,044 ESOL students who are over the age of 18... in Fairfax County

062Public Schools and you learn that principals are struggling with whether or not to tell parents of a 14-year-old little girl that their little girl is dating somebody who's 19 years old, these are some of the complexities on providing and maintaining a safe and inclusive environment that are in the balance. And so if you just vote on words and you haven't actually affirmed with the community and addressed the quote unquote fear in the community. There's a lot of different fears in the community that have to be reasonably addressed, openly addressed, and acknowledged in dialogue so that you're not passing words that leave. people questioning what your words even mean. And so when we're in a position where we message, I do have to wonder that my colleague from the Sully District brought up that this doesn't

063say we're a sanctuary county and that the board supervisors did and Chairman Bolivar did very carefully, very thoughtfully craft this. But I have the question, why doesn't it just say we affirm we are not a sanctuary county? Why not just say it? Why not just say affirmatively, we will follow federal law, we will educate the children who come to us and provide them educational opportunities that have not been presented to them as they have been living with interrupted education, with no education at all. I went to a graduation ceremony from one of our alternative high schools, a young lady from Iraq who was not even allowed to go to school in Iraq. And we celebrated her journey in being able to acquire and excel in an alternative high school. That's celebrating diversity, but celebrating within

064the context of providing access. for education, closing opportunity gaps, but not doing it at the expense of others by refusing to acknowledge and affirm how you go about providing a safe and inclusive, welcoming environment for all students. And I don't see that we've done this here, so I'll be abstaining from this. Ms. Hines. Yeah, I think I've already spoken to how important I think it is that we send a clear message by supporting this tonight. We send a clear message to the community and to our partners on the Board of Supervisors. So I won't restate that. I will say that we have recently as a board, when you talk about safety in general, we have very recently as a board had a high-level update from school system security staff and... County police on safety in

065general in the community and how it affects our schools and how our school safety people work with the county police to make sure that our kids are safe. I really think it's fair to say you can never rest on that. We need to continue to look into that. But I think safety is... job one. I think it really is for us. We know that we have children in our care all day, every day. And it's something that everyone, it's everyone's responsibility. When you talk about, okay, what are we actually doing? This is just a resolution. It's true. It's just words. So what are we actually doing? Well, I've had, I have checked in and this is how I do it. I have checked in with principals and teachers and parents and social workers and other

066people who work in the buildings. And as usual, it's the people in the buildings who are doing it. They're doing it every day and they're doing all of it. They are taking care of their kids and their families. They are making sure that they know if kids feel safe, that kids have someone in the building to talk to if they don't feel safe, if they're worried about going home and maybe finding no one at home. What's their plan? And I know that they've had support from central office because I think the principal's recently had some training. It's tricky. This is a new environment. I don't think our schools, at least in my experience of living in 25 years in Fairfax County, I don't remember this feeling that we're not quite sure how to support our

067students. in this kind of environment it's new and there are lines that you don't want to cross you know you don't want to frighten people you don't want to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing and so as usual our folks in the building are doing it and from what i can tell they're doing it very well and this is an opportunity for us to make a statement to join our county board making a statement of support for all of that good work that is going on out there in the county and in our school building so i will support this miss huff miss huff Thank you. Well, I think probably I've made clear my objection to this has nothing to do with the substance of it, but the process. And I know

068Ms. McLaughlin mentioned an example of the budget, but what has happened here is we've arbitrarily created a deadline for ourselves when we didn't have to. The budget is a time certain. We have to get it done, and we bring amendments forward. This is something that we... want to do thoughtfully, we want to do in our process. And Mr. Wilson had questions at the forum and actually at the forum was told, well, this wouldn't be the time to ask the questions, you'd have to ask it at the table. Mr. Wilson very well understood that staff wasn't prepared for his questions because we'd had no discussion. And so in deference and respect of staff, he's chosen not to put them on the spot. And so now we're standing here, I still have some questions because the Board

069of Supervisors did draft it very carefully among themselves and with proper notification to the public. And they also mentioned schools in here. And I thought Ms. Drilson had some very valid questions about what we're saying, what we're not saying. And I'm glad Ms. Hines brought up the fact that we recently have had a high level discussion for the board about safety in our schools. what we're doing there. And part of that is words can signal things and do we have the right words that we want as a school system that does ensure respect and safety for everyone. And I just don't see what would be wrong with doing that in the right process. And I did receive emails as early or as soon as Monday and Tuesday asking me, well, I see this agenda item,

070what are the words? And I kept saying, I don't know, I don't know yet. And so in representation of my community, I'm abstaining not because I don't agree with these words, but because I do believe in process. We do have words written already, and it's in our SR&R, and it's an entire booklet of how we believe and enforce diversity and inclusion in our school buildings. So I'm glad that it already exists. I'm so thankful that Dr. Locker has sent communication to the schools, and I think we as a board could have done this much better, and I'm sad that we have not. Ms. Darren at COFAX. Thank you. I am on the skipped committee which brought forward the one Fairfax resolution. Ms. McLaughlin and I brought that forward to our board. And I have to

071say that I do appreciate the process that we followed that time as the way we are bringing this statement forward. Because when something comes forward in this manner, we take something that is truly positive and it makes it divisive. However, I will be supporting this thoughtful statement from our partners at the Board of Supervisors to alleviate fear in our communities. I do welcome from all of my colleagues additional conversation to help us ensure that we have safety, alleviate fear, and we try to ensure that students are getting the education that they need, that they want, in a caring, welcoming, and safe environment. Ms. Polchek? Thank you. I also have shared most of my comments, but I'm sitting here listening to some of my colleagues. I do want to reiterate a couple of points. Number one,

072we educate approximately 188,000 students, some born here, some born elsewhere like myself, some in other counties and parts of the nation. The vast majority of our students are here to learn, to be safe and respectful, and to get an education that will allow them to be productive and leaders in our community. We want to make sure that they are safe. We want to make sure that they are safe from bullying. We want to make sure that they are safe from targeting. And we want to make sure that it feels safe to report incidents should they happen. That is why I believe it is very important to bring this up. It happens in our community. It happened when we moved here as students. And I think we want to know that all of our students, regardless

073of their legal status, know that they can go to our student resource officers, they can go to their administration, and they can report incidents because that is what keeps our whole community safer. That is why this is a very important and vital statement that we make. And as I iterated earlier, we are making later than I would have hoped, but sooner than some of my colleagues are asking for. So I do fully support this. I know that we have a process and we do find times and there are times when that process is adjusted even in our budget. It is not final until May. So there are always reasons why we bring things up at the table. It is not our first go-to to function in that way. But when it is necessary, and I

074believe in this instance it is necessary. because we do want to ensure as soon as possible that our community that we've heard from and that I've heard from know where we stand and that they know that we support the statement specifically constructed by the Board of Supervisors to say where our community stands and that as always, if there are incidents... And there are always incidents in the community that is a reality that they are reported and that people are able to report them and to feel safe. I know I've said it many times, but I think that is critical. It is not just a moral statement, but it's a statement of ensuring safety in our community. for all of us. And so sometimes the process is shifted. I do think that we, our chair did

075everything in her power to make this as transparent a process as possible on the timeline that we are working with. And so I do support this. I do think that this is a statement that is. very basic support. If we want to have further conversation, I do welcome my colleagues to bring it to a forum. If we want to add to this, if we want to make it school specific, we are still at liberty to do that. But I fully support this and I hope that those in the community who have been waiting for us to make a statement can feel reassured tonight that the school board will stand in support of our students and our families. Okay, seeing no other. folks wishing to speak, I will briefly say that I will also support the

076Fairfax County Board of Supervisors resolution. It is important that all the children who reside in Fairfax County come to our schools and that they have the opportunity for good education, that they feel safe, and it is our responsibility to make sure that our schools are safe and they are indeed safe. It's important that we believe and work with the county and their institutions and their police department again. to make sure that our community is safe and that people can carry on their normal lives in the way in which we support the education of our children. is important for democracy, it's important for our economy, it's important for our county. And I am grateful that the Board of Supervisors carefully brought forth this resolution and I wholeheartedly support that. So I will call for a vote.

077All those in favor of the resolution as read, please raise your hand. Hines, Palachuk, Corbett-Sanders, Strauss, Evans, Moon, McLaughlin, Darinette-Kolfax, McElveen. Those opposed? Those abstaining? Huff, Schultz, and Wilson. The motion passes. Thank you very much. I pass the gavel back to Ms. Evans. Thank you, Mrs. Strauss. 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 program, 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

078to the conduct of the public's business. Please be mindful that there are often young children in attendance at these meetings or watching at home, so language should be appropriate for all age levels. Thank you for your cooperation and thanks to those who've come out to speak to us tonight. We do have 10 citizens signed up to address the board, as well as one video testimony, which we had last time but couldn't get it to work, so we're showing it tonight. Our first speaker is Josh. Israel, to be followed by Jennifer Demasik, to be followed by Mary Mathewson. Mr. Israel? Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening. My name is Josh Israel. I am here to speak tonight in support of the diversity in Safe Schools resolution that you all just passed. I am thinking a lot

079about diversity lately. I recently learned that a high school friend of mine, the son of the principal of a Christian academy, converted to Judaism. This surprised me a little, but shouldn't have. I should be used to the unexpected by now. In recent years, one close Jewish friend of mine became a devout Episcopalian, while another became a Muslim. They remain the same people with whom I did some really bad theatrical productions, debated both at debate tournaments and over pizza, and stayed up late with watching cartoons, though each is now a bit grayer. I also recently learned that a friend and mentor I assume straight married a same-sex partner of more than a decade. I was delighted for him and for another friend, a brilliant colleague whose family brought her to America as a small child and

080who was able to work for our nonprofit thanks to President Obama's deferred action for childhood arrivals. She just married her longtime boyfriend and has just begun the long process of becoming a U.S. citizen. What these people have in common is that while something about each of them is very different than when I first met them, what has not changed is that they are fundamentally amazing people. For me, the biggest change in my life came a couple months ago when I became a father for the first time. I look at our two-month-old and I wonder what will come. This adorable baby's sexual orientation, gender identity, possible disabilities, religion, and future will be revealed to us in good time. I have made clear that loyalty to the Red Sox and Washington Nationals is non-negotiable, but I realize

081that even that is probably outside of my control. It is vital for us to celebrate and protect all of the diverse identities that make up our community, not just because that diversity strengthens and enriches us all, but also because we might someday be surprised to learn which of our kids may need those protections. Regardless of who my child proves to be, it will be a loved kid. And knowing that mine is just one of thousands of other newborns who will be FCPS students in the blink of an eye, I am deeply grateful to know that they will all be welcomed and protected by this school board's actions and his dedication to diversity and safe schools. I commend your commitment to inclusion and thank you for passing this resolution tonight. Thank you. Jennifer Demasic. Did I

082mess up your name? I'm so sorry. That's okay. Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today. My name is Jennifer Damoshek and I live in Burke. I am here to state my deep appreciation for the school board's strategic plan goal two, which is caring culture. I also strongly support the resolution that the school board just endorsed, which affirms the commitment of FCPS to the safety and support of all children, no matter where their family is from. A school system could be teaching children effectively and still profoundly fail those children and the community if the culture of the system lacked kindness and respect. Thank you for making it a priority to ensure all students and employees feel cared for, especially those who are most vulnerable. As a Christian, I try my best to follow

083the golden rule. As a mother of two children, I also committed to instilling the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself into the minds and hearts of my kids. Unfortunately, in our culture, we find a prevalence of unkindness, bullying, hate, and disrespect toward people who are different from us and people who think differently than we do. I believe that when some people are more likely to be targeted for harassment, abuse, or even violence in the school system and the community at large have a responsibility to ensure those people are protected and supported. Right now in our county, there are students and community members who are being targeted for police action and deportation. This is a time of fear, uncertainty, and anxiety for the immigrant community. Not only that, but those children are sometimes subjected to

084hurtful words and actions at school by their fellow students. I AM GRATEFUL FOR THE PASSING OF THE FAIRFAX COUNTY RESOLUTION ON DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION AND I STRONGLY SUPPORT IT. I ALSO KNOW THAT OFTEN KIDS WHO ARE GAY OR TRANSGENDER ARE THE TARGETS OF BULLYING. THANK YOU FOR TAKING CONCRETE STEPS TO PROTECT AND SUPPORT THESE STUDENTS. My son is graduating this year from Thomas Jefferson High School. When I asked my son if he knew any kids at his school who were gay or transgender and whether they had problems at school, he told me he did have friends who were LGBT and there were no issues that he knew of. I was glad to hear that and especially happy for those kids. All children and youth deserve a safe, caring space to be educated and make friends.

085I would also especially like to say how much I appreciate and support the specific LGBTQ training for clinical teams in FCPS that is described in the Caring Culture Report to the School Board. It is well known that LGBTQ youth are at increased risk of depression and suicide. Thank you for ensuring FCPS staff and students in grades 7 to 12 receive harassment training regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth. If these youth have a safe and caring environment, they have a stronger chance of growing up to be successful, healthy adults. Also, when schools help children understand and respect the normal differences between their fellow human beings, they are helping the greater society become better for all of us. I am glad to live in a county where diversity and respect for others is valued and

086encouraged. Thank you. Mary Mathewson to be followed by Robert Rigby to be followed by Dawn Haptonstall. Good evening. My name is Mary Mathewson and I'm a teacher and English department chair at West Potomac High School and I've been there for 15 years. I have a freshman at West Potomac and I've had three children graduate from there. In fact, my second child is an army captain preparing to deploy to Iraq. I'm also a board member of FCPS Pride and a Gay Straight Alliance sponsor. I serve those organizations as an ally because I have seen firsthand the difficulties that our LGBT youth encounter. As an English teacher, my primary function is to help young minds understand the power of words. Nothing makes me more sad than a student believing that any statement, regardless of intent, is just

087words. The resolution we're talking about says that Fairfax County believes that diversity is a strength and that FCPS will remain a safe, inclusive, and welcoming learning environment for all the children we serve. I'm troubled by recent very public vitriol expressed by adults toward immigrant children and those who identify with some facet of the LGBT community. We, as teachers and parents, do our level best to teach children to be kind, to be open to new things, and to be become the kind of person who makes their family and their community proud. At the same time, there are FCPS adults in positions of authority and visibility who are telling our children that some people are not actually deserving of those ideals. And they are doing so in very public, very direct, even threatening manners. It is my

088sincere hope that tonight's conversation ends that meanness. The word diversity is defined as a point of difference. Teachers are trained to celebrate children who are different in ability, in nationality, in socioeconomic status, and yes, even in gender. I feel certain that none of you here tonight would want your children treated as anything less than the special that they are. That diversity is one of the best parts of my job, as a teacher and as a parent. All four of my children are better for having experienced the true diversity that FCPS offers. In fact, my daughter gives FCPS a great deal of credit for her ability as a female army officer to train foreign soldiers who did not grow up in a world that is accepting of that kind of diversity. So I have a request

089that FCPS continue that proud tradition. and that this governing body affirms that the standard of accepting true diversity is not just a group of words that appears in a public statement. I ask that you affirm that the standard of accepting all children and of keeping all children safe is expected, pursued, and even demanded. Fairfax County Public Schools boasts some of the world's best individual schools only because we allow for the world's best students regardless of individual situations. Please make those situations, regardless of which category of diversity they fall under, accepted and safe. Thank you for your attention. Robert Rigby. Good evening, board members, Dr. Lockhart and staff. My name is Robert Rigby. I've been a teacher in FCPS for more than 18 years, and I am angry. I am pleased and impressed by the resolution

090tonight on safe schools, diversity, and inclusion. I am angered by the public attacks on immigrant and the LGBT communities of students and residents. Last month at this meeting, I heard what amounts to vitriol and acid aimed at the community of undocumented students. You may respond, we can't do anything about it. People have a right to their testimony. Yet I have seen and heard language on Twitter that explicitly riles... up such hateful rhetoric and in email and in online newspaper opinion pieces that do the same. Thank you for not being silent on this and passing the resolution. For myself, I know that more than about 40% of my students, English is not their native language, and I share walls with the level one ESOL classes, the students most recently moved here. These students are not dangerous

091and they are not exploiting our system. They are children and families that need to come here to be safe. While you welcome free speech, you must speak out as public officials against words that demonize our community. For the LGBT community, the rhetoric has gotten out of control. And again, I lay the task of ending that at the feet of public officials and those citizens who have assumed leadership roles. People speak of the desire for public discussion about transgender students. Yet the words I've heard put the lie to that. Every transgender person who has spoken at these meetings has been attacked personally from the audience, on Twitter accounts viewed by thousands, via organizational email blasts seen by tens of thousands. or from this podium at which I speak now during last month's meeting. It is dangerous

092for members of the transgender community to speak or even attend here. That's the lie. You cannot have public debate if one group is intimidated into silence. Some of the emails sent out by groups that claim legitimacy cause horror. One last week linked advocates for LGB students to vandalism and violence in New York. This can serve no purpose that is not inflammatory. The speech shown at the level of the school board and public leaders in Twitter, email, and citizen participation filters down through families and staff to schools and students. I've seen kids in our school who are scared, scared they will face violence over their gender identity. or nation of origin, scared that their parents will be sent to a foreign country that has never been their home, and scared that even coming here to speak

093about their experiences will subject them to ridicule, threats, or violence. My time is done. Thank you for listening. Dawn Hapton Stahl, to be followed by Cole Mallard, to be followed by Meg Kilgannon. Fairfax County Public School Board members, thank you for this opportunity to address you here this evening. My name is Dawn Haftenstall. I am a resident of Fairfax County and the parent of a fourth grader and an eighth grader. I stand here in support of safety and acceptance and inclusion of all students. There are some voices in opposition to this, voices that reflect fear, concern, and alarm for what-if scenarios. Those brash voices express discriminatory, exclusionary, and inhumane attitudes that are biased towards speculation of disaster. Instead, I implore you to focus on what is, the current reality of students, faculty, and staff who

094actually suffer at the hands of others because of groundless and prejudicial fears about race, ethnicity, culture, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The latter two categories are prevalent in my mind and heart right now. There are some of you on the board who do advocate for students based on what is. You alluded to that in a version of what was said here tonight. You're committed to a safe, inclusive, and welcoming learning environment for all the children you serve. Overall, this statement reflects passivity. As a board, where is your active advocacy for students in marginalized groups, the ones who need additional supports in place so that they have the same access to safe, inclusive, and welcoming environment you want for all students? Teachers within our schools emphasize clarity in their students' writing. I request that

095you be similarly direct in your written statements. The fear-mongering what-if statements are insidious and dangerously misleading. They attempt to dissuade you from acceptance and inclusion by fabricating the threat of a safety hazard. The what-is reality clearly demonstrates that transgender students are no threat to cisgender students. Please do not allow the nasty voices of those who are homophobic and transphobic to deter you from your commitment to all students and to educate and cherish them all as a legal and moral imperative. Thank you. Thank you. Paul Mallard, to be followed by Meg Poganen, to be followed by George Becerra. Mr. Mallard. My name is Cole Mallard. I'm a 40-year Fairfax County resident, homeowner, taxpayer, father of three children who over the last 30 years have attended Fairfax County Public Schools in and out. First of all, I'd

096like to say what I'm going to address to you tonight is about transgenderism primarily and the regulations and how the board has handled that. And I want to preface it by saying I have no problem with diversity. I have no problem with immigration, inclusivity, or caring culture. But I am concerned about the way that the Fairfax County Public School Board has handled the transgender issue in terms of regulation and finances. It seems evident that the FCPS is failing to provide a safe school environment for 99% of the student population. On July 1st, 2016, last year, Fairfax County Public Schools released regulations for implementing transgenderism in public schools. These regulations, and we're talking about the issue of regulations now, were not properly announced to the public by the superintendent or by any FCPS official. They were

097imposed on every single student without parental notification or consent or ability to object, and that causes fear and panic from many of the students. Students face suspension and loss of school privileges for noncompliance, also considered disrespectful. The mandates and content included disregarding known science that DNA determines sex at conception, male or female, permanent and irreversible. Allowed access to all facilities, not only bathrooms, but allowing males to use female showers and locker rooms with no specific exemptions. This is causing fear and panic. Remember, we're talking about the regulations that were passed in July. These mandates compel some parents to take their daughters out of the public school system. forced access to all activities, allowing males to compete in female sports, even if it results in unfair competition and personal injury. All school personnel were forced to

098support such activities, despite their diverse moral, scientific, and religious knowledge. Such regulations violate the First Amendment's protections for free speech, religious association, and the press. Above all, the regulations do not consider the diverse needs for safety, health, and well-being of the 99% of the general student population, nor the need to notify and obtain consent from opposing parents and their students. We request the Fairfax County School Board to demonstrate their commitment to diversity and conduct an impact analysis on the regulations on the 99% of the general student population. Taxpayer dollars should always be used to ensure public education is made available to all students in a safe, non-hostile learning environment with a focus on academics. Thank you. Thank you. I do just want to say to members of the audience watching that that regulation was not

099passed. It's on hold. It's never been passed. It's on hold. Yes. Thank you for coming out tonight. Good evening. I'm glad to see you tonight. I was here just last week. I'd planned on taking a week off, but circumstances require me to come again because this diversity and inclusion deal that you just did doesn't seem to include a lot of diversity of thought or the inclusion of anybody's opinions but yours. Nobody gets to give you public comment before you vote on that. The Board of Supervisors passed it, but that doesn't mean that you have to go along with it. I think the school board is also an elected body. People elected you to serve them and it would be good for the school board to come up with their own statement of diversity inclusion if

100that's really something that needs to be done. The statement of diversity inclusion that was passed by the Board of Supervisors is very carefully crafted to say very little and yet mean a lot. It's very political. That body is made up of mostly Democrats, very partisan Democrats. As I noticed, this board is too mostly made up of Democrats. So naturally, there would be a lot of agreement among you all, and that would leave some out. That's not very inclusive. We've had over the course of, I've been to the school board meetings here since the beginning of the school year and I have heard speakers, I have heard a young mother who's a sexual assault victim, I've heard a clergy member with concerns about Head Start children, I've heard a Syrian national stand before you almost weeping

101because he had to remove his children from the public schools because of your recent actions. How are you including those people in any kind of dialogue or any kind of conversation about what you do as a board? This happens week after week after week and there's nothing but silence from you until a very carefully crafted statement, which is excruciatingly full of nothing and yet full of something, comes before you and you decide to go ahead and pass it. I I don't understand how you can pass agreement with the policy that says that community policing requires the trust of the public. Are we supposed to trust you to do our business when you don't follow your own processes to pass this resolution? Are we supposed to trust you after the hasty way that certain policies have

102been passed and yet other policies like changing the school start times were studied for 10 years before any decision was made? This leaves a lot of people in the county feeling bullied, frankly, and it's not appreciated. We see. We see what happened here. Thank you. Thank you. George Becerra to be followed by Elizabeth Lower Bosch to be followed by Mary Ann Burke. Mr. Becerra? Good evening, Superintendent Lockhart, Chairman Evans, and the rest of the school board. Thank you for passing the resolution. A couple comments what I heard today on your forum session. First of all, I haven't heard much about, except for Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. Darinette Koufax, about the One Fair Facts resolution. From my understanding, that was a public policy that was passed last July unanimously by both boards of this county, which

103set... action public policy guiding staff to make it happen. The people behind me, if you don't know what it is, maybe if staff can post it on board docs, because that's where the policy is at. This right here, this piece of paper, is really not too much. It says the same things. So please post that up so the people can be educated about that. So that was unanimously, again, all Republicans and Democrats who voted for that last year, the retreat. A couple of things I also heard today, Ms. Evans, you said March 27th you pass it out. From my understanding from board docs and work sessions and public records, what were you guys doing at the end of March? I'm not going on specific dates, but you said end of March you were doing something.

104So what were you guys doing last week? I think you guys know the answer. So I can understand where it might have slipped email-wise. So answer that. I'm sorry that you missed it. Other topics, things I heard in the forum. School board member Wilson, you mentioned, does this pass the legal test, the county test, the attorney test? It did. Yes, you did mention that. Go look at Board of Supervisors meeting yesterday on Tuesday because they had the same discussion and they passed it after they got that approval from county attorneys. The whole statement has to do with all legalities. Other aspect, you said, how did this start? Well, it started because the chairman of the board. Bulova reached out to the community, reached out to having forums at the Jewish Community Center where Barbara Comstock

105was there. So she was here in the community. Where Supervisor Cook was at the public safety, who was the public safety chair, her didn't hear back from the ICE regional office director. So he had concerns of what was going on. So that's why he voted on this yesterday, on Tuesday. Another aspect that came about is Chairman Bulova did the NAACP head of forum. that Ms. Karen Corbett Sanders was there. So the chairman was listening to her community. This is why it came up. Other aspects, Ms. Schultz, I understand you said, how did this come up when people are here? Well, when people sign up at six in the morning, it's a drop-down menu. As you know, they chose it. We don't fill in topics. So I don't know if there's other documents. I can maybe

106understand you on that aspect, but the topic was there. They signed up for it. So it wasn't a surprise hit why people were here. Other aspects like to hear is community. What does community mean? Is it school community or is it the county? Always to get to debate. We're all one county here. So I hate going back and forth. Another thing I'd like to mention is I have to trust y'all. I have to trust, you know why I have to trust y'all as elected officials to understand a diverse community? Because I don't see it in front of me sometimes. When one out of the 12 planning commissioners is minority, when two out of the 10, two out of the 12 school board members are minority, When one out of the 10 the Board of Supervisors

107are minority, when two out of the 26 General Assembly members are minority, which makes it six out of the 60 people in this county who represent us, I don't see that diversity with 10%. And I will wrap it up. 10%. When by 2025, this county will be a majority-minority. In 2044, 70% of this county would be minority-minority. So thank you very much. Thank you. Elizabeth Lower Bosch. Hi, thank you. I'm Elizabeth Lauer-Bash. I'm here today as the parent of two Fairfax County Public School students who attend Glasgow Middle and Falls Church High School. These are two of the most diverse schools in the county. Our PTA meetings are simultaneously translated into both Spanish and Arabic, and we've been asked for more languages. We're working on it. I strongly support the Fairfax County Statement adopted this

108week and appreciate your support for it. Thank you for the commitment. It is needed. I wrote here in what I prepared in advance that passing a resolution is the easy part. I'm not sure after the past two hours that's a reasonable thing to say, but it is still the easy part. Making it reality is much harder. Building a caring community, building a caring culture, it's an ongoing effort. We're working on this every day in the schools. It has to require both these kinds of high-level statements of principle, but also concrete action. I've got some actions to suggest. First is really about making sure that counselors, teachers, everyone at school has access to the training that they need to respond to children who have experienced trauma, including the stress that people are experiencing now due to

109fear of separation, as well as children who have experienced bullying for race, religion, immigration status, sexual orientation, gender identity. From what I hear from my kids, it is getting worse than it has been. There is more bully teasing, not huge levels, but yeah. On the immigration enforcement, commit that immigration agents will not be permitted on school grounds unless they have a signed warrant. That's what the law requires. If people have a warrant, obviously we should follow it, but otherwise keep people safe. And restrict the sharing of students and staff files that might be used to ascertain the legal status of students, their families and staff, unless required by law. allow community groups to provide know your rights trainings in school buildings. I also do support the regulation that was proposed last year but not adopted

110regarding transgender students and protections. The federal government is not going to act. We mean to. Transgender kids are far more risk of being bullied or bothered than of hurting anyone else. I know this isn't easy, but we ask our children to do hard things every day when they matter. Standing up against the bully is hard. For some of our kids, just walking into school every day is scary and requires bravery. We should ask no less of ourselves. Thank you. Thank you. Mary Ann Burke. Good evening. Some of the recent statements made at school board meetings has compelled me and to come here tonight and speak and for this For that reason I'm going to make four points First the reputation of Fairfax County Public School is far-reaching So what goes on in our schools can

111affect our property values It is the diversity and the willingness to include people who are not like us that draw at least some families to this county, such as my family. I graduated three kids from Fairfax County Schools, two from Woodson and one from Thomas Jefferson. Second point, transgender people are already among the most vulnerable and marginalized members of our community. Here are some statistics from two surveys of gender nonconforming students, and I have references. that I believe you all have. 78% reported significant abuse at school directly related to them being transgender. 31% noted the abuse was from teachers. Between 50% to 60% of transgender students have experienced sexual violence. 52% avoided using public restrooms because they were afraid of confrontation. 23% limited the amount that they ate or drank to avoid using the restroom.

11215% of gender nonconforming students left school between kindergarten and 12th grade due to mistreatment. Third point, there is no evidence that transgender people negatively impact public safety. The claim that there is evidence is a red herring, and that means inaccurate information that is used to distract people from another issue. This ploy of providing inaccurate information to stoke fear and accomplish another purpose is not new, and similar arguments about predators have been used to marginalize other groups. Most recently, it was the fear of Hispanic immigrants when there is no evidence to suggest that they are any more likely to attack women or children than the general population. Also, it wasn't long ago that it was legal to marginalize dark-skinned people using a similar unfounded fear of sexual attack. Those that continue to spread these stories about

113transgender people committing sexual attacks make no one safer and can damage the most vulnerable among us by inciting harassment and violence and contributing to the already high rate of suicide in the transgender community. Fourth point, the safety of our children in school bathrooms may be an issue, but it is not transgender women or girls who perpetrate these attacks. Signs for women and girls do not provide security in a public bathroom. Men who want to sexually assault someone go into the bathroom regardless of whether it corresponds to their gender. So if there is a concern about safety in our schools, there are ways to fix that. structural ways, there are many resources. Thank you. At this time, we will replay a video submitted by a student for our March 23rd meeting. As you may remember, we

114experienced a few technical issues that night, and so we weren't able to play his video. So this is submitted by Adelso Noriega. I go to transitional high school. I like because... We have good teachers. I like it because we have good teachers and good students. They work hard and want to learn. I want to get an education so I can get better job because I learn more English and more math. Thank you for Change to little. Worth the wait. We now turn to 3.02, student representative matters, and I call on Ms. Chu. Thank you. First, we'd like to recognize Boy Scouts from Troop 1887. Are they still in the audience? Well, Boy Scouts from Troop 1887 were here completing their citizenship in the community merit badge today. I believe they left, but I would just

115like to first recognize those Boy Scouts. I'm excited to announce that this past Monday, the Superintendent Student Advisory Council elected the new student representative for the 2017 to 2018 school year. She is Niharika Vatakonda from Thomas Jefferson High School, who is unfortunately out of town today, but would like to send her best and is very excited to join in the summer. I'd like to thank Hayfield Secondary School for hosting the election, as well as the candidates for their passion in serving our community. I was so impressed, as was Mr. McElveen. who's able to stay for much of their speeches with their platforms. And they were so passionate in advocating for issues such as preservation and increased focus on the arts, bridging the opportunity gap starting at pre-K, increasing awareness of issues such as distracted driving

116and substance abuse, promoting acceptance in all schools, and expanding Fairfax County's project-based learning initiatives. So all the candidates were wonderful and it was wonderful to see them demonstrate such great care towards these issues. In addition, the SAC was very excited to see the new student wellness tips and strategies page on our website that provides mental health and wellness information targeted specifically to our students. As the year comes to a close, the SAC is finishing its mission to contribute to existing databases on mental health and wellness resources such as these. And at the end of the year, they are currently preparing right now for their presentation too. So they're very glad to see this website up and running. So again, I'd just like to thank you guys for a lovely year. It's weird seeing the new

117student representative be elected, but in light of that election, I'd just like to again reinforce that our students are doing so much for our community and all the candidates are very much looking forward to participating more on county leadership in the coming years. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Chiu. And it's hard to believe that we're coming to the end of your time with us. We want to thank you for everything that you've done and continue to do. Thank you. We move to item 3.03, goal 2, caring culture. And I'm going to call on Dr. Lockhart for the introduction. Thank you, Madam Chair. This evening we're proud to present. Strategic Plan Goal 2, Caring Culture. The report will outline the major strategic plan activities for the coming year that are designed to address areas in need

118of improvement, as well as provide an update on the monitoring metrics and the current work that supports Goal 2, Caring Culture. We are going to start the presentation with a short video, so we'll roll that now. These Get Active contests are great. You're laughing, you're having a good time. You get camaraderie. I lost 25 pounds and my daughter lost 20 pounds. I attended the Expecting Parents workshop. It was extremely informative. I did the American Adventure Challenge. Programs like this make you want to be with an employer that respects you and values you. They provided calendars, every form you needed to fill out, timelines, something for your fridge. even when you needed to do what. Being in Fairfax County, we're lucky because it's such a great school system. You know, there's great teachers, great staff. But

119another, like, I guess thing that comes along with that is stress. We feel like a pressure to succeed. And I think the main goal on focusing on mental health is kind of to alleviate that stress, to kind of get kids to slow down and realize, hey, like, it's not all about getting that A. It's not all about getting to college. One of my friends was going through a lot of personal issues, and I found out about these youth first aid mental health training courses, and I helped them get to a professional. Our counseling office has implemented wellness weeks and they brought in therapy dogs one day during lunch and just kind of fun things that kind of breaks up the week and gives you something to look forward to. I feel appreciative that we have

120these opportunities and these resources. I definitely think the administration wants to help the students and make us feel... really comfortable in our school. I want most for students to feel that even when they're in a difficult place or dealing with something that they can't control, they do have support and they can balance out the frustration and the hardship that they're going through in productive ways. From offering employee wellness programs to focusing on students' mental health, FCPS is truly a caring community. We are so proud to be a part of Fairfax County Public Schools. It truly is a caring culture focused on the well-being of all of its students, parents, teachers, and staff. Okay, so I'd like to introduce Dr. Chase Ramey, Dr. Jane Lipp, and Mr. Matt Guilfoyle, who will be presenting the caring culture

121presentation. Welcome, Dr. Wood. Thank you. Good evening. We'd like to... Welcome you to our presentation of the Goal 2 Caring Culture Report. Our focus will be on committing to fostering a responsive, caring, and inclusive culture where all feel valued, supported, and hopeful. We plan to give a brief overview tonight for the Goal 2 Report in our presentation this evening and look forward to meeting with you all when we do the school board work session on April 24th. So, this report is organized by listing the desired outcomes, the monitoring metrics that you've chosen, and the bodies of work that we've been involved in relating to strategies five, six, and seven. Chase, Matt, and I will be presenting this evening. Our first slide has to do with student satisfaction and it's from our secondary school climate survey.

122And you'll notice the positive data in terms of students feeling that they're treated fairly. The rules are consistent. Staff assist them and they are motivated by school. This data shows the students feel safe and that we provide support to them. However, there's always room for improvement and there's concern about our positive relationships with staff. So to address this, you'll see in the report a lot of our work on responsive instruction and cultural proficiency. And we believe these initiatives are going to help us with this work. We move on to staff satisfaction where staff feel safe and recognized. They appreciate the collaboration, mutual respect, and support of colleagues. In terms of areas for improvement, this data demonstrates our need for continuing to work on positive communication among all school stakeholders, school, home, and the community. For

123the second year in a row we did summer clinical, we provided summer clinical services for students and families and we invited them in for individual sessions to help them over the summer months and to work with them on positive student and family behavior. And again our feedback for this has been very positive and we'll be continuing this again next summer. Another metric that we had in this report had to do with student discipline data. We chose to use the 2013-14 data compared to our data, our 16-17 data isn't in yet, but we compared it to the 15-16 data because we wanted to compare data prior to our implementation of the SOSA program and then what has transpired since that time. If you recall, the SOSAs are involved in all of our high schools and they

124really work on providing case management support to students and families in addressing. ACADEMIC, ATTENDANCE, SOCIAL EMOTIONAL ISSUES. AND THE DATA DOES SHOW A REDUCTION IN OUR DISCIPLINE. Other initiatives that we've been involved in to really address discipline include our responsive instruction efforts, and we're continuing to provide resources and training to all of our schools. You'll also see here the specific breakdown of training, where we've been involved, and what specifically we've been doing in terms of that. We also have our positive behavioral approach, which again is scaled to working with all of our schools, which is a challenge, with 196 sites, but we continue to put forth effort on this. Another thing that we believe has contributed to our positive behavior has to do with our continuing work on restorative justice. This shows you our referrals

125and the data over the last four years. Again, looking across elementary, middle, and high schools as we're invited in. We also have been doing a lot of work with recidivism and really trying to reduce that and really increase our improved student behavior. So you'll see a little breakdown in where we use restorative justice conferences. This slide highlights our positive work with the staff, police, and the court system. This shows our referrals for restorative justice activities rather than referring students to our court system. It also shows you a higher number of staff and students being involved in this process and that we have low recidivism rates for students. Another area or metric for strategy five has to do with customer service. We're working to provide greater customer service across the district. We do not currently have

126a division-wide program to date, but individual departments, offices, and schools collect this data. Here are two examples of that. The Department of Information Technology tracks customer experiences through its IT desk service. and HR through its HR connect. The data reveals positive customer experiences. There is always room for improvement and the HR department and our office of communication and community outreach are working to create and adopt division wide customer services model. These conclude the metrics for strategy five, so I'm now going to turn it over to Matt who will look at strategy six. Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Lipp. Tonight I'll be addressing in conjunction with Dr. Ramey's strategy six that focuses on fostering active and positive communication engagement for students, staff, families, and the community with the desired outcomes as shown here. Within

127this area, we have two primary monitoring metrics that includes website analytics along with levels of engagement and satisfaction with learning and work environments by division stakeholders. I think it's important to note that as we look at the website analytics, we've made significant progress from a year ago when I first reported to you. A year ago, our external website, FCPS.edu, was not addressing the needs of primary audiences for this platform. Our parents and our prospective employers are our primary audience for this platform. Our website was not in line with numerous accessibility requirements. This includes the extensive use of PDFs. documents that were not accessible. The number one page on our website was file not found. Our previous website had no content management platform, no workflows, and required all of our users at both the central office

128and at the school level to have HTML programming skills to make even basic updates. Each school website has to be updated individually, and there was no method for us to push an alert across the entire school system such as today, this afternoon, where we had experienced some interesting weather. Additionally, we couldn't view it on a mobile device, or at least it was very difficult. It was not a responsive website. This is especially problematic as we look at our growing demographic of millennial parents and other communities where the phone is the primary web delivery platform. To address these issues, we embarked on an aggressive timeline to implement a new modern web content management system that met all these accessibility requirements, was mobile responsive, included workflows, and did not require users to know HTML. This required a

129substantial effort by dozens of staff from across FCPS in order to launch before the school year began. This included developing from scratch thousands of pages of content and migrating thousands of pages of documents from the old website to the new one. It's important to note that no documents were deleted. However, some content didn't migrate due to non-compliance with ADA standards. And additionally, any documents that were already resided in board docs were not touched. The FCPS.edu website is designed primarily as a resource for parents and prospective employees, while our intranet, FCPSNet, is designed as the primary resource for our employees. Unfortunately, we've had significant inconsistency in the use of each of our platforms, causing confusion for staff. We attempted to improve this confusion by moving employee content primarily to our intranet. However, we received substantial feedback

130from our employees following the launch of the website that they prefer to use the public website as their delivery platform for their information. And as such, we've moved much employee content back to our public website. And following the launch, we are now continuing to look at better solutions to this longer-term challenge. Beyond the central website, we have worked to deploy 15 schools in our initial phase, and we plan to have more than 55 up by the summer, with a goal of at least two-thirds of our schools on this platform by winter break. As we look at the specific analytics, we monitor the usage on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. We currently average more than 28,000 users a day. We average more than half a million users a month. On weather closure days, we receive

131more than half a million visits per day who are coming to the website to see the information available. As I mentioned, our number one page on the previous website was file not found. We have made substantial improvement in reducing this error rate. We've reduced that by more than 90%. We do have more work to do as we ensure that we have redirects in place for old links, update our school websites that may have older links, and update many of our documents that also had prior links to our website. The majority of our users, it's important to note, are under 44 and the majority are female. When we look at our top pages, as you note here, employee resources is our second most used after the home page. and the demographics match our workforce. So as

132you can clearly see, our number one user of our external public website are our employees. And again, we didn't design the website for our employees and therefore we know we have much more work to do to address this challenge. As I mentioned, the website is never done. We are continuing to make improvements and refinements every day and every month based on user feedback, surveys, and studies of our analytics. This graph here shows the number of inquiries our office received following the launch of the website. We did have substantial challenges at the immediate launch of the website. This was primarily caused by the timing of the launch, which was on the first day of returning teachers this year, which in hindsight being 2020, is not a day I would have picked to launch the website. and

133we would have done it much differently. These problems were addressed as rapidly and as quickly as we could. We're pleased to report that our inquiries and our problems are substantially down and again we take every inquiry seriously and try to address it in a timely manner. We continue to receive significant positive feedback from our schools and our schools that have moved to this new platform. We've received positive feedback from school-based staff, curators, and principals. As you see, some of the actual comments here, such as the principal at Stratford Landing, who's been using the website herself to send messages, school-based technology specialists who are getting time back in the classroom as opposed to having to spend time on the website, and parents who find our accessible technology to be significantly improved, and teachers who have actually

134begun to use the website as a real-world... skill development opportunity for students. We know that people don't simply generally just come to your website and browse. We know we have to push people that information. And so we have extensively embarked on using News You Choose at both the central office and across our schools to do this. And as the data here show, we know that this strategy is working. Our fourth most, our driver of traffic, our fourth most driver of traffic are our GovDelivery emails, the News You Choose. It's driven more than 500,000 people back to the website to read more information. So we know that that is working and it is well ahead of things like Yahoo and Bing. I'm pleased to we have now more than 358,000 individuals who are using our News

135You Choose service and we've sent more than nearly 5 million emails just this school year alone. This effort has resulted in being the fourth most source of traffic to the website. Lastly, on the web analytics, I think it's important to note that our other web presence includes our social media presence. We've increased our Twitter following to 228,000 followers, which is an increase of more than 380% in the last 24 months. We have a substantial Facebook following, and our YouTube channel recently exceeded more than 1 million views, and we average more than 56,000 views a month to that channel. We've posted more than 200 different videos alone just this school year. We're working to grow our social media outreach as well to some extent. of our other communities including our Spanish speaking communities. Turning to our

136second measure, levels of engagement and satisfaction with learning and work environments by division stakeholders. I'd like to highlight the close collaboration between my office and Dr. Ramey's. To improve engagement, we've increased our level of communication with our employees. This school year, we began sending weekly updates to staff, along with numerous other outreach mechanisms from our HR department and other departments to our employees. We also began the first use of paid social media for recruitment, which we've seen demonstrate a high rate of return in promoting our recruitment events. We also showcase many positive employee stories on a weekly basis through our features and our ongoing Our FCPS campaign that's been widely supported across the school system. I'm going to now turn it over to Dr. Ramey, who's going to dive into this in more detail. Thank

137you. Good evening. I'm very pleased to be a part of tonight's presentation. Normally, Premier Workforce is where I spend my time, but I have a firm belief that a positive culture and a caring, excuse me, a positive climate and caring culture are crucial to everything that we do. As Matt foreshadowed, I'm going to tie some of our work around engagement and caring culture to our employees. Last year, FCPS partnered with K-12 Insight to provide the first employee engagement survey to all contracted employees. We launched the survey again this February. K-12 Insight will join us at the June work session to provide a summary, overview, and analysis of this year's data. In addition, the board will be receiving the division-wide report in this week's superintendent's update. However, I would like to point out a few of

138our results from the survey. First, participation this year. Over 18,000 employees took this year's survey, representing about 65% of our contracted staff, an increase of 2% over last year's total. As we look at overall engagement, we've seen our highly engaged level for employees go up by five percentage points, where our less engaged percentage has declined by five percentage points. Looking at this compared to last year, we see that employees this year are more highly engaged in their work than they were a year ago. This finding is driven by nine engagement items. Employees were asked for responses on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being strongly disagree to 5 being strongly agree. As you can see, our responses rated higher in every single category this year. Again, feeding into that overall increased engagement level by

139our employees. As I said, K-12 Insight will join us in June to dive deeper into some of this work around the engagement survey. One of the items they will talk about are what they call engagement drivers, one of those being employee recognition. In this year's survey, we saw our greatest gains in this area with over eight percentage points gained by our employees in terms of their reflections on how we recognize our employees. We think that is partially due to our revamped Outstanding Employee Award program that we instituted this year. I'd like to pause and thank the members of the HR Business Services team, Dr. Ivey, and our Regional Assistant Superintendents, our Executive Principals, and our Principals who truly helped lead this work and let us recognize employees this year not only globally for FCPS, but

140the local level, starting at the school, pyramid, and region level. So when we look at the enhancements, we've increased the number of awards from 8 to 12. adding a second outstanding teacher of the year, adding a second outstanding new teacher of the year, and then dividing our leader, support, and hourly employees into two categories, school-based and non-school-based. This provides us an opportunity to recognize even more of the great work that's going on throughout the county. Today was one of our interview days for the LT team, and I think I can speak for my LT colleagues that they are some of the most uplifting days we have to hear from our employees about the amazing things they're doing and how much they really love their work and simply coming here and serving the students of the

141county. So as you look at this, to date, we've already recognized 512 employees. Through the new program and the ability to recognize at the school, pyramid, and region level, we've seen that number almost quadruple from last year. And as we look forward to our honors night in June, where we'll announce the division-wide winners in each category, we're anticipating recognizing 65 finalists, as opposed to 26 in the past. Now, formal recognition is great, but we know it's only one way to engage our employees and one way of showing we care. Informal recognition is just as important. That can be a simple thank you or a note scribbled to say, hey, you're doing a great job and put in a mailbox. That happens on a daily basis in our schools and our offices and across our departments.

142The FCPS CARES program was designed to allow employees to recognize their colleagues more frequently for the great work they're doing. They can log onto the portal through the website and send a note about the great things they see employees doing across the division. Through a partnership with the foundation we were able to enhance this program this year. Each month a committee of employees gets together and reviews the cares that have been submitted. They then select one honoree from each region and from the departments to recognize as the FCPS Cares Honoree of the Month. This individual's provided a certificate, a pen, and through the generosity of the foundation, a celebration at their work site so they can celebrate with the colleagues the success for all of them. This is a picture from one of our recent

143FCPS cares at one of our elementary schools. After the custodian was recognized as the honoree of the month, unprompted and unscripted, nearly every single member of the staff took a turn talking about the positive contribution he makes to their classrooms and the school. And I kid you not, the smiles were only... only interrupted by tears as they were just so joyful and being able to celebrate not only his success but what he's doing for the school overall again we're very appreciative for the foundation for offering us another avenue of way we celebrate the success of our employees with that i'd like to turn it back over to dr lip to move on to strategy 7. thank you dr randy Okay, strategy seven has to do with the health and well-being of our students and our

144staff. So we go directly to our summary data for our use survey data. You can see our improvements here and you can see some of our concerns. We have changed the LSC to LSD three times. I'm not really sure why that doesn't stay, but whatever that message may be. Correct, correct. We are continuing on working to provide prevention and training through our health classes, our counseling sessions, and our evening programs for students and families that are sponsored by both community and our school agencies. We had some new items in our youth survey from previous years and these had to do with texting as well as stress. And so you can see some levels there. And you'll see later on that the stress factor is one of the things that our student government leaders are working

145on. Additionally, we have a wonderful new resource we'd like to highlight some of our initiatives that will help address our mental health and wellness for staff and students. And this has to do with our circle on student health and wellness that's posted on our Department of Special Services website. And this will give specific info and resources for each of the 11 areas for schools and staffs to use. This resource was... created in conjunction with our student health advisory committee and our school staff and it's been found to be a great resource for our school community today i'd also like to give a shout out to laura and the student advisory council for all their work on our focus on mental health and wellness. They've really done a good job of going back to their schools

146and directing them to look at their pyramid data, to analyze it for their students, and to use it to plan mental health and wellness initiatives for their school throughout the year. And I think you'll agree that this has gone from previous years of a one to two activity a week event to things sponsored throughout the year at a lot of our schools. One of our other measures that you asked to see were our levels of bullying and harassment, and the next couple of slides will highlight both the data and our efforts. We are seeing lower than national percentages for data in terms of students who are experiencing being bullied on school property, which is a good sign. We're continuing to look at our system in providing professional development for both students and our staff. And

147last year we also developed survey data for our intellectually disabled students as well as our English learners so that all of our students would have a greater voice in sharing information about the schools, both their experiences and what else they thought that we needed to do. We continue to offer specific lessons to students across the district. Our counselors, our teachers, and our administrators are helping us with this. An additional measure that you asked to see had to do with attendance rates. And so that's a metric that we provided information for you on in terms of years and total numbers of absences. You'll see on this slide that kindergartners have a higher absentee rate. Then it decreases for us across elementary years. And then it increases as we go into high school. We believe in talking

148with school staff that some of the reasons for the higher absenteeism rates in high school has to do with students working late and trying to provide childcare for younger siblings. So in an effort to address that, we're continuing to work with our social workers, psychologists, a lot of our support staff and administrators on our Check and Connect efforts. We're trying to really provide focused behavior management to students to try to eliminate barriers and increase the implementation of strategies that will increase our attendance. We also are trying to work with the community through our attendance task force, which is a Fairfax County initiative and trying to work on specific ways that we can get the community involved to help us in terms of improving our attendance rates so that it's both the school and a community

149effort. We also have changed one attendance officer position to an intervention specialist to again get at getting that information out to all school staff as what's the best practice, what's our research, and what can we do to improve a national issue of attendance. One last slide that relates to drug use and alcohol has to do with specific data here and trying to improve our efforts. So you'll see positives in terms of a decline in self-reporting on tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana with higher prevalence rates than the national average for LSD, cocaine, and heroin. And thus we go to trying to work with our community partners to provide evening programs for the community as well as school related information via our health classes and work through our student leadership groups. Another area that we took a look

150at was demonstrated citizenship skills. So here the focus is on training staff and service learning opportunities and promoting student engagement and involvement in those student learning activities. Another area of emphasis for us involves our efforts to continue to promote and increase executive functioning skills in our students through specific curriculums across elementary, middle, and high school. And you'll see information on that here, as well as continuing to link counselors and teachers to providing instruction to students in these specific areas. The report, the 81-page report highlights programs and experiences that promote executive functioning and the data is outlined in the report on three additional programs and initiatives that we have been utilizing. And a final point for us relates to improving inclusive schools and what we do to promote that. We've been providing a lot of training

151to our staff on inclusionary practices, providing them with professional development and training opportunities so that we can improve and strengthen our inclusive practices. And now I'm going to turn it back over to Chase. We'll talk to you more about the staff initiatives. Thank you and I promise this is our last handoff of the evening. It's good. Well when we talk about benefits It is, exactly. Right. And when we talk about benefits, it's more than about just recruiting and retaining a premier workforce. It really goes to providing a caring culture for our employees. And this doesn't hit home any closer than we talk about our health and wellness resources. And at the foundation of this is our Get Active Wellness platform. It's our main area for wellness initiatives for staff, with over 9,000 staff members currently

152signed up. and we're seeing the access increasing as more than 1,000 employees have signed up in the last year for our Get Active Wellness platform design. One of our new initiatives under this platform this year is a pilot we've begun called Right Maternity Program Incentive. Employees that take advantage of this program are eligible to receive a $150 incentive for completing a pre- and postnatal questionnaire. This year during our pilot, we had 37 employees participate. The feedback we've gotten has been very positive, and so it's an area that we look to expand as we move forward. Another support resource that's been around for our employees for several years is our Employee Assistance Program, or EAP. EAP services are available to employees via the phone or online and provide support for a range of services from mental

153wellness to financial and legal advice and even wedding planning. We've seen a steady increase in our employees' utilization of this, revealing that they not only find this valuable, but they trust the information that they receive from these resources. And we only expect that engagement to continue to go up. Coupled with this is our EAP critical response services team. This is made up of a group of individuals from across several departments, including Dr. Lipp's office and folks from HR. This team responds to critical needs at schools, offices, or buildings. offices or departments, excuse me. You can see that the utilization of these teams has also steadily increased. This is not due to an increase in critical events, but rather a realization by our principals, our directors, and our employees of the value that these teams can

154provide when they need to call upon them for resources. Switching gears and looking at our health plans, last year the superintendent created a health plan task force which issued several recommendations. Several of those touched on health and wellness. One being the implementation of a wellness incentive, another being a tobacco-free discount, and then a re-emphasis on a communication plan. As we look at the health assessment wellness incentive, we brought that into programming this year, so it's live right now for Plain Year 2017. And employees are eligible for $100 health and wellness incentive if they complete a confidential questionnaire related to their general health and well-being. As we look forward to next year, we're finalizing. Our proposal for a tobacco-free incentive for employees, we haven't quite come to what the actual incentive will be, but we're looking

155for a discount of between 10% and 15%, and employees will have to certify during open enrollment that they are tobacco-free. Tonight I'd like to end highlighting one of our employees favorite programs our expecting parent workshops We launched it last year in February and since we've had over 400 people attend and participate They're provided tips about pregnancy provided information on programs through our health providers and also information on our leave and disability programs that are available internally to our employees. And the onesies, not just for the camera, we do actually hand them out. And so if you participate, you do get a onesie. It's been so popular that they had to give me one of the old ones because we've had a waiting list. Thankfully, they did not have one in my size. So, but we

156will continue to... No, there is not an announcement. No. For... I am blushing. You got me. I know. For presentation purposes only. Thank you. Thank you. But I'm glad that we could make you smile because we do see these wellness and health initiatives as very positive things that we're doing for our employees and for everyone associated with FCPS. And these hopefully highlight a few. So regardless if it's resource stewardship or building and maintaining a premier workforce. or supporting success across the division. We're committed to creating a caring culture for everyone within the division. With that, that concludes our presentation. We thank you for our time. We look forward to the work session so we can explore these topics more, but we'll entertain any questions you have now as well. Excellent. Thank you so much to

157all of you for an excellent presentation. I do have quite a few people who have questions, so I am going to start with Mrs. Schultz. So I'm going to ask patients because I did this by slide number. So if we could go to slide seven, please. I don't remember what it is, but I wrote it down so I know that when I see it. And I'm sorry, Dr. Lipp, this is the first couple are going to be for you. I have to give you as many questions as I can while I can, right? Okay, so yeah, this is the first statistic I have a question about. At the top of, well, first of all, I don't know, what is the climate survey? I mean, I know we survey, survey, survey our kids, but what's a

158climate survey and when is it? A secondary climate survey is given by the state of Virginia and it's for grades 9, 10, 11, and 12. And this was last year's data. Is it given in the fall or in the spring? Fall, I believe. Okay. So I don't understand the first two bullets because 85% said they feel safe. school but then 84 percent said that if they tell a teacher that is oh so they're saying that they tell a teacher correct correct those are two different questions we're just summarizing the data for you okay does that make sense okay and then the areas for improvement it says 46 report some teachers at the school pick on them Or pick on certain students. So it could be them or other students. I don't know. It's just a

159little bit of a dissonance there. It's like, okay, they can tell the teacher, but they're saying, you know, and I'm sure we'll have, so when we come to work session, I'll probably have some more questions about that. Could we do slide 17, please? Yeah, and it does cause each school to really look at their data in depth because you want to look at is there a perception? Do you feel like you can get help or does it look like other adults are interacting either? Inappropriately towards you or someone else. Could you just explain at the bottom portion of the slide? What are the parenthetical? What does that mean? So it says fight 29 youth. I mean fight 20 90 what? Disorderly conduct. Does that mean only one violation? It means that they were called in

160to do restorative justice conferences. Those were the topics that schools called them for help with or that they provided a restorative conference for. But are the 29, 15, 13, 7, and 1, are those individual numbers only that many? Yes, that they used restorative justice for. Wow, that's good news. I mean, that's really, I mean, so it's just a little bit unclear there about what that means. I'm sorry, slide 18? November. So at some point, I have been talking about looking at, or for some time, I've been... when do infractions occur? Because there is CDC statistical data, particularly on suicides and suicide, you know, unfortunately successful suicides, about when they happen in a year. And I thought that there would be a correlation. I find November very concerning because that's probably a quarter end. And I

161don't know if there's a correlation. I'm wondering if this is something you're tracking. I mean, that's obvious significant concern and it's obvious. that's at least the last two years there's kind of like a spike in november and then looks like there's some you know later is that something that you're tracking you're keeping an eye on we're trying to and we're trying to look at it division-wide as well as individual schools and quite honestly that's some of the data that our sources are helping us with to really collect per school and to really talk with administrative staff about as well as jointly. So I have feedback on that and I don't know if it's so specific, but I do know that on the one hand, the reports that are coming out on discipline are wonderful, but

162I also, and I don't know, I don't know who's doing, where the program. For inputting discipline, if that was a proprietary thing we developed, I know it's very time intensive. It is. And anything that we could be talking about during this about, you know, I got to believe there's an app for that, you know, something that's a little bit more helpful. I just have a couple more. That's okay. Page, slide 20. Oh, this is an IT one. I just don't understand. 240,000 inquiries for, does that include student inquiries? What? 240, a quarter of a million inquiries on IT? Yeah, that's every day we get those, all those request IT tickets. But does that include students or is this employees? It's mostly employees. We do periodically get some parent requests and student requests, but most of

163them are employees. Well, that's horrible. I don't know why I think that's horrible. I mean, I think it's horrible that we have that many. It's questions, and again, a lot of times it's questions on the grade book. It's lots of different applications, not just your computer, but it could be a question on Blackboard or you name it. I'm sure we can talk about that, but I just thought a quarter of a million inquiries for... Ten inquires per employees a lot. Yeah, I think too as Mary Beth said, you know, you're looking at grading you're looking at testing online testing You're looking at attendance. We're just very busy. Okay I have a couple others, but I don't want to take up too much time No, I do want to see page 40 This is bad. I

164just, this is bad. This is bad, bad, bad. 79% of the students are reporting moderate to high level. 79%. Well, frankly, it's one reason. Ms. McLaughlin, for the love of Pete, what are we going to do? I am so, so, so concerned. Mental health and wellness. Boom. It's right there, those two bullets. Well, and it's one reason why we added it as a question. If you recall previously, we weren't measuring. And we said we knew that we really needed to take a look at this. You know, I know that this doesn't disaggregate down to the level of concerns. But, I mean, there's got to be a conversation going forward about assessment, assessment, assessment, assessment, assessment. you know if we're assessing at the level that we are not only is that um you know classroom time

165classroom teachers um workload you know that's two sides of the same coin so i really hope that we're going to have i really hope we're going to have a productive conversation and if there's time at the end i'll ask my other questions or i'll save them okay um is paul chick Thank you. I will be brief because I know we're having a work session. But first, I was remiss last time, Dr. Ramey, I want to thank you and your team so much for the work around FCPS CARES. I know I thank the region assistant superintendents, and I know you and your team have been working nonstop on that, and it's very much appreciated. I know the first year is not easy, but it's definitely worthwhile, so thank you. I was going to ask if those

166onesies are up for sale. I would like to purchase some for some friends. Maybe the foundation can... Well, I think it would be a great fundraiser. I can see quite a few alumni getting those for their babies. I also wanted to... Sorry, I lost my speech. I appreciate the work and I will ask more specific questions on that, but just putting our employees first and starting to gather data, I really appreciate both in health and wellness and looking at our employees and even our communications having a baseline that we can start to look at and kind of... but then break down information. So I hope, and maybe we'll talk about this more, I have not had a chance to look at the full report yet. I'm thinking about how our staff. USE DATA TO LOOK

167AT SPECIFIC INTERVENTIONS FOR STUDENTS AND SCHOOLS. SO I'M HOPING THE FUTURE IS TO START LOOKING AT HOW WE USE KIND OF THAT SYSTEM FOR SPECIFIC INTERVENTIONS, NOT SHARING IT OUT, BUT WHEN WE NEED TO TARGET SCHOOLS, COMMUNITIES, MAYBE EVEN DOWN TO STAFF, HOW TO look at ways to support how professional development that allows right growth and improvement and some of especially the areas of concern we're seeing here so I don't know if that will be addressed but I'd like to see what our what our goals are we know where we are how do we get to the next phase and finally I want to thank you Matt THAT WE HAVE THE SPANISH PERSON, I'VE BEEN RETWEETING AND SHARING SOME OF THAT FACEBOOK. I THINK IT'S VERY HELPFUL. AND IF WE CAN GET MORE, I KNOW

168OTHER LANGUAGES, IT'S A BUDGET CONSTRAINT, I'M SURE, BUT THE MORE WE CAN DO TO SHARE INFORMATION WITH OUR FAMILIES AND STUDENTS, THE BETTER. AND JUST WANT TO THANK ALL OF YOU. I LOOK FORWARD TO SPEAKING MORE AT OUR WORK SESSION. I HAD ONE OTHER QUESTION. IT'S BEEN A LONG NIGHT THOUGH, SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH. MR. MCAVEEN. So I too have a lot of comments. I'm not going to make them but the one thing I would say is that Hopefully the work session at which we discuss this report will be a good time to discuss the many issues and concerns that have been raised by the board about the website, so Please certainly hold on to those and bring those up at that time. Thanks miss McGlachlan and try to follow Mr. McElveen's approach. I

169know this is yet again one of the reports that speaks to the heart of our school system and certainly where the board is. It portrayed the graduate of strategic plan. It's all right there. So I'm not gonna really go into any specific slides this evening. I will just prepare my colleagues and Dr. Lockhart that I'm going to try to do my homework as best I can. I think there's a lot here that we're going to need to talk about, not just in terms of what's being reported, but what are we capturing, what are we not capturing, what metrics we're using to draw conclusions. We're about to vote tonight on Goal 1 report and that's going to be, you know, in my mind, another macro level challenge before this board. So it's one thing just to

170report information. It's another thing to measure what we're doing and how do we want to continuously improve. Since it's on slide 40, I'll just point this out. So we asked the question in ascertained levels of stress, and Ms. Schultz, thanks for doing the math. It obviously is very alarming when about 80% of our students are saying that they're experiencing stress, and I know everyone in this room cares about that. But one of the things we do not do in this school system, and I'm really hoping we will continuously improve on this, is... don't try to deduce what it is, talk to the very people who are experiencing it. questions, while it's great we asked, are you experiencing stress? Okay, but why? Because we know our children are diverse and come from diverse backgrounds and have

171different issues that contribute to stress. But we can't help them and we can't reduce stressful learning environments if we don't know what it is that they're stressed about. So I do think that's going to be an example of where we have to... peel back the onion a little bit more and really understand what it is. And that was kind of my reaction to tonight's presentation. Things like we went from eight awards to 12 awards. Well, with 28,000 employees, I really don't think that increasing our awards by four means that people are happier with their jobs. I think there's probably other things going on. Ms. Palchuk, you know, complimented Dr. Ramey, who has been phenomenal in his arrival here. So I will actually say, Dr. Ramey, I think there's a whole lot more for why our

172employees are feeling better and more, you know, hopeful about their work environment. But I want to just be careful that... When we can find a metric and therefore it just kind of helps to have something to report on, but I don't want to draw conclusions with a large workforce like we have. I don't think it's the honors alone. I think there's hopefully, thankfully, a whole lot more going on in our buildings. So I think we need to capture that so it's meaningful to our employees and it's meaningful to the hard work that's going on every day by everyone trying to improve our environment. And so my final just comment, and I guess it's a question to Ms. Evans. How much time is being set aside to talk about this entire Goal 2 report? Because I

173know Goal 1 we broke up into, I believe, at least two work sessions, if not more, because they're so comprehensive. And I look at this, and there's no way. that this board can do justice to A, the goal report and all the work that staff put into it, but B, to actually make these reports meaningful if we're just going to give it a perfunctory two hours. chalk it up right then and there you've asked me to rubber stamp something. If we're actually trying to make these goal reports more meaningful and manageable for the school division then we're going to need more than two hours and I don't know if it's a chunking it. There's as others have said earlier tonight what's the deadline or timeline and why? In other words, I don't want to just

174rush to pass goal two just because we checked the box. It's how do we make it meaningful for next year and what time might be required then for board reflection because as I understand it, you do these reports for the board and obviously the public, but there's no point if we're just giving you a rubber stamp because it says we just did it. So, Ms. McLaughlin, I don't have that with me right now, but I will look at that. Personally, I agree with you that this is an incredibly important report, and we need to have the right amount of time. So I will look at that and let you know what we had at least initially scheduled and think about what you've said. Mrs. Strauss. So I want to thank you all for an excellent

175and rich report with a great deal of information. Those of us who have had the opportunity to look deeply into lots and lots of other school systems lately, this is striking how much we keep track of what we do. And I think this speaks well of our organization. We truly try to find out as deeply as possible. what our students are experiencing, what our staff is experiencing, what our parents are experiencing, and then we put it all out there publicly. We are very, very transparent. And it's the only way that we can understand how we're doing and how we can get better. So I look forward to a deeper discussion, but I want to say I really like the Expected Parents Workshop. After all, we want to support and get young people to come and

176work for us and stay with us. We are in the child making business. So I think that was a wonderful idea. We are, we enjoy more children. We celebrate more children. And this is a, it's a phase of life. And it's a major part of us and what we do and our employees and the people who wanna stay with us and feel as though we welcome their families. So I think that's wonderful. I also appreciated your comment on the recognizing the custodian. One of the things, because I know over the years, Many years ago when we first began recognizing excellence within our employees, it was when Dr. Splane was here and recognized how important that is. And the more we do it, but Chase, what you said is it gives the entire staff the opportunity

177to be uplifted and to take joy in the success of another employee. So it's not just recognizing one person. It is recognizing an entire community. And that's what, again, we are here to recognize and challenge all of us to do the best that we can and then to celebrate when that occurs. And so the Fairfax Cares is fun because I occasionally get to email somebody in a school that I represent. And it's good because then we... we celebrate our humanity and our successes. So it's more than just one recognition. So anyway, I look forward to talking more about this, but I need to spend some time going back in and really understanding it. But thank you for the hard work, for the depth of the inquiry, so that we can see how we go forward.

178And yes, Ms. Luff-Glass, we are very busy with IT. I would have at least 15 tickets a day if I could. I just... figure out and send it to staff and they figure it out so anyway thank you all very much well done and good presentation as well thank you mrs corbin sanders Wow, talk about a packed presentation. Thank you to all three of you for the, and your teams for the excellent work. I look forward to delving deeper into it. I echo Ms. McLaughlin's concerns that we need to give this report the time that it's due because there is so much great information in there. I do have a couple of questions that I would like to tee up in advance of our meeting. One is on page 50 when we look at the

179levels of student drug and alcohol use. We have a major issue with opioids, as you know, and so it's not only limited to our schools. but it's a community and a national problem. And so I would like to understand a little bit more where the school system is going with this in addressing the needs of our students, but also increasing education on opioid use and the dangers of it. I remember, you know, I'm a child of the 70s. It was a major part of our education back then. would like to talk about that a little bit. Additionally, on page 53 and page 54, I know that Dr. Lipp will not be surprised to see me. Moving to actually I guess it starts on page 52, 53, and 54 on executive functioning. You've done some great

180work with our twice exceptional kids and their parents have been very appreciative. I would love to have you just talk a little bit more about what you're doing there because I think it's great work that applies not only to our current students but I have a young man who has come to me often and said that this is an area that he wishes that we had done a little more with. So thank you. Ms. Saenz? Yeah, thank you. And yes, thank you all so much for this report. Got a lot of reading to do over spring break, but I'm actually looking forward to it. This is such important and good work. You know, I think it's maybe important to remind the community that the school board, we created the plan, we created the metrics, and

181you know, you all are just kind of responding to what we have asked you to do whenever we get a report from staff. So I think if the board is concerned about whether we're asking for the right information. We passed on the metrics. We had an opportunity to look at it. We did. We had an opportunity to review all of that, and we can again. That's fine. I mean, I just, you know, I think it's always a challenge, right? We have to balance that. We're all subject to the tyranny of time, right? So we have to balance that time and information, and in such a huge school system, you know, we'd always like lots and lots of information, but we have to manage our time, and we have to not kill your time, you know?

182You're doing the work. So just a few things. It's true. I don't think there's any one thing that we do that makes teachers feel more valued, makes employees feel more valued. But I do think that that opportunity, you know, the picture of the custodian who was being rewarded, I just think that opportunity actually to celebrate someone else is so motivating and community building in a school. That's a great thing. I actually, myself, I'd rather celebrate someone else than... than myself. So I think that's true for most people. But I'm kind of wondering, I don't know, this may be just anecdotal information, but seeing that people feel, that teachers seem to feel better about being here, I do wonder how much of that is that we finally were able to send a signal with salaries. that

183we respect and value them after eight or nine years of them wondering whether they were going to keep pace. Since we're talking about the budget, you probably don't know for sure, but do you have a sense? I think there probably is a sense of that. We've heard that about anecdotally as well. And when we talk about the engagement piece, we did want to highlight it because we think it's a part of caring culture. And unfortunately, when we have the conversation about goal two later this month, it really won't be something that we get into a lot because K-12 Insight and Steve Knobloch are going to come back and do a complete session on that and look at the data from last year, compare it to this year, and they'll provide some interesting information. of those

184comparisons also a little bit of you know employees' responses to where they presented the engagement data last year and did their school do anything with it. And so one of the reasons we're using that survey and doing it every year is so we can start to build those trend lines. And I agree. When we talk about it in terms of engagement here in Strategy 6, it's not one thing. And I can't thank the principals enough because, as Ms. McLaughlin said, there's something clearly going on. And so the awards program and CARES... are simply catalysts to provide additional avenues. And we know our principals are working really hard and buying into this because they're the ones that are making it happen. That's why the number goes from 135 people recognized to over 512. Because the principals

185are making it a priority and the regents and superintendents are making it a priority. So I agree, it's not one thing. And it is something that's going on in the building. And so we'll continue to do the engagement and draw on that research. And those workshops just are presented to the board. They come back and do workshops with the principals. They'll come and work with the directors inside the departments. So we continue to drill down and see where we can go in those areas of engagement to make sure that we continue those positive trends. Well, thank you again. I look forward to the work session. Mr. Moon. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have not been feeling well all evening long, but I wanted to wait until the presentation was done or hear from all my

186colleagues on the questions. And then after this part is done, I probably have to leave. But I'm looking forward to our work session discussion. I'm sure that as you have heard, a lot of board members have many questions and it's going to be a very fun discussion. That is why I'm looking forward to it. One thing that I am going to bring up, so I hope that you will be prepared to respond at the time, is to provide me with... or provide us with a little more information about cultural proficiency training. There was something when I first got on the board. We had a great, you know, board had a great discussion about that. And the board decided to provide more training for our staff. Even we started with a group of members back then.

187But, you know, I'm sure that there are a lot of things I need to learn myself. So I want to know what is included in the training. I mean, I don't expect you to present whole training at the work session, but I want to have a taste, a little bit of a taste of that. Thank you. Thank you. And I will see no other lights on, so I'll just make a few comments before we let you go. First of all, thank you for an excellent and very detailed report. There's a whole lot of great news in here. I'm looking at the reductions in the disorderly conduct, the physical altercations, the incidence of plagiarism and cheating, and that's wonderful. I see so much good news here and that's great. You know, the positive behavior clearly is

188having an impact. That's something that I know we've been working on very, very hard. I think we're all concerned about the stress issue. I know the students, they bring this up, mental health, and I appreciate the fact that they work very hard this year on the issue of mental health. the student school board rep elections, that came up time and time again, the issue of mental health, mental wellness, and stress. So I do think we need to be doing something on that in a very deliberate way. So that's something I look forward to talking with you about some ideas on how we can go even farther than we have. I know we've made strides and we've worked very hard at that. I was of course very glad to see the data on sleep increase for

18910th and 12th graders. That is what we would expect after having finally achieved later high school start times. Of course unfortunately we also at the same time saw a decrease with the 8th graders because we unfortunately had to go uh... earlier at that level and i think we do need to remember that that we did say that we would go back and look at that again because we know that uh... that that time is not great for uh... uh... for our middle schoolers and uh... if they're losing sleep we we need to uh... to be thinking about that and seeing if we can't scoot those a little bit later as well it's wonderful to see that uh... that the incidence of sadness and hopelessness are down. You know, I think that's, Dr. Lipp, was that

190a new turn down? Is that the first time that we've seen a downturn in that? Well, I'm very pleased to hear that because my recollection I don't have the the the youth risk survey data right in front of me But my recollection is it just kept going up and up and up So the fact that it's it's going down even if it's only a little bit I don't have that data, but that's good news And I think there's been a lot more effort in terms of the resiliency training and really working with students on their assets and and working in that area and I think that that may be part of it. So we can certainly highlight a little more information about that when we do the work session. Okay. That would be great. And

191then the only other comment I have, I was a little surprised with the nice circle about all the different important things on there that there's something missing. We don't talk about sleep in there. Is there any particular reason we left sleep off of that circle? You can answer at the work session, Dr. Love. You can think about that as to, because that is such an important piece of student health. Those were the 11 categories that we worked with the government on in terms of that were approved for students. You know, the specific areas, SHAC and our school staff worked on that last year and made sure we addressed all of those according to U.S. guidelines. But we can certainly go back and review where we've got sleep included. We might want to revisit that. Okay.

192But great job, everyone. I do not see any other new lights on. So thank you so much. Thank you for sticking with us, too. I know it's getting late in the evening, but excellent report. And we will continue to have this conversation at the work session. Thank you so much. Normally, we would now go to confirmation of action taken and close meeting. We are going to have to continue our closed meeting after we finish our agenda items and then come back to do the confirmation. So I will skip over that for now. We go to item 4.02, goal 1, all strategies. And I call on Ms. Palachuk for the motion. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the school board approve the strategic plan goal one, student success strategies one, two, three, and four as

193detailed in the agenda item. Is there a second? Seconded by Mr. McElveen. Ms. Palachuk, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, I will be brief because I know we have a long night ahead of us. Just really want to appreciate and thank Dr. Duran and his staff who have worked so hard on this report. We've had plenty of conversation on it and I think we know there are definitely areas of strength and then a lot of growth that we need to do. Specifically, I know many of us on this board want to ensure continued high expectations and closing achievement gap for all of our students, as well as continuing to use data, professional development. and strategies to support our staff. And I'm especially grateful of all of the rubrics that are being created

194in order for our staff to be able to implement Portrait of a Graduate. We also, I appreciate that in this presentation and in this report, there's reference to our nascent continuing work on having consistent consistent grading and professional development around appropriate use of homework. I know there's discussions that our community are very engaged in. So really appreciate the work. This is critical. And I personally think that our format for looking at this goal is very helpful and looking at our growth in this area. Sorry, and the data around it's been a long night. So with that in mind, I will just say that I hope my colleagues will join me in voting in favor of this motion. Mr. McElveen, would you like to speak to your second? Nothing further. All right. Ms. McLaughlin. As I

195have shared with my colleagues at the numerous work sessions and as I again spoke to tonight, even though there was a little bit of debate between me and one of my colleagues, yes, the board does set out desired outcomes, but the superintendent and leadership team developed the metrics to determine how to say to us how we're doing as a division. I've shared with the report that even if we don't even want to go into the existing metrics that are here, there's a lot of metrics that are not telling us how we're doing. And what metrics were provided. And I said this over and over again, didn't come as a surprise, and I actually appreciated when leadership team members nodded in agreement that we're not doing analysis. There is some data here, but it's not speaking

196to the so what. And, you know, so I looked at in the actual narrative report and things like page 32, AP scores and letter grade correlation. It gives you data. but it doesn't say what the division's doing with it, what does it tell us, what should we be doing going forward. You then go to page 43 through 51 where we're talking about gaps in our SOLs. It just, everybody, I can't emphasize enough, as a board we have such a responsibility that... We're supposed to dialogue with staff and help them understand what makes this meaningful, not just between the board and staff, but the community. The community wants us as the governors and the stewards of the school system to say, what are we doing? How are we measuring it? What do we draw from these

197measures to tell us what we're going to be doing differently? And if we don't ask that, type of analysis, then we are failing in our job as board members. And I hope I'm not the only board member tonight who says this in the most respectful way possible. I'm not holding staff accountable to this one. I'm holding this board accountable. We have to stop doing what we always just do to check the box. And I would actually rather, since... My colleague, Ms. Hines, mentioned this and it's absolutely true. I've spoken to this as passionately as anybody. We want to give you reasonable expectations. We do not want to crush you in your jobs. We do not want to ask you to prepare a report that is completely unachievable. So if we've got too much in it...

198That's fine. Pair them down, make the data meaningful. Maybe every year we look at a different set of data that still keep informing us about student learning. I don't want volume of data. I want it to be a meaningful analysis of whatever data you bring to us each year that says, how are our students doing? Anyone who reads this report, you're welcome to speak tonight to debate it with me, but It does not have the analysis. And when I challenge that, I mean to my colleagues. If you think I'm wrong, I welcome you to demonstrate how I'm wrong. But the analysis is not there, and we are failing our community, and we are not collaborating appropriately with our leadership team and our superintendent by just saying thank you. We instead should say how can we

199make this a reasonable request. But how do we still communicate to all of you that I... It doesn't help us if we don't analyze the data and why do things look like they do. We have major gaps between our subgroups and no one tonight can deny that. But we did not ask staff to say to us, so why do those gaps still persist? Yes, we can talk about the programs we're doing, but did we analyze then which programs produced positive results? I said this in a couple work sessions and I know this isn't gonna be popular with some of my colleagues but I'm just speaking to staff at this point. My vote no tonight, which is what it's gonna be, is not a reflection on my lack of respect for the work you've done but

200it is to signal to my colleagues no this is not. I think what we do to serve the community well in a Goal 1 report, and we need to get better at it. And that's my challenge to our board. And I just can't support what we've allowed to come here tonight for a vote. And I'll just finally say, just read the conclusion even. We should all be saying to staff, we want this conclusion to be meaningful, not a platitude of we continue to outperform Virginia and the nation and the world. what do we need to be do differently this coming year there's nothing in that conclusion that says so here's what we need to do what here's what we drew from this year's report that we're going to be doing better next year so anyway

201thank you ms heinz yeah thank you um first of all thank you very much for this report i'm hap i i will support it i'm happy to support it because i think it gives us the information that we've asked for um and really my comment before was really just um so that the community knows, and I agree with you, Ms. McLaughlin, that this board does have control, ultimately, over the strategic plan, the goals, the measures, the metrics, the objectives, all of it. It's our plan. And it's supposed to be a living document. If it's not a living document that responds to what this board wants, then it's just going to sit on a shelf, or worse than that, it's going to make a lot of people do a lot of work for no good, right?

202So last summer... We looked at, I think it was last summer time, we had several retreats where we looked at the strategic plan in stages. The metrics came later. First we set our goals and then our objectives. And we still, I think many people on this board would say we need to put the budget in there as well or we need to align this strategic plan with our budget because you fund what you value. So that's an important statement also. So, you know, I'm not disagreeing with you, Ms. McLaughlin. I'm going to support this report because I think it's what we asked staff to do. I do think we have work as a board to make sure that what we're asking staff to do makes sense. I don't like that we still have gaps. Every

203year I've been on this board, we've had gaps. And they're not really closing. And I know that people are working very hard. And I want to make sure that we have the best ideas here in Fairfax County, you know, from anywhere, always. So anyway, I'll support it. But I. I very much support the work that everyone's doing and the effort that it took and that this report does respond to what we have asked for. But I also support the idea that we need to take another critical look at some of the metrics. I agree. But that's our job, I think, at a retreat or something over the summer. Ms. Schultz? So I feel like Ms. McLaughlin I feel your pain. I mean, if there's anybody and I'll self admit data wonkiness. And I forget how

204many thousands of times I've talked about data for data sake versus data that's meaningful, meaningful data. I'm torn because I'm somewhere between Ms. Hines, your very relevant point about the fact that to some degree, this is what we asked for. But I also think that it is... the senior leadership position to push us not to give us what we ask for because sometimes we don't know what we're asking for. We talk about what we're asking for. but pushing that to present data within context. And I'll just do, and it's completely, it's not relevant to this, but I'll do something that references the report that was just delivered to us because it was one of the points that I didn't get to. And this is just. This is just an analogy, but there was a slide

205that had the number of children who are absent 18 days or more by grade. That's a helpful slide to know, and it looks like it's really bad in kindergarten. It looks like it's really bad in a couple other grades, and horrible in 12th grade. But I don't know, is 3,500 kids in 12th grade missing 18 days or more? Is it important? I don't know. Are they mostly 18-year-olds? What is that as a percentage of the overall 12th graders? I know we have 50,000 high schoolers. I can divine that it's probably around 10,000 to 12,000 seniors. And is 3,500 out of 12,000 bad? It sounds bad, but I don't know. the data in context, how is that nationally normed? How do we compare what are peer districts? And so Ms. McLaughlin, this is an age-old problem.

206I think it is a systemic problem, actually. I do hope that in our superintendent search, we wind up with a leader that really understands how to help this board do executive decision-making, how to... pare down frankly some of what we ask staff for because sometimes i think we ask for things because we're looking for things that are meaningful and maybe necessarily we haven't gotten to something that is meaningful so we just ask for something else and so i think just like our teachers in our classrooms sometimes the assessment if you will of the teacher in the classroom is we just ask for something else and we don't ever take anything off the plate so i think there's got to be the balance between what we're asking for and what we're getting and is it meaningful

207and I'm gonna allow you to vote no. I'm gonna have you take my note tonight if you will. I'll vote for it because I think that Ms. Hines in some respects is correct. It's what we've asked for. And this is not to penalize staff, but frankly, just like we wanna raise the bar for our students, just like we expect our teachers to raise the bar, I think what... I don't want to put words in your mouth, but we're asking for the bar to be raised. We're asking for you. It's a help me, help you, help me. Because if I can make better decisions as a board member, if data is more illustrative and informative, then I can decide how I can lessen. the the burden on a teacher how i can lessen the burden on

208an administrator how i can close an achievement gap and frankly this is the one thing miss um heinz i'm going to disagree with you on yeah we're not improving the achievement gap and frankly there's a bunch of places where actually we're sliding backwards and and when we decide you know soon to spend 46 million dollars on needs-based staffing and just smear it around and make classes smaller and i do my perennial, you know, raise my fist that that is absolutely the wrong thing to do. It's a report like this that says, look, we're not, we're not closing the achievement gap. So let's stop doing, you know, spending tens of millions of dollars, just making classrooms smaller because it'll make us feel better. So I know that was a long speech. I'm sorry. It's late, but

209channeling, channeling Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. Hines, you're both right. Mrs. Corbett Sanders. So I'm going to channel the three previous speakers. Don't change the channel. I am going to get some. I'm not. Ms. McLaughlin, thank you for referring to the importance of the data metrics. And I appreciate Ms. Schultz mentioning the importance of the relevance of the data in context. It's really a question Simon Wittek would ask us, tell me the why. Why are we doing it? And why is the data important and how can it contribute? to better student outcomes as well as continuous process improvement for the system. And so I would encourage as we go forward to continuously ask the why. and how can we be better? Better as a system and us, also better as a board. So those are great

210questions. I really appreciated Mrs. Hines mentioning the importance of being able to make sound budget decisions, which... I would encourage we didn't get there this year. I know people have heard me say this repeatedly. We agreed last year to align our budget with our strategic plan. I'm optimistic that we'll do it next year since we seem to have missed the opportunity this year. But I will be supporting this report tonight and look at this as an opportunity for ourselves to have continuous improvement going forward. Mrs. Strauss? I'm very grateful for this report and this plan. I will certainly vote for it. A couple of pieces that I was particularly pleased to see, one of the things that we had asked for in Portrait of a Graduate was increased attention and opportunities for kids to do

211project-based learning. And the report talks about we've used the Buck Institute for Education to try to help us go forward with PBL. We are moving forward. It's obviously too soon to actually dipstick to know exactly how that's impacting. If there's deeper learning, it takes time to put that in. But I'd also like to say that as I watch the things that we have implemented, particularly in the last couple of years, are highlighted here in the report, but other things we've done with Project Momentum, et cetera. I have seen real progress in some of my neediest schools. I see the results, whether or not I see them specifically in a countywide report, but I've seen dramatic improvement. in the schools, several schools that I had that desperately needed to be turned around because of the needs

212of the students and improved training, improved walkthrough, improved professional development for the teachers, different curriculum approaches. And I see it working in the schools that I see more close up. So I'm pleased to see that. And thank you for the report, school board. We always can stop and take a look and what else do we need to do, et cetera, et cetera. But I want to thank the hardworking teachers, the principals, and the support staff who have helped some of my very neediest schools turn around. I'm very grateful. Thank you. So seeing no other hands, I'll just say briefly that I'm happy to support approval of this report. FIRST OF ALL, FOR ANYONE WATCHING, I DID JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE PEOPLE KNEW THIS IS AN INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT REPORT. WE HAVE HAD OTHER CONVERSATIONS ON

213THIS REPORT. WE HAVE HAD CONVERSATIONS AND WORK SESSIONS. AND I KNOW A COUPLE OF OUR BOARD MEMBERS WHO ARE USUALLY HERE FROM BEGINNING TO END ARE NOT FEELING WELL. SO I DON'T WANT ANYONE TO believe that because we're having a shorter conversation about this tonight that it's any reflection on the importance of this report because it's incredibly important. And I know we all believe that and have had lengthy conversations about it. I, too, see the impact that Project Momentum has had. As far as the report itself and how data is gathered and presented to us, I think our reports are getting more and more meaningful. And, of course, we always strive for doing better. So happy to see if we have other different certainly we're continually looking at that. I will strongly disagree of course

214with my colleague. on needs-based staffing. I think needs-based staffing is incredibly important to our high poverty schools. And the idea that somehow class size is important to low poverty schools but not to high poverty schools, I don't see that. So simply make that comment. But with that, I will call for the vote. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Speak slowly. Heinz, Palchik, Schultz, Corbett-Sanders, Strauss, Evans, and McElveen. Opposed? McLaughlin? And that motion passes. Now go to the consent agenda. Our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure, Robert's Rules, provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion. Many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members in the public in advance. Items may be removed from the consent agenda

215at the request of any board member prior to the meeting. 5.01 approve the minutes of the March 9th 2017 regular school board meeting 5.02 appoint individuals to serve on committees as detailed in the agenda item Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing and seeing no objection the consent agenda is approved Item 6 new business the following or new business item agenda items. There will not be a vote ON THESE ITEMS, BUT ACTION IS SCHEDULED FOR A FUTURE MEETING. 6.01 APPROVE THE STRATEGIC PLAN GOAL 2 CARING CULTURE AS DETAILED IN THE AGENDA ITEM. 6.02 AUTHORIZE STAFF TO NEGOTIATE PROFESSIONAL SERVICE CONTRACTS WITH SELECTED FIRMS FOR CONSTRUCTION TESTING AND INSPECTION SERVICES AND AUTHORIZE THE DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT OR THE ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF FACILITIES AND TRANSPORTATION SERVICES TO EXECUTE, DELIVER, AND ADMINISTER CONTRACTS ON BEHALF OF

216THE SCHOOL BOARD. 6.03 AWARD A COMMENT. contract for the Glasgow Middle School Modular Relocation Project to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and authorize the 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 Sandburg Middle School synthetic turf field replacement project to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute, deliver, and administer the contract on behalf of the school board. 6.05. Award a contract for the portable classroom trailer purchased to the most responsive and responsible... offeror and authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute, deliver, and administer the contract on behalf of the

217school board. 6.06, award a contract for the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology synthetic turf field installations to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute, deliver, and administer the contract on behalf of the school board. 6.07 approved the 2017-2018 annual special education plan section 611 part B grant funding application and section 619 part B preschool grant funding application as detailed in the agenda item. We now turn to superintendent matters and I call on Dr. Lockhart. Okay, thank you Madam Chair. As Laura Chu mentioned earlier, I was able to attend the Superintendent Student Advisory Council election convention at Hayfield earlier in the week. I know several board members were there. As the student leaders elected a new student representative

218to the school board. So congratulations to Maria Kai Vitaconda from TJ High School. And I guess we'll welcome her soon enough as it seems to be rapidly approaching that time. Also this past week at Hayfield Secondary School was the Special Education Conference. Several board members and thousands of people joined us at Hayfield for a very informative educational opportunity. And we want to thank Dr. Lipp and her staff and all those folks who planned, coordinated, led sessions, and attended. It was an excellent opportunity for our community. I want to let you know that FCPS has received a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for its comprehensive annual financial report from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada. FCPS was recognized for its financial reporting work for the fiscal year ending

219in June 2016. The award, the highest form of recognition in the area of governmental accounting and financial reporting, is given to school systems that demonstrate a constructive spirit of full disclosure to clearly communicate their financial stories. Also, Bucknell Elementary was announced by the Virginia Department of Education as one of the winners in the Virginia Breakfast Challenge. One school at each level is selected based on their enrollment, and the award is based on breakfast participation growth over the past year. Winners receive funding for school nutrition equipment and $4,000 to support technology, field trips, or playground equipment. Nutrition has been one of the main advocacy's of First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe and she's visited with our food and nutrition staff on a number of occasions. So congratulations to Bucknell Elementary. I've mentioned Hayfield Secondary School three times now

220tonight as they are a blue star school for achieving a student pass rate of more than 84% on the Wise Financial Literacy exam. Teacher Latrice Rich was recognized as a Gold Star teacher for the fourth consecutive year, and teacher Sharon Paul was recognized for the third consecutive year. Teachers who have 93% or more of their students in a given class pass the certification test are recognized as being master financial educators. The school and teachers were recognized by the National Money Power Organization, and they were presented with a celebration banner for their achievement. So congratulations, Hayfield Secondary. That concludes my announcements this evening. Board Committee reports, and I will call on Mrs. Strauss for an update on the forum held earlier this evening. The forum we discussed whether or not we would bring forward for a

221vote tonight the resolution that we voted on. that's the discussion thank you we now go to board matters and i call on miss heinz okay thank you it's late so i'm just going to read one thing that i got earlier today on facebook about one of the schools in Vienna. This is Wolf Trap Elementary. And one of the PTA parents posted that a tree fell down on the road outside of school today about 20 minutes before dismissal. The county police officers came and cut up the tree with chainsaws in eight minutes. So thank you, FCPD. Then our principal and several staff members were sweeping the street and directing traffic. And she posted a picture of that. And they were able to get out of school on time, even though they lost a tree right before

222dismissal. So I think they should get an FCPS. CARES AWARD. MS. BAUTCHEK. um i will also be brief um outside of our community um the nova district pta also announced outstanding administrator of the year and that went to oakton high school's assistant principal michelle taylor so congratulations to michelle taylor especially her work around helping to start the pantry at oakton high school and also wanted to thank fellow board members and our chair for her testimony and for the board of supervisors budget hearing i was able to there for part of the first day and watch on tv some of the other days so i want to thank everyone who came out and share their stories and support for our county schools and services and finally just want to wish everyone a safe and very happy

223and restful spring break initial just three quick Actually, two notes. A thank you to Detective Ken Comfer and Sergeant Mayor Castle for coming from the Fairfax County Gang Task Force and speaking with the board in closed session tonight. in your work on keeping our children in not only the community but in our schools safe in gang abatement. Gang activity abatement is appreciated. And it's 1040 and we still have closed session so I'm not going to be home before midnight. So I would like to wish happy anniversary to my husband. Ms. Corbett-Sanders? I'd like to start by wishing a happy anniversary to Mr. and Mrs. Schultz. Your wonderful supportive partnership and great parenting skills are a tribute to marriage, so thank you for that. I would also like to... give a shout out to the Board

224of Supervisors in their support of the Shark Tank Challenge. Miss Palachuk and myself were able to participate in the award ceremony on Tuesday morning where we saw students from TJ and Chantilly High School presenting some incredibly innovative projects in support of seniors in our community. And so I would also like to thank the business community that supported the Shark Tank Challenge. And I will be encouraging students in the Mount Vernon District. to participate in the challenge next year. I also want to thank Kirsten Maloney for being a wonderful, allowing me to shadow her yesterday at both our, a local level four program as well as an AAP center. Great things are happening in our schools and the collaboration between Ms. Maloney and the principal and the teachers in the classrooms made for an incredible inspirational

225morning where we saw kids unpacking problems and doing real problem solving together as teams. Now if I, I know it's late. but I do want to offer a tribute to an incredible man who passed away this past week, William T. Coleman. Mr. Coleman was inspirational for many reasons, but he came from a family of educators, and he was the first one in his family not to go the education route, but instead he went the legal route. And he was on Thurgood Marshall's team. of lawyers that put together the case that really was a landmark case for desegregation, the Brown v. Board of Education. And then he also was on the case that was the precursor of Loving v. Virginia with the McClough. McLaughlin versus Florida case. And he later served on the Warren Commission and

226was the second African American to serve in a presidential cabinet. He served in President Gerald Ford's cabinet as the Secretary of Transportation. Mr. Coleman passed away this past Saturday, or actually Friday night late, and he leaves a loving family, a wife of... over 65 years in Levita and I just want to send my sincere condolences to the family as well as a recognition of great appreciation for a life well served to our community. Mrs. Strauss. Thank you. I want to congratulate again our schools and our staff in being recognized for our Energy Star accomplishments. We have the most schools meeting the Energy Star criteria and being awarded than any other school division in the country, including the other big school divisions. So we are the winner. Also FCPS Get to Green engages students in recycling,

227composting, building wildlife and plant habitats, conserving energy and also growing food. And again, we have more green flag schools than any other district in the US. I want to congratulate the school system and our teachers and our children and our parents who support these initiatives. And I want to compliment Matt Guilfoyle and his staff because in their News You Can Choose, this was highlighted, and they have all the great links. So you can go and learn more and more about these programs. And I encourage anybody to take a look at the website. It's really very... very impressive because it shows how our curriculum, our science and health curriculum tie into this effort. I was really very impressed. First time that I followed all the links all the way through. I also want to thank the

228school system for their attentiveness during the weather events this afternoon. And just as the warnings went out, I got a panic. text from my daughter saying are the children safe in willow springs where my grandchildren are and then very quickly she said they're fine they've done their tornado warning they've all been assembled in wherever it is and she thanked me so i think you all did a good job in communicating and very quickly communicating to the parents that we did our safety drills they paid off and everybody was fine so thank you all very much ms mclaughlin Just briefly, I will be having my office hours and community roundtable discussion this Friday at the Kings Park Library meeting room from 9.30 to 11.30 in the morning. And I also want to convey my appreciation to

229the Woodson PTSO as well as the Robinson PTSA. of those organizations are sponsoring screenings of the film documentary Screenagers about teens and screen time. And Woodson hosted theirs on just last night. Regrettably I missed it due to a board meeting, but Robinson is also having their screening on Thursday, April 27th at 7 p.m. and sending messages out to my community because I can't think of anything more timely and more important than for families and students together to see this film and really understand what is happening to this generation of students. And it's eye-opening because most of us parents who have school-aged children, we didn't grow up with these screens. And so we're... learning how to do this as pioneers. The other thing is I want to share with my colleagues and Dr. Lockhart, you may

230not be aware, but the... veterans of foreign wars post in Lorton, Virginia. They honored three of our Fairfax County teachers for teacher of the year. And interestingly enough, they were all in my Braddock district schools this year. So for the elementary school, it was Teresa Early of Laurel Ridge. For middle school, it was Evan Kalinkos of Frost Middle School. And then for high school, it was Woodson teacher Joshua McNabb and former school board member Steve Hunt actually is the one who oversees this annual honor and he not only did a wonderful job at the dinner and the providing the celebratory honor to these three teachers who have gone above and beyond in delivering history instruction to students but Teresa Early of Laurel Ridge advanced to the district level winner and she spoke not only about

231her grandfather who was a World War I soldier but she brought in his helmet. And so it was pretty awesome to be looking at a World War I Doughboy helmet. And it was very inspiring. Dr. Scott Poole from Woodson was in attendance, along with Kim Pryor from Laurel Ridge, the assistant principal. So it was really very nice. And the Connection newspaper did a lovely story as well on these special teachers. And I'm extremely proud of them. So with that, Mr. McElveen. It's all you. Mr. McAbee? Passed. So I will just close with a couple of comments about events. I want to congratulate our new student rep and also all those who ran, who put themselves out there and were willing to serve as our school board student rep. So congratulations to all of you. I

232really enjoyed last week. with Ms. Hines being part of the award ceremony for the State Bowl for Future Problem Solving at Thomas Jefferson High School. It brought back fond memories of my days as an FPS coach, and I want to congratulate all those who, both who won and all who participated, particularly those from here in Fairfax County. TJ students as well as those from Frost Middle School and those from Hallie Elementary School as well. So I hope everyone had a good time and and enjoyed the very challenging problem that they have. I want to thank Dr. Steve Staples for his visit to Stuart High School to see for himself all the great work that's taking place at that school and to visit the school within a school for our our newcomer students and we had

233a great conversation. He came up and went back just to visit Stuart so we particularly appreciate that and Dr. Lockard and Principal Penny Gross and several others of us including myself had a very good conversation and tour with him so we appreciate his joining us here. I also want to thank everyone who came out to my budget town hall meeting. We had a great conversation and of course I want to particularly thank Kristen Michael, Assistant Superintendent for Financial Services for your great job in explaining where we are in the budget situation and answering many questions from my constituents. So I appreciate that. that great work. And last but not least, I just want to recognize that this is Shine On Week at Stuart High School. This is a week-long event that takes place at Stuart

234every year in honor of former Stuart student Casey Schulman, who was known for her caring and kindness. And so it is a week dedicated to caring and kindness and Boy, that sure was Casey. They have events such as telling people who inspires them, giving someone a hug, and smiling at several people that you normally might not smile at. So they did have to cancel their final festival tomorrow, but they've rescheduled it for April 21st, and I will be there. So with that, we are adjourned.