FCPS School Board Regular Meeting No. 20 - May 26, 2016

001This May 26 2016 regular meeting number 20 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 Hayfield Secondary School Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Carrie Shelfo Ms. Derenacofa. Yes, thank you. Hayfield Secondary, you have played beautiful. What a beautiful rendition. Thank you all for being here tonight. We know it's a very busy time of year for you students, so thank you for being here, and thank you, parents, for sharing your students with us. I would just like to... echo what was what Mr. Nat Koufax just said but I'd also like to acknowledge the very proud principal of Hayfield Secondary School was here earlier Martin Graham well there he is Martin what great

002great job very proud beautiful thank you item 2.02 certification of closed meeting compliance In order to comply with section 2.2-3712D of the Code of Virginia, it is necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on May 26, 2016, to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convened in the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the board during the closed meeting. Do I have a motion? Moved by Mrs. Strauss, seconded by Mr. Moon. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Ms. Darrenette Koufax, Mr. McElwain, Huff, Strauss, Corbett Sanders, Evans, Hines, Moon, Schultz, and Palchik. All those opposed and all those abstaining. Wilson and

003McLaughlin. Thank you. Item 2.03, a few announcements before we begin tonight's meeting. 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. You may access tonight's agenda and related meeting documents. By going to the FCPS website, select School Board and then Upcoming Meetings and Agendas. The meeting is also being streamed live on the FCPS website homepage. Click on Watch School Board Live. Please turn off or silence your cell phone. I call on Mr. Press for announcement. Thank you, Madam Chair. We just have one announcement this evening, and that is the board will be recognizing National Safety Month in June. Each June, the National Safety Council sponsors National Safety Month. This year's theme, Safe for Life,

004reminds us that safety is no accident. It is the choice we need to make throughout our lives as we're all empowered to make safe decisions for ourselves and those we care about. Over 185,000 FCPS students depend on school employees to provide a safe environment in our schools. Prevention, identification, and abatement of hazards are integral parts of every employee's job. The FCPS Office of Safety and Security has established emergency plans that provided appropriate training for employees to cultivate safety throughout the school district. And later tonight, FCPS staff will present the revised FCPS student and staff health and wellness policy, which serves to promote student safety, student, staff, and community health and well-being. We are also joined this evening by a few Boy Scouts from Troop 859 in Springfield, working on their communications merit badge, from Troop

0051978 in Vienna, working on their citizenship in the community merit badges, and from 1965 in Burke, also working. on their citizenship in the community mayor budgets. If you could stand so we could recognize you. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Mr. Press. Item 3.01, 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. Speakers are encouraged to deliver their comments with the decorum and respect appropriate to the conduct of the public's business. Speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information in connection with an individual student. Such concerns are best addressed to the appropriate school principal or other school official. If the concern is a group

006concern, please consider appointing a spokesperson. And while the spokesperson is speaking, those in support may stand to show their support. Tonight, 10 citizens have signed up to address the board. And in addition, we have one video testimony, which will come at the end. Our first speaker is Bennett Shoup, to be followed by Josh Israel. First of all, I'd like to thank some of the school board members for their decisions granting more rights to me as a queer person and to my fellow trans and gender non-conforming people. It means so much to me to know that most of the school board is on the right path to progress, and I assure you that it was very reassuring and helpful to many trans students in the county. I will say, however, that due to the outrageous trans

007panic epidemic, as it's being called, trans students are beginning to feel a little bit unsafe without specific regulations in place. I've heard many students talking aggressively about their hatred and animosity for trans students recently, and I feel it's very important that we follow the federal guidelines in order to further solidify the protection of trans students, as well as utilize the FLE curriculum to educate about transgender people to dispel all the myths spread about us. I also want to remind everyone that as trans people, we pose no threat to anyone. We are actually more likely to be assaulted in public restrooms than non-trans students. And we have no ulterior motive. As trans people, we live a lot of our lives in fear and providing protections would help so greatly. It's important for the school board to

008support its students of all differing identities, and that includes transgender students. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Josh Israel to be followed by Jeff Anderson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening. My name is Josh Israel. I'm a proud Fairfax resident. Last year, I joined with students, teachers, parents, and other members of our community to ask you to protect our LGBT students and faculty from discrimination and to ensure that our family life education includes age-appropriate lessons that acknowledge that some people are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender, and that that's okay and normal. Multiple studies have shown that inclusive curricula actually makes schools safer for LGBT students. I am very grateful that by an overwhelming majority, you voted to do both of those things and sent a message that Fairfax will be a leader on including

009everyone. In recent weeks, our Virginia Attorney General, our U.S. Attorney General, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights all followed your lead. Determining that LGBT youth's rights must be protected and our schools must ensure that they are. Tonight, I ask you to please continue with this progress. As this board prepares to consider important Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee recommendations, I ask you to keep LGBT kids in mind. Their proposals include vital lessons about substance use and dating abuse, areas which the 2015 youth survey showed are especially problematic for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning students in our community, as well as other important common sense lessons. I commend you and I commend the FLECAC on the steps you've taken to keep LGBT kids safe and urge

010you to continue to do everything possible to continue that progress. Thank you very much. Jeff Anderson to be followed by Allie Peters. Good evening, Chairman Hines, school board members, Dr. Garza. My name is Jeff Anderson. I am the president of the board of the Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling, also known as FAB, and a parent of three children in the school system. I was last here about five years ago speaking in support of policy and regulation 8610 which gave parents the choice to how children would get to school, namely walking and bicycling. I'm here tonight to speak in support of the wellness policy 5008. It states influencing the resiliency, self-perception, and future endeavors as goals. And we like these goals and bicycling mirrors these goals. In the course of the past three years, FCPS has

011moved Safe Routes to School along very well. I'm not going to review the achievements, but I want to point out the wellness policy is important in the continued support and encouragement of bicycling and walking to school. The devil is in the details, as we all know. FAB recommends the following share the book the bike and walk messaging at principal association meetings Participate in tally week and apply for a cog TLC grant with the Fairfax County Department of Transportation Safe Routes to School is a very local issue Grassroots is how it gets started. Top-down support is key, however, and this can come from you all by participating in Catalyst Days like International Walk to School Day and National Bike to School Day, which we just had this past May. It also has to come from leaders

012within the school. When principals support these days and go out of their way to improve not only safety, but lead the way in encouragement, the positive impact on the outcomes is visible in the number of families participating. FAB urges FCPS to share these messages with principals to encourage principals to share them with parents and teachers. We would like to see this information shared during principal association meetings where they can share the ideas and hear from the SRTS coordinator within the system. And FAB stands ready to work with the principals, per the wellness policy language, to develop partnerships with community groups. The wellness policy also states to set measurable and achievable goals to encourage continual progress. FAB believes data can shed light on SRTS. It's not just about how many schools participate or having 100 bikes

013in the racks. Every year the National Center sponsors Tally Week, but few FCPS schools participate in collecting this data. We know the school collects the data on its own in transportation data, and it could lend itself to continual progress. However, these are islands of data that we don't feel are bridged. FAB has suggested to the county DOT that they and FCPS apply for this grant I mentioned earlier to understand the data and leverage the transportation knowledge. Such a study could unearth easily solvable problems, but also aid in cutting costs in the $160 million transportation budget. In addition, the DOT is applying for a bicycle-friendly community designation for the first time and schools play an important role in the application particularly in the teaching of pedestrian and bicycle curriculums. Per the wellness policy improvements and solutions

014will be devised in partnership with stakeholders and agencies. Fabrics forward to working with you in the future. Thank you for your time. Thank you Mr. Anderson. Allie Peters to be followed by Elizabeth Ende. Good evening. I am here to speak to you about family life education and being transgender. Most see gender based on biology, but there's more to it. Gender is about an innate sense of being male or female or neither. Who we are on the inside may differ from who we are on the outside. I am just now learning how expansive gender... really is. 18 months ago I found out that my 16-year-old son was my daughter. So gender is not about sexuality but about who you are inside and it's not an absolute for many, it's a spectrum. My daughter is also autistic

015and that made it more difficult for her to be able to share with me. what was going on inside of her. She didn't have the tools. And that's one of the reasons that I'm here tonight, because you have it within your authority and your power to provide her the tools. I'm going a little bit off message because I'm trying to condense it down. But just as we learned that skin color should not affect whether or not someone's equal, neither should being male or female, neither should their gender expression. So I celebrate you. We moved here and we're told. Don't worry, we do transgender here in Fairfax County, and so I really celebrate you for that. That's what we found wherever we've been going. My daughter uses the restroom of her choice, which is an immense,

016it's very calming for her. Her teachers accept her, as do her classmates. By ensuring that you teach about gender nonconformity, you create a safe place for all kids, allowing kids to be who they are. Prejudice is real. Despite being just 17, my daughter has been fired from a job for being transgender. Many medical staff said her being transgender was a lousy joke on me. Friends called her names. Her future is more of the same. She will face much of this, as do many transgender individuals. Please help us avoid bias by changing her school records. We changed her name legally and her gender with DMV, but at school we can't change her name or her gender in the student information system. We are told we need a new birth certificate, but to do that we have

017to get sexual reassignment surgery. Medical specialists don't recommend that surgery before age 18. Insurance won't even consider it before then, and it's a traumatic experience that can impact... people as you would imagine. So it's a huge commitment to make. So instead she faces questions whenever her online profile comes up substitute teachers try to figure out who they're dealing with because she expresses herself as a girl. So I would like to skip ahead a little bit in my remarks and just leave you with a few things. The U.S. Department of Education reports in its Emerging Practices Guide that Kansas City, for example, recognizes that there are certain situations where school staff or administrators may need to report a transgender student's legal name or gender. Ms. Peters, I'm sorry, because we have a full slate of speakers.

018I'm going to be a stickler about the buzzer, but thank you very much. That's fine. You guys have the transcript. Thank you. Elizabeth Enday, to be followed by Heather Davies. Good evening school board members and superintendent Garza. My name is Elizabeth Endy I'm an advocate for sleep and the mother of McLean high school freshman and a 2010 McLean high school graduate I'm here tonight to support the proposed changes in the health and wellness policy These are timely changes stress is extremely common among teenagers The American Psychological Association reports that school is the top source of stress for teens It's not only important for FCPS to educate students on stress management and coping skills, but it's also important to provide an environment where students and staff can put these tools to use. I'm going to talk

019about two of these tools, sleep and exercise. Getting enough sleep is an important tool for reducing stress. Yay, you guys have already taken the big step to implement later high school start times. I have firsthand knowledge about how much better the day goes with an 8-10 start. The almost extra hour of sleep means that my daughter can tackle her day with energy and enthusiasm. I thank you. We'd love to see the same change for middle school. Sleep members are pleased to hear you are continuing the conversation about striving to align start times with best practices and that this is reflected in the regulations you will review in connection with the wellness policy created by SHAC. We'd love to see these changes reflected in the policy as well. Getting exercise is another important tool for reducing

020stress. That's why I'm proud that FCPS held fast on continuing to fund school sports, including freshman teams, marching band, theater arts, and dance. For those who live close enough, walking to school with friends is another way to reduce stress. We need to work together with the community to help make sure these routes are safe. For example, more students are walking to school now at McLean High School than when my older daughter was there. Through a partnership with FCPS, VDOT, and the county, a dangerous crosswalk at the Westmoreland entrance was transformed by adding a crosswalk beacon. Later start times had the unintended consequence of making this crosswalk even safer and more popular because it's now light out when students are walking to school and they have a little more time to get there. Imagine what else

021can be done through partnerships with Safe Routes to School and FAB. I thank you so much for the time and energy that you put into the important job of educating Fairfax County youth. It's your job to provide our next generation with a safe, healthy environment where students can excel in academics, arts, sports, and other extracurricular activities and establish good lifelong habits. Thank you. Heather Davies. Heather Davies to be followed by Emma Chatton. Good evening, School Board members, superintendent. My name is Heather Davies. I have two Woodson High School students, and I'm active with the parent group Community of Solutions. I'm a NAMI family support group. facilitator with supporting two groups one that meets in Fairfax and one in Springfield and this provides a peer family support to caregivers of children and youth experiencing mental health

022challenges and I also serve as a board member on the unified prevention coalition of Fairfax County Community Solutions started, was started by Two Woods and Parents four years ago in response to suicides at our school. We meet fairly regularly. We have members from other schools, county agencies, and local nonprofits, and we seek ways to help teens deal with adversity and stress. We have task groups addressing homework, academic stress, building resiliency. teen to teen communication, concussion safety, and crisis support capacity building. I want to tell you that I feel healthy schools are a community asset, a jewel of civic pride, and an investment in the future. Something to be cherished and supported and passed down from one generation to the next. Improved and renewed by each for the next. I want to commend the school board

023for the hard work that you put in and the direction and encouragement that you have given to FCPS staff and the Student Health Advisory Committee to steer our school system on a course to realizing greater implementation of health promoting practices. We know that so much of lifelong health outcomes are determined during childhood through, among other things, nutrition. health education, peer influence, physical activity, stress, and adverse childhood events. The proposed wellness policy that will be introduced to you tonight will hopefully result in new initiatives and attention to these fundamental social determinants of health, both for our students and for the FCPS staff. With the epidemics our country is facing in chronic diseases obesity heart disease and diabetes many of which are outcomes of smoking and the recent tragedies of suicide and prescription drug overdosing the role

024of health promotion in the school setting is more important than ever I urge you to study this proposed policy and the draft regulations. The SHAC and the FCPS staff have undertaken a huge task to put forth a policy guidance on a diverse set of topics that include physical activity, school facilities, food and nutrition, bullying prevention and counseling. I'm sorry, I need you to wrap up. Thank you so much. I hope that you'll invest in this through the meals tax revenue as well. Thank you very much. Emma Chattin, to be followed by Michael Klein. Greetings. My name is Reverend Emma Chattin. Among my many jobs, I am executive director of TGEA, the Transgender Education Association of Greater Washington, D.C. I also co-lead several community building groups, one of which is for parents and guardians of trans

025and gender expansive children, tweens, teens, and young adults. Another is for the tweens and teens themselves. TGEA supports individuals transitioning in their communities and communities preparing for transitioning individuals because it is a process. When one person transitions genders, the whole family transitions. Their neighborhood transitions, their friends and their school. transitions. It's a learning journey and it is all about education. That's why I'm so thankful for the opportunity to express gratitude to the school board for having the strength, the compassion, and the forward-thinking perspective in adopting the family life education guidelines last year that included LGBT and discussions of trans and gender identity. Such education helps to open doors, minds, and hearts. and continues to make the way for a greater, better educated, and more inclusive society. Trans kids are already here. Their existence is not

026up for debate or discussion. They can't be shouted away and they can't be voted away. Schools have already been working with trans kids without incident as best as they are able toward a more inclusive educational environment. I celebrate our own Fairfax County school system for continuing to be a part of the future and not the past because tradition is not a valid justification for maintaining the status quo. It is important to note that the occasions when we have had the courage to transcend tradition, those are precisely the same ones that have allowed our nation to rise above its history. This is a learning journey. Life is a learning journey. Lest we fall into places along the way governed by exclusion, by fear, and by ignorance. What you can do is exercise compassion. and the knowledge

027that comes from education, and familiarity that comes from meeting some of these brave kids, you can come together and make a very difficult life just a little bit more comfortable and bearable. Now, I don't know what people think happens in a bathroom besides the purpose for which it was intended, yet misconduct seems to be the first place the mind some people go when it comes to bathrooms. I have no idea why. Regardless... There are ample laws in place that present everything that the opposition fears. There are scant means in place, however, that protect the dignity and the safety of our trans kids. We can do better. Let's continue to educate toward a greater society. Thank you very much. Michael Klein. Michael Klein, to be followed by Anne Marie O'Brien. Michael Klein out here. Anne Marie

028O'Brien, you're next. Good evening. My name is Dr. Ann Marie O'Brien, and I'm here tonight as a nursing professor at Fairfax County, taxpayer and parent, and the Braddock District appointee for the Student Health Advisory Committee. And while I'm proud of the work we did on SHAC, the wellness policy still has a long way to go before it can truly promote the lifelong health and well-being of our youth. Your data confirm what I've been hearing from families for years. According to the Fairfax County Youth Surveys for middle and high school students, 39% of females and 24% of males reported feeling sad or hopeless for more than two weeks. And 22% of females and 11% of males seriously considered committing suicide. In addition, from 2008 to 2013, the number of students here living in poverty increased by

02940%. More urgent are the disparities for children of color who are three to six times more likely to live in poverty than white children. As an expert in population health, I can tell you these data on student well-being are deeply concerning. While I applaud FCPS's commitment to reducing the achievement gap, education equity requires health equity. Most of the parents here tonight probably have no idea that the average nurse here at FCPS monitors 3,000 kids. This is profoundly unacceptable. Now more than ever, our school system needs to address the social conditions that compromise student health if we ever hope to achieve education equity. So what can we do? One essential step is to bring RNs back into our schools. RNs have the education, the training, and the licensing authority to expertly assess and care for our

030children who go to the health clinic. A recent study found a two-to-one return on investment as school nurses save both parent and teacher work time. Furthermore, I experienced this firsthand when my children attended Scottsdale Unified Health Services. I therefore have three suggestions for your consideration. One, while employee health is important, SHAC needs to focus on how we can provide high quality, holistic health services to our students and to specifically address student stress as it leads to physical and emotional health problems that continue long beyond childhood. Two, 25% of FCPS students have a health plan. They and all students need a trained health professional to help them effectively manage their health and optimize their learning outcomes. Therefore, I ask the board to advocate at the county and the state level to increase funding for nurses to

031the ratio of one per thousand students as was recommended nearly 20 years ago by our Commonwealth. Since 1998, the number of school-based clinics has doubled nationally. We are the 10th largest school districts in the country, and the third richest county in the United States, and yet our clinics are staffed mostly by unlicensed clinic aides. Please use evidence-based practice and invest in our children and create new models of care. Thank you. Thank you. Andrea Lafferty. I'm Andrea Lafferty, president of Traditional Values Coalition, resident of Fairfax and a mother. On behalf of thousands of children, parents and grandparents, I remind you of their lack of distrust and faith in you because of your arrogance and disregard for their parental rights and concerns. First you rammed through the gender identity policy, then the secret sex survey. You then

032attempted to eliminate parental opt-out from family life. Despite overwhelming community opposition, you approved this new FLE curriculum. It is now a year and parents deserve a public update. While we wait, many parents and taxpayers are still unclear as to what's in the current FLE. Will these new lessons that you claim as age appropriate remain in the curriculum? Starting in fifth grade, students are drilled every year on their knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases, including genital herpes, gonorrhea, etc. Eleven-year-olds and sixth-graders are taught about exchanging body fluids and injecting drugs into their veins. Seventh-graders and 12-year-olds are introduced to both oral and anal sex. Oral sex is mentioned 20 times in the curriculum, anal sex five times. Teachers are instructed to read to the seventh graders, oral sex is mouth to penis or mouth to vagina. Fairfax

033claims a commonly asked question by a seventh grader is, can you get pregnant from anal sex? Really? That's a commonly asked question here in Fairfax? Oral sex is mentioned 10 times and anal sex 21 times in eighth grade curriculum. Teachers are instructed to read to eighth graders that anal sex is penis to anus. And this is considered age appropriate by you. Then we've got the Lady Gaga survey that you sent out just before the big FLE vote. You told parents one thing, you sent kids another. This survey violated Virginia law and Fairfax County policy. Fairfax has been arrogant and you all, including the superintendent, have refused to apologize to parents. Now you're in cahoots with the Obama administration on this crazy guidance. First, it is a deceptive action by Obama twisting the clear intent and

034language of Title IX. And the Obama administration has no authority to do this. But yet you're in cahoots. out a letter, your chairman said you sent a letter to principals telling them how to implement this lawless policy. Last June you all and the superintendent promised parents that you would keep us updated on this new gender identity policy and what's happening. You said nothing will change before the community is informed. That promise now seems to be broken. Thank you. Okay, we have that concludes our speakers unless Michael Klein did Michael Klein come? Okay. We now have one video testimony Good evening. Dr. Garza board members and Fairfax community members. My name is Robert Rigby jr I am a 17 year veteran teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools Last year, the board approved updates to the Family

035Life Education curriculum that included the terms and concepts of gender identity and transgender, and it also updated its non-discrimination policy to include trans students and staff. I anticipate the lessons on gender identity and directives on how we treat transgender students, including records and restrooms, will be published soon. There has been and will be a lot of backlash and vocal opposition. I want to speak to that. I'm going to talk about my own journey in accepting trans students. When I first heard the idea that students might use the facilities of their gender identity, I was surprised and taken aback. I wasn't sure if I liked the idea. So I started talking to people. I met parents of transgender youth. I talked to transgender adults. I went to some discussion groups and community support groups. I began,

036just began, to realize that transgender people are just like me. They were no longer scary. I became more comfortable with trans people in my own life and came to accept the idea of trans students sharing spaces with non-trans students. But I had to work for it. So if the idea on the face of it puts people back, I understand that. I say you should do something about it. Later, the idea that transgender boys and men would use these policies to abuse women and girls came up. Some of my friends, who are parents of daughters, brought up the same concern. I did some research, I talked to people, and I read a lot. I found that this sort of abuse just doesn't happen. It's a reasonable concern that a lot of people have, but it doesn't

037pan out. My suggestion to people is that before you become angry, before you go to rallies and board meetings and speak against trans kids, go out and talk to people, meet people, learn. If you don't know real transgender people, several transgender people, you are working from stereotypes and caricatures and have no legitimate standing. I'm pleased that some of our school board members and some leaders whom you would expect to be in opposition have reached out. That's the kind of leadership and civic engagement in which we all need to participate. Thank you for listening. That concludes citizen participation. Ms. McLaughlin wanted to just say something briefly. Oh, just briefly, some of you in the auditorium may have noticed speaker number nine looks a lot like me. It happens to be my identical twin sister. And in

038the four years she's lived here in Fairfax County, it's been more than on occasion that people aren't sure which twin they've met. So I just wanted to make that point tonight. Great. Thank you. All right item 3.02 student representative matters. I call on mr. Press Thank You madam chair I'd like to begin this evening by discussing some of the student advocacy frameworks we have in place in this county You know in May things start to wind down in our schools and it's given me some time to reflect on how these systems work, what they do, and how effective they are in the long run. What I can say is although we have a great framework in place now, I think we have areas we can improve upon, including school-to-school communication and indeed school-to-school board communication.

039I think we can all acknowledge and appreciate that when we hear the student voice, this board and leadership team do better work. In that spirit, I'll be spending the last month of my term until the end of June, in addition to all of our other conversations, researching the national best practices in student advocacy. In fact, I've got a meeting upcoming with the Montgomery County student member of the Board of Education, Eric Gersey, to exchange practices and ideas that they have implemented to see how we might apply those same lessons here in Fairfax. With that said and on that theme of student advocacy I want to take a moment to comment on the FY 2017 proposed budget that we'll be voting on tonight I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the students who

040made their voice heard during this budget process their tireless advocacy and to protect the programs and people that meant so much to them really made a difference With that said I hope our two County boards in tandem with state legislature will continue this investment in education in our schools in increasing teacher salary scales, reducing class sizes, updating our facilities, and applying resources to our neediest of schools. You know, the message of investing in schools has become very personal to me over my 12-year career in Fairfax. Over the past eight years in particular, I've watched some of my favorite teachers move away for better salaries and lower costs of living. I have watched more classes go in trailers. I have watched computers and textbooks age as we cannot replace them. Part of the reason I ran

041for this position on the board was to find ways to stop that I think hopefully we have begun to this budget with such small cuts Does mark a turning point for us and I couldn't be prouder of that Moving on. Thank you moving on. I want to pass my thanks to miss Corbett Sanders She and I had the amazing opportunity this past Wednesday to take a driving tour of the Mount Vernon District, which, for those of you who do not know, is one of our most diverse districts in the county. Besides being geographically large, it has the whole range of the socioeconomic spectrum in it and really juxtaposes the two extremes of the economic ladder in our area. You know, I want to thank you, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, you know, for allowing me to experience that

042Fairfax is not the homogeneous area that some people think it is. You know, and it really showed me that regardless of where our students come from, we do a great job every day in supporting them. And I hope that we can continue to do that in this budget. With that, I'll close up by saying I wish all of our students good luck on their upcoming SOL tests that they might have, and I wish our seniors the best of luck as they enter the last couple weeks of school. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Press, very much. Item 3.03, the FCPS Student and Staff Health and Wellness Policy 5008. I have a note to call on Dr. Lipp. Dr. Garza, do you want to start us? Nope. I'll let you. I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A FEW

043COMMENTS AT THE END, DR. LEB, IF YOU DON'T MIND. THAT WOULD BE GREAT. I WANT TO WELCOME HERE TONIGHT CHRIS GEAR, WHO IS OUR CHAIR OF THE STUDENT OF OUR SCHOOL HEALTH ADVISORY COMMITTEE. WE ALSO HAVE DR. DURAN, LEAH SKIRPSKI, AND LIZ PAIN. THEY WERE INTEGRAL MEMBERS OF OUR COMMITTEE IN TERMS OF WORKING THROUGH THIS DRAFT. So we come before you tonight to present a draft of our student and staff health and wellness policy. You will see before you the charge of our committee as we worked through to take a look at this over the course of the last three years with a real emphasis on it this past year. You can see that we had quite a broad range of community agency and school staff members who've been collaborating with us, and you will

044see the product of their work tonight. Cross departments. across our entire school system which you'll see later as we expanded the components within the policy. And as I said, we really put a real focus on it this particular year. We had a lot of large group meetings, small work group meetings, and combined meetings with the community and the school staff. Our guiding information included the following, our Public Law and Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. We also took a look at reviewing documents and publications from the United States Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and your own strategic plan that was developed last year, which shows a real emphasis on student and staff health and wellness. And it really did guide our work. You'll also see that it's quite an expanded policy from

045the current policy, which has four main components, and we've expanded that into 12 main areas. Again, a real collaboration. As you review the document, we're trying to highlight students, staff, and community health and well-being, which is a major point of emphasis. You'll also see from the policy that the inspirational language was a key component of it. We also had physical literacy as it relates to lifelong activities and fitness. We also see a highlight of physical activity for the entire community. We're also expanding on health education to include more areas relating to mental health and wellness. We also are looking at transportation options for students and families, and we had a speaker speak to that earlier this evening. With this policy, we're also putting an emphasis on social emotional health and wellness of students and of

046staff, which is sort of a new area of emphasis. Previously, there was a real focus on students, but we've really expanded that to staff. We're continuing to focus on safety and security in our schools, establishing systems, procedures, protocols in working with students and families on mental health and wellness. We also have an emphasis on resiliency and wellness strategies and a focus on cultural competency and fostering relationships. In addition, we're continuing to highlight best practices and our long-range work in working with communities, agencies to provide school-based health centers, which is a best practices research item and something that is a lofty goal for us within Fairfax County Public Schools and our community. We're continuing to collaborate with students, staff, families, and communities on providing training, resources, and support to students and staff. And we're utilizing all

047of our agencies, federal, state, and local, to help us provide resources and services. And the last one on this page, I think, is a goal of all of ours to try to maintain a healthy balance between work, academics, family life, and recreation as we all strive to learn how to identify and manage stress. So we're trying to be models in that area. It's a lofty goal. Expanding on information, activities, and resources. for our staff members, expanding on our breakfast and lunch options for students, focusing on nutritional foods, and considering the health needs of all of our students. Our next steps will include highlighting this policy and discussing it during our school board work session this upcoming Tuesday, May 31st. And the SHAC committee at that time will be presenting you and highlighting their draft of

048some of the regulations that they feel relate to this policy. And then we're looking for your vote on June 9th in terms of approving the wellness policy. In addition, we've also started to create a few... tools that we believe will help schools both document and measure their health and wellness activities and we'll be happy to share those with you at a later date. Dr. Garza? Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Lipp. I just want to take a couple of minutes I know for well that the committee and our wonderful staff have worked very very hard on this policy and Chris I want to thank you for your leadership and the end all the committee for the work that you all have done Along with our staff who I think you know that we're very invested and

049committed to taking care of the whole child, healthy minds and healthy bodies. And so I very much appreciate your work. I'm very excited about the fact that, yet again, this school board and this school system, I think, will be a leading school system around taking a strong policy position on these important issues. While it may not be exactly what everyone wants, I think it's certainly a step in the right direction, and we'll continue to improve and work on it. in the coming years. I know I'm excited about the full range of work that we're doing in this area. And as you pointed out, Dr. Lipp, it's all encompassing. You know, it's our food and health, health and nutrition programming. It's our exercise and our PE and physical health in our schools. It's our mental health

050and well-being work. So I mean it's a full array of things. So I'm very proud of the work that you all have done, very appreciative as well. And as you pointed out, Dr. Lipp, we do have two other meetings scheduled to further walk through the policy and to have an opportunity to visit with the committee and to flesh out all the major components of it. So again, I just wanted to take THE OPPORTUNITY TO THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR VERY, VERY HARD WORK ON THIS. THANK YOU. I THINK WE MAY HAVE A FEW BOARD MEMBERS WITH QUESTIONS, BUT AS HAS BEEN MENTIONED, WE WILL HAVE THE WORK SESSION NEXT TUESDAY THE 31ST. AT THAT SAME WORK SESSION, WE WILL HEAR FROM THE SHACK COMMITTEE, THEIR ANNUAL REPORT, SO WE'LL HAVE A CHANCE TO SPEND A

051LOT OF TIME ON THIS. BUT I DO HAVE A FEW BOARD MEMBERS WITH COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS. MS. EVANS? AMAZING WORK. I JUST, I REALLY WANT TO START BY CONGRATULATING ALL OF YOU FOR THIS. amazing document. This moves us so far ahead and I know how much time and effort has gone into this. Even though this is a fairly hefty document, I know it could have been ten times as long, you know, based on the conversations that you've had and all of the things that you would like to get into. So thank you also for being able to boil it down into a very readable policy. Thank you. So you all have just done tremendous work. This moves us so much farther forward on wellness. And I'm just thrilled where we are. So I appreciate the

052breadth of what you have included here. On balance, you know, the part that you highlighted, Dr. Lipp, that is certainly something that this board has clearly determined that we need to do more work on. I would say that I have one tweak that I'm going to mention tonight and that I'll bring up at our work session. I think we might want to include rest in that definition. And so I, you know, we can discuss that at our work session. I think that's an important part of balance as well. So, and I have read ahead to the regulation that we will be discussing on Monday as well. So I look forward to doing kind of a crosswalk between the policy and the regulation and seeing how they combine. So just kudos on great work. Thank you.

053Ms. McLaughlin? Just briefly because I look forward to the more extensive conversation the board will have but I know my Braddock appointee has talked about really the extensive effort Dr. Garza that both the committee and your administration has really committed to this effort and to Mr. Gere I will just say I know at times for you especially Sometimes seeing how the sausage gets made, you have a deep appreciation for what it is to what we're looking at here, which is really magnificent. And it is, as Dr. Garza described, so incredibly comprehensive. I am very, very excited for this board and for our school system to really finally take some even greater leaps than we already have. I'll just share with my colleagues briefly, I had a unique student case that came to my attention over

054the weekend and it was very serious. And this policy couldn't come at a better time for reminding me of how important of us to look at a holistic approach to education because each and every child, if the mental health and well-being is not there, not only can they not be successful, but we play such a crucial role. really ensuring not only just the academic success but the overall health and safety of children so I'm really looking forward to this and again want to thank the collaborative nature that was needed for this and so great work everybody thank you mr. press Thank you. I think the people in the box over here knew I was going to talk about this. You know, this policy is the culmination of three years of very, very hard work on

055the part of this committee and our staff. You know, I was fortunate enough to serve on that committee for two of those three years, and I can tell you that this policy is a product of so many more hours of work than were dedicated at that, you know, the committee meetings. You know, there was such intensive and deliberate thought that went into this. You know, this policy was in the works while we were transitioning to later start times and discussing that. And this policy has been around in its formational stage as we have encountered some of the greatest challenges to student health that we have yet encountered in our system. So I am extremely proud of this document and of the wonderful people we have sitting over here who put this document together. And I

056think this is the first time that, you know, I want to congratulate this board on taking the action to bring this forward and to outline in a concrete manner your strategic commitment to tackling, you know, not four but 12 areas of student health issues. And even in those four, we're making those areas so much more robust and functional. You know, I won't ask any of my specific questions I have today. I look forward to our continued discussion on Monday and then our following action meeting on this. But I want to close by thanking, and she was here earlier, I don't know if she has stayed around, but the current student representative on that committee, Jenna Kaufman, who is a student at South Lakes High School, has been so involved with all of these issues. And

057I don't see her out there, but I'll look at the camera and say, Jenna, thank you for all you have done, you know, this board and this community. I think she's going to come on Tuesday. Good. Okay. I'm looking forward to that. Very good. So thank you once again. Just a reminder, we may be confusing people. Our work session is Tuesday, May 31st. I think it's hard because we usually have work sessions on Monday, so that's probably why we're having a challenge with that. Ms. Corbett-Sanders? I want to echo my colleagues appreciation for all of the hard work that your committee has done and certainly going beyond the call of duty of just a monthly meeting. I know that my representative on the committee has spent many hours outside of those meetings. So I want

058to thank you all. all the members of the committee for their hard work. But I also want to show my appreciation for the comprehensive approach to the healthy mind, healthy bodies, not only of our students, which obviously are our first priorities, but are putting a priority on the healthy mind, healthy bodies of our staff, and that we are looking at this as a whole system. That really is... strikes to the core of our number one strategic goal of having a caring culture and that we care about the life balance that our staff has too. So thank you very much and I look forward to a more in-depth conversation on Tuesday. Mrs. Strauss? This is just a wonderful, wonderful piece of work. I think we are all just incredibly impressed and very, very grateful. I'm proud

059of the fact that in Fairfax County Public Schools that we really are looking to educate the whole child. For a youngster to be available to learn math, science, you have to pay attention to all that child's needs. And if we want to graduate young people who are ready to be successful in life, it is looking at... how they eat, how they exercise, how their mental health works, our interplay with all of these things. Our children are whole people, and we have to pay attention to that entire human being. So I am very, very proud of what you've done. I look forward to further discussion of it. But this is the best piece of work that I have seen that addresses all the needs of our children. And I know our community has been looking for

060it. has been asking for it. I know our parents are so eager for this. So thank you very, very much. I applaud you. Thank you. Ms. Palchuk? Thank you. I will add to the applause and to Chris, without your tenacity, I don't think we would have this. comprehensive report. So thank you. You will be missed as the chair and you'll be stepping down and helping ensure your child is happy, healthy and ready to learn at FCPS in a few years. So thank you so much and to all the staff who've worked through this for over two years now. I came at the end of the cycle, but I knew when I ran for this office that this was a big priority. We do academics really well in Fairfax County and I'm one of the students

061who burnt out. and needed to find a more holistic style. So I'm so glad that we're able to start to provide this to put some grit, some teeth into what we mean by whole child, that it will not just be language, but it will be policy and then regulation. So look forward to our discussion about this. Also about the regulation. I know that the committee will continue to be very active. proactive and ensuring regulation is doing the right thing as well and wanted to just double on what Ms. Corbett-Sanders says that as our staff also experience a lot of burnout and we're focusing and hopefully tonight we'll be able to give them a salary boost but I hope with this policy we will also ensure that they are happy healthy and able to continue to

062teach so thank you so very much Okay, well, I guess I'll just close out. For those who don't know, the school board actually has several advisory committees, and they're pretty large committees with people from the community who are dedicated and qualified to advise the board and staff on certain issues. And this school health advisory committee has been particularly successful, I think, in the last couple of years, and it's a testament to the work, as everyone has been saying. I think this is a great... strategic and holistic approach to to our our wellness in our school system. I look forward to learning more and I would say if there are any citizens out there who would like to provide some input this on the agenda item tonight attached to it is the wellness policy itself and

063we welcome comments and questions from members of the community. So unless there's more from Dr. Lipp or Dr. Garza I think we are done. Thank you. Thank you very much. See you on Tuesday. Item 4.01, confirmation of action taken in closed meeting. This is the portion of the meeting where the board will confirm actions regarding issues that were discussed in the closed meeting. These issues include actions taken regarding student disciplinary matters. Board members have discussed each individual case and at this time we'll make several motions to confirm the recommended action. I first and want to have a motion from Ms. Strauss. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I move to expel a student who is adjudicated delinquent of serious criminal offenses related to a community-based incident. Do I have a second? Seconded by Ms. Corbett-Sanders. All those

064in favor, please raise your hand. Corbett Sanders, Evans, Hines, Moon, McLaughlin, and Palachuk. Those opposed? Those abstaining? Wilson and Schultz. Okay, that motion carries. For M2, do I have a motion from Ms. Strauss? Yes I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who used and distributed marijuana to others on school property and who also possessed a schedule 2 controlled substance on school property and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Ms. Darinette Koufax. All those in favor please raise your hand. Darinette Koufax, McElvain, Strauss, Corbett-Sanders, Evans, Hines, Moon, and Palchik. All those opposed? Schultz McLaughlin and Wilson all those anybody abstaining and Huff that motion carries M3 to have a motion from mr. moon Thank You madam chair I move to deny the

065school reassignment appeal of a student who was charged with a serious criminal offenses related to an alleged community based incident and to confirm the decision of the division superintendent Is there a second? Seconded by Ms. Corbett-Sanders. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Dernette, Koufax, McElveen, Strauss, Corbett-Sanders, Hines, Moon, Palchik. Those opposed? Huff, Evans, Wilson, McLaughlin, and Schultz. That motion carries. M4, do I have a motion from Ms. Evans? I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who possessed marijuana, drug paraphernalia, and a weapon on school property and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent. Is there a second? I second the motion. Seconded by Ms. Strauss. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Darnett, Koufax, McElwain, Huff, Strauss, Corbett, Sanders, Evans, Hines, Moon, Schultz, and Palchick. Those

066opposed? Those abstaining? Wilson and McLaughlin. That motion carries. Thank you. Item 4.02, another action item. The fiscal year 2017 approved budget, which we will vote on tonight. I call on Dr. Garza. Oh, I'm sorry. Actually, we'll start with the motion. Thank you. My mistake. I call on Mr. House for the motion. Thank you. After a very long year of deliberation and a lot of hard work and much good news, I am pleased that we have come to finish this tonight. With pleasure I move that the school board adopt the FY 2017 approved budget as detailed in the FY 2017 an advertised budget and is detailed in the agenda item to include section 1 operating fund required revenue adjustments with total reductions of $16.6 million. In Section 2, operating fund required expenditure adjustments, items A through

067D, with total reductions of $7.3 million. And to replace Section 2E, reduction placeholder of $9.3 million with the following revenue and expenditure adjustments detailed in Section 3 and 4 that total $9.3 million. Increasing the beginning balance by $5.3 million, increasing the community use fees for custodial personnel services by $2 per hour to offset increased costs for salaries and benefits resulting in increased revenue of $200,000. $200,000, moving the cost for the implementation of the living wage for food service employees to the Food and Nutrition Services Fund for a reduction of $1.1 million, adjusting the rates paid to substitute teachers to include one short-term rate and one long-term rate paid to all substitutes, saving $2.3 million, and directing the superintendent to identify reductions totaling $.5 million or $500,000 in central operating accounts. I so move. Is there

068a second? Second. Seconded by Ms. Darinat-Kofax. Ms. Strauss, would you like to speak to your motion? Thank you. This budget is a good news budget. It is an important turning point. After many difficult years following the recession, we are finally reinvesting again in our schools. This is the first budget where we are not having to absorb large reductions. This budget will enable us to offer a 1% pay increase to all our employees and a step to those employees who are eligible. We will make a strategic investment in the neediest portion of the teacher scale, bringing us halfway to the market. More work needs to be done, but this is a significant and important start to help return ourselves to a competitive stance in hiring and retaining our very best teachers. This budget provides a living

069wage for all our employees. This budget enables us to cap elementary class size and turn back the three times that we have increased class size that has had a particularly negative impact on many of our elementary schools. This budget has no cuts in important programs and supports for our students in our schools. This forward-moving budget comes as a result of increased revenues from the state and the Board of Supervisors. They know how important quality public schools are to our children, our community, and to the economic well-being of Fairfax County and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Thank you again to the General Assembly, the Governor, and especially our Fairfax County Board of Supervisors who fund over 70% of our budget. We thank the citizens of Fairfax County. We had many advocates who formed many, many groups to

070help us this year in support of additional funding for our schools. And in fact, I want to especially thank the young student at McLean High School last spring who came forward to begin the hashtag SaveFCPS. She was so upset at the loss of her favorite English teacher who had to leave because we couldn't pay her enough. in order for her to meet her bills. She began it, a student in our high school. I want to thank the Citizen Task Force, the heavy lifting that they did. I believe Ben Press was on that committee. Very, very difficult task. We need to be able to identify significant budget cuts if we were going to have to make them. and that task force laid out for this school year and certainly for some time in the future as

071to what would be proposed cuts if we have to make additional reductions. I urge my colleagues to support this FY 2017 budget as proposed in the agenda item. Thank you all. Ms. Darinakoufax, did you want to speak to your second? Briefly, Ms. Strauss did an excellent job of talking about what is in this budget and the long road, shall we say, that led us here. It really is a road that seemed to flow almost immediately from last year's, when last year's budget was... approved and will conclude tonight. And it was a long hard road at times, but in the end it proved to be just really what this community needed. I want to thank Dr. Garza and her team for developing a citizen advisory committee. This group worked hard and they rolled up their sleeves

072and they worked to define exactly what could be lost without sufficient funding to our schools. And they provided eye-opening dialogue for the entire year. It was most helpful that the preliminary results from the compensation study provided hard data to back up years of anecdotal evidence that some of our experienced teachers were those that were paid the lease and they were leaving our system to surrounding jurisdictions. Thank you to our teachers and our advocacy groups and community members who made it clear that if educating our children was indeed the number one priority in our county, we needed adequate funding to meet our most basic needs. And thank you, of course, to our funding bodies. who read the data, listened to the community, and acted in support of our schools and our children. I look forward to

073continuing to work with our governor and legislators in Richmond. I look forward to continued and more robust dialogue between our board and the Board of Supervisors to ensure that we continue to move forward to keep our schools strong. And I encourage my colleagues to support tonight's budget. Okay, thank you. Dr. Garza, would you like to make a few remarks? Yes, thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. I could not be more pleased or grateful for the budget that's before you all tonight for final action. It was the best budget probably that we've had for over a decade. It's not a perfect budget, but it's the best budget we've had in a long time. I do want to thank Budget Chair Janie Strauss and Vice Chair Tamara Derenat-Kofax and just all of you for your

074hard work all year long on this budget. When we finish one budget, literally we probably have two weeks when we don't talk maybe about budget too much, and then here we go again. So it's been a year of work and it has had its ups and downs and it's been difficult at times. So it took an enormous amount of time and attention to get to where we are today and I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge our outstanding financial services team, Susan Quinn and Kristen Michael and so many others in that department who put just extraordinary amount of time and energy into supporting the work and this year particularly so. because we had so many additional things that we put on their plate, including supporting the budget task force, the budget tool, and then just

075so many community meetings and outreach that we did. So I just want to commend them for always representing our system so incredibly well and with such dignity and authenticity. We are so grateful for the additional funding we received this budget season from the state and from our Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. This funding provides the opportunity for Fairfax County Public Schools to make a significant and critical investment in our employees to reduce class size at the elementary level while also providing the conditions for us to no longer have to cut or even consider cuts for programming and services in our schools. I do also want to thank, as Ms. Strauss did, the Budget Task Force for their investment of time in helping us to better understand what our community wants and expects and the thousands

076of people that also weighed in on the budget tool and also let their voices be known throughout the process. I also want to thank all of our employees and community members who came out to meetings and public hearings to support our schools. This important investment in Fairfax County Public Schools I will tell you I sent a very positive and hopeful message throughout this county and I hope that our school board members have heard the same some of the same messages that I've heard. I've received countless emails from teachers saying thank you for advocating for them from other employees throughout the system. I've also heard countless stories from principals saying I was able to keep a teacher. that I was afraid I was going to lose. I didn't hear those stories the last couple of years,

077but this year some of the decisions of this board I think has sent a very positive and great message to our system. And if you think we spend a lot of time developing the budget and giving it serious time and attention, I will promise you that we do. For the development of the fiscal year 17 budget, for an example, and this is probably not doesn't include every single meeting we had. But we had well over 60 planning meetings with board members and staff. We had many, many employee association meetings. We had over 28 school board meetings, work sessions or hearings. We had 13 budget task force meetings. We had 37 community meetings specifically on the budget. just for that purpose and there's so many others I'm sure that we didn't capture in that list so

078there was a there's been a lot of time and attention given to to the development of this budget I believe our collective future success is dependent upon the power of a strong educational system this reinvestment in our community's most important asset our schools will provide great dividends for all the citizens of Fairfax County We do look forward to continuing to work as a strong partner with the Board of Supervisors as we work together to develop long-term solutions to these important challenges and continue to do everything we can to maintain this great quality of life that we enjoy here in Fairfax County. Thank you. Thank you. Before we go on to more comments on the main motion, we do have a board member who has proposed two amendments, which I think she's combining into one. Okay,

079so Ms. Huff, would you like to go ahead? Thank you. I move to amend the main motion by eliminating the increase to community use fees totaling 0.2 million dollars directing the superintendent to identify reductions from operating accounts totaling 0.2 million dollars. So you've just literally combined the two that you had. Great. Do we have a second? Seconded by Ms. McLaughlin. Ms. Huff would you like to speak to your motion? Thank you. I know we had an opportunity to discuss this at our last budget work session and understand most of my colleagues don't have a problem with the community use fees. Despite that, I still wanted to present this as an option because I do feel our constituents deserve a thank you for digging into their pockets with the increase in taxes they are experiencing in

080order to help fund our schools. When the task force was looking at these items to consider closing the budget shortfall, the shortfall was projected to be 50 to 60. $75 million, assuming no more of an increase than 3% from the Board of Supervisors. But that was not the reality. The shortfall was closed thanks to the state, the Board of Supervisors, and our taxpayers. The increase in revenue from our taxpayers was to help pay for our increase in employees' salaries. For that reason, I do not think this year we should also increase community use fees, saying it is to pay for the increase in custodial salaries. I think the appropriate thank you should be to not impose another fee, but to find the $200,000 in savings in our $2.7 billion budget. Okay, thank you. Ms. McLaughlin,

081do you want to speak to your second? No, I just want to say that I very much appreciate Ms. Huff bringing forward this amendment during our work sessions. I did express support for her doing this. I think that our board talked about our concerns with the fact that we were so close with meeting the needs of our budget without having to do any substantive cuts as well as any... dramatic increases in fees and I just think it's it's a matter of commitment and and as Miss Huff stated appropriately demonstrating to the community that funds our schools that this nominal amount we can certainly absorb and not put an increase in fees in the very year that we did ask our residents here in Fairfax County to fully support our schools where 70% or more of

082them do not have children in our schools. So they already fund and pay for our schools. So increasing you know any any charges with community's fees i just don't feel this is the appropriate year to be doing that and i have every confidence that um superintendent garza and her team would be able to find the 200 000 as directed by ms huff's amendment mr press thank you madam chair um i appreciate your amendment miss huff but sadly i am not able to support it You know, I'm very pleased that we're in the situation in the first place that the changes that we're talking about are only $200,000 that is so small drop in the bucket that I think we really should be you know, pleased that that this is the only You know amendment discussion

083we're having this evening. However I do believe that the impact of that $200,000 reduction in our central office accounts will have a negative Miss miss if I see you shaking your head not central office accounts the entire operating budget of the entire operating budget. Okay. Well, I appreciate that. Okay. Sorry Thank you, but generally we don't have back and forth. Okay, so I just I appreciate the clarification I still believe that that cut, no matter where it comes from, will have in some way, shape, or form a negative impact on student learning. And therefore, I cannot support it. And I urge board members to not vote for this. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Wilson, to be followed by Ms. Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to talk in support of the motion. In part

084because it's really not even $200,000. I think the number was more about $165,000. And we are in a situation where the Board of Supervisors has raised real estate taxes, and there's been articles in the newspapers about adding a meals tax. I believe that this board can can make the effort to find a hundred and sixty five thousand dollars without sending the message to the community that we are going to increase their community use fees of our public facilities and so I urge everyone on this board to support this amendment and move forward thank you thank you miss Schultz so we're going through a little bit of a dance here and I know it's our agenda and I know this is our script and this is what we're gonna do, but it's all already played out

085just so everybody knows. We could just do this in the next five minutes and we know exactly how this is gonna work out. We know exactly what's going to happen. The budget's going to happen. None of the amendments are going to pass. We're not going to move any money. We're not going to prioritize, and we're going to add another fee onto taxpayers. But I'll go ahead and dance because I've been invited to the dance, and I think that it's my duty to represent the people who both elected and voted to put me here and the others. I'm confused how... We've been doing this for basically about nine months from what I can from what I can calculate and I'm having to expand my spreadsheet so far to get to the decimals. This is .00611% of

086the budget. .00611% of the budget and it's not going to pass. And it's not gonna pass because people say it's too late or we should really raise community use fees or this will really harm education in Fairfax County, it will hurt students. No, it won't. If you have a $2.7 billion budget and you can't find $165,000 to resolve a budget that just A mere couple months ago was $50 million gap, and before that was an $80 million gap, and before that was a $120 million gap. And all of that's been closed, and we haven't touched any major programs, and the taxpayers are footing the bill courtesy of the Board of Supervisors increase in taxes. And don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have a little additional money to make this part of the process less

087painful so that we're not going to be leaving here at 1.30 in the morning, which we have in the past. But if 12 people who are charged by one of the wealthiest counties in America, in the 10th largest school system in the United States of America, with a $2.7 billion operating budget that is larger than the GDP of 150 nations on earth, can't prioritize 0.00611% of the budget and say, no, we're not going to kick the can over the fence and make the taxpayers... cough up more money to have access to our facilities. And yes, we do subsidize the access to our facilities. But we access it, we subsidize it to our residents. They're your buildings. We don't subsidize it. You subsidize it. The people who are subsidizing it are you. This is your money.

088They're your buildings. They're for your nonprofits. They're for your churches. They're for your scouting events. They're for whatever public access you have. If you want to have a dog reading group where dogs read to kids, I love those. Those are in the libraries. Whatever that is, they're your buildings to begin with. So for us to say we're subsidizing the community's use, it's the community's money to begin with. So there is some level of... pomposity that this will not pass. I'm not surprised. In the past many have known me to put together two, three, four, thirteen, eighteen budget amendments. I've put forward none because they won't pass. When I heard that Ms. Huffs had no support to pass tonight, I actually just reached an all-time level of incredulity. This is your money. We are spending your

089money. We need to be accountable to you. And if we can't be accountable with $165,000 without passing on more fees to you, after having the Board of Supervisors resolve virtually all of our budget problems, after big campaigns about hashtag save FCPS and not taking advantage of any of the budget task force suggestions, after all of that work, we're not going to move a dollar tonight. And I think that's problematic. I think it's problematic for the board. I think it's problematic for the taxpayers of Fairfax County. Okay. Ms. Strauss? Thank you. And thank you, Mrs. Hoff, for bringing this. This was an item that was discussed a couple of times, and so I appreciate you bringing it forward again. I will not support it. We do, our public buildings do belong to the public and I

090am pleased to say that we do subsidize community use to the tune of about four to five million dollars. So the fees, and the fees by the way generally are not charged to Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, those after school programs that most of our children participate in. The proposed increase in fee is two dollars an hour and it is simply because costs have gone up. So I appreciate the discussion that we've had over this fee, and I can certainly understand the desire to bring this amendment forward. I will not support it tonight, but again, thank you for bringing it forward. Ms. Evans? Thank you. I also appreciate anyone who comes up with ideas for saving money in one way or another. I'm not going to support this for a couple of reasons. I do think

091that it's eminently reasonable for us to increase our community use fees by $2 an hour for our custodial employees. We do currently subsidize our community use, and we will continue to subsidize our community use. The added community use fees will come from users. If we cut somewhere else it would either come from a small, it would be a small cut but in a program or somehow the taxpayers would continue to subsidize even more the community use. I mean it all comes from that and I think it's reasonable for the the users to have a very slightly higher community use fee. So I'm not going to support it, but I did want to address one thing. There are different ways. This budget was put together over the course of several months. We approved our advertised budget

092a couple of months ago. Then we learned how much money we were going to get, and then we came up with a final product. And I did want to note, and Mrs. Huff on the last round did come up with an idea. of putting $1.1 million into, for the living wage, into the food and nutrition service and so to save that from the operating cost. This has now been incorporated into the budget that we're getting ready to approve. So it's not that everyone's just rejecting ideas. That idea was in fact incorporated into this budget that we're going to vote on. This one, however, I'm not going to support, but I appreciate the idea. Yes, Mr. I just concur with what Ms. Evans said, but the other thing that I did want to point out that

093this, the community you see was one of the recommendations that was supported by 97% of the task force. So stating that this wasn't something that was supported by none of those agenda, none of those items were taken into account is not true because that is exactly where this came from. Ms. Corbett-Sanders? I just want to echo some of the comments of my colleagues in first thanking Jeanette for, Ms. Huff for putting forth this recommendation. As I have spoken with you, I actually think that this is on, this is a similar treatment of how we have dealt with the food service fees being moved over into the cost of the living wage for those workers has been moved over to the food services, which will mean that the people that consume the food services will also

094be paying a little bit higher in that area. And so when I look at how we are addressing this going forward, we're actually addressing the treatment of our custodial. staff in support of community use in the same way that we're handling the food services. And because of that, I will not be supporting this amendment. Okay. I think I have a go back for Mrs. Schultz. The raising of community use fees was created by a budget task force last fall when we were in the 50 to 80 million dollar budget gap. Not when we were in the $165,000 budget cap. Just to be clear. So taking advantage of something that the budget task force put together last fall with a gaping wound of close to $100 million or half thereof and then justifying using it instead

095of finding $165,000 in a $2.7 billion budget, not comparable. Okay, Mr. Wilson. Thank you madam chair and and just to clarify the numbers a little bit. I appreciate Ms. Rouse mentioning the $45 million subsidy for community use of our schools. This $165,000, by my calculation, would be 0.0036%. So it is a minuscule portion of the total, and I think it sends absolutely the wrong message to our community that we can't be disciplined enough to figure out how to close that gap without raising community use fees. And so again, I encourage everyone to reconsider and one just on one other point I would point out for the audience that mrs. Huff's amendment regarding moving the the Living wage cost into the food and nutrition fund actually was voted down by this board It wasn't accepted by

096this board. It was rejected by this board Thank you I just I would really like to make sure that our colleagues are again just mindful of the fact that when we had our work session and I suggested that the 5.3 million that we were trying to you know determine as part of the 9 million budget gap between the funding we got from the state and the county We had a list from the Budget Task Force of up to $50 million. I mean, we had the perfect a la carte menu to close the $5.3 million. And there was on the board definitely some hesitancy to find consensus on there. But now Ms. Huff has given us... Again, you know, $200,000 or as others have pointed out, $165,000 really. It's just concerning to me that we point

097to the budget task force suggestions when it works and then we discount it when we don't necessarily want to use it. So I just think that it's kind of a little bit, honestly. Sort of embarrassing Ms. Hough. I appreciate that you brought this forward because frankly I felt that even though we talked about it in work sessions and it didn't look like you would have the votes for it, I felt it was important for you to demonstrate that this was something that several of us on the board thought was an easy fix to do. And I out of sensitivity quite honestly for Dr. Garza and her administration here tonight and the public who wants to see us move along. It's just a shame we even spend this much energy talking about this tiny dollar amount

098when the message here was simply the very taxpayers who don't have kids in our schools, we're grateful to them, and we really rely upon them for a very generous transfer this year, and then we turn around and put this. Pitten of a fee and in there. I don't understand it. Mr. Moon Thank You madam chair. I'm not gonna support the amendment As we all remember that we discussed this particular idea several times so it's not the first time so when public sees us when a colleague of us Staged that will not entertain or pass an amendment because those amendments Having already all discussed and we all know where a our respective colleague stand on each one of those amendments having said that a If you look at the main motion, we are already directing We

099are already directing the superintendent to find half a million dollars somewhere from central operating accounts rather than us trying to find some money we Asking we are passing our buck to somebody, a superintendent, to find the money. What this amendment does is asking superintendent, rather than us trying to find money, superintendent find more money from somewhere. If superintendent were able to find more money from somewhere, superintendent would have presented, proposed that to us as part of her proposal. She did not. And when you look at, if you look at a task, budget task forces, some of the recommendations, 97% of those who participated supported it. That was a top choice, raising community use fees. At that time, it wasn't $165,000. Their recommendation was to find half a million dollars from community use fees, raising it

100by 40%. We're not doing that. We are only doing a small portion of that recommendation at this point, which garnered the largest support from those who served in the community budget task force at the time. Thank you, Mr. Moon. I would just say I appreciate the amendment, but I will not be supporting it either. I want to just mention that the food nutrition services money that was put on the table back in January by Ms. Huff, at least for myself, I did not support it at the time because it was early in the budget conversation and I felt like I needed to see where we ended up with revenues and our cost estimates do continue to change over time. And so I was not ready yet to burden the food nutrition services fund with that

101responsibility. But here we are at this point and we once again have to balance. everything and see how we close this margin which fortunately is so much smaller than it was. But we got from potentially 50 to 75 million dollar shortfall down to single digits by doing not only by increasing the revenue coming in but also by finding savings already. And I think we are at the point where $200,000 for community use fees is a small amount to those. It's a user fee. It's not a tax and it's a small amount to those who will be using our facilities. It pays for the use of the facilities. And on the other hand, $200,000 is to teachers. It's to teacher salaries, to teacher compensation. So it's not a small thing in our school system. And I

102think we will regret asking the superintendent to go back and find another $200,000. So if there are no other comments, I will call for the vote on the motion, which is to amend the main motion by eliminating the increase to community use fees totaling $0.2 million. and directing the superintendent to identify reductions from operating accounts totaling .2 million dollars. Those in favor please raise your hand. Huff Wilson, McLaughlin, and Schultz. Those opposed, Darinette Koufax, McElveen, Strauss, Corbett Sanders, Evans, Hines, Moon, and Palachuk. The motion does not carry. So we will go back to the main motion now, and I will, if board members would like to discuss the main motion, I'll call on you now. Ms. Evans? Thank you, Madam Chair. I primarily want to start by some thank yous. First of all, to our

103state and county funders this year. They have worked very, very hard. Our advocates in Richmond worked very hard with the governor to provide more funding for education this year, and that was very important to us. but particularly our county funders. They had to work very hard and take some courageous actions this year in order to reinvest into our school system. And I want to thank them for taking that action and working with us and hearing the advocates. So I want to thank also the advocates, all the members of the community, the appointees and the members of the Budget Task Force that did Yeoman's work for months and months looking at our budget when we thought that we were going to have a tremendous shortfall. to Mrs. Strauss and Ms. Derenette Koufax, thank you for your

104work on this budget. I know that this is now a year-round operation that takes a lot of work. And of course, Dr. Garza and her team, Susan Quinn and Kristen Michael and all of the the budget staff for everything that they have done. I know that they have put out hundreds and hundreds of pages of budget questions and answers. I hope the public has read it with as much fascination as I have. But that's just a small part of their work, so we're thankful to them. I do hope that this is the beginning of a new era now in our being able to strengthen our school system and build on what we have. We have gone through so many years of difficult, difficult, hurtful cuts and I do hope that this is the beginning of

105a new day. This is the first time in my years on the board that I can vote for a budget with real enthusiasm. So thanks to all the people that made that possible. Any other board members? Yes, Ms. Corbett-Sanders. I'll make this brief, but I do want to... echo the thanks to the Board of Supervisors and to our state legislature for all of their support of this in this past year and really echo the thanks for the boost as Chairman Bolivar put it that this has been a year in which we have begun a dialogue that's very important for our community. It's a dialogue with fellow policy makers, citizen groups, employee groups, and students on what are the shared values that this community has. And those conversations, those debates, those very late nights and lots

106of support from the finance staff here in the county has resulted in a budget which i will enthusiastically support as a shared values the virginia values budget is what i look at this as so thank you very much ms mclaughlin A year ago, I found myself voting against the budget, which was something I didn't take lightly, but I felt it was really important to speak to the issue of how this board owns the work we do. That in the end, while we rely heavily upon Dr. Garza and her team to... not only operate this great school system but to really identify how we can do it in the most fiscally responsible way because as you've been hearing the limited revenue that we have to try and fund public education and last year we in my

107mind didn't do our best board work So tonight, as you're hearing from many of my colleagues, people are very excited that this is a budget with a lot of good news. And it is, without question. I think one of the greatest selling points of this budget is the fact that this board did, in fact, honor its commitment that our employees would remain a top priority. We didn't do it. do anything negative contrary to last year in touching the 1 percent cost of living adjustment and so that's important along with ensuring that we could provide a step. But I do want for my colleagues to understand that yes, there are 12 of us and we all come at this budget with a varying degree of perspective. But for some of you, where you're comfortably in the

108majority of a mindset, this budget feels very comfortable to you. And as I shared with you in our work sessions, I'm not comfortable on a budget that we are, in fact, adding to a structural imbalance. And I'll be talking about that in a follow-on motion. And I really wrestled with whether or not I could vote for this budget because I didn't feel that we were actually, once again, doing our best homework. As some of our colleagues mentioned in the prior amendment, We asked our citizen stakeholders to serve on Dr. Garza's budget task force. And I thank Dr. Garza again for her leadership in pulling that together. But whether it turned out that the shortfall could have been 50 million, could have been 80 million, and instead it turned out to be 9 million. But the

109bottom line is we asked for their input on how to... ensure we could fully fund this budget and do it in the best way possible. And yet when it came down to that $9 million, Dr. Garza did her best. Chairman Strauss and Ms. Koufax as chair and vice chair also tried to meet with all of us and get an idea where could we find consensus on that $9 million gap. And frankly, we let each other down. We were not willing to compromise. And so Dr. Garza's best solution was, you know, if I can't get you all to find consensus, then we can make the budget work by using the third quarter carryover funds. But it does contribute to our structural imbalance, and that is not good fiscal stewardship. So in terms of tonight... I do

110want to speak to some of the strengths of the budget, not just about employees, certainly class size is essential. We've heard this from our community and I'm very proud of this budget that we're going to once again really address that. I also want to share for those of you who maybe haven't tuned in to some of our other prior work sessions that I raised the issue that's an upcoming recommendation from the Minority Student Achievement. oversight committee that we have a achievement gap issue in the school system it's something that I know my colleagues and I are all committed to trying to address but currently in Fairfax County Schools we don't have a specific designated staff position to do that type of work. And so I appreciated during the work session recently where Dr. Garza shared

111with us that she is working toward that and that that is something she and her team really are committed in this next school year to looking at how we can be more intentional with the focus on the achievement gap. And so Dr. Garza, I really appreciate your openness to looking at how that work can be done and continue to be enhanced in our school system. And that is another thing that makes me encouraged about where we're going as a school division and with this budget. I will say that in the end, for the public who might wonder, how did we come out this way where we genuinely were worried about such a large budget shortfall, without question, the board supervisors decided to very boldly decide that it was going to take additional revenue and I

112have spoken always in support of the fact that we're one of the wealthiest school systems and one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. And we should not find ourselves in a position where we cannot be competitive in compensating our employees. And there are things that we're still not doing that we need to do. But all of that being said, I really do hope... that going into fiscal year 18 for my colleagues when we start to move past tonight's vote on the budget and interestingly enough Dr. Garza you talked about how we vote on a budget and then two weeks later we kind of start anew. I'll actually inject a little humor here. We're going to start two seconds later because the follow-on motions are actually you know starting to talk about the fiscal

113year 18 budget. Not that there's any drum roll here, but my colleagues know sometimes I can march to a different drumbeat. I will be joining those of you who will be voting in support of the budget. It's not perfect, but when I did the reverse in my mind that as much as I wish You would dig deep and look at that, you know, one-fifth of 1% of the budget. I can't very well hold back and not vote in support of a budget that's over probably 99% of where I'd like to see it. So to our community, all I can ask if you're at home watching and especially the dedicated individuals sitting here in the audience here tonight, please remain engaged in this budget. I do hope what you're hearing tonight... not just from my remarks

114but others is that there are 12 personalities up here and we will do better work and I can speak to the different issues only when I hear from you all so your voices do matter and I appreciate you all being here tonight and for those of you at home listening. Ms. Palchuk. Thank you. It is tricky because we just had a work session and I was trying to remember some of the words I shared. First of all why why couldn't support the community use being taken out it is about our employees I believe that our budget, I agree with Ms. McLaughlin, is not 100% of what I would like it to be, but we have made a lot of sacrifices. We're so grateful that the community that are especially our supervisors who provide the majority

115of our funds to the schools have been able to find the will to do that, to support our community. The state has done a little bit more, and I hope... the federal government will do a little more to support our IDEA and impact funds in the future. It is about values of our community. I think this budget comes really, really close. Unfortunately, we are using one-time funds. We've done that to try to reduce the impact on our community, to try to preserve our programs. And so we've made a pretty big sacrifice and taken that. that little leap to say, okay, we want to protect it this time. I don't love that we are reducing our substitute pay. I think any cuts to our employees and our staff just puts more pressure on their backs and

116on their work and doesn't do enough to... help support them and to show us that they are a priority as well. So I'm concerned about the future. That is why I will be presenting a follow on motion. But for now, I really appreciate the work that's gone into this. I know as my first budget cycle, this has been quite a roller coaster ride. So I think everyone who's been engaged now and in the past and I do hope we We continue to look at our strategic plan, which is I'm very excited to hear Ms. Corbett Sanders' proposal to make sure we are aligned there, to make sure we have equity, that we have a true plan forward. And it's not just about a person, Ms. McLaughlin. I agree with the intent. I was in a

117community where we hired someone and it's not a silver bullet. You really have to have a comprehensive plan put forward for how we will achieve. closing opportunity gap achievement gap and having equity for students so I appreciate that I think we I hope we will hear from Dr. Garza in the future about how we will be addressing that I will definitely support this budget even though it's about 99.9 percent of what it could be and I do hope that we're able to continue and start to work with our board of supervisors in our community to think about how we continue to close our gap for the coming years because we don't have answers there yet either so thank you very much and I will be supporting this budget. Ms. Schultz? So I think we had

118a preview of things to come. You know, I wanted nothing more than to vote for this budget tonight because I think a lot of people have done some really tremendous work, a lot of them over there, Dr. Garza's down there, Board of Supervisors, and frankly, you know, the Budget Task Force, people in the community, all the comments. except the people that I think that didn't do the job are the other 12 of us who are sitting here. And my colleagues are going to be offended at that, but sometimes I think it's easier just to speak plainly. We had many opportunities, and if we go with the note that it's the supervisors who gave us the money and thanking them without thanking the taxpayers, it's not the supervisors' money. It's the taxpayers' money. It's the taxpayer's

119money. It's the taxpayer's money. The taxpayer's buildings. We're employees of the taxpayers. We're stewards of the taxpayer's money. We don't give them the right to access our buildings and education with their money. And it's maybe a slightly different way of looking at things, but it's a... big difference in the way you look at it. Let me give you an example. I have a 18-year-old art student who's investigating a new way of doing art, and he's bending canvases in order to create different aspects of light so that when you walk across the front of the canvas, you see a different picture by the time you get to the other side. It's the exact same thing. This is a bent canvas. this dais and one thing is said on one side and another thing is said at

120the other side and it's two sides of the same coin but it's not our coin and that's the fundamental underlying problem. We have classrooms that have 17 children in them and when we talked endlessly about the potential for creating a floor classroom rise from 17 to 19. We were told by some colleagues that that would be a devastating impact to some children. Now, that's an emotional feeling response. And it's not that we don't want to give everybody everything that they need. But at the end of the day, you can't. And you've got to prioritize. You've got to prioritize the .006%. You've got to prioritize and say, you know what? We cannot, with the economy that we have, with the taxpayers already footing an increase in their property taxes, with a stagnant national economy, look to

121the taxpayers perpetually to go after their wallet and say, well, it's just a little bit. It's always a little bit. And if we have the ability to make smart decisions and make choices, we 12 are the ones who have to make those decisions. And raising the class floor in some of our buildings would have been somewhere between $105 and $300 per child in those buildings. And those students already have. thousands of dollars more per student in educational resources because of Title I funds. But that's not an honest conversation that we want to have. I thank Ms. Palchak for bringing up the $5 million. $5.1 million in recurring use of one-time monies. That is bad practice. We've been lectured on it year after year after year at this time. We could have prioritized and Dr. Garza

122sat right here at our last work session and said as soon as the budgets passed she's gonna go look for those that 5.1 million and one-time funds anyway. Well if she's gonna look for it anyway and she's professed that she's gonna do the work then it's incumbent upon us as board members to help her and do the work collaboratively with her up front not to just heave this over to her and make her do it after the fact. Where is the board's work on that? And they'll say, oh, we've had lots of work sessions. That's true, we have. But we haven't moved the money. We haven't made the difficult choices ourselves as board members. And this is the other majority that we don't hear from, that we don't see from, but I hear from it.

123I don't have... small class sizes in my district. I have extraordinarily large class sizes. I have stuffed buildings. I have the lowest number of square feet per child. It is an educational impact and it is about educational equity and that equity is a two-way street. So I want to vote for it because I think the Board of Supervisors did a Herculean amount even though they raised taxes and I don't like that. I want to vote for it because staff did their work. I want to vote for it because superintendent did her work. I want to vote for it because the budget task force did their work. But I don't feel that we did our best work and we owe it to you as fiscal stewards of your money to work harder on your behalf instead

124of letting other people do the work for us. I want to do it, but I'm not going to be able to do it tonight. Okay, any other comments? Well, I'll just say I will be supporting. Oh, I'm sorry, Ms. Huff, I missed you. Go ahead. So I do want to say I ran for this seat on a few main things. Fiscal responsibility and driving the dollars to the classroom with competitive teacher salaries and reducing class size disparity. As evidenced by my only two motions I presented in my five months on the board, I do think there is work to do on fiscal responsibility. However, on the other two, getting our teachers to a competitive salary and class size, the budget has succeeded. Thank you taxpayers and thank you to staff for doing this work and

125to my colleagues for the discussions. So given that I will support this budget but I do so with the hope that my follow-on motion will be considered for the budget process since as a new board member I entered this budget process mid-conversation. Thank you. I'll just say a few words and then I think we'll be voting on the motion. I feel like we have talked about this so many times that maybe we're all a little tired of it. But I think tonight is really an important night for the community. This time last year, we were worried that if we had even one more year of revenues not meeting our growing needs, we would have to cut curricular and extracurricular programs that make Fairfax County Public Schools the school system that it is, that make Fairfax

126County a place that people from around the world want to come and settle. and bring their jobs and their families and their kids. So we really felt like we were up against it. And it's been a tough year of conversations. We had, you know, last year, this time we knew that we had, actually right now we know that we had 200 open positions. The beginning of this year, we actually, you know, have seen some measurable damage after eight years of revenues not meeting growing needs. We are spending $1,000 less in real dollars per child than we were in 2008. We've done that. by freezing teacher pay, raising class sizes. We had 200 unfilled classroom positions at the beginning of this school year. That's real. Our elementary class of over 30 are becoming more and more

127common in the county. And central office spending has been cut to rock bottom. over the years, rock bottom in the region compared to all other school systems around us. There really is virtually nothing left to cut there. And so this year, after a year of conversations about the reality that we were facing, We really had a question for the community. This is your school system. You know do we value the school system. Do we want it to be as great as it is. We want it to continue to have the reputation that it has had. And if so are we willing to make the investments that we need to make. And the answer now we can see it was yes. And thanks to our funders at the state and particularly our funders on the Board

128of Supervisors we're in a position now where we can not only meet growing needs we can also begin to invest in recovery. We can begin to recover our teacher salary competitiveness. We can begin to lower class sizes, and we will have no cuts to the programs that we all count on that make this school system what it is. Now I'm you know I think all of us will probably tell you that we're not particularly we're still not comfortable. I still feel like we're just kind of teetering just past the tipping point in this school system because we have more to do. I mean the 40 million dollar investment in teacher salaries will only get us halfway to the market average. We have more work to do there. But I and you know I'm mostly not

129comfortable because you know, this will cost the community. I own a home too. All of us taxpayers will feel this. And I think I believe that it is a critical investment in our local economy and our property values at this point in our history. But a 4 cent rise in the property tax is not something that can happen very often. It's not sustainable to do it this way. So we do need some of our next steps, I think, here as a community, and we'll talk about it later. tonight are you know to provide ourselves our county with more stability and diversity in our revenue base so that you know so I'm not 100% comfortable but I feel like we're in a much better position than we were last year I know that we have put

130a lot of work into this not only staff but the citizens my goodness who came out and supported this made all the difference You need to tell the folks, the elected folks who have to raise taxes, you need to make sure they understand that that is something the community wants them to do. That has to be a clear message from the community and I think the community came out and made that clear and that's why we're in the position that we're in. I also want to thank our chair and vice chair of the budget and I want to thank everyone on this board because I think we have done a tremendous amount of work. Work sessions conversations out in the community conversations with each other conversations with staff conversations with our superintendent. We have done

131a tremendous amount of work and while this budget is not perfect it is significantly better than last year and it is a great step on the road to recovery for the school system. So if there are no other comments I will go ahead and reread the motion. Do you think I need to reread the motion. We dispense with the rereading of the motion. It's right up there behind us. Okay. So thank you all of those in favor of the main motion to adopt the budget Please raise your hand Darnot Koufax McElvain Huff Strauss Corbett Sanders Evans Heinz moon McLaughlin and Paul chick those opposed Wilson and Schultz the motion carries Okay. Now we have something we don't usually have we have several Proposed follow-on motions. Madam Chairman, maybe we should do the one technical follow-on

132before we get into the next chapter. Okay, Ms. Strauss, go ahead. Yes, this is not very interesting, but this is sort of the technical motion that has to come after we approve the budget. I move that the division superintendent be authorized to take whatever actions are necessary to implement the decisions made by the school board relative to its FY 2017 approved budget and that all policies and regulations inconsistent with the budgetary motions passed tonight are hereby modified and amended accordingly and the division superintendent is to be granted authority to make all necessary minor changes and technical modifications to the budget into salary scales to comply with the intent of the school board with regard to its budget actions. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Ms. Darinat-Kovacs. And as Ms. Strauss said, this is just

133housekeeping that we do every year, right? So we don't probably need to discuss it. Okay. All right. Seeing no discussion, all those in favor, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous. Thank you. Okay. We have a few more follow-on motions. This seems to be the flavor of the year. We have several of these, so we'll go ahead and move through them. I am going to hand the gavel to Ms. Evans because the first follow-on motion is mine. Thank you. I call on Mrs. Hines for a motion. Thank you. I move that as the Board of Supervisors and the school board strive to provide quality services to the community, the collaboration of the two boards should continue. The boards have committed to a joint meeting retreat on June 14th. It is expected that the agenda

134will include discussion of the budget requirements of both entities and additional opportunities for collaborative service delivery. In addition, as the FY 2018 budget process unfolds, it is directed that additional joint meetings be scheduled to provide updates on projected requirements and resources. It is anticipated that these joint meetings occur in September and October-November. Updated revenue projections and refined service delivery needs should be outlined with time allotted for discussion by both boards. on how to best address these needs in the continued environment of constrained resources that we face. Staff will schedule the joint meetings of the two boards. The work of the successful children and youth policy team, SCIPT, should be the focus of joint board discussions as well in the coming year. First convened in May 2013, SCIPT is comprised of leaders from multiple sectors within

135Fairfax County. The team's role is to set community-wide goals and priorities for public policy as it relates to children, youth, and families. In order that the needs of the community as discussed by SCIPT are fully vetted by both boards, the June retreat and subsequent joint meetings should also include updates and policy discussions to ensure that the recommendations coming from the SCIPT can be incorporated into funding decisions going forward for building the capacity to address early childhood and school readiness. This focus is also consistent with recommendations from the Joint Budget Development Committee. There have been incremental adjustments made to the county and school programs designed for pre-K students. However, a comprehensive long-term plan needs to be defined and funding and facility options identified jointly in order for progress to be made towards this significant priority. I

136so move. Do I have a second? A SECOND BY MS. STRAUSS. MS. HINES, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOUR MOTION? YES, BRIEFLY. IT'S A LONG MOTION, SO I WON'T SAY MUCH MORE. I WOULD JUST SAY THAT EVERY YEAR THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS DOES BUDGET GUIDANCE FOR THEMSELVES. THEY SORT OF FOLLOW THEIR BUDGET VOTE WITH A LENGTHY GUIDANCE. AND SINCE WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO WORK SO WELL COLLABORATIVELY THIS YEAR WITH OUR PARTNERS ON THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, IT'S AN OPPORTUNITY FOR US TO JOIN HANDS AND KEEP MOVING FORWARD AND WORKING TOGETHER. AND SO I HAVE TAKEN A PART of their budget guidance that was related to the joint work that they would like to do with the school board and I have incorporated it here in this follow-on motion just to show our commitment

137as a board to to that board to the joint work that we think is really essential for meeting not only the needs of the school system but the needs of the county Mrs. Strauss. Thank you. With pleasure, I will support this, and thank you for bringing it forward. There are many things that we provide for our community and our citizens where the school board and the board of supervisors work collaboratively, and this speaks very much particularly to the support that we give to families and very young children, and it is something that our staffs work well together, and we will be talking about this with our joint retreat with the board of supervisors, so thank you for coming forward with this. All right, seeing no other comments, we will take the vote on the motion,

138which I am not going to read again. All those in favor say, or raise your hand. Ms. Darinak-Kofax, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Huff, Mrs. Strout. It is unanimous with Mr. Wilson away from, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Mrs. Huff, Mrs. Strauss, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Evans, Ms. Hines, Mr. Moon, Ms. McLaughlin, and Ms. Palachuk. Those opposed? Those abstaining? Mrs. Schultz. And that motion passes, and I will now pass the gavel back to Ms. Hines. Thank you. She actually passed the gavel back to me. That's nice. Okay, I call on Ms. Palchik for her follow-on motion. Thank you. I move that the Fairfax County School Board support and encourage the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to vote in favor of putting a meals tax to referendum this coming November and to allow maximum flexibility to support our county

139schools. Do I have a second? Seconded by Ms. Corbett-Sanders. Ms. Palachuk, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes. This follow-on motion is focused on the fact that our great schools are the gem of Fairfax County, that they attract families and businesses to locate here, that we currently spend $1,000 less per student than we did in 2008, that almost 90% of Fairfax County's non-property tax revenues are capped by the state, and that due to state and federal funding formulas, more than 75% of the FCPS budget comes from the county. If passed, this would allow Fairfax County to diversify its limited revenue source. Fairfax County Public Schools continues to face an unprecedented revenue shortage. Recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers with competitive salaries has become increasingly difficult. Reducing our class sizes is a challenge for our

140system without additional funding. Quality programming for all of our students in an increasingly diverse county is at risk. For these reasons, I hope my colleagues will join me in urging the Board of Supervisors to support putting this new revenue option to referendum by the voters of the county. This new revenue could diversify the tax base and bring an estimated $96 million to fund our schools and county services. Many jurisdictions across the Commonwealth, including Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church City, Fairfax City, the towns of Herndon and the town of Vienna, currently have the meals tax. An estimated 28 percent of expected revenue from the meals tax would be from non-county residents who work, travel, or pass through our county. As Fairfax County residents currently pay the meals tax in those jurisdictions, visitors would now be asked to

141pay the tax when they dine in our county. While Fairfax County Public Schools received a supportive revenue transfer this year, this one-time increase cannot be assured every year, and we cannot continue to balance our budget by relying solely on Fairfax County property owners. The meals tax would bring in funds that would stay in the county from both residents and non-residents. These funds would go directly to support our county's kids and families. For these reasons, we can no longer wait to ask the voters of Fairfax County to support this new funding source. Okay, Ms. Huff? So I'm concerned with our board advocating for this under the presumption of giving maximum flexibility to support our schools. Do we understand the impact this tax will have on our teachers and support employees, the very ones that make up

142almost 90% of our budget? If we continue to increase taxes, they have to pay in their own community in order to receive more revenue for the schools in order to raise their salaries. We will not be able to keep up. We are... increasing their own cost of living. In addition, with our current budgeting processes, we use the amount we spent last year and make some adjustments based on mandated costs, increasing salaries, and student enrollment and demographics. If the meals tax is passed and the Board of Supervisors agrees to transfer any of it to the schools, this will help us to close the shortfall for one year. but not going forward. The increase will no longer contribute to the increased expenditure needs asked for each year, as it will now be part of our recurring funds.

143Another concern in advocating under the claim that it increases school flexibility is that there is no guarantee the meal tax will provide additional revenue above what we currently receive as a transfer from the Board of Supervisors. In the past 10 years, the county transfer has increased anywhere from negative 0.9% to 10.9%. In the past few years, it has been 4.5%, 2%, 3%, 3.2%, and this year 4.8%. Since there is not a set transfer rate, in the increase in revenue from the meals tax can be offset by a decrease in the county transfer that otherwise would have been without the meals tax. So for these reasons, I will not be able to support the motion. Okay, Ms. Strauss? Virginia is what's called a Dillon rule state and I believe there are very few or maybe we're

144the last one in a Dillon rule state local government has only those authorities specifically given to it by the state government and Fairfax County is an urban county system in Virginia those localities that are cities or towns have greater flexibility to create a menu of taxes that are considered fair and well balanced by their citizens Because Fairfax County is an urban county, even though we provide the services of a city, and in fact, the economy of Virginia is dependent on the economic well-being of northern Virginia, particularly Fairfax County. So we are faced with, as a citizenry, a great challenge to create a menu of taxes to provide the services that citizens would like. If we were a town or a city, not only could one levy a meals tax without going to referendum, could raise

145a hotel occupancy, could raise a cigarette tax, a gasoline tax, there's a whole menu. But because we are an urban county, We as citizens have a great deal of difficulty creating what we would see as a fair and equitable menu of taxes. We are unusually dependent on residential real estate. While we are one of the wealthiest counties, not only in the state but in the nation. A lot of that wealth is taxed at the state or the federal level. It is not available at the local level. For all of those reasons, I would support putting a meals tax on the referendum for voters to decide. I would hope it would pass, and I think this would help to create a fairer menu for citizens, and I think it would also help to better fund those

146services that our citizens and our taxpayers would like. So for that reason, I will support this motion. Thank you. Ms. McLaughlin? As my colleagues know, I serve on the successful children and youth policy team. And one of the most important themes coming out of SCIPT is one, Fairfax. And that's exactly what we're talking about here tonight. We are, both the school board and the board of supervisors, two of the governing bodies of a county of over a million people. And because of an antiquated, system down in the General Assembly. We're the seventh wealthiest state out of 50. and yet we've got Dillon Rule that has us back in the 19th century. I happen to live almost across the street, by all intents and purposes, from the city of Fairfax. My family, my children, we've been

147paying the city of Fairfax meals tax every time we go to our favorite pizza place, whether we go to Chipotle as they walk across the street after school from Woodson, you name it, we're paying it. And yet, here we are not benefiting from the fact that a meals tax would, as Ms. Strauss so aptly stated, diversifies our revenue. There is no indication that the city of Vienna, the city of Falls Church, the city of Fairfax, that their restaurants don't thrive. And this is simply our board. demonstrating what I think is so essential for the success of this meals tax and it's called collective leadership. We need to collectively put our voices together. The supervisors, as we just extolled upon a few moments ago, stood out there and voted to increase the property tax rate in

148support of our public schools. And now this is our opportunity to stand with them in support of our county's overall revenue needs. Being able to go to a restaurant as a parent of three teenagers, it's not something we do often. It's a luxury. And so if you want to go out to a restaurant as opposed to go to the grocery store and prepare food in your home, that's fine. But this is a way that we don't have our taxes sometimes hit our most vulnerable. So I really hope that as many of my colleagues as possible will support this. I appreciate that Ms. Palchuk. um her follow-on motion is very uh clear and and doesn't necessarily go into them Extra details about what this meal tack would be it just says let's bring this to the

149voters and as elected officials we're making a statement tonight and whether or not we believe this has been official to the county and many in this audience and at home know miss Schultz is one of my Dear colleagues on it any number of issues on on the board But and we may not see eye to eye on this one. So I recognize there's diversity of opinion But I wanted to make sure that the Braddock District and Fairfax County citizens who are watching tonight know that I am one of your board members who believes this is actually a good thing for our county, and I'm happy to support it tonight. Ms. Corbett-Sanders? Thank you. I, too, will be supporting, as you know, Ms. Palachuk's... motion and the reason I'm supporting this motion is that this motion

150is about voters right to choose. It's about putting on the ref on our referendum that allows voters to choose whether or not they support a meals tax. It is not about making a decision tonight. Secondly, as my colleagues have talked about, this is about diversifying revenue streams. Those of us who have been in business know that it becomes very difficult to have a going concern of a business if you only have a single client or a single buyer. And so what this does is allow the county to diversify revenue. And it allows the county to diversify revenue in a manner that keeps the revenue in Fairfax County rather than sending it to Richmond. The third aspect of this is that a meals tax will include the compensation to the collectors of that meals tax. That

151is what the plan is. So it is not adding an extra cost burden to the collectors of that tax. But this isn't about the ins and outs of an individual tax. This is about the ability to bring a suggestion to the voters and letting the voters choose. And so I will be supporting this. Ms. Schultz? So I'm very grateful for Ms. Corbett-Sanders for reminding us that this is about not us deciding for the taxpayers to raise their taxes because we don't have that authority and to the Board of Supervisors who do have that authority and just did it. The only problem is that we have a history of entertaining the meals tax in Fairfax County. And I have to laugh when I hear about diversifying income. That has been roundly rejected by the voters time

152and again. And in order to put something, to put a ballot initiative on the ballot and put it before the taxpayers, it costs money. So it's not a free endeavor just to say we're going to put something else on the ballot because all kinds of organizations including the chambers and then the restaurant associations, the individual restaurateurs are going to have to spend money either lobbying for or lobbying against it and the place where that's going to hit the hardest are the small business owners, the individual families, the people who are building frankly new enterprises for their families. to be successful in the future who are working very hard now. A lot of immigrants to our country, legal immigrants to our country who have worked very hard building small businesses are going to be stuck in

153a position of either not having the resources to fight it or having to relentlessly add to their already strained weekly endeavors to make their small businesses a going concern. Large restaurateurs will probably get in as well, which means then that the tax advocates will then start spending money. And everybody will be spending money on fighting whether or not to levy more taxes and you don't diversify your income by raising taxes, you depress it. That's the way economics works. The more taxes you levy, the more people retract money from the all-knowing and seeing eye of the IRS. This is not complex. And what you're going to do is you're going to drive parents who are emailing me right now saying, I just won't ever be able to take my children out for dinner again. So now

154you further restrain families. Military families will get the idea that it's not a good idea to come to Fairfax anymore, and they'll just send their spouses here to do their D.C. tour, and then they'll stay wherever they are in whatever local area is more affordable to live. more teachers out of Fairfax County that we're gonna be paying them with Fairfax County taxpayer money and they're not even gonna be able to afford to live here and then they're gonna take their money and they're gonna go live in a neighboring county that's more it's more affordable to live There are basic economics here that levying more taxes on people doesn't save us and doesn't get us out of holes that we're not willing to dig out of ourselves. So while I understand and appreciate the clarification that

155Ms. Corbett Sanders gave, and she's exactly correct, we're not voting to levy a tax. And this is the taxpayer's right to do it. But if you want to do it, then by heavens, go to the Board of Supervisors and tell them, go tell your state legislators. But I am not going to be complicit in facilitating the levying of more taxes on the broken backs of taxpayers who are weighed down already. Mr. Press. Thank you, Madam Chair. On that same note of economic attitudes towards this problem, I'm going to take a little bit different of an outlook and share with you the first lesson that I was ever taught in economics and personal finance in my freshman year. And it was in the form of a big poster that was placed on the board with a

156chicken on it saying, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify. Miss Corbett Sanders, I think you were exactly right this school system for too long has been funded by a single revenue stream as a student You know and I have said this time and time again the budget process that we have to go through year over year is deeply troubling to me because of the flexibility with property values in this area which caused Property tax revenues to fluctuate which causes our transfer to fluctuate which causes our budget to fluctuate In a system that is growing at rates that are, you know, unprecedented, we cannot continue to be reliant on a single revenue stream. And I think that, you know, as Ms. Schultz and Ms. Corbett-Sanders both pointed out, and I appreciate that, we

157are not voting on putting a meals tax on the ballot. You know the Board of Supervisors says that but I think it's important for the students and staff of this system that we send a clear message to the Board of Supervisors that this board is with them as they empower the voters of this county to determine how they will fund our schools in the future and if they should vote it down that's their prerogative but if they should support it We now have a way that we can, you know, in the future, mitigate the flexibility of property values and property tax revenues in this county. And we are not placing all of our eggs in one basket. So I thank Ms. Palachuk for bringing this forward, and I support it. Ms. Darinette Koufax. Thank you,

158Mr. Press, for showing that our education system does work and for giving us an economics lesson to boot. I appreciate that. I will be supporting that for all the reasons. I will be supporting this follow-on motion for many of the reasons my colleagues have talked about already, allowing us to diversify and also keeping the money in Fairfax if this were to pass. I think that's extremely important. And when we do talk about... surrounding areas, most surrounding areas, Alexandria City, Arlington, Falls Church City, they all have mills taxed. It's one of those taxes that is, if it does pass, I think it's a choice if you decide to go out, but I don't think from, it's not something that I think will. make somebody they wouldn't go and buy a meal if they were on the

159border between Alexandria City and Alexandria Fairfax County. They're not going to think about going into the county versus Alexandria City if they were going to buy a simple lunch and meal. And the amount that that will generate will be significant for us. We have been struggling for years. We realize it has been on the ballot and it may not pass, but I fully support bringing it forward, allowing for the voters to to to see but i will definitely be on the side of um stating that this is something our county needs and this is something that our schools need and i hope the voters out there will support it so i will support this follow-on motion ms mclaughlin has a i'm sorry mr wilson mr wilson you go first yeah thank you um this is

160a situation where i think that this board is not prepared to answer this question. I'm sure that the Board of Supervisors has spent a great deal of time studying the impact of a meals tax and studying the different types of taxes that might be implemented. This follow-on motion, while it is drafted in a way that's very direct and straightforward, doesn't get into any detail. So we really don't even know who would be impacted. For example, would this tax apply to ready-made meals in a grocery store? If so, who's impacted by that? Right? We need to, I think that this is the kind of conversation, frankly, that when you hear, when I hear all the viewpoints on this stage, we need the same sort of professional level of analysis that the Board of Supervisors has before

161they make that decision. If the Board of Supervisors wants to put this in, vote soon to put it on to referendum, as it seems like it's impending, then I think then it's maybe a right time for us. to discuss it ourselves and to talk as a board. But I think right now, I don't have the background in economics because I certainly think that diversifying revenue sources might be a good idea. But is it worth it if we decimate many of our restaurant businesses who frankly close with frequency in parts of Fairfax County right now? The restaurant industry, I think, has an average profit margin of 3% to 4%. So I need to understand, what does a meals tax do in the restaurant economy? Because we don't have so many jobs that we can give them

162away in Fairfax County. We don't have retail, restaurant. In Fairfax County shopping centers of so many that we don't have a lot of vacancies because I think we can drive around Fairfax County and see Quite a bit of vacancy. What does this do to vacancy rates? Well, I think we need to understand before we make a board recommendation to the Board of Supervisors I think as a board we need to understand what it is What would be impacted if we if this meals tax were to be put into place? I think this is sort of a showboat And I don't think that that's our job as a school board. I think our job is really to drill down and find out what our priorities are in terms of spending. And clearly, based on our last

163discussion, that's not something we do very well. I think we should delay this vote. Thank you. Okay, I have a couple of go-backs, but I haven't spoken yet, so I will. The last time that the meals tax was put to the voters in Fairfax County was 1992. None of the children currently in our school system were born in 1992, so it has been a long time. It was put on the ballot in a special election. There was virtually no campaign waged for it, and it did not do very well. I think we're in a very different situation now. We've had now almost a decade of a harsh reality about how we have growing needs and enrollment. in this county. We have growing needs in other public services in Fairfax County. You know this is a

164great place to be a kid not only because of a great school system but because of parks and libraries and safe neighborhoods. All of that is our collective responsibility and we have been relying on property taxes which is an arcane rural model for an increasingly urban county and it just doesn't work. We are surrounded by jurisdictions that have a meals tax that have this kind of diversity and their restaurants do very well. I represent the town of Vienna, and every time I turn around, there's another two or three restaurants in there, and they're doing just fine. I think this is the meals tax. I would say that the Board of Supervisors has looked at this very closely. I was at their work session recently, two work sessions recently, where they got a lot of questions

165answered from their legal team, so all of that is available publicly to anybody who wants to see it, all the kinds of questions that have been asked just now. They're also, Chairman Bolivar put together a task force of meals tasks. task force two years ago that spent a couple of months that had all the stakeholders around the table doing all this research and answering a lot of these questions. So the information is out there. The meals tax, and one of the things, part of the information that you will see if you look at it is that a meals tax is not regressive. It is not harder on low-income people. It is not hard on the employees of restaurants. 30% of the revenue coming to, 30% of the meals that are bought in Fairfax County are

166bought by people. who don't live in Fairfax County, so this is free money for us. These are people who don't use any of our services, but who spend their money here. It is passed through the restaurants. It's not regressive. You don't have to eat out. If you choose to, then you pay it. I don't notice it when I go to the town of Vienna or when I go to the city of Fairfax. I don't even notice it. It's passed through by the restaurants. It doesn't cost the restaurants anything. In fact, there's proposed to be some money from the tax that would go to the restaurants as an administrative fee to help them to deal with it. It will cost them nothing. And you know what? Homeowners deserve a break. We deserve a break year after

167year after year. We go back to the homeowners, people like me, right? To pay for all the services that we all enjoy. A meals tax will give us a break in that. Counties in Virginia just do not have a lot of flexibility as has already been said. So I will be supporting this. I think it's a great opportunity for our community to support something that makes a lot of sense for us. Mr. Moon? I'll be supporting this motion. For my colleagues in the public, I just want to point out one thing that this motion is very consistent with one of the positions in our legislative programs, which is, I was just looking at it, trying to give you exact page number that's on page 16, which was passed in December of 2015. It is stated,

168it's right there. The Fairfax County School Board supports, among other things, local revenue flexibility to accommodate various economic and demographic conditions and assist local governments in creating systems of taxation that are sensible, fair, stable, and reflect the local priorities. We should not be, just as a number of my colleagues pointed out, we cannot be just relying upon property owners, homeowners, they are all the burdens. Non-property owners, non-homeowners also have a responsibility to contribute toward educating our children. Okay, I have some go-backs. Ms. Schultz, followed by Ms. McLaughlin, and then Ms. Palachuk. Ms. Schultz? Just a couple of things. We're talking about advocating again for more money when we just passed a bigger budget, when we have over 2,115 fewer students in the school system this year than we expected. Over 2,115 fewer students. So it

169isn't necessarily for more students. And speaking of keeping our word, part of our oath that we swear when we take office is that we will run this school system with utmost efficiency. Utmost efficiency. Going in perpetual motion in search of more revenue rather than... running the school system according to the Code of Virginia as we're sworn to uphold and oh by the way the US Constitution, but we'll get to that later, is utmost efficiency. And if we can't find $165,000 to not raise fees on the community, I do not see that we are running it with utmost efficiency, and I'm not going to ask the taxpayers to pay more or curb everything that they're doing in their lifestyle because of a stagnant economy. And to say that only those who say they feel they can't

170notice it when they go out, well, there's a lot of people that can. Okay, Ms. McLaughlin? So, Ms. Hines, I appreciate you bringing up something that I had wanted to mention in my prior remarks, which is that when the analysis has demonstrated that up to a third of the revenue can be coming from tourism, Fairfax County is, again, by sheer size, benefits from an enormous amount of tourism, sports. tournaments and conferences and that's all lost revenue that the other surrounding jurisdictions benefit from having with this meals tax. So the Washington Post recently reported that if the supervisors decide on June 7th to put this to referendum, they're looking at perhaps 4%. meals tax is what the poster is reporting anyway, but that could bring in up to $100 million. That's over four pennies on the

171real estate tax rate that we've all been talking about. It's very difficult on homeowners when you do it every single year. So the beauty is this is something that, again, comes from what... many jurisdictions around the Commonwealth recognize. If you want to go out and eat at a restaurant, right now the state already taxes it at about 5%. And so if you go out to a meal, whether it's a family of five and it's $100, because it's $20 a person, you're paying $5 to the state. But as Ms. Corbett Sanders pointed out, if you have the Fairfax County tax rate, that's another five dollars out of your pocket you already were spending a hundred and five dollars Now you'll spend $110, but 100% of that county meals tax stays here, not four-fifths of it going

172down and never returning in Richmond. So this is the best way. But I can't emphasize enough, because I really appreciate Mr. Wilson's concern about, you know, are we really in a position to vote on this? And why I see it differently is very much as described by... Ms. Corbett Sanders and others. And Ms. Schultz pointed out too, we're not actually voting to put this in place. We're showing our elected leadership voices in support of the supervisors to saying, we think it's good to bring it to referendum. And then absolutely let Fairfax County voters decide. I mean, I think it would be horrible if... the supervisors and or the school board said nope don't bring it to referendum who are the 22 of us to deprive the voters of telling it voters from telling us what

173you believe will be better for us in terms of revenue streams so i know ms schultz was expressing concern about small business owners i happen to actually believe that hopefully voters are simply going to want to go to the website, the Fairfax County government, get their frequently answered questions, ask questions, what does this mean, and make informed decisions. I really do hope that people recognize, again, we're not doing anything here that's harmful, but I think the collective voice will be beneficial to this county. Mr. Wilson to be followed by Miss Palachuk. Yeah, just just very quickly. I and I really appreciate Chairman Heinz comments about we keep going back to the homeowners year after year and increasing their real estate taxes I have not heard the Board of Supervisors say that meals tax revenues would

174be refunded to reduce real estate taxes. There is no guarantee that the Board of Supervisors is not going to raise our real estate taxes again, and in fact, they probably will. And I think that we need an analysis of that. If there was a promise that we would reduce the current increase in real estate taxes for the meals tax right now, then I think we've diversified. But I think what we're talking about right now is just simply adding a tax. Okay, Ms. Pulchik? Yes, thank you. I did want to address some of mr. Wilson's concerns from earlier I think miss Heinz spoke about the Task force and the information that has been put out by the Board of Supervisors. So there definitely has been research I have been following that in addition when it comes

175to posts kind of post-price consumption taxes actually has been shown that it does not have a negative effect or people do not go out less or spend less or buy less. Actually in Henrico County, which passed it in 2013, they've actually seen more of a revenue from the restaurants than they even expected. So it did not have a negative impact on the businesses. And in addition, it is it is a tool in the toolbox. They cannot guarantee that this will be, you know, lowering property taxes. But it is another way that. that the supervisors can use, as Supervisor McKay said recently, this hundred million dollars is about equal to the increase in the transfer to schools this year. So that really is providing another way for our county, which is very limited, to be able

176to fund our revenue and our schools, which do attract businesses and people to our community. So. the impact on businesses would be minimal and the impact on the community would be pretty immense. Okay so thank you. I think we may have said as much as there is to say about that right now. So I have I will go ahead and read the motion since it is short. I will be voting on this. I move that the Fairfax County School Board support and encourage the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to vote in favor of putting a meals tax to referendum this coming November and to allow maximum flexibility to support our county's schools. All those in favor please raise your hand. Corbett Sanders, Evans, Hines, Moon, McLaughlin, and Palchik. Those opposed, Huff, Wilson, and Schultz. The

177motion passes. All right. I call on Ms. Corbett Sanders for her follow-on motion. Thank you. recognizing that the strategic plan ignite articulates the vision for our school system our budget should define the fiscal resources necessary to achieve the vision I move that the Fairfax County School Board direct the superintendent of schools to develop the 2017-2018 budget proposal to be aligned with the strategic plan ignite Is there a second? Seconded by Ms. Strauss. Ms. Corbett-Sanders, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, please. Our strategic plan, Ignite, is a tool in which we articulate the mission and vision of our school system to be better, stronger, more focused, and flexible in dealing with the changing landscape of education in Fairfax County. However, we are at risk of having this plan relegated to the shelves that

178they rest on in each of our offices and the offices of FCPS leadership unless we use the plan to inform our policy and decision-making for our schools and our budget. Additionally, as we have seen over the past several years, we are facing and will continue to face increased scrutiny by the Board of Supervisors and the public as we ask for increased funding either in the form of property tax or a meals tax. We pride ourselves on using best practices in the classroom and strive for continuous improvement. We as a Board and the school system's leadership also strive for continuous improvement and the use of best practices. A best practice recognized in the business, nonprofit, and in academia is the Malcolm Baldrige process. A key component of this process is going beyond the development of the

179strategic plan to creating an institutional understanding of the role of the plan in informing decisions and the actions critical to implementing the plan. A foundational piece for ensuring a strategic plan is implemented successfully is the alignment of resources with the plan. Our alignment of resources is driven by our budget. In the absence of a strategic plan at the beginning of the budget development process, coupled with the pressure of depressed funding, it is understandable that we did not fully align this plan this year. However, going forward, aligning our budget to our strategic plan will allow the school board and our funding bodies to identify near and long-term budget requirements. The alignment will also ensure that we have captured the transformational aspects of the vision of our strategic plan to include the investments in our teachers, the

180digital transformation of our curriculum, and the retooling of our high schools to meet the portrait of the graduate. In essence, the aligning of our budgeting process with our strategic plan will drive our resource allocation process and begin a dialogue with peers on the Board of Supervisors and the broader community about our vision for the school system. A budget aligned with the strategic plan not only makes for more effective use of institutional resources, it allows the community to follow the process with greater understanding of how and why our decisions are being made. The alignment of our budget with the strategic plan is crucial to ensuring budget resources are prioritized, allocated appropriately to support the mission and vision laid out in IGNITE. Thank you. Ms. Strauss? I'm very proud of the work that we have done in

181developing IGNITE, our strategic plan that is built on our portrait of the graduate. We have described the outcomes that we want for our children. and we are forging a new path forward in programs, in curriculum, and what is also exciting, the state is also using part of our foundation to go forward. And while we have struggled through very, very difficult budget times, it has been a challenge to actually... positively craft our budget priorities using ignite it's now time to do that we have turned a corner and it is time now that we we begin the the forward planning use our strategic strategic plan as our lens to evaluate programs to determine how we are going to allocate our resources so that we actually are able to to achieve the outcomes for our children that we

182have defined in our strategic plan so I welcome our ability to go forward with this. Ms. Derenakofa? I will be supporting this. I, too, am proud of the work this board did. We took a long, lengthy look to develop that strategic plan, and a lot of work was put in there. The good news about this budget this year was that there were minimal cuts. The bad news about this budget was many of the opportunities that we have outlaid in our strategic plan were unable to be funded. And so that document that Ms. Corbett-Sanders is a new member of the board, I can guarantee you that this member of the board who was instrumental in putting it together will not allow that to grow dusty on the shelves of our leadership team or with this board.

183So I wholeheartedly support that. I think Ms. Strauss eloquently expressed some of the reasons why it hasn't been funded this year because we were in what we thought was the ultimate cut mode and in order there was one of the budget documents that said if this, this and this were to be funded and I don't have that in front of me but I know Dr. Garza and her team worked a lot on that because when we were talking about is this a needs based budget and we're like no because if this were a needs based budget these were the things that would be funded and the length was long, the price tag was large and all of those items came directly out of our strategic plan. So I think this follow on motion as we

184turn. in the corner, hopefully in our financial situation, that this is the right way to go. Anyone else? Yeah, Ms. McLaughlin. So I do want to first say that I actually am supportive of all of the follow-on motions. I think that Dr. Garza last year took the lead in creating a budget task force knowing what our circumstances were this year and I think that the motions before us, these three in particular, now allow the board to speak to how we want to own the budget process and work with Dr. Garza and how best to help us get there. So I think that Ms. Corbett-Sanders, your motion starts to get us there. I shared with you that I have a little bit of concern that I think the strategic plan is so lofty and so high

185level that sometimes when I've had conversations about the strategic plan and statements of old, it's already there. I mean if you actually read the strategic plan it is very lofty, it's a very, very, very high level. So I think we'll definitely need to work with Dr. Garza. I would envision a work session where she can try to understand and wrap her arms around so what did this motion mean for the 12 of you because this is going to be something new. But we absolutely, I think, as a board, need to start having a clearer understanding of how we develop a budget. And it is something that happens over almost a full calendar year. So I will be supporting it. And I thank you for your efforts in reaching out to all of us. Trying to

186make sure that we're headed in the right direction for this next budget cycle Okay thank you. I will support it as well. I agree with the direction and the concept. I'm not sure what exactly we're committing the school board and the staff to do but I think we have time to talk about that as we finish our first year of living with the strategic plan this summer. I think we'll get more clarity about how we move forward and part of that probably should be how we connect it to the budget. But I think, you know, after all the commitment, the commitment and work that we and the community have put into the strategic plan, I do think that that demands that we commit all of our work going forward to the goals of that plan.

187And this just kind of makes sense. So I will support it. Any other? Oh, so I just, I sort of have a question because something you just said, Ms. Hines, made my. Guess my puzzler puzzle if we don't know what we're committing the staff to do There was a previous motion about lines of business and doing amendments In doing a review we don't want to do that, but I'm worried because we talked about something earlier this evening in the forum about Not necessarily taking on things and that was something completely different, but not knowing what it would do to staff time on an education type summit. So I sort of, there's a juxtaposition there of if this is gonna task staff time and maybe Dr. Garza that's a question. oddly directed at you is what

188does this mean in staff time? I mean, what is the level of commitment here? And again, what are we spending money on in staff time or staff resources that are directed to this, if not something else, if we can't even quantify it up front? Because that's concerning. I don't I don't from I've visited with Miss Corbett Sanders about this I'm not I'm not sure I don't believe that this Required an exorbitant amount of additional staff time. I mean whatever time might be required. I think it would be beneficial We have directed priorities in this current budget that you are considering tonight You know we did those priorities and new investments are directly aligned and correlated to the strategic plan There is time in July for the board to reflect upon the strategic plan this past

189year And I think we just talked about budget priorities as reflected in the strategic plan moving forward. So I think there's a lot of ways we can accomplish this. Well, if you're talking about potentially actually doing budget priorities, which is, you know, I mean, many of us have been advocating for years to do a zero-based budget and build the budget up from the bottom. I mean, I'm all for that. And if you're saying we could somehow build access to an exercise like that this summer while aligning it to our strategic plan, is that what you're intending, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, is that we're going to... Pull apart the budget and align it to the strategic plan or you're talking about a different exercise altogether Okay, I think that's a question for mr Corbett Sanders and I have

190another speaker and but you can give your answer after After the next speaker. Yeah, are you finished? Mrs. Schultz? Well, no because I'd like her to answer the question so that I know whether I'm finished or not back to you and then you'll have another chance miss Evans I do want to thank Ms. Corbett-Sanders both for this motion and also for the conversations that we've had about it where we talked about the intent and where this would lead us. I do think that... This is in line with what the board intended when we approved the strategic plan. We certainly need for the money to follow our roadmap, which is what the strategic plan is. So I don't see this being in any way in conflict. I see it being a complementary action. that says we

191have set the strategic plan. That is our roadmap and we need to be guided by that. Like Ms. Derenette Koufax, I'm not going to leave it on the shelf. I certainly will keep it in front of us as we go forward, certainly with the budget. So I appreciate you reminding us of the need to have the dollars follow the plan. And I do think this strengthens the plan. So I will support it. Ms. Corbin-Sanders? Ms. Schultz has left the room, but I think she's watching on the camera or on the television in the back, so I will answer the question. Our strategic goal, our strategic plan has four goals, and around those goals are desired outcomes that include strategies to achieve those outcomes. What the budget... how I envision this working is that as we

192go through the budget that we will actually align the budget items. the larger ones, not all the way down to the individual penny, but along those desired outcomes. So we have a much better understanding of where the money is and how it will influence our ability to achieve the goals, recognizing that the bulk of the funding that we have is spent on salaries and resources there. But, for example, there are certain... underlying services that we provide in the county. For example, we talked a bit about custodial services that are just kind of the nuts and bolts of operating a business or an organization. And so that may not be as crisply aligned as other items. And so what I would suggest is that the the superintendent work with her staff to do a rough crosswalk

193between where our budget items are now and how they align with the strategic plan and then have a work session this summer on how that will go forward. Just for clarity purposes, I do think there's some ways, and certainly I think it's appropriate for us to identify major new, new major investments. just like we did this year with teacher compensation and lowering class size at the elementary level. Those are directly correlated to our strategic plan. They're right there. So I think that those are things that we can maybe more overtly tie. I would caution, I just want to make sure we all understand, I don't think, because our strategic plan... is about how we think about the future and how we want to be in the future. It's not an operational plan that addresses and

194identifies and reflects every single thing we do in this system. You all developed it, you know that full well So I just want to make sure that it would be impossible for us to do a direct correlation on every line item But I do agree with miss corporate Sanders that we do need to tackle how we're going to get there and unless we tie that to How we're investing dollars and how we're prioritizing monies that we're not going to we're not going to be able to accomplish all those important things in our strategic plan so that there I Think we can get that done Okay, all right. I think we are ready to vote seeing no other hands the motion is Recognizing that the strategic plan ignite articulates the vision for our system our budget

195should define the fiscal resources necessary to achieve the vision We move that the Fairfax County School Board direct the superintendent of schools to develop the 2017-18 budget proposal aligned with the strategic plan Ignite all those in favor. Please raise your hand That is unanimous with mr. Schultz away from the table I call on Mrs. Huff for her follow-on motion. I move to direct the superintendent to develop a line of business process reflective of the unique needs of Fairfax County Public Schools in order to educate the community on the way of services provided and to receive stakeholder input for the school board to identify programs and or services for review with a goal of improving efficiency and effectiveness. Is there a second? Seconded by Ms. McLaughlin. Mrs. Huff, would you like to speak to your motion?

196Thank you. So thank you for considering this motion. I've heard many concerns around the community concerning Fairfax County Public Schools budget. I heard from both members of the task force and non-members about wishing they'd had more information as they were considering cuts and how they would directly affect the students and the classroom. Due to the projected shortfall the task force was a reactionary move to engage the community in choices before the school board. The issue of the shortfall is not new and it's not going away. I consider this motion for the school division the school board and the community to engage in a proactive process to understand our programs what we offer what we expect for those programs and for good discussion on our budget and budget decisions. In talking to finance leadership, it was

197suggested we could go through the process using our program budget as a guide. The county is going through a similar process and we have the advantage of using what's worked and what has not worked so well. This motion gives the superintendent flexibility in recommending a process she and her staff feel would be effective for our school system. I actually think having just had this last motion passed, I feel like it is a good complement to ensure the linkage between our vision and budget as well as to continue defining the metrics we use to accomplish these goals and visions as defined in this. strategic plan. Okay. Ms. McLaughlin, would you like to speak? Yes, thank you. I very much support this follow-on motion and appreciate Ms. Huff with the tremendous amount of work she did to

198try and develop an appropriate motion that I think will enormously benefit this board and the school system. As she noted, this is a similar action that the board supervisors have already undertaken. And in fact, they invited us last year to do it and we shared with them that we had other challenges and that their timeline didn't necessarily work with our timeline. Well, we now have this opportunity. So as Ms. Corbett-Sanders motioned, helps the superintendent in developing the fy18 budget ms huff's follow-on motion is in my mind more of the more extensive work that we again as a school system as a board have got to begin to to do and we haven't done and having served on the board in the prior term Many of us talked at times about how do we do zero-based

199budgeting? How do we do a baseline budget starting with what's required by the state and building up so that the public can understand here's really how limited our funding is that we get from the Commonwealth and the guidance to say, well, here's what you can make public education. And then... It's such a wonderful opportunity for us to demonstrate to Fairfax County residents again the 70% or more who don't have children in our public schools Look at how well Fairfax invests in its schools and goes above and beyond what would be the standards of quality The the bare minimum I think it would be not only highly informative for the for our community for the board supervisors for us but it really would allow us to be extremely intentional intentional and knowledgeable about where are we

200directing our funds I really do hope that Ms. Huff's follow-on motion will receive a majority support of the board if you you know felt that Ms. Corbett-Sanders helps us start in that right direction It is so essential that we not only begin with FY18, but we have got to have the long ball view on this one. And Ms. Huff's motion is going to allow us to do a lot more that even as Dr. Garza pointed out, Ms. Corbett-Sanders motion is really only to the strategic plan, what we're trying to envision going forward. Ms. Huff's really enables us to... to focus and say here is what we are doing throughout a division, a major enterprise, third largest employer in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And if my colleagues aren't going to support the motion, I do hope

201you will share with all of us why not because I think it's important for us to understand where each other is on this. Right now I think that this motion will be highly beneficial not just to this board but to the county as a whole. Ms. Schultz? Okay, so those in favor seem to be willing to embrace, race to embrace. This is a common sense. motion and my earlier comments were predicated on the fact that maybe we've already gotten to this I apologize myself this is what happens when I think it was two hours ago when I said we could do this in five minutes but I was wrong aligning the work that we do in a lines of business review if you're going to do it for a strategic student achievement education policy perspective,

202then you should certainly do it with the $3 billion that goes behind it to effect that student achievement and effect that... the process of strategic development. So if you're not gonna do it with the money, there really isn't a point in doing any aligning with the strategic plan because the money is what makes the strategic plan happen. So if all you do is align the work that you do to a strategic plan and you don't ever align your money, you have disambiguated the entire discussion from that which is meaningful. So I do hope that my colleagues show a level of collaboration. that is commensurate with Ms. Huff's work and don't just compliment her on doing the work, but actually show her your appreciation for the work by putting something together that is common sense and

203will allow us to be more effective going forward. Ms. Evans? Thank you. I want to point out that we've taken several steps in the last couple of years to... try to improve efficiency and effectiveness. It was two years ago that we asked the state to come in and do a very, very thorough audit of our programs and they did that. The Gibson report we do have in in hand. They did give us a few ideas about things that we could do. We've adopted I believe almost all of those things. They didn't find much but the things that they did find most of them we have adopted. We just within the last year we have created and hired an Auditor General, an independent Auditor General. who's working with the audit committee on creating a more robust

204audit plan than we have had in the past and I think those are all good things. About a year ago, the county went down this road of lines of business and we were asked to join them in doing this. I have been at county board meetings where board members, the county board members, supervisors have I said, you know, this really hasn't helped us in the way we thought it would help us. That we thought we were going to do a deep dive into our budget and really look at ways we can. save money. And in the end I think at least some, perhaps not all, of the supervisors have said well, you know, it was interesting, we found out a lot about our programs, but we really haven't. done the deep dive that they thought,

205at least some of them. I can't say that all of them feel that way. And so I look at this and think, you know, do we want to go down this road, which would be a tremendous amount of staff work, I believe, a tremendous amount of school board time. without really knowing where it would take us beyond where we are. You know, with the state audit, with our auditor general, we do have, on a regular basis, we have program evaluations. At work session after work session, we look at specific programs that we feel... Need to be looked at so I don't think at this time. I'm not going to support this amendment or this follow-on motion I don't think we should be going down this road at this time perhaps in the future once we

206have Have created the audit plan and put it into effect Had the program evaluations Perhaps we'll see some value in this at this point. I I don't see the value in doing a lines of business process So I'm not going to be supporting the follow-on motion mr. Oss We have come through eight consecutive budgets of calming the budget finding reductions We have reduced our baseline by half a billion dollars and cut 2,180 positions. That is in addition to freezing pay, et cetera. We have continuously looked for reductions and cuts, and we've had to make them because that was where we were. Every budget document shows the minimum state requirements for all of our staffing. The vast majority of the money that we have in our budget, 93, 94% is in schools. And it is for

207a large part staffing formulas. And that defines class size and the actual staff in our schools. And that is where our money is spent. I don't believe, we also, the citizen task force did a huge effort to take a look at potential cuts. And their part of their task was to look at cuts in such a way that they would satisfy minimum state standards. But what could we actually back up on? I don't think a lines of business is appropriate for us. I think that it's not going to uncover anything more than we have uncovered in the last eight years of making reductions and the incredibly good work of the budget task force. And also, as an aside, there is no school division in Virginia, even the most impoverished in the mountains, that actually funds

208and staffs its school system. to the minimum level that the state requires. We all staff at a higher level than the state. The program budget is an interesting tool. What happens is that after the budget is passed each year, there is a backward look and the dollars are actually then allocated back to show almost on a line item budget where the money is spent. It is not a tool that can actually allow you to do lines of business or to do a program review. I believe it's more important that we use our strategic plan and looking at our student outcomes to evaluate programs. And as we go forward, programs and initiatives are never static. There are changes. We have made changes in the last couple of years, and I would expect that to continue. But

209it will be based, I believe, on whether or not we achieve the student outcomes that we are looking for rather than simply an explanation of. of a lines of business. The school, the Board of Supervisors, some of the things that they do may be fine for them and it does not necessarily translate to us. It is important that we continue to evaluate programs, that we make sure that our budgets are strategically used in a way that's actually going to drive us to student achievement. We certainly don't want to continue any program that is ineffective. that would be irresponsible to our children and our taxpayers. I don't expect that we'll be doing that going forward. So while it is important that we continue to be efficient and effective and continuously evaluate ourselves, but I do believe

210that looking at how we go forward against our strategic plan and using those student outcomes as the way to evaluate whether or not a program remains, is cut, or is changed. Thank you. Okay, I would just say... I will not be supporting this motion. I do see a difference, a qualitative difference between aligning what we do to the strategic plan and biting off the lines of business process. And I do think I have an understanding of what that looks like because I've been following the Board of Supervisors lines of business review this year. And I think they've been very interesting conversations, but it's my understanding that they were a tremendous amount of staff and board time that was not necessarily. well spent. I think what I like about this is stakeholder input part of it

211because I do I think that the community engagement this year on the budget was so important and I think we have to figure out how to have the same level of community engagement going forward but it will look different because the school system is in a different position now so I do want us to have that plan to you know to engage the community and we can't wait very long but I don't just in my experience of the lines of business from the county side um is was not successful in engaging the community or in finding savings. So this is not something that I want to commit us or staff to do. So I will not be supporting it. Anyone else. Okay, so seeing no one else, the motion on the floor is to direct

212the superintendent to develop a lines of business process reflective of the unique needs of FCPS in order to educate the community on the array of services provided and to receive stakeholder input for the school board to identify programs and or services for review with a goal of improving efficiency and effectiveness. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Huff, Wilson, McLaughlin, and Schultz. All those opposed. Doerrna Koufax, McElvain-Strauss, Evans, Hines, Moon, and Palchik abstaining? Ms. Corbett-Sanders abstaining. The motion does not pass. I call on Ms. McLaughlin for her follow-on motion. Thank you, Ms. Hines. To help address the structural deficit, I move to direct the superintendent in the fall of 2016 to include a discussion of potential reductions that require decisions early in the budget process to ensure adequate time to engage the community and

213provide appropriate notification and planning time to implement these reductions for FY 2018 if necessary. Is there a second? Seconded by Ms. Schultz. Ms. McLaughlin, would you like to speak to it? Yes, thank you. Earlier tonight, we were talking about the fact that this school system, for many years, due to revenue challenges and the growing needs of our school system, that we struggle each year with having a structural imbalance. And during the recession in recent years, it was up as high as over $60 million a year. We've been trying to bring that down over time. But now, even with this budget, by using the third quarter one-time funds, we've actually added another $5 million to our structural imbalance. And so the goal of my motion is really simple. As my colleagues recall in recent weeks as

214we were talking about the budget, that some of the items that were identified by the budget... task force had items on there that even if we had wanted to put them into the FY17 budget as a way to close the $9 million gap in funding that some require a little more time and planning. So for example you can't add in in April that come tonight's vote on May 26th that we would close certain schools and save $600,000 which in the words of my colleague Ms.. Hines earlier tonight $200,000 gives you two teachers will $600,000 gives you six teachers minimum so that might be something that we would decide We know based on our structural deficit. We need to start bringing that down as much as possible so being able to have this dialogue with each

215other with Dr. Garza in the fall to be able to look at some of the items that were identified by the budget task force that would now allow us to have those conversations with each other and help the superintendent to identify as we try to close any budget gap rather than this board find itself saying it's too late now in March or April to do that. There are some things that we could have the conversation with Dr. Garza now. you know, anything from another example, pupil placement fees. Some of us were saying, you know, pupil placement fee is certainly a luxury for families if they want us to accommodate. Well, that's $1.5 million. 94% of the budget task force supports pupil placement fees. But that's something that then if the board talks about this fall,

216because it's not whether how much money we just need to... fine and savings to pare down our structural imbalance. It's just the fact that if we're going to try to redirect funds and maximize them, imagine what $1.5 million would do toward our staffing reserve or being able to address the other needs that we talk about each year. So I did consult with... Dr. Garza, with Susan Quinn, with Kristen Michael. I asked them to vet the language. I asked them to let me know if there was any concerns about what this motion would mean. And I was reassured that they don't see any problems with the language at all and that there is a benefit here to us finally looking at what the budget task force recommended and saying, okay, now that we have a little

217bit more time. Let's identify some things and help Dr. Garza to identify as she has to build her FY18 budget, where might she find some cost savings? So I hope that my colleagues will support it. I emailed all of you and asked if you had any questions or concerns to please contact me about it. And I didn't have anyone raise any questions. So I look forward to receiving as much support as possible. I believe this will be beneficial. Ms. Schultz, do you want to speak to your second? Just briefly. This is an age-old problem of ours that in January when Dr. Garza presents the budget, nobody wants to touch it. Actually, I don't even know why we have Dr. Garza present a budget in January when the Board of Supervisors doesn't do anything with it

218until April. I think that's something else we should look at. But nobody wants to touch it in January Nobody wants to touch it when we adopt it Nobody wants to touch it when it's going over to the Board of Supervisors and it's presented Nobody wants to touch it when it comes back because by then it's too late And so if there are viable options for ways in which we could do the business of education better in Fairfax County, and pupil placement fees is an excellent example, that that is way above and beyond the state standards and something that we're providing. That's a community conversation worth having that takes time. and we can't make big changes on a dime. It takes us far too long, it's far too complex, and we just don't have enough time,

219apparently. So I think that for these more complex things, the budget's not gonna get easier, folks. The money's not gonna grow on trees. We're gonna continue to have VRS challenges. We're gonna continue, I'm sure, to have suggestions to add more and more to teacher salaries. So it's not gonna get easier. So it's better to inject difficult discussions, challenging discussions that We're gonna need to be brave about earlier in the process and commit to them and all you're saying is that you're gonna commit to work into it and I think that that's a reasonable place for us to be at this point Mr. Press Thank You madam chair Mr. Gluckland I appreciate you bringing this forward and in the motion it says the words structural deficit I want to comment on that as a smaller part

220of the problem It's more than a structural deficit. It's a structural issue in general between the Board of Supervisors and this board that perpetuates our two boards essentially back loading our budgets into the you know into the later part of the fiscal year Which means that we don't have the time necessary in a lot of cases to consider cuts That might be effective in reducing that structural deficit Because it doesn't work with our calendar. You know, I know I speak for many of my colleagues on the budget task force when I say that those cuts you know that were previously mentioned like people placement fees and for example closing some school sites during the summer were Some of the most palatable to members of that group and certainly to myself because to me they were

221cuts that did not have a Direct negative impact on student learning as many of the other ones on that list were so I support this idea. I think that by having a year-long discussion as dr Garza mentioned the next budget conversation really begins in two weeks and I don't think there's any reason that this board shouldn't you know, I know we have a budget conversations all year, but I think we can bring a formal conversation earlier on in the year so that those cuts really aren't off limits because if we can do our part to reduce that structural deficit this board is doing its fiduciary responsibility in exercising its its oversight of this large school system so with that i thank you miss mclaughlin for bringing it forward and i support this ms palachuk yes

222um I this and Ms. Huff's motion I'm open to them for the future I think that for this coming year and for knowing that we have limited staff time I do believe that looking at the strategic plan first and looking at how we can address issues related to that and starting to look at the long term what are things that we need to start to think about cutting that are not helping the strategic plan is the way to move forward We do have limited staff time. We continue to cut our central staffing. And as much as I appreciate the intent of this, I cannot support this motion right now. Thank you. Ms. Strauss? The actual amount of our structural deficit is our continued reliance on a planned beginning balance. Those are one-time funds. The overall

223amount of our structural deficit, it has been declining because we have been cutting our budgets. The current structural deficit sits at about $33 million. Now, as we finish this budget, we could have chosen to cut another $33 million. There was not the will or the consensus on this board to do it. the Citizen Budget Task Force certainly came up with 50 to 75 million dollars of cuts that legally we could do that The work of the budget task force is still there There was not the will on this board to cut the late bus to change staffing formulas, to raise the floor to minimum class size to 19, to enact the APIB fees, to do pupil placement fees. Those options are still there for us. Obviously, we could tell RECPAC that they can no longer

224use our schools during the summer because we're going to close them to save money. That's all information that we know. It is still out there for us to do that. I do not support beginning our budget discussion with looking for $33 million in cuts. I really want to go forward. We have turned the corner. We obviously have to continue to find efficiencies, but the information that we would need and the timing we know now, that is part of the work that we did this last year. We need to work our way out of a structural deficit. A recession that we went through 20 years ago, we had the same challenge. It took us many years to dig our way out of a structural deficit. We finally did with working with the Board of Supervisors and

225ourselves and being as efficient as possible. And hopefully we will work our way out of it. And we are. That structural deficit has been declining. But I don't want to start our budget development again. by affirmatively saying, and we will cut. As I say, we already have the knowledge, we already have the information, the hard work was done. And if there is a consensus on the board to make those cuts and those reductions, that is up to us. I don't think we need to ask the superintendent to identify them all over again. They are identified for us. I, myself, will not be looking for $33 million in reductions out of the gate as we begin working on the next budget cycle. So I won't support this at this time. But we do have all that

226information for us if we wish to use it. Thanks. Ms. Hupp? I think I'm miss McLaughlin for bringing this idea. I think that it is absolute beneficial exercise It was mentioned in my earlier as a response to my earlier motion that no schools in the area spend the state minimum I actually don't think comments like that are gonna get us where we need to be no one's suggesting. That's what we do It took five weeks for me to receive an answer from finance on how many system principles we have above the state minimum. My intent was not to suggest we go to the state minimum on assistant principles, but it's important in prioritizing to know what we can consider. Having this budget discussion starting in the fall gives the staff the time to get the

227information we need. And I think I recall the superintendent stating that what this motion directs you do anyway. It's something that you do do immediately after, is you have to consider what that one-time funding is covering. But this ensures that we invite the board in on the conversation in the community. So I will be supporting this motion. Ms. Corbett-Sanders? Thank you. I'm actually looking for a little bit of clarification, and perhaps Dr. Garza can give us this clarification because Was it last week we had a discussion about how you would make the decisions regarding the 5.6 That's one or 5.3. That's one part of the discussion up here, but the part that I was keying in on when I read this, and we haven't really had as much time as I'd like to to talk

228about this follow-on motion, but was that you would give us a time, what you're asking for is something different. It's not a review of the budget task force recommendations, but rather, are there any of the recommendations of the budget task force that the calendar dictates when when we can use that as an option or not use it as an option in the event that we have a budget shortfall this time next year. So what I'm wondering is, and maybe it's a question to you, Dr. Garza, as well as to you, Ms. McLaughlin, which is if what you're asking for is a timeline. against, measured against the budget task force recommendations. That's different than a discussion about reopening each of the budget task force recommendations. You're not asking for reopening the budget task force recommendations. You're

229just asking for a schedule that if we wait until April, then the following items fall off the table. Ms. McLaughlin has a go back, so I'll let her answer that when we go back. Dr. Garza, did you have anything to add? No? I believe it was to schedule a discussion early in the fall, but I don't want to read into Ms. McLaughlin is her motion, but that was my interpretation to identify those things that we would potentially reduce or consider that would have to be very early in the process to identify those early should the board wish to. direct us to go ahead and make those those calls I think the challenge is someone else mentioned the challenge is not knowing exactly at that time how much revenue we will have or not have and

230so I think that that will be you know so some of it I think we could do I don't know how far we could go with it in terms of the comfort level of the school board but I think I understand it to be those things that would need to be identified early okay miss corbett sanders did you have anything else because i will ask miss mclaughlin to she's asked for a go back no i actually our process has been if if a board member has a motion and someone doesn't understand what the board member said then we speak to it so i'm happy to speak to her question now because otherwise we're going to have her question go unanswered and then If I could tell you, I do still have a couple people who

231want to speak. I understand that, but I'm going by process, Ms. Hines. We've always allowed the person who's made the motion to answer the question, the board member. Exactly, and you will. You will, but the way I'd like to do this is because we have a couple people who have not spoken yet. Rather than allow Ms. Corbett-Sanders to take a back and forth time with you while other people are waiting for their turn, what I'd like to do is give other people a turn, and then you'll have a chance to answer the question. Next on my list is Ms. Evans. Thank you. And actually, this is good timing because I had similar questions that I'd like to have answered. I do understand, Ms. McLaughlin, I think I need your attention because these questions are for

232you. Because I want to understand your amendment better. I do understand the frustration that we get at times over timing. We have an idea and it turns out, well, it's too early or too late or something. So I understand the desire to get information. as early as we need it. Now at this point, as we've mentioned now, I mean our budget process is practically year round at this point. You know, we don't just start this process in January and not by any means. You know, we have conversations all year round about this. So your, I had two, well actually I had more than two questions. Your description of The amendment talked about the budget task force the the way this reads it doesn't Limit it to the items in the budget task force so my

233first question for you is if your intent is to Get the timing specifically on the items identified in the budget task force you know, to look at those things and for the superintendent to identify, just check the box, these have to be done early if we're going to do them in the next fiscal year. You know, that's a lot narrower than I was reading this language. In terms of the first phrase to help address the structural deficit, I would like to know what specifically you mean by that. If you're talking about the 5.3 that... is part of this budget. If you're talking about the 33 million that Mrs. Strauss talked about, if you're talking about some portion of that, if you're talking about trying to deal with all of that in one fiscal year. So

234I'd like to get a better understanding of that. I am thinking about what, you know, is this a simple task for staff to go through and just put a timeline on, or is this a much more involved process that you're asking for? And if I'm understanding your description this time, I guess part of me thinks that, you know, if we don't approve this tonight, it could end up being a budget question. that could be answered. But I'm not sure I understand those pieces of it. So before I vote one way or the other, I'd like to understand that better. Thank you. Okay, I have Mr. Wilson, then Mr. Moon. I would actually defer so that Ms. McLaughlin can answer the series of questions now that she has. I do want to speak, but I would

235actually appreciate answers to those questions, too, because I think they would inform my comments. Okay, thank you. Mr. Moon? I have a few questions to our superintendent. Looking back to what you have done this year to develop FY17 budget, I just went back to last year's meeting dates to see when we actually began that process. The first discussion was had on September 21st. with FI 17 fiscal forecast. Is that something that you and the staff are thinking of doing for the following fiscal year? Absolutely, yes. We would start very early in the process. That will include revenue projections and potential shortfall. But my question to you, the follow-up question is this. Last year when we did that, we used a county board of supervisors transfer guidance of a 3% as a sort of what we

236may expect to receive from county supervisors. And we also showed what if the transfer remained flat when we showed what the gap might be. You know this year Board of Supervisors did not issue any transfer guidance because you know they my interpretation of that was because they basically agree with us the transfer guidance is basically very arbitrary. We need to have some conversation with the school board before they give us further guidance and I expect to have that discussion with the County Board of Supervisors sometime in the fall. If it was going to happen in some time in the fall, it may be way too premature for us to talk about the extent of a gap and extent of potential reductions we have to deal with because we also heard plentifully from many members on

237the County Board of Supervisors last year that we are, by talking about $15 million, $75 million of potential cuts, we are inflaming the community. And I hope that we don't do that if they have not, you know, before they give us a transfer guidance because we don't know what the gap will be. Because I don't want to unnecessarily go out and say that, you know, we may have to cut these programs, we have to cut positions here and there, et cetera, without knowing what they tell us that we should rely upon. reasonable reliance upon them on the transport amount by us. Unless that is known first, I think it is quite premature to talk about reductions. Every summer. In fact, we spend quite a bit of time in July and August, August when you're on

238recess, to develop our full year's kind of calendar around budget development. And Mr. Mooney, you're correct in that that will be something new for us, not to have some budget guidance unless we get it sometime this summer. But we still will show the board beginning in September what the fiscal forecast will be for fiscal year. There are some knowns that we can predict, you know, some of the costs that we will be experiencing. Of course, it's all predictions, but we'll do the same thing we've done in the past. It will be a little bit more challenging because we have always shown on that the assumption that we're getting at least the budget guidance amount. And so that will be a little bit of a nuance, but we'll start that in September. Thank you, Ms. Williams.

239Okay, I'll just, I just have a couple quick comments and then thank you for your patience, Ms. McLaughlin. I think you have several questions to answer now. And I, you know, I've been kind of torn on this. I think when I, when I look at it. What it seems to say is that we should just have a conversation sometime in the fall before it's too late to consider some of the reductions and the changes that we might want to make. Now, I think I don't actually see anything wrong with having that conversation. I think if I'm understanding that that's what Ms. McLaughlin is asking for. I'm not sure that we will. enough of us will feel comfortable at that point to actually make any cuts at that point. We may end up in the same

240soup, you know, later in the spring because we won't know, as Mr. Moon says, you know, we won't necessarily want to send a message out there that we're cutting things before we know that we have to. So I'm not exactly sure what it will look like. I'm not exactly sure what we are tasking ourselves and staff to do. But as a general matter, I think I support the idea of having this conversation in the fall. So I'm still trying to kind of decide how I'm going to vote on this. I'm sorry to say. Ms. McLaughlin, you have a go back. Thank you, Ms. Hines. I'll try to see if I can compress the questions and really try to not. allow this to become so overly complicated because it's really quite simple. As I shared with

241all of you during our work sessions, it concerned me that we were balancing the FY17 budget. by using third quarter one-time funding. And so we were adding to our structural imbalance. So when I told all of you that I was uncomfortable about doing that with the FY17 budget, Dr. Garza even shared, I recognize to all of you that we're doing it for FY17, which means by FY18, not only am I looking about the fact that I've now... got only 5.3 in one-time funding that's not going to necessarily be there for FY18. But we've got other projected shortfalls that are going to come from all the other things that we know are going to happen with the FY18 budget. So to be clear, as the motion reads, it's to help. Help address the structural deficit. We

242just added 5.3 million to our structural deficit as Ms. Strauss pointed out. It's now going to be 33 million dollars because we just put 5.3 into our budget with one-time funding. So it's only to help address it. Maybe we only do the 5.3, which Dr. Garz already shared with us in a recent work session, she's going to be doing. But she needs to know from us, where do you all think the 5.3 million reductions may may need to come from we've got the reference point as I shared with you from the citizen task force so it's not reopening work it's not creating a lot of work there's your menu of options some of the menu of options when we were trying to get the 5.3 for FY 17 had timelines attached to it. You can't

243close the schools this July even though that would have been an easy $600,000 because the county had already planned for programs. You can't decide that you know what 1.5 million dollars for pupil placement fees we should be you know looking at better ways to spend our money. So to the question where it also says Ms. Hines thank you so much for picking out this part of the motion. is to include a discussion because what my colleagues have said is I'm not comfortable at this time. So it also says potential reductions. So Mr. Moon, this is about inflaming the community and interestingly this board was not at all worried about hashtag save FCPS and excellence in peril which really did create a our school system is on the brink. No, this is just a very simple,

244whether you want to address the 5.3 million that we all owned and understood was something we were going to have to just live with for FY17, but now we've got to deal with FY18. This seems to me this motion is just simply allowing us to commit to the conversation, engage with our superintendent, and not have her in a situation again where she says, I can't get the 12 of you to herd you around these reductions. And even Mr. Moon, if it's as simple as 5.3 million. That's not sending an alarm bell in the community but even if we chip away at the fact that we just added to our structural imbalance that should instill confidence with the board supervisors and with the community. I really do hope people understand the benefits of this very simple

245motion. It is to have a conversation and I already vetted it with Superintendent Garza, Susan Quinn, Kristen Michael, they all understood. It was about discussion. Please don't complicate this, everybody. And do think about the positive signal this gives to our community by engaging in this conversation in the fall. Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to just suggest that this is a very modest proposal. That's been put forward. It is a proposal that suggests that the super, that tells the superintendent to include a discussion of potential reductions that require decisions early in the budget process. It's identifying long lead items. I honestly think we have probably stupefied the few people that are in the auditorium with this discussion, which borders on the absurd. I mean, it is a discussion that, frankly, I think the

246superintendent would probably agree that it's not an impossible task for her to come to us in the fall and say, these are long lead items. We don't know how much money we're going to have in the spring, but these are the ones that are going to require us to analyze early. to figure out whether or not these items require us to think about them more than at the last minute after the funds have been approved, the transfer's been approved by the county. That's an easy thing for us to vote on. And I honestly, I think this board has to look at themselves. We have to look about how we... operate as a board that we that we have such a difficult time having this discussion because to me this is a very modest ask and

247it's something that actually uh Ms McLaughlin had mentioned during some of our budget discussions that she would have liked to identify those recurring costs that are being funded with one-time funds this is actually a even more modest proposal than that so I hope everybody can find a way to vote in favor of this motion. Thank you. I'm just going to have a quick go back and then I'll I would just say I think that School board members clarifying questions are not absurd. I'm gonna push back a little bit Mr. Wilson because I don't think it's absurd for people to have questions about language, you know, I think we could probably all Support this as an idea at some point, but you know, we're now for the first time publicly looking at the language and language

248raises questions and that's why we have questions tonight so i just wanted to push back on that a little bit dr garza Thank you for the go back. I failed to answer a question I was asked earlier and I wanted to fully answer and I don't think I did. We can go through the budget task force list as was, I'm not sure who asked the question, I didn't answer it. I think it was Ms. Corbett Sanders. But we can go through that budget task force list and I think it would be instructive for all of us to have some indication of which, you know, kind of a general timeline. for when, if we decided any of those things need to happen, when they would need to happen to be able to operationalize them. So we'll

249be happy to do that. So I think that's helpful to all of our work moving forward. Ms. Evans. So with that and with Ms. McLaughlin's explanation, and I think we did need to clarify what we were being asked to do here, and I think that's certainly warranted when we're talking about anything that we're committing ourselves to. So my understanding is that if we approve this, we're going to have a discussion in the fall. with the superintendent. The superintendent is going to bring us a list with the focus on the budget task force menu of items, not beyond that menu of items. So it's limited to that menu to tell us which of those we would need to take early action on. So this seems like a relatively narrow and probably worthwhile task. And we're not

250committing ourselves to any particular number in terms of the structural deficit. And so in the end, we're going to be getting information. So with that understanding that this is informational and that it's got the narrow focus, I'm inclined to support this. Okay. Seeing no other, oh, sorry, Mrs. Strauss. If this is all you're asking for, Ms. McLaughlin, you just simply want a timeline from the budget task force, because what I'm going to say, we could probably ask for that now and just get an email given. No, I hear what you're saying. The language was clear. It's Dr. Garza gave part one, which is to be able to provide a timeline on some of the suggested items on the budget task force that would be something you would need to have the conversation on before, as

251I couldn't be more clear, you can't decide in May we're going to close the schools two months later in July. So she would bring it in the fall and say, if you all believe that given our projected shortfall, that we're going to be needing to identify some things to address in the budget. The $600,000 you'll save by closing schools the following July, you may want to start identifying those now in the fall, not in May, six weeks before July arrives. So it's part one. She's going to give us, she's going to identify those and what the timeline, if any of those were to be considered. And then it's our discussion. And the key word is potential reductions. Until we know what our transfer amount is. But we do know at minimum we just added 5.3

252to the structural deficit. So even if we wanted to address that alone. So you are looking for us to identify potential budget reductions in order to reduce the structural deficit? I'm looking for us to vote to have a discussion with each other and Dr. Garza on it. And then what we decided that discussion... on do we want to identify the 5.3 that related to the structural deficit. Whether you're talking about reducing the structural deficit or you're addressing the fact that you also have a budget shortfall, they're both going to be issues for FY18. It was simply just to give people a framework that we just added 5.3 to our structural deficit and we weren't able to come up with a solution. Dr. Garza said she'd have to start looking at it for FY18 anyway. And

253so I'm just helping us signal to the community and to each other that we want to have the discussion in the fall to start understanding how... how we're going to look at some of potential budget reductions that have calendar implications, calendar in terms of time. So it's not about analysis. Okay, I'm going to go back and what Mr. Moon indicated. I am concerned that if we begin in immediately talking about budget cuts, we have just had an excellent relationship with the Board of Supervisors and with the General Assembly. I don't want to stir the community up again and to indicate, I know that's not your intent, but I would not want the impact. to basically say and we are going to begin to identify reductions this early in the process when in fact we have

254actually turned a quarter. I understand that's not your intent, but I am concerned about that would actually be the fallout. Ms. Strauss, I guess what I want to just make sure everybody understands is this is a conversation about potential reductions because we already know what the budget forecast is going to be. Ms. Michaels could tell you right now what she thinks of what FY18 is going to look like in terms of potential shortfall. We're not signaling anything horrible. We're just trying to identify some things that the community already said in the task force that they recognize our potential ways to. to save or find money. Madam Chair, I call the question. Thank you. The question has been called. Do we need a second for calling the question? Second. Second. All those in favor of calling

255the question, please raise your hand. And Paul check that the calling the question passes. That means that we vote on the motion and the motion is to help address the structural deficit. I move to direct the superintendent in the fall of 2016 to include a discussion of potential reductions that require decisions early in the budget process to ensure adequate time to engage the community and provide appropriate notification and planning time to implement the reductions for FY 2018 if necessary. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Dear not Koufax, McElvain, Huff. Corbett Sanders, Evans, Hines, Wilson, McLaughlin, Schultz, and Pachek. Those opposed? Strauss and Moon. Anyone abstaining? Did I miss anyone? Okay. The motion passes. All right. We are finished with our budget conversation, I believe. Item 4.03. We're all happy about that. Item 4.03,

256Auditor General Authority. I call on Ms. Strauss for the motion. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I move that the school board adopt a policy on auditor general authority, which memorializes the current authority, responsibility, and definition of the auditor general. I have a second. Seconded by Ms. McLaughlin. I'm sorry, Ms. Strauss, do you want to speak to your motion? I just recommend that school board members support this. It is a recommendation from the audit committee and from the auditor general. Thanks. Okay, any conversation? I was going to speak to my second. Go ahead. Just that I really do appreciate the work of our Auditor General, Goli Trump. Thank you for ensuring that we have an actual policy that helps capture the work that you'll be doing for us. And so this is really more a matter of,

257I think, helping both the board, the school system, and the community better understand the valuable role that you'll be playing in our school division. Okay any other conversation? All right all those in favor of the motion that the school board adopt this policy which which memorializes the current authority responsibility definition of the auditor general all those in favor that is unanimous thank you. All right item 4.04 proposed woodlawn Fort Belvoir and Woodley Hills elementary boundary adjustments and pupil assignment plans. I call on Ms. Corbett Sanders for the first of two motions. Ms. Corbett-Sanders is not here. Ms. Evans, please read the motion. I move that the school board approve. Shall we wait one minute? This probably should be made by Ms. Corbett-Sanders. Okay. We'll just wait a minute. I'm tempted to give us all a

258break, but I think we should probably slog through and get this done. I apologize. I move that the school board approve redistricting of school boundaries and adoption of pupil assignment plans to affect the reassignment of elementary students residing in Mallard core departments from Woodley Hills Elementary School to Woodlawn Elementary School effective for the 2016-17 school year in order to contribute to the efficiency of the school division and to increase instructional effectiveness by among other things balancing enrollment and utilization of school facilities all pursuant to applicable law school board policies and division regulations including Virginia Code section 22.1-79 paragraph 4 and there should not Policy 8130.7, local school boundaries, program assignments and school closings in Regulation 2230.12, exceptions for attendance at other than base school and procedure for applying for intra-county exceptions. Is there a second?

259Second. Seconded by Ms. Darinette Koufax. Ms. Corbett-Sanders, do you want to speak to your motion? Yes, this is a two-part motion actually to make some minor boundary changes in the Woodlawn Elementary School and Woodley Hills to basically balance out the populations at two schools as a result of a third school opening on Fort Belvoir and we've had two conversations with the community in their base schools as well as a hearing here last week and we also had some community discussions with the Fort Belvoir community as well and have support for this. Okay, Ms. Darna Koufax, do you want to speak? Just that I was there with, I shared this school with Ms. Corbett Sanders and these schools with Ms. Corbett Sanders and I've been part of the community dialogue. I think they make sense and

260the community is in support of these. Any other discussion? All right, seeing none, I am not going to reread that motion. All those in favor of the motion, raise your hand. That is unanimous with Ms. McLaughlin and Mr. Wilson. And... Ms. Huff away from the table, thank you. All right, I call on Ms. Corbett-Sanders for the second motion. I move that following a public hearing, the school board approve a redistricting of school boundaries and adoption of pupil assignment plans to affect the reassignment of elementary students residing in Mallard Core departments from Woodley Hills Elementary. to Woodlawn Elementary effective for the 2016 school year in order to contribute to the efficiency of the school division I'm sorry this should have been a different one let's take a minute it's the same and it should have been

261a different motion regarding the so we need just a minute to take a look at the language we will take a three-minute recess Okay, we'll start again. Thank you. Okay. I should have read what was before me before I did it. Following a public hearing the school board approved redistricting of school boundaries and adoption of pupil assignment plans to affect the reassignment of elementary students who reside in Woodlawn Village from Woodlawn Elementary School to Fort Belafor Elementary School effective for the 2016-17 school year in order to contribute to the efficiency of the school division and to increase instructional effectiveness by among other things balancing enrollment and utilization of school facilities all pursuant to a applicable law, school board policies, and division regulations, including Virginia Code 22-1, 179, paragraph 4, policy 8130.7, local school boundaries, program

262assignments, and school closings, and regulation 2230.12, exceptions for attendance at other than base school and procedure for applying for intra-county exceptions. Okay, is there a second second seconded by mr. And echo facts Thank You. Miss Corbett Sanders. Did you want to add anything to your remarks from before? This provides a wonderful opportunity for our military-connected youth associated with Fort Belvoir to attend a school located on Fort Belvoir with their cohort of students that live on the base. It's a great opportunity, shows a collaborative effort between Fairfax County and the Department of Defense in building the school, and there's some great programming going on there. Thank you. All right. And thank you, staff, for helping us clarify that. So all those in favor, please raise your hand. And that is unanimous with all of us at

263the table. Okay. We are finished with our action items except for our consent agenda item 5. 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 and the public in advance. Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting. 5.01, appoint individuals to serve on committees as detailed in the agenda item. 5.02, adopt policy 4760, integrated disability management program and policy 8420, community use of school facilities as detailed in the agenda item. 5.03, adopt policy 4660, overtime pay as detailed in the agenda item. 5.04, confirm the separations as indicated below for the period

264beginning April 1, 2016 and ending April 30, 2016 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 are new business agenda items. There will not be a vote tonight on these items, but action is scheduled at a future meeting. 6.01, award the contract for the automatic temperature control system replacement at Woodley Hills Elementary School to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder and authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute and administer the contract on behalf of the school board. 6.02, award the contract. for the boiler replacement at Stone Middle School. This item has been removed from the agenda. Is that correct? Okay. Item 6.03, approve recommended

265media, print, and lesson objectives as detailed in the agenda item and as reviewed and recommended by the Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee. Item 6.04, appoint committee members to the Social Studies Basal Instructional Materials Adoption Committee as detailed in the agenda item. 6.05, award the contract for the Boilers replacement at Bryn Mawr Park Elementary School to the contractor and authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute and administer the contract. on behalf of the school board. 6.06, adopt policy 5008, student and staff health and wellness as detailed in the agenda item. 6.07, joint one Fairfax resolution. The successful children and youth policy team, SCIPT, serves to guide and coordinate efforts to ensure that children and youth are healthy and successful across Fairfax and that social and racial equity

266is paramount to achieve this goal. The Fairfax Board of Supervisors and School Board intend to join in this resolution to encourage the development of a cohesive racial and social equity policy. Item 7, Superintendent Matters. Next, I call on Dr. Garza. I'm going to pass tonight. Thank you very much. No, thank you Item 8 we have two board committee reports. I call on mr. Ouse for a report on audit Thank you very briefly. We had a long and very successful audit committee meeting last night. We are making significant progress in developing an audit plan for next year. I do believe we will meet our deadline of July in order to bring something forward for the board to approve. So I was very pleased with our results last night. Thanks. Great. I call on Ms. Evans for

267a report on tonight's forum. Yes, we discussed two items at our forum. The first, we... referred to the public engagement committee the idea of holding an advanced academic program summit they're going to come back to the board with some ideas on that we also referred to the governance committee the we asked them to come up with a protocol for school board advocacy letters okay thank you item nine board matters i call on miss darren at kofax Mr. McElwain is encouraging me to pass, but I'm not going to. But I will encourage my colleagues to exhale because that's what we can do for these next three weeks till we start talking about the budget again. So enjoy the graduations. Exhale and do that. I did want to say that I had the privilege last week of

268visiting the FATE House in Springfield with my colleague Karen Corbett Sanders and I want to say this again is the absolute best example of hands-on experiential learning. For those of my colleagues who have not seen this house you need to get over there. One year, one time. It is an amazing thing that we provide this kind of hands-on learning for our students and the money for the sale the house goes back into the program for learning it is just an amazing and if anyone is in the market it's on Springville Court in Springfield. Yeah nine hundred twenty five thousand dollars I believe and it worth every penny let me tell you. I attended a community meeting at Stuart regarding a potential name change and that community dialogue will continue. And also just the other day,

269several of my colleagues, we were at the County Council of PTAs for the screening of screen agers. And again, that is something I would encourage you all to do. Just as it raced to nowhere, it's going to be a sponsored film that you can put out through your PTAs, charge for it, raise a little money, whatever you want to do. But it was basically a movie about... Talking about the huge amount of screen time our teenagers, our adolescents and children spend on their phone screen, on their computer screen, gaming, and some of the detrimental effects that this can have on their learning, on their personality. And so it was fascinating. The one thing about the film as the presenter who sponsored it was talking about at the county council, it doesn't offer a lot of

270advice, but it does offer some. food for thought and I think conversation and I think we all should be aware of that. So thank you all. Mr. McElwain? Pass. Ms. Huff? I'll pass. Ms. Strauss? I'll pass. Ms. Corbett-Sanders? I'll make this brief. There comes a time in a child's life that a teacher or a trusted adult outside of their family inspires them to do more, try harder, delve deeper, explore an area of studies in a different way. This person touches the child's heart, soul, and mind. The Mount Vernon community, and in particular the Bellevue Elementary School community, was blessed by a teacher like this for almost 40 years. Mary Ann Nash worked for Fairfax County Public Schools for 30 years. 38 years after she relocated from Montana. She inspired up to four generations of students

271in some of our families to be lifelong learners, passionate about poetry and take pride in their work. In addition to being a great teacher, she taught students humility, humor, and a bit of whimsy by wearing bunny slippers to her third grade classroom. Mary Ann lost her life, her battle with cancer this past Monday. Our community is forever grateful to her family for graciously sharing her with us for almost 40 years. Thank you, Ms. Corbett-Sanders. Ms. Evans? Yes, I want to thank the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers for developing focus groups of teachers and other staff to talk about. IT WAS A VERY INFORMATIVE MEETING THAT I HAD WITH MS. MCLACHLAN THERE. WE HAD A GOOD CONVERSATION AND I APPRECIATE THAT. WE DID HAVE A COMMUNITY MEETING ABOUT THE POTENTIAL FOR CHANGING THE NAME OF JEB

272STEWART HIGH SCHOOL AND I WANT TO THANK THE STAFF FOR PUTTING TOGETHER A GREAT PIECE OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT THERE AND ALSO FOR THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHO CAME OUT. IT WAS PRETTY MUCH A FULL HOUSE. AND I APPRECIATE THE CIVIL CONVERSATION THAT WE HAD AT THE TABLES AND THE FEEDBACK THAT WE GOT. WE WILL TAKE THE FEEDBACK FROM THE COMMUNITY AND CONSIDER WHAT OUR NEXT STEPS ARE. THANK YOU. MR. MOON. Thank you. I'm not going to tell you more than a dozen things I did since the last School Board meeting, but I still want to point out one particular concert I attended last Saturday. This was a concert done by Vienna Choral Society, but included our Mosby Woods Elementary School. It was a great program, great opportunity and experience for our elementary school students who are

273in choral music to have an opportunity to work with the grown-ups in a classical music setting, in a setting with a full house at the Vienna Baptist Church. And I hope that we can have more of our younger students to be able to join in a grown-ups on Sagini to learn from each other. Thank you. Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, attended the screening of screenagers, and one of the negative effects of looking at screens too much. was diminishment in your ability to interact with others. So tonight I think maybe I was looking at my phones and other screens too much and I apologize if my tone and tenor of some of my comments, passionate comments perhaps were a bit too, a little too rough. So I don't of course withdraw some of

274my sentiment but I do apologize to anybody if I if I came across as too strident. That said, I would like to at least talk about one thing that maybe you've heard about in the news, and that is the Department of Justice and Department of Education's guidance letter, the Dear Colleague letter, which has really been dominating a lot of the news. And I want to commend those speakers that came as citizen participation tonight to speak about. the issue of transgender students and in the community and in particular I guess I'd like to compliment Robert Rigby on encouraging all of us. to engage as much as we can in understanding the issues because I think if we fail to do that, a difficult conversation may become impossible. And I really hope that we can have a

275conversation as a board about difficult topics. And that's certainly going to be one of them. So I encourage everybody to take him up on his offer. I know some of us have already have taken him up on his offer, but I encourage others to do the same. So with that, thanks to everybody. Ms. McLaughlin? I first want to thank Mr. Wilson for mentioning Mr. Rigby's public statement tonight. He shared it earlier with the board, and I actually emailed him right away and said, you know, what a... powerful way to capture a difficult conversation. And I just really felt that he framed it out very well with such honesty and candor. And I think so much of this has to do with trying to create better understanding. And what I liked about... his remarks is that

276it's with no judgment. Like he's basically just saying, I understand that people will come to this conversation with different levels of comfort and understanding. And so seeking to understand is all he's really encouraging, not only us as a community to do, but certainly then us as a board when we're looking at this. And so I... I think that was very well stated. And I will certainly be sharing his remarks with constituents who reach out to me on this one. Just briefly, I wanted to make my colleagues aware that for the second year now, Pathway Homes held a benefit breakfast, and I was able to attend that this past week. And it's meaningful to our work because... They provide housing to those who are struggling with mental health issues, adults. But what they noted is that

277some are actually our Fairfax County graduates. They become young adults. They want to become independent citizens. And so Pathway Homes really is just another one of our wonderful nonprofits here in the community that is trying to help. bridge county services and and so it was wonderful to hear the speakers who spoke about how beneficial this has been and it was great to see some of the local city of fairfax officials since it was held in the city of fairfax so many of them were there I also want to just add on to what Ms. Evans said. Our focus group conversation hosted by FCFT, Ms. Evans and I ended up being there for two hours. So it was a very thoughtful conversation. And, you know, Dr. Garza, I think we came away with just an appreciation

278for the fact that in a school system that is striving so much to help. enhance and improve student achievement. As I know you've been one of the strongest voices to this, we have to figure out what the plate looks like. You add something onto the plate and at some point it's just going to teeter. And so I look forward to us engaging with Dr. Garza and the things that we learn over time with it. And I think it's... One of those things that was, I mean, I learned some things without a doubt that I didn't realize is going on for our teachers. And then finally, I'll just mention that, you know, in terms of the speakers who came out tonight, I appreciated that it overall was a very respectful dialogue and that I felt for

279the most part the audience was, you know, allowing people to speak. and not, you know, it was much, much better. So with that, everybody, I hope you have a fantastic Memorial Day. Hopefully we get as much sun as possible. I hope you don't have to think one more thing about budget for at least the next three days. And then when we come back on Tuesday, we will be thinking budget because we're going to have recommendations coming from our advisory committees, and that always will come with some monetary recommendations as well. Ms. Schultz? Apparently we end at 11.20, whether we want to or not. I want to thank members of and several different organizations who put together the new Asian Leaders Town Hall that I participate in, Education Town Hall. Chinese Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, Korean

280Americans, was an absolutely phenomenal experience. Definitely got a dialogue going and we covered a lot of topics that I think are deeply held in those communities. And I appreciate the invitation and the time that you spent dialoguing with me. In addition, there were a group of Arab Americans, Muslim Americans that we had a wonderful conversation last night. I appreciate the engagement. I appreciate the concerns brought forward and the wide range of interests that you represent across Fairfax County. and I look forward to continuing working with you on a number of issues. And I want to wish congratulations to Amy Goodlow, who just celebrated one week of new principalship at Rocky Run Middle School. That's a big middle school appointment for her moving up into the middle school community. and that's, I know, a very treasured

281jewel in that community. And so I know that they're looking forward to welcoming them, or you, and I appreciated the time set with you. Ms. Stearnak-Kofax, I very much appreciate you bringing up that screen agers issue. I continue to passionately ask parents to get involved in the digital lives of their children and the implications. I don't think that we still know. all of the things that we can do to help our students with digital citizenship. But certainly screen time alone is definitely a big issue. And I ask parents to learn as much and get involved as much as is possible. And lastly, I hope to come back refreshed next week when we start all over again, because I get to have a boy-free Memorial Day weekend. So I don't know what I'm going to do

282with myself. Ms. Palachuk. Thank you. I just want to echo Ms. McLaughlin's comments about the respectful discussion. I think that's a good way forward. And I will be brief and wish everyone a happy, healthy, safe, and hopefully not too lonely Memorial Day weekend. Thank you. Just quickly, I want to congratulate Hunters Woods Elementary School's sixth grade class. It's a wonderful art science magnet school. And the whole sixth grade class every year puts on a show that is just amazing. I was over there today at George Mason University. They write all the dialogue. They write the songs. They create the dances. It's just an amazing two hours of kid ingenuity and creativity. It was so much fun. Their theme was determination and they've been working on that theme all year long and it was just really

283terrific. I also want to thank South Lakes High School for inviting me to join in their AVID year-end celebration. AVID is a great program that identifies some students, middle school and high school students every year to give them the extra support that they might need to be college oriented in their thinking and And I was just so impressed with the students and the teachers and other administrators at Southlakes that support those students. It was just a really great opportunity. So to all those who are remembering loved ones this weekend who served in the armed forces, my thoughts are with you. This meeting is adjourned.