001Good evening, everyone. This May 21st, 2015 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 Sunrise Valley Elementary School Chorus under the direction of Nicole Hodges Abasi. Beautiful job, Sunrise Valley. Thanks to all the parents who came out to see your kids tonight. Thanks for sharing them with us. They did a great job. And the principal, Kevin West, was here at the back, so we thank Kevin, Mr. West, for his leadership of the school. We're really excited. It was a wonderful performance. Yes, thank you, parents, for sharing your beautiful children with us. We really appreciate it. Next, certification of our closed meeting. In order to comply with Section 2.2...
0022-3712D 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 21, 2015, to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the opening meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the board during the closed meeting. I have a motion. Ms. Hines, seconded by Mike Smith. All those in favor? That vote is unanimous. Prior to beginning tonight, I just want to make another announcement. Tonight, our board meeting has a full agenda. At the onset, I want to remind those in attendance that this is the board's business meeting, and everyone should act. with respect for each other and for
003all of those present. Please refrain from outbursts or cheering for it is not appropriate in this context. If the board is unable to conduct our business in an orderly fashion, then we will ask security to escort those who are causing a disruption out of the auditorium. Please do not approach the DS. While the public is invited to listen to tonight's proceedings, we ask that you do not interrupt the meeting. We thank you for your courtesy. Next, I have announcements from Mr. Lateef. Thank you. We are recognizing National Safety Month in June. Each June, the National Safety Council sponsors National Safety Month to promote safe and healthy employee wellness and the President's Active Lifestyle Award plus Challenge Ergonomics, preventing slips, trips, and falls, and driving safely. This year's theme, quote, What I Live For, encourages employees
004to engage in safe behaviors no matter what activity they participate in so they can live for what matters to them. Over 185,000 FCPS students depend on school employees to provide a safe environment in 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 and provided appropriate training for employees to cultivate safety throughout the school district. We'd also like to recognize a Boy Scout in the audience. He's from Troop 1313 based in Reston, and he's working on his communication and citizenship in the community merit badge. Very busy. man tonight if you'd please rise thank you for coming and I understand we also have a former school board member here Michelle Brickner Tonight our next order of business is citizen participation and
005in accordance with the board's policy a maximum of 10 speaker slots is available on a first come first serve basis for every regular meeting. In addition up to five video submissions may be accepted in advance. The school board will not hear personal attacks on any person. Complaints regarding individual students or school based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school official. Tonight we have 10 speakers plus two video submissions. Each speaker is allotted three minutes to speak. I ask that each speaker please limit your remarks to no more than three minutes, and I will adhere strictly to the three minute time limit. When the buzzer sounds, your time is up. First on our agenda is Alexandra Dixon, followed by Yuan Yuan, and then Laura Hanford. Good evening. I want to thank
006the the FLE Curriculum Advisory Committee for their hard work on behalf of our students. Tonight I want to speak on the issue of including information about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender sexualities and identities. I graduated from FCPS and then I went on to earn my bachelor's in psychology and my master's in health promotion. I am here for three reasons. To advocate for these changes from a psychological perspective, a health perspective, and lastly as a Unitarian Universalist from a moral perspective. I support providing FCPS students with this information. This is a health issue. LGBT people face significant health disparities throughout their lifetime due to discrimination and bias. LGBT high school students are more likely than their heterosexual classmates to attempt suicide and do risky things like smoke and drink alcohol. By providing our students with age-appropriate,
007medically accurate information about these sexualities and identities, we are empowering them to make healthy decisions about their bodies and their lives that may help reduce these health disparities. It is better that they get this information from teachers and trusted adults than risk possibly getting misinformation in the locker room or on the street. Sexuality is an important topic, one with a lot of power. Students need strong guidance to help them navigate these changes in a way that helps them grow and thrive. Every single major medical A major medical and psychological organization has stated that sexuality and gender identity are not a choice but an immutable part of who a human being is. Teaching students to respect diversity is not a bad thing. I have heard the concern from parents that they fear that they will no
008longer be able to opt their children out of family life education. This is false. They will be able to opt their children out of family life education the same as they always have. So including information on LGBT sexualities and identities in no way violates parents. rights. Lastly, this is a moral issue. When children are dying because they are LGBT, this is a moral issue. When they are shamed, bullied, or harassed, it is a moral issue. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that even in fifth grade, 13% of LGBT students are bullied. Other studies have found that the longer a child is bullied, the more severe and lasting effect on the child's health. A study done here in Fairfax County of FCPS students found that 38% of LGBTQ youth have
009serious considered suicide. As a Unitarian Universalist, I affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all people regardless of sexual identity or gender identity. The lives of these children are sacred. Please vote to include information on LGBT students. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next I have Yuan Yuan followed by Laura Hanford and then Patty Healy. Monica Cameron will speak on my behalf. Thank you. Do I have to press the button? Nope. Okay, great. First, as an Army veteran myself, I'd like to take a moment to publicly thank all those that have served in the Armed Forces and those that have given their lives for the supreme sacrifice in the honor of others during this Memorial Day. I have three children in three FCPS schools. I have served on the FLE Advisory Committee for almost
010three years. The lofty goal of the committee this year was to review the FLE objectives from K through 12. The secondary goal, as was presented by Chairman Liz Payne, was to remove some of the objectives out of the FLE and add them to the general health and science curriculum. I'm hopeful that the audience has had a chance to look at those objectives. In my conservative viewpoint, all of these objectives add to the regular curriculum. straightforward and age appropriate as they dealt with non-sensitive issues and items such as defining positive relationships, suicide awareness, and human trafficking. As we began to review middle school objectives, Liz Payne introduced the Fairfax County Youth Survey statistics for eighth graders and the eighth graders were being asked the question number 113, which of the following best describes you, hetero, homo,
011bi, or unsure? According to the Fairfax County Survey statistics, it was about 300 kids, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, give or take a few jokesters out of about 10,000 to 12,000 eighth graders who checked the block unsure. This, I soon learned, was the pre-planned opportunity for those who came with a political and social agenda to bring up the need to push down the definitions of gay, straight, bi, and not only those definitions, but to go even further and add the definition of transgender. I was one of two members with a voice of concern and disagreement. Being the mother of an eighth grade son, I respectfully shared my concerns to my fellow board committee members about introducing these definitions and how I felt it was not age appropriate to ask this question on
012the survey in the first place at any age. Quite honestly, it's none of anyone's business how my child or anyone else's child identifies. That is private. I presented the facts that I witness every day as a parent of an eighth grade son in a house full of tweens and teens. And that is the last thing they think about how they identify. They're kids, and at this age, they worry about the zit on their nose. They worry about when they're going to eat next. They worry about their game. They worry about the fouled shot. They don't think about an identity question. And when I asked my son, I'm like, son, so how do you identify? He says, mom, stop. You're weird. Stop. Stop asking me that. I don't need to know this. My point is this.
013It's not age-appropriate material. This also includes the introduction of the four types of sex defined, which are defined and currently introduced now to the eighth graders. The most remarkable facts are that even the middle school teachers and counselors and principals in my pyramid agreed it was too soon for this information. Thank you so much. Next is Laura Hanford, followed by Patty Healy, followed by Joellen Murphy. Thank you for your service and for the chance to speak. I'm Laura Hanford. My oldest of five is in seventh grade. My husband and I have a combined three decades of government service international religious freedom, including his terms as U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom. I have three points on process, policy, and the role of parents tonight. Process is where leaders too often fracture communities, whatever the policy.
014I've watched the meetings and read the report, and the contrast with the 10 years you engaged on sleep issues is staggering. On this far more sensitive issue, you passed new policy within weeks. The school website posted the proposed change hours before your vote. And here we are 14 days later, during the end of school rush, and we have 30 days to comment on massive changes. This is not process. It's a power play. And contrary to suggestion, we're not suffering from confusion. It's conviction. This leads to my second point, curriculum. And first, to be crystal clear, every child of every gender and inclination of any sort is equally precious in the eyes of God, equally deserving of our protection. That just is not the debate. It's whether you get to rewrite the blueprint for our children's
015sexuality, for understanding right and wrong, or multiple choice. It's not based on science. It's not required by any law, contrary to what we've been told. It's your morality imposed on the rest of us. And in this case, it contravenes the teachings of nearly every faith in this county. You think you're being compassionate. I understand that. But many, many of us believe the paths you define here as legitimate lead not to happiness but to heartache. It is our deep personal understanding that God has given himself, his mercy, and his will not for our sorrow but for our joy, including the gifts of gender and sexuality. Which brings me to my final point, the role of parents. You may view these beliefs as irrelevant, but I guarantee you the vast majority of your constituents do not. Do
016you really think they want you teaching that gender is optional and subdivides into four constructs? That sexuality is broad, boundless, and a fluid spectrum? expanding sexual orientation and gender identity down to middle school, redefining family and mandatory education down to kindergarten. Opt-outs, though they're critical, are a cop-out. This curriculum usurps the rights of parents. The statute requires you to appoint broad community representation, but that memo seems to have suffered the same fate as process. So my request to you is give parents the respect they deserve, table the entire report, start over, and this time, truly engage families and religious communities. Take away these arbitrary battle lines, and let's figure out, as a community, how to protect and respect all our families and their beliefs. Next on the agenda is Ms. Patty Healy, followed by Ms.
017Joellen Murphy. Hello. I'm a mom of a Fairfax County student and the spokesmom for concerned parents and educators of Fairfax County. I'm speaking here tonight because for a second time this month, the school board is focusing on agenda-driven policy changes that affect our children. And once again, these changes are not rooted in fact and science, but instead are ideologically driven, disguised as false appeals to tolerance. I asked the school board to reject any of the proposals by the FLA. committee that contradict our widely accepted understanding of human relationships and sexuality and to keep all of the FLE provisions within the current opt-out centered FLE curriculum, thereby affirming that parents are the repository and guardian of the values of their children and that schools are not a place for social engineering. The focus of the current
018FLE curriculum is on male and female anatomy and human reproduction. By contrast, the committee's proposals are inconsistent with this male-female dichotomy. For example, the committee recommends adding for eighth graders the notion that there are four parts to gender. Biological, gender identity, gender role, and sexual orientation and sexuality is a broader spectrum. These proposals seem unnatural, forced, as if they were pulled out of thin air. And rightly so, because gender is not based on feelings, which change and don't always reflect reality. Instead, gender is based on something tangible, our sex chromosomes, which contain the blueprints for the anatomical differences that distinguish men and women, differences that are so important to the flourishing of life, they are present throughout the animal kingdom. By contrast, the idea of gender or sexuality changing throughout a child's life is a
01921st century construct. Human civilization has flourished for thousands of years without such notions ever crossing the minds of Aristotle, our founding fathers, the world's religion, etc. Yet we are supposed to believe that the committee's members have some heretofore unrecognized understanding of the human race. Moreover, who will be developing the lessons plans implementing the proposals? We insist that long-held traditional viewpoints be at the center of any changes to the FLE curriculum. Who does have input is important because the committee recommends the use of tolerant language when discussing these ideas in the classroom. But will this tolerance apply to students who disagree with these new ideas? Will our children be intimidated to affirm these newly minted notions of human sexuality by a hostile classroom environment? We fear that our children will be put into the very awkward
020situations if they don't embrace these experimental concepts. In closing, the school board should reject any of the committee's proposals that contradict our widely accepted understanding of relationships. Retain all effing... materials within the FLE curriculum, thereby protecting parental rights and ensuring that schools not become laboratories of social experimentation. Thank you. Thank you. Joellen Murphy followed by Robert Rigby and then Todd Sedmak. Hi, I'm sorry I don't have a very polished speech because I made the mistake last two weeks ago of bringing my husband to the school board meeting because I'm tired of going to events by myself. And he was so outraged at your lack of respect for his parental rights that we've spent the past two weeks trying to figure out if we should run for the school board. So I have not had time
021to prepare a very polished speech. And I wasn't sure that I wanted to speak tonight. Because of it, but I have a few a few brief points that I would like to make As the OBGYN spoke two weeks ago, she said that there is no medical definition of gender. So just by introducing the term and making the kids aware of it in seventh grade is going to open up a lot of questions for them. And I'm wondering how the teachers are going to know how to answer that since there is no medical definition of what transgender is. And I would like to give you... three, well, a couple different situations of what it might look like. First of all, I work for a doctor, and he said that it's a medical condition where in fetal
022development, the testosterone hormones do not work properly in the brain. And so, for example, you wind up with someone like Bruce Jenner, who says that since he was a young child, he has felt like he has had a female brain and a female mind in a male body. So that is a medical condition. Also, Johns Hopkins University was the first university in the country to do sex change operations. And they started doing them, and then they stopped in 1979 because they realized that this is not a medical problem. It is a psychological problem. And so they no longer do them. Okay, so the end of the second situation of being transgender is from, I have an example of a man who is now 74 years old. His name is Walt Heyer. He's a speaker in
023this area. And he said that when he was a child, his grandmother really wanted a granddaughter and she didn't have one. So she would clothe him in a purple chiffon dress that she made for him. That dress set in motion a life filled with gender, gender dysphoria, sexual abuse, and finally unnecessary gender reassignment surgery. So he was transgender due to abuse, first from his grandmother and then sexual abuse. Then third example is just a... Simple example of a friend of mine who is not transgender, but she said she prayed every night when she was six that she would be a boy because she wanted to play baseball. So you are introducing confusing things, confusing solutions to things that might not be problems or that have bigger and broader issues that need to be addressed than
024whether. Thank you. Thank you. Robert Rigby followed by Todd Sedmak and Roland Smith. Madam Chairwoman, just a personal point of privilege before the speaker. I noticed we have some new security individuals here and they may not be familiar with the board's practice of allowing people to stand in the audience when they support. any of the speakers at the podium. And that's a practice of the board and we allow it. And I've seen some discouragement and whatever side you're on, we as a board have allowed that practice and that's just a silent way for you to represent your support of a speaker. So I just wanna honor our standing practice. Mr. Rigby. Good evening. My name is Robert Rigby, Jr. I'm a Latin teacher at West Potomac High School and sponsor of the Full Spectrum Gay
025Trade Alliance at Westpo. I have a thank you and some thoughts on the FLE committee report. First, a thank you. I will be speaking at the student baccalaureate service for West Potomac during graduation, and my topic, inspired by the FCSB, will be courage. You showed a great deal of courage in order to speak and act on the right side of history. I've heard of many positive conversations among my colleagues, too many to go into now. The students in the GSA I sponsor gave you an ovation. They feel more part of the school community now. Now to the FLE committee report. This is an important first step to addressing the existence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the lives of our students. Members of Gay-Straight Alliances have always talked to me about the poverty
026of information about themselves and family life. An essential change in the new recommendation is that FLA will teach that LGBT people are normal within the spectrum of human development. This is not simply a political agenda, but is instead the scientific consensus stated by the professional organizations of psychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, medical doctors, social workers, and school principals. If you do hear references to the American College of Pediatricians, it is important to note that the ACP is not a mainstream professional organization, but rather an anti-LGBT splinter group with only a handful of members. It is well worth noting that parents may still opt their children out of any part of the curriculum that mentions sexual orientation or gender identity, as stated on the webpage today. Parents still have... Parents still have full control over what their children
027hear on this. I want to underscore one thing now. It is crucial to caution students and parents about reparative therapy or so-called sexual orientation change efforts. I was involved in such for many years when I was younger, and I can speak personally to how destructive they are. Materials for FLE instructors, school counselors, and parents that help in informing those who may be considering reparative therapy are important in helping our students avoid harmful interactions. That said, by and large, I recommend you approve the committee recommendations as an important first step. Thank you for listening. Todd Sedmak, followed by Roland Smith and Eric Klanderman. As a father of Fairfax County students, thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. Superintendent Garza recently emailed thousands of parents that they have the final say about their child's involvement in
028classes involving sexuality, gender identity, and health classes. It sounded like the superintendent agrees with Virginia state rulings that parents have a fundamental right to make reasonable choices for their child in public schools, such as opting their child out of health standards of learning curriculum the parents find objectable. but the superintendent's email failed to tell parents that the material parents may find objectable is moving to the health standards of learning curriculum, which does not support parents' rights to opt out. Please correct the record tonight. I'm hearing confusion from parents. Regardless of what the board says, the Virginia Parental Rights Act, passed in February 2013, provides that a parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent's child and requires strict scrutiny in their protection. In addition, parents can
029learn more about their rights by going to the Virginia Department of Education's website or call their office. Why doesn't an opt-out exist for the new health standard of learning policy? Opting out of FLE courses has been reasonable and acceptable for a long time. Parents are all familiar with the ability to opt out if they choose. Is this board no longer reasonable? I'm under the impression that the board is pushing for these changes to push their agenda on their own because Virginia does not have any specific requirements for the county to enact these specific extreme changes put forward by the committee. It seems like the committee thinks that parents don't have the final say about their children's learning, as Superintendent Garza implied to thousands of parents in the state of Virginia supports. Keeping the gender identity
030and sexuality content within FLE permits an opt-out that is reasonable and clearly fits with court rulings. Why does this abhor appear to be bullying parents and students and challenging the court rulings in the state of Virginia? We're all in agreement no one should ignore or disrespect children with questions or fears or doubts from their personal counseling resources that can help them. Superintendent Garza, people say you're a good listener. Act on problems seems like you have a problem on your hands at the school board created We the people request that you resolve it by respecting parents freedoms Parents and voters, especially my Democrat friends this scoreboard and County supervisors are up for election in November People of many faiths and numerous political perspectives know that people are uniquely created as male and female without any confusion
031and are very against this mandate that their children be told about gender identity from adults who have very extreme values and beliefs than yourself. Are you going to rise up and respond with your voice, resources, and vote your conscience? I hope so. Next, Mr. Roland Smith, followed by Eric Klanderman, and then our final speaker, Phil Hicks. Hi, may I go ahead and finish my speech on behalf of Roland Smith, please? Do you have any objections? No, go ahead. All right, thank you. Let me begin. Let's see. One of the things I wanted to follow up with was one of my committee members remarked, well, parents don't attend those curriculum reviews anyway, and hardly anyone opts out of FLE, so why can't we just add it to the curriculum anyway? I mean, nobody cares. I find
032that just remarkable. Folks, the sad fact is that it is not far down the road. There will be no parental rights if they pursue this agenda to build it into the curriculum. And I urge you to contact your school counselors and you review the script for the FLE, not just the objectives, which in themselves appear innocuous. Look at the scripts, the ones that tell your children in eighth grade that there are four types of sex. As parents, only we know what is best for our families. As a parent, I want the right to talk with my children at the time I think they are ready to hear certain topics. I do not want this school board or any subcommittee, which I'm ashamed I served on now, to take my parental rights away. I do not
033want anyone to encourage the discussion or open the dialogue to my children. I'm the parent. I'll do that for my children. I know with each of my three children what is right and appropriate at the right time for my house and my family. And I urge you to ask the school board to please send these recommendations back to a fresh, fair, and balanced either committee or a body of parents and look at this with fresh eyes. I really urge you to do that because it's so important just to maintain the parents. Position and our rights because it's very meaningful and it's our families. So I thank you for the extra time ma'am Can you please state your name for the record again? Could you please state your name for our records again? Monica Cameron, thank
034you. Mr. Eric Klanderman me me I'm Eric Klanderman grandfather of three children likely two of whom will be attending Fairfax County Schools this fall I Joined concerned parents and educators after the action changing the school's non-discrimination policy I believe it and this Fleek Act report further subvert the parental role of raising children. In April, I attended with about 7,000 others a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, sponsored by Orange. Our church continues to review how we might apply what we learned in raising the kids of our congregation. My biggest personal takeaway from that message was treat every child like they were made in the image of God. After the May meeting, I pondered what had happened. I'm kind of slow that way. It is my impression the board is far more interested in seeing every kid in
035Fairfax County raised to believe something quite different. I think I'm not alone in believing this board is being deceptive. I listen to members say things I don't think they believe, like this will change nothing. We already do treat people who are different in appropriate ways. They could not or would not address the cry of, then why do we need this policy change? It seems the board continues down this deceptive path. Looking over the flea cax work. I know from the summary of changes question Did the committee recommend adding sexual orientation and gender identity to grade seven and eight as a result of the school board adding gender identity to the non-discrimination policy? answer no Flea CAC recommendations are shared annually with the school board in the spring Continuing further the committee began their discussion and
036review of the full program in October 2014 not as a result of the recent school board vote and quote Reading the full report, it seems clear these changes do not come about in a vacuum. One affects the other. I accept that the report did not spring up from the voters of May 7th, but I think one is foolish to believe the two are unrelated. Here I thank Senior Teaching Pastor Jesse Johnson of Emanuel Bible Church. I'm not a member there, but someone pointed me to his message of this past Sunday titled Gender Confusion. The Pharisees sought an excuse to get rid of Jesus, and they thought they could trip him up with a divorce question. Seems like it's still all about sex. And here was his response from Matthew 19, 4. He, Jesus, answered, Have
037you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? I wish not to mess up his sermon should you decide to listen. I recommend it highly. Pastor Johnson related several points to remain to this very situation, including that we should not as parents and teachers fall into the ultimate trap of calling something good that clearly is not. And I do not mean that those who are in some way confused about their gender roles are less than good. I refer rather to policies that would allow or even encourage their confusion to continue. The board is, I believe, making itself irrelevant. I listen to a teacher I know well talk in general terms about what goes on in the classroom and about all the rules. Good rules help, but bad rules
038are not followed either by teachers or parents Johnson continues that those with rightful concerns will remove their kids from the classroom opt out available or not Parents should critique this report carefully. Thank you so much listen which in sharp contrast to the most recent situation and table or scrap the proposal while a less Other people were very respectful. Thank you Phil Hicks. Good evening And let me begin by thanking the board for the opportunity to let me speak this evening regarding what I believe to be a very necessary proposed change in the family life curriculum. My name is Phil Hicks, and I'm the Virginia Advocacy Chair and the most recent past president of Metro DC PFLAG. I also happen to be a lifelong resident of Fairfax County. In fact, my entire family, my entire core
039family, are graduates of the Fairfax County school system, including my two gay sons, both born, raised, and successfully employed right here in the county. I have fond memories of my school years at Groveton High School. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of my kids at Annandale and Centerville, respectively. I speak to GSAs within the county often and I still hear stories that lead me to believe that work needs to be done. Despite everything we've learned about bullying and teen suicide, I continue to hear rationalizations from supposedly educated adults that make my skin crawl. One example is that kids, if they would just keep their sexual orientation to themselves, there wouldn't be a problem. The other is that bullying that goes on is a rite of passage and it's just kids being kids. As a parent
040of gay children, I've become a straight ally to many others. And my primary motivation is making sure every child has the opportunity to learn in a safe and supportive environment, just as I was able to experience. When we send our kids off to school, we want and we even demand that they're kept safe. We also want them to be prepared in other ways to be worthwhile members of society and have personal decorum necessary to be socially responsible. Society's views are changing regarding the LGBT community and our educational system needs to keep pace. The students of today will end up working with, and perhaps even for, lesbians, gay, and transgendered adults, and I guarantee you that the businesses and government agencies won't put up with any foolishness. Anti-discrimination laws won't allow that. I know this because
041I'm brought in regularly to present a program called Equality in the Workplace. They bring me in because employers want to continue to recruit the best and the brightest. Their concern for their workplace should be mirrored by the school system, and these changes would help that take place. Adults in this day and age would be mocked if they didn't understand the difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality, just as they would if they couldn't explain where children come from. Ignorance isn't cute at any age. It's incumbent on the schools to not allow that to happen. Thank you. Thank you to our speakers who came tonight. Next we move on to agenda item 3.02 student represent. Oh, I am so sorry. Thank you for reminding me. We do have two videos tonight. Dear members of the board, thank you
042for this opportunity to speak with you tonight. My name is Sam Runner, and I am currently a junior at West Potomac High School and vice president of our school's GSA. I would like to voice my approval of new business item 6.01, the update to FCPS's FLE program to include education on terms like homosexual, bisexual, and transgender. Currently, FCPS does not provide any educational resources on these topics, leaving LGBTQ youth feeling very lost, isolated, and confused. That was exactly my experience. In seventh grade at Carl Sandburg Middle School, I first began having suspicions that I might be gay, and that terrified me. With absolutely no education on the subject, I was left feeling very lost. I didn't know anything about gay people or what so many others had already gone through what I was experiencing. This
043lack of education led to years of self-loathing, self-hatred, and feelings of depression. This is because I didn't know anything about what I was going through except that it wasn't normal. I drove myself mad, spending so many sleepless nights trying to make myself something that I was not. Finally, in ninth grade, with help of some close friends, I came to terms with who I was and those feelings of self-hatred finally washed away. I'm now proud to say that I'm comfortable with my sexuality. And as the leader of my school's GSA, I'm educating others that their experiences are better than mine. Unfortunately, others aren't nearly so lucky. Those feelings of self-hatred, self-loathing, and the idea that they aren't and never will be normal become so much of a burden that they tragically end their lives all too
044soon. According to the Center for Disease Control, LGBTQ youth are more than twice as likely to commit suicide as their non-LGBTQ peers. The proposed policy changes can start to bring an end to this in two ways. One, it will teach kids that what they're experiencing is normal. So many others have already been through this, and it's okay. This validates their self-worth and will help dramatically reduce self-hatred. Two, it will teach non-LGBTQ youth that their peers are still normal, and will continue to help reduce bullying and intolerance promoted by ignorance, creating an overall culture of acceptance, improving LGBTQ students' since morale and academic performance by decreasing rates of depression and suicidal thoughts brought on by self-hatred and bullying. Members of the Board, I urge you, take a stand. Say yes to less bullying. Say yes to
045acceptance. Say yes to so many more lives of LGBTQ youth being lived out in full by voting yes on Business Item 6.01. Thank you. Hello, my name is Adam Hyatt. I'm a Fairfax County parent and of a student and I wish to thank all of the Fairfax County School board members for all of their tireless efforts to make Fairfax County Schools a great place to work. On Easter weekend, President Barack Obama visited the state of Utah. State and political leaders expressed their concern over nondiscrimination policies and how these are colliding with religious freedom and free speech. This year, Utah became the first state in the nation to pass legislation that included nondiscrimination on the basis of both gender identity and sexual orientation. It was passed by a coalition of political and religious leaders and was
046touted by state leaders as a model policy for other localities and states to follow. While I do not represent my church, I would like to express my personal faith by quoting selected pieces from the newsroom release of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on this issue. It is coercive measures such as these that have so alarmed people with religious values who wish to live their faith without being intimidated. In state after state, advocates for religious liberties on the one side and advocates for LGBT rights on the other have clashed repeatedly. The result has frequently been the failure of either side to advance their cause, and anger and bitterness has been the end product. The church supported non-discrimination ordinances in 2009 in Salt Lake City and in 2015. Utah passed three statewide legislative bills,
047Senate Bill 296, 297, and House Bill 447. They gave parents the final say about what their children learn in public schools about human sexuality. It included employment protection, issues on marriage and education, unemployment. All employees may express their religious convictions about matters of faith, marriage, family, and sexuality outside the workplace and inside the workplace in reasonable and non-disruptive ways. It allowed employers to set grooming standards. It also allowed employers to make sex-specific designations for restrooms and other facilities, but they must make reasonable accommodations for all their employees. The effect of the 2015 Utah legislative action is a compromise in the truest sense the church has not altered its doctrinal position on homosexual behavior or what constitutes chastity it has not changed its position on same-sex marriage and all faiths now have additional protections for their
048fundamental right to freedom of religious belief and expression. On the LGBT rights side, a gay or transgender person in Utah can no longer be arbitrarily fired simply on sexual orientation or gender identity. In all of this, church leaders have followed the example of the Savior. While he never condoned the sin, Jesus Christ was the first to reach out to the marginalized, the oppressed, those without a voice, or those who struggled in one way or another. End quote. In conclusion, I strongly urge the Board to reaffirm their commitment to religious freedom and free speech nondiscrimination and upholding parental rights by amending their policies to include similar items that would assure such protections. Thank you for your time. All right, now we will move on to agenda item 3.02, student representative matters. Mr. Lateef. Thank you. Chairman
049Durnak-Kofax, Dr. Garza, members of the school board. Usually at the beginning of my remarks, I say something about how I've had a busy two weeks. Tonight, I'm going to mix it up and say I've had a very busy 14 days. On the morning of May 9th, I had the privilege, along with Ben Press, who's sitting right over here. of presenting at the second annual Fairfax County Public Schools Community Conversation on Teen Stress, which was held at Hayfield Secondary School. It was a fantastic demonstration of Fairfax County's ongoing commitment to the mental health and wellness of my fellow students. From an informative and engaging keynote delivered by Dr. Mark Brackett, the director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, to 80 different breakout sessions participants could choose to attend, the summit was well attended and provided
050students, parents, teachers, and community members alike an opportunity to learn more about such a critical topic. I'd like to thank Dr. Dockery, Dr. Lipp, Dr. Baylor, Mr. Darrell Sampson, and Ms. McLaughlin for allowing me to contribute to the summit. I'd also like to thank the student volunteers at Hayfield Secondary School along with their SGA, along with the Student Advisory Council delegation from Southlakes High School. They hosted their very own breakout session. On the 13th, I was in Springfield visiting Lee High School's leadership class, and later that evening, I was at Carl Sandburg Middle School on the invitation of their PTSA for a screening of Race to Nowhere. Many of the situations depicted in the film, from late nights working on homework to early morning starts to get ready to school, were painfully familiar to me.
051I strongly encourage board members to watch the film if they have not done so already. On the morning of the 14th, I visited the old stomping grounds of our very own Miss Goddard, West Potomac High School. As she has reminded me frequently, any time I've had to miss a class to attend a meeting or work session, Miss Goddard was the head of the West Potomac Attendance Office for some time. Although she's now the clerk of the Fairfax County School Board, she still does not approve when a student, or in my case, a student representative, misses valuable instruction time. On Friday the 15th, our very own Ben Press gave me a grand tour of James Madison High School. Also shifting gears, other than serving as your student representative, the other major cause of my sleeplessness and
052inability to find time to hang out with my friends or family. has been my role as the co-executive director of the Relay for Life of Langley-McLean. It's an all-night fundraiser dedicated to supporting the American Cancer Society, and it's a joint partnership between Langley and McLean high schools. This past weekend, over nine months of work finally came to fruition when hundreds of students, parents, teachers, and community members, along with Mrs. Strauss, Mr. Moon, and Mr. McElveen, assembled at Cooper Middle School. Although a very uncooperative Mother Nature forced us inside for our opening ceremonies, the rest of the 12-hour event went smoothly, and the Langley and McLean communities raised over $112,000 to support the life-saving work being done by the ACS. Thank you. Since our first event in April of 2013, we've raised over a quarter million
053dollars in hopes of someday ridding our world of this dreaded disease. Yesterday, I did something that very few politicians will ever serve enough terms to achieve. I fulfilled one of my campaign promises. 45 weeks ago tonight, I addressed this school board for the first time as your student representative, and I committed to visiting each and every high and secondary school in FCPS so I could gain a better understanding of the students and the school district I've been working so hard to represent. 25 visits, 11 months, and 891 miles of driving later. I have successfully been to, in order, Edison, Mount Vernon, Woodson, Robinson, Stewart, Falls Church, TJ, West Springfield, Centerville, Oakton, Hayfield, Fairfax, Chantilly, Marshall, Southlake, South County, Langley, of course, Westfield, Annandale, Lake Braddock, McLean, Lee, West Potomac, Madison, and yesterday, Herndon. Thank you.
054I'd like to thank so much the literally hundreds of students and the dozens of teachers and administrators who took the time to meet with me and share their points of view on too many issues to count. My notebook is filled with notes. After visiting all these schools, I have a reinvigorated appreciation of what an amazing school system we have here in Fairfax and also a reinvigorated belief that we must do everything in our power as a community to make sure it stays that way. Moving right along, at this point in my remarks, I usually let you know what I have to look forward to. Sadly, I am in the quote unquote twilight of my term. Our next meeting will be my last as your student representative. It has been such an honor, a learning experience,
055and truly a privilege to serve my fellow students. And I've enjoyed working with and getting to know members of the school board beyond words. I'll be back at Luther Jackson one last time on Thursday, June the 11th to deliver my final report, and I plan on being joined by a good contingent of my friends and family so they'll finally figure out where I've been disappearing to every two weeks for the last 11 months. Sadly, I have learned that Ms. Goddard will be taking a much-deserved vacation that week, so this is the last time she's going to have to sit through one of my very long-winded student representative matters. I plan on delivering my heartfelt thanks at my final meeting, but that's going to happen right now. Ms. Goddard, or as I affectionately have you listed
056in my phone contacts, Ms. God, I owe you more thanks and appreciation than you know. You're the first person I ever had contact with at the school board office some 15 months ago. You've kept me grounded. You've gently corrected me when I've made mistakes. You've warmly congratulated me when I haven't. And you've shown me the countless ropes when it comes to being a decent student representative. I thank you, I will miss you, and if you think I was up to a lot as student rep, just wait for this kid. Lastly, on a personal note, in my never-ending effort to promote the unity and togetherness of students from schools across this county, I'm lucky enough to be attending the W.T. Woodson High School Senior Prom tomorrow night, along with my own prom on May 30th with
057the wonderful Miss Sarah Guth of Woodson High School. Sarah's one of Woodson's delegates to the Student Advisory Council. That's how we met, and if I needed one more reason to be thankful for the guidance and support of the SAC, that is that. Thank you very much. What a nice perk, Mr. Lateef. Thank you so much, and I will make a note of that, Miss God. I do want to make notes, since the majority of our speakers spoke on one of our items that is new business, I wanted to let you know that new business means it is up for discussion, and we will take action on that at another time. That information... will be discussed, there'll be a public engagement of 30 days on the particular FLEECLAC recommendations and we will be taking a vote
058on June 25th on that item. I just wanted to make a note of that for all of you in the audience. And next we are moving on to our action items which there will be a vote and action on tonight. And the first one is. Agenda item 4.01, the FY 2016 approved budget. And I call on Mrs. Reid. Thank you madam chair. I move that the school board adopt the FY 2016 approved budget as detailed in the FY 2016 advertised budget and as detailed in the agenda item to include section 1 operating fund required revenue adjustments with total reductions of 10.1 million and section 2 operating fund required expenditure adjustments items a through D with total reductions of 2.5 million and replacing section to E reduction placeholder of $7.6 million with the following adjustment, reducing
059the 1.0% market scale adjustment included in the FY 2016 advertised budget to 0.62%, resulting in a savings of $7.6 million. Second. Seconded by Ms. Smith. Ms. Reid, you may speak to your motion. Absolutely. Tonight we will adopt the FY 2016 approved budget. At this time, it is prudent to look back and look ahead. This is the culmination of a solid year of meetings with various stakeholders throughout the county. We started discussing the FY 2016 budget right after the FY 2015 budget was passed. We attempted a new approach to our budget. Our team of Kristen Michaels, Susan Quinn, Marty Smith, Matt Guilfoyle, Dr. Garza, Kathy Smith, and Kathy Partlow and myself spent countless hours discussing strategies, feedback, and financial data. And of course, we met regularly with school board members. Since September 2014, the school board
060has had four regular meetings, 14 community meetings, nine budget work sessions, two forums, two public hearings, six joint budget development committee meetings, and two joint meetings with the Board of Supervisors. And those are just the formal meetings. FCPS kept the community engaged and informed using a strategic communications plan that included social media outreach, a brand new budget development strategy, and a revised citizen's guide to understanding the budget. Also, the Bottom Line e-newsletter, the superintendent's listening tours, and business and community roundtables, and training of key communicators and FCPS budget basics. Hopefully we reached you. We worked with employee groups, employees, parents, and other stakeholders who encouraged investment in FCPS, and we thank them for standing with us and participating in public hearings and venues to express themselves. The school board and county board of supervisors joint
061budget development committee presented recommendations and action plans adopted by both boards to improve the budget process, identify opportunities for smart savings and smart services, improve financial management, and establish shared vision, priorities, and goals. We acknowledged the Board of Supervisors guidance and came as close as we possibly could. There was no Washington Monument approach nor an attempt to pit one group against another. Given about half a billion dollars in cuts since FY 2008, we envisioned FY 2016 to be a year of stability and our goals were to protect the classroom and honor our commitment to employee compensation. We presented verifiable data on relative employee salaries region-wide as well as increases to enrollment and needs of students. Our county transfer request was reasonable and pragmatic. Sadly, we once again fell short of our request. The supervisors maintained
062the 3.2% increase as recommended by the county executive. Now we must cut $7.6 million from an already tight budget. These cuts will likely be taken off the market scale adjustment proposed for all employees. I believe the county was able to preserve a higher increase for their employees and gave themselves an increase in the amount of the current school board member salary of $20,000. What is striking is that we already are at the tipping point where class sizes are too large and literal and figurative cracks are appearing throughout our system. Time and resources are precious commodities. It makes me wonder if all the meetings and straight talk made any difference at all, or if anything would have changed the preordained outcome. I like to think that we have strengthened our relationships and increased understanding, transparency, and
063accountability. In that vein, I want to thank the supervisors for honoring their commitment to allocate funding to both the county and schools for infrastructure investment and school construction through fiscal year 2015 carryover balances, despite not being in the county executive's budget. Looking ahead, there exists an opportunity to roll up our sleeves with our county colleagues on the Board of Supervisors. As you know, we are projecting a deficit of over $100 million in FY 2017 prior to any increases from the county. Although there are unknowns, we know we face significant increases in the Virginia Retirement System contributions as well as in the recalculation of the local composite index. The Board of Supervisors has offered a preliminary guideline for an increase of 3%. and the FCPS school operating transfer for the FY 2017 advertised budget plan. The
064board will work with the school board to reevaluate the 3% guideline for the FCPS transfer prior to the release of the FY 2017 advertised budget. Given that the superintendent presents her budget in January, any joint deliberations for FY 2017 must take place this fall. What has become clear to me is that we must re-envision our school system and our county services as well. The current models are unsustainable and new or increased revenue streams appear to be pipe dreams. Starting tomorrow, we will begin the painful process of acknowledging that we no longer will be everything to everyone. Simultaneously, we will be finalizing our strategic plan and actions to support the portrait of a graduate and acquisition of 21st century skills. We will be establishing an advisory committee to help us as we struggle with where do
065we go from here. And we will be once again asking the public to join us in thoughtful conversations of what is and what could be. Some may say this is fear mongering or idle threats. I tend to think of it as the perfect storm. What might happen? What has happened? Thanks to Kimberly Adams at FEA, she has cited the Virginia Association of School Superintendents survey from November 2014. Already in the Commonwealth of Virginia, 47 school divisions have eliminated fine arts programs, 40 have eliminated foreign language programs, 34 have eliminated PE, 88 have eliminated career and technical education. 28% have eliminated co-curricular programs. 53% have eliminated academic clubs. 45% have eliminated student clubs. And 58% have eliminated athletic programs. So that is just a little foreshadowing. It has been my pleasure to serve our board as
066budget vice chair last year and as budget chair this year. Mrs. Smith and I have worked hard to maintain communications and avoid surprises. Sadly, we did have some surprises in terms of amendments that have come forward late in the game, but we will be deliberating them nonetheless. But it's unfortunate that the public may not have seen or been given adequate time to absorb these amendments. Based on board member agreement, we have crafted the omnibus main motion that essentially adopts the superintendent's recommended budget. I urge my colleagues to support the main motion and to be mindful of the fiscal challenges that lie ahead of us. Thank you. Ms. Smith. Thank you. I appreciate Mrs. Reid's comprehensive comments. I just want to add a few other things. The budget process never ends for us. Once we vote
067on one, we start on the process for the next. And I think I have to remind us where we were this year. This fiscal year we're in right now was a budget where we cut almost $100 million and 730 positions. So knowing that when we were going to develop this 2016 budget that we're voting on tonight, there was a strategic decision made to keep things constant in the schools, to not. increase class size again, to not change lengths of contracts, to really try to work to keep things calm where we could and to take cuts in the budget from central accounts. So fuel and utilities were cut tight and that's where cuts were made. So even with this budget that we focused on employee compensation, this budget was still built with $55.4 million of cuts.
068So you think $100 million in this current fiscal year, another $55. which will be more than that because we're short $7.6 million of funding. But I do think it was the right strategic look to take at this budget. And we also took a two-year look in our budget decision making. We knew that fiscal year 17 was going to bring a lot of challenges with the beginning of the biennium with the state budget. So we tried to make decisions in this budget to limit the issues we had so that we could focus on 2017. I think it's important for 2017 that we're going to have to take a comprehensive look at programs. to see what we can or can't do. I know this is very hard for all of us because we do believe the strength
069of this county is the strength of these schools and the programs that we offer. That's what draws people here and keeps them here. So I also ask for your support on this budget. I think we did a good job and I think we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. Thank you. I'm gonna call on Ms. McLaughlin for an amendment. Thank you, Chairman Koufax. I move to amend the main motion by A, eliminating recurring funds for and the process of having FCPS pay students advanced placement and international baccalaureate test fees at a savings of $5 million. B, directing the superintendent to identify one-time funding at the FY 2015 final budget review to continue to pay students AP and IB test fees next year. C, increasing the budgeted lapse percent from 2.10% to 2.23%
070for a savings of $2.6 million. And D, increasing the market scale adjustment from 0.62% to 1.0% at a cost of $7.6 million. Chairman Koufax, I do want to correct something. B is the year end, the final budget review is supposed to be from the year end balance. I don't know why the language is saying that the superintendent identifies that. Could you read it the way you would like it to read then? Direct the superintendent to utilize one time funding from the FY 2015 year end balance. I just want to make sure everybody knows including, I want to make sure my colleagues know. You're not thinking she's just going to go pick that out of an existing budgeted item. It's the year in balance. All right. Thank you for that clarity. Is there a second to
071your amendment? Ms. Schultz? Second. All right. Ms. McLaughlin, would you like to speak? Yes. I want to share with my colleagues as well as the community that I do understand the concerns that the transfer wasn't the full amount that the school board had hoped for from the Board of Supervisors. But as has been stated by the chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Sharon Bulova, the transfer amount was 99.8% of our request. That's a differential of 0.2%, or as we know, $7.6 million. And during the discussions with my colleagues in the work sessions that followed notice of that transfer amount, the conversation focused on... what is our school board responsibility but to build a budget and vote on a budget that reflects our top priorities. And I'm proud of my colleagues that we have
072repeatedly stated that employee compensation is one of our most important commitments and important priorities for the school system and for the budget. And so when we found ourselves faced with this $7.6 million differential, In my mind, what the question became is within a $2.5 billion budget, how do you then look at... reprioritizing where we're going to make up that differential. My amendment essentially speaks to the fact that I do believe that there are things in our budget that we would like to do, but it's a wants versus needs. We need to honor our pledge to our employees with the 1% market scale adjustment for their compensation. We know that FY 2017 is going to be more difficult. And I can think of nothing better than for this board to say, when we came up short,
073we didn't take the 7.6 away from a top budget priority. We took it from a lesser priority. And I actually believe that our credibility with our employees, with the community, and even with our funding source, the Board of Supervisors, is going to come down to making this difficult choice. I proposed this amendment because I really felt strongly that when you look at the $5 million that FCPS pays for the AP and IB test fees, when our neighboring school districts, Montgomery County, Loudoun County do not pay for those test fees that through the College Board through the state and federal funds We can meet the needs and have those tests paid for for our students who qualify for free and reduced lunch So again, when you look at wants versus needs, why would we be paying
074for test fees for families who the vast majority can afford it, and if their students score well, they enjoy college credit for it. But in the meantime, we wouldn't direct that funding to our employees. So in terms of people trying to understand where this gets us, During our work session conversations, my colleagues expressed concern that they did not feel in late April, early May, that we could at this time make any adjustments to our budget without being able to gauge our public on it. And while I don't want to armchair quarterback what we should have been doing then in the event that this could have happened, that we would have fallen short of the full transfer request. The bottom line is that I think that my amendment provides a win-win for my colleagues and for
075our school system and most importantly employees because it's not eliminating the AP and IB test fees for FY 2016. It's simply shifting them from a recurring fund, recurring funding to one-time funding. It enables the superintendent, her leadership team, this board to engage with the public if we think that this is a high priority that we need to continue paying for. In addition, when you look at our employee attrition lapse, if you're shifting it from 2.1 to 2.23, it's negligible, but it does produce the 2.6 million in recurring funds so that in the end, this 7.6 will enable our school system to honor the employees, have this in recurring funds, and these two other... items will certainly then allow our board to make some decisions within FY16. And for that, I hope my colleagues will certainly
076consider the merits of this amendment and I look forward to hearing their perspective. Ms. Schultz, would you like to speak to your second? I think that Ms. McLaughlin largely covered, but I do want to just briefly say that I'm going to go back to a discussion that we had, and for those who are here who may not be aware, we had a budget work session last week. You can find it online. It was not live broadcast, so some people may not have understood as I think maybe as our budget. It's not online. It is online. I don't think it was live. Okay, well we were told it wasn't, but that's okay. So in any event, I think that there is a growing public awareness of our budget as issues and topics make their way into
077the public discussion. And I think it's important for this board to demonstrate internally some measure of prioritization. And I do think that, and some of my colleagues disagree, but I think we were heavily dissuaded from doing any changes early on because we had to message for the Board of Supervisors. But now that it's down to whatever the transfer is for however we got there. who's to blame, whether the Board of Supervisors is necessarily paying attention, whether we need to make some prioritization. There are people on both sides of that issue. But at the end of the day, once the transfer's made, that's what you have to live with. And I do think... Mr. Lateef, that you are not the only politician that tries to keep up with your promises. In fact, last year at this
078time, we made a follow-on motion in our budget that we put employee salaries at the forefront. We said it. We put it in a follow-on motion. We all proclaimed how important it was to us. And I know that we've done an extraordinary task with the money that was given to us, but... If we're going to keep up with the promise that we made a year ago, then I think it's time for everybody to roll up their sleeves and decide out of a $2.6 billion budget and some light items, are there some things that can continue to shift? And I appreciate that it's late, but it's never too late to make an amendment if you think that... potentially you can keep the previous promise a little bit better by continuing to refine your answers. Our students
079do the same thing with their work in the classroom. We talk about our students having the need to acquire mastery of content. And they work and they work and they work and they work until they get it right. They don't take one good stab at it and walk away, drop the microphone and say, I'm out. Their teachers wouldn't let them. Our administrators wouldn't let them. It's get back to the grindstone and do it better until you learn what you need to learn or until you accomplish your goal. And to me, I don't think we quite accomplished our goal. We got close. And it's time for us to refine. And I think this is an opportunity to refine before we pass the test. final budget. If AP and IB fees are as a best practice in
080other divisions paid for by the students and they get some skin in the game, I think that's a great thing. I think students having skin in the game early and understanding you don't just sign up willy nilly for a bunch of AP and IB courses because you're going to get a grade bump and going to get into a college because you think you have a grade bump out of it. You got to have the skin in the game with taking the test and do well on the test as well. So there's no such thing as a free lunch and I think this is a beginning of many, many difficult conversations to come and if this one's too hard I can't imagine. where we're going to be when the numbers are many, many, many factors times
081the size. All right. You want to speak to that? Now we have another amendment. You can speak. Okay. So, Ms. Schultz, I'm going to call. You have an amendment to Megan's amendment. Because we're just doing the first and the second, and then we'll discuss after the friendly amendment, correct? No, your amendment is now I'm asking you to my name in deference to mr Latif who wanted to speak to the amendment We're going to do the friendly amendment first and then whether that passes or or fails, he will still have an opportunity to speak to the amendment. Correct, correct, to Megan's amendment, correct. So I move to amend the amendment, this is a friendly amendment, by further adjusting the lapse rate with the savings from eliminating the school board salary increase. Give a second, Ms. Reid.
082And you may speak. So I made clear at the time that we voted for the school board salary increase that I was not pleased with the public engagement component, particularly since I'm the chairman of public engagement. I didn't do any public engagement on the salary increase. I wish, I wish, I wish we had gone about it in a different way. while on the one hand I think we're due a salary increase for a lot of different reasons that we discussed at the time, by having a public hearing on the same night that we voted, we were not able to discern that public comment and have any conversation amongst us. Out of, I believe, and I'm roundabouting the 23 or so speakers who signed up that night, probably about a third or more were from my
083district. People who I hadn't had a chance to engage with. I do a lot of public engagement in my own district. I hold community office hours. I hold citizen town halls. I had my last in a series for this year just this week. and it came up yet again. And so as we race towards not only trying to close this $8 million gap, but how much saber rattling it is with $100 million, or if it's $50 million, what if it's half of $100 million? $100 million sounds horrible, but let's just say it's $50 million. $50 million is still really bad. And I don't know how we're going to get there, so I'd rather bank the money for a rainy day. So I'd rather throw it back in, help Miss Michael up there with her lapse
084rate and whether the lapse rate needs to be 2.10 or 2.20 or 2.23, I don't know. But what I do know is that we're in a rough spot, and we're in a rough spot as board members in not having, I think, done the significant public engagement that needed to be done. I think we would have arrived at the same place, but I don't think we did it particularly well. I think it's time to prioritize. Ms. Reed. Thank you, Madam Chair. Briefly, I thank Mr. Schultz for bringing this forward and for trying to be creative and to distinguish a want versus a need. And I did vote against the school board salary increase. And I do think that this has some merit, but I also have questions. I mean, this just came to us today. And
085like a prior conversation this board had recently, I feel like I don't have enough information. and adjusting the lapse rate with the savings from eliminating the school board increase, what does that mean exactly? How much of an impact will it have? I think it's negligible. My sense is that it's more symbolic on your part. And furthermore, the other thing that I think is troublesome to me is that this kind of goes and reopens an issue that I thought the board already agreed on. I mean, even though I was on the other side of the issue, the majority of the board members did agree. So I feel like this would be setting a precedent by saying, okay, well, even though the board agreed on that, now let's take another look at it. So for those reasons,
086I feel uncomfortable with the way this is worded. And last but not least, I know staff have told us that they are already feeling that the lapse rate is about as tight. as it can be and I trust their judgment. I don't know enough about that personally and so I don't know one way or the other whether this is going to make any difference or not. Again, I think it's more symbolic on your part so I thank you for bringing it forward. Just as a clarification, Ms. Reed, it's not to shrink the laps. It actually would buffer. It would add back in because the reason it's here is that Ms. McLaughlin's Potentially takes a little bit away and basically this gives a little bit back. I just want to make that clarification Yes, I understand
087that. Thank you. Mr. Mann. Well, thank you madam chair I do have some questions to ask of the maker of this amendment that if he could respond to a couple of questions that when you are Moving to eliminate screwball the salary increase. Are you just talking about? the six-month 2016 so half a year of FY 2016 budget is that is your what you are referring to or are you trying to reverse the decision made by the board about a month ago? Well, I can't make a fiscal So thank you for the question. I can't make a fiscal 17 answer for you. What I can do is make a fiscal 16 answer for you. So it would be a six month, if you will, on abatement because I can't, this is not a fiscal 17 budget.
088So we would have to determine in fiscal 17 what the fiscal 17 impact is. this would eliminate it for the fiscal 16 budget. So from for FI 16, for FI 16, the duly elected board member's salary for the first six months will be reduced by your amendment from the salary increase adopted by this board about a month ago and I just wanted to have that clarified. It's not affecting FY17 or FY18 as far as school board salaries. If I could multi-year budget amend, I would, Mr. Moon, but we're not at multi-year budgeting yet, so I can't write for the future. Madam Chair, may I ask our division counsel a couple of legal questions? Absolutely. If it's legal advice. If it's not legal advice, just a question of the legality of this particular amendment. Be careful,
089Mr. Min. You're a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. Mr. Foster, prior to this meeting, you and I had a conversation about this particular amendment because I wanted to find out, hear from you. If he if he went back let's say about a month ago when the board voted on school with the salary increase could we have adopted a Board salary structure in a way that board member salary would be different From one year to another for example first year you will be such amount and second year would be a different amount and third year Would it be yet another amount? This issue came up Prior to the decision on the school board salary increase and the answer is no you can't have a different salary number for subsequent years It's one number that's either approved or
090denied by the school board in this case. It was adopted So therefore what you are saying is a school board for the next for the duly elected board for the next four years Salary has to be fixed for each and every year for four year period is that You cannot have a sliding salary number that changes year to year. It's fixed. So with that, if this amendment passes and affects school board member salary for the first year for the new board, then that's going to have an effect upon the future year salary as well because we cannot legally have a different amount from year to year. for the four-year term. I think that's the response that I heard from legal counsel even prior to. So with that, I would not only would I not be
091able to support this amendment, but I believe that this amendment will be out of order, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Minow. Does anybody else have a question? Ms. Smith. You know, this creates a situation, and I have to agree with Mr. Moon, I do feel like the situation is out of order. And, you know, I'm a board member that voted against the salary increase, but once the board votes on something, it is owned by the board, whether you voted yes or no for it. And so this board went through that process. And what's to say that we couldn't take any issue of something that we voted on and say, I don't like that anymore, so I'll get rid of it by doing that. And the example that came to me today was... I didn't vote
092for a change in start times. I don't think we should spend that money. So where's my amendment to say let's cut $5 million from the budget? That's not the way the board does their work. And as much as I didn't want to vote for the salary increase, that is now the work of the board. And I don't think it's appropriate this time to take a vote like this that's effectively changing a vote of the board. So it does not seem like an appropriate motion to me. At this point, I have two... You may speak, Ms. Schultz. Go ahead, and then I'm going to speak. So it's not a question of order. It's a question of, you know, last year when we entertained salaries for our employees, we had what was amounted to a delayed step.
093and we delayed the step, we delayed the salary because we didn't have all of the money and it would have been more costly to put ourselves in a position of paying the step and we had lots of budget amendments around, you know, can we move the money earlier, can we move the money later, how do we make it fit with our budget? And Ms. Reid, I'm not gonna deny that it's in part symbolic but It's also real money. And we played with real money of employees a year ago and delayed a step in order to close our budget and make our budget work. And this contemplates nothing different. The salary can stay the same. We just don't take it we put that money back into the hopper just like we took the money for the
094employees and put that back into the hopper to close the salary gap so if you want to call it a delayed step for board members that's exactly what it is, but it's a fiscal 16 acknowledgement in our budget of what's looming in fiscal 17 and We get to share in the pain and we can't make the employees do it one year if we're not willing to do it the next. Ms. McLaughlin. I guess mine's more a question before I comment because I'm becoming concerned with the input that this might be out of order and if it is then from a process standpoint. I'm concerned for all 12 of us that if that were the case, then why wasn't this ironed out before we came and sat down at the table tonight at 7 o'clock p.m.?
095I can tell you one reason is that the maker of the motion was unresponsive to many, many calls from staff. Yes, Ms. Schultz, we tried repeatedly to reach you. So right now what I think I'm gonna do, Ms. McLaughlin, I understand what some of my colleagues are saying, but I'm gonna let it sit on the table. It can be the chair's opinion. So I'm going to, if no one else has comments or opinions on it, I'm gonna take a vote on this amendment very shortly if you wanna speak. So I had the question and then the comment, if that's okay. You may comment. Okay. As some may know, I did vote against the school board salary increase. And as some may also be aware, in the end it was a vote of five to four
096and three abstentions. So it was probably the most unusual vote I've experienced in the three and a half years I've been on the board. I think it did raise some concerns and some discomfort. And as noted by Ms. Smith, you want to honor a board's vote. And using the example of the start times, you wouldn't want to turn around and put another amendment up and retract start times after the board made the vote. But the reality is, every single one of us on the board could bring forward a motion to change anything at any point in time. Our credibility could be called into question if we were to keep bringing up issues that the majority of the board made a decision on, and you keep bringing motions, and they just keep being voted down. And
097that's for each individual board member to have to decide. But in the end, in terms of what we have decision-making power on, it's that this board can decide at any point in time that it's going to vote on something and it's going to change. And given that we are faced with... Some challenges about our budgeting priorities I I can understand that it is Miss Schultz is prerogative to come forward and with emotion and we all have the prerogative to say Thank you for bringing it forward and we're all voting it down But I don't think this is about precedent that once we vote on something once, it can never be revisited again. It's just a credibility issue of how many times you want to keep revisiting something when this board has so many important decisions
098in front of it. Ms. McLaughlin, I just want to make a comment. I think what you were talking about is the ability to rescind a motion, and that would have had to been done by somebody who then this motion would have had to come from somebody who was on the prevailing side of the win. So I just want to clarify, via Roberts rules, that. So at this point, I don't see any more comments. We're going to take a vote on this amendment. Quick question, Madam Chairman. Yes, sir. Are we voting on the friendly amendment or the entire amendment itself? There's no friendly amendment. We're voting on mis- Schultz's amendment which is I will read that now I move to amend the amendment which is Megan miss McLaughlin's amendments by further adjusting the lapse rate with
099the savings from eliminating the school board salary thank you mr. Stork before we go and vote yes I want to clarify one thing that was said and Mr. Foster, maybe you can do that for us. The ability for the school board to raise its own salary is something that I believe is in law versus increases that we might approve or pass for our staff. Is that accurate? That's correct. There's a Virginia Code provision that expressly addresses the ability of school board members to raise their salaries. Your comments to Mr. Moon regarding that process and what we could do in any one year are based upon the state law? That's correct. So there is a difference between the two and how you can go about whether or not you can have one amount and you can
100continue that for four years or you can make that change periodically as you saw fit as a board? That's right. Okay. Thank you. All right, we are voting on Ms. Schultz's amendment, and one more time I will read it. I move to amend the amendment by further adjusting the lapse rate with savings from eliminating the school board salary. All those in favor? Ms. Schultz? Opposed? Moon, Reed, McElveen, Hines, Smith, Darnett, Koufax, Velkoff, I can't see Ms. McLaughlin, no. Mr. Stork, Strauss, Evans. Opposed? Abstentions? I just said opposed. I said opposed twice. I'm sorry. The first round was opposed. Ms. McLaughlin was an abstention. So that motion, that amendment to the amendment fails. We are now back on Ms. McLaughlin's first amendment, and that should be behind us. We can all read it, and I will
101entertain discussion on that right now. Ms. Smith. It's like deja vu all over again because I know we talked about this last year. I am opposed to the amendment. I think that the part of the discussion about the test that has not come out was the decision by the Attorney General that created a situation that we cannot charge. If we charge fees for the tests, we can't require the tests. And I was in the past a supporter of students paying for AP and IB tests. And once the Attorney General lost that privilege for us that to require the tests we have to pay for them, I believe that we do need to require the tests for kids to take. And knowing that the board is going to be facing a tough fiscal year in 17,
102this might come up in a discussion. But I think it has to be part of a broad discussion with the whole community, that we listen to the pros and cons, that we listen to community members, and we make decisions about whether this is something we want to provide in our budget or not. We know that we're facing a hole of about $100 million for fiscal year 17. And by moving this funding to year-end funding, we've now created another $5 million haul in the funding we need to find. We need to find $23 million at year-end to put forward for the next budget. I just don't think that this is a fiscally responsible decision to make at this point. I don't think it fairly involves the community. and will affect them in our decision making. So
103for a number of reasons, I will not support this amendment. Mr. Lateef. Thank you. I just got a very interesting lesson in Robert's Rules of Order. So now I'll be speaking to Ms. McLaughlin's amendment that was not amended. Okay. I've actually talked to many students on this issue ever since we had that first budget work session, and I would be in favor of adding these fees. It would save us $5 million, as it's detailed in the amendment, and perhaps it's not the $7.6 million, which is only 0.002% of our budget as a whole that we don't have funded. However... Maybe we won't make it to a 1% market scale adjustment, but if we can make it anything better than the 0.62, I think that would be great. If you ask me, making sure we value
104our commitment to our teachers and we honor our commitment to our educators, that's more important than... scores on exams. I can say, I think Ms. McLaughlin mentioned at our last get together that your family had saved $22,000 in college tuition from paying these exams, which I think makes a lot of sense. You mentioned that students who would be unable to pay for the exams would be helped out. You have Loudoun County that does not pay for the exams. As a personal example, I could have gotten 12s on all my APs and still not gotten credit, so I would not have sat for those exams. I agree if you're going to do this and make it work, you're going to have to eliminate that requirement. So I don't know if you are in a position to
105do that tonight. I like the fact that it is delayed next year. It's not going to happen the year after that. I think this is pretty much common sense. And I would urge you not to settle for anything less than a best effort to honor our commitment to our educators. Because when you do the math, our budget deficit's around $40.64 per. pupil if we have a saying we have 187,000 kids although we spend more than thirteen thousand dollars per pupil so if it's that little and our gut reaction is to go for teacher salaries I have to say I would support many different other options although I think this is a valid one I think this is a valid one and I think the fact that it's delayed the fact that other counties do it
106and the fact that children who would not be able to pay for the exams wouldn't have to I would urge you to support this Ms. Strauss. Thank you. First I have to remind my colleagues, this amendment does not eliminate the APIB fees. What it does do, it is sort of the old cartoon adage, I will pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today. We all so wish that the ending revenue that we were going to get from the Board of Supervisors would have kept us completely whole. The problem that I have with this motion is that it proposes to pay the APIB fees next year through year-end money, which is 2017 money at this point, or from money taken out of the salary lapse, which is also... FY 2017 money, that is a year in which
107we are looking at a significant, significant deficit and we are going to have to do everything in our power in 2017 to keep the step in place and to see if we can get a cost of living again. In order to do a step and a cost of living in 2017, we will be looking at probably a deficit of $100 million. that is looking seriously at 500 to 1,000 position cuts. That's the reality. If this were a motion that was simply straight up and down to eliminate the fees next year and to reallocate that money to salary, that is an accounting situation that is acceptable. I'm not sure I would support at this point monkeying with the fees because we've not given the parents or the students an opportunity to talk about that. But this
108simply... I guess I have to be honest, it's a shell game as to how we would find the money to be able to give the full step. And that's my problem. It is the way in which the proposal to give the full step would find the money. Again, this will create a $7.6 million hole in the 2017 budget and will make it that much harder. for us to do the pay increases again. It makes it harder for us to keep the pay increases going. I fully expect that when we begin to work on the 2017 budget, and we are going to have to develop alternatives as to how we're going to balance this 2017 budget. I fully expect the issue of APIP fees will be on that again. But again, this motion does not cut
109those fees. It simply rearranges money that would ordinarily go to the 2017 budget. That's my problem. And for that reason alone, I can't vote for the motion. I commend Ms. McLaughlin for trying to find a way. We would very much like to be able to give these pay increases. We all work hard. We've had many, many meetings, many meetings with our communities, civic associations. We've begged for this money, and we didn't get what we wanted. But again, I cannot justify paying for something out of money that technically we also don't have right now. Salary lapse has not accrued for next year. And year-end money has not accrued yet. We don't even know how much money it's going to be. Plus, that is really 2017 money. So I do not approve of using 2017 money to
110pay for a reoccurring expense in 2016, on top of the fact that this money actually hasn't even appeared yet. So I'm sorry. that I will not be able to support this way of getting to being able to do the full 1%. I wish we could do it. It would be better if we were willing to make more position cuts or to make other substantial cuts. But this is where we find ourselves. Thanks. Ms. Hines. Thank you. Yeah, I want to thank Ms. McLaughlin for being creative, putting something on the table that we could look at. You know, a few weeks ago in our work session, I think all of us, to a person, looked at the options that we had and said, none of this works for us, really. You know, because none of the
111options we had would fully fund the compensation increase that we wanted to give. And I was one who said, well, let's take it out of your own money. Let's do, you know, we would talk about doing a bonus, you know, some way to make our employees whole, even if it meant kicking the can down. the road for 2017. Since then, I've looked at some of the options and I think Ms. McLaughlin has made a good try here to make this sort of palatable at this point. And it is about compensation, but here's where I am on it now. I mean, I have concerns about AP and IB fees anyway, and I also have concerns about sort of being more optimistic about our lapse assumptions because I think that cuts down on our cushion at the
112end of the year, and that worries me because it's already pretty tight. And so as Mrs. Strauss said, this would end up coming out of fiscal year 2017 money. And so the conundrum for me is do we take this money now, the $7.6 million, and put it into, I guess it's about a .4 cost of living increase, or do we save it, hang on to it for fiscal year 2017? and use it to build the $40 million that we will need for a step increase. And my own feeling, this is my goal, is that we are able to do a step increase for our employees every year until our teachers are at the top in the region when it comes to pay. I don't know how long that will take, but I think we should
113commit to a step or something that's equal to a step every year for our employees. This compensation increase that we're giving this year is not enough, but I think it is the largest increase that we have given in several years. And it's not as much as we wanted to give, but I'm leaning now toward saving this conversation about the $7.6 million that we might be able to find in 2017 and using it to build a step increase next year for our employees because I think that is... That's a goal that's going to be hard to meet as it is in 2017. So thank you, Ms. McLaughlin, but I think I will not be supporting this tonight. Any other comments? Ms. McLaughlin for GOPAC. Yes, thank you. And Ms. Hines, I appreciate your thoughtful remarks. I
114do want to clarify a few things. First of all, this is definitely not a shell game, and it's definitely nothing that resembles a cartoon. What we're looking at is Catch-22. For those of you who didn't sit in our work sessions, we did have conversations after our transfer came up short. And what I heard loud and clear from my colleagues was that they were not going to support any amendments that were going to make a cut right here, right now, May 21, for the July FY16 budget. So yes, I looked at our budget and thought, all right. In the past, this school system has certainly used year-end funds to pay for some things that would be considered a one-time expense. Since I looked at the priorities and understanding that when it comes to the $5 million
115in AP and IB test fees, they do not need to be required. They're not required in Montgomery County. They're not required in Loudoun County. They're optional for students to take because the general practice for AP and IB courses in getting that GPA bump is for taking the class. FCPS has chosen to tie it to the test. I don't know what the rationale was when they did it. Some have pointed out that it's really nice, that it helps us with, in my humble opinion, the J. Matthews Challenge Index, which is a singular criteria and is no way reflective of what makes a great high school. We need to extricate ourselves from this race of having students take the test just because it's how we'll get ranked. Montgomery County... does not require the test. Montgomery County certainly
116enjoys an equally exceptional ranking like FCPS in its schools. So let's take that off the table. Ms. Smith pointed out that what was the Attorney General's ruling? Yes, we require the test, we have to pay for it. So make a simple policy change, stop making it required, make it optional, let the students and their parents make that investment of the $91 test. If the student feels well prepared, if they're going to a college that accepts AP credit, if the student feels that they can get a passable score, that's their investment. I received an email from an English teacher who teaches in Fairfax County Schools describing how students will doodle palm trees on their AP booklets. They'll sleep through the AP class. and get the requisite one because they're forced to take the test but they
117don't feel they're prepared or that they're going to pass it and it's not a good investment of $5 million to keep doing that. But as I pointed out in the beginning, my colleagues said we want to engage the public. We don't want to make any cuts that we didn't present to them. So that's what this amendment does. It's not about stealing money or shell game movement of money from FY17. What it does say is we want to use year-end one-time funding to carry this through for next year while the public's engaged on it. And I got to tell you, I don't even care what our deficit would be. for FY17, I think the public should be engaged on wants versus needs and effective use of our funding. And had I not had Montgomery County and
118Loudoun to look at as school systems that have demonstrated we can do it, this might be a more difficult discussion. But I do want to caution my colleagues in talking to several boards of supervisors. What they did say to me is, if you, the school board, pass your budget and you take that 7.6 million and you short it from your market scale adjustment on your employees, that's on you guys. With the 2.6 billion dollar budget, if you can't find that point, 2% of the transfer that you felt we were short on and get it from somewhere else, that does not lay at our feet. I'm not going to get into the argument about whether or not the board of supervisors disappointed us. What I am going to say is in the end, I'm responsible for
119this budget and I wanted our employees and I wanted our public to know that when I'm looking at budget priorities, wants versus needs, paying for AP and IB test fees and having a yes. Lapse rate that certainly does not put us into a dangerous situation whatsoever. This is the way we show our employees that we honor them and we honor our pledge to them. FY17 is going to be tough. I'd rather that we put you and our employees in a sense of good faith that we honored you to the best of our abilities this year knowing that we're going to need to work together for the FY17 budget and that's going to be tough. So I hope my colleagues will really consider again that this is about making some tough choices. We were elected to
120make tough choices, and I do think that creating an amendment that doesn't force you to have to make any decision this year was really supposed to be the win-win for everybody. Sandy. Ms. Evans. Thank you. I think we all have heartache over not being able to provide more for our employees, and this is something that we are going to be looking at very, very seriously and carefully in the next year coming up. We've got someone we're going to bring in to try to take a look at our structure, at how we can get from here to there. That's something that we're going to have to do, and I think this board has looked at this. Everyone on this board, I believe, has dedicated themselves to wanting to have higher teacher compensation, higher compensation for all
121of our dedicated employees. So I don't think that there's a lack of commitment to that, and I think later on we're going to again make a commitment at the end of this budget to what we're going to be doing next year. At the same time, we know that we have a particularly difficult year coming up. And so to be saying, you know, we're going to take money out of year end this year to pay for these fees, it basically tells the world that we've made a decision on this. And I don't think this board should be making this decision. I've never liked the idea of AP and IB testing fees. I didn't like it the last time around. I didn't like the sports fees the last time around. We finally got out from under them.
122Whereas for some people, it's easy to pay them. Whereas for some people, they get a waiver, there are plenty of people for whom this is a significant expense. And to put this requirement on a relatively small percentage of our student population, I think would be the wrong direction to go, particularly at this time when we haven't had the larger conversation. If we find ourselves in a position where we have to go in this direction, we need to be very thoughtful about it and we have not been at this time. I have a great deal of concern about IB fees. IB fees are significantly higher than AP fees. To get full IB you have to take seven tests. That is a significant expense. IB does not get as many credits. from as many schools as AP.
123I think we need to advocate that in the future that IB does get full credit from all of the schools that give credit for AP. But to get to the end of the road, somebody who has dedicated themselves to full IB and then say now you have a very large expense in your last year or two of school, I would not want to do that. if we need to ask people to pay, well, I just don't want to go down that road, and I think I'm not going to support this amendment. All right, Ms. Evans, I'll just speak briefly because my comments are very much in line with yours. I can't support this amendment. I feel that we all as a board, everyone has dedicated themselves to make sure that our employee compensation is where
124it needs to be, and sadly, we are not. I am leery about taking this. money from year-end funds for the same reasons Ms. Evans said. It kind of is assuming we made this decision. I think it's a big assumption, a huge assumption to say that the vast majority can afford to pay for these fees. When this came up the last time, many students and their families stated before us when they were testifying that it was a choice they had to make, they would have to make, whether or not to take the test or to play a sport. These are huge choices, and it's a huge assumption to think that there's many, many children who can afford to do this. And while the school rankings, Jay Matthews, U.S. News and World Report, you know, we may
125poo-poo them. There are parents who look at them, and I fear that in the schools where many children may be faced with these choices, those are the schools whose ratings will suffer significantly, and that is a bad place to be. So for that, I will not be supporting this because of that. So with that. Let us have a vote. Oh, Ms. Reid. Very quickly, again, just want to thank Ms. McLaughlin for putting this forward and thinking creatively. I do think that AP and IB fees need to be out for public discussion, but not tonight. And I think those discussions need to be held in the context of the larger budget discussions when we try to take a look at everything on the table. I also worry about the out years, just like with our own
126budgets at home. You know, when you know you're going to have a big expense coming up, then I think it's prudent to save as much as you can. And on the other hand, though, I understand what you're saying, and I hear from employees who say, you know, if compensation is your priority, then put your money where your mouth is. And we don't seem to be able to do that to the extent that we had hoped we would. And that is a sad, sad reality. And I wanted to speak last on purpose because I wanted to hear what everyone had to say about it. I mean, this is difficult. I hope that no one thinks it's easy for any of us because it isn't. But this also is being prudent, I think, looking ahead to what
127we know is going to be very, very difficult. So I will not be supporting this amendment. All right. The amendment on the table is I move to amend the main motion by A, eliminating recurring funding, for and the process of having FCPS pay students advanced placement and international baccalaureate test fees at a savings of $5 million. Directing the superintendent. Did we change that? Did you change it? Okay. Directing the superintendent to identify one-time funding from the FY 2015 year-end balance to continue to pay students AP and IB test fees next school year. Increasing the budget lapse. percentage from 2.10% to 2.23% for a savings of 2.6 million and D increasing the market scale adjustment from 0.62% to 1% at a cost of 7.6 million. All those in favor of this amendment. McLaughlin and Schultz opposed.
128Moon, Reed, McElveen, Hines, Smith, Darinette, Koufax, Velkoff, Stork, Strauss, Evans. That amendment fails. It was a 2 to 10 vote. I now go to Ms. McLaughlin for a second amendment. Thank you, Ms. Koufax. I direct my colleagues to look at the screen because there's a slight change in the language and the funding for this amendment. I move to amend the main motion by eliminating recurring funding for and the process of having FCPS pay students AP and IB test fees. at savings of five million dollars b directing the superintendent to allocate one time funding at the f white twenty fifteen final budget review from the school board flexibility reserve to continue to pay students a p and i b test fees in f white twenty sixteen with this one time funding and to fund the reductions
129too professional services or other items in f white 2016 with one-time funds. C, directing the superintendent to reduce the funding for professional services or other expenditures by 2.6 million. And D, increasing the market scale adjustment from 0.62% to 1% at a cost of 7.6 million. All right. Is there a second? Seconded by Ms. Schultz. Ms. McLaughlin, you may speak. Yes, I'd like to speak to this amendment because it is different from the First Amendment and the funding is slightly different than what I originally proposed because I was concerned in listening to my colleagues that in fact there would be consternation of drawing any money at all away from the year-end balance, which right now has been projected about $25 million. What this amendment does is it says, for those of you who aren't aware, where
130the school board has what is called a flexibility reserve of about $8 million. And again, I will go to, that's a recurring fund that we have every year. And to my knowledge, I haven't seen it spent in the time I've been on the board. So when you look at, again, wants versus needs and priorities, I felt that this is yet again where we can create room in our budget by, taking out the AP and IB test fees and what will amount to 2.6 million in either professional services or another expenditure identified by the superintendent, pay for it with our school board flexibility account, and then you have not affected your year-end balance that you carry over for FY17. I will again emphasize because of listening to my colleagues on the First Amendment. The entire point
131of doing this amendment in this manner was that it honors my colleagues desire to engage the public on these AP and IB test fees. By giving it one time funding, what it says is during the FY16 conversation as we build that FY17 budget, the public can weigh in. on these test fees as well as the rest of the stakeholders that may be impacted by it. I cannot emphasize enough how important this conversation needs to be about data. This is not about making a decision today about AP and IB test fees. But let's be clear, Montgomery County has a higher free and reduced lunch population than we do. I've not heard of any concerns coming out of Montgomery County that their students of need are not able to take those AP exams. Also, I think it's
132very important that when my colleagues say that we cannot make assumptions of who can pay, They're absolutely correct. We also should not make an assumption on how many students are struggling to pay those fees. Let's look at the data. And that's what this amendment lets us do. We get to spend the next year, engage with the public, look at the data, what percentage of our students who take these exams demonstrate need, talk with our communities about that. But the point of the matter is that there is funding available to help our students of need. In terms of the cost of full IB, just to be clear, a very small number of students take the full IB, and we don't even know what percentage of those students are identified as free and reduced lunch. Those are
133all important questions, and that's why this amendment was set up so that it's not making an immediate decision to remove them. What this all comes down to is our credibility. I hear my colleagues and all of us say that employee compensation is a top priority. But what are we doing voting tonight? We're taking one of our most important priorities and we're shortchanging it. But we're leaving in the budget. AP and IB test fees. We're leaving in a lapse rate that can be adjusted and is not harmful. We've got $8 million in a school board flexibility reserve account to not draw on those funds for one-time funding so that we can insert one of our top priorities into a recurring funding source. To me, If I were an employee, I would start to be very concerned
134about where the budget priorities are. So I will go back to that I do understand my colleagues are committed to voting on the best budget possible, but I could not in good conscience vote tonight in support of this budget knowing there are things in here that are receiving recurring funds. And we're telling our employees that something that was supposed to be a priority isn't going to get funded at all. So to my colleagues, I would be welcoming you to at least speak to. With this second amendment where you draw on the funds from the school board flexibility account why then is this a problem and Please tell me how this doesn't improve the situation for our employees Which we promised them pledged to them. We would make their compensation a priority Miss Schultz a year
135I'm gonna fast forward a year ago We said priority to employee compensation. It either is or it isn't. It's not that complicated. We're making it unnecessarily complicated. There's a lot of dialogue that's happening up here. It's either too early or it's too late. It's very simple. You go into the line items of a $2.6 billion budget and you decide whether or not you're going to make a 1% MSA. It's that simple. It is very, very simple. We already pay for students who are free and reduced meal 26%, 28%, whatever we are. We already cover their test fees and certainly no child is going to be denied the opportunity to take a test. But let's be intellectually honest here. That is a red herring. You either get down to brass tacks and say 1% MSA is
136going to be the priority or it's not. And yes, we've kicked the can down the road, but we've kicked the can down the road for three years. There have been budget amendments for school psychologists and school counselors and social workers to help kids with stress, and we've kicked the can down the road. And guess what? We've got a bigger problem now than if we had taken care of that three years ago. And I've said to this board before, there is a marvelous proverb. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today. Plant the tree today, give the 1 percent MSA, and we'll have to roll up our sleeves and do the harder work down the road. Ms. Smith. Thank you. If it were
137simple and these decisions were easy to make, we would do them. But we have a responsibility to be fiscally responsible. And I think the hardest part of that is sometimes it leads us to somewhere that in the short term doesn't seem like the right decision, but in the long term it gets us to a better place. We have an $8 million reserve in a $2.6 billion budget. That is nothing. One day's salary is $10 million. I have been on this board when we had a bad winter and we needed to use that reserve money for fuel. And once we use any of that $8 million, we gotta find it somewhere to put it back in. And so if I'm going to be fiscally responsible and look at this budget that has to be balanced at
138the end of the year, knowing that we took those central accounts and they are as tight as we can get them, I can't in good conscience say that I'm going to cut money from that $8 million. It just to me is not a fiscally responsible decision. We don't have a 20 or a 30 million dollar reserve. We're dependent on what we have here. I know Mrs. Strauss was on the board when they had to use a lot of that. I know we've had to use it for fuel for bad winters. You pray that you don't need it. But my job is to sit here and kind of weigh where we are and make some of these tough decisions. And we were all hoping we could get to a place that we could do that full
139compensation piece. I just, I can't support this, I can't support where the funding goes, and it is not a red herring about the AP and IB fees, because sure, it gets paid for the next school year, but there's no money in the budget then, even for the kids that need the tests paid that are free and reduced. I don't think you make a policy decision that affects education and learning based on what other school districts do and what else is happening. We need to have a discussion with the community and we need to talk about the pros and cons of this. I will not support this amendment. Ms. Hines. Thank you. Once again, Ms. McLaughlin, thank you. You are trying very hard. You really are trying very hard to help us find this. And I
140think, you know, what I'm seeing and what I've been feeling for the last several weeks is just that this is really hard to find. There are a lot of good arguments for why we can't do what... seems obvious, you know, what seems like it might be easy. And on this one I had some questions that I haven't had a chance to ask you those questions so I'm going to ask staff if I can because I want to make sure that I understand. If we take $5 million out of the flexibility reserve, as I understand it, that's an $8 million fund that always has to be at $8 million. So if we take $5 million out to do something else with it, we have to put that money back in? And where would that money come
141from? You would need to find it at year end. Okay, so basically, once again, we'd be taking that out of fiscal year 2017 beginning balance. All right, okay. So I have a little agita about that because, once again, we're borrowing from fiscal year 2017. And I think it's been explained to us what that reserve is for. But, Ms. Michael, maybe you could explain what we have that reserve for. Sure. The flexibility reserve is to be used for unforeseen emergencies or circumstances that we can't. project for or plan for. So examples of that have been catastrophic weather, right, we had to use it one year when there was a state error in projecting sales tax and we had a sudden and unforeseen decrease in that revenue. So it's really to help us with those unforeseen emergencies.
142Okay, and so and then the 2.6 million dollars up there and maybe Miss McLaughlin or someone else can explain to me where that would come that see directing the superintendent to reduce the funding for professional services or another expenditure by 2.6 million dollars. What what is the thought for what that's coming out of? I'm sorry I'm looking at C, where you find the extra 2.6 million. If you read B, B says that you're going to basically use the flexibility reserve to pay the A, P, and IB test fees with one-time funds, and you're going to fund those reductions for professional services in FY16 with the one-time fund. So basically, the flexibility reserve is $8 million. You're going to pay $5 million. to one time fund the AP and 2.6 million to one time fund other
143professional services or something else that Dr. Garza drew the money from. Thank you. Okay. So basically what you're saying is that we would take 7.6 million dollars out of the flexibility reserve leaving 400,000 dollars in there. So we would just have to put that money back in at year end, right? So okay. All right, well, once again, it's kind of the same thing. It sort of washes out the same to me, which is if we're going to find $7.6 million somehow that we just, that we, it seems we can only do it by borrowing from year end and because we don't have any place else to cut right now. And so then we're left with $7.6 million less in 2017 to face the great hole that we have there and the goal that we have
144of doing, you know, significant compensation increases every year. And so I'm sorry that I can't support this. I really do appreciate it. Ms. McLaughlin's efforts here. I would just respond to one thing that Ms. McLaughlin said about the Board of Supervisors. And this is not across the board. We have some friends on the Board of Supervisors. I know that my supervisor in Hunter Mill, Kathy Hudgens, works hard every year to help fund the schools. John Faust in Drainsville works hard every year to help fund the schools. Jerry Hyland down in Mount Vernon has spent 30 years as a friend of the school system. But they don't have a majority on their board to do what they want to do for the school system these days. they haven't for the last few years. And for them
145to scoff at us, which is what I hear maybe the suggestion is, for some of them anyway, are not sympathetic to the idea that we can't find $7.6 million in our budget after we have cut almost a half a billion dollars out of our budget over the last eight years. We have raised class sizes three times. We are spending $1,000 less per child in real dollars than we were in 2008. We have been through a comprehensive... intensive independent efficiency assessment. We have made all the changes that that assessment recommended. We have done a lines of business review in 2014, I believe, and we will, 2015, and we will do it again next year. We are facing, and we're facing $100 million shortfall in fiscal year 2017. I mean, I think the notion that we're not
146serious if we can't find more money in this budget, that to me is what's not really credible. Ms. Strauss. Ms. Hines spoke to many of the points that I was going to make, but again, thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. I know you're working very hard, and this is all from the heart, and so I appreciate that. The $8 million reserve, I think we've heard what it is used for. It is our only emergency money. We also, and I think it was before Ms. Michael's time, we used it for unexpected enrollment growth as well. At a time when we didn't have this reserve, I watched us in one year having to go back to schools to take money back from schools that had already been allocated. And our budgets are tight. And we are asking a lot
147of our individual schools, and by the way, they are beginning to feel the burden of the lack of support, not only for salaries for their employees, but for the kind of day-to-day support that they used to enjoy. And to take from the reserve, and then to have to find it again out of 2017. budget, it again creates a bigger hole. But we really do run the risk in unanticipated emergencies and they occur. that we would have to go back to individual school budgets. And there is nothing more destabilizing to everyone in a school building to have to go back to a school once the year has begun and say, we're going to have to take some of your money back because we just don't have enough to simply cover our bills and our payroll. and
148this reserve is very small, but at least it gives us a little bit of a protection against having to go back to an individual school budget and to take money back. There was a year when we took back 50% of the supply in textbook money. It was the only way we could survive, and I sure don't want to see that again. That's a devastating situation for a school to be in. So again... I commend the effort and the reasoning behind it, but I can't support the way to fund this motion. Thank you. Mr. Stork, followed by Mr. Moon. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think the purpose and effect of this motion by Ms. McLaughlin is absolutely noble, I think, and cool. an effort to try to meet the needs of our teachers, which we absolutely
149all recognize have not been met for these past many years. We've talked over and over about the basis for that, the reasons for that. And I know there is not one single effort of this board that's going to change that, but a constant effort to keep focused and to look to try to change that formulation. It starts with having sufficient dollars to do that. And once again, we've not had sufficient dollars to do that. The challenge for me, the problem for me is that it starts with taking something that I also have a deep concern about, which is the needs of our students to be able to take AP and IB tests and to do that in an equitable way, to make those choices, make those decisions in an equitable way. There's no doubt that
150the students that are the poorest would probably be provided opportunities to do so, but we have so many other students in the middle, particularly in many parts of Mount Vernon District, that I don't share that conviction, don't have that belief that they won't choose what I would consider a short-term decision, but one that I would fully understand due to the economics of it, to not test themselves, not challenge themselves, not reach their full potential. And that is... number one issue in our community is making sure that our students have the same rights and opportunities as every other student in Fairfax County and that is that is truly a challenge that we fight every day. So putting one more barrier in front of those students is not acceptable to me and not one that I can
151support. So if I reject the basic position that we wouldn't cut APIB fees, then I get to the next part of this which is the funding process and simply it's simply a bad idea to use one-time funding it's a bad financial management to use one-time funding one-time money for a recurring expense the board has made great strides the past few years in doing the exact opposite trying to increase or decrease the amount of one-time money that's used for recurring expenses and we've made good progress For those of you who may recall the Joint Budget Development Task Force, we spent a great deal of time talking about this issue and looking to see how do we get to that point. And we recognize that that's not going to happen through our own sheer will. Yes, could
152we get there? Yes, we could get there tomorrow by doing a lot of cuts. But we'd like to get there the same way the Board of Supervisors got there, which is increasing the funding that they have for those items in their budget that are recurring and making sure that they set that up. they set themselves up on a path to do that. So the last thing I want to do right now is create another hurdle, another barrier for us to achieve what I believe is important fiscal responsibility on our part by setting up one-time funding for recurring expense. So I will not be supporting this amendment. Thank you. Mr. Moon followed by Mr. McElveen. Thank you, Madam Chair. As I indicated to my colleagues at the work session last Thursday, that I pondered about bringing
153a compensation in terms of one-time bonus, a motion. But over the weekend, I decided not to bring that forward because, again, being mindful. of our dire needs for FI17. I just could not burden further on the revenue side, which we do not have. And also, I agree with many of our colleagues that we should not be using one-time funding to fund recording expenses. That is why I thought about one-time bonus, but unfortunately, I just feel that... I need to address the FI 17 needs, which is much more serious than FI 16. But I want to appreciate the efforts being made by Mrs. McLaughlin. Mr. McAleen. So I have a question for Chris and Michael. I know it's been quiet over there tonight, so we can't keep it that quiet. With regards to IB testing fees,
154can you clarify for me how we would charge were we to put that on the backs of our students and families? My understanding is it's about $110 per test, correct? AP fees are slightly lower, I believe, and IB fees are higher. Right. So my understanding is IB testing fees are between $110 and $125 per test. So we would, for example, someone who's doing an IB diploma, they would take seven of those, presumably, unless they wanted to challenge themselves even more. So we're looking at about $800 per family. Is that correct? Correct. There's also an IB registration fee as well that needs to be paid. Right. And this would also require us to charge for... theory of knowledge fee, extended essay fee as well, correct? Correct. And my understanding is those are around $100 each. So
155we're potentially looking, were we to adopt this at $1,000 per student potentially. That's untenable. Any other comments before we do go-backs? Ms. McLaughlin for a go-back. I appreciate the input provided by my colleagues. It's very helpful just to understand what you're all thinking as we approach my Second Amendment. I do want to just clarify a few things. As the parent of two sons, the second one is about to graduate next month, who were at an AP school, each one of them took the equivalent of eight AP classes each. The McLaughlin family basically had 16 AP exams being taken by my two boys. And yes, at $91 a test, it would be our investment. As I noted from my one child alone who took those eight AP exams, he got a semester's worth of college credit
156at $22,000 at his private university. Again, just like Montgomery County and Loudoun, the families and the student make the decision on whether they feel well prepared for, want to sit for the test and can do it. Tonight really isn't supposed to be about our board deliberating or debating the merits of AP and IB test fees. I specifically placed it in one-time funding. because I don't believe that it is a more important expenditure that should remain in recurring while we leave out the MSA. So some colleagues were making comments about recurring versus one-time funding. My amendment simply says that the AP and IB test fees would... be transferred from a recurring cost to a one-time cost. And then what that allows this board to do is it builds FY17 and we've examined the AP and IB
157test fees and the impact it has on every single one of our students who might take those classes and might take those exams. We can determine whether they go back in the budget as a recurring cost or they will go away. And it has been shared by our superintendent that we are going to have to look at some very difficult choices. So why would I want to leave AP and IB test fees, which might very well find themselves on the chopping block for FY17, and it's holding a secure spot in a recurring funding position, and yet the employee MSA gets left off. And then the final thing I just want to point out again is that when you're looking at Each year we have a year-end balance that's projected at being about $25 million. And
158a school board reserve flexibility account of another $8 million. It's $33 million. This school system is not going to go bankrupt. We're not going to find ourselves... going over budget, violating our balanced budget constitutional obligation, this amendment by no means puts us in that peril. And it worries me that in the end, and I hope that what people have realized the challenge here is trying to honor that MSA priority under the guise of do not put forward any cuts. for FY16 at this time. Do not use one-time funding. And do not untouch that year-end balance. It really makes it very difficult to find myself tonight wondering how were we ever going to honor our public remarks, which was that the compensation was a top priority and we've left other things in this budget that in
159my humble view simply aren't at that same level of a priority. And so I do very much appreciate the... highly professional input that my colleagues gave me. It doesn't go unnoticed that I appreciated that while you might not share my perspective, you were very kind in your remarks and that's appreciated and I hope you'll take my remarks with sincerity. I understand we're just seeing it differently tonight and so I don't want anyone to feel that I... providing any criticism. I just want to say to my employees, the employees of our school system, I regret that I have not been able to be as successful as I'd hoped. I apologize to my colleagues for my inconsistency, but what I did the first time, we have also an amendment to Megan's amendment, and we spoke upon it.
160We spoke upon Megan's amendment prior to the amendment. So, Ms. Schultz, you don't know. We had it here. That's incorrect. You're not offering it at this point in time. All right. So that's taken off the table. So now what we have before us, colleagues, the script is a little bit different. We are gonna be voting on Ms. McLaughlin's Second Amendment and I will read that. I move to amend the main motion by A, eliminating recurring funding for and the process of having FCPS pay students advanced placement and international baccalaureate test fees at a savings of $5 million. B, directing the superintendent to allocate one-time funding. at the FY 2015 final budget review from the school board flexibility reserve to continue to pay students AP and IB test fees in FY 2016 with one-time funds and
161fund the reductions to professional services or other items in FY 2016 with one-time funds. C, directing the superintendent to reduce the funding for professional services or or another expenditure by 2.6 million and D, increasing the market scale adjustment from .62% to 1% at a cost of 7.6 million. All those in favor of that motion? Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. Schultz opposed? Moon, Reed, McElveen, Hines, Smith, Darinat, Koufax, Velkov, Stork, Straus, Evans. The motion, the amendment fails. All right. I now call, well, I now. I now call on Ms. Schultz for an amendment to the main motion. So I'm going to... out of deference to the time and because again, Mr. Lateef, some politicians do keep their promises. I said when I originally ran that if I could put one thing on my palm card, it would
162be common sense. So I'm going to demonstrate some tonight and it's clear that we're not getting any traction. on getting to a 1% MSA, nor are we getting any traction on the ability of my colleagues to sacrifice some of our own salary for at least the first half of fiscal 16 and put it back on and make the 1% MSA. So I will rescind my amendment because everybody already voted against it, but I would like to say publicly that I think it's shameful. Is there any, yes. Thank you. Is there anybody at this point who would like to speak to the main motion? Ms. McLaughlin. So I'm going to follow my colleague's lead and try to practice common sense as well as brevity, which my husband of 23 years tries to ask me on a
163daily basis to embrace. And I know my colleagues would love that too. Anyway, I wanted to make sure that my colleagues and the public understood that I don't take lightly voting against a school board budget. I know we would very much love to see 12 hands go up and be quite unified in where we are with tonight's budget vote. But as you saw... tonight I just have a different perspective I firmly believe that we should be honoring our employee compensation as a top priority I also believe that our our board really needed to be able to have a contingency plan if we didn't get the full transfer and we should have been willing to look at the 2.6 billion dollar budget and say you know how do you identify the point point one sixteen percent
164challenge before us with that seven point six million dollars and unfortunately we've fallen short tonight and so it is because of that because I look at the fact that you're not always going to get everything you want in a budget but this year unlike prior years I simply cannot in good conscience vote for a budget where I feel that at least I as a board member fell short in being able to present to our employees as it was our best work. So for those reasons I will be voting no against the budget and I really do remain a Pollyanna that I believe that this board with Dr. Garza and with our board of supervisors that we really are going to need to work. together and identifying the needs for the school system in addition to
165the county and Next year's challenge for FY17 has everything to do with a balloon payment of the Virginia retirement system, which is out of our control. And it has everything to do with wanting to provide our employees with a similar compensation increase that the county employees have projected for their own employees. We are one county and we are one community and all of our employees deserve that equity in compensation. And we do know that we will be having more students. But I do remain optimistic that we will be able to work with our board of supervisors, and we have an incredible responsibility of developing and continuing that relationship with our funding authority. Mr. Velkoff. Thank you, Madam Chair. We've seen some folks tonight taking credit for achieving. some campaign promises. Unfortunately, I'm going to have
166to take responsibility for failing at one of mine. So I'm going to start by talking about some personal disappointment over this budget. I do want to raise some concerns about next year and then speak to the long-term concerns. It was one of my goals four years ago to come to this board having witnessed in the community the annual strife that goes on between the Board of Supervisors and the school board. And it's been going on for years and years and years. And it doesn't matter who's on either board. We seem to always wind up in the same place. And I had the naive view that naive or optimistic view that I could make a difference that merely by communicating with some of the folks on the other board that we would establish a different tone.
167And I thought if any year we were going to hit a home run it was going to be this one and that hasn't come to pass. I just think about if I look back over the four budgets that I've now voted on the very first one I saw the county executives guidance was 5% and this board marked it up to a 9% increase and you may recall that I quoted one of our well-known local politicians who said school boards sped like drunken sailors right and I thought man he's right about that Well, since then, and of course I voted against the first two budgets because I honestly thought that we could do a better job of being fiscally responsible. Last year as budget chair, we endured a very difficult year, the budget that we are
168now executing, and we cut $100 million out of that budget and some 400 and some positions. I'm sorry, 732. See, it's worse than I thought. And then this year we're coming to the closest ask that anyone can remember the school board and the board of supervisors. You see, it's been my view that if we did a good job as a school board of cutting our expenses, of really demonstrating clearly that we have taken every step possible to be as fiscally responsible as possible, that then we'd be in a position to go to the funding body and say, see, we really have... We are as responsible as possible. Now you're in a position to trust what we're doing and you can meet us. And not only that, we recognize the limits that you're under in terms
169of the amount of revenue that you can raise and therefore we're coming in at less than 4% when they're giving us a target of 3.2. So I have to say. by being unable to find seven and a half million dollars and I understand the supervisors have a lot of constraints, believe me. There are many unmet needs in the county and we all know that. But I have to say it was very disappointing and this is why I started off by citing my failure. I felt like, I feel like the supervisors have unwittingly validated the cynics. the cynics who always told me you'll never be able to work with them, you'll never be able to trust them, if you try to reach out to them they're just going to slap you. So it's a tremendous disappointment
170to me that we have gotten to this point with this year's budget. Having said that, like Ms. McLaughlin, I'm not going to give in to cynicism and tomorrow I'm going to do my best to continue to reach out to the supervisors and help us reorient towards the common goal which is getting funding generally from the state and I'll have a few things to say about that in a second. Okay, my second topic has to do with the concerns for next year. And I just want to make sure everybody understands the numbers. So right now we are projecting, I believe, a net of, I'm sorry. or expenses of 126 increase of $126 million. And I just want to make sure everybody understands where that's coming from. So 53.6 million of that is costs that are not
171really under the control of the school system coming from essentially enrollment increases, health insurance increases, and retirement rate increases from the VRS. Now if the county transfers to FCPS 3%, which is what is in their plan, then we could probably cover just about all that. Great. Well, the board has also planned to give our employees a step increase and a one and a half percent market scale adjustment. That's going to cost 72 million. Now we can decide that next year's budget is going to be easy. We just simply go back and tell the employees we're not going to support you, right? We get the three percent from the county, the projections, let's assume that they're correct, and we're done. But that's not what this board's going to do, and there's a follow-on motion that's going
172to reaffirm, as we have been doing every year, that employees matter. So what is at risk next year, in my opinion, is increased compensation for our employees. And so we all need to go to our funders. We need to say, we know that you also treasure our schools, but since the quality of the schools comes from the people who work in our schools, We have to find a way to get more funding so that their compensation is increased so we can reflect the value that they provide to us in the monies that we spend. All right, finally, the long-term situation. I think, well, I got a constituent quote. Constituent likes to say, you know, we're all tired of watching you guys on the hamster wheel. Lately for me it's felt like we're standing around in
173a circular firing squad. At a recent event, Senate Minority Leader Dick Sasslaw rightly said, in my opinion, that really it's not the school board and it's not the board of supervisors. It's us in Richmond who are failing to fund localities in the Commonwealth. I think that is where the focus needs to shift and I think that if there's one thing that I think we can come together on immediately with the Board of Supervisors is the need to be going to the state and doing something about this because frankly your Board of Supervisors and your school board don't have the tools that they need. in order to solve these local problems. So we have to demand fundamental change in our relationship with Richmond and it can take one of two forms. Either they fund the localities
174and especially education, human services and early childhood education or they should devolve powers that they reserve to themselves, hand them over to local authorities and I guarantee you that the elected officials in this county would be able to solve them if they had such powers. I'm disappointed in the result this year, as I've said, but I'm certainly going to support this budget. Ms. Hines. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Velkoff. That was very helpful. This is a disappointing budget year. I think you hear that from all of us right now, though I would like to say that I'm very happy that we managed to get some class size. money in there. It's going to come to about $4 million all together and new regulations. Back in the fall, I think when we first started talking about
175this budget, that was a conversation that was only just beginning. And I know that the superintendent and staff worked really hard to come to us with something where We are as lean as we can be. We're making changes that don't cost money to try to address large class sizes, but we also recognize that we needed to put some money into that as well. I think we're a little worried that whether that money will be enough this year, and we'll see how that goes. But we know we had to address it, and it's certainly more and better than we did last year. The compensation increase we've been talking about tonight, everybody knows, is not as much as we wanted to give. but I think it's the best we can do to balance this year against next
176year. We have left ourselves with a minimal year-end balance to face fiscal year 2017. We've done the best we could, but as Mr. Valkoff said, we have worked very hard over the last few years to change the conversation to make sure that we're being as efficient and as lean as we can be, which means that we don't have that much left over at the end of the year. And so our conversation in fiscal year 17, I kind of think we need a new normal. I think this community gets it. We do need more revenue, but I think also the reality is to find $125 million shortfall, we are just gonna have to start looking at programs, and that's gonna be painful, and we're gonna be asking the community to make those priority decisions. I wanna
177thank... Patty Reed and Kathy Smith, our budget chair and vice chair for all the hard work you've done. Dr. Garza and staff, particularly in the finance office. And I just, I would like to say, I want to thank Dr. Garza in particular. I think these last couple of years that you've been with us have, I think, probably been the most difficult budget years in a long time in this county. And you walked right into it. But we are very grateful for your leadership. and I think we're benefiting a great deal from your leadership. You know, we're kind of ringing the alarm bell now because we're standing in the room that's on fire, you know, but the whole house is at risk. If the school system isn't doing well, the county suffers, and everybody understands that.
178So we have to reinvest in this school system, and we know we can't solve it on the backs of homeowners. This archaic way of raising money for schools in Virginia just doesn't work. And I appreciate Mr. Belkoff talking about what needs to happen at the state level. We will be very actively working on that as well. So I will support this budget. It's not all we wanted to do, but I think it's the best we could do in the circumstances. All right, Ms. Schultz. Yeah, so I'm reminded of a conversation that... I have, I think, with great frequency, as do many parents. If you have children at home who ask for something, and sometimes you can't always give them what they want, and you try to teach them that at the end of the day,
179you get what you get. And in our house, the standard line that mom and dad whip out is... You've got to be happy with what you have, not unhappy with what you don't have. And at the end of the day, we've got to be happy with what we have, not unhappy with what we don't have. But I don't think that we, not the staff, not Dr. Garza, I don't think we 12 did our job. I think we had an opportunity to fine tune our answers before we turned our answers in at the bell a few minutes ago. We didn't do that. And I think we overcomplicate things, to be perfectly honest. We have for every budget year that... we 12 have been up here, wound up kicking the can down the road. And no matter
180how many times we say we're going to put this priority or that priority next, or we're going to do that next year, or we know we're going to have to get to that. Now... that bill is gonna come due next year. And if we couldn't do something that was a $7 million problem or a $5 million problem or a $2 million problem in multiple budget sessions year after year after year, whether it was putting four-year-olds at the priority, because those four-year-olds that we could have had pre-K rooms for in last year's budget. with a budget amendment, they're in school this year. And we didn't do it last year and we lost the opportunity to provide them services as pre-K at-risk students and they're already in our schools and they're costing us more money. So the
181money we didn't pay up front is money that we're gonna have to come and do eventually. And we've done it again. And if the employees are going to be any happier with us next year when we've got a $100 million problem to solve instead of a $7.6 million problem to solve, I can't see how. And to some degree, you know, a vote by us for a budget isn't, it's not a vote, it doesn't reflect the vote of the work that Ms. Michael has done, or Ms. Quinn has done, or Dr. Garza has done, or the countless other staff members have done. But at the end of the day, it does put our imprimatur and says, this is the best work that we can do. And... I think it's so simple that it occurs in our
182classrooms that teachers expect students to turn in their best work. And if they don't, they work with them to get it right. But at the end of the day, you've got to turn in your best work. We haven't turned in our best work. It is not easy to continually be a canary in a coal mine, but it doesn't de-obligate me from doing so, that we have a responsibility. And I don't know how we've made our responsibility facing a $100 million gap easier because we didn't roll up our sleeves and attack some things and fulfill the priorities that we've set our priorities. You know, maybe it's cavalier to vote against a budget. Maybe it's serious to vote against a budget. But I think at the end of the day, if we are not intellectually honest with
183the work that we've done... and what we said we were gonna do and whether or not we actually got to do what we said we were gonna do and if we continually blame somebody else and I don't know what the problem is with the Board of Supervisors I don't know how we're gonna resolve it but once it's done it's done and then the work transfers to us And it is our responsibility to dig into line items of a $2.6 billion budget and establish priorities. And it may not be exactly what the staff has said it is. Or if it is exactly what the staff it is, if it is, then I don't even know why we're here because if we're just going to do what staff tells us to, then we don't fulfill our role
184as elected officials representing 1.2 million people in Fairfax County and billions of their taxpayer dollars. So I thank Ms. Michael. I thank... Ms. Quinn, and I don't even know how many people went behind all of those budget questions that came in. And maybe we just simply go back to 53% of the pie. Take whatever the average is of the Board of Supervisors budget, let's save everybody time next year and just say, you know what, take the average of whatever was transferred to us over the last 10 years. put in a growth model and say, you know what, it's 53% of whatever the pie is. And whether, you know, as I've said before, if it's a homemade pie and it's this big, if it's a Mrs. Fields pie and it's this big, or it's a Costco
185pie and it's this big, it's 53% and let's not have any public hearings and let's not waste any staff time and let's not go through the extraordinary elaborate dance. and then not be able to move 0.2% of a budget at the end to fulfill a promise that we set a year ago. So I'm not gonna vote for the budget. Ms. Evans. Thank you. I want to start by thanking all the people who worked so hard on this budget. I think they started very, very early this year. Mrs. Reed is budget chair. Mrs. Smith is budget vice chair. And of course, Ms. Michael and Ms. Quinn and their team as well, of course, Dr. Garza and her leadership on this. I think a tremendous amount of work went into this. So thank you all for... for
186the amount of time and effort and conversations that you all, that went into creating this budget. I do think this is, it's a modest budget. It's a reasonable budget. It is not what any of us would have liked. It simply isn't. We would have liked to have done more for more people and have moved forward in a number of ways. We weren't able to. We're, I think, probably starting tomorrow, going to have conversations beginning on FY17, which is good. We'll start even earlier than we did last year. But I do want to say I'm glad that we finally were able to get a step and a small. It's smaller than we would have liked. The equivalent is a little bit more than 3%. So we are funding a pay increase for our wonderful teachers and
187all of our employees. So that's a positive even though it's not as much as we would like. I do want to say too that even though it's not a perfect budget, we do need to also point out that we have funded, we've managed to squeeze in a number of significant priorities. Things which give us a real bang for the buck. We have funded full day Mondays, which is important to our elementary school students in terms of time. It's important to our teachers in terms of their day and unencumbered planning time. That was something that we instituted back in September and we are fully funding it this year as part of our budget. Later start times, which is very important to the health and well-being of our teen students and basically all of our students ultimately
188will benefit from that. Our class size. putting in again and not as much as we would all love to be able to roll back the increases in class sizes but at least we're making a little bit of progress on that. Whereas, of course, we're disappointed with the Board of Supervisors not meeting us halfway. I think in some of the comments it hasn't been made completely clear that whereas the end result was a relatively small difference, we had already squeezed so much out of this budget in order to try as best we could to get as... as close to that budget guidance as we could. So I think that's important for us to point out. And of course we now have to brace ourselves for next year. I appreciated the list that Mrs. Reid read at
189the very beginning in her original remarks with I think she gave credit to FEA for having provided it. I guess we should in many ways feel lucky that we haven't at this point had to do a number of those things that so many other jurisdictions in the state of Virginia have had to do. And I hope we don't get to that point. But I guess that does help put this budget into some perspective. So with that, again, while I would have liked to be able to do more in a number of areas, I will support this budget. Ms. Strauss. Thank you. I will support the budget and I too want to thank all the people that have worked very hard and I want to thank all of us. We've been to countless meetings and the
190people here who are in the audience, they have lobbied and worked very hard and I truly appreciate everybody's efforts. And I know as we have gone to many community meetings, I know, Ms. Michael, you never say no. You come to every single meeting. And I truly appreciate it because I know you come with me a great deal. And thank you, Ms. Reed, for your remarks. And I would hope that, Ms. Adams, we could again have that document when you talked about the cuts in the rest of Virginia. That's startling. That is just startling. And I think that... is part of the information that we need to share with everybody. Just a little bit of history. When we think of in the beginning of this recession, which of course the country is no longer in a
191recession, but we're very slow in recovery here in Northern Virginia. In the beginning of the recession, we had the stimulus money and we had the dramatic change in the funding requirement for the VRS. And while we had difficult budgets, But what we are facing now is obviously the recovery in Northern Virginia is not as strong, and we no longer have the help from either the federal government or the state. And in fact, we have a state now that has adjusted all of their basic aid formulas in the wrong direction. So we have... just very few places to go. Some of my colleagues have said we have been able to address some class size and that is very, very important to many people in my community. Of course, they would like a lot more and that
192is something that we at the moment can't do. We are finally resolving the later start time issues. That's been... going round and round for actually more than 10 years. So, and full day Mondays. That's a win for our elementary students. It has stabilized planning time for elementary teachers because we know from our surveys that it is very important that our teachers have the time, the planning time. not only to use the time for it, but to use it in the way in which they feel they need it. We need to support them professionally. So those are good pieces. We did make the step. We didn't quite make the one cost of living. I want to personally thank John Faust. He was the one member of the Board of Supervisors that in April came forward with
193a board matter that would have fully funded us. And it would have funded the cost of living. He was the only one. He got no traction, but he put it forward, and it's in the record. So I want to thank John for doing that. So I know we've been bitter at the end, but now we have to come back together again. and we're gonna have to immediately go back. We have to work with the Board of Supervisors. We have to work with the General Assembly. And I thank Dick Sasslow for his remark a couple of weeks ago acknowledging that a lot of our difficulty is at the state level. And our problem is is that the state issues take a long time to fix. The shorter stick comes from our own citizens here. But as
194I've gone... In my community a lot, I've been to all of the schools and as many civic associations who want to hear about it. On the one hand, I am hearing far more interest in how does that school funding work again? So tell me about what you've done and the difficulties going forward. I am seeing many more people wanting more information, wanting to understand it, and not brushing aside the difficulty that we're going to have going forward. I've had civic associations that have come to me on their own and have said, oh my, don't take those programs out of my neighborhood school. I'm getting ready to sell my house. I'm retiring, and my property value will go down. In previous years, I've had to suggest to people that the schools are good for your property
195values, but I'm now beginning to hear some of the older people, very kind, and saying, I am concerned about my own... my own ability to retire and sell my home. And if the schools take a hit, if my neighborhood school takes a hit, this is going to be hard for me. And I've never had that happen before. And in schools where they do not get the additional funding because of high poverty or high ESOL needs, I'm beginning to hear parents being very concerned about losing some of the programming that they really enjoy. The arts. the music, the STEM programs that many of them have been able to put together, the extracurricular activities, all of the things that they value, the things that make Fairfax Fairfax. So if that is a light at the end of
196the tunnel, we have to hang onto that light. And I think many people are beginning to see that, gee, maybe we need to come together. And one of the things that I always tell people, I know at the moment we're kind of pointing fingers and being angry with each other. But in the end, our public facilities, our public schools, and all the things that we pay for out of our tax base that we say are important to us in a democracy. It's up to the citizens. It's up to the citizens to ultimately decide. We make our communities as good as we want them to be. We make our public schools as good as we want them to be. So I think instead of continuing to point fingers at each other, we just are going to
197have to go back. Democracy is messy. We just are going to have to go back, work with our communities, and say, what do you want us to do? We believe that our teachers need to be paid because we can see them going away. We can see them moving away. We can see them taking jobs elsewhere. And we don't want to lose the programming that is important to our communities. So we begin again next week. We work with all of our citizens because all of our citizens own our schools, and it's up to all of us to determine how we're going to go forward. So, again, thank you, all of you, for who have worked so hard, and thank you for those in the audience who have come to watch tonight. We really, really appreciate your
198input, your hard work, and your advocacy because you care so deeply for our children. Thank you. Mr. McElhinney. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, would like to commend our budget chair and vice chair on the extensive work you've put into this budget, perhaps many more hours than you expected to, especially this week. I have also chosen, along with many of my colleagues, to respect the wishes of our budget committee and to not bring forward any additional changes at this late date without engaging the community on them. We will have extensive work to do to meet the challenges that await us next year, and we won't get there by starting and cutting away at the limited funds for employee raises that we do have at our disposal for fiscal year 2017. I do want to take
199a moment and reflect on collegiality and the importance of collaboration with the Board of Supervisors. I think it's very clear here that none of us want to make enemies of the Board of Supervisors, and I do believe that we can move forward with them to ensure that we do not decimate our excellent school system, and I believe that much of that work has actually already begun. I would like to join Janie in thanking the supervisors for doing what they could for us, particularly John Faust, for fighting for our system with board matters to ensure that we receive the $13.1 million that emerged out of the Infrastructure Financing Committee work, and most importantly, the board matter to fully fund our budget. There will always be tension between our two boards at budget time. I think that's
200very clear. We're both elected to represent our constituencies. As school board members, we're expected to advocate for what's best for our schools. We, along with the superintendent, are obligated by state code to submit a needs-based budget to the Board of Supervisors. And we failed, by choice, to do that this year. we did not submit a true needs-based budget in an attempt to get us as close to Board of Supervisors budget guidance as possible. Unfortunately, what I believe that this year's budget portends is that we will likely never again be able to submit a true needs-based budget because adding back the $500 million in system needs that we have not accrued over the past five years is unthinkable. The work that lies ahead breaks my heart. I know it breaks all of our hearts. Few of
201us joined the school board to cut programs and decimate all of the things that have been put into our system to make us what we are today. We joined the school board to build a better and stronger school system. As Ms. Hines says, we are entering a new normal for Fairfax County Public Schools. And unfortunately, it's pitiful. Absolutely pitiful. Mr. Moon. Thank you Madam Chair. I don't want to repeat what my colleagues have already said. I just want to note that even though it is quite disappointing that we have not been able to give our employees full 1% market scale adjustment, I do not believe in not voting for the budget. We have to, no matter what the budget situation may be, we have to continue teaching our students. The operation of the school system
202has to go on. When you disagree with the main budget motion, you bring in your amendments and you debate on the amendments. But at the end of the day, school system needs a budget to move forward. So I am voting for the budget. Mr. Stork. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be supporting this budget as well. And I wanted to thank Ms. Reed and Ms. Smith for your leadership. I think we... We did something very different this year. I think it had some pros and cons to it. And I think we tried to meet kind of somebody else's expectations about what our budget is. And we didn't submit a true needs-based budget. I think we fell a little bit short of what our true hope and expectation was. And on that, I'm disappointed as well.
203I think it does at least give us some perspective for future years that I think we can build on. And more importantly, I think we recognize that we have to be true to ourselves and, frankly, true to our constitutional obligation to submit a needs-based budget. So I think that hopefully will be a guiding force, if you will, for us as we craft 2017's budget as well. Thank you, Ms. Michaels, Ms. Quinn, Dr. Garza, for your work and leadership on this. I know you all spent countless hours. I know you've met, had countless meetings with individual Board of Supervisors members, school board members, and I see kind of the heavy eyelids for everybody here. So I know it's been going on for quite some time. And I know we share a lot of disappointments. We did
204accomplish a fair amount this year, too, and I want to highlight that first. maybe speak to some of the disappointments. There's no doubt that the work on trying to better balance class size, I think that will be a real positive impact for this coming year. I'm enthusiastic about it. Even though it won't affect quite as many schools in the Mount Vernon district, it clearly will have a widespread impact around the county that I think is a positive and one that I'm happy to support. No doubt that full-day Mondays will make a big difference. And this fall, you know, starting high schools later, I'm... obviously deeply appreciative of our ability to finally move that issue forward and I think realize some of the benefits that our students desperately need and I think will show in their
205performance throughout the year. Clearly our needs are also great. We've made sincere efforts to try to be fiscally responsible and consistent. I think by every measure we have achieved that, cutting more than half a billion dollars, particularly cutting our administrative costs far more than really any other surrounding district. If you look at the Washington area boards of education comparative numbers, we are number one in terms of really efficiency at almost every level. We spend $5,000 less than Arlington and a couple thousand dollars less than Montgomery County. I think by every measure, again, we are a low-cost leader, but that comes with a deep price, and that price has been with the salaries that our teachers have earned compared to surrounding districts. It comes with the fact that our class sizes are larger than what we
206believe is appropriate and reasonable and really necessary for our students to excel. And it comes with a price that is maybe not as visible, but other opportunities and options that our students could greatly benefit from. We've had a lot of conversations this year, particularly at Mount Vernon High School and the Mount Vernon community about doing some new initiatives that would help students, give students other opportunities to succeed and excel. And those have been really... done if you will in a very limited cost way which means we've done them more gradually and Because we didn't really feel we had funds to do any other way and frankly we're leveraging what we should leverage use federal government money for Department defense funding for science technology engineering math Math funding so we're using good resources, but we know
207that those aren't fully meeting the needs of the students in those communities and and others. I don't mean to limit it, but those are ones in particular that I'm familiar with and I wanted to address. I definitely have a different view than some of you about the role of the Board of Supervisors and the School Board. I think we both reasonably perform our role. Whether or not I like the particular decisions that the Board of Supervisors makes is another question, but I think their role, their responsibility is different than ours. And I at least understand their focus on the global fiscal realities that they face, whereas the school board is absolutely constitutionally responsible for making sure that we spend money wisely, but also make sure that we... spend the funds that are fine and get
208and spend the funds and the most needs based way I think where the issues are where I differ particularly with the Board of Supervisors is is the need to look for other options for funding for funding not only schools but other community services and looking for the kinds of cuts that the school board has made over the last really six years we've made substantial cuts we've done our own lines of business review. Not that we can't do more, but we've done substantial review consistently throughout this period. And I'm pleased to see that the Board of Supervisors is engaging in a similar process beginning in January, and I think they'll find similar kinds of benefits from that process. But those things are real and I think have to be done. I think the other thing that
209we have to do far more effectively than we've done is advocate for change in Richmond. We all recognize that Richmond is the problem in terms of funding schools. I don't have an answer for that, but I know that when you send a dollar down and you get 20 cents back, and that 20 cents represents no more than about 20% of our budget, and that... funding of schools by Richmond hasn't gone up since 2008 and Richmond funds schools at a at the 44th 41st level of the 50 states in the country and we are the eighth richest state in the country you know there's something cool you know not right and we need to work on that we need to advocate for that we need to look if nothing else get the fiscal autonomy that we
210need to to have more control over our future and frankly assume the identity that the second or third richest county in the country ought to have in terms of how we fund things that we care deeply about. So those are my passions. Those are things that I'm clearly going to continue to work on and ones that I'm convinced we can make a real difference in the future. I also want to thank in particular Jerry Hyland for his incredible support over the years, not just this current year but in previous years. He's consistently advocated for what he says was always done by the Board of Supervisors in the past, which is at least maintain funding on a per-student basis as our student population has grown. So in other words, our overall budget would increase as our
211student population has grown versus our budget has been relatively flat, at least on a per-student basis as a result. So I think that's a basic understanding, and it's a basic formula for the community with our schools. I have knocked on a... thousands of doors in the last many weeks and I hear that view consistently. Some concerns about the budget but clearly when you explain to them the details people respond very positively and recognize that we need to do some things differently. So more to do. Fair amount done. But the most important thing is people need to get out and vote what they believe in. And we've heard some of that tonight, but I'm saying it's across the board on a lot of different levels. And I urge every single person out there to truly vote
212for things that you care deeply about because I think you'll find that schools are at the top of almost everybody's list and I think we'll all benefit as a result. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. You've all said so many good things. I want to be brief, but I do want to thank our budget chair, Ms. Reed, and her co-chair, Ms. Smith. You have done yeoman's work, and you have been part of those many, many meetings that she listed. I think we have... done more outreach this year than we have done in previous years and I applaud you for leading us and leading there in that way. And the people behind the scenes, not even behind the scenes, out in front with us, Ms. Michael and Ms. Quinn, thank you so much for your very,
213very hard work. We know you are working nonstop. You are 24-7 gals at this time of year and we appreciate you very much. Today this budget ends, but we know that tomorrow the even harder work begins. A few weeks ago Dr. Garza shared with the community her concerns and frustrations. regarding the serious budget challenges facing our schools. And I have to say that I do too share Dr. Garza's concerns. She was hired to oversee this public school system and it is one of the top, if not the top public school systems in our nation. And I have great confidence in her that through her honest conversations, although they were hard to hear, that... what she's doing is trying to maintain us where we are and make us even better because we have a growing student
214population with diverse needs and we know that our ability to best serve and meet the needs of our children is in jeopardy right now. We've had some good things in this budget as my colleagues mentioned and we can't let that pass by. Full day Monday is a great thing. Later start times, a great health initiative for our high school kids, some smaller class sizes. That's gonna be great. We have to say that it is, I feel that it's disheartening and devastating that our compensation is not where it should be and where we hoped it would be. The statistics cited by Ms. Reid via Ms. Adams are exactly where we do not want to be, but where we might be. Because since 2008, we've made nearly a half a billion dollars in cuts, as referenced by
215another one of my colleagues, 724 positions. And during this time, and you've heard this before, our school system welcomed 23,000 new students. Again, that's students the amount in the size of Arlington County. We have continual student growth. We have changing needs. And you combine this with many years of underfunding. And we're not going to be able to sustain the high-quality school system that students and parents have come to expect and I believe truly deserve. So the community will have a choice to make. As we referenced, we will be having community outreach. These decisions will not be made in a vacuum. These decisions, the painful ones that some of our colleagues proposed implementing now or considering now, that will be probably on the table with many, many other things. But I think what some of my
216colleagues have also referenced is Miss Schultz referenced the pie. Well, I think we need a bigger pie. And there are many ways to do that. And again, it will be the voters that decide. I don't think we've negated our responsibility in any way. The outreach that we've done, we've been working with state officials and federal officials. The budget. You know, we have, the way the LCI is calculated and the way it will be recalculated is not going to account for the deep pockets of poverty that exist in our county and what that happens. The Board of Supervisors, when we talk about them, our structures are made to be contentious. We fund one portion. We oversee one portion of what they fund. And we do understand that they do care about education. and we understand they've
217brought our challenges, but as I said in my speech on April 7th, when we've exhausted all other avenues, we have to come home. Our county is our primary funding partner. We have worked this year with the state. We are even working at the federal level, but it's through the county and with them until all these things dramatically change that we have to work to maintain our world-class school system. The budget is not where I would like to see it, but it is where it is. We will continue to have hard work beginning tomorrow, but I will support this budget tonight. And with that, I believe a vote is in order. The amendment on the table. The motion on the table, excuse me. I move that the school board adopt the FY 2016 approved budget as
218detailed in the FY 2016 advertised budget and as detailed in the agenda item to include section one, operating fund required revenue adjustments and total reductions of. 10.1 million and section 2 operating fund required expenditure adjustments A through D with total reductions of 2.5 million and replacing section 2e reduction placeholder of 7.6 million with the following adjustment reducing the 1.1 percent market scale adjustment included in the FY 2016 advertised budget to 0.62 percent resulting in a savings of 7.6 million dollars. All in support? Moon, Reed, McElveen, Hines. Smith, Darnot, Koufax, Velkoff, Stork, Strauss, Evans. Opposed? McLaughlin and Schultz. The motion passes on a 10 to 2 vote. I now call on Ms. Reed for a housekeeping motion. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the Division Superintendent be authorized to take whatever actions are necessary to
219implement the decisions made by the school board relative to its FY 2016 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 and to salary scales to comply with the intent. to the school board with regard to its budget actions. Second. Seconded by Ms. Smith. Any discussion? Ms. Reed? No. Ms. Smith? Anyone else? All right. All those in favor of this motion? That vote is unanimous. I now call on Mr. Stork for a follow-on motion. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move to direct the superintendent to develop an FY 2017 proposed budget. that includes compensation increases for employees with step increases and at least
220a 1.5% market scale adjustment as the board's preference, and that the school board by this motion commits itself to compensation increases in FY 2017. A second? Ms. Smith and Mr. Stork. Thank you, Madam Chair. The origin of this motion was about four years ago, and it followed... some really tough times in the schools. We had two years in a row of total freezes in all wages for staff, as well as market scale adjustments. And we knew that we had to do something because we were consistently falling behind other school systems in our area. We recognized that in the end, it was just a commitment to do better. That's all we realized when we find the money to do it. But we recognize too that if we didn't make that commitment early in the budget process,
221we'd be less likely to achieve it. So that's really once again what we are trying to do here is we're trying to set a direction, trying to make it clear to the superintendent that what we value first and foremost in our next budget is to ensure that we do hopefully a better job of providing increases for our staff. In this case, a step increase and at least a 1.5% market scale adjustment. We all can look at this and go, okay, we didn't quite meet it this year, so how are we going to do better next year? Well, we still did better this year than we did the year before. That's something. And better than many other years that we've had over the last six or seven years, for sure. That's kind of faint praise, maybe,
222but it's still a direction that we recognize and this board is committed to trying to achieve. Again, this is a marker down on the table that says here's what we're going to try to do. We're making a commitment to make the tough decisions to do that. I think, once again, the door is open for any options and any amendments. And I think what we all don't want to have is a year from now. with those people who are in attendance to say, well, you know, we didn't meet it because we didn't put something else on the table back in the fall or back in the winter when we first vote, or even in May when we have our final vote. So this is a chance to get started. and get started with some tough decisions
223and to, I guess, really follow on what I know Dr. Garza is proposing is to try to have a more in-depth review of our budget this year, recognizing that FY 2017 looks particularly difficult given the local composite index adjustment that's likely not to go in our favor, which is the basis for state funding of our core operating funds. I think the commitment is an important one. Yes, it once again be a challenge. We may not. fully make it, but I think we can. I think there's an opportunity to do even better than that. And in the end, we all know what it comes down to, which you have to have the money to do it. So we have plenty of time between now and then to work hard to try to secure that money. And
224obviously, we have elections in between that can have an influence on that as well. So I think where this statement today is that we're committed to making this happen, and we're going to work hard to make it happen. And I think if we do so, we'll be successful. Thank you. Ms. Smith. I think Mr. Stork said it well. I appreciate when he first came up with this idea to do this motion. I think it has made a difference, and it's important to say that this is what we want developed in the budget. So thank you for doing that. I will support the motion. Ms. McLaughlin, followed by Ms. Strauss. I said earlier tonight that I want to ascribe to still being Pollyanna who can believe in the greater good. And so of course I will
225be happy to support Mr. Stork's motion. But I do want to ask my colleagues that this is more about action rather than words. We did this last year. When we came up short in our transfer from the county, where did we take the $7.6 million but off of the MSA? So if we're going to fully embrace... Mr. Stork's motion, honor it and communicate that with our superintendent and her team, then we've got to work really hard from the beginning of the budget cycle to the end of the budget cycle to communicate that to her that we want this to be a top priority. And if we come up short, where else are we going to be prepared to look at those changes in the budget and not make the change necessarily on the compensation. I
226think we all recognize that there is going to be tremendous challenges in FY17 and I think we absolutely have a responsibility to do our very best to look at the greatest needs within the school system including competitive compensation for our teachers and all of our employees. But I would just ask that With this commitment tonight, we are going to have to have a plan B that goes further than what we had here tonight. Ms. Strauss. Thank you, Mr. Stork, for once again offering this motion. I will certainly support it. We simply cannot go backward on our compensation. We have made a little progress this year, not as much as we would like, but we just simply have to draw a line in the sand, and we're going to have to drive our way to regaining
227some of the competitiveness that we have lost on our teachers' salaries. I am losing very good people out of my schools. And it just is happening. So thank you very much. And even no matter how hard this 2017 budget is, we are going to have to pay our people. And if it means beginning to cut programs, which I hope doesn't happen, but at some point we have to be able to pay enough to keep the good people we have that we can afford to maintain. So thank you, Mr. Stork. Seeing no other comments, Mr. Stork's follow-on motion is I move to direct the superintendent to develop an FY 2017 proposed budget that includes compensation increases for employees with step increases and at least a 1.5% market scale adjustment as the board's preference and that the
228school board, by this motion, commits itself to compensation increases in FY 2017. All those in favor? Moon. Reed, McElveen, Hines, Smith, Darinette, Koufax, Velkov, McLaughlin, Stork, Strauss, Evans. Opposed? Abstentions? Abstentions, Ms. Schultz. A follow-on motion passes. Next, I call on Ms. Schultz for a follow-on motion. I move to direct the superintendent to formally accept the Board of Supervisors recommendation to have FCPS participate in their lines of business review as part of the fiscal 2017 budget development process. A second? Second by Ms. McLaughlin. All right. Ms. Schultz, you want to discuss it now? I mean, it's pretty straightforward. I think that, you know, Dave Edlong, as the county executive and the board of supervisors, have, you know, said in advance they're going to have, and I think they do this maybe periodically. I don't know that
229they have it built into their schedule. But when it becomes necessary, they have what amounts to a prioritization deep dive into the line items. pretty extensive from what I understand. I've met with Chairman Bolivar in the past and gone through what the process is. And they basically sit with each of the departments of the county government and do a whole scale analysis of what that department does and what services it provides and why the people think it's important. And I think that there's often a lot of incoming about what happens in our budget. And I think if we have an ability to, in a germane fashion, participate in that budget review, then maybe we're at the front end of the conversation at the overall budget. instead of coming in at the back end of trying
230to squeeze our budget in. And I think that maybe we could have gleaned some insight to the county side of the budget from a staff and even a school board member. participation in that lines of business review and I also think it would be a demonstrative goodwill gesture to take them off on the offer so I think it's not offered hat out of hand from them I think it was sincere and that level of sincerity I think needs to be met with some genuine interest on our part about the overall budget and be engaged from the very beginning in a complete teardown. And frankly, maybe we could learn something as well. So I think it's wise, I think it's collaborative, and I think it's prudent. Ms. McLaughlin. I think Ms. Schultz spoke well to this
231follow-on motion, but I just want to emphasize that I actually think this could be extremely helpful for both boards in having a more direct... understanding of each other's budgets and the challenges that we face on both sides in meeting the needs of our operations and I know in conversations I've had with my Braddock district supervisor John Cook that when there's been concerns about that where the school system can find efficiencies I very much welcomed he and his staff to look at our operations and to provide me with input about where we could be more efficient. And so that has been just conversations. And so I really like the idea that working with Dr. Garza and with our county executive Ed Long and our boards that I think this will really help broaden the lens for
232all of us serving in these positions and having a deeper appreciation for how difficult it is to try and fund. an extraordinary county that has challenges and in funding services on both sides and I'll reiterate again that I still very much believe that in a county of where we are one county that Finding how we can be equitable and fair across the board for all employee compensations is extremely critical in FY17, and that, in my mind, would be a starting point of what will it cost with the county's projection for its own compensation for its own employees to then look on our side of the envelope and recognize that 3% Just looking at compensation, equitable compensation along with VRS payment alone is going to require more than that 3% that is initially being identified for
233us in FY17. All right, Ms. Reed, you can speak. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question for the maker of the follow-on motion, and that is what... do you envision in terms of formally accepting the recommendation to participate, do you assume that then... all the board of supervisors and all the school board members will sit together and go through all the lines of business? Can you just kind of talk a little bit, I didn't think that's what you intended, but if you could just elaborate a little bit on that point. So I'm gonna go back to my common sense argument. I think to the extent that is practicable, I don't expect to for Ms. Quinn and Ms. Michael to give up their day jobs and go be a LOB participant, no more than I
234would expect ours to. I do understand from the supervisors, from speaking to them individually, that it's a pretty intensive undertaking. And frankly, when they do it, they're all in. It takes, I think, a couple of weeks. I don't expect that, but I think that if we don't participate in any formal way, meaning whoever can come for whatever parts, when they can come, and we don't do so formally, if we just sort of take an ad hoc approach to it, that perception will, I think, stick to us. I think if we say, you know what? maybe we make it to as many as we can as much as is practicable, that's within Dr. Garza's ability to control for her staff and it's within our ability to control as board members. Okay, thank you. Probably the larger
235question I have is what about the timing? It's my understanding that the supervisors are planning to do the line of business review in early 2017. That's exactly what I was going to ask about. It doesn't indicate. And that would be too late for us to have any impact on our 2017 budget development. Isn't that right, Dr. Garza? So how do you envision addressing that parent quandary? We can't participate in it until they do it and we can't benefit from participating in it until we do it. And I didn't say that it would necessarily benefit the 2017 but they don't do it every year so they do it when they do it. So all I can do is accept an invitation to a dance when the dance is going to occur. Thank you very much. Do
236you have a question, Dr. Garza? That was the question. That was your question. Obviously, there have been some conversations. I was wondering if they were still sticking to this proposed timeline they discussed, and that was my question, because we have to make our decisions for fiscal year 17 beginning in June for the next six months. Point of order. We have a substitute motion on the, which we have to get to because what I've done is I allowed the maker and then I allowed a question. So I now need to get to the substitute motion. Ms. Hines. Thank you. I move to amend the motion in the form of a substitute motion. I move to direct the superintendent in the preparation of the FY 2017 budget to thoroughly analyze all division operating expenditure budgets to identify
237any potential cost savings and or reductions using a methodology commensurate to that of zero-based budgeting. Is there a second? Seconded by Mr. McElveen. Point of order. Yes, Ms. Schultz. Madam Chairman, this is not germane to the motion on the table. This is a substitute motion that entertains a separate participation, and it's not germane. It can't substitute this motion because it's not germane. At this point, Ms. Schultz, I don't agree. I believe the way I understand it, I'll let Ms. Hines speak to it, but I believe she's responding to their offer in a different way. Thank you. That is what I was doing. I mean, I looked at, and actually, do you have a point of order, Ms. Evans, or something? Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. Actually, I appreciate the spirit of your follow-on motion, Mrs. Schultz,
238because I do think we have to respond. You know, they want to work with us. Working with them has not necessarily worked to our benefit in the past couple years on budget joint committees, and we've spent a lot of staff time. and not necessarily in conversations that ended up being fruitful. So what I wanted to make sure is that we responded in a way that would work well for the school system. And so I asked Dr. Garza if there were language, and it may just be semantics, but I think now that we've talked about how the Board of Supervisors will probably not even begin their process until well after we have to have ours done, I think it is probably more than semantics. So I asked if there weren't some language that would get to
239the same place but would leave the... school system some flexibility and some control over how we do this process ourselves not to shut out the county but just to say that we need to do this ourselves so that's how I came up with this language dr. Garza did you want to add anything no I think you covered it well I mean we're gonna we're essentially went through a form of lines of business last year in preparation for the fiscal year 15 budget. We are going to do something like that starting in June. And again, I think really it's the timing that's a question for us right now. We need to go through the exercise. I'm not discounting the fact that we do need to look everywhere in every budget and every department and with everything
240that we're doing and where we're allocating money. So I think that's the... I think in essence we want to do the same thing, it's just probably the timing would not work for us. Unless someone knows that they've adjusted. I'm sorry, Madam Chairwoman, I'd still like a reading on the germaneness of this because Ms. Hines, while I appreciate and I don't actually disagree at all with what she's contemplated in her motion, it's contemplating what FCPS would do within our own division with our own budget. It does not contemplate what... my motion contemplates which is what the Board of Supervisors is doing with their budget and you cannot substitute a non-germane motion as Ms. Hines has done and I think that her motion should certainly be entertained but not as a substitute motion because it isn't germane.
241It is contemplating FCPS's own budget and what we're doing within the division, not the Board of Supervisors. So it is wholly and utterly separate. Could I? I don't see it that way. And so my decision at this point is to allow her to speak. And if you want to speak further to explain yourself, I'd be happy to do that. hey thank you and mrs schultz really i i think it is because i was i thought i was understanding your your request was how are we going to respond to this and you wanted us to respond by accepting their offer and i'm a little concerned about accepting their offer as they've put it to us so i would rather say we're accepting the spirit of their offer and we're letting the community know that we are
242going to do that kind of a review and that you know when it comes to it we obviously will work with the county as we always do on the on the budget but that this is our way of responding to their offer to their invitation to us to do a lines of business review. So that's why I put it this way. Any other discussion? Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I did have, Mr. McElveen, do you want to speak to this? Nothing further. All right. Ms. Evans. Actually, I had. Questions for I guess both makers of the motions. I guess my first question is if it would make sense to do both as opposed to just one or the other that's, but aside from that, whether we could or should do both of these things. I actually
243have some, and what is the downside to participating in the lines of business review? Even if it is in early 2016, is there any downside to participating in it? That's another question I have. And then what's the practical impact? So I'll start with you. Well, I'll ask the chair to let me ask Ms. Hines a question. I think that's the way I'm supposed to do it, right? Yeah. Oh, thank you, Ted. So with the chair's permission, I will ask Ms. Hines. You may ask Ms. Hines a question. Okay, thank you. How is this amendment, what would we be doing differently than we have been doing? I think we have been sifting through our budget and doing, you know, looking at cost savings and looking at reductions. What would this do other than what we have
244already been doing? perhaps Dr. Garza could explain that better. My feeling about what it would save us, I mean, I'm not sure how much staff time would be involved in working with the Board of Supervisors in January when they do their lines of business review. I suspect that it's significant, and that was my concern, that if we're going to go ahead and use staff time to do that work starting pretty soon, then we'd be asking staff to do the same work again when actually I think maybe what we could do is do the work ourselves and then report to the Board of Supervisors. on how, rather than working side by side with them. It seems that these joint budget opportunities with the Board of Supervisors do use a good deal of our staff time. And
245they're already going to be spending their time over the next few months doing this kind of review. You know what I mean? So we'd be doubling up on their work. But Dr. Garza. Yes, I think and I don't want to speak for any of the board members, but you know, I certainly appreciate What's what's the conversation? We all know that we have to be accountable To our stakeholders and to we want to we want to work with the county. We want to be good partners with them We also know full well that we're going to go through a very in-depth exercise of looking at every bit every every line item We have within our budget I believe, and this is really a question to the board, that you're really talking about how we're going to
246start this process of fiscal year 17 budget development. And we will be entertaining that in an upcoming work session, talking about how we want to begin this process. We sent you kind of a starting point with regard to a task force and what we were, the staff had thought would be a good way to get this started. So, I mean. I wonder if maybe we're getting a little ahead of ourselves before we've had a work session and then maybe that would give us an opportunity to talk with the county staff to see what is their timeline because maybe they're because we've been talking with them a lot now about why this timeline doesn't work for us necessarily they may need to consider moving that up starting earlier maybe they're reconsidering that I think we all
247I've not done a lines of business with the county I'd like to learn more about it and I think the board does need to have a conversation about how you want us to go about you know attack essentially addressing this deficit moving forward so just just something for you all to think about Well, and I guess the other question I had was if Ms. Hines' amendment passes, what will we be doing differently than we've been doing? Because we've gone so thoroughly through the budget to identify cost savings and reductions. Is it the zero-based budgeting that's different than we've done in the past? No, we've done, we've essentially done that with a lot of the cutting that we did last year. We went through every single department budget, went through staffing formulas, we did that. I
248think, and I don't want to speak for Ms. Hines, but I think what was attempt. It was important for the community while we still had maybe potentially some questions about the timeline because I went back and read their guidance again. We still didn't want the community to think that we weren't going through a similar kind of exercise. So I don't want to speak for you, Ms. Hines, but I thought that's what you had said. So it's basically saying we are going to continue doing the kinds of in-depth look at cost cutting. Right. And the question whether it's a statement that needs to be made, I mean, I think it is because we have been publicly invited by the Board of Supervisors to do this work. I think we need to tell the community that we
249are directing the superintendent to do this work. That's, you know. Well, I guess my last question, which I'd asked before, is whether it would make sense to actually do what is in Ms. Hines' amendment. basically continuing the process that we've started a couple of years ago and then keeping ourselves open to doing the line of business review. I mean, that would be separating the two motions and basically doing both. I mean, does that make sense or does it not make sense? What's on the table? You're asking, what's on the table right now is Ms. Hines' substitute motion. And just so you know, if that passes, it becomes the follow-on motion. All right? And because it's a substitute, Mrs. Schultz's would not be considered as a follow-on motion. However, as Ms. Hines suggested, the reason that
250she was doing this was out of concern about the timing. It doesn't take off our ability to participate in the lines of business. It just doesn't make it a follow-on motion for our 2017 budget. And I think there's been sufficient... concerns about timing and staff time and we haven't had enough time. We're not saying that we wouldn't do it but we at this point we're my understanding from what I'm hearing is at this point we're not exactly sure what that would entail and so we wouldn't want to do it at this time and that was Ms. Hines' rationale behind adding the substitute motion. And I have Ms. Strauss and Ms. McLaughlin. I know, Dr. Garza, you actually have the document from the Board of Supervisors. From my read of it, what the Board of Supervisors
251are asking us to make sure that we do is that we look again at our budget very, very carefully, which we are obviously going to have to do. I don't think their intent... is for us to actually sit with them in their many subcommittee meetings that they will have, working internally with their staffs of all of the departments. I would certainly not want to tell the heads of their departments how to run their departments or what their budget should be. And I'm assuming that that is not their intent. But I think that they are asking that, again, that we look very carefully at our budget. And I think that Ms. Hines' motion says that. Now, if the Board of Supervisors want to ask us to participate with them in a different way, I think they
252need to clarify what they have in mind. So it's my interpretation. They want to make sure that we are going to look as carefully at our budget as they're going to look carefully at theirs if they want to do something joint. I think we need a little more information as to what they have in mind. So I am sure they are not asking us to sit down and look at the police department's budget with them. At least that's not my understanding of what they're asking for. Thanks. Ms. McLaughlin. Before I comment, Dr. Garza, do you or anyone within the administration here tonight have the actual language that the Board of Supervisors stated? And if so, could you read it? Read the language about how it relates to FCPS. It's a lengthy paragraph. You can read
253the whole thing. Well, you can just take out the excerpt where they invite us to work with them on it. The board encourages FCPS to participate as a full partner in lines of business. This unique opportunity will allow both boards to continue to work cooperatively in determining and addressing joint priorities and will build upon the positive efforts of the Joint Budget Development Committee. By coordinating county and schools' LOB reviews, the board and the community can focus more clearly on program effectiveness and identify desired outcomes with the goal of improving services in the shared priority areas. The LOB's process also provides opportunity to identify areas in which there may be a duplication of efforts between counties and schools as a means of generating efficiencies and improvement in the provision of services. The board also suggests to
254us, to the schools, to enhance their discussion of their program budget by including metrics and performance information so that the respective boards in the community are able to understand the importance of various programs. Okay, so thank you, Dr. Garza, for reading that language because I really am struggling with the substitute motion. I very much appreciate what Ms. Hines is saying, and I don't... disagree with the merits of it at all. In fact, I think it might be worth one of us at the table just simply saying that we'd like both of them to happen. But to the merits of whether this qualifies as a substitute, it simply does not. Ms. Schultz's amendment is very clear. We've been invited by the board of supervisors to partner with them in an LOB review. And Ms. Hines substitute
255motion does not talk about how are we partnering with the board of supervisors in doing this and to the concerns about the timing of when they plan to do it versus when we would do it. Well, that's what a partnership's about. If we agree to this and have this as a follow-on motion, then part of the partnership is having the dialogue of the how will we achieve that. So I think at the macro level, Ms. Schultz has a motion before us that says do you want to accept their invitation? And I've already said earlier tonight I'm extremely worried about the current relationship between our two boards and for us to substitute out and not. show our willingness to partner with them in a line of business review by simply saying we didn't know what that
256meant and so we won't commit. The details will be after we've decided do we want to partner with them or not. And to be clear, even if we design our budget and Dr. Garza brings us her proposed budget in January of 2016 and their lines of business review with us goes from there, the bottom line is we don't vote on this budget until toward the end of May. And for anyone who doesn't know and understand how international corporations work, They adjust their budget every single day, 365 days a year. They review it quarterly. If they find out they're coming up short in their revenue or their projections, guess what? They've got to make decisions. I tell this board frequently. My husband is part of a management team, and he's had to make some very painful
257decisions in how they've had to let people go, and they've got two weeks. Notice, and I'm not... advocating that, but this notion that somehow our major enterprise of $2.6 billion has a hard and fast budget that gets presented by the superintendent in January, we approve it, send it over to the board of supervisors, and then it just pretty much goes untouched, I don't think is actually our best work and what our taxpayers and our citizens expect from us. the lines of business review and the partnership with the board of supervisors, it can be a good thing. And I think more than ever, we need an olive branch with our board of supervisors. No harm can come from her motion, Ms. Schultz's motion. And I guess I'll go back to Ms. Hines with a question. Help
258me understand why you think this is a substitute and how does this answer the board of supervisors invitation? Because there's nothing in your language that says what we did with their invitation. Ms. Hines, you have a question. Look, my feeling is if we want to work with the... I feel like it's premature what the Board of Supervisors is asking us to do right now. They're asking us to commit to a joint conversation which won't start for months from now. And we know that we actually can't wait that long this year, at least my understanding, because we are going to be looking at program cuts. I mean, we have to to find $100 million, $125 million. And if we're going to make program cuts, then we really need to have the budget pretty well, you know.
259pretty well understood by the fall. We have to know what that means because program cuts means that we have to fire people and we have to change programs and all that has to happen in the fall. So we may be on a different timeline than the Board of Supervisors in general, but we definitely are this year. So I guess what I'm hoping, and the thing is I first saw this amendment, this follow on motion this morning. So I've had not a lot of time to respond to this and I'm doing the best I can. What I'm worried about is us signing on to something that we don't really understand yet, that I don't think really fits with the way we need to manage our business for this next year. And so I guess what I
260would say, if I could add just sort of my own understanding of what we would do from here is that we would continue to have conversations with the Board of Supervisors to follow up on this offer. And then when we understand better what they want to do and they understand better what we're trying to do, then we could come to the table. but the offer that they've made us is so one way, you know, it's so one-sided. It's sort of like, you know, we invite you to come to our party. Well, you know, you haven't planned the party with us. They haven't planned the party with us. And the last couple of times that we've worked with them, staff to staff and board to board, when we talk about the Infrastructure Finance Committee and the
261Joint Budget Committee, Those have taken a lot of work, a lot of staff time, and they have not been very fruitful for us at the end of the day. I mean, we may get the money out of the IFC. I'm not sure if that's going to happen or not. So I feel like we need to somewhat protect our staff time. We need to protect our schedule and our calendar and what we're trying to do and not have the conversation with the Board of Supervisors, but do it a little bit more on our own terms and in our own time. And so that's why I think this is a better response to their offer. Madam Chair, I call the question. All right. Since I was the one who asked the question. No, no. We have a
262question called. Is there a second? Ms. Reid. All right. The question has been called. All those in favor? Moon, Reid, McElveen, Hines, Smith, Derenette, Koufax, Velkoff, and Strauss. Opposed? McAleenan, Stork, McLaughlin, excuse me, McLaughlin, Stork, Evans, and Schultz. So the question has been called. That passed this, and what we have is we have a substitute motion on the table. And it is, I move to amend the main motion in the form of a substitute motion. I move to direct the superintendent in the preparation of the FY 2017 budget to thoroughly analyze all division operating expenditure budgets to identify any potential cost savings and or reductions using a methodology commensurate to that of zero-based budgeting. All those in favor of this? Moon, Reed, McElveen, Hines, Smith, Darinat, Koufax, Velkoff, Stork, Strauss, Evans. Opposed? McLaughlin and Schultz.
263That substitute motion passes. Madam Chair. And now we go back to the main vote. You may speak, Dr. Garza. I just want to be clear for the public that might be watching. Just because that motion fell does not necessarily mean that at some point... in the near future or in the distant future that this board might not consider partnering on the lines of business. I think from my interpretation of this conversation tonight, it's about we just need more information. I just feel like given the tense nature of the relationship, I just want to be clear. All right, and we have one more vote now. Now that this substitute motion is now another main follow-on motion, I am not going to read it again. I just read it. So, and there's a question. Mr. Stork. I
264just kind of want to reiterate what Dr. Garza is saying. I think the point of this is, first off, we have more than... this day to make that decision number one number two is I want to understand a lot better what it is that they're seeking to do I mean their lines of business review is very different than what we do and should be very different from what we do because their their review of budgets is is with very distinct departments you know from from the planning authority you know to public to parks to health department. I mean, there's just so many variations in what they do. So I think that process makes sense for them. I'm glad they're doing it. I think it's long overdue that they're doing it. But how it relates to
265what we do, I think, is very separate. So if there's an opportunity, and I would welcome the opportunity to how we can, I guess, work together. Maybe we see some common. ways that we can look at this process. Clearly the Joint Budget Development Committee saw that as a real option. In fact, if you all remember right, we identified one of the first things we wanted to do was in June to have a strategic planning meeting. To really look at this right, you need to get folks together and talk about the top level. Where are we? Do we have common interests, common issues, common agreement? And then you start planning down from there. And so I think there's a lot more we can do. we need to discuss and better understand before we can really, I
266think, know how to proceed with the offer that they've made. I very much appreciate the offer. Definitely want to consider it more seriously, but I think we need to look and understand and really have some communication with the chairs, particularly in talk, to see how we could best proceed. So I appreciate the... the substitute motion i think it's something we need to do anyway so miss signs i welcome that i think it sets us on the right path but we also have something else that we can consider a later date and i think we should do that but we need to understand it better before we can do that thank you miss evans Yes, in some ways I'm going to be repeating what Mr. Stork just said, so I'll be very brief. But I did
267vote for this amendment because I think we need to get started right away. But it was with the understanding that we're not precluding in any way our ability to participate in a lines of business review with the county. So my advocacy, and thank you, Mr. Stork, you laid it out very well. And Dr. Garza, my advocacy as one board member would be to actively pursue. the lines of business and understanding what exactly that would mean and if there's a way to participate in that because I do think that if we can work with the Board of Supervisors and accept their offer to work with us, I think that that's a good thing. So I feel like we've adopted an overarching look at that we are going to identify cost savings. and also with being open
268to the lines of business review. Ms. Schultz. I find it curious that we can vote on a follow-on motion year after year after year about our commitment to employee salaries that's a year away because it demonstrates something. It shows our commitment to it and our will to work towards employee salary increases, but when the board of supervisors specifically comes to us and says that they would like to invite us to the table. and we know that we are in a perilous situation between the two boards for a host of reasons known publicly and unknown publicly that to not have made the decision to... make the same kind of motion to demonstrate our commitment to improving that in a demonstrable fashion with saying, yes, we will participate with you. on what was a non-germane motion and
269I will go down saying that over and again. I'm four years into asking this board to have parliamentary procedure training. We've continued to fail and we failed again tonight and I think it's vastly unfortunate that we continue to put ourselves in a position where we could have made a follow-on motion. It was very simple and we could have advanced. the relationship with the Board of Supervisors and going through their lines of business review. Nobody said we had to not do our work first. Nobody said we had to stop what we're doing and wait for them to get going. Maybe it would have paid off in fiscal 18, but we need to stop making short-sighted decisions. And we're going to get into a match at this table based on who presents a motion or when it
270happens or what it means or I didn't get it until such and such. At the end of the day, we have a demonstrable problem on our hands. We have a $100 million deficit coming and making motions about what we feel we should be doing next year on employee compensations or what we should be doing, which Ms. Hines largely described as let's do what we were going to do anyway or what we have done, and we're not really going to change anything, but let's just say we're going to do what we've been doing. Instead of the offer from the Board of Supervisors, which is come with us down our road, see what we do, see if there is anything that we do that's different than what you do that will help, and then we become a
271partner in the process, I'm at a complete loss that we can't even pass a follow-on motion to try to advance that relationship. I'm embarrassed. Ms. Smith. So a different perspective here. One of the reasons the board set a deadline of 4.30 last Friday for amendments was that we would have the time to ask questions, to research, and to be educated about making votes. I got the wording today to look at the follow on from the Board of Supervisors. It is not clear. It is not specific. We don't know the expectations. If we had been able to have this information earlier, we could have made some phone calls. We could have talked. We could have seen if there was a meeting point. But now we're in a position to be accused of not wanting to collaborate.
272And that is far from the truth. The truth be told, I would have preferred to have neither of these motions because I think we need time to have a work session, to be able to talk, and to make a plan going forward. We have been talking for months that we are going to start the process for 2017 ASAP. We keep cutting our central staff. There aren't enough people to do this work. We don't want to have a double workload to achieve what we need to achieve. We are going to have to take a hard look at what we're going to do. We need to see if we can do things better that maybe services we do with the Board of Supervisors. But because these things came so last minute, we have not had the ability
273to be strategic, to be thoughtful, and to ask questions. And people are trying to give the impression that we don't care about being collaborative and that we don't want to do our work well. And that is disingenuous. And I think it makes the hard work we all do look wrong. I'm sorry, I try not to get upset at the board table, but this is an unacceptable way to do work because it doesn't give us a chance to do it respectably and honestly and ask questions. Thank you, Ms. Smith. Ms. McLaughlin. So ideally, once the board of supervisors finalize their budget, which I believe was April 29th, is that a Tuesday? So it's now May 21st. So they made that public proclamation about three weeks ago. And I would ask why the very next day it
274wasn't brought to the board's attention. You've been given an invitation. And we would have had three weeks to talk about it at our work sessions and contemplate it. And I don't have an answer for who, what, where, why, and how that invitation did not come to us. But I think what I heard my colleague, Ms. Schultz, saying is even the board of supervisors, when they voted affirmatively for this, may not know the details. It's all about the intention. And when someone asks you to be a partner, It is that in a partnership. You have to work through the details after that. So in terms of our board signaling that yes, we welcome partnering with them, that's a first step. If it turned out in the partnership that what they had in mind. was far more
275complicated and we didn't feel that it was gonna actually be feasible, we have that conversation with them and determine at that point whether the well-intentioned partnership was not gonna happen. But yes, I heard Mr. Stork and I heard Ms. Evans say that yes, of course, we can still revisit it. But I think it still goes to the macro level. We were invited to become partners with them in the fiscal year, and instead we voted on a substitute motion that actually doesn't answer that at all. So I... I'm a little worried about listening to the double messaging that's going on here that people are being chided on. It came for us just this morning. Well, I mean, well, and I'm saying again, for three weeks, the information was there. So our budget chair and vice chair
276certainly could have brought it to our attention since it related to us. But I'll just go to, we just voted on Ms. Hines' substitute motion that. Came up as a result of Miss Schultz's motion so technically we just did vote on something that was right in front of us Without much consideration, so we should have voted them both down if we're going to be consistent So you know it's it's a little hard because there's some murmuring at the table I think people are upset with what I'm saying, so I'll just stop Now we were just talking about that. There's still one more vote So you have the opportunity to vote it down as the main motion. That's what we were speaking of miss Heinz Yeah, thank you. I was getting a little lost in process.
277We still have a vote to take, is that right? Okay. Well, all right, then I won't prolong this anymore other than to say this is not our best work. We're kind of chatting and drafting at the table, which is not great. And I agree with Ms. Smith. I think that's why we try to hold ourselves to better habits and to get our amendments in earlier. So anyway, I appreciate everybody entertaining my thoughts on this. I just, I did not want to... just vote down the offer of the Board of Supervisors to work with them on the lines of business review. I don't think that would be the message to send, but I was not ready to vote for it, so I wanted to do something that would show we are interested in doing that work.
278And we will, I'm sure we will continue to talk about how we go forward working with the Board of Supervisors, but we have to do our own work first and in our own way, so thank you. Ms. Reid. I apologize, but I have to just say if we had received an amendment that addressed this issue Friday like we had hoped. that we could have had some discussion and I would have proposed language such as this board is committed to work with the Board of Supervisors to establish a shared vision, priorities and goals for FY 2017. It's the what not the how. So all this discussion about line of business review I think is just completely missing the main point here and I think I've heard us all say we want to work together. So that,
279again, I'm just saying we had plans in place and that is my thought about where we could have gotten to. We could have gotten to a place where people are nodding saying yes instead of all of us now being tired and frustrated. Thank you, Ms. Reed. I will tap in again and say emphatically that we will be working with our Board of Supervisors to do this. They are our funding body. We need to be working with them. If there's new ways, be it lines of business or other ways, we have been working with them with the Joint Budget Advisory Council in many ways this year, reaching out, talks, all the ways. So the fact that it is not... pushing away their offer. It is just saying let us gather more information on this and we
280definitely want to look forward to many ways to work together with you. So now I will read it again. The motion that is on the table is I move to direct the superintendent in preparation of the FY 2017 budget to thoroughly analyze all division operating expend. Operating expenditure budgets to identify any potential cost savings and or reductions using a methodology commensurate to that of zero-based budgeting. All those in favor of this motion. Moon, Reed, McElveen, Hines, Smith, Darnack, Koufax, Velkov, Stork, Strauss, Evans. Opposed? McLaughlin with Ms. Schultz away from the table. I believe we are done with agenda item 4.01. You may respond in any way you like. I had a request for dancing, so however you like. Now we go to agenda item 4.02. My computer needs a moment to reboot. This is the
281portion of the meeting where the board will confirm any action regarding issues that were discussed in the closed meeting. These issues may include action taken regarding student disciplinary matters. Board members have discussed each individual case and at this time we'll make a motion to confirm the recommended action. I call on Ms. Smith for a motion. Thank you, Chairman. I move to affirm that the grievance discussed in closed meeting is premature and without grounds and therefore is not grievable. Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Ms. Hines. All those in favor? Moon, Reed, McElveen, Hines, Smith, Derenat, Koufax, Velkoff, McLaughlin, Stork, Strauss, and Schultz. Opposed? Abstentions? Abstentions. Ms. Evans, that motion passes. We're moving on to our consent agenda. Our adopted Rules of Parliamentary Procedure, Robert's Rules, provide for a consent agenda listing several items
282for approval of the Board by a single motion. Many items listed have gone through Board review and documentation has been provided to all Board members and the public in advance. Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request. of any board member prior to the meeting. 5.01, approve the minutes of the May 7th, 2015 regular school board meeting. 5.02, confirm the separations for the period beginning April 1st, 2015 and ending April 30th, 2015 as detailed in the agenda item. 5.03, adopt policy 5017 school procurement system as detailed in the agenda item. 5.04. Award the contract for the automatic temperature control system replacement at Park Lawn Elementary School to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder, Engineered Services, Inc., in the amount of $351,700 and authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities
283and transportation services to execute and administer the contract on behalf of the school board. 5.03. Award a contract for... compactor refuse disposal for Fairfax County Public Schools to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder, Bates Trucking Trash Removal, Inc., 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. Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda? Hearing and seeing no objection, the consent agenda is approved. Moving on to 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, approve recommended lesson objectives as detailed in the agenda item and as reviewed and recommended by the Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Council. 6.02,
284award a contract for the West Briar Elementary School Addition Project 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. Next, I move on to Superintendent Matters. Dr. Garza. Given the time, I think I'm going to skip and just pass. Thank you. All right. Next, we have board reports. Madam Chair, I'd like to ask if we might defer board reports given the late hour and the staff that are still sitting here waiting. Could we possibly defer board reports until our successive meeting? Okay. I'm sorry, Ms. Evans, do you want to speak? You do want to speak on yours. I just think that that puts us in a difficult situation because it gets
285built up then. Okay. I see head nodding. I'm sorry, Ms. Schultz, I'm not going to entertain that right now. But we will begin with you. Public engagement. I'm going to defer my own board report. Okay. The May 11th. meeting with Ms. McLaughlin and Ms. Reed as meeting managers. Madam Chair, on May 11th we had a work session. Ms. McLaughlin and I were the meeting managers. We first discussed strategic planning and the results of the staff and community survey. We then discussed human resources and budget and the elementary school class size guidelines. In the instruction area, we talked about the high school ESOL pilot at Stuart and Lee High Schools and the family life education recommendations. And in facilities, we talked about the Region 3 community engagement meetings and the feedback received therein. Thank you. Ms.
286McLaughlin for the Successful Children and Youth Policy Team on May 13th. As Ms. Schultz noted the late hour, I will let my colleagues know that I have a 22-page link that I can send you that will describe the most recent meeting from the skip. team that met on May 13th for two and a half hours. The highlights were that we did adopt the meeting schedule for the next year beginning in September 2015. And it was mentioned, Madam Chair, that it is the committee's preference that those of us who've been serving on the committee can remain on the committees because of the two and a half years of knowledge that's been presented and the work that still needs to be completed. So that was part of the affirmation that took place in that meeting. We also
287then had a presentation about the collective impact planning efforts and endorsement request, which... basically speaks to the fact that the SCIP team took the work we've been doing on the vision, mission, and outcomes that we would like to see for our children in our community. And through those community dialogues where over 150 people participated, they were talking to them about the design and the goals and trying to develop collective buy-in within the community. And again, this is detailed in the link that I'll be be sending to you. Then they talked about a truancy planning summit that will take place in September. They originally had a date but now it needs to be rescheduled for another time. But very excited about... the conversation that I'll be talking with the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court and Fairfax
288County Schools about truancy in attendance issues, which we know is so important for student success, but also preventing students from ending up in our criminal justice system. Then we had an equity update where, again, a lot of work in the SCIP. You'll see some designs from subcommittee works on how the structure of SCIP and the supporting staff committees will work in these areas and a remarkable chart that talked about from birth to college and career readiness graduation and the steps that will go into it. So I'm very encouraged by the work that's being done by this committee over time. And then we received a brief presentation about the community health dashboard and again that is also very exciting. to see how this dashboard will enable citizens to look at different parts of the county and
289have an opportunity to explore data that looks at hospitalization, disparity, socioeconomic needs indexes. I mean, it's just really going to be an amazing dashboard tool with a focus on Live Healthy Fairfax. So I would... welcome our colleagues reaching out to me or Ms. Hines or Ms. Strauss if you're looking through this 22 page attachment and want to know more about it but I think it's continuing to really make strides and will benefit our county because of this joint effort. Thank You miss McLaughlin I now call mr. Val cough who was the meeting manager on May 14th for instruction and then I'll be calling on miss Evans Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, on the 14th, we unanimously accepted the Instructional Program Operational Expectations Monitoring Report and requested that staff provide us with a detailed breakout of
290new ESOL students by grade level. We also unanimously accepted the Learning Environment Treatment of Students Operational Expectations Monitoring Report. and we requested that staff provide one, the total number of respondents who participated in the special education family survey, two, data related to the average length of time it takes for a student discipline case to complete the discipline administrative process, and three, the number of discipline infractions we were required to report to the Virginia Department of Education versus the actual number of discipline infractions that were reported in our schools. Thank you. And Ms. Evans, if you would report on governance from May 14th and 18th as well. Sure. After we looked at those monitoring reports, we did look at the OEs themselves on instruction and learning environment. We did not recommend any changes to the OE
291at this time as we're in the process of reviewing our measurements in connection with the strategic plan process. It was very brief. At the May 18th Governance Committee meeting, we discussed our July retreat. We have confirmed, and I will send something out to everybody as a reminder, we confirmed that we will hold the retreat on Saturday, July 18th from 8 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. The topics will be pathways to graduation, any remaining issues that we have at that point with the strategic plan, and also a self-evaluation which will be brief but focused on areas that we decided we needed to work on last year. We also at this committee meeting had a general discussion about advisory committees and how to align them with the strategic plan. We decided that the governance chair and superintendent would
292come back to the committee with a timeline, a proposed timeline for evaluating how we would determine whether we needed to make changes and how best to consider that issue. Ms. Reid, I believe all that's needed to be said about budget has been said. All right. With that, Mr. Moon, Board of Board Matters, if you have anything. I yield my time to Madam Chair. Ms. Reid. Just one quick thing. I encourage Providence District residents to take a look at the I-66 expansion plans. It does have potential impacts for Providence District schools and communities. Public hearings are next week. Go to www.transform66.org. Mr. McAfee? Ms. Evans, one of the things you talked about at the retreat, I want to take offline with you because at our last retreat, we had discussed another potential topic for that. So
293I want to make sure that gets included. Just one correction from the board meeting tonight. I know Mr. Lateef referred to Pam as God, but she's in my phone as goddess. Ms. Hines. Just one thing. Viva Vienna this weekend, Church Street. All day Sunday, all day Monday, and there's also some stuff going on on Saturday. So if you live anywhere near Vienna, come on out. It's a great festival, a great celebration. Ms. Smith. Yes. Mr. Velkoff. Yes. Ms. McLaughlin. I wanted to actually just share this with Dr. Garza. I have had a wonderful time visiting some of my elementary school principals in Braddock District. Most recently, Roxanne Salata at Ravensworth Elementary and Keisha Jackson at Braddock Elementary. And also visited with Old Creek Elementary to see a remarkable mindfulness project that was presented in San
294Diego at a conference with... an amazing amount of data. So it's just been wonderful. You've got great leaders in your building, and it's inspiring as a board member to get to spend that time in talking with them. And I feel like our system is such great hands, especially spending time with great leaders like that. So thank you. Mr. Stork. I'll thank you, Madam Chair. A couple things. One, I particularly wanted to... recognized the 75th Mount Vernon High School anniversary, which took place this past Saturday. Mr. Annette Koufax and I were there along with many, many, many, many other dignitaries and alumni, including Chuck Robb, former Senator Chuck Robb. It was incredibly well done in a gymnasium, and it looked awesome, and just hundreds of people were recognized really throughout the evening. slideshow from the 1939
295when the school opened to the present day that was just very very well done and and i'm It just was really a wonderful occasion, a great gala. And then that same evening, Holland Meadows Elementary School had their annual gala to help fund their garden and science and technology programs. And again, it was also equally a success. And then I had a chance to meet with the Heritage Presbyterian Boy Scouts on Sunday evening where they were trying to get their citizenship and mayor badge, among other things, and spent an hour, hour and a half of... under grueling questions from them about the school board. So it was well done and very enjoyable. And just my. Folks know we're going to be holding a follow-on meeting to the Region 3 CIP meetings sometime the week of the
2962nd. I'm still working out the dates, trying to make sure we can get appropriate staff as well as others there. And it will be announced sometime in the next few days. So stay tuned to my email that I'll send out, a newsletter that I'll advise you of the dates and times and location. Thank you. Ms. Strauss. Ms. Evans. So I wanted to mention the Teen Stress Summit, which was very well done and just a tremendous job. I did attend the meeting that Mr. Lateef and Mr. Press organized and led, and they did an excellent job. So good work to all the staff that provided all the background and the speakers for that wonderful event. One of my favorite events of the year is the Hispanic Leadership Alliance Scholarship Dinner. It was just tremendous. There were
297scholarships provided to 14 students, some of them who had overcome just tremendous challenges, some of them who are the first in their family to go to college, some who are the first in their family to graduate high school. So it was wonderful hearing their stories and I would be remiss if I didn't mention that one of the scholarships was the Ben Garza Scholarship, brand new. scholarship provided by Dr. Garza and Louis Garza in honor of Louis Garza's father and grandfather. So that was a great event. Lastly, I wanted to mention that I'm having community office hours at Thomas Jefferson Library on Route 50 on June 6th between 10.30 and noon. No need to make any appointments. Just come and see me. Miss Schultz. Just very quickly, because I had my last Citizen Town Hall this
298week, to all the people who came as the biggest one yet, I'm very humbled that you took a night off. Very good questions. Profound thanks to Miss Fields, who is in the school board office. for all of your help in coordinating a whole series of those to aid in the public engagement. I've had such good feedback and I'm really, really grateful for the opportunity to reach across my entire district, especially given the size. And certainly that will be something that I continue going forward. Thank you. And with that, this meeting is adjourned.