001All right, thank you, Ms. Nielsen. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to today's school board meeting, SPS school board meeting for June 26th. We are starting the meeting at 12.02, and I will ask, I will call out your name for the take attendance. Cindy Anderson speaking here, present. Veronica Nolan. Present. Megan Alderton. Present. Ramia Gentry. Present. Jacinta Green. Present. Margaret Lorber. Present. Michelle Reif. Present. Christopher Suarez. Present. Heather Thornton. Present. Okay, all nine of us are present and accounted for. We will now observe a moment of silence. All right. Thank you, everyone. Could I have a motion to adopt the agenda for today's meeting, please? Madam Chair, I move that we adopt the agenda. Second. Ms. Alderton seconds Ms. Gentry's motion. I will do a roll call for the agenda adoption. Cindy Anderson,
002yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Remy Gentry? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. We'll just remind people that you can send communications to be posted with the board meeting, and then
003they will be part of the public record that is available to everyone. Then next up, we have the consent calendar. If I could get a motion. Madam Chair, I move that we adopt the consent calendar. Second. Ms. Lorber, seconds Ms. Green's motion. And does anyone have anything to pull from the consent calendar? Okay. If not, then I'm going to call for a vote on the item. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Rainey Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Weave? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, great. Thanks, everyone. Vote is 9-0 on the consent calendar. So now we move on to our old business and action items and an exciting one, our equity for all 2020 strategic plan. And so now I'll turn it over to Dr. Hutchings.
004Thank you, Madam Chair. This is probably the most excited I have ever been about a strategic plan. And I'm excited about not just strategic planning is my thing, right? I do love strategic planning. I have a doctorate in it. So it's something I'm passionate about. But I'm excited about this particular plan because of the time. the timing and kind of like where we are as a country, as well as the fact that, you know, I believe we're at a place where people are more open and willing to push the envelope a little more. And I just have to say that, you know, as a board and as our staff, I think that we were really forward thinking. Of course, we couldn't think we couldn't, you know, have thought of a pandemic happening right now or
005what's happening in regards to the racial. tension that's happening across our country, but we were forward thinking and saying it is important for us in Alexandria City Public Schools to really take a stand and to make sure that all students, regardless of their particular family circumstance, has a high quality education and is also engaged in a high quality education. And this was by any means necessary, right? I think you know, some of the key terms in our strategic plan this year, as you read through the document, I've read through it several times, is bold and courageous, right? I think those are two very important terms as we look at the next five years in Alexandria City Public Schools. And, you know, in order for us to be able to serve every student, we have to
006be bold and we have to have courage. So I'm just looking forward to getting this executed and into play and for us to start developing these action plans. But with that said, I want to turn things over to Mr. Clinton Page, who is our chief accountability officer. And I do want to say this publicly. I said it before, Mr. Page, to you as well as to the team. One, your hard work, your dedication, your vision has been impeccable, especially during this strategic planning process. And I just wanted to publicly thank you and our team for all of the work that has been put in to this plan coming to fruition. So without further ado, Mr. Page, if you can just take it from here and let's go through our revisions that we've made for the
007plan. Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Hutchings, for those kind words. And I, too, would be remiss. In past presentations to the board, we've certainly underscored the critical work that the Strategic Planning Committee has had in bringing this work and breathing life into it, as well as our partners in this work, Four Point Education. Also, behind the scenes, there is a core planning team of key central office staff. who really work through all the nuts, bolts, details, logistics. as well as some of the high-level thinking and leadership and pointing this plan ultimately to where it landed today. So I would just like to take the time to personally thank the dedication and the work and the passion that Kenetra Woods and Cheryl Robinson had on the core planning team from Student Services, as well as
008Helen Lloyd and Alejandra from Communications, and then from the accountability team, Tina Constantine. and Jennifer Whitson for all their efforts and dedication over what has been a over a year-long journey in terms of where we are landing today. So just to reflect a little bit on that journey, we have our visual here that we've shared with the board previously, but just to reinforce, we started this work back with the committee last June and really started with conversations and the foundation of equity as the backbone of the next strategic plan. And in doing so, knew that we needed to take an honest and transparent look at both where we have been and where we are as an organization as it relates to the inequities and truly illuminate those and have honest and open conversations about where
009we are so that we can meaningfully point to where we need to go through the process of this next strategic plan. So we did all of that work, got busy on drafting the strategic plan with the committee in the December, January, February months, and then worked through revisions, refinement, really focused on alignment, prioritization, making sure we're identifying any gaps and having those addressed. ultimately kind of through today. And I think ultimately we have a plan today that I believe is as high quality as possible. And with that said, knowing that we are going to have new learnings moving forward and that this plan has to be a living and breathing document and that we have to continue to reflect. on the services and the deliveries, the structures and processes, and how they're supporting our students,
010families, and staff. And when we need to make refinements, we will come back to this plan, look at it with a critical lens, and make those adjustments over the course of the five years. So a little bit about today. We'll just walk through some of the final round of stakeholder input and then go into some highlights of next steps. So in terms of the stakeholder input off the back of the May 22nd and May 29th presentations to the board, we sought feedback from staff, families, the Strategic Planning Committee, the Unified Planning Committee, as well as community members at large. I would like to personally thank the board for their support and outreach to our community and to parents. So thank you for your efforts in that. And we took all of that feedback and compiled
011it within the attachments that are under this agenda item today. So you'll see all of the comments and feedback received in one attachment, as well as all the annotated revisions in another attachment in terms of what was the original text and what the adjustments were to the current text. And then for the PDF document itself. In terms of the strategic plan, we highlighted any additions or changes in yellow to try and make this as clear and transparent in terms of what the changes were based off of the feedback. So in terms of overall feedback across the board, we saw really positive feedback specifically to equity being the foundation of the strategic plan. And I think it echoes Dr. Hutchings sentiment in that in some things, timing is everything. And I think both as a community
012and a nation at large. We know that this is something that we must confront and address in the here and now, and this strategic plan sets us up for success as an organization over the next five years in doing this work. A little bit about the other feedback. So in going through the feedback that we received, we certainly looked for themes across feedback. One theme that emerged... was in understanding that equity for all being the driving force of this plan, we also have to, as an organization and as individuals, understand, acknowledge, and confront that racial equity is at the heart of the historic and current inequities within our system. So that is a change that you will see very clearly made within the document that is attached for the board today. We also received and
013had a great session with the Unified Planning Committee. So again, that's the committee with representation from city agencies as well as the health department, making sure that the three plans from the health department, the Children, Youth, Family plan and our plan are aligned and working together and receive great feedback from them in terms of ensuring that we're using consistent language and also that we're being very clear about the three commitments that each agency is making. in the highlighting of racial equity, in the need to take a developmental assets approach, and in utilizing trauma-informed care. We also receive feedback from stakeholders around existing programs that are folded under the components of SEAL. So things like restorative practices, as well as PBIS and ensuring that those things would continue as they weren't specifically named in previous versions
014of the plan. Other feedback centered around family engagement and alignment of family engagement across goal areas. So looking to strengthen the explicit calling out of the need to engage and make accessible materials, et cetera, across goal areas that families truly are our partners in this work. And we have to have that open two-way communication to facilitate those relationships and to really strengthen those partnerships. also receive feedback around career and technical education and wanting to explicitly name that and cite that as we know that we want to have multiple pathways to graduation. And we understand that students, as they receive their diplomas, are going to be going on to a multitude of opportunities off the back of high school, whether it be a post-secondary opportunity, a career opportunity, et cetera. So wanting to reinforce that. And
015then the last two bullets really highlight to me the excitement that folks have for this plan. So one common theme we saw was around accessibility and specifically the document that we've released to date and some of the jargon, et cetera, within that document. And so we very much know and will be rolling out tiered communication to make sure that we have options to meet people where they are and to make documents accessible. and meaningful and give people the amount of information that they're looking for. So we have the full 25 page document if that's what you're looking for. We also have the one page pamphlet if that's the level of information that you're looking for that has language that is easily accessible to everyone. So that will certainly be something that you'll see forthcoming as
016we engage in our communication plan and outreach off the back of today. And then also the desire for what comes next. So obviously for parents, right, how does this plan impact my student? What does this mean for the classroom? What does this mean for what this looks like on the day-to-day? And so certainly knowing that that will be forthcoming as we incorporate this plan into department improvement plans, school improvement plans. And it makes its way all the way down into the classroom, ensuring that we have tight communication so that that is messaged out clearly for our parents. And then also in terms of continuing to build out our measurement processes and how we are going to learn and monitor the implementation of this plan throughout the five-year cycle, knowing that we had a structure, obviously,
017under the previous plan. and knowing that we will be making some adjustments to that structure, lessons learned, and certainly more information to come to the board on that in the coming months. So with that, in terms of next steps, obviously in the immediate, hopeful for a board action today in terms of adoption of the plan, and then again, beginning the rollout of communication, and again, embedded within this is not just... Delivery of information, but also. seeking of understanding and having two-way communication, both with staff, with parents, and with students. You know, this is within our strategic plan. What does this mean to you? What does this look like in your day-to-day? How can you, what commitments will you make in living an equity core value? What commitments will you make in living innovation as a
018core value? So all of that very much will be coming forward and then also aligning internal structures and processes across the board. We've talked about the superintendent's evaluation certainly being aligned to the next strategic plan, but also in aligning decision-making criteria. So how are we using the five core values to check all of our decisions? Is this welcoming? What impact is this going to have on equity? Those types of things, as well as examples of onboarding and recruitment. How are we hiring people based off of these core values, et cetera? So really it will grow. and have tentacles across all segments of the organization. And then also, obviously, speaking to that, the implementation and monitoring, how are we learning, how are we adjusting, and how are we moving forward? So all of these things will
019be forthcoming. We are so excited about the strategic plan. I know I am so excited to have been able to have been a part of the development of the strategic plan, and I'm even more excited. to be a part of the implementation of this plan. So that is where I will conclude my comments and open it up for board discussion. Thank you so much. I see, unfortunately, everybody, that my video has stopped on its own again. And so I apologize. I want to thank the two board members who served on the committee, Ms. Green and Ms. Gentry, for their work on the committee. First of all, since we're... We're acknowledging the work that went into this. So I'm glad that they were our representatives. And so I also then want to open it for questions.
020I'm looking to see if people have some questions. I see Dr. Reeve. All right, well, thank you for that presentation, Mr. Page, and just thanks again to everyone who's worked on this plan, and congratulations for making it to this point. It's very exciting, and I just appreciate all of the changes that were made to the document, making it one page so it was easy to print out for people if they wanted to do that. I loved that you highlighted the changes in yellow. I think that was super helpful. I was really excited to see that equity was defined explicitly as racial equity because I agree that really has been the challenge that's been holding our division back. And I'm really excited that, you know, we all want to tackle that and that we're really naming
021that explicitly. And I was also really pleased to hear the communications plan for how it's going to be shared out because, you know, we heard. from the audit team about the the bite snack meal that our community likes different you know different amounts of information and so i think that's really fantastic so um no questions just really a comment that um i am very excited also especially looking forward to the implementation and monitoring of this over the next couple years so thank you so much okay next i see miss uh miss gentry Thank you very much. So it was certainly my pleasure. And I'm sure Ms. Green would agree to serve on the committee. It's such an interesting group of people that kept coming back, you know, month after month to work through this. And,
022you know, I just was really felt pleased that I got such a great seat to watch that forum. So in term, I really just kind of had one. I mean, there's a. There's a lot that will be that we worked out in the details. But I just thinking back to some of the specifically some of the sharing techniques that have been done in the past. And there was, you know, in previous strategic plan, there was a dashboard. I know the city has been very interested in the use of dashboard as a way to sort of give people a way to kind of look in on certain things. But, you know, and there was, you know, a lot of things that people liked about the dashboard and areas where they thought it could be different. So,
023you know, certainly not holding you all to anything right now because it is. But I did want to, if you all had some initial thoughts specifically about dashboard as a communication tool going forward for this next strategic plan. I have thoughts. I think I saw Greg nod to me sharing my thoughts. So, yes, I think the overall goal, right, is to be completely transparent in terms of what we're seeing in the implementation of the plan and to allow people to do a level of sensemaking as well as to monitor, you know, how are we doing here in terms of also, you know, quite frankly, an accountability. perspective. So I think a dashboard is certainly one tool that we have used in the past. I think we certainly, as you alluded to, have lessons learned off
024the use of the specific tool. And I think dashboards have come a long way. So that absolutely is going to be something that we will be looking into to see if that's going to ultimately be the best option for ensuring as transparent as possible. reporting out on the implementation and monitoring of the plan. And just in addition to what Mr. Page has said, I think refining our dashboard because, you know, it's a little complicated with the dashboard we currently have right now. It's hard to one, navigate. It's hard to get the right information. So we want to make sure it's user friendly and that it's useful. Another component I think is going to be so important for us, and this is a little different than what we did in the past with our strategic plans,
025is educating our staff and our community. on what the strategic plan is and how it's used to guide our work. You know, like literally educate. It has to be professional learning modules. on our strategic plan. People who are employees of our school division have to know our mission, our vision, our core values, our strategies, our goals. I mean, it has to be non-negotiable. Our language that we're using, because if we don't educate everybody on all of those components, we're not going to see it come to fruition in our schools and in our classrooms. So that is going to be key up front before we even get into the dashboard piece, because we want everybody to know. specifically what every component of our strategic plan is and what we are striving to accomplish over the next
026five years so that when we're walking through the halls, and this is a hint to all of our employees out there, Dr. Hutchings might say, well, what do you believe our mission is in Alexandria City Public Schools? You don't have to say it verbatim, but you need to have a gist of who we are and what we believe. You know, that should be a non-negotiable for us in our organization. Great. Thank you. Next up, I have Ms. Thornton. Thank you, Chair Anderson. And I just want to echo that I think the... refinement of making it clear that racial equity is what we're really talking about here was spot on. So I definitely appreciate that implementation. And I love the format where we get to clearly see how feedback was incorporated into our revised plan. I
027think that's a format that should be incorporated for anything that requires drafts and finalization. It's really helpful for, in addition to board members, the public to clearly see how what they're contributing is being implemented. So I just wanted to give kudos to that approach and I hope that we can continue to use it. My question is along the implementation and monitoring line as well. Mr. Page, I heard you mention that this will be a living and breathing document that could be refined throughout the course of the five years. And I was hoping that you could kind of talk a little bit about what that may look like, because, you know, from my understanding, strategic plans typically, while the metrics might be refined and while the measurements might vary, typically the plan in and of itself
028doesn't really change over time. So can you just talk a little bit about what you meant by that and how this might be changing over the course of five years? Sure, absolutely. So I do think, right, there are components of the strategic plan that we are not anticipating revising. So things like the mission, vision, core values, those overarching components, right, those need to. stay consistent as an organization. You can't continue to pivot on topics as broad as that and expect meaningful outcomes. to be leveraged. So I think the refinement pieces really fall more within the kind of highlighted actions and maybe even at the strategy level of the strategic plan. So if we are working on actions and we are not seeing the outcomes that we anticipated, right, that our theory of action isn't coming
029to fruition, that if we do this, we can expect that. If we're not seeing that, then we do need to have the processes and procedures to have those open and honest conversations, both internally and publicly, about what we're seeing and have some sense-making in terms of what we need to do differently to get us to where we need to be. So I just want to... reassure that vision, mission, core values, those high-arching things won't be changing, but as a learning organization, we do need to remain flexible in our response to changing situations and needs. Super. Thank you, Mr. Suarez. You're up next. Thank you, Chair Anderson. Yeah, so first of all, I just wanted to echo everyone's comments about just how great this effort's been. Excellent job on the revisions. I'm very pleased with them,
030very excited about them, and just very grateful to my colleagues, Ms. Green, Ms. Gentry, who served on this committee, and also Mr. Page and everyone else who's been spearheading this great job. So I just wanted to kind of sort of bucket my points in sort of three areas, two are comments and then sort of a question. The first is I just wanted to reflect a bit on this body and this body's role in this effort and just say that I'm really proud of this board for adopting or soon to adopt, I presume, a strategic plan that is explicitly calling out race, as a couple of my colleagues have said, and using the words racial equity. I haven't looked at every past strategic plan in history, but I think this is the first strategic plan that
031has explicitly called out racial inequity and also been explicitly anti-racist and sort of adopting sort of an anti-subordination principle. you know, and the notion of being anti-racist and anti-subordination is really a key principle. And I say that because, you know, this board is a continuing body and, you know, and 65 years ago, I just was reading a case the other day, because I'm a legal nerd, you know, Jones versus the school board of Alexandria and T.C. Williams, you know, where this board was explicitly denying, you know. black children admission to schools on the basis of race and then defending that in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. So that is the history of this body. And I want us to keep talking about that history, both of this body and
032of the school division, because we have to move forward and remind our community about the historical systemic racism that we've had. in this body and unfortunately at times in this community. We're a great progressive community that's made a lot of progress, but we have to own that and we have to talk about that. So I'm just really proud of this board for taking the step to adopt an explicitly anti-racist policy. That's number one. Number two, I want to, you know, and this is related, I really want to challenge the community to read this plan. and unpack the principles that are in it and get excited about them. Because if we're going to get the work done that we need to get done in this division to move the ball forward, we need to adopt an
033explicitly anti-racist posture and we need to really unpack the past and and talk about it. If we do not do that, we are not going to move forward. And so I've definitely seen a lot of talk in the community and excitement around symbolic sorts of measures to, you know, to talk about racism and move the ball forward. But I want to challenge the community to really think more systemically about what are the things that we can do to really push. You know, three things that come to mind are One, our graduation rate of Hispanic male students in particular is really, really poor. That is something that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. What are the systemic things we can be doing to make, solve that problem right now? Number two, the disproportionate discipline
034of African American students in the division. What, what are, can we do systemically? to be addressing that right now. And number three, the inequity in our talented and gifted programming, which we've talked about frequently. So these are areas of system, you know, just that scratch the surface of systemic issues we could be addressing as a community. And so I hope to see the same levels of excitement from our community on these sorts of systemic issues that we've started to see on some of the more symbolic measures. And so that transitions me into my sort of question here, which is, it kind of piggybacks off of what you said before, Dr. Hutchings, about the whole education piece here, which is going to be super important. I think we all know that if this board is adopting
035an anti-subordination, anti-racist type of strategic plan, that everyone in the division needs to be on board with that. You know, everything flows from the strategic plan. And so I'd like to understand a little more what we're going to do to build that buy-in amongst our staff that already exists. That's part one. Part two, we've had some struggles in HR in the past. So what are the things we're going to do on the front end to screen for the right mindsets or at least a mindset that is open? to this sort of anti-racist, anti-subordination disposition? And then three, what is the campaign going to look like for the community? I think the staff has laid a great groundwork for that in having some of the posts about the Secret Seven and sort of talking about some
036of this history. And I think now in light of the George Floyd situation, more people in the community are looking at that communication. effort that was done last year, but how can we continue to beat the drum of that so that we can invest our community in this, as Mr. Page said, really bold work, like, you know, really bold and courageous work that we need to do, and so that we can seize this critical moment in our time. So, thank you guys. Thank you. Next up, we have Ms. Nolan. Thank you so much, everyone. I'm not going to repeat anything that was already said, as it's been said so eloquently by my colleagues. And I think one of the things that's so satisfying is that, you know, the ACPS is being supported in this moment
037in time by a board who embraces this plan and is really excited about it and wants to really. get to this work so that the young people can be served. In fact, one of those sentences that really jumped out at me on the plan was on the first page, no matter what other priorities we have going forward, our young people will always be at the center of our work, decision-making, and mission. And I think that is a really critical sentence in that if we just always remain focused on the young people and what their needs are and understanding the parameters of racial equity and how that does impact everyone, I think we can really move this ball forward. So in that... Mr. Page, I'm just curious, since we're at a board meeting and we're about
038to adopt the plan, what support would you like from the board in terms of making sure that we are holding this plan accountable and that we are an ally to this work in moving it forward? Like, for example, will it be something that... maybe quarterly we are presenting. I'm just curious about like, what is your plan of action in terms of using the board as an accountability metrics and how can we make sure we support your work and our ally to make sure these goals do get accomplished? Because I really believe in this plan. I'm super excited about it. And I think we can make real change and impact for kids. So I think in terms of today, I don't think as staff we could ask for any more than what the board is already
039supplying in terms of the support for the plan, the support for the vision, and the support. that we all will need in terms of truly digging into this work and focusing on racial equity at the core. So I think that in terms of a starting place, we absolutely could not ask for more. In terms of next steps around implementation and other things, I think we will be coming back to the board with those plans in the coming weeks and months. and make explicit the supports and the needs that we feel are going to best support the implementation of the plan, as well as support the governance from the board's perspective in terms of making sure that you all are feeling informed and are able to make decisions and have the data and information that you
040need to support that work specifically as it dovetails into the strategic plan implementation. So I think thank you so much for the support today and know that we will be coming back with with additional ask in the future around the monitoring and implementation. And in addition to Mr. Page. comments. I think it's important for the board to help us establish our areas of focus each year. You know, this is a commitment that we made last year and we kind of started out with doing our areas of focus for 2019-2020. We're going to need to make sure every year we're setting those areas of focus and those expectations so that, in a sense, the school division knows our marching orders or what we should be focused on for the academic year. And then I also think
041it's going to be important for us, including the board, to have the courage to be able to do what's right. and to really dismantle some of the historical inequities that have been happening for so many years. No other board has done it, right? We wouldn't have this issue right here if all the other boards did this. No one has taken really the initiative to say, we are no longer going to tolerate inequities. We are no longer going to tolerate over-representation of Black students in ED. particularly black male students. We are no longer going to tolerate systems that we have in place where our talented and gifted is now a way to have modern day segregation in our schools, right? Now, not to say that we dismantle all of TAG, right? That's not the point I'm
042making right here, but I'm saying that we're going to have to really tackle some major issues that everyone has really avoided. We've done a lot of little things. to make it seem like we're working towards it. That is why we still have the same results, you know? So that's going to take courage. And if we don't have your support in that, I guarantee you our results are going to look exactly the same way they look today. So in order for us to change, you know, our data and to change the narrative for the next generation who deserve it. right, who deserve it, we are going to have to like bite the bullet and we're going to have to push back when we get it from the community. And we're going to have to say, this
043is what we stand for. This is what we believe. And this is how we're going to make it happen and take some of the wounds and for our kids, you know, and that takes courage and it takes boldness. But I know that all of you are tough people, every single one of you, because I work with you all the time. So I know if anybody's going to do it, it's going to be the members of this board and this staff. So that is going to be key to us making it. Okay, next we have Ms. Green. Thank you, Chair Anderson. And I do want to echo all of what my colleagues have said. It has been quite a minute to get to this point where we have such a solid plan. So thank you, Mr.
044Page and your team and our partners at Four Point and especially the community. I went on a door knocking campaign. Just like when I ran for school board to make sure that we could get as much community feedback as possible, because it takes that partnership with the community to make this happen. So I hope going forward, as we get more information and specifics that the community will indeed continue to partner with us so that we can make this very solid plan, make it work. And I will say this, I'm very happy that we only have to do this every five years. So thanks again to everyone that was a part of it. It was a pleasure working with you all. Thank you. Yes. Thanks again to you, Ms. Green, for getting, I recognize some of
045the comments in today's posting from comments that you solicited. So thanks again for that. Next up, we have Ms. Lorber. One second here. A little emergency in the house. One minute. My hair, honey, in the bag. I will go to Ms. Alderton and come back. Ms. Alderton? Yeah. I guess my comment is going to be more sort of zoned in around what Ms. Nolan's question was, because I think it's one thing to ask that question of staff. But what I've been thinking about it is like, you know, I actually haven't asked to the board. And, you know, what am I asked to? My board colleagues is around this issue of courage. And, you know, I think courage for us is going to mean being laser focused. we will be courageous by not allowing ourselves to
046be sidetracked by the issue of the day. And so, you know, if I could ask anything of my board colleagues, it is to remain completely focused on these goals and our strategic plan. And, you know, I think. we can easily, I think we've all seen as we've embarked on this school board journey is that, you know, issues come to us all the time. And at some point we have to prioritize this in particular. And so just, you know, I asked you guys did not allow anything or any issue or any particular thing to sidetrack us. from achieving this. You know, that would be my ask to the board. Thank you, Ms. Alderton. Ms. Lorber? Yeah, it's all good now. I, you know, I don't, I'm not going to repeat anything I have. I think we're
047very, very fortunate at this, to be at this time with Dr. Hutchings having come in with a vision that actually fits the vision that are the place our country is right now. But I wanted to thank Mr. Suarez because I really appreciated that he immediately, my hardest, biggest challenge is figuring out. How do we make things happen in a concrete way that people can start to see that we're focused on particular inequities that are easy to grab, not easy to grab hold of, but they're just out there and they're obvious. And so I thank you for identifying three particular areas that you thought we should be focusing on. And I also appreciated, I'm very interested in. not just how we bring the community along, but how we bring the staff and, you know, along without
048making people feel that. we have some new answer that they may not have come up with themselves. And I really want us to focus on this as a team effort where the whole school system, and again, this is not just me sprinkling my fairy dust. This is me hoping that, believing that many of the folks who are already in our school system are... as delighted as we are about this. And I want us to be extremely careful that, you know, we stay away from too much jargon, that we really work on using words and vocabularies and approaches that bring people into this team effort. That's really, because I think we're all so committed. And I think we have lots of committed colleagues throughout the school system. And those who end up... not being able to
049feel that same commitment will probably drift away on their own accord. They're not going to need us to turn them off by using some jargon that they can't relate to. So those are my parting words. And I just want to say, you know, thanks, Ms. Suarez, and thank you, Dr. Hutchings, and everybody else who worked so hard on this plan. Thank you, Ms. Lorber. I think everyone has had a turn. And so this is on for info action, but it would be as Mr. Page has commented, it would be nice if we feel like this is, you know, I didn't hear anyone say that they're not ready. So if that being the case, then I would love to entertain a motion to approve the strategic plan. Madam Chair, I move that we approve the strategic
050plan. Second. Okay. I heard Ms. Lorber, but sometimes it's hard to hear who the other person is. So I'll give it to Ms. Lorber. Ms. Lorber seconded Ms. Green's motion, and I will call for a vote on the, I will call vote. So Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Remy Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lerver? Yes. Michelle Reeve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, everyone, we have ourselves a strategic plan. That's a 9-0 vote. Thanks to everyone who worked on it. And now the even harder work begins, right? So we look forward to doing that together. And now we're... And it's not that we don't have a lot more to do even in this, this meeting, because next up we have our new business. And wow, what a thing
051that is. And actually I want to. there were some questions and this is sort of for the board, the public, everyone, you know, what is going to be, this is unprecedented. That word has been used so many times and sort of determining what is the board's role in this plan and its approval and so on and so forth. So thanks to Ms. Abruzzese who did some digging, you know, and sort of what we're... What we come up with is that the Code of Virginia mandates that it's our responsibility, the school board, to operate and maintain the public schools to determine the length of the school term, the study to be pursued, and the methods of teaching. et cetera. In addition, the Virginia Constitution entrusts each local school board with the supervision of schools. So the
052outlines of a fall reopening plan reasonably fall under this category of supervision. Because the board officially speaks to the superintendent only through the public recorded votes, the school board will be voting on the fundamental elements of a reopening plan to provide the superintendent with the direction. Now, this ultimately may be a single vote or possibly a series of votes as needed throughout. the reopening process. So that's sort of to get us all on the same page about that, because I could see where there would be questions about it. But we are, you know, I think flexibility, agility are all going to be important as we go through this process. And so now I'm going to turn it over without further delay to Dr. Hutchings. Yes, and before we go into this, I also want to
053just thank 4Point as well, because I did not mention 4Point in my opening remarks. So I do want to thank Dr. Scott Joptas and future Dr. Rudy Ruiz. on the collaboration and the work and the effort that is taken for us to get to this point. You had to deal with all of our feedback, recommendations, comments, and that can be a bit much, especially when you have a team like ours. So thank you all for guiding us along the way and keeping us intact and also making some insight and revision. So let's give them a round of applause too for a point. Thank you all. So as we transition into reopening, this is a big deal. I think this is probably going to be one of the toughest decisions and reopenings we've probably ever had
054in the history of Alexandria City Public Schools. I have always been the person who has said I sleep well at night. This is the one thing that does keep me up, reopening schools. honestly, and I think about it every single day. I think about the implications. I think about the uncertainties that we have before us and the unfortunate pieces that we can't just come up with one way and say, this is going to be it. And then we all do a vote and then we're excited and we move on with our days, right? This is going to be something that is going to require two very important things, which is grace and patience. And I say that because we're going to have to be so flexible during this reopening because every day there brings a
055new challenge, unfortunately. And we have been kind of thrown into this global pandemic. not knowing what tomorrow was going to bring and no one could have ever imagined we would be here, right? So this is just validation for all of us to know we can't guarantee that tomorrow is going to be perfect and we're going to be able to live up to plans and expectations that we've set. So we're going to have to be flexible throughout this process. And I rarely say that about any plan, but this is one that we have to be. We also don't want to be too impulsive. And one thing that I think is, you know, a lesson learned that I'm seeing just across this country, as well as across even our region, we don't want to be because everybody
056else is publicizing their plans, let's publicize ours. Because everybody else is doing it, let's do it. We want to take our time and do it right. You know, our goal is to not have to keep going back to our community over and over again, you know, saying, oh, well, we thought this, no, we thought that. Let us make sure we're getting the feedback. from our community first. Let's make sure we're able to put all that feedback into consideration before we display specific days that we're going to need to be out of school and all those things. We need some feedback and data from the community prior to doing that. Because if we go out with a plan without feedback, as you all know, the city of Alexandria, as well as I do, they'll say, well,
057you already have your plan. It's already done. It's not a draft. It just has draft on it, right? So we do not have a draft. And this is why it's going to take a little longer. So we need our community to understand we could dish out a plan any day, right? We could. But we wouldn't have the feedback to create that plan. We want to make sure we're doing it the right way. So just bear with us. And I think today will give the board as well as the community an understanding of our thinking and our process and why we're being extremely methodical in how we do this and strategic in how we go through this process. So I'm going to turn things over to Dr. Mozingo. to introduce our group. And then we're going
058to go right into our presentation. I will say that today, as we're talking through our planning and we're talking through our process, it is very important that the board, as well as our community, understands we always going to have to have contingencies. And unfortunately, this situation that we're in right now with reopening, it brings a lot of mixed feelings and communication. We have people who want to come back to school and say, when are you going to open it? People say, I'm never going to come back to school until there's a vaccine. I mean, so we're at a catch 22, right? We are going to have to accept. We're not going to make everybody happy throughout this process. This is one that's not going to get 100% in our community. And I just ask that,
059you know, we go into this knowing that and being very explicit about the fact that. We are in the catch 22 in regards to what people are seeking and what they need because everybody has different needs throughout our community. So I'm going to turn things over to Dr. Mazingo and we're going to go ahead and get started with our presentation. Okay, thank you, Dr. Hutchins. And before we get started, I'd like to just quickly introduce two consultants that are working with us from Education Elements, Sima Ringo, along with Natalie Hall. They have been tremendous in helping us work through the initial planning and process in working with our teams. You will meet them later during the presentation. But again, we want to recognize the two of them. and the level of insight and support and
060guidance and facilitation that they will bring to this reopening of schools here in Alexandria. Dr. Hutchins, you want me to keep? So yeah, so keep going. I know I was going to start with this, but I think, go ahead, Amy. Okay, good. Okay. Okay, so these are the four essential questions that guided our presentation, that is guiding really the work that is occurring here in Alexandria and really in the Commonwealth. We really want everyone to understand that we have a group of thought partners. We'll tell you a little bit about the thought partners and their role. We're also being guided by the Center for Disease Control, as well as the Virginia Department of Education, in addition to the Northern Virginia Regional School Division. And that's a group of superintendents that are meeting and collaborating and
061working together. Later, we will also highlight the multiple models and begin to delve into those and where we might go next with input. In addition, we have formed cross-functional planning teams that will develop the action plans and recommendations that will include a tremendous amount of input and will be provided to the board for feedback and next steps. And finally, again, it is important that we involve and engage the community, the staff, students, and families. And we'll tell you a little bit about that as we move forward. What you have here are we established thought partners and we'll again, I'll introduce the thought partner shortly, but we actually deliberately convened for about three meetings with some internal and external stakeholders. We work closely with identifying some of our city officials, community leaders, and we. identified them
062as essential to this process and wanted to give them a chance to guide and inform some of the work. What you see here is how the role and expectation was for them to provide guidance, and they did that. We'll tell you more about that later. They focused on... quite a bit on ensuring academic and high levels of achievement and even the whole area of equity for all. They provided some insights into the action plans that will be developed later, as well as just how we decide in the decision-making process that is used. Also, one of the things they discussed was being able to embrace uncertainty. A lot of... complexity, and just the complications with opening schools. But again, the thought partners were not engaged to actually develop the plan, but to provide guidance. Here you
063have a list of the thought partners from Alexandria City. And on the right side, you have the staff from Alexandria City Public Schools. The way we set up those meetings was for the staff to listen, to seek input. But we allow the Alexandria City and community officials and leaders to really provide us guidance and feedback. And what we'd like to do now, again, is just to publicly thank them. for their time, their dedication, and their input. And I'll tell you a little more about this group as we move forward. But again, we thank them for their input, time, and dedication. Here, we framed the meetings with the thought partners, the three meetings, around nine essential questions. We wanted to make sure we focused those meetings and that we were very targeted. And you can see
064here from the nine questions, we were really trying to get from them what worked well. It didn't work well in the closings. What are some of the positive and negative implications and some factors? And they talked a lot about the educational planning process. And I'll tell you more about that. And then creating this plan that ensures the safety, the health and wellness of our students. There was a lot of discussion around the role of community partners and ensuring that we have diverse. input. In addition to that, they identify some challenges and opportunities. And then we spent the last meeting just looking at the three models in terms of some of the benefits as well as challenges. But again, the last question, and they focused on quite a bit, is what you've already shared today somewhat,
065is making sure that there is this effective, collective communication and input from our community. So what we tried to do was to synthesize the themes and recommendations from our thought partners. And you can really begin to see a pattern and even some of what was presented earlier in terms of the strategic plan. There was a theme around using data, whether it's the CDC data, BDOE data, but really the plan. must be guided by data. They also wanted to make sure we understand the learning loss. And so we need to build a plan like our summer learning program is an example of a program that is trying to begin to address the learning loss. But that was critical. Also, they mentioned that we must focus on the social, the emotional needs, whether it's the students or
066even the adults or the staff. We've got to really make sure we address that because we may have... families and children that may have experienced trauma as well as adults. What also resonated was that there is a unified voice, that we collaboratively support students, staff, and families, but at the end of the day, we work to communicate a unified voice throughout this community. And lastly, once again, is really what was paramount was the plans must address health and the safety. of our students and others and that we need to kind of begin to anticipate, right, what might be some of the problems and gain some of the opportunities and making sure that that's built into each of those teams as they work and that we also seek feedback from the community around some of the
067challenges. And they also wanted us, one person even mentioned, I want you to really work on managing your expectations. Because of the complexity and the uncertainty and the ambiguity in each of the models, there was really a theme around managing expectations. This here is the... Dr. Hutchins, are you... Okay. So, yes, so this right here is really just some of the guidance. It's important for us to know that the thought partners, they provided us guidance, but we also received guidance and recommendations from the Center for Disease Control, as well as the Virginia Department of Education and our Northern Virginia Collaborative. And it's key for us to understand that some of our decision-making has to be led by the CDC. So those things are non-negotiable. We can get into some legal implications if we're not following
068the CDC guidelines. So we are trying to make sure that we are using the CDC to drive all of our decision-making, especially with the reopening plans. The VDOE also provided some guidance. And if you can go to the next slide. And a part of right now, as you all know, with the VDOE, they provided us with three phases. There's discussion right now about a possible fourth phase that may be coming out over the next month or so. But the governor released a couple of weeks ago the phases and the VDOE also released our return to school plan. And specifically right now we're in phase two. Even though everybody says the country's going to phase three, they're not talking about schools, they're talking about businesses, right? So we're not in phase three for schooling, even though
069that's happening on July 1. I mean, phase three, sorry, it's happening on July 1 for businesses and communities, but not for schools. So we are still in phase two for our schools until further notice. They have not given us dates of when we get into phase three in regards to our schooling. But we've been sharing this information right now in phase two. The goal is that we're still limiting in-person instruction, that we're focusing on pre-K through third, our EL population, our students with disabilities. This summer, we're doing our summer. learning options and they are all virtual. So this really is not applicable to us. It just gives some guidelines if we wanted to have some type of in-person instruction. If you follow the social distancing guidelines, it is permissible according to the VDOE. If you
070can go to the next slide. This also just gives some clear guidelines around phases one, two, and three that are pretty consistent. And this brings a lot of implications for us when we're thinking about our reopening. For one, we're going to have to maintain the six feet, you know, amongst staff and students in our buildings. And that's going to vary based on our schools. And that's one area that we're looking at now is having a building plan of how many students can fit in classrooms and in certain buildings. And as you all know, classrooms are different sizes. and our buildings are all different sizes. So we have to do individual building plans for each one of our schools just to determine how many people can actually fit into the buildings with the six feet or
071meeting the six feet apart social distancing guidelines. Also the face coverings for our students and our staff members, especially if you're not within six feet, then, I mean, if you are within six feet, then you are gonna have to wear those face. coverings and we have to put all of that into consideration and making sure that we have adequate PPE because if they're requiring it, we have to also be able to offer it and can't expect people to bring it. Everybody may not have face coverings. So we're going to have to be required to provide that. Daily screenings is required and it's non-negotiable. So we're going to have to put that into consideration when we're reopening that every day, all staff and students prior to entering our school buildings will have to have a temperature
072screening. And that's for all of our locations. And that's for all of the different phases. So that is a non-negotiable. Our cleaning practices are also going to be consistent. And the social distancing on our buses, which is one of... I think one of the major factors that we're going to have to put into consideration is going to drive how we operate, because this is how kids get to school and how kids get from school. And right now, with the guidelines that we have to keep students at least six feet apart on buses, it only allows us to have between 10 and 12 students on a bus at a time. So that's going to have some significant implications for us. And then we had our region for collaborative. And a couple of weeks ago, we have
073been able to meeting the Northern Virginia superintendents. And we also brought in members of our leadership teams. On June 10th, we conducted a collaborative meeting and we focused on facilities and scheduling and communications because we know that in this particular region, many of our staff members live all over. They're not all living in the city of Alexandria. Actually, only a third of our staff live in Alexandria. So that lets you know that two thirds live outside of the city of Alexandria. And whatever decisions our bordering school divisions make or in this northern Virginia region could have an impact on our operations. So what we are doing as. the Northern Virginia Collaborative, and this is Region 4, is we are making sure that we're communicating with one another and that we're working collaboratively to establish our
074alternative scheduling because we know that what we do will have an impact on our neighbors and vice versa. But we specifically focused on our facilities, we focused on our scheduling, and we also focused on our communications. So on this slide, what you have is just a repeat. We would just want to share with you again a little bit about the reopening models, but we want to frame those around the national, state, and division and local community guidance. It's just very important that all of the work that is occurring, whether it's with the thought partners, whether it's with the cross-functional teams for the community, just to be aware that we have and we are grounding the work in these different... commissions in the various reports and expectations. You can see here national would be CDC, for
075example, the state, Dr. Hutchins just mentioned that. They've actually developed a document, I think it's 152 pages with tremendous guidance and questions that guide different groups that are working to develop plans for reopening, whether it's facilities, whether it's transportation or instruction. In addition to that, we want to make sure that we're engaging again our thought partners in our larger community. Here you have at the bottom the three models that he just highlighted. One model is the traditional 100%. This is the model that I think we all are familiar with. This is the model that would mean everyone would be back in school, right? Everyone back in school. But I think the question that we still have about this model is we still would be expected to adhere to those guidelines and expectations. that Dr. Hutchins
076just mentioned. So even with this model, it still has, we have to adhere to some expectations. The second model is a hybrid of in-person versus virtual. And what that basically means is there is some in-person instruction and some online instruction. But I think we still have that same core question around how do you address all of the expectations and the guidance? And we're committed to doing that. We have to do that. The third model is completely 100% virtual. It means that all of the instruction is online. What comes with this model are maybe some possible policy changes, particularly in the area of grading, attendance, revising the curriculum and making sure it's aligned to the standards. In addition to making sure all of our staff would be comfortable and experts in online learning. So these are...
077the possible models that where we will engage a tremendous amount of discussion, benefits, challenges as we move through the process with the cross-functional teams. Later in the presentation, you will hear from the two individuals from education elements, but we wanted to just highlight for you earlier this week on Wednesday, we had a session with our chairs and their leads of the cross-functional teams and just engaged in an initial activity. We'll continue this with many groups, but really to begin to see, you know, what do you think, what do you know about the traditional model? versus the hybrid versus the virtual. And what you see here are some of the benefits as well as the considerations. For example, for the traditional, it would mean that it would bring a sense of something that's familiar. It might
078result in greater work-life balance for families. But then there are some considerations in terms of still meeting some of those guidance expectations. Model two, again, provides some connection, particularly 50% is back in the school. So it's still some connection and back in the buildings. But at the same time, there's still those considerations that they identified in terms of how do you manage drills and how do you ensure the protocols for the common space. But on the virtual, we did have the same activity, again, around the 100% virtual. It does lower the health risk. possibility of lowering the health risk, but at the same time, there may be some budgetary implications and some complete design of the transportation system. But this was just initial brainstorming. We will use this same process again with different groups so
079we can get a sense of some patterns and feedback across the different models, one, two, and three, traditional, hybrid, or virtual. This slide really frames, it framed, this slide framed our work with our thought partners, and it really frames the entire reopening plan. At its core, there are several themes or terms. What matters is there's equity, that we're improving learning for all, that we make sure families and parents are involved, that we're also, we even began to look at some research abroad, and we provided some of that data to the thought quarter. partners that we collaborate and that we coordinate and that there is a high degree of collaboration. What also came from the thought partners, but it was, we had developed this one before, build trust, internal trust, external trust. Again, they wanted us
080to know that with this whole process and for the community to understand the degree of flexibility and uncertainty with these different models and communication. And lastly, just making sure that regardless of the model that our students have access to technology and connectivity. I like this slide. I think I like this slide the best, and I'll tell you why. I think it captures, it is not only captures, but it really illustrates the system's commitment to, for collecting, for getting input, and then doing something with that input. So you'll see the thought partners. That's where we started. The nice part of that is that The planning team chairs attended those meetings with the thought partners and were in a listening role. You see, again, the Virginia State guidance, which they've given us a tremendous amount of guidance
081for these teams and others to utilize. On the right side is a commitment, and we'll tell you more later about what will happen in that area and how we're working with communications, but to really get feedback. from staff, students, families in the community. And then there is the Board of Education making sure that you are engaged and aware and then that in August this plan will be brought and then we're bringing actual reports even before the end of August. But in the middle we have identified, we thought it would be really easy to try to organize the work and try to identify. major areas that align with a lot of the national reports that align with what the state is suggesting. So we have these teams, as you can see, there's social, emotional, academic learning,
082human and capital resources, health and safety, financial management, school and community relations. All of these were deliberately decided and have particular actions and roles as we go forward. Their job, though, will be to evaluate models, to propose some decisions. and at the end of the day develop action plans that will be shared and reported out. This is just a glance. We call this the rainbow chart because this is our cross-functional planning teams. On the left side, you can see, you can see again, the names of the actual teams led by chiefs and others. Dr. Julie, Dr. Julie Crawford and Dr. Gerald Mann will be social, emotional, and academic learning. Dr. Stephen Wilkins, human and capital resources, health and safety. Dr. Alicia Hart, financial management. Mr. Dominic Turner and soon to join us, Ms. Julia Burgos,
083who will be our chief of communications. And she is responsible for school and community relations. On the right side, those are just focal areas, major areas and subcommittees that will be created to address all of those particular areas that are essential for reopening schools. And now I want to turn it over to Simma and Natalie to take you through the next three slides. Thank you so much, Dr. Mozingo, and thank you, Dr. Hutchings, for introducing us today. Madam Chair, members of the board, leadership teams, and the public, we're really excited to be a part of this conversation. I'm a member of the Education Elements team. We are a K-12 consultancy, and we work across the country on areas related to strategic planning, operational planning, and right now, helping districts meet the challenge of returning to
084school in fall 2020. So we're working with other divisions in Virginia. We're also working at the state level and with districts across the country to coach leaders, facilitate working groups, and do exactly what we're about to talk about here, leading different sprints through return planning. So I'm going to hand this over to Natalie to go through this slide, and then I'll close this out. Great. Thanks, Sima. And good afternoon, everyone. As mentioned, my name is Natalie Hall, consultant with the Education Elements team, also based in Washington, D.C., so not too far away from you all as well. So to talk a little bit about our overall approach, it is grounded in this idea of responsive planning and being able to pivot and really react to the changes that are inevitably going to come. And we
085at Education Elements work under the assumption that change is really hard. And so part of our work is to make sure that we're guiding divisions through this process of being able to roll with the punches, if you will. So throughout this process, we will be working in a series of two-week sprints. And during those two weeks, we're going to be working with leadership teams, with our cross-functional planning teams, with various stakeholder groups to make sure that we are zooming in and zooming out. taking stock of the data that we've received and if necessary pivoting our approach. So I'm going to pass it over to Sima for our next slide here which is going to give you a deeper dive into what we're going to cover in each one of the sprints. Thanks Natalie. So as
086you guys can see we have built a series of sprints that move from this week actually all the way through the middle of August and the purpose of these sprints is to build from broad and general into specific and detailed. So We start in this next sprint or in this current sprint building out benefits and risks. And you started to see that in a slide that Dr. Mozingo presented earlier. We started to put together calendars, timelines of key decisions. And we also start with feasibility. We start by understanding what is the budget? What are some of the constraints that might guide us through this design process? Over the course of the next. eight weeks, we will be building towards a comprehensive reopening report, which is not only required by the state, but we recognize is
087incredibly important to guide the actions of our district leaders, our division leaders, of our school leaders, and of the community. So I'll give you a moment to look through these goals and outputs, but really the important piece to note here is that by doing a two-week sprint, at the end of every two weeks, we have a set of outputs that we're able to communicate. to the community, we're able to share out, receive feedback on, and make adjustments if there's new information. One more thing I think also to note in here is that we have, as Dr. Mozingo mentioned, we have focus groups and we are engaging with folks outside of just that cross-functional planning team to provide input throughout. And we hope that you see that this increased stakeholder involvement will lead to a plan
088that not only addresses their needs, but really has their voice throughout this process. Move on to the next slide. And so finally, this is another recap of the previous one, but this has what we consider to be our requirements. Here are the key dates that are going to happen between now and August 14th when the plan is due to the state of areas where we're going to be able to gather input, we're going to be drafting reports, and we're going to be sharing out with the community. And today's date, June 26th, is represented on here, and we will continue to provide updates to you. Dr. Mozingo? Yes, thank you both for that update and we'll go to the next slide. Okay. And so on July the 2nd, our new chief of communications, Mrs. Julia Burgos,
089will join ACPS. And her new role is to ensure that our community is involved and very connected to what is happening in the school division. And what you see on this slide is ways in which the community can stay involved. You see between July, well actually today, and July 1 all the way through August. But a summary of the planning process will be available on ACPS Express. There will be webinars with the superintendent as well as surveys and forms to complete during the week of July 6th through July 13th. We will have a process again with the survey for obtaining feedback regarding opening. Then in addition to that, as she mentioned earlier, as these little plans are being developed, the plans will be presented. We will seek feedback and then. The summary of those plans
090will be synthesized and available on ACPS Express. The last little box speaks to this notion of FAQs, but I really wanted to highlight that we currently have FAQs already on the website for families in the community to access. But this just shows you as a community and as a board and working with communications and the new chief of communications ways and deliberate ways and strategies. by which the community and others can stay involved and stay up to date around the reopening planning process before a plan is implemented. The next slide we wanted to highlight some of the future outputs or deliverables that would be forthcoming. There will be progress updates. The teams have a schedule to develop draft action plans. In addition to that, as those plans are drafted, We will seek feedback and adjust.
091We all have also made a commitment. We have three dates to circle back to our thought partners to just check in with them to see, you know, more advice, guidance, lessons learned. In addition to that, there may be some implications for the budget. So you see that as a future deliverable. We have a team that's working primarily as a financial team that will really make sure that each of these teams. are making good decisions in those areas. And then ultimately is to provide this comprehensive reopening guidance with extensive input and kind of auditing along the way before it's actually presented to the board in late August. This we wanted to just say to the public, please stay informed. Please stay updated. And this is a way that you can do that. There's the ACPS Express.
092There's an entire section dedicated to the reopening of schools. They've even started developing a 4.0 of this continuity of learning plan, reimagining schools 4.0. You can go to the ACPS website and just find a wealth of information. This is the end of our presentation and we will certainly open it up for any questions or comments, but I'll turn it back over to the superintendent or the forechair. Okay, I think before I take questions, I wanted to just let the public know about some dates. The next time the board will discuss this will be July 10th, but also we have four opportunities for public comment, you know, a virtual public comment. Thursday, July 9th at 7, Friday, July 10th at noon, Thursday, August 6th at 7 p.m. And Friday, August 7th at noon. So additionally, the
093public can also send us emails as they do on other topics. And they can either send it to us for the view by the superintendent and the board or to be posted with a subsequent meeting. So with that, I will go to the questions and I have Mr. Suarez up first. Thank you, Chair Anderson, and thank you everyone for the presentation. I really appreciate all the thought that's gone into this. I know it's a very challenging topic, and I know that this decision is not going to be easy for the board, and it's not going to be easy for any of us. So as I sort of looked at the presentation and I've been thinking about this, you know, I guess the criteria I would want to use to sort of make a final decision,
094you know, is We want to maximize learning for our kids. We want to maximize the health of our kids and our families while at the same time maximizing happiness. We have obviously constraints and the constraint and one of the main constraints is sort of the risk preferences of different people. And I think Dr. Hutchings, you alluded to that when you kicked off the presentation. You know, there are some people, if we decide to reopen everything up, they're going to say there's no way, you know, I would send my kid to school regardless because of the pandemic situation. And there are people at the other end of the spectrum who, if we were to say it's only online, they'd be beaten down our door. Why aren't you letting our kids go physically to school? We're not
095going to make everyone happy no matter what. But kind of going back to a comment I made at the last meeting, I really think in this new normal, we have to sort of reconceptualize school as a service rather than a place. And so just sort of thinking about that, I'm wondering if one way we're thinking as we're going through this process is to sort of get a sense from our community, both informally and perhaps even formally. that, you know, let's say this pans pans out, what is your risk preference? Like, would you send your kid to school under any scenario? Would you want the hybrid? Because I think there's one sort of question, that's the policy question, right? And there's another question of like, what's your individual preference? Like, what would you want to do?
096And that preference may keep changing, you know, as we get more data and more information. But all of this to say is, is I wonder, and maybe you're already conceptualizing this way, I'm just not 100% sure, like, what I don't want is, is it to be perceived by the community as it's model one, model two, model three, and we're just imposing that down and you're going to have to live with it. What I like is a situation where we think about all the different models, and then we provide options to people. so that we can maximize learning. Because if we choose model one and then a bunch of families send their kids home, I still want those kids to be learning, right? So I'm trying to think about how we maybe structure that into this
097iterative process of thinking about this so that... you know, we can really get in the mindset of service delivery. And candidly, I think this is an opportunity for us because we've talked a lot about the customer relationship management system that we want to implement and all of these other types of structural things about our service delivery. And so I'm wondering if this is an opportunity on that front as well. Yeah. Thanks. So, so yes, Mr. Suarez, during July 6th through the 13th, the plan is to, that is when we're going to be engaging the community in a number of ways, surveys, focus groups, webinars. And it's not necessarily about, you know, hey, do you want your student to be off on Mondays or Wednesdays or Fridays? It's more of, if we have, if kids have
098to come to school certain days of the week and certain days of the week, they're learning from home. would you still send your child to the school with having these social distancing guidelines in place and face coverings and things of that nature? It's really getting a feel of how many of our families, you know, we make assumptions right now, but we don't have the clear data to show how many of our families would or would not. Also, how many of our staff members would or would not, you know, because that is going to help in regards to what scenario we might be able to. do. We can put together, and this is why I say it's important for us to be patient and not to jump to like, you know, days of the week and
099how many days, because we might jump to that and then 50% of staff might say, I'm not coming. And we won't be able to do that model because we won't have the staffing. Because with now with the FMLA, and there's a lot of legal pieces to this too. FMLA has been extended to our employees. So they now have some additional rights that were not in place prior to COVID-19, which requires us to still pay people if they have a loved one that's sick at home and they have to be off because of COVID-19, or they have childcare issues and their children can't go to childcare. We're still required to pay two-thirds of their salary. So we're going to be paying that. And then if we wanted to bring in subs, and we would have to
100pay those additional fees too. So there are a lot of implications that that data is gonna be so meaningful to us. And that's why between July 6th and July 13th, we wanna have collected that data. So when we're getting to more of the concrete action steps, we know what the implications are gonna be for those options that we present to the board. But good. I mean, that was a great, you know, on point is what I'm just saying, Mr. Suarez. We are in sync. Okay. Thank you. Ms. Nolan is next. Yes, thank you so much. Again, I just want to echo Mr. Suarez's thanks to the entire team. I know this is just incredible work that there's no roadmap as to how to best do this. So really appreciate everyone's laser focus on this to
101give kids the best education possible. My question is, I would like to unpack a little bit more of an understanding of the focus groups and how exactly parents and community members can be engaged during this time to offer their feedback. For example, we already have an education design team set up. at TC? Are those folks and other groups that are already been working together and are always pretty thoughtful with their feedback, will they be invited to participate? And then again, with the focus groups, how will parents react to a plan? For example, will they be given a draft of a plan and then they'll have the opportunity to react to it? So I'm just a little, to be candid, confused about how community members can actively participate both with their feedback to react to plans
102as well as participate in focus groups. So, yes. So, one, to answer your question in regards to the EDT, yes. Some of the structures we already have in place will be some focus groups that are already just, they're groups of people who already give us insight and expertise. So, yes, they will be a part of the focus group piece. But we're also looking at, you know, families who may have had some challenges with, you know, this spring. We want to get some insight about that. You know, so we need to have a focus group with people who just didn't have a good experience with online learning to find out why they didn't have that good of experience and more of a discussion, not just checking off. I didn't have a good experience. And that's the
103purpose and purpose and having these focus groups. We can get a deeper understanding of why it wasn't a good experience for you or your child or people who had a great experience. was it a great experience? What gave you that great experience for you to say my teachers rocked it this year? ACPS is the best. Why do you think that? And getting more to some concrete examples. What we're going to be talking specifically about is not necessarily we're going to do Monday, Wednesday classes and then Tuesday, Thursday, that's not what people are going to be reacting to. They're going to be reacting to kids are not going to be able to come to school every day because of our social distancing guidelines, meaning that your child won't be in school every single day. Your child
104will do some in school and some at home. What concerns are raised from that? What challenges does that bring to you and your family? Because some people work and they're going to say, well, that's a child care problem for me. Or some people might say, you know what, I don't want my child in school at all. That's not a good environment for my child because I'm fearful that they could, you know, contract COVID-19 or that we have health conditions in our home and our children will not be able to leave our home because they could be bringing the disease to our home. that causes a health risk for us. So those are the types of questions that are going to be asked during these focus groups. In addition to the focus groups, we also are
105going to have... webinars where people will be able to, we're going to go through a series of questions, but people will be able to type in different questions that are answered during a webinar type session. And this is for people who aren't a part of the focus group. Then we're also going to have surveys that are going to go out by text messages so that people can text. and go into a survey and answer some of these same questions. And some people like to write things out. Some people like to text things out. And then we're also going to have just our normal comment section for anybody who just wasn't, you know, we can't get everybody. Unfortunately, everybody can't be on a focus group. But we want to make sure that. everyone has an opportunity
106if they want to give feedback that they can and that we're doing an analysis of that feedback similar to what we had to do with the strategic plan and some of the other um you know initiatives that we have that we have in place so we're having multiple communication channels. So we're getting diverse perspectives and we have to be intentional with, and we're working with FACE to make sure we're intentional with the certain subgroups that we're hearing from, you know, so that we're not just relying our focus groups on people we know, that we're making sure underrepresented, underserved families, because they're just different challenges that we may not understand or may not be privy to, that we're being intentional to get those perspectives around the table. as well. I don't know if that helped with
107your answer, Ms. Nolan. Yeah, just a clarifying question. So just, I think that's a great process and I really appreciate how inclusive you're being. And so ultimately, what will the decision factor, how will the focus groups be decided upon, I guess? Like what is the final either criteria application process or what? Yeah, so with the focus groups, what we're looking at, we're specifically looking at targeted groups and each focus group has a different target. So as I mentioned earlier, I gave you some examples of like some of our families who are having challenges, some of our families who are underrepresented, some of our families who work, both parents in the homework, some of our families who are single parent house. We're going to really be putting out specific criteria, the types of voices we need
108to hear, not necessarily people. yet, but the voices we need to hear and then start identifying, you know, people who fall into those different categories. You know, we also want to make sure that, you know, I know board members have already sent me some potential people that, hey, can contact this person and somebody sent in a resume, which I thought was great, you know, gave some background. I mean, I think that's helpful to us as well to identify. different people. The issue is that, you know, this is going to be more so of a random sample, sampling of categories, not like an application process or, hey, call me if you want to be on the focus group, because then we'll be inundated with so many calls. And how do you say no to people when
109you do it that way? So really, we're going to have to start as we're developing our criteria, we're going to have to start relying on board members and staff members to. to identify these different groups because we do know non-negotiables are we need to have voices of staff, students, parents, and community members, right? So we know that those are our four stakeholder groups, but there are multiple categories in those stakeholder groups that we have to identify. And then there's also representation. of all of those four categories that I just mentioned to you on each of our planning teams as well. So all the planning teams are required to have student representatives, staff representatives, parent representative, community representative. So those are additional voices that are at the table as well. Hi. Sorry. Dr. Reif is up
110next. Okay, well, thank you, Chair Anderson, and thank you, everyone, for this presentation. I thought it was very good, and I really appreciated the comments you made at the beginning, Dr. Hutchings, about your process, because I definitely have heard some feedback. I've seen some feedback from people that feel like, you know, is our division behind other school divisions in terms of our planning, and I think that Taking a methodical approach and as Ms. Hall described it, responsive planning, I think that's really a great approach because I do agree that this is going to be really a community effort. I appreciated hearing that the thought partners said that we want to have a unified voice in this process. And as Mr. Suarez mentioned, I've been thinking about this too, that our stakeholders, they all have different
111needs and different attitudes towards risk. And just, you know, asking the community to understand that our goal as a school board, as a school division, is really to make the best decision for our entire community and our students in particular. You know, another thing I've been thinking about, I'm just going to throw this out there, is you presented the three models and understanding that, you know, we have to have an online option for folks with the, you know, who are immunocompromised. And I think a lot of what I'm seeing is a lot of trending towards this hybrid model. But, you know. Another thing to think about is, you know, if mixing one and three would work, if some people were going 100% of the time, if we find that 50% of our families and our
112staff want to be home and doing it virtually, then perhaps we could have 100% time for other people, which kind of leads into a second thing I've been thinking about. And you did touch on this too, Dr. Hutchings, is the staffing issue. I know that we, so it sounds like what I heard from you is that. In the week of July 6th, we're going to be serving not just families, but also staff, because I think, you know, finding out what our staff members comfort level is and returning to work and what supports that they feel they need to be successful is going to be really critical. Because if the majority of our staff is not feeling safe coming back to work, we're going to have to figure out, you know, how to deal with that
113problem. And also another piece that I've been hearing is, you know, for those teachers who are working from home, who have children at home, you know, they still feel that they need child care in order to be effective teachers. You know, so I've been thinking about, are we talking with Parks and Rec, for example, the city to, you know, see what kind of child care options might be available through the rec. centers that we could have teachers accessing. So that's another thing that I've been thinking about. And then just kind of like getting into my questions. With the cross-functional planning teams, I was curious to understand how many, how large you envision those being, because I know you have some folks already identified among the staff who are on there, but just thinking about, you
114know, you mentioned wanting to have parents, student feedback as well. So I'm wondering how large you're envisioning those teams being. And I think, you know, just in terms of participation. I know we have the public hearings coming up. And so really thinking about how we can. really communicate that widely to the community. I think with our strategic planning public hearings that I feel like a lot of the notices went out sort of at the last minute. And so I think like the sooner we can really be broadcasting that as loudly as possible, that those public hearings are an opportunity for people to give feedback would be good. So the question is about the cross-functional planning teams, their size. And then the second thing is about curriculum. Mr. Suarez talked about this as reconceptualizing schools as
115a service. You know, one thing that I've heard from, you know, some families have talked about wanting the program, the curriculum to be more rigorous. And that this issue with the grading policy, some students were like, they figured out sort of what was the bare minimum that they had to do. So thinking through that, and then in this issue of a lot of parents being concerned about the amount of screen time that the kids are having too. So how is instruction and the curriculum driving the model versus just thinking about how we get kids and teachers together, but thinking about, given that we have to have this online component and that we have to potentially have this hybrid model that can pivot, how are we thinking about how the curriculum and maybe trying to build
116more project-based learning or that kind of thing, like how are we letting that really drive the model that we choose? So I know that was a lot, but thanks. So to answer your first question, we're looking at no more than 10 on our subcommittees, on each of those subcommittees. So for example, you see those leads, not the chairs, but they're... specific areas of focus. We're calling those kind of like our subcommittees, but there are no more than 10 on each of those, because once you get beyond that, you're not going to get anything done. I mean, just think of the call right now. If everybody was talking with 33 people on here, we wouldn't be able to be prosperous and we wouldn't get anything done in a short period of time. So you got to
117make sure that we're having it so it's manageable. In regards to like our grading policies and how we're going to structure the curriculum piece, that is really one of the areas of focus for our SEAL team, which is our social, emotional, academic learning team. There are specific guiding questions, and I think it's going to be important for us to, you know, keep encouraging our community to look at some of these guiding questions that came out of the VDOE's guidelines, because we're using those guiding questions to drive the work of these subcommittees, right? Because specific things around grading and how do you make sure that you're reteaching information or teaching information? How do you provide supports for students who may have special needs or students who are English learners? You know, those are all the things
118that our teams are going to need to really work through to show how we're going to be able to do that, whether it's a hybrid or... I'm completely online, you know, moving forward. So those are a lot of the conversations that are going to happen in the month of July. And on July 17th, we'll be able to provide an update to the board around that work, specifically some of the, you know, the seal work, because that's really driving a lot of this to our seal work. And then you'll be able to get the updates each week. And then another key point, I think, for our community that we're going to need to just continue to reinforce is that our meetings are being recorded. And that's the wonderful thing about having these Zooms because you can
119record them and we're posting them. We're being as transparent as we possibly can be. Even the thought partner meetings, those are recorded and they're posted. You know, our chair meetings are recorded. They're going to be posted. Everything that we have in regards to meetings, if you're not a part of a team, you can go and actually view it. And that's what's going to cause you to ask questions or share some concerns that you might have based on some of the things. the material you're able to review. And we will also have summaries from these sessions that will be posted for people to follow along. So it's allowing the community, if you're not on one of the focus groups, or if you're not, you know, on one of our committees, that you can still be engaged
120and know exactly what's happening as if you were there. Okay, I have Ms. Nolan. Yeah, sorry for one more question. I know that we're going to be getting a lot of questions in terms of safety and facilities. So it's sort of a two parter, just anticipating what parents are going to be most concerned about. And number one is how confident do we feel about our facilities and the schools being up to the task and being safe environments for students? And then my second part of that question in terms of safety is what is the protocol going to be? Or perhaps we don't know as of yet, but like, if let's say a teacher or a student does come down with the coronavirus, like what is the community? communications protocol and how will that be handled
121to ensure the safety of all? Yeah, so we're working through both of those now. We do have guidelines from the VDOE and the CDC on how to deal with anyone who tests positive within a school. And we also have guidelines in regards to cleanliness and cleaning cycles of our schools and requirements, which we are going to abide by. So these are all a part of them. We have a specific custodial and maintenance team that deals with our cleanings. So you'll get some more information about that as we finalize those. But we do have guiding guidelines. for each of those areas. And this is why I say it's so important for us because it is so complicated. And so what's the word I'm looking for? I can't think of the word I'm trying to say, but
122there's so there come it's complex, right? You know, in regards to like, how do you provide health, a healthy environment, a safe environment, and then meet all of these guidelines and still be able to operate like a school division and still have to have some of the uncertainties like, okay, I might feel comfortable coming today, but then I come in and I see a bunch of people. I'm like, nope, I now don't feel comfortable coming. And then your plans change the next day because now some people aren't coming back. Or somebody tests positive and we don't control what people do when they go home. We can control them doing what they need to do in school, but they may go into an environment, they may go out into the public and not wear masks at
123all, you know. So I think because of the uncertainties is what's really causing, to me, most of the anxiety that I have about, you know, the whole reopening plan, because so much is just. And it is changing how we operate completely from how we're going to clean our buildings, which right now the guideline says every two hours we have to clean our buildings. You know, so that's a change from how things used to be, you know, in ACPS. Now, the benefit we might have is that everybody's not in school at one time, like typical. But it's still going to require a shift in how we operate. So more information will come to you, Ms. Nolan, to answer your question. I don't have a definitive response right now, but those are some of the questions that
124we are going to be grappling with in the month of July. Thank you. Okay, next up I have Ms. Alderton. Yeah, mine is just a more quick, direct question. Is it safe to say that in any sort of in-person session, one of the things that we have to expect to be able to plan for is roll-in closures, school closures? I think that is safe because at some point, somebody might test positive. And when that happens right now, the guidelines require you not necessarily to close down a school, but you have to do contact tracing once that occurs. And that contact tracing can lead to a number of other people who have tested positive, which then can lead to having to close the school. So there are specific guidelines on how all of that works. And
125that has come out through our VDOE guidelines, which are aligned with the CDC's guidelines. which I did not go to school to do all this stuff, everybody. I'm just like, I'm learning so much new stuff. I mean, thankfully I was a pre-med major initially, you know, in college, but I did not become a medical doctor, folks. And I don't have aspirations to be one, but I know this is kind of like our new normal. And it is. I think, you know, all of us are going to have to kind of step into our discomfort because we, I don't even remember what the new, I don't remember what normal was like anymore. Now, honestly, I feel like I've been in this kind of like fortunate situation for the past three months that I forgot what it
126used to be like. I don't even know, to be honest with you. I don't know. Dr. Reeve? Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to share that I saw too that the Virginia Health and Safety Board is recently like in the last day or two put out some new guidelines. So, you know, with I understand, you know, with OSHA at the federal level, some people feel that the guidelines really haven't been coming from there. And so I think that's going to be another thing that's going to be impacting us. But and so I just wanted to put that on folks radar, but In addition to, you know, this what Ms. Alderton was just talking about, about possibly needing to pivot back to online is with children who might be in households where people become sick, you
127know, where they're exposed, they're going to have to quarantine for 14 days. So we also need a model that is going to be able to accommodate. you know, kids, if they are coming into school, they might have to then stop coming to school for long periods of time to quarantine. So, you know, that's why, again, back to the comment that I was making about thinking about instruction and how, you know, a different model that's a little bit more project-based, you know, could work better. So just really thinking about, I think, you know, ways that we can really improve the curriculum. I think it is going to look really different, instruction and curriculum, you know, just to accommodate these different, it's an opportunity, I guess is what I'm saying, to do some of the things around
128project-based learning that we've been wanting to do for some time now. And if I can make just a quick, I'll make a comment, Madam Chair, Dr. Hutchins, is that okay? Just want to quickly say thank you, Dr. Reif. We have started some work in that area. We have a collaboration with the Buck Institute, also a part of the social studies curriculum. The new focus is project-based learning. So I just wanted you to actually be aware of that. And we have another program that's called Civic Track, which is a project-based program for the division. And our goal is to eventually be able to expand that. regardless of the actual model. So, and we have teams of teachers that are beginning to organize and see this as a as an opportunity for creating this these engaging experiences
129for students through a project-based learning. Thank you. I think the key point, Dr. Rief, you just mentioned is that this is an opportunity as well. So even though it's overwhelming and it's like, oh, my gosh, you know, so uncertain, it is an opportunity for us to really redefine how we educate. our students and how students learn as well as how we deliver instruction. And I think that there's been a lot of kind of like dragging of the feet in regards to like online learning and asynchronous and synchronous learning and all those things and everybody was just forced to do and At least we know it's possible. You know, before it was always what if. Now we know it is possible, but there are a lot of caveats to it and there's a lot more work
130that needs to be done to make it solid. But at least we do know we can completely go online overnight as a school division across the country because we've done it before. Not to say it was the best, but we've done it. And I think this is a really big opportunity for public education and for ACPS. Great. Okay. I don't see any more hands. So we are going to talk about this more over the next weeks. And so I think we can probably move on to the question and answer with Dr. Hutchings. And I wanted to just start with asking if maybe you could do a summary of the playground situations. And specifically, I got another request about what's going on with the TC track. So, yeah, so I hope that Alicia, Dr. Hart is
131on this call. And let me see, I believe that she is. I see her name on there. So I'm going to ask her to chime in. But I just want to give you a quick overview as to, well, first and foremost, I do have to say, you know, Governor Northam didn't include playgrounds in the initial phases, right? So we were trying to get all of our, you know, our... playground assessments completed on every one of them to determine what had issues and what didn't so that we can work through this while kids aren't on. Because normally right now, kids are on our playgrounds and it's almost impossible to close them down. So we were able to do that. The unfortunate piece is that when playgrounds were added just two weeks ago now to phases like,
132hey, playgrounds are now open, folks. we were still going through our repairs on our playgrounds. And fortunately, we don't have significant repairs that require us to completely redo our playgrounds. But if you even have to put a screw into a slide, if that shows up on your playground assessment, you cannot open that playground until that screw was put in there. Right. That's just a requirement because we did the assessments on all of our playgrounds. So many, as you all can see, you know, initially we had only opened like three playgrounds. And then you saw that, you know, the following week we were able to open, you know, six or seven more. It's because a lot of the repairs and things are minor. But our staff, you know, we don't have staff that can just go
133out and do all playgrounds all at one time. So it just takes a little longer for us. to get to them. So Dr. Hart, if you can just elaborate a little bit on that. I mean, I know this is based off of the updates that we've had together, but can you elaborate? Yes. Good afternoon, Dr. Hutchings, members of the board. So as Dr. Hutchings just stated, we were undergoing our playground repairs at the time where playgrounds were reopened for use based off of governor's guidance. With that said, we had three playgrounds at the time that were free of deficiencies. We had 13 playgrounds that had anywhere from minor to major repairs. We are in the process of getting those repairs done. The other day being Thursday, we were able to release, I believe it was
134five or six more playgrounds to be open because those repairs had been completed. We have ongoing repairs that are occurring today and we'll go on through the early part of next week, but we anticipate the remainder of our playgrounds, which it was a balance of seven that was left to be repaired for repairs to be complete and withstanding any other issues to be ready to open sometime probably by Wednesday or Thursday of next week. So we, as Dr. Hutchings said, you know, we're already in the process of having these items repaired. Thankfully, we've been able to sequence the repairs to where we can open up playgrounds relatively quickly. Of course, we want to do so safely. So that is the process that we are employing at this time. Okay. I think, I'm sorry if I
135was distracted about the track. Is it open then? No, I'm sorry. The TC Williams track is not open yet. We have recently just received the contract for the... contractor to have a hold of in order to actually authorize the start of the construction work. So pre-construction meetings and activities are ongoing. Staging will begin next week and actual construction efforts would be forthcoming. So the track itself at TC is not open, no. And so then will it be closed for the duration of the project at this point? Yes, that it would need to be closed for the duration of the project. Okay. And so, and then till when, when, when, when do we anticipate, um, uh, it would be open. Right now, we are anticipating, based off the construction schedule, early fall. That is considering no
136interruptions. That is considering no natural disasters in terms of weather and so on and so forth. We are anticipating early fall. If we can expedite that, we will try to our best. But right now, it is an early fall anticipated completion date. Okay, great. I'm wondering if we need some signage that maybe says under construction so that we can, because we've been getting several requests, questions. We'll be able to do that. Yes, we can do that. Okay, we'll be able to do that. And we'll also be able to share out with, you know, I know we mentioned this in one of our community meetings with the community that's adjacent to the playground, but I think maybe something that goes out to a broader community might be helpful. to let people know that the tracks will
137be closed because this construction is happening over there. Okay, super great. Anyone else have something, question, comment? Okay, all right. I don't see any. All right, so, oh wait, I see Dr. Eve, okay. Sorry to just jump in, but Dr. Hutchings, I did want to ask you about with the cross-functional planning teams, like you mentioned that they were going to be about 10 members. And so I was wondering about the role that the principals were playing just in the planning process for the fall. We didn't really touch on that, and I am sure they're going to be integral. because every school is unique in terms of their layout and that kind of thing. So I'm assuming you're still having principal meetings throughout the summer, but could you just touch on that? Yes. So the principals
138are going to be heavily involved because all the master scheduling comes from them and they've already been prepped on that. And they know we still will continue to have our principal meetings. They're going to be once a week, but they are also going to be assigned to different. different SEAL teams and other teams they've been requested to be a part of. And that's in addition to just our principal meetings because principals also have insight about facilities and operations and food services and transportation. So we want to make sure that we utilize their expertise throughout all of those planning committees and assistant principals as well. So it's not just principals. Okay, great. All right, everyone, we're on to, we're in the final stretches of part one of our meeting. So next up is my report. And
139I had some things to say today, because I realized last week, some were disappointed by the amount of time that I devoted to the topic of name changes. Although I will say I had been very clear with one of the proponents about how little I was going to say. Now I'll explain why I didn't think it was a good idea similar at that time. First, I cannot promise things on behalf of my fellow board members, and I cannot make things happen with executive orders. Being chair does not give me additional votes. I'm still only one of nine members, and together with our instructional leader, Dr. Hutchings, we're a team of 10. Second, saying I wanted a bigger discussions of names is not to delay or kick the can down the road. I was a student
140in ACPS during T.C. Williams' tenure. I know about some of what happened. I'm not a person of color, but I'm also not stupid. We need to reach deeper than names and we need to have a bigger conversation. I think implementing the strategic plan we approved today will require this conversation as part of our equity work. We are an educational institution and we need to educate our community in order to move forward. I don't think we as a community have a shared definition of what integration and segregation mean. This was clear to me when I chaired the naming committee for Ferdinand T. Day Elementary School. Two different members of the committee, both former students, had two very different ideas about when our schools were integrated. Both were correct. The difference between them was their definitions of
141integration and segregation. Also, Mr. Williams didn't do it alone. I think it will be beneficial to examine the larger issues, including the constructs that allowed for some of the things that happened. I believe some of these constructs are still in place today. As Vice Chair with Ms. Gentry and now as Chair with Vice Chair Nolan, I worked as part of the leadership team to make board operations more efficient and transparent. Every single item on the board agenda involves staff time and energy, many times from multiple departments. Starting last year with assistance from Dr. Hutchings and his staff, the board worked to set budget priorities. This was a huge step forward for our board and ACPS because it allowed us to agree on the areas of focus for the year. Last year we did that in
142August. This year with the current pandemic, I could not commit to any particular date because our calendar has not been set. The pandemic and planning for reopening of schools in whatever form that takes is requiring our staff to work overtime to plan for what comes next and to be ready to pivot repeatedly with little notice. I did not want to obligate staff to refocus their attention until I heard from them. This week, I've learned that we still anticipate being able to set budget priorities before school starts. That calendar will come to our meeting on July 10th for review and will be approved at a subsequent meeting. Names will certainly be a discussion topic during our budget priorities process. Lastly, to address some of the comments regarding the speed with which Fairfax County changed their names,
143they didn't do it in a week. They started the process with public hearings. a comment period and community meetings in February before the shutdown. Part of the process was in person and part of it was virtual. Only after hearing from the community, including any dissenting views, did they vote to start the process of changing the name. That is what a transparent public process looks like. We have previously heard criticisms in our city about how this public body or that have already made up their minds so that the public input is not considered. Moving ahead with some sort of vote statement, et cetera, at this point would not be transparent and does not conform to our obligations as a public body. So now that was a little wordier, but hopefully that will cover some of the
144things that I've heard since last week. So now if Vice Chair Nolan could read us into closed session, that would be great. And there are two, remember there are two different items that we're reading on the closed session. My apologies for the delay. Madam Chair, I move that the board convene a closed meeting pursuant to Virginia Code 2.2-3711A1 for the discussion and consideration of employment, performance, and contractual matters for 25 specific public employees. Second. Ms. Nolan, there is a second motion. Yeah, you can read both of them. Yeah, you can read them both together, and then we vote just once. Great. Got it. Pursuant to Virginia Code 2.2-3712, I move that the board certify that to the best of each member. Oh, excuse me. I apologize. That's the certification. I apologize. Hold on one second.
145Thanks for bearing with me. Oh, here we go. Okay. I move that the board convene a closed meeting pursuant to Virginia Code 2.2-3711A2 for the discussion and consideration of admission or disciplinary matters of any other matter that would involve the disclosure of information containing a scholastic record concerning any student. Second. I'm sorry, did I miss a second? Was that Mr. Schwartz? Yes. Okay. Mr. Suarez seconded Ms. Nolan's motion, so I'm going to call for a will call vote. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Mimi Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reif? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, that's 9-0. And so remember, everybody, we have to leave this meeting and get on to the other meeting, the link that Susan has sent us. And then we'll have
146to come back to this one to certify and adjourn. See you in a second. Okay. Hello, are we all here? Here's I'm muted. Sorry. So far, I only see you. Oh, gosh. Oh, no way. There's going to say, wait a second. I see a lot of people. OK, the one. Is anyone not returning? Veronica's on the phone. And so I'm going to send. I'm going to send this. We have five board members present. Who has actually six, including yourself. Available. Hey, Jacinta, can I send you the closed thing to read? Yeah. Because Veronica's in her car. Sure. And then I know you've been texting me. So let's see. Let's see. Well, to get in, you know, back in. When you got out. I know, I know. I just thought, okay, I'm sending it to you.
147Oh, my word. I'm sending it to you again. Okay. It's on its way. So if you can read that. I took a picture of it. Okay. Got it. Okay. All right. Ready? Yes. One second. All right. Pursuant to Virginia Code. 2.2-3712, I move that the board certify that to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened and are lawfully exempted by the Freedom of Information Act were heard, discussed, or considered by the board in the closed meeting held on June 26, 2020. Second. Okay, I think I heard Mr. Suarez second Ms. Green's motion. And I'm going to call for the vote. I think that Veronica is in the waiting room. So I think Susan's going to get her over so that she
148can vote. But I'll just come back to her at the end. And I've got another thing. Oh, okay. Margaret's unable to join us back again. I don't see her. We don't actually have a way to- She's in a number. She's in a number, the number, the top number. That's her. She's calling in by phone. Okay, so that was Mr. Suarez seconding Ms. Green's motion for the certification of the closed meeting. And so I'll call the roll call. Cindy Anderson, yes. Megan Alderton. Yes. Oh, Ramey's absent. Jacinta Green. Yes. Margaret's not coming in. Michelle Reeve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes, from Heather. And then Veronica Nolan? Yes. Okay. So that's seven yes and two absent at this point. So now we're going to move on to the motion to adjourn, please. Madam Chair, I
149move that we adjourn. Second. Ms. Thornton seconds. Mr. Suarez's motion to adjourn. I'm going to go through the roll call. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Ramey Gentry? Oh, of course, she's absent. Jacinta Green? Yes. Okay, Margaret Lorber is absent. Oh, sorry, you got back on. Margaret Lorber has returned. Okay, so she's yes. Okay, Michelle Reeve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, so we're eight yes and one absent. The meeting is adjourned at 3.40. Everybody have a good couple of weeks. We'll see you on the 10th. All right, bye. Bye.