1/8/2026 - FCPS School Board Meeting

001The time is 7:09 p.m. on and this January 8th, 2026 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the national anthem by H. Hearnden High School guitar for ensemble under the direction of Christopher Cunningham. I pledge allegiance >> to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisibley andice for all. >> [applause] [applause] >> Can we have one more round of appart applause for our amazing students, please? [applause] Agenda item 3.02, announcements. Mr. McDaniel, I'm sorry, Mr. McDaniel has submitted a a request to attend tonight's meeting remotely due to personal reasons as he has a work travel conflict and is located

002in Houston, Texas. All those in favor of approving Mr. McDaniel's request, Mr. Fr, Miss Marin, Mr. Mavine, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, and myself. All those opposed, Dr. Mr. Anderson, please state your objection. >> I will not approve virtual participation. >> For what reason, ma'am? >> For the reason I will not approve it. >> That that that is not part of our process. >> Um Mr. Foster, could you please explain which Virginia code we need to follow in order to state the objection? >> Yes. Uh Virginia Code section 2.2-3708.3. 2-3708.3 um requires that if there is a vote to disapprove virtual participation that the reason be stated with specificity. Dr. Anderson, would you like to explain? No, I gave my rationale. Chair Anderson, in order to take a

003recess to discuss this, we either need unanimous consent or approval by a majority. So, if we could discuss this and have the board take a vote on whether they are whether to allowing a recess so that we can have this discussed with general division counsel off the record, please. >> Okay, with no objection, we're going to go ahead and take a quick fiveminute recess. >> I object. Okay, then we're going to go ahead and vote on whether or not we're going to be able to take a quick recess. All those in favor of taking a quick recess, Mr. Fr, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Dixit, and myself. All those opposed, Miss Marin, Mr. Mc Meline, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson. Will the clerk please read the vote? >> The motion's going to

004be 55. uh it fails. >> Okay. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Um at this point, Mr. Foster, what would you like us to do to move forward? >> I believe the vote to permit um Mr. McDaniel to participate virtually did pass. If I saw the count correctly, um and so in light of that, I think my recommendation is that the meeting proceed. >> Okay. Thank you. Mr. McDaniel, will you please check your audio and video? I'm in. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. On behalf of the school board, I would like to welcome Sarah Kelsey, City of Fair or of City of Fairfax School Board member and Kate Hanley, former appointed Providence District School Board Member, um Providence District Supervisor and the chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. So, if we could welcome

005them, please. [applause] I would also like to recognize several of our student representatives in this year's student leadership program or development program who are attending tonight's meeting and ask them to please stand. Welcome. [applause] If you would like to review a copy of the meeting agenda, please see the back of the auditorium. To obtain copies of any items or supporting materials being presented tonight, please reference the QR code on the agenda or visit www.fcps.edu/boards. Tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 999 and livereamed on YouTube and at our on our website at www.fcps.edulivestream. Tonight's meeting is also being broadcast in Spanish. in Spanish on YouTube at youtube.comfcpsnual. Agenda item 3.01 volunteer and mentor appreciation week proclamation. I call on Miss St. John Cunning for a proclamation. Whereas Fairfax County Public Schools benefits from the dedication

006of many individuals who generously volunteer their time and talents in schools and at school sponsored activities. And whereas every school relies on volunteers and mentors through both formal and informal partnerships who enrich the academic, cultural, and extracurricular experience of students, particularly through tutoring, mentoring, and programs that strengthen family engagement. And whereas volunteer and mentor appreciation week is a week-long observance dedicated to recognizing the exceptional support, care, and guidance provided by volunteers and mentors who also highlight the ongoing need to expanding mentoring opportunities to promote positive outcomes for all students. And whereas Fairfax County Public Schools honors the volunteers and mentors who consistently show up for students. demonstrate unwavering commitment and support their academic, social, and emotional growth. And whereas by sharing their experiences, offering encouragement, and provided trusted guidance, mentors help students envision limitless possibilities,

007fostering confidence, resilience, and curiosity, and often playing transformative roles in the lives of young people. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board hereby proclaims January 5th through 9th as Fairfax County Public Schools Volunteer and Mentor Appreciation Week and recognizes and honors the individual the invaluable contributions of school volunteers and mentors and encourages students, staff, families, and the broader community to acknowledge and celebrate their service in strengthening our schools and supporting student success. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. I will call for a vote. All those in favor, Mr. FR, Miss Marin, Mr. Mleine, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, Mr. McDaniel, and myself. That is unanimous for all board members. Agenda item 3.04, principles and administration. [clears throat] Administrators appreciation

008month proclamation. I call on Dr. Anderson for a proclamation. Whereas the observance of school principles and administrators month honors the leadership of elementary, middle, and high school principles and administrators and recognizes that their work is essential to student success throughout preK to 12 education and beyond. And whereas principles and administrators work diligently to create a safe, inclusive, and productive learning environments that support the academic, the social, the emotional growth of all students while fostering positive school culture and strong professional communities. And whereas principles fulfill multiple and complex roles serving as instructional leaders, supervisors of teachers, and learning community partners, assessment and accountability experts, budget and resource managers, facility and operational leaders, public relation representatives, and stewards of legal, contractual, and policy requirements. And whereas as the chief instructional leaders of their schools, principles set a

009clear academic vision by establishing ambitious goals, supporting high quality instruction, enforcing academic rigor, and maintaining high standards and expectations for every student while also prioritizing the social and emotional well-being of students and staff. in building strong trusting relationships with families, with educators, and with the broader school community. And whereas throughout their commitment, perseverance, and passion for public education, their the those educational leaders ensure that Fairfax County Public Schools continues to prepare students to meet high academic standards, lead healthy and ethical lives, and become responsible, innovative global citizens. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board hereby proclaims January 2026 as school principles and administrators appreciation month and recognizes their vital role of school leaders and support personnel in ensuring every child has access to a high quality education. >> Is there a

010second? >> I second. Miss St. John Cunning. I will call for a vote. All those in favor, Mr. Fresh, Miss Marin, Mr. Mavine, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, Mr. McDaniel, and myself. That is unanimous for all board members. Agenda item 3.05, 30th anniversary of the directly elected Fairfax County School Board Proclamation. I call on Mr. Fran. >> Thank you. We ask that Past and current school board members, please stand as your names uh are read. Whereas the Fairfax County School Board has long played a vital and trusted role in guiding the mission, policies, and governance of Fairfax County Public Schools. And whereas historically Fairfax County School Board members were appointed until 1995 when Fairfax County held its first election for school board members following a voter

011referendum and enabling legislation, thereby shifting from an appointed to an elected board structure. And whereas the change established a more direct democratic accountability between schoolboard members and the families, students, educators, and communities they serve. And whereas over the past three decades, 53 elected Fairfax County School Board members have guided transformative policies in curriculum, equity, school infrastructure, fiscal stewardship, and community engagement. And whereas this 30th anniversary of the board's direct election is an opportune moment to reflect on the enduring value of representative elect educational governance and to honor these those who have served including Chris Ammonson, former chair in Virginia delegate, Mount Vernon district 1996 to 1999. >> [applause] >> Dr. Ricardi Anderson, former chair, Mason District, 2020 to present. Chair Sandy Anderson, Springfield District TW, 2024, present. Phy Kathy Belter, former vice chair, Springfield District

0122000 to 2007. Her son Doug and her daughter Laura are with us tonight. [applause] Liz Bradshere, Springfield District 2008 to 2011. [applause] Chris Brunck, Franconia District 1996 to 2003. Michelle Brickner at large 1996 to 2003. [applause] Isis Castro, former chair, Mount Vernon district 2000 to 2003. [applause] >> Brad Center, former vice chair, Franconia District 2004 through 11. >> [applause] >> Virginia Delegate Laura Jane Cohen, Springfield District 2020 to 2023. Karen Corbett Sanders, former chair, Mount Vernon District 2016 to 2023. [applause] >> Tammy Darinet Kofax, former chair, Franconia District 2012 to 2023. >> [applause] >> Sema Dixit, Sully District, 2024 to present. [applause] Matteo Dunn, Mount Vernon District, 2024 to present. >> Mr. or Dr. Mark Emory, former chair at large 1996 to 1999. [applause] Sandy Evans, former chair, Mason District, 2010 to 2019. Carl Fr,

013former chair, Providence District, 2020 to president. >> The late Bob Fry, former chair at large, 1996 to 2003. His wife Rathy with us tonight. >> [applause] >> Stu Gibson, former chair, Hunter Mill District 1996 to 2011. [applause] Ernestine Hasty, former vice chair, Providence District 1996 to 2003. [applause] Tina Hone at large 2008 to 11. [applause] Janette Huff at large 2016 to 2017. [applause] Steve Hunt at large 2004 to 2007. >> [applause] >> Pat Hines, Hunter Mill District, 2012 to 19. [applause] >> Virginia delegate Karen Keys Gamara at large 2017 to 2023. [applause] >> K. Corey, former vice chair in Virginia delegate Mason District 1999 to 2009. Vice Chair Robin Lady, Drainsville District, 2024 to present. >> Kyle McDaniel, at large 2024 to present, Ryan McLavine, at large 2012 to 2019 and 2024 to present. [applause]

014>> Megan McLaclin, Bradock District, 2012 to 23. Melanie Marin, former vice chair, Hunter Mill District, 2020 to present. Ilong Moon, former chair, Bradock District, 1996 to 1999 at large 2004 to 19 and 2024 to present. [applause] Phil Nielski Iikner, former chair, Providence District, 2004 to 2009. [applause] Janet Ollesc at large 2004 to 2007. Abra at large 2020 to 2023. Supervisor Dalia Palic, Providence District 2016 to 2019. Virginia State Senator Stella Powaskki, former chair, Sully District 2020 223. Jim Rainey at large 2008 to 111. Patty Reid, Providence District 2009 to 15. [applause] >> Gary Reed, Sully District, 1996 to 2003. [applause] >> Elizabeth Schultz, Springfield District 2012 to 19. Marcia St. John Cunning, Franconia District 2024 to present. >> Supervisor Rashna Seismheiser, former chair at large 2020 to 2023 and Bradock District 2024 to 25. [applause]

015Supervisor Kathy Smith, former chair, Sulli District 2002 to 2015. [applause] Supervisor Dan Stork, former chair, Mount Vernon District, 2004 to 2015. The late Janie Strauss, former chair, Drainsville District, 1996 to 2019. [applause] Elaine Tolen, former chair, Drainsville District, 2020 to 2023. >> [applause] >> Carter Thomas, Springfield District, 1996 to 1999. Rita Thompson at large 2000 to 2003. [applause] Ted Velov at large 2012 to 2015. [applause] The late Fred Ward, Mason District, 1996 to 1999. Tessy Wilson, former vice chair, Bradock District, 2000 to 2011. [applause] Tom Wilson, Sulli District 2016 to 2019. >> [applause] >> Now therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board hereby recognizes and celebrates the generations of elected schoolboard members, past and present, who have served for the benefit of our students, staff, uh, and and schools and encourages Fairfax

016County residents to reflect on the importance of civic participation in school governance and to engage as partners in our shared mission of academic excellence, equity, and opportunity. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Moon. I will call for the vote. All those in favor, Mr. Fresh, Miss Marin, Mr. Mavine, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, Mr. McDaniel, and myself. That is unanimous for all board members. [applause] Welcome to all of our colleagues who have served as an elected as elected member of the school board. I invite all of those here to support the 30th anniversary of directly elected Fairfax County School Board proclamation to please join the board for a photo in the front of the dis We now invite our principles, administrators, and

017all those here in support of the principles and administrators appreciation month proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dis. We now invite our volunteers, mentors, and all those here in support of the FCPS volunteer and mentor appreciation week proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dis. Chair Anderson. That's our last picture. The ne agenda item 4.01 community participation. The next order of business is community participation. We welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening. Additional information about signing up to provide comments to the at a schoolboard regular meeting and or public hearing can be found at the school board's website at www.fcps.edu/schoolboard. During the sign up process, community members acknowledged they were informed

018of the school board's expectations for respect and proper decorum when providing comments. These expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room. We ask audience members to be respectful of one another. Shouting an outburst will not be tolerated. Please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks. Audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain in their seats, including when recording or taking photos. We are grateful to those who have come to speak to us today. Thank you for your cooperation. Schoolboard members will be listening but not responding. Madame clerk clerk, please call the first speaker. >> N Goyle. Good evening. My name is Niha Bole and I am an FCPS parent of two children, a first grader and a

019second grader. I'm a software engineer and tech leader at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and currently serving on its AI governance task force. Today I specifically want to address the usage of chat GPT at FCPS. Using chat GPT in educational context raises ethical concerns such as the potential for bias and a lack of transparency and accountability in the algorithms that are the basis of their model undermining academic integrity. Some academics are concerned that students can use tools such as chat GPT to misrepresent their assignments, further raising concerns about plagiarism and creating a generation of tech users as opposed to leaders, creators or inventors. Like any AI tool, Chad GPT can make errors due to contextual misunderstandings, AI hallucinations, and technical difficulties. Additionally, using chart GPT could raise concerns around privacy of data.

020While registering for this meeting, the form read that speakers should not use personally identifiable information in connection with an individual student or school-based employee. However, Chad GPT can't be relied upon protecting private data and PII because it uses data that is input to inform the model and algorithms. It is important to ensure that LLM based educational tools are designed to be accessible, inclusive and effective for all learners. Moreover, the deployment of such tools in schools should be done in collaboration with FCPS families and stakeholders, placing guardrails, creating a robust training program for educators and students, using key performance indicators to measure its success in the educational system while ensuring privacy of students and teachers. For now, there are many challenges to overcome before Chad GPT should be integrated into our education system. Thank you, >>

021Karen Bradford. Last month, I asked you to consider why we let students why we wait to let students drive. One key reason is brain development, specifically the frontal cortex. Students need time to develop judgment and reasoning. The same principle applies to math. Dr. Pidio can talk more to this. So, in brief, all students must take a finance class to graduate. And we wisely wait until at least their junior year when students take it too early. They lack the maturity and context to understand it. In math, we are asking elementary age students to push students into higher level courses, younger and younger, even though not all students are developmentally ready. Algebra 1 is generally a 9th grade level class. Dr. Reed and Dr. Prescidio are now pushing this into elementary schools. It's like asking sixth graders

022to read at a high school level. Not all sixth graders are ready for this. This push for high school level math in elementary school is not from the math central office. I do not hear math teachers or department chairs supporting this acceleration. Science teachers share the same concern as well. Student students need maturity before tackling higher level reasoning. We have asked for the data and I urged the board to request it from pyramid 5. There algebra 1 has been prioritized in the eighth grade and students are suffering. Geometry so scores have declined and enrollment in classes continue to rise. That data matters. It exists. My question for the board, Dr. Reed and Dr. Prescidio, is why are we doing this? Why are we pushing students into deep mathematical reasoning when their 12 and 13year-old brains

023and even 11 are not developmentally ready to understand this? Another comparison that is telling, the number of students completing algebra 1 in middle school does not match the number of students completing higher level BC calculus. If acceleration worked broadly, those numbers would align. Instead, we're seeing burnout and student advancing without understanding. Thank you, >> Leslie Houston. Leslie Please play the video submitted by Stephanie Lenquist Aurora. It seems that your definition of excellence is actually mediocrity. In its 2025 report, the state of Virginia gave 22 of Fairfax County public schools the designation needs intensive support, meaning those schools received less than 65% in the state school performance and support framework. This is an abysmal performance that Dr. Reed spun in a press release on December 9th to say makes FCPS a quote worldclass school division. I

024guess if your standards are low, it's easy to be content. But pretty packaging doesn't change numbers. In reality, in 2025, 21% of FCPS students failed reading SOS. 84% failed writing, 25% failed science, 22% failed math, and 58% failed history. We're performing worse in every subject than neighboring Lowden County students. Banging your test to say that none of our schools have lost accreditation yet is embarrassing. The results show subpar performance for a district with so many resources. And speaking of resources, you allocate them to many things far outside the purview of students academic outcomes. In August and November, you signed contracts with the law firm King and Spalding, agreeing to pay their attorneys up to $1,850 per hour. In August and September alone, you paid that single law firm nearly a million dollar. Given your exceedingly

025high payments on legal fees, it's funny that your media office claimed that you essentially forfeited the bathrooms and pronouns case to quote, "Safeguard public resources and save taxpayers thousands of dollars in legal fees and costs." Wow. How generous of you to do that. The same month, Division Legal Council John Foster signed the contract with King and Spalding, agreeing to pay its lawyers nearly $2,000 an hour. Maybe if you focus spending on student outcomes rather than directing so many resources to district administrators salaries and lawyers, students would perform better. Thank you. Please play the pre-recorded video by Laura Chapman. >> Hi, my name is Jessica Kim and I am an FCPS parent. I wanted to implore this group to respond to the call from parents on more transparency on how Genaii tools such as chat GPT

026for teachers is being rolled out and utilized across FCPS. I recognize that this is a very exciting time for a society and Genai is a powerful tool that has the potential to change the way whole industries operate including education. However, the key word here is potential. Major industries even in tech are still testing this technology to better understand its efficacy, optimal use cases and impacts to the problems they are trying to solve. So while the excitement is understandable, making these tools accessible without transparency on usage guidelines, safeguards on data share, and how the outputs will impact the way our children learn are deeply concerning for me. In addition, the main point of these tools is to make the what more easily attainable. But I would argue that our children are still learning the how and

027the why and they do not need shortcuts to get to the answer. Open AI, Google and other tech companies have a motivation to roll this technology out as broadly as possible to as many people as possible to gather the data that they need. So while partnerships and no cost options sound great, there is always a cost and value they are trying to recoup through these efforts. As one of the largest school systems in the nation, we are certainly a very attractive target for these companies. I am asking the board to reconsider the fast release of Chachi PT for teachers and other Genai tools in the classroom and instead consider what problem we are trying to help teachers solve. We need to clearly define the governance controls that we need to have in place and we

028need more grounded research and data to show that having these tools accessible is solving for the needs of our students. Thank you. I apologize. We had an issue with our walk-in registration. So, we should be calling on Sarah Argawal if she would like to speak. Hi and good evening school board members. I'm here as an FCPS parent in support of the world language program and world language education at large in FCPS. I represent a goo a group of parents at multiple FCPS schools who are interested in seeing both improvements to and expansion of existing programs. Let's start with improvements. Almost three years ago, we parents spoke with chief academic schools officer and shared with the superintendent and the board a number of recommendations that was actually 14 pages long, which I've summarized in a document

029um that should have been placed by the clerk on your chairs in advance of this meeting. Um since then, we've seen some improvement, but I would say more is needed and warranted in terms of expansion with new school boundaries. Now is the time to examine whether every pyramid has the right of immersion programs and eless programs in order to strengthen fairness and equity across the board. Just as an example, our my daughter's elementary school wanted an Fless program, but we only had enough budget for a steam program. Steam is critical and in the interest of access and equity, we shouldn't have to compete um for which subject matter gets which budget. We're asking for the creation of a parent advisory group or committee to discuss this with you more regularly because it's a shame that

030we started this initiative. We got lots of good responses from board members and then it just kind of went quiet. So, how can we work together with you in a constructive way so that we can continue this conversation and work together as parents and people who share a mission to advance this goal? Thank you. So the previous video was by Miss Kim, Jessica Kim. Lord Chapman registered for community participation but did not submit a video for tonight's meeting. So Chair Anderson, that was our last public speaker. >> Thank you. Agenda item 5.01, student representative matters. Unfort Unfortunately, Miss McConen is not was not able to attend tonight's meeting. Thus, we will not have student representative um matters tonight. Agenda item 6.01, action item, certification of closed meeting compliance. Since the board needs to return to

031the closed meeting towards the end of the regular meeting, we will return to this item later today after we concludes conclude the closed meeting. Agenda item 6.02, action item, confirmation of action taken in closed meeting. I call on Dr. Anderson for a motion. I'm finding it. Sorry. Um, I move to excuse from attendance at school certain students identified in in the closed meeting pursuant to Virginia code section 22.1-254B1. Is there a second? >> Thank you, Mr. Moon. All those in favor, Miss Marin, Mr. Mackin, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. All those abstaining or I'm sorry, all those opposed. All those abstaining, uh, Mr. Fr, Miss Dixit, Mr. Dunn, and Mr. McDaniel. Will the clerk please read the vote? 704. The motion carries. >> Thank you. I call on

032Mr. FR for a motion. I move to expel the student who committed a serious offense in violation of schoolboard policy by possessing a weapon on school property and injuring another student in violation of the Commonwealth's laws. >> Is there a second? >> I second. >> Thank you, Miss St. John Cunning. All those in favor, Mr. Fresh, Miss Marin, Mr. Mavine, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. All those opposed, all those abstaining. Miss Dixit, and Mr. McDaniel. Will the clerk please read the vote? >> 902. The motion carries. >> Thank you. I call on Miss St. John Cunning for a motion. >> I move to expel the student who threatened another student at school. >> Is there a second? >> Second, >> Mr. Fr. All those in favor?

033Mr. Mr. Fresh, Mr. Mavine, uh, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Mr. Moon, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, and myself. All those opposed, all those abstaining. Miss Marin, Miss Dixit, and Mr. McDaniel. Will the clerk please read the vote? >> 803. The motion carries. >> Thank you. Uh, I call on Mr. Fresh for a motion. I move that the school board authorize legal counsel to proceed with the submission of a further statement of facts on January 9th, 2026 discussed in close session according to the terms and conditions discussed therein. >> Is there a second? Mr. Moon. All those in favor? Mr. FR, Mr. Mavine, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Dixit, Mr. uh Mr. Moon, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Mr. Anderson and myself. All those opposed, all those abstaining. Mr. McDaniel, and Miss Marin. Will the

034clerk please read the vote? >> 902. The motion carries. >> Thank you. Agenda item 6.03 action item, motion to rescend. At the December 18th, 2025 regular meeting, the vote of on an amendment to this motion resulted in a tie. Thus, in accordance with the code of Virginia section 22- or 0.1-75, this entire action item was deferred to this meeting. Thus, we need to consider the entire agenda item in at this meeting. I call on Mr. Meline for a motion. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, I move to rescend the decision taken by the school board at its meeting on December 4th, 2025 to amend the structure of the comprehensive planning and development committee and sunset the school board's facilities planning advisory council. So, CPDC and FPAC continue to perform their essential mission for FCPS. >>

035Is there a second? >> Done. Mr. Mavine, would you like to speak to your motion? >> Um, so I've spoken to this motion um at the previous two meetings. So I do not see uh need to speak to it again other than saying that I hope my colleagues have reconsidered their their vote on December 4th uh to eliminate uh the facilities planning advisory uh committee. Um it's a essential uh committee that serves the purpose of advising this board and has done so for more than a decade. >> Mr. Dun, would you like to speak to your second? >> Briefly. Um I just wanted to reiterate I think anytime we restrict or we eliminate opportunities for the public to contribute to the achievement of the important and essential mission of FCPS. It's only the public, the

036community that ends up getting hurt. It only ends up the school board being less informed. It only ends up our operations being more costly, less efficient, less effective. I call on Dr. Anderson for an amendment. I move to insert the phrase and to revert back to the previous language. I'm sorry. I apologize. Um, I move I move to insert the phrase and to revert back to the previous language in the strategic governance manual policy 1710 and the community advisory committee operating manual after the phrase council. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your amendment? >> Yes, very briefly. I think I've said this the last time we discussed this and I said it the first time. I have never been in a space where

037people are begging to let us help to let them help us for free. These are individuals of high caliber. We have uh Chuck Fanshaw who serve on this committee who was hired by FCPS not once but twice to run the facilities office. Those are the kind of caliber of individuals that come from that committee. I I'm just stunned that we are not able to see their value and to leverage that to help support FCPS. Mr. Dun, would you like to speak to your second >> briefly? I I this is now the third school board meeting where we have discussed the elimination of the facilities planning advisory committee at a time when we have a 42-year renovation queue. We have a half billion dollars in an infrastructure and deferred maintenance backlog. And uh to date there

038has not been a single rationale advanced for the haste with which this is being done with the disrespect that's being shown to the community members who have served for many years on this committee and have contributed vital recommendations to improve how we manage uh our facilities, how we construct and renovate our schools and who otherwise guide um our our facilities planning and management with expert industry, private sector input. So, uh, lacking that rationale, I certainly, uh, will seek to have this motion approved tonight. Thank you very much. Seeing no others, I would like to call for a vote for the amendment that is on the screen. All those in favor, Miss Marin, Mr. Meline, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon and Dr. Anderson. All those opposed, Mr. FR, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Dixit, Mr.

039McDaniel, and myself. Will the clerk please read the vote? 56. The motion fails. >> Thank you so much. We are now voting on the ma unless there is somebody that would like to speak to the main motion. >> I would. >> Okay. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. [clears throat] Well, go ahead. >> Thank you. And this is the third meeting now where we voted on this. I'll be very brief. I want to be very clear on what this motion is not doing. It's not removing public input. It's not removing uh innovation. It's not removing expert input into facility planning and processing and all the stuff that FPAC does. So I want to make that very clear. What it's doing is it is taking the function of FPAC which is innovation which is community input which is

040expert guidance and advice and is inserting that to a standing board committee the comprehensive planning and development committee. And that's getting lost every time we discuss this. That key part is getting lost every time we discuss this. So I want to be very clear about that. Obviously for logistical purposes we cannot have two separate bodies running two separate directions talking about capital planning and facilities and our processes this that the other. So what this restructuring of the function of FPAC accomplishes in my opinion is it elevates their work from a citizen advisory committee that has no direct control over our staff to a standing board committee where we do have direct control and a direct working relationship with our staff. It also increases transparency. FPAC is not videotaped and recorded like our standing board committee

041meetings are. The CPDC meeting where the function of FPAC will now sit. Those are recorded and streamed and put out for people to see exactly what is going on when we talk about how we can better plan construction and facilities. Um and lastly, it's going to streamline the workflow. I had a chart up at the previous meeting where we voted on this which showed a completely overhauled streamline workflow. One of the biggest challenges with the current structure is that workflow. how disjointed and confusing it is. So, I really wanted to make sure that those points were out there in the public um and that is considered at our vote tonight. So, thank you, >> Miss Maron. >> So, a functional board will work to get to yes. I'm concerned that more and more of this

042board's votes are being passed by failures at a tie by 7 to five or 8 to four. This shows that collaboration is not happening. I'm also concerned that the focus of the work of this board is not progressing when it comes to our own approach to the work. A conversation about advisory committees is clearly needed. If this bill passes, it will be the second advisory committee in the two years of this board. We should be talking about how to have input that residents are clamoring to give us, such as for AI and technology. Miss St. John Cunning Um I want to reiterate um the fact that we are not eliminating engagement that we are including engagement and it is just a different structure. We have this structure already in the audit committee and it works.

043It's efficient and we still have the voice of the community. It disturbs me that I consistently hear that we're eliminating the voices of the community. I have spoken to several of the members of um EPAC and they were more concerned with the process by which this was done and maybe we have lessons learned about moving forward and being more thoughtful. I profusely thanked members of FPAC and told them that we appreciate their work and that we asked for them to participate in CPDC. When I explained audit committee to them and how it works, they were satisfied. So I think we have to be honest about how we maybe dropped the ball and how we handled this. And I will apologize for how we handled it. I will not apologize for the fact that we are

044doing this work in a way that is trying to be more efficient and that is trying to ensure that we don't have committees going in different directions and doing different kinds of work. Um, I just want to make that very clear because I think there's been a lot of miscommunication about what's happening and I have spoken to some of our FPAC members and have assured them about what the intention is and that we do appreciate their work and we do value their work and we can we hope to continue seeing them as members of CPDC now at a more elevated level. Um, I just want to make that very clear. >> Thank you. Uh Mr. Dun for a go back. >> Um there's no misinformation. Uh the truth is uh a Frankenstein was created and

045we don't even know how to make it work. Uh the proposal was to add five citizens to a school board committee. Um and the instruction was to weight the votes of schoolboard members as greater than citizens, but we didn't quite figure out how to do that. So there's all this extra sausage to be made. We really don't know how it will end up beyond that. FPAC was working has saved tens of millions of dollars for FCPS for decades. Um, and we don't know how the new structure will work. So why the haste? Why the rush to elaminate something that works with people who are not paid consultants? So they actually serve out of a sense of public service and mission and and love for their community. um to a much smaller number, five people um

046who we don't even know if any of the FPAC members will agree to serve everything. I've all my conversations are no. So um to to be so hasty to eliminate something that works that's beneficial to FCPS to the public um for something that doesn't work because we don't even know how it's going to work and we're just going to figure it out on the fly. That's the very antithesis of the type of administration that our public expects. efficient and effective schools. >> Miss Dixit, >> um I I believe being we we are being very efficient and effective by com combining FPback and C CBDC. I have served on CBDC before. I also served on audit committee before. I like the structure of audit committee and uh with this proposal of having cit you know community

047members uh with the voting rights um you know combining CBDC it would be much more effective and efficient and more work will be done uh number of people weightage all can be discussed and done you know later or we can discuss that in the next meeting because uh we ultimately want a a quick uh action um sometime and instructions go to FPback from CPDC then back and forth and it goes to the full board. It used to take a lot of time and I I think we can cut short that uh with this combination. So um I'm in support of that and I I feel like we're moving in the right direction. Thank you >> Mr. Mavine for a go back. >> Um I haven't spoken to this piece yet so it's not a go

048back. Um I do want to um since this is the third um and final time it looks like we're going to be discussing uh this the dissolution of EPAC. Um I'm going to repeat what I said at the first meeting which is that um I'm profoundly um sorry because um some very passionate and active members of our community have felt disrespected by this decision. Um and no matter what folks say of this DAS that can't correct for that. So, um, with that, I I will say I've done what I can. I think Mr. Dun might have done what he can. Um, so thank you to all those who have served on this committee for the past 14 15 years. Um, you've made an indelible mark on this system. >> Dr. Anderson, >> thank you. Um,

049I I served on um CPDC for probably all of the years that I've been on the school board. Um it is not like audit. One of the benefits of having the FPAC committee it's because they are able to be representative of each of the areas of the county. We know all too well how important that very specific and um representation mean what how important that is. We see that through the boundary process. While we could talk about things on a holistic level, it's really important to have people who know those neighborhoods be able to raise concerns that would impact those various areas of the district, that is not what um the audit committee needs to do. They don't they're not actions that are going to be taking place that are so um that will only

050pertain to various sections of FC of FCPS. It's overall and it works. Where is the voice that is going to say hey when we take a look at what's happening in Franconia this is what we see because the two three four members whatever that number ends up being half a person I know that conversation went on in one la last time they will not have that intimate information that they could bring that FPAC currently has because they represent all of the corners of FCPS. So I get it nobody I won't say no one I get it that there's not that there is a will to want to do things differently but let us not conflate what they can bring with what audit committee is able to do because there are two different things this is

051not an apples to apples comparison it's apples to oranges and again I cannot reiterate enough I cannot believe we're sitting here turning people away who are trying to help Miss Lady, >> thank you. Um, I wasn't planning to speak to this. Um, but I I have spoken with my drains representatives who were uh on FPAC and uh we've had some very good conversations. um they certainly understand my understanding of the path forward and why I'm supportive of moving FPAC members um suns setting that committee and putting the expertise at the table with uh other board members. Um and some of this I I learned from my conversations with them that some of the things they were doing uh they reference um writing of memos that were schoolboard directed in terms of research. Um one of

052my frustrations is I've never read any of these memos. Um, and so while they were working, I felt like they were working in a in in sort of in a vacuum. Um, because some of what I think they thought was being shared with me as a board member, um, I have no recollection of ever seeing. Um, and the last thing I'm going to say is that, interestingly enough, this is a someone's bringing this back for a vote, but it passed the first time 8 to three. >> Thank you. Seeing no others, we're going to go ahead and call for a vote. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Moon. Okay, go [clears throat] ahead. >> Oh, thank you, Madam Chair. I I made my points a couple of meetings ago, but I want to just to repeat for

053the public, for the benefit of public that uh whether [clears throat] a particular advisory committee could run more efficiently and more effectively can certainly be debated and board members can certainly disagree on that. and decision of the board can be made by the majority of the board. What I really feel disappointed is how this was carried on come to the vote. uh we have large number of a community volunteers. I've been serving on the committee for many years to help us without having an authentic engagement with them as to why a certain board members or board may feel that the committee should be restructured or disband and and maybe there might be other ways for them to contribute to the work of the school system. It was just basically they were notified after the fact

054that they would be disbanded. That was not the way we should be doing our business. And I think the motive's intent to bring this motion to resent to is put the process back to where it should have been so that they could have we could engage FM members first and have the discussion and conversation before we make a decision and what to do with a that is why I am supporting this motion brought by Mr. Okay. Now, seeing no others, I'm going to go ahead and call for a vote on the motion, the original motion that is on the screen. All those in favor, Mr. Mavine, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, Miss Marin, all those opposed, Mr. Fresh, Mr. Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Dixit, Mr. McDaniel, and myself. Will the clerk

055please read the vote? >> 56. The motion fails. >> Thank you, Madam Clerk. Agenda item 6.04, action item, proposed amendments to the governance manual. I call on Miss Marin for a motion. I move that the school board amend the strategic governance manual as follows. Insert a new number five in executive limitation number eight, superintendent's relationship with the board on page 24 to read as follows. Update division regulations in accordance and alignment with reviewed or updated board policies and within 60 days provide to the board either the updated regulation or a plan to update the regulation by a date certain and renumber the list items accordingly. Amend the current number 6E in executive limitation number eight, superintendent's relationship with the board on page 24 by striking the phrase relevant documents in advance and inserting the phrase

056relevant documents are posted publicly no later than five business days in advance in its place and amend number 1B in B5 meeting protocol on page 37 by striking the phrase circulate proposed motions and amendments whenever possible at least 48 hours before the meeting and inserting the phrase The norm for the board shall be that any item seeking board action have motion language included in order to be posted online as part of the board's official agenda in its place. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Uh, Miss Maron, would you like to speak to your motion? So, the public may or may not know, but we have a governance manual and we follow governance pro policies and practices in addition to Robert's rules. Um, but it has become clear that some of these rules

057need to be refined and some of these rules don't speak to certain matters that are really causing problems in how we do our work. So, um, this has three topics. One is to update to be sure that the superintendent is updating regulation within 60 days. And this has been an understanding, but in practice it hasn't been happening. A 60 days when we update a policy. So, for instance, the board updated our boundary policy in July of 2024. That regulation did not get updated um until this Tuesday, which some of my colleagues may be surprised to know because we weren't informed about it. My staff aid happened to find it. Uh the second part is that the superintendent will have to post documents publicly no later than five days in advance, which is really what's in

058alignment of our meeting procedures. But by putting it into these executive limitations, which are the public way that we show that we're holding the superintendent accountable, this further reinforces that we really do need this because we need to be prepared and we want the public to have the information. Like for instance, the boundary materials 5 days in advance was before Tuesday when they came out. And finally, the last item is about clarifying what constitutes posting to the agenda. So this evening, you see here the motion. Well, we this change would specify that what we mean when something is posted by 5 days in advance is there's a detailed description of what this is about. There's motion language so we know exactly what we're supposed to vote about and it includes the materials. So, the whole

059thing is posted 5 days in advance. Um, now this can be adjusted. We have procedures to make changes. If someone wants to change a motion or add a document, that's fine. But we have had a lot of serious instances in the last few weeks where this has um caused problems particularly with Western High School when I thought we were voting on phasing and we were actually voting on transportation and the years of schools coming in. So that's what this aims to do. Um I will say that there will be an amendment brought on the language for the third bullet or the third one because we actually further clarified it to make it even more correct. So that will be forthcoming and I will be supporting that motion. Thank you. >> Dr. Anderson, would you like

060to speak to your second? >> Yes, briefly. Um I think Miss Maron did a good job with introducing these three parts. Um what I wanted to add is the importance um of this clarification to the public. when the board um adopts a policy that means that there's an expectation that is different and it needs to be communicated to staff and to the public in terms of exactly how that's going to be rolled out. That is done through the regulations. So, it's really important especially for staff and teachers who are largely responsible for rolling out much of the work that is involved in our policies to have that clarity as soon as possible. That is why we're asking for that very tight timeline. I recall with during my first term on the board, it was not

061unusual as the policy was being built that the regulation was also being constructed at the same time. So they almost walked the line together. There wasn't a gap from when the policy was adopted to when the regulation was written. So that is going to help communicate what the expectations are and how to carry them out to staff more than anything. The last piece that I want to speak to is the um posting of uh motions and of documents 5 days in advance. That is important to our public because once individuals in our in the community see what it is that we're going to be voting on, then they need to make determinations like what do I need to tell my representative? What is my concern about this thing that they're voting on? If that is

062not known well in advance, they do not have the opportunity to speak to us and to give us their feedback. We're going to be speaking about EL8 in just a little while where we're talking about relationships to the community in communication. This is just one more tool in order to not only communicate clearly with the public, but to also get their feedback so that we represent their interests. I call on Dr. Anderson for an amendment. Okay. Sorry, I lost my page here. In the second bullet of the main motion, strike the word business in the phrase relevant documents are posted publicly no later than 5 days in advance. In the second bullet in the main motion, insert the phrase in alignment with meeting procedures as detailed in the board's board's bylaws. Strike the third bullet

063in its entirety and insert the following phrase in its place. Amend item B3 in the bylaws section 4B3 meeting procedures by striking the sentence. The agenda and all supporting documents and information shall be made available to the school board and the public and posted to the website at least 5 days in advance of the meeting whenever possible. and inserting every agenda item's detailed description and all supporting materials shall be made available to the school board and the public and posted to the website at least 5 days in advance of the meeting. Additionally, for agenda items requiring public board action, namely action items and consent items, the motion language shall similarly be made available at least 5 days in advance. The deadline of the five days in advance shall be met unless there are extenduating circumstances

064which will be recorded specifically in the web-based agendas agenda items description under the heading reason for delayed posting of materials prior to the meeting's commencing and its place. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Fresh. Uh Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your amendment? No, I think I have sufficiently explained. This is just clarifying some language that was previously um presented. Mr. Fish, would you like to speak to your second? >> Yes. Um so the first part of the main motion reflects some comments that I had uh when this first went around to colleagues. Um, and these amendments are the result of uh conversations that I had with Miss Marin where I expressed, you know, anybody who's been a chair of this board uh, and we just had a

065whole bunch of them here here earlier knows that there are sometimes challenges that are beyond any one individual's control when it comes to documents. And I think we all agree that we should be transparent to the public about when and why those things happen. And so I want to serve on a board where we have access to information as early as possible and when that information is not available that we're told why. Um I think that's uh reasonable. Um, secondarily, uh, in alignment with that, I will be bringing a follow-on motion that I'll speak to later that would hopefully lead towards the alignment of the board's motions to track similarly to what we expect of the superintendent. Uh, because if we want more time with material from the superintendent, I think we probably also want

066more time uh, with the work that we engage each other on as well. Uh, but I think this does two things and I'm grateful for the the main motion makers for starting the conversation around what we can do to increase the amount of time we have the materials to review uh and bring some transparency to um the whole process including when we fall short. >> Miss Dixit. >> Um, hi. as I was not present uh last meeting and uh also missed some of some of this conversation. I'd like to have a little bit more thought and discussion before I can vote on this. Um so uh at this point I will not be able to support it. >> Mr. Moon to speak. >> Thank you. Miss Marin. Yes. To clarify, this was put on new

067business two weeks ago. Uh where was it? December. The 18th of December. So this was posted as new business uh the 18th of December. And it was only when the member from Providence this week reached out to collaborate uh to get to yes together that we brought the changes. Uh we certainly invited comment at any time and welcomed input. It's been advertised and publicly noted and is just codifying the rules that in theory we've all spoken to to work by. It's best to have it be clear so we all know what the expectations are. >> I'm going to take a quick turn about the amendment. Um I would like to thank Mr. FR for the work that he did um to clarify some of these. I think that having the opportunity to break apart this

068this motion into the separate pieces would have been helpful um rather than putting them all together. However, um at this time because I was not asked at all and not addressed at all related to any of this other than um my colleague from Providence, I'm not going to be able to support the amendment to the motion or the motion itself. Um so I'm going to be abstaining because I don't have enough information to make the decision this evening. Okay, seeing no others, we're going to go ahead and vote for the amendment that is on the screen. All those in favor, Mr. FR, Miss Marin, Mr. Mine, Miss Lady. >> Sure. >> Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Mr. Anderson and Mr. McDaniel. All those opposed, Miss Dixit. All those abstaining. That's Miss St. John Cunning and

069myself. Will the clerk please read the vote? 812. The motion carries. >> Thank you. Now we are returned to the new amended language. Seeing no others, we're going to go ahead. Miss Lady, >> this is this is the new amended motion. Yes, >> thank you. I just um I appreciate my colleagues working together on this um because when it initially came through um I wasn't going to be able to support it. Um I'm more comfortable, but I just have a couple questions that I just want to make sure we understand. Um you know when we talk about uh like the first bullet in alignment with meeting no in the first bullet where's it been entirely amended only on the screen um within the 60 days provide the board either the updated regulation or a plan

070to update the regulation of of a by a date certain. So that means that somewhere in the journey, we could be at 45 days, we could be at 59 days, and we're not going to make it to 60. The superintendent can come and ask for extension. It's my understanding of how it's written. I just want to clarify before I were to vote on it because part of my concern is >> Miss Lady, would you like the your colleague to answer? >> Yes, I would like my colleague to answer. >> The maker of the motion, could could you please answer the question? Yes. So, and this was one where I someone did uh engage with us, my Dr. and Mr. Fr again engaged with us early on. Uh so, yeah, what it says is update the

071division regulations in accordance and alignment with reviewed or updated policies. So like the boundary policy, let's say July 24, within 60 days, the superintendent is to provide the board either with the updated regulation or a plan to update the regulation by a certain date. And and I prefer not to talk about all of the exceptions because the reason we're doing this is because we have not been good at doing this. So I happy to I I suggest we adopt this and we could always tweak it. >> Okay. I just need a clarification because as someone who sits in chairs, there are definitely some things that need to go through legal and sometimes we are in a legal backlog. So that's that was why my question came. I actually agree. I believe in accountability. Um when

072we update a policy, yes, the regulation needs to be addressed, but I also understand what an incredible uh the volume that runs through um you know, the superintendent's office, and I want to be sensitive to that. Um and I'm very very pleased that we pulled out um business out of bullet number two because I think it needs to be just five days. Um and again, you know, yeah, this is an expectation we need to meet. Um but sometimes all the materials are not ready or something's changing in real time. So um I mean I'm certainly much more comfortable with the new termin new new new um amended language. Um, and I think it's all I have in terms of questions right now. Thank you, >> Dr. Anderson for go back, I believe. Yes. Just very

073briefly, I I do want to just again say this. Um, I think initially when we had business days that seemed to have been a little bit more flexible, that there was more time. Five days seems to be a little tighter and I even know that the clerk had shared some concern. But if we're fine with it, I'm fine with it because the whole idea is to ensure that we have all of these documents be available publicly so that our public can be responsive to us about what we have moving forward. I also need to reiterate that in years past when I first got on the board, documents, regulations were built right alongside of the um of the policies. So there wasn't a big lag. And we also know that life happens. It's great to have

074a structure, but we need to also be flexible that life happens and there might be some extenduous circumstances that would require for one or two things or, you know, periodically to fall out of line. But I think now we don't have any structure. So we don't know whether or not the regulations are going to come 60 days, 90 days, a year, well two years after the fact. That's not a good way of us to do um that's not a good way to do business. So I just wanted to make sure that I shared that we could be building the regulations as the policy is being written because that did happen before when I was on the board actually on governance that first my first stent staff would walk in with two drafts. >> Thank you

075Dr. Anderson. I'm going to take a quick turn. Um one of the [clears throat] concerns that the clerk did bring forward was related to the five business days. um both are problematic, right? Is that we have when we have the five business days, when we have certain meetings, it does mean that they're going to be it it it causes an overlap in our in our schedule that creates a problem. Um I think that five days is what we have been doing, which is we aim to have all materials available. The superintendent's office works to have all materials available the Friday before a meeting when at all possible. There are always extenduating circumstances and I do appreciate the fact that it does account for that. Um Dr. Reid, could you speak to I think that some

076of it would allay some concerns. Um us cottifying the five days does not mean that we're going to change our practice related to whether or not we're aiming for because if we if we do only abide by the five days, it does mean that our clerk team is going to be working on the weekends. So I would really love to ensure that we are going to continue to aim for Friday afternoon as the way that we will have all meeting materials up just just to allay any cons in any concerns that may be happening. >> Yes, ma'am. We generally have things ready to roll Friday afternoon. Um I also know the clerk's team there oftent times we are connecting over the weekend, you know, with an attachment here or there or something, but definitely Friday

077is the intent. >> Okay. Thank you very much. I think that that helps um alleviate some concerns. Um one of the issues or one of the concerns that I have related to some of the amended language um is for thing because it says every agenda item. It means that all new business items would have to be 5 days in advance as well, which means now you're talking about three weeks before we're actually voting on something, which seems a little excessive. So I don't think that the nuance is there. It's one of the things that I would have brought up if um if we had I'd had a chance to talk to somebody about it. So, I think that at this point um again, I still cannot support the existing language because of the of the

078changes that don't encompass the way that we actually do work. >> Miss Lady for a go back. Yeah, I I appreciate those comments and um I didn't even put that together in terms of every uh agenda item just given the volume of watching uh Madame Chair uh work hours upon hours to get things prepared. Um and I I guess what I'm feeling right now is just in full transparency that I wish perhaps these had all been brought as individual um amendments and not as a cluster. Um, and because they're as a cluster, I think right now I I would need more more time because I I think I'm comfortable with the first two u but not the third one. So I probably aren't going to be able to support it. >> Mr. Moon. >> Thank

079you, Madam Chair. Uh I appreciate a a maker of this motion bringing this motion. However, at this point in time, I am not going to be able to support it because I think this requires further conversation amongst both members and with the superintendent and let's see whether whether whether we can you know if motion doesn't pass uh what I request to the chair is the schedule time to talk about this. Thank you >> Miss Marin for a go back. Yes. I just wanted to clarify. So, I emailed all schoolboard members on December 16th, plus the clerk and the superintendent saying that Dr. Anderson I would be bringing it. Uh, it was posted as new business with the original language on December 18th. I emailed all members on Monday saying, "Hey, just a reminder, this is

080on the agenda uh with a link to the language. Mr. Fris was the only person that reached out. Um, I've certainly I sent an email saying, "I'd love to collaborate." Literally, those were my words. If people can't reach out and engage their colleagues in the communications being sent, we will never move forward. Um, even if we had the best rules ever, if people don't express that they have questions or then I I don't we're not doing the right thing currently. We're just not. And it's unacceptable to have a policy done in July of 20 of 24 on one of the most important things we've done in 40 years and only receive the update two days before we receive the actual recommendation. And by the way, we're voting on that in two weeks. I have it

081right here because my staffer grabbed it for me. I haven't had a chance to read it. It is five pages about how the boundary changes will be implemented. These changes are going to be codified to prevent this because this is not right and that's how we hold the superintendent accountable. Miss Dixit. So I apologize to my uh colleagues that I was um not able to discuss because I was out of country um and on manual leave and I was not able to communicate as my uh mother was in a hospital in ICU. So I I would say that I would request some more time to discuss this. I'm not against it, but I do need time to discuss this further. >> Dr. Anderson for a go back. >> Yes, thank you. I just wanted to

082kind of reiterate what Miss Marin had just said. It is our practice when um board members are bringing things forward that we email it and people ask, "Do you have any questions?" And I typically have just answered, "I have questions. Let's talk." I've shared this with you, Miss um Anderson, when you brought something very recently. I've shared it with Mr. Fr when he has sent something. Yes, I have questions. That's how we get the ball rolling. The silence, you know, seems to cons consent for the most part. And I don't want for this um policy or this proposal to be treated any differently than all of the other proposals that board members have brought up. We have to engage with each other. It is a two-way street. And I know particularly when I'm leading something,

083not only do I send an email, I send you a text, I I call you try to have a lot of outreach and a lot of times nothing comes back. Most of the time nothing comes back. Some of you are really great about returning, but some of it's not consistent across the board. So if it was sent and resent and sent again and no questions were raised, we don't know how to move. Clearly the questions that Mr. Fr had, they were in discussions for hours with us to ensure that we can get to that place of compromise. And so there was a space for us to have these discussions. And I just want to be sure that we're being uh we're acknowledging that. >> Okay. I think If everybody can turn their lights off for

084me, I think that we're ready to vote on the amended language that is on the screen. So all those in favor, we have Mr. FR, Miss Marin, Mr. Mavine, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, and could we I can't see Mr. McDaniel. All those opposed. We have Miss Mr. Moon, Miss Dixit, Mr. McDaniel, Miss Lady, and myself. All those abstaining, Miss St. John Cunning. Will the clerk please read the vote? Given that we do have the full board, so it is a tie, but given that the full board is here, the motion fails. >> Thank you. Action item 6.05, net zero motion. This item was withdrawn from the agenda and will be considered at a future meeting. Agenda item 6.06, 06 action item Fairfax County School Board electronic participation resolution. This item was withdrawn as an action

085item and the has been placed on new business for this meeting with an up with updated documentation. Agenda item 6.07 action item Armstrong Elementary School renovation contract value adjustment architectural and engineering services. I call on Miss Marin for a motion. I move that the school board approves an increase to the total amount of the architectural and engineering services contract to Horde Copeland Mock Inc. for the Armstrong Elementary renovation project to 2,576 oh excuse me 2,576,424.50 and authorize the division superintendent or the chief operating officer to execute, deliver, and administer the contract on behalf of the school board. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Miss Lady. Miss Marin, would you like to speak to your motion? >> So, I'm pretty passionate about facilities and contracts and procurement, and this board has done

086a really nice job of trying to elevate that work and focus more. We recently passed a policy to allow us to do different types of procurement approaches in an effort to save money. We also have been elevating data about the woeful lack of funding for our facilities that are used seven days a week by this community and are not there's not enough money to cover the maintenance um let alone build new modern accessible buildings. So when I saw this come through as a consent item because the board has to review certain contracts of a certain amount and sometimes we could just pass them through seeing that this seems to be an over 25% increase. I had to pause and I know that some of my colleagues also have pause and while I am very excited

087that my residents at Armstrong Elementary will eventually get their new school, there have been also been questions about the capacity of it um and and why the need for this space in this place. So, I do think that it merits a conversation and um answers some questions and I believe some of my colleagues have specific questions to ask. >> Miss Lady, would you like to speak to your second? >> No. Thank you, >> Mr. Dunn. >> Yes. Um, I have a question for the superintendent or for Mr. Gordon. Um, in in in researching this particular um, uh, issue. Uh there was reference made to the fact that even though there's not housing development um that would cause an expansion of the school, a capacity enhancement that um there was a desire to do so because

088there might in the future at some point be be housing put up. And I I appreciate the long-term nature of the thinking. Um but this this expansion of this school will cause uh the capacity utilization to go down to I believe 45% from I think it's around 60 or 70 now. Um but you can correct me if I'm wrong. So I'm trying to understand in terms of just scarce dollars um if if I understand correctly that there is this kind of long-term thinking that's driving the expansion of the school. But uh we recently res in my district resolved a problem with a school that was only at about 30% um capacity utilization and and we shouldn't be looking to introduce new new problems where we have schools that are so u poorly utilized from a

089school division perspective. So I just wonder if you could offer some thoughts in that regard. >> So Mr. Den, I get thoughts in the regard of why we renovated or chair or can apologize a little more specificity would help. >> Sure. Uh so it's not the fact that the school is being renovated. The school obviously is on the renovation queue but as part of the renovation dollars are being added to expand the school as I'm understanding even though there's not um a number of students that would drive that expansion. >> I think I'll ask Mr. Gordon to share why the dollars are being added. >> Hey. Yes. Yes ma'am. May. Hey sir. So um as conversations we've had you know last couple days you know so construction for projects is a multi-year process. This uh

090project has had eight uh previous additional services or change orders and the bulk of those were in 2022 23 bulan 231 and 122 um and those were all during the design and permitting phase. So what the district looked like, you know, four or five years ago, you know, does that change over time? Sure. But we do, as we, as we talked about, we do see this as an area of growth. And so we're in construction approximately, I think, 25% through construction process. And so, um, we do share the same capacity concerns, but we do believe that in this area of the of the county, the growth will support this facility in the end in the end state. And and what's the data that supports that conclusion or what's the kind of records that were shared

091with you that led you to want to expand the school which am I correct that the capacity utilization will will fall to 45% from the current utilization? Not to take that for record and I'll get back to you for the percentage piece, but for growth, we do work with the county uh on a monthly basis and collaborate with them on future growth areas and we do get notifications for new development. And we do believe that the Silverline area will be the area of growth within the county. And was that a specific request from the board of supervisors to to expand the school? >> So the ex the expansion of the school was based on uh you know so we have a design cue that goes back to 2008 and so we're in the process when

092this when this uh facility came up there were some uh requirements that weren't in standard with the current educational specifications. So the expansion in and in in variance in design was I think primarily dealt to dealt with or related back to the uh coming online with the edspecs. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you Mr. Dunn. Seeing no others, we're going to go ahead and call for a vote on the motion which is on the screen. All those in favor, Miss Marin, Mr. Meline, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Mr. Anderson, Mr. McDaniel, and myself. That is unanimous for all board members present at the dis with Miss Dixit and Mr. Fresh away from the table. Agenda item 6.08, action item, new consultant contract, Accenture LLP, Academic and Business Consulting

093Services. I call on Mr. FR for a motion. Actually, what we'll do is Miss Lady, can I call on you for a motion, please? >> Absolutely. Very happy to help. I move the school board approve the contract for academic and business consulting services and authorize division superintendent or the director of the office of procurement services to execute, deliver, and administer the contract on behalf of the school board. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Fresh. Uh, Miss Lady, would you like to speak to your motion? >> No. >> Mr. Fresh, would you like to speak to your second? >> No. >> Thank you. Seeing no speakers, we're going to go ahead and call for a vote for the motion that's on the screen. All those in favor, Mr. FR, Mr. Meline,

094Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Mr. Moon, Mr. McDaniel, and myself. All those opposed, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson. All those abstaining. Miss Marin, will the clerks please read the vote? With Miss Dixs it away from the table. 7211. The motion carries. >> Thank you. Agenda item 7.01 performance reviews relationships with families and community stakeholders. EL3 monitoring report. Each year, the school board assesses the superintendent in part on the basis of the school division's reasonable pro progress toward achieving the 2023 2030 strategic plan goals in adherence to a set of 13 executive limitations found on pages 14 through 31 of the board's strategic governance manual. The the superintendent provides an annual monitoring reports to the board for each executive limitation. The board then votes on whether the provided report is in compliance or if corrective action

095is needed. I call on Dr. Reid for a monitoring report on executive limitation three relationships with families and community stakeholders. Um this evening I'm obviously uh at the tail end of a head cold and uh so I'm going to ask different staff to do the slides and then I'll respond to questions from the board rather than staff. So, I'm going to ask our assistant superintendent for strategy and planning, Miss Neil, to go ahead and present the slides and then I'll um answer questions. >> Thanks, Dr. Reed and good evening to the members of our board. Um tonight, I'll be presenting executive limitation 3, which discusses relationships with families and community members in FCPS. At the time of this report, to the best of our knowledge, information, and belief, we've gathered information uh and evidence that

096we believe supports compliance with the board's executive limitation associated with this topic. And we're going to share some highlights this evening. Go to the next slide. There are seven areas of executive limitation 3. All indicators can be seen here. And although I'm going to only be sharing some highlights this evening, the entire monitoring report is posted publicly uh for the community on board docs this evening. So to begin tonight's uh updates, I'm pleased to share that uh every middle and high school website now includes consistent set of information about course selection for the school, including the course catalog, graduation requirements, important dates, and general academic advising information. Additionally, this spring, as our students are signing up for classes for 2026 27, a new feature will be added to CIS parent view uh for families to

097sign off on students course requests. We're currently developing and implementing a framework that's going to identify a standard set of knowledge and skills that we will support parents and students with at elementary, middle, and high school levels as it relates to academic and career planning. And then finally, a goal innovation team is working on programs that will improve and create opportunities for students as they transition schools. And we'll be providing guidance and resource to support common processes. We launched a new graduation status feature in parent view. If we can go to the next slide, slide five, sorry. Uh we launched a new graduation status feature in parent view and student view uh this year to help parents and students monitor their progress in meeting graduation requirements. As we strive to provide consistency across the division,

098expectations for Schooly usage were also shared with principles at a leaders need to know session in July of 2025. To support consistent communication of information to families, the special education and section 504 newsletter is shared quarterly via multiple modalities. This information may include updates to special education and section 504 services, important dates, and upcoming events. Additionally, key resources about IEPs and 504 plans have been translated to facilitate family and staff understanding of procedures uh rights and processes. And we now publish official forms related to special education in 14 languages, which is an increase from eight languages that we previously translated information in. Our office of communications hosts an annual comps comms camp training for our principles. Uh this is designated to help refine communication strategies for the upcoming school year. The office also supports school

099leaders and staff in creating clear engaging communications for families through a yearround school communicators program. And we're also very excited that every FCPS school now has a top 10 list that showcases the things that make their community proud to be a part of the school. This year we collaborated with our blueest star families to host a back- toschool military fair for our military families with secondary school students to help them prepare for the upcoming school year. The fair offered our families an opportunity to connect with a variety of val valuable resources from 17 different community organizations and programs. We also had an inaugural welcome bar barbecue for our new and returning military connected families to provide opportunities for them to connect with one another throughout the division. We had over 260 military connected family members

100attend. We're also proud to report that FCPS now has 149 purple star schools. In October of this year, our FCPS mobile app was launched. This app is designed to be a central unified tool for connecting and informing our families, staff, and students, and includes automatic translations in over a 100 languages. Our app organizes information into division and school level feeds, and our um families and students and staff can follow specific schools for targeted updates. This fall, Tandem is also now our official external facing calendar platform for school websites and our new app. All of our school websites are successfully displaying tandem powered calendars and 83% of our schools have created at least one event in tandem. And at this time, Madam Chair, this concludes the summary of the monitoring report for executive limitation three, our

101relationships with families and community members. Thank you. I call on Mr. FR for a motion. >> Thank you. [clears throat] Can he not be ready for a motion twice in one meeting? I think he can. I apologize. >> I apologize, too. >> Almost there, folks. I move that the school board finds the superintendent is in compliance with executive limitation three, relationships with families and community stakeholders. I further move that the school board approved the monitoring report based on superintendent's reasonable interpretation of executive limitation 3, relationships with families and community stakeholders as outlined in the strategic governance manual. >> Is there a second? >> I second. Thank you, Miss Dixit. Mr. Fresh, would you like to speak to your motion? >> I would. Um, first, I want to thank all of the people that help with

102our community engagement uh and family engagement in Fairfax County Public Schools because it's a lot of very hardworking people who could really use a lot more colleagues to do their work. Uh, but things as they are, they do a tremendous amount of work um for their numbers. And this monitoring report shows that you know historic [clears throat] volunteer engagement uh tens of thousands of uh comm family engagement touch points etc. Um the you know innovations like the new app that uh has been um uh provided to families um and and so on. Um, you know, and and then you look at November and we have a historic passing of or excuse me, a historic result in the passing of a of our uh last bond with 70% of the vote, certainly higher than it's been

103in many years. Um, and so there's also been efforts to take barriers down from people from participation. Um, military connected families are uh more connected than ever to FCPS as we expand and very soon will become uh a purple star school division. And so I will be voting that uh this EL is in compliance. I do have a couple questions. Um, one of the things that has always gotten, you know, has always kind of been something that I think about when we talk about engagement is the true value of informative versus instructive uh, engagement results. What more can we be doing so that we're not looking solely at the volume of responses? Um, when we do a survey, for example, and we get 30,000 families participate in a survey. Now, that on its own is

104informative, right? The volume, but it's not necessarily instructive until you break down the numbers and see if it's a scientific sample worth um taking seriously. What more can we do when we do have these large samples um to use the data in a way that is informative, is instructive, and not just informative. >> So, I think it's a great question. Um, I know that our Orsy department that works under um, Miss Neil, I think we could take a look at that and think about um, think about that question honestly. So, it's a it's a good question >> because most statistit statisticians would die for some of the sample sizes that we end up producing in FCPS because, you know, usually they're having to make a lot of assumptions with the data that they have. And

105when you have 40,000 touch points in something all on the same type of survey data, there's a lot that can be gleaned from that. And instead, sometimes we're left with in this region, this is what we got with lower participation. Maybe at this high school there was more um and it doesn't tell us within the school, you know, are those free and reduced meals families, are they multilingual families and so on. um how uh you know many of the systems described schooly oh I'm out of time I might do a go back we'll see thank you >> thank you Mr. Uh Miss Dixit for would you like to speak to your second? >> Yes, briefly. Um I'm in support of this EL and uh definitely have seen a lot of improvement in the community uh

106community engagement relationship with families. Um I do um also you know want to just have like couple of questions. Um one one of the slides said that um the principles have been notified for expectation of schoolology use. Um what does that actually mean for in is it for for the teachers usage or the students? Um it's a bullet on page four. >> Yes ma'am. I'm going to ask Dr. Prescidio to respond as the schooly department uh resides in our academic office. Dr. Presidio, >> of course. Thank you for the question. Yeah, one of the things that we had discussed uh in a board work session about a year ago was uh the consistency or lack of consistency at the time of uh schools posting information for parents in schooly so that uh parents would have

107a better understanding of what assignments their students were working on. So we set division expectations uh and have been monitoring um the uh the posting of information in schooly from school to school. So we obviously started working with principles to set that expectation, make sure that they were clear on the guidelines and then uh were able to provide that expectation, training and support uh to classroom teachers to be able to uh ensure that the schooly pages were up to date for all of the classes. >> Thank you for the response. Uh from what I've heard and and it's it actually changes from teacher to teacher. It's even if the principal is the one u you know relating relaying it to the teachers it's actually depends on the individual teacher how they feel comfortable or not.

108Uh how do we ensure that it actually is consistent like you said um with all school and all all schools like we know it's you know consistent across the board. >> Yeah. So the principles are monitoring it. Um we had pulled a couple different reports uh at different times where the region assistant superintendents had looked at that. Uh but again you know that sometimes teachers are very very busy. Um so they might get a little bit behind with that. Um but there are staff available at the school the espits and the t-specs to help them if um they need any technical assistance with posting the information. >> Okay. Thank you so much. Uh my last comment I would say is that uh there is a lot of communication which goes out of FCPS. Sometime it

109is a lot more than people can take in u and uh and and you know as a parent who has got uh you know multiple students in the school that sometime would just is know data overload at some point um my question was the actually the reverse communication is is basically how do we do the dialogue more and I know you do community hearing and you do a lot of other things but uh I I certainly feel that the voices who are louder are the ones get uh you know get their work you know work done and how do we ensure that the parents who are busy and not able to communicate are also being listened to somehow. >> Oh good questions. I think um you know the community conversations we try to do twice

110a year. Uh but if you're busy you may not be able to make it. Um the parent quad groups um are also another venue if uh those meetings. We have two parents from every school [laughter] and the goal is to make sure that parents come to those get information and can go back to their school communities and share information. So PTA I think would be a you know they're a tremendous partner in communication. Um, I think the mobile app is beginning to um, catch on in terms of communication, but that's not really a conversation to your point. Um, we'll continue to work on ways um, to do that. Um, but I do think the boundary process, which we'll talk about a little bit later, certainly garnered a lot of community conversation. Uh, and so I

111think, uh, we always want more connection. And so we'll continue to work on that. >> Miss Marin. >> Yes. Overall, I too want to recognize the employees who have been at dozens and dozens and dozens of events this year at night, on weekends, particularly during the boundary engagement process. I have seen the same small group of employees providing outstanding professional services. I would like to know if such employees working outside traditional business day hours are being compensated monetarily or with comp complimentary time. >> I don't have an answer to that this evening. I would have to get back to you on that. I shared out of concern that it's been a lot of meetings. Um and I would like to know. So there are a lot of metrics in this report but the metrics are

112mostly inputs and they're lovely inputs. Um, they're engaging activities that I've been at, observed, participated in as a member and as a parent, but it's numbers of webinars, newsletter opens, events hosted. I don't see an analysis of what's working best, if at all. Um, and we just don't have the luxury anymore to do all the things if we don't know if they're being productive. So, I'm going to be finding the superintendent not in compliance with this EL report. most specifically the lack of improvement on the technology and instructional connection in communications and families to adults. Although there is reference to a web icon going onto the homepage, I did yet another audit and the schools don't all have it. They don't have the title and moreover when you click into it, it does not have

113meaningful consistent information. Um, and it's it's just not acceptable anymore. I've been saying this for every year and um just a case in point, I was late to tonight's meeting because my 10th grader happened to tell me about the courses she was selecting and I had to stop everything because I didn't know that she had had a meeting, selected courses and there is something in here about the future. I'm very glad that parents will have to sign off because I know of a constituent whose child signed up for a course where they had to drive there, but it's it's taking too long. And as such, I do want to say that during the CIP work, I will be bringing a motion for the instructional services division to be moved into Gate House. The instructional services

114division is the only major office that is not at Gate House. Other than safety and security, I don't understand how we can be a school division without the instructional services division being in the superintendent suite. Now, I know it's a big office. I'm not saying it has to be the old office, but the chief academic officer and the assistant soup for instruction must be engaging with you regularly as the chief technology officer is doing, as the chief of schools is doing. I also want to say that the EO report does not reflect the level of engagement that I I require. Um, the latest example is communications with constituents about Tyson's Green, who I've been in touch with for months through the boundary process, only to find that the superintendent had responded to them directly to

115answer a question I asked her on Sunday. I repeatedly feel like I'm respecting the superintendent's wish to not engage with her, you leadership team directly on a lot of questions, let them do their work. But when it comes to my constituents, I there needs to be a partnership. I have additional comments, so I would like to have a second turn, please. Thank you, >> Mr. Mle. >> Uh, thank you. Well, it's fortuitous that I'm following Miss Mirren because um I just want to um extend her her praise to the communication staff that have truly gone above and beyond this year. Um I I don't think there's precedent uh for the amount of work they've had to do this year, whether it's been um staffing um listening tours, um staffing um boundary meetings, Western High School

116meetings. Um it's it's truly been uh quite a feat. Um and so I would join Melanie in saying that I hope we we're recognizing them as as they should be. Um, I also want to applaud the um um innovative ideas in this report about having top 10 lists of schools. I think that's a good way to promote our message um and kind of tamp down on on a lot of the negativity out there. Um uh the line of questioning that I want to um approach tonight is on the mobile app. Um so back in 2014ish uh we embarked on a similar project um that was a um complete and colossal failure. Um so I'm I'm curious as to um what motivated us to try it again um and do you see it as being successful

117so far? We heard from a variety a large variety of parent stakeholders that um and also following research that uh significant number of people are actually doing a lot of business from their phone and not necessarily from a laptop or um a standalone computer. And I think as you think about mobile banking, mobile apps, uh mobile just almost everything, we felt like that would increase our connectivity to families. So, um, I really am proud of our comm's team, our communications team, and our IT teams. Uh, they've worked very hard to put that together. We also felt like we've had so much feedback about the need for a divisionwide calendar. So being able to create a calendar feed that a family can um I don't know subscribe is the right word but connect to so that

118you could um actually follow your students um activities both at school field trips after school activities theater band whatever the practice is or athletics um that that would really put everything in one place and try to also access the cis pieces be able to pay for lunch, like try to have a one-stop shop that's really uh mobile in every possible way. >> I I think that's a great goal. Um do I don't know if staff is available tonight to speak to lessons learned from the last app adoption that might have been applied to this one >> from the 2014 adoption. I don't know if anybody's still here that Oh, Mr. Smith, of course, our resident historian. So, Marty, do you have some thoughts on >> Yes, we learned I I think we learned a lot.

119I know that technology has changed a lot over time and we use our phones for so much more. At that time, the previous app was really more like an electronic filing cabinet uh where you had uh many websites at your fingertip, but you really couldn't do much with them but open them and and review information. Today, our app can do so much more and interact so much differently. Uh, and it's a much more interactive tool than the app was of 10 years ago. So, I had the app 10 years ago, I have it today, and it's a world of difference. >> I will say that that a number of board members actually found the app useful um in the old days because it u it had the pictures of the principles. So, when we were

120going to schools, we knew who we were meeting. >> Um, so I'm sure the new app has that, but that was the one redeeming feature of the the old app. Um, so do do we have a cost on the app adoption or is that something you can get to us? >> I can absolutely get it to you. Yep. >> Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay, Dr. Anderson. >> Thank you. One of the things that I wanted to raise for your consideration is um about community engagement. I think we tend to put a lot of different activities into that. We do a good job of awareness because I'm a parent at two different levels and I get a lot of things. So that is our opportunity for to to alert the community of things. But

121the engagement and the two-way feedback to impact decision making. I think that's a place where we can do a little bit more in addition to what Mr. Fish had said in terms of who are we hearing from. I I also want to understand a little bit more in terms of how do you determine the activities on which you will engage the community for decision- making as outlined in indicator three. >> So certainly with boundaries that you know the policy drove the engagement um strategy. I think with um in general we the parent quad group where we meet with uh families members and parents from every school in the county multiple times a year. Um and again that's a reciprocal relationship. They come we do presentations on topics they're interested in. They go back to their

122community and can become spokespeople about the about that work. Um, you know, we do community conversations both fall and spring in every region which are open to any community member to come and visit about any topic they wish. Um, uh, but so those are some examples. >> Sure. But I I think because I've been to some of the community conversations that you posted and many times people are coming to speak about a very specific issue to them. But when it comes to making a decision around the district, I think there's some more efforts that could be made a little bit more broadly because these are all very small quadrants. We still have 180,000 almost 180,000 students and and their families. So there's an opportunity for greater outreach. uh because we've sat here where we've heard

123particularly in December 18th dozens of parents came and spoken some even tonight about the AI roll out like when do we engage them in that because that's a huge and impactful activity to their student. I I'm trying to understand like when do we create that delineation like well we're going to handle this here FCPS we'll we'll make you aware or we are going to make you aware and ask for your feedback about our activities. I I just want to see behind the curtain a little bit in terms of how you determine which route. So with the AI, we actually had an event, public event in November, meeting the moment where we invited the entire community to come in um and hear from both myself, Mr. Sethy, um several of our partners from Google and Play

124Lab. And we're going to have another event coming up when we have our Play Lab um I think it's our national competition. And so we, you know, sent out communications regarding that topic. Um, and as we, you know, become, so I, you know, so on that topic, we've already initiated, uh, a conversation. We're going to be talking about that in the parent quad group as well. Um, so those are kind of pieces around AI. I don't, you know, boundaries have really consumed, I think, a lot of time in the last 18 months. >> Absolutely. I recognize that. You're absolutely right. there's been a huge effort [clears throat] with the boundaries and you know multiple meetings a week. I recognize that but I just want to kind of put in your ear um when we are

125rolling out to be thinking about what is awareness where we're just letting people know which are those two AI events that you've talked about and what is the opportunity to actually pull people in and get their feedback. Um similarly with calendar, you know, we've heard it from people here like we just are rolling out calendar year year in year out and there's no space for them to be able to say, hey, we're we're not asking for their feedback on that in a way that is going to be structured and comprehensive. Yes, we'll have people come here and here, you know, come to the meeting. They'll email us and they have been more and more. I I just want to be more thoughtful about that. Um, I did have a question that I wanted to ask

126about um the the website. I do appreciate the website seeing that every of the every single one of the schools has that tab that's been outlined here that says coursework, but when you open that tab, it is all very different. I didn't realize Miss Marin did this, but I did my own audit today and not just with my schools. I think I hit about eight schools and all of the tabs were here. They are all very different with different types of information. Um, and it's inconsistently laid out. And again, I I'm not going to be as fussy about the layout, but the content, I made a little chart for myself that I'm happy to share, but I wonder if it would make sense for someone in your office to do their own little audit from

127a user perspective. Because if I have a parent, and it's likely, you have parents who one kid is at one middle school because they're not AAP and others at another middle school because they are AAP, and it's just a little bit too much for them to navigate things that are so vastly different. So, I would encourage you to have someone take a look um do a quick audit to evaluate whether or not what we're articulating here is actually the user experience. I'd like to go back, please. >> Yes, ma'am. We'll do that. >> Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Uh, Mr. Moon. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for the presentation, Dr. Reed, and especially with a voice like that. >> Maybe I should not be asking you questions because you may have to use your voice

128more, >> but I still got to ask a couple of questions. My questions go to uh a couple of different areas. A central registration, welcome welcome centers. uh uh a lot of times you know unfortunately I get to uh you know hear from the constituents especially people who are coming to Fairfield County for the first time to have their children registered for schools. You know sometimes they may be coming at the very last minute sometimes a lot of time but they come you know in my mind early enough to start the process. Uh many of them unfortunately I you know, find the process not as easy to navigate through and and and we know that many people come to a central registration office during summer months or even you know late spring to summer months

129uh and many of I don't know whether we are sufficiently staff during those months where we are relying on many hourly employees to take care of us you know region needs when there isn't influx of people large number of people coming in at the same time about and I hear that people getting a different information conflicting information from depending upon you know whom you you know whom they talk to so I a request that I'm making is you know I'm not going to make you assumption you know people might you know misunderstand you know the instruction given to them a request that I'm making is uh Maybe with a duly registering families after their registrations are done. You know, if we could do some survey and to find out whether they feel that there are

130uh areas where they can, you know, we can do we can improve uh how we provide the information, how we process their application through. I mean that's a request that I'm making. If we already doing that, please provide me with the information about, you know, their feedback. >> All right, I will check that. I can give you some feedback for regarding our military connected families. Couple, I think it was two years ago, we added online registration and um a piece I know a piece on our website, also a connection for our military connected families. And on my last military connected family advisory committee meeting, there was a lot of positive feedback about the registration >> that what I would call the transition in to Fairfax County process. So I think the team has worked really

131hard and I'll check on this survey idea >> and especially you know if you if you could uh especially you know hear from language minority families. >> Yes sir. >> I mean I appreciate the same thing goes with the community engagement. I I do understand I know you we make a lot of efforts to provide you know interpreters in many of the meetings. Unfortunately in many of the places I've been to have not really seen that many uh uh you know language minority you know families participating and coming into use in interpretation services etc. My the question that comes to my mind whenever that happens whenever I see that happening is whether there is there is another way different ways to reach out to them and at least find out why they are coming because

132I mean there is a large number of you know that large percentage of our families uh language language minority families and they should be equally participating coming attending these important meetings but they are not. >> Yes. >> Thank you >> Mr. Dunn. >> Thank you. Um first of all I want to just compliment um uh superintendent and her team on the top 10 lists. I think that's a fantastic start. Um you know what a big fan I am because there's so much bad data out there on greatschools.com and similar websites. we need to do everything we can to uplift our schools and proclaim the daily excellence of each and every school in our county. Um that's that's the reality and and unfortunately we have so much um negative stuff out there on social media and

133otherwise. Um so so bringing forward the daily excellence and and really shining a light on it so every community member is aware of it not just the parents with their kids in that school I think is is a vital part of our um educational obligation um in our modern society and also to restore public public trust in public education. Uh we need to show them what's happening our schools and unfortunately in FCPS we often have too much of an armslength relationship historically. So I just want to um uh commend you Dr. to read because I don't know if there's ever been a superintendent who's in our schools and in our communities as much as you are community conversations all different types of advisory committees including with military families and many other communities. Um it's so

134vital to the success of our school division that you're doing that work and so I just want to say thank you and night when you're losing your voice um uh uh to uh for all of that work. Um, one thing I want to ask, um, not as a, uh, criticism, but as as as a request, uh, one of the best things that really distinguishes a public school in a public school system of our size from a private school is the wealth of themies. All right? All of the CTE programs we have, all of themies we have. And um, while there are some videos now on the website, most of them were made six or seven years ago. And I we know from all the videos that get played at these meetings that you have some

135of the top video makers probably in in Virginia and the country. Um so if we can just get um either the communications team to make more videos to make updated videos at least showing the diversity of programming or individual programming we have at each of our CTE at non-ACC academy high schools. I think that would be so important because we need to get the word out because our CTE budget has been flat forever. we need to increase it. But until we have that public demand um uh for you know CTE program across the board and public awareness of these uh CTE programs and pathways some of which you have to start as a sophomore or a junior really to get the certification that allows you to be career ready upon graduation. Um we we won't

136have that demand, right? I mean when we start something new like welding, we see how demand just explodes because it's so exciting and fun, right? Not that I've ever welded, but it looks fun, right? Um, and I've seen the art that people make. So, I I just want to say uh this is one area where I feel really distinguishes distinguishes us from private schools who don't have the money um and the expertise to do things like this. So, we need to lift it up because if we were publishing a brochure for each high school, that would be like 50% of the brochure. Thank you. >> Yes, sir. I'll talk with the team about that, >> Miss Lady. >> Thank you. Um, and again, thank you team. Thank you to your entire team. um the hours

137you put in. Um you don't get paid well enough for the hours you get put in. Appreciate all that you've done. Um 13 and a half page report, bullet after bullet after bullet of things, most of which I read were not in place three years ago. Dr. Reid, I thank you. I thank you for your leadership of this school system. Um while we can always find areas to fine-tune something or where something isn't most ideal um I absolutely will support this e um and I I quite frankly don't understand how anyone at this dis could not um I think that there are always occasions where I'm looking for something on a website that I can't find it or it's named something that's not intuitive to me um or perhaps you know I want a different

138set of outputs on something that may have been surveyed. I mean, these are good questions, but the volume of what you have put in place since you took over the school system just it's it it shocks me. And for example, the registration I was snapping as if I was in school because we needed an electronic version of helping parents register when they move here. And part of what's happening in that portal is it's very clear the documentation they need where before it was done over a phone or email and people couldn't see an example and they showed up for registration appointments and didn't have what they needed. Um all of these ways in which we are communicating are fantastic. Um what what the 70% bond approval that it's fantastic. Obviously our our constituents believe in

139the work we're doing in our public schools. um the tandem calendar of events um all the things with familymies um the welcome center um what you've done with blue star families and purple star schools we didn't even talk about purple star schools three four years ago it was not even a conversation it was nothing we were striving for um so I hope what folks are hearing from me is that yeah if we want to look for something that didn't happen the way we wanted it to we could find it but overall in a 13 and a half page uh report which is rich with with with links and information and what I see is is improvements uh with this overall e um kudos to you and kudos to the team sitting there and the people

140that are not here which includes our principles our DSS's DSAs all our teachers everyone out there um who is putting students and families first um by need by strength thank you >> Miss Marin for go Yes, of course. Yes, no doubt. There's been amazing things. I just don't see a measurement of how effective those are for the limited dollars that we have. Um, you know, as a colleague mentioned, the engagement around AI. We have parents and residents coming to us asking for engagement. And really what I think should be is a process akin to the boundary process. Um, there this is a whole new era. I mean, I heard your remarks at the training earlier this week that we want this to be human- centered. 25% of our students are already using this without being

141facilitated. I'm I'm very surprised that there hasn't been a plan for this, and I will speak to that when we get to academic matters. Um, but there's been no engagement with the board systemically. And then I I just think that I don't see the school board is the face of the school division and we engage with the community. That is our job. And when I have instances where the superintendent is meeting with constituents or announcing AI and hasn't said, hey, what what do you think, school board member Marin? I'm hearing this from your community. Like what are your thoughts to inform the superintendent's decision and also to hear what my suggestions are? I don't see that. We are the first stop for community members a lot of the time and um I would just like

142to see it be um much more robust. So I I will share these comments uh electronically and hope that uh something can be done about them. >> Dr. Anderson for go back. >> Thank you. Um just a couple of quick things. One of the things that I wanted to talk about was Schoolagy and um and I think somebody said earlier no matter what the platform you'll have people who you know still think it needs to to work. I can't even remember what we had before school. Um I I can't remember Blackboard. Oh, how could I forget Blackboard? Wow. Um I will pause right there. Um, what I wanted to share is something for your team to take a look at. Schooly and CIS don't necessarily speak with each other. I think some integration there would

143be helpful because you have at times where a student because I've seen this assignment is missing in schooly but graded in CIS. And I know a lot of parents are utilizing schooly to kind of keep their kids accountable especially when they have that that missing assignment section. But if they're not double-checking, CIS to see is that assignment really missing, it it just becomes a little bit cumbersome. Um, so I I would love for you all to take a look at that. Um, and we have come a long way. Uh, and I've said this before, but a lot of this is kind of the same report from last year, the same report from the year before. I know because I keep all three and at every meeting I take a look. So I I'm not in

144the camp of this is all brand new information. Um I I do pay very particular attention to the area of um the new evidence because we need to continue to evolve. That's why we've evolved in your staffing. We've evolved in a lot of ways. So the expectations are higher. Um so I wanted to share that. Um, and I I also wanted to say for me a as one board member, while I think all of these indicators are are valid, they have value, they are not all equally important. There are some that I value more and that weighs in into my decisions. When we're talking about the the public facing pieces where my community continues to say that, well, I guess our voices don't matter. I have to see how can we increase the opportunity for

145them to have their voices be heard in the on the topics that matter to them. So, I will not be voting in compliance, but um we're heading in the right direction. We're not there yet. Okay, seeing no others, we're going to go ahead and call for a vote on the motion that is about to be on the screen. All those in favor. So we have Mr. Moon, Miss Dixit, Miss Lady, Miss St. John Cunning, Mr. Meline, Mr. FR, and myself and Mr. McDaniel. And all those opposed, Miss Marin and Dr. Anderson with Mr. Dunn away from the table. Will the clerk please read the vote? 821. The motion carries. >> Thank you. Annually, the board will review each executive limitation at the time of the monitoring report is provided to determine if revisions are needed.

146Board members may offer amendments to executive limitations at any regular meeting, provided they send the final amendment language to the board and clerk at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting to at which it's to be considered. At this time, no amendments have been submitted in advance of this meeting executive. As no amendments have been submitted, executive limitation three um relationships with families and community stakeholders was placed on the consent agenda for approval later at tonight's meeting to maintain the current language for the year ahead. We are going to take a very fast five minute break to allow for board members to provide feedback on the monitoring report. board members, please take your seats. Agenda item 8.01, comprehensive school boundary review. I call on Dr. read for a presentation on the 2026 comprehensive school

147boundary review. >> Thank you, Madame Chair. Um I this evening I'm going to make a few opening comments and because again I'm want to make sure I have my voice for questions. Um I'm going to ask Mr. Gordon to present the slides. Um, I want to begin this evening by thanking the board for setting such clear direction um, in adopting the policy around boundaries. I think that that provided very clear roadmap for staff um, and very clear direction for me as we've navigated the last 18 months. So, first and foremost, I want to thank our board. Um, thank each of you for setting that guidance so clearly. Um, also want to thank a tremendous number of people, our teams, um, that it's been mentioned tonight. We have had a lot of staff out, uh, doing

148this work, and I appreciate the work of our staff. I also want to thank all of the volunteers that uh, were part of the advisory committee, all the community members that that came that showed up, that shared their voice, their perspective. Um, I met so many people through this process. So many neighborhoods, uh, got to know each other, neighbors. Um, I'm just really very, very proud of our community and the way they showed up and the way that, uh, we were able to thoughtfully process this project as an entire community. And so, big thank you to our community, our board, and our staff that supported this work. Uh, and I think that when it's all said and done, the fact that we keep our children at the center of our decision- making and we ground

149our conversations in what's best for our children makes all the difference and it it's also what makes Fairfax special. I'm going to also say that this process wasn't perfect and our recommendations my recommendations are not perfect. what we're a goal I think um that I have and I hope we share is normalizing this conversation around boundaries. It's really a best practice just to routinely uh review these and I um I feel like we've taken some good first steps. Um and we've got obviously more work to do, but I feel like um the ability to cycle through this work over time will continue to be um important and we'll continue to do it in a collaborative, thoughtful um and measured way with our community. So, uh, Eric's gonna walk through the slides [cough] and then, um,

150I'll answer questions. And, uh, you know, we we have a lot of demographic data, too, that we're going to need to look at the coming years as we, um, wrestle with growth in different parts of the county and neighborhoods that are turning over and so forth. So, it's a complex task and I appreciate the patience and the grace of our community, our staff, um, and you as a board as we, uh, process through this. So, I'm going to hand this over to Eric after 18 months of doing nothing but talking about this, but and I'll stay to answer questions. >> Hey, thank you, ma'am. Good evening all. Dr. Reed is pleased to present the school board tonight. um her recommendations for the proposed boundary changes as we conclude our uh compre comprehensive boundary review process.

151As you know, this was the first undertaking of a comprehensive review of school boundary for our division in the nearly four decades to ensure that enrollment, facilities, programming, and student well-being [clears throat] remain uh aligned with the needs of a growing and changing community. Throughout this process, we heard meaningful and impactful feedback from families, staff, and community members. Their voices helped guide and shape our work, and we are grateful for the engagement of our community and the dedication of our staff throughout the process. The comprehensive boundary review was grounded in the priorities and direction set forth of our strategic plan, which serves as our northstar. Fairfax County Public Schools is committed to ensuring that each of every uh each and every FCPS student has equitable access to excellence and opportunities in alignment with F FPS

152FCPS 20 2330 strategic plan. As you recall, you as a school board approved an update to the boundary policy 8130 in July of 2024, which mandates that FCPS school boundaries are reviewed every 5 years going forward. And then in July of 2025, the school board adopted and revised language which set the phasing plan for boundary adjustments at the elementary, middle, high, and secondary school levels. Our boundary review work was guided by the priorities put forth by the school board and policy 8130. As laid out in schoolboard policy 8130, we've had a robust community engagement including the creation of the superintendent boundaries review advisory committee which includes uh community members from each high school pyramid and guided our work throughout uh the development of various boundary scenarios. Beginning in the fall of 2024, FCPS engaged in

153four sets of community meetings across phases one and two to share information to collect feedback and uh then and that informed new interactions of the boundary scenarios. From the fall of 2024 to the end of 2025, we hosted a total of 48 virtual and in-person community meetings with more than 6,500 attendees. In addition, we utilize the boundary explorer tool to share scenarios and collect feedback online. First in spring of 2025 and then in fall this fall, we received almost 25,000 comments on various scenarios using the boundary explorer tool. The superintendent's boundary review committee included two parents/caregivers from each FCPS's 24 high school pyramids as well as school-based and division uh level administrators, teachers, and operational staff uh representatives from uh county, local government associations and other community members. Their role was to uh help ensure

154that community feedback was considered in the development of potential boundary scenarios and provided recommendations to the superintendent. The committee met 16 times from December of 2024 through December of 2025. And we are grateful that each uh commitment each member's commitment to their important work. As you see before you, this graphic provides a highle timeline of the boundary review and its outline and outlines the process and we are here and we are now nearing the end of the timeline and tonight I'm presenting Dr. Re's re recommendations on the proposed boundary adjustments to the school board. Then this Saturday uh January 10th, the school board will hold a hearing to uh hear a public comment on the recommended boundary changes. And on Tuesday, January 13th, the school board will hold a public hearing on the proposed 2027

155capital improvement program. Overflow testimony for school boundaries will take place at that hearing as well. And then on Thursday, 2022 20 uh 2026, the school board is uh scheduled to vote on boundary adjustment recommendations. This timeline shows more detailed recapping our work from this past fall. In October, we held pyramid specific community meetings uh pairing two pyramids at each of the meeting to present uh scenario four. In November, the superintendent advisory uh board uh advisory committee reviewed and discussed the community feedback and provided recommended changes to scenario 4 based on that feedback. On December 12th, the boundary review committee uh provided feedback and recommendations uh for Dr. to read to consider which she reviewed with staff and developed uh her recommendations that she'll share with you tonight. And again, as I mentioned, the Saturday, January

15610th, the school board will hold a specific uh hold a public hearing on the recommended schoolboard uh boundary changes. And if there's any inclement weather on this day, the school board will hold a public meeting on Saturday, January 17th. On Tuesday, uh, January 13th, the school board will hold Pacific, uh, will hold a public hearing on proposed 2027 capital improvement plan with over overflow testimony, uh, for school board boundaries will take place at that hearing as well. And then on the 22nd of January, the school board will uh, have a scheduled vote. The process for determining the new Western High School uh, will begin in February. This slide spotlights the priorities of the school board as set forth in policy 8130 which uh guided our work through the process. Access to program programming was to

157ensure equitable access to programs and facilities and consider impact on schoolboard programs and population. Enrollment and capacity was uh is defined by using student enrollment uh projections balance available capacity across a school division and maximize efficient and effective use of school facilities. And as uh per best practices uh for capacity utilization and program needs while eliminating and preventing the establishment of split feeders whenever possible. As you can see on this slide, it describes the priorities of proximity and transportation. Proximity is defined by uh promoting contiguous attendance zones and maintaining uh neighborhood groupings to include uh condominium and apartment complexes with the goal is to eliminate and to prevent establishment of attendance islands. Transportation is defined by providing a walking and uh busing safety and limit transportation times to to ensure efficient transportation routes with attendance

158areas. Two of the priorities of enrollment capacity and proximity are related to split feeders and attendance islands. Based on existing school boundaries, there are 42 schools that are split feeders in at least one school affecting all six regions and eight high school and and 18 high school pyramids, 30 elementary schools feed into multiple schools, 33 elementary schools that feed into more than one high school, and six middle schools split between multiple high schools. Additionally, there are 22 boundaries, 22 school boundaries that have at least one attendance island affecting five regions and 14 high school pyramids, 16 elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools. Dr. Reed's recommendation would eliminate or reduce nine elementary schools to middle school split feeders and 10 10 elementary schools to high school split feeders. It would all it would

159eliminate and reduce six school attendance islands. Based on the proposed school boundaries for school year 2024 and 25 student membership data, the proposed uh changes would impact approximately 2,210 students at 52 schools and an estimated 1,174 elementary students, 44 447 middle school students, and 589 high school students. These numbers assume that students who are currently transferred to another school will continue to transfer to the school and are not included in the impacted number of students. Now, with the next 20 slides, I will I would like to walk through an overview of Dr. Re's uh recommended boundary changes affecting uh students at 52 of our schools. As you will see uh on each of the slides, the map on the left slide shows the existing boundary and the map on the right side shows the proposed

160boundaries. The area circled with the black hash line are in the proposed school boundary adjustments. Each each of the slides describe the changes at the student planning area level. And each spa is each spa is a small geographic zone used to uh use as a building block for creating school attendance boundaries aiming to keep neighborhoods together while balancing capacity and program access. Uh my remarks will provide an overview and I will encourage all uh encourage reviewing the slides for more details. This slide shows the proposed changes for the King Mill uh elementary school shown in yellow, Cardinal Forest Elementary School, shown in gray, and White Oaks Elementary School shown in pink. The proposed changes would eliminate attendance island at King Mill Elementary School and eliminate King Mill Elementary School split feeder at the middle school

161level and high school level. This slide shows proposed ch proposed changes for the Rolling Valley Elementary School shown in purple and the Saratoga Elementary School shown in gray. These proposed changes would reduce the split feeder at the Rolling Elementary at Rolling Valley Elementary School and align this area to the Lewis High School pyramid. This slide shows the proposed changes for the Cather Katherine Johnson Middle School shown in pink and the Rocky Run Middle School shown in gray. These proposed changes would uh reduce the split feeder at Greenbire East Elementary. This slide shows the corresponding proposed changes on the previous slide to keep the feeder pattern in alignment. This slide shows the proposed changes for the Fairfax High School shown in purple and the Sh Chantelli High School shown in pink. This slide shows proposed changes

162for Laurel Ridge Elementary School shown in blue and the Old Creek Elementary School shown in purple. These proposed changes would eliminate an attendance island at Old Creek Elementary School and eliminate the Old Creek Elementary School split feeder at the middle school and high school level. This slide shows the proposed changes for the West Brier Elementary School shown in blue and the coven run elementary school shown in yellow. These proposed changes would eliminate the West Brier Elementary School split feeder at the middle school level and reduce the number of schools West West Brier Elementary School feeds to at the high school level. [snorts] This slide shows the proposed changes for the Thorough Middle School shown in red and the Kilmore Middle School shown in green. These proposed changes would eliminate the Vienna Elementary School split feeder

163at the middle school level. This slide shows the proposed changes at the Madison High School shown in yellow and the Marshall High School shown in pink. These proposed changes would eliminate the Vienna uh elementary school split feeder at the high school level and eliminate the Wolf Trap Elementary School split feeder at the high school level as well. This slide shows proposed changes for the Long Longfellow Middle School shown in blue and the Cooper Middle School shown in red. These proposed changes would eliminate the Spring Hill Elementary School split feeder at the middle school level and eliminate the Longfellow uh middle school attendance islands. This slide shows the proposed changes for the MLAN High School shown in gray and Langley High School shown in blue. These proposed changes would eliminate the Spring Hill Elementary School split

164fleer at the high school level and eliminate uh MLAN High School attendance islands. This slide shows proposed changes for the Fel Fort Belvore Primary Elementary School and the Fort Belvore Upper Elementary School shown in purple and a Washington Middle Elementary School shown in green. These proposed changes would remove off base students from Fort Belvore Primary and Fort Belvore upper, create a Washington milary school attendance island. And as you know, uh, family engagement and school community is critical to the success of each student, each and every student to foster such engagement for all families at the Fort Belvore Elementary and upper elementary school level. The recommendation is to remove the barriers uh to the family engagement and reassigning off base students to the Washington Mill Elementary School. This slide shows proposed changes to the Riverside Elementary

165School in gray, Stratford Landing Elementary School in purple, and the Woodlon Elementary School in blue. These proposed changes would eliminate the Riverside Elementary School split feeder at the middle school level and at the high school level. This slide shows proposed changes at the cross for Crossfield Elementary School shown in yellow. Lee's Corner Elementary Lee's Corner Elementary School shown in purple. These proposed changes would reduce the number of schools Crossfield Elementary School feeds into at the middle school level and at the high school level. This slide shows proposed changes for the Coats Elementary School shown in red, McNair and McNair upper elementary school shown in gray, Flores Elementary School shown in green, and Hernand Elementary School shown in yellow. This area was highlighted by the school board as uh to be reviewed as part of the

166comprehensive boundary review. These proposed changes would eliminate the Coats Elementary School split feeder at the middle school level and high school level. decreased the coach elementary school capacity utilization percentage from 137% to 86%. And as we all know, coach has been uh one of the most overcrowded schools within the division. This slide shows the proposed changes for the Parklong Elementary School in purple, Belvadier Elementary School in gray, and Columbia Columbia elementary school in green. These proposed changes would decrease the Parklon Elementary School capacity utilization percentage from 99% to 89%. This addresses one of the schools that school board asked us to be specifically addressed when approved policy 8130 directing our comprehensive boundary review. This slide shows the proposed changes for Glasgow Middle School shown in light orange, Cole Middle School shown in brown, and Holmes

167Middle School shown in purple. These proposed changes would address concerns on the size of Glasgow Middle School, which is one of the schools that the school board asks us to specifically address with policy 8130. Uh it was also eliminate the Mason Creek Elementary School split feeder at the middle school level. And we acknowledge that the proposed change uh split feeders would create uh Beach Tree Elementary School and Belvadier Elementary School. I'm sorry, let me me start that again. We acknowledged with this proposed change, split feeders would be created at Beach Tree Elementary School and Belvadier Elementary School at the elementary school and elementary school high school level. Uh this slide depicts this slide corresponds to the changes in the previous slide and aligns to the middle school and high school feeder pattern. This uh this

168slide shows proposed changes for the Anid High School shown in red, Justice High School shown in purple and false search high school shown in gray. This slide shows proposed changes for Fort Hunt Elementary School shown in red, Mount Vernon Woods Elementary School shown in orange, Ibo Valley Elementary School shown in blue, and Groverton Elementary School shown in green. These proposed changes would eliminate attendance islands at Fort Hunt and Grobertton elementary schools. This slide corresponds to the previous slide to align the school feeder pattern and shows proposed change for Sanberg Middle School in purple and Whitman uh middle school shown in pink. This slide corresponds to the previous slide to align the school uh pattern and shows proposed changes for West PTOIC High School shown in purple, Mount Vernon High School shown in red. [snorts] This

169slide shows proposed changes for Holland Mills Holland Medals Elementary School shown in pink and uh Stratford Landing Elementary School shown in purple. This this proposed change would align uh a home in a neighborhood to attend the same elementary school. As we conclude uh this initial comprehensive boundary review, several structures and processes will help uh ensure continuity, monitoring, and uh redress for future boundary adjustments in alignment with the review cycle established by the school board policy 8130. These include a comprehensive plan for establishing a full-time AAP centers at all middle schools, meeting quarterly with a skeleton version of the superintendent boundary review committee. Uh regular updates to the student uh planning areas which will be used to inform future boundary slides. And we we have identified some initial flagged sites for uh future review. On this

170slide, you will see a list of flag areas for future review. This work was uh was this work was not about reviewing our current boundaries. It marks an important step towards establishing a clear, more predictable, and more equitable process for ongoing boundary work. As we move forward, the lessons we learned and insights we've gained will help uh improve and ensure that our systems evolve alongside the needs of students, staff, and families. Um we thank you again. We thank our community. We thank you uh participation throughout the process to the community members who served on the superintendent boundaries review advisory committee for their time, dedication and thoughtful engagement and to the many staff members who countless hours supported this work. Speaking for Dr. Reed, we're grateful for everyone who involved uh involved keeping with our students

171at the heart of every decision and direction we made. We're gonna kick things off with Mr. Fr. >> Thank you. Um, you know, right out the gate after the boundary policy was evaluated and uh changed. Um, it became clear that this would be unusual for the board to deal with. Uh, when secret maps were the discussion that took over social media, the secret maps the school board was sitting on that they don't want you to know about. In fact, these maps we've now learned are so secret that they never made their way into any of these scenarios under consideration by the BRA or the superintendent. Um, but in those early days, it became clear how important it is to engage the community early, often, and with factual information um about what exactly was happening. And

172um I want to talk a little bit about um why the process felt messy. And I feel like part of the reason that the iteration of boundary maps felt messy um was because it was transparent. And you know in earlier times doing boundary work, much of the work would be done behind the scenes on a one-off boundary change that was then brought to the community so the tires could get kicked and then it would get refined and then they would move forward. this time around because the project was much bigger and because we insisted on having a BAC and we didn't want people to think that work was be being done in secret everybody got to see the first draft of the homework the second draft of the homework the third draft of the homework

173the fourth draft of the homework and then the superintendent's homework and so that's why that process was messy and um I do have two areas two of my communities um are in flagged for future review. I'd like to get just an idea of what that's going to entail going forward. Um if somebody could speak to that. >> Yes, sir. I um the flag for future review if uh for those community members watching online or listening in the white paper there's a little more um not a lot more but a little bit more that clarifies why but um and I think you know as we get closer after the public hearing Saturday um I can certainly draft some more language that we can share but um for example I know the uh Brierwood community is one

174that uh the third bullet we did um I did particularly with the Brierwood trace group um I asked the team uh which included our office of safety and security our transportation and facilities to go out and walk the path from the community to the school. I believe it was Marshall Road at that point, right? >> And they were not able to deem it a safe route to school for a variety of reasons. um based on the um traffic flow in you know on that walk. So that was one concern we had. But um if we think about uh the uh request to move to Oakton as a high school, what we want to do in and I believe I put this in the white paper is we won't wait five years, but we're going to

175look two years out after the opening of the Western High School to see how that's going to affect if it does at all. We don't know. um students who may be at Oakton who may choose to go to a different high school or may get caught up in um that Western High School work uh to determine whether there would be room to put another neighborhood of students into um Oakton. So, we're going to re-evaluate that in two years. Uh but we did evaluate the lack of ability to classify it as a safe route to school for elementary. And then the Greenway Downs, Jefferson Village, and Kingsley Commons. [laughter] We're going to look at that area is still not balanced. And we have committed, I think, to looking at the facilities um all the facilities within

176those neighborhoods um within this gap year to be really better prepared with a a thoughtful plan at the next fiveyear mark. >> Yeah. And I think the difficulty in scenario four for that one was that it created another attendance island of a very large population of students. Um and by the time people came up with alternative ideas, it was something that couldn't be implemented in time for >> certainly this year or next year maybe. Um I did want to flag on uh slide 30 the changes that impact Falls Church High School. One little nugget that's missing there that maybe should be added for future consideration is that the false church number showing 113% capacity when the renovation is complete. It'll be 88% capacity. So that's the current structure, not this renovation that Dr. Anderson and

177I have been visiting throughout uh the last several years. Um and so it will not be resulting in an overcrowded school because of a boundary change. That's the current structure. It'll be much lower after it's finished. >> Yes, sir. That's correct. And the same thing happens with Hearnden Elementary. And once the renovation's complete, they'll be able to better accommodate the Coats Elementary School students. So, in a couple areas in the county, we've got a little bit of um we have tight quarters perhaps for a year or until we're able to utilize renovated space. But we'll we'll make sure staff make that edit on that slide. Thank you. >> I also want to thank Donna and Michael and everybody in your team that has done the work on this. Um because in addition to you meeting

178with constituents from across the county who had questions about the things that they'd been hearing, not even necessarily one of the scenarios, just rumors that they'd heard. Um, Michael and Donna did a tremendous job attending community meetings in schools, responding to constituents, not always with extreme detail, but always letting people know that they were at least being heard. Um, and so I'm going to ask for a go back so that I could talk a little bit about what an afteraction report might look like when this work is done so that we can refine it for better improvement in the future. >> Yes, sir. Mr. Dunn, >> uh, thank you. Um, I wanted to thank all the work done both by uh Dr. Reed, all of your team, by uh by Mr. Gordon, by uh Miss

179Samsky before her departure. >> Um, it's been a heroic uh labor. Um, I wanted to ask a few things. Um first of all uh we met several times at community meetings with um parents of students at Lewis High School and they advocated very strongly for enrollment at Lewis to be increased because of historic changes to boundaries that had progressively reduced uh both enrollment at that school and and the academic and extracurricular and athletic opportunities available to those students. So, I wanted to understand what your plan is to address that concern because I don't I don't see it addressed in these proposed boundary changes. >> Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Um, first and foremost, we're looking at transfers um as a first strategy and uh Dr. Pon actually is uh planning to meet with um staff and

180there's a community group as well. So perhaps Dr. Pon, you want to share a moment what your plan is to work with uh Lewis High School and the transfers and I think there also some programming that they're contemplating there. >> Uh yes, we have a planned 14 of this month. Uh we're going to have a roundt where we're going to have a students, boys, parents and uh faculty uh and staff. We have been meeting several times listening to what the concerns are especially with the transfers and what the transfers mean for them and uh with the regulation and how we as a a division can support them to make sure that the numbers are up and you know keeping them more attracted to the children also uh some other ideas that we have so we're

181going to have a roundt uh community when I say community is students, faculty, and staff all to together bringing ideas. >> Thank you. I' I'd like to ask if you could do a similar round table for Mount Vernon High School because it is has a second highest number of transfers in the county and far above other high schools. Um, and so that's definitely an issue that would be very uh welcome at Mount Vernon. >> Definitely uh what we can do also is invite someone from Mount Vernon to to join me that day. so they can see so we can mimic what we are doing there Mount Vernon and and work together. >> Thank you. Um I wanted to understand uh some of the mandatory factors in policy 8130 uh speak to reducing the number of

182trailers and modulars but um that doesn't seem to be a particular focus of the boundary review. So if you can speak to that because we do have 800 classrooms across the county in trailers and modulars. >> Yes sir. So I I do think that's something we were not as successful as we could or should have been. I think that um we also I think have been thoughtful to try to not add trailers. So that that's a positive. But uh I think one of the really positive features about keeping a skeleton group going quarterly is I think we can be as we begin in the on-ramp to the next five years much more strategic and I think that that particular uh focus could be something that um I think we could be much more thoughtful about

183upfront. So, I expect the next round um to begin to minimize the the trailers or begin to be able to remove some of those. >> And and will that be a focus of your quarterly meetings uh going forward? >> Yes, sir. It'll be one of them. >> Um I wanted to understand what your uh performance review of through consulting would be if you were to provide one to the public. I mean, they played a major role in this process and how do you think they they did? So I think that um as Mr. Frion, we're going to be doing an afteraction report which we would want to include them as a party to. So um I think that give me a few weeks to get that uh done and I'd be happy to share that.

184>> Uh do do you believe that FCPS will realize any cost savings as a result of this boundary review? >> I think so. Um, you know, I think some of the cost savings are also sort of I wouldn't say hidden, but if our class, um, you know, hopefully we're going to be saving some transportation dollars. I don't know that it'll be significant. Uh, but I do think that when you have students better positioned in schools, um, you're able to use staff more effectively. Um, so we're hopeful that we'll see some uh cost savings, but I I also hope that as we get young people, as we've cut back on some of the split feeders and some of the distances to schools that we'll have, uh, you know, young people that are better able to engage

185and families better able to engage. Uh so hopefully that uh we'll end up um with a better experience but the fiscal part we'll try to calculate that. >> Has there been any effort to calculate the cost of this boundary review? Not just in terms of the contracts or through consulting but staff time, community meetings, translators, all of those costs and and what that all adds up to at the end of the day. >> That'll be part of our afteraction report. Um we have today 22 attendance islands in this county and only four schools are having their attendance islands eliminated entirely. Two are having them reduced but we're also creating three new attendance islands. So if we're that kind of adds up to a wash. Uh so I was wondering if you could comment on that.

186Well, I think we have to be careful about um one of the attendance islands, I'll put in air quotes, that we created was pulling the off base kids off base, which I I think is the right thing to do. And I don't I I struggle to call that an attendance island, right? Because it's actually better for kids and families. Um and I, you know, I think as we went out in the community, to be honest, Mr. Dunn, and began to talk with families, I think the theory of action going in was that families were more concerned about that than other things. But what we heard is that actually wasn't in some cases their biggest concern. So I think one of the things maybe I learned with years of experience is that I can be wrong,

187right? That what I think maybe is the highest motivating factor for a family or a community might not be. And I think what's important about this process is that as a board all of you were out at meetings a tremendous amount of time that you all put into this too. It's not just staff but you know we listened and we thought and reflected about what we heard and I think that's important to model as well. So, what I guess I would say is where we can remove those moving forward. We should and we shouldn't do it just for a data point if it isn't something that's going to work for our children and families. >> Thank you, >> Dr. Anderson. >> Um, thank you. I do want to start off by saying thank you to

188the BA committee members. I know everybody already said staff, so I I will also say that. But I want to take my little time and really highlight those community members who for no additional pay, not part of their job, devoted hours and hours and hours to this work. Not just the work with the on the committee, but the work that they also engaged in when they came back into the community. Um, and I think we have one person here from the Brack, Mr. Visera is there. I don't know if there's others, but thank you for that long dedication. Um, speaking of the BAT committee, the skeleton crew to which you um referred in this document, have you given any thought yet in terms of its composition? Would it be the exact same members or how

189is that going to be determined in order to still have geographical representation? So we've asked for initial interest and I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of people are interested. So um I think it was hard work but in its own way was hard work as well and uh I would say the committee worked very well together and had tremendously diverse perspectives. Um but uh I think are proud of much of what's been done. I I will get back to you with the composition. We're still in the process of buttoning this up >> um and then getting the western boundary done, but this would start next year. >> Oh, no. Thank you. Absolutely. And also given that um the four areas from the boundary policy um that had to be followed, it seems as if

190we really landed on enrollment and capacity being the driver of at least this goround. >> I think they were the predominant drivers and I also want to remind the board and remind those watching at home that we launched a boundary process about 18 months ago, right? And during that process, we bought a new high school and also not you know I mean fairly recently I was directed to provide a plan for middle school AAP programs in every middle school. So which are these are good things right? So and yet they do in they do have an intersection with this process. So, I think that um as we think about program placement being one of the four, if we're going to end up with an AAP center at every middle school site, then that's going to

191be a key part of kind of thinking ahead. And I will say Mr. Dunn and I were um at the Lorton Station meeting recently. And so what I've had an opportunity to think about are what would be those middle schools of as I come to you in March of the plan that need to be first up. And the fact that [laughter] we're sending middle school AP students from Lordon station to Lake Bradock makes no sense, right? So if we can be if we're moving them, if they're going to Hayfield, if they're going to stay in that pyramid, that's where we need to place a a spot sooner than later, right? So, I feel like I had that program perspective as part of my context. We also don't want to be moving kids if we're going

192to end up creating programs because we don't want to move children twice. >> Sure. >> So, I think that the program piece was there as part of the context. Um, but you're right, the capacity and um proximity I guess was >> and in all full disclosure when we were writing the boundary that's what I thought needed to be the driver because we're not going to add programs where there's no space. >> So it just is the most logical thing to do. Um, that brings me to to my next point in ter and I hate to look ahead while we're still trying to figure this part out. It's not yet a done deal, but I had a wondering in looking through some of the schools that now are falling significantly below capacity. We've already had some

193that exist, but there have been some others now based on the readjustments for tennis islands and split feeders. I I I would want to know at the appropriate time, what is the thinking for those schools? And you know, I have a few that I noted here that are really in the low 70s. And these are schools and spaces that I think would be ripe for preschool programming because I've always had the concern um one of the schools in my community, we know the entire fifth grade was put outside in trailers so that we could include preschool programming which is serving the students um of nearby. But I wonder if there was another school that was close by that had low capacity, could we then move those programs there in order to bring those K5 kids

194back into the building? So, I'm really interested in what is our general plan with those schools that are significantly under capacity. Um, one of the things I want to pivot and talk about are obviously my community schools. Um, and I did appreciate um, Mr. Gordon talking about how with Can I finish that sentence? And then before I go to go back, I appreciate that um, Mr. Gordon talked about how um, those schools were part of some board directives. I I saw the work at Coats. It's beautiful at 89%. But I I want to be sure that I shared that the work at Parklon, the numbers that you described were just with the modulars. Without the modulars, there is still significant um overcrowding. Um so I will pause here and ask for a go back. >>

195Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Uh Miss Marin. >> Okay, the day is here. Um so I I guess I have two buckets of questions and comments. one is the general and the approach and then the other is specific things that 100mill constituents have asked me and it's it's just kind of curious that we're going to dig into these details right here and now. I'm also feeling like it's up to us members to clarify these questions and it it just doesn't seem like it's as um planful as I I would hope. Like I'm looking to be briefed on what you're saying. So um I I guess I we'll start with the general questions. I think um well I think you know what's we talked a little bit about Western but we need to understand how the the

196decisions today intersect that more. Um is there anyone being changed in these recommendations who could be then changed again? >> No ma'am. No, not for next year, the year after or the third year, like for fall of 26, but knowing that it's an optin and the western boundary won't kick in as required until the third year. Isn't that correct? >> I believe so. It's opt in, opt out, then a boundary in year three. That's correct. >> So, so let me be clear. Are there any residencies proposed to be changed for school boundaries in your recommendation that in three years could be required to be boundaried into Western? >> I don't believe so. >> Okay. I have questions about specific recommendations that I had which again in hindsight I would like to be celebratory that this

197has been a very robust process and as I shared in my email to you on Sunday after receiving an advanced copy of the materials the way you've compiled the you know number of split feeders reduced and attend attendance islands like and the capacity info that's really great stuff and I would love to you you know, celebrate that. I also just need to understand about more about the changes to the assignments like Tyson's Green. Um, I just want to confirm my understanding. Tyson's Green. So, this is a neighborhood on it's impacted on slide 21 and 20. 21 is the high school uh slide. So, Tyson's Green is currently assigned to Marshall. I learned from constituent thread that you were emailing about that priority high school flexibility will occur for Tyson's Green families for the fall of

198and families can seek flexibility for a Madison student to go to Madison. Is that a correct understanding? >> Correct. The boundaries not being changed. The community still is boundaried to Marshall. Um but we believed based on the number of families in that neighborhood that there will still be room at Madison. So we would start with them as a priority transfer um for Madison but not for the middle school because we're not able to row is um over capacity. So we can't make it a clean feeder and um it would be treated as a transfer as far as transportation as well that they would have to provide their own transportation. >> Yes. So but additionally the constituent asked a good question of will the priority transfer be treated as a standard transfer from Marshall to Madison

199about mandatory AP classes and no sports in the first year or will they be transferring as if they had been zoned to Madison? And I shared with that constituent that that question hasn't been answered yet. The Mr. Horn and the team are working through that because VHSL also has new rules around transfers. May I ask why my question wasn't answered by you on Sunday asking these same things. >> I don't know because I didn't get it to you. I think we got an answer to you yesterday. Um, how should those in Tyson's Green who opt to go to Madison communicate this change to the Kilmer staff? Because right now the eighth graders are picking courses. Um, is there paperwork that they should fill out? >> We're going to be in touch with the principles um

200this week about that. >> So, and this will be my last thought. Please provide us with that information because as you can see, as I said before, the community turns to the school board for answers and we're trying to partner with you in this work. >> Miss St. John County. >> Um, so first of all, I want to thank everyone that worked on this. This was a monumental project and I obviously actually want to thank my colleagues for initiating this work. I know that when we first got together, we all said this is something that has been a long time coming. Um there's a lot of conversation about whether we should or shouldn't do it. Uh I've worked in the system for 26 years and I've seen the issues involved with um consistently not addressing

201boundary issues. So I'm really proud that we've taken this on. I'm proud of the process where we decided that if we were going to do it individually. That wasn't going to work because then there would be turf wars between us and that we handed it over to our very capable staff that has done immense work. Um I appreciate that you listened and that we all listened and that we all learned. Um there are some people that will say this isn't gone too this has not gone far enough. Uh but I think that the thoughtful approach and listening ities and getting communities adjusted to the idea that this is something we're going to consistently do is important. I know that with some of our my constituents, I've had to explain to them when they have said,

202"Well, why wasn't our split beater removed?" And it's like when when you look at some specific situations, there's competing priorities. It's like these schools are at capacity. So, where are we going to put these kids, you know? So then we can't eliminate the split feeder. And I know that that was difficult because we gave you instructions that sometimes were conflicted. And I appreciate again the thoughtful approach that was um done with all this. And that that that was really the comment that I wanted to make. Um I I actually was at Lewis High School this morning speaking to staff and speaking to students. Uh I do know that um the community's concern about having a larger student population has been voiced. But what has also been voiced to me very strongly is we don't want

203you to boundary people to come to our school that don't want to be here. We would rather not have them here. And I think that that's where we listen. And I think that's where we work on getting the right kind of programming there and and we make it a place where people want to be. And that's my goal. And I've been working very closely with that community. Uh because as much as they say they want a bigger school, they have very vehemently told me we do not want people that do not want to be here. And that's where we start to listen. And so, um, I think we've got some good ideas, um, that we we can develop for Lewis and looking at the transfer, but overall, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Mystix.

204I'm picking up from my colleagues. Thank you. Thank you again uh for for this uh comprehensive [clears throat] boundary review. And uh when we I was new in the board like many of us and uh this idea of doing a comprehensive bond review was little overwhelming because it was not done for 40 years and you took that challenge and took the board's directions for for it. Uh thankful to team uh and also I would like to encourage you know appreciate the parents and the community members. um you know uh I've been to few boundary meetings uh in my district and uh the parents have been very supportive, very respectful, the conversations have been um you know nothing was you know nobody was yelling or shouting u in any of those meeting even if they were

205upset. So it just shows the maturity of our our community as in general. Um there are most of our um you know districts have evened out well and people are relatively happy but uh some are going to come tomorrow I guess if they have any certain lingering issues uh with what's been addressed but um I would say that u this board has taken up this task and I'm I'm hoping that with this kind of boundary review doesn't have to happen for the next uh you know any any other time we just keep just do the cyclical review and and just move move forward so our community doesn't have to worry about this continuous changes uh so I appreciate this thank you so much Dr. Eid and uh we'll be seeing hearing tomorrow what the sorry

206on Saturday thank you >> Mr. Mood >> thank you madam chair thanks for the presentation I don't want to comment upon your voice anymore because Uh you've been talking way too much tonight, you should be you should be taking a rest. Uh but since you are there, I'm going to have to ask a few questions for this is a slide number 37. Slide number 37 for the future review. The areas which are marked listed for the future review. Is it possible for you to provide us why they are not being considered right now for each one of them? It could be the same reason. >> Sure. you know out of time or I mean if you could provide written responses that would be better a a and also since I'm asking for each one of

207these and also why this is being will be reviewed in the future uh uh that will be helpful for me to respond to the inquiries from the committees who may have a questions who may be concerned about what may follow in the future. >> Yes sir. >> Okay. That's one comment and request. Second one is a you know I'm not too surprised that we focused on capacity enrollment because that has been consistently the practice by the former boards look look at the look at the capacity as the major driver to make the boundary adjustments. Uh what I have a lot of questions about at this point is correct me if I am wrong about uh when we will be looking at middle school AAP centers. Is that are we having the work session in March

208of this year? >> The directive I got received from the board was that I was to bring you a plan by March 2026. So we'll have a plan and then of course you know board board will discuss and make a decisions whether to do it or if if we do it when that's going to be implemented etc. If if the board wants that to be implemented in August, that's going to affect a lot of boundaries. So perhaps board may not do that. But if the board make a decision to do it but delay that to the following or 2027, they will still they will still affect a lot of these boundaries. I mean that is my assumption. Am I am I way off with those assumptions? >> I would never say that, Mr. Moon. Um,

209but what I would say is what I how I responded, I think, to Dr. Anderson earlier as well, which is there [clears throat] is an intersection on the middle school EAP and this work. When I come in March, I can almost guarantee you it's going to be a phased plan. there's no way we can add [clears throat] every middle school program in the same year because we have to have credentialed teachers um you know and be thoughtful in our plan. So, I think that we'll see several a year for a couple years. And what I was trying to do is I was sitting down with staff to look at the boundary recommendations would be to try to make sure I'm threading the program plan with the boundary work, which as I shared the example with

210that Mr. Dunn and I were dealing with where we're actually transporting kids all the way to Lake Bradock instead of to their secondary school they're going to attend. I think that we are able to there going to be some of those changes that will be much cleaner than others, but as we run the numbers for what happens if we keep students at their school, it's going to shift the capacity again at the middle schools, which will inform the next five-year review. So, you're correct. >> Okay. Uh thank thank you uh Dr. Re. One more question is deals with because I have a list of a a boundary adjustments potential boundary adjustments from the scenario number four which are not reflected in your recommendations. Some of them may be a on the same list page number

21137 for the f future review. You know, if you could point out which from the scenario four that are not part of your final recommendations are completely open. >> I don't know if I could do all of that tonight, but I can make sure we have that for you, sir. >> You know, I don't expect you to do tonight and and and and you know, if you could as you provide the responses to all your questions. If you could also include response to this request, I appreciate that. And as far as a particular >> Mr. Moon, that's your last one. Okay. >> So that I don't need to ask go back is I'm gonna wait until after the public hearing to ask more technical questions. >> Yes, >> Miss Lady. >> Thank you. Um, and

212I wanted to be uh sure to make sure I thanked staff for the hard work on alleviating coats. Um, and and again when I look at the slide and the capacity changes, I guess the main thing there is there was no modular coats. So with this these changes, may I assume that all of those learning cottages will be removed from the campus? >> Mr. Gordon, >> learning cottages. Oh, we're we have a team in the facilities office that are providing us. They're listening and providing answers. You know, I I just want to say while we're waiting for that answer, we've got people here at back at the facilities office. This is an all hands on deck activity and I couldn't be prouder of the team. So, what' they say? We will need to monitor development

213in and around codes. >> I mean the only reason I ask because if the capacity really is going to go from 137% to 86% there's no notation here related to learning trailers cottages. >> I think the guidance is clear. Every bit every effort we can to get rid of modular units and trailers will will is our intent your intent. So um >> so well I guess my question is does that 137 to 86% include it because there's no notation next to it. >> So granted we can come back with that answer. So I mean it's a full look at capacity programs analysis. >> Okay. >> So for sure some of them are going away. I can't say all of them but yes. >> Okay. I just if it could be noted to some. >> Yeah.

214I think what Miss Lady is saying is we need to have the number next to it. So >> yeah. >> Yes ma'am. >> So the other thing I want to say is I want to thank my colleague who opened us. Um I think that uh Mr. Fris did an excellent job of explaining sort of like how interwined this work is. Um I appreciate the honesty from you regarding learning, right? Um because that's what we're in the business of is learning and I think we learned a lot. Um, I also think the intersectionality of Western High School, our requests for AAP cohorts or centers in all of our middle schools is intertwined. And when I studied what I and I appreciate my colleague's question about are any potential kids who are going to be bounded in

215three years or two whatever the timing is to Western currently being moved here and certainly my study of all these it didn't look like that was going to be the case. So, I very much appreciate that answer because we don't want to move students twice. Um, but it also points to why the movement at the high school level is under 600 kids. Um, so I appreciate that. Um, I also am excited that this work will continue. Um, and we will be doing this, you know, every five years but building up to it because I think it does take time. Um I I as my other colleagues have said I understand why uh you know um capacity was a priority. I I certainly hope that we will get to all four aspects of the policy um

216in the next iteration. And um you know I I think the other thing that that I certainly delighted in was I didn't speak to any constituents who were asking to get out of their school. Nobody called me and said, "Please move me out of my school." >> And it's fascinating and I just want to uplift that because there were some disparaging things said and it that pains me and that's part of the after paper about the fact that we're going to have to lay some groundwork and say we're not going to disparage any other school or person or neighborhood because that's not what we do. But what was delightful was nobody asked to be moved um out of their place because I think that what that says is what every place every school in our

217in our county is its own hidden gem. And when you step foot inside, you recognize that the wonder that's there and the learning that's there. Um and you know that's makes me proud to be part of this board. So again, thank you for this hard work. >> Well said. I'm gonna take a very fast turn and I have to admit that I was one of those people that looked at the final recommendations and I said, "Man, I wish that we had done more." Um, and then I thought about what I have told constituents the entire time during this process is that um it took us 40 years to create this problem over time. Um, and it's going to hopefully it doesn't take us 40 years to dig out, but it's going to take us a

218while. And so what I love about this and what I'm the most hopeful is what we've learned is that we need to keep going. Um, and we've learned that this is the first step in an iterative process and we can't stop again. And so I am grateful for the fact that the board looked ahead to in include that iterative process in in the policy so that we can keep going and that we can use this as an opportunity to talk to parents about what they've learned through this process, what we've learned through this process and how we can make it better for the next time. Because I agree transparency is messy. I mean we we we let people come along and watch how everything was being done and that is uncomfortable thing when you're trying

219to untangle something that's so interwoven here. Um, one thing I will say is that I don't know that we have the list of of areas that still need to be addressed all the way complete. And so I do anticipate that I will bring some sort of follow on that adds the area um within my district that I think is the one that if nothing else we need to have on our radar, which I know we already do, but I think that putting it in the decision I think is an important aspect of this. So um right now my most contentious area in my entire district was the West Springfield community. Um it is the tightest boundary of almost any high school we have. It's over capacity and no one wants to move and I watched

220throughout the 18 months the concern move around the school just in the circle and no one wanted to move any of those kids out of that school and there were no good solutions because it like I said school was renovated in 2019 tightest boundary we've got um and so I appreciate the fact that we took a measured approach here I think that I agree with the community that we need to keep an eye on what's going on with capacity there. Um I don't anticipate that what what is being seen in the numbers is necessarily going to turn up, but I think that it's worth it to watch. So it's going to be one of those areas that I think that we need to keep going with watching just to make sure that if there is

221capacity relief that can be provided to that school because we've done everything else, right? Um I think that that is a spot where we might need to to keep watching. So but I am grateful for the the work of the team. I am grateful for the fact that you all were willing to go along with this with us. Um is that I understand that this was a monumental undertaking and you haven't paused a single moment and said, "Man, we shouldn't do this." Um what you said is this is important work and we need to keep going. So I appreciate the fact that you took that approach with us rather than um anything else that could have happened. So um we have a couple people for gobacks. So we're going to start off with Mr. Fr.

222>> Thank you. [clears throat] One thing that uh I think would be helpful in the future, um in 2023, I went through all of the CIPs that we'd had since I'd been on the board just to see what kind of progress we'd made on trailers and modulars uh countywide and in Providence District in particular. And uh I was able to find that we' reduced the number of trailers in Providence District by about 25% over that four or five year period. Um the number was roughly the same for the entire county, a little bit lower. Um, it was higher for Providence because we had a lot of big schools that had been renovated in that five-year period. [clears throat] So, when they lost their trailers after their projects were completed, obviously they um only needed them

223because the renovation was happening or because it'd been a while since renovation. So, it'd be helpful to get that information because I do think just anecdotally scanning through the documents, it would show us that there's around a 20% drop in the number of trailers over the last five years in FCPS. That's going to be different from region to region, school to school, but overall it's still going in the right direction. So, I want to applaud that. I want to talk a little bit about and I also want to echo the comments about our BRAC members. they uh were phenomenal and responsive and very much appreciated. Um I want to talk a little bit about the afteraction report um and particularly um how you see engaging folks who uh had eyes on this project um and

224um how that feedback can be used to improve practices going forward because what I keep telling people is like one of the best accomplishments of this goround is yes it's good to see that we've made some progress on the boundaries. It's showing people that we can do it and that it's and that it's responsive to community feedback. Um, you know, in some areas you just get a letter in the mail that says where you're going to school next year. >> Um, it's usually the place you went before. Um, but we're going to have to do a cultural reset here where people get used to the idea that this is an ongoing iterative process. So, how do you engage people who were watching very closely and will have the most input, valuable input to offer? So,

225is that a question? Okay. Um, I think we're going to have to actually finish the process and then um also get the uh the Western High School process done. But I think this summer as we, you know, um, everyone gets their lives back, uh, their postboundary lives, I think, uh, we'll need to over the course of the spring develop a plan for how we would do that. So, I be, uh, um, I know that staff have a high interest in that at this point. So, um, perhaps I'll share a draft of that later this spring and get some feedback from the board. um from the advisory committee um and the community. But I think you know all the voices that participated, it would be great to hear from them about um thoughts on moving forward.

226>> Um Dr. Anderson, >> thank you. Can you speak a little bit in terms of how tightly or loosely coupled your recommendations are ba um as compared to what the committee recommended the brack [snorts] >> I would say they're fairly close there probably some exceptions thank you and I would be remiss if I didn't share this because my community is frustrated you know as Mr. Gordon raised earlier, you know, the Bradic Park, I'm sorry, the Glasgow park lawn were supposed to be part. There were separate motions by the board like coats and yet scenario one, two, three came and went. Nothing for those communities. Scenario four came. Nothing for the communities. We ended up in what I've been envisioning or calling like four plus and it didn't come with the same provisions as the others.

227It didn't come with the same timetable. The explorer tool did not have the information, the time to give feedback, the community outreach, that was a big miss. Although I I I think the what was provided are reasonable, the presentation, the roll out of that, it was a big miss for that community. And there's a lot of um there's a lot of resentment about that. So, I just want to make sure that that's said to you here because I know we've talked about this before. Um given that now we know that there's 2,200 students to be moved. I hope that your analysis of transportation can include that exact number or what that as a as a higher end as because we know some people will make different decisions. So I'm looking forward to that when we

228start talk about the transportation piece. Um I would also um want to ask about the schools that you flagged for the future. Brandar Park. What is it that you're thinking there? >> So, I think as Mr. Moon asked, I'll be creating a paragraph for each of those items about why why I flag them and um what the intent is. But I think Binmar Park, one of the things we looked at was that we heard that they felt that Annale was too far to be moved. And when we had suggested Lewis being closer, uh, we didn't really have time at that point, it didn't feel respectful or thoughtful to try to move forward. But, uh, we do want to start earlier in engaging that community to talk through, um, if Annale is too far, would Lewis

229be a better option? And we also wanted to give Dr. Pon an opportunity to think about what programs are we going to be citing at Lewis. So, the reason they're on the watch is we've got to be very intentional from the get-go to make sure that we're connecting with that community and if you know trying to make that determination between um Anandale and Lewis. Thank you. I appreciate that. But in the vein of has been said when that was discussed, the community was veheumly against it. So, I wanted to make sure that I raised that. And also there was that conversation of 395 east and west. There was certainly a divide there regarding distance to Anendelle High School. So hopefully that is all part of your future discussions. Um one of the questions that I've

230been asked by community members is what should be their expectation based on the public hearing. People are going to come out and offer testimony. Some people feel that it's just going to fall on deaf ears and it will have no bearing. I'd like for you to speak to that. Yes, ma'am. Well, I the public hearing is the board's hearing. So, I my expectation would be that if we hear something that um you know gives us pause or there's a better idea or we've made an error or there's something um that could be improved, you know, we're going to be there taking notes. Um and you know, we want to get this right. I don't have any ego wrapped up in this. It's uh really about making sure that these are the very best boundaries that

231we can for student learning and um communities and neighborhoods. So, I would encourage people if they feel like um there's something that doesn't we could improve in the recommendations to share and if they're not able to come Saturday, you know, send an email. Can you also articulate the specificity that was in your email? Because I know in my community there were some um there was some confusion. If individuals were not able to sign up for Saturday, are we allowing them to come to the CIP to speak about boundaries as well? >> Yes, ma'am. It's my understanding that uh people can sign up for the CIP public hearing which will be Tuesday evening up until 4:30 tomorrow evening, Friday the 9th. and the there will be an opportunity for overflow is what was referred to in

232the note. Overflow boundary feedback. >> Dr. Reid, can I also add really quickly is that we also allow certain people like people can come to the to the um public hearing on Saturday and actually sign up in person. um we reserve no no fewer than five spots but there is room within the capacity for for that hearing to add more people. >> Sure. But the reason that I really wanted to share this it's the point that I made earlier the community for the park law Glasgow piece it was not in the explorer tool. So people did not even know like am I in that spa? They don't know what that is. It's like some people can very easily see, but others that are on the border, they really needed to have the opportunity to plug

233in their address to see the impact. And they were not able to do that until last night after the public hearing closed. So that's why that's why there's a lot of angst. >> Was that another question? >> No, I did not ask a question. I just made a statement. Um, and then I think Mr. Fr talked about the false church because I also had that as an inquiry. Just wanted to make sure that we shared with people that is the now um number, not the post renovation capacity. >> Yes, ma'am. I can confirm that. >> Okay, Mr. Dunn. >> Um, thank you. I wanted to uh if you could please uh comment on the bullet that refers to Lorton Station Elementary, Loyal Hill Elementary, and Gunston Elementary, and just provide some context for my constituents.

234>> Is this on the flag sites? >> Yes. >> Okay. Yes, Mr. Dunn. I my intent is to come back to the board in January of 27, so a year from now, with a recommendation um related to the neighborhoods in that area and uh specifically our Hegel Circle neighborhood um because it it feels like we need to be really thoughtful about how we move forward because there is a complex ask there. It wasn't just um providing a shorter transportation for Hegel Circle, but also consideration of the Lake Bradic AP um and a possible uh better, excuse me, [clears throat] a different connection with South County. So, for us to be thoughtful, we really wanted to do that as one thoughtful conversation and it's going to take us about a year to process that. We've also

235heard that um recently there was a a a thought put forward that maybe there was um a part of the neighborhood that might be closer to Laurel Hill that would create more room for students to be at um Lorton station. So, uh, for this one year, we're going to be providing, um, enhanced transportation for our Hegel Circle students who attend Halley for that, uh, double back if necessary. And I've also asked Mr. Muick to look into the possibility of adjusting the start time so that, uh, traffic would keep our traffic wouldn't be such a a significant issue for our Hegel Circle drive. I think might be able to shorten the drive if we're adjusting school time. So, we're trying to mitigate issues for this one year. Um, and also the opportunity to maybe think about

236a path that could be cut through. I know we've had a lot of discussion on the maps, but um, I had an opportunity to meet with all the principles involved, not Laurel Hill, but the other three, Gunston, Halley, and Morton, the regional assistant superintendent, um, our central office staff, uh, Dr. Bonce, Dr. King and I think there's a real commitment to get this right. Um and just make sure that we don't rush. We've waited 40 years. 41 is okay. Um but we're really committed to coming up with a solution and involving the community in this and coming back to you in January 27. >> Thank you. Um I wanted to also ask um there had been some discussion uh during the early and mid part of the boundary review about moving uh sixth grade into

237u middle school. Um ultimately that's not part of this recommendation. Uh but I wanted to ask you what your what your thinking is on that long term and there are schools like Brenmar Park that are K through five and then at one point there was discussion about moving them into Lewis which is uh you know 78 for for middle school at key. So, uh, you know, it does create complexity when we have some middle schools that are 6 through eight and others that are 78. And I was wondering if you have any thoughts long term about whether that experiment as the very first community being at Glasgow Middle School that that community termed it uh was intended to be transitional to all middle schools, you know, two decades ago becoming six through six through eight.

238That didn't happen. Um so should that experiment continue indefinitely which makes boundary changes very difficult for schools between and among po Glasgow homes uh and the surrounding schools or should that experiment be be wound down at some point? I think that it um in my opinion it's a preferred model to have sixth grade in middle school six78 and um I think it's space constrained right now for us unless we use whole buildings differently. I think as we look at our enrollment demographics over the next couple years I think we will hopefully see patterns that will enable that that to occur in uh spaces but right now we're space constrained. Um, but you're right, it adds another element of um, complexity. >> I I I'd just like to ask since it has been discussed, but it's

239never been formally presented to the school board as a recommendation, as a presentation during our work session, if if if there could be something brought to the school board. So, there could be a decision made because it is a big inconsequential thing and it does complicate our school boundary reviews, which will be happening every five years at least. Um, so if there can be some formal decision made with your recommendation, that would be helpful just to establish a direction for us at least. >> Yes, sir. I I think that actually makes sense. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Yes, sir. I shouldn't say actually it does make sense. So, yes. >> Thank you both to Dr. Reed and um Mr. Bordon. So, thank you so much for this portion of the presentation. Um we are going

240to move on to um 8.02 academic matters. So I call on hopefully I call on Dr. Reid for academic matters. >> All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm going to have some staff support this as well. Um, I I want to start by just giving a couple data points and then I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Seth and Dr. King. Um I you know I know there's a concern around our partnership with open AI and I also want to share that in thinking about the work that we're doing here in this partnership it is important to note that currently um research indicates that 72% of teens in our amazing country are using AI or have used AI companions and with really no guidance direction in general um and really no safety guard

241rails around those today. A third of those students who have used an AI companion actually find it more satisfying than their human conversations and relationships, which I find very concerning. And perhaps the most concerning is that a quarter of those who've used AI companions have shared private information with those AI companions. And so when I think about that data and I shared that with our ESPIs and our T-Specs as we are developing training for the adults only the adults in our school division. We as adults have to better understand AI to make sure we provide clear direction and guidance to our children. And most adults who are educators or operational staff right now in the school division did not have AI as part of their educational preparation. So, it's critical that we partner with a

242uh professional group that can provide the training, the awareness, the wherewithal for our staff to understand these tools so that we here in Fairfax County Public Schools can shape this conversation and not be shaped by the tools. So, I am um and you can do that. We must do that actually and we must continue to do it in a measured and thoughtful way and we're going to be very measured in our approach and disciplined in our approach and we're going to continue moving forward on this topic as our children need us to know more about it to provide thoughtful guidance. So recently actually we [clears throat] did this training and Dr. King, Mr. Seth, Dr. Prescidio, Dr. Riley, we're on a panel. I'm gonna just take one more drink and then I'm gonna step aside.

243I want to say that it's important that we're intentional about this topic and um it's obvious why Mr. Seth and Dr. Prescidio would be involved in this, right? Academics and it I want you to know that it's just as essential to Dr. Kings involved because equity and access for our young people in every school, not just schools where the adults are excited about learning about this, but we have to make this an every school um proposition. And so I've been very proud of the team uh for their collaborative approach and I'm going to turn it over to them this evening. >> Thank you, Dr. Reid. And good evening, morning almost board. Um we are here today shake to share updates on our AI implementation work FCPS and I want to say that I'm really really

244excited about this work and the opportunities for open access for our students when it comes to um the integration of AI and yes we know that we're talking about the adults right now but our students are already using AI so it's important for our adults um to be trained and um so that we can support our students when we're ready to go that route why this work matters now. We believe that this is our spunk spunk neck moment. We as a nation, as educators, need to acknowledge the world around us is changing faster and ever than ever before. Jack Welch, chairman of GE, believe companies must adapt quickly to change or face failure, famously stating, "Change before you have to." For us as a nation to be globally competitive over the coming decades, we must

245start building a deep understanding of emerging AI technologies. Only with deep understanding will we as educators be able to thoughtfully integrate AI into our curriculums. Our guiding principles create a starting point where innovation Oops, excuse me. Can you next slide please? I'm sorry. Thank you. Our guiding principles create a starting point where innovation must align with what matters most. Human connection, legal standards, and ethical practices. In this journey, we can choose to collaborate with the top AI labs, building and shaping the learning tools to always protect our children from the harms and the biases that can happen um and and be or be passive partners. um ensuring that our thinking as educators is reflective in the tools we enable our children to interact with them. Our IT procurement and legal teams ensure that for any

246AI tool reaches the classroom. It goes through our vendor evaluation cycle. Privacy is non-negotiable. FERPA compliances first always. FCP also requires, excuse me, FCPS also requires vendors with access to student data commit to FCPS data privacy agreements. This isn't a fast process. Like Dr. Reed said, it's intentional. Our team has had multiple engagements with the community on this topic over the past year. On October 7th, the school board hosted a work session where we discussed the topic in depth. Our leadership team along with external experts provided updates and responded to schoolboard inquiries. Our presenters shared ways in which AI is continuously and fundamentally transforming our world affecting both the workplace force and education. And I want to um take a moment to share that Sam from Open AI um during his presentation um shared how

247you can use the tool to have a conversation with a parent about their kid in whatever language we need them to have. And in that moment, I was reflecting of my time in principal and how I would have to wait for my parent liaison or the support services to be able to have those conversations and how exciting it would be for our parents to be able to communicate with them in the moment using a tool so effectively. Following the schoolboard work session, our IT team worked to set up a public night on the topic of AI on November 3rd and many of you were there. We hosted our first uh community event, meeting the moment. The event hosted an interactive expo where the community explored innovative AI tools. Dr. Reed also shared our strategy and

248thinking around AI tools, evaluations, and all approved AI tools must undergo. Again, critically the tagline that emerged which continues to define our work is FCPS is meeting the moment with AI leading with humanity. I'll turn it over to Ger. Uh we want to highlight next slide. We want to highlight uh the key partners bringing leading AI technologies to FCPS. Uh Google with it unwavering commitment to providing safe and secure AI tools that builds upon a deep and long-standing partnership with them. Play Lab which focuses on creating with AI which is different than consuming with AI amplifying student imagination and part innovation. And this product and the capability Dr. mentioned earlier is going to materialize when our students come together in the competition which is we're really excited about. They have such innovative ideas in the

249hopper right now. Uh this is in midFebruary. Everyone is always excite invited is a public event. Uh and the last one Chad GPD for teachers which materialized this December is a version of Chad GPD designed for education institutions prioritizing privacy and security for education use. As we had mentioned a little bit earlier and we want to certainly commit to it again. All our vendors who have access to sensitive data must commit to FCPS data privacy requirements and have gone through legal and procurement reviews before they can be brought into the environment and use with our student data. Next slide. Uh staff training opportunities. Uh we want to build capacity for this work and we must invest substantially in staff training. With the initial uptake provided as optional staff-based and online training, we are now rapidly

250providing working to provide targeted training opportunities for key tech support staff at schools. Uh we just mentioned earlier on January 6, which was actually this Tuesday, we hosted an event for our spits and keyspecs where we had this opportunity to debrief with them and share some training. We'll also be doing similar training for our building leaders very shortly at the next ACPM. By blending these facets, we are bridging the gap between knowing and doing. We'll continue to scale up training for adults, ensuring AI literacy is universal and supporting all at FCPS. Next slide. Uh we're also excited under Dr. uh Reed's leadership, we will be forming a FCPS think tank, a high impact advisory body that will report directly to the superintendent. Uh we need recognized leaders from diverse fields, business, academia, ethics, technology and

251community advocacy to participate in this and we join them in building something unprecedented together. A national model in for AI and education that puts humanity first. Thank you guys. We're going to kick things off with Dr. Anderson and then Miss Dixit. Thank you. Just a very few comments as I share with Dr. Reed during many conversations. You know, I'm very excited about this possibility. This is a thing that, you know, it could really change so much of the way that we do business. And I'm always looking for ways to reduce the workload on our teachers, particularly because we're asking them to do more and more. Um, and also I'm very guilty. I use AI just about every day. Um, as of the last probably five, six months or so. I I live with a person

252who's been using it every day for years and their organization has devoted many many resources in order to do that well. And when I was asked that >> who what's your what's your AI department? I'm like we don't have an AI department. We have an IT department. He's like but these are different things. If you don't have an AI department that's going to connect it to instruction, connect it to planning, connect it to even it, you're not doing this right. But we're also not Loheed Martin. We don't have, you know, $15 million to dump into an AI department. So I realize that on the other hand, we have this concern that's just been growing and growing with parents who are reading about how kids are involving themselves with chat boxes and then they're selfharming and

253they're not engaging. And that's the worry. That's the balance that we need to walk. And we have teachers who want nothing to do with AI because they are very concerned about academic integrity. We have some that are ready to get started. But what we need to be in this moment, I think, in order to bring everyone along with us is to have way more clarity with our parents. We are saying that there's we're going to go measure, we're going to be measured and thoughtful. Nobody knows what that means. what they are hearing right now which I can't necessarily counter is that teachers are going to use AI and it's going to trickle somehow to my kids and I don't know what that is what is that measured approach what is that thoughtful approach articulate that

254so people can see and of course you have the added measure of people being very concerned the p parts of the public and they've been here since December were very concerned about the groups that we are partner partnering with and perhaps the lack of um structure, the lack of guard rails. Those are the things that I think we need to tick off before we move forward. But I'll pause and hear your thoughts. >> Yeah, thank you for raising that. We're also in the process of crafting an AI website presence um that will be able to articulate responses to much of what you've raised. Um and I think [cough] [clears throat] once we're able to um I'll I'll let Gotham talk a little bit about that for just >> Yeah. Uh so a couple of things

255in terms of the AI website, right? We recognize that our parents need probably as much support. Not every family has someone who's been devoted to this. So there is a lot of understanding and sometimes lack of. And our goal is to be able to create a parent community place where parents can come in and get online courses and possibly engage with our family engagement groups and learning about AI in general. And you can see the intentional deliberate work in our focus on getting the adults in the system trained up. The roll out of AI in almost any organization as you recognize uh with your personal experiences is somewhat of a jagged experience. There are people who use it jagged in terms of it's not straight and smooth. There are those who use it and get

256the acceleration and they can start moving much faster with the work they have and there are those who are waiting to kind of learn about it and then apply to it. Our goal is to try and smoothen that experience without demanding lots of hours of our staff to come in and sit in on training. Right? A corporate can certainly do that but our restrictions in terms of what we can put in forward in front of our staff is limited by the time that's available. So it's a balancing act between how can we introduce them to this technology and not necessarily demand the usage across the board. >> I understand that. But I think this is a space where the tail is wagging the dog a little bit. We've gone out of the gate without that

257communication that we just spent several hours talking about. This is a piece where I don't think we've been as intentional about the parent engagement awareness. Yes. engagement and feedback. I don't think we have gotten there and we could do a little bit better to partner so that we don't have this kind of resistance that is moving forward. And when teachers are utilizing this, what does this mean again? What are the guard rails? What are teachers utilizing this just for themselves and nothing will come to teacher to students? Are parents going to be able to opt out if they do not want or they're not yet comfortable with how we are rolling this out in order to have their children not participate? Is that an option? >> So, first and foremost, I think we've um we

258have had several community communications around the uh topic of AI. We had our meeting the moment uh community event. Um, I've sent a note out about our open AI partnership to uh families in the school division. And right now our rollout is limited to only the adults in the school division. Period. As we get um as we continue to develop that work with the adults, we'll be make we'll be providing more communication well before there'll be any um student uh instruction that would be connected in any way to what the um adults are doing. And I so I um I think a lot of the questions you're asking will be determined prior to those decisions around the type of roll out. I If I were a parent right now, well, I am a parent, but

259I mean, if I was a parent of a high school student or a middle school student right now, I'd be far more concerned about what I don't know that my student is doing with AI because I think even our staff was surprised to realize that 72% based on research of teenagers in the United States right now have already either experimented or are using an AI companion. So, you know, without guidance from educators or direction and maybe without even the knowledge of their parent. So, I think that it's very important that we contemplate how to really understand these tools as educators um and make sure that we're being thoughtful with our our families and our young people to keep them safe. Um, I will also say that we're hearing from parents regularly that want that want

260instruction now, right? That um are feeling like in some ways we're spending a lot of time trying to decide how to talk with students about AI because it might be dangerous when they're already using it. And our kids are saying, you know, Dr. Reid, we're already they can show me 10 different ways, right? They're using AI to create study sheets. are using AI to do role model and you know you guys are you know what they're using it for and so we're still trying to talk about how to talk about it to them and so I I really think that um we're going to have to uh sort of move off the sidelines and back into the game here in terms of shaping our future. And I I certainly take um I appreciate the feedback

261on the communication and prior to any move towards students guaranteed we're going to be doing a lot more. >> No, I I appreciate that and two things can be true at the same time because I'm kind of there and our community is there. But I also want to make sure we're not conflating communication with engagement. when we're sending things out one way, there's really no structured space for that feedback to be received and giving you lots of food for thought. But again, as we are rolling this out, because yes, we have got to get started because this has been moving along. We have to decide how FCPS will be engaging, but we need to also be very clear with our community. What is it that teachers are going to do and what is going to

262be that impact to your child and do you have a voice to say yes I want my child to engage and no I do not want my child to engage. I think that will reduce a lot of angst. >> Yes ma'am. >> Thank you Dr. Anderson. Uh Miss Dixit >> um thank you for the presentation. Um I don't know what what the angst about about the whole world is using AI especially um in more the developed countries. Um in fact China many of my colleagues who went to China for the conference they to came and mentioned that China is way ahead of us many many many many steps ahead. So, um, are we going to be fearful and just, uh, stay back or are we going to take the leap and and go forward just

263and be the leader, um, like the Fairfest County is? So, um, I'm very supportive of this uh, this initiative and especially for our our educators if we can support them any way we can to reduce their workload. um almost is like you know giving them extra tool just like you know when we're writing emails we're using Gemini and chat GPT and it just saves like little bit of time just them to formulate the email better than just typing it up in you know and proofreading it and all that stuff. So um I almost uh feel like that Dr. checking you made the comment that you can talk to the parent right in that language and translation can happen it can save so much time and a lot of our Hispanic uh community Arabic speaking community

264which is um you know will benefit out of that which is you know you constantly don't need a translator and wait for them uh I almost want in the future that u that we have customized educ planning for each student the way they are they can learn and then AI can help with that as uh you know every student learns differently. We have right now one basically package for all and this is the direction I think we will go as as as a nation that AI will be used in much more things than what we are just seeing right now. So I'm very excited and I want to see us uh progressing in that direction. And I just had a question. Did you just say Sam like you know him in personal basis? Sam different

265Sam. >> No. Oh, no. Sam was the the representative from OpenAI. So, >> okay. Sam at Open. >> When you said Sam over there, I was like Sam. >> Oh. Oh. Oh, no. Not Not that Sam. I'm sorry. [laughter] >> Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. >> Miss Marin. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, you know, Dr. Re, you know, >> Mr. Moon, Miss Marin's turn. I have you on the list. You could. It's okay if she already started. Okay, after me. Okay, thank you. Um, so like like financial management and capital facilities, AI needs to become part of our regular cadence of work for the school board. There's no question FCPS must address the role of AI in all aspects of our school division. So, I wanted to share some reflections on what

266I'm seeing. I'm seeing the superintendent be visionary and realistic. I see how she wants FCPS to be the leader. I'm aware that our chief technology officer has been working on AI since 2022. I hear the superintendent citing research that children already are using this technology on their own unfacilitated and as such that we can't wait to take action. I hear the superintendent saying that quote rollout is limited only to adults in our school division period. I have two responses to that. What I think the superintendent and her staff are not are doing that you're not connecting the dots on that parents equate that to well if the teacher has it my child is experiencing it either directly or indirectly and I really really hope you reflect on that because just because you say it's with

267the adults parents do not think that that's where the line it's just like a bubble um and AI is already being used by FCPS educators with students in elementary school because parents have given me a lot of examples. Um I see no comprehensive communications plan to the board and to the community about what is happening next. I see no plan detailing what is happening now and what comes next. What comes after the open AI pilot with teachers? Where does the superintendent want to go next? I experience that the school board is not engaged by the superintendent thoughtfully or meaningfully in this work and it's disheartening that this is a real theme in the work lately. Um I respect Dr. Reed and I trust her expertise in educating children. However, she's not bringing the board along

268with her and this will inhibit the success and I observe that the school board is not aware of what's being rolled out in our schools. So, I want to ask a question or two. Dr. Reid or staff, please tell us about the pilot with 18 high schools in place since November, which you informed the board about via a paragraph and an email on December 12th and a three-page description accompanying it. Tell us about the pilot. How are parents and caregivers informed about this? What are the 18 high schools? And which are the six to eight schools receiving the more intensive approach? >> I'll need to get back to you on that. >> Well, it's right here. I don't understand how is it true that there are programs in place. November says key action introduced magic

269school as a teacher tool to early adopters at 18 high schools. That's a plan. We haven't We're working on that right now. So, I'll have to get back to you with more details. >> Okay. But it is in the past tense, >> so I assumed. But again, this is the danger in only communicating stuff to the board and email. Um, I've heard from several constituents about an AI curriculum being built for elementary age kids, particularly at Oakton Elementary School. Can you please confirm if this is the case and share more about it with the board? >> We certainly can. Um so this is reminds me of when uh the the division undertook a big effort a few years ago to call through social studies uh pro you know lessons and such to be sure that

270it wasn't including um old you know and um I just want to close with saying someone needs to review what's being created. When I hear things like AI helped me create this new form and this new tool well it created a big problem. Where's the quality control? Where's the the goal for rigor? And I'll take a go back, please. >> Mr. Mavine, >> thank you so much. A couple questions. So, um, Gautam referred to the think tank. Um, can you expound on that? >> Yes, sir, I can. I'm pulling together a couple of industry leads. We already have several folks um to really be thought leaders and thought partners. um with me on the direction of AI. We're also, as you know, workforce development is a key tenant right now both in the county um

271as well as in the Commonwealth and honestly across the nation. So, one of the things we want to make sure is that we've got tight partnerships with industry leaders on this topic. So, I'll be um I think I have three or four folks already and we'll be adding names to that so that hopefully we're good to go by um the end of February. >> Great. Look forward to hearing about that. I would say that um a think tank should not only be comprised of industry folks, but it should be comprised of skeptics, academics, other folks that that can bring um a critical eye to this. Um, I don't think any of us nor our community just wants industry focus on this. Um, because that's lead us down a pretty pretty bad path. Um, so um,

272I'll be eager to hear more about the think tank. Just to be clear, we aren't hiring anyone. This is all external expertise. That's >> Oh, we have no budget to hire anyone. >> Thank you. >> Yes. >> That is typically what an in-house think tank entails. So, it's good to know that's not the case. Um to Melany's point, um I think there are a lot of things circulating out there that we're out in the community hearing about Sure. and we don't know how to respond. So, um there's this magic school thing. Um I heard about Teachers for Tomorrow piloting something AI focused that's different from the other things we're doing. So, I think it'd be very helpful if we could get a comprehensive list of all the apps, all the programs, everything in the schools.

273um because I've been caught flatfooted just saying, "Oh, we have we're doing two things. We're doing Gemini and we're doing OpenAI and and that's clearly not the case." >> Well, I think we also have to think about there's a difference between AI as a topic and the chat GPT partnership training that we're doing for educators in the school division. and the some of the concerns that have been raised have been raised around the chat GPT partnership with open AAI that's different than we've of course had staff um in the academic office instructional office have been working on AI for several years just as Gotham's been working on it so there a variety of types of lessons and ideas that people have I think as we get the AI policy in front of our governance committee

274and are able to sort of codify some of those uh guard rails. I think that'll be really helpful because there's such a deep curiosity, right? Educators are curious by nature and are lifelong learners. So, I'm excited that our staff are interested in new ideas. We probably didn't spend as much time on the pilot pilot proof scale slide, which was part of the academic matters. Um, but we're not going to roll anything out at scale till we've really tried it in small areas. So, [cough] we'll try to get you a better grid or a better chart of current right ideas. >> And I think just along those lines, and I think this also gets to what Melanie was talking about, is that um we really need a um a a retreat focused on this as a

275board. This is a critical topic. We need to take time out of our schedule to have focus time, not at 11:40 p.m. Uh after, you know, I think any I we're happy to provide content for such an event. >> Great. Well, I'd be grateful to board leadership if they could find time. Thanks, >> Mr. Moon. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for bearing with my impatience. There were many M's. Uh uh thank you for the presentation once again Dr. Re. Uh looking at slide number three, our guiding principles. I mean I agree with all those guide go guard railers. Having said that could we find some concrete details under these guiding principles anywhere or are they being developed and not available for any of us to see or >> I think those are the

276generic buckets. I don't know that there are um items under that. I'll ask Mr. Sethy. I know that the teams the teams it's been a collaborative team have been working on these. >> Yeah, we can certainly uh provide details on sort of a technical adoption steps which have a strong depth and width in terms of how the vendors evaluated the security protocols, their privacy protocols. Uh but the broader guard rails are sort of the intentions with which we go approaching tools. So those are available for our teachers to be guided by >> the technical process of evaluation happens before the tool comes into the hands of teachers. So that is where we would check the privacy and the security boundaries of the schools before we will give it in the hands of the teachers. I

277think that the these guard drills, if I might, Mr. are are something that um our IT department or our instructional department's using as they measure things that um might be potential tools. I don't think this has gone out to teachers yet. I could be wrong about that, Katum. That isn't this something that's more a central? Yeah. >> So, are you asking about developing something? developments of a a a more specific guidelines under these guard rails. So that I think they will give a more comfort once you once we once people parents and community see that when we say humans are in control ethical and responsible and we're going to be very intentional in adopting this. What do they mean? What are they actually doing? What are we actually doing? I want to know. >> Yes,

278sir. Well, will craft a more detailed list. >> Okay. I mean I and also uh what uh Mrs. Stix said earlier I I completely agree with her. There are a lot of countries out there who are far ahead of her. I mean she mentioned about China being many steps ahead of us and a Korean government. Korea is from the national level they're strengthening they are planning on to strengthen a AI uh for all students not just as an elective courses for a few students who may be more interested in STEM courses but for everybody that's where country of Korea is going and we can talk about this uh talking about this is one thing but actually doing it which I consider to be more important. You know, I have two sons. They are older than

279our K through 12, you know, students, you know, one in private sector in technology and the other in government. They use AI all the time. That's part of their job. When we talk about we are preparing preparing our students for tomorrow future, that is not even future. That is right now. Thank you. >> Yes sir, >> Mr. you're done. >> So, I'll say the same thing overseas. I've said here uh I'll say the same thing here that I said overseas. Um children have died from use of AI. Let's just be really really clear about that. Children have died and it's all great and shiny and new and exciting until a child dies because it engages in hallucinations and and some kind of deep relationship, deep bonding experience with AI. You can look at any headline

280in any major newspaper in this country in the last six months and there's ample evidence of that. Right? It's anecdotal. It hasn't been studied enough because this is so new. But this is a dangerous technology and we should not take our eye off that ball. We expanded computers and classrooms and it had detrimental effects on the mental health of our kids. It decreased use of handwriting and knowledge. It decreased attention. There are serious drawbacks to technology. So I just want to remember that, you know, humans learn best from other humans and and social and cognitive development is dependent on reading books on and memory is dependent on learning handwriting and taking notes. um and and AI cannot be allowed to be a replacement for human interaction and the incredible experience of having a great teacher,

281right, and great staff, counselors and principles, etc. So, um I don't have specific questions, but I would just question whether China is really ahead. I didn't see that evidence. I saw great marketing, but I didn't see evidence. And um I think there's a lot of study that needs to be done before we unleash this in our classrooms uh and imperil the mental health and the safety of our children. >> Miss or Mr. Fr. >> Thank you. [clears throat] Um, I'm not going to pretend that like the general conversation around AI is not frightening because I think for the most part what we hear about AI is that it's what kids use to cheat and it's what's going to eliminate the jobs of every adult. Um, and there's elements of truth to both of those things.

282Some kids use AI to cheat and some adults jobs are going to be replaced by AI. Um, in much the same way that entire industries were replaced during the industrial revolution or the uh mechanization of farming equipment from the 50s to the 70s. Um and it's frightening especially for people like me who do a lot of writing for a living. Um but I can tell you there's a world of difference between um uh people who know how to use the technology and people who don't know how to use the technology. And so when I worked on Capitol Hill, there were a lot of hearings about the internet. This was in the as watching policy makers talk about technology is painful, especially if they don't have a deep understanding of it. I like Mr. Meline's idea

283about having a retreat where maybe we can learn more about the technology uh to take some of the opacity of it away. Um, you know, I we know that kids are using it and we know that adults are using it. We know that teachers are using it whether it is part of what they're encouraged to use or not. Um, what I want is in line with what has been talked about. I want to ensure that kids are taught how this technology can be used safely. And I want adults to know the same thing. Um, you know, my mother, my late mother thought that my Facebook wall was an email box and she would post the craziest, most personal things on my Facebook wall because she didn't get that it wasn't a private message to me.

284We need to prepare people for what the technology is so that they know how to use it in a safe way and they know what the risks are. Um, you know, the Governor Yncan's wife said, uh, maybe a year ago that we police every aspect of our kids' lives and then give them a phone with no restrictions. Cats out of the bag. I would love to be an ostrich with my head in the sand and hope that this all goes away because it is terrifying to think that in 40 years many of the jobs that people we know have will be done by technology. But those jobs will be replaced by other jobs in other industries. And so um I don't want to be caught flatfooted. I want to ensure that parents know exactly what

285we're up to and how that impacts their kids and how that impacts their kids' teachers and the cafeteria staff and the j the custodial crew because everybody's jobs are going to be impacted by this at some point. And that AI is not just something that helps you write a paragraph. It is so much more. If all you know about AI is that it helps you write an email or a document or a couple paragraphs of text that you're struggling over, you know nothing about AI. We could all learn more. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> U Miss Lady, >> thank you. Um and thank you. I I share a lot of the reflections that uh Mr. Fresh just shared. Um and again, you know, as someone whose training is counseling. Um, you know, this has been

286scary for a long time. Um, and it is scary data. And you open with this, Dr. Reed, that 72% of our kids are using AI as a companion. And of those 25% think that that's better than human companion. And I said all the time when I gave presentations to parents, no matter what the presentation was, I always held up a cell phone. And I said, "If you give your child one of these or a computer and you let them charge it in their room, you let them go anywhere in the world without your supervision." Exactly what Governor Yncan's wife said. I said it over and over and over again. And I love that there's now wait till 8th grade, wait till 8th. Um I think it needs to be wait till 9, wait till 10th,

287right? When it comes to social media and all these things, but let's get back to this what we're discussion point is at hand. What our teachers are doing is leveraging technology to improve instruction. It's the intersectionality of inclusion UDL lighthouse schools work. Um I'm fortunate I have a wife who is an espit and I learn every day new and exciting things the ways teachers in her building are using this this technology. and and I I will probably not articulate this accurately, but there was a situation where the a student a teacher was trying to reach a non-verbal student um and there was a technology because we use technologies as part of instruction because it's also with um assisted technology and whatnot. But she ended up learning how to write a program that then also had

288to be transferred from, I don't know, HTML to some other kind of program that ultimately allowed the kid to interface with technology to address what the objective was. It had something to do with language arts. Um, and again, my apologies if you're watching that I didn't get that accurately, but the point is I get so excited. So, so the next thing I do know, and I I'll get to this point to colleagues ask to see this in action to better understand how we are not replacing teachers. Okay, we cannot do great educational work without fantastic teachers who deliver the curriculum. However, we can diversify instruction. We can differentiate. We can have kids doing things that that addresses how they learn and how they demonstrate knowledge in myriad ways. So, I do know that with Lighthouse

289Schools and some of these other programs, there's upcoming presentations where they're going to be showcasing and sharing with one another. Um, I'm asking, is there a way that schoolboard members could be perhaps invited to see some of those? If you could think about that because like I said, I get stories firsthand that just get me excited. Um, that would I think be helpful. U the last thing I'll share is that one of my very best friends who's a math teacher uh we were going to a hockey game and brought this up to my wife. What do you think of this open AI stuff? Like I'm all against it. We don't need this. You know, we're good teachers. And I listened to a 30 minute conversation on the way down to Capitol One Arena and at

290the end of it she said, "I had no idea. I had no idea. It's never been explained to me that way." So, I guess what I'm hoping is that we can get in spaces where it can be demonstrated for us. Um, because I believe you're absolutely going the right direction and I'm excited by the work. Thank you. >> Thank you, >> Miss Marin for a go back. >> Dr. Reid, what do you think could be some next steps for you based on what you've heard from the board this evening? >> I think I'll reflect on that this evening and um provide some thoughts in tomorrow's Friday letter. Uh, I wanted to share with my colleagues the governance committee is going to be taking up the AI policy development work um at our next meeting January

29120th. We did state that at our previous meeting just uh this week. Um, Dr. Reid, are you providing samples to us or are there any materials for us to read prior? I know you've mentioned an article called talk, trust, and tradeoffs. I'd love to hear that, but what are you planning to send us before that January 20th governance meeting? I think we have the draft policy that's been queued up. Is that correct? >> Yeah, we'll have the draft policy teed up. >> I think it would be nice to have some sort of facilitation guide to really help us come up to speed with what you're thinking and not just giving us a document saying what do you think because some of us have said we don't know what we don't know and what are the

292questions uh we should consider. Some of the questions I've been considering are how does FCPS enter into a business partnerships and the role of the authority of the board for AI or for anything. What lessons from other approaches to building a school system can we learn from like the literacy roll out and again the social studies curriculum where the lessons were all over the place until we really went through with a rubric. U data privacy, what controls teachers have to change settings. Those are just some questions. Uh, I also just wanted to refresh that the board is expecting a full list of the technology used for instruction as part of the EL12 report on technology that's being delivered at the next meeting on January 22nd. And I expect this will include the list requested by

293the board at the October 7th work session that initiated that request, plus any additional that have been added through the AI work since then. Um, back to the conversation about advisory committees with my colleagues. I just shared a link. The Montgomery County Council of PTAs has a technology committee, you know, of parents that is looking to do things. And so these are great resources to share with our parents and residents who advocate. And just in general, I'd really like to see less of a passive approach with the board on this and present to us, Dr. Reed, what you think we should know. What should we be thinking about? What should we be learning about? How do we understand what you want to do? What you may want us to fund? and how can we be

294your champions alongside you? I will leave it at that. >> Thank you, Dr. >> Yep, you bet. And definite [clears throat] thanks to the staff. Appreciate your attention tonight. >> Agenda item nine, consent agenda. Our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure. Robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval by of the board by a single motion. Many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance. Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting. The consent agenda items are on the screen. Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda? Hearing and seeing no objections, the consent agenda is approved. Agenda item 10, new business. The following are new business

295agenda items. There will be no vote on these items this evening, but the action is scheduled for a future meeting. Agenda item 11, board committee reports. I call on Mr. Meline for a report on the audit committee. >> Uh, thank you very much. Um, this past Monday, we went over the uh, annual audit report. >> I call on Miss Marin for a report from the governance committee. We rocked and rolled on Tuesday. We got through 10 policies related to capital improvement program which were first put forth to the governance committee two years ago and then we did an additional set of policies 2 46 seven or eight regarding HR and human relations and making sure that they were all up to date per the changes in collective bargaining. So, it was a real big effort

296for our governance committee and you heard we're going to take up the um work for AI policy which I have no doubt will come before the full board for a discussion hopefully a work session. Uh we also are going to continue to look through those CIP policies that are still sitting there and then uh the calendar policy is one that we want to work on uh given the community input and request for updates to that. >> Thank you, Miss Marin. Agenda item 12, superintendent matters. I call on Dr. Reid for superintendent matters. >> Given the hour, I think I'll pass. >> Thank you, Dr. Reid. Agenda item 13, board matters. Um, in accordance with the board's consensus, due to the late hour, we are going to skip this um item this evening. And since we

297are going to have to return to the closed meeting, we will recess the regular meeting at 11:57 p.m.