001called to order at 10:30 a.m. I call on Dr. Reid and her team for a presentation of goal one strong start preK through 12 report. >> So thank you, Madam Chair. Um we're excited this morning. We're going to have our first goal report of the current academic year. So what better way to start off um an October morning. Uh so for our goal one report, it's uh been a team effort and I'd like to uh have Miss Neil uh introduce their team members or have them introduce themselves and then we'll uh share our goal one report. We're very excited to share with you um and our community. So Miss Neil, >> thank you Dr. Reid. I'm Marcy Neil, the assistant superintendent for strategy planning and learning. I'll have my colleagues introduce themselves. >> Good morning.
002Sloan Prescidio, chief academic officer. Good morning, Nardis King, chief equity officer. >> Yavanni Pon, chief of schools. >> Good morning, Candace Hunstead, executive director for strategy and planning. >> And then we have several colleagues who are with us today as well from various departments as well as our goal innovation um champions who are joining us today who are going to support the board's discussion. So, good morning to the board. We're going to go ahead and jump right in. As Dr. Reid said, we are really excited. This is our first of our five goal reports for the 2526 school year. And we're just very excited for today's discussion. We're going to make sure our clicker is working. There we go. Um, so our objectives for today are on the slide. Um, we're going to provide you
003all with an update on our progress towards our 2030 goals, as well as share some additional contextual data related to the measures in goal one. Um, we're going to talk about the work we're doing to make progress towards these goals and discuss policy, budget, and strategic considerations as we work towards our 2030 goals. Um, today's presentation is goal one, which as a reminder to our community, it is focused on a strong start preK to 12. For this year's goal reports, we're going to focus on eight themes to organize our reports and presentations. And these themes are going to allow us to continue to focus on those initial strategic plan priorities while also broadening the discussion into other strategic plan measures. So, goal one has two themes. We're going to talk about school readiness and multilingual
004learner progress. Goal one recognizes that all students need to have a strong start to their educational journey no matter when they enter our schools. There are six measures in goal one and today's presentation is going to focus on those on the slide that are bolded. Data for all the measures for goal one can be found in the appendex of the full report that's posted on board docs. So, new this year, we're also using a color-coded system to allow for an easier comparison of our performance on our metrics with targets against our baseline. When we meet an annual or 2030 target, you will see the target met designation. When performance is approaching our 2030 target, so generally 90 to 94%, you will see the approaching designation. When performance has improved from the baseline but does not
005meet the previous two criteria, you'll see the progress designation. And then finally, when performance has not improved from the baseline, you will see the baseline designation. So for our first section, we're going to talk about school readiness. And in this section, we're going to look at fall and spring kindergarten readiness, prek participation, and data specific to our FCPS preK programs. So, we know that kindergarteners with basic school readiness tend to be at an academic advantage as they progress through school. They score higher on standardized assessments. They're more likely to graduate on time and they have better attendance. Because of this, we expect a focus on school readiness will impact several other goals in our strategic plan. The research also highlights several factors that contribute to school readiness, including transition and prek participation, both of which
006we will focus on today. So in FCPS, school readiness is assessed at the beginning and end of the kindergarten year. And we look at three dimensions specified by the Virginia kindergarten readiness program, including reading, math, and self-regulation. We measure readiness by looking at students who met the benchmarks for all three of these domains with grade level expectations that are higher for students in the spring than in the fall. In addition, we also assess readiness for our own preK students on the same domains. Last year, the literacy screener for kindergarten students was updated from the PAL's assessment to the VAWL assessment. And this change was a result of the Virginia Literacy Act. The Val is a more rigorous screener that better predicts reading risk and allows us to better identify students requiring early intervention. So, this
007change in screener directly impacted the rates of readiness observed in the fall for our kindergarten students, which was also consistent with what was observed across the state. There are key differences between the two assessments that you can see on the slide with the vows being aligned to what the research says are the greatest predictors of future reading difficulties. So here you can see our fall kindergarten readiness or those students who met all three of those benchmarks. Overall, we did see a decline in readiness rates with 14% fewer kindergarteners meeting all three readiness benchmarks last fall compared to the baseline. This decline was primarily driven by the change in the reading screener. While math and self-regulation data remained relatively stable from our year prior, we saw a 16 percentage point decline for students meeting the readiness
008benchmark for reading. Given the timing of these assessments, which are um within the first three to five weeks of the school year, fall readiness scores tend to be a reflection of the skills students develop prior to entering kindergarten. And because most students do not most of our kindergarten students did not attend an FCPS prek program, there is limited ability to influence this measure and thus no target has been set on this data. Assessing kindergarten students readiness in the fall allows us to best support them throughout the year. This slide provides some additional information to show how the new literacy screener identified students who were below expectations in the fall and throughout the year. The increase in students meeting literacy expectations from fall to spring is tied to both the new literacy curriculum provided to all
009students as well as strong interventions provided to those students showing reading risk. Because of these efforts, we were able to increase the spring readiness levels for our kindergarten students. This is especially impressive given the lower rates of readiness in the fall and the more rigorous screener. saw small but sustainable progress from the baseline. However, disparities still exist and required continued attention given the impacts of early readiness on future success. We know one of the key drivers to school readiness is highquality early childhood education. And it's also important to note that prek is not compulsory in the Commonwealth. This slide imp um highlights the impact of prek. About one in four kindergarten students who entered FCPS without a pre-K experience met the fall readiness benchmarks last year compared to 65% of those with a preK experience.
010Increasing the percent of kindergarteners with preK experiences is a shared endeavor with other community partners as the majority of students continue to access preK outside of FCPS. Overall, we saw substantial growth in the percentage of kindergarteners with pre-K experience. All student groups made progress from the baseline and many met the target of 80% or higher. The largest increase from baseline was for black students up 11 percentage points, followed by Hispanic students up 10 percentage points. Last year, we also began collecting some additional data from families of our kindergarten students who did not have a prek experience to understand what barriers, if any, existed for our families in accessing preK. What we saw in this first year of data collection is that prek experience is driven by both preference and logistics. About 800 families, or the
011light blue box you see on the screen, did not reside in Fairfax County the year prior to kindergarten. Thus, we could not have had an impact on their pre-K experiences. About 700 families, or the light yellow box on the bottom left of the screen, did reside in Fairfax County, but preferred not to have their child in in preK. And this is pretty consistent with what the national research says. And around 500 families, the light yellow box on the bottom right, live locally and had a potentially unmet demand for prek. Our full report does provide some additional details on the reasons why children were not in pre-K as reported by their families. And one important insight is that our families who are economically disadvantaged cited preference more frequently as a factor for their child not accessing
012preK than cost. We also saw that families who were not economically disadvantaged cited cost more frequently than um some other factors. So there are some important implications as we think about the collaboration with the community to address that unmet prek need. So these findings also have important implications for our prek experience target as meeting it in some cases would require more families making the choice to send students to prek versus solely focusing in on barriers for families accessing prek. So now we're going to take a look at FCPS specific prek programs. And as a reminder to our community, we currently provide pre-K services to students with disabilities and as space allows to students who are economically disadvantaged, homeless, in foster care, or those who have other educational risk factors through slots that are funded by
013Early Head Start, Head Start, and Virginia Preschool Initiative, or our VPI grant programs. About 29% of last year's kindergarteners received a pre-K education either through FCPS programs or county VPI programs. The rate of students attending other programs has remained relatively flat. So you can see on that top line in blue, while the rate of students accessing FCPS and county BPI programs has been rising steadily since 202122. So this data shows that the investments that this board is making in preK are helping to close the access gap for our students. Students who are served in our preK programs are also assessed on re readiness in reading, math, and self-regulation. And this slide shows the spring outcomes for our students who are getting ready to transition to kindergarten. Overall, 45% met all three readiness benchmarks last year.
014And as with kindergarten readiness data, it is useful to look at other factors to contextualize these results. In 2324, which is the last year for which statewide data is available, all of our early childhood programs met the state quality standard of 400 or above. On average, the quality of our programs exceeded the state average and fell within the range of other divisions in Northern Virginia. In addition, the vast majority of students with disabilities in FCPS preK who entered the program below age expectations made substantial growth in three key skill areas that are monitored by the VDOE special education performance report. VDOE and FCPS also monitor inclusion, which is another important element of preK for developing readiness skills. We've seen steady growth in this area with almost 12 percentage point increase in over four years. For
015the last year, we estimate that 28% of our prek students with disabilities met the definition for VDOE indicator 6A or students receiving the majority of their services in a regular early childhood program. As a result, we do expect to exceed the VDOE target for last year. To continue to see improved rates of school readiness, we're focused on four strategies and I'm going to provide some highlights on the actions associated with these strategies and the full report has additional details. So FCPS along with the county and our community providers all play a role in addressing the demand for prek. This past year, we served 80% of our income eligible students who applied for our pre-K programs and have successfully expanded our capacity to serve students as measured by an increase in both preK classrooms and the
016number of income eligible students serve. Compared to our baseline, we're serving almost 500 additional students. This increased capacity has been a direct result of investments that the board has made in our early childhood programs. FCPS also continues to advocate through skipped or the successful children and youth policy team and as a part of the board's state and federal legislative program to make prek more accessible to students. Our second strategy focuses on expanding opportunities for inclusive prek. We know students with and without IEPs both benefit from these inclusive classrooms. The increase in our 6A inclusion rate, excuse me, inclusion rates is the result of an intentional focus on expanding inclusive preK by introducing and expanding three inclusion models. To support these models, we continue to help teachers earn the early childhood special education endorsement through university
017partnerships and our grow your own program. And this year, we're continuing with our community peers program at FCPS sites where pro programs are not coll-located. So while this model does not meet the criteria for indicator 6A, it does provide students with disabilities more opportunities to learn alongside their typically developing peers while we continue to address barriers to colllocating programs. Strategy three is focused on strengthening school readiness through evidence-based curriculum. We continue to provide training to prek educators in evidence-based curriculum in the areas of literacy, math, and social emotional skills. Our pre-K program of study is aligned to the Virginia Early Learning and Development Standards and the program of study that students will experience when they enter kindergarten. In addition, we're piloting a tier 1 executive functioning curriculum in five schools serving approximately 225 preK students
018and we will be collecting data throughout the school year to inform future expansion of this program. And finally, we have a new Monasuri program at Bucknell Elementary School serving 125 students in grades preK and kindergarten. And our final strategy is focused on transitions and developing foundational skills once our students are in our kindergarten classrooms. We continue to provide school readiness and transition programs to children in the community. This includes programs such as hippie early literacy, family literacy, and bridge decay. And we use fall readiness assessments to provide early interventions to accelerate learning for students who need additional support. So, as you can see on the slide, the gap in readiness based on preK experience narrows from fall to spring with both groups experiencing substantial increases in readiness. And then finally, for our public, the school
019board maintains a state and federal legislative program that articulates the board's position on a variety of topics, including school readiness. And this slide outlines several relevant positions from the 2025 program. The 2026 program is currently in the process of being adopted. So in closing out this section, you can see that compared to last year, our kindergarteners had higher rates of readiness in the spring, which is significant given the more rigorous screener and the lower rates from the fall. We saw more students coming in with preK experiences that are driven by increases in FCPS and VPI preK participation. And this is important as we continue to see the impact of preK on school readiness. And finally, we anticipate meeting the state target for indicator 6A for preK inclusion when the official VDOE data is released. At
020this time, I will turn it back over to our meeting managers for questions. >> My apologies. Are we doing one section at a time? Is okay. >> Yes. >> Um, thank you. Um, good morning all. Um, thank you for this. I heard you say something but I think I missed it regarding the factor in which we had no target because we don't have control. Is that the kindergarten is that the preschool? >> It's the fall kindergarten readiness assessment. So those three different assessments are given to kids sort of that 3 to five week range of when they start school. And so we did remove the target for this year recognizing that we do not have a lot of influence on the outcomes of that. >> It's just a diagnostic. They're coming as they are. Um,
021what I would like to see and I don't know if I was able to or to to find this here. Can you show the comparative data between where they are in the fall and the progress in the spring because that we can impact? >> Yes. So, if we go we can go back a couple of slides. It is on our strategy um slide 27. >> What page is it in the report? I will find it for you in just >> um thank you Nardis. You can see what you can see Dr. Anderson on this slide. This is showing the fall to spring and it's based on the blue is the overall. So we went from 57% hitting those readiness indicators to 69 overall. And then the other bars are showing by preK experience. So you
022see the kids who had the prek experience went from 65% readiness in the fall to 74% readiness in the spring. And then for our students without preK, it went from 26 to 47. >> I did see this. Do we have it disagregated by subgroups? >> I let me double check >> because I think that might be interesting. Another piece of data that I'd be interested to to see is the performance of students by subgroup who are um who did have um kindergarten experience. Do we have a disparity there as well? Um so that's a curiosity. So if you could provide that, that would be helpful. Um, yep. You just answered that question. We can't put targets on that. Um, on page 10, let me make sure I gather my question. On page 10, this is
023the spring. Um, this is the spring readiness for students. And again, just looking at it yearover-year, I see that we've had just a little bit of growth from 68 to 69%. Um, we have three categories that did not experience growth. Economically disadvantaged, 504, and Asian students. Um, but most importantly, the achievement gap continues to grow. And again, I know this spring is where we've had some impact. Can you speak a little bit to the strategies that you all are employing to close that 39 point achievement gap? >> Yeah, know thank thank you for that question and I think you know what we're trying to do is make sure that we have evidence-based strategies and supports in place for supporting students. Um, you know, kindergarten obviously is a key uh educational experience for all of our
024students. uh the expectations that we have for kindergarten students continue to increase along with the Virginia Literacy Act. Um we now have expectations that students, you know, are um hopefully coming into school with some background understanding and and background knowledge and uh letter recognition, numeracy, basic numeracy. But we know many of our students, particularly those that don't have pre-K, don't have that background. So for a lot of students, we have a lot of ground that we have to make up. So we do that by trying to make sure that we've got an evidence-based curriculum that's aligned to what we're doing at the subsequent uh grade level. So if you think about the kindergarten curriculum has to be aligned to what students are going to do in first, second, and third grade in the primary grades
025as they're working to develop proficiency in early literacy skills. So that's the first thing, making sure that we've got evidence-based curriculum across all of our classrooms and all of our programs. The next thing is making sure that all of our kindergarten teachers are trained in evidence-based instructional strategies. So, one of the things that we've been doing the last several years, uh, and again, the Virginia Literacy Act, um, accelerated a lot of this was making sure that all of our staff are trained in evidence-based literacy instructional practices. So, we've been partnering, of course, with the University of Virginia that's really leading that work, making sure that all of our teachers complete uh training that's uh accessible both in an online format and then reinforced uh in our schools with our school-based staff. And then making sure
026that we have good data to be able to monitor and identify where students are at in terms of the progress that they're making or the progress that they still need to make. So, we've created new dashboards uh to help teachers really track and monitor how students are doing as they go through these assessments that we're talking about here today. So, when we're talking about kindergarten readiness, remember we're talking about three assessments. We're talking about the vows, which is the Virginia literacy, language, and literacy uh screening system. We're talking about EMAS, which is the math assessment that they take. And then we're talking about cibers or the child behavior rating scale. So, it's all three of those measures when we look at this data that students need to be proficient in. So, just as I was
027talking about evidence-based curriculum with literacy, same thing with math, getting early numeracy skills, um, and hopefully, you know, making sure that students are able to, you know, count to 100, for example, have that basic number sense, um, before they move into first grade. Um, and then making sure on the child behavior rating scale that students are developing those skills, executive functioning skills, um, to be able to manage their impulses, make good decisions, stay engaged while they're in class, u, be good citizens in the classroom. And all of that coming together, the curriculum, the training for teachers, the monitoring of data, and then providing supports and interventions to students that are falling behind is the approach to make sure that students are making growth. But like I said, it's three measures when we look at this
028data that they have to be proficient in. And for a lot of our kids coming into kindergarten with no pre-k experience um or even limited in terms if they had a pre-k experience, what that really was, it might not be um a program where they have licensed staff with an evidence-based preschool curriculum. It might be more of a daycare setting and situation where they're not as engaged academically um or even socially. So there's a lot of growth that a lot of our students have to make. So you pointed out we're not where we need to be, but I mean we are optimistic that we're seeing growth that's being made across the year in kindergarten and then we're also seeing that long-term growth from baseline. >> Um thank you. It seems from what you've shared um
029the training, the curriculum, those have been in place for a while. What seems to be new from what you've detailed are the dashboards. Can you go into greater detail in terms of what that's going to provide teachers the opportunity to be able to accomplish? So, I think, you know, like everything, we continue to enhance um what we're doing. So, our school support, our professional development is stronger and and tighter than it's been in previous years. A lot of that's um you know, uh something that I I really appreciate the partnership that we have with Giovani, the chief of schools office, the region teams to really make sure that um we're providing those targeted supports to schools that we know have a lot of students that are at risk. So even though we've done some of
030the professional development, we're doing more. We're going deeper and we're really making sure that we're aligned across the system. We're also getting um additional training beyond what I guess I would refer to as like base level training. So, the evidence-based literacy training that I talked about, that's for all teachers, but we're also making sure that we can get um some additional literacy training in things like letters, which really helps with students that might not be making literacy growth uh due to reading difficulties like dyslexia. So, we're trying to get as many teachers possibly uh as possible trained in letters so that they're providing more effective interventions. So, some of these things have been going on, but we're continuing to, you know, I think take that work to a deeper level. The data question you asked
031about is making sure that uh what we have is an early warning system that allows schools to look at if students are falling behind in math or literacy or attendance. um basically getting a light to say this is a student that we need to be paying attention to so that don't have to do as much of the leg work to collect the data, analyze the data, we can provide it to them in a dashboard format and then they can respond to the data um and be more efficient in their time. Oh, I think it's important for them to be able to identify who those students are. But I would be remiss if I didn't share like my concern with reaching the target that's been set for this year because over the last three years we've
032gone from a baseline of 67 to 23 24 school year of 68 to 2425 school year of 69 and now our target is 75. The trend doesn't seem to be favorable to you. So I I'm just wondering how will that be accomplished? Well, one one thing just to reiterate particularly for folks in the community and Miss Neil mentioned it. You you have to remember the change in the literacy screener that we introduced in school year 2425 as part of the Virginia literacy act. So the state required a new literacy screener that is more difficult to reach proficiency targets on than the previous screener which was the PALS. Both of those instruments were developed in partnership with VOE and the University of Virginia. But the new screening system that we have the vowels measures things that
033the old system the PALS did not measure. So it measures for example not just decoding words but encoding words. So when you hear a word can you recognize the letter sounds and does that help you with your spelling? So for example >> if you take the word dog d we want to be able to isolate letter sounds and not have d- a wg for dog. Right? So there's additional encoding and additional other literacy uh tasks that are included in the screener and it's also timed. The PALS was not timed. So you can think about for students like multilingual learners that need as much processing time um as possible to be successful on some of these instruments that you would anticipate with a more rigorous screener that the scores are going to have a dip as
034we try to adjust to that new standard. >> No, I appreciate that. That's very helpful. My last question at this end is to Dr. Reid. Given that we know that there's a huge gap between some of our students, even the gold targets still maintain a 30 a 30 point gap, how do we see that we can leverage the extra time of perhaps home activities to help shore the gap with some of our students who are a who need a little bit more support. >> So, thank you, Dr. Anderson. I we are working really hard right now to leverage um time outside the classroom and that includes evenings, weekends, breaks and summers. Um I think that the team we got off to a um sort of a field testing start last summer with uh sending uh
035laptops home over the summer. And I was really proud of our instructional team for uh beefing up our resources online that families could access because as you know with the Esther dollars going away we had fewer summer school options for students. So what we're really hoping to do is utilize those breaks in time to support really authentic best practice instruction around literacy. We've got a number of programs um that are very strong in those areas. What that often is going to do is that's going to hit kindergarten to first grade. It may not hit this kindergarten assessment, right? So, I think that if we're patient, I think we're going to see the fruits of our labors. Um, but I I think that we have to recognize that when children are coming in in very different
036places. Some children are reading in kindergarten and some children it's honestly they're picking up a a pencil for the first time. So, as we bridge those gaps and team kindergarten, if they're listening, which they're probably not because they're working with their littles, but team kindergarten, I mean, they're some of the most incredible educators that we have anywhere in this country because they're able to take um you know, a group of very young children and uh start in a hundred different spaces uh and be able to by the end of the year show tremendous improvement. So, I know the team has got a lot of ideas uh for how to use outside of school time. Uh we're also trying to make sure that like our grand involve and our uh community partners uh support tutoring. We
037know that high impact tutoring assists uh children in their academic development and the more of those partnerships we can set up uh even for our very young children, I think the better start we're going to be able to provide them. >> No, I appreciate that. I I think my and I appreciate kind of taking advantage of those out of school time. I think my question was mostly speaking to the daily out of school times. There's some wonderful things that could be done with kindergarteners as they go home just to help practice those very skills that Dr. Prescidio just mentioned with decoding and encoding. My wondering is how are we taking advantage of that? I'd like to go back please. >> I I'd like a question an answer to my question but I do want to
038go back. >> Yes, ma'am. I, you know, I think utilizing our community partners again is important. Our public libraries, I know I had a chance to visit our public libraries this past month and every Fairfax County public school child has access to our public libraries and they have tremendous resources. I I think that we need to be more explicit about those opportunities and make sure that our our children are able to access those opportunities. um team. Do you have some other thoughts on uh I know you've been working one of the things I'm really proud of is Dr. King, Dr. Bidio and Dr. Pon are working regularly. It's a close achievement gap group. Uh and Miss Neil and Mr. Smith sit in on that as well. But we're taking a very strong cross departmental approach.
039So, um why don't you guys share a couple of the ideas that I know that you're working on that we're we're moving from this I think status of we're working on it to actually we're going to do it. So, and we are doing uh we are implementing these strategies in parts of the county to assess their effectiveness before we just bring them to scale. If they're not providing the impact we want, we don't obviously want to bring them to scale, but uh team, why don't you offer up a couple of the ideas that you're working on right now? >> Yeah, I mean, I think it's a lot of different factors as Dr. Reid was saying, right? So, one of them is making sure we're providing schools and teachers most importantly with resources that are ready
040to send home so that they don't have to create things, right? So, that's when we can look at personalized learning software like Lexia or um Summit which is a a program that we're using for multilingual learners which we can talk about in the second um component of um this work session but making sure that there's tools resources whether they're digital or whether they're hard copy materials that teachers have that are going to reinforce the skills and concepts that students are Another big thing that we're really leaning into is family engagement and making sure that families understand um the resources that they have access to and the best practices for supporting uh students at home. So that's an area again where Dr. Pon and Dr. King are helping um to really engage our families and make
041sure again that they feel really empowered to not just advocate for their children but uh to be their children's probably first and best best teachers at many times. And then it's, you know, making sure that schools obviously are getting the supports that they need from central office in implementing any of the practices that we're asking them to to think about how they can extend learning time. So Dr. Pon, for example, and his team last year um looked at some innovative strategies to think about how to extend the learning day. Um spring sprouts, you'll probably remember as a program to extend opportunities when we were on spring break. You know, we're trying to get as creative as we can with extending learning opportunities in a lot of different ways through resources, extended time, and family partnerships.
042>> Thank you, Mr. Meline. >> Thanks. On um slide 21, uh you share our ranking in comparison to surrounding jurisdictions uh in terms of performance of the programs, I believe. Um, so, uh, and quality rating. My question is, uh, obviously Alexandria and Arlington, um, score, um, uh, significantly better than we do. So, I'm wondering what they do differently and what lessons we can learn and how we can learn them. >> Well, it's a great question and it's something that I would say, you know, we're still investigating ourselves to some extent to be honest with you. The first thing I would point out about this slide is the state target is greater than 400, right? So all of the Northern Virginia districts that you're looking at here um are and the state are above 600. So
043really understanding that range in terms of how that really works is one of the questions that I think we need to dig into a little bit uh more deeply. But we have collaborated uh with our local uh partners like Arlington and Alexandria. One of the things is they have a lot fewer students in their program. um you know we have thousands of students in our prek program even though it's a small percent of the overall um population. So it's a little bit easier I think sometimes to have coherence when you've got a smaller number of classrooms that you're working in. So I think that's one of the things again making sure that we're consistent in the evidence pra based practices that we've talked about a little bit this morning u from school to school. Um
044but there's there's no magic you know secret that we've uncovered in terms of why those um uh northern Virginia districts might be a little bit higher than we are, but again that scale I think it's also like trying to understand the statistical significance when you're 250 points above the state target but maybe five points off from a surrounding division. Does that have statistical significance or not? We're still trying to figure that out. >> Um and my last question uh is more um I guess theoretical. The um Skipped was founded how many years ago? 12 maybe 12 years ago. Um with the purpose of expanding um our prek seats. Uh and by my observation, it has strayed so far from that initial goal that it's um to some extent lost its its meaning. Um I'd be
045eager to hear from staff who represent uh FCPS on that committee their thoughts about skipped. Um does it need a reset? uh and what can we do to move that conversation forward? >> Well, I've been working with Skip for quite a few years now and I'm looking around the table, a number of board members, current board members I've partnered with on Skip because Skipped has two county board of supervisors and two school board members on it as well as staff and then folks from community- based agencies. You know, you ask a question about does it need a reset? I I think that might be a question um that you might want to have with supervisors to see, you know, if we're continuing to really meet the targets and the goals. Um because Skipped was developed,
046I think 15 years ago, actually now. Um with the initial focus being on expansion of prek, there are now five different areas of focus, all very worthy. Um, you know, we look at, uh, for example, uh, opportunity youth and supporting students or excuse me, I should say supporting youth age 16 through 24 that are either, um, undereducated or unemployed currently. And there's a number of different work streams as well. So, that might be a question if if Skipp is really focused on the strategic priorities of both uh, the county board and this school board. But what I'll say with respect to early childhood education is I'm actually more optimistic than I've been recent years because last year we partnered with the county to develop a new equitable school readiness plan. It was time for them
047to refresh their plan. And one of the things that we argued for very vigorously was a direct goal around increasing the number of prek slots, not just increasing the number of early childhood or child care slots in the county. Um, and the county was very open to that. We were able to actually get that written into the plan. So we have a a measurable goal. Now, the question, I think, becomes, is there any additional county funding to be able to support us moving in that direction? Um, and I know that the county is in active discussion about possible opportunities for future uh bonds, even directed at early childhood expansion. So, I'm more optimistic than I've been in in recent years. >> Mr. Moon, Uh thank you. I have a few questions. Thanks for the presentations.
048I am going to start with slide number 17. And at the bottom of that slide is a the sentence states that a small unmet need. The characterization of that unmet need being small. that how you want to characterize nature or state of extent of unmet need. >> Yeah, I think when we say small, we're talking about relative to the entire kindergarten population. But I would say it's clear between weightless and the reporting that we're hearing from families is that there is unmet need within the community. I worry about what message we are one message we are sending to the community that >> it's a small so people may just small so we don't have to worry about it >> I don't think our unmet need is that small not to worry about it so I
049wonder whether we can perhaps revise that slide at the bottom how we state that okay thank you uh with that uh I was trying to find this information in the report itself but I have not been able too. So uh and and what I heard earlier as part of your presentation regarding a that low prek for other reasons 42% were you saying that those from the families in poverty did not necessarily indicate financial reasons as but the families who are not in poverty tend to indicate financial reasons for not having prek services. That surprised me. So, >> so on page 14 of the full report, we Okay. 14. >> Yeah. We provided a little bit more of a breakdown of what families were self-reporting. And I think it's important to keep in mind this is
050based on a family's status when they're kindergarteners. So, we don't know what their economic situation was prior to. But for our families who were um if you look and it's in figure 10 for those of you who are looking in the full report um for our families who were not economically disadvantaged 19% of them that didn't have a prek experience that said there was a barrier said cost was a factor. Whereas for our families who were economically disadvantaged who reported barriers it was 11%. So I think it's important to to to note that we've got families who maybe aren't falling in sort of an income eligible criteria but are still saying prek is out of reach for them. >> Okay. Okay. uh with I am going to go back to where we have okay let
051me see whether I can assessment data eating or versus spring data what are the slide numbers okay 11 is the four data So when we have a grade level expectations for the fall and then we have a grade expectation level data for spring is the level expectation same in the fall and then spring or expectations changes. >> Well that's an excellent question because the expectation does change on some of these assessments. Right. So again, you're looking at three different assessments here to be considered ready. The literacy, the math, and then the child behavior rating scale, which is basically and there is a difference in expectation from fall to spring because those assessments are state developed assessments with state developed standards similar to the SOS. So there is a higher slightly higher expectation in spring than
052fall. >> I mean I would People don't naturally think so, you know, >> which means the growth that we're making there, >> that's actually more growth than maybe it looks like on the chart because not only are we meeting that fall standard, but now we have to meet that spring standard in the spring when you see that growth. >> Okay, just you know slides were not that clear whether we are talking about same standards, same expectations or different expectations at different time frame for different areas. And even with that in mind, I think this is some of the things that Dr. Anderson was probably asking to get, you know, more answers from you, more information, is that when you look at whites, Asians, and blacks, and overall, etc., that from the fall to the spring,
053achievement gap has grown. And that concerns me obviously because the students are now in our schools under our control and that we teach them and and and we of course we want all students to improve on their in in their in their achievement we don't want to see what we don't want to see is while they are with us the achievement gap to grow and I want to see I want to know whether this is true in all schools most of our schools schools where some schools do a much better job and not having the achievement gap grow and if that's the case whether there's anything that we can learn from the schools who are doing better jobs >> um go back thank you >> Mr. I I appreciate that those were probably more suggestions
054than questions in a sense, right? So, um we didn't include school by school level data in here, but we do have access to be able to look at the results on a school by school basis and that's the work that we try to do across departments really in partnership with Dr. Pon, Dr. Miss Neil's accountability team really look for those outlier schools, the ones that aren't making the growth that we want them to make and prioritize as much support as possible there. But just as importantly, look at schools that are making maybe growth that we wouldn't even expect them to make or higher growth than other schools and and trying to share best practices across schools. So that is something we do. Miss Seismore Heismore. >> Thank you and thank you for this report as
055always. It's very interesting and um lots of lots of details. I think we could talk about this for hours. So, thank you to the team for all the hard work. I have a couple questions. I I looked in the main report as well as in the presentation. But when you look at the readiness benchmark, you have reading, math, and sort of self-regulation in one data point. And then you mentioned that the decline was really mostly due to the reading scores. Is it possible to get that disagregated by subject you not just for the readiness the fall but also the subsequent ones so we could see where the gains are made. That was the first question. >> I I think we can take a look and see if we can provide that. Okay, that would be
056helpful just to kind of see and then especially I think for our teachers be able to target you know well if it's reading was a real issue in prek those we have for prek and maybe as a parent engagement focus we could use our family resource center to target specifically reading skills at that pre-k level to help partner with our families so I think that's an important thing to look at is to um and then it would be really helpful to have it also disagregated by subgroup right reading by subgroup math by subgroup self-regulation by subgroup group because then again we could do more targeted interventions if we know certain groups maybe are coming in with lower math skills or self-regulation skills. So I think that data you know maybe less for this discussion but
057more for usefulness for our staff and teachers and and I really think we've got to make it more useful for our family resource center to partner with our families so they can help support these needs at home especially for our prek kiddos who may not we may not see till they get to kindergarten. So that's the first point I wanted to make. You know, I'm going to ask this question. What's the status of inclusion preschool? Um, especially the pack program and the community peers model. I know in particular, I'm talking about the ones that are not colllocated. >> Yeah. So, if somebody could go to the slide that we have on the different models. I can't think of the slide number off the top of my head, but just to start out to to ground
058everybody, um we have three models of inclusion that we're working on um to really implement right now. The single teacher model, that's where a teacher is duly endorsed, um has students in the classroom that are both general education and have IEPs, that one teacher and that aid serves that group. That's a great model, but that's a unicorn teacher who has two endorsements. So, we don't have too many of those classes. So, we have to get a little bit more creative. Um, the itinerate model we think is working really well. That's a model where the special education u case manager and aid push into two classrooms and co-e with a general education teacher who has both special education students with IEPs and general education students. Third model is the paired classman model where we have a
059teacher who has special education preschool classroom, a teacher who has general education preschool classroom and they interchange students throughout the day and flexibly group. But we've made a lot of growth in terms of the number of students. Um two years ago we were at about 300 students in one of these uh models. Um we're at about 700 uh a little bit over 700 right now. Um so we're making growth but we obviously need to accelerate that and and move faster. Um so we're working obviously with all of our schools uh to try to implement one, two or three of these models in their school um so that we can maximize inclusion. So expect this number to continue to increase and grow. Our projected trend right now is that we're going to exceed the state target
060for preschool inclusion uh this school year. So that's good news because we've been way behind in the past. Uh but even at that point, we'd still be below 30% of our students being included. Obviously that tells you we've made growth uh because we've increased from about 16% to about 30% but we have a long way to go. But one of the challenges um as Miss Seismore Heiser pointed out is when we don't have programs colllocated, it's it's harder. If you have a school that only has a special education school program, how do you get community or how do you get inclusion in a situation like that? Community peers is a model where we've tried to offer pre uh free preschool to students without disabilities to come into the classroom and create a more inclusive learning
061environment. Um two years ago we had a very small number. A handful of students were about 102 for this. So making growth but again we want to accelerate that growth. Um it's kind of just the current status. >> I appreciate that and I do appreciate the growth and I I have noted that. Um a couple questions specifically I had asked about the pack classroom. >> I apologize. So so PAC is an area that we have not made as much growth in. Um we've got a lot more work to do there. Um the easiest spot to start with our pack students is our older students that are of the same age as students in the preschool classroom. So threes and four harder with our twos because we've got students pack program. So uh we are working
062u with some consultants right now to reinvision our service delivery for pack uh classrooms and we're part or we're piloting at two different elementary schools right now. Not made as much growth back as we have for ECCB. >> So when you say not as much growth, I would like to know how much growth. >> Off the top of my head, those numbers I don't have. So I'll have to get back to you on that. >> So I'm a little disappointed, Dr. Reed, that we don't have that information when we're talking about inclusive preschool. We should have the information for all of our preschool classrooms. Even if there's not much growth, we should still be transparent about what has happened. >> Yes, ma'am. We'll have something before we present um at the board meeting. >> Thank
063you. So let me dig in a little more into this. So when you're looking at the again the non-col located and I appreciate the different models, how in the paired model or the single teacher model that you're using are any of these models being used for pack? >> So I am going to phone a friend here. Miss Pilson is here with us today who probably has a better understanding of the data. She might even know the data that I don't know off the top of my head. So Lisa, if you could help us with that one. >> Sure. Good morning, afternoon, whatever time it is. Hi. Um, so yes, we do have and I was actually specifically looking at your district. Um, we have a a school in your district that has the single teacher
064inclusion model where they they work with pack students. So it's so in the um the single teacher inclusion model, it's 85 eight students without an IEP, five students with an IEP. Those five students with IEPs are from the PAT classrooms in that particular school. And that's something that we're we're scaling based on students needs and the decision of the um of the IEP teams. As far as community peers are concerned, um there are we have 20 student stu 20 peers that are in packed classrooms this year. Might correct me if I'm wrong. So that is something that that is another area of growth. Whenever students are being whenever a team is making the decision for inclusion for a child that is three or four years old, three turning four because we find that the goal
065is for our students that are in that have been in a self-contained program going into a pre an in into an inclusion classroom. We want to make sure that our students are having the best possible chance to have full success in a full day kindergarten class. So in looking at the students, the team is looking for not what program but what the level of needs are. So when for when I can't say to you that we don't have students with um a um their level of services autism in inclusion classrooms because we do we do we definitely do. It's we're not looking at it from a programmatic standpoint. We're looking at it based on what the students needs are, what that the knowledgeable committee um has about the child. Of course, you have to take
066the students needs into account, but the entire purpose of inclusion is the environment >> first. And so, I think we may want to balance those two considerations. Um, so you're saying there's one in my district. How many are there entirely in the county? >> For the single teacher model, there's only 12 in the county. >> No, for inclusive models of PAC, how many are there in the county? >> So again, whenever we're developing inclusion models, we're not developing them based on pack or ECCB. We're basing that on student need. >> How many models have students inclusion have not students with autism because not all because we have to be very careful to presume that every student with autism is in the pack program. That is not accurate either. >> So how many how many pack
067classrooms may I finish my question or students who qualify for pack are in one of these three inclusion models? I will get that information to you but it's we have many between the paired classroom model and the pre and the inclusion the um single teacher or itenerate models we do have many of our students that are being included who are served through pack >> miss sizeer I apologize I just don't have the numbers off the top of my head and I shouldn't have put Lisa on the spot to ask her if she had off the top of her I could pull them up we'll get them for you but but I'll just reiterate my earlier point >> just to be clear. We have not made the same level of growth and progress with our pack
068programs inclusion as we have with our ECCP program. >> I'll take a go back to Oh, I have one comment if you want to say now. >> Um we what we're going to do um Miss Dix will be the last person that's having their first turn because we're so late into this. We're going to take all gobacks at the end of the next presentation. As you said, we could spend the entire time just on this and we still have to go to multilingual. keep your questions that you have for this but then we're going to go into the next presentation or we won't get through that. Uh m Miss Dixon, >> I'll keep my questions brief. Thank you for the presentation. Um it's a lot of effort which goes into this program. I can see
069and we would like this to prek offer to all our students obviously coming um to Fairfax County. Um but uh there's a gap. Everybody mentioned that and I was wondering how much of outreach we are doing to the families especially the Hispanic families or economically dis disadvantaged families. Maybe some people don't know about there's a prek program. Do they like I know 40% of the parents said they don't want to send their kids or they want to keep them home. Is it because they don't know about the options out there? Well, I will ask Lisa maybe to talk just a little bit about the outreach that we do because that's in partnership with the county actually as well because the county program uh or the county I should say offers certain early childhood programs and
070then obviously in FCPS we have the pre-K program. So we do that in partnership but I think there's always people that probably don't know. Um but I think when you look at that data that we tried to collect from the survey we're trying to figure out if you knew about it what factors prevented you from being interested in enrolling in the program. And there's just a lot of different ones as as we pointed out in the report. I'll just say even anecdotally like in my own house. Um my my first child started preschool at age two. My second my wife did not want to start preschool until age four. Right. So that was just a personal family choice for different reasons and we're seeing some of that in the survey data. But we do do
071a lot of outreach and partnership with the county. Lisa, >> yes. So um great question. One of the things that we do as a division in March, we do march into registration where we definitely are targeting our families who um are not only registering for kindergarten because we want to ensure that families get the information and get students enrolled and registered as soon as possible, but also to register for prek oper prek as well if that is a um uh our if the FCPS prek program is a program that's appropriate for the family. We do recruiting events at schools during the summer. Um although we did not have the bridge to cave program this summer. Schools that offered the summer meal programs, we had tables set up at those programs. Any program that had summer
072school sites for any that offered any type of summer school for school age students. This whether it was in elementary school or not or targeted at young children. there are there are families that have children that are younger. Um we've had we have um had staff go out for those events. Um we partner with the county on varying um broad communication pieces, social media platforms, things of that nature. And we rely heavily on our principles to share information in their community newsletters, their marquees. We post yard signs, banners, things of that nature. >> Yeah, that's quite extensive. I would just like to add maybe places of worship. So, because you know, churches, mosque, temples, you know, a lot of families go there, take their kids and um just to to know because um awareness like
073I said is very important. I'll just ask one more question. Um and then we'll I guess go back to our next presentation. Um our students we are we can use technology I guess uh a lot in these days and our these kids are born smart now like they they can use iPad from like age two and do things and and and they they use technology much more than you know many generations before before them. So my question was that that I understand a lot of parents decide to keep their students home but can they be given some at home activities to do reading or just doing something technology based where they can spend 30 minutes a day um and maybe uh with some instructions um online instructions I won't say word online instructions that that's
074not right word but something they can collaborate with the school system and and they can do at home if they don't want to send their child um to school. >> Yeah. No, I think that's a great point. Um we do do some of that now. We create materials and resources that families can use. Um you know, we really leaned a lot into those partnerships with our old bridge to Kay program that we can't fund anymore because the loss of esser dollars and that was a program for students that didn't do preschool. We gave them um some additional summertime um in school um along with addition The way that we kind of do it now is largely through the family resource center um through some of our programs, family literacy programs, the hippie program, the home
075instruction for preschool youth program. Uh but we could do more on that front for sure. So we'll take a look at how we could expand some of those supports. >> Uh thank you. And because I was not born technologically smart, I've failed to at the beginning of this thank you for all of your work because I was having a technological glitch. So, thank you for your presentation and for all the work that you've done for this. Um, and I don't want an answer now, but I would like an answer in the future. um the programs like hippie and family lit uh how many pe how many students are covered and families are covered and how are they funded and what is the threat to that funding because that's how we capture a large amount of
076kids and I think we don't give them enough um enough kudos for the work that they do and I think it's important for us to number one know how many kids are covered and number one how they're funded and how precarious the funding is for those programs. Um, you could give that to me later because we want to go into the next presentation that we could spend another whole day on. All right. So, the second area of our focus for goal one is on our multilingual learner progress towards English language proficiency. And we know that multilingual learners that are able to make consistent progress towards English language proficiency are more likely to have the language skills needed to gain knowledge, complete assignments, and communicate their understandings, including on assessments. Beyond academics, communication is also core
077for our students, developing friendships, and feeling safe, supported, and empowered. We continue to focus on annual progress for our students as we know the more language skills they acquire, the more successful they will be. Research also points to a number of factors that affect whether multilingual learners will make the needed progress, including instruction, advising, and student and family empowerment. So, to provide a little context first, this slide presents our endofear membership data for last school year. Um and based on this you can see that a little over one in five of our students was a current multilingual learner with about half of them being levels one or two or students who have um minimal to some social and academic language skills and an additional 6% of our students are former multilingual learners levels A 6A
078through D who are still being monitored. So each year our multilingual learners English language skills are assessed through the Wita Access and this assessment evaluates skills in reading, writing, listening and speaking and the state sets expectations for multilingual learners to make regular progress towards English language proficiency each year. And the ultimate goal is for our students to successfully exit services. So overall and across all of our student groups, the percent of multilingual learners making progress towards English language proficiency continues to increase over time. All student groups have h have improved 10 or more percentage points from the baseline with economically disadvantaged students and Hispanic students showing the largest increases from the baseline up 14 and 13 percentage points respectively. Um, this year's goal report also includes data on the percent of multilingual learners who successfully
079exited the program last year by gaining English language proficiency. So, this isn't a data point where we would expect to see it close to 100% as we don't expect our students um to exit when they're just beginning to acquire English language skills. Um, at baseline, we had 10% of our multilingual learners exiting the program successfully. Last year that rate increased to 14% and rates have been increasing steadily across almost all student groups as well. This slide shows both progress and rates of successful exit by English language proficiency or ELP level for last year. Saw improvements from the baseline across the board for all ELP levels. And for both sets of data, we saw the largest increases from baseline for students at level four in their English proficiency. For our students categorized as ELP level 4,
08062% met the state standard for progress, which was up 18 percentage points from the baseline. And in addition, over half of ELP level 4 students exited the program successfully, which was up 10 percentage points from the baseline. And because academic language proficiency takes on average from 5 to seven years to attain, we expect more students exiting as their ELP level increases, which is what we see in our data. So the successes we're observing in this data are as a result of an intentional focus on four strategies each with an associated set of actions and we're pro going to provide some highlights of the work we're doing and again with more details in our full report. So our first strategy is focusing on direct explicit instruction provided to students in English language development. Last year, we
081purchased K12 Basil resources for English language development for all schools and began piloting ELD resources at 15 secondary schools. The digital resources provide students with extra practice in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This year, we also have new requirements and resources for schools, including ELD common assessments that provide our teachers and schools with additional ways to progress monitor and support instruction and new data tools and walkthrough guides to ensure multilingual learners receive appropriate services. Our second strategy focuses on enhancing English language acquisition in content area instruction. We continue to provide training in Project Lad and SCAP, which are two models of sheltered instruction that help content teachers serve multilingual learners in their classrooms. This year, teachers also have access to new data tools to see students assess strengths and growth areas on the WEDA to
082best support their instructional needs. And in addition, we'll be launching a multilingual learner micro credential this year uh to increase teacher skills in supporting our students. and we continue to expand the percent of teachers with an ESAW endorsement. Our third strategy focuses on supporting students in schools who are not yet making expected progress. Last summer, we offered programming to our long-term multilingual learners. Uh, a long-term multilingual learner is a student who has received Esau services for over five years. And younger students who are at risk for becoming long-term multilingual learners were also included in summer programming. We're piloting a new AI tool, reading assistant with Amira, that supports literacy instruction for multilingual learners. And for schools with lower rates of students making growth on the WEDA, they continue to receive additional support and monitoring through
083project momentum. And additionally, some schools have a required school improvement and innovation or SIP goal based on last year's WEDA progress. And finally, across all of our goal reports, we see that multilingual learners with disabilities require additional support. This year, we're providing monthly professional development to ESO teachers working with multilingual learners with disabilities. And in addition, the ESAW and special education offices will jointly provide professional development to enhance accessibility to core curriculum for all students. Our final strategy focuses on engaging families in their students educational progress. To help families support their children's language growth, we provide family-friendly materials to explain ELD instruction and reinforce the importance of maintaining one's home language. In addition, we offer resources and programs to support students continuing their language skills at home, including our family literacy program and access to
084family license for students using the Summit K12 program. And then for our public, this slide shows the school board's 2025 state and federal legislative program as it relates to our multilingual learners and the continued advocacy for appropriate resources and the appropriate assessment of multilingual learners are clear themes from last year. So in summary on this section, we've made large gains from the baseline and recognize that just under half of our multilingual learners still require additional support to make growth with WEDA. A higher percentage exited ESO services last year, which is important as we prepare our multilingual learners for success both now and in the future. And finally, we saw some of our largest gains for our ELP level four students in both growth and exiting services. So, at this time, that concludes our goal one
085presentation, and I'll turn it back to our meeting managers. Thank you. Um based on our last section discussion, we'll start with two minutes um just to make sure that we have enough time to cover everything and go back to the gobacks. So Dr. Anderson, >> I'm going to go back to the gobacks, but I'm going to go back to my original point and just go down my line. What I was hoping to have when I talked about the disagregating of data in terms of student performance is because I want to be sure that especially with the prek experience I want to be sure that it has some impact because when I look at some of the data that's provided here students with disabilities 90 plus% are participating in prek multi-race students um from 88 to
08692% 504 students from 84 to 92% of those students participate in prek but yet 58% of them are performing well on these assessments. So that's not the only factor. It is a factor, but I'd like to not have to do this on my own. So if you can provide that, that would be helpful. And also I would love to hear some of your thoughts regarding the type of prek. How are we evaluating? You talked about the ratings etc. How is that being evaluated? Do we have students who are in this kind of prek uh performing those? Is there a case to be made here? um if there's some data to support that that I think would be super helpful with skipped. >> So we have not gone as far in our analysis of looking at
087if kids had a prek experience outside of FCPS, was it a quality prek experience? Right now the data that we've been looking at has been based on um the kindergarten entry form that families fill out that indicates did did you have a child have a pre-k experience in what kind of setting and for how much time essentially is the information we're collecting. I think you're asking a really important question because the research really ties to having that quality prek experience being a strong indicator of school readiness. Um, and that's certainly something that we can start to take a look at um to help support the board's conversations. >> Thank you. My second point on this area is regarding the goals that are being set. I appreciate the year-over-year data in terms of where we want
088kids to be in the spring. It just seems to me that it might be more impactful or even more accurate to set goals based on where they are in the fall. If they are, you know, in X place in the fall, we want them to be in place Y in the spring. So having a one, I'd like to have a sideby-side comparison with those students with spring and fall data rather than year-over-year because one, they're different kids and two, they're coming in without us being able to control what, you know, they are. So it's not as helpful. It's It's better to just be able to see the growth that we able to we are able to impact from fall to spring. So if that's a possibility, I would be very much interested in that data.
089And it's 8 seconds. And I'll take a go back. >> Miss Seismore. >> I wasn't sure if there's a response to Dr. Anderson. >> Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. >> I I think you're raising a really important question, which is the growth data, and it's something that we certainly as we were putting together this goal report also had that reflection on recognizing that that um fall data is not something that we have control over, but really recognizing right the starting point for students. And I think that that is absolutely something we can take a look at. How do we bring more of those growth measures into not just this goal report but multiple goal reports? >> Thank you. >> That's okay. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure Dr. Anderson could have her question answered.
090Um so Dr. Dr. Reed and team, when you bring back more information about the pack, I would love to have more information about the re reimagining and what your team's timeline and metrics are for that inclusion project to make sure it's going hand inand with the rest of it. So, that was my follow-up question on that. Um, I do want to thank all of our kindergarten teachers who are working incredibly hard with such a w and wide range of students. So, kudos to all of them. I did have a question. You mentioned earlier, you know, some students are entering kindergarten already reading. Some students, right? What programs and metrics do we have in place for those who are already reading or already exceeding the benchmarks when they enter? Because I want to make sure we're
091fostering their strengths, too, right? Like closing the gaps is is key and and critical. We need to do and I appreciate the work, but I would love to hear on the goal reports, what's the work to foster those who come in with that ability to help them grow. I think I think I guess what I'm getting at is what's the growth metric for all students? >> Well, I think it's a great question. I mean, I think we're going to need to probably think about how we could a little bit, but they'll look at where students are at in the growth that they're making even if they're above benchmark on these assessments that we have. Right? So that helps us identify those strengths which is important when we design our differentiated instruction to be able to
092continue to push them. Um which we do you know we do definitely do that but I think that's an area we probably need to think about how we would highlight and share what that work looks like a little bit have been focused on whether or not you meet the benchmark or if you're below the benchmark we haven't really talked about if you're above the benchmark what that your experiences >> yeah and Dr. I would just encourage you. I mean, I think one thing when we were doing the strategic plan, right, as a team, we were really talking about fostering student strengths and helping all of them grow and achieve, but the goal reports have really been focused on more the gap closing, which again is vital, but it's a piece of what we were doing
093with a strategic plan. It's not all of it. And so I think it's really important for our strategic plan to show that growth for all of our students because if we're reporting on it, then we're consistently doing it. And I know it's being done in our classrooms. I've seen it in my school visits. Absolutely, it's being done. But again, if it's in the report, it's consistent and right. And I know, you know, we we used to say every child by name and by need, but I think our strategic plan makes it clear it should be every child by name and by strength. And so what are we reporting on on fostering those student strengths so we have goals where growth metrics and measures for everybody. So I just would want to for all the goal
094reports leave you with that thought. Thank you >> Dr. Anderson for go back or go go back. >> I I have a lot of things here so I'm going to try to go quickly. Um one of the things I also wanted to raise as Dr. Dr. Reed mentioned that Dr. Prescidio, Dr. um King and Dr. Pon, you're the closing the achievement gap um team. I'd like to see that data a little bit more present because right now I have to dig through it in the document. I think we have to be a little bit intentional about calling out where it is and what the impact is going to be in the future targets because some of the future targets actually make the data um the achievement gap even worse. And so I think there has
095to be a little bit of intent in intentionality there. And um one thing that I wanted to raise to Dr. Prescidio when you talked about the resources that are provided often I I when I'm at the schools I kind of experience a little bit of disconnect because the central office believes all the resources that are being provided are very helpful and are being or um or are being used regularly. Well, there's a different application at the school site. How do we bridge the gap between we're saying do this, do that, what are the expectations and what exactly is happening with what is being provided here? I I'm just wondering who's kind of doing that monitoring. >> Yeah. So, I think the the first thing I would say is we want to provide resources that are
096shelf ready to use time, right? But we also know and I'm reminded because my wife is a teacher in FCPS that uh we have all kinds of things that we share with teachers that maybe at all times aren't always as reasonable to be able to do, right? So, I think what the what the goal is is to provide as many resources as we can and make sure that we're providing that support, but it doesn't mean necessarily that every teacher is going to use every resource that we've created and provided. They need to use them with the students when they need them in a way that's going to be helpful and lead to. So the work that we've been trying to do is to build the capacity of instructional leaders in the building to understand how
097to support the teachers on the ground because we're not in 198 schools every day um in instructional services or or DSS. So we work very diligently um with our administrators and our instructional leaders in our building. Depending on the content area we're talking about, we might meet as frequently as every two weeks or um once a month to make sure that everybody's aware of the supports, the materials that are available. Principles in the school along with their instructional leadership team is the first line of monitoring for fidelity of implementation of things. There's an expectation that something be used. For example, our new benchmark curriculum, we're very clear that that is an expectation that that must be used, must be taught with fidelity and that monitored at the school level through walkthroughs led by next thing
098that we're doing again and Dr. Pon and Dr. are key in this is division level walkthroughs so that we can gauge and see are the things that are required versus the things that might be nice to do actually happening consistently from we're continuing to try to deepen our work I think you might have heard us talk about that previously but we have very targeted walkthrough tools for literacy expectations um we're talking obviously in this report about our multilingual learners as well what should instructional supports look like for multilingual learners particularly uh Englishment which is critical that all students that are multilingual learners receive that. So we've got different walkthroughs for different expectations and we monitor those first at the school level and then at the division. Um, and then you know, we're just here to
099support where schools might be struggling. >> Thank you, Mr. Moon. >> Thank you. I know that I only have two minutes, so I'm going to speak fast that I I agree that it takes at least five to seven years to acquire academic languages for the second language learners. Uh, for many of the students may even take may even need longer than that. uh you know I'm not going to claim that a what I experienced as a second language learner when I came to the US as a teenager uh was is the only uh you know best way to uh teach our second language learners. However, uh the way that the opportunities I was given through ESER program back then ESR at the school that I attended, I mean they were very open to providing flexible
100and creative opportunities for me to really learn the language that I needed. I did not have five to seven years before I went to college. I needed to learn much more quickly than that. And they let me they let me go to regular classes from ESL and be able to return back to the ESL whenever I felt that I needed to return or I wanted to try a regular classes that kind of flexibility you know giving a students who wants to learn at at his own pace or her pace his one her need I think we should give it a try uh you know you know that may require some you a training work on the part of not just the ESO teachers but regular teachers who may be seeing this ESO students coming in
101maybe once a week or twice a week but the students might want to give it a try to see whether uh you know that would be more helpful for the students growth in acquiring uh English language before he or she gets to college. >> Yes sir Mr. Moon and I think you know we hear that from a number of our multilingual students uh that feel like they're ready for more accelerated coursework. Um there's a as with all students there's a continuum of uh expectation and readiness uh to accelerate learning for sure. So I appreciate you calling that out. Thank you. Thank you for this presentation. Uh again this is a great program uh north of new initiations. I have seen that in middle school when I visited that how multilingual learners are using different tools
102and differentiated learning them in the classrooms. Um and their classroom sizes are smaller than the regular classroom sizes too and um one of the presentation I was attended was for portrait of graduate from each student um and giving their journey like throughout the year and presenting different the collaboration what they did and communication. So and uh this the collaborative environment was very impressive in the classroom and it was more like everybody was pro like helping each other like yeah go for it. Yeah, you can do it. So, I feel like the uh the multilingual learner just like Mr. Moon said, they're very engaged and very smart uh kids and they want to excel. They want to be successful coming to the country as an immigrant myself and you know I'll speak for a lot of
103us uh we just have to work harder sometimes to just get to to the point where everybody else is. So um I I feel like the right tools are given to them um it's going to make a lot of impact. U the only thing I would wanted to ask what is ELP level four on slide 36 which you have mentioned has a great improvement in proficiency. So on slide 36, you're talking about ELP level four. Um, and proficiency um is at the top of that. So it's showing that over our baseline um which was a 44% of our students who are uh labeled ELP level four. That's based on their WEDA assessment. So it's ranking how you are in your English. So level four is the highest level that you achieve before you exit into
104monitoring status. Um so our baseline was 44% of our students achieving that target and then last year we had increased that to 62%. So that is a that is a good increase. One thing that's not on this slide that I I would point out in terms of the research which um continues to be reinforced um in more recent studies, but this goes back several decades of a 5 to sevenyear time span to develop English proficiency. Where we're at, which does not show on this slide, is that students that are with us um for five years or less than five years, 67% of those students exit ESOL services after attaining proficiency. So we're the majority of our students are doing it at the low end of the researchbased time frame that it takes for students to
105develop and you don't see that on here because you only see the level four. So >> okay, one one more questions is the uh on slide 38 you have mentioned piloted summit K12L connect to literacy digital ELT resource and I wanted to know if this going to be also introduced to the elementary schools. >> Yes. So, we're still in in fact maybe Rich Polio's here, our director of ESOL services. I could let Rich maybe talk a little bit about that because that's one of those resources that we piloted last year that we're trying to expand this year that provides that ability to uh reinforce learning outside of the regular school day. That's something that students can continue to use and practice at home and it even has uh resources associated with it that help um
106parents and family members. So, Rich, do you want to say a little bit more about the summit? >> Sure. So, Summit, uh, the Summit K12 program, the additional, it's a digital program that's supplemental to English language development. It's currently at 18 middle and high schools, and it is this year was introduced by the Title One Office at 46 elementary schools. So, we have it um in both elementary, middle, and high this year. Um, I'm going to take a quick turn before I go to some gobacks. Um, I have a a couple of questions. Well, I I have one question in terms of when a newcomer comes in and you assess where they are in terms of content comprehension versus English language comprehension. like if you have that data because we have some very high functioning
107kids that come in that know the content but don't know the language. So that's my one question if we if we capture that data and my second um question is that I would really appreciate an explanation of what proficiency is in terms of reading, writing, listening and speaking. I understand this because I have had to explain it countless times to a lot of parents who say, "My kid no longer needs these services because they speak the language." So, for our listening audience, if you would just explain what that when we're measuring proficiency, can you explain what that looks like? >> Yes. I'll start and then just invite Rich to jump in with anything to add or correct anything that I might say. First, on the proficiency, there's a real difference. what we might term kind
108of conversational or basic proficiency. So I might have some vocabulary that I can use to interact and have conversation with with community, but that doesn't mean that I'm proficient in academic English, right? So when we talk about proficiency, we mean at the same level of performance as a native speaker of the language, in this case, English would be at. So, for example, if you think about a high school class and you might be studying history, um you need to be able to read complex text with vocabulary, make inferences, have strong comprehension skills, be able to reason and analyze in that language in a way that is going to give you access to all the content learning that you need to do in that target language. And if you think about sometimes I think about if
109you were to drop me off in Germany, I might have some conversational skills and background with language, but I wouldn't be ready to learn about German history and German um in a self-directed manner. And there's a real difference between that basic conversational proficiency that academic proficiency. So that's the first thing. And then can you remind me the second question that you had asked? Oh, about assessment about assessment and newcomers. I apologize. So, when we assess students that have a home language, when we do registration, we ask questions and we're required to do this by state and federal law. If you speak a language other than English in the home, so it's a home language survey. If you do, we're required by law to assess you to see if you need ESOL services. Um, and when
110we have those students coming in, we also assess their literacy skills, their math skills in their in their native language to have a better understanding of their content knowledge versus their language proficiency. Um, and similar to some of the questions Mr. Moon was asking, we don't restrict students in terms of their access to grade level content. We enroll them directly in grade level classes. nth grade English for example if you're a nth grader along with the the English language development support that you need to increase your English language doing both but what ends up happening sometimes is students um have a really rigorous academic course load and they might want to take other elective courses that they're not able to take because they're taking English language development course so it does create some um some
111difficulties at times from the scheduling do you want to add Uh I I think you answered that very well, Dr. Prescidio. The only thing I guess the only thing I would add is that we do notice the difference between our students who are still receiving multilingual learner services and those who have exited, those who have reached proficiency. It does show up in our like for example so pass rates. And so you see like one other definition might be that you know while many of our multilingual learners are able to pass SOS we know that our multilingual learners our former multilingual learners are students who have exited um are able to pass uh state assessments at the same rate as our non-multilingual learners. So they're doing really fantastic when they when they exit. >> Thank you.
112I appreciate that work. And I also appreciate that we had asked before that you break down the information versus the levels and I appreciate that you listened to us and gave us that. I will uh Dr. um Dr. Ricky Dr. Anderson Dr. Anderson thank you. Now I feel like I'm now getting into the second half of the report. um will with multil- language learners the progress as identified in the documents um it didn't meet the target of 59% from 56% it made one point growth and I know we've been super intentional about having lots of resources to um that population so can we talk about the root c root cause analysis as to why we didn't get the growth that was um intended Well, I mean, I think again it's multiaceted. There's a lot of
113factors that go in there. Um, oh, there's a lot of factors that impact the learning rates. It's not just your language. There's a lot of other things going on there. So, what we try to do when we're not um hitting targets for individual students or school, try to do some of that root cause analysis at the school level. Um, one of the things that we is maybe the instruction wasn't as aligned as it needed to be to support student on those targets. So the ESOL office works very closely again in partnership with Dr. King and Dr. Pon to work with schools that had not met those uh growth targets. Every one of those schools develops a school improvement plan after doing root cause analysis as part of their school improvement planning process. So all schools
114that didn't meet their WE to growth targets are required to have school improvement plan uh goals. Then we provide uh training and support uh to those schools to make sure uh to to hopefully make greater growth in the following year. And then in an individual student level um the ESOL office will provide individual student consultations with the student, the family and the staff at the school to do root cause analysis to understand why an individual student maybe is not making the expected growth and develop basically a plan for them um to try to get you know the instruction and supports that we look at it at the school level with a certain targeted group of supports uh level as well. >> Thank you. That's helpful. Dr. Reed, the reason why I wanted to just hone
115in on this is because we have just a few years left on this plan and everyone's supposed to be at that 100% rate. So, it's going to get real really quickly. And my wondering is if we're making single digit single percentage points growth now when this is supposed to be kind of the easiest section. Are we going to be successful with the end of the plan in 2030? >> So, thank you for the question and we're at least moving in the right direction. Um, sometimes like a flywheel, you have to engage in a practice over time that's predictable and at some point it catches and then we're able to accelerate progress. Um I also I believe that the uh for the first time we've actually had multilingual literacy materials last year. Uh one year is
116not going to turn around data that's um been uh a little anemic for a period of time but I believe that the focus on this work will continue to garner um an acceleration of achievement here. Um and our staff uh are working extraordinarily hard. Our children are working extraordinarily hard and our families are very supportive. So we believe we're moving in the right direction and uh we're going to make the progress we need to make. >> Sure. My last set of questions is regarding the so data. I know we didn't May I just continue? I don't see any other um I know we didn't go over them, but they're in the back pages um 49 51 etc. where we talk about the so data for third grade. um we did not meet target in that
117category. The achievement gap also increased um 53%. What are the expected changes so that we meet the target for these subgroups? Again, we're we're going in the wrong in the not in the wrong direction. We're not going in the direction that we want to go into. And let me also just pull that in with the middle school data, the fifth to sixth grade. I am actually very concerned about that because the targets were not met for two years in a row and several groups went down. Um similarly with the sixth to seventh grade achievement data that achievement gap is 69 points. Again these are areas of great concern to me. um the eighth grade so again we did not make that target except for 504 uh multi-racial and white students that achievement gap is 71
118points these are great concern and I won't even couple this yet with the new cut scores so let's just talk about current state this we didn't talk about this and we needed to because the progress is not there. >> Yeah. So, I think I will start by just saying we're our focus on goal three is going to be both on language arts and math and science. So, we're going to have a broader conversation that's going to be inclusive of those SOS. So, I think we'll be prepared to dive into a deeper dialogue in our goal three report. Um, and we did that intentionally because we know while the goal one has these measures included in it, the space that we've sort of made in this conversation has been to focus on school readiness. Um, so
119I want to make sure that everyone is aware that that is our plan where we're going to dive deeper into those data sets. >> Okay. Thank you. But just kind of overall, Dr. Reed, can you give us some sense of the new cut scores, how they will impact um, what these data show? I don't know about this specific data set, but the new cut scores are certainly we we need to recognize the new cut scores are also coupled with a more rigorous assessment. The SOS in math and reading recently were the tests themselves were redone and um by all accounts made more rigorous. So when you make the test harder and then make it harder to pass, you've got two concerns that are happening simultaneously uh for our children and our staff. So I know
120that our cut scores, there have been varying modeling that's been done and we're going to be sharing some of that in an upcoming academic matters, but it could have an impact of upwards of 30% in perhaps larger in some areas uh of the county. And that's significant. uh we're gonna have children one day that feel like they're they've met uh the SOS or even highly achieving and the next day haven't even passed with the same uh performance um and again on more rigorous tests. So I think that if I were contemplating raising the bar for excellence, my expectation, and I think what I've talked with you as a board about is we need to take the rigor of the courses we're requiring, such as requiring advanced math sooner, actually does raise rigor. There's nothing about
121changing scores um that makes something more rigorous. There's there's nothing about that strategy that supports excellence in education for children. >> Oh, thank you for that. I just wanted to make sure I took the opportunity to bring that into the conversation because I think it's going to be a rude awakening for parents and students when those new um those new cut scores are applied. And we could not stress enough how detrimental it's going to be to our overall picture. And I would anticipate a significant rejigging of our goals and our targets or not. I I well I one of the things that we've worked on for about a year and we're going to share I believe this coming meeting is our own Fairfax County public school criteria for success. In other words, our metric that
122we as a county and we as a community believe best describes excellence in education for this county and our children. And we need to stabilize that metric and work with it over a period of time. Uh excellence doesn't happen overnight, right? It's a process of deliberate discipline behavior that occurs over time. And in this case, as we've made significant progress, particularly in our mathematics, uh it's something that as we move forward, it's going to be critical that we think about what do we define as excellence? Because if we let someone else create that narrative and define us, um then I mean we just we simply can't allow that. We need to carry our own narrative. We need to be clear about what we believe excellence is and looks like. The world's changing right now. The
12322nd century skills that are expected for our children to be successful are different than those skills were several decades ago. And I think here in Fairfax County, we've been a leader nationally and we need to continue to be by setting those metrics for ourselves and not allowing those metrics to become politicized. >> Oh, I I agree with you 100%. I think my one concern is that the accountability to the external measures impact our accreditation which impact how our schools view well how our community view our schools. Um what I think it's always a good idea to to share our narrative. I think it's inescapable that we are going to be linked to the external factors and just balancing that is going to be a tight rope. >> Yes ma'am. I I will say that we
124have the number one uh students and staff in the country and just recently as recently as this week um the 30 top elementary schools in the Commonwealth were published and 18 of those are Fairfax County Public School elementary schools uh which is more than half of 30 and we're only 14% of the students in the Commonwealth. So, we continue um to demonstrate excellence across the board and I'm I'm proud of the work our young people are doing. >> And my absolutely last question because I this is more of a process question. When we vote on this on Thursday, are we voting because we've seen the data, we've talked about the data and you know, yes, we accept it or that we are affirming that the growth is sufficient. I believe you're going to be voting
125uh it's an and uh that you've seen the data that it's uh clear and we're making adequate progress. >> Thank you. Um, I I' I'd like to take a quick turn when we're talking about cut scores because we are talking about multilingual learners and I'd like for you to please explain the change that has occurred in terms of our multilingual learners and how they now h are required to take so uh SOS that will count towards accreditation after um just just explain it have I believe in our resident accountability expert, Miss Huffman in the room. So maybe we should invite her up if she doesn't mind because she attends all of the uh board of education meetings, works with the VDOE, you know, as one of our main advocates with respect to um all of
126our accountability work. So, um, there are a number of changes that are, I think, complex and confusing. Um, and hopefully Betrus will probably do it all. I know she'll do a better job than I will highlighting the most important factors, particularly as it pertains to multilingual learners. I was trying to buy you time to find a microphone, but >> Awesome. Okay. Very good. Um, so the change in the accountability system that went into place, it was approved by the state board of education last September and went into effect for this past school year. With those changes, our multilingual learners became accountable at after one full academic year of public education in the United States. So 12 month of of public schools following that the students uh assessment scores would count within accountability and those results
127we believe will be res released probably next week from the state um to see that first kind of baseline of that impact. Um in terms of the students impact, the changes in cut scores additionally will have um impacts on all of our students. But the change from 11 semesters before the students were counting in the accountability system to now essentially three semesters is very significant and definitely worth noting >> and not best practice. Um so I think that that's important when we talk about And we had this conversation last year and we said we need to produce our own report card based on facts and reality. Uh Mr. Fr. >> Thank you. I just wanted to clarify the board activity at the meeting regarding the goal report. Um so our governance manual does not speak
128to um approving based on adequate uh progress on goals. It is an acceptance of the goal report being transmitted to the board and then the work that underpins that throughout the um executive limitations which are all pointed at the goals uh is where we uh discuss engage debate uh say yay or nay to the adequacy of the progress. That's where that work happens. So I've always based and the governance manual uh speaks to accepting the report uh as being transmitted. Um the evaluation of the work done um uh is through the executive limitations. So uh additionally the executive limitations are the only mechanism that we have at least in our current governance for course correction or asking for additional information. Um other another mechanism would be a follow-on motion to uh accepting that we've received
129the report. Um but we have a very specific approach to um the board saying whether or not we believe the work is adequate and that's in our executive limitations conversations. So uh other than that, uh I appreciate the information that's been shared. I share some of the same concerns that colleagues have um particularly around um how we get from you know uh point A to point B with the time left in the strategic plan. I will say that there have been reports that we've received previously that have showed surprising jumps in numbers and so uh while something might look slow one year uh other years it might uh show a bigger leap. I think just last year or the year before we saw a 15 or 16% increase in proficiency um uh which was unexpected
130um and surprising maybe it was 10%. Um uh so I look forward to further conversations. Thanks. >> Thank you for that Mr. FR. Um seeing no other placards we can adjourn for lunch. and members to take their seats. We're going to get started in the next portion of our work session today, which is our AI future in Fairfax County Public Schools. And I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Reid. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Lady. And um I really am excited this afternoon, I know the board's been very excited, too, to talk about um artificial intelligence and all of the potential. And I'm thrilled uh that this afternoon we're going to hear from one of our leaders in the field nationally. Um and Mr. Sethi will introduce him in a moment. I really
131want to manage expectations for this afternoon. I feel like sometimes do you know we start this conversation and it's a ginormous topic AI right? It's you can't open a news release of any type without seeing some article good, bad, otherwise about it. And so in managing expectations for today's conversation, I'm really looking forward to this being a level setting for us as a team so that we all understand what we mean when we're talking about AI. Uh because I think that one of the things that Babak said when Mr. Seth and I met with him earlier is often if we all had a bubble over our heads and we mentioned AI, we all think we know we're talking about the same thing, but in reality we're not. And for us to chart a path forward,
132I think it's important that we're all clear about definitions and what we really mean by AI and what we think about when we set a path forward. So, it's a level setting today and there is going to be opportunity for many more conversations moving forward. Uh we're calling this uh topic area meeting the moment and that came from that same conversation. Uh which is the sense that we have to meet this moment as a school division, a community and a country and um we're going to have our November 3rd evening meeting to invite our community into the conversation as we shape the future um of Fairfax County Public Schools. So I will turn it over to Mr. Sethi and I look forward to 90 minutes of robust conversation. >> Thank you Dr. Reid. I'm excited
133to have Dr. Babek Mastagami join us today. He started as a teacher in Michigan and he worked at opening up the first AI school in Gwynet County Public Schools which was slightly before Chad GPT era. So clearly he's been at it doing it for a while and now he advises institutions publicly, privately on the future of AI and education. So excited to have you here, Bab. >> Thank you so much. Uh Dr. Reed and Mr. Sethy, board members, it's great to be with you here today. Um what I'm going to do is take you through a a briefing that's brief. It's going to be short. It's not going to have everything in it. Um but hopefully what it'll do is it'll give you a bit of a sense of the sort of basics of AI
134and those sorts of things. Many of you are likely to be far more technical than I am and those sorts of things and that's great. Let's bring all that to the table. Um, but I look forward to engaging in this conversation and laying the landscape of what's going on right now around AI and education. Uh, level setting around some of the AI capabilities that are out there and those sorts of things. Um, and then grounding it in potentially a set of things to consider um, as you all are moving forward in Fairfax. Um, just by way of reminder. So, so I'm Bobc. I'm an educator at heart as a fifth grade science and social studies teacher. Started off in a really rural place, but I'm originally from Blackburg, Virginia. Um, and have actually had multiple
135cousins who live in the Vienna Fairfax area and they've been through your schools. Uh, they turned out all right, so I appreciate that. Um, I hope they're watching this and seeing that you guys did a really great job. Um, so so thank you. They're they're all they're all younger than I am, so I can sort of ribb them on that. Um, but uh, so so I really appreciate you all. And I do want to make sure that I say that um while we're going to be talking about AI today, we're primarily going to be talking about a world infused with AI. Um and so it's going to be about the technology, but really about the world that our kids are going into. Um and kind of going from there. Does that make sense? >> All
136right. So let's start off. So if you look at this picture right here, a lot of people look at it and go, "Oh, that's a weird picture to put up first." And here's what's going on right here. Does anybody know what's going on right here? Am I allowed to ask that question? They're not jumping off. >> Uh well, some they're not exactly jumping off. They're being pushed off the cliff, right? And so what happens oftent times with penguins is that they get on these big ice shelves and in order to take to test the water for safety, they all sort of shove and push and pull until some fall in. Then they all look to see if something has eaten them or not. And if nothing has eaten them, then the rest jump in, right?
137And so well, no. So here's the deal. So, typically when you get in an AI conversation these days, typically when you're in an AI conversation these days, you have people who come talk to you who are at the very back. Notice the ones who are like laying down in the back and like not doing anything and they're like, "Oh yeah, go jump like go do the thing." Um, I am not that person. Okay. So, as Mr. Seth said, uh I and my entire team when I was back in Gwynet County Public Schools, we've been swimming in the water for quite a bit. Um, and there's a lot that we can that we can learn from that experience and to help grow the entire sort of country on. Um, and so I just want to make
138sure you guys know that this isn't coming from a theoretical space, uh, but from a place where we've we've done a lot of what I'm talking about with kids, for kids, with families and communities and those sorts of things. Um, so let's dive right on in. One of the biggest challenges that Dr. Reed pointed out at the beginning is that uh we are typically having three separate conversations around AI at the same time which makes it really really difficult to have the full conversation. Um conversation one is about future readiness of students for an AI infused world. Okay. So this includes whether or not kids know and understand AI tools but also includes deeply human skills around do you know how to collaborate with other people? do you know how to communicate with one another
139and those sorts of things and so readiness future readiness of students is one of those conversations but often one that goes ignored. The second one is a conversation around tools with AI in them. Uh and these are specifically tools that are used to support student learning. So you might have a vendor or something saying oh we have this great AI tool that supports reading or math or whatever it is right but sometimes and oftent times the child or the adult doesn't even know that there's AI in the tool. Um but the conversation is around an AI tool uh for kids. The third set of conversations is around AI tools to support adults, right? And so these are things that can support teachers directly. So for example, supporting lesson planning and building content and rubrics and
140those sorts of things, but they can also be used by like research and evaluation folks to run big data sets, all those sorts of things. Um and to keep things going. So before we get into any of these conversations though, I think it's really important to ground ourselves in the purpose of of public education. And for me, that purpose is to inspire and prepare young people for their future, which I'm defining as flourishing in life, career, and democracy. There are a lot of different ways you can sort of cut that across and those sorts of things, but fundamentally when we talk about the parts of a person's life in the future, I think a lot of it falls in these buckets. The challenge though is that we're we're leading in a rare moment where AI
141is fundamentally impacting life, career, and and democracy in ways that were previously unimaginable. And so what that means for us is that means that we need to update and upgrade our systems, our classrooms, and our lessons for this AI infused world. Notice that I'm saying upgrade and update. I'm not saying throw away. I'm not saying reinvent the entire thing. What I'm talking about is making sure that we're meeting the purpose of education that we already believe in. Now, many people when confronted with this are like, "Oh, yeah, okay. So, like that's a ways off. Like, it's it's far away, but the future is already in our in our hallways, right? Children beginning kindergarten this fall will graduate in 2038, right? So, a question that comes to mind is, are we preparing them for today or
142for 2038? A child entering sixth grade will graduate from high school in 2032? a child that's born today will graduate from college in 2042, right? And so realistically, the question that literally keeps me up every single night is, are we preparing children for their future? And by their future, we're at this point talking about the 2030s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. Right? In some instances, people are already talking about the 22nd century. That scares me too much. As a guy who has a 13-year-old and a nine-year-old, I'm like, hold on, let's finish out this century strong uh and then look forward. Right? But the important thing to note is the big question of are we preparing young people, children for that future that they're going to have or our present. So to ground us really quickly
143and briefly on what is AI? Uh because AI is and isn't a lot of things to a lot of different people. AI is a technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision-making, creativity, and autonomy. I say that word simulate on purpose because it is not conscious. It is not humanlike. It is simulating. And the form of AI that we're going to primarily talk about today is called generative AI, which is a type of AI that uses that builds new content using existing text, video, code, and images. Um, but the thing that it's creating is fundamentally new in certain ways. If you look at the chart on the right, you see that they're all different types of AI um out there. These are some of them, right? everything from virtual
144companions to robotic personal assistance to machine learning and autonomous systems. There are a lot of different pieces at work. Today we're going to be primarily talking about generative AI. So the question of the day that I get from a lot of people is are things really changing or is it hype? Right? We always hear about the hype cycle. So let's jump into it. So piece number one thinking about life, career and democracy, right? AI is transforming life in real ways. On the left hand side, you see some negative ways. You see some Jenzers who would marry an AI in AI relationships, right? You see people having their closest relationships and companions with chat bots. You see the environmental aspects of AI and the environmental risks that come from a lot of the data processing and
145those sorts of things. At the same time though on the right side, you see some of the very positive things. You have organizations like Course Mojo and Amir Learning who have built really remarkable use cases in the education space for for augmenting and supporting educators in what we want to do. Everything from supporting dyslexia screening to differentiating classroom environments in real human-based ways. At the same time, in medicine, you have AI proving that they can outperform doctors in terms of medical diagnosis, which can be rather incredible. Imagine if you can detect lung cancer uh many months or years before a human eye could. That could really be beneficial to our system um and our world. At the bottom, we have a really neat tractor. Uh and what is there? Usually, people go, "Oh, but there's
146someone driving the tractor." Yeah, I'm not talking about autonomous driving tractors. In this case, AI is being used to look and identify weeds in the soil. Uh and those weeds are then zapped by a laser that destroys the weed without the use of pesticides or chemicals and those sorts of things. So think about the positive things that could happen if we didn't have to use those things um in our food production processes. At the same time, AI is transforming careers, right? Uh so you have Goldman Sachs saying that twothirds of current jobs are exposed to some sort of automation. Uh Mackenzie Global Institute is talking about 30% of activities and 60% of occupations that could be automated. Um really really things are changing. Now for people who are like I don't actually believe those uh
147those statements. Let's just look much more directly. These forecasts are no longer theoretical. In ex Accenture, they've said employees who can't be retrained for AI will be exited. Uh Shopify is talking about how AI proficiency is now baseline and built into performance reviews. Duolingo has specifically said no new hires unless teams prove that AI can't do the work. Walmart is talking about how AI is going to change literally every job and talking about how headcount will remain flat despite growth plans as roles are eliminated or transformed. So these uh these challenges uh and positive opportunities with careers um really uh are are coming to four uh and much faster than anticipated. At the same time AI is transforming democracy and so on the left hand you have the positive. So there are really interesting use
148cases of AI to foster a more inclusive democracy to make it so that they can find zones of agreement between people who seem very very far apart and might not figure out those zones. Similarly, it can be used to improve citizens quality of life by making it so that citizens can uh so government can be more reactive and transparent to what the citizen needs are. On the right side though you see some of the cases where AI can be really problematic for democracy and for community as a whole. You'll see the LA Times article at the bottom that's where I highlighted roughly 7% of Americans use AI chat bots and interfaces for news each week. That can be highly problematic if people aren't at a minimum looking at their own news sources themselves. We have
149big shifts in election disinformation across the world happening as a result of AI created disinformation. Uh I have two images on here. The one on the left uh is uh you'll see I think that's Rachel Madau. There are a couple other famous people helping uh flood victims in Texas. None of these pictures are real. They were all artificially generated, but they spread like wildfire on platforms like Facebook and Instagram um and those sorts of things and Twitter because uh people thought they were real. Now, those you might go, well, obviously those are fake, but look at the picture on the right. The picture on the right was also shared from the Texas floods recently. And on at first focus, you're like, oh yeah, that could be reasonable. Oh my gosh, look at all that damage.
150But when you look closely at that circle thing, that is a two-fronted truck, right? I have never seen a two-fronted truck that's been uh that's been working, right? And you might go, "Well, that's innocuous." But the challenge is uh that when a person sees that, even when they're shown and told that it's fake, they go, "Yeah, that image might be fake, but there are probably a whole bunch of real ones that are similar to this." And so it essentially is used to confirm people's existing biases. Now the bottom line to all of this and and I'm going to quote an oldwynette uh good thing which is that AI and future readiness have to be for everyone and I really deeply believe the districts have to lead the way and so that readiness we would talk
151about in Gwynette as uh no one's allowed to drown in the future infused with AI that means everyone needs to swim most people need to be able to snorkel and a much larger and diverse set of people need to scuba dive in this world they need to be the creators of of AI um in ways that meet the diverse needs of the community and not just the likes of a small group of people. So let's get to some of the current capabilities of AI so that we can uh sort of level set on what things can currently do or what they're forecast to do. So AI is able to do increasingly complex tasks. Uh so some of the headlines first is that AI deep research which is a relatively new uh development can conduct years
152of PhD level levels of research in mere hours. That mere hours is starting to become minutes like everything is becoming faster and more precise over time. The second thing um is that AI agents apologies for the numbering AI agents are autonomously tackling tasks and collaborating with one another to accomplish the complex tasks. So think about it this way. There is a traditional form of AI where you can like ask it a question and it answers. Then there is gen generative AI gen AI that understands what's being thrown at it and answers accordingly. There's a new form of agentic AI which is more fully autonomous meaning for example if I visit a website and have to make travel accommodations it could actually do that for me soup to nuts based on parameters that I give it
153ahead of time. So you're no longer necessarily talking about a chat interface. you're talking about deep capabilities that can get uh really important and useful work done. At the same time, chat bots are being replaced with multimodal AI that listens, speaks, and sees. So, the chat interface is starting to go away, and most new forms of AI are actually spoken to and they speak back. Um they can see what's going on in a room. They can make interpretations and inferences of about emotion and those sorts of things. uh and these will these capabilities are starting to significantly shift how we interact with AI and what can come of it. Secondly, or finally, major advances are coming in the next 18 months, right? Uh developers in anthropic and notice the dates on this. By late 2025
154and into 2027, the these are what they believe will exist. AI systems that will match intellectual capabilities of Nobel Prize winners across multiple domains. AI that can navigate all interfaces available to humans, meaning like websites, everything on your computer, Microsoft Word, Office, PowerPoint, all those sorts of things. AI that can reason through complex tasks over hours, days, and weeks, which means it can do far more complicated things than a quick sort of chat type now. And finally, AI that can interface with the physical world through robotics. meaning that the AI is no longer stuck behind the screen but can actually interface with human beings through robotic capabilities. Now, what does this mean for us? That's a lot. I can see your faces. I agree. Right? Uh and anyone who sees this stuff uh and just
155jumps right in uh isn't being cautious enough. And make sure that you hear everything I say, not as a let's do everything all at once all of a sudden. Everything needs to be done with caution um and with with student safety in mind but also with ensuring student readiness for the future. What are some of these implications for for education? There are lots of implications for education, right? But let's start off thing number one I would assert is that we need to engage in all three of these AI conversations. So most of the time our AI conversations stop at the tool like oh are you using insert name of tool in your building? If so then you're like doing AI if not you're not. That's not that's not the case, right? We really have to
156center talking about the future readiness of young people, which actually we do already in most of our buildings, talking about the tools with AI in them, and talking about the AI use cases and supports for adults. A second piece is that our learning systems need to center the readiness skills young people need for an AI infused future. It's really hard to read, but if you look at this chart closely, uh this is from the World Economic Forum, and it's a chart that shows uh the sort of skills on the rise and skills on the on the decline from the World Economic Forum. So, if you look at the very very top, which is small on our screen, you'll notice that the top thing is not reading, writing, and math. The top skill that they have
157listed, give me a second to pull it up where I can read it, is AI and big data. Thank you. Next followed by networks and in cyber security you have things like creative thinking, analytical thinking, all that sort of stuff. Down towards the bottom of the list is reading, writing and mathematics. Right now the reason I say that is not the oh my gosh is he saying we don't need reading, writing and math. No, that's not the case. Content knowledge, however, so reading, writing, and math has to be tethered to these other human skills, the creative thinking, the the critical thinking, those sorts of things in order to prepare young people for their future. What can't happen is that those skills just get done in isolation um or that we only teach content and don't
158prepare kids with the knowledge that they need. A third thing I would recommend is that I think every district ought to have a coherent AI readiness strategy. And these are not big thick documents that never change, but nimble strategies with clear guiding principles and community engagement that can embrace a clarity of direction but avoid the certainty of action. meaning people should be very clear in direction. Um, but certainty around AI will prove you a fool because AI changes every moment. Uh, literally as we're speaking, new things have come out that will likely make some of our old ideas wrong, including ones in this presentation. And the second thing is making sure to engage the public in that AI conversation to ensure that the AI doesn't become one more thing but purposefully thinks about AI readiness
159and integration into the core uh sort of way of teaching and learning is imperative. Number four is that we need to increase the AI and future ready learning experiences inside and outside of the classroom. That means active human connected learning. It increases the importance of human skill development. teaching kids how to collaborate and partner together in learning that's connected for their lives. It means building knowledge and skills together in a tethered way. So modernized foundational knowledge with integrated skills, skills like adaptability, communication, critical thinking, creativity to ensure that they're ready for that future. Oftentimes these are in a portrait of a graduate or a portrait of a learner. And then finally is the integration of AI concepts and some tools. Learners do need exposure to AI and an understanding of how it works and doesn't
160work in the context of their learning and lives and not just in like a separate classroom. And then finally, I like to remind people of avoiding some common AI pitfalls, right? Thing number one is do not please do not just put more kids on more computer programs. Like the the AI readiness skills required need kids to build human relationships and to see other people and work with them. So don't hear what I'm saying as buy a whole ton of AI learning apps and have that be the whole experience. Teachers actually do a really incredible job at building those human relationships that are critical. The second thing is I would urge everyone, kids and adults alike, to not give up their thinking to AI. So I've seen people uh literally on on television, for example, get
161divorced because the AI told them to. And that doesn't make sense, right? Like we have to keep our own critical thinking and knowledge at the four. And we cannot allow our human thinking skills and judgment to be given across to AI which also means we have to train our young people to know how to embrace their own thinking and their own uh agency. A third one is not to let tools lead instruction or program design. So programs and what you want to do for kids comes first. Tools have to support that. So not the other way around. When we center the tools, we forget about the kids. And then finally uh and I put this as a final note not because it's the last and like least important thing but it's very critical is to
162be very cautious about data security. Um people should not share personally identifiable information or sensitive information with an AI tool. There are some exceptions where a tool has been uh walled gardened off. Um but you should generally unless you know that for sure we should not be putting information about children's or IEPs or any of that sort of stuff in any any sort of AI tool. So think about just whatever you would put out into the public is what you would want here as well. So with that, I'll I'll close and I'll open it up for any questions and answers or comments that that the board would like. >> Thank you. Um thank you for that presentation and for being here this morning. We'll get started with Miss Marin. >> Good afternoon. This is really
163cool. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh I have a few kind of general themes I'd like to ask about and share and share with my colleagues and staff. So I think it's very helpful to know the three different themes of how AI is being discussed in education. I primarily hear about how do we keep students from cheating and plagiarizing and I'd like to aspire to something more for our students and um we got to get through that >> and the wheel of all the different types makes me think about the definition of organic and natural, right? Like you got to really know what's what's really there. I I find that it's tough for adults to change. I've really tried to focus on the students are very willing, you know, and interested and we ask them
164to change all the time, but it's the adults that have a hard time learning the new way of things. Um, you know, we've seen that a little bit when we were rolling out the new literacy program, a little bit with schooly um in terms of teachers doing it different ways, but to their defense, they have not all been trained in it. So in thinking even just about schooly and approaching that like so I have my seventh grader and last night we were looking at his stuff and one teacher lays it out all so well and everyone else is different and I just don't think we are there yet with the intentionality of how we lay things out for students to be like oh I get it now I can run with it like we're we're
165nowhere near that. the same thing, you know, I think when we talk about transitioning through the schools at times. So, so that's something and I do wonder, you know, Dr. Reid, like, so what's the plan? So, how are instructional services and our technology office going to work together to like what is the plan? Does this infuse our strategic plan that we just had a report on this morning? Um, so that is something I'm wondering. I also um and Mr. If you remember, I was asked to be a panelist on a forum that was done by middle schoolers and high schoolers on on uh AI two summers ago, I think, and they put the whole thing together at the Capital One Center, and I was like, Gotham, I got to look I got to look smart.
166What are we going to do? So, that's when I really started like learning and trying and you know, I wanted to do that. But what I ended up talking about was the commons because as someone in public policy, how do we navigate this space that's always changing and talking about well who's going to put up some guard rails and who's going to make it safe knowing that it's always changing? And I think like if we can think that way and teach our students like that more higher level thinking of how are we thinking about the parameters of this, not just how do we implement it. Then I could see we we start it's just like with math and Dr. Reed says, "We're doing algebra in kindergarten, right?" Like, how do we tease that out into
167everything? So the kids are thinking that way so they know how to do a prompt um when it comes to that, but they also know how to read things and verify before trusting. Um and to me really that gets on leading with integrity. And so really we're talking about how to teach kids to be good people and be true to one another. And I love that you have democracy in there because that's really crucial. So, those are initial thoughts and I'd love to hear Dr. Reed if you uh have it all planned out yet. >> Um I do think that I want to remind um the board in our community that are watching that we started our Lighthouse Schools program several years ago and we're in we just launched the year three cohort. And that
168initiation really was to uh find the penguins that weren't being pushed off, but the penguins that were seeking to jump off early uh like Dr. Riley here from uh our former MLAN High School principal. So those schools in year one got to pilot some new ideas, concepts, uh new relationships with technology is what I'll call it. Um which are not as important as our relationships with one another. Um, but uh we're in year three now and AI is becoming a much more important part of that. In the handouts that got them handed out, you'll see actually a handbook that um our ISTY colleagues and Fairfax County Public School colleagues put together a handbook. Uh we're looking at upgrading our uh ESPITS training in terms of becoming SD certified to be stronger supports to our um
169educational staff. Um but fundamentally we want to invite our community into this conversation November 3rd, the evening of November 3rd for our um meeting the moment uh night to share much of what has been shared today um as we frame that experience, Miss Mayor. And I think we're going to have to be comfortable with a certain amount of fluidity because this content area and our 22nd century future for children is one that moves very differently uh than the f you know the past that we've traditionally planned for. Um but we're excited. Uh again the lighthouse schools have launched this work and this is year three. Um, and it's time, right? It's time for us to uh be clear around our framework in this area. >> Thank you, Dr. Anderson. >> Thank you. This is definitely
170very exciting and trying to contain some of the things that I I want to ask about. Um, what I love about this conversation, it's not that we can't talk about AI and have it be infused in our schools, infused in our tools, because we were certainly there like, oh, let's not do anything because kids will use it to cheat. And that's always been the conversation. So, I I I'm very excited that we've moved away from we can't touch this to how do we get this into our spaces. I I really appreciate um I think section well they all say a up here but they were different on they were different on what I had on my screen but I moved away from it where you talked about do not give up the thinking to AI
171because there's a space to use a tool and then and and and um apply your analytic skills you're just doing the grunt work by using this tool and I don't know if we are there yet um my husband who is a nuclear um engineer came came back and showed me at a conference that he attended a dissertation was done in 45 minutes by AI something that people take 10 years to do. So the work it's happening and a lot faster in other fields than it is here. Um but my wondering and I know you talked about the lighthouse schools Dr. Reid. My wondering is what is our basic expectation right now? And if it's none just let me know it is none. Um, I was actually asked of a from a constituent in terms of,
172well, do you have AI regulations and policies like I don't think so. I know we talk about it quite a bit, but we have not landed on anything that's on paper. So, if you could just touch upon all of those, that would be appreciated. >> Yes, ma'am. I I think what we have right now is we have a lot of uh spontaneous outbreaks of AI use across the school division and there's not a systems approach to uh how we're approaching AI um across the entire school division. So when we think about uh the Google pilot pilot prove scale model that was part of what the lighthouse schools were you know initiated around like a pilot that's contained then we enlarge think autonomous driving cars right originally in a very small parking lot a larger parking
173lot that's more complex eventually San Francisco and then bring it to scale across the country so think about AI and Fairfax County Public Schools we certainly have drafts of a framework or drafts of activities, drafts of um thinking. Uh but it's pretty much been limited to a particular department um or team. Um and it it's guidance or optional or all those types of things that things are when they're new, if that makes sense. Like the penguin has jumped in and most of the penguins are still actually alive, right? They haven't all been eaten. Um, so, uh, what we're talking about now in terms of meeting the moment is how do we take what we've learned from the work that those teams have done, the lighthouse schools have done, what other people around the country and
174world are doing and really build out our framework um to develop a proof of concept that we can then uh bring to scale because that is part of our strategic plan. you know, we focus a lot on uh gaps and we also need to think about what are our strengths and what are those aspirational um characteristics that we want for our children and our community and this is one of those. I would also add that we have a couple videos that time permitting we're able to share about how AI is being used in classrooms in Fairfax now. um and be happy to maybe show one of those now that you think would be appropriate at this juncture. >> If I could just finish my time. >> Sure. Yes, ma'am. >> Um I I would be
175uh appreciative to see those videos, but that's also my wondering because you do have those spontane spontaneous outbreaks as you call it. So the disease does exist in certain places and we know that teachers are utilizing some of the tools because I know that they can tell when students are using AI in their work um because we've had parents come to us at the board meeting to talk about that. So the tools already there. I I guess what I'm looking is for the pivot. How do we start to teach kids to use it as a information gathering rather than a workg generating um tool so that they can still have access to what everybody else has access to because you can't ask me anything without me putting in a GPT trying to figure out what's
176happening every single day. I did it with call on the phone just last week. We were talk about uh the PLA's like oh what do they say about it? Well, chat GBT says there are pros and cons. I it's automatic for me right now and I would imagine for the digital natives who are my children and those coming after him, it's even more u innate. How do we teach them to use that for good kind of like now because they're in it? >> Well, I think that's where we were talking earlier. AI doesn't substitute for our own ability to think critically and we have to when we look whether we're looking at pictures that just kind of raise a question or we read arguments that make no sense or I mean know that AI hallucinates
177right it makes things up at times um and nothing is going to substitute for critical thinking on the part of our young people but um I'll defer to our AI experts across the way here I I will also say though is chat GP to me is to English in some ways and thinking being as calculators were to mathematics early on and you still see students calculate a certain math problem that has the most outrageously wrong answer and they'll write it down without like wait a minute did you stop and think whether that makes sense right like because they maybe hit a wrong decimal point or whatever and so we still have to make sense even when we use a tool does that really you know pass the sniff test I guess for lack of a
178better way but Mr. said that you were going to say something. >> Yeah, I I was going to say I think that's a good segue to the videos >> as examples, but go ahead. >> So, just to quickly add to sort of what we have been doing and where we are headed, right? We have seen AI being used primarily as a consumption tool. We see that all of us individually, collectively, we use it to consume something. It produces something for us. We demand something and it produces an answer. We run with it. what we would love to bring and actually we're bringing with the the handout in your flyer. You will see we have sparked a partnership with Amazon and Playab and we are sparking a hackathon which is essentially going to allow our students,
179high school students at this point to be able to use tools to create right that moment where they can go from understanding this is just not consumption but creation to problem solve for something bigger larger that they're passionate about. I feel that it starts creating that opportunity for our both our students and our adults to say how do we use these technologies in the future and it is still evolving. It is still moving fast. It still changes on a daily basis. I think Miss Marin was asking about how do we put the guard rails? We have access to tons of tools. There's a vendor every day who shows up and says, "Hey, this tool is the best tool. Why don't you use this tool? Put in front of your students." And we've been holding down
180the fort, right? We are not ready. It doesn't matter even if your tool is safe. We don't know how this is going to get used and what it will be used for. If our adults are not ready to use the tools in the classrooms, then we're not willing to open the gates and say just enable the tool for students. We do want our adults in the system to learn everything about every tool that we can enable for them. Which is why it's really focused on adult AI literacy so we can at least have a shared and common understanding across the division of that concept. But we have some good examples and let us show the video if we can. There are early clips from schools who had kind of used these tools that I [Music]
181>> Our fifth and sixth grade students are being introduced to AI through a template lesson from Adobe Express. They are generating images of themselves using descriptive language to see how accurate of a portrait they can create. Once students have finished their projects, they share it to a classroom gallery where everybody can see each other's work. This creates a great visual of how accurate or in many cases inaccurate the AI imagery is. Seeing that these faces look similar to their classmates, but aren't quite right, generates a great discussion about how AI is a tool to help us with our work, not a replacement for doing the work ourselves. It's important that we edit, check references, and make the work our own. [Music] My name is Megan Keane and I am an ML teacher at Homes Middle
182School. I am part of the Lighthouse Schools initiative. I created this story book using Google Gemini after attending our Lighthouse Schools kickoff on September 22nd, 2025. My sheltered English 6 class has been learning about John Mure through the Benchmark advanced curriculum. I created this story book to help my students see how the past connects to the future. First, I asked Gemini about story books and it gave me questions to answer to start creating the book. And then I added the age range of my students. Gemini created a fun story about a girl named Sierra who was relatively the same age as my students. This was a great connection to the Sierra Club which was founded by John Mure. These are some samples of the story book that was created. When Mel Mollik asked us to
183about using AI in our classroom, I shared this story book with her. She told me that she was able to translate it into French. And so I ran with that idea and translated it into the languages of my students. The languages represented are Dari, Turkish, and Spanish. Each student will receive a book in their home language as well as one in English. [Music] At Langley High School, the honors biology team transformed research projects, all thanks to Google Notebook LM and Gemini. Notebook LM became our project's brain. Effortlessly organizing everything from research sources to student feedback. Its power to instantly create summaries and mind maps made it a breeze to bring new teachers up to speed. But the real magic, how it positively impacted student learning. This wasn't just about biology. It was about building vital
184research skills that students can carry into any subject. Gemini helped us brainstorm, craft clear instructions, and even perfect our project rubric. We used it to survey students, analyze their feedback, and continuously refine our approach. This meant better instructions, smarter timelines, and lessons perfectly tailored to student needs. Integrating AI streamlined development, making projects richer and more engaging. Students gain valuable transferable skills setting them up for success far beyond the science classroom. That's the power of AI in education [Music] of tools that we have enabled for our staff to use their learning opportunities and being able to enable that to integrate into the classroom in the ways only they know and they can see. I don't think anyone from any central office team can say use this to do X and that is the same X everywhere
185and that's sort of the power of this stuff once you plant the seed and let them use it when they have their aha moment with it we have seen this happen over and over again you probably all have individually seen it too when you have that aha moment like I get it I know I can use this to leverage and push forward in a certain direction which supports my work and helps build on it that's when it happens and this momentum is is something that you get to by testing, experimenting, learning on your own. I don't know if there's a PD that we can do collectively which everyone just suddenly gets it. But that's that's the thinking that's the scaling strategy right now. >> Thank you, Miss Seismariser. >> I have to confess I'm actually
186very excited about this. I'm super excited about this. Um, I've actually was developing an AI forum topic and then I heard that this was coming so I stopped developing the AI forum topic because it was here. Um, a couple things I will just sort of frame this. I know a lot of people there's a lot of nervous nervousness around AI and and fear of it. I think of this similar to when I started working at my law firm and when I was a young graduate from law school and there were not very many people in my law school classes had a laptop. I had a laptop. I took my notes on the laptop. showed up as a young lawyer and all of the partners had computers with docking stations and half the partners use a
187computer monitor to put postits on and that not that old wasn't that long ago. So to think from that world where we were using computer monitors for postits to what computing is in every workplace now is what I see the promise of AI. And we still have jobs and we've made advances in technology and all sorts of advances that we I probably couldn't have imagined as a young lawyer. And so I don't think of this as much different than that moment when computing became infused in every workplace or the calculator became infused in every workplace. I think what we are doing now is very smart which is setting our students up so that they're not the partners with postits on a computer monitor but the associate who can type our own briefs and that's how
188my analogy for this um I have been talking for a long time including do you know how much I pushed on our grading policy to make sure that we are assessing our portrait of a graduate skills because I have said for a long time that the most important skills that our students have is a core base of knowledge So when they put things into AI, they know whether it's right or wrong or how to look it up or research it and and check, but also critical thinking, analysis, collaboration, teamwork, right? Those are the things that set us apart. And this is something you've heard me say. So I am thrilled that we're of of your presentation talking about that. What I'd like to know more about, and I'll just say on a side note, I'm
189a college professor, so we see this all the time. And I don't think it's the fe you take away cheating by changing your assessments. Right? What I've done in my my students papers is I just say, "Okay, go use AI and then tell me what it got right and what it got wrong and and where in the textbook is the source material for what it says and how you would change it." And I make it analyze what AI gives me. That's changing the assessment. So there's lots of opportunity here. Um but I guess the first question I have is not just changing how we're teaching in our core academic subjects but how do we emphasize getting more infusion of the subjects that where students are autom or focusing more on the communication collaboration critical thinking
190skills into our teaching of core academics and I'm thinking in particular of theater classes where I learned a lot of these skills um and I'll talk more about that because my time is almost up infusing that type of teaching methodology into our core academics so students learn those skills naturally and and uh without it kind of being forced. So, I'll stop there. I'll have like 17 go backs, please. I'm excited. >> So, something I I was in New Hampshire giving a talk to 400 teachers the other day, and I asked a question of uh how many of you uh plan your lessons based on content that you need to get across to children? Every single hand went up. Great. Wonderful. Step one. Then I asked the question, how many of you teach skills like critical
191thinking, like perseverance and those sorts of things in your lessons as well? Every single hand went up. I'm like, wonderful. If I looked at your lesson, your lesson plan, could I see those skills being taught? Raise your hand if so. And no hands went up. And the reason I bring that up isn't because we don't have the intent or the willingness or the ability. And it's not what I'm not asking or saying is that by just writing critical thinking on a lesson plan suddenly it happens right but essentially the core design of a learning experience which we call a lesson right can be shifted in ways that aren't really difficult that actually get back to the core of what what teachers love doing uh and what they came into the teaching profession for and at
192the same time get across the content knowledge which is required by standards and those sorts of things and build those human skills. So, I've seen it happen. I've seen it in classrooms uh across the country in different ways. Um I've seen it in Gwynette with our with our AI work that we had been doing. Um and and one other thing is that there's a student actually from the from our AI high school that I was chatting with yesterday. Um I'm going to call her Morgan for our sake. Uh but Morgan had been through three years of this AI high school and someone asked her the question. We were preparing for a panel and someone asked her the question, "What about cheating? Like what about cheating? what about uh like losing capabilities with AI? And she
193kind of looked at the person like they had three heads. And I'm like, Morgan, please like explain what that look is for. She's like, that's a conversation from a long time ago. Like we have realized that if you're just using it to cheat, you're not really using it for what it's for. And so it doesn't even cross our mind as that that being a primary use case. you're supposed to use AI for expanding your thinking, for pressure testing your thoughts and your logic flow, um for testing your logic, those sorts of things. And so what gives me hope is that there's a generation of young people who are growing up who could potentially view it as a tool in that way uh to really expand their capabilities if we if we inspire them and let
194them do that. >> Okay, Miss Dixit followed by Mr. McDaniel. Thank you for the presentation. Um obviously it is very welcoming and um all the board members we really like uh learning and hopefully implementing more AI in our schools. Um I was when you mentioned about the AI high school um that's might be the direction in one of the schools we might take that route. Could you let me know a little bit how does that work? >> Sure. So, in uh Gwynet County Public Schools, we uh did a sort of a we're a county that's growing in population. And so, we had the need for additional seats. And so, we were creating another neighborhood school. So, not a specialty school or a magnet school or anything like that. And our question was essentially, could we
195create a theme in this school that would enable it to be a test bed for the rest of the school system? Um and in our case, this test bed was around AI readiness. And this was before chatgbt and those sorts of things. So many people thought we were a little crazy back then. Um but as the sort of world advanced and things moved along, people became increasingly supportive and interested in okay, what does that mean? So what it what it meant for us, and I'm going to be very very clear that I I personally believe that school designs should be held and owned by community members who are giving a lot of input um by neighborhoods and families in addition to teachers and other people. So it's not like we had one brilliant mind at
196the top that said hey this is a school and it worked for everybody. What we ended up creating was a framework for AI readiness which was not just about the technology but around many of the skills. So things like creative problem solving, ethical thinking um and those things alongside data science, mathematical reasoning, um applied experiences, robotics, those sorts of things. And we use that that shell to essentially say how would we create a school where kids are prepared to swim, snorkel and scuba dive in the age of AI based on that framework. And what that meant in practice was that for the scuba divers we were like okay we need a set of AI classes that they can take and dive deep into the sort of deep knowledge around AI. And so we built that.
197So, we built a career and technical educations sequence of courses for the state of Georgia uh that were used by our county. We're the first ones to to use it in our state. Uh that would do that for our scuba divers, right? At the same time, we realized if we do that and only that, we'll end up in the same place that like computer science ended up, which was like this oneoff room to the side that most kids didn't have access to. And so, we started looking at the swimmers and the snorkelers. and we started looking at how do you upgrade every single lesson plan every day to start incorporating a lot of these AI concepts into it, right? And so that's when we got to the point where whether you were in a biology
198class or an English class or whatever chemist class, whatever class you're in, you're actually getting pieces of that core AI framework um as part of your teaching and learning experience of that day. Um and then we didn't just do the high school, we actually worked it all the way back to K feeder pattern. And the big thing that was the sort of the trick that's the hard part is that because AI is changing all the time, you can't just do this once and then you're done. We actually created systems within our school to make sure that lessons and things like that could be constantly updated and upgraded as the technology progressed, as the kids knew more, etc., etc. Um, and so yes, so I want to say the the school is in year four now.
199Um, and doing really really well is a very popular school. the sort of local area has has grown significantly in population. Um, and at the same time it meets the needs of every type of learner uh that you could you could imagine. >> Thank you for the information. Uh, do you guys have AI labs within the school where students are taking problems uh and then trying to solve it, coming up with their own solutions. So the interesting thing is as we were building our our school out originally, we thought we'd need these like big footprint labs similar to how you might need um large computer labs and things like that. But as chat GBT started coming out and as we started realizing that the primary interface for AI for especially kids of high school age
200was going to be any device, we realized it was actually better not to create pure AI labs because it would give the signal that you should only do AI when you're in that room as opposed to AI is infused in part of how you think about everything um across the curriculum. Now that said, we do we did build specialized spaces uh for uh like robotics and some of our advanced manufacturing things and those sorts of pieces because those require like very specific facilities. Um but in terms of the AI like the AI specific piece, those those would use those spaces and they just as much use the drama and art spaces for the AI work as well. >> Thank you. You know before we used to say math in every math is in everything. Now
201we are saying AI is in everything pretty much like right now every day we use AI and um all the social media or our personal uh work. Uh I have an example of uh Brazil we recently use AI powered robotics tree planters uh which basically reforest doing reforestation for them. uh this is the kind of critical thinking and um thoughts provoking ideas we want to you know give it to our students that these are the problems you know there's a deforestation happening or there is some disease which is incurable still in this age and come up with the solution so for for me AI is more of like solve the problems and that's the thought we want to give it to our students so how do we um get this information and get those tools
202to kids to I don't know if chat GPT is the right answer but >> yeah I think this is very timely. We gave out a folder and we will also send it electronically that competition we're running for our students sparks that basis of creativity right we call it sees the moment in alignment with meeting the moment where we are encouraging our students to create with AI as opposed to just consume. So if you have an opportunity to kind of push this out to the high schools and have them participate it is it has prizes associated with it. So the coaches are are getting compensated for it and it's a partnership with Amazon and Play Lab which are two private entities but that's sort of the beginning of it and there's additional work that will happen
203in the back end of when we learn from how do we run this how do we spur creativity how do we encourage the adults to support our students thinking and then how do we bring it forward so we can highlight to the world the great talent we have within our division and our system. >> Thank you so much Gautam. I think lastly I would just say with um that piloting idea with one school and then taking it to all schools is what I think is the way to go because each and every students in our FCPS um should have access to these tools and these opportunities. That's the equity point. We have to make sure that we um we absolutely give it to every student after we do the initial pilot. So I'll stop there.
204Thank you for Thank you again. >> Thank you Mr. Mr. McDaniel, followed by Mr. Moon. >> Thank you. Um, good stuff. Um, I will confess that I I have forced my staff to be using AI on almost a daily basis now to help analyze different stuff that comes out. Um, but the other day I my kindergartenner came home and we had a little update on her math progress so far and she's struggling to tell the difference between squares and rectangles, which I guess is kind of understandable for a six-year-old. You know, they all kind of look the sameish, but not really. So, my first inclination was to go online and print off some worksheets and sit down and work with her. Then I said, "Wait a minute. I bet you there's something out there where
205I can develop an online quizzing system that I can sit with her and walk her through it. And sure enough, there is a tool to do that and it tailor as you go and it really drills into the weakness areas and helps her. So I say all that to say this is focused right now on the classroom, but there's two other areas where we can be infusing AI. That's one, helping parents help their students and helping parents navigate the educational experience of their kids. And the second area which I we we need to have the conversation around at some point is the actual administration of the school system and operations. Um whether it's finance, HR, I know it was mentioned IEPs 504s. Um anything that we do that is very manual. How are we going
206to infuse these types of tools into those processes in the long run? Because as we all know, dollars are not where they used to be and we're going to have to continue to squeeze these budgets more. And these types of tools are going to help us accomplish that. So I would welcome any thoughts or feedback there. >> I'm just going to double click into that moment where you use the tool first. It's that aha moment that we were talking about because when you have it, you know where to go and look for it. We are actually starting building capacity on serving content to our parents in terms of giving them ideas of how to engage and work with them. Right? We obviously have our family academy which works in hosting online sessions. We are at
207the at the starting stages of building an online learning sort of module where parents can come in and take on lessons. And I think it is critical for this. We were discussing this a little while earlier. The social media thing ran out of our hands to the end where we as an institution even as a country had to shut down phones in the classrooms. Could we have prevented that if we started this conversation 10 years ago trying to help parents understand? And granted we as adults didn't know at this point how far this one can go. So this time around I think we know better. So we want to start the conversation with our parents and the one which we really really and I will say this here in this moment so everybody gets this
208the anthropomorphization of sort of AI tools where somebody starts believing it is a thing where it is a person an individual that they can relate to and the relationship forming is probably going to be the biggest issue that we'll see rising in the future and as educators we can certainly support that but I think we need our families in this together so they can make sure that they're able to monitor and support the students through that they need to know it's a machine it's not a thing it it may know them better I mean we know AI tools will repeat back to you whatever you want it to say the sycophony of it as the term is used frequently is very dangerous and students need to know how to discern or young kids adults need
209to know how to discern that so our role in helping our parents understand all of those facets early is probably going to be much larger than the previous cycles we have with technology >> thank Thank you, Mr. Moon. >> Oh, thank you. Uh I'm I'm glad that we are having this discussion today. Uh a a I think the first time I brought this to the attention of a superintendent was about a year and a half ago when I got so excited after returning from attending a conference up in New York related to uh AI. Uh with that said, it has taken you know to me way too long to have this conversation and I'm hoping that the next conversation next the conversation we'll have after this one is not going to take another year and
210a half because for most of us our terms as a schoolboard member is going to end perhaps if it's going to take another year and a half. So from a you know schoolboard members perspective at at least this one person's you know perspective uh we make policy decisions we make you know budgetary decisions you know we're not going to go into minute detail of how this should be run uh by superintendent or the school system. So we want to know what decisions on on what timeline uh you know superintendent or other senior staff uh envisioning for us to do. What kind of work do you expect the schoolboard members to do? I am not an educator. You know I would not be able to claim that I know much about AI either. I hear a
211lot about the benefits of using II and you know I see some you know cases that how they are being used in the school system and as also Mr. McDaniel suggested how perhaps I mean one of the areas I have a keen interest in is how we can use AI to improve our operation as well to uh you know perhaps generate you know more savings cost savings or or or provide the more efficiency in our operation etc. But again going back to the role of a schoolboard member. What decision do you expect the schoolboard to make? >> Well today no no decision today. This is a presentation to level set so that we're all clear about the conversation that we're having when we talk about AI. It's also the first time as a board uh
212that and a superintendent are having this conversation. So I think it's very important to be thoughtful about what are the possibilities to think about the buckets that this work sits in both in operations in the classroom um in in staff usage. I think that um down the road the policy setting around AI is definitely uh something I would expect the board to uh determine because I think uh the policy determines what comes to scale across the school division and um what's available then across every neighborhood in the county. So I think um as we involve our community uh November 3rd will be our first community conversation dedicated solely to AI uh by the end of this year it's our expectation that we have a framework and um we have a good start at that already
213and we need to have a framework that cuts across all departments that the board has conversation about uh so that we can bring to scale um the use uh of AI across the three topic areas. I don't know about snorkeling, swimming, and scuba diving, but I can I can get there probably. Um, but I think that we need to think about by policy, what's the minimum expectation everywhere? What are the guard rails the board's willing to um live with uh to allow the system essentially? What is our sandbox, right, as a system to develop new ideas and new practices? Uh so I see all of that coming at some point later this year. >> I mean that's exciting. Later this year by the end of this year is two months three three months from now.
214Less than less than >> year nice try. >> Hold on. thinking by June. >> My effort has just failed to push superintendent and a little you know faster timeline but but but that is better than better than year and a half another year and a half. However, uh you know next time when I see this uh you know I would love to see some sort of recommendations from superintendent for the board to you know start making some decisions rather than keep putting this off. uh you know I'm sure that this is fast changing technology and there are a lot of things unknown out there by the time superintendent comes back by the end of the school year school year not calendar year you know things might have already changed and then you know then maybe
215force you to uh change your own recommendations to us however we got to get some we got to start making decisions I mean that's how I see it otherwise we'll never get there uh so with that said could you put me I'll go back. >> Yeah. To Mr. Moon's point, I just want to clarify too that the important way in which to shape this topic area is going to be building in the maximum flexibility that we're comfortable with because of the nuanced nimble agility we need to have to really maximize planning for our children's future and not our past. >> Thank you, Miss St. John Cunning, >> thank you. Um, I know some board members were here a few years ago and I know I participated in an initiative that I think has since been
216sheld where we were going to try to make all of our schools adopt the making of the mind um, footprint or framework which really focuses on seven essential life skills that children need. And when I look at your slide 19, it really reflects those which is not actually the tool but the life skills that they need which include you know focus and self control, perspective taking, critical thinking and I would like to see if we can consider revisiting that because as we start looking at as a tool we have to manage those life skills for those children and that's what helps put those guard rails there that so many of us sometimes worry about. So, I would like to have the superintendent just think about that. >> Thank you, Mr. Dunn. >> I think this
217is an exciting conversation, but I think it's a little amorphous. And so, I wanted to ask the superintendent, when will we see a a proposal, a plan, and when will we see a a budget that goes with that? because right now we don't necessarily have the federal funding to feed hungry kids or provide uh kids with special needs with all the support that they need. So, you know, I I'm always excited to go off in adventures, but I want to make sure we're doing it in a fiscally responsible way given the the funding shortfall that we are facing right now and the funding shortfall we're likely to face uh come this spring. um given the additional needs that will be um uh on the minds of county and state leaders uh given reductions in federal
218funding for everything from Medicaid to um to affordable housing. So, I just want to make sure that, you know, we get excited, but we also approach this uh from a maximally cost-effective uh perspective. Um, and also try to um not not get people so excited that they end up being disappointed that what we roll out turns out to be more limited because we just don't have the dollars to do something grandiose. >> Yes, sir. I Let me just clarify for all those folks listening. We still are receiving money for our food and lunch program as we're in litigation around those federal dollars, but we are still currently receiving those dollars. I think you raised a really good point, right? It's reckless to think about uh planning an initiative that we don't have resources to support.
219I will say that uh right now there is a significant interest nationally, locally, globally probably that's not in any great order but nationally and locally and also globally around um the utilization of AI and the integration of AI into our work and into our education spaces. So, there's a significant amount of grant money that's out there right now for us to um take advantage of if we're positioned well with a thoughtful plan as well as um partnerships uh that uh we're one of the first K12 school divisions to partner uh with the Play Lab um partnership and maybe I'm not using the right word on that, but uh not Playland. I knew it was a play. There's one more, but we're not announcing that. >> Oh, we're not announcing. Okay. We're not announcing one of
220those partnerships. But I think what we want to try to do is make sure that our work in this area is funded because I agree with you. It's u um a fool's errand to plan something we really can't support um with resources. Having said that, we believe we've identified a number of possible resource areas and what we want to make sure is that as we shape our direction, we want to make sure we include our community, which is the purpose of the November 3rd evening and also make sure that your thoughts, feelings as a board, uh that that evening's reflected. We wanted it after this work session so we could take sort of what we heard and frame the conversation that night. Um, so I I think it's good to have a cautionary tale and
221I appreciate that. >> I I I just I know this is obvious to to everyone, but it doesn't get spoken about enough. You know, our our kids aren't learning handwriting. Um, I've seen handwriting samples recently from high school kids who it looks like, you know, second grade K u chicken scratch and uh and that's that's not good. Um, a lot of our, uh, kids don't have access to physical textbooks and those are preferred by many kids nowadays. I think studies show they're more effective and I think being humans uh, we learn best from other human beings, from teachers. And so I think there's there's a role for AI, there's a role for technology, but I think in our country we get so excited and obsessed with technology that sometimes we can lose sight of the
222fundamentals. And we've we've been losing some of the fundamentals for a couple decades now at least and and we're seeing the effects of that in the social isolation of our kids um anxiety um and other issues. So we need to just be thoughtful as we get excited about yet another kind of technology um that we also start to think about the fundamentals of humanto human connection and teaching some of the basics of handwriting you know personal finance etc that uh require us to be successful in our in our human society. >> Thank you Mr. Mine. Uh thank you and I uh appreciate being able to follow um some of my colleagues. Um I really appreciate the presentation. I thought it was uh very good for level setting. Um I do think if this is what
223we present on November 3rd, um there's going to be a lot of disappointment. Uh I think I would have liked to see more than just a couple videos about what we're doing as a system on this. And I think others have have laid this out that um uh I think we are doing a lot as a system that just wasn't reflected here today. Um so that's that's the only editorial comment I have. Uh and hopefully uh we'll have a more um robust presentation next time. Thanks. >> Thank you, Miss Anderson. >> Hi there. So I tend to be the penguin that's at the front. Um I I don't mind being pushed into new technologies. I was uh in the classroom when Wikipedia firmly came out. So I had my kids using a wiki for our
224class so that if they missed a day that they could go there to find the information and that was their responsibility as part of the learning in the classroom. Um we I wasn't afraid of it and I did very much um similar to my colleague. I made it part of the assignment and so that they understood what was going on. Um, I do think that to my colleagueu's point related to funding and things like that, I see this as a preparation for the time that we have the funding available to do everything we want to do. The board can start working on policy. We can start setting setting a framework within the division as to how we want to utilize these tools and start the conversation. Um, I personally love the videos because it gave
225me an opportunity as a place to see where we've already started and the work that's already being done. So more of those I think are amazing um touch points. Um even an like an oldfashioned poster session at some of the events where you could walk through and see what the different projects are um in real life I think is often helpful. Um I do think that we are at a moment where it would be beneficial for us to examine what tools we're currently paying for. And I thought that for a long time related to just the sheer volume of of different apps and things like that. And what will happen is that we'll have one person or one school that is still heavily invested in something and we need to figure out how to phase
226those out so that way we can open up dollars and funding um to move forward. So I would very much like to see more um robust discussion about the tools we're already paying for and what our usage is because that is something that I've never seen is what the usage of each of these individual tools are. And so I think that that would be I also anecdotally know that regardless of whether or not we pay for anything related to AI, our students are already using it. Our teachers are already using it and our staff are. So I would very much like us to embrace it as to this the beginning. We don't have to be the first penguin to get pushed off the ledge and we're certainly not. but we could be in the middle
227of the pack so that we are making solid decisions after we figure out that there are no sharks in the water. So, I think that this is a good start to the conversation and I'm really looking forward to where we go next. Um, and I want to definitely say where we can help. So, what are the policies that we need to create? I don't necessarily think that a specific AI policy is the way to go, but a policy about innovation and then allowing regulation to come in makes a whole lot of sense to me. And so creating a policy around embracing innovation within our division, I think, is essential to success. So that's just my thought. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um I'm going to take a turn as well. Um, I I I want
228to commend Fairfax County Public Schools in and being ahead of the game in the sense that we already have an ESP in every one of our schools. Um, I also want to talk about the fact that they're not all being used correctly. Um, and I know we've talked about this, Mr. Sethy, and I I I commend your office on the IT side and also on the IS side for leaning into this reality. Um but you know our schoolbased technology specialists you know they understand or they should that a tool doesn't teacher teaches but they can leverage technology to utilize UDL to different instruction to make sex access all students can access learning the inclusion model the lighthouse schools all of this is intertwined and I think we're doing fantastic work um and I do appreciate
229the vignettes Um, and I do agree with my colleague, uh, Mr. Mackavine that there's a lot more fabulous work being done. Um, I will just say as someone who attended ISTY, uh, I'm on a lot of, uh, communications from different vendors that I went to their booths and I just got an email recently from a vendor, um, that has free, um, um, uh, tools for our for our teachers and 14,400 AI supported instructional resources were just last week alone utilized for free. I also still have teachers that lean on this teachers teach us Us or there's some website where they pay for other teachers who've created >> what's it called? >> teachers pay teachers. We got to get off that. Our teachers should not be paying for content. Um but this is a Maserati and
230to my colleagueu's point about about cost. Yes, we need to be careful but we've already made that investment in our ESPIT. So what I would like to see happen is the relationship between ESPITS and principles which I do know as being uh a focus area um that principles better understand what an ESP is there for especially in light of the staffing in elementary schools. I'm hearing that some ESPs are sort of being plugged in almost as monitors that were used and they're far more skilled than that. Um the the um IST certification um is is is an incredible undertaking. Um but it requires the artifacts that demonstrate the leveraging of the technology and not not tapping into technology to teach. Um I also find it app propo that we're going to be talking about talking
231about um decision points. We're going to talk later about the Western High School. So to that point, I have a question for um our guest related towet county and the AI school. It's four years in. Is that trickling now into the rest of the the schools within Gwynette? Was that a jumping off point? Uh because it very much excites me in terms of an opportunity we might have in front of us. >> Sure. So yes, yes, it is trickling into the other parts of the schools. Uh, and here's how. And we we had had always, uh, and keeping in mind that I'm not with Gwynet County Public Schools right now, um, but I had I had been and led the work there. The theory of action for all our new schools was that you build
232an innovation within one place and then you actively figure out what pieces of that innovation go elsewhere, right? And so at this point in Gwynet County Public Schools, the AI pathway that I talked about, that's the three course pathway for the deep divers um has been expanded to two other schools already that are actually hubs for many other schools to access. Um and we're looking at how that goes even further from there. But more importantly than that, there are core aspects of our framework around robotics, around computer science, where every every school, including every elementary school, for example, has a robotics team and robotics uh conversations. Um there's computer science at every single grade level in every single school. So like the combination of the AI readiness part is both the explicit AI development work
233and the future readiness stuff. Um and is being treated sort of as an imperative for everywhere without uh enforcing a cookie cutter. Now you're going to do the same thing that school did and you're g it's like uh meeting the the moment and the need of each of the communities. >> Thank you. Um, and the last thing I'll say because I'm going to be out of time is in terms of ESPITS, you know, having worked in a high school, I felt like my ESPs spent so much time dealing with schooly and CIS and not instruction. And so I I I'm hoping the technologies that are within those uh tools are better um and they don't need to be in the weeds on that with supporting teachers, but they can start to support instruction, which is
234why they're there. So, we're going to do gobacks. And because we do not have a lot of time, I'm going to give people a minute and I'll start with Miss Marin. Okay. Well, well, first I' I'd like to know how other school divisions are approaching this. Let's think about the governance and what informs our board. We also need to be experiencing discussing this. How do we help all kids snorkel? That should be what we're talking about at least monthly, right? But the good news is that we can plan our own agenda so we can actually make that happen. What I find so tough is this is juxtipo just juxtaposed against the incredible reality of public education. So, I have a little part of my brain being like, "Yeah, innovation. This is great." And then I've
235got, "Wow, we're just trying to get money and survive and like teach all kids and the the needs are increasing and there's a teacher shortage and our facility funding, but then also there's a little bit of um but we're used to building things as we do it." Um, but then we're also FCPS and sometimes we don't roll out things all at the same time, but we have experience rolling out things. So, um, this is about teaching adults, right? It's about teaching adults so they can teach kids. And we teach a lot of adults all the time. But um we could do better. I'd like to ask the board what the non-negotiable investments of money and time are. We can direct the superintendent this Thursday with the executive limitation on financial planning to come back with
236that list of all the apps. We can do it through a budget question. And last thing I'll say is we spent a lot of time and money getting rid of materials that were not up to our standards of quality when it comes to social studies and other things. I I am very uncomfortable with now teachers could just, you know, we got to still make sure they meet our quality level, our level of cultural inclusivity, of historical accuracy. Yeah, that's I wish I had like two more minutes, but there we go. So, for my colleagues to consider, >> I'm going to give Miss Mayor another minute and everyone has two minutes because there's only three gobacks. >> Okay. to regroup governance. Okay, we all need to have presentations like this way more often. We need to
237understand what's happening. I would say what's some lowhanging fruit? Can the board start using a tool very explicitly? Let's give ourselves an assignment. Let's let's do that work. Again, hard to make the brain space to be creative when we're just trying to survive. Um the materials, we've got to be thoughtful about what's in front of students and also what's in front of parents and families because we know with benchmark advance, parents don't always see those consumables, right? Right. So now we're talking about teacher creative materials in class. That's one class. Another class, how are parents supposed to keep up? I can't even find my seventh and 10th graders materials online. Now we're going to have creation of whole new things. We got to think that through. Um again, the non non-negotiable investments. So the board
238like we can make this decision, you guys. We can look at what we're paying for and like Miss Anderson said, stop paying for those things, but we have to do that work. So, I'm happy to submit the budget question or I'm happy for us to do a follow- on this Thursday for financial planning which is this Thursday and see what we can do. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Seismore. >> So, I kind of sketched Well, before I get into my sketch, I want to ask a couple questions. One of the things that I've been talking about for the last few months is AI adjacent jobs, which is just a phrase I made of it. maybe it's a thing or not but you know when we talk about AI can do all these things well
239someone has to prompt it and I know prompt engineer is already a job that exists right I think about AI compliance and ethsist companies going to need to have compliance rules within their companies on and these are not necessarily technical jobs but they're jobs for communicators they're jobs for marketers there's lots of other things right um have we talked thought about how to build skills for what I'm call I'm terming AI adjacent jobs um and jobs in the workplace where AI is going to become a tool to augment that work. I can tell you from having young adult children that they I have children who are being measured now on their use of AI in their workplace. So what's the thought on that first or the training for that? >> So I like what you
240just said around the every job is AI adjacent >> uh because that's the reality. It's not even adjacent anymore. The AI is part of the workflow across the board. So that's really important. So no matter what job someone wants or what area, there are aspects of and impacts of AI. And if we recall the pieces around life, right, there are big decisions being made by uh utilizing AI algorithms and things like that that our populace just needs to be aware of and able to make the right voting choices, for example, as a voter related to those things, right? Um and so that's really critical. you are correct that there's a whole new infrastructure of jobs emerging that are directly AI adjacent that didn't exist previously because AI didn't exist before. Um and and I like
241your your pieces around like publicists and things like that in the AI arena. Um or or AI law ethists sorry ethicists in the AI arena. So there there are a lot of things like that. Um to my knowledge, I haven't run across anyone who has deeply uh built out what what like what all the and mapped out what all those jobs are because they're still emerging as such. Um but I think that's a very important point. >> Okay. So I kind of sketched out this plan as we're talking very very rough. How do we get I mean the funding is an important piece, right? I think we need to have the plan to know what we need to fund and then figure out what we maybe we can pull from other places like the million
242apps we have or whatever. But how do you have AI education infused in core subjects in such a way that it becomes a tool that we know how to use as opposed to a tool that's using us right how do we con consume what is our core knowledge or content that everyone needs to know what are the skills in life I like life democracy and industry which includes what I call these AI adjacent jobs we're preparing our kids for and then what are the skills that were that are the portrait graduate skills that are even more important now in an AI adjacent world what's the plan of building out what those pieces are, right? What we're preparing them for and the skills they need to have to get there and then how do we infuse
243that? I love the idea of a pilot that we then expand upon a pilot AI high school. Um, but I I to me it's like what's the core content, the plan to teach critical thinking skills and looking at how where we teach them perspective taking, collaboration, self-regulation, agency, teamwork, critical thinking. Our job is to prepare students for the future that they're going to walk into, not the past that we came from. So, what's the plan to do that and the grant and funding training and the PD for our teachers and our families to go along? I'll stop there. >> I'm saying I would love to see that someday. I don't think you have that today. I wouldn't expect you to have that today, but that's what I think we need to build towards. >> I
244agree. And that's we also I think as Babek was saying, we need to involve our community in that conversation. Um, and that's why I'm really looking forward to November 3rd uh to have our community join us as we shape uh the trajectory of this work. >> Thank you, Dr. Anderson. >> Followed by Miss Anderson. >> Yeah, just very briefly, the conversation here definitely has um revealed that we have a lot of thoughts. Um we have a lot of we have a lot of ideas as a board in terms of at least in as individual members in terms of where we want this to be. This to me is the starting point of a draft of a policy because we don't have that yet. I had whispered that to Miss Marin on the side, but I
245felt compelled to just share. We have some things that we could start putting down on to paper. It doesn't mean it's the last and final policy, but that at least it is a start where it is that we want this to be. How? Because our policy is not only our communication to the public, but it's our direct it's our directive to the superintendent. This is the opportunity for us to do that. So I I would hope that all of these thoughts are being gathered that are being articulated here to help bring this to governance in the very near term. >> Thank you, Miss Anderson. >> So we have spent at least all of this year so far working on the urgent and what I see this is working on the important and the important is
246the oxygen that keeps us going. It's like the thing that gets us all excited and and makes us want to do work um that is so important for the division moving forward. I do think that we have an opportunity here to define what future ready actually means um in a real way because the the idea is we have the the some of the theoretical already, right? POG does that. It could be that it needs an update related to new things that are happening. Um, but then we have this like practical aspect of future ready that is very when the kids walk out the door, we want them to be able to do these things. And so I do think that maybe expanding the definition of what we mean by future ready is probably going to
247be extremely important as we move forward with the discussion. And this is where effectively surveying or talking to kids or you know we can get feedback from those those people in industry like we this is a place where we can gain partnerships. So I really think that this is um the opportunity that will create something ex we need to be innovative here. It's not just that we're expecting the kids to be innovative. So they will always be innovative and we the adults just need to follow their leads. So I'm very excited about to see where this is going. Um to some of my colleagues points about like the how this work is going to move forward. Um we're going to need to talk about that. We've been talking for a while about whether or not
248we needed another committee, another standing committee related to some sort of technology focus or um innovation in education, that kind of thing. And I think that this is leading towards that discussion because I'm not sure that it's fair to just put one more thing on governance in terms of trying to determine the full path forward here. So, >> all right. And thank you again uh for being here it and for you, sir. Uh we appreciate your time and we're going to transition now to the presentation on the new Western High School after a fivem minute break which is the new Western High School. I call on Dr. Reed and her team to present the information. >> Thank you, Madam Chair, and um appreciate this afternoon. It's been a great afternoon of uh thoughtprovoking conversation. So
249this afternoon I want to uh talk a little bit about how we want to frame this conversation and I want to be really um thoughtful about level setting again and just sort of managing expectations uh for the conversation. So I'm going to jump up and use the uh Thank you. So, what I want to do is talk a little bit about what we did before and we only had one other work session, right? Because we just bought the school property on uh August 14th. We really haven't owned it that long. But recall that at our last meeting, we talked about really I'm going to call it a continuum of possibilities. So, and the continuum is anywhere from sort of a single topic all the way to sort of a more comprehensive approach for a school,
250right? And so I think it's important when we start brainstorming any new idea that we think about the the vastness of possibility and not start with a very narrow idea, right? Because then it's really hard for everyone to connect to the conversation. So, and this is an important conversation to connect to because it's the first time we're having an opportunity to open a new high school in two decades. So, I think having that broad conversation created a lot of discussion, a lot of conversation among us as a team, among our senior staff, among our community. Um, we are planning a community conversation Saturday, October 25th, uh, to have an open house at the new school. We're inviting the community to come in uh to we're going to have a presentation a little bit about possibilities
251and ideas around um the high school and just kind of a get to see the building sort of uh couple hour event. But this continuum really led us to have some conversation around what was our thinking uh for a new Western High School. So this afternoon, what I want to share is um at this point my recommendation in thinking about how we're beginning to think about this at this time. And what I want us to think about is really kind of I'm going to draw a circle here for a shell if we can think of that of a school idea if that makes sense. which is to say that within this comprehensive high school, which is going to be, I believe, best situated as a neighborhood school, a neighborhood high school, we can still within
252that, and we'll talk about that, we can still have what we talked about earlier today, which is um we could have uh 22nd century skill pathways that could sit within a comprehensive high school that I'm going to say will have its own discrete. I love these kind of math things. I hope you're panda, Mr. McDaniel. It's squares and circles now, not squares and rectangles. It's not a triangle. But I believe that this neighborhood western high school should have its own boundary, right? We have made a commitment for quite a number of years to reduce crowding on the western of the western high schools. So if it has its own boundary and it has a comprehensive curriculum, it can still have a 22nd century, if you will, pathway within it um and a an opportunity for
253us to uh incubate or um pilot new ideas as well, much as um our guest this afternoon talked about um with high schools. So, because we also have classroom spaces that we're building out yet. We haven't completely built out. Um, so I'm going to be talking in the presentation. And you're going to hear um others talk about all the possibilities that could be situated within a comprehensive neighborhood high school with a traditional boundary to reduce crowding in the western high schools and still have opportunities for second 22nd century skill development within the school. So, we're trying to make sure that we can provide the opportunities to even try some sort of new curricular ideas potentially that can then be um brought across the entire county um and brought to scale. Which is why as we
254look at the agenda, the boundary work, what we're going to base the new boundaries on, the Western High School programming possibilities, and then the expansion of our career and technical education, which provides access across the division, and our academy work which provides access across the division that was a very important topic uh in our last conversation. So let's start with the first slide please. Here are some basic facts again to level set the um presentation today. We expect the capacity of the new western high school eventually to be at 2,000 students or more. The site size is on the site. It will be our newest high school building as it was built um eight years ago in 2016. It has a number of building amenities as well as site amenities. The campus space, including the
255two buildings we're developing, is 355,000 square feet with 407 parking spaces and a transportation loop that we've already uh reviewed for accessibility. So, islands and uh uh minimize split feeders where possible. Enrollment slashcapacity looked at using current student enrollment projections to maximize efficient and effective use of our school facilities and help us make informed decisions. looking at proximity. It was to limit transportation times and ensure efficient transportation routes and attendance uh areas. Uh per 8130, a superintendent can also look at uh seven additional criteria and a couple of those criteria are uh relationship to school pyramids uh minimize disruptions of students in instructional programs, minimize uh future uh capac uh capital and operational budgets and minimize the use of temporary classrooms and uh modular units. So on this next slide, we'll just talk about uh
256some of the things Dr. Reed mentioned, but the um Fairfax County public school boundary review process for Western High School is designed to relieve overcrowding at Westfield, Chantilli, and Centerville high schools with the goal of balancing student capacity across the Western High Schools. Um, in addition, we will review to seek to eliminate um, attendance islands, reduce split feeder patterns wherever feasible, and uh, per 8130 align this with phasing adjustments as described within 8130. That's a brief overview of how we're going to uh, look to incorporate the Western uh, high school into the current boundary analysis. As you're aware, the our consultant is working through those analysis right now. uh working through the announces that we're directed uh them to do and we'll start a series of uh committee engagements on the 13th of October and
257that will go through the 30th of October as well. So >> thank you Mr. Gordon. So this afternoon just uh I think the major takeaway from the boundary part of this agenda is that we're drawing a boundary unique for the Western High School. it is not completed yet and that um we will be bringing um a draft uh boundary likely by the end of this month. Uh that would hopefully meet these needs. It's not ready today. Uh but it is a boundary that is a discrete boundary being drawn at this time as a draft for this high school. So moving on to the next slide. Um, and then the next one, we're looking at programming conversations. As I began on the chart, we're thinking at this time about a comprehensive high school with a traditional
258boundary. We also recognize that anytime we open a new school, it's an opportunity to think about planning for our students future and what are those um courses and possibilities that might uh enhance a student's experience as we think about a future. So even within a comprehensive high school there are a number of types of programming be they CTE classesmies that are attached to the school or even a school within a school model. There's some options on this slide as we go to the next slide. Just want to remind our board and anyone watching or downloading the presentation that as we look at comprehensive academic offerings, neighborhood enrollment, and making sure our facilities uh meet what the expectations would be for a comprehensive high school. These are important and important in any comprehensive high school planning
259across the division. The next slide illustrates two current examples within Fairfax County Public Schools of schools within a school model. On the left is the Edison Global STEM Challenges Program. And even though Edison High School is a traditional comprehensive high school, that's a neighborhood school that has a defined boundary, there are 90 students within Edison High School that attend a 4-year cohort program. In this case, it's a three-year for grades 9 through 11. Um, and that cohort of 90 students is focused on global STEM challenges. And that's a program that can exist within a comprehensive high school that has a traditional boundary. If there's room in the program, students outside that traditional boundary are allowed to um apply for a transfer. And if they meet the transfer guidelines are accepted into the program. If there's
260not room, then it's uh filled by the neighborhood school in the traditional comprehensive school setting. Another example is the Lewis Leadership Program. The Lewis Leadership Program is currently situated at Lewis High School and in this case it's a 4-year cohort program, but there are elements of the program that are inherent in all the courses um at Lewis in terms of all the grade levels. In other words, all students can participate in some element of the program, but there are about 30 spaces that rising ninth graders can apply for to be part of a four-year cohort program. So, these are examples in two of our comprehensive high schools that allow for what we consider a school within a school pathway that doesn't change the fact that there's a traditional boundary. Um, and it can be situated,
261as I mentioned, in a comprehensive high school. So, as we think about this western high school, when you think about 2,000 students, it's reasonable to think that we could have anywhere from 30 to 60 to 90 students in one or two of such pathways um within a western high school while maintaining the comprehensive nature of the school and a traditional boundary. The next couple slides are simply some ideas that um different community members have shared or staff members have put forward. Um let's look at the next slide, please. One of those because of the um proximity to Dulles and the um incredible opportunities currently career-wise around aerospace uh careers. That is one possibility that could be uh one of these pathways of 30, 60 or 90 students within a comprehensive high school. There are all
262kinds of possibilities and simply because we're visiting some of those on these slides does not imply they're the only possibilities. These are just some that have been suggested um and that are current, if you will, after a review of the research. So this slide talks about some of those possibilities. Again, it's not a schoolwide theme, but rather a pathway for 30 or 60 or 90 students potentially over four years. There are a number of these uh that also have aligned credentials. If we go to the next side slide, please. Um the aligned credentials and certifications. When we think about workforce learning and workplace uh workforce development, one of the things that we're really thinking about at this time is what types of credentiing or certification can our students earn while they're still with us in
263Fairfax County Public Schools that become portable when they leave us. So this chart um identifies a few of those and also lists a grade 9 through 12 progression that would be a potential progression for these topic areas. Conversely, there's also in the next slide uh as we looked at I met with several community groups already and several of them have been very interested in a humanities or a leadership and ethics uh possible pathway that would track through again 30 students perhaps maybe it's 60 um that might uh go through a 4-year program. Again, we're uniquely situated near the nation's capital. the opportunity for a leadership program or um ethical civics and government strands or the humanities. This is also these are just examples of what a 9th through 12th grade cohort could look like and
264also the aligned credentials and certifications that might connect to these. There are infinite possibilities. And what this afternoon the board's going to be voting in early November on not necessarily the um the brand of the possible school within a school track but this idea that it is a comprehensive high school with a defined traditional boundary and some one two I don't know possible pathways because I think those will be developed veloped with our planning principle and community input as we move forward over the course of this year as well. So at this point I'd like to turn the uh CTE and academy expansion topic over to Dr. Prescidio uh for his comments on the career and teched expansion possibilities. Dr. Prescidio. >> All right. Well, thank you Dr. Reid and good afternoon again. um happy
265to be back uh for this second work session that I think is a good continuation of some of the conversations we've been having all day, particularly from the AI work session. So, as Dr. Reid mentioned, um as we're thinking about innovative programming opportunities for this new Western High School, we know that we need to be thinking about innovative programming opportunities for all of our schools as well as equitable access to existing career and technical education offerings that we have around the county. So, we wanted to provide a little bit of thinking uh today in terms of what our work in that area could look like. We did term this a plan, but I'm going to just go ahead and frontload and say I don't have a plan with timelines, deliverables, milestones, and success measures today.
266Probably a framework or a concept model would be a little bit more apt. So, on the next slide, we wanted to share with you just kind of our current state of how we talk about career and technical education in Fairfax County. We use the term pathways to talk about large areas of focus. So on this slide you can see the current pathways uh seven pathways that we offer and in each of these pathways we offer a lot of different coursework. So for example I won't read everything on here but for example if you look at business and information technology we offer a lot of coursework and these are just a few examples on the slide. business management, business law, accounting, um all types of uh business associated courses as well as IT associated courses which
267it sometimes can overlap with some of the other pathway areas just in terms of our nomenclature. So another area I would point out on the slide would be steam and computer science for example. Um, a lot of the courses that we offer in computer science, uh, programming, networking, administration, um, advanced programming classes, cloud computing, cyber security, some of that has overlap with business and in the IT sector, but we have these seven different pathways, all with multiple courses within each of the pathways. So, that's kind of our current state of how we organize our work. And on the next slide, I wanted to share with you just a few highlights um and celebrations for the work that uh we're doing in the programs that our staff are currently offering to students. So, we have 150
268plus CTE courses across FCPS offered in base schools, offered in the online campus, offered at our six academy programs. In fact, we over we have over 65,000 students on an annual basis who are taking one or more CTE courses. On the right hand side, you can see that's translating into a lot of success for our students. A lot of career connected learning, work-based learning opportunities. We had over 8,500 students last year. These are all figures from last year, participate in work-based learning. Um over 5,000 students completed a CTE sequence. That's a series of courses that leads towards a certificate in a particular CTE area. So, we have a lot of offerings and we have a lot of access, but we also have equity gaps and access gaps with some of these programs across the county
269that we really need to try to shore up. So, on the next slide, um I just wanted to share a few recent enhancements that we've been working to try to make sure that our programming and CTE is uh industry relevant and relevant for today's economy. So, a few recent examples of innovations in CTE programming. The first is that we've really tried to create more equitable access to courses at our base school level. So two years ago um we introduced advanced computer science. We already had uh introductory computer science but advanced computer science courses as well as cyber security courses as standard course offerings in all of our base schools. So that was a big win for us is to try to start to standardize access to some of the high-tech courses that we were already
270offering. We've also introduced a new welding program as part of our academy. It's actually situated at Bryant High School and serves students from Bryant in one section and then students from around the county in the remaining sections throughout the day. We just opened that program last year. Um and that's associated with uh our West PTOAC Academy. So it's kind of a annex site of the West PTOAC Academy. We've done a lot of additional access uh to CTE courses through our online campus in the last several years. Um and touching on the work session um from just a few minutes ago, this year we offered our first uh AI programming course, AI fundamentals programming course through our online campus. So any student in Fairfax County uh can enroll in that. Um as part of our capital
271improvement work, uh partnering with our facilities department, the recent renovation at Falls Church High School, we really invested in the nursing lab, which serves students from around Fairfax County. students can graduate high school with a licensed practical nursing degree uh by participating in that program. It's an amazing opportunity and again we'd love to have more programs like that around the county but I offer that as an example of when we think about capital projects and programming together we can do some pretty cool things and then a lot of additional opportunities for internships and work-based learning even within Fairfax County departments. So on the next slide, um I just wanted to point out where we think some of our future CTE programming uh expansion work really needs to go. So we review with business and industry
272professionals on on an annual basis all of those seven CTE pathways. Um we seek input from people in the industry in terms of the relevance of the coursework that we're providing to our students. And one of the things that we've heard over the last several years, and we've heard it several times uh in our conversations today, is that technology is evolving so rapidly, it's very very difficult for us to keep up. And we're starting to fall behind in some really important sectors like artificial intelligence, like machine learning, like quantum computing and quantum science, like data science. So based on the conversations that we're having, the research that we're doing, um just even partnerships with George Mason University, the community college system, the county economic development authority, these are areas that we really need to build
273out new programming in. And our goal would be to build out this programming in a very thoughtful and intentional way so that we don't have access barriers to students based on their base schools around the county. So again, I don't have a complete plan about what this is going to look like, but conceptually, this is an area of new programming that we know that we need to focus on. On the next slide, I wanted to share with you just a little bit of what that might look like in terms of courses. Now, as we develop new courses, uh, particularly in high-tech industries and areas like this, we want to work with business industry and higher education partners. We've got some good partnerships with George Mason, as I mentioned, and their computer science program. But here
274you can see, and I'm not going to read every single course on here, but in these three different pathway areas, AI, data science, and robotics, potential courses that could be offered leading to certifications in these areas. And the main thing I think that I would call out on this slide is that you can see if there's a course that has an asterisk next to it, that would be a new course. If it doesn't, that's a course that we currently offer somewhere in Fairfax County. So, we already have a strong foundation in some of these areas, but we don't have fully articulated pathways. And we think that we could build on the strong foundation that we've already established, create greater access geographically to students around the county, and really provide some innovative career related learning opportunities
275to students across FCPS. On the next slide, um I just wanted to share with you kind of the strategy that we have historically used. Um, and I think we can still build on this strategy. It's not the only strategy, but just how we've gone about thinking about access to courses for students. So, base schools is the first place and probably the best place for students to get access to their coursework in their base neighborhood school. Um, so we can expand access to areas by ensuring that we have standard course offerings, which means that a school would be required to advertise that course. If there's sufficient student interest and teacher availability, then they would be able to staff that course. Now, you could foresee that we might have a standard course offering and we forecasted in
276one particular school only two students decide that they're signed up. We wouldn't be able to run that. It wouldn't be fiscally responsible. So, we'd have to think about, well, how could those students get access to a course if they couldn't get it at their base school? Well, they might be able to get it at the online campus. So, we've really tried to lean into getting more career and technical education courses at the online campus for students to have access if they can't get something at their base school. The other thing that we do is we utilize our high schoolmies. We have sixmies as you know across the county. students based on their uh base school are targeted to kind of two geographicies. Differenties offer different programming and that was intentional by design to be as
277fiscally responsible as we could be. Um and those are typically those programs atmies are typically reserved for programs that have highly specialized equipment. So you can think about things like again the nursing program, the welding program, HVAC programs, dental our dental lab program, right? things that are going to require a lot of highly specialized equipment that we may not be able to afford or have the facility space for in each of our base schools. And also they might have really highly specialized teacher teacher lure requirements. So students in our licensed practical nursing program they have to have an instructor who is certified to teach in Virginia but also who holds a professional nursing license to be able to provide that instruction. Same thing is true when we're talking about automotive programs. When we're talking about
278cosmetology programs, they have to have the appropriate professional certifications. Sometimes it's very difficult to find people like that in 26 different base schools. So those programs tend to be specialized in ourmies, but we know that this isn't the perfect structure to create access. So we want to lean into how can we enhance each of these access points in our future work. On the next slide, I won't go into this in detail, but I just wanted to again share with you kind of how things sort out is our current state. So on this chart, you can see the CTE program areas or pathways, those seven pathways that we talked about at the beginning. Then you can see in the columns base if they're offered at the base school, the academy, or the online campus. So again,
279business courses, for example, are typically not offered at our academy because those are courses that are pretty easy to offer at base schools and staff at base schools. Um, additionally, they can be supplemented through online campus offerings. Health and medical, as I mentioned, you can see is not really offered at base schools because most of that requires a lot of uh um technical equipment, just even hospital beds and things that uh need to be in the classroom. We have an ambulance uh simulator that's part of our program. Lots of different things that probably would be impractical to have at at base schools, but we can offer that at academy and some things could be offered through online campus like a medical terminology class, which would be easy to do. Similarly, trade and industrial, sometimes we
280do offer those at our base schools. I think we have 10 or 11 automotive programs right now. We don't have 26. Um but we do have some of those programs at our base schools or typically at themies again for facility space and technology needs. So on the next slide we want to talk just a little bit about how we would go about um you go to the next one as well Eric. Thanks. um how we would go about making some progress on enhancing both the um innovative programming that we offer as well as the accessibility of programming that we offer. So just checking where you're at there. Okay. All right. So the first thing that we would like to do is really try to create more standard course offerings at base schools, particularly in this
281emerging technology area that we've talked about, AI, robotics, and data science. If we could offer standard courses, students could get access to those courses at their base school. We could also think about expanding online campus um and getting some of those courses uh available online as well as what we're calling virtual or hybrid courses where a student might take a course virtually at uh their base school that's taught by a teacher at a different school who has students probably in the class if they can't fill the class at their base school. combining two or three um schools, students from multiple schools with the same teacher using hybrid instruction. We have the technology to do it. It's not, you know, always the preferable model, but in the right context with the right students, the right instructor,
282that can open up more equitable access, eliminate transportation uh costs, eliminate transportation time and loss time in student schedules. The other thing that we would propose doing is really looking at all of our base schools and thinking about those specialized programs that they have that maybe we could open more seats in. So, while we don't have automotive at every school, perhaps we might be able to open some seats and automotive programs that do have automotive programs to students that don't attend that school. We could allow students to transfer into a program for a particular specialized program like that and stay in that that new school for four years or we could allow them to attend part-time like we allow students to attend part-timemies. Now again another strategy which we think would have limited costs to
283expand access uh to students and specialized programs around the county. Um, and you can see there we've we've named some of the courses automotive, culinary, criminal justice, JRTC. The reason we named those courses, those are those courses that have the biggest student weight list. When students sign up, those are courses they really, really want to take and we just don't have enough current seat space in. Okay, so let's uh move forward a slide into the next slide and we're going to talk a little bit about how could we expand access through themies, creating more equitable learning opportunities through themies. So again as I mentioned I won't belabor the point but you can see even from the uh pictures on this slidemies tend to be highly specialized programs unique facilities unique instructors. So you can see
284students in our dental lab students in the automotive program students uh doing our electrical program as well as our culinary program that has um you know a a high-end uh kitchen. On the next slide, just to provide you kind of the current state of how these programs are currently situated across themmies, you can see for example business and marketing. We have very little of business and marketing in themies because those are courses that typically are covered in our base schools. We don't need to have them in themies. On the other hand, if you look at uh trade and industrial, we actually have a lot of trade and industrial programs in ourmies because it requires a lot of specialized equipment. So, this is just the current state by program area pathway, not by course. If we
285were to do this by course, this would be like a 12-page document, but we'd be happy to do that for you if you were interested. So, on the next page, how would we go about expanding access tomies? Um, and where should we start? really health and medical and trades um are the biggest gap areas when you look at some of those charts that we were just flipping through pretty quickly. You can see we don't offer as many learning opportunities in health and medical and trades and we have long wait lists in those programs. So we would we would propose starting with those two particular programs trying to get more geographic access um in some of our existing base schools in some of our existing mies and also even thinking about um and Miss Lady I
286believe has talked about this before extending the school day in terms of accessibility for students. So sometimes students can't get access to programs because they are taking so many AP classes. they're they're a full IB student, but they really want to explore this CTE program. If we could shift some of our availability starting earlier in the day with what we call a zero period before the first uh period of the day starts or after school, what we call a 9th period, we potentially could open up access to more students to participate in these programs. But I do want to point out that doesn't that's costneutral because we didn't add any staffing. We just shifted the availability of when the course was offered. We're not offering it to more students in the aggregate. We're offering it
287to more students that maybe would have been conflicted out of it previously. But again, we think that's a good access strategy. The second thing would be to look at um creating additional career pathway programs similar to the Edison program and the Lewis leadership program that Dr. Reid talked about in our base schools. Um and here I think anything is fair game, right? As Dr. Reid mentioned, we haven't made any decisions about the new Western High School. We've got multiple ideas out there. We could bring new ideas to the table even if we were going to start some additional schools within a school is what this model really is in our base schools across the school division. You could think about again some of the high interest areas that we have like trades, technology, um health
288sciences, but you could also think about things like the arts program or or humanities program as well. And then finally, like I mentioned, the partnership between facilities and instructional services with the um renovation at Falls Church High School. If we can build in more opportunities like that when we have high school renovations to design builtin career and technical education spaces like we did at Falls Church with nursing, that would give us a lot of additional access as well. So, as I said, this isn't a plan with timelines, deliverables, and everything right now. I know this is more of a concept, but we wanted to get your feedback if you think we're on the right track um as we can then take this work and and turn it into more of a plan with definitive timelines.
289>> I think that is it. So, thank you everyone. >> Thank you for the presentation and uh Dr. Reed, thank you so much for the Western High School overview and presentation. I think we'll start with questions uh for the board members and the first Mr. fish. >> Thank you for all the work that went into the presentation and scoping everything out. Um, my high school growing up had a science and aerospace magnet inside of it. I was not a part of the magnet, but many of my friends were. Um, I will say it felt at the time even then that the technology was extremely outdated. We were in the shadow of Howard Hughes uh and his facilities and I think after launch they never kept up with things. So, I think if if we do
290go in that direction, I think it's important to have some kind of a long-term partnership somewhere that keeps the technology fresh. Um, in terms of what's been presented, uh, and in terms of like the questions the board will be grappling with, uh, I appreciate the leaning into a traditional, um, uh, approach to the school with a, um, uh, its own boundary. Um, you know, for my part of the county, the discussion around the Western High School had always been that there would be a tertiary benefit to the Western High School because we would not be taking in a bunch of students from that part of the county at Oakton High School, for example. So, uh, I think capacity relief, uh, has various benefits downstream as well. Um, and I I also have been since the
291first conversation started, I've been keen on the idea of having uh something special baked into uh a traditional comprehensive uh high school. So, I'd be supportive of a path that takes us towards um uh I'm probably more inclined to the pathways uh around the aerospace and science than I am around uh American democracy. Uh, I think those seem very interesting and maybe those can get baked into what we do at Lewis already. Um, I do have some questions about the pathways experience. Um, and obviously those are things that can be, you know, farmed out to other schools for students to have experiences as well. This is a pathway that every student in the school would end up following or just select students. Um when we're talking about pathways, we would only talk about students that
292would select themselves to participate, which um the Lewis Leadership Academy actually has 30 students out of their right, >> you know, 1700. Only 30 of them are choosing the four-year path. Um the Edison Global STEM Academy, I believe 90 students choose the three-year path from 9th through 11th grade out of over 2,000. So, it's really it's a fairly finite pathway that's included within the school. It's not um it's not schoolwide, although you know, I think that the Lewis Academy has certain characteristics that any student can participate in, but the specific pathway is a fairly small group of students that choose to participate. So, in order for the sample course selections for the different pathways by year to work, approximately how many students would be uh needed to to make that work? I know that we'd
293be probably be onramping the school over a number of years uh in terms of filling it up, but at its I don't know what you would call it when it's at the point where everything is fully functioning at every grade level about how many students out of the 2,000 would be in the pathways in order for that kind of a framework to work. Generally what you look at um which is the case in both um Lewis and Edison is about 30 students per course per grade level. So if you had 30 students that's a section there were 30 students over four years at Lewis. So 30 30 30 all the way through. Um there are 90 over three years which may mean there are three sections perhaps at each grade level or 90 uh but
294it's you minimally would want 30 students involved because you want to maintain class sizes for budget purposes. It shouldn't cost any more to have a pathway than straight traditional because you're still providing staff for students. >> So it' be 30 studentsish per per grade level. >> That's what we would be thinking about. And again, roughly 500 students per grade level times four is about 2,000 students. So we're looking at about 500 nth graders, 10th, 11th, and 12th in the new school. >> Well, I look forward to the further conversation and I'm supportive of a comprehensive approach and something special being baked into the school. >> Right. And I, you know, any current city high school could bake a pathway into their programming if and that's what Dr. Prescidio was talking about is this potential expansion
295of our CTE pathways because the as we look towards 22nd century skills, it's not enough just to take a course. Although often middle school is that exploratory take a course, do I like this area? Do I not? The wheel is often what they talk about in middle school. Try a number of things. in high school, if we're looking at industry certification or some type of credentiing, they're going to need to take a series of courses, which really is part of this pathway idea. >> Thank you, Mr. Fresh. Uh, next is uh Mr. McDaniel. >> Thank you. Um, I think the school within a school model is fine. I would agree that, you know, it needs to be more technology focused as opposed to humanities. Um, but I want to and I do have to leave
296early to go pick up my daughter uh from the bus. Um, but uh speaking of busing, um, on slide six, it seems like we're limiting the review of this bound. I don't want to get into exact lines and things like that, but it seems like we're limiting the review of the boundary to Westfield, Chantilli, and Centerville. Um, what I envisioned purchasing this building and the lines that would be drawn around it, it was to relieve capacity in the western parts of the county. Well, if you look geographically in the western parts of the county, there are two other high schools that feed into there that are not included in this scope, and that's Oakdton and South Lakes. I have kids at Oakton, to Mr. Fish's Point that are two miles, two and a half miles
297depending on how you drive it from Carson, which is where Western High School is, that are being put on buses 10, 12 miles, 45 minutes down to Oakton. You have people sitting even closer going into South Lake. It's not as bad of a bus ride, but nonetheless. So my hope is that when we're looking at the actual geographical boundaries of this western high school, we're looking at the western neighborhoods and not artificially limiting it to the lines of these three high schools because it's not the fault of the western neighborhoods that they're being bust 45 minutes east to Oakton or however long the bus ride is getting to South Lake is not as bad as the Oakton guys. So when we're looking at those lines and when you guys are looking at those numbers, some
298of the worst split fears of elementary schools in the county are sitting in those neighborhoods and they're getting overlooked for no other reason than they're in goofy lines that were drawn because this building did not exist. So that's my only comment here and hopefully staff can go back and expand the scope of this to include South Lakes and Oakton. >> So Mr. McDaniel, we we've looked already at a couple models that looked at South Lakes and Oakton. One of the downsides of South Lakes is it currently is not over capacity as Chantelli and Westfield. Um Centerville Oakton actually is a outlier high school with a significant enrollment increase this year. So we'll definitely be looking at both of those as well. But as we looked at the map and uh the furthest west, those were
299the biggest three, but for sure Oakton um and South Lakes are a part of whatever modeling comes back. >> Right. And on the capacity numbers, so I looked at the boundary tool online, compared it to the CIP documents. Westfield, Centerville, Chantilli, right now are sitting at a 600 seat over capacity total, give or take with a couple of seats. But if we're saying that the capacity here is going to be 2,000, where are the other 1,400 students going to come from? >> Well, that's why we're looking at more just those three. Those are the paramount. That's my point is is even in a worst case scenario, there isn't enough um of a capacity deficit even in long-term projections for those three high schools to fill the full utilization capacity of the Western High School. Thank
300you. >> Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Uh Mr. done. >> I want to ask I I know that you mentioned that the boundaries or draft boundaries are being uh prepared by the end of this month. So, Dr. Reed, do you expect the uh schoolboard vote in January to vote uh to include not just the comprehensive school boundary review we've been doing, but also the boundaries for the new Western High School? >> That's my hope. I again when we started this boundary process we didn't even contemplate buying a high school right so this is another new variable that's um kind of come in in the fourth quarter I guess for lack of a better way to put it and I do hope we can get there Mr. Don because I I feel like that's important. We're trying
301to figure out the best way to feather that into our work and I don't think there's a perfect solution for that right now, but we're working on it. >> And will there be a separate set of community meetings if because all the community meetings right now that are on the schedule will be done by October 31st. >> I'm not sure yet. >> Okay. Um I was this is a great presentation first of all. So thank you to you and your team for putting together a great presentation. Um there wasn't any discussion of project- based learning but I believe that the physical construction of the building was really built around project- based learning. Is there any uh contemplation of that within the kind of curriculum being developed for the Western High School? >> It could be.
302I think one of the things we have to recognize is that the policy decision that we need to make by November is really this school shell I'm going to call it, right? which is to say, do we want a comprehensive high school that has a traditional boundary? Because that sends us in a really specific direction. What types of um courses that sit within it? We have a standard course book for comprehensive high schools. We also have a model for inserting school within a school sort of models which are we've given you probably eight or 10 of those possibilities. Then there's also sort of the as our guest spoke about AI being infused into the courses. You could infuse project-based learning in a number of courses in addition to that. So we didn't go into detail
303about the types of infusion in that way here. Um but within those schools within a school it's very likely there will be projectbased um approaches to the work. It's really a good approach across the board quite honestly. Um but we're going to once we make the decision on the shell our planning principal and our planning team Mr. Smith is leading that work um with Dave Jaggels, Dr. Pon, Dr. King, Dr. Presidio, Mr. Gordon, that committee will be inviting community members that are likely going to be attending that school to have deeper conversations around those topics. But we're talking at this level about comprehensive high school, traditional boundary. That's the decision I'm going to ask you for in November. >> It it sounds like you're already going down the path of a traditional comprehensive high school,
304though. So, I'm just trying to understand like what are the decisions you're if any that you're asking for today? >> I'm not asking for a decision today. Today isformational, but very early in November, you're going to need to make a programming decision um about whether the school has a defined boundary and a comprehensive high school versus recall at the very beginning I talked about the continuum of possibilities, right? You could do a magnet for the division. You could do a magnet for the western only. You could do a traditional with no schools within a school. Just total comprehensive, very traditional curriculum. You could do something in the middle, right? Traditional boundary but comprehensive with a school within a school. Those have staffing implications that we need to have an answer to because then we need
305to set that committee and Mr. jaggels off to begin planning once that decision is made in early November. So, no decision today, simplyformational um and a chance to sort of chew on what a comprehensive high school with traditional a traditional boundary could look like, including these possible a pathway or two within the school if possible. And how do you how do you get from the infinite possibilities, you know, different combinations that you put on your slides to one recommendation or do you anticipate providing a recommendation for one of those pathways or school within a school etc. or you know AI versus aerospace versus you know humanities to the school board. I don't p well let me how do I but it's not by November the 1 of November right because there won't be a chance
306really to authentically engage with the community about that. I think once we know if that's the way we're going to go, then that gives the committee that's planning along with the planning principal an opportunity to meet with the community, also potential students that will be attending and really create a process to think about what is that interest and that will be running parallel obviously um to the naming process and it's parallel running to the boundary setting process. Uh, and then at some point I'll be bringing a recommendation back to the board on what that programming might look like, which was very similar to the Lewis leadership program conversation the board had or the global STEM challenge conversation the board had about Edison. Those are um that decision could come after we I hear your decision
307on is it a comprehensive high school with a traditional boundary and some type of a program perhaps that's situated within that. >> You mentioned a committee. Who is on that committee? Well, there's a school opening committee which includes right now a very few people till we're clear on um is it a tra traditional boundary comprehensive high school because that's when we'll know which community to draw community members from. So it's a bit of an unusual process we're in. So Mr. Smith, do you want to clarify who currently is working with you? >> Certainly. And good afternoon everyone. We have representation from all of our chiefs who are working on that committee. Uh we are we have paused all programming because we haven't gone down the road of programming at this time. Uh right now we're
308looking to ensure that we have uh the space and facility uh ready when the time would uh warrant us u having meetings in the building and then preparing for a future opening. Uh but again we have representation from all of our departments uh on this operations committee >> and there right now some of the topics Mr. are done are like security. Are we wiring everything within the new school into our current security? There are a number of those technical topics that need to happen right now and are happening. >> Security inventorying uh what we currently have in the building, food, nutrition services, safety and security. Uh those are the pieces that we're looking at now. Clearly a facilities piece to ensure that we have uh our spaces up and running. Uh but it's uh very
309operational at this point. And and does that include decisions on uh what to do with the swimming pool which would be the only one that we maintain and whether it needs we need to build a football stadium because it it lacks that at this point. Um I those specific level decisions are not being made at this juncture right now. or looking at sort of that more global policy decision around the shell, right? Comprehensive high school traditional boundary um with a possible 9 through 12 pathway on one or two content areas. >> And at what point do you make a decision on AP versus IB curriculum or if you're looking to bring in something like Cambridge as an alternative? >> I love Cambridge. I'm glad you mentioned that. But um I that would be once we
310have the decision on comprehensive traditional boundary then Mr. Jaggels who's our planning principal along with Mr. Smith will be reaching out to the community that will be situated within that boundary to have those conversations. >> Okay. I I I do love the uh presentation that Mr. Presidio presented on u providing greater geographic equity um and access so that all students uh have access these wonderful programs we have. I'd love to see some component of that being expanding access because 30 students in a you know 2,000 student plus high school is not very many students and there's a lot more interest I think especially for some of these programs. So um and and making sure that I mean that's almost a separate conversation from Western High School, right? Um, so I' I'd love to see that
311conversation keep moving forward um so that you know we can have I you know on a dual track perhaps in combination but I appreciate that's being raised because certainly if we're having a shiny new thing in western Fairfax County all you know as far west as you can go before you cross the border want to make sure that people living in other parts of the county uh also are being considered and these long-standing um problems that have existed and are thoroughly examined by some of my colleagues I think who led work sessions under the prior board um to look at gaps um in and programming and availability um we start to move towards outcomes and not just uh further conversations. Thank you. >> Yes sir. And I the reason we paired the topics was because
312at the last work session we had board members concerned that we were creating something unique here without making sure we had access to programs in across the division. So want to sort of benchmark where we are and I've asked Dr. Prescidio and his team to put together a 2030 plan to provide that equitable access across the county. >> That's wonderful. Thank you. Uh do you know when that will be presented? Well, Dr. Prescidio, they have bits and pieces of this plan, I think, because the CTE advisory committee has talked about it for a number of years, and we had a CTE review. So, we'll get back to you on that, Mr. Dunn, but it I'm expecting that this academic year. >> And I just want to say I'd love that 12-page document you mentioned from
313slide I think it was 27. >> Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Uh, Miss Marin is up out. So, Miss Lady, >> thank you. Um, I got a couple comments and they're kind of might seem all over the place. First of all, slide 18, I I I don't want us to be conflating job readiness with CTE because when I look at this slide, AI, data science, quantum science and computing, energy, which is wind, solar, other sources, that is not career tech education. It is, but it's math and science. And I and I just I've gotten a little frustrated throughout my tenure in Fairfax County Public Schools just because there's so many pathways, but we seem to be just conflating this with career technical education when if we're going to create these courses, they're not going to have
314CTE codes. They better have science and math codes. And so, I just want to be clear about that. Um, and then slide 19, my question is with the asterisks, proposed new courses not yet offered, are are these being piloted in Fairfax right now? >> No, as as I was trying to mention, this is more of a concept model in partnership with business and industry trying to think about what new courses would we need to have to actually build out the type of um experiential sequence that students would need to be. >> So any are any of these VOE that are somewhere else or we would be proposing them? there. There are I think there are a couple that might have VDOE course codes right now, but most of them would be new courses that we
315would need VDOE course codes for >> because I would like us to move on the VDOE ones now. I mean I started asking for data science before I retired in the system and I think we kind of have a data science course but kind of we don't like we have not like I just looked at you know and no disrespect to any discipline but you know what are what is information systems what what is that course anymore like when we look at some of what we're doing I think that we've got a an opportunity here to really really improve and revamp a lot of what we're teaching in every discipline that's much more more futuristic. Um, even when you look at the humanities and the American democracy idea, which I love those those pathways, but
316maybe some of those pathways should be, you know, course offerings in some of our of our our, you know, schools we have now. Um, I feel strongly that this is a missed opportunity if we don't utilize this school for some sort of specialized pathway. Um, I was initially a proponent of making it some type of magnet or career academy that would relieve the western high schools, but I understand I'm not going to get support for that idea. I don't think, and I say that as someone who worked at Chantilly and dealt with the overcrowding. You know, it's funny when you have overcrowding and all of a sudden we're going to shrink that school by three or 400 kids, people are going to freak out because no no teacher wants to leave there. Okay? So, you
317you know, some people are going to get cut and and some kids are not going to move, right? So even though it's overcrowding, we figure how to deal with it. But but having said that, I understand the desire for for a more comprehensive high school and I very much support that, but I would like to have a pathway. Um I don't think 30 kids in a cohort is enough. Um I would love to see 180, but I could live with 90 or 120. Um I think that's going to take time, but I think as we put this out there and back to the conversation earlier, can we also infuse this as an AI high school? um based on the conversation we had earlier in terms of you know uh lesson design and and and the
318overlapping of how all that works um I think that's important um and then I had one last question and that is with early childhood are we going to continue to keep that space or is that because that's nowhere in any of the slides um but I personally think that that's a pathway we eliminated from our kids that is a pathway that we need so I'd like to see that stay in some capacity even if it's as an academy course or if we have enough interest within the school. So, I'm just curious to know where we stand on early childhood right now. >> We've made no decision on the early childhood space, although um it is a special little space and the playground is pretty amazing, too. So, I it certainly uh has a lot of
319possibility attached to it. >> Thank you. The only last thing I'd say and um and again I I don't know what's happening with some of our academy spaces, but we desperately need HVAC um and electricity and probably welding on the western side of the high school. Whether we can renovate something at the Chantel Academy to create that space or do something with some of the spaces we have here, um it's definitely a void. So, thanks. >> Thank you, Miss Lady, Miss Marin. Yeah. So, a few things. So I see a tension with our boundary policy. So 8130 directs that phasing is not phasing is not applicable in the situation regarding a new school. So all the families and students that get boundaried into this school will not have a choice to say no. Okay. So
320if we put a program in on a certain subject area, I don't know how families would feel about that. Now, if it's 30 kids, I'll talk to that in a minute, but that is different than every other school and we need to think about that. Um, the second thing I'm glad you clarified, Dr. Reed, that the boundary will be based on geographic location and not a magnet from various places regardless of geography. Um, and it will particularly consider overcrowding. I know that my constituents in that area will be relieved to hear this even though the outcome still remains unknown. The big picture is not being considered here. Um, this is about programming at one school when we are long overdue to consider and make decisions about the offering of career and teched and career pathways
321in every high school. I'm trying to go with innovation. I'm I want to go with that unknown arrival place to a point, but I personally have been advocating and waiting for a thorough conversation on the board about CTE for years. And here we are seeking to make a decision about one school in a silo rather than have a comprehensive thoughtful plan to expand access and equity. I'm not interested in a niche program for 30 kids. Um when some students don't have access to the breadth of programs we offer. Madame clerk, could you please put up slide 23? So um I'm in we have 60,000 high school students. So, I'm interested in what can scale. When we talk about access to programs at all high schools, well, first of all, there's two categories of information technology.
322I don't know which ones those are off the top of my head. What's the difference? I'm thinking about our AI conversation. Which one of those two categories? Infoch, cyber, computer science, and tech and engineering education. Which one are those the ones that are going to focus on AI? And secondly, for technology and engineering education, Hernand High School is not in that category. It is the only high school in in that region that doesn't have it. So, I'm supposed to grant access to 22nd century learning for the students who are going to be boundaried into Western High when there's an existing high school that does not have the coursework that we just spent talking about is the now and the future. That is not equity. Um, this very much is a concept. It's not a plan.
323Um, and yet you're asking us to decide in a month or we are putting it on ourselves to decide in a month on a concept. I've been asking about the early childhood space since I first went to the school on that day in August. Dr. Reid, I've asked you as recently as yesterday. What is being done with the early childhood space? Are we ripping out that facility part or are we keeping it? What is the cost of that? Why isn't there anything about the upkeep? if we do something in technology and AI, what's the ongoing budget to maintain it? And I just want to say the constituents locally, the Carson kids, they want to stick together as much as they can from that cohort from Flores. And I also sent you to the board questions
324from eighth grade students. We haven't even talked about what is the experience like for a rising ninth grader at this school. Do they have homecoming? Do they have sports? What about music? Do they have marching band? When are we going to talk about that? >> Thank you, Miss Marin. Next up, Miss and Dr. Anderson. >> Thank you. There's a lot here to digest. Um, and so I'm going to try to funnel down to the most urgent thing that you need from us right now. As I said during the last conversation on this matter, and I will repeat here, we have to have this be a comprehensive high school because we must relieve the overcrowding and the spaces in the Western High Schools that I've been hearing about since I've been on the board. and we
325don't have any other options in sight. So very much leaning into having a traditional boundary of a compreh comprehensive high school. So that's check for me. You could put that down. That's how I'll vote. Uh my second piece is I I do think this is an opportunity to also do something differently at this site. Um I don't want it to be something that only benefits 30 60 kids. I'm actually kind of surprised to hear that the Edison and the Lewis um programs only impact such a small number of kids. So, not only would I look for whatever it is that is the special thing that happens at the Western High School to impact more kids, but furthermore, I'd like for us to go to Edison and Lewis to see how we could expand that because
326all of these things come with some resources that we are investing. Is it the most bang for the buck? and maybe it's just one class and it's one teacher. I don't know. Feel free to tell me. But it just seems as if we can do a little bit more there. Um agree with a lot of things that have been said, but one of the other things that I wanted to um to speak to is um the space. I probably one of the few board members that has not been to that space. So, Mr. Gordon, can you speak can you kind of try to give me a picture of the layout? There's a main building and two other buildings. Are we looking for all of these buildings to give us the space that we would require
327for a comprehensive high school or is it just the main building that's going to give us 2,000 kids? >> Thank you. Great question. So, fundamentally we're looking at how do we take two grades, ninth and tth grade initially form a new school. So 9th and 10th grade in this first phase would be the primarily the main building of that main building roughly 3 uh 25,000 square feet. We have two additional shell buildings for additional 30,000 square feet,000 uh square feet each. So again 9th and 10th grade would uh look to occupy the main building. We think we need roughly three to five years to plan, budget, design, construct the a school that would support all four grades. And so building out the two out buildings, um we've looked at uh some concepts that would uh
328include so again 15,000 square feet. When you look at uh traditional educational space needs somewhere between 25 and 40% of that space needs to be credited or allotted for circulation. Circulation meaning you know egress circulation uh bathroom storage mechanical space. So if you look at roughly what that high end of that 40% we think we would be able to in the second phase of that support roughly uh five to six classrooms per floor roughly 10 classrooms per building. So additional 20 classrooms in in those two out buildings of a traditional concept and that would uh then then in that second phase and we would then look to repurpose spaces within the facility with the ultimate goal of get having 500 you know students per class and getting us to 2,000 student 2,000 students plus. >>
329Quick follow-up question. Our other high schools how what's the typical size or the average size of our other high schools? So, you know, I think our smallest high school is 220,000 220,000 220,8 square feet or something like that. Largest is roughly 410 maybe. Um, >> and that 220,000 square foot high school houses 2,000 kids. >> Um, well, at a base we I obviously a smaller high school um has temporary classrooms, temporary facilities. So that's really a base building concept. So there's additional school additional uh square footage instructional space that supports that. If you look if you were to ask hey what's a if we wanted to build a new high school I I think we would roughly look somewhere around 415 410 as a a concept of what we were want if we had a
330you know perfect space perfect size you know acreage to do that. >> Are these two out buildings kind of far away or is this kind of a walkway situation? >> So they're walking distance. If I had to guess, I'd say they're within uh 100 yards of the main main building. >> Um, thank you. I definitely think there's some space for us to learn a little bit more about the facilities component. And I would also be interested, Dr. Reid, and knowing the impact, the CIP, the utilization impact of the surrounding schools um, if we were to move into this position where 500 students will need to populate the grade levels. And I'm glad that Miss Marin brought this up. We don't have to start with just the um the first two grades, but I think it's
331a good idea because in high schools, you have to build momentum. I it it's you can't be a senior in a new place because you haven't had your activities. You haven't had all of the things that make your experience special. So, I I'm in full support of that. But I want to make clear that they don't choose to go. They all go because that's what happens with a brand new school. I'll take back. >> Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Miss Seismoiser, >> thank you. Um, a couple things as I look through these slides and look at this information. First of all, I'm really grateful we're including beyond just the high school, right? In terms of our pathways, I want to I'm hearing a lot about not humanities pathways, not humanities pathways. And I want to call
332attention. I'm sorry. I I'll wait. Thank you. I want to call attention to the specific slide around humanities and the offerings on slide 13. These are not what these are the classes that are going to build those skills that we just heard about in the previous right journalism, debate, argument, rhetoric, digital literacy, empathy, ethical decision-making. That's what makes us human and not AI. How do we not have this pathway somewhere? And maybe not all of this, but for good. You know what you need to add to this is improv. And I don't mean comedy, I mean theater, improv, because there's nothing that teaches you perspective taking and listening skills better than improv. I'm going to tell you this right now. you've got and how to get from point A to point B than improv because
333you're given a scenario and you've got to listen to somebody else. You got to understand the perspective to build on that to get to the end. That should be infused in every lesson we do. But I would so the first question I'm going to ask is is it possibility to have this type of stuff infused everywhere because if we're going to build those skills that are needed for the 20 for our students if not is it possible to offer more than one pathway or pathways that are combined together. So it's not AI or humanities but it's AI and AI adjacent AI and AI adjacent skills because I would I would recommend one pathway maybe or if you want to go two different AI and data science aviation and adjacent skills. You can't separate them. That's
334my big this is great but you're you're siloing skills and we do that in FCPS. we silo things. I would take this back. I would take this humanity's part and infuse it in the other pathways and then come back. >> Oh, if you could please answer or or comment on that. >> Sure. No, I think what's exciting about where we are in education today is really anything is possible, right? I I also know that once the we can give the committee that's going to work on this and the planning principle the green light to whether we're doing a comprehensive school in a traditional boundary with possible pathways then really we want that group to go out and work with community uh students that might be attending uh to come up with some ideas that we
335would bring back to you as a board for consideration. And I think the integration of the humanity skills um because you're right, the last session we just had, it's not so much the technology, but it's our ability to use the technology in an ethical um thoughtful way that's very important. So, they're both important. Um all of it is important. Um and I think it we've got to figure out also not just for the western high school but really across our school division how do all our young people benefit from um what's been captured here in terms of a discussion. So and that's that would be my pitch is is I think integrated education interdisciplinary education is has been the trend at the at the college level of the recognition of the need for the skills
336alongside the technical knowledge. Lots of people are doing genai there are not very many people who know how to use it and and if this is this is what we've done. We put portrait graduate over here and content knowledge over here. If we're going to really prepare our kids for the future, we've got to prepare them for both. So, I don't have much more to add. I appreciate the hard work that's gone in here. Um, but I would I would encourage you to come back with a integrated model for pathways. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you so much. Uh, Mr. Moon, >> thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Um, I've been enjoying the conversation between IA board members and staff and superintendent. With that said, I I want to start with a couple of
337comments slashquests. As earlier when you were making a presentation, you seem to be making a distinction between uh comprehensive school and so-called 22nd century skills. I don't know whether we can really talk about 22nd century which is 75 years from now and with the technology and other things changing so fast enough I can hard to keep up with the 21st century changes so so uh on top of that on top of that I don't know whether we should be saying to our community that comprehensive schools education we are providing in our comprehensive schools is not going to be future oriented. They're ancient archaic backward versus 22nd century skills because I want all our schools to educate our students for the future. Am I asking too much? uh you know hopefully that's something a a superintendent
338and staff to consider when you want to talk about different programs that we don't want to leave vast majority of our students in regular comprehensive schools to uh fall behind those who are will be studying 22nd century skills. So with that said, uh the preparing the duly acquired buildings for new students to come in to be educated. Are we thinking about a renovating retrofitting all three buildings at the same time or are we trying to do uh you know part at a time a little bit at a time or main buildings first or what are we thinking of? >> Hey hey hey sir thank you for the question just want to correct the record. So uh our smallest high school without modular buildings is 285,000 square ft. Our largest is 459,000 ft and then our
339average across the footprint is 383,000. So just want to level set that. So y so to answer your question so it would be a phased approach. I I I think to do this it has to be done over a three to five year period. So the initial piece is what can we have in place by August of next year and we're looking for a two grade set. So roughly a thousand students um is the plan >> in the main building or in three buildings or just the main building. Okay. With with that said >> with that said perhaps perhaps I'm just an idea. I'm just throwing out that I mean I in general our prefer large part of if not all part of the schools to be a part of comprehensive high school program as
340opposed to magnet or specialized for the entire school. Uh so with with that in mind, if you are still discussing or debating and not sure about what other programs uh on top of what we normally provide in comprehensive scores we should consider, perhaps those programs could go into those two separate buildings of 15,000 each that might a perhaps could accommodate up to 400 500 once they are fully renovated. accounted for that up to 40% of what do you call that? Circulation. >> Circulation. Yes. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. We're eventually going to need all three buildings to get to 2,000 kids, the two out buildings and the main building. So, um, and as we looked at the footprint of that, I think ideally we wanted the first two grades to start in the main building, but
341if we end up when we look at the renovation in the main building, it may be a quicker task to renovate one of the out buildings while we do the renovation on the main building. But I do agree with you that the two buildings that are on the property close um perhaps at least one of those we can hold an obeyance for until year two or so as we flesh out the pathway for um if we're still contemplating that. But I we're going to need the square footage from all three to get to the to the um 2000 enrollment. >> Thank you, Mr. Moon. Uh, Miss Sanjan Cunning, >> thank you. Um, I've enjoyed the conversation and thank you for the presentation. Um, I think the problem with the presentation is that it was too
342comprehensive and there's 12 of us here and we all have very unique ideas. You gave us so many to pick from and that's a problem, but that's also a possibility. Um, there was a lot of things that were brought up. I want to first say that our comprehensive high schools that exist now are top-notch. What we're trying to decide is this going to be comprehensive and what is it going to have. I would like for you to provide the numbers for the rest of our board members to understand exactly how many students are serviced at atmies or at these schools within a school because the numbers we're talking about about the 90 and 30 are pretty much even across the board. That is not an unusual situation. So when we're talking about that, I think
343we have to calibrate ourselves realistically about what's happening now and what the capacity is. Although I'm very excited to hear that at the Monasuri school there's 125 students which is another school within a school. Uh so depending on what we decide to choose you know that's going to dictate the kind of numbers that we can have. I think that we are so excited about this and we're so enthused about this and we all want to put in our two cents and that's not even counting the community. Um I appreciate the presentation. I think we need to defer to the community that where it sits and I think that we also need to defer to the magisterial um school board member that represents that that has been listening to the voices. I think the possibilities for
344what can happen at this school and why we have to make the decision now versus that long term that we would have if we had bought a property and we were building it. We have to make the decision now. Not taking away from the fact that we know there are equity issues. Not taking away from the fact that why hasn't this been done in other places. We have to make decisions now based on the fact that we are very fortunate. Just like incredibly fortunate that we have a building that is already there that needs some minor modifications and yes it's quick but oh my gosh look at all the time we didn't have to waste on building it. Um so I think that's the frustration for all of us. I think we have a lot
345of great ideas and I'm hoping that what we can do with this is use this as a blueprint to maybe look at our under um populated schools like some in my district and maybe put some of those programmings there to so we have equity. My daughter went to an academy but it was a struggle because it was Fairfax High School which is not near Edison High School. Okay, it's going to be impossible to get people from my side of the county to there. I mean it's going to be not impossible but difficult but let's put some programming there but right now the decision is this because we have it and so thank you for this presentation that created a lot of possibilities and a lot of problems. Thank you so much uh for those comments.
346Um I'm uh Miss Anderson, do you have any comments? Meeting manager. Okay, I'm going to just uh speak as the uh Sulli district uh representative and also um the idea of comprehensive school uh actually was more of the community voice as well. So, we heard so loud and clear from the community. They wanted this to be a a school with a specific boundary and to alleviate some of the um capacity issues and uh definitely it's going to help a lot um not just center essentially but also with Centerville, Westfield any other other high schools in the western side. Uh I I do want to add that the school within the school model seems to be a great idea right now as we just had an AI uh presentation before and that just gave me the
347idea of like having an uh like AI program amongst the other programs we're thinking about just the school which did this great program for three years. We are in the right time to go go into innovation right now. uh we cannot wait for next five years and then start this. We have the opportunity to do it right now. We need to take that momentum and and and like all of our voices we I think very very similarly we are discussing about how we can use technology advance our school and I lastly I'll say CTE is um definitely has to be reaching more uh school population. And so I really appreciate the idea of having it in the base school and using hybrid technology because so many courses on computer science related AI and uh cyber
348security can be done online. So it's basically a win-win situation of whoever has access issues. Um so I'll leave it that and I think we have some gobacks. Um Miss Lady, >> thank you. I realize often I speak quickly, so I just want to make sure for those listening that um I 100% support enrollment relief for the western side of the county. Um 100% do. I just believe that we could do some innovative things and also provide that relief. So having said that, I think that listening to my colleagues, where I landed, just so people are clear, was a school within a school model. Um, and again that focusing on relief within the western side of the county. Um, but there is great opportunity with this facility. Um, I also I love the humanities pathway
349and I'm going to put this out there like leadership one, leadership two, leadership three and four. We teach that in all of our schools, but I don't believe we're doing empathy and ethical decision-making in leadership one. And I don't believe we're doing justice, power, and systems thinking leadership two. I believe we're making posters and we are showing up at school events and we are getting credit for our behavior. So I asked for years when we were teaching this to please have a program of studies that's a curriculum. Um and it's not a gut course as we used to say in college. Um I also would say that there are some other gut courses um something in athletic leadership and sport. uh not that that can't be a major or a dissertation, but I don't think
350that some of what's being taught. Again, I' I'd like to see a a healthy program of studies. So, I also want people to understand that we teach world civ in most of our schools, that is a lot of what this is happening with this humanities pathway. So, as someone who went to the college of William Mary, it's college day for those in the community too. That's why I'm wearing my shirt, not because I don't know how to dress for a work session. Um I obviously believe in liberal arts education, so I very much support that. But I just I just want to uplift those things. And last thing I'll say, and there this might require humor, might add levity, too. But in terms of the IBAP, I believe the school is too close to South
351Lakes to make it an IB school, and South Lakes is underenrolled. Um, I would vote for AP, but I really would vote that all of our AP schools become Carnegie schools because I think it might cost a lot less, but I could be naive. Is it cheaper to do Carnegie? >> It is cheaper to do Carnegie. So, I'm all in for maybe if we're going to go Carnegie units or Carnegie curriculum that we get rid of AP because it is a astronomical amount of work and a lot of money. >> Thank you, M. >> Mic drop. >> Thank you, Miss Lady for the mic drop. I have Mr. Dunn next. >> Um, can can there be additional information provide Mr. Gordon on this 3 to 5 year time frame you've discussed? because my understanding is
352that one of the outbuildings um which is just across the street from the main building uh might be used for you know an academy program in aviation where you need like big open spaces or it could be HVAC or any number of things where you need that open space and since those buildings have not been constructed with you know inner walls and such that seems to offer great space for you knowmies or similar programming so and I just want to understand like cost estimates if we have any rough ballpark because when we paid 150 I didn't know there would be you know tens of millions on top of that and just trying to understand the impact on the CIP. So for so for sure you got a shell building you know depending on program selected
353that you know something minimalist could be depending on that type of program. So for sure that's possibility but we look at timelines you know if you're putting something in there you're you're probably 8 to 12 months in design process and then you're also then have to go through the the county for review. So that's another 12 months. So that's that's a lot of the time is eaten up with design and then also with uh going through the proper review process within within the county >> and well that might be a a great pilot project for my colleagues who are on the joint facilities board to work with on county and to expedite that permitting process and the planning commission as well. Um, but what's the rough ballpark kind of you have if if we're just
354doing straight traditional comprehensive high school? You mentioned, you know, we got to build out those two buildings to get to 2000. I think the superintendent said, well, so what I when you say shell, I don't know. Are there floors to the building uh that you're going to have to construct, you know, level one, two, three, or is it just a big empty box or >> they're both two-story buildings? >> Okay. And and so how much construction needs to be made? Because I got a hammer. or I can get some wood at Home Depot. Like what what needs to be done exactly? >> Well, I appreciate that, Mr. Dunn. Um I think what I think would probably would be most helpful is if we brought back a report to you um that has some more detail
355and we can do that, I think not this Friday, but next Friday. Um in terms of what it would cost to do classrooms and I think we have a ballpark on that, Mr. Gordon. Ballpark for classrooms for those for each of those buildings. >> I'm not looking for detail, just ballpark. >> Yeah. So we look for CIP. We have what cost to build out uh uh shell buildings and we have cost to build out new square footage and we have cost to build out um and renovate. So for a shell building, you know, roughly looking at uh 15,000 square feet. So it's um they're about about 4.2 million per building. And so my estimate is about ballpark figure rough organ about 12 million to build out both buildings in a traditional sense total. >> But
356you said 4.2 million per building. There's two buildings. So where's the extra 4 million come from? >> You've got uh equipment. So if if it's traditional probably less. I'm just trying to you know protect myself, protect the kind of the organization here of what a rough organ magnitude would look like. So that doesn't include furnishings, equipment. So if there's something special going in there, then that would probably, you know, get it closer to that 12 million. So it would be it could be less for sure. >> What about the main building? Because I mean, it's 9 years old, newest building in our portfolio. It's an award-winning architectural design. How much needs to be done in the main building, if anything? >> Again, a lot of that is kind of gets to back to program setting.
357And so if we're looking primarily at a traditional uh uh concept, I think, you know, you have two elementary schools floors that are roughly about $25,000 square feet each. If you're looking at roughly about $320 per each to to m uh to renovate those spaces, I think that could roughly be about $20 million. So I think all in to to bring this thing into a traditional school is roughly rough order of magnitude somewhere between 30 to $50 million over to support a five a three to fiveyear program >> be before a before 11th and 12th grade can go there >> that would support a four four-year concept. Yes. >> I I don't necessarily think it's before Mr. done because we have, you know, false church high school iss current example where we've got students in
358a in a in a building being renovated currently. So I believe that we're going to have within two years of a 910 as we add each grade each year. I believe our renovation can keep up with that and I'll work with Mr. Gordon on that. >> Okay, that would be great. And if we can just think about public private partnerships and all options, you know, uh construction management at risk, design build, all these things just to uh do things faster, cheaper, uh as we learned in a work session, uh last year before you're hired. So, thanks. >> Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Uh next would be Dr. Anderson. >> Okay. Thank you. I I think I'm still confused as to how we're able to have buildings with much less square footage and more students and we're
359not able to have four grades and 325. But you don't have to get into the details right now because I think that's more information that should come to us at another point as well as all of these costs of renovations. All of those things I think should be packaged for a comprehensive perspective. Um, this is a significant investment and this is not a space where I think there should be a difference to the magisterial district member because we I don't think we've ever done that. Almost every decision from an AP center to a Korean center, the whole board weighs in. So, I think that's what we're doing here. One of the things that I I want to make sure that I I share that I'm not in support of is making this an AI high
360school only because of the presentation that we just heard. everybody needs access to this. So, those are good things to to bring to all of our comprehensive high schools. Um, I also wanted to share that um the CTE very appreciative of what you've provided thus far. Clearly, there's a yearn for more information that is a little clearer in terms of what we're going to put where and what is it going to look like. uh are the are the content going to be the most rigorous and up to scale? Um because we all know location matters. That's how kids get locked out of programming because they're not able to access it. So I I'm looking forward to whenever that plan can be provided and also Dr. to read if at some point what you could bring
361back to us kind of like the big picture because there's been a little bit of conversation here and there about the timeline of this project, how it gets buried and not buried encompassed into the larger boundary conversation, the meetings for that community. All of this needs to kind of be laid out on paper for us to have a visual of how these things are going to dovetail into each other. Thank you. We can certainly provide that. I think believe there's a draft uh set of dates right now that's being worked on that we'll be providing you. >> Miss Anderson for Storm. >> I I just wanted to speak up for a second because as we determined in the previous I to Dr. Anderson's point, we absolutely want to make sure that all of our students
362have the ability to to work within AI and, you know, have those experiences. I guess my point or my thinking is that if we actually have this be an AI high school, then within in theory, we could turn it to be next year that we get started. And if we can do that, then that's the fastest turnaround we've ever been able to make related to curriculum implementation that I've ever seen. And this would give us the place to test things that could then be put out to the rest of the schools. So, I kind of love the idea of having this be an innovation high school and or at least the school within a school model. I understand. Um, but again, you guys have heard me say a million times, I do what I do
363for a living now because of a class I took in high school that taught me how to do computer graphics that we now call computers and art. And now that computer's an art class is from what I understand in all schools because it's on a computer and it's easy to implement everywhere. And that was a million years ago when it wasn't easy to implement everywhere because it was expensive as as anything to get all those computers in the classrooms and the software was insane. So I I understand that it is hard to start somewhere, but when we start somewhere, we get to where everybody has access. And so we have to begin. We can't stop the process moving forward simply because we're afraid that not everybody's going to have access as soon as we start.
364And so I just don't want us to be held back with the possibility. The other aspect with AI is we've already talked about the fact that it it touches every industry. So it means that we can get the fine arts kids. It means that we can do all of those things because we are going to be able to open it up to everyone. So I just think it's it gives us an aspect to a possibility that would be a strong pathway moving forward um to get to the innovation that we want. >> I just wanted to say I um and next um I this missin thank you. So what I want to try and think about is how to be innovative and creative. So visionary and realistic and so I just again just like with
365the AI I'm struggling to see the possibility knowing that the resource of time is limited. I don't think that we're really recognizing this. Um we are assuming that staff among all the other things going on have time to create this whole new course selection plus all the building stuff and and time for the board to be appropriately informed. Um, I don't think colleagues that we are being set up for success in making the decision about Western High School. Um, we just heard back of the envelope estimates, nothing written down, no projected plan that could be subject to change. Where is that money coming from? Is it from FY operating funds, FY26 operating funds? Is it from the capital funds? And this is every every board member needs to see this school because then you you
366you'll see why the question about early childhood matters because the bottom floor a significant part of it is set up for little ones. So are we ripping out cubbies and that area or are we keeping them in these are again I just I'm perplexed at why I can't have an answer to that question. Dr. Reid, yes or no? You want us to vote in a month? Is it going to be there or not? Um, I think this school within a school model, it's confusing language. It's a pathway. It's a career pathway. We have IB pathways. Let's use language people know because they're confused and it sends off alarms and people think that they're not getting a comprehensive high school. Um, I have a really difficult time being in this strategic plan space of this morning
367and seeing progress over time each year and how planful work implemented pays off. And then we have information given to us incomplete and are expected to make decisions. Um and then there are some that we make in a silo that implications across the school division. Carnegie schools I would love to have a conversation about that. When do we do that because maybe the decision we make on Western High School can start that. It's so rushed. I I just don't get it. We are not be I would love to hear each of you what you would vote on because this is when we're supposed to do the work which is why it's so valuable to have our work sessions that are scheduled and noticed publicly. So could you please share what your thoughts are? Will you
368vote for comprehensive high school? Do you want a magnet? Do you need more? What's the work here to do to prepare us for that vote? >> I'll put you in the go back as well if you want. Uh Mr. Dunn, are you uh do you want to speak? Okay. So it's Miss Lady >> just real quick it's Cambridge a Carnegie is a high school credit. >> No that's a I got my you know you're in when you're in education speak you you know you you get confused but Cambridge is what I was talking about. Thank you. >> Uh Mr. Fresh >> I think today I have heard a textbook example of what the next steps document is for. Next steps document, although not always used this way, is designed to solicit the information that one
369needs in order to make the desired decision. So, um, I have some questions that I'll be adding to the next steps document to see if colleagues are equally minded in terms of needing that additional information to make the decision, but that's exactly what that document is for. So, it's already in the inbox is what I'm hearing in murmurss across the table. Uh, so I'll be looking forward to seeing what folks put in there. Uh, and I will likely be adding some items as well. Thank you. >> I'm looking for speakers now. Okay. Okay. I'll miss for second term. >> Thank you. Just briefly, um, I do agree and I appreciate all the hard work that bring the plethora of options back to us. I think that's really helpful for us to see all the possibilities
370in this and I think while it is difficult I think to think about what do we do with this new space that we have and it's going to cause ripple effects otherwise right and it's going to be positive in terms of relieving the overcapacity issues we've had on the western side for a long time but I would just encourage all of us to look at the possibilities of this because there's a lot of really good inherent possibilities and and I do think it's important to look at the possibilities of a pilot than and then can be expanded to some level to our other comprehensive high schools. I think that to me is the best use of this. Now whether that pilot humanities or AI or some infusion, I think there's still more conversations and work
371to be done. But if we are going to do what we need to do to make sure our students are set up with the content knowledge and the skills to be successful in this very seinal inflection point in education and in our society using this as an opportunity to create the pilot that can be then taken to our other comprehensive high schools I think is to me would be my advocacy for the path to go. It still means it's a comprehensive high school. It's a traditional high school that relieves over capacity, but building within that those p it's similar to what we're doing with the lighthouse schools, right? Or the inclusion pilots. We have models for these types of pilots within our comprehensive schools all over the county. But if we don't take this unique
372opportunity where we're starting a high school from scratch to be the leaders that Fairfax County is known to be to create the model for what the education for our students who are looking for us, I I can tell you having 20ome years old in the career world right now with AI is disrupting their career paths at an early career stage, we owe it to our students to be the person who has the laptop and not the postits. Well, let's make that happen. >> Thank you, Miss Seismoiser. Uh, Miss Marin, do you need to go back? >> Okay. >> So, just to confirm, we have our conversation today, and the next time we talk about this is when we vote on it on November 13th. >> I actually, if I can interrupt, I spoke with the
373superintendent about the fact that um, I'm asking her to bring back a presentation when she puts this on for new business on the 23rd. So, we will have a presentation of the path forward. So, we will have a a a layout and I will work with her to ensure that we have what we're what we're looking for and we'll work with the next step steps document as well. >> Thank you, chair. I'm just again perplexed. Dr. Reed, I've known you to be very strategic and thoughtful and planful and yet here we are creating new dates at the last minute, no budget. I I just do not understand how how the superintendent could expect this board to make a decision with taxpayer money and not have the information in a timely manner. Um, and I do
374feel alone in this. So, I'm trying to figure out if I'm just really seeing things weird, but I again I trying to make database decisions here. Um, and I don't want to make a decision about one per one school when again there is a need across other schools. I've been hearing the same stat about Edison, 30 kids for years. What's the plan to do that? What's the plan to expand it? What's the plan to expand HVAC? I don't have a single constituent in Hunter Mill going down to Springfield to participate in HVAC or anything down there. And that has been the case for the six years I've been on this board. And I have not heard a single implemented plan to change that. But we're ready to go to do new coursework and new stuff
375for this school. I want innovation, but it's got to be connected to the big plan and also not just one year. What's the outyear for the budget? We talk about this all the time. We get money for building, but not for maintenance. We didn't talk about the pool. Now, I will say that my constituents um who are would be most closely affected, those in the Flores Elementary School pyramid school that would go up, they are five or six minutes from Western. And currently the students spend at least 15 to 20 minutes going either way. And so they are very passionate about, look, this is like a great opportunity for our kids not to have to trek to the other sides. And what they said to me is knowing that geographic boundary at least would be
376a relief and figuring out the programming then we can work it out but again I just don't hear a plan to work with them about those questions about homecoming or whatever you know and I want to be sure that other stakeholders in the community like every board of supervisor like the county executive have all received a tour and not just on that October 25th open house but it's really important certain that people understand what this is and we are just rushing so fast but I guess I'm alone unless I hear something different. >> Thank you Miss Marin. Um I think Mr. and Dr. Anderson is next. >> Yes. Just very very quickly I just want to be sure that I didn't lose some information because this was a very robust conversation. Dr. Reed the the
377decision that you're asking us to make rather than me saying it. Can you just please rearticulate the decision that you're asking us to make at current? >> There is no decision today to be made >> on the whenever in the future, >> November 13th, >> we're going to need and it's been calendared. Um it'll be new business on the 23rd. the 13th, we need a programming decision. And the programming decision is, are we going to have a comprehensive high school with a traditional boundary? That's what I'm going to be recommending. That's different than a magnet school. It's different than um it's different than a magnet school and all the other sort of continuum. I will also be saying that I think it's important that evening that we have some kind of a 22nd century skill
378pathway school within a school is what we call it at uh Edison and Lewis. We have a program within the school. I think that's going to be important in a new high school and we have an opportunity to create it from the ground up. It isn't a have to. It's if kids choose to. So the decision is comprehensive with a traditional boundary is really the decision because then I can turn that over to the planning team which will be actually building out a comprehensive high school master schedule which we have a standard course catalog already for. So, it's simply matching that comprehensive schedule. And then there's been a lot of work done in a variety of arenas to think about what might that um program within a school look like uh which might be over
379a four-year program. And again, would have to be self- selected just like any other um course taking pattern. But that's essentially this the decision. But the decision on the 13th, it's only comprehensive high school with traditional boundary. Everything else is to come later. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you, Dr. Reed. Um, I don't see anybody. Oh, okay. Miss >> Okay. So, that's helpful to clarify. So, what we're voting on on November, what was the date? 13th is the boundary. Well, whether it's a traditional high school, but but again, I I just the vernacular really matters and as we know, a lot of the there's been a lot of communications confusion at the start of this school year. Okay. I'm hearing from staff, they're verifying, people don't really know school within a school. You mentioned Edison.
380I'm not familiar with Edison, but you know, it again, it's confusing. People think magnet, they think lottery. That's the vernacular people are used to here. So can we call it a pathway because that's vernacular people are used to. Okay. So if we say that November 13th what we are voting on is it for it to be a comprehensive high school with the local geographic boundary to be decided. Is that accurate? >> Yes. >> Okay. When is the board then voting on the programming at the high school if and when? Well, the board already has in the sense that a comprehensive high school has a standard course catalog already. Every comprehensive high school, the board's already approved the standard course catalog. So, that those are the courses. Those are the program that are going to be
381at that school. >> What about the pathway? >> The pathway I will that is something we're going to have to take back to the team because that's going to require some community input before I bring that back to the board. So the board does decide on whether there is a pathway. >> I have to go back to policy and regulation about that. Um I believe so because I recall in my early in my tenure the board approved the Lewis Academy at Lewis High School. So that from memory again I would expect that the board would have a role in making a decision around um that pathway and if we add other courses to the standard course catalog those always come to the board as part of your routine work. I'm not sure Lewis would be
382the case study. It was done in an untraditional way. Um, I would want to check other programs and look at the policy. But again, I continue to raise that the regulation for policy 8130 is not up tod date. The regulation supposed to be updated after the policy updated. It was last updated in July. I'm going to have a hard time voting for things if they're based on outdated policies and one-off traditions. >> Okay. Thank you so much, Miss Marin. Um just uh for clarity because you asked and I'm just going to say I I'm supportive of uh traditional boundary school uh on this in this particular case and and programming in the school for the same population which attends a school not pulling from other schools that's the basically school within the school model or
383pathways. So with that said, I think I appreciate all this uh conversation, the robust uh I said um you know brainstorming today and uh with that said, I think we will adjourn now at 4:32. Thank