6/14/2025 - FCPS Advisory Committee Summit

001move in this morning. So, I am not the liaison for this particular committee, although I I wholeheartedly and completely support their work. Um, but I wanted to go ahead and get us kicked off. So, thank you guys so much for being here. There we go. Yeah, that's how it works at ours, too. and yet people still can't. We struggle. Um, so thank you for your time this morning. I know that it's all on the top of our mind that there's big news events today and things that are distracting us, you know, one direction or another. And I'm speaking, of course, of Flag Day. Um, you probably all have your own Betsy Ross celebration scheduled. I know I do. And, um, I'm going to go through this as quickly as I can to uh, have you

002all get back to that. Um, I heard there's something else in DC. I I haven't been paying much attention, but you know, maybe you all know what's going on. I I'm not looking. So, um, with that in mind, we actually did I was telling them the story. We actually did celebrate Flag Day in my in my family because it's my father's birthday and my father was Canadian. So, we would put a Canadian flag out every day for his for Flag Day for his birthday. So, that didn't really I was kidding. I'm not doing a Betsy Ross party, but we did actually celebrate Flag Day. Um, so anyway, as you know, we are a statemandated committee on the ACSD and some of our roles on that committee are prescribed by VDOE regulations. Specifically, advise the local

003school division of needs in the education of children with disabilities and that doesn't always follow the clean lines of an annual charge or a strategic plan. It means that we listen to the public for information about what's happening right now in the division. And what we see in here can look very different than it does from the point of view of leadership. We know that your job is tasked with looking in a visionary capacity with your policies. Ours is more reactive to see how those policies have manifested in real time and boots on the ground. And I think as a result sometimes what we recommend doesn't always sync with what's top of mind for you in your decisions. And I've given a lot of thought to that. And I you know I think that's why

004it is. So, I would urge you maybe to think about what your plans were a year or two ago because what we're seeing now is the manifestation of those plans and how successful they may or, you know, in some cases may not have been. Um, but in order to really amplify the voice of the public and be able to reflect those priorities, um, we made a few changes this year. We had a town hall meeting that was specifically dedicated to public comment. Unlike some of um some of the advisory committees, we have public comment every month to varying degrees. Um but for this particular meeting, we had dozens we had dozens of people show up and we spent a good what was it hour and a half, two hours listening to people who had joined

005us either in person, in writing or by video. And um it was heavy work to listen to, but just critically important to hear those voices. Um we also were very fortunate to have three students appointed to our committee this year. The student school board liaison uh did exercise her right to appoint two students and then we actually had a staff appointed role that we filled with a student who was so impressive to us the year prior that we wanted to preserve her voice for another year. So that was a little unusual I think and we benefited greatly from hearing what the students were experiencing in the schools in real time. Um, and we also have a very diverse representation on that committee, not just by design, but when you look around that room. You know,

006we talk a lot about inclusion. And if you want to see what that looks like in real time, come to one of our meetings. We had cued speech. We had service animals. We had um people who have mobility impairments. We have lots of autism. We had lots of ADHD. And um it really again it benefits us in our work. And I think it's a good example of how um many people working towards a common goal really elevates the outcome of the work. So um I do want to say that the committee struggled this year somewhat with the strategic plan. Um most of the people on our committee were not part of the planning process for the building the strategic plan. And you know, I have a background in strategic planning and um I don't think

007that's necessarily common, but when you don't have that background, I think they can seem very abstract and hard to wrap your head around in terms of the tactics that or the objectives that support that strategy that's been built. Um so I don't want to say that as if that's a negative thing. I think um what you'll see in our recommendations is it was very much a learning curve. The u the recommendations we have are are valid on their own merit. I would just urge you to um recognize that there there may seem to be something of a disconnect between what that strategic plan intends versus what was top of mind for our membership as we went through this year. Um we also struggled to get our responses to questions and data requests in a timely

008manner. Our inquiries are not even determined until the committee has been working for a few months. And sometimes when we get the first wave of information back, that raises new questions of clarification or or maybe we're not seeing something that we thought we'd see or vice versa, but there's no time left to do another data inquiry before the report is due. So there have been cases where you know we maybe removed a recommendation or altered it somewhat because we missed that window of opportunity to base the recommendation on more of that granular information that we would have liked to have. So overall I'd say it's a transition year. we adopted from our very very long established processes which we had a we had a um a very structured committee and one that when the new

009operating manual came out we found was almost validating because we were already doing a lot of the things that you know Rajna had shared with me you know part of the reason certain things were put in the operating manual was because other committees maybe were doing things so differently than than we were so it didn't necessarily negatively impact us But um there was definitely you know our our role our process was so ingrained and we are such a large group of people. We were I think 34 when we're fully staffed. We spent most of the year at about 31 or 32. That's a big group of people to try to get them you know in lock step toward a goal when you only meet once a month. Um, so I just would urge you not

010to dismiss the validity of the recommendations that we make based on some of that uh structural challenge that we encountered. Um, you know, they have merit on their own even if it doesn't quite hit the bullseye in terms of the charge that was put forward at the beginning of the year. And of course, you know, these are the things that our committee is seeing in real time. So, if for no other reason, you know, they're a voice of what's happening in the schools and with families today in the division. Um, we are over 30,000 of the students that are represented in the division, which is not an insignificant point of view. Um, my Gen Z 24year-old graduate of Chantelli High School, thank you, Dr. lady um class of 2019 um said to me the other

011day I was talking about something I had noticed that was sort of abbleist and he said you know mom people don't really recognize abbleism the same way they do racism and it was such an insight to me because he said you know there's lots of people who are racist and don't know they're racist but if you say to them do you know what racism is they will say yes he said if you ask people if they know what abbleism is they don't even know enough to know that it's a thing and it's true I asked that when I'll say I'll use the word abbleism sometimes and they'll say what's that? Somebody will say what's that? So I think that was just such a critical insight into the hill we climb when we make these recommendations.

012So with that being said, I am not going to go through these in granular detail because I'm not one who believes in reading the slides and certainly you have a lot of robust supporting information in the document itself. um some of my subcommittee chairs are present in the room as well. So if there's a particular nuance or more information that you'd like to have um on something specific, you know, we we have other resources to answer those questions. So we had separated by the we had separated our subcommittees by goals of the strategic plan. But out of one of those goals, we arose a a recommendation that really fell more under one of the pillars. Um that pillar being a culture of equity, excellence, and opportunity. Um you heard me mention earlier about the challenges

013we had with data. And you know, I don't say that in a blameworthy way. It's really more of a cyclical timeline issue, but often we encounter situations where somebody will say, um, well, can you tell us how that particular issue affects students with disabilities? And we're told, well, we don't track that. So those are things that prevent us from getting more information with specific information with specific to this recommendation though the air report and I know that among this room that you know you started the special education improvement plan but in the schools people don't know that's a thing there. They knew about the air report. The error report got a lot of coverage. People read it. People knew understood it. they agreed with it. I think a lot of times there was um there

014were a lot of people who said, "Yeah, we've been telling them that all along kind of thing." But um born from that was this special education improvement plan. And I'm not sure that that has the same level of awareness. So we frequently get asked what are they doing about this recommendation in the air report? And um it might be worth taking a look at that and and you know considering how you communicate that back to the public so people know that there's you know there you have leveraged that information. You have followed up on those recommendations. Um this particular recommendation is an audit. I am not the person who served on that subcommittee. So, if you would like to know more specifically when we get to the questioning period about what was intended with that,

015there is an individual in the room who can speak to that with more detail. Um, moving on to goal one, strong start preK through 12. This group recommended in looking at the community schools initiative that the three pilot schools should collect and report the outcome data to the school board which demonstrates the impact of that that program across multiple indicators and stakeholders. Um and it should also be expanded to include more title one schools which are specifically the schools that you know would likely benefit most from a program such as that. Uh they recommended expanding inclusive prek classrooms for all eligible students and to provide ESOL services in title one prek classrooms districtwide. And they recommended partnering with colleges and universities to develop programs that recruit and prepare the staff needed to support and scale

016those two initiatives that I just mentioned. Goal two. Um goal two and I got to tell you I admire this committee. they they do one recommendation and they do it thoroughly and they that is a conscious choice on the part of the committee so that the thing that they feel most strongly about they can spend the most time um getting the information and you know it's so tempting I think when you're sitting in that room and thinking about recommendations that you're going to have an opportunity to give to the school board it's so tempting to you know come equipped with your torches and pitchforks and say but this and but that and um you know you can't do everything at once and do it all well. Jack of all trades, master of none. And the

017um the subcommittee chair of this committee, who is a secondyear subcommittee chair, prioritizes the one thing that they feel the most strongly about and defends it robustly. So their recommendation was to enhance access to emotional, behavioral, mental, and physical health services through a comprehensive review of the student to clinical and student to behavioral support staff ratios using a weighted formula. Um, and there's all sorts of data and graphs in the report that you can refer to um as the basis of that recommendation. Moving on, academic growth and excellence. consider alternative service delivery models for special education services in advanced classes. Um this is being uh discussed I know by advanced academics and I know that um the superintendent's advisory committee on choice exceptionality is looking at some of these models as well. How do we

018teach students that learn differently but still teach them to their capacity as an advanced learner? Um promote more teachers with disabilities to inspire students with disabilities. We think about this in terms of other um historically marginalized communities, but the idea of having someone who looks like me has a lot of merit to students who the world often tells don't have quite the same future as their peers. In the inclusion pilot program, um develop next level universal design for learning training that incorporates best practices that are specific to selected curricular and co-curricular areas. increase focus on relationships and play-based learning in both primary and secondary programs and utilize parent leaons to discuss the continuum of services and spectrum of secondary courses and academy options. One of the things that this I think implies is if you

019have a student who's gone through an IEP process, the timeline for making certain decisions is skewed by the the um the timeline of the IEP. So, it's a very frequent thing that when a student updates their annual IEP, there are certain electives that get allocated to special education electives, but because their elective slots are held until that IEP meeting, the electives they may have that are of choice are already full and so they are disproportionately left out of the electives of their choice simply as a function of timing. Um, and that's what I saw when they were talking about some of that. um some of that continu the secondary courses and the academy options. There are a lot of occasions where if you're not updating your IEP till the end of May or early June,

020the things that these students might have wanted are no longer an option. Um goal four, equitable access and opportunity. Implement data tracking for student exemptions from literary lit excuse me literacy. I'm losing my literacy this morning. from literacy screeners disagregated by demographics and IEP eligibility were applicable. That's a key point in the data tracking because there are a lot of situations where we can say we have x number of students who are exempt but we cannot drill down and find out um but but is it because they have you know specific learning disability dyslexia presumably or is it because some other you know some other um disability prevented their access to that literacy screener like communication. Um, develop a divisionwide method to monitor literacy progress for students that are exempt from those screeners to ensure

021accountability for their literacy development. Consider exemption data from reading screeners when selecting locations for early childhood inclusion programs. Select a concussion baseline testing vendor that provides textto-spech accessibility for the assessment instructions and the demographic data collected at the start of the test. provide training for staff and families to ensure that necessary accommodations for student participation in extracurricular activities are proactively included in the IEP. Proactively being the key word. Um, I'm sure you all know that students with disabilities are guaranteed access to extracurricular activities as well. But in my experience, and I think the experience of many on the ACSD, they would say, "But it never comes up. We didn't know. we didn't know we could have this accommodation extended to chess club or we didn't know we could have this accommodation because it's not it's

022not proactively considered as part of the IEP and the inclusion pilot program uh target provide targeted professional development and parent resources focused on the benefits for all when presuming competence and increasing time in general education settings. I think a lot I know I don't think I know a lot of parents are really fearful of putting their child with needs into a general education setting and you know my role as a as an advocate to some of these families I you know I I coach them and I say you know raise your bar higher they can do it you can believe in them and not only is it good for your child but it's good for all the typically developing child children the non-disabled children I mean copious amounts of data has shown that and um

023parents don't know that and I think that if as you move forward with inclusion, you need to be prepared for that fear and that push back about, you know, there's a there's a phrase that was said to me by an autistic writer that has stuck with me. It's it's a really scary thing to seed control over your vulnerable child and release them into an environment that hasn't been built for them. It resonates with me deeply and that is part of what you're going to struggle with as you expand on universal design and inclusive learning is parent resistance. Um, and then finally, leading for tomorrow's innovation, use data that career and transition services staff and employment transition representatives collect to identify and replicate best practices and continue multimodal communication about programs and opportunities, including information about

024post FCPS transition services as early as middle school. So, before I move to questions, I want to just um make a few comments. Um, I mentioned in my opening comments about the challenges we have with receiving data. Um, often the challenge is that the data we need isn't being collected. All of these issues have led us to propose an annual charge that is specific to studying the way data is collected and used for students with disabilities in the division and um give some of that feedback about well you know it might be beneficial to look at it this way or that way. It's not a fault of your data tracking. It's a it's that you can't ask for something that they can't that they're not that they're not following. And there's, you know, one of

025the greatest things about FCPS is the the data driven nature with which they make their decisions. If the data doesn't exist, the decisions are essentially guesswork. And so we believe there's a lot of benefit we can provide to looking at that process not just as it's collected but through the continuum of how it is then implemented and responded to and then tracked for success. Um I also believe that the ACSD is underutilized in the regulation that reads assists the school division in interpreting plans to the community for meeting the special needs of children with disabilities for educational services. I'm not personally aware of any way the ACSD has been leveraged to assist with that dissemination of community information, but I believe there's a lot of opportunity there. And what I said earlier, for example, about

026the special education improvement plan, I mean, who better to be out there talking about, did you know this is what's happening? This is the way it's being responded to. There's a reason why they can't do everything in year one. Um, there's a reason why, you know, certain things have to be monitored over multi multiple years. I know Sloan, I'm I'm speaking your language right now because you're the one that said it to me where, you know, we can't start everything in year one. Um, but in fact, we're actually often overlooked in being invited to participate in projects that have a unique impact on students with disabilities, such as the equity plan or the boundary review groups. While arguably there are, you could say students with disabilities affect every aspect of FCPS, I don't necessarily agree

027with that. But what I have noticed over my five years on the ACSD is that um SEPTA is often included and I fully fully support that. But what that says to me is that you acknowledge the role of students with disabilities, but you have not called upon your very own group of people appointed for precisely that topic. So I would urge you to think about that we are your own homegrown resource not to the exclusion of SEPTA because they absolutely have value in in the times when they've been included but ACSD has not. It gives me a great deal of confidence because I know they will reflect the issues with fidelity but that's not really the point. The point is we represent different stakeholder groups and we are the one that advises the school board.

028So, um, with that in mind, um, I want to thank Mr. Moon first of all to, uh, because he saved me this time a year ago when the operating manual was going to implement and I was going to lose my job on the ACSD, but I had already been appointed chair. And as tempting as it was to say, find another chair, the the reasonable answer was find another appointment. So, um, thank you, Mr. Moon, for um, for providing that. And um I also want to add something that I said to Sarah earlier this morning was that I think to some extent when the appointee is the chair, your ability to have any unique voice is somewhat limited by the fact that in the role of chair I don't initiate motions. I don't you know there's

029certain things that I have to take more of an unbiased view of. And um I uh I hope that that any issues you may have had didn't suffer for that. But you you helped me out a year ago and I appreciate that. and I of course appreciate the appointment in general. Um, Mike Bloom here. He's the rudder to our boat. He has a gift for sharing the parameters that exist without restricting our voices. And I don't think I've ever seen someone as capable of remaining calm under pressure as this man. I tell my family that if anyone comes to my funeral and says I never had a bad word to say about anybody, you'll know they didn't know me. But many will say it about Mike. And I want him to hear it before it's

030his funeral. So Holly Stern is here is completing three years on the committee today and will not be returning next year. She was my partner in this work in the truest sense and she has the gift of both wit and wisdom in addition to knowing exactly when to apply each one. The reason you're reading a report that is as professionally written as this one is is entirely due to her acute eye for editing. I'm sure we all would have enjoyed group projects in high school more if we'd had someone like Holly on our team. And I appreciate her more than I can say. Uh to the subcommittee chairs, some of whom are in the room, uh Jay Burkenbelt, Brandon Cassidy, Carolyn Hayden, and Joanne Walton. I want to thank you for the kitten hurting that

031you did this year. And also to the hidden figures, our personal hidden figures who didn't have leadership roles, but carried a lot of extra work, who are Ali Baldesari and Colleen Jones. You all were the kitten herders that can take the passionate and sometimes loud and angry voices of their group and direct it into meaningful conversation and a quality work product. That effort can't be underestimated. If any volunteer on our committee did nothing more than attend our meetings, that's 30 hours over the course of the school year. Those who led subcommittees took on much, much more than that. Next year, I will be returning for my third and final year as chair. I know that the learning curve from this transitional year has been overcome. I look forward to what we have ahead and I

032continue to be deeply deeply committed to the welfare of the entire division. But in particular to those students we serve who require us to think differently. I thank you for that opportunity. If there is one parting message I would say it's one that some of you have heard me use before that when you think about students with disabilities there is no them. There's only us. students with disabilities. The key word is students, not disability. So, thank you for that awareness and that attention. And with that, I open it to questions. Okay, we're going to go ahead and kick things off with Mr. McDaniel. Thank you. Um, I heard an interesting word that kind of caught my attention and I was hoping you could flesh your point, your recommendation out a little bit more, but the

033concussion baseline testing, we're talking I assume we're talking actual concussions as in like the Okay, that's what that's my assumption. I'm reading the recommendation here in the report. Um, the issue here I from what I'm gathering is the is the text to speech. It's an accessibility issue. Right. Right. Right. So the the the current vendor program can't do that. There's no No, it cannot. Oh, interesting. Okay. Um that seems like a fairly low lift. So I think that should probably maybe get a quick look for from a basic, you know, technology p everything is text to speech now. At least everything that I I use on a daily basis. So, um I mean there are there are other accessibility issues just with text to speech, but um potentially, but not having something as simple as

034that, you're right, it's a low bar, right? Yeah. I mean, today I think that's a fairly low bar to reach. And I know our youth sports clubs um have fairly aggressive concussion protocols. So perhaps they maybe there may be a vendor that they use that does that. I don't know, but that seems like a fairly low bar. Um and and the last question I think you opened by you know kind of critiquing some of the delays and data requests. Um can we just get some feedback from staff on the delays? And I mean I'd like to clarify that to some point though. The delay isn't necessarily on the part of staff. Okay. It's the cycle when we get the first pass of data and then we don't have time to do another pass of data

035based on follow-up questions. So we don't always know what the right questions to ask are when we do the first pass. And it does take a couple of weeks for sure, which is reasonable. We meet once a month and we're preparing our report by about our seventh month meeting. So there's just not enough cyclical time. Okay. Um I I want to be clear. I'm not That's a good clarification. My mind was going down a different route during my commentary or at least later. I know I did, but um that's fair. It's not necessarily a delay. There is sometimes that we're told we can't do that because for example our interest is students with disabilities and certain data when it is returned is a privacy issue depending on the nuance of the data. Um there's other

036times where it's just not tracked by students who have 504 plans or IEPs. I want to be clear. I'm not blaming staff for that. Okay. All right. That's fair. Thank you. That's all. I would say though just to the point about your concussion baseline, it's not just sports. students with disabilities um you know have behaviors that might be self-injurious or aggressive that are also at issue with concussions. Yeah. I just the the point on sports was I know having worked with some of the sports leagues a decade ago um they they because they're private organizations they have a little bit more nimble flexibility when choosing vendors. So they may already have a vendor that provides that so we don't have to do the lifting work. Thank you. Mhm. Okay, we're going to go to Miss

037Dixit and then Mr. Moon. Thank you for the presentation and uh and um it's really thoughtful work you guys are doing in this committee. Um I have my own child who's a 2E student um and um even though the school experience was good in FCPS overall but there were challenges in his um when he went to high school I guess that's the time it you have to be really superly organized. So, uh I was looking at the report and it does talk about some 2E um I I guess um the the data you collected from um public testimonies and then there were they were lit in a list. So based on this um is any advice for the especially to about the 2E student that you would like us to you know incorporate moving forward

038because I think there's a gap there are special needs students and then there is a general student but twoe have like a remarkable u situation where they know a lot they want to do a lot but then they have all these hindrances in their life especially I would say executive functioning and I've done have not seen that being incorporated in all schools. Some schools do a good job with excluding functioning, but some don't. I just wanted to hear from you. Well, how much time do you have? I mean, go ahead. Um, I'm also the parent of a twice exceptional student. He who graduated. He he just finished his first year of college. Um, when we had our our um what we experienced with him 10 years ago was that it was either or. you could

039either get supports or you could have uh you could access the the higher level courses. Sadly, when we had our um when we had our town hall meeting, we had testimony after testimony saying the same thing. So, I know that this is something that many people are looking at right now, how to how to how to fix and I don't have all the answers on how to do that, but it's that that eitheror seems to be an ongoing challenge. I would say the same. I have a lot of faith in the work that Superintendent Reed's advisory committee is doing. I have the pleasure of serving on that as well. Um it's a it's a it's a very validating conversation that we have when we meet. And um what I would say as general advice is

040that you have to stop thinking about how you've put a 2e student into your current advanced program and how you can alter your advanced program to be more inclusive to 2e students. It's not just about making the student with differences fit into the box you already built. It's about changing the box. Yeah. Thank you for the answer and and both of your um input. See uh and the other thing I'll quickly mention is and I'll take go back later is about um the clubs you were talking about like chess club and and things like that. I think it's an excellent opportunity to involve our our all our students in those kind of things because even if you're nonverbal uh you could still play chess and there are other robotics and things like that. So um

041there is definitely there's a gap where you know I've run chess clubs in schools and I've ran robotics clubs as a parent or volunteer and there's not much participation from special needs um classes or the students there. So there's definitely a room of improvement. We have to work on inclusivity. Um so I'll stop there and um my son uses assisted technology. He's functionally non-speaking and he could beat anyone in this room at chess. Yeah. 19. But he's been able to do it since he was about 12. Yeah, I know. Shame. I'm not very good. So that's a low bar. But he's that good. So you're absolutely right. Thank you, Mr. Moon. And then Miss Marin. Uh thank you vice sh Anderson. Uh first of all thank you for your service as my appointee and thank

042you serving as the chair for your leadership. Uh I understand why you need to you wanted to step down as my appointee next year because you wanted to represent the community organization and instead of representing me. Uh but I I get that. Uh but it will be difficult for me to find someone as good as you. So you're going to have to find someone for me who is as you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I I volunteer as tribute to find you another person. Okay. Thank you. Because we have a deadline coming up. So sooner the better. So uh thank you. But I still I also want to add one more thing. my a working relationship with my appointee not just to you but all other advisory committees I don't ask them to bring any

043emotions I don't ask them to make any points because I I leave I try to find good people to serve on those committees and I live them to their work and advise me rather than me telling them how to advise me what to advise me so that's my style maybe you know it's different board members have a different uh maybe work working styles but that's that's me. So with that said uh one thing that I got in my attention is a recommendation on the goal number one expanding a access to inclusive prek programs for all eligible students and in providing es uh that I think what I read at the bottom of page eight of well written report uh you know states something probably obvious but at the same time you know concerns me as

044a longtime board member Because that should not really be, you know, this should not exist anymore. You know, misidentifying for special education services because someone's language abilities, someone's being multilingual learners and mis being misidentified for special services. How do we overcome that? How do we avoid those misidentifications ever? I think it's a really complicated question because I think that not only are there language barriers, there are cultural barriers. I see it every day where clients um of diverse cultures have a very different approach to the way they interact with their school team and I have to encourage them to um you know their their role their expertise is their child and it's not an environment where you can defer to authority. So it's not just language, it's also the fact that culturally they have a

045different interaction role of interacting with their team. Um but I also think that you know in very early students even an typically developing child is still developing their language. And so while it might be a good opportunity to have multiple languages in the home, um it's difficult to say that what's disability and what's language because language is still developing with or without disability. So I I don't I mean that's past my pay grade and my last paycheck from FCPS was zero. So I can't help you with that, but Okay. So we have a Mr. Bloom here. Uh you know I I I want to I want to add to that something that we all know is count is becoming more and more diverse. There are more more families where before the kids come into our

046school building primary language may be something other than English. So you know if you're going to continuous identify many of them for special education services only because they multilingual learners then we have a work to do. Yes. Thank you for that uh that question and the important point that you made. Um, this year our team, our office of special education instruction has worked alongside our colleagues in the ESOL office to take a closer look at our identification process for multilingual learners who are in many instances um, going through the eligibility process, being found eligible as a student with a disability. And over time in Fairfax County, we've seen that there is an overidentification of those students in Fairfax County. So we'll one of the things that we'll be looking at moving into next year is

047a process where we can provide some level of of education working together with our eligibility teams uh working together with our decision makers at the school level um when they're looking at data when they're looking at to uh have an informed decision about the eligibility process so that as Miss Solinsky said we can take all factors into consideration around language development, around uh the needs, the strengths of those learners, those multil- language learners as they come into Fairfax County. Um so the work is going to be ongoing this year. Um but it is an area of focus and we are keenly aware that we are over identifying those students. Mike, if if I could just add to that because I think you did a good job um kind of laying out the work that we're

048doing this year, but I just want to kind of clarify a little bit. We have had a regulation and protocols and guidelines that before we would find a student eligible for special education who's a multilingual learner, we would do dual language assessments, collect data, understand the linguistic developmental needs versus the additional um uh struggles that a student may be experiencing. And what Mike was describing is we've had those practices and those guidelines in place, but we have still overidentified multilingual learners. So what we've been doing this year is the department of special services, the ESOL office and the language arts team have been looking at a variety of different data points to try to provide more precision about identification, what we call decision rules or business rules um so that we can be more explicit

049with schools because even though we've been going through that process previously, we think we've got to be a little bit tighter in making sure that schools not only understand the practices but understand the data points when evaluating multilingual learners prior to identification for special services. So, it's ongoing work, but we're trying to get tighter with that. We're trying to get more precise and we're trying to do more training for our staff. I mean, trying to serve the needs of all students, that is important, but at the same time, any mis identification also has other impacts upon families and students and staff members, our financial resources. And I'll add to that, the barrier when you're new to special education is enormous. When I entered the world of special education with my older child, it was 2004.

050I was a stay-at-home mom. I had a law degree. I had I mean, I was overwhelmed. And what I thought about at that time is what do families do who have fewer resources to bring to the table than I do? And one of those would be language. Um, it's part of why I became an advocate is because is thinking about I have every resource as you could define it to be successful at this and I struggled. It's the system, not the person. And so when you add that that how difficult it can be to understand and you know we're all so used to it. I can't tell you I don't ever have an IEP meeting with a client where I don't have to stop a team and say could you just explain that and it's

051something that use of jargon or whatever it might be nothing problematic but they literally forget that this is not common knowledge and um that's you also are working with that Miss Marin and then Miss Lady thank you um I want to thank the committee and um for the three years of service you're about to um retire Holly and also my appointee Laura McKay. She's also done with her three years. So I do thank her tremendously and I will have an opening which I know is really coveted uh to be on the committee. So I'm going to be sending out that announcement this uh weekend and going to have to turn around pretty quickly. So um just wanted to share that just to our um schoolboard office team. You know our committee page needs to be

052updated. It doesn't have all of our current committees and I had to kind of search around for this committee. They're not in the sidebar, but they're on the main page. So, let's just make sure that we're all clear there. The ASC um ACSD public hearing, I'd love for the board to be informed well in advance of that. I'd like, you know, calendar invite information um to see if we can get to that. Also, Dr. Reid, we need to stop excluding ACSD over SEPTA. This has been an issue for years, and I'm just tired of hearing of it. Like, we we got to fix it. either it's ACSD solo or it's ACSD plus septum. They've got to be the first stop shop. That's the law. So, um this has gone on since Dr. Terry Edmonds was

053the assistant superintendent. So, um okay. So, I got to acknowledge all the improvements and it's through the strategic plan and it's through budget decisions that the superintendent has made. Um I do see a change in culture and how FCPS is doing business. I see us talking about educating all students focusing on addressing our 2E students. The disagregation of data by subgroup and our goal reports this past year was the full implementation and data collection. So I mean it took some time to get there but now at least we have it and we do have gains and it is informing instruction. The superintendent has given us examples of how you know de disagregation of you know a student not achieving the principles have this and then they're going in like very individually. So um and that

054might be you know mostly gened but there I I'm aware of you know this databased kind of instruction. The data that would be helpful to know though I think is the portion of our student population that has the most common disability which is dyslexia with 20% of the population because that is something that I am really eager to see benchmark literacy help us catch. So like for my kiddo who was in second grade and didn't have anyone in his school with that kind of training, he arrived at fourth grade on a second grade reading level. But I'm hopeful that these kiddos who are in second grade are not going to move on, right? And so that should then limit the burden. But it would be good to know how many of our students are dyslexic

055or have um a reading disability and the other portion that requires that more intention intensive individualized education accommodations. Um I know Monday universal design is like this is a centerpiece of the equity summit. So and the family summit earlier this year was universal design. So I do see the language changing the least restricted environment form inclusive prek classroom by classroom you know we're trying to eek out with like almost no funding. So I I do have some other questions but I just um I see a big difference from when you brought up the a air report I was like oh yeah I remember that like like we're in a totally different space. So, um, and you know, given that we have had a funding decrease, I just want to be realistic and we've done a

056lot and we've still got ways to go, but, um, just want to voice that. If I could respond to one thing, we did invite the school board. Um, I would not say that we invited the school board to our our public hearing um, with enough time because it we didn't have enough time. We were planning it shortly after the holidays and it was our January meeting. And so I I absolutely understand if that got lost. Rashna was at that meeting and listened carefully and we do plan to do more of them this coming year because it was so valuable and I will make sure that we have plenty of advance. Miss Lady and then Miss St. John Cunning. Thank you. This is fantastic work. Um a couple questions. I'm going to start with 2E and

057ask the question um around elementary education and does the committee believe we should be doing departmental uh instruction uh so that we could take a 2e student who have is gifted in math but but maybe below grade level in reading but have them change classes. Yes. Okay. I I just want that be to be heard because the traditional way of doing you have one teacher. I think we need to push down, right? Um I also think one of the things that's coming out of our our superintendent committee is you can be gifted in a variety of things that aren't necessarily core curriculum, but if you have arrived at high school being modeled that you're either in or out, you don't even think about it that way. But absolutely, yes. I mean, I I it was

058the only answer I had. Yes. Yes. Thank you. because I I'd like to see more of that as well. Um the next thing is your comment regarding the timing of IEP signatures um and electives and access tomies. Um can you expand on that a little bit because certainly when I was at TJ I mean when I was at Chantilly um I mean my counselors worked hard to try and put the kids in what they wanted and then depending what came down with percentage of services we might have to pull them out of one but I kind of gave it to them up front. Is that not happening places? happen everywhere, but I also think that it's most pronounced in middle school, the transition to middle school, because um students in middle school are reflecting the

059electives they want in February. And the scheduling just seems to not be the same as high school in terms of when that schedule gets it's not permanent really ever, but you know, when you when you roll that output that in high school it might be, you know, August that you roll it and you say, "Okay, this is more or less what we've got now before we make changes. in middle school by the time you know we had I actually had one at a high school just this week where a student needed one special ed elective and was going to have another uh space and you know the top two or three that he wanted were full and to what degree the counselor is able to make those changes is yet we haven't heard back yet.

060I think he'll try but do you kick somebody out or do you ask the teacher to take a larger class? Like what do you do? I don't know. And it does happen. And I think I have observed it personally more frequently in the transition from elementary to middle, but I also do see it elementary or middle to high. Thank you for that. Um because I do know in terms of closing classes, uh because of capacity, I mean, this was an especially tough year because we went back and took staffing from people and they had to, you know, do their staffing sheets twice. Um, but you know, I know when I was a director, and I would hope that my colleagues are doing this, is capping them before they're full for transfer students and for these

061types of IEP things. So, if they're not doing that, then we need to work with our directors to tell them, you don't wait till it hits 150 kids in the five electives of debate that, you know, this one teacher teaches. You cap it at 28 and you save 10 seats, right? And then you might have kids that are there on a wait list. Um, but I mean these are all nuances that we need to do to make sure we have the equity and the access. So, excellent. That would be excellent. Well, so the resistance to gened and the overidentification. Um, I think that this is resonates well a lot with me because, you know, we definitely felt like when we there were sometimes I felt like sometimes middle schools didn't do bring kids to local

062screening as often as they could. It was like, oh, they're here two years, we'll just push them up, right? So we go read files at Chantillin and be blown away that nobody had been brought this kid forward especially for a kid whose parents not is not advocating. Similarly though we had overidentified kids who who absolutely really didn't qualify but had gotten them because quite frankly there's you know it's latigious world and there's pressure. So, not just with multi- language learners, but I think we need to focus on that over identification and empower our staff to be strong, but also I I I also understand the fear of uh trusting gened, but we need to because the bottom line is because I the other note I have here, I know I'm going to run out of

063time. I want to go back is you this presentation needs to be presented to the board of supervisors bar none. We don't have any money. Okay? and we we are we are trimming everywhere and we need to do better work with fidelity and we can't do it without without the support. So, you know, when I think about you push into gened, maybe it's team, but the way we allocate staffing, the kids who have the highest needs are sometimes losing because we're we've got all these different IEP things that we've got to staff and it and it teases us out. Well, Kathy Smith's my neighbor. I walk my dog with her, so I'll bring it up. Please do um because I think it's essential and then I'll take a go back. May St. John Coney please

064please bring it up often. She knows but yeah I will. Um so my question actually in terms of over identification goes more to underification. I was a family liaison and an interpreter and I would sit at a lot of the testing uh that was being done and there would be a lot of times where I would see that it was like well we need to give them the gift of time with language and it was clear to me as an interpreter and as someone that's worked in the school that it that this child needed services. Um, so I guess my question to staff was, and I and I know an interpreter is not quote unquote an educator, but we have very highly qualified interpreters that have interpreted at thousands of IEPs, testing. Um, I know

065I was never asked my opinion. Um uh but can we utilize some of these people that have that cultural competency and awareness where I mean it was very obvious this kid needs help but it was like we're giving them the gift of time and so as much as there might be well answer that first. No I I appreciate the question. I think, you know, we want to use all of our staff who know our students and families well, whether it's, you know, family liaison or other staff that might be serving in interpretive roles and in meetings and and have a relationship with the student and the in the family. I think that's really important. I think what I was trying to get at earlier is we've had guidelines in place to try to indicate whether

066or not a student is making adequate growth and progress based on their English language development needs. Right? So one of the things that we have is we have growth targets through the WEDA assessments that we give to demonstrate whether or not students are making adequate you know progress and growth based on their language development needs. One of the problems is I don't think that we've had a clear enough understanding in all of our schools what those uh targets and benchmarks are. And sometimes we've looked at multilingual learners and we've looked at their gross outcomes like on SOS and said well their you know their academic so performance is not good. they must have a learning disability and we refer them to special education without going through the procedures that we have to do the dual

067language assessment and look at their language development needs to see if they're making the benchmarks and the progress that they need to make um with language development um instead of just assuming that somehow their language needs are masking a learning disability. So, we've got to do a better job of using those, you know, the data that we have, the dual language assessment, uh, process that we have to look at both learning needs and language development needs and train our staff to understand how those two things intersect better than what we've been doing. Uh, because we do have a pretty significant over identification rate for multilingual learners right now. So, what is the harm of overidentification? Well, one of the things that is is a potential issue is that you're going to get students uh targeted

068for the wrong intervention. So, we might be making assumptions that a student has a a reading difficulty um and we place them in a remedial reading program as as opposed to accelerating the amount of time that they have for English language development, which would be the first thing that we would want to do. Instead of getting just 30 minutes of ELD time, we'd want to extend that to 60 minutes or 90 minutes and see if the student is able to make progress in their language development that way first before we put them in a program that doesn't really match their instructional needs. There's absolutely no harm in getting them more support. It's making sure that we're getting them the right support to really address what their learning needs are. So, I just wanted to bring

069that up because I have seen that in my experience where it's like you need the gift of time and it has been obvious that that is not what the situation is to me. But I I was not in the position where I could voice or say anything and then that child went to through two years and then at year three was identified. So they they were they lost two years of services. Yeah. And absolutely we don't want to do that and we wouldn't want to be using you know the you know the language that we want to give a student a gift of time. No if a student's not making progress. We want to make sure that we're accelerating the time and the support that they're receiving not you know prolonging the amount of time

070and hoping that somehow you know learning is going to accelerate. We've got to accelerate the supports and intensify the supports they're receiving. It's just we want to make sure that we're getting them the right support to match their learning needs. I would like to validate what you said though about cultural competency because I think one of the other elements at play is that there are cultures who are resistant to being identified as needing special education. And so that cultural competency piece is is critical as is very positive you know parent information and support so that it's not stigmatized. And the other thing going to that cultural competency point do I know I have situation I'm just like speaking from my experience which is unique. So just take that with that situation. I know that I

071used to have parents who had children receiving the services. Speak to those parents that were resistant. You know I would invite the parents to say are you open to this? Do you want to talk to this? Because I think sometimes, particularly with our immigrant families where there is a huge cultural stigma, not to mention what the translations look like. I mean, the wording of the translations are horrible, at least in Spanish. Um, and then that's the way one parent met another parent and they thought like, oh, okay, this isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be and this is how this child is doing and this parent is okay. And then within themselves and within that that school there was a community of those parents. So I mean I'm just putting that

072out there because I know that that's the way I could somehow um help parents come to the position to overcome that stigma. I could if I could jump in here. That's part of um part of the recommendation in the report actually is to utilize parent communities to try to encourage that sort of um willingness to you know to be open to supports. That's all. I was going to ask a question, but um Miss Lady explained how like like if we could hold spaces open for classes and I think she can teach people how to do that since she's done it. Okay, I'm going to take a quick turn myself and then we're going to go to fast gobacks so that we can um move move forward with the agenda. Um the only thing or one

073of the things that you said that I really appreciate and I agree with Miss Marin that we need to make sure that you guys are in the room then when it's appropriate to be in the room for sure. Um I hesitate using the boundary work as an example of that because right now the boundary work is with the superintendent and so you guys are an advisory committee and we don't have any of our advisory committees from what I understand in the room right now with the superintendents. As I understand it, you have SEPTA, but SEPTA is not a board committee. So you are Oh, I see what you're saying. Do you see what I'm saying? So SEPTA is the community. That is why that group was created. It was for the and so but but

074you no actually you brought up an excellent point because we have other advisory committees that also could probably give us important feedback as to things that we should be looking for but that is appropriate feedback for us to take not necessarily feedback for the superintendent to receive in the advisory work or in the boundary work it like under her the one that stood out to me was the equity plan because who is more appropriate for the equity plan and students with disabilities. Well, and I think that that is an excellent example. I just I want to make sure that we don't like conflate the line there because when we have advisory committees like they they serve the board and and so we're trying to keep that line clean. Um but what you did bring up

075and I'd like to talk with some of my colleagues is whether or not if if there's some mechanism that we could use to receive feedback of things that we need to be paying attention to. So, I I appreciate you bringing that up again and I agree with Miss Marin that we need to figure out how to get you guys in the room more often where when it's appropriate to do so. I just wanted to clarify that particular one just so that there's no confusion out in the world. Oh, okay. So, we're going to go back to go back. So, Miss Marin, you're next. Stretching my legs. Thank you so much, Miss Anderson, for um confirming that and checking me. And I apologize. It was Dr. Boyd who I was mentioning way back when there was

076an issue with ACSD not being called to the table. So, I apologize, Miss Edmons. Um, okay. So, I also do want to share that there's a lot of, and we all know this, um, there's a lot of exciting work happening with the the transition work from middle to high. Um, and so that's part of the goal for academic advising because absolutely it's really hit or miss. it depends what school you're at. So, there is more consistency and intention going into that. So, again, I think these whole system um process improvements will help um our students with disabilities. Also, you know, on Thursday night, we approved a contract for assisted living devices for our deaf and heart of hearing students. And it makes me wonder if the committee can be helpful to us in identifying funding

077sources because we we know what we need to do for kids, but as my colleague said, I mean, money is super scarce, right? So, I just wonder are there things that we should be purchasing or investing in or time to move on and that was just just a thought um because we do exceed the standards for state funding and again that well is is drying up a little bit but I also just wanted to add I'd love to see more infusion in the curriculum about about people and their stories and lived experiences um for those with student with disabilities like it's not just Helen Keller who you know rose above the challenges and thrived and So even talking about the um fight for ability for um recognition in the civil rights movement. So you know

078how can we really integrate that in those stories. So I I will leave it at that. I did want to I do want to submit a next step colleagues to try and get that data about the number and percent of identified students with that most common dyslexic um reading challenge and then the other items because I wonder too if it helps us better target our resources and it it would help me understand a bigger picture of you know where the need is really at. So thank you. Okay, Miss and I'm gonna go ahead and take this opportunity to correct myself. I am incorrect. There are advisory committee folks on the committee. Um, and you do have a representative from ACSD that's already on there. So, there is and they're all listed on the website. Uhhuh.

079So, here's the issue with that. as a committee. If somebody is appointed to that body that happens to be on the ACSD, but they were not appointed by the ACSD, then their role is not the voice of the ACSD. We within our bylaws, we have to agree to appoint them, which we didn't do. They were selected, which means they were selected on their own merits, and they just happen to be an overlap. I understand that that that may be part of it. I will say that in this particular circumstance, I understand some of why that was going on. However, um we'll we'll continue to work to make sure as as we suggested ahead of time, we'll make sure that we continue to ensure. I was surprised. I did not know that there were our advisory

080committee members on that other than FPAC, which made more sense. So, um I will I will definitely continue to look at desperately. She's doing the oo ooh with her hand over there. I I just want to if I can for a second clear that history. So Nita was appointed by ACSD but the issue here was that ACSD was not initially approached. ACSD got a spot after like SEPTA was approached. Uh APAC was approached, Title One was approached. Like all of us were named initially. ACSD wasn't named until I approached ACSD and told ACSD SEPTA had been invited and then ACSD was then able to approach leadership and ask to have a spot appointed and it was done. It was done very quickly. It was it was handled. Um I just want the clarity here and

081then was appointed by the ACST. Well, as long as long as we're making progress towards what we were intending to make progress towards, I think that this is lovely. No, but I mean this is this is how this stuff happens. It's iterative over time. So I I appreciate all of us working together to get to the right answer. Um Miss Lady. Yeah. I mean the only thing I also wanted to talk about was I I like the conversation about more training. Um and again the tough part about training is time, right? I mean you know our teachers are fatigued. Um, having said that, I I think that UDL um has the ability to save them time. I don't know why some teachers can't just take the approach that my when you have an IEP or

082you have someone in your class with an a 504 and IEP, whatever accommodations they get, why don't you just give them to everybody? Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's UDL, right? Like, it's a way in which you approach it. It's not it's not gaining an advantage. We need to train our teachers around this whole thing about an UN gaining an advantage is it's not it's not what's happening here. Um so that that's just a big thing for me and I just think that what we're doing with UDL is has is amazing potential. Um but we also need enthusiasm. Um and I want to um give kudos to professional learning at Fairfax County who took feedback from the inclusive schools trainings uh because apparently the first three of those were a train wreck. you

083know, um that the that the uh they they didn't understand that we were a consent state. There were all kinds of things that those they left, they walked away feeling like they don't even know Fairficks County. They took the feedback. The last training was far better. Um but at the same time, they need to have enthusiasm when they do the turnaround training with their schools. And I don't know if this falls on razes or it falls on EPS, but certainly falls on principles that the attitude in which we bring to a training and the enthusiasm if we're doing turnaround training has to be this is fantastic and not yeah some of these training you know I mean like that that's important attitude is so important in this work. Um so that's all I just we

084do need more more training but we need to make sure our trainers are are quality. Thanks. Okay, Miss Dixit. So I'll be quick too. Um I actually looking at the coming from UDL from my colleague just mentioned uh I was going to say the same thing. Your recommendation 3.4 says increase focus on relationship and play-based learning in both primary and secondary program is basically to foster relationship between among neurotypical students and student with disability benefits everyone involved. I know this work has been happening. I just wanted to know is it uh happening in all our schools or are we this is just a recommendation it's not been um you know the so it's a play-based learning or or should say pro project based learning happening between neurotypical and special needs students. Well, I mean, not

085to defer to the committee, but if I don't know if you want to maybe clarify the recommendation. I mean, in terms of play-based learning, absolutely. In our early childhood programs, that's a core part of our curriculum and project-based learning and collaborative and cooperative learning are parts of our FCPS learning model and and reflected in our curriculum design. Um, so I'm not sure exactly if the anyone on the committee wants to clarify that recommendation and then I'd be happy to try to speak to more was to expand it to other grades and I don't know off the top of my head which subcommittee that was but we have subcommittee chairs in the room so I might be able to ask them to speak to that said it was recommendation 3. It's 3.4 and it talks about

086also the how things are happening in TJ in multi-disiplinary um in interdisciplinary learning. So it was kind of a really interesting uh you know University of Michigan peer-led team program and some examples there. So really impressive uh write about what we could do. Um and I think all our students will benefit with that just overall and I have seen examples of project based learning and going to schools and students like designing like a water park and then they were like using their math skills and their design skills and engineering and there was a very interesting project they were doing and they were very involved in that. It it felt like they all you know were invested in that and it was a group project small team within the classroom. Well, I can tell you that's

087the one subcommittee that doesn't have somebody in the room, but one of the people on that subcommittee is your appointee, Austin. So, she might I mean, it doesn't benefit the group, but she might be able to answer some of your questions one to one. And I I think I can I can add a little bit here. Um, I think the idea was to um create ways to um to see how students are doing, give them opportunities to shine that aren't the traditional take a test way to to have a project to design your own project even to work as a group to you know find find other ways that students can show mastery of a subject and learn and show mastery of a subject. understood. That's a that's a really helpful clarification. And I I

088would just add I mean I know this maybe seems a little bit difficult to for folks that aren't familiar with it, but FCPS has what we call our learning model and it has four domains and that basically are the evidence-based best practices that we want to see in all of our schools. We updated that model this year to really make sure that it was uh centered in in universal design principles. And one of the cornerstones uh one of the four domains is purposeful assessment and using multiple types of assessments uh and providing student choice um in assessment types in terms of how students would demonstrate their learning. Um that's a UDL principle. That's part of one of the assessment practices that we want to see just as you just described and that's part of the

089training that we're doing with staff this coming school year is to really make sure in the staff development time that we have at the division level that staff understand what those best practices are, how to find the resources that we've developed. Um, and we're creating a lot of examples, even video examples so folks can see um, what those practices look like in in practice in classrooms. And definitely a choice around student driven choice around assessment um, and demonstrating learning is one of the cornerstone practices that we want to highlight. Can that information be found online or is it just internal? It actually is. Uh, well, it's it's both places. It is online. the resources and things that kind of get down at the teacher level are more on the, you know, the internal FCPS internet,

090but we'd be happy to, you know, help folks get access to any of that information. I think it would be helpful to our committee to see to refine the recommendations and prevent the kind of clarification that No, we'd be happy to do that. We'd be happy to share all of that with you. So, just let us know. Dr. Reed, I know you are. Thank you, Miss Dixon. I think what when I read the report, what I thought was so very promising is just focusing on the importance of children working together on projects. And when you think about projects, often that's the application of learning, right? It's how we know we know students have learned when they can independently exercise their knowledge um in a new situation, right? not with uh repetitive situations but independently apply

091knowledge in a new situation and they've learned. Uh we know that and to do group work with all children is a UDL strategy for sure. I think a challenge we often find in group work is we don't want to give a quartet music for a solo right if we have music for a quartet then we need four people and all four of them have to do their part or it doesn't become the beautiful piece it could be. And I think it's the same with all projects. There's a role, there's an opportunity and uh neurode divergent neurotypical perspectives uh improve the quality of any outcome of a project. So I appreciate you raising that as an important feature and thank you. It's good to see this happening in our schools. Um and I I say great

092things happen at FCPS every day in every school and it's sometime we we get you know we focus on things which are not happening but they're always like so many cool stuff happening in our classrooms and and I did see that um students were taking their own way of like assessment some chose to do a PowerPoint some chose to do a Canva uh you know design and it was a special need class and I was like mind-blowing they could just choose any way of assessment they would they wanted to. Thank you. Okay, we're going to go ahead and take a recess here to go to lunch, but we wanted to say thank you so much for coming out and sharing your your report with us. [Applause] Um and thanks for being here again. So we're

093going to turn to the Advanced Academics Program Advisory Committee and uh we'll go ahead and kick it off since we're running just a touch late. So um Holly uh or do we want to introduce yourselves please to start and um are we going to adjust any time? Let's just check because we are starting a little late. So let's do what we can and maybe we can add a few more minutes. Okay, we'll do our best. Okay, thank you. Hi everyone. Is this um the appropriate length from the microphone? Um hello. If we want to get the um presentation up, my name is Cheryl Napolei. I am presenting today for the Advanced Academics Program Advisory Council. My um I represent the committee with uh Fairfax County Council PTA. That's my role on uh I'm on the

094committee and I'm the one of the co-chairs for the committee. Dr. Holly Glazer is our the other um co-chair and she is an assistant professor over at the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. She's unfortunately unable to be here today. Um, I'm joined with Dr. Kirsten Maloney, who's a senior manager of the advanced academics program, and Dr. Dana Lieberman, an educational specialist with the Advanced Academics Program. And want to recognize that Amy Andrews is also um really active um as a staff member. She's also an educational specialist with the advanced academics program. and they were um really instrumental this um year with our advisory committee and making sure that we kept on task and kept our um monthly meetings running really well. And I'm also joined today with one of our

095committee members, Randy Constantino. Um and she's here for if we have any um to help us with any of the questions at the end as well because she was a really active member in our committee. And um so thank you so much Randy. Here's our agenda for today. We'll go through our charge for this year, our committee process of what we um of how we worked this this year starting from October through May. our committee recommendations and then our followup from our previous year's um recommendations and how the um what staff has done and what FCPS has done to follow up on the recommendations that were made last year by the committee. Our 2024 2025 charge was as follows. APAC will learn more about the advanced placement and international baloria options for FCPS high school

096students, including analyzing access, participation rates, and numbers of student exams in order to make recommendations about effective practices and possible areas for improvement. I realize that as this is up on the screen, the committee process is pretty small here, but you can find this in your um in your report as well. The committee spent the fall learning about the advanced placement and international balora programs and the current levels of access and participation within SPS. In the fall, we also had to make clear that we weren't comparing and contrasting the two programs to one another. Rather, we wanted to see how we can expand best practices across the division. In October, November, and December, we we spent the time understanding the this year's charge. Um, learning about the AP and IB background information with the educational

097specialists Amy Andrews and Dana Lieberman, talking about our need to knows and processing the IB and AP enrollment data. If you'd like, you can go through the background information that was included in the report. Starting on um page four of the report, you can sp see all of the AP and IB options that FCPS offers. There's quite a a breath of options that we have in our um in our county. Starting in January, we had focus groups of high schools that provided us information from IB schools. We had an IB panel which had Justice Marshall Lewis and Edison high schools represented. Um our February meeting which was then rescheduled to March because of snow was our AP panel rep with representatives from Falls Church High School, MLAN and West Springfield high schools. And then in

098March we had staff that presented about dual enrollment and academic advising. And we also got to hear a student perspective from focus groups that were conducted from students that are currently in the AP and IB programs. And with each of those months, we had small group processing and were able to do key takeaways. And all that information can be found in the background um information of the report. Our initial draft and and committee recommendations we did in April and then revising that and refining those happened in May and our final vote was on May 20th. Starting on page 14, you can find our committee recommendations. Our first recommendation is to develop a six-year academic planning and course selection pathway. One of the one of the barriers we heard about accessing advanced courses was that students

099might not have been able to access the prerequisites needed to get to the advanced courses by the time that they were juniors or seniors. So, one of the things that we wanted to recommend was to enhance the student and parent counseling on AP, IB, and DE options beginning in middle school. The academic advising period could also include clear information about college admissions criteria, career readiness pathways, and also the key gateway classes that students will need to take to access those advanced courseworks. a more robust four to sixyear academic planning tool can be developed. Maybe even using our Navvian tool that students already have access to, but making that more robust and viewable and editable both by students and parents so that that can follow them starting in seventh grade and following them all the way

100through 12th grade. So that no and no matter where they go to high school, whether or not they choose a different path in their high school, that they can that it follows them no matter where they choose. And also that they have structured and consistent messaging in for all middle school families about the advanced course opportunities and have student ambassadors that can come and speak to middle school students to ensure early and informed decision-making about those academic pathways and make sure that they're ready to um access those um options. Our second recommendation is to encourage all students to take at least one AP or IB course in h in high school and recommend adopting a modified AB A I'm sorry AP IB for all approach to ensure that every high school offers at least one

101AP or IB course as a standard course replacement making advanced coursework accessible to all students. Some courses that have been identified as options include AP human geography, AP computer science principles, or AP Seminar, which some schools have included as a replacement for English 10. Encouraging the students to take at least one AP or IB course early will help build their confidence and demonstrate that all students are capable of succeeding in rigorous academic environment. Schools can assist these students by targeting supports for multilingual learners and um with special and helping students with special education needs to scaffold learning and be able to reach students who have not had access before they've reached high school age. Our third recommendation is to establish student support programs and mentorship network in the student focus groups. One of uh something

102that we heard repeated was that they felt a lot of pressure, competition, and which can lead to burnout, especially as they were accessing a lot of the AP courses and IB courses. We recommend establishing a cohort or mentorship model for the AP and IB students by grouping students enrolled in the specific AP and IB courses together in advisory periods to foster peer support, build community, and encourage collaboration. To ensure that students are thriving in these courses, schools can provide consistent student support systems focused on mental health, academic scaffolding, and promoting the balance between personal and academic life. And this will help students to be able to manage the rigor of the advanced coursework while also maintaining their overall well-being. Academic advising can also assist students to select advanced courses that align with their interest areas,

103future goals, and academic life balance needs. As we delved into AP and IB, we realized that DE options were another enticing way for students to access advanced coursework. But there are barriers that existed that prevented the expansion of these options. So our our fourth recommendation is to expand dual enrollment opportunities. And we recommend that FCPS create incentives financial or otherwise for teachers to pursue credentials that are needed to teach DE courses. Providing financial support and professional learning will help to increase the pool of DEcertified instructors and increase the course offerings across schools. and FCPS can continue to partner with NOVA and other local universities to address the barriers and streamline pathways for teacher qualifications to teach DE courses at the high schools. We recommend also exploring maybe a college program that allows students to earn

104a full associates degree during the final two years of high school, a model that exists in other locations. Even as we expand the AP, IB and DE opportunities, SCPS parents want to ensure that the rigor of the programs is maintained. And so our last recommendation is to as that as we're expanding strategies for maintaining the rigor of the AP, IB and DE programs and that we are evaluating student success at the same time at the state level. The VDOE 3E framework has aspects of measuring success as part of the school accreditation account and accountability that can be expanded upon within the individual schools and as they seek to evaluate their own programs of of advanced coursework. The College Board also recognizes schools in their AP honor roll program and schools can earn this recognition based

105on the criteria that reflect a commitment to increasing collegegoing culture, providing opportunities for students to earn college credit and maximizing college readiness. We recommend that FCPS create reporting guidelines to ensure that expanding access to APIB and DE does not detract from the excellence of the program and collect rel collect information such as the relation of the API scores to the GPA in the class and in situations where there's lower performance provide additional support for those classes and teachers. We um also are including our followup from the previous year's charge. Just a reminder of our charge for last year was that APAC will learn about the research in the field of twice exceptional and learn about central and school-based efforts to meet the needs of 2E learners in FCPS. I have five different things five different

106things about the followup of um last year's recommendations. So the 2E handbook was updated by staff to reflect additional details and updates. There's a detailed list of roles and responsibilities for collaborating to meet the needs of 2E students. And there's a section updated with um more current assisted technology. I think you guys have probably talked I heard some of that discussion in the last presentation as well. There's a two-page summary and acknowledgement of the FCPS 2E handbook and it was included as mandatory beginning this school year for professional learning and all for all instructional staff and will continue to be required for any new instructional hires and this is tracked through the my PDE program. As of November 2024, 95% of staff has completed this required acknowledgement about 2e about 2e data. staff worked with

107information technology to create an icon within CIS so that instructional staff are aware of students who have been identified as 2e and that flag has uh will appear for any student who has identified for AAP services no matter if it's subject specific part-time or full-time AAP at any time that they also have a current 504 or IEP. We've heard from many staff and that the icon has raised their awareness of many students they were not even aware that were 2e. Within this work, they were also able to create a flag for 2 in cyst which allows the district to collect baseline data track improvements for future years about whether 2e students are accessing advanced academic services and coursework. Overall as a district 88% of 2e students are accessing advanced academic services or coursework. And at

108the at the elementary level 91% are receiving dual programming. At the middle school and high school levels, 85% are receiving dual programming. And the district has also used this data to create goals and a multi-year plan for scaled improvement. There's been a lot of collaboration between special education and AAP. A cross-d departmental team including representatives for special education and AAP have been meeting weekly regarding ongoing toe work. To facilitate similar collaboration at the schoolbased level, central office staff have initiated new quarterly meetings of K12 special education department chairs and AAP school-based leaders. AAP school-based leaders at the elementary and middle school levels are the AARTS, the advanced academic resource teachers. Since there's not an AART position at the high school level, each high school named a representative who is also included in both the scheduling

109and instructional leadership at the school, such as an assistant principal or an IB coordinator. Central office staff shared a expectation that ARTs be included in specific elements of IEP work where appropriate, such as staff meetings. There's continued professional learning opportunities in a variety of formats for multiple stakeholder groups such as school psychologists, school-based administrators, individual schools, and teachers. In addition to the 2E specific professional learning, there's been ongoing learning throughout the school in a variety of formats for a variety of stakeholders, especially related to the universal design for learning and district inclusion work, which both intersect with the learning required to improve the experiences of 2e students. AAP has included professional learning about leading UDL principles and the professional learning for ARTS as well as full-time AAP lead classroom teachers. Several members of the AAP

110team are collaborating with schools through the inclusion pilot work that started in March 2025 and will continue through the 2526 school year. And finally, family engagement, which we all know is super important, continues to be an area of focus at the district level. The superintendent started the 2E advisory committee with families, school level representatives, and central office level staff in um January 2025. Central office staff continue to provide 2E topic webinars through the family resource center. And the topics that have been through this school year are calming the chaos, teaching emotional regulation to 2E students, empowering 2e students to understand the role of accommodations in accessing learning and using strength based approaches when communicated with 2e students. Those recordings are available on the F FRC YouTube channel after the live webinar opportunity as well. And

111that's the conclusion of my formal presentation and we can open it up for questions. Great. Thank you, Miss Napolei. Um, Mr. Fr, five of us who are using this microphone down here, thank you very much for the presentation and all the hard work from all of you and our committee members. Um, I want to tackle a couple of the recommendations. Uh the first one about ensuring that um every student in high school takes an AP or an IB class. um kind of aligns perfectly in terms of timing with the conversation we had at the board meeting this past week uh about in our academic matter uh matters presentation uh about the success our school division has with the open environment we have for uh AP um increasing significantly the number of students who are taking

112AP classes, taking the exams and passing. Uh and you know what the superintendent identified as interesting was that and I miss lady had uh had a conversation with a few of us about how in many school environments APs are restricted and uh you know you would expect that in an open environment where we're encouraging anybody who would like to take one to take one uh that testing uh passage rates would go down but ours have remained steady and higher than the national average which speaks volumes about uh some of the argumentation that you were raising for this um this recommendation that you know giving people an opportunity to succeed will lead to future success as well. Uh so two questions one Dr. Reid um how feasible do you think it is to continue down the

113path of getting to you know at least one AP or IB course per student in high school? Um, and then on y'all's end, um, were you aware of the the updated data that we received at the academic matters presentation last week about the I think we increased by what 6,000 since last year? 10 in last year. 10 in the LA 10,000 more stu uh students taking AP exams over the last two years and our percentage rate holding steady and higher than the national average. So, I I think it is of course possible for every student to take at least one APIB or dual enrollment course. Um, many divisions around the country have that in place already. So, I think it's certainly something we could uh not just aspire to, but actually implement. And I'll say

114we didn't necessarily know the numbers, but in our focus groups that our recommendations really came because of the focus groups and and that we were seeing it being successful in in the high schools. So there were specific schools that had replaced certain courses with the AP for all and it was working out as a success. And so that's why we were like, well, if it's working here, then it can be expanded to working across the division. So that's why we made that recommendation because it was working. And so especially I think it was the AP seminar especially um I think that was the one that as a replacement for English 10 that that I think was one of the ones that has been flagged as a AP or for all that um that a lot

115of students can access. Second uh recommendation I want to chat about is the expansion of dual enrollment opportunities. um critically important, not just because it provides more opportunities for our students, but also because the uh hastily adopted uh new uh accreditation and accountability standards uh lean heavily into dual enrollment despite the fact that many school divisions across the Commonwealth do not have access to the robust opportunities that we have here in Northern Virginia because of Northern Virginia Community College and and uh elsewhere. Um, uh, I'm curious, um, what kind of state level advocacy you think might be necessary to make this, you know, more possible. I think one of the, and sorry, Randy Kazantino, um, I I work on the college level. I'm a president of the US Naval Community College, so I I work

116with actually quite a few community colleges. Um, I think one of the biggest challenges, if you're talking statewide, and it may frankly go beyond statewide, is I think one of the biggest obstacles of being able to offer dual enrollment in the classroom is the mandatory qualifications for the faculty. Um, and I know at least, if you don't mind, you Robin Lady and I had a conversation about this recently as well that it is inconsistent across the state in terms of what they require. uh up in here in the Northern Virginia area, they tend to require a master's with 18 hours, maybe it's 16 hours, I get confused, uh in that subject area, whereas I don't think that's consistent necessarily across the state. Um and there may be a way to try to achieve what's understandable

117that you want a certain quality in order to be able to give college credit. You want to ensure that they're teaching at a certain level and there's some sort of norming. But it seems that one of the major obstacles to schools offering it is can you get enough teachers who are qualified? So can you look at what those qualification requirements are? Is there an alternative qualification requirement or another way to be able to enable more of our high school teachers to be able to teach at the dual enrollment level? Dr. Reed, do you have any thoughts on this uh necessity? I do think um it it is an interesting requirement and uh the committee members are correct that one of the barriers to increasing dual enrollment courses has been the ability to hire staff that

118the dual enrollment granting institution will accept as qualified to teach the course. So I do think there's some advocacy. It came up u Miss Anderson and you Mr. First, we were at a breakfast yesterday and it came up um Miss Corbett Sanders also was talking about approaching Chev um with maybe some advocacy around minimally having a calibrated expectation across the Commonwealth. Um and we're certainly at one end of the continuum, I think, compared to other parts of the Commonwealth. Thank you. I would also say just as a an aside, AP grants college credit in a different way and we don't have those requirements. So I think it's also an inconsistent application um of expectations. So I'll just leave that there. Thank you, Dr. Reed. Uh Miss Lady, and then we'll just continue down the row

119here with Mr. Moon and Miss Dixit. Thank you. Um I'm going to talk about academic advising 712. Um, I want to know what the plan is. 7th grade through 12th grade. Well, then um what the plan is. Yes, ma'am. Um I you know it's interesting. I come from a state that took the assessments, the state assessments, and if students were in that fourth, the top quartile, um it was an automatic placement into the next most advanced course. Like it wasn't something kids signed up for. That was an automatic placement. So just based on data and then they had to opt out rather than um here where it's an optin and not all families know to ask and not all conversations lead to that outcome. So I think part of the plan will include a very

120different approach to how we schedule. Um perhaps with looking at data and opting young people into courses that we believe they could be successful and then if the conversations are happening it's about why do you want to come out because we believe you could be very successful in um and I do know that um Dr. Presidio's team is also working on a new template whether it's Nviance or some other product but capturing uh planning much sooner. I mean you have to uh particularly for mathematics you have to be in a queue well before middle school even quite honestly. Um so I think that the plan um will be coming shortly and prior to next year you'll see a much that's the work we're doing with Dr. Garing and Dr. the ABL work in terms of

121looking at course registrations and being very clear about planning. Yeah, I mean I ask because obviously it's it's it's near and dear to my heart. Um I'm going to give a shout out to Alice Robertson who was my career center specialist when I started at Chantelli. She was doing a program called it's never too early to talk about college. Uh she and I partnered on that and did it every year that we were at that I was at Chantilly. Um unfortunately she left the same year I did and went to Madison. But I will tell you it targeted rising seventh, eighth, and nth graders. And we basically mapped out academic career plans. Um, you needed to understand that you can come into bio honors as a nth grader, but if you're only in algebra 1,

122you're not going to get to chem honors the next year, right? They're all the sequencing. But the other thing that uh I just want to share is that, you know, when I would do my sort of invite breakfast with my middle schools, I asked all of them to bring to send me all their counselors. and they would usually just send me their eighth grade counselors because in their mind they're the ones registering for nth grade. So I can't emphasize enough how important it is that everyone be trained a curriculum. Um, everyone needs to understand this is we are we're K we're K16, you know, or at least K14 if if kids are going to go into some other skills-based environment where they need um information. So um we need good course sequencing charts whether you're

123mapping IB or AP. Um each school is making those on their own. Uh we had some that were amazing at Chantilly, but I don't know if Oakton has their own and Woodson has their own, but should we do some things that are a little more uniformed? Um that's one thing in terms of the AP or IB as a standard course offering as a required expectation of every student. Yes, some schools have decided like Marshall, everyone does IB English. There's no standard English at Marshall. It's all IB English. Um you know, some schools have picked something else. The AP seminar is actually replacing English 10 honors. I don't think it's becoming a standard AP across all the 10th grade. My suggestion would be that we need to be nimble in how we think about this because

124of kids different skill sets. I would say create a bucket of here's here's what we recommend. Is it APCS, AP HUG, AP AP environmental um you know or maybe an AP lang like explain to kids you're going to do one of these, right? but let's work with them early enough to see where their skill sets are, to see where they're mapping and we're putting it in their four-year plans as opposed to saying everyone who goes to Chantelli is going to take APCs. Like I think that's shortsighted based on kids individual interest and skill sets. Um and I would say similarly perhaps there's a way to do that with IB too. I wish there was an AP theater. Um, the other thing before I run out of time and I'll probably take a go back is,

125you know, the other thing with the sequencing charts, um, I because I supervised performing arts created a four-year plan that included the arts in every year. I said one of the biggest mistakes our parents make is they celebrate all of those arts until it's time to go to high school and then they think that they got to shut it down because you got to be more academic. And all colleges and universities love seeing the arts for four years. And so I think we need to do that type of of SK um sampling too to our to our parent communities. Um thank you Mr. Moon. Okay. I'm going to ask your questions. Oh, thank you for the presentation by the way. Uh you know continuing the discussion from couple of nights ago. Is it couple of

126nights ago? Thursday night two nights ago tonight that I'm going to ask you from a opposite the other from you know the other anger I looking at your recommendations that in this culture of continuing to promote and continuing to encourage our students to achieve at a higher ever take more advanced courses. Uh at the same time, I see a don't have a page number on my print out where uh you also mention about promoting balance between personal and academic life. How do we do that? I see many high school kids struggling with the pressure to take more and more AP and IB courses coming from themselves, peers and families and college admissions. So how do we where do we find the balance? How do they determine where the right balance is? And that's where this

127the the idea of this mentorship or the student support really came out of those student focus groups. And so many of the students, they didn't necessarily want to stop taking the courses. That's not that's not what they want. They don't want none of them want to stop having the opportunities or stop having the access. So the thought process that we as the adults in the room talked about is well then how do they have the opportunity to to be able to sit in a space where they can talk about it where they don't feel alone in those spaces because I think that's part of where they can feel that that that stress can continue to build. So the thought process is we're already sitting in those advisory classes every other day and I mean different

128high schools do it in different ways but if they can be grouped together so that the same so that you're in your same classes or you're in your same um space and I know that they do that sometimes with the AVID students in in advisory or that they they group kids in a way so that they could have targeted supports in those spaces. is so that the the advisory teacher can have the that they know that those kids are all in an AP class and the test is coming up this or you know what I mean so that that stuff can be managed in a way that those students don't feel alone that they can be working both as peers but also that other adults can be paying attention to to where they are. the

129stress. It seems like it's it comes from so many different levels too because so many of the students were talking about the fact that they feel it just from their other peers saying, "Oh, well, you got to take this test, this this class, and if you don't take it, you're not getting into this university." That's not any of us telling them to take it. Do you know what I mean? And I'm not I'm not sure how we change that culture of Northern Virginia necessarily, but can we can we manage it by helping those students during the day creating these these networks? So since I still got time uh uh you know based upon my own experience you know working with the students high school students middle school students and their their parents pressure seem to

130be coming from colleges college admissions where they want to go where they want their children to go and and somehow under the belief rightfully or wrongfully wrongly that you need to take all these AP courses otherwise you're not going to have a chance at those scores. So I think I did ask this question to superintendent a couple of meetings ago whether we can engage you know major universities their admission offices to tell us whether they are in fact true if you don't take 12 AP classes don't apply whether that is true I I I think That's good research to look at. And one of the other interesting aspects of this topic and I'll just use an example. Um when uh my daughter was in undergraduate at Gonzega, fabulous school, right? Go Bulldogs. the she was

131premed and organic chemistry was a very important course to take and often was characterized as the course that would determine whether you were going to go on to medical school or not. And I will use the example because I don't recall exactly the numbers but the example roughly was that there were five chemistry organic chemistry professors right and depending on when you registered you had an opportunity to select the course that would have a particular professor attached and there were reputations of the professors who was maybe the most sought, the next most soughtafter, the average sort of sought after and then kind of the ones that if you got them you were probably not going to be successful and you registered by order of the credits you accumulated in the class for the next year.

132So students who came to university with a significantly higher number of credits either from AP or dual enrollment or IB registered earlier than students who were becoming a junior with fewer credits. So one of the inequities that we realized was perpetuated isn't just about admissions. It was about where you sat within your class to register for courses. So, you could actually, and I had this conversation um at a very different level, you could actually come from a high school that didn't offer those courses and by that virtue have an inequitable access to the best instructors that might lead you to a postgraduate program. Conversely, maybe not as important. So was housing done by the number of credits you were coming in with. So I just I think that this is a conversation that many savvy

133families already know the answer to. And it's not just about admission, but it's about what this aggregate of credit allows or enables or supports as an experience for you. So there are a lot of topics connected to this topic. Um so I just it's it's more complex I think than just admissions. I appreciate that that's more complex. Uh you are giving us an example of one particular university and your daughter's case is our state. Oh okay. and and and I do not know whether that's the case for other most other schools other colleges uh because I have not heard the same from uh at least from my kids generation which may be at this point in time uh outdated uh but I think that's where I would love to have a more information from other

134universities as well because uh in as much as I want our you know our students to strive for the best in the highest level at the same time I want them to have decent high school middle school and elementary school life as a youngsters. Thank you Mr. Mr. Moon exit then Mr. McDaniel I'm just going to take it from Mr. what Mr. Moon said and first of all thank you for the presentation. Um I'll say not all students have to take all AP courses. They like the the whole recommendation is just take one. So um or AP or IB. So I think it's all upon the student um whether they want to take 10 AP courses. I think it's a very individual decision for them and their family. We should be able to support that

135whichever path they want to go for. Um I know this colleges have become super competitive and very difficult to get in. I think the longest wait list wait list this year for colleges admissions and what do we do whether we prepare the students to go in those colleges or we just say you know what they can do whatever they want you know we don't have the support but FCPS being FCPS is able to provide that support system and I'm really grateful for that. My son almost graduated with one year more one and a half years of college credits when he went to GMU and it shortens his college um span. So um it's obviously save savings for the families for who can't afford um the the tuition. Um my question was with Navy actually and

136um I know you guys mentioned that as your one of your uh suggestions for the developing six-year academic planning. Do you have experience with Nevision? Anybody here? My I have a rising junior and um at false church high school and my experience is that I have no access to it. So as a parent the only access you have is that they have to log in they have like as a parent there's no access like I have access to cis and I have par I have access to even schooly but naviance is a student like he has to log in and show me whatever he wants to show me. So um when we had this discussion as a committee that it's it's because it's more an in internal to the student program that if it can

137be expanded so that it's more a collaboration that can happen as a family it might be a more useful tool. Um I think that's question will be now for me to ask the um your team. Do you think Navian will have a cap capability like this? So, we have had Navvian for a number of years. Um, and we've had longitudinal academic and career planning activities that are part of the Naviance program for a number of years. There are many challenges for parents uh to be part of that process for sure. Some of them are technical in terms of seeing what's actually in the program. Some of them are more adaptive in terms of making sure that we're doing a better job including parents in the decision-making process and including them in the course selection process

138and helping them really understand course trajectories and what is possible. So, we've got to do we've got to and we are working in the instructional services and the IT department to try to fix some of those technical issues and challenges with Naviance so that the interface works better for families. Um, but I think a big part of what we have to do is we have to do a better job consistently um making sure that our parents are integrated into the course and academic planning process from grades 7 through 12 for sure. Um, so we've got a lot of work to do in that regard. uh one of our uh strategic plan goals as Dr. Reid talked about is incorporates u new uh actions and strategies to do just this work uh to do that longitudinal

139academic planning with families. Um so we're going to be working hard on that piece as well. But definitely there are technical issues that make it challenging for families to see what's happening. Yeah, thank you. So that was my understanding too that uh with the limited knowledge I I used with my son and it was not a very um super friendly tool and it was not giving the I think it's like it maps your potential colleges with your SAT score or your u a you know um I think it's that's what what we were using as a as a parent like which college he should apply to but this is very different what you're suggesting using Navian for um the other thing I wanted to address was our um pre-calculus scores. I I do not believe

140we offer that at any middle school level. Am I right, Dr. Reed? I don't believe we have any sections of pre-calculus at middle school. I would expect that at some middle schools maybe a student's able to walk to a high school or do it online. I'm sorry. Right. So, I think we want to get to the place where we're able to offer a section. um do you know we have elementary libraries where children can read at whatever level they're able to independently read and I think u mathematics is going to need to be more nimly um delivered so that wherever a student is they're able to access um mathematics at their independent level. Yeah. And and that's what my experience was that uh even though we have in high schools we have a lot of

141APs and everything available but pre-calculus uh uh was not available in middle school and I think my son we did virtual Virginia um and he did it over the some one one semester that's how we got to that um the IB schools and I know this is the issue and my son went to Robinson one have two sons so one one went to IB and um he could only take one AP course. Uh that was his NIB diploma path and that is the reason we see very low AP uh uh you know in in your report where you says Robinson only had 20 12% students who took um AP course. Is this because of that reason? So I was wondering is there a reason that even though in 10th grade or ninth grade they cannot

142take AP courses even though they're part of the IB path. So, we did make an adjustment a year or two ago that ninth graders could take AP courses and that would be then two AP courses for them or maybe more for IB schools. Just period. Um, we weren't allowing AP and nth grade, I think. Period. Is that right? And now we are, Miss Flamingco. Yes. Sorry. um we weren't offering the courses that typically a ninth grader would take the AP courses, but with the AP human geography that's coming this year as a standard course offering in all of our AP schools, um that will that will be available to them. There are some students whose pathways in math might get them to AP classes also in nth grade. Also, the other nth grade course or

143that AP suggests for nth graders is AP environmental science or CS. Yeah, but AP environmental science and human geography are very traditionally nth grade. Thank you for that. Um, and then lastly, I would say that looking at the AP course offering and participation by school, it's in your page six of your report. Um I feel like there is a lot of room of improvement in some schools and some schools do doing great job at it and uh that obviously number of AP courses offered are very different in each school high school but it's still you know kind of like great every everybody's over 25 AP courses in each school but there's 45 40% of only students taking the AP course to all the way to 99% So I in fact um I definitely see that

144having this open open door policy sort of that they can enroll in AP courses could benefit that but right now there are lot of schools which are significantly higher. So I just thought like it maybe you guys thought of that as one of the data points to maybe make a suggestions because of that reason that So the ones that that with the highest percentages of the one that those are the ones that have replaced a a course with a a standard course with an AP. So um the ones that have the highest percentage of at least one, it's because that's a standard course has been replaced. So like those that percentage at the end will go higher as if if more high schools can adopt either that AP or IB for all um concept. And

145Miss Mix, it may go back to your original point around the IB schools versus the AP schools. as as as you heard earlier when we took on this charge, we were not comparing and contrasting, but certainly one of the things that we came up and we asked about was why a school might have gravitated towards AP or IB and and a lot of frankly the folks that were there didn't necessarily know the history. But I I say that just to say that it's clear that each school has chosen to focus on one or the other and and that was a deliberate strategy and and from my at least lived experiences, colleges are good are they they will value them equally. So I think certainly you you were asking I think in your first question about

146why don't we see more AP courses at the IB schools and that's because if the school has adopted an IB program which often sometimes even starts in the middle years which can be in middle school but often can happen in freshman and sophomore and junior and senior. It's because that school's chosen to focus on that. And from a college outcome and a college acceptance perspective it shouldn't necessarily either advantage or disadvantage the student. are both considered quite competitive programs. My time is up now. Maybe I'll talk later. Thanks. Okay, Mr. McDaniel, then I will take a turn. Then let's get Miss Lady for a go back and then I think that will be it. We'll be at time. Thank you. Thank you. Um, do we a technical couple technical questions and then a comment. Um,

147do we have classes that are both AP and dual enrolled at the same time? No. Okay. I didn't think so. Yeah, same same. Okay, I you're going to understand why I'm going down this route. Just a second. Um, so I wanted to go back to something the superintendent said about the story and I how we can design things that maybe accidentally lead to disincentives or incentives that were not expected. Um, here's here's the where I was going with this. Um, I will caveat this by saying I was not an FCPS grant. I took a course in high school that was AP and dual enroll at the same time, which if you think about it, doesn't really make any sense because if you're dual enrolled, you get the college credit regardless of what you get on

148the AP test. So, me being the either ingenious person or the petulant teenager that I was, kind of figured this out and I told the rest of the class, you could actually turn in the test with your name on it and you still get dual enrollment credit. So, you still get the college credit. Well, over half the class did that. Um, and then someone told the teacher that I told them that and I got in trouble, but I still got the dual enrollment credit and I still went to George Mason. Um so I I think in a comment that Miss Lady said about how we designed these um I kind of read silo into but these these pathways um need to be very intentional because we I think as we saw with the grading policies

149the most the the best intentions can lead to these negative externalities. Uh so as we're going down this route of trying to push more AP and IB and dual enrollment that program design overall uh needs to be done very intentionally so our very capable students don't figure out ways to gain the system as as as you know we've never seen that before right? No never. So anyway thank you. Okay thank you. So similarly to the uh earlier presentation on our advisory committees with for students with disabilities there's a lot of information converging and c and I just did email you the academic matters from Thursday the superintendent presented and I think what's different from this year as to last year and certainly years prior is we have now a full year of data around our

150strategic plan and so you know and my experience with advisory committees began before I was elected when I was on the human resources advisory committee. So I I know like the es and flows of the work, but what I'm really wondering now is well one one thing is so the academic advising and I mentioned this previously but the superintendent is working on this and there's a team now that's going to very actively focus on the academic advising and what I'm thinking colleagues is like we need to make sure that the these reports with our community's really good input go to those people because you're reiterating things that are being said and so like I want to send them to them but I want to be more thoughtful about it and be like, well, maybe as

151a matter of process for advisory committees, we're making sure that, you know, staff that might be working on this specific area that might not know that this wealth of information exists gets to them. So, like that's one thing. Um the the other, you know, kind of more systemic thing is like I feel like going into the next year, a level setting might be needed because again, like this presentation was just made with the data and you clearly had other data that you compiled, right? But so like at the start of the next year, let's make sure our advisory committees know the data on where things stand in terms of student performance, professional development, like the data point about how many have have completed the 2E training. That would have been something that would have been

152good for us to make sure that the ACSD knew, right? So like just kind of being more thoughtful about how to integrate all of this because it's getting like exciting and more complex and like a really great way and let's make sure all those people are are connecting and the course mapping too like that's connecting all of this whether it's our twoe students or um you know the AAP stuff. So I I guess I just um so that's like my kind of bigger picture thinking and you know with Navvian I think that's just one of those um indicators of the larger problem were students trained on it families don't have access or teachers trained on how to use it just like schooly so that stuff should be being addressed with the goal work for the

153academic advising like I just again see a pattern of the same problems and disconnect X here as I do in for our students with disabilities and just our gened students as well. I mean, I I've asked friends, do you know what dual enrollment is? And they don't know. They don't know how to enroll their kid. Um or the governor's schools over the summer or the academy program. Some schools advertise them, some schools don't. Like, it's all the same issue and it's communications and thoughtfully organizing information. So um again I think that this report would be really helpful for the people doing the work about academic advising. So with that I'll turn it to Miss Lady to uh provide the following follow the final comments. Well thank you. I'll try to be quick. Um first of

154all a college credit acral uh to uh Mr. Moon's earlier question. A lot of our most selective institutions like Harvard uh limit the number of credits a kid can get and every kid who get attends comes in with the same number. So when you go to register for classes you don't have what uh Dr. Reed referenced with Gonzaga but if you're applying if you're going to a William Mary area UVA a GMU most of our schools in this state credit or cruel gives you your time slot for registration for courses. Um the other thing I want to talk about for a second is college admissions folks there are colleges still taking applications. Okay, we have got to stop with this. We can't they can't they've got to take this many to get in. No, we

155have the majority of our graduating seniors, 15,000 who want seats at the same 50 schools in the country. Okay, there's not enough juice in that lemon. Okay, it's just not going to work out. But we need to be careful. If we were in North Carolina, we named our schools University of Virginia at Radford, University of Virginia at George Mason, University of Virginia at Longwood. You couldn't sit around and say you can't get into your state school. So, I'm tired of hearing it. Okay. Um, and I also encourage everybody the next time they go to their dentist or their doctor, their internist or their accountant, ask them where do they go to undergrad because you don't know and you'll probably be surprised. Um, the other thing I want to say is Navvian is in my opinion

156hopefully I'm praying that a better vendor comes in. So, we've got to do better than Navviance and I believe there are better products out there uh that will allow the interplay that that my colleague Miss Dixit was referencing. Um also um um in terms of the the API IB scores and their correlation to grades, you know, IB schools have to predict grades. Um AP schools need to be doing the same thing. We need to be looking at correlations. Um and if we've got kids getting fives who got C's or B's, that's a problem. And we got kids getting A's and they're getting ones and twos, we've got a problem. But we need to look at those things. Um and I had another thought and it's gonna it's gone for me. with the cohorting. I guess

157I want to say this about cohorting. My thing and and I'll end with this is when it comes to building a master schedule, my counselors could give me what I called special request. If if if if Ryan Mave was going to take his first AP course and I was encouraging in that direction, but he was hesitant. One, I'd want to pick the teacher I'd put him with. Two, I'd want to find out if anyone else who maybe he was friendly with or is with was in his soccer team or in the band who might be trying the same class, I'd put them in together. Right? I think we cohort in the room. I I do understand the advisory thing, but I don't want to create advisories where these are the smarty pants kids and they

158get advisory together and things like that. So, I get the cohorting and I get the support, but I'd rather provide the support for those kids trying their first one because some kids need to take their foot off the gas pedal. Oh, the last thing, sorry, senior survey at Chantelli. We added on to the Naviance questions and we asked seniors, what would you do differently? 98% of them came back and said I would have taken a less licorous course load because I still would have gotten into the college I got into. Okay. Well, to be continued, but thank you so much for this thorough report and I enjoyed um coming to the meetings until my my schedule just couldn't I couldn't make it happen. But I learned a lot myself about IBP and dual enrollment as

159a freshman parent. So, which says again a lot about how we're informing our parents who are trying to get information. So, um so thank you so much. So, we'll just uh take a break to switch and why don't we start in 5 minutes at 2:30 for our student health advisory committee. Thank you. So, we're going to get moving here. Um the Sooth Health Advisory Committee I served on. I'm going to turn the uh microphone program over to Kina and Katie uh to share the report. Thank you so much. We're so happy to be there be here. Thank you so much for spending your Saturday with us and other advisory um committees like this. Okay, great. Thank you. Um I'm Kina Makavoy and this is Dr. Katie Moyer. She's an infectious disease physician and I worked

160as a physical therapist in the school system. Um I'm no longer doing that work now, but um but so we that's the experience that we've we've brought to this role. Um Bethany Demers and Sur Hansen are here with us supporting members of our team and um Carrie Reynolds is in the back also. Thank you. Um so we're really grateful to our committee. Leah Skursky, excuse me, is our faculty um leazison who wasn't able to be here today and her staff Debbie were just so helpful to us. Um and then Robin of course thank you for your your support. And then Marca um Miss St. John Cunning you joined us for that for Dr. Freed's presentation and that was great to see you there um your interest there. So thank you. Thank you very much. All

161right. Uh just to give you guys um kind of a layout for our presentation today. We'll start off with the charge for this year and then um go into a little bit of the data that supports the recommendations um that we've made and then the proposed charge for next year. Um this is the purpose of the shack committee which I'm sure you guys are all aware of and then these are our committee members uh and and the single star indicates the voting members. So our charge this year uh was fostering brain health for all. So students, families, and staff countywide. Um and we really uh through our work kind of landed on two areas. Uh one of them being sleep and how that fosters brain health and then the other one about technology and how

162that affects brain health. So for the for the sleep data, uh we actually got the data from the Fairfax County Youth Survey. Um and current currently they only ask sleep of eth 10th and 12th graders and only 32% of them re get the recommended eight plus hours of sleep. So you can see there the CDC recommends for ages 6 to 12 9 to 12 hours per night and then ages 13 to 18 8 to 10 hours per night. Um only 52% gets the six to seven hours and 6% just get four hours or less. And so just a third of the SP FCPS students that filled out this data um felt well rested. And and another big piece of of data that we accessed this year was we were thrilled to have Dr. Richard Frerieded.

163He's a child psychologist and author of the book better than real life. Um he's known as an an expert on persuasive design in technology which is basically persuasive design uses neuroscience and psychology to maximally engage and capture attention using incredibly sticky supernormal stimuli that makes the product seem better than real life. hence the name of his book. And this works, I mean, we know it works on us, it works on kids, this persuasive design. Um, and he really um believes it's incumbent upon schools to take science-based actions to protect their students um from this kind of design technology. We also had um Sapen Labs came and visited us. Dr. Tara Theagarajan, she's a Stanford trained neuroscientist. She's the founder of Sapion Labs. Um and what they have done is gathered the largest um database in

164the world of mind health and they've been able to use that data to make some really um interesting and helpful um conclusions about factors that really impact um mind health. And they have looked specifically at youth and they're implementing the schools for strong minds um program in in different schools where they help to measure and um and help schools kind of plan interventions to address these these changes in mind health that we're that we're seeing. So these next two slides really just are give a very general overview of the change in mind health for young people is what we're looking at specifically that we've all been hearing. So this is the U-shaped curve of wellness that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. This is typically, you know, in general up until about 2008.

165This is what that curve looked like was this U-shaped. And you see ages 18 to 21, you know, they're doing well. They're feeling good. Um as well as um elderly folks, you know, they're they're feeling pretty good. um middle age, not so much on this U-shaped curve, which is a little depressing, but um but then the next slide shows, you know, what we're looking at currently, which is that um young people are struggling. They're having a hard time, and that's what we're seeing through all sorts of um data that shows increased rates of suicide, aggression, um depression, and and self harm. Um so that's just a general overview of that data. So what Sapion Labs has done has really identified some critical changes in the environment that have taken place that they find have impacted

166um mind health and impact you know kind of been pivotal factors in these changes. We looked specifically at the technocultural environment, which is smartphones, um, sedentary lives, family relationships, you know, and technology, whether it's personal technology or just technology in general, impacts all of those, um, areas. And these technocultural environmental changes are creating tremendous opportunity costs in terms of experiences that adults and kids aren't having. That um, that really contributes to having a a healthy um, healthy body and mind. So what Sapen Labs is doing is really looking at those root causes to kind of stop the avalanche of these negative um outcomes that that kids are experiencing. You know, we don't want to resort to therapy and drugs for um for kids if we can really identify what the root causes of some of

167these changes are um and address those. So parents are a huge part of this and we I know that you will all understand that and and speak to that. Um and it's critical that schools have a partnership with parents to support them through this and to share information. Um and they really require leadership not only at the you know kind of central office level but at the local school level um to kind of acknowledge these challenges that parents are going through and to support them through them. We'll get into the recommendations now. So um the recommendation that we initially start with is talking about why sleep matters and recommendations surrounding that. So in it adequate sleep affects emotional regulation, mental health and cognitive performance. And we see this um uh correlations kind of play out

168in the FCPS data as well. And so students who sleep less are actually more likely to feel hopeless or depressed. We have some graphs at the end if you want to look at those. are more likely to consider suicide and are more likely to report frequent stress and anxiety. So, the first recommendation uh we'd like to make is to add sixth grade sleep questions to the youth survey. They are not currently being um surveyed with those questions at this time. And I think especially uh with the consideration of changing middle school start times, it would actually be really helpful to know are there correlations there um to help provide more of that data when other potentially other school systems are are considering that change as well. Um and then that's also like another marker that

169we can continue to follow as we try to incorporate things around sleep uh within FCPS. The second recommendation is to have some studentled sleep awareness. So engage students to create peer-informed materials. So this can include posters, flyers, videos. There's tons of stuff out there. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine actually has a program called Sleep Recharges You and it has a ton of resources. So teachers guides, handouts, activities, quizzes, and you can kind of monitor these things over time. The the third recommendation is to educate families. So again, uh we want to target students, families as well as staff to kind of promote this culture around sleep hygiene. And so providing families with evidence-based resources, um giving them some ideas that can be easily implemented at home like no screens in the bedroom, consistent bedtimes

170and wake times. Uh and again, there's a lot of information out there on multiple sources um from from different places. One of the examples that we give here is Neores Kids Health has sleep tips for teens and and there's a lot of data out there and materials out there for different age levels. And then we'd also want to integrate sleep into school culture. So um having this we're not trying to change any curriculums that are out there. We know that currently in the health curriculum they do talk about sleep. uh but we think it can be woven into other places like the advisory period, clubs, sports teams specifically with sports teams talking about adequate sleep as a competitive advantage. Um it also helps with academic results as well as em emotional regulation. Um and these

171messages we want to be coming from teachers, coaches, counselors. Um just have that be be part of the culture. And one uh area we can do this is in in March um there's sleep awareness week within national sleep foundation and this can be kind of a step off point of normalizing sleep as a pillar of well-being for students and then focusing on how sleep supports the self-regulation and and the other risk factors that we talked about. Okay. So um we did um technology was kind of our other area we we dealt with sleep and and technology impacts. So this um recommendation 2.0 develop an intentional and age appropriate technology use framework. Now I know this is familiar. Um the two previous shack reports have included information on on technology as well. But we we really

172want to address how does FCPS continue to flex adjust and support students and families in this changing technocultural environment that we talked about. So 2.1 FCPS will provide technology use guidelines for teachers of all grades emphasizing intentional targeted use. We really weren't focused on educational technology at first, but when we talked about personal devices in school, whether the classroom hallways, cafeterias, it always came back to they're going to do the same thing on their laptops. You know, they're going to go on Snapchat, they're going to watch Netflix, they're going to do these things on their their laptops, too. So um yeah, so we really felt compelled to provide just a couple, you know, basic kind of general guidelines just to keep this this in the conversation because this is a critical a critical piece. Um

173we do just want to point out that there continues to be little robust independent evidence on digital technologies added value to education. Um I just think that's really important to note. um but lots of objective data that continues to demonstrate that learning has its foundations in relationship and students learn better um from print books by writing on paper and by interacting face tof face with peers and with teachers. Um and just a statistic about in-class distraction. A 2025 edeek research center survey 56% of educators surveyed reported that offtask behavior on laptops school devices is a major source of distraction. So, two of our um guidelines that we we provided in our report is that laptops, excuse me, laptops and iPads should only be open available to students when a targeted educational activity and assignment is

174underway. So, that really communicates the message that this is a tool. This is a tool that we use for a very specific purpose and there can be lots of very useful ways to use technology in the classroom, but it's not a constant companion. It's not something that's always there for distraction or for entertainment. Um and then the second is that laptops, iPads should not be used as a reward for free time or an indoor recess activity. Um there exist there's just tremendous opportunity costs that are paid when school issued technologies are used this way in in classrooms. Okay. So recommendation 2.2 FCPS and school staff will use school classroom newsletters to promote and share proven support strategies for school and home use of technology, both school and personal. I I um you know observe during

175the May 8th schoolboard meeting you know discussing the um cell phone policy a lot of mention was made of parents responsibility and parents have a huge responsibility um and it's a huge challenge and I think it's just such an opportunity for schools to really communicate with parents and to share resources. There are so many resources available there on the right side that's just a small list of them but guidelines like delaying access to smartphones and social media. I've heard some of you speak about those um using phone alternatives. Um there are lots of alternatives, stuff that a lot of parents maybe just don't know about. And with more information and support from schools, they can collectively act together to make some of these changes at home will then just kind of filter into the school

176environment as well. Okay. Recommendation 2.3. FCPS will pilot a peer-led initiative to support and educate students about strategies to minimize harm from tech to adolescent brains. Um, we need to hear from our students about this. This environment that they're living and growing up in is all that they know. So, we need to talk with them and really engage with them in in conversation and hear their perspective while we are also supporting them and educating them about what we are hearing from um scientists and professionals about the impact that this is having on on student brains on the brains of adolescence as well as adults. We need to engage in those conversations. Um recommendation 3.0 create an FCPS divisionwide culture of respect for and awareness of brain health. Um basically this is just o you know

177overall throughout FCP me FCPS messaging that there's just a a message of um we value our brains and we understand what keeps them healthy and we want to support you um in doing that. So 3.1 belltobell phone free school day. We um we provided a letter a shack position letter to the school board in March um if this year in support of a bell-to-bell phone free school day with no exceptions. So we are a health committee who believes that the intent of the Virginia law should have been respected because it is based on the health and wellness of children. Um student health and wellness should be a priority. We must address the shifts and adjustments in communication procedure that are necessary to facilitate it. the VDOE guidance that they put out this summer um has

178just so much so many resources and information about how to shift those communication practices that we are all very used to that we we really do need to shift away from in order to support these kind of changes in the interest of our students health and wellness. Um iPhone free I know me as a personal advocate you've heard this from me many times so in interest of time we're going to skip that one. Um 3.2 2 FCP FCPS should remove common sense media digital curriculum and replace with other independent sources. Now, Dr. Frerieded um really helped us understand that that curriculum is quote financially invested in increasing or maintaining kids screen time at home and school, which is counter to students health and academic success. Now, this is a shift. Um Common Sense Media didn't

179always kind of have this pro um uh slant, at least in their education division. Um and and a lot of it is because Common Sense Media is now funded by um by Meta, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, edtech funders, the Gates Foundation. It's very protek. These are folks that are it's um they have incentives to keep kids um on social media and using their products. There are arms of um common sense media like their research arm that is um still you know we still have used you know use common sense media research to support some of our work because there it's like different messaging the education arm is kind of you know pro-social media but then the research side is giving very real data about the harms to children so it just doesn't match up. Um

180but this curriculum is not sending the right message to to students or I do want you to take a look at this. Um, this is usage data from the FCPS digital citizenship website. Um, this is an FCPS produced website and it's it's expansive. There's tons of resources. Many of it does link to common sense media. Um, a lot of it does kind of treat this idea of social media and our young people as inevitable. It speaks it doesn't ever speak about the option to delay or the option to you know forego or not be accessing accessing it. It talks about the in it it communicates kind of an inevitability. Um so the content in many places on this website doesn't match what we currently know about technology and the impacts on young brains. If you

181will look this is September 1st to December 14th. 473 times um the homepage was accessed and you can see very few went past that homepage and again this is 473 you know in a division with over 180,000 students. Um I'll just point out that the digital citizenship families site or page was only accessed 18 times. The digital citizenship and teachers page was only accessed one time and digital citizenship students page was accessed 24 times. Um 3.3 incorporate social emotional learning programming in morning meeting responsive advisory with fidelity promoting equitable access. Now Bethany Demer is on our committee and for a couple meetings she really shared with us a lot of great information about all the mental health supports that FCPS provides in the social emotional learning programming. One thing that we really focused on is

182that respon the responsive advisory um period or programming in middle and high schools is only implemented with fidelity in less than 50% of schools. Um which is very unsettling. I absolutely as a parent experienced that myself with all three of my children um for sure. So so that's a big concern. And this is one of the only mandatory practices uh you know for the social emotional learning are these these periods of time and when they're not being implemented that's that's a problem. Um so uh recommendations that schools should ensure that all students have equitable access to SEAL practices. Um Bethany showed us or you know told us that schools that have a social emotional learning wellness goal um are are those schools that tend to be more likely to have a well-implemented responsive advisory period.

183and only 39 out of 172 schools currently do. These periods of time are are optimal times to share with students the importance of sleep to talk about sleep habits to talk about technology and we need to be sure that they're being utilized. Um 3.4 distribute messaging that supports foundational concepts of brain health regarding sleep and technology. This is one of the last slides but it's really so important such an important piece. It's that through line of messaging through communications in in FCPS. Um, social media should not be used for FCPS communications is is our recommendation. That is also in the VDOE guidance that came out last summer. Um, that's a tough one, but that's um, you know, that's social media is a place where we know is is harmful for for kids and it's utilized

184by lots of different um um or you know pieces of FCPS. Encourage light speed for families. um engage with speakers regarding technology best practices for parents. There's so much there's so much information out there to to be sharing. Um and this brain health messaging about sleep and technology can just be interwoven be a familiar refrain to be heard in existing FCPS structures like back to school night openhouse, fall festivals. Um the family resource center has amazing resources that I just don't feel like are being um aggressively promoted the way that they should be. I think that people, you know, it's so hard when you find a, you know, a a seminar that the family resource center put out, um, and it's only been accessed maybe 150 times, you know, in the last five years. That's

185wonderful resources that we need to promote. Um, and then promote family involvement, engagement in school wellness committees. So I know that this is what what we are all saying we need is parental involvement and they that with support um and then our last slide here is just um talking about some additions to the wellness and student experience survey more information about the fidelity of implementation of school cell phone policies as well as the student experience of with technology in their And this last slide is just um it's it's a nice summary. I'm not going to read it to you, but it's it's from Sapion Labs. They just had a piece um a segment in the United Nations Developmental Program, human de development report, but it speaks to all the things that we are talking about

186today. It talks about sleep and it talks about technology. Um, and it talks about the shift from in-person to digital interaction seems to have delayed social and emotional development increasing feelings of isolation, you know, leading to that um, kind of hockey stick graph we're seeing for students. The last uh, slide is our charge for next year. We really felt like we just kind of scratched the surface with this. So, it's really um a continuation concentrating on sleep hygiene awareness as well as uh use of technologies and taking the FCPS data and and trying to help that guide our recommendations again for next year. All right. Thank you for that. So, we are um to questions and I'll start with Miss Marin. Oh boy. So, I don't know if you heard the previous two presentations, but

187so much of this threads that same needle of communications consistency, clarity. Um, I've given, you know, examples of screenshots of all sorts of different communications I've received as a parent via Let's Talk email, social media. It's it's way too much and it waters down everything. The things I've been thinking about as listening to you and knowing what you've been working on is, you know, board members and and superintendent, I'm wondering a few things. one in governance is trucking through our policies, but let's can we let's review our digital access like let's really take a look at that and see what it allows for. Um, also in the SRNR, I'm hardressed to think why we wouldn't include as part of the SRNR reading and saying you've done it is a link to the digital citizenship. I

188mean, at worst it'll will have maybe 60,000 people clicking it. Hopefully some will absorb it, but I I mean this is not even like 400 people, 473. So, you know, that's the SRNR and community use. You know, when I I experienced it myself as a parent, um when your kid has a practice at 8:00 at night, five in their five, fifth grade. Well, and I've talked to, you know, I've asked Mr. Muik about this. Can the younger grades get priority for that late time scheduling? And I know a ton of really great work has been done in community use to make it, you know, more effective and fewer cancellations, but like I'm trying to think about I know I sleep for myself. I support earlier schools times or later schools times, more sleep, sorry, later

189school times for our our early times, but we can't do it right now because it's a lot of money, right? So these are the things I'm thinking, well, what can we do? Can we prevent school activities going late at night? Can we prioritize our middle school students then not having 9:00 practices knowing they're going to be right back in the building? You know, that's something I think that we could do. We could direct the superintendent do it or we could talk about it here. I think community uses a place and even are we training are people who are using our properties are they required to go through any kind of training that says, "Hey, this is best practice not to keep your kids here till 10 11:00 at night." So um I think the implementation

190um of the social emotional learning with fidelity just like the superintendent provides the uh review of how much professional development has done I think that could be part of that data dashboard that the superintendent has talked about we can focus on that because she's shown us that focusing on the frequency of the PD we're getting up to that those high percentages okay social media I I I've said this before our students in their student groups in their school uh hosted groups have social media accounts on Instagram and social media and all these there is seems to be no thoughtful way of giving guidance or process to anything and just the last thing I'll say is I feel like for me in the last few weeks a lot of stuff has come to this nexus of

191we've really got to look at our kids as humans who are in this world where a lot of stuff's against them and what are we really gonna do to help them get through it and thrive and it's this kind of stuff that we've got to we've got to address. So maybe I'll say more later, but thank you. Thank you, Miss Mayor and Mr. Meline. Great. Well, thank you for the presentation um and and Skina for your service as my um appointee. I'm grateful for your leadership. So um you know I think just from a historical context Shaq has really been um a tremendous leader in this system pushing for um much neededed reforms and I think you've continued to do that this year um particularly in the tech and and um sleep space. Uh it's

192very clear from your presentation that um you had a kind of a policy advocacy um slant when it came to the technology piece, right? Um, but I didn't see that with the sleep piece. So, can you tell me a little bit about where your committee came down on um the sleep policy change uh and what those discussions entailed? I mean, I think for sleep that's that's hard to control at the school level other than what um she just mentioned with uh having them not practice late. So again, I think we uh really focused on the educational piece around that, focusing on the students, teachers, and the the home. I'm referring to the start time change. Oh, the start time change. Yeah. Uh well, we knew that that was uh probably not our lane to uh

193go into to make the recommendations there. I think that people we did have discussions around start time. I would say we had more of those discussions last year than this year. and we would definitely support a later start time for middle school. If you think that's helpful to have a letter of support from our group, we're happy to do that. We do we do know that there's budget constrictions and stuff like that though. So, but it is something that we discussed. That's helpful because I will say, you know, it was through the leadership of Phyllis Payne, Sandy Evans, through Shaq that got us in 2013, 2014 to the start time change. And I think a lot of it wouldn't have come if it weren't for Shaq's leadership. So I do think Shaq has a role

194in in um in helping us better make better policy. So um I I for one would be grateful to see um just your formulation of um views on on that start time change that that's helpful to know I think for next year's charge too and especially what I was reading um regarding that is they were going to try to do that parallel um with the boundary changes for next year at least that's what I read from uh the February meeting. Right. And that's the policy decision for the school board that I disagree with, but um Okay. That's that's up to us. Sorry to bring it up. No, no, you're okay. Um I appreciate your your feedback. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Dixit. Thank you for the presentation and uh you bring a lot of u

195I guess backdrop knowledge in this area both of you and the and the committee. Um I I just feel this is um really important for parents to be in this conversation because this sleep uh like we were just talking about it. It is not up to the school to make sure the students get the six seven hours or eight hours sleep. As a parent you can do that a better job at that. Um my son did uh high school sports and he was in wrestling at one one year at Robinson. He would come home 1000 p.m. after practice and be tired and doing IV program then had to do his homework and then he would go to sleep perhaps by midnight and because he had to get up by 5 or 6 whatever right so

196there's some sometime it's not the technology or these cell phones which is causing students to sleep less I wanted to ask uh in our survey did we ask this question why they're sleeping less I know they are sleeping less but why they do no I don't I don't think we have that a question that was asked. No. Okay. I know you're continuing this work in the next year. I guess this charge. So I guess in the survey in our schools, we can ask that question because I'm really curious to find out what the students say about them. Oh, we are playing games on the at night with their friends or are they doing homework because they have seven APS because my son had seven eight APS. I knew like he had two study at uh

197at night to do his all his work course work and uh and they need a little downtime too. So um I like you know I understand that you know teenagers have other needs. They they need to sleep more but they also want to you know associate with their friends more than now they're with their parents. They they have their own cohort of I guess peer uh friends who they talked more with. So um I I just thought that is one of the uh point I wanted to make is that it is not uh only because of screen time or any anything like that. The other uh point I was going to say is that the mind health age in 2024 um I kind of agree with that where we are at at this point but

198I pretty much feel that we all are in red right now. It is just a very turbulent time and we're going through in this country and this last uh few years and um and I would just say that giving that time I I feel like we have to give everybody a grace. Um we it's not just the young ones we all are going through that where our mental health or mind health is not up to the up to the par. Um so lastly on page 34 I said saw something. I'm sorry this is a long uh presentation. I know. Uh so what are you propos propos proposed charge for FI 2025 2026 how that's going to be different than what you're presenting now what uh what is well I I think for next year that

199so we've talked a lot about um kind of personal technology and kind of the phone piece and helping you know supporting parents through kind of making changes at home that can kind of filter then into the school space as well. I think next year the focus um will be more so on the educational technology more kind of in the classroom um piece. There's just continuing um evidence um you know being coming available about edtech. There's lots of lawsuits that have come up just in the last probably six months um you know against edtech company. There's just lots of happening h lots happening in the space. So I think that's a shift we'll see. So how do you perhaps uh see that this world is ch going toward digital you know the jobs and and and

200you know the use of social media and in jobs too and AI and just just pretty much every job will require that if our students don't get that access uh in high school how would do you think they'll be prepared for their next generation because not everybody's going to college even if college they'll need the technology. So if we don't give them that tools and you know items to kind of study um how would they perform in their next path in their career right yeah thank you for that question and that's a common concern is that we we all want students to be prepared for for the future for sure um I think that employers are telling us that you know their new new hires new college graduates that are coming in they're finding that

201um they're having trouble communicating they're having trouble collaborating you know in person they have, you know, they have the tech skills. Um, which, you know, again, because of persuasive design, you know, a lot of technology, unless you have a very specified field and go into that specific education, it's pretty easy to get a hold of. Like social media is not hard to grasp because they they make it easy for you. Um but what employers are seeing more so now is that kids are missing those kind of foundational like human skills and a lot of them don't know how to type you know so like a basic technology yeah basic technology skill like that's an important thing to teach students is to how to type I okay um so there's yeah interesting perspectives I think with

202employers in terms of the preparation of the our newest workers and doesn't necessarily rely rely on more technology in schools. I will say one um I have one um friend, she's a Georgetown professor, but she allows no technology in her classroom at all and more and more colleges are are doing that too. You know, they know it's incredibly distracting, you know, and the kid comes in with a notebook and a pen. Um I I can understand in literacy and other things it can happen. you can do that. But if it's an actual technology course, if it's a cyber security class or if it's a AI class, you are working on the technology and that's what you're doing than high school. And and I think with the whole addition of new courses like data science and

203AI and other other curriculums we have um I don't see there any other way to learn technology but not but by using that technology. Right. So I think it has to be balanced like you said some that they they need to be having that eye contact you know how to talk to people those things I think has to be incorporated more as we go forward I with this this generation thank you thank you miss Dixit miss I want to pick up just a little bit um and I'm going to dig into the report that you guys are quoting here um related to technology use um I've been in the I was in the college classroom for almost 15 years and it was a number of years ago at this point and my focus in academia

204was computers and writing and thinking specifically about how computers have actually changed the way we write. And the way that that has actually occurred is that it's created a whole avenue to allow people who wouldn't necessarily have been able to be in the workforce in the same position because they are out now able to use technology to support the work that they're doing. And so I desperately can't say enough that while I totally understand the importance of making sure that there's a healthy balance, I think that statements saying that digital education has no place in our classroom is absolutely dangerous because we had a meeting this week talking about Lighthouse Schools and about the fact that if if our kids don't actually understand the technology that's out there, while they may not be excelling in

205all aspects, at least they're coming in with a framework where they're not afraid where I deal with folks that are maybe of an older generation at this point that are are they just can't interact with the technology at all and it actually impedes their ability to do the work. So I know that you and I are not in alignment on on much of this. Um, but I will say that I do agree that we need to pay attention about why kids feel like helpless and why they and much of the research that I'm seeing come out actually talks about the over monitoring of children is that when we were growing up, you know, our parents would kick us out of the house at 8:00 in the morning and we would come back at 5:30 at

206night and they had no idea where we were. And what's actually the reason that kids are moving to technology is it's the last frontier that they are not monitored at every minute of their activity. And so I think that that is an important aspect. often when we are encouraging that continued monitoring of everything. I think that's one of the reasons why I am in support of giving older students the opportunity to try these things out in in a in a school environment that is meant to simulate what they're going to have to do in the future. And so that again I will continue to support the opportunity for our oldest learners to be able to have that minimized access. But I also want to take the opportunity to talk about we were on the forefront

207of ensuring that younger kids don't have their cell phones in school. We we started the bell-to-bell for K through eight and so we have been on the forefront and now we are limiting only access during lunch. And so I feel like the way the work that needs to be done at this point is enforcing that policy in every way possible. That means our teachers need to be modeling that behavior in front of their students. It means administrators need to be modeling that behavior as much as possible. I mean, that's that's the work that I think would be the most helpful at this moment. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. I I swear I did not set up my 5-year-old to run in with the iPad during this conversation. I did not plan that. I I I promise.

208And you know when I picked when I pick her and her sister, younger sister up from preschool, um we pull into the house and it's always, "Daddy, I want to watch cartoons." And I'll say, "That's nice. Go play. Just go outside. Go play. Go play." And then once you know you're tired and sweaty and hot, then maybe we can talk about something else. Um but I guess my question is, and I do have another slight confession. Um, I I've been using AI a lot recently to include sitting in this meeting, uploading hundreds of pages of all the reports that we're reviewing today and using it to flesh out key themes and findings and you know if I'll see something I'll ask it to elaborate on topics. The the point being technology is not our enemy.

209It's not it can be I guess but if it's all about the governance and how we integrate it in the day-to-day in in not only K12 but in every aspect of of our lives. So I I guess my my question that did not come from the robot. Um, I mean, are when we're talking about the concerns of of educational technology, I mean, if you had to kind of rank maybe the top two concerns, are we talking I mean, the the physical device, access to physical device? Are we talking um using the device? I mean, I I you know, when I was growing up as a kid watching Scooby-Doo, my grandparents always yell at me, "You're going to go blind sitting that close to the TV." Um, you know, I remember carpal tunnel for the people

210that that are typing all day. That was a big concern when computers were really integrated into day-to-day work. Um, my dad who's of a certain age, um, recently to the doctor and he was having some neck pains and the doctor said, "We're seeing a lot of people your age with these same neck pains because what are we doing all the time? We're doing this all the time." Um, so there's the physical aspect of the technology. Are we talking looking at the screens? Because I'm my wife bought these glasses which she puts on to look at the screens at night for the blue light. Um are we talking the dangers of the technology uh being used for uh bad purposes? Are we are we talking you know let's take AI for example that it will degrade

211um our analytical and our writing skills. What when we talk about the negativity of technology, I'm I'm I'm having a hard time not just with these reports, but in general kind of fleshing through all of the possible bad things. And I think that we have a there's probably a tendency, and I do it too, to focus on the bad and not think, okay, well, everything has some bad components. How do we get to the positive impacts? Um, so it's kind of an open-ended question, but I'll just I'll I'll leave it at that. I do agree with some what Miss Anderson said. Um, you know, specifically on the cell phones. All we are doing there, the the conversation was never mind. That's enough. I've rambled too much. But that's just an open-ended uh question and and

212I'll I'll leave it. I don't need to go back. Thank you for that. And I think that I probably, you know, we probably should have had a slide that said we are not anti-tech because we we are not for sure. And and when we talked about the educational te technology recommendations, part of the recommendation is that we want the message to be delivered that this is a tool. It's a very powerful tool that's used for very specific purposes um in our classroom. It's not again that constant companion. Um so I think that's our message and one of the primary concerns I think that we have. Um and also the distraction piece is is huge. um you know kids are watching Netflix in class, they're shopping in class, they're doing lots of things in class and

213there is light speeded and some parents do use it. I'm hoping that it will in fact become an opt out where you know parents are automatically signed up and they need to opt out to um to not receive the updates from from light speeded. But I've also had parents share that they um they receive they've been receiving light speeded reports and all of a sudden there's nothing on the light speeded report because you know the kid has figured out they're very crafty you know and they're very smart and they figured out how to get around um that that tool. So I guess to answer your question like what do we think are the biggest issues is um is the the distraction piece and also the opportunity costs in terms of you know is the class

214ends and the teachers allowing the student to be on their laptop during their free time when maybe they would have been you know reading a paper book or they would have been talking to a classmate or they would have you know something else that's not an algorithmically mediated experience. So, you know, when you were a child and you're watching Scooby-Doo, you're watching one show, Scooby-Doo. But when a kid is, you know, accessing the internet, it takes them to all sorts of places. It's not a teenage brain that is making decisions about what they're paying attention to and who they're paying attention to. That technology is making those decisions for them. Um, because that's how it's designed to keep them engaged and and I guarantee you she's probably watching Russian cartoons right now. So, I I

215get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Miss St. John Cunning. So actually to piggyback and I really appreciate the meeting I went to and I would like for you to elaborate because where you were where you talk about removing common sense media digital curriculum and replace with other independent sources. Could you do you have suggestions of those sources and could you just explain a little bit about that curriculum because that was really eye opening to me at that presentation. Um, and so we're using a curriculum that is being funded by META that purposely is trying to get kids addicted, then what are what are the other sources that we could use, right? And that's that's a great question. Um, one thing I think that will make a difference and my understanding is that kids receive like one

216digital citizenship lesson a year. That's what's mandated. I think some schools probably provide more. Um but I think our position is you know that is not enough. You know it needs to be a constant kind of culture of you know this is how we you know use our technological tools and this is how we respect your brains. Um you know and this is just how things work in our schools. This is um this is a book called Kids Brains and Screens as a curriculum by ScreenStrong. Um this is just an example of some of the products that are being um you know created and distributed now. And it talks all about you it talks about dopamine and um I think this is for middle late elementary middle school students but talks about brains and the

217brain science and how your brain works and about social media and and all those pieces that um that we really need kids um to help them understand. So, so that is one example, but again, I think that kind of through line of communication, you know, at back to school night and the fall festivals and that it can kind of increase actually the um the access to this information if it's a messaging that is just, you know, all sorts of areas in our school day. Thank you. I I think as many sources that you can provide to us as options would be helpful for us to look at. And as you were discussing, it's a tool. It's a double-edged. It can be helpful and it can also hurt. And I think that's the difficult thing um

218because you know, your other recommendation was that the school system not use um digital media to put out information. And I know that that's one thing that our parents and our families rely on. Um, and I just don't know what the alternative would be. I was just looking at my notes from when that speaker came. Okay. There was something called screen strong. Yeah, that's that was a recommended curriculum. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I'm sorry. So, so one of your recommendations was that the division not use um social media. social media to communicate things. And I just know that like our schools use it, you know, they use the different platforms to highlight what the kids are doing or to get communication out to parents. Um, again, it's a tool and it could be very positive

219and it can also, you know, be very dangerous. So the what would be the alternative I guess is more than anything is my question right and I I mean that's a very good question that's a tricky one like people do absolutely parents you know rely on social media but I think it's kind of reimagining what some of this needs to look like and maybe you know returning to old um you know more traditional methods you know I don't have the perfect answer I do know that again in that VDOE guidance that came out in the summer there's I The majority actually of the pages of that document is on communication and what schools can do in shifts. Know this was you know in reference to a bell-to-bell policy but also spoke about you know not

220using social. So so yeah it's a big change and that's why this is such a collective action problem that only when we all you know kind of work together and support each other through it you know can we create some change. Also, small changes make a big difference. You know, if student groups were to stop using social media, that would that's a that's a big change. That's a that would be great a great step in the right direction. Is it are there still some pieces of FCPS that are using social media? Okay. But are you know these few student groups stopping? Yes, that's that's an impact. That's you know it's like small baby steps. The piece that I'm struggling with is that I know that some um some of the things we've discussed with our

221committees is that there is so much that we offer that people don't know about and that this is the way people do get to know about it. So when the theater group at uh Edison puts out a clip about what's going on, then it's going to inspire other kids to join that. when the lacrosse team or the so that's the piece that I'm struggling with that there are so many things that we offer how do we get it and this is actually a great tool where it's not um it's more active and interactive where people are actually seeing what it is versus reading it and try this brings life to some of those that programming and the students you know are out there saying we're doing this and that excites people and I guess that

222That's the balance that is very difficult because of the world that we live in and yet the harms and again that meeting was very powerful. I can see that. So I think for us to find that balance is what's going to be difficult. Thank you. Um I'm going to take a quick turn. Uh my first question is the FCPS youth survey. Do we write that inhouse? Bethany. Yeah, I'll defer to Bethany, please. Yeah, it's a it's a large team. Sorry. It's a team um from agencies across the county who collaborate and it includes the health department, uh law enforcement, the school division, domestic and sexual violence services, on and on and on. So adding questions about sleep to sixth grade is should be doable. We may have already done that for the next year's survey.

223If I Yeah, if I could. It's definitely doable. We're in the process of revision right now and that's on our uh revision list just to add those questions. So along with um the question my colleague asked about why kids are not sleeping. Can we add why questions? Because I'm in agreement watching my three girls go through. They were, you know, from theater to cheerleading practice to grabbing dinner on the run. It was not other things. It was just their schedule. I think it's definitely something that the committee can consider a as they're revising um the survey. One of the things to keep in mind is that the youth survey is modeled after other national surveys. So sometimes there are challenges in creating our own questions but we can look at that. I understand that but

224I just add also it might be a place for um the student experience survey might be a place for those kind of questions um about you know the reasons. Sure. when a kid's going to sleep late. What are those reasons? Yeah. So, given schedules, and I was a varsity athlete who got the 8 to 10 time slot for basketball at one point, and it rotates through. Um, talk to me about research on napping. Is that is that because I mean I I know that I could pound two hours after school, get up, do work, go to practice, 8 to 10. And I mean, if you totaled my hours, but what is the research on napping? I don't think we reviewed the research on napping. I do know that shorter naps like 20 minutes, 30 minutes

225are better for you than like two hours. That would not be good to like do the catch-up time with that. So, so I should do five 20 minutes. Oh, yeah. Sprinkled throughout the day. We'll just be doing recess in the middle of our board meetings from now on. Um, no, I do think it's interesting because even as an employee, I mean, I had so many night programs at Chantelli that I would get home and I literally I I had to crash or I was not only going to be able to do supervision till 11 o'clock at night. Um, the other thing was um you're talking about the social emotional learning and doing it with fidelity. I just want to reiterate the fact that it's not being done with fidelity. Um, and I personally hold administ

226the principal of a building accountable because they need to hold their assistant principles accountable who hold their teachers accountable. Um, and I also in defense of teachers um it's not fair to expect something done with fidelity if they get a lesson, you know, it rolls in their inbox 7 p.m. before the SLE lesson the next morning. Um, so this is a multi-layered thing, but I think the number one thing is and um is just sort of this, we've talked about it, stories matter, relationships matter. In my opinion, if you're a classroom teacher and you chose this profession, then you should care about, you know, all the kids, right? You should care about growing and spending time with them. And um and so I think that we need to work if we've got attitude issues with

227some of our folks that there needs to be direct intervention and learning around that. Um because normally they're all skilled enough to deliver a lesson if it comes in last minute, but some of them just like push play and sit at their desk and work. Like these things have to stop. Um and the other thing is the other things we're using advisory for. We're talking about maybe pushing out executive functioning, you know, lessons. It's a the it's an advisory period that's powerful. If it's it's just like bell-to-bell instruction, right? Um if we're not using it bell-to-bell, then we're wasting the opportunity um to enhance our students skill set outside of traditional learning. So, I just appreciate that recommendation and I'll do a go back now to Miss Marin. Thanks. So, I've been trying to, you

228know, formulate and theme as I tend to do. And, you know, I Kyle, it's funny. I think of you and your your 5-year-old. My daughter did not see TV for the first 3 years she was alive. And then my second was born and that was the end of that era, right? Things change. Things change. And now my 12-year-old has a phone and he's got 30 minutes a day, but because he likes to bike around town with his friends and and you know, he sends me little requests and but it's fatiguing and so no judgment because we're trying to all do everything we can and it it's a lot on parents. So, and I guess that leads me to the bigger idea is like you I think it was even someone said at a graduation you

229know these students know the developing technology faster than anybody else. We can't deny that because the force of it is bigger than anything. The students are also facing other forces that we even you know our age didn't face. The the you know global climate crisis that weighs on a lot of them. um you know the political unrest that perhaps some students had seen you know as far back as the 60s but now like there's just again there's so much more and so like I I just wonder how we could be flexible because I agree we can't I'm not going to say no technology in the classroom there's a place for it but as Dr. Darita said when the instruction is engaging they won't be swayed by technology that to take them off their you know

230they won't be shopping and doing whatnot. So I kind of feel like it's it's like what sugar is like added sugar is not good and yet how many of us have it right a little bit in moderation but we're not going to have it all day long. what we can do in the school day is teach our kids, communicate to our families and limit access or thoughtfully, I would say thoughtfully provide access. And that again goes back to like um what our processes and policies are allowing for and implementation. On a side note concerning health, I will say like candy, the amount of candy that I see given out in schools, elementary schools as rewards and enforcement of the no food for birthdays rule. I mean, that's another one I'd love to see dealt with

231like we did with the cell phones because we can't offer these wonderful nutritious meals and then allow bags of candy or a candy salad. Oh, such an oxymoron. So, while we're talking about health. So, again, that's a theme, right? Are we consistently implementing our policies or do our policies need to be updated and then better implemented? Thank you. All right. In interest of time, Mr. Moon has not had a turn, so I'm going to turn over to Mr. Moon. Just a quick question or request for advice uh as a schoolboard member. How how do I avoid screen time when there are so many emails coming in? You're fortunate because you have a fully developed prefrontal cortex. So that's that's a big help. So in terms of like planning and making you sure about that? I

232mean, I don't know you very well, but I assume. Um, yeah. So, that's a definite advantage for you as as an adult. Um, but it's very I mean, we feel that ourselves, right? Like, we all have to be very intentional like when I'm just at home working like working on this report, I need to put my phone over here. You know, I know that I need to do that and I can I can do that because I'm an adult and I can, you know, sometimes, you know, most of the time make those choices. What about what about what about when superintendent sends us all the reports and materials through emails and it's a lot. [Laughter] Okay. Thank you. So I missed those days when I first began my service on the board when things came

233through mayors actual snail mayors. It took, you know, you could give yourself a a week to respond and then you could wait another 10 days before something else came back. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're we're you know, technology is not really helping our quality of life to a certain extent. At the same time, I we're giggling about it now, but it's very real. It's not just for children. It's kind of a critical piece when just because my my my colleague talked about neck pain. I thought he was talking about me. Thank you. So, um before we uh conclude this, I do want to go back to the last report and uh make a correction to my comments regarding uh registration and colleges and credit acral with the use of technology. Uh I've been in communication

234with some of my students at their institutions. um that they are often submitting their preferred courses and the computer then generates something that sent out um at the same time by whether you're a sophomore, freshman, senior um and then you can interact to make a change. Uh and other schools are if you're at this certain level like you're a sophomore they all it opens up for all of them but they are randomly assigned at a time. So it's not necessarily by credit acral. So technology has changed maybe how they used to do that. So I just wanted to correct that on the record. So we thank you for the report and thank you for your hard work and um hopefully you know people will get some get their eight hours of sleep uh most nights

235moving forward. But no it's great work. Thank you. I again was not the liazison for this particular committee but I have recently done a ton of work related to title one and I'm super excited to hear what you guys have to say. So lead us off. Can I start? Okay. Just making sure. Okay. Thank you so much um members of the board for having us today. My name is Maria Woreren. I'm the chair of the Title One parent advisory committee. Um and I am joined today by um our incoming vice chair Jessica Strellis and our um Title One staff um liaison Courtney White. I just want to take a minute before I start to acknow to recognize Courtney because we just learned that she will not no longer be in that staff support role. Um,

236Dogwood Elementary, Dogwood Terrace, Dogwood Elementary, Dogwood Elementary is very lucky to be getting her as uh their newest AP. Um and we on title one advisory comm parent advisory committee are very sad to be losing her um competent expert detail oriented support. So she is a true gem um and um just want to take a minute to thank you Courtney publicly. Um you have made being Auntie Pac and then moving into the chair position this year just so easy. So, um, selfishly, I'm worried about how much more work I will have to do when you're gone. But thank you truly. Okay. So, with that, we'll get into our slides. I'll do I'll do it while I'm talking. So, um, I hope I I assume that everybody on the board is aware of what title one

237is. There is a brief overview in your slides. Um, but the sort of short of this is title one provides targeted funding um to make more equitable opportunities available to schools serving our most highest populations of disadvantaged students. Um, and during the current school year, there were 44 elementary schools, four middle schools, and for the first time, two high schools identified as title one in FCPS. And so it was we were also joined on our committee by high school liaison for the first time. Um and I understand that next year we will be um increasing by one elementary school in the total count. Um and this serves a total of title one schools serve a total of 34,98 students um in FCPS. Title One grant funding supports schools um by again this is on a

238schoolwide basis so that everybody at the school um that is identified based on poverty data um gets these additional supports intervention and enrichment high quality instructional materials professional development family engagement opportunities and supplemental staffing the title one parent advisory committee um does fulfill a federal mandate that we do have uh parent um meaningful parent engagement, family engagement in the implementation of title one. Um and I would say that in FCPS it is done in a truly meaningful way. This is not a check the box. We had a meeting, we had a town hall, we we said that we consulted with parents. This is a true partnership between parents and staff. Um and uh we also have teachers who are members of TAC as well and um we learn a lot from each other and each

239year we set a learning agenda. What do we want to learn about related to our charge and our recommendations come out of that learning journey. Um myself I am the parent of a third grader or sorry a rising fourth grader at Beachree Elementary School. Um, I'm coming at this uh as as having a kid who is still an emerging reader. Um, he has an IEP. He's also twice exceptional. Um, he gets pulled out for uh level three AAP services. Um, he's also a formal former multilingual learner. So, we've benefited personally as our family from a lot of the additional supports that are provided to Title One schools. Um and I also just appreciate in my own community um that the level of engagement and support that it affords. So each uh school title one school

240is represented by a title by a parent. The um I believe your packets contain a list of the parent uh representative so you can see who um from the schools you represent was in attendance at our meetings this year. Um and then our executive board has five members who meet every other month to plan for our general committee meetings. And um that group includes a teacher liaison. And so like I said um it it's truly a partnership and a learning um a learning partnership. Um and our agenda is very much shaped by the voices of our members. Our charge for 20 24-25 was to champion literacy by reviewing the implementation of the science of reading curriculum in title one schools. Um and we took on this charge holistically, not just looking at the instruction, but

241also what are the supports that we need for that instruction to happen um equitably to ensure that students are ready to learn. So we had uh five meetings this year. The last one was um sort of, you know, our elections and our um report, but the other four meetings included a title one grant overview. We do this every year with Courtney White providing an incredible um overview of the Title One grant program and how it's implemented in FCPS. Um we uh had a meeting about family school partnerships. So we had the director of the family school partnerships office um who and we had two family liaison come to learn about what they do. I I think um that that meeting in particular was very very wellreceived and um I think everyone came out of it

242appreciating the role that family liaison play um and and just really feeling like that's an important role that we need to um promote and support. Um, and then our our last two uh meetings were on the implementation of that equitable access to literacy plan. And so we learned about where we are. We looked at some data and we learned about some of the supplemental resources um that are helping um particular schools make even um better strides. So with that we are very pleased to share our recommendations with the board. We have three main recommendations but each recommendation does have some sub recommendations. Um our first recommendation is related to our central charge of uh the equitable access to reading. So um first of all I'll say that we we got to see in on the

243executive board level a lot of new data uh that has come thanks to the implementation of this plan. We now have data for uh kindergarten through first grade that was not available before through the valves and we also have IRA I ready data now up through 8th grade. Um so first we really just applaud FCPS for making that data available. I think that there is a lot of power in the data and just seeing what we have to work with. Um that said we were very very concerned by what the data show us. Um and um in particular um how some of our most disadvantaged subgroups continue to have really really concerning gaps in um but in um grade level proficiency. So um the biggest gaps uh overall are with our um Hispanic and um

244special education populations of the data that we saw. Um and those gaps I think even more alarming is as you go up in grade levels those gaps grow significantly. So, by the time students are getting to high school, we have a shocking number of students who have IEPs um or who are um from a historically marginalized group that are not reading on grade level. Um so with that in mind um we our first recommendation is to maintain rigorous focus on closing reading achievement gaps in title one schools. Um and we um were encouraged to see the work that's been done already and um you know the the progress that's been made and getting staff trained and rolling out um the Basil uh curriculum. um in the supplemental and and we just want to encourage that

245now that we have access to more of this data that we really pay attention to that data and make sure that our title one schools in particular are ensuring that um the supports flow to those students. So we have three subrecommendations under this. So the first is around professional development. Um, we want to make sure that um, every uh, staff member, every instructional staff member at Title One Schools is getting trained in the science of reading, not just literacy specialists um, but across general um, multilingual and special education um, and uh, special subjects. even anyone who is interacting with students in an instructional manner understands the science of reading. Um and u as we know that training is less successful without that ongoing job embedded coaching um to ensure that implementation is successful. Recommendation 1B

246under um closing our reading achievement gaps uh is ensuring equitable access to supplemental supplemental literacy resources for all students. Um prioritizing the faithful and intentional implementation of those. So there were a few supplemental resources that we learned about in depth as a committee. So, we had um principles from two different title one schools come and tell us about how they are leveraging Lexia um as well as a program that was new to us called ECRI which is um stands for wait I wrote it down and now I can't see it. It is enhanced core reading instruction. Um, and I believe that was at Center Ridge we learned about. No, London Town. Pine Spring. Pine Spring. Okay. Pine Spring. Um, so, um, and their data had a mar marketkedly better growth from fall to winter in

247the data than other schools that weren't doing ECRE. Um and so we want to make sure that all of our schools and in particular prioritizing title one schools have access to ECRE which is a something that's that is very complementaryary to the um Basil and the Orton Gillingham um instructional methods that teachers have already learned. um it just puts a little more um I think direct instruction um into the hands of teachers, more tools. Um so we just want to make sure that again title one funds are targeted to making these reading reading instruction as effective as possible. All right. And then 1 C, our third recommendation under equitable access to literacy is expanding learning opportunities. So, we learned that there are some programs that are getting more um read literacy in instruction to students

248during breaks, um tutoring after school or over the summer. Uh but that reach is very limited and there are a lot of students that could benefit from those things that are not having that opportunity. Um so we want to make sure that anything we can do uh to um help students maintain and accelerate their learning over breaks so that they're not starting the next year or that you know when they come back from breaks even further behind uh is done. And of course we want to prioritize students from those highest highest risk populations and make sure parents know about it. And we um we have another recommendation coming up on communication because we know this is as the prior uh report was discussed at length this is definitely a challenge for everybody. Okay. Our second

249of three recommendations is around reaffirming our commitment to the core equity imperative of title one. Um so um if you look at the language in the um elementary and secondary education act uh it specifically talks about equity and needing to um target resources at disadvantaged students to increase their achievement. And so um title one is e is about equity at its core and we want to reaffirm that. So um to that end, we want to make sure that students who may have barriers to being ready to learn are get receiving they and their families are receiving the supports that schools are able to provide that will enable them to be ready to learn. And we have two subrecommendations here. So one is around staffing. Um so we want to make sure that um we are

250prioritizing equitable staffing in all title one schools based on school quality ratios um as well as nationally recommended ratios. Um and through title one provide supplemental social workers, counselors, psychologists and other qualified personnel to ensure full-time support for student wellness. Um, I know a lot of schools have, you know, part-time social workers and psychologists, um, and they simply don't have the bandwidth to, um, provide that, um, social emotional support that is needed throughout every day. Um and uh again going back to that really enriching um learning um we had from the family um school partnerships office. Uh we're very convinced of the need for full-time family liaison at every every title one school. That's a really important link especially to families who may not have um a history of formal educ completing formal education themselves

251to just be able to navigate school for their children. They don't know what they don't know and family leaison can really help with that. Um and then the second um part of this recommendation around improving equity is adopting evidence-based practices um and um curriculum and interventions to foster students social emotional learning um with a strong emphasis on providing professional development for all staff to maximize their effectiveness. So I think I heard this also in the previous report. If students are not given I'm sorry if teachers are not given the training to actually implement those social emotional learning curricula that they are being required to um do if they themselves haven't internalized those skills um that's it's hard to make that meaningful for students. So, we need to invest that time and again having those staff

252um like social workers and psychologists and counselors in the building to be able to help um guide the instructional staff on the implementation of those things is really critical. Um so those are the first two recommendations and I'm now going to turn it over to uh Jessica Stritz to talk about our third recommendation. Very much. My name again is Jessica Strelitz. Um I have been on the TAC for the last three years, I think four years. Um and I have a rising fifth grader at Belvadier Elementary and I have a rising seventh grader at Glasgow. So I get to experience Title One and Mason District at two different levels. Um which has been an unbelievable part of our educational journey so far. Um so would like to talk a little bit about meaningful engagement. And

253this is something that again as Maria just said, you are hearing over and over from these reports. I swear we did not collude with anyone on these other reports. These are just all things that you're truly hearing from the caregivers, the parents, the community members who make up these committees. Um, and we hear it at an X level because our committee is so large. It's, I believe, the largest committee of its kind that's out there with with the ability to have um over a hundred people potentially engaged in this type of peer-to-peer learning. So, um, you know, it's the the fact that we have an an entire section on this about meaningful engagement, I think just underlines how important family engagement is within the title one community um, and the work that we do to

254support Title One schools and education. So that recommendation is to, you know, more meaningfully engage families and communities in supporting the student populations in achievement in title one schools and really focused on, you know, the dialogue, the communications around things that people need more support around, especially when we're talking about literacy with reading plans and assessments. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Um, so there's a couple of of subsections that we have along this line. One is building family understanding. So really focusing on, you know, what people are are or how people are able to learn about the things that are available to them. um and supporting ways that you know Title One and you know FCPS can support these types of um ways to gather and learn together as a community, ask

255questions. Um some of these things are strategies probably you have seen at a lot of schools like literacy nights and literacy focused you know ways of engaging with you know in some cases parent teacher associations um or other comm you know committees that are connected to the school. Um you know for examples of that are around the family um symposium series which you know was supported by um title one funds from the central office. Um, you know, these types of activities not only are, you know, supporting conversations about curriculum, but because of those funds, they're able to support child care, support food, support um, you know, the opportunity to be to be um, get transportation at a title one level. These types of supports are incredibly important to be able to support family engagement activities.

256In fact, you know, you know, I think we have heard from a lot of our peers over the last couple of months, they are they are a huge driver uh for getting people into the schools or in some cases bringing those community opportunities to the communities themselves. Um so engaging with the with the community in that way. Um so we do feel as though uh you know as part of this recommendation that we want to prioritize um that schools are building their families understanding um through these potential literacy focused um programs. Um you know that's that's again truly our you know a key way of connecting with um families and caregivers in the title one community. for recommendation um B in this um talking a little bit about um how schools can partner with TAC.

257So we had um really great conversations with you know not only um some family liaison and learning more about what family liaison did but also talking about how our committee members are engaging with their schools themselves and getting the schools to engage with the committee members. So for our committee the members are chosen by the principal by and large. Um sometimes you can raise your hand which is what I did. Um but sometimes you know the the the principles will work within the school committee either you know working with a a a a group of of already involved parents or you know using newsletters and other ways to find people who are interested in being parts of TAC. Um and and really what we're encouraging is that become a truly two-way communication because we see

258a lot of one-way communication that's happening with um newsletters or or social media posts. Um we're really looking for other ways of doing that so that we are getting more information from the schools themselves about how they're using Title One funds. um you know challenges or even problem solving that they're looking to do and engaging that micro community of title one as part of their solutions-based approach to things and then the title one the TAC members take that information are able to bring it back to TAC and share through their peers and see what are other schools doing how are things that they can you know kind of learn and share back then TAC committee members are you know empowered to bring that information back to the schools themselves. In some cases, it's administration, so

259your principles, your APS, in some cases, it's those student, it's excuse me, the um parentled, you know, organizations working with family liaison. All of those people are welcome to come to these meetings, but we of course recognize that not everybody has the capacity to do that. So you know we are looking to you know encourage more deeper communication on that um on that front. Um so also talking about new approaches to um you know kind of making us that vital link. Again as I as I mentioned before there's the possibility of us having over a hundred people who represent TAC. That's a very powerful group of of parents and caregivers within the community as well as other community leaison um that we have had you know people from outside of the FCPS families um who

260have been able to come and represent themselves on TAC in the past. So you know we're looking to um you know recommend to adopt new approaches to provide more collaboration between the schools and TAC itself. And then um on the third front um talking a little bit about family engagement models. So we had an opportunity at one of our meetings as Maria mentioned um you know working with talking through some of the different programs um that we see manifest in schools that are supported um such as you know parent project loving solutions and academic parent teacher teams. Um, you know, these are all different ways to engage the school community itself. And, you know, the the kinds of problem solving, the kinds of communications that are coming out of those, you know, truly collab collaborative

261approaches to connecting with your community. um and you know the ways that we can um you know learn more about the best ways to communicate with you know those title one committees uh communities. So, as we all as a as a peer-based group were talking about, you know, the effectiveness of these things and learning from um our FCPS um staff members talking about these things, it really helped us to be able to think about, oh, these things exist, first of all. Second, you know, how do we potentially work with, you know, Title One, with FCPS more to get more of these things implemented into our schools? So again, a lot of it is knowledge and understanding, which I'll get to in our in our next recommendation. Um, and then thinking through, as Maria mentioned in

262one of our earlier recommendations, making sure that we're supporting and fostering collaboration um with school personnel um you know, with especially those family liaison and social workers who create such an important infrastructure um to really bridge that gap between um the school and the families. And then I'm sure this is one that we could just put in every deck at this point, the consistency with communications. So, um, you know, in our recommendation, we're talking about, you know, some of the communications practices that we see you using evidence-based tools like talking points, you know, newsletters and things along those lines, but looking to standardize some of these things. Um, one of the things that we've discussed as a committee is how can even coming out of the meetings themselves. We recognize not every one of the

263potentially, you know, dozens and dozens of people who could be part of the committee can come to our meetings. So, how can we synthesize some of that knowledge, share it with our committee, and then give them templates and tools to share that back again with their schools? And then for the schools themselves to be able to share that out with their school communities, whether it be through talking points, their newsletters, social media, etc. Um, making that information potentially mandatory. um and you know what are the types of communications that we would like to see there that would be impactful for the for the caregivers. Um the second part of this is again more kind of teacherto-f family communications. So that if we're getting for example um test results back that there is something that explains

264exactly how to interpret those you know literacy assessments and be able to talk about them at home. Um, and we can work, you know, with the school to, you know, work with other title one schools to share that information and maybe share some of the other information that we had an opportunity to have a peek at when we were at the committee level, share that with other title one folks to not only engage them to learn more about, you know, what is happening throughout FCPS, but again, how, you know, what is happening on the title one level that allows us to have different interventions and support to support this type of learning. Um, and then the last part is just general awareness of all the incredible things that are supported by Title One. I mean,

265I've been part of the Title One schools for the past eight years, and there's still things that I'm learning about. I learn about every year about all the amazing things that these funds do and that this amazing staff does for us. Um, unfortunately, what we have found from a peer-to-peer learning perspective is that those things are not consistently shared. sometimes they're not shared at all. Um so we want to make sure that FPAC at our organization that TAC is basically we can be liaons to again ingest this information, share it back with our schools, share it back with that broader community and really amplify that information and the importance of that information. So that that concludes our recommendations and our report and we now open the floor for any questions or comments. Great. Thank you

266so much Mrs. Stletz. Miss Dletz. Um okay, we'll start with Mr. Moon and I have a question if nobody else wants to go after Mr. Moon. I I wrote down you know I think one to three three things but third one which I'm going to be asking you first is probably already answered by your presentation but I'm going to ask you anyway just in case you talked about a meaningful engagement uh could you site some unmeful engagement practices is that just one way newsletter and one comm is that I If something comes home, for example, your your test results and there's no context to it, that's not very helpful. You get it as a parent and you look at that and think, what what does this number really mean? And there are way, you know,

267there's some things in very small print. um there's some information maybe on you know that everybody got this test and why but not only to understand that number but also I think to think about the resources that are provided if you are looking to both potentially excel or make up any sort of a deficit or kind of work through the different structures that we have in title one to be able to address any issues that might be raised or ask questions. Yeah. Yeah. Um I think something else I would add to that is it's almost a mindset mindset shift that is needed amongst schools. Um not to just be like trust us like we know what we're doing. Come to the funfair. Um you know come to bingo night and then leave everything else to

268us. Um, and I I know there are people on our our committee again with that peer-to-p peer learning. We have varying experiences of that um type of interaction we get with our schools and some schools. It's very um there are opportunities to provide that input on the the um school improvement and in innovation plan. there is a um meaningful opportunity to learn um about literacy um in like more of a deeper dive with some of these models like the um academic parent teacher teams that we learned about. So it's really about it being a dialogue rather than it just being like shooting information out to us. It's about okay here is some information. what do you think? Or hey, we'd love your input and we're really going to genuinely consider that input. Um, we do

269trust our schools to do what's best for our kids, but we also want to be engaged in more than just bake sales. We we care deeply about how our students are learning and we want to learn so we can support them at home. And especially as this new reading way of teaching reading is rolling out. We don't know what we don't know. And so we need schools to partner with us um and and to understand from us what it is we don't know what it is we do know and and have that dialogue with us. Thank thank you for sharing. Yeah. So when you see those uh maybe unme Yeah. engagement practices. Do parents let schools know or is there a mechanism through which this parents can express their views on certain types of engagement

270or Yeah, I think there's there's, you know, some survey work that's done, but I think as you go throughout the year and something comes up, it's not always clear who you can go to for some um information or clarification on things. So, we want to we want to basically make sure that folks understand what the resources are that they can get their hands on and have, you know, be able to turn some of their questions into, you know, answers. the title one, if I may share this, the title one office did some focus groups around communication and um I think what they found and certainly I agreed with this is that the communications that families are more likely to look at are the ones that come from their child's teacher. Um and then second to

271that might be the principal. Um and then if it's coming from the the district, maybe you don't open it at all. So, um, but definitely the things that come from the teacher, um, like are most consistently opened and read and responded to because we know that our teacher knows our kid best. And so, and that also if we provide a suggestion or ask a question, it's more likely to get responded to. And this is why we did make the recommendation of providing templates to teachers for how they can communicate because we also recognize the burden of communication should not be fully on them. But if there are some things they can kind of, you know, cut, copy and paste, I'm going to be more likely to read that than if it's just coming from a

272sort of communications email address. Okay. The next question goes to the staffing under your recommendation 2A. Right. This is just for me wanting to be educated. Uh the school quality ratios is a is a term that I'm not too familiar with. Is that FRM and and B language learners? I like Well, there's two. So, there's one that's by the state and that's like one counselor to every 325 students, but then there's also the three specialized student support positions for every 1,000 students. And so, what we're saying is those so these are state mandates, but the specialized student support positions can count as anyone, meaning the school nurse can count as that person. Uh, your behavior analyst, an assistant behavior analyst, they don't necessarily have to be licensed. they don't, you know, so making sure that

273all our schools are properly staffed with staff to support with the social emotional learning that meets those school ratios because right now some of our schools, our title one schools in particular, are supplementing their their staffing through their title one budget um to to have enough counselors or social workers to be able to support the needs in their school. So just being sure that we're meeting the standards of quality that are set by the state and also the counseling association, but then also ensuring these high need schools have what they need to. Okay. Okay. One last question. Yeah. No, I mean I just I would the only thing I would add to that would be the um ratios recommended by the professional organiza associations. So, American School Counselor Association and um National Association of or

274of School Social Workers recommends a ratio of 1 to 250 and um National Association of School Psychologists recommends a ratio of 1 to 500 and we are very far from those ratios for the social workers and the psychologists. Thank you. Uh one last question goes to the a uh when you stated that achievement gaps for certain uh you know groups of students I think they were Hispanic and special education you know students as the a grade level goes up that achievement gap seems to be widening. Is that are you talking about longitudinal based upon longitudinal or just just the like in ninth grade the gap is much wider than it is first? Second grade. That's right. Do you do we have any longitudinal data of any cohort group whether as they go up even the

275groups achievement gap is getting wider as they move up? I don't know whether that data I'd be happy to find it and then share it with you. I would I would love to see if there is one. Okay. Thank you. Oh me great. I'll stop writing all my notes. um question about Okay, so actually Dr. Reed, I have a question or two for you. Um a a question was raised about the well reinforcing the equitable um nature of title one and I know um our Mason district representative have has often asked about equitable staffing and um I'm just when we talk about the literacy the training and support is that differentiated for our title one schools so they have that more intensive like was proposed by the committee and can it be uh title one

276schools receive extra resources um which non-title one schools do not and uh it would be my understanding and expectation that those resources are allocated in accordance with that expectation. You want me to speak more towards that? Okay. Well, again, I'm specifically trying to answer I'm sorry, miss just the question of are more teachers in title one trained than the general than non-title one schools. Okay, thank you. So, I actually have that. Um so, Title One has actually provided OG training once a month to all title one teachers. So, they've had the opportunity to be in cohorts of about 60 teachers each at various locations throughout the um throughout the county. They've also had uh UFly training, so access to UFly training, which is tier 2 instruction as well. And then they also have um speaking

277to the resource part of it, um the division purchased certain levels of Benchmark Express, which is for our multilingual learners, but they also purchased Aspire for our students with disabilities. Title One schools have been able to purchase additional resources for Benchmark Express for our multilingual learners because we have over 15,000 in our title one schools. And then we've also provided funds for um more Aspire kits and then from there they're given the PD to be able to utilize these highquality instructional materials. Thank you. Does that include and I'm just looking at the committee's recommendation 1A. So does that include also special education teachers and multilingual learner teachers? Both both for the science for the EBLI both for the benchmark express and Aspire and OG. So all of our teachers have access to those those. Okay.

278Well, hold on a second. You said access. Are they actually doing the training? That's the key thing. Yeah. Each cohort has had a mix of of teachers in all. So meaning like there they've been a mix of classroom teachers and I can actually provide you that data. I have the attendance and everything for all of our courses if you want like a a number between the three. But each course is mixed with multilingual learners um learner resource teachers uh sped teachers and classroom teachers. We also provide our multilingual learner teachers with GLAD training too. Right. That also supports That's cool. Well, I guess I'm just wondering then because if the committee is recommending it, it doesn't sound like it is perhaps happening, but maybe this is all just true real time. Yeah. No, I think

279um what my response would be so far so good, but this is not a set it and forget it type of initiative. I like the uh the little phrases. Got it. Okay. Yeah. This is going to require uh vigilance in fidelity of implementation every year and especially as it's now getting rolled out into secondary um which is a totally different challenge. Um making sure that teachers across these areas are accessing that training I think is going to be a little harder I understand. So, okay. Um, so yeah, it's more like yay, good job so far, but don't stop, keep going, and make sure that everyone new coming in is also getting this. Got it. Thank you. Um, you know, we've had the shift or the federal government, we've shifted to the C designation rather than

280using um federal juice lunch. Can you just share what that's been like and like are families understanding that? Are they automatically enrolling like what that process is like? Dr. White. Um, I'm gonna try try my best. Uh, it has been extremely difficult for our families. Um, C is a very different data set than FRM. C is SNAP, TNAF, and Medicaid. And so many of our families um don't know that necessarily to fill out that data. And so I think we as a school division need to do everything that we can to support them with that. Um, for example, we sent out C letters only in English. So, like number one, why why should we should be translating those and they should be coming out sooner than August to our uh C schools to let families

281know. Um, additional resources are like, um, I would also say that in addition to that, providing them with something that says this, this gives me access to a scholarship in sports. This gives me access to free instruments. This gives me access. So, just ensuring that our family knows that. It sounds like from Dr. Reed Reed's exhalations, she's aware of it. Um, so she was unaware. Oh, are you okay? Well, she's aware of it now. Do you want to Well, and and go ahead, Dr. Reed. Would you like to Well, I we need to send those documents out in multiple languages. I I'm not I have no idea why we're not, but we will be. Yeah. It also sounds like perhaps that letter getting that letter that opens the door for that access perhaps that could

282be contingent on filling out the form, right? That's that's the hook. But exactly, and we were talking about this at lunch and we talked about it at TAC last year. when you get barrageed with let's talk emails, you just can only take so much. So just like we're trying to do, you know, the division is trying to do better with the coursework transitions. I mean, so often I feel like we have all of the things, well almost all the things that we need. We're just not communicating it in an effective way. It's just like with our policies. We have the right policies, they're not being implemented, you know, that that's like the crux of this stuff. So when we think about what we're investing in, how do we invest in the solutions that make that

283stuff happen? Like who is sitting in the technology space at the top level that's like, huh, this schooly interface is really confusing and hm, we really need to figure out how to get parents to look at CIS and like have it accessible. Like I just guess I'm at the tipping point and I feel like you'll agree, but it's like what's the tactical work here? And like how do we measure? Like can we say today the letters didn't go out, you know, at this point? Where are we going to be in the fall? Where are we going to be in the spring? We could measure this stuff. So that's it. Um, and I think there's something just more to that to your point with C change this year. People didn't know about that. Even my even

284my admin weren't 100% clear on that and it was something that we came to the table had conversations with and I think was a really important part of what we basically equipped everybody on TAC to have was that information was crystal clear they were able to go back and talk to other families about it and support their family liaison to answer your question family liaison were pulling the bulk of that burden because they're the ones having to have those conversations with families and explain to them why this is so important not only for them but for their school community. Yeah. Thank you. And I so two things one is on Monday we have that equity summit and it's only two days away but could there be something that is said while everyone is there in

285the room to say this is a situation with C and more is forthcoming like that you know just equity right the other piece is around um oh dang I lost my train of thought um you just said the family leaison I was talking with a wonderful family leaison last week at a high school and who was preparing to have parents come in well after the school here. Well, I didn't know if that person was doing it on their own. Was it connected to this coursework transition piece? Like I don't know. We got to make them part of that core team. They are the core team. So, thank you. Um, Miss St. John Cunning and then uh Miss Anderson. Yeah. So, so on that friend reduced or CP because I was a family liaison and obviously

286I haven't been there but the last I knew the letters weren't going out and everything was being done online which was a barrier for some of our families um and like there are families that know and every year come and they get help um and there are some families that have difficulty I mean well they come and get help and they can't fill it on online. It It is the family liaison that's doing it. Um, God, I just lost my thought about the other question. But what here's my concern with the climate, social climate we have now. I have a fear that less families are going to come forward. Um, it happened before. I don't doubt it's going to happen again. And we know that that also well I don't know how our funding is

287going to be impacted from the federal government at this point. Um, I think I don't know if they're going to take that into consideration or not, but um I I just I guess I'm just voicing it um because I saw it happen before. Um I think with family engagement and having people understanding the scores, I think that that's really critical um for a lot of our families, particularly our immigrant families. And it's I've sat in a lot of parent teacher conferences where I think it's also educating teachers when you say to a parent your child's at a third grade reading level when they're in the fifth grade. That means nothing. That means nothing. And uh I mean I would start just out of experience start saying if you're going to say this please have fifth

288grade reading level material here and third grade so they could see it. Um so I think our training has to go be has to go beyond like what t when teachers are speaking to families they have to forget the educational legal ease and come down to the level that they're at and and that's where some of our family leans are great because they understand that like what does a fifth grade reading level look like? you know, some K some parents hear your kid is a third grade reading level and they're in the fifth grade and they're like great, that's great. You know, so um I appreciate the report. I appreciate the work. I mean, I understand this work very well, but I think there's also nuances that sometimes we miss. That's all I want to

289articulate. Miss Anderson, I want to finish us off by talking to my colleagues a little bit and I I think it's important information for you to have as well about the presentation that I gave yesterday to the public school leaders network. So, this actually kind of segus into it just a little bit because one of the things that we need to know is that three of the JARK recommendations actually are specifically related to at risk add-on funding that is that is um Virginia's supplement to title one type kiddos. Okay, so kiddos that are living in poverty across the state. Um, it is a recommendation for JARK because specifically it does not count kids that are in C schools because CK school kids do not use free and reduced lunch data. So they are not filling

290out the form. So that means that we're not catching those C schools. And when you have lots and lots of schools that are C schools, then it reduces the funding that's given to each individual lo locality. And so the other question that I have is that I'm one of my major concerns is as as we are watching the dismantling of some of the support programs at the federal level, then if C is using those support programs as a designator for qualification, then it means that we're going to see reduced support in that in that way as well. So, we actually are at risk for losing Title One funding in lots of ways um that are scary and that we need to make sure that our state partners know. Um I am going to be sharing

291the map that I created of what it looks like. We have 810 title one schools. I I searched the address of every one of them and I mapped them and it is all 131 divisions have at least to one title one school. um and they are everywhere across the state. This they are um actually far more concentrated in the southern part of the state when you consider just population and they're tied heavily to food insecurity and things and other issues and the percentage of federal funding. And so this is one of those opportunities where Miss Marin, I know you did this work significantly last year. We have to let our partners know in other divisions how essential this is because we cannot just rely on them being able to understand that this is an issue.

292And so I really think that this is a place that our board can come together and kind of work on getting this information out to the state as as much as humanly possible. This is a b bipartisan issue in such a significant way because of the fact that the people who need the funding, it doesn't matter which party they belong to. And so I really think that this is a moment that we cannot be quiet about what the impact is. People often times, I've heard this from multiple sources, will often um say that it doesn't matter what Northern Virginia thinks. And in this case, technically, yes, we have the most title one schools, but we do not have the highest percentage of our schools that are title one compared to the rest of the state.

293We have we have whole divisions out there that every single school they've got is a title one school, and they have to care about this as much as we do. So, I think that this is a real opportunity for us to kind of be leaders in the state and make sure everybody's got the information that they need. Well, that's fabulous. And um since we're um at the end of our time, I would would love to just respond. Thank you so much for sharing that and clarify. So you're saying that Virginia is using the FRM. Yes. Okay. And we are using what is no Virginia in order. Okay. So there's title one money bucket and then there's an what's called the at risk add-on. It's a separate set of money that comes through um Virginia, like

294specifically from Virginia. If I understand it correctly, it actually doesn't go through the LCI. So, this is why it's such important funding because if we can get that funding number right, then it would increase the amount. It would get it the money to the kids that need it. But if they're not going to count C kids, then it means that we're not getting an accurate representation. The formula doesn't work. But this is but this is a moment where we can work advocate to fix it because if we lose the federal funding at least we could be ready with the state funding before it happens. So as I told everybody at the meeting yesterday all of this legislation was killed related to this particular part of JARK in 2024. It was vetoed by the governor. we

295are at a moment where we can get some of our partners at in the in um the general no in the general assembly to bring it back when potentially we have a governor that won't veto it. So I just think that this is a place of strong advocacy that we could move forward with that may have a real impact specifically as the rest of these funds are at risk. Can I just ask a real quick question? And this is because I've been out of that loop. It because I remember working at a school where everybody got free and reduced lunch C. Right. But I would always say we need to fill out the form. And then I was told you don't have to fill out the form. Exactly. So where are we in that? Because

296I would always say I don't care. Fill out the form. We need that. So we're being told by the state if you are a C school you must not fill out the form. That's by the state. They're telling us not to fill it out. That's messed up. So, just on the last note, so Mr. Anderson, I would suggest, can you present at VSBA? Right? That's a way to do this. But I'm writing a next step right now though to the superintendent that says, you know, put together an explanation based on what you provided about Title One that we can use. Um, including the past legislation. We need an advocacy plan. Do we have Right. I mean I'm already thinking about the general JARK stuff but there's there's a lot if if you don't mind I

297think that this is a step because if we are going to chip away and I was sitting next to next to um delegate Bova yesterday and the benefit is is that what he was saying is the JARK subcommittee is actually working through some of these issues and they are trying to go where like the lowhanging fruit is and so I'm wondering if instead of us looking at Jark as this big bucket of money that we're going to have to get right back in there, which all of us would love to have happen. I'm wondering if we can chip away at it slowly. Um, just with this with the success that we have with raising the support cap this year. Um, what is our next thing that we could go after? And this is a particularly

298important one because of the risk of federal funding for Title One. So if we had that ready at the state to kind of be responsive, I think it would be a real path forward that we could be prepared. Well, and that makes sense because we did have success with the four number recommendation number four, but that's because we did the work to inform our colleagues around the state. Look, this is like what we can achieve. So um so I'll put in that next step and um or run by you first and then we can get the advocacy going in all the ways. So and how do you determine what a C school is? Can we just say we're not going to have C schools and have them fill out the forms? Can we do that?

299You So C, the intention of C was free food, right, for breakfast and lunch, but then it turned into a purpose that it was never meant for, which is title one identification. So now we're being told we have to use for any C school, we must use C information. So percentages. But if they have if if you're an FMR student, you still get the free breakfast and lunch. Correct. Where it depends on where you are. So if you're a free and reduced meal school, like so if you're not at C school, you get a free and reduced meal rate. If you're at a C school, everybody gets free. Correct. But but I know I know. So I'm saying it it's still to our advantage because some of our schools are 90% if they fill out

300the form. So only 10% of the kids aren't getting it, you know, because and if they choose not to fill out, I mean, some of them don't qualify, but then that data, we cannot use frm data to identify title one. We're being told to use C data to identify title one. Okay. It's like a catch 22. Yeah, it exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be just like with JARK when it came out like there's going to be an education needed of other electives just to understand what it is and then it's the part to understand where we can act. But we can do it. We did it. So, okay, we'll talk. Okay. All right. Boy, still energized, guys. Way to go. 4:30. You guys can go. We're trying to No. Yeah, we're going to solve

301it right now. All right. Well, thank you everyone. Thanks to our clerk team, um our breakfast team, and uh see some of you on Monday for governance.