001by a moment of silence in honor of former Fairfax County School Board Chair and member Janie Strauss of Drainsville District our board extends our sympathies and condolences to her family and friends at this difficult time the moment of silence will be followed by a performance of the national anthem by the Spring Hill Elementary Strings under the direction of Margot Msvinsky i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all heat [Music] heat heat [Music] [Applause] [Music] heat heat [Applause] [Music] heat heat [Applause] can we hear another round of applause for our amazing students and and our in and our incredible music educators aged item 2.02 announcements miss Dixon has submitted a written request to
002attend this evening's meeting virtually due to a personal conflict issued at a family event and is attending tonight's meeting from Amsterdam Netherlands all those in favor of approving Miss Dixit's request Miss Marin Mr macke Dr anderson Miss Anderson Miss Seismoreheiser Mr moon Miss Lady Miss St john Cunning and myself that is unanimous for board members present miss Dixit will you test your microphone and camera hi sorry you're very popular Miss Dixit thank you all right um did I finish did I announce the vote yes I did uh all right mr mr mcdaniel has submitted a written request to attend this evening's meeting virtually due to a personal conflict as he has child care and is attending tonight's meeting from Fair Fairfax Virginia all those in favor of approving Mr mcdaniel's request Miss Marin Mr makov
003Dr anderson Miss Anderson Miss Seismarhiser Mr moon Miss Lady Miss St john Cunning and myself that is unanimous for board members present mr mcdaniel will you test your camera and mic hello thank you all right we hear you loud and clear if you would like to review a copy of the meeting agenda please see the back of the auditorium to obtain copies of any items or supporting materials being presented tonight please reference the QR code on the agenda or visit fcps.edu/boards tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and livereamed on YouTube and our website at fcps.edu/livestream agenda item 2.03 Holocaust Remembrance Day Proclamation i call on Miss St john Cunning for a proclamation holocaust remembrance day proclamation whereas the Holocaust was the government sponsored systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews who were targeted by
004the Nazis for extermination per the final solution directive resulting in the annilation of 66% of the Jewish population and whereas per Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Eli Weisel the Holocaust is not an example of man's inhumity to man it was man's inhumity to Jews and whereas the Holocaust was a genocide that specifically and intentionally targeted Jews powered by anti-semitism based on tropes and and conspiracies perpetuated for millennia in societies and whereas the distinguishing factor of the Holocaust is the industrialization of genocide to exterminate mass quantity of Jews as efficiently as possible including using gas chambers and whereas between 1933 and 1945 Nazi Germany and its collaborators also targeted Roma people with disabilities and polls for destruction or dissemination based on racial ethnic or national reasons and millions more also suffered grievous oppression and
005death including homosexual persons Jehovah witnesses Soviet prisoners of war and political dissident and whereas education about the Holocaust is a prime method to ensure such atrocities never again occur reversing growing anti-semitism and consider that Holocaust survivors and their descendants including those who are the first generation from survivors live here now in our FCPS and Fairfax community and whereas in FCPS students receive Holocaust education largely in grades 7 10 and 11 as per alignment with state social studies standards for which FCPS educators receive professional development with content from organizations such as the Jewish Community Relations Council Capital Jewish Museum the Virginia Holocaust Museum the Annef Frank Museum the Smithsonian Echoes and Reflection and more now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board proclaims April 24th 2025 as Holocaust Remembrance Day in memory of
006the victims of the Col Holocaust and its legacy from which learning continues and therefore be it further resolved that the Fairfax County School Board encourages every member of our community to set aside moments of their time each year to consider the over 6 million people murdered the heenous heenous result of unfettered hatred and personal commitment to be an upstander for all people's freedom and right to live in peace is there a second second Mr chairman Mr moon all those in favor of the proclamation Miss Marin Mr macke Dr anderson Miss Anderson Miss Seismarheiser Mr moon Miss Lady Miss St john Cunning Mr mcdaniel Miss Dixon and myself that is unanimous the proclamation is adopted congratulations agenda item 2.04 Virginia High School League and academic team recognitions the school board is very pleased to recognize the
007recipients of winter 2025 VHSL state championships and selected performing arts ensembles tonight please stand when your team is recognized after all recognitions are completed individual teams will be invited to to have a photo with the board uh in front of the deis miss Seismarheiser the board would like to recognize the Lake Bradock Secondary School Gymnastics team for winning the VHSL Classics Championship four years in a row the board would also like to recognize principal Lindseay Karns director of student activities Janice Pritchette and coach Michael Cooper for their contributions to the team congratulations [Applause] the board would like to recognize the Chantelli High School boys swim and dive team for winning the VHSL class 6 state championship uh the board would also like to recognize principal Amy Goodllo director of student activities Brendan Shapiro and co
008coach James McKenzie for their contributions to the team [Applause] the board would like to recognize the South County High School girls indoor track and field team for winning the VHSL class 6 state championship the board would also like to recognize principal Samuel Kashaba director of student activities Marvin Wooten and coach Maurice Hutton for their contributions to the team the board would like to recognize the West Springfield High School boys indoor track and field team for for winning the VHSL class 6 state championship the board would also like to res recognize principal um Elizabeth Faucet director of student activities Leah Conte and Chris and coach Chris Pelleigrini for their contributions to the team the board would like to recognize the South Lakes High School basketball team for winning the VHSL Classic State Championship again second year
009in a row the board The board would also like to recognize their principal Carlos Seward director of student activities Andrew Dugen and coach Mike Desmond and team for their contributions to this fabulous group the board would like to recognize the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Scholastic Bowl team for winning the VHSL class 6 state scholastic bowl championship the board The board would also like to recognize their principal Michael Mcai director of student activities David Arthur and coach Julia Fu for their contributions to the team the board would like to recognize the Chantelli High School speech team for winning the VHSL class 6 state speech comp championship the board would also like to recognize principal Amy Goodllo director of student activities Brendan Shapiro and coach Barb Clarity for their contributions to the board
010would like to recognize the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Symphonic Wind Ensemble for their performance at the Music for All National Council Band Festival the board would also like to recognize their principal Michael Mukai director of student activities David Arthur and band director Steve Barlar for their contributions to the group [Applause] the board would like to recognize the West Springfield High School Wind Symphony for their performance at the Music for All National Concert Band Festival the board would also like to recognize principal Elizabeth Faucet director of student activities Leah Ki and Ben director Wilson Gustama for their contributions to the group the board would like to recognize the Cooper Middle School Symphonic Band for their performance at the Music for All National Concert Band Festival the board would also like to recognize
011principal Mori Moren Mclofflin director of student services Dana Cavis and band director Matthew Baker for their contributions to the group we will now pause for photos uh for the proclamation and recognitions honoring the recipients of the winter VHSL 2025 state championships and selected performing arts ensembles uh we will read the recognitions in reverse alphabetical order uh the clerk will um and first I would like to welcome all of those here in support of the Holocaust Remembrance Day Proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the day the board would like to invite the West Springfield High School boys indoor track and field team school staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the West Springfield High School Wind Symphony School staff and supporters to
012please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Scholastic Bowl Team school staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Symphonic Wind Ensemble School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the South Lakes High School boys basketball team school staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the South County High School girls indoor track and field team school staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the South County High School girls indoor track and field team school
013staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the members of the Lake Bradic Secondary School Gymnastics Team school staff and supporters to please join the board for the a photo the board would like to invite the Cooper Middle School Symphonic Band school staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the Chantelli High School boys swim and dive team school staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the Chantelli High School speech team school staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo chair that was our last photo all right board members please return to your seats agenda item 3.01 01 community participation the next order of
014business is community participation we welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening additional information about signing up to provide comments at schoolboard regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the school board's website at fcps.edu/schoolboard during the sign up process community members acknowledged they were informed of the school board's expectation for proper decorum when providing comments these expectations are also available online and with the printed uh agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room we ask audience members to be respectful of one another shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain at their seats including when recording video or taking photos
015we are grateful to those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation and schoolboard members will be listening but not responding before we dive into uh community participation I'd like to recognize that we have a former school board member present Miss Sandy Evans the former school board member from [Applause] Mason madame Clerk please call the first speaker Alexander Mathther do I begin where I'm ready okay uh hello uh today I'm here to talk about the weapons detection policy affecting students like myself we are all very lucky to live in a district in which our leadership cares about feelings of student safety however my peers have not been displaying that students are panicking afraid of being treated like a suspect for the crime of potentially being a victim of school
016violence and critically my piercing and I don't believe that the OpenGate system is capable of keeping our schools safe opengate promises AI weapons detection but what does that actually mean on their website they give almost no information on how their system works saying that if they did criminals would be able to easily break it in other words open gate is a mystery machine that we are expected to simply believe and if we knew how it worked it would fail um even worse when a group of security experts called IPVM tested it they found that the machine was unable to detect even common weapons like a Glock 19 or a switchblade when they confronted CEO Luca Casioli about it he said that the uh weapons detection term is a marketing word and that opengate is identical
017to the metal detectors that were invented in the 60s these metal detectors do not work even the TSA which uses a much more complex system than what opengate can promise misses around 70% of contraband to move through it according to tests by the DHS this is why according to the Department of Education uh schools that install systems like these do not see reductions in school violence to spend millions on school safety even when our county budget is 150 million under next year is genuinely admirable however OpenGate is promising a simple solution to a complex problem fcps deserves better reducing violence is a whole of society issue that should include conversations from students staff community members as well and uh solutions like hiring social workers or improving peer-to-peer relationships are what we should focus on thank
018you for your time sandy Evans good evening i'm Sandy Evans former schoolboard member and co-founder of Sleep uh I was coming here tonight to ask you to vote for a later middle school start time pilot at PO and at Glasco tonight but my understanding is that that motion is being pulled so um I guess I I will start by telling you why I think um you should have been able to do that uh your consultants have done an excellent job of creating costneutral a costneutral pilot at PO and they've promised that they could produce a costneutral pilot at Glasco as well um it's important to do what's best for students so um it's disappointing to us that deeply disappointing to us that you won't have this opportunity at least tonight and we hope you continue
019on this mission because it is important to the health of our middle school students we want to thank Dr anderson for her tireless efforts on this and for those of you who have supported us throughout this effort um I'll make a couple of other points one is that um you're never going to get to the point where there's no disruption for something like this you're going to have some opportunities to see people who are going to be unhappy with this but at the end of the day parents deeply deeply want to see their children have healthy start times and so I would hope that the board could fulfill your promise to middle school parents and middle school students and uh get this done if if there's no action this year it will be a major
020failure of this board and of your superintendent thank you Elizabeth Endy hello I'm Elizabeth Endy a longtime member of the sleep advocacy team who cheered in 2014 when the school board voted to implement later high school start times i saw the world of difference later lighter later start times made for my daughter during her years at Mlan High School thank you Mr mlane and Mr moon were voting yes in 2014 and since your return to the school board last year for your work to deliver on the commitment the board made 10 years ago to also implement healthy middle school start times how much difference does it make if students start school before 8 a.m university economists answered this we find that when a student is randomly assigned to a first period course starting prior to
0218 am they perform significantly worse in all their courses taken on that day compared to students who were not assigned to a first period course importantly we find that this negative effect diminishes the later the school day begins economists estimate the performance boost for middle and high school students as equal to two extra months in school what better investment could you make to improve academic performance and positively impact mental and physical well-being prismatic has provided data that would allow you to cost effectively pilot healthy start times at two middle schools this fall this pilot could give you critical data for a countywide roll out and would provide immediate relief to 2600 students please vote to change the t start time at both Glasco and PO this fall as a step towards bringing pediatrician recommended schedules
022to all of our students thank you cara Danner good evening thank you for your time and your ongoing commitment to improving the well-being of students i'm here tonight to urge you to take meaningful action on healthy school start times this board and previous boards have already acknowledged that our middle school start time of 7:30 is not healthy for young adolescents many students wake up at 5:00 a.m just to get to school on time this is not what pediatricians recommend this is not what's best for students and yet despite the research the data and your own stated goals we have not fixed it the lack of prog progress signals that the urgency is not being communicated or worse not being felt by leadership staff are more than capable of making change when they know it's a
023priority from the top fps has FCPS has already shown that it can find efficiencies even in a short time when Prismatic took a closer look at our transportation systems they identified real ways to streamline routes including cutting stops with zero riders imagine what could be accomplished with just a little more time and direction the benefits of extra sleep better mental health improved focus higher academic performance are well documented please direct staff to do the additional work needed students parents and teachers will thank you let's stop talking about what's best for kids and start showing it [Applause] cooper Jessup Carrie Russo my comments may no longer finally but I'd like to say them anyway um good evening my name is Carrie Rouso and I appreciate the opportunity to present my concerns regarding the Mason District start
024time pilot which would impact Weanoke Elementary where I have taught for 16 years the later start times for PO and Glasgow middle schools schools that weanoke students do not attend would push wayanoke start time from 8:35 to 9:00 a.m currently we are the only elementary school being pushed later fcps is rushing a decision which will immediately place more economic burden on an area that already faces socioeconomic obstacles yesterday the Title One Office reported Wayanoke's poverty rate at 93% a later start time will create more need for before school care for our families this is a financial burden that is not easil easily managed by our families moreover weanoke has worked hard to improve attendance 90% of our students ride the bus with a later start time parents with rigid work schedules who cannot afford before
025school care will be forced to leave young children to get themselves on the bus further exacerbating our attendance struggles the later dropoff times could see our children getting off buses in the dark in busy apartment complexes along major roads where safety is an ongoing concern my last concern is personal i'm a proud graduate of FCPS but I've lived in Lowden County for 25 years where I've been raising my own four children i willingly drive this long commute because of my dedication to Wayanoke families many of my colleagues also face long commutes as they live in Woodbridge Stafford Manasses Sterling etc all of us are concerned that we may not be able to continue teaching at Weanoke with the later start time the pilot was announced with very little warning on April 1 at the end
026of the transfer window and we are now figuring out how a later start time will impact our own families and many of us are facing a difficult choice of having to leave Fairfax County to teach in a different county now that the transfer window is closed thank you for your thoughtful consideration vanessa Hall hi all thanks very much um I wanted to address budgets and safety but I'll talk about safety first um our county was rocked by the violence at West PTOAC High School the community is outraged and scared i'm unfortunately a parent who's received the first worst call that any parent can get yet even I caution you against reactive decisions arming adults in the building does not solve the problem instead it solves the appearance of a problem because armed adults have not
027yet prevented gun deaths in schools metal detectors may seem like a solution but they come with limitations and have not been shown to reduce violence i really love Alexander's research on that in spite of this terrible incident Fairfax County schools are the safest in the country and the safest place for students spending money to harden our schools hardens our children as well and takes money away from critical academics and programs that prepare our children for the outside world so onto a happier subject uh the budget um there's overwhelming grassroots support for increasing pay for FCPS staff i appre appreciate each and every one of you who has advocated shown up and encouraged others to speak since our schools are starred for funding by the governor i did a little research and I was surprised to
028find that the average 2023 county salary was 15,000 more than the average FCPS salary that's a 20% difference our FCPS staff working less hard under less scrutiny or involved in less important work we all know that's not true even when comparing apples to apples you'll find that Fairfax County has paid 20% their attorney has paid 27% more than our own general counsel and I'm surprised by that after seeing his uh incredible legal work in the courtroom staff in schools and Gate House show their commitment to our community every day honestly in this age of culture wars everchanging state and federal whims and constant harassment by paid agitators it seems like they should get hazard pay so please keep on fighting for a safe well-funded educational environment for our students staff and f Chair Fresh that
029was our last public speaker thank you Madam Clerk agenda item 4.01 student representative matters i understand we have a very big announcement tonight so without further ado I call in Miss Sant i've actually saved my announcement for the end but it is exciting thank you Mr chair in light of recent events my heart goes out to all the students the staff and the community affected at West PTOAC that could have been any one of our high schools and hearing from students about what they went through is just horrifying for me thank you to our safety and security teams our school resource officers our office of safety and security that works tirelessly to keep our schools safe and to mitigate incidents like these while we hope that this never happens to us this is the reality
030that we live in and we always need to be prepared with that said the extra money in the budget that we've put towards safety and security the weapons detection pilot these things are necessary steps that we can take towards getting to greater safety and taking the steps that we need to after that we need to do more to promote our tip line so students know what to do in these situations and educate our students on how they can feel safe at school and supported by the county at a recent superintendent advisory council meeting students sat down with our regional assistant superintendent and we spoke about areas of progress and concerns in our schools one issue that repeatedly came up was bathroom access within just region 2 one student mentioned that in their school only three
031sets of bathrooms are open they're locked during class during class during the day and they're only open during passing periods another student mentioned having to walk to the other side of the school near a bathroom not near their classroom because none of the other bathrooms were open in the school another student also mentioned not wanting to visit the bathroom because they were scared about what was inside and then at another school they had no issues with the bathroom all of the bathrooms were open and the reason that I mention this is this inequity between the same schools across one region shows us that students are experiencing vastly different standards of access to basic necessities many students have started to accept that this is normal that it's normal for only a couple of bathrooms in the
032school to be open that it's normal to only go during passing periods but it shouldn't be it shouldn't be acceptable to feel like you can't use the bathroom during the school day we need to strike a better balance between maintaining safety like preventing vaping and abuse within the bathrooms and also preserving students dignity and access to their needs what really surprised me is how different it looked across high schools within the same region i also had the opportunity before spring break to attend the portrait of a graduate symposium which brought together teachers principles instructional leaders and students to share their experiences on portrait of a graduate implementation throughout the classroom our secondary students voices advisory committee which is a group of high schoolers shared their findings on the work they had done throughout the year
033on how POG experiences vary between different schools grade levels and specialized programs and the goal of this was to gain student feedback on portrait of a graduate so we can see how we can revise the how we can better implement these in schools in 2025 and to kind of put it into perspective these high school students juniors and seniors that were on the committee were in kindergarten first and second grade when Portrait of a Graduate first came to be in 2014 so we came back to share our experiences with everyone from the feedback that we collected from over 1,000 student advisory responses and personal interviews to help share with teachers how they can better support portrait of a graduate growth in FCPS what we found is that portrait of a graduate is really used strongly
034in elementary schools through project-based learning exit ticket reflections and emphasis by teachers but it's kind of lost in middle school and high school and kinds of seems to be more of a requirement put in into classes when it's needed but the thing is portrait of a graduate isn't just a requirement it's a real life skill and when you get to high school and middle school and you're balancing all your classes learning how to take tests going through the college application process balancing all of these different things in your life and what you need to be as a young adult this is when portrait of a graduate becomes more important so one thing that our committee really stressed on was the importance of reflection in high school and ways that we can build portrait of a
035graduate into advisory lessons into reflection into that personal growth that you have when you are struggling through those challenges another thing that we found was that incentivizing student involvement in portrait of a graduate outside of the classroom through student leadership programs that are already built like the Madison Wing program or the Lewis leadership program or the Sax and Start program which is given to freshmen at Langley High School when they come in giving them the tools that they need was really helpful so that students could apply it to extracurriculars outside of them and then on top of that it was really inspiring to hear from the other elementary school students who also attended that conference and how they're seeing POG in that classroom and how that translates to high school so I hope that we
036can continue to spread that awareness about Portrait of a Graduate and last but not least to the news the Superintendent Advisory Council held their student representative election for the next school year on April 9th at Thomas Jefferson High School and I am so excited to announce that our next student representative is Faith Mcconen from South County High School where she's a rising senior she is part of our student leadership development program um and I'm so excited to see what she does this next school with ear i worked with her on the superintendent advisory council on goal two and just seeing her lead goal too how passionate she was about the issues i am so excited for what she'll do next year and the passion that she'll bring to this board so congratulations Faith [Applause] thank
037you Miss Sant you will be missed we're very excited though for Faith so thank you Cher Fish may I be recognized yes Dr anderson you can have three minutes um thank you as was shared a little bit earlier in light of some new information um and some feedback that have been received today I do not believe that it will be prudent to bring forward um the PO middle school um pilot program at this time um so I did elect to withdraw it from consideration for this evening um however I have been in conversations with Dr reid i've been in conversations with the consultant with Prismatic and there appears to be some opportunities to continue to review the Glasco Middle School um component of the report there were several next steps that have been identified which
038would essentially given with given a little bit more time uh may result in bringing that recommendation in a costneutral way um while the timeline is not ideal um Dr reed has confirmed that she will continue to have those conversations with Prismatic so that the board may have um that report to consider during the next meeting and so um while we weren't able to move forward um on one section I'm hoping that we can have some good data that we can review at the next meeting regarding the Glasgow I um the Glasgow component for the justice pyramid i deeply appreciate all of the feedback and all of the support and all of the advocacy of the community that have come here and have written the letters and have done the work and I'm hoping that we
039can be successful because we do know that having um a healthy start time with kids the research has already been clear that doesn't need to be restated we just need to find a way to make it happen for our students here in FCPS in some way or other um I did also appreciate Dr reed's comments during the Mason D the Mason Crest community conversation yesterday speaking about that this is some going to be something that's going to happen in the very near future and having an opportunity to pilot it to work out the kinks would be important um so Dr reed I'm not sure if you wanted to share anything else as we discussed the timeline is not ideal but we will we will do what we can thank you Dr anderson agenda item 5.01
04001 action certification of closed meeting compliance in order to comply with section 2.2-3712D of the code of Virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on April 24th 2025 to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such business matters public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting do I have a motion miss Lady do I have a second mr moon all those in favor miss Marin Mr macke Dr anderson Miss Anderson Mr dunn Miss St miss Seismarheiser Mr moon Miss Lady Miss St john Cunning Miss Dixit and myself Mr mcdaniel are you voting he's
041abstaining um Mr mcdaniel you're abstaining am I correct yes that's correct all right uh the motion passes agenda item 5.02 an action item confirmation of action taken in closed meeting i call on Miss Anderson for a motion i move to remand the school reassignment appeal of a student who fought another student and caused a disruption at school to the division superintendent for further consideration based on the discussion in the closed meeting is there a second second mr moon all those in favor miss Marin Mr mavine Dr anderson Miss Anderson Miss Seismore Mr dunn Mr moon Miss St john Cunning Miss Lady beautiful background uh Miss Dixit or Mr miss Dixit will you verbalize your and Miss Dixit and myself and any abstensions mcdaniel abstains mcdaniel the motion carries agenda item 5.03 action social studies basil
042instructional resources i call on Miss Marin for a motion i move that the school board approves the titles listed for the social studies as recommended by the instructional resources review committee and instructional services leadership is there a second miss St john Cunning miss Marin would you like to speak to your motion it's been a welcome opportunity to review a bit more the social studies materials that were presented last week and discussed last week the board did have some conversations about how professional development for these materials would go about and also we wanted to be sure that the materials were accessible um meeting not just digital but that students had hard copies of materials especially in those years when they have standards of learning um and also so families could help um students see you know
043at at home and what's happening um I did want to note that the purchase of the international baloria books for grades or uh curriculum for grades nine and 10 aligns really nicely with observations that I just received from the board's uh ac advanced academic community advisory committee uh that early entry to IB for students in a certain number of courses will help with that rigorous coursework trajectory uh that we heard our superintendent talking about and even so opting in opting all the students in right can give them that exposure so that more are exposed to it and shown that you know we do believe that they can attain high levels of of rigor so I was pleased to see that group of of community members you know further validating what the superintendent's been doing and
044what we've been talking here so I did just want to ask a few questions um the professional development since that was something that Oh we going to wait i don't Okay sometimes we did not have the presentation in there so I just went right along yeah dr reid would you like to have staff present to the board yes sir that's what I was wondering we will give Miss Marin back a few seconds of her time so that she can get into her questions when the presentation's over okay thank you yes sir all right thank you um I'd like to ask our assistant superintendent Noel Cleco to provide a presentation this evening and so Miss Flamco thank you Dr reid and and thank you board i first want to thank you while they're getting the presentation
045up for giving me a second chance to to um really bring these books forward and provide the additional information um uh for those of you who are watching and may not have tuned in on April 10th we did talk with the board about the process that we went through and the titles and all of those all of that information is posted um on board docs tonight if you'll go ahead and switch to the next slide please tonight the focus is really following up on some of the questions that we heard from the board last time and and as again I welcome the opportunity to bring this information back to you all the first being some additional information about um international balora then as Miss Baron just sort of set us up for a little bit
046more about the professional development plan and finally we did some additional costing there was definitely interest from the board to look at buying more uh print text so we wanted to give an idea of what that looks like so if you'll go ahead and go to the next slide miss Maron was sort of just mentioning how um uh for our ninth and tth graders at our IB schools they will be um receiving the textbooks uh for the social studies courses just like all of the other courses because our IB coursework really begins in 11th and 12th grade i think that um for those of you who aren't familiar with IB it's important to realize that it's a it's a slightly different um uh approach than our AP classrooms in that it doesn't have um it's
047not a survey course so for our classes that stand in place of our standards or honors classes out of grades 11 and 12 we have actually three classes history of America topics and world history and geography but within those courses teachers make selections out of a list of topics to focus in and go deep on certain topics so it's a little bit different than a textbook that covers a large um breath of information and the resources they need are a little bit more detailed so we have been in touch with all of the IB schools collecting understanding um what they are currently using and um they do use a variety of print and digital resources for sure um and we do have an existing central contact uh contract for an IB text um that goes
048across content areas called Cognity um but we do recognize that as we are launching new things for others it's important to not um to be sure to be sure that we have what we need for IB so you know we're committed to working with the schools to identify that they have IB approved resources and um and have parity in spending if we are buying the AP resources then we should also be helping the schools with that purchase and we've done some estimating based on the AP purchase and how many students we have enrolled in those upper level IB courses that meet core graduation requirements and we believe that would be approximately $500,000 to to have that parody so um we don't have something to bring tonight obviously that it will take a little bit more
049time to dig in but um we do have um a plan for moving forward if you move to the next slide the next uh thing was around professional development plan um I feel like at um a lot of things in this county our elementary language arts implementation and professional development has become the gold standard right that's what we that's what we really are like we want to do things to that level but we do need to keep in mind that not all basil resource adoptions will be the same as that particular one keeping in mind that for elementary language arts we really were changing the way teachers teach language arts so it was a significant shift to the pedigogy it wasn't just a new resource um for them to to learn so for social studies
050it may not feel like we have a plan that's quite as rigorous and and that's true but that doesn't mean that we don't have a plan that will be appropriate um given the situation we find ourselves right now at the opportunity to introduce a new resource at the same time when we are uh bringing new standards in most of our courses so what you'll see up here is the professional development is really going to focus on the new resources but in the context in the context of the new SOS that are also being launched um by VDOE so and we have estimated that the cost of PD will be $400,000 if you would like to switch to the next slide I'll talk a little bit about the kinds of things and what we're we're looking
051at so we do have a staff development day which is a day on contract so there's not a cost to that um where we will be doing we the all the asynchronous model uh modules will be available to anybody and everybody in the school system um so that we can start to just break in and get some groundwork done we know there are a lot of things happening on that day but we want to make sure that we can catch some people before they even leave here and and get some things introduced we will have two symposiums an elementary and middle school one and then a high school symposium um and those are not only about the new materials but they're also um in courses where where we have standards changes because there's um just
052a few courses where there's significant changes to um what the content is then all through the summer our plan is to offer a variety of optional summer virtual offerings i know that virtual isn't always preferred but when we're trying to capture people in the summertime when they have child care and vacations planned we're going to offer just a a variety of summer uh virtual offerings where they can be walked through obviously the asynchronous materials would also be available but these would be things where they could have some more support then when we return to school on August 13th we have another staff development day and that would be an in-person um staff development to help support this and then we know we're going to need some ongoing so we'll work with our different um groups
053of teacher leaders throughout the first quarter it will go beyond the first quarter i just ran out of room on the slide so just gave you a flavor of how we will launch this if we go to the next slide um so this one let me just take a moment to make sure you all um see what we've done here so keeping in mind that when we purchase these books we're purchasing um the books and the digital licenses for seven years so we make the one-time purchase and we keep them for seven years which is our cycle um our typical cycle the first column after the grade and subject where it says digital and print for all there was definitely interest in buying a a print textbook for every student and so if we were
054to do that we would be buying a digital and a print license for every student for every course and when you take um when you add them up for all the different courses that we buy centrally and add the shipping it comes out to just about 17 million plus another way we could look at it is we could look at buying digital for everybody and then buying class sets so when we buy class sets that means each teacher typically gets 30 books um and so then they some of those books different people do it different ways if a student needs a textbook then they usually check one out take it home and there are some copies in class so there's a variety of ways for students to access the print copies and then the final
055one that we that we presented last time um was kind of a mixed bag so digital for all grade level sets for elementary class sets for seventh and eighth grade and then 40% books so it's more than a class set for high school there for more students to be able to check them out i would say a class set really comes out to about 33% so this last um this last column is about 40% so that is what uh additional information I've brought for you tonight i'm happy to answer any questions um and clarifications um that you have thank you very much Miss Flamingco and we will rewind and pretend like the beginning didn't happen except Melanie already spoke and now she's going to ask her questions miss Marin thank you it's really uh this
056is really interesting um so the questions well first of all I mean if we want to save a million bucks can we rent some U-Hauls and some of us go on a road trip and pick up these books i mean wow that's a lot of money for shipping um I wanted to know more about the professional development and you did explain that Miss Clemenco and also regarding last time you were talking about print sets i believe the board was interested in making sure the classes with the SOS and the elementary grades had print and I so I just do wonder maybe Dr if you're interested has an opinion on this but like if the grade four through six get their own individual books like do we want each kiddo to have it so that's just
057like one permutation that maybe Yeah so with elementary right elementary because teachers have one class they get they basically it's the same you'll see that the price you see how the price doesn't change from column one to column two it's because buying buying one for every student and buying a class set is synonymous at elementary okay um there was a question that I'd asked that I think was a bit little more complex and would need explanation but you know we're also going to have the math basil review on the horizon soon and so when I'm for me when I'm looking at this like what's the budgeted amount for this purchase do we need to be thinking about the budget amount for the math purchase and um what was the question I had i'll just leave
058it at that for a moment if you could speak to that like what what's the budget we should be looking to spend for this resource i believe we budgeted at most 17 million uh for social studies so if we go with column one we would be 641,000 over um what we budgeted for social studies and columns two and three give us a little um space and this money is already in the FY25 current budget is that correct okay um all right i will leave it at that for now thank you thank you Miss Marin miss St john Cunning would you like to speak to your second no I just really appreciate the extra information and the extra time that um you um you took to give us this information so I appreciate that you did
059that thank you uh Miss Anderson okay so I can't gloss over I had this conversation with Dr to read earlier this week i can't gloss over so can you talk just for a second about why it is so um astronomically expensive to ship these books well actually I think part of the reason um is because they're going to the schools and not the warehouse to be distributed to the schools and so there's a certain extra cost involved with that um having said that we certainly could go back as a staff and try to press for a better shipping rate because I agree it does seem like even just renting a 18wheeler i don't know if I want to drive it but um it does seem exorbitant to spend that kind of money on shipping yes
060I I would love for us to pursue other I mean I did basic research after I saw this today um I did bake to ship an entire container from China is like $6,000 so I think that we're just I understand that the the drop shipments are are excessive like excessively expensive i don't understand fully why we're not utilizing our warehouse to mitigate some of that cost um and so I understand that that would be it would be an undertaking but it does seem like it's a significant cost savings if it could mean that we would get closer to being able to have more books with kids i what I could do uh Miss Anderson is do a you know a contrast table if it was a drop ship to schools versus drop ship to the
061warehouse and you know come up with some options for us i just I I know that renting an entire like 18-wheeler full of like it can't be a million dollars so anything we can do to mitigate that expense in I think would be an a very appreciated um endeavor here um we've had some questions from staff related to this specifically um and I'm going to go through what I understand about how this is all working and so please correct me if I'm wrong when we implemented benchmark that was based on a state mandate to implement a basil resource for language arts is that is this the same type of mandate no no okay so this is our decision to create a standardized social social studies platform this is actually I think this is twofold one
062um there is a curriculum review cycle that if we want to stay current is every seven years in Fairfax County and there is a um we looked at curriculum committees even that the only requirement is to convene every seven years so I think so and then secondly there are new SOS that we want to be responsive to um so that's another piece as well as one of the things I know um this board has been very uh focused on is trying to provide similar experiences across the county so having a basil social studies curriculum uh really enables us to do that i think that it's an amazing opportunity for our staff um I don't necessarily think that they can um see it that way at this exact moment because it seems like a lot coming
063all at the same time so I would hope um with our professional development plans are we coming up with with plans that would help show how the existing bas the the new basil resources can ex can overlay immediately so that it is not put on each individual teacher to determine that yes we what we do is we take um sort of the planning and pacing guide and we integrate it with the new the new resource yes okay because I think that that's going to I think that as we're talking about this with staff we need to stress those opportunities that we're going to be we're going to be pursuing to ensure that it's an easier roll out for them because I think that as as we've gone through benchmark and everything else it's been a
064heavy lift particularly for our elementary teachers and I'm concerned particularly when we've got math coming i know math won't be this next year for them but that's that's a pretty significant lift over over just a few years to deal with three different sets of curriculum and so I would really like us to do whatever we can to spend the time with our instructional folks to make sure that we're providing whatever resources we possibly can to make that a lighter lift for them all right we're going to take a fivem minute recess because there are some process and motion questions that need to be resolved before the board continues fivem minute recess [Music] board members please return to your seats board members we have enough to begin business but barely so please return to your seats
065all right so in a moment Miss Marin is going to um speak to the motion there's some confusion among colleagues around the slide and what the board's direction is tonight and as the finishing point of the Basil review committees we're not voting on contracts tonight we're voting on the titles of the materials that we are choosing for the students so that should bring some clarity and Miss Marin's going to speak to that point miss Marin yes thank you um so to clarify you know usually when we do our basil adoptions we vote on adopting the titles that have been presented to us and so those are listed in the motion and that is what the vote will be about and we can certainly each offer input on which options seem most amendable um you know
066cons this money is already budgeted in the FY25 budget but it doesn't escape me that if we save some money here and it's okay for the instruction we could maybe use that for other things like paying our teachers so but really when we talk to our teachers and our staff knowing what they need the print for all really seems too much that it wouldn't be as useful and when we think of little kids shleing their textbooks back and forth it might be a lot um as well as again with the math adoption that's going to be a textbook so now we're talking about kids bringing two textbooks back and forth um but so it seems that I've talked to a few people briefly before the middle column that so it's digital for all and and
067printed class sets for grades four through 12 right so every teacher gets a set of 30 although in the middle grades I believe it gets to the 40% is that correct Miss Clemenco in the middle column yes um it's class size it's class size okay so like a high school teacher who's teaching five sections of history would that mean they get 150 books or No a class set they would get one class set of 30 one class set of 30 for all their sections right so they'd use them in class or they could they could check them out um a lot of our students would probably choose to use the digital option okay well and the last thing I'll add is I just went through this with my own daughter trying to help her uh
068study for a World War II exam and not knowing where to go for that content and so I'm really um optimistic that the content resources will be better available so I'm in that um anticipation I think going more with digital on this is is the way to go so for me I'm I'm okay with the middle column but I do continue to support the uh proposed materials that are listed in the agenda thank you Miss Mayor and Dr anderson all right thank you before I get started on some of my comments and um questions I do want to echo what was previously shared by Mrs anderson regarding the shipping we have to be able to explore every pos I'm sorry I don't know where to look we have to be able to explore every possibility
069to do that differently a million dollars for shipping just seems to be probably not the most um conservative thing that we can do especially given our budget climate we need to get that down so I'm looking forward to whatever chart you can produce Dr reid regarding what the various options would yield we are on the uh postage path awesome thank you um a question that I had originally and you started to speak about it um Miss Kenco but I don't know if I'm 100% clear the 40% means that it is a class set plus one more if you could just detail that out for me a little bit so um a class set is is 30 is 30 books right um and 40% is 40% of I'm trying to think oh 12 of 120 so
07048 books so the difference in column two and column three right or when I say two and three that of the options a class set would be 30 books the 40% is 48 books okay 48 books so in in at the elementary grade it's pretty easy because you know you have one teacher the teacher gets the class set everybody ili utilizes it how does it work at the high school level is it the teacher who's if I have a teacher with multiple preps do I get a class set for maybe the one prep that I have to teach this course multiple like multiple preps of the same class like if they're teaching five sections of something of of world one they would get that's not what I meant like if I'm a teacher let's say
071I have three sections of you know history and two sections of government do I have the all of the books that I need for Yeah you would get class sets of each i get class sets of each okay because you're teaching both courses um I I guess one of the questions that I had was regarding which options you all were recommending but I think that has been um taken care of i do appreciate the followup regarding the professional development a question that I did not understand clearly is there an asynchronous option for high school teachers or is it June 12th for everyone so June June 12th is when um we will have the asynchronous available for everyone yes it's not just elementary those are available for high school teachers as well and then on June
07224th and 25th and then we have the symposiums and those symposiums are when teachers are send I'm sorry schools are sending one individual and then they'll come back and do the training come back and then we'll have um virtual all summer long for any teacher to sign up for for all the different grade levels okay thank you um I hope that if we are if we are able to realize some savings and the shipping perhaps we can reallocate some of those um funds towards some more in-person opportunities for teachers who might want it and I'm hoping you can keep some sort of list um listing of that kind of an unrelated question but Dr read when you are envisioning the math textbooks for students is that going to be one per or is it a
073class set it must be one per it must be one per because one of the discussions were having here was how a kids going to store them carry them so if they have to store and carry a math book we essentially don't have that question anymore because that would be applicable here so one book versus two books for me is kind of moot um so having said that you know I was very much leaning into the middle section um and I think there might be some opportunity well I'm just going to throw out that is Was that my Can I have a go back please yes mr dunn can you please clarify if the digital and the uh print are identical sorry yeah the text like the units and the texts and yes they are
074the virtual does have um enhancements right and things like it can read you can click on things and it can uh help with vocabulary or it can be read aloud or um uh movies that might you know the the book only is a two-dimensional thing right so there will be enhancements in the digital but as far as the the text yes it will be the same so so there's nothing that would be in the print that would be missing from the digital is that right no okay um can you clarify uh my colleagueu's question there was a the example was or hypothetical was a teacher has three sections of one class and two of another does that mean the teacher would get five sets or the the presentation says there'd be one grade level print
075set for each school so does that mean if there's four teachers teaching government one that there would only be one print set for the entire school no each teacher would get a class set of So if there's four government teachers each government teacher would get a class set so if that teacher is if each teacher is teaching multiple sections of the same class they'd use the same class set for each of their classes correct and so if you had but that would make it difficult for students to take books home because that might mean that students in the next class wouldn't have the opportunity to to access the book isn't that true what we find is that children now that we're one to one they have their computers so they can access the the text
076on their computer as well not all students choose a print book but that was some of the reasoning for the 40% right if we buy teachers like a 48 instead of 30 there's a few extra there's there's a little bit more for letting students check them out i'm sorry I'm not following the 40% can you clarify or just explain what that means first of all I just am so sorry this is so confusing and I appreciate everyone's patience with me so there's different ways and and all of this is is very alikart like we can do a lot of different things for grade levels but in the middle column it talks about class sets so if a teacher has five classes of world one they're going to get one class set of 30 books and
077they will use some if there are students who um you know sometimes IEEPs say they need a print textbook they get a textbook or sometimes a family just says we need a print textbook then teachers have uh in the past check them out um to students for for a period of time or for the year and they will have digital in the and that is what is in the middle column class set for grades 9 through 12 when you look at the last column it says 40% so if we base it and we base it on teachers having 120 students I know they have more than that 40% of 120 is 48 books so our original proposal to you all was 40% to give a little bit of cushion to that class set for those
078checkouts if that makes sense so you wouldn't just buy one class set you'd buy you'd buy 48 books instead of 30 so there's like and each teacher would have 18 books that if there were students who needed to have a print copy at home for a reason right because we're going to have class we'll have books in the classroom um so it was just to give a little cushion in our original recommendation uh Dr reid can you clarify what your intention is with respect to these options that are shown on the slide well I think we need to start by going back to the publisher and seeing if we can get a better deal on delivery costs i guess I would also just do a double check that we've um winnowed the cost as best
079we can this was uh if you will a um oh recommendation in terms of where we were at this point in time a draft of the possible costs and see if we can get costs down a little bit more i do think classroom sets at elementary make sense uh and I do think textbooks for middle and high school students that they are able to take home at middle and high school make sense while uh Miss Glamco is correct that there are students who uh prefer digital there are many students who don't have uh consistent or dependable Wi-Fi at home and therefore digital is really not accessible to all students uh so I think it's important that students not also feel burdened to have to ask to check books out because sometimes that feels like you're
080being an exception and we really want that to be a natural thing students receive a book that they can take home and be prepared uh for class i think uh so my intent would be to make sure that we have print text available for all middle and high school students for sure i think grades four through six the classroom set makes sense um and that's tanamount to a textbook for students i think it's less likely at elementary they would be taking them home and back um but it could happen because we don't have a lot of time during the day with uh you know the literacy and math coming up social studies and science i think that it you know if possible there could be some reading uh prep for social studies that could be
081done at home if possible thank you i I strongly support uh all physical textbooks for every student in middle and high school because for the past 600 years since the invention of the printing press are the progress of our civilization has depended on books and I also support you know expanding as much as possible uh the availability of physical textbooks in our elementary schools because if uh you progress all the way through sixth grade get to middle school and for the first time you have a textbook I think that's going to be a rude awakening i think there needs to be some introduction of textbooks along the way to socialize that textbooks um just from being human you know our our our entire base of our species is engagement with something physical not something digital
082right although technology is attractive um I think studies have shown the physical textbooks are are superior in terms of academic outcomes so um as your proposal you described I I will support um the hybrid between the middle and the left option but I I think we do need to look long-term more at um basing our our learning on what's worked for the past 600 years um and not on the the digital which does not seem to have been as as successful in maintaining productivity growth rates and economic growth within our country over the last 20 years thank you thank you Mr dunn miss Anderson for a go back i think Hi wait a second mr moon has his light on i apologize he's not yet spoken mr moon okay thank you uh Mr clemo I'm
083going to ask a very very picky question uh comparing a second column with a third column just for grades seven and eight look at those two numbers for under second column for grade seven and eight what they are getting is digital plus print class sets correct under second column yes under third column they are also getting digital plus print class sets for grade seven and eight so they're exactly the same thing except there's a price difference do you think they fit yes i believe I transposed those two digits and I apologize for that one and nine was flipped in one of those columns okay that answers my question thank you thank you Mr moon i apologize for skipping you miss Anderson I just wanted to also share that I am I I believe that the
084center column is probably the best option um partially because I have um test shoppers for us and I can tell you that I doubt that I would ever be able to get my ninth grader to carry his textbook back and forth and so I do think that it's probably a good idea to have the physical copies at school and be able to use the digital copy at home where possible but I do understand that we've got some connectivity stuff that's going on for different kiddos so maybe we can look at those areas that we know we have the significant connectivity issues and offer something different for those kids that are necessary rather than just do it based on everyone so if we have a school where we know it's one of the questions we're asked
085whether or not we have internet access at home so if we know we have internet con concerns it could be that we could utilize a different purchasing for that for that particular area um but yeah I I am the other concern that I have with having textbooks particularly at the high school level um is I know that we have been actively working to take some of those locker banks out as they're no longer really being utilized by students as significantly um and so I do worry about what's going to happen whether or not if you're depending on unless you also have a class set i don't think I think the the process of carrying back and forth plus a laptop isn't necessarily going to happen so that's what I get nervous about thank you Miss
086Anderson um we were sidebarring that we'd be happy to run a U-Haul put on some black bandanas maybe and drive out and pick up the books ourselves save us some money um we'll just we'll work on the schedule um all right Dr anderson for go back i do have a large vehicle i've carried lots like a whole hoorde a whole troop of Girl Scouts so I can take some books um just going back a little bit I I want to make sure that I don't get lost with some of the points that I wanted to make which is regarding the IB um Miss Clemenco just so I understand while you while you have listed here on the slide that there are options to standardize IB resources these will be options that will be actualized it's
087just that you haven't developed what exactly that they will get but there will be funds that are earmarked for those IB schools yes okay terrific thank you um Dr reed I think I got lost in the sauce here a little bit i thought I heard you say your at well your preference was to have a physical text for middle and high school okay okay thank you it's not that necessarily that they will carry it back and forth because some will some won't so would you then anticipate that in the classroom there would be more um dependence on the digital copy because would it be a cla a physical copy for kids to take home and a class set you know I think that um the internet or the Wi-Fi is more predictable at school yes
088so if I were to use um you know if I were to look at again the most accessible uh opportunity the I would probably use the digital in the classroom consistently i think that in every school community we have students who are living in spaces that do not have reliable connectivity at home uh and in particular perhaps not to be able to use extra features um that might come in a digital text um I think having it available is great but relying on it um as a basis for graded assignments I think would not be um something that I would support i think the text availability at home is critical and that is pretty much consistent with what we have talked about in v in previous conversations um regarding math or regarding any textbooks because
089we have parents that are willing and wanting to support their kids but they're not unable if it's in this locked up space for a lot of reasons so I'm in full support of having that physical copy at at at home because we do have more reliability and no one is singled out in the school setting when everybody has to open the laptop that they carry back and forth every day um my one question is because we have a delineation between grades four and six and grades seven and eight what does it look like for the three middle schools that are not clean so will the sixth graders at Glasco Homes and Poe have whatever it is and then the seventh and eighth graders will get the physical copies where will they fall i have not
090talked to Miss Clamco but I would anticipate the sixth graders would have since the seventh and eighth graders have actually more access to written text that sixth graders in a seventh and eighth grade school would also have more access to that text because they don't have a home room they're moving from class to class so we would mirror that okay thank you thank you Dr anderson seeing no others we will vote for the motion if the clerks could put it on the screen please again we're voting on the titles here if you have additional feedback for the superintendent you can share it with her um after the meeting whenever all those in favor of the motion that is arriving on the screen all those in favor Miss Marin Mr mcavein Dr anderson Miss Anderson Miss
091Seismarheiser Mr moon Miss Lady Miss St john Cunning Miss Dixit I can't see you miss Dixit has left okay mr mcdaniel all right and myself all those McDaniel votes I sorry and Mr mcdaniel uh all those opposed abstensions mr dunn the motion carries congratulations thank you all right agenda item 5.04 action strategic plan goal five report leading for tomorrow's innovation as a reminder the board has already had an extensive work session on this topic so board members are not obligated to raise the same questions or comments that are already on recording and available for you to viewing at anybody's pleasure at double speed so thank you Chairman Fr good evening board members this evening I'm happy to share some highlights from our goal five work session that Mr fish just referred to for the public
092we did have a comprehensive session on April 8th where we had a chance to discuss data related to this goal and the full report is posted to board docs so just want to make sure we center ourselves in goal five which is leading for tomorrow's innovation which is really um an opportunity for us to be future ready here in Fairfax County there are eight measures in goal five um and this evening we're going to be focused on measures C through G first of all what is graduation equity when we think about that we've talked about um the statement our equity commitment is that we want to strive for all students to graduate with a plan and a way to demonstrate their qualifications for post-secary success whatever they choose that to be so this report looks
093at several related factors um that you can see on slide and why this matters uh is it's really the culmination of many of our earlier efforts from PK through 12 and 12 plus in some cases um it we want to make sure we're thinking about supporting student growth and learning in earlier grades regular attendance and facilitating access to and success in advanced courses so let's talk take a look at uh on-time graduation first and FCPS and Virginia calculate on-time graduation rates based on the percent of students in a graduating class who've earned a standard advanced studies or applied studies diploma so essentially the data on the screen uh shows some changes increases and decreases but across the board we continue uh to meet um targets that uh we have set uh for this work so
094looking at slide eight um our on-time graduation rates have increased by 10 percentage points for multilingual learners classified as levels one and two which is a significant increase in our data points this was uh while these uh data are still not where we would like them to be we are making um significant progress year-over-year our former multilingual learners had a rate of on-time graduated graduation that exceeded the division average at over 97% so what we know in that far right column is once our multilingual learners exit the programs that are there to support them they actually graduate at a significantly higher rate than all students so um there's a lot to celebrate there last year we want to we want to make sure we take uh look at our freshmen on track rates because we
095know graduating credit ready or graduate or leaving nth grade credit ready um means there's a high likelihood that students will graduate on time so we want to make sure that we follow these data points and don't wait until students are seniors to track uh credit readiness so really proud of the team that we're looking at this level of detail as students are completing nth grade we've also had a really lengthy discussion at the work session about the impact of the state's new school performance and support framework and graduation rates beginning this year the four-year graduation rate will account for 10 to 15% of a school's overall accountability score within the new framework and this is going to be slightly less than it previously um counted in the last column the new six-year graduation measure effectively
096recovers most of the diplomas for students needing more time to complete high school or needing to access the applied studies diploma so at this point again the graduation rate with these additional two years and broader diploma acceptance the six-year rate is only about 6 percentage points below the traditional on-time graduation rate however note that the six-year graduation measure will only account for 5% of a school's overall score in the new state framework we want to make sure and we're going to talk more about this not just tonight but in the coming weeks uh so that our community better understands how these graduation rates are going to be factored into accreditation um of our schools let's look at the student dropout data and again we have declining rates of students dropping out last year we saw
097improvements in these rates across multiple student groups again with the largest improvements uh for student groups that we've had real significant challenges with the rates of dropouts uh in looking at our multilingual learners they're improving but they vary uh similar to the on-time graduation data we saw large improvements for our level one and level two multilingual learners and our former multilingual learners had dropout rates that were lower than the division average so leaving with a plan and a diploma it's hard to believe but we're getting close to graduation time so I can't wait to see all our students as they uh celebrate the end of their career here and the beginning and the launch um out into our greater world so each year our high schools administer administer a survey to our seniors to determine
098if they have a post-secary plan for students who completed last year's senior survey 99% had post-secary plans a rate that was similar across all student groups so um we're very excited uh to have that data point and uh proud of that work for most seniors those plans include college um the majority of seniors um at the 88 to 87% this is a really high rate particularly for a school division um our size want to mention that the percent of on-time graduates by diploma and student group again this was for SY 2324 there are differences in diploma outcomes by student group which was similar to the baseline and if you recall goal four we have measures around academically intense course taking patterns which will begin to um shift these numbers quite a bit in the coming
099years i think next year we'll begin to see some real differences in the following year um even more significant differences most students who plan to go to a four-year college have earned an advanced studies diploma we do see that the majority of students who are planning to attend a four-year college do pursue the advanced studies however there are differences between student groups again as we deepen our work with the ABL group and focus on both consistent academic advising and enrollment we expect to see changes in this data as well we also know that 79% of FCPS graduates enrolled in college within 16 months of graduating and this is across all groups uh it's a higher percentage than the Commonwealth and other divisions in Northern Virginia in addition to monitoring students post-secary plans we also have
100access through the National Student Clearing House that reports on both two and four-year programs on this slide we're looking at state reported clearing house data that provides information on enrollment in college within those 16 months of earning a federally recognized diploma 79% of our graduates from the class of 2023 which is the most recent year met this criteria so our strategic improvement efforts focused on graduation equity last year again we saw improvements that we attribute to consistent structures and systems in place at the school level that use data that identify risks um and provide personalized support dr pon uh Miss Lemon um the teams that have been out working with schools our region offices uh really and our school-based uh staff have done a lot of work uh to make sure that we have systems
101in place um that and structures that are effective uh our efforts focused on student attendance last year as you recall also resulted in large improvements in the rates of chronic absenteeism and last year particularly with seniors as you can see on the slide we have both uh new and continuing actions related to these strategies and our goal teams actually have done some reporting even this week i didn't get to um sit through all the presentations yesterday as we had several things occurring uh but our goal team reports which include principles and central office staff um have just done some phenomenal work in these areas and I'm just really proud of how they've pulled data together and um not just made plans to continue processing the data but actually plans to engage and um make difference
102make a real difference honestly in the data which affects and supports our students um so key takeaways in SY 2324 as you can see um our graduation rate was 94.58% for a division this size which is incredible with a 3.81% of students that dropped out and we saw increases in on-time graduation and improvement and dropout rates uh with the greatest improvement in those areas where the gaps were the largest we met our overall targets this year and are on track for our overall 2030 targets and goals however we're going to need to make sure we continue the support and that's why we're counting on our county uh partners to support our budget transfer so we can continue um our arc of progress towards our 2030 goals mr chairman this concludes my goal five presentation thank
103you Dr reid i'll call on Dr anderson um thank you i did it again we have a different way of doing this now just one moment uh I call on um Mr moon for a motion thank you Mr chairman i move that the school board approve the goal 5 strategic plan report for SY 202425 thank you is there a second um second thank you uh Mr moon would you like to speak to your motion just a briefly and perhaps I also have a couple of questions or comments is I think a report spells out a a shows a reasonably satisfy satisfactory progress on graduation rate and and reduction in dropout rate and also postsecary plans that our students certainly have on their minds those are really all good uh we hope that we will continually
104continuously improve on those those measures as well in the future going forward however at the same time I am really looking forward to you know next year's report because uh if you if you look at the report itself the measure G and measure H are going to be a add in next year's report 25 and 26 especially one regarding a uh student perceptions of opportunities for innovation because uh if you go shoe please bear with me i'm trying to go between two different reports here uh under goal five uh under equity commitment H is a students innovating and preparing for the future uh you Dr re you and I had this conversation earlier today we are in the age of artificial intelligence and that is changing so fast are our students prepared ready to go
105into the world of artificial intelligence as they graduate from us i mean that's the kind of conversation I would really want to have a a for the next year's report yes sir thank you Mr moon dr anderson um yes thank you uh one of the things that we discussed during um the presentation back on April 8th and I probably spent the majority of my comments on this were around the diploma types the diploma types um and pulling up the presentation from that meeting um it was slide 32 had a section where it said to be determined just to have some conversations regarding goals since then you have provided to the board um because I also requested that much appreciated for giving us that information in terms of how um what the diploma types looks like
106across our schools and it's anywhere from 7% to 84% so wide range across our schools um one of my major advocacy points when looking at this data um that was provided on the ETH is that it looks very similar to the data that we had the year before why are we not having any targets to that end and I still don't see any targets for diploma types um so if you could speak to that please yes ma'am i as I recall and we discussed with the team uh there was a bit of a reluctance I think at the time of the work session a year ago on setting targets um and attributing there was a I think I recall a robust discussion about the distinction between standard and advanced diplomas in particular and um what
107type of course taking patterns would lead one way or the other and I I don't know that I felt um or the team felt like there was a consensus around how um how do I say what ratio the board felt was targetable that doesn't probably sound right but what would be our goals with those because it's not would so anyhow I don't know that the team am I saying this right Miss Neil there wasn't a consensus as we looked back in the notes and so then the question is I mean staff can set a goal um around um advanced versus standard diplomas I do think that we also need to make sure that's part of our ABL work right making sure that students across the entire county have access to the most rigorous courses um
108but then there may be students who will choose to take that standard diploma route and perhaps do um take other a different course path so I think we're still in a space where um where we're working through what we think would be a reasonable ratio for those and I guess I also would be curious um about the board's uh appetite for setting targets within those two diploma types well I I certainly think the data require that we set targets because when you're looking at this list it has all students at 66% of advanced diplomas yet there are some groups that are significant outliers multilingual students are at 23% students with disabilities are at 22% black students are at 52% Hispanic students are at 45% everyone else is somewhat kind of closer or above the average
109we have an achievement gap this shows us this and so I'm struggling with staff not being able to wrap their minds around the fact that there's a gap here that should be closed because we do address those same kind of gaps in many other areas where students elect to do different things and we also had an extended conversation with Dr bell regarding the the able work in terms of how that could impact this so not having any kind of target is for me just dismissing this gap that exists so the reason we retained and are working with the able group is to make sure that we provide access to those advanced courses for all students i mean that's why that's why we're doing that work i think the setting of targets trying to make the
110determination in terms of the cohort experience because when students begin high school is really when they begin that path towards a diploma type right either standard or advanced and often that's determined again by mathematics and where they're going to start because that can determine the level of science they're able to take and so forth so I think that we would want to roll any type of target into a cohort model with incoming ninth graders um and we're happy to set those targets um so I I will have staff make that across the board then and we'll just move in that direction if that's something as a result of our discussion um you know that certainly is something we could uh explore but at the end of the day we want to make sure the courses
111are accessible at all schools to all students right and you've just described multiple efforts which again are very good efforts we appreciate that but targets help us to measure the impact of those efforts whether it be an ent a cohort whether we're starting with ninth graders or the entire high school group having some sort of target keeps us keeps us focused it measures the efforts it really gives us on time data i mean that's what all the dashboards are about on time data in order to course correct this just seems to be missing and I'm I I don't understand why i personally would like to see some sort of target whether it's a cohort or across the grade levels because it tells me that we're paying attention to the fact that achievement gaps exist here
112yes ma'am and I I do want to share that we do have dashboards around course taking patterns um and advanced course acquisition so we will be providing year-over-year data which should show growth in this area um but I'll take that as a um point to note thank you and my second question um also speaks to this area i'm very curious to your thoughts when you reviewed how that the 25 high schools presented themselves when this was disagregated what came to mind what were some of the aha moments and what could that potentially lead to well for me one of the most significant aha moments again was around our mathematics sequences and they look very different at this time around the county and we're working very hard um I know the ISD team is working very
113hard on compacting curriculum and working with staff uh and we're uh Dr pon and his office are working with principles in terms of master scheduling uh and the high school principles are working with um Dr garing and our ABL partners to make sure that course scheduling is occurring in um consistent ways across the county our DSS's are part of that conversation and making sure that um our students are uh even in some cases and I didn't uh I will at some point this spring here share our algebra dashboard that actually went student by student with their um so scores their performance in their current class etc so we were able to look at a student by student course um registration uh plan uh where some students I think were not advocating for themselves or families
114weren't in similar ways across the county so we're really trying to look at every bit of data and make the best course placements uh possible thank you it was Thank you it was that was weird Miss Lady thank you Chairman Fr um thank you for this report uh I think that uh there is a lot of good news in here um and I really do um appreciate your leadership around um high standards for all students and pushing all of our students to achieve at their at their highest level um I do have a question on slide 19 um which indicates the clearing house data is this 79% of the kids who started college or is it 79% of the kids who self-reported and intent to go to college because when you look at the other
115slide 16 that's self-reported data that's an 88enter but but when we look at 16 months in is it 16 months in those who started 799% are still attending miss Neil sure so Miss Lady this is a report that the state generates using national clearing house so it is looking at the students who earn the federally recognized diploma who started college at any point in time so the denominator is our kids who graduated with the federally recognized diplomas who enroll in college at some point in that 16-month window so the 79% doesn't necessarily represent that 79% of our graduates overall were enrolled at the 16-month point that that is correct right and the reason I bring this up is I really believe in transparency and when you click on our website in the about FCPS we
116share student self-reported data and you have to have a keen eye around this this data to know that that's not reality i'd like some clearing house data on our website and even in this particular slide it delineated because if I don't ask these probing questions it's misleading um and I know we want to be transparent i I just think it's important um but I also want to say that what we have in terms of our collegegoing culture is phenomenal when it comes to other school systems in this entire country um and we are we are among if not the best um to Dr anderson's points um I if if we have some schools whose advanced studies diploma numbers are low I understand targets but I'll also tell you that I have worked with lots of
117families in my career where I advise them not to get an advanced studies diploma because they wanted to be premed so do bio do chem do AP bio do AP chem that's not three sciences from three different scientific areas you have just forfeited the advanced studies diploma we have just introduced AP human geography in nth grade maybe you don't do world one world two because you don't do two world histories you don't get your advanced studies diploma people need to understand that what we're talking about with the able work is the priority which is having access to high level coursework and the advanced studies diploma was created in Virginia back when we didn't have school counselors and we we didn't have collegegoing cultures we have today it was kind of a way of saying "Hey
118if you want to go to college then you should you should take these courses which are above the standard." Um but we have lots of kids who don't need that sticker but have incredibly impressive transcripts having said that in some of our schools where we really see that we're struggling with access issues I think we do need some targeted goals around advanced study but I just want people to understand I'm not comfortable with a blanket increasement of advanced studies diplomas for the whole county because I often advise families not to pursue that because that's what's best for their kid thank you Miss Lady mr dunn I wanted to ask about IB diplomas um because uh there is a a a vast disparity in my experience from attending graduations last year between uh the number of
119IB diplomas received at different schools and uh and I' I'd like to see um as part of this graduation equity um more effort devoted by FCPS on a on a system level basis because you've rightly said we should be governed as a school system not a system of schools to ensure that um the IB curriculum especially the full IB program uh is is made available to a broader number of students because it is an amazing program and I think of our generation on this dis um perhaps we don't have a full appreciation for the opportunities that exist with IB diplomas today um because you can get much more college credit uh with IB than with AP in many instances and IB B teaches critical thinking whereas AP teaches more wrote memorization so I wondered if
120you could talk about what your what your intentions are or if you have any plans uh or thoughts about how to ensure greater um implementation or consistency across FCPS of the IB program so I think I I don't today have any plans to expand IB to other schools in the county i I don't mean to expand but just where it is right now if it's being underutilized so there I would agree with you Mr dunn there are different um numbers of IB diplomas depending on the IB schools and in some cases remarkably different um I I wonder um I've wondered why that is and I know I've asked uh staff particularly at the chief of schools and in chief academic officers I know to look at uh what those um percentages are and really be
121thoughtful about the opportunity and again it's somewhat different right the opportunity to take IB courses versus that whole sequence of courses exams and you know leading to the IB diploma um I don't know that we have specific plans but I'm going to ask maybe Dr presidio Dr pon if you have any thoughts because I I think it's a fair question no it's a it's a great question and I think you've already framed it pretty well um the courses are available the full slew of courses are equitably available across all of our IB schools um I do think when you look at the enrollment numbers in some of those courses in particular you see differences across schools so that's one of the areas that our IB high schools are going to be working on when they
122work with the ABL team to look at getting more kids in a more rigorous academic trajectory um so we definitely have a lot of work to do there i would say with the diploma though um I think we have to be a little careful about using the number of students who achieve the diploma as the success measure because that still comes back to that individual choice just like we were just talking about with advanced studies um and I'll just say just you know you're not going to find a bigger IB proponent than me i was an IB student an IB teacher an IB principal and I'm an IB parent um and IB students if you take the full load for the diploma you sacrifice a lot of elective choices when you do that so I
123think what we find is some of our students are perfectly capable of earning the diploma um but they might choose as Miss Lady mentioned earlier to take additional coursework in other areas of interest whether it's elective areas or other uh courses within a particular discipline that they might be more interested in that don't put them on that track for the diploma so again I think it's one of those areas where we have to be careful and our area of focus right now is not looking at the number of diplomas earned but looking at the enrollment in IB courses and trying to get greater parity in enrollment in courses across the division and and in some ways that that um we we have to start earlier because IB if you just encounter it first time in
124in high school or if you encounter it at a middle school where it's not implemented effectively and you may not be familiar with it right there's there's a little bit of um education that still needs to happen with our local population to um talk to them about the benefits of it both for um obtaining college credit as well as for teaching critical thinking which is I think in our society going to lead to a more successful career ultimately whether whether it's in a mathematics scientific or uh liberal arts field um can you talk a little bit about what what you might have in store or in mind for how we can expand um to elementary schools or implement more effectively at middle schools again I given our current budget uh situation we know that IB
125or the PYP primary years program is more expensive because uh the professional development the coordination and so forth at elementary so I don't believe there are any plans on the books at this time to expand uh in our my middle years program there are not plans to expand either now that's a different question though than effective implementation of those and I um have to I have to hope we're effectively implementing our PYP at MYP uh but we certainly can take a look I believe those are externally reviewed by IB on a cyclical basis so perhaps what we can do is provide the most recent cyclical review to the board in a Friday letter i think would be um appropriate because I don't think I've forwarded one since I've been here um but I do know
126there is a an external review that's correct okay thank you yes sir thank you Mr dun miss Seismore thank you and I appreciate the conversation i just wanted to pick up a little bit on um I think what Miss Lady was talking about and in terms of um in terms of having a um for an advanced diploma I think it's important to make sure that students have access to the advanced diploma to make sure that they have the opportunity you know and they're encouraged to take the classes and they're also ready for the classes which we know we've talked about with our elementary school making sure about advanced math and things like that um and I think if there's disparities and who's getting an advanced diploma looking into the reasons for those disparities are important
127from school to school to understand that i just wanted to be careful about setting a target for more students to get the advanced diploma because I think one of the things that makes FCPS so great and valuable to is the breadth and depth of the variety of classes we have i know Miss Lady talked about the variety of the science classes and people who might be going to a certain field but I'm thinking of our CTE credits and our greatmies and we keep talking about the certifications our students can achieve and how they can help kickstart their careers or into colleges i'm thinking about the arts i'm thinking about DECA and I I want to be careful that we're sometimes when you have targets for more of an advanced diploma which is very academically based
128then it devalues and maybe disincentivizes what Miss Lady talked about with the counselor really looking at an individual student and saying what is your goal and how would you be able to get there and what would be the best path to get you there um and that may be an advanced diploma that may not be an advanced diploma maybe a scienceheavy path maybe an arts heavy path maybe a you know hey you want take a look at this great CT credits you're very interested in cyber security whatever it may be and I don't want to accidentally and unintentionally disincentivize those because we've had target sets for the advanced diploma i would love an advanced diploma that actually looked at multiple paths for advanced coursework right you know where you have a strong academic basis and
129then if you have students who want to do a lot more science right there's a pathway to an advanced diploma for five multiple AP classes in science or an advanced arts or I just think that would be great to have but that's a state level conversation that's not a local conversation but in the meantime I don't want to accidentally disincentivize our principles because they're trying to be understandably be a target from making or counselors from making sure a student can be counseledled in the way that's best for that student but looking at disparities and trying to dig into the reasons why and making sure access opportunity readiness and encouragement are consistent across the county I think would be really great things to look at yes ma'am thank you Miss Seismarheiser dr anderson um thank you
130can you put back slide 17 please oh I I just want to make sure that that comes back up here because I appreciate both of what um my colleagues shared definitely spot on but we can't see this slide and not have questions regarding our economically disadvantaged students our multilingual students our students with disabilities our black students and our Hispanic students i I don't see the slide and not see what is it in the words of Jason Morgan is he there we have a revenue problem we have an access problem and this is the same slide that showed up last year so yes I am still on my target train because this does not just speak to choice because there's no way we have those students and those groups making the choice to do other things
131in these numbers that to me does not compute thank you Miss Anderson Miss Lady yeah I I'll be brief i made one other note to myself down here and that was um have we ever given any consideration to teaching world history one and eighth grade um because that will that will help your advanced studies diploma numbers in my opinion but we have surrounding jurisdictions who do this Arlington does it I believe I think Prince William does it I think that there are actually and I don't know what else they're doing but there's a possibility that some of those students are coming into high school with like three or four standard I mean um so credit courses like they're coming in with like four high school credits so that's I'm just going to put that have
132we ever considered doing world history 1 in eighth grade i don't know but I will ask uh Miss Clemenco what I would say is I don't think we've ever put it forward to to ser seriously consider it i think there's always been a question about how many high school courses do we want to push down in middle school um where they start their their high school transcript um it's something that could be discussed for sure well and I think along those lines because I can appreciate that but I think along those lines um there are lots of colleges that turn a blind eye to the grades that actually are generated from high school courses in middle school um just like we have some college like University of Delaware if you get the advanced stud and
133you take Spanish one and eighth grade and then Spanish two and nth and Spanish three and 10th you're not eligible to go to Delaware because you didn't take three years of oral language at the high school level right so there's all these kind of intricacies which again I'm going to advocate for better professional development for our counselors around college preparation and how it diff Stanford doesn't even look at nth grade right not that I'm sending kids to Stanford but I'm just saying that there's so many different ways that things are evaluated but what you hear more often than not is that the middle school grades while people proceverate on them because they're part of a GPA um they're not as much of the evaluation from a college uh reader perspective so I just think we
134should check it out and and we can ask more and more of our colleges what their thoughts are i don't want to you know run with scissors um but I do think it it's it's not hurting our surrounding jurisdictions it's actually helping some of those kids and and helping them get to the advanced studies diploma which is one of the things we're talking about thank you yes ma'am it it would be interesting too to Dr anderson's point if we're doing some practices in some parts of the county and some not that are disproportionately impacting students so I will make sure we take a a close look thank you Miss Lady miss Anderson I just have a quick question and I'm learning in public a little bit here i'm hoping it's not something I'm supposed to
135already know um is the diploma type one of the new things that's in the accountability and accreditation standards i know that advanced level courses or dual enrollment are part of it i don't know about the new or the differentiated diploma types i'm still sort of learning these multiple diploma types coming from a state that didn't have them we had a diploma not diploma types no okay so that would be another reason why focusing on advanced coursework and not necessarily just diploma type would probably be an important thing across the county certainly to the extent um that we need to get these numbers in a better place that it's cohesive across the board um or a better representation for what is appropriate for our kids and that indicate access but I'm just maybe not focused on
136the actual type of diploma but focus on the access that's behind the diploma type I think is part of it well I Yes ma'am and I I think you know when you look at this chart that's up it's hard not to um postulate that there's something else going on absolutely and I think individual choice not to speak for my colleague but I believe that that's what I mean it's hard to look at this and not recognize that there are the same the same patterns that we're seeing in a lot of our our issues and so I I want us to make sure that we're increasing that consistency and access opportunity that I think that we talk about every time we see a goal report because it is the same groups of kids that's that tend
137to have the larger gap that we're trying to to reach and so I understand the desire but I also am very cognizant of what Miss Lady was just talking about in terms of wanting to make sure that we're actually preparing kids for what they want to do in the future and giving them the opportunity and not being as worried about the diploma type so I do think some of this will be some of this access is resolved around mathematics and I will be sharing a little more about our light bulb uh data project which really um really put shined a light hate to say it but shined a light on a variety as we sat even in senior leadership and looked at students uh data points it was very surprising There were a number of
138students that actually by data were better prepared to be in the next most rigorous course who weren't than students who actually were and we you know we can theorize that parents advocated to put them in or there was some methodology by which they were placed there but there were many many students that we then met with students and families at the school staff level and moved them into the next most rigorous courses so I think we're going to see these data points move as well as we really dial down to the student level at each school and that's the level we're working at right now i'm so excited to hear more about that as we move forward because I really think that particularly as we talk more and more about how much of math as
139we know it right now is review and how lost kids get in the boredom of factor of it where math really should just be exciting and fun um but yes I so I really want those opportunities that we can push kids so that they have the staff that can push kids even when they may not have those cheerleaders at home for lots of different reasons and so I think that to Miss Lady's point as well having that that eye towards professional development for our counselors so that they can be part of the driving force behind that push is important yes ma'am thank you Miss Anderson mr done i guess I'd like to understand whether there's a formal plan and maybe it's you know within the scope of the strategic um plan but is there something
140written down saying you know for these groups blacks Hispanics multilingual learners economically disadvantaged that we are you know here today and by 2030 we want to be there and this is the way that we will um you have it i don't I don't know if you'll be able to achieve you know parody with um white students and Asian students by 2030 but you know if we if we cut the difference in half right um that would be significant right and and that's what I'm trying to understand like how how formalized for these groups which you know may reflect you know historical legacies but but now we're at a point where we need to overcome those historical legacies and make sure every child is receiving a world-class education and in my experience at least unless you
141have a plan you can't really get anywhere we um we reviewed goal plans for goal five actually yesterday afternoon and there were some very clear uh plans and we want to vet those plans right and that those goal teams include central office and principal school-based teams and central teams and as we vet those strategies then it's fullbore ahead just like we've done with a number of other topics I've reported on this year uh you have a generic on slide 22 a generic uh pursuing strategies too uh but we have some very specific data tables um that u I probably won't share in a more public setting but could um at a different setting that are very uh directive and uh very specific and we've got attributes of what those theory of action plans look like
142uh yesterday I was really impressed we went through also our multilingual learner plan and um that champ gold champion team did a really nice job about separating I think it was policies persons and practices the three Ps and so not just and I I was just really proud of them because they're not just talking about professional development or policy changes but what actually is going to happen and how is it actually going to look different so I think we're going to continue to make the progress i mean we had some double- digit gains here in goal five in a number of areas so um I think you'll see a lot more detail uh very shortly what I'd really like to see is you know as as under your leadership and the school board you know
143we reestablish Fairfax County as the gold standard for public education one of my frustrations coming into this is that there just seemed to be so much more art than science and we've been educating people for hundreds of years um we should be able to apply a scientific approach right there's innumerable research studies and it sounds like you are putting together you know a roadmap to success to student achievement to overcome these disparities that have existed for decades and I would just ask that as you're going down that path that you um document what you're doing so that you know we can then publish you know our results and how we achieve that so that other school systems can can follow our model assuming our model is successful because uh we should not leave others in
144the dark where we can be the light yeah yes sir i appreciate that i think one of the things that the team here for example we talked about SAT scores we have over 70% of our students taking the assessment and still maintaining a higher score than the Commonwealth the country and the world and in the Commonwealth there are around 50% of eligible students taking it so when you think about 70% that's around opportunity access and the scores are excellent right so the team that's sitting over here and the school-based team that they represent are doing incredible work um and so anyhow I appreciate that and I'll make sure that we continue that path thank you thank you Mr dunn will the clerk please place the motion on the screen all right all those in favor
145of the motion as listed on board docs and in the agenda item and on the screen Miss Marin Mr mackeine Miss Anderson Miss Seismheiser Mr dunn Mr moon Miss Lady Miss St john Cunning and myself with two colleagues away from the table all those opposed dr anderson abstensions will the clerk read the vote should be the vote is nine to one the motion carries thank you very much thank you Dr reid you're up i call on Chair Fresh for I'm sorry 5.05 action item um award of contract solar power purchase agreement at 15 elementary school sites i call on Chair Fresh for a motion i move that the school board approve the implementation of a rooftop solar power purchase program at 15 elementary school sites and authorize the division superintendent or the chief operating officer
146to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board is there a second i second chair Fresh would you like to speak to your motion yes this was on the consent agenda and I pulled it off for two real reasons is one to highlight the progress uh we're making on the school board's critical jet climate and carbon neutrality goals another is to elevate this student inspired work were it not for the passion of our students advocating for solar on the schools we probably would not be here today and and so where are we today here's where we stand our one school pilot project is finished nine more schools are in design and going to permitting next month and tonight we will approve 25 more schools which should be finished with design permitting
147and installation in the next 12 to 18 months that's 17 more elementary schools five more middle schools and three more high schools and it was not easy getting here we faced a lot of hurdles we had trouble finding the right partners then in 2022 Dominion Energy revised its interconnection requirements which freaked a lot of people out in Virginia uh because they would have significantly impacted the costs of solar projects across the Commonwealth particularly for those being planned by school divisions and local governments the change risked exploding the costs um by hundreds of thousands of dollars perhaps even millions of dollars for different projects um and it created a lot of uncertainty and so how our staff responded to these challenges tells the story that we should be talking about tonight because they did it incredibly
148smart to keep the ball moving forward and to save us money in the process they planned these projects to fall beneath Dominion's 250 kilowatt threshold for that interconnection rule so these projects will not be impacted by that price gouging and by the way our friends in Richmond are working to address that that gouging additionally our staff negotiated this is my favorite thing a rate with an escalation uh they negotiated an escalation rate of zero over the next 25 years that means that the rates we pay today will be the rates we pay until 2050 i'm sure some of us will still be on the board then all of this ties back to the incredible energy conservation work that we've been doing in FCPS uh to be good stewards of the community's tax dollars for years
149since 2014 FCPS has reduced its energy use by 31% surpassing the goal set 10 years ago for a 20% reduction and resulting in more than $100 million in savings these energy efficiency measures have resulted in a substantial decrease in greenhouse uh gas emissions contributing to sustainability and helping us combat climate change so I want to thank Dr reid for helping to get our jet work moving again these solar projects are evidence of that i want to especially thank our office of division council our office of procurement services and in particular Janice Samansky and the entire sustainability team within the office of facilities management none of this incredible work would have been possible without your tireless incredible and innovative work so thank you [Applause] would you like to speak to your second Miss Marin yes this
150has been a long time in the works it's been four years 2021 and unfortunately that theme of things taking a really long time in Fairfax County seems to permeate a lot of things so I I'm really pleased that we have the fortitude to go on but if we want to establish green goals that we want to meet and save money we can't take four years to do this kind of project uh that said we plan to have a savings of $3 million over this time and I do want to highlight that because one of the things during our budget advocacy right now to the board of supervisors is saying that we have become as lean as we can uh to include saving over $800 million spanning the last 10 years and those categories include compensation
151savings uh class size increases uh fee increases uh we've um been able to to do some things but we are always trying to look for savings and so we did send a statement today to the board of supervisors about our budget advocacy saying "Look we've done what we can we need the funding to fund what our executive has has told us to do." So I will let one of my colleagues speak more to that letter later but this is just such a prime example of how we are trying to do the right things in this school division by students by employees by the environment and by taxpayer dollars so um and I also do just want to highlight that further down on the consent agenda we do have even more schools listed uh to get
152solar on the schools so this is just fabulous and thank you to Miss Samansky and her team Mr dunn well I think anyone who uh has studied the the utility sector and uh has looked at projected rates uh for electric use in Virginia uh and see how they're expected to skyrocket as the number of data centers continues to explode um would be grateful for having stable electric rates for uh the next 25 years um and I think you know this isn't just beneficial from a climate change carbon emissions perspective this is fiscally responsible and I appreciate the enormous efforts that have been made to save money because when you save money this comes out of the operating budget and that operating budget is the same budget that funds teacher salaries and other popular things uh
153so I wanted to emphasize that this makes sense from a taxpayers perspective as well as from an environmental perspective and that's why we should continue to explore every avenue to save money and uh be more sustainable in our operations thank you seeing no other speakers I will call for the a vote for the motion on the screen all those in favor looks unanimous for everyone present in um with Mr mcdaniel and mystic sit away from the table all right thank you agenda item 6.01 academic matters i call in Dr reid so lots of excitement this evening our academic matters segment focuses on advancement via individual determination or our AVID program and how our recent efforts to expand AVID directly support our school division strategic plan as many of you both on the board and at
154home know AVID is a K12 college and career readiness program backed by over 40 years of research in teaching and learning it prepares students for success by equipping them with the skills to navigate rigorous academic courses which connects to our earlier report and prepares them for future college andor career trajectories avid implementation and FCPS has grown considerably over the last few years in the upcoming school year we had three uh 23 additional schools are going to come on board 21 of which are title one elementary schools and this will bring the total number of AVID schools to 76 and the link in the slide provides a breakdown of where our AVID schools and FCPS are it's actually really an exciting time in our school division uh to see all of the younger students coming on
155board where they set those patterns early and the foundational skills that are um so critical to closing opportunity gaps um at both the elementary and secondary level ad AVID is designed to be a schoolwide model where teachers use high engagement strategies in daily instruction and you can also see that there are certain strategies often called the wicker strategies which are embedded and are really helpful um across the board for students the AVID elementary program lays a foundation of essential skills necessary for future success um and provides a rigorous learning environment it's really been exciting to visit some of these schools and visit with students as they explain how it's made a difference for them finally um the ultimate goals of AVID Secondary um build again essential skills necessary for academic life and career success avid
156tutorials are a core AVID strategy that supports students as they access higher level courses and as you can see in the picture from an AVID middle school class a tutorial group includes five to seven students and an AVID tutor who helps facilitate the inquiry process students bring a point of confusion from their core classes to AVID if they can find a point of confusion and with the help of their collaborative with group they present their question and work through a structured process to gain a deeper understanding of the content and honestly it's a great way of showing uh their thinking and making learning more visible and I think that's um just a really key strategy for group work later in life as well so um these uh programs are only possible with high level professional
157learning which is where a lot of the cost for the AVID program also exists educators who attend AVID summer institute uh and they train and collaborate with their school teams to establish um their SIP align site goals for implementation uh in fact I asked one of the principles this morning at all county principles meeting i was asking what fun summer plans do you have um it was our Mount Vernon Woods principal actually i said "So what fun summer plans?" And she said "Well our school team's going to AVID." And I thought "Well that's exciting right the get to get away and do AVID professional development." So um I just think that the time our staff spends during the summer to work on their craft uh is what makes so many of our principles and educators
158um be able to do the magic they do during the year so um anyhow lots of excitement uh you can see some of the comments here and the work that uh staff are putting into this we also know that AVID supports the FCPS strategic plan and um I'm really pleased to share the data on the screen uh because uh both our strategic plan and the AVID program are committed to excellence equity and opportunity at the secondary level the AVID elective is designed to appro improve and provide academic support to students who are engaged in rigorous coursework many of the AVID schools have incorporated AVID into their individual school innovation and improvement plans and this year over 74% of AVID eighth graders are enrolled in algebra 1 or higher which is seven points higher than the
159divisionwide average and the divisionwide in percentage in addition 86% of AVID seniors have taken at least one APIB or DE course when you include honors courses in that equation the percentage increases to 97% so I think as we talked about the slides in goal five AVID Mr dunn is a very researched 40-year practice to improve strategies for access and this is one this has been one of our key uh theories of action along this uh point of view in FCPS many AVID students are eligible for free and reducedpric meals and are also enrolling in rigorous courses and planning to attend college at higher rates so here are some thoughts uh or if you will uh students staff and families and um one of the things I know that as we visited elementary schools it's really
160fun to have elementary students explain their binders how they're organized and they like to hold them up and shake them and nothing falls out which would be different than the binders I recall toing around as a student when you had to kind of hold it this way so that the papers didn't drop out um but teachers and counselors can cite how AVID compliments division initiatives like benchmark and how its organizational systems instructor structures have increased schoolto family communication um I just think that uh we also have a father of three AVID students who shared how grateful he was for the impact AVID has had on his entire family um I just think being organized is such a key skill to learn um and that uh personal management of our materials from a young age uh
161really matters and as we transition next year to recognizing homework again is an important uh and key aspect of our educational experience the AVID program really is going to provide some structure um in how we do that so Chairman FR that would be academic matters this evening thank you Dr reid we'll get started with Miss Seismarheiser thank you and I appreciate the presentation i appreciate the hard work of staff and and this um especially the staff at the schools who are implementing the AVID program i've heard really great things about the success stories but in that realm when you talk about sort of the proven data strategies do we have data in our system when you're looking at a school where AVID was like maybe before AVID got there and after AVID got there in
162terms of the difference it made it'd be good to sort of or maybe comparing schools with similar populations that do and do not have AVID so I'm wondering if we have any of that data ourselves well we did look at data on slide six uh and that's not uh preschool and postchool but I know we've been keeping some of that data related to school improvement plans dr pon do we have some that you could kind of put your hands on data around schools that have implemented AVID maybe how their performance has improved after uh from before or Dr for Presidio do we have anything like that that we've collected we could run it um we definitely have access to that data so we could do that analysis if it would be helpful so we could
163provide something to get back to you on that i've just heard anecdotally so much about it and these numbers are fantastic but it would be good to kind of see uh you know how is what's the difference in terms of the schools that have and don't so yeah if you if you can that would be great um just as we're looking at continual improvement of our programming i am again I've heard great things about the AVID program i've visited some of the classrooms and the teachers and staff have talked about it i am a little surprised that the presentation has zero mention of executive functioning skills because I know in the last four or five years when I've talked about the importance of executive functioning skills and embedding them in our classroom is one thing
164that's often been brought up to me is AVID as a place that they're taught and practice but I know we talk about the wicker skills in here that's probably what it's built around but in the presentation and I I bring this up because we we talk often about those learn to learn skills and the executive functioning skills and how they underly a student so much of a student's ability to be successful right and yet we don't talk about it much outside of the special ed realm and the reality is that executive functioning skills are important for every student right so I I'm just surprised at the missing piece of that here so I'm curious are they taught it sounds like the binder organization is but are they taught in that including the self-regulation and planning
165and all that or are they not well I think the planning obviously the goal setting is a part of AVID um and clearly the wicker strategies are scaffolded organizational skills i in terms of the intersectionality between um executive functioning skills and AVID I think there is a strong intersectionality um Dr presidio do you maybe want to elaborate on that yeah absolutely and I I appreciate the question because there is some overlap um as you mentioned for sure with executive functioning skills through the wicker strategies in Abbott uh very specifically when we talk about collaboration skills when we talk about organizational skills but we also know that executive functioning and teaching executive functioning has been a priority for our school system for the last several years so we didn't want to give the impression that we're
166adequately covering executive functioning skills with just the AVID program and we don't have the AVID program right now in every one of our schools so we didn't make that connection but there's definitely a connection here what I will say um is that through our advisory program and through and that's responsive advisory at the elementary and then our advisory program at middle school and high school we do have explicit executive functioning skills as part of that curriculum um at every grade level and even in the schools that don't have AVID we've embedded the wicker strategies into advisory so that they're getting those note-taking skills study skills as well uh via advisory that's great to hear and I appreciate that i just the reason I bring that up is because one thing I know we're trying to
167work on Dr reed is kind of ending the siloing of some of these conversations so having that kind of embedded throughout different areas where those skills are actually focused on it's sort of a very natural way to end some of that siloing so I and that's why I'm glad it's in advisory because that's another way to do it but I think it's important to name it as we do it so that way it doesn't go oh executive functioning that's for this group and this is for this group because I think it's an important thing for all families to realize too so I just wanted to put that out there is something that I would have loved to see in this presentation um I have a question also on slide two it talks about how these
168strategies for both elementary and secondary are embedded um in elementary says into instructional routines and existing curriculum in secondary it says um incorporated into trained site team members classes schoolwide strategies could you talk a little bit more about what how that looks embedded because one of the things I've talked for many years is we can't do these types of skills in isolation so I'd love to learn more about how it's taken from Abbott embedded throughout the day because that's what this unless if I misread that let me know but that's what this implies to me yes ma'am thank you it's a great question because I think not uh again this is a trained site team members classes so I don't know that the implic maybe the implication is broader than what the practice maybe I'm
169misreading the slab that's what how it came across to me is that no you're you're not misreading it at all and perhaps we oversold it a little bit but I hope not um because I do believe that this is happening uh schoolwide uh the main reason that we chose to emphasize that point is I think sometimes when people are familiar with AVID they just think about the tutorials that we focused on in some of the other slides and those are really important for the students that are taking that elective class but not all of our students in the school take an AVID elective class right so again as part of the training um the AVID staff work with our faculty to talk about how do you take particularly those wicker skills the writing skills the
170reading skills collaboration the inquiry skills right the organization skills and how do you teach those and embed those and reinforce those skills in all of the classes in the school so at the secondary level you can think about trying to do that you know focus note-taking in a social studies class or a science class for example at the elementary level you can think about those teachers you know it's actually probably in some ways easier because it's one teacher with the same kids all day long so they can find the appropriate places um to build on those practices that they're being trained by the AV uh staff with i appreciate that i just would love maybe I don't know the date some more information about how it's kind of strategically and systematically being done because I
171do think that's a really important point you can't practice and teach these skills in isolation i think it has limited academic impact so perhaps at a later date get some more information how that systematic embedding is happening but great program great presentation i appreciate it thank you Miss Seismheiser mr dunn uh can you elaborate just on uh whether this uh program is uh fully implemented at all uh elementary schools and all secondary schools for the schoolwide models that are described in the slides yes sir it it is currently not at all elementary schools and all secondary schools we have been adding numbers i know for the last two years and there is a cost attached to implementing AVID at a particular school um and I don't know again whether it's Dr pon or Dr prescidio's
172office that has those growth numbers we really worked through title one uh we wanted to make sure AVID was going to be provided at all title one elementary schools um but and I can't recall how many we've added i know we're adding 23 additional schools for the coming year and 21 of the 23 we're adding in the coming year are going to be title one schools and as uh slide two I believe um shared actually it's probably not up there but we have a total we'll have 76 of our 200 schools be AVID schools by next year and I don't know where we started but we were a lot less than 76 well yeah I mean this year for example we're at approximately 50 so it's a pretty dramatic increase and and I really appreciate
173the partnership with Dr pon's team because the title one office sits in his department and we've really focused on expansion to all of our title one schools for next year so the academic office and the chief of schools office have been working together on this initiative would it be possible to receive a list of all the schools where it's implemented and and then a list of all the uh oh and the expansion that the Yeah that that link right there um does link to the list so we could publish that in the Friday letter if that would be helpful but it is right there on the slide so uh I'm I'm proud to to be uh the representative for the Mount Vernon district because Gunston Elementary was the first elementary school in FCPS uh that
174implemented Avid Elementary and it was actually the first uh elementary school that the founder of AVID witnessed Avid Elementary in action um so uh you know something I've seen is that AVID I think was originally designed or at least implemented within FCPS to assist title one communities low uh low-income communities but I'm seeing that the same lack of um and I'm hearing from many constituents that at all income levels um just as kids today don't know how to program a VCR because it's a foreign technology uh they also don't know how to get organized how to take notes like basic skills that we take for granted that we assume at a certain income level kids know how to do in the post-pandemic world they don't they just don't at any income level and so parents
175are coming to me and saying "Hey where is the class where my kid learns to take notes?" And I say "Well AVID." And they say that I go to my school counselor and and I'm told that's not for my family right and so um I I do appreciate the expansion of this program but I do encourage it to be implemented systemwide because I think you know in our digital world um unfortunately we've lost many of the skills that used to be more uh taught I guess at a in a family setting uh or taught in elementary schools and might not be taught for whatever reason anymore i appreciate that and I I think part of why we're providing this at title one is because there are title one funds to support the implementation and professional
176development and we can provide that scale um because I believe every student benefits from AVID there's just no question about that where we're in this budget strap time over the last couple years uh title one schools do have extra dollars to enable us to uh roll this out and some schools have been able to carve that out of their budgets but uh point taken i was going to ask how much is it for each school right now do we have a round number i was trying to recall yeah I off the top of my head I don't know but we can get that i apologize but we I can get that for you in a Friday letter but I I think as we think about planning definitely there's a a plan if not the whole
177AVID program at least the wicker strategies um you know having those be something that uh are available across the board yeah if if you could share just the budget numbers of what that would cost to implement at every school systemwide and maybe if there's a different cost at elementary versus middle versus high school versus secondary school 7 through 12 that would be helpful to know um I'm also just concerned because our definition of what is a title one school has changed significantly over time and I think recent materials I saw said for a high school you have to have 75% low income or more which um I think it used to be much much lower like half right i mean I think if you have 51% low income that's a title one school but it
178seems like we have differing definitions and we're stretching those title one dollars more broadly and so there are schools that are technically not title one but might have a majority of low-income families and students and so that's why we need to think more broadly not just limiting it to title one understanding that there is a cost associated with it but as with you know security improvements these are just seem elemental to providing students with the skills they need to succeed as well as be in a learning environment where they can focus on their academics yes sir thank you thank you Mr dunn dr anderson um thank you i just want to echo a couple of things that I had here that my colleagues have have asked but just want to just lend support to it
179nevertheless one is the data that shows the impact of AVID i think that's just important to show i I think anecdotally I could speak to um some of this data that is that are on what I don't know slide six uh because the AVID program at Justice High School is one of the largest and I had the opportunity to participate in their evaluation and having students who uh were graduates of the program come back and give back and speak about the benefits of the program and how prepared they they were how it helps with college applications writing your college essay all of the things which is why I told my son you're going into that elective um because we don't have to do that at home if you're doing this at school having said that
180the growth that you're talking about the expansion of AVID um at the secondary level are these elective classes or just being embedded throughout other courses so the growth the 23 additional schools that are coming on board next year 21 of those 23 are title one elementary schools so the remaining two [Music] are not title one elementary schools do we know what they are the remaining two schools someone have the presentation up and can link to it i'm sorry throw middle school might and Centerville High School will those be elective courses or again just embedding the tenants into advisory however it is that we do it when it's not an elective class so Miss Flamco what is our plan for those two schools so those are those schools are um adding AVID so they would be
181adding the elective everyone has it in their advisory um yeah okay um thank you um the second point is one that Mr dunn began to talk about which is you know our students don't know how to take notes uh honestly every year I buy my kids multiple notebooks to send to school expecting that they would utilize them at the end of the year they're blank because everything is done electronically how are parents to see some of the work that is being done to teach them some of those skills of note takingaking because I don't think we're seeing that connection at home and I I hope that Miss Marion also speaks to this because we've had this conversation multiple times these wonderful things are supposed to be happening in the school but yet we don't know
182how to help support or to reinforce or even request that our kids show this learning that they're doing that should be organizing them for the you know very very long future ahead of them as adults and learners so great question and I know Miss Burton and I uh share an excitement for the Cornell notes uh notepad uh because that's what we learned to use and um it's actually like serious excitement when we have our Cornell notepad but um Miss Clemenco do you want to respond to the uh more specific question when students are digital i find that I often am hearing that and we both have heard some of that I think in our parent quad meetings that it's hard for parents sometimes to find those digital um footprints to have those conversations i know
183I I agree i mean a lot of students um a lot of your probably your children and students find that taking notes on their computer is the way that they prefer and I think it leaves a lot of us who learned in a different way in a place where it's a little bit hard to we we can't see it and it's hard to understand if it's as effective as what we did when the hand with our own handwriting um I think that the process of note-taking you know as we embed the AVID strategies in in to um advisory they can be introduced there but students practicing is something we would probably have to look at to be more explicit about and I I could not name for you exactly where that is happening okay so
184that raises another question um particularly in the classes and in the schools in which it is not an elective it's just embedded through advisory to teach skills what is the expectation of the division in terms of how those skills will then show up in other classes because without a stated expectation you get what you get yes ma'am dr pon do you want to explain how that uh is showing up uh yes uh well I know that the first question was how we uh support and work with the parent something that we have been working with uh with the regions we have a a avid night out where uh it's kind of festival where the parents are able to see the the project of the children the binder what they have so I know we started
185this year next year is going to be mandated for every single Abbott so that's going to be um for the parents to know and something else that we have been talking across how do we uh increase um Cornell notes across so I know that this is only a a page that we can make um copies and make sure that the students are being util uh utilize that across content areas so this is something that we have been discussing in talking with the uh uh all the six regions so we going to be able to to observe this going to be part of the conversations that the RASES and EPS will have with every single uh AVI school i I'm just sorry just to re um reiterate you're saying that next year there will be some
186expectations regarding the usage of Cornell notes that's correct and every single Yes cross those to electronic usage say it again physical paper or electronic uh both but physical uh paper is going to be number one so we can uh observe and give feedback right straight and we all know that the research shows also when you write something down there's uh there's a connection that really embeds the learning a little bit deeper and we all always looking for opportunities to reduce screen time and so I think there's a benefit here that we could certainly take advantage of um and that is correct especially for the multilingual as soon as you see a multilingual how they take the pen you can make an inference what kind of support we need to give to that student and so
187I I will look for those AVID night outs because I'm very interested in that and I look forward to your plan for next year's use of Cornell notes across the schools that have AVID thank you thank you Dr anderson miss St john Cunning so I just want to say that throughout the years that I've been in schools I've seen so many students really take advantage of this program and I've seen the success that um it has you know engendered in them and I'm really glad to see that it's been expanding and and that it's starting at and that it's moving to elementary schools because that's where we lay the foundation um I just wanted to bring up that when we did our mock forum topics with our schoolboard leadership cohorts one of our students Serio
188that was his forum talk topic he said "I love AVID it was great and we've got to expand it we have to have more AVID programs so that more kids can take it." And I think that's the best testament i think sometimes we sit here and we talk about what we think should happen um but I think that when our students are telling us that it's working that's when we need to listen yes ma'am thank you Miss St john Cunning mr moon thank you uh Miss St john Cunning's question just prompting me to ask you this question first do we have a waiting list for AVID for the secondary level for schools that want to become AVID schools aid schools with the elective classes on the secondary level we have a waiting list to not
189able to enroll in classes i mean we have a limited number of the tutorial sections for sure um I think the number of students that might signal interest to enroll in those sections is going to vary by school so off the top of my head I wouldn't know we'd have to consult with the DSS's and the principles at each of the schools okay when you say tutorial sections could you explain about sections yeah so I think there's two big buckets that we're trying to point out in this presentation about AVID there's the tutorial uh class that students can take at the middle school and the high school level so that's a period that they would take like a as an elective class so when I'm referring to sections I'm saying how many sections of those
190classes are offered at each school and there's going to be some variance from school to school and I just don't know that off the top of my head but the other thing that we do in our AVID schools recognizing that the strategies are good for all of the students is we work on embedding those strategies schoolwide so reinforcing the note-taking strategies for example the critical reading strategies uh by training all of the teachers in the school to be able to use those uh strategies with their students in their own classes separate from the tutorial classes can the secondary level if you know these classes are elective where they are offering elective classes i mean we we seem to have 13 middle and 13 high and two secondary altogether 28 as of this year for the
191secondary level those are elective classes that's one full period if they have a block scheduling is every other day if am I understanding that correctly yes sir and and do they have like a set of curriculum yes the students go through and then when you say sections in each that elective class they will devote certain amount of time for tutorials the classes I I'm I'm still lost confusing sections no you're you're explaining it perfectly well so when I say sections I mean the class that the student is taking the AVID class that the student is taking third period for example right you had asked the question about do we have a waiting list yes at certain schools so what I was trying to say is the number of students that want to take that class
192at each of our AVID secondary schools is going to vary and I don't know that data off the top of my head um so schools will staff the number of sections that they can offer of that class based on student interest and staff availability so there's going to be some variance from school to school okay since you mentioned a tutorial are you trying to say that there are aid classes just devoted to tutorials the Avid class is the tutorial class so they're doing a number of different things in that class okay um some uh was what we tried to illustrate on the slide where you saw the five students working with the teacher um on a point of confusion that a student had in one of their classes so they're practicing their critical thinking skills
193their problem solving skills as the uh tutor works the group through that point of confusion sometimes there's direct instruction on uh some of the wicker strategies in the class sometimes there's individual support uh for students the the tutor working with the students sometimes it's peers working to support each other so there's a lot of different things that happen in the AVID tutorial class so uh what kind of a teachers get to teach every classes um well again I mean it could be somebody from any different discipline who's really interested and passionate about um working with students in this way so again I mean it's going to vary from school to school there's not just one type or one certification that you would have but you do have to be trained uh by the AVID organization
194you know for example if a if a you know in the class if there are different students with a different needs to focus on that if a teacher needs to be able to help those students whether it's a computer or it's a writing skills or or some of some of the needs uh then students a teacher should be really multi-talented to be able to work with all those different students with different needs i mean it's kind of a jack of all trades in a lot of ways yeah all right what's the average class size it's just like any other elective class no it's about half the size typically or less yeah the number so that that is where that we are putting in additional resources yes not just PD but also the staffing ratio basically
195yeah it I mean I have a feeling that in those classes the relationship between the teachers and students got to be very close because you know teachers really have to understand needs of each and every students in their class to provide what the students may be seeking or maybe needing yes and students got to be able to trust gota be able to go to the teachers tell teachers by the way I need some help in this area etc yeah we hear a lot of really positive feedback from the students not just about the strategies that they learn but the support from that trusted teacher that trusted adult in the school yes i I mean that having that kind of relations is needed for everyone in every school yes not just in those in the elective
196every classes would you agree yeah and just another plug for advisory that's one of the you know objectives of the advisory program is to develop those relationships with one trusted adult for every student in the school but they don't meet every day just like every other day well but that's true of any class they're meet every other day yeah on a block schedule yeah okay thank you thank you Mr moon Miss Lady thank you um just to piggyback on some of Mr moon's questions I think I can have some offer some insight to uh since I was at Chantelli when we implemented um AVID people need to understand it's a commitment to a program and you commit to the elective in 9th grade in 10th grade in 11th grade and 12th grade you don't just
197take an AVID elective if it fits in one year it is a program of studies it builds upon itself the different grade levels they introduce different things that are essential for college success um one of the most difficult things we ran into was kids willing to give up a period every year so they can participate in the program um I I do believe that the larger the program is at a given high school the more interested kids are in doing it so I think when you see discrepancies a lot of it has to do with the fact like Chantelli has an academy Chantelli has a robust performing arts program there are other things that will compete um but I want to continue to um push on the need to train all teachers in Avid strategies
198so that they can be utilizing them instructionally uh I've shared this before but when I worked at TJ as a school counselor you know we had IBIT right so integration of biology English and technology as a counselor all of my freshmen were in the same IBET i could walk in any of those classes and those were my kids A to Z we spent the first month of school doing executive functioning we taught them how to because a lot of these kids just absorbed material and didn't have to even reflect on it because they were so gifted um but I also want to talk about homework that we've talked about this in governance that we as a those of us on governance are very interested in seeing homework be a part of every student's experience starting
199in kindergarten first grade practice your letters practice writing numbers because we're building routines what we have done is we've gotten away from those practices and we also have kids because of these distractions who aren't listening intently in class so you can I can teach you how to take notes all I want to but if you don't listen and then engage in the practice you're not going to enhance your learning so um when it comes to home room experiences in elementary and advisories in middle and high school we need to be embedding this instruction because it's crucial and it does build upon itself based on how courses get harder for students and how you introduce world language versus different levels of science because you use different strategies u within that but I just want my colleagues
200to understand AVID is it's great but it's a major commitment within a student's uh schedule um but if we can can train all of our teachers on those strategies hopefully they can start to embed them like Portrait of a Graduate and all of kids will be getting that exposure so thank you thank you Miss Lady Miss Sant thank you so I love AVID i talk about it all the time and that's because I hear from other high school students about how it affects them how they go through that program and actually Sergio who mentioned AVID at that forum when we got to the discussion half the students were like "What's AVID i don't know what that is so we had to start by explaining it to them and a lot of students tell me I
201wish I had AVID i wish I was able to do that um and one thing that Sergio mentioned is that at his school students do have to apply into that program and he goes to Centerville which has a bigger AVID program um and so I'm really excited that we're having AVID programs at Title One elementary schools but I'm wondering if there is a plan to expand it to more of our high schools if not in the next school year the school year after that because the students who take it have really good things to say about it and all our resource schools have the college and career center but having that teacher that you can make that relationship with and that connection over four years is different it is i am not aware of a
202plan at this time to increase it at high school um unless Nope i we do not currently have a plan for further expansion any particular high school who would like to do that certainly can and we would support that but there isn't a plan in place at this time we've been really focused on the elementary the last two years and then my other question um since most of these elementary schools are title one is this implementation next school year going to be affected at all by the budget and what happens to that it will be if there's any um lessening of our title one funds as long as we retain the title one allocation we've been uh relying on we should be able to roll the new 21 schools out okay thank you you bet
203i do remember though Miss Swant that we talked about access to the college and career center was one of the big platforms even in sack and how to more effectively use those resources so I appreciate the comment thank you Miss Sant and thank you Dr reid agenda item seven consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure Robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion and many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members in the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda is being displayed on the screen is there any objection to the approving the consent agenda seeing and
204hearing no objection the consent agenda is the consent agenda is approved agenda item eight new business the following on the screen are new business agenda items they are not up for a vote this evening but action is scheduled for a future meeting agenda item nine board committee reports i call on Miss Seismarheiser our budget chair for a budget committee report sorry thank you very much i appreciate it and I appreciate um the chance to give an update on the budget committee report um we had a really great budget committee meeting work session on Tuesday of the committee of the whole as a reminder the budget committee is the entire school board and there is a chair and vice chair that help facilitate the work and also just as a reminder the goal of the budget
205committee is to reflect the um the priorities of the board towards the superintendent and help work with the superintendent on a budget um in addition to our budget committee meeting we had a great conversation about the crossroads that we're at and um some of the talking points that we've then memorialized into a letter that we sent that our chair sent on behalf of the school board to the board of supervisors today where we respectfully reiterated our request for full funding of the advertised budget and while we're waiting for the county to amend its advertised budget currently um our its advertised budget is underfunding FCPS to the tune of 149 million or 120 million if the governor signs the current state budget proposal as we've talked about in the meeting our public schools really are are
206the foundation of the countyy's strength not just for centers of learning centers of the community but really the employment and economic engine of Fairfax especially given the ongoing uncertainty at the federal level fcps is one of the most stable and trusted institutions that businesses and residents count on when choosing to relocate to Fairfax County and yet we talked about that we're at a crossroads now our student needs are increasing and the demands on our workforce continuing to intensify and we have unprecedented fiscal pressures at the same time we're asking to do more to prepare our students in an increasingly complex world over the past decade we've implemented reductions cost avoidances and fee enhancements and more than $800 million to align with the funding levels we're provided and in the meantime we remain laser focused on
207the classroom with the the bulk of our staff and our funding to the classrooms four things that we specifically asked about in our board of supervisors letters was we know that our board of supervisors are considering a food and beverage tax which we really appreciate as a way to diversify the tax revenue in the county but we're asking if they do um have that tax that the revenue be given to the schools to help cover that deficit in funding we're also asking for restoration of the proposed reductions of um spending and programs that impacted the schools that were part of the county budget this includes the middle school after school programs we're asking them to restore restore the funds for that high school crossing guards and several other um programs in the tune about 7.7
208million given that we're currently at $149 million gap it would be very difficult for the schools to absorb that additional 7.7 million and then we're asking to look really at the county year-end surplus and and share that surplus in the same percentage as our county transfer which um I've heard is is similar to what we did in the past and at the crux of this all is I think as we're going into these tight budget years we really need to focus on collaborative future budget planning and earlier in collaboration we all I think the board of supervisors and the board want to work together for what's best for the county so that was sort of the crux of the letter that was sent i look forward to to hearing back from our chair from the
209county um a couple things I wanted to mention that the bulk of our budget focuses on salaries and this increase for our teachers is really necessary because while we are about the middle of the pack for salaries now the longer our teachers stay with us the further they fall behind so um we really want to make sure that our budget keeps our experienced teachers because we cannot have excellent schools or excellent teachers so thank you for the hard work of the team thank you thank you Miss Seismarheiser uh Mr dunn for a report on the comprehensive planning and development committee uh I can't promise to be as detailed and lengthy as my colleague i have more pages you have more pages um but I am excited to share that um the facilities department provided detailed
210updates on various construction and renovation projects taking place at 15 schools across the county um this was prepared by uh the facility staff and will be shared shortly with um all of my colleagues so that you can uh see what schools in your district the great work being done by the facilities department um I also want to share with my colleagues that uh we received a report on multiple multiple cues that have been developed for everything from playgrounds to asphalt and this provided uh unique insight for the first time into just how many cues exist um we have asked to receive uh more information on exactly how those schools were prioritized for each of those cues and examples of the spreadsheets um the cues don't always result in work being done every year for every
211Q um but uh it depends very much as with everything else on available funding um we did ask for more detailed information and we will be getting that at the next CPDC meeting in addition CPDC approved a motion uh though there was some initial debate about parliamentary uh procedure but did approve a motion directing FPAC to revise its charter to incorporate the content into its bylaws consistent with the direction received from the public engagement committee um FPAC is seeking feedback from uh the school board on topics that they would like to see in next year's report specifically on memos that they that would be useful to schoolboard members as we uh approach uh the CIP and other schoolboard priorities um finally uh we received positive reports that outdoor classrooms currently under construction should be substantially
212completed by early May which I know will be uh very exciting for some of our colleagues who love outdoor classrooms um in addition the stadium bathrooms will also be completed uh estimated to be by late June which I know will be uh or late June early July which will be greatly appreciated by everyone who attends football and other outdoor athletic events thank you thank you Mr dunn uh agenda item 10 superintendent matters i call on Dr reid thank you Chairman Fr it's been a busy couple weeks um and uh I say that because spring break there was a lot of activity here in Fairfax County Public Schools uh during spring break I had a chance to visit Pine Springs Elementary School which was one of our 31 schools that offered programs over spring break uh
213the two programs specifically were Spring Sprouts uh which was the Pine Springs and many other title one elementary schools where uh the staff worked on addressing chronic absenteeism and provided students many hours of attendance recovery options and it was really uh it was great to visit Pine Springs and see all the work going on and getting an opportunity to read a book or two with some of our young students um and it's uh nothing can be more fun than that our Blooming Readers program also gave students in third grade or higher some extra support and literacy so it was really a lot of uh a lot of fun and want to congratulate the Bobcats for their strong work and all of the um staff and uh families that supported that as well as transportation i've
214had the uh pleasure of attending several ribbon cutings um to celebrate building renovations being complete both at Frost Middle School and Oakill Elementary School and really appreciate our capital projects team design and construction and our facilities team that brought those programs um in on time and then this week I had a fabulous visit at Oakton High School on Wednesday morning and talked with their robotics team and there's going to be a video coming out shortly because they have answered the eternal question that every math student has asked since the beginning of time when will I ever use this right so they were able to answer that so stay tuned spoiler alert it is uh it's an impressive group and just really excited to talk math and science and um also shared with them my intent
215to recommend to you as a board a requirement for our students to be able to pass algebra trig prior to graduation and to a student in that group they're like they were surprised we didn't already require it and said that you know trig is just central to life itself so look forward to the video and uh that's my report this evening chairman Fresh thank you dr reid did Principal Harris take you on the roof of of Frost Middle School uh I declined that it was a uh it was a rainstorm the likes of which would have made Seattle uh cringe he brought me up there it felt like it was Stars and Hutch it was very took my life into my own hands I guess all right uh it is time for board matters agenda
216item 11 i call on Miss St john Cunningham thank you yesterday our school community was shaken by a senseless act of violence at West PTOAC High School of which 41% of families live in the Franconia District my heart is with every staff member student and family affected we're grateful the injured student is recovering and that swift action ensured the suspect was quickly taken into custody to those who witnessed the altercation and are processing the trauma of what they saw please know your reactions are valid this kind of experience can leave a lasting impact and we are committed to ensuring mental health supports are in place for everyone who needs them in moments of crisis the first priority is always to protect students and staff i want to commend the team at West PTOAC for their
217calm decisive response under incredibly difficult circumstances as a parent and former school employee I understand how distressing it is to be on the outside during a lockdown you're desperate for information in an era of instant alerts and viral video uncertainty can deepen fear we must follow emergency protocols first protecting students and staff before sharing information that is accurate verified and responsibly communicated now we must look forward not just at what happened but why and what we can change we must review the incident and assess where the protocols worked and where they can be strengthened we must look at how we're investing in school security and whether we are maximizing limited resources in the most effective way and we must engage directly with students around conflict resolution emotional health and digital responsibility too often we see
218a culture of spectatorship phones raised instead of hands extended this has to change when I visited West Battoic this morning I saw a community hurting but also one that was calm and resilient this board owes them more than thoughts we owe them actions please hug your kids tonight thank you Miss St john Cunning miss Lady thank you Miss St john Cunning for those remarks um I also uh want to share my condolences for the passing of Janie Strauss longtime Drainsville school board member janie was a preschool and elementary teacher advocate PTA president and mother of four FCPS students she was appointed to the school board in 1991 as an atlarge school board member where she served for two years when the county moved to an elected school board Janie was elected as the Drainsville district
219representative in 1996 where she served for 24 years through 2020 in tandem with her husband Bill she promoted arts in the Fairfist County Public Schools community with their work to create the Cappy's critics and awards program an international program launched in Fairf County Public Schools it recognizes celebrates and provides learning experience for high school theater and journalism students and teenage plays speaking of the arts it is high school and middle school spring production time to view the possible 2025 Cappies nominees check out Langley's High School's Mousetrap and or TJ's Big Fish this weekend or Hearnen High School's Foot Loose MLAN High School's Amaly TJ's Big Fish and Westfield Sound of Music next weekend today is Holocaust Memorial Day i was honored to be part of the DMV areas unto every person there is a name
220that pays tribute to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust by honoring them as individuals by reading their names aloud this year's video will be published to YouTube on Sunday afternoon i want to offer congratulations to the Drainsville awardees of the National Merit Corporate Sponsor Scholarships claire Chen of TJ National Merit Geico Scholarship Jaden Lee of Langley High Langley High School National Merit George Watts Hill Scholarship riley S Seawir of Langley High School National Merit Boeing Scholarship and Ailen Woo of MLAN High School National Merit NVIDIA Corporation scholarship uh I've been out and about yesterday I attended the Hearnen High School buzzworthy awards that honored the 97 students nominated by their teachers counselors administrators who have made progress across academics attendance and attitude i also attended the Hearnen Elementary School Capital Project community meeting
221excited this project is moving forward you can see the community meeting presentation on the Hearnen Elementary School Capital Project website and provide feedback through May 8th and look for the presentation and the feedback from the Hearnen Elementary School Capital Project website um I'm also looking forward to I guess it may be a ribbon cutting ceremony at Cooper Middle School uh the their final capital project community meeting is on 4:29 at 6:30 p.m um and then lastly I'm excited to go to Kent Gardens tomorrow morning for a PTSA meeting and also to experience a kindergarten orientation at Great Falls Elementary that's it for my board matters thank you thank you Miss Lady Mr dunn yesterday West PTOIC High School witnessed a horrific act of violence an unacceptable act of violence that should never have happened um
222I believe uh with greater measures we can prevent such incidents from ever happening again uh it was my concerns are with all those who were involved and my heart goes out to all of the students and staff who were unnecessarily exposed to this trauma i pray for the students who are injured i pray for everyone who witnessed both this incident and its aftermath no one should ever have to experience or even witness violence in a place of learning and no student should ever be asked to step over a pool of blood to exit the school building i am grateful for the quick and competent response of our FCPS staff our school administrators our paramedics law enforcement personnel and security personnel but I know more must be done to ensure that our schools are a safe
223refuge for each and every person who walks through our doors i'm committed to working tirelessly with FCPS staff and our partners to strengthen safety and security measures for all of our schools over the days and weeks ahead i I will look forward to partnering with my colleagues on the school board and the superintendent to advocate for new protocols and resources necessary to strengthen our layered security measures so that when parents and families entrust their children to us they can be assured that they are safe i want our children to feel safe because they are safe for too long we have talked about bathrooms that that kids are afraid to enter or bathrooms that are locked because bad things happen in them that time must end i know that my colleagues agree that we must work
224with the fierce urgency of now to ensure a situation like this never happens again we must ensure that we don't turn a blind eye or act with complacency when our students are fearful when our parents are afraid and when parents have a choice frankly in making a decision on whether to send their children to public school versus private school i look forward to sharing the next steps of our collaborative efforts as we work to achieve a permanent resolution finally I'd like to also thank my colleague for her beautiful remarks which I found um very striking um finally if you haven't heard on a positive note a monastery program a public monastery program is coming to the West PTOIC pyramid at Bucknell Elementary beginning this coming fall the 2025 through 2026 school year it will start
225with multi-age classrooms at the prek and kindergarten levels families of current three four and fivey olds are invited to apply through a lottery process the program is free let me repeat that a public Montasauri program with free admission and free transportation the application is available online now through May 1st 2025 please visit fcps.edu/monasauri for more information again the deadline is May 1st so please act with elacrity to ensure that your child three four or 5-year-old can benefit thank you Mr dunn for the excellent vocabulary dr anderson um thank you sorry about the delay there firstly I do want to say thank you to um Teresa Burn and to um Principal Noak um a couple of weeks ago they put together a beautiful memorial for Amy Baker um with a bench dedication at um False Church
226High School it was a wonderful moment and to be able to see the class of 1989 um be able to participate in that moment for their classmate who has been slain and the case was finally closed this year after over two decades and so thank you for that um I also do want to extend my condolences to the family of Janie Strauss so thank you for sharing those beautiful words uh Miss May Miss Marin Miss um lady Miss Lady totally escaped me there um and I too want to extend my um heartfelt condolences and thoughts with the community of West Potoic our students experienced a horrific um event yesterday and I too will commit along with the rest of the board members who've already spoken to this um to do everything that we can in
227order to prevent future activities of that sort um that is not the purpose of our schools um but we do know that some of that violence is beyond us but we will try as much as we can to take care of our students when they are with us i do want to also thank um the community that came out for the community conversation at Mason Crest last night with Dr reid um thank you for your thoughts and all of the questions that range a number of topics um I had the opportunity I believe yesterday to visit Belvadier Elementary School um it is one of the two IB elementary schools in Fairfax County and for many years it was the only until Dogwood um joined it two years ago and it's uh it's just a fantastic
228opportunity for our students to really have that deep learning and also our teachers who are just continuously questioning and learning and bringing that back to the students um I also have had the opportunity to participate in the evaluation that comes from the IB um leadership um when they have come to Belvadier um I do want to say congratulations to the following Mason District students who were selected to perform at the 2025 all Virginia Band Chorus and Orchestra event that is taking place this week in Richmond from Anidal High School we have Lena Ab Abu L hawa from False Church High School we have Colt Armstrong from Justice High School we have Kyle Alward Max Hoffman Rachel Kessa and Seron Watley and from Woodson we have Katherine Morton and Maya Moses um theater season is upon
229us and TJ Theat's premiere of Big Fish is tomorrow evening with additional showtimes on Saturday and next weekend um and also we have several productions coming from Anandale Theater Company Little Shop of Horrors Falls Church will be Spotlight Theater Company the Adams Family Luther Jackson um Mean Girls Jr um Woodson Mama Mia so please come on out and support those students good night hi Dr anderson Mr mavine thank you and I just want to join my colleagues um who have remembered uh Janie Strauss tonight um and just to share that uh as a community we will be coming together on May uh 18th at uh 11:00 a.m at uh Mlan High School so look forward to seeing people there thank you thank you Mr mcvine Miss Marin thank you good evening i did share with
230the community my own thoughts on the horrible incident at West PTOAC High School and you know I want to convey that there are many plans and supports in place to help keep children and adults safe in our school facilities however there's no way to guarantee anyone's safety whether it's in a public place or at home there is much though that FCPS could do with increased funding for safety measures and personnel um but you know parents and caregivers they are children's first and foremost uh teachers and they are the first line to prevent children from accessing weapons so I think you know we need to continue to inv uh include our families help them with strategies and also really think that these today's students and children are different you know in so many wonderful ways and
231maybe we need new strategies uh certainly more counselors more support smaller class sizes so um it's uh yeah I just wanted to speak to that on another solemn note I appreciate uh Miss St john Cunning reading the Holocaust uh memorial proclamation and I think I've shared this but my husband is a first generation survivor of the Holocaust he was a um he was hidden as a child in an attic and survived and this means that my children are survivors of attempted genocide because on my side my ancestors fled the Russian prams in the 1800s and you know there's a pattern of bigotry that is anti-semitism and it's now at the highest levels it's ever been in America so again I really appreciated the thoughtful reading of it and um just know that the Holocaust is
232not in the past it's it's still here and what made it happen is is increasing again i want to say a huge congratulations to our Madison High School Wars the robotics team they were in Houston over spring break for the world championship they are in the top 200 in the whole world sixth in the Chesapeake region and third in Virginia so that's like the top 1% in the world but I think what really uh sets them apart is that they had a lot of fun it was a total team experience and I even had the good fortune to fly on spring break and I ran into my friend who is the lead mentor uh whose son has long graduated Madison but he continues to volunteer including flying to the other part of the country to
233support these students so it was it was really fun um and while I was on the plane I did choose to watch Going Varsity in Mariachi because I know that Dr pon is trying to bring that music to schools and I want to learn about it and I'm so excited and I can't wait till it comes to our schools so um and then finally the budget um you know TGIF tomorrow it's been a long week of budget advocacy and I'm just so pleased that our board put out a statement and you know it's I don't understand the continued pleading and begging it seems we have to do um our our teachers I mean look at what they went through in the high school yesterday this is not a typical job and to think that they're
234doing the same kind of thing as other people who might be doing very hard work but at an office with security guards and other adult like it's I'm glad we were able to do what we could um highlight of the week was the students who came out i saw students uh honeymill students who were in the debate club in Carson Middle School one who had been there formerly and I was a South Lake student the one who got the Jefferson scholarship who's going to UVA they you know buddied up and got their friends to show up and then one of the moms got advocated and that's what it's about right um so on the one hand it's it's um disappointing that we have to keep asking so much but on the other people are learning
235about what's happening and they're not happy they're actually really in disbelief that this is what's happening that things like middle school programs are being cut so um onward and uh hopefully we'll get to that end of the road budget in a really great place thanks thank you Miss Marin uh I'll just take a moment um I was grateful to represent my colleagues uh speaking at the board of supervisors budget public hearing on the first day uh where I expressed the critical importance of funding a budget that allows us to raise our staff pay so that we can attract and retain the world-class educators our students deserve um yesterday I was able to attend the Falls Church Pyramid Art Show um which was incredible there was art from every school in the false church pyramid and
236we all received uh report or little um punch cards i I say we all did but it was the children and I got one too and and so I have a little uh punch card stamped by all of the different schools from the false church pyramid and I got to see some really great artwork along the way i also met recently with uh Dean Fairchild from University of Virginia's Northern Virginia campus and am connecting um that great institution which is newly opened in Providence District uh in Falls Church um with the administration the superintendent and her team so that we can partner in innovative ways going forward uh some shoutouts um the 2025 Fairfax Student Peace Award winners want to congratulate two students who are from my district uh Gila Sckley from Marshall High School
237and Shri Bula from Falls Church High School i want to also congratulate the 2025 regional scholastic art award winners congratulations to Khloe uh Doan from Madison uh and um she was one of four FCF FCPS students who were nominated for best in show American visions award so incredible work there and then of course nine FCPS projects received the grand prize awards at the 2025 regional science and engineering fair and I'd like to congratulate two students from my district who won the grand prize and are eligible to compete in the regon international science and engineering fair in May ethan Lee who attends TJ for biomedical and health sciences modeling risk and rtor transformation with and without chemotherapy treatment on CLL this is a high school student uh Thomas Sparling from Oakton uh whose project was energy
238sustainable materials and design microclosed loop pumped hydrogen power system turbine assessment yep um and uh so obviously we're going to expect great things from these students and for FCPS students uh projects that received the grand prize at the 2025 Virginia State Science Fair uh congratulate Alina Alique from Marshall High School um who won for her project implications of resversterol on memory retention in duesia tigrina we have incredibly talented students in FCPS um and I'm not going to read all of the drama performances that I get to attend over the next few weeks because several have already been mentioned but I'm really looking forward to the Manua Drama Club's performance of the Frozen Kids edition that I will be able to attend um uh this weekend so uh with that I would like to say it
239is 10:43 which means that the pool of our staff did not work out in their favor this meeting is adjourned janice one Janice did you