4/8/25 - FCPS School Board Work Session

001Um, I'm going to hand things over to our board chair for a motion. I believe in order to comply with section 2.2-3712D 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 8th, 2025. To the best of each board member's knowledge, only business uh public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such 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. All those in favor or do I have a motion? Miss Anderson, do I have a second? Miss St. John Cunning. All those in favor of the motion, Miss Seismarheiser, Miss Anderson, Miss St. John Cunning, Mr. McDaniel, Mr. Moon,

002Miss Dixit, and myself. That is unanimous for board members present at the table. Um, and I will now turn it back over to our meeting managers. Thank you. This will be the second work session that we've held on the annual update of student rights and responsibilities document. Um, so as we go through this presentation and we hear from staff, uh, please keep in mind this is the second iteration. There have been some updates since our first work session on this. And with that, I'll hand things over to superintendent. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. So this a or this morning, it just feels like afternoon, but uh this morning we have staff returning. uh they have uh made requisite adjustments based on the prior work session that the board engaged with as well as they've gone back

003to meet with uh members of the staff. Uh and so this morning uh I know they've done a tremendous amount of work. Um so it's my pleasure to welcome Dr. King and her team uh to present where we are currently with the student rights and responsibilities. So Dr. King, thank you Dr. Reed and good morning schoolboard members, division leadership, colleagues, community members. Welcome to the second SRNR um work session for the 20252026 school year. Today we are building on discussions from our March 12th session. Our work continues to focus on ensuring that SR&R regulation is aligned with state guidance, community feedback, and the division's commitment to providing safe, supportive, and empowered learning environments for every student in alignment with goal two of our strategic plan. At this time, I'd like to introduce members of the

004Chief Equity Office who have been instrumental in leading this work. Um, Kathleen Waltz, executive director of equity and student relations. Tiana Shin, senior manager too for equity student conduct. Lisa Forest, administrative hearings officer. We have several members of our team in the audience as well who will be here to answer any questions that might need to be answered. Now, I'm going to invite Kathleen Waltz to begin our presentation and guide us through the foundational elements of today's discussion. Good morning. Our desired outcomes today are to review the final proposed discipline recommendations and the final proposed cell phone policy and storage recommendations for the SRNR. Based on the guidance provided today, the redline version of regulation 2601 will be posted as new business for the April 25th 24th, 2025 regular school board meeting. Today's session is

005divided into three key areas. First, we will explore the final proposed discipline related changes to the SRNR. Second, we will review the final proposed changes to our cell phone policy and storage. All of the final proposed changes are in response to schoolboard and/or principal feedback collected during the March 11th work session or in further discussion with principles. After reviewing these changes, our team will open the floor for collaborative discussion and questions from the school board to solidify the final redline changes. I will now turn our presentation over to Da Shin, who will review the final proposed discipline changes. Our first focused area is the final proposed discipline changes. These recommendations are based on feedback gathered during the March 11th work session. As part of the SRNR revisions focusing on clarity and enforcement, we initially proposed

006changes that state for possession or use of statutory weapons, possession or use of switchblades, machetes, and certain other knives, and use of other weapon weapons, administrators would be required to issue a suspension for up to 10 days unless the referring administrator determined that mitigating factors such as the student's age, background intent, previous infractions, disability status, and or other circumstances should not warn suspension. The original proposal also required a referral to the school-based riskrevention team for further assessment and intervention in accordance with regulation 2111. During the March 11th work session, schoolboard members provided feedback expressing concern that the allowance for administrative discretion and suspension decisions for weapon related violations could still result in inconsistent discipline outcomes across schools. members emphasized that even with guidance, such discretion might continue to undermine the division's efforts to reduce disproportionality,

007particularly for students with disabilities, black students, Hispanic students, multilingual learners, economically disadvantaged students, and male students. In response to this feedback, the final proposed change now mandates that for any violations involving possession or use of statutory weapons, possession or use of switchblades, machetes, and certain other knives, and use of other weapon, the following two actions shall be required without exception. a suspension for up to 10 days and a referral to the school-based riskrevention team to determine appropriateness for further risk assessment in accordance with regulation 2111 and any other appropriate intervention as designated by the referring administrator. The final proposed change removes administrative discretion regarding the imposition of suspension for these offenses. This ensures that a consistent non-discretionary consequence is applied across the division, thereby reinforcing a uniform, equitable application of the SRNR by requiring both

008suspension and riskrevention team referral for these weapon related incidents. The updated regulation balances student and student and school safety with the structured intervention framework, ensuring both immediate and long-term supports are put in place for students involved. As part of the SRNR revisions, we initially proposed adding a monitoring requirement to regulation 2601 to provide oversight specifically to two critical areas. First, the application of administrative discretion related to suspension decisions for weapons violations. And second, the consistent use of required interventions for weapons assault and assault and battery violations. The original proposed change recommended creating a new section in the introductory portion of regulation 2601 titled monitoring and enforcement. The language originally proposed stated the chief equity office in collaboration with the office of the chief of schools shall conduct a semester review of all discipline cases involving

009weapons assault and assault and battery to determine the use of required intervention and factors considered prior to issuing a suspension for the related violations. The intent of this proposal was to enhance oversight by ensuring that administrators both applied required interventions and thoughtfully considered student specific factors before suspending a student for serious violations. During the March 11th work session, schoolboard members provided feedback that discretion and suspension decisions, even if monitored, could still lead to inconsistent dis discipline outcomes and undermine efforts to reduce disproportionality. Board members expressed concern that allowing administrators to consider factors prior to suspension could continue to result in unequal application of discipline practices across schools. In response to this feedback and because the final discipline proposal removes the administrative discretion provision for suspension decisions related to weapons violations, staff determined there's no longer

010a need for a separate formal monitoring process of discretionary factors. With discretion eliminated, it is sufficient to monitor the use of required interventions for weapons assault and assault and battery and compliance with suspension practices related to these infractions can be addressed through standard discipline audit and reporting processes already in place across the division. As a result of this feedback and internal review, the final proposed change simplifies the monitoring provision. The new proposed section of the regulation will state the chief equity office in collaboration with the chief of schools shall conduct a semester review of all discipline cases involving weapons, assault, and assault and battery to determine use of required intervention. This adjustment ensures a streamlined, consistent approach to oversight while reinforcing the division's commitment to clear, equitable, and uniform enforcement of the SRNR. Since the

011March 11th work session, the governor signed Senate Bill 908, sorry, 980, which amends policies and procedures related to the prevention of and response to cyber bullying in schools. Specifically, 980 requires that all local school boards establish policies that address cyber bullying in alignment with model policies to be developed by the Virginia Department of Education. These model policies provide regulatory guidance on preventing and responding to incidents of cyber bullying, including incidents that occur off school property but have an impact on the school environment. Under SB908, sorry, 980, correction, the new policies must also provide protections to ensure that any student who is a victim or witness of cyber bullying is not deterred from reporting incidents or seeking support. In addition, the policies must include a list of available support services and resources for students impacted by

012cyber bullying. At this time, we are awaiting the Virginia Department of Education's issuance of the required model policies. Once the VDOE model policies are finalized and released, the SRNR will be revised accordingly to incorporate the mandated procedures and protections related to cyber bullying. We will continue to monitor the development of the model policies closely and ensure that any necessary updates to regulation 2601 are brought forward in a timely manner to maintain compliance with state law and to enhance protections for all students. To enhance clarity and enforcement within the SRNR, several proposed changes to the discipline matrix were brought forward during the March 11th work session. The proposed changes include the inclusion of a Ksix icon within the discipline matrix, the addition of matrix instructions to guide users through the appropriate disciplinary process, the addition of

013a corresponding narrative column in the matrix to reference where additional information can be found, a matrix key footnote directing users to the page containing the matrix key, and a matrix footnote clarifying that SBAR code BSC27 related to weapons includes blades less than 3 in and pneumatic weapons. Following the March 11th work session, no feedback was received from the schoolboard regarding these proposed changes. As such, unless new feedback is provided during today's session, we plan to move forward with redlinining these revisions into the SRNR. To further strengthen clarity and enforcement within the SRNR, several proposed changes related to drugs and assault violations were presented during the last work session. The proposed changes include a revision to BESO6, which would require administrators to use the signs and symptoms of substance use within the FCPS overdose protocols before

014determining that a student is under the influence. The definition of assault is proposed to be updated to reflect the VDOE definition clarifying that assault occurs without physical injury. Additionally, the proposed changes would require interventions for all assault violations. It is also proposed that a new narrative section for assault and battery be added using the VDOE definition which distinguishes assault and battery as occurring with physical injury. To further enhance clarity, the proposed changes would create a new SBAR code be for group assault and battery violations. Finally, the narrative provisions related to hazing would be separated into their own distinct narrative section recognizing that hazing is a unique violation with its own ESBAR code. Following the work session, no feedback was received from the schoolboard regarding these proposed changes. As such, unless new feedback is provided during

015today's session, we plan to move forward with redlinining these revisions into the SRNR. Several proposed changes related to data entry, parent notification, administrator training, and directed support were presented during the last work session. The proposed changes include requiring discipline data entry into CIS for all discipline violations, parent notification within 24 hours of a disciplinary incident, required intervention for any SRNR violation, and annual integrated discipline training for all school-based administrators. Integrated discipline training would include training on updates to the SRNR scenario-based discipline processing, title 9, bullying and harassment, bias and discrimination, discipline data entry, and requirements for turnkey training with school-based staff. Finally, the proposed changes would remove the school counselor as a required school team member for receiving discipline concerns and directing this responsibility to the school-based administrative team. Following the work session, no feedback

016was received from the school board regarding these proposed changes. As such, unless new feedback is provided during today's session, we plan to move forward with redlinining these revisions into the SRNR. Proposed changes to enhance clarity around specific terms and definitions within the SRNR were presented during the last work session. The proposed changes include revising the definition of hate speech to include religion as a protected class and symbols, changing the term stealing to theft for consistency, incis, and removing the term stakeholder and replacing it with community partner or community organization. Following the work session, no feedback was received from the school board regarding these proposed changes. As such, unless new feedback is provided during today's session, we plan to move forward with redlinining these revisions into the SRNR. And finally, proposed changes related to the following

017general terms and definitions within the SRNR regulation were presented during the previous session. The proposed changes include adding definitions for the following terms listed here. Following the work session, no feedback was received from the school board regarding these proposed changes. As such, unless new feedback is provided during today's session, we plan to move forward with redlinining these revisions. With the discipline revisions concluded, we will now shift our focus to the second major topic of today's session, the cell phone policy and storage recommendations, which will be presented by Kathleen Waltz. To initiate our conversation, we will begin by reviewing data collected from the cell phone pilot program, focus groups, community forums, and surveys conducted in response to schoolboard follow-on motions issued in May 2024. Extensive data related to these findings was pre previously provided to the

018board. Cell phone violation data was evaluated at the schools participating in the storage unit pilot. Between the first day of school, August 19th, 2024, and September 30th, 2024, there were 428 cell phone violations at the control or comparison middle schools, compared to 164 cell phone violations at the storage middle schools. During the same time period, there were 1,587 cell phone violations at the control or comparison high schools compared to 1,170 violations at the storage high schools. Between October 1st, 2024 and January 31st, 2025, there were 809 cell phone violations at the control or comparison middle schools compared to 433 cell phone violations at the storage middle schools. During the same period, there were 2,17 cell phone violations at the control or comparison high schools compared to 1,936 violations at the storage high schools. These findings

019indicate that the pilot schools implementing storage units had slightly fewer cell phone policy violations inputed into CIS during both time periods captured. However, the difference was only slight. The possible positive impact of the storage units appears to be more pronounced at the beginning of the school year from August 19th through September 30th than when compared to the period from October 1st through January 31st. Participants of the focus groups were asked about their perceptions of the story storage units piloted at the 30 pilot schools. For pouch storage, which was piloted at the middle schools, participants identified the following benefits. An enhanced learning environment, force consistency, reduced behavioral issues, and a reduction in teacher burden. The drawbacks or considerations associated with pouch storage included students circumventing the rules, the impact on teaching practices and inconvenience and loss

020of instructional time for door storage and tote storage options which were piloted at the high schools. Participants identified encouraging student accountability and the formation of routines as the primary benefits. The drawbacks or considerations identified for these options included a lack of consistent enforcement and student resistance. Diana, while the findings collected from the following data points, including the pilot, focus groups, community forum, and survey are critical to informing next steps, the signing of Senate Bill 738 directly impacts any preceding cell phone policy. In revising the cell phone policy recommendations, findings from multiple data sources, including the requirements outlined in SB738, were consulted and directly informed the proposed revisions. In addition to the earlier data points presented, new data sources were reviewed and considered. These include the cell phone violation data, a letter from the high school

021principles association, and convenings with high school principles to gather additional recommendations and feedback. These additional sources of information, including the signing of SB738, arose after the March 11th work session and have played an important role in shaping the final proposed policy revisions being presented today. Based on the passage of Senate Bill 738, the following changes to the SRNR regarding cell phone use in schools are proposed to go into effect on July 1st, 2025. The SRNR will be amended to ban student possession and use of cell phones, personal tablets, cell phone accessories, and smart devices on school property bell to bell. Belltobell is defined as the period beginning when the first bell rings at the start of the school day to initiate instructional time and ending when the disp dismissal bell rings at the conclusion of

022the school day. The bell-to-bell period includes lunch and the time between classes. Under the proposed changes, student cell phones, personal tablets, cell phone accessories, and smart devices may no longer be used as instructional tools during the school day. Schools must ensure that the implementation and enforcement of this policy is the responsibility of the school administration and that enforcement minimizes to the extent possible any conflict with the instructional responsibilities of teachers or any disturbance to instructional time. Appropriate accommodations must be provided for students with IEPs, 504 plans, or medical conditions in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. Students may not be suspended or expelled solely as a consequence of violating the cell phone policy. However, any violation of this policy that involves coincides with or results in an instance of disruptive behavior that is not solely

023related to a cell phone violation shall be addressed in accordance with the SRNR. In regards to storage, following the passage of Senate Bill 738, several new implications and factors must be considered regarding cell phone storage practices within FCPS. There was a cost associated with implementing storage pouches or units at all FCPS schools. While the pilot program showed success both anecdotally and through quantitative data with fewer cell phone violations evident at storage schools compared to non-sto schools, it is important to note that these data points were based on implementation under the current FCPS cell phone policy, which will be significantly different beginning July 1 under the new state law. Additionally, principles have expressed that any decision regarding cell phone storage must be approached with consistency and equity across schools to support fair and successful implementation. The

024language of SB 738 related to enforcement responsibilities will place pressure on administrators to ensure compliance with the policy. Storage units are seen as a mitigating factor that can assist administrators by working in tandem with other resources to help students adapt to the new requirements under the law. Given these factors, the superintendent recommends that all students be required to personally store their cell phones, personal tablets, cell phone accessories, and smart devices, keeping them off and away from the arrival bell to the dismissal bell each day. In the next three slides, you will see the proposed discipline matrix that governs violations of the cell phone policy. After receiving feedback and convening with administrators, the proposed matrix changes focus specifically on required interventions at each level of violation and the loss of privilege upon a fourth violation. Interventions

025are required for every violation level which aligns with the VDOE model policy and with the propos proposed SRNR revision requiring interventions for every SRNR violation. However, administrators are not required to complete all interventions within the cell phone discipline matrix. This is reflected by the addition of the word or between intervention options. The use of ore clarifies that administrators may select one intervention from the list rather than completing every listed intervention for each violation. Lastly, for a fourth violation, the loss of privilege is restored back to 20 days instead of the originally proposed 5 to 10 days. This change was made at the request of school administrators included in the pilot program. As a result of the final proposed cell phone policy, we recommend the inclusion of two additional terms and definitions to further enhance clarity

026within the SRNR. The terms belltobell and smart device are proposed for addition. The definitions for these terms directly reflect the language and definitions established in Senate Bill 738. Including these terms will ensure consistency between state law and division policy and provide students, families, and staff with clear and shared understanding of key expectations under the new requirements. Today marks the conclusion of our final work session before we move forward with the redlinining of the 20 526 students rights and responsibility regulation. A tremendous amount of thoughtful work has gone into this process. Our team has greatly engaged with feedback from students, families, staff, administrators, and community partners. We have closely monitored evolving state guidance to ensure our policies align with the law while staying true to the needs and values of the Fairfax County community. Throughout this

027process, we have remained focused on achieving the goals outlined in our strategic plan and advancing division priorities around equitable discipline practices. Further, our proposed changes reflect a deliberate effort to address discipline disproportionality by revising policies towards consistent enforcement and evidence-based strategy in the reg in the reduction of discipline disparities. The proposed changes were um we present today reflect a collective commitment, one rooted in clarity, consistency, and a care for every student we serve. We thank you for your collaboration, your feedback, and your shared dedication to making FCPS a place where all students can learn and grow and thrive. At this time, we welcome your questions and final reflections. Um, thank you. I'd like to thank staff for the presentation and we'll go to our first question. Um, Miss Seismore Heiser, thank you. And I appreciate

028the the hard work and taking the feedback from the work session. Although I'll save this question for a little bit later on the feedback from the work session. The first question I have is I looked at the I appreciate you sharing also the amended law itself so we could take a look at the language. So I'm a little curious and Dr. Eid, I'm going to ask you this question. Why are I see on slide um I can see the numbers on here the slide that recommends the proposed changes based on the new law um that we're recommending a ban to ban a bell-to-bell ban. However, the law only recommends a restriction and a restriction and a ban are not the same thing. So I'm wondering why and in fact the law says an age appropriate

029that age appropriate developmentally appropriate restrictions but we are seem to be going beyond that by recommending a ban without recommending anything around age appropriate developmentally appropriate. I'm wondering why we're going beyond the law, what the thinking goes around that. So, thank you, Miss Seismoreheiser. I think that um and it's a great question. We've wrestled with this for some time. I think that the current version of the governor's uh bill uh has been characterized as uh essentially banning cell phone use bell-to bell. And as you know, our prior um regulation has required that it be out of class use and we've had storage, but we allowed uh cell phone use between classes and at lunch for high school uh students. So, I think the the characterization of the ban bell to bell is what led to

030the uh recommendation. But upon closer scrutiny, the bill actually or the law actually to your point does talk about developmentally appropriate restrictions. So that would leave the door open to have a dialogue amongst the board um about the developmentally appropriate allowance of cell phones perhaps during the lunch hour um or between classes. So it's certainly I think a a conversation to be had. At this point, the recommendation is um you know a bell-to-bell uh keep the phones out of sight. So if I'm understanding you, the recommendation for the ban was based on the perception that the law banned it, but I'm not hearing any other reasons for going beyond the law other than that was a perception. And I'm really a little hesitant on making a more restriction with only the only reason for it

031being because we think that's what the law says, which is what I'm hearing. Yes, ma'am. And that's and I mean the law is right here. It's only a page. It's not that long to read. And that's not what the law says. So, and the reason I bring this up and the reason I think this is important is one, we're putting in our slides based on the law, we recommend a ban. We need to be careful we read it. Second of all, I really think it's important because when we put the cell phone restrictions in, I think now three years ago, we wrestled with what to do at high school and we banned cell phone usage in classrooms outside of teachers needing it for instructional purposes. Um, and it was bell-to-bell for elementary, middle school, but

032for high school, we talked about the fact that there are some of like I firmly believe that we need to think about all of our students, right? Not just the ones with the loudest voices, but all of our students. And when I talk to students and their families, I think about the students who are parents themselves and have children they may need to reach. I think about the students who may be working to help support their families, which may be more now given what's happening with the economy and the federal government. Um given the fact that we have a high percentage of people who are newly immigrants or um a high percentage living under the poverty level and who qualify for free and produce reduced meals. A lot of those students are working shift work.

033If you're working shift work and your boss texts you saying, "Can you pick up the shift?" and you don't answer within that whole day, you might lose that income. Those are the students that I think about. So, I'm wondering why we are not recommending an age appropriate, developmentally appropriate restriction that allows checking cell phones during lunchtime. I think about the students who desperately want to be included in the lunchroom with their friends, but may not have a 504 or IEP and need some sensory reduction, may not qualify for a 504 IEP because maybe that sensory need doesn't actually impact them in their educational environment because the classrooms aren't that noisy, but may in the lunchroom. So, I'm wondering why those students weren't taking into account when the law seems to allow an age appropriate developmentally

034appropriate restriction. Thank you um Ratcha for those questions. Um when we took our recommendation to the superintendent for consideration, we looked at um number one where it said except as provided in subdivision 4 number one under B in the law. Oh, line what? Oh, line 24, I'm sorry. except as provided in subdivision 4, restrict cell phone and smart device possession and use on school property from bell to bell. So our interpretation of restrict means not allow use. You could be restricted to your restriction ban and not the same word. I'm just putting that out there and I kind of want to understand why we're conflating the word restrict and the word ban. So I'm gonna I'm gonna take that one on. I think that um I we could read it more conservatively or more liberally

035in the sense of uh our imposition of the regulation and at this point I think the the recommendation from staff is to take that more conservative approach. I do think you raised some good points and we certainly uh can adjust that to provide I think you could still keep within the law to your question. Uh you could keep within the law and restrict as developmentally appropriate uh its use during instructional time and between classes, but allow a phone check-in at lunchtime and still be within the bounds of the law as long as we identified it as a developmentally appropriate um use of the of the phone. So I I think we could certainly interpret it that way and still be within um the Law of the Commonwealth at this time. Thank you. man FR. Thanks

036so much. Um assuming let's say we're taking the conservative approach. Um what steps can the school division take to ensure you know one of the things that came up in our initial discussion several years ago. It seems like far longer than three years ago at this point, but I think it has been three years. Um, we talked a lot about the stigmatization of students being able to be identified as having a 504 or an IEP based on them having a phone. If that's the only reason that they have it, then everybody knows automatically. What steps can be taken as a school division to mitigate the outing of students based on their IEP and 504 status, based on their access to those devices? So um I think that um I think as we work to create

037a culture that's inclusive of students in all uh manners in which they best learn uh clearly that would be first and foremost right respect the uh needs of one another um and come from a space that is uh welcoming regardless right? You and I happen to be wearing glasses today. Not everybody is. I'm okay with it. You're okay with it. But as a young child, sometimes the first time you put glasses on, you're not okay with it. So, we need to create a um an environment and a culture within our schools that regardless of the tools we need um that that's okay, right? So I I would also say though that allowing or to Miss Seismore Heiser's point about allowing a developmentally appropriate usage of phones at lunch would call less attention to a student

038who required that. On the other hand, um I know that from parents and staff and students just having that distraction not present in front of them is also very important. Right? This is not a simple uh solution. It has complex impact. Um, and we have to remember developmentally we also have uh high school students that are 18 at times 19 um and are heading off to uh school work life and just how do we also talk about the responsible use and practice that um in high school. So all of those I think are part of this conversation. So I appreciate having it um this morning. um what steps can we take as a division to put more of the onus on parents uh to police the proper use of these devices? And in two ways,

039I'm thinking one, ensuring that they know that times are changing and that direct contact with their student via the device is not going to be as easy as it once was and that they should be going through the main office. and secondarily um arming them with the tools they need to properly police the device itself on their end through user settings. I think those are great questions. I mean at the end of the day parents are providing for most not all but for many of our students it's parents that are providing and paying the data fees right so I think that uh that's a conversation our parents should have with our students about what is the appropriate use of uh a cell phone and it's not the phone itself the tool right it's the access

040to so much damaging and negative social media content um and the algorithmic um obviously pull of the phone. I would say though that uh you know letting parents know that we certainly have in division ways to monitor uh laptop use but a lot of the chatter we had hoped to um eliminate eliminate or limit has moved to different types of devices. Right? So, I know our school staff and leaders are wrestling with um just sometimes our students appear to be a step ahead of us regardless of our rules we implement. Uh but I do think having that conversation with parents is very important. My time has been going for like a minute and a half. Can you restore it back to two minutes, please? I also have to recognize that as we sit here, the

041students in our schools have never not had cell phones. So they've grown up in a very different um environment around these tools than we did. So I think there are lots of ways we could work with parents. Um and I think uh we'll explore those. Um, so the the proposal seems to indicate that schools principles would have the discretion of choosing how to enforce the policy whether it's away in your backpack or your bag or what have you or in a storage device. Would those be implementated uh implemented at the school level or on the classroom level? Um, so would a principal who decides to use a storage receptacle of some kind, would that be implemented throughout the entire school or based on the classroom? It would be a school by school decision, not a

042classroom by classroom decision. Great. Which leads me to my next question, which is obviously there's always going to be room for refinement on these policies. So because it is school by school, we could reflect, the superintendent could reflect on data gathered uh based on changes in the policy and how the schools implement the policy to see what the most efficacious implementation has been over a period of time. Yes, sir. We could do that. Um well, I'll be interested to see, you know, based on Miss Seismarheiser's line of questioning where we end up on this uh subject. I do think that there are two things that could be read out of this legislation. One, exactly how Miss Seismarheiser has interpreted what does the word restrict mean? At the same time, line 24 and subsection 4 would

043indicate that the only uh restriction allowable beyond um bell to bell is for an IEP over 504, which I have a general uh problem with um because of, you know, it potentially outing students uh etc. But I'll be interested to see how that progresses. I will be bringing a follow-on motion for the SRNR to evolve the way that our board u engages on the SRNR to align it with our um EL process so that we're not taking up such significant amount of board time every single year uh when it could be part of our standard evaluation process. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fush. Miss Anderson. So our our chair was in my brain. He asked most of my questions, so I'm not going to repeat um everything. I did want to reiterate that I am

044also concerned about protecting the rights of our of our kiddos with IEPs and 504s. Um the other aspect that I found very interesting when I was listening to what Miss Seismore said is that when you go back, we can't actually um eliminate student possession of a cell phone. There it's still technically they're going to be possessing it because it's still on their person. Which actually gets me to my next point. I have well and then I'll go back to um one of Mr. Frch's questions. Is there a possibility as a as a parent, I sign the SRNR every year to say that I understand what's in it and that my children will abide by it. Um is there a way that we could put something in the SRNR that actually acknowledge the fact that the

045cell phone is a private device that's being brought into our schools? So, it's a personal device that you are making a decision to bring in. um which also would help I think with some of this idea about possession it would understand like acknowledge the restriction. I just think that um it in the before time when we didn't have a device for each student if a student brought a device in they were required to act their parent was required to sign a personal device notice. So I think that that is an appropriate thing for us to do here to acknowledge that these are devices that parents are allowing their students to bring to school. And so if that's the case, then I think that it would make make sense for us to protect ourselves just a

046little bit that way. Miss Anderson, are you saying that just like the parents have to sign off on the SRNR, there would be another signature sheet? Are you asking for another signature sheet? I'm actually asking it to be part of the SRNR itself. So that way they're when they're signing off, they understand that if they're sending a device to their with their student that it's their responsibility to monitor that device. Okay. Thank you. Um so that's one thing. The second thing is um we have as a school system kind of moved away. I went to school when it was absolutely the main office that were the sub school or whatever that was collecting information to get to students related to all the different things. Um and our email devices or our email program quite appropriately

047doesn't allow parents to email their students at school which I absolutely agree with. um do we have the staff required to meet the new communication expectations of parents during the day? Because I think that we're going to have to come up with a system that we actually talk to schools about related to the fact that um how we're going to make sure that parent communication because we're we're in a much different time than when I was growing up where just the sheer volume of of communication that goes on between parents and students. Um I don't think we're prepared for that as a division. So, I think that that would definitely be something that we would need to look toward. Um, and the final thing I want to say is that looking from the findings of

048the pilots, what we were doing was working. Um, it's not perfect. It's never going to be perfect. Um, I particularly look at the amount that the minimal amount of impact that the pilot had on the high school level, which indicates to me that if we don't figure out some less restrictive way to manage this, it's going to continue to be a battle with high school students that I don't particularly want our staff to be engaged with. I think that it's a waste of our time. Mr. Dixon, thank you for the presentation. Uh I believe uh that word restrict also doesn't mean ban. Um it means reduced um you know I guess access to the phones. I I I believe students also have rights and um and also taking it away fully from them during the

049entire day. Um I think we're doing some disservice to our high school students who may be working um after school or have other classes or commitments and taking care of their siblings. So there could be hundred other reasons why they could need a phone during recess. So um I'm I don't like this ban uh and bell-to-bell ban just because I want them give them a little bit of time in between to just take their check their phone messages also in time of emergency. and I god forbid that habit happens and there is a school is under attack or shoot shooting I I I do I do want parents to be able to communicate with their students in some some possible ways. So um I wanted to ask you in case uh you know the equity

050office that what what is your understanding and in the term of students who may need phone during lunch breaks. What is the problem with that? Before the law was passed we had a different recommendation to allow what you are asking. Our interpretation of the law was that we were supposed to restrict useth from bell to bell and that's why we brought the recommendation forward. Okay. Um so again the law we can talk more about the law's interpretation and u my interpretation is same as uh mismoiser said that it is to be restricted in in some capacity but not it's like you restrict you know doing something doesn't actually mean you don't do it like you uh I could be wrong but I this is my understanding um also wanted to know about the implementation I

051mean all rules are great and policy are great but it comes to implementation. Some kids have schools have better success with school uh cell phone than the others and and consistency is the key and I I just feel like um if you put our teachers to in the middle of grabbing the phones from the teach students I think it just puts a lot of pressure on them too. I think they don't like doing it. So um the devices it's should be an automatic thing when student is signing SRNR and and they're they are supposed to do that it should be kind of inbuilt into them. So I think the more the consistency is across the district with every school I think the students are going to be like okay this is what I'm supposed to

052do and take giving them some respect also this is uh you know you know giving them some respect of them being able to use their phone at some time I think we can gain their respect back so it's I think it's a mutual respect we have to do at this time so I'll stop there thank you thank you Mr. predicts it. Um, Miss Marin, yeah, I was so ready to be like, yes, let's just do it. You're presenting us with the present with the recommendation, but there's still questions and I'm I'm trying to figure out, okay, a few things. So, before the board, it seems like we have some consensus to figure out are we going to do bell-to-bell completely or allowing for lunch at high school. Okay. So, that would be if if the

053staff is going to propose what they're proposing, that means that we either need to ask for amendment now or we amend it when we vote on it. The implementation, the how um are they going to be pouches? Are there going to be hangers? The front office calls. That's a great idea. Are families now going to be flooding the front office with with things relatedly the funds needed to implement? Do we have to buy things? And then the communications to families. But but there's just I feel like there's an overall philosophy, too. Like just this week, my daughter said, "Hey, can I have Instagram?" Because my soccer team is posting updates and I don't know what's happening. I see the updates. So, like, we've got to be consistent. If we're going to not have them on

054devices, if it's to limit them from the social media that they're not useful for, well, then there's all these social media accounts by all these clubs that principles are posting to. So, you know, what do we do about that? Because they're still going to need to see those things. Um, unless it's totally duplicative content just delivered, but this particular piece of content was not duplicative. I like the idea Miss Anderson suggested about the signoff. I recall this past year when the SRNR sign off my parents was digitized. Great, but like I somehow hit something and it was gone and I was done and I had agreed and I hadn't scrolled through anything. So, I think and I remember we talked with Mr. Sethi at the time, but like really being sure that that is a

055meaningful process. I know sometimes like you can't scroll through, you can't just click yes until you've actually scrolled through, which is like a minimum. But, you know, I've thought and we've talked for a while, how do we really get parents and families to read it to, you know, so I'm all for like an extra, you know, like when you go to the doctor and they're like, do you agree to this? Do you agree to this? You know, really have them go through these prompts. Um, you know, I also received this week attendance updates for each of my children. And so I'm wondering, is there something, which is great, um, and whether they're chronically absent or not. um they're not. But I just um wanted to say could there be some kind of a report like

056that like your child has had this many violations of the cell phone or this maybe it's something like I don't know I'm not trying to make more work but you know what's the least worst decision cuz we have to decide and we can also know that laws can be changed and we can reinterpret the law. students will really really dislike this and I really don't feel good about doing that. So I'd love if we could get to some kind of consensus. Are we feeling that we would want to do the bell-to-bell or you know interpret restrict to be what we have now which is allowed during lunch implementation the funds needed and the communications. So I'm eager to hear your thoughts. Thanks. Yes, ma'am. So, we number one, there are no funds uh planning on

057expending on this particular recommendation uh because the high school was planned, I believe, to keep the cell phones if they have them on their person not to be seen. Correct. So, they're not taking them out every period and putting them somewhere since they're not supposed to have them. So I believe that's where the high school principles landed. So there's no uh there are no funds expended in the high school side currently with the recommendation. The middle school uh those middle schools who had the pouches and want to keep them were saying fine. And other middle schools felt like they got good results with simply enforcing and not purchasing that. So that's a choice they're going to be making. So no funds. Um secondly, I think the question uh really is the enforcement, right? Uh regardless

058of which way we end up, I do believe that that expectation's been made clear both by Dr. King's office and Dr. Pon's office as well as our region staff that we have to be consistent in our accountability across the division regardless of where we land. So, I think that's been improved this year just with that heightened sense of awareness about, you know, enforcing expectations with cell phones. Dr. Anderson, thank you. I I want to build a little bit of more understanding regarding the the the bill. Um, I think I read it the way that Mr. Fresh shredded. There is an exception in subdivision 4 that speaks to a small cluster of students. Um can Dr. Re can you point it to me the area that gives us flexibility in terms of interpretation? Just the line.

059I don't have the line in front of me, but I can phone a friend. I think Miss Seismore has the name of the line, but I believe in the reading of it, there's a developmentally appropriate restriction characterization that is not explicitly closing the door on the possible use uh in particular by developmentally um aged individuals. So I let me it would be lines 16 and 17 perhaps. 21 2122 but that's where yeah 21 22 and 24 I believe. Thank you. Okay. I do agree it could be clearer and I think that's where you can sort of read it for it's a little bit like statistics right? I guess we can use them to tell the story we wish, but I think you can read it either way. I do think you could make the argument

060though that developmentally appropriate restrictions might look different for a 12year-old than an 18-year-old. Okay, I'll I'll circle back to that in just a little bit. Um, thank you for finding that for me. And I I think what I'm hearing a little bit is started in the conversation. the existing materials for schools that have yonder pouches and the hanging things and the receptacles. So if they want to keep using them, they can. And if they do not, what will happen? I would hate for that financial investment to be for not. So in speaking to the seven schools that have purchased pouches, they want to continue to use those pouches. Our recommendation is to allow middle schools or high schools that desire to use their own school funding to help enforce it. We gave them that latitude

061in our recommendation. Um, but the seven that did had made it very clear to us in our meeting since March 11th that they want to be able to use their pouches. And additionally, there's about four or five other middle schools that would like to purchase pouches as well. We made it clear that the division would not be spending any funding, but if they want to utilize their own school budgets to do that, the recommendation allows for them to do that. Thank you. And if I remember from our last discussion, there was a concern regarding using classroom, you know, pouches because of the in and out of students taking out their backpack to include it in a pouch and putting it back in seven times throughout the day. Can you speak to that a little, please?

062Yes. Our recommendation does not allow for those types of storage units to be used. Right. We said because of the bellto bell that we interpreted in the law that we did not want students engaging in their phone every 90 minutes by taking it out and putting in something. So the high schools in meeting with the high school principles they agreed as well and um came to consensus around the language that we recommended which was if you're going to use storage the storage must be bellto bell at that point and high school said that they wanted to use the personal use or if if schools have lockers and the kids can use the lockers but it is not they're not going to purchase pouches unless a principal decides that they want to use that money to

063do so. Thank you. Um is Mr. Foster here? No ma'am he is not. Okay. So I cannot ask him that question. Um one of the things that I talked to you all when I met during my 2 by two is exactly having some more acknowledgment of the different components of the SRNR particularly the pieces that are changing significantly around um weapons assault etc. I I think it will be a great thing and we talked about this just on that cover sheet whether it be electronic or physical where each section gets its own line for an initialing. I understand you know assault weapons d this will happen and I understand you know x you will happen for this other section because it brings the attention to it because that one full signature it's pretty much arbitrary

064and we do find not arbitrary that's not the word preuncter when we find that parents are digging into the SRNR it's because there's a reason to because their kid is in process we want them to know it ahead of time similarly to what I raised for students um the student education piece and the parent education piece regarding what they can do to help mitigate student use. I mean, I've put it in my newsletter. I've shared it with all of my principles. Like, these are the steps to go in your kids's iPhone and to limit what they can have access to throughout the day. It doesn't hurt. How many people are doing it? I don't know. But the Anderson children are not happy because it's happening for them. Um so, I'm just going to say that.

065Um, but I I do and unless I I'd like to hear from Mr. Foster. I know he's not here, but I don't think I am seeing the language being interpreted in the way that our um colleagues are seeing it. I do see it as bellto. Um, and I do wonder it and I and again this is not clean. This is not black or white. This is a lot of gray. There are a lot of different circumstances. Uh, but I also wonder about how will it impact what principles and school staff need to do because one of my biggest concerns is this becoming kind of a teacher heavy enforcement um issue taking away time from instruction. I'll take a Thank you. Um, Mr. Moon, uh, thank you. uh comment or two or question or two and

066and then perhaps a request. A this sort of last minute a legislation from general assembly is really helping us but at the same time you know causing some confusion on our part. uh some of my colleagues already stated that restrict to be interpreted other than banning. I mean I can certainly agree with that that can be certainly interpreted that but so this is a sort of question and request a lot of times when you are unable to ascertain uh uh what the legislation or legislator truly meant to say in the legislation. You look at legislative history and if that if they can be found if they can be found and I was looking at this particular legislation and all that I see is it began from September of 2024 and started with uh started in

067Senate and then there was house version and then there were a lot of discussion between Senate and House And at one point they not could not reach a compromise and then ended up senate ended up exceeding to a house bill and then came to this. If we can somehow find the discussions they had to come to this point that might give us some clues as to what they meant to say by restriction as opposed to any other languages. That's one if that can be done because I'm not able to find that right away whether they have any any any minutes from those committee meetings and etc and look through those that's a request uh question that I have is reflecting on this house bill 1961 and your proposal 1961 seems to asking each school district

068to develop a policy. Uh that implementation and enforcement of which should be the responsibility of administration, school administration and minimizing minimizing uh loss of instructional times or minimizing a responsibilities or duties put upon classroom teachers. But use of use of cell phones or other smart devices if they occur in classrooms, we don't see school administrators in every classroom all the time. How will we be able to enforce at the same time minimize loss of instructional time or duties upon classroom instructors to be able to enforce this? Mr. Moon. During our pilot process, we had these conversations with our principles and what they did as part of the pilot was a teacher would school set it up separately. Some of them have a Google doc where the um teacher goes into the Google doc and says

069this student violated and the administrator handles it. Some call the front office and have an administrator come and deal with it. But at this year um teachers were not to handle the cell phones. It was upon the administrator to handle the cell phone and the discipline of the cell phone. I guess my I'm going to have to ask her to go back. At this time, I would ask for members that don't want to go back to put down their placards because I know some of you guys left them up. Thank you. And I think I captured everybody that did put them back up. We'll go back in the order of our first round. Uh, Miss Seismore Heiser, thank you. Um, a couple things I want to just go back to. I appreciate the the comment

070about looking at the legislative history. However, that's the second step. I believe the first step is look at the plain language meaning of the word. So, when you just Google the dictionary definition of restrict. It's refers to the act of setting boundaries, limits or conditions on something. Indicates an act of imposing rules or conditions how something can be used or distributed. It does not say ban or stop usage of or prevent. It's it's clearly limits not ban. So I don't think we even need to go look at the intent because the plain language meaning of the word is limit. So I think that gives us leeway in what we want to do. And I'd be curious what the high school principles would say if you asked them that this was an option. And I don't

071know if you did or not, but like it seems like if the if the law was interpreted as banned, then I'd be curious what they said. But um beyond that, I also wanted to kind of get back to I appreciate my colleague bring up the stigma of IEPs 504s, I don't see anything in these plans to really address that. When I talk to families of IEP 504 students, the number one reason they do not want their kid included is because of bullying. I I appreciate the glasses analogy, but glasses are not necessary a coveted item. Cell phones are a coveted item. I know yours are beautiful. I do like them, but you know, they're not necessary coveted item the way cell phones are. And you give students a coveted access to a coveted item because

072they need it for an accommodation when other students don't. You are setting them up to be this targets of bullying. And what are we doing around that? I have asked this question for 2 years since we did the first ban. And I have yet to hear what we're actually doing to make sure. And this is the reason why and and then I hear from from you know staff that we can't include kids because the parents don't want it. It's this like vicious cycle. So I do want an answer to that that if we're going to do this what are we going to do to make sure the kids who need access for medical disability English language reasons are protected. I will need to go back my other point. I could if I could get an

073answer to that question that'd be great. Yes ma'am. Dr. King. Yes, Miss Smarheiser, we I agree with you and um you know, it's the expectation that our teachers do what we expect them to do. And if our students are allowed to use these devices as part of an IEP or 504, it is upon the teachers who service that student to ensure, you know, a case manager would know and and alert the other teachers that um serve that student that they know that. That's not the with all due respect, that's a different question. Okay. I'm sorry. The question that's a question whether the teachers are going to punish the student for using the cell phone. Okay. I'm asking what are we doing to prevent other students from bullying the student or pressuring them to let them

074use their cell phone because they don't have access and the student does. I mean we have bullying expectations, right? And I expect that if a student is bullying a student with access to a tool that they're addressed through the SRNR like any other student who violates our roles. With all due respect, Dr. to read. I appreciate that statement, but when we're setting kids up in this way, we need to do more than just saying, "Well, these are our rules." I know our time is up. Yes, ma'am. I will uh convene staff and work on some um additional strategies. Chairman FR, thank you. Um so, this would not be the first time that the general assembly has passed imprecise legislation impacting our schools. Um, so I anticipate that if um, you know, the legislation doesn't define

075the word restriction, had it defined the word restriction, we wouldn't be having this kind of extended conversation about it. Um, it doesn't mean that they won't address this discrepancy in future revisions to this section of the code uh, as well. And so um my my general issue is you know I read when I read the legislation I was reading it from the perception of me defining what the word restriction means right and so um when I had decided myself that it meant a complete ban um because of the conversation out in the public I was able to find I think it was line 24 and section 4 read in tandem would be that the only exception would be for s uh 504s and IEPs, but because nowhere in the legislation does it define what the

076word restriction is um you know, a restriction can be from the lightest uh rebuke to the most strenuous um denial um because it's not defined. It leaves it open to interpretation, I think. Um, and I would struggle to see how any school division in Virginia's current plan could not fit into this legislation, including the recommendations that the board received at its previous um, SRNR conversation about I guess two a month ago uh, at at the work session. So, um, perhaps at some point the general assembly will uh, button up their approach to the legislation. You I can say from my time working in Congress on the rules committee um that if Congress passed laws that were not clear and specific, they were they the courts, you know, rely on the plain language. Um and only

077when that plain language does not um far it out uh clarity do they go back and try to interpret um what the intent behind the legislation was which is not always clear based on the conversation. Thank you Chairman Fish. Um, Vice Chair Anderson, not to further elaborate on this point. The only other thing that I want to say is being someone who went to a secondary school. I'm not as I'm not only worried about the kids. I'm not only worried about the teachers. I'm worried about every teacher that someone passes in the hallway that yells at you for being on your cell phone. Like, so it's not just and it's othering in the hallways. It's all the things. So, we have significant members of our st we have members of our staff that don't need

078to know what every student's IEP is. and that's private information that needs to be kept with the people who need to know it. So, I just worry about how we're going to um mitigate some of those things as we move forward so that we don't create environments that are unsafe for our kids. Um, the other thing that I wanted to quickly mention is actually a procedural question that I have for some of my colleagues is that the the things that were recommended in the last work session related to SRNR were not actually codified in any any consensus vote um or consensus taking on our next document related to the changes. And I know a precocious um third grader that unintentionally created a knife um out of a piece of silverware in order to cut his

079food at lunch. Um, and I wonder whether or not that would have been dealt with the same way as someone who's actually bringing a machete to school. And so I'm a little concerned about not having any variation. I understand that we don't want the disparity in it in discipline. However, my concern is is that the way we're actually going to get there is that things are just not going to be recorded, which is what we're trying to get away from. And so I am concerned that if we don't have some mitigating language um then it means that we're just not going to be recording what's going on. So then we don't really know when we have a problem because it's going to be further in the disparity that we're actually trying to move away from.

080So I am not actually it wouldn't have been something that I would have supported to take that out. And so I I'm wondering whether or not it was the it was your office's decision to take it out based on our conversation because I don't think that it was necessarily an agreed on board direction. So I just wanted to to bring that up. Miss Anderson, you're correct. Um Miss Marin. Yeah, I appreciate the question, Mr. Anderson, because I was I'm okay with everything the staff has proposed about the SR language so far, barring the cell phone piece, but I had wondered um Dr. King, you know, when we're saying we made it not not your team made it so that it wasn't up to discretion for the suspension of the 10 days and the factors prior

081to suspension. Well, what are the criteria then? Are those already in the SRNR to determine if a child gets suspended for 1 to 10 days? There's slide five and six, but the board asked to not have it up to discretion of the staff member to assign the suspension time of 1 to 10 days. So that's been removed. But what now are the criteria? How is it determined whether suspension is 1 day or 10 days? like we've removed the subjectivity of the person but like is it even more subjective now because there's actually no guidance. So thank you for that question. So currently right now the proposed change is that it is a 10day suspension for that particular violation and it is not within the discretion to have less than that particular 10 days. I'm sorry

082it's up to 10 days. So they can have anywhere from one to up to 10. So who's deciding whether it's one or 10? It's at the discretion of the administrator. That is correct. That was removed from the document. So the administrator can determine the duration of suspension but not other factors in determining whether to suspend. But what factors will the administrator use to determine the duration? Yes. Um those are factors that are typically determined in in suspension. So we're right back where we started, aren't we? that now instead of explicitly stating they're going to take all those factors in consideration, now we're saying don't consider that, but they're clearly going to consider something. So without explicitly, I'd rather have it in there saying considering their past experience or age than have nothing at all and

083then it's more open to bias or subjectivity. So that's on that. And I'm feeling pressured cuz I want to share about cell phones. Yeah, it's a sloppy it's sloppy work by the general assembly and the governor and um we're supposed to have local control and the fact that the governor is trying is dictating what is happening in our classrooms is why it's sloppy and unclear. Um it's I came into this meeting before the legislation of a few months as Mr. Moon pointed out thinking okay I'm good to go with the have them out at lunch because we talked about that's what this board wanted. So I would love if we could, you know, raise hands or say in our turns who is for what the staff is their interpretation and who's in and for the

084other interpretation that allows for us to restrict it in the way we see fit and that would mean allowing it during lunch. I think if we can get to that, it will really help us. Thanks chair. Is that allowed during a work session? Would Okay, by a show of hands, would the board like to take a vote to show consensus on consensus? Oh, okay. Before we take that vote, may I ask Mr. Foster some questions first? Sure. Um, okay. Thanks. So, actually, Dr. Anderson, it's your turn. So, okay. Mr. Faucet just came in. The conversation at the table is regarding the um the language and the cell phone policy, whether it is a I guess I'm following you, okay? Whether it is a restriction or a ban and is that applicable to student groups outside

085of those identified on line 3 three? I'll give you some time to take a look because I do have other questions that are unrelated to cell phones. Um, in one of the pages, and please number these just to make it for easier reference, but in one of the pages talked about the removal of the school counselor from a team, can you give a little bit of background there, please? So, originally there were several portions throughout the SRNR that stated that counselors um are the ones that could be fielding potential com um concerns around disciplinary decisions. And so, we wanted to redirect those concerns around disciplinary decisions to administrative teams um instead of to counselors. It doesn't preclude um a parent from discussing um the concern around the outcome of a disciplination or how to be

086able to support a student, but the concern itself and how to address it according to the SRNR should be directed to the administrative team. So what you're saying is that counselors were making disciplinary decisions. No, but potentially with the language in the SRNR, it permitted uh a a parent to go to a counselor to discuss a very specific disciplinary concern around an outcome versus taking that to the administrator. So now parents would be prevented from having conversations with counselors about outcomes of discipline matters. I'm sorry, I'm I'm not getting it. So what we believe Please stop my time. Please stop my time. She's talking. We did not parents can talk to their students counselors about anything that they wish. The counselor does not have the authority to change the outcome of discipline infraction and that's

087the way it was interpreted. So we remove the counselor and put it back on the administrator who makes the decisions. If a parent is upset about it, there's an appeal process and it's with the administrator and not the counselor. So that was the interpretation. Was in actuality. Were counselors making these changes? No counselors, we're not making the changes. No, we just wanted to provide more clarity. Thank you for that. And the other question is regarding um the timeline of SB980. I know one of the things that's always been talked about with the SRNR, we have a job dead date for printing and all of the things. How does that work with your timetable if you don't have a final language until late potentially? So the SRNR and I'd have to find the precise language for

088you, but the SRNR does permit us to to change the regulation as needed um based upon regulatory guidance um or things that come up. So it does allow us to change it and provide guidance to schools if it's if it happens two three months from now. All righty. Thank you, Mr. Foster. More time. So uh good afternoon. Um, want to make sure I understand the question before it's on. It's on. It's Is that Is that better? Yeah. Um, I want to make sure that I understand the question before I answer it. So, um, as I understand the question, it is under House Bill uh number 1961. Is this a ban on uh cell phones or does the language of that code section um give the ability of a local school division to restrict or regulate

089but not have an outright ban? Is that the question essentially? And it's saying what needs to be happening from bell to bell. Is it nothing or is it flexibility therein? So I I outside of those student groups that are laid that are named. I do I do think that the um language of the code section as it currently exists does um give local school divisions the flexibility. Um I don't read it to require an outright ban because it talks about restrict at line 24. Um and restrict is is uh not a ban. Um you can restrict something and not ban it. Um and and then again at line 27 it talks about regulating. Um right. So please keep going. So I I I think those two um points that I just referred to um I

090do think local school divisions including this one do have the authority under the current language um to um regulate but not ban. So then we don't have to So essentially our regulation could end up being usage all throughout the day. I don't know if that would be a regulation but I I do think that it gives board flexibility or school systems flexibility. So we would have flexibility for again all throughout the day. I I think that you would have flexibility. Yes. So what's the difference between what we have currently? How what is what's the teeth of this legislation then? if it's saying you can do whatever you wish throughout the day. Yeah, I I don't read it to be saying you can do whatever you wish throughout the day. But I do read it to

091say that school divisions, they don't have to impose an outright ban that they can um have something that is a restriction but less than that. And it could have a restriction or must have a restriction. Dr. Anderson, I I just asked uh Mr. Foster to take a look at it a few moments ago. I do want to say that it's um I believe that they're talking about developmentally appropriate restrictions. So I don't believe that the intent was um to allow anything to go. I believe there was an intent to provide some level of monitoring or restriction that was developmentally appropriate. Thank you. And I think what I'm trying to get to, if we were to decide that at the high school level it is developmentally appropriate to not have restrictions on the cell phones, would

092that meet the tenor of what we would like? If we were to say we'll just restrict it, let's say it's at lunch and not throughout the rest of the day, would that meet the law the law standards? I so I think my immediate reaction is no. I think that what the code section uh envisions is restriction on use but I as we've talked about I do think that given that each local school division in this commonwealth has local control over its school system that there is some flexibility in how that restriction is implemented. Thank you. I I don't think I'm any clearer, but I I appreciate I know it was completely last minute. Okay, thank you. Um so, um let's go back to uh taking the consensus um after Dr. Anderson's questions. So, I'm going

093to take an informal consensus of the board to help inform staff in advance of the May 8th board vote. Thank John. If I could say may I may I before you do I'm I'm sorry but I appreciate data. I appreciate survey data. I appreciate information, but without them knowing what the what question was asked on this, without them knowing what the interpretation of the law is, I feel a little uncomfortable having sort of I hate to say this, hearsay, right? Because if so, I I would just rather based on the information you've provided so far, unless they're here that we can ask them questions, that would be fine. And if if you had a panel like you've had before in work sessions of you know principles from the principal associations that we could then ask

094more questions. I I think I think it's a consensus of the board. It's not a formal vote. I don't know why we need all that information. Okay. Can we can we Dr. King go ahead and speak please? Okay. I just wanted to say that prior to the bill being passed, our recommendation was to allow high school students to use their phones during lunch and between classes because the high school principal said that if we restrict in between classes, it's going to be very difficult for them to um enforce. And so I wanted before you took the consensus, I wanted to provide that additional information because the principles did say that. Thank you. Um, so I'm going to so I'm going to just in the interest of time, I I know there's two more gobacks here,

095but just in the interest of time, let's move forward with this. Uh, and it's not a binding vote. It's a consensus. And this law did just come down, and obviously there's a lot of questions. So all those who prefer the staff's previous recommendation that would continue to allow high school students to use cell phones during lunch and and passing periods and passing periods by would show of hands. Is there a consensus for lunch and passing periods? Okay m Miss Marin, yes. Miss Dixit, yes. Mr. Moon, yes. Mr. Carl, yes. Um, Miss U Seismoreheiser, yes. Mr. Um, McDaniel, yes. Miss Anderson, yes. Um, myself, yes. Is uh, all those opposed? Oh. Oh. Oh, I go to the second option now. Okay. I'm sorry. This is Okay. So, there is a consensus. uh all those who prefer

096the updated staff recommendations for bell-to-bell bands at all levels including high school. So we have a show of hands in terms of a consensus. Um and then I'm going to go back to the next gobacks. Is that the process here? Okay. So Miss Seismore Oh. Oh, Mr. Mr. Moon, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mr. Moon, your second. Yeah, I I didn't get to I didn't get to ask my follow-up questions because ran out of time. And how to enforce this is so what is your your expectations once we adopt US SRNR, new cell phone policy of teachers in the classroom when teachers see violations. So, it's our expectation that each principal determine how they're going to enforce the rules at their school, right? People are doing different things. A principal showed me a cart that they

097have set up that their security is going around from class to class. When a teacher notifies the main office, the main office notifies security. The security goes and confiscate a phone if they need to. So, there is. So each school is going to have uh its own way of handling enforcement by starting from teachers. Is that if if it happens in the classroom, it has to start with teachers, right? There's minimal, right? I think that the law is asking us not to have teachers intervene back and forth with students and principles know that. And in the pilot program, they prove that they could do that. and and you don't have any intention to give certain uh let's say a a strategy guideline as how to handle it by all teachers right Mr. rather than each

098school developing its own and look different from one school to another. I think the expectation of our school leaders are to enforce all infractions in the of the SRNR in their schools and we're expecting our principles to be able to do so. We will often um offer um office hours with our with DA's team to um support principles when they're having issues of enforcing any rules of SRNR. And we're going to expect the same thing with cell phones. Because since I still got some time, I you know, one thing that I am trying to avoid is this teacher A just letting go of a violations versus teacher B reporting everything, you know, dutifully and school A's culture being this versus school B's culture being different. That's what I'm trying to avoid. Yeah, Mr. Moon, I

099I understand and respect what you're saying and the expectation is for our principles to uphold all rules in the SR&R. You know, when there's violations of dress code, some teachers see it, some teachers don't, but the expectation is that they all do, right? And we will continue to work with our principles who might have challenges in enforcing any rule of SR&R like we've done. Thank you, Miss Seismore Heiser. Thank you. Um, just two quick points. First, I want to pick up my colleague Miss Anderson talking about the next steps versus board recommendations. And Dr. Reid, I just wanted to get clear because this is a slippery slope. If we start making changes based on conversation at the table versus next steps, is that going to be going forward for all work sessions and all topics?

100You can stop my time. Thank you. So, are you referring to the consensus vote? No. in the in the in the presentation, there are certain changes that were recommended based on board conversation at the last SRNR meeting and those weren't embedded in the and voted on in the next steps or contestants wasn't given on the next steps process. So, is that going to be a new change that from now on at work sessions, we may make changes based on staff recommendations, based on board conversations versus next steps and if so, we should get rid of next steps. No, ma'am, that was a that was an error. We're not going to that won't continue. Thank you. Thank you and I and I appreciate the willingness to be collaborative and take our feet. I totally appreciate that.

101So, please I just want to be clear what our process is. Yes, ma'am. Um the other thing I wanted to mention is the findings from the pilot. I was a little confused because I appreciate the finding. It clearly shows there's a bigger impact of the the pouches at middle school than high school. But the pilot was only August 19th to September 30th. And then there's a statement later on that said that there was that the in the next slide that there was um less or somewhere they said there was um less enforcement like it was less um beneficial later on but I don't see any data about later on. It said the pouches and implementation strategies were more effective early became less effective later but we only seem to have data for a month and

102a bit. I'm curious why we don't have data for longer. Yes ma'am. Dr. Dr. King, does the team have some data, Diana? Yes, certainly. So, um, we provided findings from the pilot in terms of the data just for a certain time period that coincided with the reporting, uh, that went out. However, the pilot of course extended for the entire year. And if we are interested in cell phone data after this January 31 deadline, we're happy to provide that. I appreciate that. I think what this goes to what tells me is that especially at the high school level it's a matter of really consistent implementation which is what we've said from when we passed these rules three years ago that if we can support our teachers and principles and ensuring that consist and and have expectations

103of consistent implementation I think storage clearly shows that it helps right and I think it's important to allow the schools to use storage methods if they need to or want to absolutely and I and I fully believe in not having cell phones in classes all the data and research I've read points to the impact negative impact of cell phones in the classroom. So, I'm fully in support of that, but I just think we need to continue to work on that consistent enforcement with protections for students who need them. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Uh, and I believe that's everybody. So, we are going to unless there's any other comments. Last call. Thanks. So, Okay, just one last comment just as an FYI because we know one of the authors of this bill um is Senator Picarski

104and I've just been texting with her just to say is this a restriction or is this a ban? Just trying to get some other some understanding and she said, "Can you just share this?" I actually texted her. I said, "No, just email it to us." But since you asked last comment, here it is. Um please tell Dr. You spoke with me and the intention is the same as the executive order and 140 in the legislature. Many top lawyers undertook what that meant. We don't want to see cell phones during the school day anymore. And there's some more stuff, but it's not as gerine. Okay. Words matter. Anyway, with that, thank you staff and we'll be back after lunch. and we want to squeeze out every last minute possible for us to digest all of this

105good information. So, Dr. Reid, do you have an introduction for go five? Dr. Reid, do you have an introduction? We are starting. My apologies, Dr. Anderson. Uh so it's my pleasure this afternoon as we explore goal five of our strategic plan to introduce um members of our senior leadership team who will be um presenting our goal five report. I want to be uh clear that the goal five report in particular really involves uh the four offices that are in front of you. our equity office, our academic office, and our schools office as well as our strategy office work on these goals. I think one of the reasons you see the data that you see is because we're working across departments and that's a critical uh strategy in terms of moving the dial on the data

106that we're moving the dial on. So, I'll turn it over to Miss Neil at this point um to have folks introduce themselves and then make the presentation. So, thank you, Dr. Dr. Anderson. Well, I am joined with uh by Dr. King, Dr. Prescidio, Miss Huntstead, and uh Dr. Pon. And I'm going to have Miss Huntstead kick us off this afternoon. Good afternoon, members of the board. Today is our final goal report for this school year. Our objectives for today are seen on the screen. We look forward to talking about our progress around goal five and the actions we are taking to meet our 2030 goals. Today's presentation is our leading for tomorrow's innovation goal. There are eight measures in goal five and today we'll be focused on measures C through G. This presentation will be

107looking at graduation equity as part of our initial priority areas. We are defining graduation equity as all students graduating from FCPS with a plan and a way to demonstrate their qualifications for postsecary success. To understand graduation equity, we looked at several factors including rates of on-time graduation and student dropout, the diplomas our graduates are earning, our students plan for additional education or work after graduation, and college enrollment. We also share student performance in ninth grade as an indicator whether students are on track to graduate. Starting with the big picture big picture first. Overall about 95% of our students graduated on time last year which is the sum of the teal, yellow, and dark blue bars. Our rates of on-time graduation are slightly higher than the state average and nearly identical to other districts in Northern

108Virginia. Approximately 62% of our students in the class of 2024 graduated with an advanced studies diploma, the teal bar. An additional 31% graduated with a standard diploma, the yellow bar, and less than 2% earned the applied studies diploma, the dark blue bar. Our students earned the advanced studies diploma at higher rates when compared to the state overall and other Northern Virginia divisions. Compared to baseline, we saw increases in on-time graduation and improvements in dropout rates with the greatest improvements in these areas where the gaps were the largest. We met our overall targets this year and are on track for our overall 2030 goals. However, we will need to provide additional support to ensure all student groups meet the 2030 goal. To achieve our 2030 goals, we are pursuing a number of strategies which we will

109discuss in detail following review of the data. Before we dive into the data of this presentation, I wanted to take a few moments to talk about why graduation equity is a key priority for our division and what factors have been shown to affect success in other districts. Graduation equity is the culmination of many of our earlier efforts, including supporting continuous growth of students and their learning in earlier grades, ensuring students are engaged in school and attending regularly, and facilitating student access to and success in advanced courses. Successful completion of high school is required for approximately 94% of jobs and necessary for admission into most colleges, universities, trade schools, and apprenticeship programs. Researchers have identified several factors across school districts that affect graduation, including those at a division, school, and family level. First, we're going to

110look at our on-time graduation data. On-time graduation rates are calculated based on the percent of students in a graduating class who have earned a standard advanced study or applied studies diploma. For most students, this means graduating within four years of entering 9th grade. Students with disabilities and our multilingual learners are able to extend time to graduation and are moved into their intended graduating class for the purpose of calculating this data. On this slide, you can see that our rate of on-time graduation was slightly higher than the state average and in line with other districts in Northern Virginia. Our class of 2024 achieved a higher rate of on-time graduation than the two prior classes, which was a similar trend in other divisions. Overall, our on-time graduation increased about half a percentage point from baseline, and we

111met our overall target for the year. Multilingual learners and Hispanic students have lower on-time graduation rates. However, both groups saw the most growth from baseline, which suggests we are also closing the gap in graduation rates across our student groups. As a reminder, our annual targets are based on the growth that we need to achieve each year to remain on course for our 2030 goals. The growth rate for all of our students is shown by the dark blue line. Rates of on-time graduation increased by 10 percentage points for students classified as ELP levels one and two. These groups now have rates much closer to the division average, and we anticipate that a sustained focus will continue to improve their rates. Students who were classified as ELP level 4 had a rate of on-time graduation that was

112similar to the overall division rates. And formal multilingual learners have a rate of on-time graduation that exceeded the division average at over 97%. Students with disabilities, categorized as level two, had an on-time graduation rate that was slightly below the rates for students with disabilities overall and about seven percentage points below students with disabilities categorized as level one. on the data points we have used to ensure students are on track for graduation is students earning five or more credits by the end of nth grade. Based on national research and our own analysis of this data, this indicator is a reliable predictor for on-time graduation, but is less reliable for some student groups, in particular for our multilingual learners. We plan to refine our model for future reports to account for these differences when examining early risk

113factors for on-time graduation. While not part of our strategic plan metrics, we are also monitoring changes to the state accountability system, including how graduation will be measured and reported within this system. We want to spend a few minutes looking at the 4-year and six-year federal graduation indicator or FGI, which is part of our new state school performance and support framework. The 4-year FGI looks at the percent of students who earned a standard or advanced studies diploma within four years of entering high school. It does not adjust for students who move to a different graduating class to accommodate extended time to graduate. It also does not include students who graduate with the applied studies diploma. Beginning with this school year, the 4G the 4-year FGI will be used by Virginia as part of calculating a school's

114accountability score. It will account for 15% of a high school's final score and 10% of a secondary schools. The state will also report on the six-year FGI. This measure looks at the percent of students who earn any of the three diplomas within six years of entering high school. This six-year FGI does not move students into different graduating classes to accommodate extended time to graduate. This measure will count for 5% of a high schools or secondary school score in the accountability framework. On this slide, you can see the impact of using four-year FGI rate compared to an on-time graduation rate. The rate is three to four percentage points lower when using the FGI compared to the on-time graduation rate for FCPS, Virginia, and other districts in Northern Virginia. The six-year FGI is closer to our on-time

115graduation rate. While we do not yet have the six-year rate for 2324 and 21-22, the most recent year for which we have complete data, our six-year FGI was 93% compared to our on-time graduation rate of 94%. This change in reporting will be most vised time to graduate or earned an applied studies diploma. I will now turn the presentation over to Miss Neil. As a part of graduation equity, we are also going to look at students who dropped out and generally this includes our students who withdrew from a school without transferring to another school or students who had an unconfirmed status at the end of the cohort year. So unlike the previous data where we were looking for the lines to go up, in this we're looking for um reduction in the rates declines to show

116improvement. Um overall there was a decline in student dropout rates at the state level um for FCPS and for other divisions in Northern Virginia, which mirrors our changes that we saw in those on-time graduation rates. Um and our student dropout rates are similar to other divisions in Northern Virginia and slightly better than the state. Last year, we saw improvements in dropout rates across multiple student groups with the largest improvements um observed for student groups who had the higher rates of dropouts. So, similar to on-time graduation rates, we're starting to see that gap close. Again, this slide shows our intended trajectory in order to hit our goals. And similar to what we saw in the on-time graduation rates, as we see the ELP levels increase, we see fewer dropouts. So we can see some very large

117improvements for our students who were classified as ELP1 level last year. Um and in spite of these large improvements, over half of the students with this categorization did drop out last year. Whereas when we look at students classified as ELP level four, they had a gra a dropout rate that was similar to the overall division average. And our former multilingual learners had a rate of dropout that was lower than the division average. Um this slide provides some additional context around the 567 students who dropped out from the class of 2024. Um approximately three4s of the students who dropped out were categorized as current multilingual learners and about twothirds were 18 or older at the time of withdrawal. And this data really um indicates a need to continue to focus on transition and support of our

118high school multilingual learners, especially those students who are classified as ELP level one at age 18 and beyond. So in our next section, we're going to take a look at the diploma types that our graduates are earning. So overall, roughly twothirds of our graduates earn a standard diploma and about a third earn the uh excuse me, twothirds earn the advanced studies diploma and about a third earn the standard diploma. Uh fewer than 2% of our students earn the applied studies diploma. And this represents about 13% of our students with disabilities in the graduating cohort. And this pattern of distribution is pretty consistent um with the baseline as well. We don't see these big shifts in this data. Uh when we look a little deeper, we do see differences in diploma outcomes when we look by

119student group. Uh and this was very similar to the baseline and that data is also in the full report. Uh you may recall in last year's work session, we did not set targets on diploma types. Um as we wanted to ensure students were pursuing the diploma that most closely aligned with their interest um and their post-secary goals. Um for some of our students that is the advanced studies diploma. For other students, that may be a standard diploma or an applied studies diploma. Um, it is important to note that we have many students who make an intentional choice to pursue the standard diploma over an advanced studies diploma when there is alignment with those post-secondary goals. Um, and that the advanced studies diploma is not a requirement for college admissions. We did set a target as

120a part of our goal four measure around academically intense course taking to allow us to track whether students are prepared for post-secary education independent of the specific diploma that they earn. Um if there was an interest however in setting targets on diploma types one option that we've explored um is to measure the extent to which our students uh who plan to attend a four-year college are earning the advanced studies diploma. So, you can see on this slide, last year, 85% of our seniors who plan to go to a four-year college also earned the advanced studies diploma. And we do see differences um between student groups. When we look at this data, there are some benefits and limitations to setting a target on this. Um one potential benefit uh to a target on this is we'd

121be able to identify and address potential gaps between students plans and their preparation. Um, adopting this measure, a potential drawback could unintentionally signal to our students and families that the advanced studies diploma is an expectation for four-year college. Um, if we do add this measure and set targets, um, we would expect that our students who are planning to attend a four-year college would be earning an advanced studies diploma. And an alternative to setting a target here would be to continue to focus on the targets that we set as a part of our goal four uh which would be ensuring that all of our students have that academic rigor that makes them ready for post-secary education regardless of the specific diploma type. And so this is something we look forward to getting some feedback from the

122board on today. Uh finally, we're going to take a look at the outcomes of our students after they leave FCPS. So we know for our students to be uh successful after graduation, they benefit from having a clear um idea and a plan of what they want to do immediately after graduation. And among our students who completed the senior survey last year, 99% had a post-secary plan, which was a rate that was similar across all of our student groups. Uh the majority of our seniors uh responding to the senior survey indicated their plan was to enroll in college. And our student self-reported plans remain relatively unchanged when we look year-over-year compared to the baseline as well. But we did see a slight uptick in the percent of students who plan to pursue education outside of that

123traditional two or four-year pathway such as um training or apprenticeship programs. In addition to monitoring the plan students are self-reporting, we also have access to data on college enrollment through the national student clearing house. And the clearing house provides us um data on college enrollment for the vast majority of students who are enrolled in two and four-year programs. Uh it does not track it doesn't have the ability to track military enlistment, work or apprenticeship programs or other educational outcomes. Um on this slide you can see um state reported clearing house data that provides information on enrollment in college within 16 months of earning a federally recognized diploma. This is data the state tracks year-over-year. Uh, as you can see on the slide, 79% of our students who graduated from the class of 2023, and that's

124the most recent set of data because it's a 16-month lookout, uh, met that criteria. When we compare ourselves to the state and other divisions in Northern Virginia, our overall collegegoing rates were higher. Um, and we had especially higher rates of collegegoing amongst multi-racial students, black students, and boys relative to these other divisions. Uh we also recognize that the collegegoing rates vary across student groups with our Hispanic and multilingual learners having lower rates of college enrollment. So finally um we're going to take a look at the work we're doing focused on our strategic efforts to improve graduation equity for all of our students. Um last year we saw significant improvements and we attribute these to a couple of things. Uh first of all, having consistent structures and systems in place in our schools um that use

125data to identify students who are at risk and to provide personalized support to ensure that students are successful. Um second, having divisionwide structures and systems in place that provide additional oversight and support to our schools where we see higher levels of need. Uh third, we had our divisionwide efforts that we focused on with student attendance uh last year that resulted in large improvements in our rates of chronic absenteeism. And if you'll remember our goal report two report in particular, we saw those improvements for our seniors. And then fourth, our growth for our multilingual learners. Um again, where we saw those double-digit gains uh that we reported as a part of our goal one report this year. So we we've tried something new with these slides. We've tried to separate out uh calling out our strategies

126that are new and some of our continued actions. Um and we certainly continue to modify efforts based on the areas of need that we see in this data and other data we examine. And I'm going to highlight a few of the actions within these strategies and there's more uh details in the full report. So our first strategy is focused on schools um using tools and dashboards to identify and track risk uh which is allows us to respond with interventions based on the individual student needs. Um, so one example, our schools use our on-time graduation dashboard to look at those students who are at risk of not graduating. Uh, they then work with students and families to develop personalized graduation plans to help get them back on track. Uh, so one option that's available to help

127students get back on track is our credit recovery um, programs which may be offered during non-school hours like in the evenings, online, or in the summer. Our second strategy again is focusing on continuing to provide additional targeted supports at schools where we've identified greater need. Um so one example of this is our on-time graduation resource teachers that we have placed at nine high schools throughout FCPS and they support students who are at risk or have dropped out of school to make sure that those students re-engage uh either with that school or enroll in another school. And the data over time which is on um page 31 of the full report does show the impact of placing these resources in schools with higher need. Uh third over the past few years we've had an an intentional

128focus on strategies to keep students engaged with school and focused on what they want to do after they graduate. So in goal two, for example, we highlighted the importance of developing individualized plans uh in collaboration with families to ensure consistent attendance and to address any barriers to students coming to school. Um another action that sits under this strategy is the collective efforts to um expose and prepare students to the full range of post-secary opportunities available. Um and some of these strategies are in place um for all of our students such as our work with ABLE where we're going to be looking at uh identifying opportunities to um expand academic readiness, post post-secondary readiness. Um while others are more targeted such are such as our work with our career and transition services that supports our students

129with IEPs in their transition to post-secary. Our fourth strategy focuses on the appropriate use of credit accommodations for our students with IEPs or 504 plans. Um including the increased awareness uh and access to these credit accommodations. Uh these accommodations provide greater access to the standard and advanced studies diploma. And this year we saw this school year we saw an increase in submissions for these accommodations as a result of the outreach efforts that were done in the fall with school teams. Our fifth strategy um is focused on scheduling and academic advisement practices. And as a part of the broader work to strengthen academic advisement practices, we are making sure that the process for conducting and using course audits is consistent across schools. And these course audits ensure students are enrolling in the appropriate courses each year.

130Um which may be particularly impactful for our students who are at risk of not graduating on time. And then finally, we've identified a number of opportunities to improve um outcomes that our goal innovation teams will further explore. Um including refining predictive data sets um so that we make sure that we're flagging early which students might be at risk. Um increasing the use of graduation plans as we know this is a strategy that's working. Strengthening our transition supports for students who are new to FCPS and those who are transitioning to some of our non-traditional school programs. um ensuring that we have alignment of our resources and further investigating and removing any non-academic barriers to graduating on time. And then as we conclude our final goal report uh to the board this year, I think it's important

131to note the interconnectedness of the five goals in our strategic plan. Um graduation equity in in many ways relies on success of our other goals. Um including students having a strong start no matter when they begin their journey with us in FCPS. our students having a sense of belonging in their schools that leads to that positive school engagement. Uh that foundation of early learning um that supports subsequent academic success and the ability um to access a broad range of opportunities that support preK to 12 success and prepare our students for the rapidly changing future. So this concludes our goal five report and I will turn it over to our meeting managers. Um thank you very much. Uh we see one placard up but I know you are all digesting the information and so we will

132start with M with Mr. FR. Thank you. Um go to slides 19 and 20. Uh, one of the concerns that I think many on this board have had since the new state accountability and accreditation standards have come forward is the idea that students who exercise their rights, multilingual learners, special education students who exercise their rights under federal law to have more time before graduation would be penalized for respecting those rights. This seems to imply, the language found on slide 19 seems to imply that students who um are getting an applied studies diploma or taking uh longer than four years would not count in in the state's counting of this. are they excluded permanently from that or when let's say that they complete their advanced or standard diploma at a point later are they then added

133into uh this the the school's calculation I'm I'm going to well I'm going to defer to Betris otherwise so I'll start and then uh Betris can uh help out here a little bit because Betrris is our um resident expert of all things accountability in VDOE but I think what the the main thing I I think is what you've already summarized, which is we're no longer going to have that same flexibility in our graduation calculations for those students that we know have a legal right um to take longer to graduate and they've got an educational need to do so. Um and they're not going to count in the four-year rate. They potentially would count in the six-year rate, but that's only for a readiness component. Correct. Correct. So, Betris, did you want to add anything to

134that? No, you you captured the main points loan uh that you know Mr. Push just said it is the readiness component. Only 5% of the points are in that six-year rate. Um the on-time graduation rate that we looked at as well that does include applied studies will continue to be reported as a transparency measure across the state to allow comparisons, but again won't be part of accountability. So there's a bit of a mixed message um that we're seeing. So at least we'll know how many families are being screwed over by the state. we just won't be able to count their success as as our school's success. So, just to be clear one more time, federal law guarantees as a right for multilingual learners and certain special education students to take longer to complete high school,

135take longer in high school. Um, and the new state standard uh is only counting um standard and advanced studies diplomas within four years. So even students who do complete that work in the time they allowed by federal law, they will never count towards the benefit of the school division accomplishing its task of helping those students achieve that accomplishment. That's correct. And can somebody maybe speak to how that penalizes a school system for the work it does on behalf of those students um to a uh never be able to present the the breadth of its work? Well, I I think you know what we're going to continue to do is make sure that every student and family that falls into that category that would have that right um to stay with us longer. And it's uh

136through the year that they turn 22 um understands what rights they have and the benefits that they have to be able to do that. So, we're going to communicate that uh very vigorously and continue to work and support those families. But what it does is it gives an unfair public perception of the work that we're doing. Right. So the public is never going to see the benefits and the successes that our school system has provided to those students and families. Um the only thing that well I don't know about the only thing but you know we can continue um to do our own internal calculations and share that information publicly. We can continue to advocate at the state and federal level as part of our legislative package that that's something that we think needs to

137be changed in terms of the graduation rate. But other than that, we're really on our own in terms of carrying the message forward about the work that we're doing. We're not going to get support from from the state with that. Well, I would advocate that when we do these reports going forward that we are informing the public about how where we actually stand uh as it relates to all of our students. Um and to be clear, um are the schools penalized then for the percentage of students they have in a school that do not complete graduation in four years with those diplomas? Well, they're going to be penalized in the sense that their graduation rates are not going to be as high and that's going to be part of the school. So, they're still part

138of the N. Right. Right. So, all around we're being disadvantaged. Correct. And the only um benefit for accreditation standards is in helping these students a achieve this uh applied studies. and then uh eventual uh standard or advanced diploma uh in their sixth year or you know until they're up to 22 um would would be that we get it on the back end and the readiness component which is a much which is only a third as large as the graduation component. That's right. All right. So that's probably pretty complicated for a lot of people to digest. I hope that as we present this at the board meeting in the future that we can contextualize this specific thing because it's a big deal. Um and it's going to impact different schools in different ways. Um and in

139our school system um I think we've gone thanks to the advocacy by some board members, we've gone to great lengths to explain the differences in the types of diplomas that are being achieved and what the benefits and disadvantages are there and how we can continue to grow uh those students. and we need to tell the public that we're being penalized as a result by the state. Thank you, Mr. Fresh. Miss Anderson, I want to flip over although I definitely want us to have to unpack that in or that conversation a little bit. I wanted to flip over to slide 36 if we could. I had a conversation with Miss Lady before she um went out of town and I definitely had had a similar question. So within my professional world, we talk about placement quite

140a quite a significant amount for the graduates from the program that I work with. And so I understand first of all the problems with getting the information related to placement. Um but the other question I have is is this a look at 16 months to see whether or not students are still enrolled or is this a look to see within 16 months that they've been enrolled in school at any time? I believe it is the within but I will double check on that and Dr. Presidio we'll triple check on it but my understanding is for sure that this is the look at 16 months that that initial enrollment but we also have the continuation of enrollment and how many students actually graduate. So there's more information in the national student clearing house. We were just

141looking at the enrollment uh in post-secary education at this particular slide because my because my question really is is whether or not this is a snapshot view at 16 months because as a former college instructor I can tell you you you lose a lot of kids in that first year and the colleges aim to do that to weed out certain students that aren't prepared or maybe come back at a later date to go to school. There are lots of reasons why even to be at 79% within the 16 months is still very high for FCPS students and I want us to actually talk about that a little bit more. So, no, you're raising some really good points. I would say and we could get the additional data in terms of graduation on time. We're a

142little bit above national averages. We're not significantly above national averages for graduating within four to six years. Um, one of the biggest factors in addition to the ones that you mentioned though for students to graduate on time is financial burden, right? A lot of families, a lot of students aren't able to complete for financial reasons. And so that's difficult and that's another reason to track that data and and this is pulling I assume pulling students at community colleges and outside of the state. Yeah. Public and private. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. It it's not a 100% of all two and four-year colleges across the country. I think it's 98%. So there's some that are missing. um because they don't participate in the national student clearing house but it's like 98% of uh two and four-year colleges

143public and private that are in the participating in this data set. Are okay so then my second question is are we doing anything as a division other than utilizing data that we're receiving? Are we doing anything as a as a division to track our students after they leave us? Um we have let me ask Jen if you could help me with that. I don't know that we have any other follow-up surveys after the senior survey in the senior year. Do we? We have the required indicators from VDOE, but other than that, we do not have additional ways to track our students after graduation. Okay. Thank you, Miss Eismoiser. Thank you. And I have a lot to unpack here. I appreciate all your time and effort on this report. I'm probably need like six go back.

144So, just put me down for those. Um, the first thing I wanted to start was kind of a big picture comment on the report. And I have to say I love I love this theory of graduation equity. I think this is phenomenal. But I look at slide six because it's something I I think I and others on the board have been talking about. It's not just getting kids out the door, but making sure they're actually set up for success when they leave. And so that's what this graduation equity seems to go to. They have a plan and a way to demonstrate qualifications for post-secary success. I love this. However, I don't see this report actually giving me sufficient data or most data on this topic because the report and I understand that the data may

145not be there. we may have to gather it and that would be fine except I don't see that narrative in here of we recognize these are the pieces we still need to report on here's how we're getting there right but one thing I've talked about for a long time is I understand the importance of on-time graduation state requirement federal requirement however it doesn't really show us if our students are ready for post-secary success and when you look at the data of how many students start colleges and leave college it it kind of shows that maybe some some is financial some aren't. So, I would love to see Dr. Reid a little more intentionality around students graduating with a plan. I know we do the student success survey and one of the questions I have on

146the the slide on the success survey, which is somewhere between 36 and 38, it talks about asking the students, but it doesn't give a percentage of how many students responded because that percentage is a percentage of the students who responded to the survey, not a percentage of all seniors because we have to take out the ones that didn't respond. So, I I would be curious to know, and maybe it's not much, maybe a lot of them responded, but I'd be curious to know what the actual percentage of plans are of those who responded as opposed to thinking those are all seniors, right? Like it just like percentage of seniors reporting post-secondary plans, but how many percentage of seniors did the report? And then out of those that did the report, how many reported post-secondary plans?

147So thank you for that question. It I think what we tried to the team tried to do is put the N uh for example a baseline and then for 2324 because that's the most recent data we have. 99% of seniors reported having a plan and that would be 13,577 out of 13,695. So that's the number who did um that's my question. Are those the number of graduating seniors or the numbers who reported? I think it's both. Well, that's my question. I I'm just not clear, right? Which one is it? And that's Okay. So, Miss Neil, yep. We had about 460 students who did not complete the senior survey to your question. About 14,000. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's helpful to know and that's what was one of my first questions, but I still I think goes

148to this point of I don't see a lot of indicators here knowing our students are ready to be successful when they leave. like on-time graduation isn't necessarily an indication of success when you especially when you put in the applied studies diploma and all these state requirements. So, I would just love to see we've talked about executive function concerns. We've talked about all like I would just love to see some of those things infused into this report. So, we're really looking more holistically at what is it that we're measuring to see that our students are ready to be successful. I think these are really important data points, but I feel like we're we're constantly talking about absentism and on-time graduation important, but we need to get to the next piece of it, which is a data

149around ready to be successful. And I'll take a go back for all my other points, but just I want to put that out there. Something to think about. Um, thank you. Miss St. John Cunning. Thank you. Thank you. I kind of wanted to piggyback on this when we talk about the definition of what postsecondary plans are. Um, and do we have or track post-secary plans that do not include going to college, but maybe some of our students that are in our CTE programs that are get that are in internships or being employed. Um, because I didn't see any of that data here. Yeah, we do. If on page 24 of the full report, it gives a little bit more of a breakdown of what the specific plans are that students had. And so the categories

150we have are um intent to go to college, plan to work or enlist, plan to pursue other education, and the full the full survey we can break it down further to say was it two-year college, was it four-year college? And I'm just I just want to shed light on our great career and technical education programs where a lot of our kids are going into internships or getting jobs straight out of high school where they're earning $80,000 a year. And this is really important for some of our students and families that come from, you know, financially disadvantaged homes um where they may need that job and that position. And then from what I understand in a lot of these programs eventually the employer will pay for higher education. Do we have any of that data? I

151I just think we're shortch changing the work that we actually do with some of our students that don't immediately pursue a a university or college degree. And I know that some of these kids are doing amazing work because of the amazing work that they're getting from the career and technical education programs that we have in our schools. And I I really think we need to highlight that and focus that on that and show that success as well. I don't know that we currently have data that we could report on that, but it sounds like understanding for our students who are going straight into the workforce who's going in there with a credential, right? Some of the things that you're raising up that have come through our CTE programs. I I think what I would offer

152to that is, you know, we could always amend the questions that we ask on the senior survey, right? Because we're dependent on the students telling us what they actually did after they leave us. Other than the National Student Clearing House with that two and four-year data, we're really relying on student self-reporting. So, if there were other data points that we wanted to collect, we could write additional questions. So, we'll definitely take that feedback into consideration and perhaps write some additional questions so we'd have other or more robust sets of data that we could provide in future reports. Thank you. Because I think we're missing a really important and valuable story. I appreciate your advocacy for that. Thank you, Mr. Moon. Uh let's see whether I can find this slide about uh ELP1 data. Is it

153slide 15 about graduation data for ERP? I think I think it's slide. I didn't make that clear. I apolog Yeah. Yeah. we, you know, again, it's a troubling data point, but it's not surprising given the fact that those students do have pretty limited uh academic English skills. So, what are the what are the strategies to you have to support them to continue pursuing high school diploma as opposed to dropping out? Yeah. So, again, a great question. And so the things that we do now um include, you know, a lot of individual case management at the schools that have larger numbers of students that would be at the lower levels of English proficiency. So, a couple years ago, we did staff an additional counselor at um 10 of our it's either nine or 10 of our

154high schools that have larger percentages of students at the low levels of English proficiency because they typically are enrolling students that are maybe newer to the country or definitely newer to uh our school system. So they do provide a lot of individual case management and support and work with the students to understand that they do have more time. Um so they can stay with us again until uh the year that they turn 22. They can also look at other alternative educational options that we have. Um so they can look at enrollment in the non-traditional uh schools or alternative schools. Oftentimes students well I mean one of the big reasons that students drop out is because they have other responsibilities. So, we looked at the slide in here that showed the dropout rates by age. And

155the older the student is, the more likely they are to drop out because they've got additional responsibilities either to their immediate family or to their extended family. So, enrollment in non-traditional programs or the adult high school so that they might be able to have more flexible scheduling and attend part-time. Um, we work on credit acceleration opportunities for them. So trying to make technology uh available um so that students can complete credits uh and uh try to accelerate their credit accumulation towards graduation through independent study. So you know those are the things that we've typically done. I I do think the biggest advantage uh for students that we really try to encourage them to take advantage of is not giving up and staying with us even if it's on a part-time basis for as long as

156they can. um because these are students that do make pretty rapid growth when they you know when they continue to stay enrolled in school. Um so trying to figure out you know how to help them balance the flexibility towards financial and other uh personal responsibilities and their educational needs. So when they are identified as ELP1 as a senior, do I assume that the reason that they placed a senior is they have other high school credits whether from somewhere in the US or where they came from enough to be placed in senior grade level or is them perhaps based upon their age. Yeah, we're really talking about based on a student's age here, not grade level. Because you might come into the system at age 18, right? And enroll at one of our base high schools

157and have no credits um because you're coming from another country or you've had interrupted significant interruptions to your educational experience and be an ELP level one student. So those are students that we provide a lot of support to them and their families to really understand their options um and try to build an educational program that's going to work best for them because that is a student who's going to need to put in four a minimum of four years of time probably right to be able to complete all of their graduation requ I guess my question is then uh why are they put in as a senior why are they identified as a senior if they do not have enough credits to be senior So, I don't think that's happening. I think when I was trying

158to explain this, we're looking at the students that would be of age in that cohort. Um, I could be wrong about that. Maybe this data set is actually and I'm going to ask Rich or Betris to help me. Yeah, the students that are ELP level one that are in grade 12 in in this data set, many of them have been with us for a number of years and they are still a level one student. So these are not students who enter as 12th graders as a level one. So they are this is a for these for these students most students like the majority of our students make progress throughout but this this group of students um may be with us for two years or three years and they're still uh they still level one. So

159we have work to do on the English language development side with this particular group of students. I one one thing just to add to that too as Rich and I were talking about this slide earlier um we when we look at that ELP1 that 22% um we don't have the exact number right now but a lot of those students most likely are duly identified students and they're also students with disabilities um and are probably graduating with an applied studies diploma um where they have more credit accommodation flexibility. Is it possible for us to get more detail? We can break it down more. Yeah. Break down. Okay. With that with that in mind, I I wanted to share with my colleagues and superintendent and staff uh something that I uh learned from one school district when

160I attended a conference in Atlanta, Georgia just a few days ago. Obviously, you know, they did a one heck of job. That is why they are the presenter. and to rest of us who are attending there. It's granted that you know they may have a different requirements. It's a different state and different demographic. However, uh this particular high school in California, California, uh 76.3% Hispanic, 88% poverty, 30% of parents not a high school graduate. They have 97.4% 4% graduation rate, 91% going to college, 4.5% military and work after graduation. Those statistics really surprise me how they were able to achieve that. I'll send your name of that high school. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that, Mr. Moon. And I think um Dr. Pon has done some really um seinal work in this area with

161our multilingual learners um and can maybe comment about some of the changes we're making here to better meet the needs of our multilingual learners. Uh right. Uh thank you. Uh if you can uh see Mr. Mr. Moon and everybody else uh we are um we are on the right track. Uh like um Mr. Dr. Sloan uh was saying we had to be a little bit more uh think out of the box and we do have some students that are uh multilingual. They have been in the system and because in the past in name of that we we like them and and we keep them uh in the same or teaching them something that maybe uh was not what they supposed to be. So right now we are being uh we have been evaluating every single

162one and we are going to be a little bit more aggressive and open more opportunities for these uh multilingual students. Uh something that uh is Sloan was saying that is reality is uh flexibility. We have some students that they are um older than 18 and they have to start working or somehow start helping families. So rather than have a uh a standard schools uh from 8 let's say uh 7:30 to 3 or or 8 to 4, we're going to make sure that we uh are going to be able that they will have no time to finalize their diploma a and we're going to be a little bit more uh flexible. We have been we have been uh actually evaluating the system that we have right now and we will be very soon uh doing some

163changes that will benefit our students and especially those that are LP1 there are some credit that they can take on their own language and and this is the one that we have been thinking you don't have to be taking in English to get some credit and also we had to be looking some other opportunities. Some students when they come they bring some credit but because they are in Spanish maybe or any other language then I wouldn't say that they are not taken but uh it's very difficult for them to translate. So we wanted to be more intentional how we evaluate those uh if they are bringing any kind of credit and where are we going to be placing them and which language we are going to be uh working with because there are some system

164that can provide us multi many many uh different ways to to provide them with the right credit. So, uh, those numbers I know that very soon we're going to be talking the same thing that you were talking about, uh, California, uh, on on, uh, Fairfax, thank you, Miss Marin. Yes. So, the National Student Clearing House, is that something that the federal department of education had run? That's a great question. I don't think so. Oh, I'm going to ask Jen and see if she knows off the top of her head. I think that's independent from the US Department of Ed, but I'm not positive. Okay. I was just asking to wonder about the interruption of that data. Um I just getting back to the uh stipulation about four years of graduation. Two things. One, it was

165on slide 21 and maybe I'm just getting a little too tired be here, but the on-time graduation rate versus the four-year graduation rate. to the on-time graduation rate is FCPS's and the four-year grad rate is the federal graduation indicator. Why is there a delta? Why is there a point difference there? So, the the on-time graduation rate is what VDOE currently reports and then we'll be shifting to that use of the four-year FTI for accountability. And the difference you're seeing is on-time graduation rate is allowing that flexibility for students who are students with disabilities and multilingual learners to have the extended time and it's accounting for the applied studies diploma which the four-year FGI rate is not accounting for either of those things. So that's the delta. Got it. Thank you. And similarly, and I appreciate

166Mr. first's comments, but is it the case that if a student knew that they were going to need five years, if they declared that upfront, does that alter how their data is measured or tracked? Okay. Thank you. Um I'd love to hear Well, I don't know. I Let me wait for that. I'm wondering if this gets back to the comments I made during goal three which um you're all familiar with which is about communicating the pathways to get folks to get the kids and the families to get students to graduation and this relates to the coursework pathway and the work with able and this also goes to Mr. D Moon's question about the strategies like what what strategies is this board funding or should we fund more of that will get more students to graduate

167meaningfully and it's not just to get that number to get them out of our building it's to get them out of our building successfully so for instance uh the course uh navigating work high impact tutoring edu's work dual enrollment and online courses counselors required lessons So, I also want to say though like so now we're a year into this, right? We had the baseline. Like this is exciting because last year when we did this, we're like, "Oh my gosh, you know, we want to see the data." Well, here it is. Like this is really great and now we're it's making us think about other things, but from a board perspective, you know, I'm wondering what do we fund? Um, and what skills do the staff need in order to make this stuff happen? And again,

168with the communications, I'm even wondering things like, do we offer some kind of AI tool so that if a student says, "How do I enroll in a dual enrollment class?" you know, like when you like go online and you order and it's like talk to an expert and it's could there not be some things like that. Um, I mean, I think a person is the is really great and having that consistent person every year really from the start of middle school onward. But, you know, again, like me trying to help my daughter sign up for driver's ed and summer health, I no idea. And anytime, you know, I can't figure it out, I really wonder about other people who, you know, don't live and breathe this. Um, so I guess I I'd like to know

169more about the strategies and maybe that's not for this, you know, but when we think about developing the budget in the future, how does this translate into us ensuring that we're spending our money in the things that make our students successful when they graduate to go to that thing, not just to get them over the finish line, but actually have that plan so that when they leave they're successful. I would say Miss Marin that probably one of the key strategies is retaining excellent educators and we know that the single most important influence on a student's success is the quality of the instruction they receive. So, I think that you are by putting a stake in the ground in the budget that you recently passed saying that we want to um adequately compensate our educators um

170our teachers in the classroom, our IAS, our principles, our support staff so that we're able to continue to do this work well. So, I think that's um that that's in every body of research. So, I really appreciate the question and the opportunity to answer You good? It's better. Okay. All right. I'll go next. Um I in the strategies uh strategy slide 39 uh it mentions targeted follow-ups and for the students uh for on-time graduation are we how does this targeted follow-ups work and um how does it impact uh the outcome? Well, I can start and then if any of my colleagues want to jump in again I I just want to stress as Dr. Reed said at the beginning, I mean, this is a cross-dep departmental effort to to really try to provide the supports

171to our schools and students that they need. I think the first thing that we did in school year 2324 that you're seeing some results in the data is from that data tracking that we've done as a school system, looking at whether or not every individual student is on track to graduate on time or not. being able to identify the percentages of students that may be on track or off track at a particular school, following up with that school, and then having that school have the data down to the individual student. One of the things that we put in place in 2324 was a requirement for schools to develop individualized graduation plans for students that might be off track. So the first thing with creating that plan is to have the counselor or whomever is the

172lead person working with that student providing that case management support meet with the student, meet with the family, uh do a credit uh um acrruel uh determination, find out where they might be deficient in credits, what some of their obstacles and barriers might be. If it's an attendance barrier, getting to school on time, finding a way to solve that problem. if it's a health issue or a mental health issue, finding a way to address that um that situation and that challenge that that student is facing. And that has produced really good results. That's super time inensive work. Um but that's really what you have to do is that personalized approach, that case management, student by student approach to get them what they need and to address the root causes of the challenges that they're having.

173Then finding additional ways to accelerate credits for them. One of the things that Dr. Reed um supported us with when she came in was the development of our twilight program and creating some flexible opportunities for students to work outside of the traditional school hours to make up credit. Um so we were able to provide resources to a number of our high schools to implement um afterchool hours credit recovery twilight programs um and also purchase some additional technology to help students um acrew credit more quickly than they would if they had those seat time requirements of taking the course during the school day. Those are the types of things that I think are making a a really big difference for our students. Um and we just need to continue those efforts and um accelerate them as

174much as possible. Yeah, that's excellent points. Um and because we're talking about graduation equity here, I wanted to just uh check in how is the equity office working in this targeted follow-ups. How are you involved? We have a team of equity specialists that work directly with our regions. our regions are able to monitor the work that's happening in our schools and with our principles as they do their SIP goals and um have those SIP meetings. So my team is engaged um all year with schools and the regions to help support this work. Uh my next question is about the um which schools are doing better. Is there any uh area or I should say pyramid which has showing a better uh results in and maybe we can see what they're doing better than other pyramids

175can you know learn from and and also it is also again equitable right so when somebody's doing something good then we all can benefit out of that so any comments on that I'm going to get us started and then have Dr. Pon and I think and we'll provide some additional data to the board as well but I think when we've looked and seen growth um for the schools where we've seen those efforts really paying off is um having deeply embedded systems as Dr. Pidia was talking about practices where those schools are really focused in on using that data identifying the students who need the you know who have a need for additional support and having systems and structures in place to provide that support for students. I think what we also see is and this

176is um shows up in the research as well is a strong culture of collaboration. Um so teams teacher teams who have strong um culture of collaboration because we're looking at you know the success in the classroom is leading to the su success on graduation as well. So some of those are the types of systems we're seeing in place when schools are doing well with moving the needle on this. And I know Dr. Pon wanted to add as well. Uh yes and and thank you. Uh like uh as Loan was saying uh we have a graduation tracker and our OTG teamm uh it's a it's a very tedious work but we have been um working constantly. However, uh I know that and I don't want to to penalize and say this region is better than this

177or this school is better because we have to see the the whole picture and something that I wanted to to check right now uh for example uh and I'm going to just look at my my map right now. uh when we talk about uh some pyramid like a justice justice is uh 51% of multilingual and at the same time uh economically disadvantaged you see is a 53.5 so we are talking about really high numbers and and so on I can talk about some of the most difficult uh that I would say that are more um is the highest need uh full church uh justice and Anandale with a high numbers of uh multilingual and uh eco as well. Then you have uh Mount Vernon, Lewis, uh Westmak and Edison. uh and then followed by uh

178Herden and Wetszfield and then Fairfax uh Centerville. Then you have schools that are doing very well. However, uh you have to understand that a number of students coming for example multilingual and I'm not labeling the multilingual but sometime you have some students who are newcomers which are totally different story like uh Islam was saying they might come when I are already 18 with few credit and that graduation for them is going to take a longer and we graduate them but sometimes it will not count toward the school when they graduate because they take a longer time especially now with all these changes. So um it will take a little bit longer but uh I I believe that uh we are on on good track uh but I don't want to to say names. I know

179you asked for for schools that doing uh because I don't want to call names now but uh I was just saying with those schools that have a uh risk factors I call risk factors are higher than others and and we have to consider when we talk about that about um students I think uh what I was not asking was that which is not doing well I was saying which is doing well so others can take that success story and use that as a benchmark and implement in other schools. That was what I was going with it. So, um and and yes, I I did understand. However, what I wanted to say is that we're talking about totally different population with the different risk factors. So, I cannot say this school is doing well because I'm

180saying then the other school is not doing well. But remember those risk factors and I just wanted to say this. Okay, that's understood. Uh is there any peer mentoring uh in play here again with the because students kind of sometime when they talk to somebody their age group and uh and somebody like them and giving them the mentoring advice uh they're more receptive to that. So is that is a part of the uh the the follow-ups and targeted um approach. So I don't know I saw Dr. Axler move over there. I don't know if you wanted to add anything on this. Everything that I've really mentioned so far is adults working with students but I don't know if there's anybody on the team that wants to mention anything about peer mentoring. Sure. So as part

181of our mentor works programming we do have some um peer mentoring. we call it student mentoring because it's not always a direct peer. It could be a high schooler for an elementary schooler. Um but um so in the 23 24 school year, we had um over 4,000 FCPS students participate in our mentor works program. A subset of those students had student mentors. The majority of them had adult mentors. We actually expanded this programming um in the spring of last year and up through this year um with something called the belonging project which is um an expansion of our mentor works program specifically targeting students with higher rates of chronic absenteeism so that we can use that as a way to provide connections to the school and increase um regular attendance and connections in that school

182building. That's amazing to hear actually. Um I'm going to uh go back go for a go back um and have Dr. Anderson next. Yes, thank you. And I'm going to try to focus my first set of questions around slide 11. So, if we could put that up, please. No, no, I'm sorry. 31. 31. I I'm I apologize. 31, the one that speaks about diploma types. Um, and looking at this chart, I I guess my first wondering, um, I'm I'm trying for the life of me to find last year's chart, and I cannot find it. But I I have a good sense of what the data is because we talked about it last time at meeting managers. But in looking at this slide, I I'm just wondering when when staff reviews it, what shows up? What

183what's the response? What resonates? Dr. Reid. Yeah, thank you, Dr. Anderson. Um, Miss Neil, I mean, I I think in this slide we obviously see some differences um between student outcomes in terms of who's earning our advanced studies diploma versus the standard diploma. I think this is something that we looked at in our goal four report when we were looking at the continuum of rigor. Um, one of the ways that, uh, Abel talked about in their presentation that students increase rigor is, uh, not only taking the AP or IB or, you know, advanced coursework, but also persisting through a fourth year of math, a fourth year of science. Um, so I think that's where you're seeing some of those differences show up. Obviously, if students are not taking advantage of those additional years of math

184and science, uh, as a part of the AEL work and social studies. Thank you, Sloan. Give the shout out. and world languages. We'll give put them all in there. Uh that are also there's some alignment with the advanced studies diploma. Yes, I appreciate all of that. And I also appreciate that last year's data, this slide looked pretty similar. And what raises concern for me is that we don't have any targets in this area at all. And this is not to communicate that having an advanced diploma is what every child should have, but this disproportionality is stunning. And even when we were talking about meeting managers, like do we not want to do anything about this? And not seeing that be part of the presentation frankly concerns me. So I want to say that. Secondly, I

185would love to hear if we could just go back to the slide. I would like to get a sense of is this presentation consistent across our schools. I'm not asking for the schools that are the lowest performance. I am asking if we were to pull this data 25 times, what does it look like? Is it consistent or all over the place? I would say it's similar. I mean, there's a range you're obviously seeing, but it's similar across school to school. So then that means it's a division problem, not a school problem. It's like in a classroom. If all of the kids fail the test, the teacher has work to do. If one of two kids, then you know they have work to do. If it's similar across the entire division, then we have work to

186do. And I would like to get a sense of what is that work? We did hear from Dr. Bell um a month or so ago uh regarding the course taking patterns. I'd like to know what is this now going to look like given that new information? What can I tell my parents that we are going to do that is going to impact this data? Sure. I So, I'm gonna do two things. I want to come back to this because this was something that we wanted to talk about as a follow-up to meeting managers. Um, I I think we can explore this two ways. Um, if you look at goal four, what this is saying is there is a continuum of rigor and students can continue to move move along that continuum of rigor regardless of

187where they are in terms of their diploma types. So, we have kids who are earning the advanced studies diploma who could who may not take math their senior year, right? Because they finish all four of their math credits by the time they're a junior. They can continue to move and accelerate their rigor by taking a math their senior year. So, that's independent of a diploma type. you have students who are earning a standard diploma who are also earning a score of 10 or higher on that able that can continue to deepen uh additional courses in math or science without necessarily earning the advanced studies diploma. So I think we have that goal that's going to really focus on those individual conversations with students to make sure they are taking coursework that is preparing them for

188postsecary. What we tried to do in this slide is to honor that students are making some decisions about the coursework they're taking that aligns with their post-secary goals. So we looked only at our students who said they want to go on to a four-year college and see differences in this data uh between the percentages of students who are saying they want to go on to a four-year college and those students who are earning an advanced studies diploma. So our recommendation is if the board wants to set a target on this to focus in here because that's honoring trying to align students intended plans with coursework that would be most aligned with that post-secondary readiness. Thank you. Um even with that subset of students that we're looking at the disparity is still stunning. We have what

189the lowest is 48% the highest is 92%. I don't think this is the representation that we want to have for our division. The other the other question that I have is regarding the intersectionality when we have I imagine you by we I mean you when you have looked at this data because it's not part of this it was in the baseline um we had more intersection intersectionality data but I don't see it as present in this year's reports what what what are the findings since I don't know I'd like to ask with regard to diploma type I think the group that we tend to that we tend to the the outcomes be mo most different from overall and not specific to this slide but just in general are students who are dy identified as um

190students with an IEP and students who are multilingual learners right and we also have our black students who are not doing well and not all of them have the language issues um and so those tend to be less so when you have that intersectionality I'm just going to focus on that group for right now because it's the one that I can take out some other variables What does it look like when we have I have to put myself on a goback. What does it look like for those students on on this specific data or on depict data set? Let's just take let's just take that. So I don't think we have explored it for this specific data set because we put this data together relatively quickly to have a board conversation. The slide before the

191slide before um I need to look and see if we have that information in the report. Dr. Anderson, I'm sure we've pulled it. I'm just not sure if we put it in the full report. Dr. Anderson, would you like to go back? Yes, I would. Um, Dr. Anderson, could I just add a little bit to that discussion? Um, and I know this isn't perfect, and we're only in our second year of required implementation. But through the advisory program, we are working to require every student to have a four-year academic and career plan. And that plan has annual goals and activities for the adviserss to work with the students and their advisory to have these kinds of conversations to really, you know, push students to achieve their best. And I think when we look at some

192of these data sets, for me, one of the things I worry about is different expectations for different groups of students. One of the things I worry about is, you know, counselors that have case loads of 450 students being able to provide that personalized support and attention. the lack of the ability to maybe have as much time with with students um as they would like to have. That advisory section, I think, plays a really important role because now you've got one teacher who's working with 20 kids who can have those individual conversations, have those connections, um get the information home that maybe hasn't been coming home when we've tried to do some of these things in different ways before. So, I do think that's a strategy that we're really trying to lean into. It's not perfect

193yet. Um, teachers are still trying to figure out how to do that in addition to all of their other instructional responsibilities. U, but I do think it's something that's going to make a difference. I'm at a disadvantage because I can't respond because my time is up, but I'll make a note. Can I um also share? I'd like to share. Um, I think that the the most exciting thing to me about our able work is that it pulls the curtains out and gives schools direct data about their students. But I also think that in in um also with what Sloan was saying about people talking to our students that we need to take it back to um the middle schools to start having those conversations about what are your hopes and dreams for our students, right?

194So that they can start when they have less pressure around guiding our students, right? When they get to high school, there's a lot of things happening. But the middle school um counselors can help in this process by starting to have those conversations about what does it look like to go to college. I remember when I left Fairfax for a couple of years and joined another system, I had a conversation with a student um about college and she was in 11th grade and she told me that this was the first time somebody ever talked to her about going to college when she was in the 11th grade. And sometimes our students just don't know what they don't know, right? And we have assumptions about our parents um that are not true. Um and I think that

195it's upon us as the educators, right? when we have the students six seven hours a day that as early as we can start introducing the concept of college for for all of our students the concept it doesn't mean they're all going to go but to talk to them about it the greater chance we have of changing these numbers thank you uh Miss um Sllo we will continue with three minutes being that it is just a little bit after two uh Mr. Fresh. Thank you. I was one of those kids, by the way. People would have assumed that my parents talked to me about college all the time. They didn't. They didn't go to college. Their parents didn't go to college. It wasn't part of the dialogue in my family. They wanted the best for me,

196for sure. They wanted me to do well in life, but that wasn't part of the um conversation in my family. And I I do want to talk a little bit about um one of the points that was raised on slide uh 36 about how access to resources impacts completion of college in four to six years. Um and tie it back to my previous round of questions about outside sabotage uh running counterpurposes with the school division's efforts. Um, right now in Washington, um, not far from here, um, the Department of Education's work is being sabotaged. Um, and I'm particularly worried about the work, uh, in the FAFSA office. um and not just in the ability for applications to be submitted in a uh clear and consistent way, but also um the cutting of staff for people

197who need assistance uh in navigating this complicated process, especially for families where this is a new experience. I'm also worried about the repayment programs that are being cut or changed or changed in such a way to disqualify swaths of students before they've even gotten in into school. particularly income based repayment programs and public service loan forgiveness. Um, as a piece of context, uh, in the previous administration of this president, uh, more than 97% of educators who applied for public service loan forgiveness, one of the very specific occupations that the program was designed for were rejected from public service loan forgiveness. Um, thankfully that was writed in the following administration. I worry that we will be retreading in that in in that ground. Um, and so when Sally May is estimating that 30% of students who

198don't complete college after enrolling do so because of financial reasons, other estimates as high as 25%. I begin to worry about the undermining that's happening. um you know transitioning all of that work, all of that complicated work and the oversight of that important work so that people are not being ripped off by student loan processors now being transferred to a department that has never I think the Small Business Administration which has never worked in this space ever at all ever um is highly concerning. So, I wonder if there's anything we can begin doing with our 11th and 12th graders to prepare them for this new reality. Um, you know, as Miss Marin likes to say, we're not responsible for every problem out there. But I worry that we will be telling a story in 3

199years from now when these numbers start going down because it's all the more difficult to and this doesn't even get into, by the way, the fact that universities are going to have to skyrocket their their fees because of program cuts from the federal government. you already have people having their acceptances for grad school and post-docctoral programs being pulled back in the sciences. So there is a compounding problem here with the financing of college. I'm wondering what we can do about it as a division to ensure that these numbers don't begin to bottom out. Thank you, Mr. Fr. Dr. Reed, did you want to respond to a lot of that? That was a bit a lot. Yes. And you have 30 seconds. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Um, I think it all that's the context we're living

200in right now. And I think we're going to have to be thoughtful about while we are addressing the challenges in front of us today, um, we're going to have to be better at anticipating the challenges down the road, uh, because I have a concern that solving today's challenges may create bigger problems for us down the road, which I think is what you're pointing to. Finally, I as I've mentioned before, I think Fairfax County, we need to be very clear about how we define success for our students and our system because the narrative that we're able to tell is most important on behalf of our educators, our students and families. And it's incumbent on us not to give that narrative up to other people to tell. Thank you, Miss Eismoiser. Dr. Anderson, would you mind if

201I apologize? I wasn't looking in that direction just because I think we do have a number of resources that I would want families to be aware of in Fairfax County that we're going to continue um to support and we probably even need to do a better job advertising those. So just real briefly I would mention uh first of all we do have our college success program in Fairfax County which has a number of different components. So there's the early identification program for example that supports students that are first generation college students in all of our high schools. We partner with our local universities, two and four-year universities, uh, to support and provide opportunities for students there. We've got a direct admissions program that we just started two years ago with George Mason University that if

202a student has a certain GPA and it's like a 3.0 GPA, they don't have to take the SAT. They help them with financial aid. They give them mentorship and coaching, but they're automatically admitted to George Mason. Um, and when they get admitted through that program, they get ongoing support. um we have our partnership with College Access Fairfax that supports students free of charge and you know applying for federal financial aid um and other scholarships and that's outside of what we do with our college and career centers that exist at every high school. So we have a lot of things that I think we should be really proud of and I definitely want our families in Fairfax County to know that because given all the uncertainty at the state and federal level it's going to be

203left to us at the local level to provide that support to every one of our families. So I just wanted to mention we do have some assets to continue to build on. Thank you very much Miss Moheiser. Thank you. And um I think I wanted to start by building on that comment I think that you made about needing to tell our own story here. And I think this is going to be more important than other ever. So to pick up on what my colleague had talked about with the slides um 19 and 20 on the four-year graduation indicator versus six-year versus our on-time graduation indicator. I just want to confirm for the 4-year federal graduation indication, which the state is now going to also use as part of its assessment or accountability system. Um, for

204students, multilingual students and students with disabilities who are federally legally allowed to stay for eight years after 12th grade, whether to earn a standard advanced diploma or just to get post-secary skills, life skills training. those students when it says on the slide do not count, you're saying they do not count towards graduation, but they do count in the denominator. I just want to make sure that clear. Yeah, because it's not clear from the slide, right? Because if it they do not count and they're allowed to have the extra time without it hurting us, that's a very different story. then they still count in the number of students in that cohort. But the fact that they are they're federal they're exercising their federally um their rights protected rights under federal law multiple federal laws is going

205to hurt the schools. I think that is part of that story we need to tell and I just wanted to really get that clarity out there. Um, and I think that's important to say that the state, you know, and I've heard, you know, states leaders say they really support our special education and multilingual students are actually putting in indicators that directly um make it much harder for schools to support those students in accessing their federal rights. And I think that's a really important point that we need to make. But I I think um the other thing I wanted to say is in just to pick up my point from before in terms of those indicators about graduation equity, you do have some in the report, right? If you if you know as you kind of

206skim through some of the pages of the report, you talk about on page 40, 41, 34, but especially 41 the POG pole numbers, right? On page 41 in the report. And I I wanted to point this out because in when we had the graduation the grading policy debate in governance, we talked about measuring portrait of graduate skills, right? And I was kind of surprised to see the low percentages of students who've accessed a POG poll, which is a portrait of graduate presentation of learning. And and I just want to help understand the numbers. I'm seeing 2% 3% 3%. You know, the baseline denominator is 78,000, you know, 7 100, sorry, and 7 and 78,091, but the numerator is 45,557. So, are we saying only 4557 of all of our students have done a POG poll?

207So, that's 3% of all of our students, which I think this goes to show why this was important. I mean, I know that's not the only place we have portrait or graduate skills, but if that's when I scrolled back up to um you know, slide 40, I sorry, page 40 in the report, it's similar numbers for attainment of portrait of graduate competencies and digital financial literacy. I would love to see this broken out more. What do you what are you using to measure and how is it being measured and who's having access to this? because these numbers we might as well not which is what I said in grading we might as well not have portrait of graduate if it's 2% and 1% and I'm not I I'm a full believer in it but we've

208got to figure out how to measure it better and that's part of this graduation equity I know my time's up I'll take another go back if but Dr. if you want to comment on that I'd appreciate or Dr. Presidio so I think that um it's clearly a data point that we were asked to measure um Dr. Pon do you want to comment on POGP pole and um the number of students or priority placed on that because 2% less than you know a single percent is certainly low Dr. Pon please. Yeah, I I will ask uh uh Islan he has been working with them and then I will add. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, I Mr. Seismarheiser I think it's an excellent question and point that you raised and the reason that N size is so small

209is because we haven't required the completion of presentations of learning. Right? So we require the incorporation of POG skills into our curriculum and into our instruction. But PogPole itself is meant to be a culminating project, if you will, almost an exhibition of learning that students complete to demonstrate the evidence of completion of of those attributes, the development of those attributes. But as a school system, because you know, when we brought this on, it's only been a couple years. We've been involved in so much change and so many things that are new, a new strategic plan coming out of COVID, a new um new sets of expectations. we have not required POGP pole to be completed for all of our students. So that's why that end size is really small. Um and that is something that

210you know I I think if we were to require it obviously we'd see very different data there. But that's that's the reason that's so small right now and slide 40 or page. And I just want to add Yeah. So um I know uh on page uh I think it's 41 that you were reading uh yeah um we are right now actually uh we have been working with the high school principles and and the RASIS to make sure that it will not be a requirement for graduation but it's something that's going to be implemented. So everybody will have the the portrait of a graduate. Uh very soon you're going to see those numbers changing. My time's up so I'll take a go back to because I have further comment on it. Miss Anderson, I just wanted

211to put one more plug in. I've been saying this since I heard about the accountability and accreditation stuff. um we have to make sure that we're telling the story of what's actually happening in our schools and we need to do it early and often because our parents are going to start seeing numbers come out that show that our schools are fail failing um at a particularly delicate moment. Um the other thing that I want to say is while of course as a as a former college instructor, I absolutely want our kids to go to college. Um and I also know that not every kid needs or should go to college. And so I want as we're having those discussions with our kids younger and younger, I want them to understand the breadth of opportunity that

212there is out there because the return on investment for college right now is diminishing unfortunately because of lots of reasons including increased prices and all the things. Um and so I just want to make sure that we're opening up the full opportunity. We've we've all seen the slides that have been shared related to that a high school diploma just doesn't do it anymore. we got to have more training, more something after. And so I think having kids fully understand what the after could look like, um, it helps them understand what they're working towards. And so I want to make sure that that is part of the story as we are talking to kids younger and younger about what and it actually helps them understand why this school is so important. So I think that that's

213what I'm hearing personally quite a bit lately is that they don't see the point. Um, and so I would very much like us to encourage that conversation more and more so that we can help kids see and keep that curiosity for a little bit longer. Okay. Uh, now it's uh, Miss St. John's gunning. So I'm going back to um the slide the sixyear slide which which I failed to mention when I talked about um when I was talking about our CTE program also huge proponent of our special education program particularly for our young adults that are in our centers where they're staying beyond you know staying for those extra years and again we've got to control the narrative and show the narrative where these kids are being trained to be active and productive in our

214communities and are getting jobs right after they exit, even if it's six years that it took for them to graduate. So, I think that that story has to be told. Um, and I think that's a piece that I just I know that I've worked a lot with Pulley Center um throughout my career for different reasons and have seen the amazing work that goes on there and seeing the pride of our students and seeing how happy they are to learn. um certain skills that they then take to the community. And so I think again we need to be telling those stories and we do need to have the alternative uh data which I think throughout some of the things that we've come across this year is like this is the data that's needed but let's tell

215the real story and this is the alternative data and we need to present that. Um and so I want to just echo what um Dr. King said. We need to start at elementary school talking to kids about what they need. And I know that when I worked as a family leaison and my kids were in the Spanish immersion program and I started talking about it then as a parent leaison, I would tell our multilingual learner families, keep them in that language because by the time they graduate from high school, they're going to have the equivalent of language credits in high school. And this is something that parents didn't understand. They already have a skill and we're just going to hone it. And so speaking from elementary and just to give a an excellent example which

216I'm very proud of although this student did not end up graduating from a Fairfax County public school because they moved but worked with this family since they were in preschool. That young lady has gotten a Posi scholarship is now going to UVA fullright with additional scholarships because that story was told from elementary school and she started here. She didn't end here but that I know that that message and that story was there since elementary school and we're partly responsible for that success. Again, going back to controlling that narrative um is critical. So I would like to see that and I not to and look it's easy for us after you do all this amazing work that you bring to us and then it's easy for us to say but where's this where's this and I

217really want to give you kudos for all the work that you've done um because I do know and recognize it's a lot of work. Just um real briefly and I'm going to ask Jen if she wants to contribute anything to this or not. Um, just so families are aware, we are doing academic and career planning earlier than high school. I was focusing my comments because we were talking about graduation at high school and building that four-year plan once you walk in the door at 9th grade, but we're doing similar activities um in middle school, even down into the elementary grade level. So, Jen, I don't know if you want to comment just briefly on that. Well, one other point that I wanted to make is that we have an upcoming academic matters plan to talk

218to you about our AVID expansion. And I think you'll be really excited to hear about what's happening in our elementary schools with those schools that have taken on AVID, especially our title one programs that are expanding. So, I really appreciate all the emphasis on let's start early. And that's another example that we'll get to celebrate with you soon, Mr. Moon. Okay. Uh I know that a you know former director of a student services where my kids attended high school is in the audience and I don't want to embarrass him because he was a good director. about uh with that with that said with that said I with such a large case load that each of our guidance counselors has you know how well do they really get to know all students you know constantly on

219my mind uh especially when I heard you know Dr. King mentioning about her own experience in another another school district where a student confided to her that nobody mentioned about me going to college until high school junior year. I'm glad to hear that we are starting you know that kind of conversation much earlier than junior year and but at the same time I still wonder you know given the large workload case load you know how much individual attention we can give to each and every students especially those who may need more help than others. uh when our students fill out their four-year plan, do we set aside time for them to do it in school versus outside the school? We do it in school. Yeah. So, I think um again, you're raising a really good

220point. I mean, our counselors work so hard to support students and families in so many different ways. Oftent times, the academic piece, they don't have as much time to spend on that as they would like, right? Because they're working on so many other things. That's why we feel that the advisory program that we've required middle schools and high schools to have for the last two years um with a really intentional curriculum is so important because that's a teacher working now with a group of about 20 students or an administrator because administrators have sections of advisory as well focused on a couple different things. One is academic support, one social emotional learning, but the big bucket that we're really focused on is academic and career planning. So that's somebody who can spend a lot more time,

221individual time and attention, build relationships with students, understand their career goals, maybe understand some of the challenges that they might face in realizing those goals and help them understand the resources and assets that they have to be able to accomplish their goals and overcome challenges. So it's still new. Um I know some of our uh teachers have struggled a little bit with the new expectations and I appreciate that. But it's so important that we provide that one personalized trusted adult in the building who is going to be able to give that focused attention to our students because counselors cannot do it on their own. You know Dr. Precedia you mentioned about one trust in individual adult in the building importance of that you know one of the things that again going back to presentation some

222of the presentations I attended include that a presentation about finding out whether student feels that he or she has a trusted adult in the building. I think Dr. King did you want to say something? No. Okay. Uh since I still got about a minute left, I know we not you know today is not the time to discuss about particular strategies dealing with multilingual learners but another thing that I you know picked up from this conference was about use of AI in helping and assisting multilingual learners because you know in as much as we do want to provide individualized onetoone help on every single student that's not possible given the budget constraint you know how AI can be very instrumental and beneficial to that and I would love to have that offline conversation with superintendent and

223and also Mr. Polio and Dr. Budio regarding that thank you Mr. Moon, I'll go ahead and take my turn. Still going back to the slide that I had earlier, which is slide 31. And what I believe that I heard uh Miss Neil is that one of the root causes that staff developed um rather concluded was that the course taking contributed to to this. So that's where the work is going to be happening. Um and similarly, we heard the same conversation with Dr. that has existed in research for the past 25 years which is the expectations of those around those students really determine what they have access to. So that brings me to the equity work because you can have the expectations but then without true tolerance and understanding it will just be minimally complied with

224which will still leave a lot of kids in the gap. I would love to hear what is the work happening in the equity office to try to instill in staff that all of our students have gifts that a parent doesn't have because I've heard of this too where parents of students of color have to fight in order to access advanced courses that their children are way more capable of handling but yet is still being denied by those who are the gatekeepers. What are the strategies in the equity world to bring staff along to help impact the course taking which we which I've been told will be the primary impact to this data set. Dr. Anderson, just like I shared earlier, um having embedded equity specialists in the region, right? They're at the table where the

225discussion is happening. We have a great tool that allows us to monitor um graduation rates and and how students are enrolling. Particularly, I'll give an example of um our goal of getting all students to take algebra 1 by the eighth grade, right? When we monitor it and we see it not happening, then we can go back and have those conversations. A lot of it is still the mindset work that we have with our staff and um you know my team is responsible for making sure that we have um culturally appropriate training for our teachers and um school-based administrators and counselors to ensure that implicit bias doesn't show up when we have expectations for all of our students. So when you say specific strategies, you know, we have been training around equity for a very long

226time in this district through our modules and it's ongoing expectations and refreshers around what that looks like. And the data tells us our story and compels us as the equity voices at the table, whether it's me at senior leadership or my team members at the areas that they lead to continue to have those conversations. Right? The data always compels me and my colleagues can assure you and Dr. Reid that that we speak up when we see something and and everybody in this room who works for Fairfax County is trained in this work and they understand that we have to even check our own biases when we're putting in um strategies or even talking about strategies that impact data that looks like this. Thank you. You know, picture this. Sicily 1965. Nobody understands what that is.

227Yeah. But picture this. You have a parent who wants these things for their child and their child may not be receiving it and they don't know what's or even a parent who doesn't even know what is available. And I want to connect this to the conversation that Dr. Prescidio had regarding the um the four-year career plan, how we have brought this down to the lower level. And I tend not to be a a schoolboard member who thinks that my experience is the experience, but I have yet to see this happening at the middle school level communicated to me. So I wonder if there's an opportunity the same way that we're sending out these attendance reports now. So you get your attendance report card. I would love as a parent to be receiving some of these

228career plans like this is what's available. Minimally will compel two things. It will either give me information in terms of what's going on like oh yes my kid is on track I don't have to have this conversation at home or it might compel oh I didn't know this is available for my child that's a conversation because I too have spoken with parents who are parents of juniors even seniors who have had zero conversations regarding post um secondary plans and that does not align with the conversations we've had here, right? And I've tried to tried to give a as accurate of a picture as I can with some of those challenges. We're still new in in the requirements. We're in year two of requiring the academic and career plan through advisory in this fashion. So, I

229know it's not happening consistently from classroom to classroom like we envision it happening, right? We we haven't gotten to full implementation yet. it is the expectation right in the places where it's not happening I really would encourage uh families to reach out and share that information with us share that information with the principal in the school we're working to get to full implementation um and we do to your point need more proactive communication from the school to the home about what's actually happening. So that is something we're working on to try to figure out if there's better technology solutions to that so that we can reduce the workload of advisers in the advisory programming, you know, having to provide that information. So we're continuing to look at enhancements to our current system. We're actually in

230the process of an RFP for a new system. We're using Navvian now. Some of us have talked about concerns with Nviance in the past. I don't know what vendor is going to be awarded the new contract, but that's in process right now. Um and the expectation is whatever tool we use in the future that we do have better communication and better you know family transparency so that families can really see what's happening and you know as a parent myself in the system um I'm sometimes wondering what's happening too right so I have to go you're in charge well but you know if you think about it those of us who are in the system and and have kids I mean we're inundated with information too right so I don't always do my best job of

231reading everything that comes you know, from the school to me for, you know, the details about when the parent information night is going to be. And I'm sure that I miss things that, you know, I shouldn't miss. So, we've got to we've we've got to streamline our communication. It's got to be more strategic and it's got to better meet parents needs because I feel like right now a lot of things are getting lost, if you will, and and I don't think it's for lack of effort to try to communicate. It's just it's not as effective as it needs to be. Thank you. And the reason I spent two of my rounds just speaking about the slide, it's because we know what is not monitored, what is not measured doesn't get it doesn't change. It doesn't

232get the attention. So I would love to see those monitoring points. I know right now they're identified as TBD, but we have to otherwise next year we'll be sitting right here having the same conversation and me giving you the the same feedback because this was my feedback last year. Dr. Dr. Anderson, if I may, I wanted to just kind of follow up on a point that that Dr. King was talking about uh when you were asking the question about, you know, seeing these inequities play out. I think one of the the exciting next phases of our able work is the ability to use data to identify students who we've missed in the academic advisement process who have that success potential to go in and be successful in these courses. Um so part of that able

233work is flagging with objective data. here is a list of students who you should be talking to about going into these advanced coursework um opportunities. And that's one of the strategies we just used to really focus in on algebra 1 enrollment for next year. Using that objective data, identifying lists with schools, having them go back and have intentional conversations with students and families to say you're ready for algebra 1. You you know, you will be successful. And sometimes that's a little bit more of a conversation with the family to say, you know, we we believe in your child and they're ready and we're going to provide the support that they need. So to your question, I think that that intentional use of objective data to help support scheduling is one of the strategies in the

234path forward here. Dr. Anderson, when we talk about our equity, right, I I want to say that, you know, I've been in this district for almost 30 years. I've had two children that went through this. I was one of those parents that had to fight to get my kids in algebra many years ago. I can tell you now that we are more focused than we've ever been around letting data drive our decisions to move the numbers. I I I guarantee you, and I might not be here, but I guarantee you because Dr. Reed might kill me for saying this, but that those numbers are not going to look like that next year. Those numbers are not going to look like that next year. We are more focused. We are more focused. I guarantee you I

235will be looking at these numbers next year. All right. So, it's going to be me and you sitting across this table. Dr. Reed, I got you. So, that that was interesting conversation. That's one of those interesting interesting. Yeah. I rational. Yeah. So, it's I wanted to ask about the um students who have do we have a data? Uh Marci maybe probably um you can um tell me about this. Uh how many of our high graduate students are coming out with credits for like associate degree because we talked about the college expenses and how we can support those students. I I we're going to have to go back on that one to see if we can collect that information as a follow-up. Yeah, because if 66% of our students are coming out of uh with advanced

236diploma, it it should like definitely have they have a lot of college credits and um and and I give this in a a very I won't say this is for every student but uh you know my son graduated from FCPS last year. Um he almost had one and a half years of college credits with him. uh so which reduces the burden financial burden on the families for paying for college and and there obviously dual enrollment courses are great option for that um and I feel like the students who are um the dropout levels will look very different if the students know that they don't have to pay for so many years of college and also they know that um there are other u pathways for them we I know that is one data point that

237we're looking at as as Dr. Reed has talked about communicating our message, being able to talk about the percentage of our graduates who are leaving here with college credits and how many college credits our students are leaving here with. So that is something we're in the process of pulling. I want to add that one. Um we have been actually working with as long department I know um uh Jen um we have been meeting and looking forward to to start giving that we have a lot of schools where probably one class or just kind of name it a little bit different and the students will be uh earning an an associate degree which means money for the uh parent and and it's something that I think that I have been discussing this is my second year

238and and we are very close to make sure that that we bring that to the children. I know we were talking about um um as a parent. I'm a parent of two and they earn an associate degree. Sophia is 20 and she's a full uh full-time teacher. And this is exactly what I was looking at right now is always students uh uh starting with those uh who like to be teachers and then looking for grants and and they finish their associate degree in teaching early childhood and then go and work with some universities. Two more years there are some grants and then they finish uh their bachelor in teaching and then we have teachers. So we had to be thinking on that. We have been working. I'm I'm very excited. Uh what are the next

239steps and and and I want to say thank you to uh Sloan team. This is uh Jam Glacer. Uh we started that uh working and they have been some hiccups but I know that uh they are about to be removed and so I'm very excited that it's going to be an option for our children. Thank you. That is really good to hear. Um I'm going to um go back to our meetings manager meeting and u um Arnardos I remember you said something which struck with me. You said students are in school for 7 hours a day or 8 hours a day. It's absolutely our job to make sure we meet their needs and we are making them ready for the uh their graduation or their future. So, um I I just felt a little frustration

240in your uh that day that you said maybe we're missing a mark somewhere and maybe you meant for this particular data sheet right behind us. Could you speak to that a bit because I think our board will benefit from that. I think what I was referring to is we know that there's outside noise in all that we do, but while we have responsibility for the students that we serve, we can't depend on outside noises or outside voices to um um share with our students what their opportunities are as students in Fairfax County Public Schools. So, I deeply believe that we as the educators, while we have the students in our service, owe them everything that we have, right? And so sometimes when people say, "Well, their parents have to work two jobs. Well, their parents

241are not engaged." None of that should matter because we have our students in our care for seven hours. It's great when students have that additional support, but whether they do or not, it's our responsibility as a school system to provide access and opportunities to every student who walks in the door. Thank you for that. Um and I I see that lot lot of this numbers the slide where it shows how much and I'm not I'm just going to say as an Indian uh parent uh how much we start talking to our kids from elementary and I think it's a lot of Asian c culture too that in elementary grade you start talking about postsecary education it comes the culture is nothing you know wrong but that's how it is my my only point was that

242that those students come with a very preset minds set. It's not before even the teachers talk to them or even before uh they they get guided by the guidance counselor they know what they want to do in the life because the parents are putting those seeds in their mind. How do we take take that out of the picture? How can we level the field in this type of situation? I think if you remember in that conversation I shared with you that if I had a chance to go back in my career, I'd want to be an elementary school principal and meet with every student that walks into my door and talk to the parents about what's your hopes and dreams for your child and map that out with them before they even walk into the

243school so that every parent has an understanding of what access and opportunity means. And I think it it impels us as a school district to strike down systematic barriers that we've had in place forever, right? That students who are not privy to the cultural things that you speak of, but still have the same access and opportunity, whether their parents start to talk to them about that at a very young age, that we as a school system communicate that. So, we have to find ways. I I remember in another district that I worked for shortly, we did put maps together for parents to start what are your hopes and dreams? But the map also gave several opportunities, right? Whether a child wanted to go to the vote route, whether the child wanted to go to a

244four-year, two-year, military, it was a map that started in kindergarten and it just showed parents ways of which their kids could achieve what their hopes and dreams are until their students develop their own hopes and dreams. And I think that we have a responsibility as a school system to communicate that to our parents. So here is the um I think the final word I would say that instead of talking to kids their parents in high school about college we got to start talking in elementary school about that. I would say first second grade but at least the fourth fifth sixth at least putting the seed in their mind. Um my time is up. Oh that was perfect. Um, Miss Setllo, we will do two minutes for the next round except for Miss Marin who this

245will be her second. So, she will get three minutes. Uh, I I've seen like what can happen when the superintendent puts forth something that's really tangible like benchmark literacy and there's like such a clear plan, right? Everyone knows what they're doing. the schedule set and you know there's been many conversations here and certainly myself with the superintendent and others about the communications piece to family and when I hear about we're looking at a new system other than Navvian I really haven't used it even though I have a freshman but I wonder if it's kind of like schooly where it had not ever been intentionally taught and the teachers had never been intentionally trained on it and I really feel like I'm saying very similar I said last time and we have great things but if

246you don't know where to find them. And I I do wonder at times, you know, what decisions the board makes that creates the work that maybe detracts staff. I don't know, maybe that's a little piece of it. But, you know, how do we make the commitment to the communications and the kind of mapping that Dr. King talked about the way we've made the commitment about literacy? Because I I wonder if if we didn't spend another dollar on anything extra, could we just change the behaviors so that we can start to do this? Like I, you know, again, being a high school parent, I get a lot of input and I've had instances where, you know, students are struggling to manage schooly or their calendar and the students being told, "Well, you're in high school now.

247We expect you to have more ownership." Well, no one ever taught that kid how to do schooly. I mean, if we acquit it like dyslexia, it's like, why would we expect a dyslexic kid to understand how to learn to read the typical way? Like I I think until we really change it, it's not we can talk about all these great things. College success program, you know, things are not advertised. I have one middle school, they do an amazing job um day where they bring in adults to come and you know, job fair. Should that be standard? Should every school have a job fair or a college fair or I think too that gets at the equity. they have some great things happening but only in some schools and sometimes it's the PTAs are running it

248or the star volunteer like can we be more standard about this stuff starting next school year. Um I know we made a little movement with the website and stuff but I still could not tell you how to enroll my kid in a dual enrollment class. Um and she's taking driver's ed over the summer and I still don't know if that means she's going to be driving by August. I mean I'm not ready for that but but I don't know. So I I just can we just Yeah, that's what I want to share. So Dr. Presidio, the communication comes out of your department. I know Jen Glazer, I know we've met a couple times. What are our plans to address that differently this year? Well, I think I heard a number of different things in Miss

249Marin's comment. I mean, what I tried to say about communications earlier is, and I shared kind of my own story about that, like sometimes I'm missing things because there's so many things that the school is communicating about. I I do think we need to get more streamlined and more strategic about that. And I think that's a divisionwide effort to try to figure out how to do that. Um, that's why I mentioned the NViance tool because that is a communications tool on what we're talking about now, academic and career planning. um but not everybody knows how to use it, right? So there's questions about it and challenges with it. Um we are working on um tightening up the way that we communicate academic and career planning information divisionwide. So I think we've shared with the board

250some initial plans maybe in a Friday letter if I'm not mistaken of some of the things that we did this year to try to standardize things, right? So common set of information on school websites, right? so that everybody's getting the same information. We're going to be standardizing the content that uh families receive in those information sessions. Next year, Jen's team's going to be working to create the content and schools can add to it, but there's going to be a core set of content, the key messages, the key things that families need to understand about academic and career planning. Um, again, the academic and career plan itself, figuring out how to get the information back to families in a way that's accessible to them. So that's part of our kind of ongoing project plan that the

251four of us up here, I guess the five of us up here that you see are working on when we talk about addressing some of these uh gaps that we see in uh in our goal report. So there's things in process right now. Um and there's things that I think are going to make a difference, but it is it is a challenge because I think people are inundated with information right now. I really do. And we've tried to also provide things, Miss Marin, to the point that you made about something might be happening in one school but not another as it relates to college and career planning. We've tried to standardize some things by saying, okay, what can we do at the division level for everybody that anybody can take advantage of that you don't

252have to have at your local school. So the career fair is one of those things that we do and we bring in colleges from around the country and families from all of our comprehensive base high schools can attend those. Instead of saying colleges or excuse me, instead of saying high schools should do that themselves, we do that centrally. On the workforce side, we run an um instruction to industry event to help uh students understand internship opportunities, summer employment opportunities, future career opportunities. We do that centrally so that every high school doesn't have to try to replicate that and some do it better than others. So it's a balance between the things that we try to offer at the division level, the thing for all schools, the things that we try to develop at the division

253level to provide to schools so that schools and families are getting information in consistent ways and then continuing to refine the ways from the school that we communicate more strategically um to the home. And I do think the advisory, I know I've talked about that a lot today, but I think that advisory is really important because that's one teacher with a small group of kids where I think communication can be um it can be a a strategy that might work better coming in a smaller setting than when you're communicating something to, you know, thousands of families in the school. Well, thank you. And you're you're right about the divisionwide events. There's some great, you know, things and and the additional things you said. And also, I think it was Dr. King just said, we have

254them during those hours of the day. So when I think of this like I'm going to be on this panel at Langston Hughes Middle School to talk about my job and it's during the school day, right? So how do we keep capitalizing on we have the students where we have them. Um and like it's also the delivery method. I was just looking at my phone because I got a text that you know there was a boundary review committee update and a text because my kids in a certain club and they're going to go on a field trip like and I was talking I think Dr. Pon like our families are using this. They're not on laptops, right? So, how is this going to relay? And graphics people aren't reading. So, how do we graphically you

255want to go back? Well, yeah. I just um I don't hear that in the response. The actual delivery method. So, Dr. Prescidio or Jen, the actual delivery method. I mean, I think it's a good point. Again, you know, I think that's a divisionwide challenge for us, right? We've got to work across departments. the communication office has expertise in communication technologies that maybe my team doesn't have. Right. So all of us have to work together to enhance those systems. Um we are doing to your point a lot more direct you know text messaging. Um, I could just, you know, give you an example when we were trying to do immunizations and get information to families about immunizations. But that that but academic I I know. But my point is the reason we were able to do

256that is because that was the Department of Special Services, our health team collaborating with the communications office to figure out how to put the messaging and the technology and deliver it in a more strategic way. And I think we've got to figure out how to do that on the academic side as as well as the operational side. All right. Thank you. Oops. Thank you. I think we only have three people for gobacks. So, we'll just stick with the three minutes, uh, Miss Setllo, because it doesn't make sense to have go go backs. Um, Miss Eismore and then Miss Anderson. Thank you. Um, a couple things I wanted to mention. I want to go back to talking about communicating our story and Dr. Reed, one of the questions I have as we're doing these the second

257year of these new accreditation. Are we planning on maybe releasing and we have it a little bit here the on-time graduation rates versus the four-year federal, but are we planning on on putting together a communications strategy plan that kind of goes beyond that and packages a little bit in some of the ways that that I think we're doing around our budget and kind of sharing our budget story. I think it would be important to share that to say here's what the data would look on the old standards, here how it looks on the new standards, here's the challenges. for example, what we talked about with the students with disabilities and multilingual students. I think that would be an important thing to put together because I want transparency for a for a community to understand the

258different impacts of the changes that we have. So, I think that's an important piece that I'd like to maybe see more of. I know it's maybe not related to the goal report, but just something going forward. The other thing I did have a couple of questions. I want to go back to my comments on page 40 and 41 of the report around the portrait of a graduate skills and the reason I bring this up page 40 actually doesn't talk about POG pole which I understand you're saying is a end of culmination and I get that it's a culmination project but page 40 just talks about and it's some rubric that's mentioned about portrait of a graduate skills financial literacy skills and digital literacy skills and I bring this back up because these skills are when

259I talked to when we were at the South by Southwest conference When I talk to employers, what I see in colleges, in a world that is dominated by technology, in an increasingly AI world, the skills people need are those embedded in portrait of a graduate, communication, creativity, you know, teamwork, critical thinking, that's what those skills are. Financial literacy, digital literacy. And so when I see numbers at 1% and page 40, the numbers are pretty similar to the POG poll. 1% 2% 3%. I I do think this is a a critical area because, you know, I have lots of information right here in my hand. The skills our students are going to need in these jobs that you keep saying don't exist yet. The ability to analyze, apply, connect, and use and know which information they

260should use and which they shouldn't use and all of those pieces. So I do think figuring though the data points on page 40 and 41 whether those are the measurements others is super important in this era. So I keep going back to that. Um the other thing I wanted to mention really quickly the on page 54 23 24 school year 31% of students with disabilities level two got the applied studies diploma. Seniors 31%. I know this is it's level two students 4% of level one. I would love to see how many of those 31% were originally on the so track at some point and then removed and when how many of those students achieved a standard advanced diploma in those additional eight years and how many of those students are we able to give that

261path to and do we have the right transition programming for them? The last thing with the special permission if I just finish my sentence locally awarded verified credit. I so appreciate that we're doing more of an effort to educate families on that because that has existed since 2018 and I know because I'm the one who lobbied for it. Um but we also need to make sure families also know that if they utilize that and their student receives a standard diploma on time they cannot access the post-secary transition program Davis pulley and step which is why that middle school six to eight year a four to eightyear planning is so important. I'll leave it at that. I know my time is up. Miss Anderson. Um, one thing I want to say is I didn't know that

262we were doing a career fair count or divisionwide. And if I don't know, then its chances are real good that other people don't know. So, if you can keep those division level invites coming to us so that we can make sure that we push it out so that we can increase visibility for those events, that's awesome. Um the second thing is I was sitting here thinking about like the accreditation system and everything and um are there is there any good news related to like things that are highlighted as things that actually help us show off how awesome we are? Like what happens if a kiddo graduates early because they technically wouldn't be on time. So does that mean that they're the denominator for the year that they would have graduated not counted or how does

263that work? Anybody know? So Betric, I don't know if you can help us here, and I'm I'm just going to be totally honest with you. I'm not trying to be flippant. It's a real question, right? No, I think it's a good question and and Betric is a lot less cynical about some of this stuff than I am. So, we'll see if I may be cynical, but I'll try to stick to the facts. Um the way that the calculation works is it's uh the student has graduated at any point within those four years. So, they might graduate after two years or three years or four. um they would not count into the denominator until that fourth year, their fourth year of high school after entering nth grade that first time. Um and then at that fourth

264year marker, again, regardless of when at that point they achieved their diploma, they would be in the denominator. And if the diploma was there, in the numerator as well. Well, that's good news at least. But I do want to make sure also that we're highlighting when we're when we're talking about the things that would craft around our story. I do want to make sure that we're talking about how many kids are taking dual enrollment classes, how many kids because I do understand that that's a part of the accreditation system is that the more kids that we can get through those dual enrollment, particularly if they actually receive an entire associates degree while they're in school, which is a whole se that's not actually our job, but I do appreciate the fact that we are making

265headway in some of those things. So, I just I want to keep cheerleading for things that should be included in that story that we need to tell and and highlighting those particularly awesome moments for us are is really important. If I could because I really appreciate that, Miss Miss Anderson. One thing, maybe I shouldn't say this, but the dual enrollment like the biggest barrier to the dual enrollment is the requirements that our state has for the certification a teacher needs to have to give those credits. That's different from stateto state depending on the state's accreditation or accrediting agency and we've had that as part of our legislative package here for a number of years. But that is our biggest obstacle is being able to have our teachers offer the classes, right? We know that they

266can teach them. That's not the issue. It's the the higher education commission saying that they're not qualified to do so. So, we've made good growth in terms of expansion of dual enrollment credits. We've tried to incentivize teachers to get those additional endorsements when they can. We've worked tirelessly with not just Northern Virginia Community College, but George Mason, other four-year universities like James Madison to get agreements uh for dual enrollment. But that continues to be a real barrier for us. And if we could remove that barrier, then you would see, I think, a pretty big expansion. And those are the kinds of things when the state imposes a new accountability framework like this that they ought to be helping us remove those types of barriers and challenges. and they've been completely absent from that conversation. So

267anyway, I just share that as a point of frustration. So well, I can definitely tell you that we're not likely anybody who gets the dual enrollment possibility is we're not likely to lose them to higher education because we pay significantly better um than most folks earn at the college level. But what I will also say is that this is something that we definitely should be talking to our state partners about about seeing what we can do about legislation because this is the moment that they're thinking about those things. So I appreciate that. Miss St. John Cunning. So just to tell a good story as we were talking about this and we were talking about elementary level and talking about maybe going across some of our silos. Um I do know that when I was a

268family liaison, we did teach classes for parents where they did talk about hopes and dreams parenting classes. And one of the classes that we taught was where the parent created a box and put hopes and dreams in for their kids and would then at the end share it and also asked the kid to share hopes and dreams. And this was supposed to be a living documentary box where the kids and the parents could keep adding as they went along. And so uh we talk about our educators and all the great work that they do. But I also wanted to highlight that our family leaison are doing great work within our communities particularly our underserved communities. And um these programs can be duplicated and we have to walk you know work across silos because catching the

269kids early is important and having those ideas of hopes and dreams that they can be reached regardless of where you come from is really important and I think not just empowering our kids but empowering our parents is critical. Um, so I just wanted to share that positive story and maybe we can figure out how we can expand that. All right, I think I'll take my last turn and then we will probably close this. Um, I did have a question that I didn't get a chance to ask. This is on the I guess page 12. I I don't know if it's slide 12. I know it's page 12. when you talk about the targets um it is table three um when I took a look at the baseline um targets from last year's that when we

270set the baseline the target for the 23 24 school year was 78 but on this I'm sorry for multilingual students the target was 78 but on in this document it is 76 similarly for our Hispanic students the target was 87 but on this one it's 84 who can speak to those changes, please, and why? So, I'm happy to speak to those changes, Dr. Anderson. Um, this year, we created those growth lines that show um the line that we need to continue to stay on as a system for each of our data points to be able to meet our 2030 goals. In some cases, those growth lines are much more steep where we need to make gains well beyond the five percentage points um each year. In some cases, those lines are not as steep and

271we do not need to make as much as 5 percentage points each year. uh when we exceed the targets in any given year. So when they're um in some of these cases when we've exceeded the target, it means we're on track to to meet our goal potentially earlier than anticipated. If we're not meeting those targets on that growth line, it's signaling to us as an organization uh that we need to pay additional attention to, bring additional resources, adjust our strategies that we are not on track for either overall or a particular student group. So, we applied that adjustment across all of our metrics so we could see the actual growth that was needed year-over-year to hit our 2030 targets. Um, I hear you, but I I don't understand still or perhaps it's because I don't

272agree why we needed to reduce the goal just so we can get there because that's the group particularly looking at the ML that's the group that is the farthest behind. So I I'm not really understanding why we had to reduce the growth in order in reduce the target in order to make the growth over the next six years. Um but we could just pause there. But I do want to talk about the 24 25 targets for that same group for our ML students. Um right now the results from last year were 76.03. Um and the next target is 79. So that's a plus three for our Hispanic students. Um, right now it's 85.84 and the target is 85.98. I'd love to understand that goal a little that target a little bit better. It just seems

273to be so minimal. Yeah, we can go back and double check the number, but it should be if you take our growth if you take the time between the baseline and the 2030 goal, it's dividing the growth evenly amongst those years. So, I'd love a followup because it doesn't seem to get us there. Okay. It wouldn't be an even because we're still at 85%. And we still know there's still a good number of disparity across the other groups. Um, one other question that I had regarding the graduation rates, and I know that you've kind of lumped it together. Where do we rank amongst the Northern Virginia schools? Are we first? Are we second? a week. Yeah, we're we're pulling some additional analysis, so we'll have that for the board on Friday. Okay. Thank you. Um

274my next thing is about career day. I I know you talked about the districtwide career day, but I really want to talk about the career days that happened at the schools. Similarly to things like um math Olympiad, etc. The things that are happening at the school, which now we've standardized and making it happen. When kids see a doctor, a lawyer, an FBI agent, all of it in their classrooms talking to them, that just creates an opportunity to dream. And so it creates an opportunity to set that that course taking pattern to lead to perhaps what is or was in front of them, you know, a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. I I'm just wondering where do we have the space to in our school day to make that a better part of

275the culture that is not necessarily uh PTA dependent because we know those little intangible things really can impact the goal setting factor. Dr. Reid, I'd love to hear from you about that. Sure. Um I think that would fall um under Miss Glazer, the career affairs, the college and career readiness. Do we have a blueprint for making sure those are consistent across all schools? Two microphones. So, we offer the central instruction to industry which is during the school day and schools may sign up to bring students on a field trip for that. And that was well attended this year. We did not have 100% of high schools attend. However, we did have a really positive turnout at that event which continues to grow. As far as blueprints for what happens in the high schools during the

276school day for career events, uh we don't have a set of requirements for them, but there are variety of of good examples that are happening in the field. We do have a more standardized process for the college and career center specialists at the high schools hosting colleges. um some of them host upwards of 50 60 80 or more college visits every year. So it is something that we can take into account and uh again look to add to our plan for creating more custom or standardized um consistent practices across schools and career days do happen at every level. It's just not a requirement and there's not a set template that every school is following. So, I do know that I would be remiss if I didn't comment on my SAC group's report on the career

277center and I think a number of you heard that my the superintendent advisory council the kids really want mandatory visits to the college and career center in high school. I think starting as early as 9th grade um because I think it's a bit inconsistent about how those are used. So, I really am looking forward to um a consistent plan on that. Um, but I think elementary, middle, and high, I think as we think about the importance of career fairs, we're going to need to have maybe a template developed. So, it's just a opportunity. It's so super lowhanging fruit. And when you have an elementary school kid just be excited about whomever's in front of them, again, that could set the course for a long time. I'll just ask my last question or make my last

278statement and I'll move on. Um I I do know that there's lots that we don't have control over. There is a lot but there's a lot that we do have control over and I do think there's a space for us to tell our story and to be mindful to articulate the work that is being done. Having said that, I I think there also has to be a balance because when we look at our data, we see that it while our school division may be great for a lot of kids, it is not great for all of our kids. And so we have to be mindful of making sure we're keeping that perspective because it tends to be the same demographic subgroup over and over and over again. So that probably won't land well with those

279parts of the community when we're just touting how great we are. But we are doing a lot of good things that need to be on record, but I'd like for us to be mindful of who it is that's going to see and hear that narrative and what their experience looks like. Um seeing oh Miss Marin please go ahead. Yeah I'm actually sending forward the um example from Langston Hughes. So I think more compelling data would be how many high schools participated? How many students participated? I I don't I think it's too subjective to say we had a great turnout until it's 25 high schools and I will also say our alternative schools. I helped um Cedar Lane school obtain speakers for their um career day. It might have been last year. And do you know

280what was the biggest aha of who to invite? Our own FCPS recruiters. They should be at every career day. Heck, we could just have an FCPS recruiting. I mean, again, this is very tangible to me. I don't get why. And and you know, at this time of year, we're getting so many invites. I have invites in my inbox for events two days from now and I have ones for six weeks from now. I would like I mean do we need to direct the superintendent to say you know the school year must include a middle school career day, a high school career day. Like I just I've been talking about this for a while and you know I've been on the career tech advisory committee. I was there for two years and I've not seen much

281more consistent implementation. The quality might be high, but the consistency remains the same. And again, I think we could figure out what do we send text messages to parents for? Is it for academics or is it because a reminder for the 10th time that it's a half day Monday? Is it to say this is the time to do like I'll send around also like the feedback but this seems very tangible and doable and I really don't want another year to go by and we can't make these little tweaks that will make such they are like no budget it seems or budget neutral so I just I don't know do we need to direct the superintendent to do this or is it part of Thursday's executive limitation when we talk about engaging the families and communities

282maybe that's a way to do We I think we got to get in a better habit of codifying things because we have such great conversations and sometimes they don't always make it to the implementation line. Mr. John Gunning. So, um I just want to make one comment and I do love the idea of career days in elementary and in middle schools. I will say that the issue is staffing. I've helped plan those. It's who's going to plan it. If you don't have a robust PTA, it's very difficult. So, when we're talking about equity and who's going to plan those, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of energy and it may be costneutral in the sense that we're not paying anyone extra, but people are working extra hours. So, I love the

283idea of it, but I want to also calibrate in terms of the reality of it because I've been involved in planning these and um I know what it takes and I know that it's taken a lot of staff time that was after hours to do it. I just want to let you guys know that. So, as of 3:25 p.m., the meeting is adjourned. Thank you everyone.