001cone emotion recognition technology the iPod and the iPhone surgical developments including the concept behind coronary bypass surgery and internet security advances such as the digital signature standard DSS and whereas since migrating to America people of Arab descent have shared their rich culture and traditions with the neighbors and friends while also setting fine examples as model citizens and public servants and Arabameans have also enriched our society by sharing in the entrepreneurial American spirit that makes our nation free and prosperous and whereas two notable ArabAmericans have influenced millions of people around the globe khalier Gibran was a writer poet and visual artist he immigrated to the United States in 1895 from Ottoman ruled mount Lebanon Burasarifet now Lebanon his best known work is the 1923 book The Prophet it has become one of the bestselling books of
002all time and has been translated into more than 100 languages fairfist County Public Schools alumni Hora Kby is a is of Egyptian descent she is a successful broadcast journalist and was a TV host of Dayline NBC and the Today Show she attended for Hunt Middle School then known as Steven Foster Middle School and graduated from both for Hunt High School and Virginia Tech and whereas the celebration of ArabAmerican ancestry and cultural heritage educates our fellow Americans encounters bias misconceptions harmful stereotyping and shared abuses by other ethnic groups and ArabAmerican Heritage Month is an opportunity to celebrate the great pride and vibrancy of the over 100,000 Arab Americans in Virginia whose abilities and contributions strengthen Virginia's economy diverse culture and communities and whereas Fairfest County Public Schools believes in fostering an inclusive community that empowers all
003students and families arabamerican Herage Month presents an opportunity to explore and appreciate the diversity that strengthens our community through classroom activities and educational programs we aim to enrich our students understanding and appreciation of Arab American heritage now therefore be reserved that the Fairfax County School Board hereby proclaims April as ArabAmerican Heritage Month and officially recognize the contributions Arab Americans have made to our society we encourage the celebration of the collective ingenuary creativity cultures and traditions of Arab Americans and encourage participation in educational events honoring their contributions so I move thank you Mr moon is there a second second miss Seismoreheiser all those in favor of the proclamation Miss Marin Miss Dixit Dr anderson Miss Anderson Miss Seismoreheiser Mr moon Miss St john Cunning Mr dunn and Mr mcdaniel will you verbalize your I see your
004hands now thank you mr mcdaniel Mr dunn and myself that is unanimous the proclamation passes congratulations agenda item 2 yes applause is in order agenda item 2.04 month of the military child proclamation i call on Miss Marin for the proclamation whereas April is the month of the military child this designation was established by former US Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger in 1986 to acknowledge and honor our youngest military heroes and the significant role they play in our communities and whereas the 2025 theme for the month of the military child is celebrating military child and youth building strongger character and relationships military youth show bravery adaptability and resiliency through frequently changing family environments and whereas Virginia is home to over 77,000 military connected school age students more than any other state in the nation Fairfax County
005Public Schools proudly supports around 13,500 military-connected youth and their families and whereas our military connected students bring a wealth of life experiences to our schools military families relocate frequently leading their children to change schools and support networks with each move these students know firsthand what it feels like to be the new kid and know how a welcoming attitude can help every new student and whereas military connected children overcome many challenges and have unique experiences as a result of their parents' assignments at duty stations around the world and whereas FCPS is honored to participate in the purple star designation program the 96 FCPS Purple Star schools are recognized by the Virginia Department of Education and Virginia Council on Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children for supporting military connected students and their families and we
006remain dedicated to ensuring all schools earn the purple star designation by the 20 26 the 26 27 school year and whereas on April 9th FCPS celebrated Purple Up Day purple symbolizes all branches of the military as a combination of Army Green Marine Corps Red Coast Guard Navy Air Force and Space Force Blue therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board celebrates April as the month of the military child in recognition of military-connected students for their heroism character sacrifices and continued resilience this month provides a powerful opportunity to raise aware raise raise awareness and build support for these children and therefore be it further resolved that the Fairfax County School Board extends our appreciation for the service of all children for military families and encourage everyone to wear purple throughout the month to celebrate
007our military connected students and families thank you Miss Marin is there a second second Dr anderson all right all those in favor of the proclamation Miss Marin Miss Dixit Dr anderson Miss Anderson Miss Seismoreheiser Mr moon Miss St john Cunning Mr mcdaniel Mr dunn and myself that is unanimous for board members present congratulations the proclamation [Applause] passes i would like to welcome One second yes deputy uh welcome deputy to the Fort Belvore Garrison Commander Mr shaun C leah and all those here in support of the month of the military child proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the deis i would like to welcome all those here in support of the Arab American Heritage Month proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the
008dis agenda item 2.05 National Board Certified Teachers Recognition good evening and welcome leadership teams honores and guests we are pleased to recognize those Fairfax County Public Schools educators who have earned or renewed National Board Certification for the 2526 school year it is my great honor on behalf of the Fairfax County School Board to recognize our national board certified teachers for their dedication and contributions to the education of our students and now I would like to introduce the division superintendent Dr michelle Reid thank you Chairman Fr good evening and I would like to congratulate each of you on achieving or renewing your national board certification national board certification is a rigorous and prestigious achievement and we are proud to be here to honor your commitment to excellence as educators to you our 2025 honores you're part
009of a very elite group of education professionals who can say that they have achieved national board certification over the last 24 years over 500 teachers in Fairfax County have earned National Board Certification as classroom teachers you are 23 of the 222 currently teaching in classrooms and serving in leadership positions across Fairfax County national board certification embodies everything we hope to see in our teachers this group of educators has demonstrated their commitment to highquality instruction equity family engagement collaboration and self-reflection on a national level thank you for sharing your gifts with the students staff and families of Fairfax County Public Schools and now I would like to welcome one of our instructors from the National Board Certification Course FISA LOM to read the names of our honores and congratulations again thank you good morning everyone oh
010no good morning good evening i'm still like in my day zone I guess um at this time we will recognize teachers who have achieved national board certification we invite you to use the QR code to access the digital program i think it's going to come up there um the digital program for more information about each of our honores honories when your name is called please stand and remain standing until all honories are called melissa Johnson Lake Bradex Secondary School patrick Noel Caldwin Run Elementary School uh additionally we would like to honor the following individuals who are being recognized for achieving their national board certification but were unable to come this evening and they are Heather Hall from Westgate Elementary School Kristen Bowersfeld Terra Center Elementary School Hannah Brown Bailey's Elementary School lyanna Clark Bailey's Upper
011Elementary School carol Dalmat Madison High [Applause] School rachel Juan Elmenorf Holmes Middle School thank you all please join me in recognizing once again the accomplishment of all of the new National Board Certified Teachers congratulations and a big applause uh please be seated uh the following national board certified teachers have renewed their certificates honories when your name is called please stand to be recognized and remain standing until the honories are called uh Julianne Braden Lauren Hill Elementary School [Applause] laura Chammy Madison High School francis Clark Keen Mill Elementary School heather Jung Holland Meadows Elementary [Applause] School lauren Kenny Woodson High School rachel Morris Lauren Hill Elementary School aliana Taylor Hayfield Secondary School additionally we would like to honor the following individuals who are being recognized for renewing their National Board Certification but were unable to attend
012this evening emily Kefir H hearnden Elementary School bethany Leighton Sangster Elementary School darren Misac Lake Bradic Secondary School megan Stanley Cooper Middle School julianne Trimble Bull Run Elementary School christa Vettle Hayfield Secondary School Jodsana Walampati Madison High School and Mary Wolf Henden High School congratulations to the renewed National Board Certified Teachers [Applause] at this time we would like to invite the school board and leadership team to come to the DIAS for a photo with the new and renewed national board certified teachers we're going to take two photos the first will be with all honores and the second will be with all newly certified honores so the second photo is with our newly certified teachers all right agenda item if board members could please return to their seats who's missing agenda item 3.01 community participation the
013next order of business is community participation we welcome all community members who are here and those who have signed up to speak this evening additional information about signing up to provide comments at regular schoolboard meetings and public hearings can be found on the schoolboard's website fcps.edu/schoolboard during the sign up process community members acknowledged they were informed of the school board's expectations for proper decorum when providing comments these expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room we ask audience members to be respectful of one another shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain at their seats including while recording video or taking photos
014we're grateful for those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation schoolboard members will be listening but not responding madame clerk please call the first speaker student speaker number one my name is Michael and I am currently a sixth grader and an FCPS elementary school i will be attending middle school next year and I'm excited about the afterchool activity opportunities that will be available to my classmates and I if the funding does not get cut for them middle school can be a challenging time with increased academic demands and being in a bigger school with more teachers and expectations being able to participate in Battle of the Books or Quiz Bowl or be a part of the school musical are things that are also so important to the development and
015mental health of my fellow students providing us with additional outlets and opportunities for engagement beyond school work makes us more well-rounded and gives us the chance to develop varied interests and learn new skills that will help us as we continue our schooling and in life i urge you to consider other school budget funds that could fund the crucial middle school after school activities program should the item be cut from the county budget thank you for your time kate Wilka most middle schools in the school district offer family and consumer sciences as an optional semesterl long elective whereas high schools have classes that fall under the umbrella but are not general and instead focus on specific careers like fashion design or hospitality students who didn't take general fax classes during their short time in middle school
016or move to the county later don't have the opportunity to not only are these classes not available for high school students to take even when they are available in middle schools many people simply don't take them but the students who don't take facts are missing out on the benefits of it while many high school vocational classes prepare students for different careers they're lacking in a class that prepares them not just for a job but for life in general the skills taught in fax classes are wide ranging learning mending techniques can help students recognize quality and avoid fast fashion whereas learning how to cook and where food comes from can encourage better knowledge of nutrition and understanding of the impacts of farming on the environment as well as other skills such as childcare and budgeting many
017FCPS students don't see the benefit of these classes and as a result are missing out on an opportunity to be more prepared for adulthood more high schools should offer general fax classes to give older students a chance to take a general class rather than one designed with vocational education in mind additionally the idea of making a fax class a graduation requirement should be considered there already a long list of classes needed to graduate such as core subjects like math and history and additional classes like personal finance and fine arts electives as well as others like foreign language being highly encouraged it wouldn't be much more of a burden to require students to at some point between 7th and 12th grade take a fax class and the benefits of learning those life skills would last throughout
018their lives thank [Applause] you BB Aali good evening everyone dear Fairfax County officials my name is BB Kobrazelli and I'm a senior at Herendon High School i'm here to bring attention to a challenge that many students who are new to this country face from my own experience I know how difficult it is to start over in a new country despite all of that I have been part of leadership taking dual enrollment and AVID classes however learning a new language adjusting to a different school system and keeping up with academic expectations can be very overwhelming one of the biggest struggle for many students like me is the SO exams for those who do not speak English as their first language these tests can be especially stressful and hard to pass i know this struggle personally because
019I have not yet passed the science as a wall and I'm trying my best to pass it this year so I can graduate and receive my diploma many other students are in the same situations failing pressured and anxious because uh passing these exams is required for graduation i respectfully ask the county to consider making the process easier for students who are still learning English whether through extra support testing options or other helpful solutions giving these students more opportunities would make a big difference i am writing um on behalf of all the students who are new to this country in facing this challenge i hope you will take this issue seriously and find ways to support us so we can all have a fair chance to succeed thank you for listening ryana Quasi good evening everybody
020um my name is Rihanna Kazzy and I am the outreach specialist for Turning Point which is a program of the Fairfax Falls Church Community Services Board a part of Fairfax County i am here today to tell you about a little bit about our program uh we are a program that provides services to Fairfax County residents that are experiencing symptoms of psychosis so briefly um symptoms of psychosis can include hearing um and seeing things that others don't um experiencing uh behavior unusual behaviors unusual thoughts so uh Turning Point has two different tracks specifically to address this issue in Fairfax County we have one that is the uh first episode psychosis track so specifically anybody who's experiencing symptoms within uh the last two years is eligible for this program and the high-risk track which is anybody who's
021experiencing some general symptoms broader symptoms um but hasn't been diagnosed yet so this program is a wonderful program it uh provides so many different services like caregiver support family support psychotherapy case management physical activity really trying to build resiliency and self-sufficiency and re-engaging our clients back into the community so we are making an appeal to Fairfax County schools particularly high schools if they're noticing any symptoms in their students or even parents um to please make a referral i can provide that referral email for you after this um after this meeting and it's just an absolutely wonderful program and um we really want to work with schools so um thank you so much and um I hope that if you have any questions please let me know frank Cole Malard excuse me good evening i speak
022to you tonight as a 50-year Fairfax County taxpayer father of three former FCPS students a Vietnam vet and retired Voice of America journalist my topic tonight is the school board's responsibility in conjunction with FCPS administrators the staff school admin and teachers to keep students safe and protected this responsibility is just as important as your responsibility to educate students in the academic disciplines and partnering with parents some of the safety issues in question include student drug overdose incidents human trafficking sex trafficking gang activity normalization/promotion of appherent sexual acts abortion as a means of birth control and instances of gender dysphoria ironically gender dysphoria is most likely brought on by topics in the family life education curriculum or the suggestive survey questions in socioeotional health or the health and human growth curriculum recently Governor Ynan said in
023Virginia parents have a fundamental right to make decisions on their child's upbringing care and education and include schools notify parents if a minor student if a minor student expresses gender in congruence or request school participation in affirming their gender identity schools should gain parental consent before implementing any related plans including counseling raising a child consistent with their biological sex including related mental health or medical decisions is not parental abuse or neglect this is common sense fairfax County Public Schools however is one of 12 school systems in the Virginia that have a policy to deceive parents about their own children i ask you to please recognize that keeping secrets from parents is dangerous and among other dangers opens the door to predators it states calls parents abusive to raise their Jeffrey Aki at the start of
024his campaign speech shortly after he was shoved by a radicalized would be assassin theore Roosevelt said "It is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful macity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers we need to teach civics there are few young persons with whom I speak who appreciate our constitution was mankind's very first governing doctrine to state all men are created equal or anything remotely similar they don't recognize our rights come from God not government and that our government is created to defend those rights fortunately children aware of those are homeschooled or taught in private schools we need to teach history the good and the bad for example in order to create
025a society that liberated American from tyranny and create full equality something grave was put off until a later date that date was September 1861 the Civil War and the struggle continues america is not perfect but it is great because we confront the struggle it is great because we treat history honestly and keep discussions open it is great because we trust in the human spirit not in government control history shows us governments that need to control always end badly our constitutional republic defends flourishing it is in the defense of our rights so egregiously trespassed against us during co it is in the defense of our free marketplace of ideas and open discussion without reprisal so dishonestly trespassed against our children with compelled speech policies and it is in the peaceful transition of power so desperately fought
026against by the weak vicious minds who attempted to kill a presidential candidate have incited violence against justices put men and women sports etc etc we do indeed need to love and cherish each soul and lift all to their greatness and their potential it is misguided to teach our children to be racist to enable their destructive behavior and to conspire with them against their parents misguided ndei and FMLE thank you Molly Sullivan oh okay good evening i'm here as an FCPS parent teacher and PTA president from the Sully and Springfield districts i'm here to advocate for the afterchool programs and the employees who run them i'm one of many residents uh who is in favor of the meals tax in conjunction with the real estate tax so we can keep our programs going i'm asking you
027be more creative on how to increase our FCPS budget not tied to the county or state because they've made it very clear we can't count on them where can FCPS save money eliminate center AAP schools and require every elementary and middle school to have AAP endorsed staff and multiple classrooms saving $8 million annually on transportation pay out PTO to FCPS employees corresponding to the step and salary at rate at which it was accumulated allow businesses to sponsor school events clubs name fields auditoriums staircases etc my ask tonight though is that the board make a written commitment with Dr reid uh prior to the finalized budget that you will retain the afterchool program educators in their current schools should their programs be eliminated dr reid was at GBW this week and she said she wanted to
028do that thank you uh but wanting to versus a written and uh binding commitment is different after school programs employ 26 highly valued educators and with the threat of eliminating their programs they've been placed under what feels like a gag order barred from using their FCPS emails discouraged from disseminating information to their school communities about these proposed cuts they've been forced to rely on us at PTAs to spread the word dr anderson Miss St john [ __ ] and Miss Lady know firsthand from having worked in our schools how vital adults like them are uh they do much more than just run after school clubs taking away a safe trusted adult in tandem with the after-school programs will cause serious damage to the 23,000 students they impact daily so please commit to continue contracts for these essential
029educators regardless of budgetary constraints thank you robert Ridby Jr good evening Mr chair school board and wider community my proposal tonight is that those of us on opposite sides of these really hot topics sit down together and eat and visit without discussing these hot topics i have a friend with whom I disagree sharply about many things in the culture war at this point in time these topics are too hot for us to talk about so we visit and we spend time and we eat we read books that we both enjoy um I talk about at other times the eraser of trans folk and the trauma and death to people in my community he at other times speaks of things that he sees that are equally dire but we can still sit together and see one
030another as human um and I think that's what our community has to do we have to sit down together and rehumanize one another otherwise we'll get nowhere um my friend and I have the luxury of doing this because we're not directly affected by the things that we fear and I don't want to retraumatize or blame folks who are directly affected but we cannot see one another as evil or dishonest we must see one another as human in these times i've really gotten off my speech here uh so so I'll just say thank you all for listening if anybody wants to contact me I'm sure you can Google me and uh find contact information thank you for listening [Applause] shella Mural Dear good evening Dr reid Chairman Fr and school board members i teach fourth grade
031at Westbrier Elementary School and I'm here to request your assistance and bring your attention to the fact that FCPS is not honoring teacher traininee uh years of full-time teaching experience on the step pay scale this contradicts FCPS regulation 4625 which explicitly states quote "Full-time teaching in a public school shall be allowed for experience credit." Close quotes hired in August 2021 to teach K to6 on an APA scale i was then hired to teach full-time under the teacher resident program created to fill urgent vacancies in 2022 i was then rehired in 2023 under the rebranded teacher traininee program after fulfilling all the coursework requirements last month HR cited a contract clause that discredits my years of full-time teaching experience and put me on the step one of the pay scale teacher trainees have fulfilled all the
032responsibilities of a contracted teacher unassisted our community trusts that the work of full-time teachers entrusted with their children's education is credible and therefore must be creditable as a parent of two FCPS graduates I certainly trusted that all our teachers were being treated equitably denying recognition of teacher trainees teaching experience sends a message that our years of full-time service and contributions are not valued if those positions were not marked unfilled or vacant shouldn't our time be credited i respectfully request that my full-time teaching experience be recognized in accordance with regulation 4625 allowing our service to be made whole by fair compensation of the work that we have diligently carried out thank you for your time robert Drummer good evening uh Chairman Fish uh Vice Chair Anderson distinguished board members i'm Robert Drummer i'm a member of
033Mega 5 Fraternity Incorporated the Omocrron Capaca chapter that serves primarily Western Fairfax uh H hearnden and Restston Virginia i serve as chair of our uh Omega STEM committee as well as on our fatherhood and mentoring uh initiative committee uh however I'm speaking tonight solely on my own behalf in my personal capacity and not in u uh as an official representative of the organization or any other public or private entity um over the past three years I've volunteered with our STEM program uh at Langston Hughes Middle School we sponsor their VEX robotics team uh we also sponsor the aerial drone uh competition team at Reston Teen Center and during the course of those three years I witnessed personally these young people middle school students grow and develop not only in their hard skills but in their
034soft social um and life skills um additionally one of our brothers uh Chuck Smith who's a former math instructor has volunteered as a tutor at Rest and Teen Center uh for math as well as volunteered last year at the VIP summer camp um in addition to our robotics and STEM programs we also sponsor awards for the Fairfax County Science Fair uh which is a pipeline through the middle school uh STEM and robotics programs and drone programs so as you consider the FY26 budget particularly the efforts to eliminate the after-school program funding for middle school uh activities I we beg you to reconsider uh that as these funds are uh indispensable in helping these kids uh particularly many of them from marginalized communities please play the video testimony submitted by Stephanie Lenquist Aurora good evening a
035is for the aviator Amelia Heheart this is how an appropriate public school display celebrating Women's History Month would have begun instead West Springfield High School experienced something entirely different a divisive and inappropriate display that began with A is for abortion accompanied by the image of a coat hanger i could go on here to discuss the other aborant posters in the display which Dr reid explicitly classified as critical thinking and all 12 of the schoolboard members also supported with their cowardly silence when asked to comment via email in reality the display was politically one-sided and undeniably controversial in the future students might wish to hang signs in the hallway that cover a variety of themes and issues i'm all for free speech which is why I object to your compelled pronouns policy so let me ask
036you this is it district policy to allow students to hang whatever they would like to in the hallways if so please do make that clear i suppose you wouldn't object to for example a display supporting the Second Amendment featuring an image of Lieutenant Governor Winston Sears a proud Marine Corps veteran holding a rifle controversial issues distract public schools from their mission of which he seemed to have lost sight the most recent so data reflects poorly on the district 22% of SCPS students failed reading 72% failed writing 24% failed math 27% failed science and 59% failed history fcps is at the center of yet another national scandal in education because of its poor leadership you could have acknowledged the divisiveness of the display and removed it immediately but you didn't our tax dollars should not be
037funding projects and curricula for children that violate many of our principles and religious beliefs why is it that whenever faced with an 8020 issue you irrationally choose the 20 the way you handle the ABC's to me display reflects your biases and willingness to engage in viewpoint discrimination against students who overtly objected to the exhibit district leadership should set a better example for its students moving forward thank you Chair FR that was our last public speaker thank you Madam Clerk agenda item 4.01 student representative matters miss Sant is attending an event with her future university tonight i will let her break the news uh and regretfully could not attend tonight's meeting so we will skip student representative matters and hear from her next meeting agenda item 5.01 action item certification of closed meeting compliance in order
038to 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 10th 2025 to the best of each board member's knowledge only 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 do I have a motion mr moon do I have a second miss Seismore all those in favor Miss Marin Miss Dixit Dr anderson Miss Anderson Miss Seismheiser Mr moon Miss St john Cunning Mr dunn and myself uh and anybody opposed abstensions mr mcdaniel the motion carries agenda item 5.02 action item confirmation of action taken in closed meeting
039i call on Miss Dixit for a motion i move that the school board authorize the superintendent and legal counsel to negotiate the acquisition of certain real property real estate property for a public purpose according to the terms and condition discussed in close session is there a second second mr dunn all those in favor of the motion Miss Dixit Dr anderson Miss Anderson Missheiser Mr moon Miss St john Cunning Mr dunn and myself all those opposed Miss Marin extensions mr mcdaniel will the clerk read the vote the vote is 811 the motion carries the motion carries all right agenda item 5.03 action item financial year 2025 third quarter budget review i call in Mr mcdaniel for a motion i move that the school board approve the FY2025 third quarter budget review as detailed in the agenda
040item on board docs is there a second second miss Seismarhiser mr mcdaniel would you like to speak to your motion uh just want to echo what I said at the last meeting uh this is a fairly routine item um you know we we the budgeting uh process is one where there's really just not a lot of wiggle room and I think if I recall correctly this represents a 0.015% variance of the overall budget um and that and the funding is going into safety mostly safety and security priorities uh so I'm happy to move this forward and uh thank you to Lee and her staff as always for the hard work you put into the budget thank you Mr mcdaniel miss Seismore would you like to speak to your second yeah just briefly um I wanted
041to first start by saying I really thank our budget team budget staff as well this is a very detailed um review that we do you know every quarter on the budget and down to the to the penny is very actually very impressive in the with such a large budget so we really do a quite a good audit review of our budget every quarter and to get the details of the changes um I'm really excited to see that we have 6 million additional dollars for towards safety and security that came out of I believe our lawsuit against against vaping and that is going to be used towards all sorts of great ways including panic alert system security camera 600,000 sorry sorry 600,000 not 6 million i was a little too excited so $600,000 um using toy
042security cameras panic alert systems and all sorts of other safety and security measures so I think um I hear about that a lot from our constituents and I think we all do about ensuring our schools are safe and secure and our students feel safe and secure so this is a great way of using some of that funding so I'm excited to see that and beyond that I'm um I thank our budget staff again and Dr reid for your hard work thank you Miss Thank you Miss Seismarhiser Dr anderson yes thank you i too am very excited to see that allocation to um security because I do remember when um with the former board when that a when that um lawsuit was awarded to us that was the goal that it'd be utilized to help counter
043some of the harm that's been done um so very excited to see that just a couple of questions um I I guess Dr to read or Miss Burden the grants for 653 uh roughly,000 um that has 3.5 positions for the magnet schools assistance program can you speak a little bit about that i am unsure what that relates to i believe that's the Monatory Grant yes yes we received a monastery grant I believe um we have briefed the board on that and we do need to begin hiring for that i had made the connection thank you for that and the other question was regarding the additional roughly $48,000 in the nutrition grant um how is that be how will that be used is that earmarked for some particular activity or just back to the general uh
044food and nutrition fund miss Burden I'm gonna ask Mr mute to speak to that we're gonna have to get back with you on that i'm so sorry say that again we're going to have to get back with you on that okay thank you um those were all my questions thank you Dr anderson miss Marin yes thank you i think um you know I would love to see the board talk more in depth about um the spending and the expenses and the budgeting and really it's not really a budget it's what's gone out so I think you know being really intentional and focused on talking about the spending and continuing to expand it to be a one Fairfax approach i just can't help but read this third quarter budget and think about what we're going to
045vote on in just a few weeks and know that the funders the county board of supervisors have um offered a shortfall of $150 million which is really to pay for the raises for our staff and be more competitive that's really the biggest thing in there and people keep asking me well what's going to be cut what are you going to cut well we really can't cut that much more if you want people in buildings teaching children um so I just wanted to confirm that the board all knew um the facts you know that then the public as well that we were all on the same page so you know that middle school after school programs we heard our students and community talk so eloquently about it's $4 million in savings and it's a program that
046supports um 20 is it 23 23,000 students however I think a student Dr anderson told me that it might not include our Mason District middle schools so that could be um even more than that so again $4 million to cut after school programs for 12 and 13 year olds um the VIP summer camp for students most in need 16 crossing guards are proposed to be cut which includes the crossing guard at Oakton High School and if you know the tragic crash that happened at Oakton High School it is I I don't understand i have I'm curious about that decision what the data is um the data provided in the county's budget says it's because other surrounding jurisdictions do not have crossing guards at high schools um yesterday Chairman Jeff McCay announced a program to offer
047offer a $15,000 signing bonus for applicants to the Fairfax County Police Department and I support public servants getting paid but we can't balance the budget on our teachers backs so my wonderings are will those hired officers have crossing guard duties since they are police department employees and why not offer a signing bonus to crossing guards um I'm aware that several vacant positions have been cut so you know we've got a lot of people in the market looking for work it seems like this could be a win um but I just have a lot of questions and would love if our board could sit down with the county board um as I've voiced and asked for but that hasn't happened so I have a lot of remaining questions so I'm glad that this third quarter agenda
048can be accurate in what it is but it's just hard to plan for the future when these cuts are being made without the budgetary justification so I hope that we can continue to do that perhaps in the next fiscal year we can have a better system to meet with the county board and talk about the 13 billion in assets this school board is tasked with uh stewarding thank you thank you Miss Marin i will take a quick turn um I appreciate uh colleagues elevating the investments that this uh budget review is making in safety and security uh with funding from the lawsuit that we entered into on vaping um we have other lawsuits that we're in currently around social media use by our our students and hopefully we'll see similar results there um I would
049note um that it's a particular boon for this work around safety and security especially for our elementary schools uh because the work that we typically do and and perhaps Mr lambert or others can correct me if I'm wrong um is funded by grants typically and so this is new money that is not part of the typical grant making cycle that we engage in to uh fund these projects is that right yes sir much of the camera funding does come from grants so very much look forward to seeing these dollars pay off for the school division uh I know that safety and security is of the utmost importance for all of us so thank you all we will go ahead and vote for the motion on the screen seeing no others all those in favor Miss
050Marin Miss Anderson Miss Seismoreheiser Mr moon Miss St john Cunning Miss Dixit Dr anderson Mr mcdaniel Mr done in myself that is unanimous the motion carries moving right along agenda item 5.04 action item social studies basil instructional resources that is a mouthful i call on Dr reid for a presentation on the social studies basil instructional resources thank you Chairman Fr um I know that our instructional services division has put a lot of time and energy into this so this evening I've asked Miss Noel Clemenco our assistant superintendent uh for curriculum uh to present uh the social studies basil instructional resources uh that we recommend the board approve this evening miss Clemenco thank you Dr reid and good evening chairman Fresh and school board members thanks for the opportunity to bring you some information about this
051um adoption process if um I'm going to just ask someone to click the slides thanks great so over the past year um we've conducted a basil resource adoption process as outlined in regulation 30004 this includes collecting teacher and school input it includes public uh review convening of an instructional committee um which is a diverse uh group of stakeholders and we'll talk more about that we've also carried out the IT and security reviews necessary to keep our students and our systems safe next slide please what you see on the slide here is the outline or the timeline excuse me the timeline of the multiple steps um that our team has gone through as we've um looked at basil resources as you can see we started about a year ago and this whole process hopefully uh will
052wind up in us adopting books and implementing this fall i'm not going to go through each of these lines this is a similar process that we go through with all of our basil resource adoptions that includes many of the things I I mentioned on the previous slide next slide please it's always important that we start with our educators in the classroom first as we begin these processes so we um reach out to our social studies teachers and our elementary classroom teachers as well as our school leaders to find out what are the musthaves what would they really like to see as we purchase these new resources and what you'll see up on um the slide is basically that we heard clearly that they're seeking engaging materials that are integrated into our technology systems and align
053to the Virginia standards of learning and just as a note we are um implementing new standards of learning at this time so this is all at the um at the perfect moment uh to meet those new standards next um one of the hallmarks of our um review process is the instructional resource review committee that you'll see up here on the slide that group takes a look at the um books that have been uh submitted and you can see on the slide that it's 60% teachers 20% school-based admin administrators and 20% community members and those community members are the ones that um this board put forward to be part of this process when the IR we call it the I if you can go back I'm sorry um when the IRC members are um pulled together
054we spend some time like kind of norming about what we're looking for to ensure that each of the members truly um understand what criteria we're using which would include so alignment pedigogy um navigation design and access and differentiation now the next slide so the IRC um combined with our interviews with the vendors that we did during the IRC process uh the public review the feedback from the IRC we landed on five different publishers okay I'm going to go through them relatively quickly if you want to go to the next slide I want to remind people that um attached to board docs is uh attachment C that has detailed information about each of these books and why the IRC felt like it was um the best book to recommend so you'll see at the elementary level
055grades four five six and let me just make a a statement here um historically FCPS does not centrally purchase K3 social studies materials we provide them with very robust materials from the county and offer other supplementary uh supplementary materials but we do start the more formalized textbook types of books at grade four and you'll see that we've landed on two different um publishers for for those elementary grades five pawns for Virginia studies and then Savas for five and six um you probably are aware that in grade four Virginia studies is the topic and so we really often have to go with a smaller publisher uh for those to really have the materials that are are tightly aligned so that would be our five ponds our plan for these is to buy digital for every student
056and then one set of books for every grade level so that they can be used for collaborative learning small group kind of work as well as to provide print when needed for accommodations or um preference the next slide as we go into middle school grades seven and eight we um we continue with Sabus for seventh grade so we have that continuum for five six and seven um digital and print uh class set uh here so once we get into middle school we do not purchase one per grade level but it's one per class um so each teacher gets a set of print materials here in seventh and eighth grade and in eighth grade again we're back to five ponds where we really want to make sure we have that Virginia government um uh covered well
057okay moving on to high school high school gets a lot more complicated in social studies uh what we have in social studies up there at the top is our standard and honors courses you'll see the world history world history 2 US history and government we have chosen Sabus for that um the plan is to buy digital and then print copies for each classroom just like in in middle school now in social studies we do um allow substitutions for those honors and standards classes of AP world and AP US and AP uh US government so we also will centrally purchase those books because those are courses for graduation once we get into electives then those are school-based purchases and you'll see our advanced placement and electives of the ones listed on here will all be from
058McGra Hill you may be asking where are the IB books right where are the IB books i don't want anyone to think that we do not support the IB um they do use some different types of resources that we have contracts already in place for IB and we continue to to work very closely with um with our IB schools to make sure their needs are met the next slide is just a continuation of high school um we have more elective courses that would be school-based purchases and then our one AP human geography that is also a potential graduation credit so you can see that as we go through the different courses it does get complicated we have to work with a lot of different publishers to get the best the best possible product for the
059different courses next slide please so as I said in attachment C individual books have ration why the the group found them to be the best um of all the submitted resources overall what the the IRC identified to be true about these books is the alignment to Virginia standards which is incredibly important but also a high level engagement through um like inquiry based uh activities we also need to make sure that the technical the technical requirements that they can sign in through schooly and to make things as as seamless and easy for students and parents um that they meet the requirements for accessibility and cultural responsiveness and that we ensure that each of these resources have the scaffolds and supports um for our multilingual learners and students um with special learning needs there's also there was
060also a desire to really look at the and support geographic skills and awareness because sometimes that is something that doesn't get as much time in our classroom so those were some of the um rationes for the the resources next slide please so it's important as we're all talking about budget lots of times uh it seems like every day people are talking about budget um there obviously is a cost to purchasing these new materials and we wanted to go ahead and share that today it is important to realize that this is a seven-year investment um we literally um will have these books and these these online accounts for seven years and that's typically the same schedule that the Virginia State Department of Ed looks and changes um any standards of learning so we try and line
061up the basil resource process with the standards of learning um changes and the final slide I believe so the next steps and of course we'll take questions here in just a minute but the next steps would be for you all to vote and should you choose to approve these resources tonight we will be working to finalize the contracts um and make the purchases uh in June put everything in place for for um for the next school year we will go ahead and gain teacher access and PD and start that at the end of the year where we have some um staff development time after the students are uh gone and then finally full implementation in the fall for all the new resources so that is uh the presentation and we're happy to take questions thank
062you all right get things started with Miss Marin for a motion i move that the school board approves the titles listed for the social studies basil instructional resources as recommended by the instructional resource review committee and the instructional services department leadership as detailed in the agenda item on boards thank you Miss Marin is there a second i second miss St john Cunning miss Marin would you like to speak to your motion yes and I'd just like a clarification chair I do have some questions would you prefer that I wait until after I um No however you'd like to use your time is fine okay thank you so this um this is the second basil that this board is approving we approved the literacy basil and the math one is forthcoming so this is um it's
063it's important that we see the information publicly and have a chance to talk about it i wanted us to be able to have any questions answered and while I am very confident in the process and appreciate the service of those who've been on the committee including Lisa Anne Moore who I appointed um and found it a very worthwhile experience I just I have some questions that I'd like to ask uh based on the feedback that I've heard so given that there is not a K3 social studies textbook how is consistency policy and anti-racism incorporated into the creation of those materials and how is that even aligned to benchmark literacies content which has a very you know social studies based content and approach to the superintendent please yeah thank you Miss Marin uh Miss Cleamco I
064know that's a topic um that you worked with um would you please share what the committee's thoughts were on that of course and and could you just repeat your first question i couldn't I couldn't hear it exactly yes so given that there is not a KTO to3 textbook how is consistency policy and anti-racism incorporated into FCPS's creation of the materials that are to be used so I'll I'll start with the second question um first you asked about Benchmark and and as a reminder one of the strengths of our benchmark advanced program is the um science and social studies content that is included in the in the reading materials and as soon as we adopted benchmark our um elementary social studies started to work very closely with our language arts uh specialists to see what we
065could align chronologically right because in the early years of social studies that it's more topical as opposed to like when you're doing history so we do what we can to align to um to align the topics to to help that to help that learning we do provide to teachers we provide to teachers planning and pacing guides that give them units and lessons and all of the pieces that they need to teach um to teach the um the social studies curriculum at K through three and we do uh work with our um specialist that specializes in cultural responsive pedigogy to ensure that those meet the standards outlined in our in our framework for curriculum uh for cultural responsive pedigogy thank you yes I'm aware of the work that FCPS did as part of um a consorcia
066to work on that cultural um culturally sensitive uh materials and I know that there was an audit of lessons that teachers had had access to that were many or some were found to be not appropriate my question is how are we ensuring consistency like are you are you saying that every first grade is going to have the same content just like benchmark or is it going to be the school's choose so we have Our social um our elementary teachers are provided with curriculums you know they have multiple curriculum areas right and so we provide them we're providing them benchmark right now that is a very tight curriculum in social studies we provide them the planning and pacing guide that has the lesson it has the resources it has everything um everything laid out for them
067so teachers don't have to go and find other things or bring or bringing things in everything is prepared um for them to Okay thank you i mean I feel like benchmark is a lot more like this is it and everyone's going to do it so I I do have some concerns but um you know regarding the print versus digital the superintendent has talked about having math textbooks and being that so critical 40 books per set in a group for for elementary why then not the alignment to have paper textbooks if it's such an an important thing for math dr read well I think that I mean it's a great question i would say that the topic of social studies and civics lends itself to a more fluid um content in the sense that mathematics the
068basic core math facts have not changed u significantly in many many years uh whereas many of our history books are dated within several years in terms of the content they're able to cover so I think we tried to strike a balance with social studies to say while we're going to provide text books we also wanted an online option to make sure that we remain current um and I'd welcome Miss Flamco adding anything to that um that the committee also discussed there are there are a lot of advantages in the digital products right a lot of supports um for multilingual learners and a lot of supports for students with um with different learning needs and we feel like we can really leverage that we're not you know with the math we've talked a lot about having
069that math book and and sending it home and having that support parents and having that come back and forth social studies for a in a lot of ways is done in the classroom right it's done in a little bit more of a um um whole class way and with cooperative learning or or collaborative groups so I think it I think we have the flexibility having the books you know especially for students who might need that for an accommodation or might have a learning preference but I think there's so many benefits to having um a digital text that can can provide that that differentiation thank you yes I'm I'm for the digital text as well what's the plan to really integrate it with schooly uh the chart the slide said seamlessly and easy for students and
070parents i have not seen that exact thing happen yet what's the plan what's the professional development is that going to occur before the school year is it required professional development so we will have um professional development starting in June we'll start to get sort of our early adopters in um right after school's out to to build some capacity at every school um and then we'll continue with professional development in August and then throughout the year it will take us a little while to get to everybody um we don't have the same sort of bigo symposium um like we did for language arts um but we do have a plan that is not only for this first year roll out but knowing that every year we'll need to train people as they come in into social
071studies as far as the school GPS piece what um you know we've worked really closely with it to establish sort of what are the things that we expect all vendors to have so that when so kids can have single sign on they don't have to go over here to a textbook that when they go into schooly those things are they work seamlessly so when they go into their account they'll have access to their resources well that's great i I'm more concerned about how consistent it's being used teacher by teacher and in the classroom so that's an ongoing concern that I have um I'll just move quickly because I know I'm still going here um the feedback that I got from my um committee appointee was there could be way more um with um with teaching
072about diverse cultures ethnic minorities facilitating conversations about history that is difficult um I'm aware that the Holocaust has two paragraphs mentioned in the world history text and two pages in AP European history so I just um however we're going to supplement and um we've got to you know we've talked about facilitating we have a controversial issues policy we really need to lean into this because it creates problems when our students can't learn how to talk about difficult topics so thank you thank you Miss Marin miss St john Cunning would you like to speak to your second no thank you Mr dunn yes thank you um so uh I I would like to understand uh will there be a physical textbook for every student in every grade there there will not be a physical textbook for
073social studies no okay um I I have a big problem with that um the committee uh strongly recommended a a physical textbook um and uh with digital resources as a supplement i mean I can tell you from firsthand experience I've seen the digital uh social studies resources when it's digital only and it is extremely superficial um and as a history major um I take issue with uh what was stated a few minutes ago that uh history is much more fluid i think there are certainly voices in our society today um trying to misstate history but history is um you know objective and should not be subject to constant reinterpretation um I I I think we need to stand up for history and stand up for history being taught in physical textbooks which I believe every
074study and every teacher on that committee recommended as being superior to a digital resource so I will be voting in opposition to to this recommendation because I believe you know tradition and studies show that children learn from textbooks and the digital resources when it's digital first are clearly inferior to what's available in in a textbook thank you thank you Mr dunn miss Anderson I just want to echo a few things um that some of my colleagues have brought up i'm a big fan of digital stuff um in terms of of as supplemental um information however I am a little concerned about the fact that our fourth graders who are in the so for history are not going to have access to textbooks in each classroom so I think at bare minimum this would be something
075that we would need to continue working to expand toward is because those kids are are utilizing those textbooks more often where they can go back and forth more consistently i'm also um concerned about our AAP classes that are actually dual i mean most classes switch back and forth between science and social studies so in theory they could probably share resources so even if we got another set or two in a grade level you could have the the classes switching back and forth so that they could utilize the resources at different times shuffling textbooks back and forth between classrooms is still problematic however for our AAP kids they're doing both all day all every day so they do science and um social studies in every class period or every day and so I think that that's
076another place where we we need to at least evaluate whether or not those classes need to have a physical textbook because they tend to go a little bit deeper into the content so thank you for raising that Miss Anderson and I also want to respond to Mr dunn's comment by fluid what I meant was definitely not rewriting history Mr dunn but we're in a seven-year cycle so seven years we have a new presidential administration and so forth so sometimes books no longer have the current um you know current history in them so definitely we were not interested in rewriting um just so I just wanted to clarify that because sometimes we go longer than seven years if they're budget issues and um our books can become very much so out of date so that's that
077was my point to Miss Anderson's point around um the different uh depth to which uh students might go i think it's certainly a valid point and a wonder at this point in terms of looking at um the budget and a redistribution of text versus digital because you know that we're paying for licenses or books so I think we could certainly take another look at that and as I said like if we can continue to have supplemental information that is more flu a little bit more fluid in terms of building on things that are are available I'm all for those things as they develop i think that when we're considering particularly for the fourth graders with Virginia history that's all a large part of that is all based on what is being tested and that is
078not unfortunately in our state currently that is not as likely to be more innovative and fluid um based on what's being evaluated so hopefully these textbooks would have have a longer shelf life than maybe other things so I think that looking at I understand the costsaving measure for fourth through sixth graders i do I do get that i just would love to see more kiddos have the opportunity to have textbooks in hand in those classes so if we could figure out even how to double it so that you could have two sets in each grade um then it would give more flexibility for for staff to be able to use those thank you thank you Miss Anderson mr moon uh thank you thank you Mr chairman listening to uh what the vice chair Sandy Anderson
079has asked and providing extra print for the fourth graders how much extra would that cost i would need to to do that calculation and I do want to be clear um we have not written any contracts so these were just estimates based on what we're proposing so your feedback tonight can help us to um can help us to determine if we need to buy more print or whatever and I can get some additional costs the per the per book cost okay okay appreciate it mhm and couple of weeks ago um Miss Clemenco thanks for sending me your response to a a question that I posed related to Baser text books adoption but that was that actually had to do more with the curriculum rather than textbook we purchased textbooks are there to support teaching our
080students our curriculum and for as far as the social studies concerned in large part that states standards of learning dictates what we must at least teach our students my question goes to uh in social studies especially in world history uh do we go above and beyond a state standards if so how much do we go above and beyond state standards yeah at this time I mean we really are aligned to the state standards we don't choose other areas to to branch off on there there may be opportunities where students have some choice and they may take different pathways but as far as the units and the the objectives in those units um they are they are tightly tied to the state standards or in the case of AP or IB uh why do we take
081that position why do we because just a limited amount of time we have in the class to cover that everything that is required to be covered by standards of learning that is primarily the reason right we have a a limited amount of time and um so giving more time and being able to go in in depth in some topics as opposed to to adding more topics uh I'm asking these questions because you know over last three decades I've been involved in public education as a schoolboard member basically that I have felt I have felt all along that uh when we are teaching world history to our students a amount of time amount of time we spend teaching the history of certain parts of the world were grossly inadequate and I'm going to give you an
082example of how we teach history of Asian nations 60% of world's population are Asians but how much time do we devote teaching history of those nations Asian people to our students and you we you also need to consider in the demographics of students in our fair county and I know for standards of learning that's something that we have to lobby if you want to change it the state board of education but I was hoping that would go beyond above and beyond the minimum requirements by state standards if you think that we just don't have enough time I guess we must then work together to ask state board of education to make some changes so I I do think that that is always the most um I won't say it's efficient because the state doesn't move
083quickly but it's definitely one way to to approach it to um advocate with the the V the state of Virginia to build out different parts of the curriculum in different ways there's certainly many advocacy groups that I think get involved every time new standards are written and we'll see that shift a little bit um where one thing might be um covered more more in one year and less the next time so I think that advocacy is one way um obviously we hear from many many groups um as a school division wanting and hoping to have more time and more focus um in the different courses and and I think we would love to do that to the greatest degree possible but we must preserve the the base which is the the standards thank you thank
084you Mr moon miss Dixit thank you for the presentation um I actually just had a question about some of the uh recommendations you have with the is also available in Spanish and some are not so I was just thinking about our multilingual learners and we talked about that the language acquisition takes time and having a textbook in their language and we have lot of like uh MLS who are Hispanic students who are also we're trying to make sure they are getting the content and also while they're learning English they can take test and learn in their language so and so I just wanted to know we c we can keep it consistent that with all some grade levels there is the it's available we have picked a vendor who provides the Spanish book um some
085vendors don't provide that um also with the public comments I kind of read few that there were few which were saying like oh this is not the best book for them but that is a recommendation I'm talking about grade five and grade six um recommendations so just to address your first question we wanted just the board to to see what is available in Spanish we have not made all the decisions about how we might buy Spanish um uh where we might try some Spanish books we it's also important to realize that one of the strengths of the digital is that when you go into the digital platform you can read it in many languages so we have a variety of languages um available um through the digital platform so that is a a yes um
086and the comments you're talking about were those from the committee or were those from the the public the public public yeah the public um we had very few comments um sometimes the public's very engaged in these processes and sometimes not as much so we did have very few what we do with those comments is we take the comments and we share them um so the IRRC will have all the comments to put into the sort of um mix as they're making their recommendations and I know a lot of my colleagues said digital um may not be good for younger students um I agree with that too uh I I think textbook will really help um having in the classroom but I also think we should definitely use augmented reality for some of these history lessons
087and uh social studies and and such and if that is something um have you looked into that so not during this process but I can certainly imagine right like having sort of the augmented reality field trip experience um I think that would be something we would probably try on a smaller basis i I'm making an assumption the cost would probably be cost prohibitive to do it um right off the bat at a large scale but might be something that we could try i have not seen any for social studies i have seen them in some other subject areas but it's definitely something that could be investigated and I know we have some global classrooms and global programs uh in FCPS uh do we uh talk to other schools other countries about the history they're learning
088and have like a you know cross history lesson sometimes so um with our global classroom a lot of those exchanges are are focused on the UN um sustainability um goals but um I think just in natural I think it's probably more cultural than historical but I think there's a lot of cultural um exchange of information okay thank you but it was another opportunity right it's another opportunity um in fact I was very impressed with my son was um in his high school in Centerville High School he he brought some papers home and it was so much knowledge about the Hindu um um Indian history and Hindu mythology and history and and and he was learning that um in in the the classroom and I I the material is very good so I think there are
089some really good stuff uh is being taught to the students so thank you thank you Miss Dixit Dr anderson [Music] thank you i do want to say thank you to um both Miss Marin and Mr dunn as well as Miss Anderson because some of my questions have already handled but I will um reiterate that I do think having a textbook for fourth grade students would be something that is um optimal um just to kind of dig into it a little bit more what is the differential between the digital text and the physical text in terms of cost i have it but it's hard for me to answer questions and look it up so I I will provide it for Dr reed the Friday letter okay so there is there is a differential i just don't
090have it in my brain i can I can definitely look it up and is it significant i'm imagining the digital is cheaper let me just get let make sure I get it right because sometime it it's interesting you would think that digital is cheaper but the bundle you know there's the bundle then there's the separate costs for items so I just want to make sure I get it correct for you i would definitely like to have that information before I vote because I think that's important to my um to my vote here um but I have some other information that I'd like to ask um also in the presentation you talked about shipping and professional development being separate what is the cost of those two um things so we have not negotiated on professional development
091and a lot and and I I don't want to presuppose that um and limit our negotiation power i will say that shipping will probably be just under a million dollars i know that sounds like a lot but that is shipping to a hund to 200 schools lots and lots of boxes is is uh no um small small cost okay um one of the concerns that I heard back from teachers when we rolled out the language arts was the lack of seats during the professional development for the summer um those teachers who completed their professional development in the summer felt a lot more prepared to walk into the classroom what is the plan to ensuring that everyone who wants to participate in the summer will have that PD opportunity i was hearing that is not the
092case you said there was limited there were limitations there are limit there right now as as we speak there are limitations um to have a certain number from every school attend um and that is primarily because we don't we do not have the same grant funds that we had to to do the summer literacy program from the state of Virginia we had the all-in Virginia grant that we were able to fund the summer symposium um for uh literacy last year um but what we will have is access to the materials and other um resources available to them to to start the learning on their own um and then we will kick it off in in um August thank you can you please also share students who are in AP schools and those who are in
093IB schools are they subject to the same set of SOS so as we speak right now we do um performance assessments so it depends on um so yes if there is an if there is an so um they are subject to the same so which is what raises my concern regarding not having any text for the IB schools and I heard you say that you will work with the schools but I don't know what that means um I don't know what that means in terms of materials are they digital are they hard copy the way that it's being provided for our AP schools um is it going to be centrally funded I I need those details please so I've tal so when uh the team started working on this and they put out the RFP
094um they there really weren't any IB books that even came forward right so and that was a red flag for me so the first thing I did is I started talking to the IB principles and said what is happening in social studies for your IB classrooms and some of the IB coursework um um has there's some flexibility within the IB casework and of I'm sorry IB program there's a lot um casework kind of of materials so we have contracted with a different company and I apologize I don't have the name of it um for to ensure that our IB students have the materials that they need and and the principles were saying they did not need to have a a textbook like the AP it's a different kind of course um than the AP course
095so they have different materials i believe they are primarily digital i do believe that they are primarily digital um and they have been um found that they are are more than sufficient i appreciate that um but in going back in terms of our conversations regarding we're school system so when we have a presentation about a textbook adoption for the system it needs to be fully comprehensive and it has to include the what the presentation that is here must include what you've just shared with me because I couldn't write it fast enough understood um one of the things that I do see as an as a positive to the digital copies is the opportunity for translation um and I must I must have misheard but can you confirm if a if there is a an opportunity
096for translation in in a different language how many languages are there and are students also allowed to take assessments in that language in that digital format so I do not know about the assessments and and I will have to get you the the number of languages my team told me that it there are um many many it's not like six languages but I don't have the the list in front of me it's more than the eight that we frequently use so there's Oh okay thank you um and the other piece is regarding the digital access for parents because we do have some grades where it's only digital right now how is that going to be better facilitated because I will tell you as a parent who tried probably a few years ago and stopped trying
097to access the digital textbook it's quite difficult are you saying like challenging no thank you um are you speaking about just being able to log in or you mean to navigate i'm sorry say that again are you mean to log in or to navigate the textbook um both oh both okay um so um I appreciate that feedback um of course and I think the the best way to approach that is to ensure sometimes what we do is we put the information and and forgive me Miss Maron in schooly right so people can go into schooly and then parents would know how to do it and then sometimes we can also put it on on the internet so parents can just say online textbooks and it would give people the login um so it depends on
098it depends on the uh type of login we have um but we can make sure that login are accessible often there are videos that we can post so that parents can see it i understand that when you only are logging in once in a blue moon it kind of feels overwhelming like how do I navigate this how do I find it but if we can have if we have some quick reference guides like we do for some other materials online hopefully that will help parents that would be helpful particularly if there's some translations in other languages which parents could be right more easily access but not being able to get to them is is a hardship so hopefully you can navigate that um I I I was not my time yep that's your time okay
099i'll let it go back please i have one more statement thank you go back i'll take a turn very quickly um just to set some historical background on this see what I did there um so people may recall a few years ago when uh the Virginia Department of Education was wrestling and the state board of education was wrestling with the Virginia standards of learning and initially came out with I think a four or 500page uh standards document that was riddled with errors uh historical inaccuracies and what many labeled as whitewashing uh Virginia and US history including eliminating references to Martin Luther King Day and Junth and many other problems and as a result of that coming out uh many educators across the Commonwealth spoke out they started attending public hearings about uh the curriculum standards
100and the uh standards were changed and reduced down to 53 pages um with many of those inconsistencies errors and um omissions uh addressed but many left unressed and so um I'm I am worriedish about uh only aligning with the Virginia standards of learning i realize that's not the only thing that we're doing um but I'd love to hear a commitment that the work in educating our students about social studies and history in our schools will in addition to meeting the Virginia standards of learning will also conform comport with our educational equity policy and our strategic plan objectives of course yes um that's good to to hear and reassuring um and hopefully um you know in the years ahead um we can ensure that Virginia's standards of learning for social studies and history uh fully encompass
101the the complexities of our history so um I appreciate all the work that went into this from the community from board members comments and questions on this topic and look forward to the implementation we have two gobacks mr done uh thank you uh so I I'd like to ask um if uh as part of the information for the Friday letter if uh there could be a cost estimate obtained to provide a textbook to each child not just uh available in uh the uh you know in the classroom but to be able to take home uh I I had the pleasure of witnessing last summer all of the books thousands and thousands of thousands of books that were purchased and delivered to each school and organized at great um effort uh labor and time uh to
102implement the new literacy curriculum and that's because books help kids learn and in the same way we need to buy books um and textbooks specifically to help kids learn history because uh we can't rely on you know the little quickie videos they have in these digital only uh curricula um and I I also want to listen to the committee members who came together to emphasize textbooks with digital uh supplements is is the preferred uh course of action um so if is that something that uh Dr reed that you would be able to provide yes sir i could provide that and and Dr reed in your experience do you I mean you you advocated textbooks for math um do you uh do you think that textbooks for social studies might also be prudent to ensure that
103kids learn comprehensive history and noting that in every history class I ever took in elementary middle and high school we never got to you know the last 40 years so updating for the most recent president etc um may not be necessary because mostly you get through the first twothirds and then the school year is over so I am definitely a fan of textbooks um and I am definitely a fan of students being able to take those home so I'll I'll visit with staff about uh the possibility of doing that dependent on where the board lands on this this evening okay uh so may I ask a question to the chair does that mean that um given the the the cost estimates that have been requested not just by me but by others that the vote
104on this motion should be delayed perhaps no unless the board decides to delay the motion but there's a motion on the table okay uh thank you very much thank you Mr dunn dr anderson thank you that actually was one of my questions um particularly because I wanted to have greater clarity on providing those physical materials for grades uh for the younger grades as well as having greater clarity on what is happening with our IB schools so I will be voting no to give you the time and space to revisit and rejig this a little bit and I hope it can include um some other discussions regarding the PD for teachers i realize that there are grants we don't have access to but if we're not setting up our teachers for success what is it that
105we're expecting for them to be able to do um I I didn't hear a clear plan is this a train the trainer model whatever that is and when and whatever that timetable is I hope that can be revisited and I would ask that we provide a no to the superintendent on this tonight so she could have a little bit of time and rep and represent with some of those answers um with some of those questions answered um otherwise I think we're kind of stuck to what we have tonight so I will be a no thank you Dr anderson miss Marin Dr reed can you speak to what the outcomes would be if the board voted no on this this evening financially timing and like what's the status now of our social studies basil materials well
106we're within the cycle to order new materials um we did this evening um I want to you know Dr anderson you indicated there were more things you would want in a presentation so I want to be clear that um staff really uh put this together very at late um so I will own the responsibility for what was in or not in the presentation i know staff worked very hard to put something together for this evening uh I would then also say that part of why they did that was because the sooner materials get here the sooner this spring they can work with staff on developing them um however having said all of that I feel like um you know if we need to wait two weeks and come back with a plan that is thoughtful
107we do this every seven years so we want to get it right uh so um I think better to do it well than rush if we're not sure so um the impact Miss Marin is that we would be delayed in receiving the materials but um so that's the impact thank you and when do you know the last time that the bo board approved basil materials for social studies miss Clemenco do you have that information it would have been prior to my arrival if this is 2025 I would guess seven years ago roughly be 2018 but I think it might have been eight years ago i think we're a year late a year behind well that's not as terrible because I know we were quite behind with the literacy materials so that's a relief um so
108you know I did pull this off of the consent agenda and I do think you know we need to realize that we need to see these materials i believe I also pulled the literacy materials off the agenda back then so we could review them um and so the math materials whenever we get there should also be presented to us well in advance it's just curious that this most intimate part of learning is not agendaized and even a work session really right i mean I um so I'm also just a point about printing i was talking to one of our local book owners and she said um this was early this week at the tariffs um lots of the printed books and color come out of Hong Kong and that would be a big price increase
109um and something I didn't get to ask about in the budget session just about how we're doing with prices on on all the things but I I'm I'm not as confident in this motion um after the discussion and so I hope my colleagues will also further discuss whether we wait or we move forward so I hope you will all respond and give input thank you thank you Miss Marin miss Sanderson I'd like to make a motion to delay the motion on the table to a date certain which the next meeting April 24th is there Dr anderson seconds Miss Mary miss Anderson would you like to speak to your motion no I think that we've all made it clear that we want a little bit more information dr anderson would you like to speak to your
110second just one quick question will two weeks be we date certain i'm assuming it's it'll be the next board meeting will that be sufficient time yes ma'am thank you all right all those in favor of delaying to a date certain at the next board meeting the discussion of this motion Miss Marin Miss Dixit Dr anderson Miss Anderson Missheiser Mr moon Miss St john Cunning Mr dunn Mr mcdaniel and myself that is unanimous thank you everybody for your work all right agenda item 5.05 new Salource contract teach for America Inc teachers trained to support high school excuse me high need schools i call on Mr dunn for a motion thank you uh I move that the school board approve the Soul Source contract to Teach for America Inc for teachers trained to support highne schools and
111authorize the division superintendent or the director of the office of procurement services to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board is there a second second Dr anderson mr dunn would you like to speak to your motion uh yes i I uh really appreciate that uh FCPS under uh Dr reid is continuing to explore every avenue by which to recruit new teachers to our school system teach for America is a very successful program that has existed for many years and uh I think it offers the opportunity to continue to provide uh you know more teachers at a time when we're facing a local regional and national teacher shortage thank you thank you Mr dunn dr anderson yes um I I do appreciate literally the opportunity to exercise exploration of every avenue
112in order to grow our teaching force i I that has to be commended because we're in a place where things are are challenging um my concern which we did talk about a few weeks ago when you first sent this is that um these teachers are to be sent to our highest need schools that's the structure that's how it's based and the training if I understand correctly um Mr solomon or Dr reid um the training for TFAS it's a fiveweek summer course and then they're sent to us yes they are supported throughout the year um by TFA but it's five weeks and then you're in front of the highest needs students that we have in our county i struggle with that it's so counterintuitive we've had conversation about conversation after conversation in our um budget work
113where we talk about that we need to have those master's degrees teachers because they are the best for our kids and yet it doesn't feel as if we're putting the best and not to say that there are not TFA rock stars there are there are unicorns everywhere but overall the um retention is not what we would like it to be and all of that is available i'm happy to send it to you all and the preparation is definitely not what it I would like it to be personally for our highest needs schools so I'm really struggling um with it knowing that we are just trying to grow the workforce in all ways possible i in all good conscience when these are these are teachers that are identified for regions two and three it will be
114our least ex our least prepared teachers in front of our highest need students it it's it's hard for me to wrap my mind around that so I appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation i would say that our teacher trainees are actually less trained than our Teach for America candidates would be the contract is for five uh Teach for America candidates who have a desire to be in education and they do receive as you indicated the fiveweek summer course but they are supported by Teach for America mentors uh throughout the rest of the year which is actually even more support than we're able to provide our new teachers or our beginner teachers or our uh teacher trainees so I I feel like um my experience with Teach for America has been amazing in terms of
115candidates we still have the opportunity to interview and select the five we wish so it's not just you know candidates provided to us we'll have the opportunity to interview and have that final say but I do believe that uh actually several of our leadership team members are Teach for America alums who uh went into Teach for America and then developed and uh recognized a deep passion for education and made it their life's work u so I often find that we acquire very missiondriven individuals um that really contribute to not only the education of the children in front of them but to uh the entire division no I appreciate that and if you'll recall I had similar concerns with the teacher trainees so for me this is not new um but it does make me also
116wonder um some years ago we were talking about the Call Me Mister program which were is I think those were credentialed teachers already are we still looking at that in order to continue to grow our workforce because I haven't heard anything since well it's been at least three years one of the reasons you haven't is Dr wilson on several occasions reached out to that program and didn't receive a response back we were also asked to check references or other uh business partners and uh those uh calls didn't result in confidence that that would be a program that would um bear great fruit here i see um I lost my train of thought here um I I lost my train of thought i'll have to go back thank you Dr anderson mr moon uh Dr re
117so how many how many how many tissues are you seeking through this contractor this uh first year of the grant is uh we would be seeking five just five yes sir okay thank you uh you know my concern with uh you know basically with the teachers from a teach for America is that they don't tend to stay as long as non- teach for America teachers and if it's just like a Dr anderson stated if they are going to be sent to a high need schools i think our own data also show that there is higher turnover in those schools for our regular teachers than other schools and so worried about there a if you know duration of stay with us whether it's going to even create higher turnover in those school that is my concern
118but it's small number to begin with so I'm willing to take that risk and see how that goes wish you well thank you Mr moon i'll take a quick turn um at the South by Southwest uh education conference um feels like six years ago it was like a month ago miss Marin and I had the opportunity to attend a session uh led by a conversation with the leader of um uh Teach for America and one of the topics that came up in that discussion was uh the efficacy of the program in other words are these just recent college grads who are taking this as an opportunity to serve and then enter another profession and while a certain number of folks do that um more than 60% of Teach for America educators stay for more than
119two years and uh about a third stay for more than four years so I think it becomes something that's on us to Mr moon's point about uh how long people stick around i think it's on us as a school division to give these educators a reason to stay with us and to stay in the schools that they're placed in um and so uh I'm I'm confident in the program uh and I'm grateful for the work that's gone into finding every conceivable avenue of bringing people into the system and hopefully with the changes that we're seeing across the school division as it relates to hiring retention etc ETA um these programs can bear even more fruit and perhaps even lead the averages that we see nationwide for the program so thank you for bringing it to
120us i have Mr dun for a go back uh thank you um do you know um uh what your long-term plan is uh Dr dr reid because I note um by comparison we we have the uh international educator program that started very small and has grown uh very substantially um do you have a long-term vision for you know how many uh teachers you would like to ideally uh receive through Teach for America eventually thank you Mr dunn you know this is a it's a good question it it asks me to be a bit speculative i I will say that we were calculating just the number of education graduates in the Commonwealth of Virginia and recognizing we hire over 2,000 teachers annually we there are not enough educators graduating from education programs in the Commonwealth to
121fill all the positions we annually have you know with 40,000 employees so I I think we're looking at five this year i'd like to see how the program goes how the supports work virginia is fairly new to Teach for America other states have been much more involved for longer time periods um so I you know it's a fair question i think we would want to grow it from five um I don't know how many it will grow to but we're going to have to look at non-traditional uh I non-traditional plans and systems to keep our schools fully staffed because traditional programs just are not providing sufficient graduates at this time uh thank you i I I note that there was a rand study of uh Teach for America in in in Indiana and then it
122found that uh on average TFA teachers were more effective at increasing student achievement than non TFA teachers uh and had uh a demonstrable impact on uh student outcomes in English language arts and math so so I think the data does show that the program is effective and I note the the positive comments by my colleague um and so for that reason I I greatly support this um this program in the introduction i note it is being deployed in in region three and region four I believe is that correct it will be deployed in generally speaking in our title one schools and those actually we have title one schools across the division but I do think regions uh two and four both have uh regional assistant superintendents who are TFA alum uh and have a special
123interest and heart for that program so I believe that you're accurate okay thank you thank you Mr dunn dr anderson um thank you i I finally find my thought uh one of the opportunities that I've had in you know in my work in education was actually in the District of Columbia was to work as the director of teaching and learning and that in that required for me to um be in charge of all the professional development and coaching which also involved um the review of many of the TFA teachers uh which DC has a huge number of and the turnover is high and the turnover is high because we are essentially having teachers who are not as trained as we would like them to be in front of our highest need students and I do
124believe that the record here says it's um regions two and three um do I think some TFA teachers can be successful absolutely i I know that one of our folks um that's in leadership can be but overall that has not been the case because of the turnover that has been as high and past four years it's actually 25% and not necessarily a third so that is a risk for me that is challenging to take when we are placing these individuals in front of our highest need students so title one schools that are already under it are receiving ideally not you know the candidates we will be seeking the candidates that we speak about all of the time during our budget processes where we are um recruiting and wanting to retain our our um mast's level
125ma mast's level teachers and I do envision unfortunately a future where over time our title one schools will have a lot of these teachers which really makes it difficult for all of the work that we do which rely on that teacher expertise we know that is the number one impact to student learning it's teacher expertise and so I do have those concerns and so I will be a no on this because it is going to also be the schools that I represent that largely have um this great core and again I do not want to be offensive to say that no TFA teachers cannot be wonderful because that is not the case because a lot of licensed teachers also have struggles but I I I just have too many worries for this to work for
126me thank you Dr anderson miss St john Cunning um so I have the fortunate of fortunate opportunity of knowing a lot of teachers that have participated in Teach for America and I would probably guess that we have some that are teaching for us now through Edu Futuro because I know Edu Fukuro uses that program and they are in our title one schools uh and I know that the retention rate for Edu Futuro is is relatively high um so to the extent that we do not have you know a lot of people that are graduating and I really commend the job that we're doing to find teachers where we can and I participated um last week with uh Hispanic Educators Association on how we're supporting the participate learning teachers and I know that there's some very
127intentional work going on through HR and I appreciate what they're doing i appreciate the work that other organizations of are doing to help support our teachers and in programs such as um participate learning and and I know that the same kind of support will be there for teachers that come through this program it's five teachers i think we can be very intentional in supporting them um and again I think we already have some of them teaching in our schools through Futuro thank you Miss St junk Cunning Miss Marin yeah I've I think it's great to have the data about Teach for America and Mr frisch yeah we did get to hear the founder talk about it and it's only five teachers and if they are surrounded by supportive professional you know um colleagues plus the
128Teach for America program i mean we currently have empty spaces i would think a Teach for America individual who is smart and motivated is more preferred than having a substitute as well-meaning as they are rotating in and out of a classroom for instance for a long-term sub so I'm willing to go for the pilot and see how it goes and I do expect that they'll be fully supported thank you Miss Marin mr moon just one quick comment i know that your intention is to put them in the high need scores maybe that's how we start but if needed you know they can be also placed non- high needed scores non-title one scores thank you Mr moon all right we will go to a vote for the motion on the screen all those in favor Miss
129Marin Miss Dixit Miss Anderson Miss Seismar Mr moon Miss St john Cunning Mr dunn Mr mcdaniel and myself all those opposed Dr anderson the motion carries it is adopted thank you very much agenda item actually we're going to take a 10-minute break recess uh before performance evaluation so we will be back uh at 9:15 heat heat [Music] [Music] i believe [Music] board member ers please return to your seats board members please return to your seats all right agenda item 6.01 performance review asset protection EL7 monitoring report each year the school board assesses the superintendent in part on the basis of the school division's reasonable progress toward achieving the 2023 to 2030 strategic plans goals and adherence to a set of 13 executive limitations found on pages 14 through 31 of the board's strategic governance manual
130the superintendent provides annual monitoring reports to the board for each executive limitation the board then votes on whether the provided report is in compliance or if corrective action is needed i call on Dr reed for a monitoring report of Executive Limitation 7 asset protection good evening Chairman FR members of the board and the public tonight as uh Mr fris mentioned I'll be presenting Executive Limitation 7 which discusses asset management this uh EL is named for you on the slide and I want to reiterate that at the time of this report to the best of my knowledge information and belief I've gathered information and evidence that I believe supports compliance with the board's executive limitation associated with this topic and this evening I will share some highlights if you're uh listening at home the full document
131is attached to board docs and um I appreciate the staff work in helping to put it together there are nine areas of EL7 this slide shows the first four and indicators five through nine are on this slide additionally tonight's presentation includes updates on last year's EL7 corrective action plan this evening I'll be sharing selected indicators even though the entire report is online indicator one ensures that the division assets are protected maintained and properly dislo disposed of or recycled when no longer in use this year our warehouse team created a rapid action plan that focused on procurement analysis and vendor engagement um successfully mitigating impacts through cross-training multiple members in the staff uh to buy and maintain continuity including instituting weekly review meetings to prioritize needs and improve vendor relationships this expanded the team's procurement knowledge
132which created a stronger and more adaptable workforce indicator four of this EL focuses on the protection of division assets um which honestly are uh comprehensive in nature currently our comprehensive school boundary review website provides transparency through readily accessible information about this uh really momentous process in March of this year in conjunction with the Fairfax County government we did launch the school bus arm camera program to boost safety want to give a shout out to our chief ex uh operations officer Andy Muick um who really drove this process you like that mr muick i thought that so come on uh drove this process and worked really tirelessly to get to an agreement uh with multiple uh stakeholders so that we're able to launch this program uh it is designed to reduce the number of violations and
133injuries caused by people who disregard uh the school bus arms being out and create really dangerous situations for our students um and our staff uh we know that most injuries uh during transportation occur during boarding and disembarking the buses uh continuing on with indicator 4 I want to highlight the work of our office of communications uh who worked with our schools to create sort of a top 10 or uh 10 highlights would showcase things that their school communities were proud of and I know we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from community members uh because our schools are unique even though they're part of a school system each of our schools have unique contexts and unique uh pride points that uh we love to see them share we also note that we're sending positive story
134roundups to the board and division leaders and ensuring that staff are aware of the appropriate use of the FCPS logo and branded materials indicator 8 talks about how we utilize knowledge management to ensure assets are known maintained and transferred want to share that since last year's report the Office of Facilities Management has developed and implemented over 35 new standard operating procedures honestly that's a lot in one year uh to create systems of efficiency the Office of Assessment and Reporting maintains the FCPS guide for the Virginia Assessment Program as the knowledge management of federal and state required assessment and accountability procedures and expectations continue to grow anonymously continue to change and as of October 2024 our employee exit surveys are now administered digitally during the offboarding process through Staff Connect in August of 2024 the board
135approved a corrective action plan for this EL which included work on our knowledge management processes since then the office of the chief of staff has initiated several actions related to this work including the development of a Baldridge framework application an inventory of existing documentation of major activities in the division development of a standard divisionwide onboarding and off-boarding procedures creating standard templates for our standard operating procedures project management plans and new hire handbooks as well as the identification of opportunities to further embed this work throughout the division ision staff took seriously uh the corrective action memo the board required last year and have acted uh prudently in responding to this indicator 9 is about the annual review of existing leasing agreements contracts,us and other agreements to ensure assets are being used in accordance with the division
136strategic plan goals as directed by the board the office of facilities planning services prepared a lease consolidation plan which provided background information and options to support any future review of leases to determine necessity cost analysis and alignment to the division's strategic plan and also as part of last year's EL7 corrective action plan division council has conducted an analysis of best practices for our memorandums of understanding based on this analysis we've updated FCPS practices on memos of understanding in several areas as you can see on the screen mr chairman that concludes the presentation for executive limitation number seven asset management thank you Dr reid i now call on Miss Dixit for a motion i move that the school board finds the superintendent in compliance with executive limitation number seven asset protection i further move that the
137school board approves the monitoring report based on the superintendent's reasonable interpretation of executive limitation number seven asset protection as outlined in the strategic governance governance manual is there a second second mr moon miss Dixit would you like to speak to your motion uh no thank you Mr dix mr moon would you like to speak to your second i just have a question can I ask to I don't know whether this should go to uh Dr reed or Mr mu uh as to asset management I'm sorry this is all ass management i'm talking about number one a my question goes to a disposing and recycling part uh we have a lot of computing devices given out to students also to STEM members and every what five six year cycle we do replace them what do you
138do with replaced uh computing devices so great question Mr moon i I know that many of our computer devices are on a lease uh plan so I'm going to ask Mr seth to talk about um the life cycle of our computers there's quite a few different things we do uh first and foremost when the devices come off of rotation from primary use we try to see if they have usable life and repurpose them to be able to reallocate to someone who could be using it for different purposes so sometimes they can go longer than 5 years um if there's not primary life because of the you know there's damage to some parts and pieces our repair shop actually scavenges as many of the parts of that laptop and preserves it to repair other devices because
139we typically buy 5,000 of the same models so we have enough of those parts to repair at the end of all of that uh there is a process of disposal where the hard drives are removed and they're separated so no data is disposed and then the physical sort of whatever is left of the device is shipped to the warehouse for disposal appropriately through the warehouse process okay because I recall a few years ago number of years ago there was you know unfortunate incident of you know some of our inventory items being not properly disposed of yes sir and I'm hoping that that doesn't ever happen again but at the same time you know those properties must have or have some values to someone outside the school system even though we are not using it i
140think when we're talking about properly disposing and recycling that we make a maximum use of those that when I say maximum not just for us but those who may have some value may see some value in using some of the a a assets that we may not be using but could still be used by somebody outside yes sir i I do I am aware of the incident uh that you're referring to and that led to um a review and look at uh processes which uh have been enhanced since that incident and it shouldn't happen again okay thank you yes sir thank you Mr moon dr anderson um thank you very much let me just get a minute to pull up my notes here i apologize i cannot find it but um one of the things
141I I'm just going to be super brief here um I think the entry plans that have been um identified in this measure are very helpful because I think it's a great way to really streamline um a principles interactions with the community and how to in that we will kind of march together so I'm very excited about that development and looking forward to its expansion and as we discussed um I will not be voting in support of this EL um based on information that I shared with you in close session um but there's some good stuff here thank you thank you Dr anderson mr dunn uh thank you um I wanted to ask about the school bus stop arm camera program um I believe it's currently uh marked for 50 buses and I think that's a
142a small fraction of our total um school bus program um can you share any plans you might have uh for expansion of the program over time yes sir mr dunn we started with 50 i think originally the plan was to start with 250 uh but what we realized in the negotiation is that uh our Fairfax County law enforcement partners needed and I think fairly so we needed to get the program underway for them to determine the amount of time and effort it would take on the part of law enforcement uh to be responsive as well as the part of the courts to be responsive so we're starting with 50 and with the expectation that once we identify the time required to manage the program effectively we would gradually grow it uh well I appreciate that
143um I'll just say on the street where I live um when the stop arm is extended of a school bus people drive around it um both ways and uh and it's shocking to me that in our country that uh student safety is put in such jeopardy on a daily basis by by reckless drivers um especially on a neighborhood street um so I I really appreciate uh that um that Mr muick and and Paul Andre uh you know uh enabled uh one of the stop arm camera buses to to be deployed in my area to help deal with that um with that crisis along with uh resources from SCPD i was also wondering if you could please um talk a little bit more about the top 10 lists that uh have been developed for each of
144the schools because I think it's a remarkable um program and uh that a remarkable accomplishment by the communications team so thank you Mr dunn and I also you know big shout out to Mr dunn who was uh part of the thought partner on this topic uh it was uh I think Mr dunn has said several times that you know we've done and continue to do great work but if we don't talk about it sometimes it's not uh obvious to everyone uh and so I appreciate Mr dunn your encouragement on that and I'm proud of our uh communications team uh Lisa Hall and Beth Vizolei and Tracy Wyn and the team that has done that work and honestly all of the principles across the division and their staffs who um really put together I think some
145very unique lists uh but it also speaks to how much more our schools are than numbers right because so many of the lists have moments and um sort of attributes that aren't about uh traditional data but really help make our schools something special here in Fairfax so I appreciate you drawing attention to that i I I think it's so important when we have so much um negativity on social media about our wonderful public schools that um that this top 10 list was developed so for every school um parents and students can see what are the top 10 reasons this is the best school for my child to attend and and and the top 10 list and I've read probably you know 50 of them by this point are really remarkable and they're very individually tailored
146and they can reflect just all the amazing things that are happening in our schools and and un unfortunately too little of that gets publicized um in the kind of uh morass of social media so I do encourage um all Perfix County residents to learn more about your local schools and spread the word um because uh you know talking to people having conversations can help uh build greater trust and and and and and spread the knowledge of the daily excellence of our schools thank you thank you thank you Mr dunn miss Seismarhiser thank you and don't worry um first I want to say I really appreciate the inclusion of all the work you've been doing around knowledge management because I know that was an um area I had concerns about last year with the report so
147I really appreciate the inclusion of the work that has been done as well as the work you're talking about continuing to do um so this is great and I I really appreciate that there's 35 new operating procedures SOP since the last report and there's a task force um for those SOPs i really do think once it's all in place you're going to have a much more streamlined operation which will save costs and times and make you more effective but I had a couple questions i saw that the Baldridge framework which I know is the um the budgeting and just sort of the overall audit and review of our budgeting process is going to include a review of operations and areas identified for improvement in knowledge management can you talk a little bit more about how
148that process is going to look towards um looking at knowledge management processes yes ma'am i the Baldridge folks actually are going to be in the division the week after spring break uh to do some interviewing and do some shadow working uh Mr smith uh the our chief of staff has really been spearheading this work uh and I'd like to have him respond maybe more specifically to your question yeah certainly and so we're looking forward to providing the board an update uh you can see in our uh report that uh we will be submitting our 25-page application in April and we'll certainly provide that to the board in a Friday letter so that you can get a gist of uh some of the topics that are covered uh as part of the Baldridge work the knowledge
149management piece there is an aspect of that around uh data and data management uh there's also an aspect of that as we on the leadership team are engaging uh in the work with the uh bald Aldridge team uh we're actually noting that work and keeping track of that work and are adding that work to the database of SOPs and other structures that we're building to ensure that we uh hold on to that knowledge of uh our team as they might come on or go off the team that would be great and as I said I think building this structure or continuing to build this structure will make you know our team much more efficient and effective and when there is turnover or promotions and things like that make it more easy for someone to be
150able to jump into the work right away so I appreciate that and it's great it's part of that structure as well because I hope they'll have some recommendations as well of of changes or areas ironically one of the strongest bodies of evidence for knowledge management are the ELS and um I think that's been noted that coming into a system and being able to see the work of the system in every critical area as well as the goal direction has really captured knowledge management in ways you know that we might not traditionally think about it well thank you for bringing that idea to us when you came on board no you deserve the kudos for bring that idea to us and the board took it and ran with it but it was a great way of
151really capturing what we're doing in all these critical areas um one last question is just a suggestion when you're looking at knowledge management i know you've been looking at it in terms of SOPs for your leadership team and your central office but one of the things that I've often heard and this is before I even ran for this position teachers talk about as a knowledge management for some of the lessons and resources that are being created especially for teachers who are having to modify or adapt lessons they often have to re you know I've heard teachers talk about having to recreate the wheel every year and I know there's obviously there's always going to be some tweaking to make it individualized for students but if you had at least a starting point it would make
152it for make it easier for teachers to recreate it and I've often talked to teachers about a central repository for some of these either lessons they've created or materials they've created especially like I said those that have to be modified from the genetic curriculum so I just want to put that idea out there as a knowledge manager that could really help our teachers and staff out as well thank you i'll uh note that and um it does seem with the tech uh online world we live in that we could capture those accommodations or those lessons that are modified or accommodated well I know some teachers have started their own repositories to share and all sorts of things so I know there's things out there but um it would just help especially as we have so
153many newer teachers in some of these areas it would probably really help them both do well their first few years but also maybe stay because they're not doing so much work to create something that someone else has created so thank you for that yes ma'am when you were saying not recreate them what I was thinking and we forgot to put in here so we're going to add next year is the uh warehouse for our theater uh props because we've uh Miss Samansky and Mr muick have combined i've actually seen a lot of the props out in the warehouse as we're transitioning to that so I'm very proud of them and their work in bringing that that's awesome i'm glad you mentioned that and since you mentioned I'm going to also make sure the word is
154getting out to our theater departments as well about that resource for our theater departments thank you for that thank you Miss Seismore Heiser we will take a vote for the motion on the screen all those in favor of the motion as listed on the screen Miss Marin Miss Dixit Miss Anderson Miss Seismar Heiser Mr moon Miss St john Cunning Mr dunn Mr mcdaniel and myself all those opposed Dr anderson the motion carries moving right along agenda item 7.01 uh I will remind board members to complete their their evaluation form uh at their own discretion they can turn it into the clerk or fill out the online version agenda item 7.01 policy review asset protection EL7 the next order of business is the policy review for EL7 asset protection annually the board will review each executive
155limitation at the time of the monitoring report is provided to determine if revisions are needed board members may offer amendments to executive limitations at any regular meeting provided they send final amendment language to the board and clerk 48 hours in advance of the meeting at which it is to be considered at this time no amendments have been submitted in advance of the meeting but board members are able to make remarks on EL7 asset protection as a policy before we vote on maintaining the current language seeing none I call on Miss Dixit for a motion i move that the school board maintains executive limitation 7 asset protection as it is currently detailed in the strategic governance manual is there a second second Mr moon all those in favor for the motion on the screen Miss Marin
156Miss Dixit Dr anderson Miss Anderson Miss Seismarheiser Mr moon Miss St john Cunning Mr dunn Mr mcdaniel and myself that is unanimous for board members present the motion carries agenda item 8.01 academic matters i call on Dr reid so thank you Chairman FR and members of the board this evening I have the uh real pleasure uh to talk about our Purple Star schools as it is um our Purple Star month as well and uh having over 13,000 military connected uh students here in Fairfax County our Purple Star School initiative is really an exciting initiative i want to remind our community that military connected youth do move around more than other youth um and I like to think of that honestly as a strength uh the building of resilience um our empathetic uh military connected youth
157and often service-minded uh we've really had some great focus groups with uh military connected youth as well as families but they're also challenges even though they move around and change schools three times more than their civilian peers um it while it builds resilience it also in fact uh at times can create learning gaps or overlaps it can be stressful and it certainly uh if parents are deployed or in circumstances that uh may not be safe uh it creates a level of um anxiety I know for many of our young people as well because when anyone in the family is serving really everyone in the family is serving so um we also want to note that 80% of America's military connected youth do attend public schools so um just want to uh point out that our
158four pillars continue to be important uh in how we uh continue to utilize Purple Star School programming um in goal one uh Purple Star Schools provide intentional support uh through transitions while goal two supports peer-led student ambassador programs which amplify student voice and support a positive school climate goal three uh Purple Star Schools utilize available evidencebased practices to provide access to academic rigor as well as supports that celebrate the experience military connected students bring in goal five or goal four uh purple star schools are responsive to military connected students lived experiences strengths and needs and in goal five our purple star schools prepare military connected youth for on-time graduation and a wide variety of variety of post-secondary opportunities the purple star criteria are on the slide and in addition to the central office staff support
159schools must meet other criteria to receive this designation and these include a school point of contact to serve as a liaison a peer-led transition team a division military web page specialized support for students with special needs and staff receive special professional development to broaden their understanding of the needs of military connected students schools further must engage in special military observances such as the blue star welcome week veterans day or the month of the military child as it is this month so I want to show you the map of all of our uh purple star schools and the central office team continues to provide ongoing support to these schools as they fill out uh their requirements for designation and retain that designation the application period for those of you um for your magisterial districts or are
160at large uh the application period opens this month in April and it closes in September this school year alone the team provided 29 purple star application workshops 11 student ambassador trainings and uh training kits for and toolkits for celebrations as well as recognition and designation um topics so here are our statistics for um purple star schools since 2018 you can see on the far left of the chart were the number of purple scar star schools we had uh we currently have 96 and of those 96 multiple schools have renewed their designation at least once we have a two-year plan which has come from the superintendent's desk which requires that every school will become a purple star school by the end of next year so we expect to reach 150 Purple Star schools in October of
1612025 with the remaining schools earning their designation in 2026 it's important that every single school all 200 of our schools um are purple star designated because we have military connected youth attending every school in the division whether it's two students or 200 um it's important that they feel welcome so I feel like I want to really thank our staff who have done Renee Lman Jackson's here Dr lman Jackson and Miss Hall i mean we started with less than 20 and we're already at 96 so props to that team that's and props to all of our school-based staff that are doing the work want to share the impact uh creating a welcoming culture fostering connections um it's just it's really um our military connected youth get really excited when they talk about um being a Purple
162Star School it means something it's it's not just a designation uh so as we continue to look at uh families who appreciate that we have this year begun a military family advisory committee with Dr l Huffman Jackson's guidance again and we've been able to resolve um challenges that some of our military families have in had as well as a big shout out to Mr sethy and his team uh because we've created a lot of online registration opportunities for our families transferring in and out and Miss Hall and our central registration team uh being able to provide a seamless enrollment from anywhere around the world we're very proud of the progress we're making and with that I'd be happy to take any questions thank you Dr reid we'll start with our military connected vice chair of
163the board Miss Anderson um so my kiddo the other day when we were doing the purple up at his school he decided that he was going to send himself down because he knows that his father is military connected um my husband retired in 2019 and what I what I found out later is that he wasn't actually included on the list of kids that were military connected because we only have a designator in CIS for active duty members and so I'm wondering if we can maybe expand that so that when people are registering they can let us know whether or not they're from a retired family and that way those kids that are military connected through a retired family member it may be a cool thing to be able to include them on more things as
164we're going through but I love that we're doing this um I think it's awesome to prot to help support these families in every way that we possibly can so thank you yes ma'am thank you Miss Anderson mr dunn well I just want to say thank you to FCPS and the superintendent for everything you're doing to ensure that um military families uh receive all the support they can uh because they face unique challenges and um as as the father of three kids who are either in the military or going into the military um I am especially proud of the military service um in our community and it's not just uh the folks who are active duty um who are serving it's it's uh the spouses it's the children as well because they are uh uniquely affected
165moving frequently um and adapting to new environments and and always supporting the military in in various ways large and small so I look forward to uh working with you Dr agreed to continue to strengthen the ways in which we can support and serve our military families to make sure that we make it easy for them to arrive and we wish them well when they uh depart for other destinations and while they're here uh they receive robust uh support and services thank you thank you Mr dunn seeing no others we'll move right along to agenda item 8.02 strategic plan update i call on Dr reid thank you Mr fr and again very excited to talk about um our strategic plan update and this evening I'll be talking about the collaborative work under the chief experience and
166engagements engagement office um that's being led by Dr renee La Huffman Jackson uh the director of family and school partnerships and Angie El Dave the director of community relations um and this is really an exciting opportunity this evening to look at pillar B um which is our vibrant home school and community partnerships and this evening I'll be highlighting our FCPS family academy so the Office of Experience and Engagement helps uh FCPS create a positive student parent staff and community experience in August of 2024 the office launched the FCPS Family Academy to improve and enhance homeschool collaboration this academy serves as a one-stop site where families can connect engage learn and receive support both virtually and in person these resources empower families to navigate FCPS and support student learning at school and home which at the
167end of the day is leading us to our uh strategic goals when we look at the family academy impact you can see what it's had since August of 2024 through March of 2025 in the learn with us section of the academy over 250 sessions have been offered to support family engagement and the programs have been provided over three eight and 10 week sessions with specific family education curriculum to support school attendance school readiness disruptive behaviors the extinguishment of those behaviors not supporting the behaviors and reunification their programs have helped families navigate formative experiences in their children's lives such as early literacy and home instruction for families of preschool youngsters parent project getting to know FCPS and other programs the Family Resource Center also continues to offer a vast array of webinars for families through the
168academy at this time we're going to hear a little bit more about the Family Academy madame Clerk please play the video [Music] established in August 2024 by the Chief Experience and Engagement Office the FCPS Family Academy was created to strengthen homeschool partnerships and support student success by bringing various learning opportunities under one umbrella it helps families navigate Fairfax County Public Schools and better support their child's education the Family Academy brings together a variety of classes webinars workshops and programs offered by FCPS equipping families with the tools to support their child's needs and learning at home additionally it provides valuable information on available resources to ensure that every student has what they need to thrive the family academy is a curated hub of resources for families that we work crossdep departmental and across offices to provide
169to families families told us that they wanted an opportunity to connect with other families and support their child's learning at home through the family academy you can find virtual and in-person classes and programs like home instruction for parents of preschool youngsters also known as hippie hippie helped Rosie Amaya recognize her son's strengths and areas where he could grow i can now have a conversation with his teacher and you know let let her know he has difficulty in let's say counting till 20 or he loves science i've learned that learning is everywhere and it could be simple and fun rosie also participated in the family academyy's early literacy program early literacy classes are offered in multiple languages the Family Academy offers other multilingual programs too including Getting to Know FCPS a family orientation getting to know
170FCPS provides a perfect avenue for families to have a strong start in FCPS we create a space where they feel welcomed our goal is to ensure that families walk away with an understanding of how to navigate FCPS by the end of this interactive orientation fair account [Music] the family academy is successful because we honor the feedback from our families we always looking for ways to grow and improve we're working with them to design opportunities and resources that they tell us that they need tea Ji attended a workshop called the parent project and participates in monthly webinars offered by the family resource center resources Fairfax County excellence equity and opportunity so it's pretty um impressive work and it happens often uh without a lot of fanfare but um I want to make sure that you know
171I'll continue to be delivering reports and uh sharing the progress um and what uh we continue to be com committed to uh keeping our community informed about this work uh and a reminder that we're going to be presenting goal five leading for tomorrow's innovation at the April 24th school board meeting and that is our last and final goal uh presentation of the year so Mr chair this concludes our April strategic plan update thank you very much Mr moon thank you Mr sh just a couple of quick questions uh the family resource center do we rely on mostly hourly employees to run the programs i believe that would be true Mr moon okay okay uh based upon some conversation I anybody else that no I believe that yeah based upon you know some conversation I had
172with some staff members in early literacy program a some challenges include because we are providing only hourly rate just a few hours a week and it's not throughout the entire year either is a broken up into a segments a few weeks at a time it's a difficult to keep staff to stay in the program too long i mean they get they come in and do it get trained and move on to some other positions any thought well yes sir i mean that's true it is a challenge and the programs are not year round as we shared sometimes they're three-w week six week 8week 10-w week programs so we would have to look at adjusting the programming to pay um more hourly more of an hourly rate or to make positions salaried so I think at
173this current budget uh time which I'll talk a little more about in our next item I don't see a lot of room for changing that program for this year but I think if we want to think about a multi-year program to enhance that they also would connect to preschool i think in some cases the early literacy or hippie program uh but you're correct i mean there's a turnover of staff and uh people often uh want more hours and so I think that is a challenge i mean it's a challenge for our foundation you can bring that up for discussion maybe not for this upcoming budget but the following year hopefully yes sir thank you thank you Mr moon miss Dixit Dr reed this is amazing um I believe that the relationship between the family and
174the school system is very integral to for student success too and especially for a lot of immigrant families and who are coming and with language barriers are really good to see that different languages um you know people speaking when they're in uh participation i my question was this most of these if uh programs are geared towards preschoolers or younger uh I guess um K3 or K4 u I I feel like connection of the family and uh and the parent is uh family and the school is lost a little bit in the middle school and high school so is there a way to bring those people also in this conversation or have events and I understand it's not easy uh but I just feel as a parent I did not have that much of in involvement
175with my son's school uh in middle school and high school i think you've raised a great point and I um as a former high school principal I used to tell parents it's the time our children most need us uh we think it's younger but I think it really is very often um as they get older right so I'm going to turn to Miss Luff or Dr la Huffman Jackson to talk just a minute about what we do provide for middle and high school uh more likely I think uh families moving into the division but I will ask her to share what is available in middle and high school sure um the video highlighted some of our programs and those weren't all of the programs and you are correct that those were highlighting our um school
176readiness programs however at the middle school and high school level um we have programs like parent project and um parent project works with families around um attendance and some of those other um issues of support around supporting their child um programs and classes are one aspect of the family academy we also have workshops that are targeted to um middle and high school we recently held sessions um in the Edison and the um um not West PTOAC pyramid around I'm a middle school parent now what trying to help our families um transition from elementary to middle school and at the end of the month there's going to be a session a workshop sess um session at uh Robinson and we're going to taking that around to all of our pyramids um so there are workshops and
177programs for the middle and high school however the video highlighted these early um school readiness programs thank you for the answer and last question is um there's so much of information uh overload there are messages going out from school and I don't know if this is uh how are you able to get to the the families like it is is because I'm sure they're getting ton of a communication so what what is being successful so far Dr dr luffman Jackson so we work with our communications team um through a lot of marketing through our uh FCPS this week communications there's always a section around the family academy and all the offerings and the family academy is designed in six areas and the learn with us is one of catalog but we also have resources and
178tools and other sections of the academy we in this principal's toolkit weekly there's also information that goes out for principles to put that into their communications so that we can have a broader um marketing around the division thank you Miss Dixon Miss St john Cunning excuse me i'll come back to you sorry Dr anderson i want to get her some water oh okay um very quickly the parent project is that the um initiative that exists at Annadel High School because I did have an opportunity to visit that probably a year two years ago and it is really great and our parent leaison's a huge part of that and just for everybody's edification there's a component where there's dinner that's provided so parents and students are able to have a meal together then they separate and
179the students engage in their learning to further their academics and the parents engage in learning to help support their students and then they come back to to um discuss how they're going to be working together it is actually one of the most powerful things that I I've seen and so having an opportunity to expand that because I do not know how many high schools provide that um Dr um Hoffman Jackson can you articulate how many schools have that i don't have the exact numbers but I can tell you it's at many of our high schools this year we also partnered with our um colleagues in social work for our Virginia all-in grant and we've been able to spread it further so parent project is for the Milan high school and the same program for elementary
180is called loving solutions and it's the same curriculum but for different age groups it is very targeted and very structured and my other question is regarding the um what you've just showed how many of our schools have um the the family project opportunities is it all of our schools and how do we determine if it is not the family project i'm sorry I'm losing the name of what we just talked about oh the family academy the family academy so I think that's open to the whole division but Miss Hall so that's centrally based this is Yes this is centrally based um through family and school partnerships uh community relations also has a role in it and it's it is divisionwide um both you know they're virtual and hybrid opportunities as well as in person um
181we're continuing to build programming for the rest of the division and pyramid by pyramid okay thank you thank you Dr anderson miss St tuning okay i was really excited and I guess I just started to cough as as you all know this is very close to my heart because I was a parent leaison or family liaison as um they are called now um one of the things that first of all kudos um to all the work that's being done and like anything it could be multiplied as Mr moon said we could have more full-time people doing this i think one of the most powerful uh messages from what one of the parents said was that she was really impressed that that family liaison was there and even though we talk about parent project and family
182reunification which Fairfax County created and has gone on to teach at other divisions because the program was so incredible and really helped our families uh so there is programming from preschool all the way to high school and I will tell you that aside from all the programming the most critical part of our family and school partnership are those family liaison that are there on a daily basis that have the cultural competency that have the language skills to connect with our parents that have the ability to bridge as I would always say passing the trust between the teacher and the parent or the counselor and the parent or the social worker and the parent and who are actively involved in our community a lot of our family liaison are not just in our schools they are
183in the community they are doing the work and just kudos for the work that uh Dr of Reneella Hoffman Jackson is doing who was once my boss and uh so kudos to the work that you're doing and um I will always advocate for the work that our family liaison do because they work endless hours because they are committed to the families and they stay with some of those families from head start through graduation and so um I just can't say enough about the programming uh I would love to have a million dollars to expand understand it um because that is so critical when we bring our families in and empower the parents and when the parents see that the value that they have in their children's education when they themselves maybe weren't educated but they
184recognize that they have that power with their kids it is just priceless so thank you for all the work thank you it's a great team thank you Miss St john Cunning moving along agenda item 8.03 financial year 2026 approved budget update i call in Dr reid thank you Chairman Fr and good evening members of the board and those listening uh this evening we're taking an opportunity to remind the school board and community about the ongoing budget work uh that surrounds our FY26 budget and provide some important updates as we progress towards final budget adoption on May 22nd so this evening you're going to see some repeat slides and information because um as we progress towards these May deadlines uh just wanting to there's value in restating some of our uh major tenants here and again
185just reminding our community that FCPS is committed to delivering a worldclass education um there are many who would say that our school division is our county's greatest asset and to continue uh being this incredible asset to our county it's important that we maintain high expectations which require us to continue to have sustainable high support um I do believe that uh a world-class education is an economic engine and we're very uh proud of the work of our staff and our students and the support of our families here in the county just a reminder on class sizes this is something that our county has often prided itself on is maintaining reasonable class sizes so that all of our students have an opportunity to be known by name strength and need currently FCPS ranks fifth out of eight
186uh school divisions in our region in terms of class size however when school levels are considered individually elementary school we rank third of eight middle school sixth of eight and high school fourth of eight we know um that it's really important uh to continue monitoring this data point as again overall we rank in the middle of our wavy districts want to remind our community about our uh beginning teacher salaries this is important as we spoke earlier about the number of graduates from Commonwealth uh education programs when there are more positions open than there are graduates it's highly competitive and so these starting salaries become more important in FY25 we ranked fifth out of eighth and assuming we receive full funding we would rank second in starting teacher salary so it's you know we're hopeful that
187we're going to uh have full funding and that we'll be able to see um our staff be ranked at least second in starter teacher salary also want to remind our community that we have the lowest ratio of central management um compared to those divisions around us and really by significant margins in other words um as the second uh largest school division in the area I believe is um Prince William County I think we're still uh well below uh the ratio in terms of central management so just really trying to be thoughtful about making sure our resources are at the school level where we know the action with our students occurs want to remind um our community that the $4 billion operating fund budget reflects the scale as one of the largest school divisions in the
188country we are the ninth largest we run the largest school bus fleet in the nation and by many accounts are larger than seven states worth of enrollment with that overview we continue to summarize uh the proposals from our county and state partners which you see here on the slide and I think that it's really important to note that while our budget request of the county included an additional 268.3 million the county executive at this time um has only recommended an increase of 118.6 6 million which leaves a $150 million gap in the transfer at this time i want to um share again uh next slide please Kevin thank you uh there are two distinct budgets that we're referring to and I think there's been a little confusion at times so it's important that in this
189PowerPoint this evening that I want to clarify that this slide number seven are county budget decisions that have impacted schools which are not Fairfax County public school budget decisions but rather um Fairfax County budget decisions and you can see these on the slide um and I just want to clarify again these um sit within the county budget side in looking at the state budget update um at this time in March the general assembly amended the governor's budget in a way that could result in Fairfax County receiving an additional 28.3 million in funding for FY26 however the governor followed up with recommended amendments and vetos that would have reduced the 28.3 to 15.7 million more recently stay tuned the general assembly rejected most of the recommended budget changes and so now have sent it back to
190the governor um with the possibility of us um recouping the additional 28.3 million and the governor has 30 days from the general assembly's latest action to review and take final action on the budget want to remind those watching about the JARK recommendations and the uh chronic underfunding really of schools across the Commonwealth um again estimating annually an underfunding of Fairfax County Public Schools of over $500 million which is approximately $3,100 per student enrolled in Fairfax County at this point the local WAB divisions have released their budgets and while we are poised to have the second highest beginning teacher salary in the region our standing could be at risk without sufficient funding really regardless of where we end up at beginning teacher salaries we will continue to lag behind at the midpoint and maximum salaries among
191the wavy divisions in looking at the impact of the county and state budget uh the funding gap could range anywhere from 120 to 150 million based on the governor's decision to sign or not sign the current budget and also just wanted to put out there for um the board and our community that and you may be aware that the board of supervisors have advertised a real estate tax rate increase and a potential meals tax while the advertised real estate tax rate is included in the county executive's budget proposal the revenue from the meals tax is actually not yet included and so what we did is provided some calculations to support um the discussion here and originally when there was a meals tax proposed and envisioned several years ago there was a discussion at that time
192that there would be 70% of the distribution of those meals uh taxes that would go to Fairfax County Public Schools so we calculated that half of this because it would only be half a year could result in an additional 45.5 million to help reduce our funding gap range further i mean if the county decided to provide 100% of the allocation of this 4% meals tax it could increase as much as 65 million in additional funding which would really support a narrowing of the gap in the transfer so this is a lot of information but what I've been most impressed about in the last couple days is I had an opportunity to host a roundt discussion on this budget with some of our student journalists so we had an opportunity and I really want to give
193Beth Fulli a shout out from our communications team who said "Why not go to our lead journalists or those folks who write for their school papers and media?" and we then had 24 of our 27 high schools represented um yesterday afternoon so I started the meeting um and we thought we'd explain some things about the budget but lo and behold we did not need to because they came prepared and they had some tough questions um and really had you know I think a lot of insight into what a high-erforming high achieving school division is and how it's impacted them and I think you'll be proud of that and also their understanding that we are at a crossroads what's helped them become the young people that they are as they transform the world around them is
194a legacy move they want for their younger siblings and their future children and a community they want to come back to after they've gone on uh to have adventures out there these voices matter and I think we need to make sure we remember why we're here and center our work in the voice of our young people so let's see how this uh rather large press conference went thank you Kevin hi I'm Kelly i'm from Fairfax High School um with the necessity to defund certain programs or delay new initiatives I also read online that the middle school after school program might be cut but I wasn't sure if that was 100% true um what criteria does FCPS use to determine what programs are reduced or eliminated so right now in our budget we didn't plan to
195reduce or eliminate any programs we've uh worked on efficiencies but your example of the middle middle school after school program the county actually funds that program not the school division and they've chosen to cut that so that wasn't a cut we would have chosen to make and we hope they reinstate that it's very important hi I'm Sierra and I'm from South Lakes High School um will any of the budget go for to like school security and safety and if so what are the things that are going to happen so why is FCPS asking the county for more money this year what do you think the ramifications would be if FCPS were to not receive that money or that additional funding that they're requesting because FCPS h currently has no plans to my understanding of getting
196rid of DEI that we'll be losing the 4% of federal funding that is in our budget how is that going to affect everyday life for students there are a number of practices that in fact are quite supported and our former secretary of education was very clear about that and as we do continue to follow state and federal law we still believe that equitable opportunities for our students is what really is the generator for excellence so we're not planning to lose those funds and um we trust that that won't come to pass i think teachers are one of the most important aspects of our county and I think it's a big accomplishment for the county to agree on collective bargaining how will the county maintain recruitment for teachers despite like the um shortfall the budget shortfall
197for the 7% anticipated salary increase i'm come from an alternative high school that have less student at the principal high schools and my question is how will the proposed budget will continue to fund uh multim high school and schools like it with the significant increase in students who are economically disadvantaged and in special education programs multilingual how will the additional funding be allocated to meet these changing needs and priorities other schools in the county are also fa are nearing time for a remodel or additional funding We know that these schools are in need of upgrades or increased support having a sister who's a first year third grade teacher in FCPS I was heartened to see that with this 7% increase uh FCPS teachers will become first in starting salary but I am concerned to see
198that even with the 7% increase which obviously is not promised um FCPS will still be fifth at midpoint salaries and seventh out of eight at maximum salaries given that the $297 million increase in the budget is large is largely dedicated to compensation for educators and services for diverse learners what measures indicators or set goals will FCPS used to measure the the effectiveness of these investments in improving student outcomes in overall school do you see any long-term impacts on low-income students in the foreseeable future is there going to be a priority over sports versus arts programs with the budget you know as you read news reports and hold your elected officials accountable uh these are our tax dollars and your parents' tax dollars and soon to be your tax dollars and we want to make sure
199um that they're spent in a way that really shapes and lifts up uh future generations because the budget while it's not the most glamorous topic it drives everything we do so I think we've got some pretty amazing young journalists and I'm just gonna spoiler alert if you want to know the answers to all those questions and more you have to check in with your local school media so I'm not scooping them um but they were pretty amazing so I'm going to close out the presentation this evening just with a reminder that there are so many things that FCPS does that exceed the minimum state standards we just jotted down some of those um in alphabetical order uh both on the instructional and operational side of the house that um and just a I think a
200real reminder that our community has expectations and we traditionally have funded those and supported those and at this point uh the crossroad situation we find ourselves in is that that classroom experience is going to be impacted one way or another depending on um the degree to which we're funded and our students also wanted to me to make sure that I noted that a world-class education occurs both inside and outside of the classroom and FCPS has always taken great pride in that so I want to remind our community about next steps um and this is the timeline dineline uh the next major milestone for the county are the public hearings that the board of supervisors host from April 22nd through the 24th the budget uh the county budget will be marked up on May 6th and
201finalized on May 13th while the school budget will be presented on May 8th with final adoption scheduled for May 22nd so a lot to keep track of and we do have a website uh to you know for folks who want to stay involved but at this time that's um the update on our budget process chairman FR thank you Dr reid i appreciated the Smith's t-shirt in that video um and I also want to note since this presentation was prepared we've added a PM work session for uh the committee of the whole the budget committee so we'll be doing that on the Tuesday the 22nd from 6:30 to 8:30 obviously open to the public and available in all the other platforms that we typically stream on we'll get started with Miss Seismore thank you i appreciate
202it and first thank you for this presentation and um I think it's important for our public as we saw from the the public comments tonight and the things that I've been hearing and others have been hearing to kind of have a bit of a update on what is the status of our budget and really what is at risk here with our budget too so I appreciate you talking about one you know I wanted to mention in some of the statistics you give in the early slides it really does show how effective and efficient we are right our class sizes are not the smallest but they're not the biggest in the county in the area we had the lowest ratio of central office staff to um to given our surrounding jurisdictions and um but the other
203thing I really wanted to point out first well first was that Smith's t-shirt because that brought me back to my day so that was pretty awesome so whoever that student journalist was please let him know he made an impression on us yes ma'am um but slide seven you know I just I wish the people who were here tonight to speak about the middle school after school program were here to see this part because you know while we are in tough budget times and you know I wish the state would do more to address the chronic underfunding as shown in the JARK report you know there this is you know and we're trying to work in partnership with our board of supervisors you know it is difficult to see some of these cuts that I think
204there's there's some confusion in the public as to where these cuts are coming from right and I hope that the um board of supervisors will continue to fund the middle school after school programming i've heard from lots of families and students and teachers of how beneficial it's been for the students at the middle school but I wanted to point out that these are all of the different areas that are that impact the school system that are not in our budget they're they're been traditionally in the county's budget on slide seven is that a correct way of interpreting that slide yes ma'am it is and I think that's important to point out that these are additional ways that the county supported the schools but it's always been traditionally part of their budget and so it would
205be difficult having a shortfall that we have of either 121 million or 149 million depending on what the state does to absorb an additional $7.7 million to cover so you know we're already at a crossroads i understand everybody's budget numbers are tight right now but it would be difficult to include include that in our budget as well and the only the last thing I wanted to mention on slide 13 when you say these are the areas that we exceed the minimum state standards what I'm assuming what you're trying to get at is that the state only funds us for what they consider the state standards the SOQs right in terms of um staffing for schools because the state funds us on a staffing model right correct and so the amount that they fund us for
206staffing doesn't cover all of these things is that correct yes ma'am that's correct so if we have this much of a shortfall and the state isn't making up their share from JARK and from the underfunding um and we're not getting it from the county because there's a lot of competing interest and a lot of issues on the budgets on both sides all of these things that you listed here could potentially be at risk for not continuing or some of these things i think that there the reason we noted them is there is a risk they certainly could be impacted um for example we have more um we have more staffing in some areas than the state uh talks about the uh advanced academic resource teachers for example are not in a state SOQ uh but
207Fairfax County has determined that those roles are important for the work that occurs in our classrooms and schools so it you know as you go down these lists there are either they are not in the state formula or we've enhanced the state formula to provide a higher level of service delivery for our students here i mean a couple things I wanted to mention in here the college and career specialists which we just heard from our students i know you mentioned that to consider how important that is elementary art music and PE teachers we know how important having a well-rounded education is in the elementary school so I think it's important to realize that this is what the crossroads means right if we want to continue to be Fairfax County this is where our crossroads is
208at and we've just got to figure out how to continue all of the great things that we're doing one last question on this oh I'm sorry can I can I have one last question sorry um are you aware of how much money average school systems spend above the SOQs like are most school systems able to staff schools within the SOQs in Virginia are we unusual that we go beyond that no ma'am i I know that schools across the Commonwealth tend to staff above the SOQ's and for for sure here in Fairfax County that's left to the county uh pretty much and we're grateful for the support our county has provided over the years uh because that's enabled us to uh go beyond the minimum and I think when we talk about excellence uh we definitely
209that requires more than the minimum right so um our community's always been there for us and we trust that'll continue thank you thank you miss sizeer Miss Marin u Dr reed the questions I've gotten in the community the last few days um I'd like to ask you please one of them is why can't the superintendent cut something else to keep the afterchool programs so at this point the afterchool programs as per slide seven were on the county side of the budget and if we were being fully funded like our full transfer we could likely look for some spaces uh but we're already in a situation where we're not being fully funded potentially up to $150 million which would not leave any uh wiggle room at all at this point to be funding from the school
210budget what traditionally has been funded from the county budget well that is the the next question I receive is why can't FCPS tighten its belt more in terms of you know being more efficient and where is data substantiating that FCPS has done so already and there's really nothing left to cut so we had a chart and I'm not sure if it's still up on the website but if not we'll make sure it's up tomorrow morning but over the last 10 years we've cut over $800 million from our budget either in cost avoidance efficiencies or simply efficiency cuts so we can absolutely document over 800 million in savings over the last decade i'm aware you've already had to inform those middle school staff who are FCPS employees funded with county funds that they will not have
211a job beginning July 1 are you able to state how many jobs you've reduced either within this budget development season or even just say in the last year so I would say that uh much as the county has discussed their number of jobs that they've um eliminated many of those were vacant positions and similarly in our efficiency work we have uh closed down vacant positions as well um and I would also say when you think about fewer we're right around 1% of central office support the vast majority of our staff are at the school level so we have not um to date eliminated positions at the school other than those that are enrollment driven uh but with the level of of transfer dissonance it's going to be very difficult not to look at school-based staff
212or programs in addition to central office-based um about the student meeting with the journalists did the individual journalists re research the situation on their own perhaps with you know information or direction from your staff or are FCPS students being taught now and consistently about local government and its impact in their lives each of the journalists that came are writing or um providing I mean they're acting in the role of a journalist at their school several have asked for follow-up interviews um we did not provide the questions um and they came uh ready with actually more questions than we got to in a little over an hour well I can't wait to receive a copy of that link so I could share it i am concerned though because when I've talked to a number of students
213recently and even in the past whether it's AP government IB course or you know gen ed uh they really don't understand what's happening locally we you know they think they vote every four years and I know like Oakton High School has an amazing program where they bring in candidates and they have a model congress what you know we had this whole discussion about social studies are we preparing the units to teach the students the you know litany of people who represent them and that we vote every year in Virginia so we didn't discuss all of that in the press conference as you u might guess but I do know that I think our students are beginning to form a much more cogent um perspective on their experience right now uh and being so close to
214the nation's capital I think our students here are much more um aware of political uh moves around them of all perspectives so um in fact there was a question about why doesn't the central office more directly fund journalism at the high schools they took a moment for a shameless plug um so we did discuss that as well and we're still I mean we're at this crossroads where this board has put a stake in the you know stake in the ground if it's good for one school and one community it needs to be for all schools and all communities and we're still working on making sure debate is at every high school we're making sure that every high school has a publication and we're going to do that even with this budget uh in the situation
215since we're in this um this time where we're all going to have to make sure that um we keep a just a steady focus on what's best and right for our young people well I could appreciate that the students are more aware but as I've seen in a lot of my friends and community there's a lot of focus on the federal and there's so much we could do locally and I'm not hearing that we are consistently teaching our students during the instructional day a selected time like which class which grade are they going to learn that there are nine magisterial districts in Fairfax and they have one delegate and one senator and the governor can't be elected back-to-back terms like that granularity because I think we're doing a huge disservice if we graduate them and
216they don't they can't name their magisterial district so I um I hear you and I will have some matrix of where we do that and if we don't we'll find um an opening to do that miss Maron great and I just want to thank our chair and vice chair for scheduling that April 22nd work session for the budget um the county board of supervisors has its public hearing that day that begins at 4 there is no set end time i've confirmed that so perhaps we can get there before our 6:30 meeting so thank you we tried to schedule it so that people could do both at least partially all right uh Mr dunn uh thank you um I wanted to uh suggest uh slide five uh offers a comparison uh of leadership and management um
217but I think uh you could actually provide more information to the public because if you look at all non-school-based positions as measured by the way guide uh Fairfax County actually measures up quite well i I looked at the uh comparisons for Arlington Lowden and Prince William County uh Prince William County it's 9.7% is non-school-based arlington 8.7 Lowden 8.3 fairfax County is 7.45 so I think uh if you provide that comparison it shows even uh when you expand beyond leadership and management positions which is quite a small fraction of the overall workforce uh we compare favorably um I wanted to ask a little bit more about the efficiencies you mentioned I haven't seen this slide you mentioned about 800 million um but but in the video um you stated uh that you did not propose to
218reduce or eliminate any programs and so so where did the efficiencies come from if uh you're not reducing or eliminating any programs so thank you Mr don we um in the video I said in my budget I didn't propose that right because in the original budget we didn't propose cuts to programs the efficiencies are in a number of cases where we've had open positions over time we've simply um made a decision not to fill those positions we're also looking at trades uh in a very uh direct uh manner at this time we're looking at I'll be um minimizing out of division travel next year we're going to be uh cutting that so there are a number of efficiencies uh that we're working into if you will the business rule for this year's budget to get
219where we needed to get and still have the collective bargaining agreement met uh with the budget we passed i I appreciate that um as as a former COO I I I know that uh eliminating vacant positions and limiting travel conferences sometimes professional development is is usually the lowhanging fruit but but ultimately is is there any plan to conduct a comprehensive examination of our programs that we have uh in existence because I think what we've seen over the past year and a half with this new school board is uh you know there's a lot of business as usual in the way we contract and the way we do some of our business operations and and sometimes when we have discussed them there there haven't been metrics or data to to show that the program is the
220most effective or or you know there are no metrics to to say you know we're tracking that this is actually achieving the original objective so is there a plan to conduct a very granular comprehensive um review similar to what what the county undertook on its side absolutely that is our Baldridge work and that is the 25-page document we're going to be providing you this spring uh has led us uh in a number of areas um our non-traditional schools program for example um our we have a number of programs that we're really looking diving into in terms of org chart program delivery and efficiencies but the Baldridge uh work is actually capturing that at a systemwide level and you're going to have an opportunity to take a look at sort of our first uh year of
221not just the study um but also some of the pieces that we are um how should I say uh integrating more efficiently and aligning uh because we know if we have better alignment we also have more efficiency i I appreciate that um my my concern about the Baldridge is that it it comes with it framed as the Baldridge Efficiency Award which kind of presupposes that we're going to win some kind of award for the work we do um and I want to make sure that as we're going through this we we actually focus on how can we reduce our expenditures to be able to allocate that money towards increasing teacher pay or meeting other uh mission objectives um I also wanted to ask um uh in the slide 13 it says we're exceeding minimum state
222standards with central office reductions can you explain what that means so I think that the uh there are no state standards on the support side in that particular in some of those categories for example uh cyber security is not something that there's an SOQ for Mr sethy is that correct there's not an SOQ um for safety and security for office staff um translators so there are a number of items in that support column that don't have if you will a ratio that's funded from the state so um essentially what the central office reductions that goes to those uh positions that have not been filled that we just simply said we're not going to fill um in many cases so I don't know if Miss Burton wants to add on to that in terms of the
223central office reductions no you're correct there there are not any SOQ staffing standards that are associated with central office we do receive some funds um for leadership very small amount of funds if you know how they do the salaries when they calculate that um but in general the support staff there the SOQs are either silent or very vague where they say that you must have enough safety and security people um it's just there's no formulas attached to those items and no funds right or minimal funds minimal funds um and and finally I just wanted to mention I I know that we're always talking about salaries but um Perfect County has certain benefits that uh many counties in our way guide don't for example not everyone offers dental and vision which is very important but not
224everyone provides and we also are alone in having the ERFC um which you know the supplemental pension so I think that is a distinguishing factor and should be included in our budget presentation because you know that those things matter for for uh for staff when they're making decisions about which employer it's not just based on money it's based on the whole package of salary and benefits thank you thank you Mr dunn dr anderson um thank you i I do want just to reiterate that last point that Mr dunn made that's always a point that we've discussed before and has been discussed even with the last board ad nauseium how do we include that as an attractive um feature to not just retain the folks that we have but to also attract new individuals because we
225tend to not have it be part of the conversation and I definitely understand the um challenge because it's not necessarily part of the salary u package it's not compensation but it is a benefit which is very unique so I would love to hear how can we better feature that for our own um recruitment work and I know it's told at the um job fairs but in these discussions in these slides so two topics I think Mr dunn mentioned vision and dental insurance and Oh I just wanted to talk about ERFC okay i was gonna say no just ERFC okay because staff still have to pay the um deductibles right for or pay for the insurance benefits uh the ERFC is something I know we've discussed uh for a number of years and I'm going to
226ask uh well I know that our HR department has worked to try to um illuminate that benefit uh to a higher degree i will say um it depends on the experience level of the candidates coming in in terms of their uh appreciation of that value um Miss Burton do you want to clarify anything about the ERFC benefit i know Dr anderson said that it's you know it's sort of separate from salary but it is a benefit um and then Mr solomon if you could follow with what we're doing to amplify and illuminate that benefit yeah I believe that ERFC the local retirement plan is the only distinction between us and surrounding school divisions um I'm checking Wavy right now and it looks like everybody carries um dental envision um the ERFC is is my understanding
227that young teachers straight out of college that salary is the is the item that is most important to them um we certainly mention in our recruiting and Mr solom can go in more detail about that about ERFC because you know some of their parents may be informing them that retirement is really important even if you're only 22 years old um but in general it's really more of a retention than it is um a recruitment strategy and so that's why the salary increase that we've proposed is is so important but it does distinguish us from the surrounding divisions um in the Commonwealth by having that that local retirement plan and that's very attractive to um all of our employees once they've been here a few years and start thinking about you know the future and I
228would just say that Miss Burton is exactly correct and of course we take a multi-pronged approach to recruitment and retention about that benefit specifically of course we share it at our job fairs we actually partner very closely with ERFC and have them attend our job fairs uh we share the information when we visit colleges universities and professional organizations and of course we partner very closely with ERC to share the information with our current employees through newsletters and other platforms a and I can also share that uh during those job fairs we have some employees who are of an age where they will soon benefit from ERFC and that has been a retention tool for some of those uh uh employees who might be coming later in their career and want to take advantage of moving
229to Fairfax to get ERFC as well as uh their VRS from another jurisdiction thank you i appreciate all your responses um I also would like to think how can we again include it in all of our conversations because the more we speak about our beginning scales whether it be bachelors masters a lot of people are hearing that information and so it's just like one more thing that is working in our favor that I'd like for us to elevate a little bit more frequently um I did want to speak about the middle school afterchool programs and I'll speak this about this a little bit more during my skipped um report but particularly because so much of the discussions that have occurred with the board of supervisors have centered around a sliding scale for the afterchool program
230and I I've been adamant as one board member I do not find that to be a reasonable act a reasonable course of action because of the percentage of our students who participate who are essentially students students who are economically disadvantaged um so can you speak to that a little bit please thank you Dr anderson um I Dr mark Emory is in charge of our middle school after school activities and has been for a long time his um assessment is that approximately 70% of the middle schoolers who participate in middle school afterchool activities uh would qualify for free or reduced lunch and I mean that's 70% of the young people participating in the program and so I I think that the um it appears based on that data that it would be very difficult to recoup
231the cost of the program based on a fee structure so I I think that um it's imperative that we think about how we are able to fund that program because so many of the young people who participate uh their families would not be able to uh fund absolutely and uh Mr smith also shared this quite eloquently this board and previous boards have really worked hard to remove barriers from student participating and having access to various things this will just reverse course and so I I appreciate that um and last thing I will say on this matter it seems to be and this is a very technical term that I'm going to use the juice is not worth the squeeze on this one it's $4 million there has to be a better way to to have
232some savings on the county side without taking away a program which has been so successful in um fulfilling its core mission which is to reduce gang activity which is to ensure that students have something productive to do after they are um dismissed from schools um one question that I do have is obviously dollars are limited everywhere so we want to make sure that we are turning over every stone i would love to hear the conversations that we are having or could be having with our partners on the board of supervisors in terms of how to have efficiencies in areas in which we have like work it's not going to be teachers it's not going to be firefighters is it printing is it HR is it technology what space do we have to maximize economy of
233scale between these two entities that serve essentially the same constituency yes ma'am i it's my understanding that the board of supervisors has um proposed and we've agreed to some joint committees um uh boardto board on key topics i believe facilities are one perhaps technology another um but I think that is a great first step to begin to think about how uh because you're right i mean all of us who live in the county are taxpayers and we want our uh tax dollars to be well used and to support um the work and uh those things that make this county amazing so um I think that those joint committees will be a a good first start um and I believe it's been capital facilities and perhaps technology are uh where they're starting on that thank you
234and I could see another space with cyber security one of the things we talked about with our federal partners is how much we um invest in that and it's difficult and it's challenging and this is a good space where we can get some support from our local organization uh one of the things you talked about in the student interviews and I was very glad to hear that that we are not going to divert away from our work on DEI it is core to the mission of Fairfax County and I I cannot overstate this because there's been a lot of concern in the community are we going to abandon our core mission given that so many schools are doing such whether it be higher education or um institutions or even other school divisions in the state
235in the commonwealth of Virginia so I was very glad to hear that response but along with that can you just to paint the clear comprehensive picture in terms of what is at stake if things were to proceed in a manner that is not um that is not beneficial to us what I mean is what grants could be potentially at stake and what is that total number i know we've discussed this here before so I'm not sure if you've sent that to us in a Friday letter i don't believe I've seen it yes ma'am so the um the question the student journalist asked which I think is a question that many divisions you know around the country and states honestly are addressing is the most recent Department of Education uh request around um commitment to not
236engaging in certain uh diversity equity inclusion practices but also making sure we're committed to following uh the Constitution and state and federal statute and our our equity work here in Fairfax County clearly is in alignment with state and federal statutes and therefore um we I believe that um our funds are secure and that uh we continue to work um with a clear understanding of the importance of that work and our resolute commitment to that work and we believe it's legal work in fact it's morally the work we have to be doing it's missiondriven work having said that um our federal grant dollars are about 168 million in basically three large buckets if you will our food and nutrition dollars are about 68 million and our title one dollars are about 50 million and our dollars
237are about 50 million and so those would be the three areas that would be at risk um if for some reason there was a disruption in our federal dollar allocation um that was my time but I do have a followup because I don't think that was the answer I was looking for thank you Dr anderson miss Anderson I just wanted to reiterate something that we had talked about earlier this week when we had our check-in um I do wonder whether or not some of the numbers that we have related to middle school after school um program usage is actually maybe misleading because of a certain number of factors so what I would love us to do is because um at a town hall that I was at with Chairman Mccay he leaned over and he
238said "We got to get these numbers up if we're going to keep doing this." And so I'm kind of wondering whether or not we are not representing the actual use we we come to Luther Jackson and we see the robust afterchool and so it's hard to think that we don't have good usage across the county so I do I I have lots of questions about where our usage is happening i also am wondering whether or not our usage has picked up with the return to the office order for the federal government workers and so whether or not we have more usage so I would love for the opportunity to maybe revisit some of those numbers to to ensure that we're giving the board of supervisors the most accurate numbers possible yes ma'am uh I know
239Dr emry is working on that and did present some numbers at the recent skipped meeting um and I will check in and make sure we have current numbers thank you Miss Anderson dr anderson for your one question thank you uh what I was getting at outside of those three funding sources that you've alloc that you talked about are any other potential federal um allocations which might be in jeopardy title that's the listing that I was looking for for example one of the things we discussed very early on was the um I guess the loss of the grant for the EV buses what other like things that are out there that may not be part of our um recurring expenditures but will essentially impact our operations so we we receive a number of different grants from
240uh through federal funds uh the EPA grant was not necessarily a Department of Education grant but definitely federal funding and you're correct uh we did need to cancel that order because we didn't have a commitment uh to fund it and without that we're not going to follow through uh Miss Burton can you enumerate maybe several of And it doesn't have to be today but I would love to see a written list of that and could that be possible can that be provided yeah we we can provide it tomorrow not to put you on the spot but I'd like to get a clear picture um and just the last thing I I just kind of wanted to reiterate what was shared um by several members regarding slide 13 um you know the needs-based staffing is one
241of the most important things that we do at our schools and it it's a necessary activity it it's not a nice to have it's really a need to have as it's um articulated but one last other question which is asking you to kind of um project a little bit in looking at Prince William um some of the data shows that they have some of the highest um teacher um teacher salaries and yet some other slides that you've shown us also show that they have the lowest um per pupil allocation how is that achieved so um I would say a couple things uh their county fully funds their budget um just as Lowden County I believe recently fully funded their budget um and class sizes are different is my understanding is one of the key differences
242in Prince William County thank you thank you Dr anderson miss Marin just under the gun dr e can you share you know we ask you to share best practices and examples can you share what a another example is of how a school division works with their local funer to budget like in your previous school division was it this kind of bifurcated system or are you aware of other school divisions that do something differently in Virginia that we could try to really collaborate authentically with the board of supervisors that's a great question Miss Marin i my experience coming from a state um where I've previously been superintendent uh we had uh our school division had our we had taxing authority um subject to voter approval but we didn't have a local entity such as a board
243of supervisor group uh we dealt with the state and the federal government just as we do here but there wasn't a local funer because we um retained that taxing authority in terms of Virginia and best practices is um Miss Burton can you think of other divisions that in Virginia or other practices that come to mind well a couple of divisions are still operating revenue sharing agreements um but those kind of gone out of fashion they were popular 101 15 years ago um where they have get a set amount of funding from the local I mean from the local governing body every year but you know that really just shifts the conversation to the projections instead of the budget because if you're if they you know county governments typically are going to be ultraconervative on their
244revenue projections which is not really good for people who are trying to plan but if I was on the county side I would be ultra-conservative too so if they regularly are ultra-conservative then even if it is a certain percentage then you know you're going to end up with a lot of money on the back end which is not really efficient way to run your budget so they have you know others you know critics say that revenue sharing agreements silence the voice of the people because if the amount of funding that you're going to get is always known then you know why why would anyone bother to comment about it and then the third item is is that it would be it's very difficult for a superintendent to meet their code required um thing to provide
245a needs-based budget based on what's needed in the school system in the upcoming year if they are falsely pushing that number down based on a revenue sharing agreement so it's probably not legally enforceable but revenue sharing agreements are probably politically enforceable thank you that's really interesting i think too as the board prepares for its May 6th session about capital planning you know these are these huge investments that we need to know more about and like I'm really glad that our board is looking to um learn more about other ways to fund construction in a more effective efficient way especially as the costs of things keep escalating so again these community resources I just am so hungry for us to work in partnership for one Fairfax so um perhaps in the remaining weeks we can make
246that happen yes ma'am thank you Miss Mayor and Mr moon uh Miss Burton those school districts where a they there isn't revenue sharing arrangement between governing body local governing body and school board those local governing bodies still take very conservative approach for the revenue projections i think our own governing body seems to be taking that approach even without the revenue sharing arrangement isn't that correct i don't know i'd have to look at their year end and see how their revenue projections compare to what they actually receive okay okay i mean listening to your response to uh the revenue sharing arrangement question that reminded me of one particular school district which has revenue sharing arrangement but they share they share additional revenue yes that is usually a component of a revenue sharing agreement and that is
247on the back end that there's a true up to the actual revenue instead of what is projected but again that's not great for planning because you get it on the back end so you can't you can't really use it it's like one I think they seem to be using that additional revenue at the end back end for one-time purposes right you know maintenance or purchase you know etc with that said uh I I am still hopeful that that county our local governing body county board of supervisors will uh see truly see our needs and then fund beyond what the county executive has proposed that said that said if we had to make any adjustments to our budget I was looking at these numbers charge etc in our budget book uh with the assumption that we're
248not going to touch uh what he agreed to provide to our employees through CBA then we have to go to uh what's considered what's I think under as logistics budget set aside for the logistics which is about $400 million and then I was looking at different categories of those for where those 400 $400 million is coming from uh I think those area that is the only area that's come you know we can we can have any a adjustments that can come from but looking at each one of them it will be very difficult are you going to cut textbooks are going to cut supplies to schools uh we cannot cut insurance I going to cut I am middle school a after uh you know act activity buses uh I I not going to purchase buses
249i mean but we may end up looking at the logistics area just for a my colleagueu's benefit and consideration thank you Mr moon all right moving on agenda item nine consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda is displayed on the screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda seeing and hearing no objection the consent agenda is approved agenda item 10 new business the following are new business agenda items there will
250not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled for a future meeting agenda item 11 board committee reports i call on Dr anderson for a skipped report yes giving the hour I'll be a little bit more brief but I do want to inform the board of the last skipped meeting that we had on April 2nd um both Dr pon I'm sorry Dr pon Dr king and Dr prescidio and there pro there's probably one more person who were in attendant who had been in attendance one of the crucial pieces that I wanted to share was the the um strategic early childhood um plan that the county has come together that really has four components um component one is to improve child health and well-being two increase access to early learning three elevate
251the early childhood workforce and four transform the early childhood system and what really came to mind to me um during this meeting is that we are really working with two different definitions because we've had some interesting discussions where the minds weren't really meeting from schools and county and I think Dr prescidio did an outstanding job in really elevating what is our what our definition is of preschool versus their definition of early learning it's the piece that is much more academic and much more rigorous that is missing so one of the things the committee needed to do was to approve this document and we had quite a robust discussion and and were adamant that we needed to have a piece in this plan that spoke to the preschool education component other than that it doesn't advance
252our work in any way and so I I think Dr pillio again you get the kudos on this not only were we able to initially infuse it that was the ask under goal two um but doing better than that it's going to now be its own standalone goal without that being a target we are not going to move the needle and having the skipped um committee help us to increase seats in early childhood and um yeah in preschool it's going to be more of what is offered which is really not consistent with what FCPS requires so once we have the final U plan I do um intend on sharing it with you i didn't share this one because of um it it's still going to be revised but I really wanted to make sure we
253were clear on their understanding of what the early childhood experiences were and how it doesn't it has not yet aligned with what our vision is for preschool education thank you Dr anderson agenda item 12 superintendent matters i call on Dr reid thank you Chairman Fr uh just again a congratulations to our National Board Certified Teachers and also it is National Assistant Principles Week uh so right before spring break I know they're busy um just want to say big shout out to the transportation team the rodeo was incredible they can back buses up in tighter spaces than I can back my car up into so I was very impressed um then also want to share that I enjoyed attending the La Liga soccer game at West PTOAC High School studentr run game and there was some
254fabulous soccer going on um superintendent student advisory council and I shared their reports in my last weekly reflection it was a lot of excitement um want to share that the Edison High School production of Greece was amazing um I could I was just incredibly uh impressed as well as their academy autoc collision class which uh finished the car they used in Greece which was a really nice partnership also saw a play I'd never heard of before so I might be living under a rock um but Justice High School did Almost Maine and I hadn't heard of the play so I Googled it and found out it was the most performed high school play in the last decade uh which I didn't know but it was uh it was really a wonderful show also joined several
255of you at the 50th annual um all county sixth grade chorus a dance move at Bailey's Upper the pyramid art show at Westfield a steam night at Hunt Valley Elementary amazing things happening and what I loved especially were our West Springfield High School students that came uh and our TJ students to help our um students at Hunt Valley uh so just really lots of uh track and field at Woodson High School we have our young women pole vaultting over Kevin or over 10 feet uh which is unbelievable um I was kind of thinking maybe I should try it but uh I restrained myself um and then the uh lacrosse tournament at Fairfax High School in Robinson so just lots of exciting things all of which are funded by our county in addition to the minimums
256from the state and just really trust that um our community you know understands the importance of those activities so thank you Chairman FR thank you Dr reid agenda item 13 board matters i will call on each board member to share their comments mr dunn uh thank you uh so having a little trouble with my video oh there we go so I'd like to uh congratulate uh the nationally board certified honores from Mount Fernan district uh Heather Young from Holland Meadows uh Julian Braden from Laurel Hill and Rachel Morris from Laurel Hill um I'd like to say congratulations to South County High School student Julia Sites for being selected as a grand prize nominee in physics and astronomy at this year's Fairfax County Science Fair for her project The Impact of Municipal Dibbming on Skylow i'd
257also like to say congratulations to Whitman Middle School's special education department chair Angela Perez who was selected to receive a first class award for demonstrating excellence in educating students with disabilities uh in late March I had the uh pleasure to conduct presentations for the Stratford Landing PTA the Washington Mill PTA and the Cross Point Homeowners Association thank you to these organizations for inviting me these events provided valuable opportunities to share information and address the questions and concerns of families in my district and if you haven't heard very exciting news a Montasauri program the first public Montasauri program in Fairfax County is coming to the West PTOIC pyramid at Bucknell Elementary it will begin uh next year the 2025 26 school year it will start with multi-age classrooms at the prek and kindergarten levels families of
258current three four and 5year-olds are invited to apply through a lottery process the program is free and transportation will be provided the application is available online now through May 1st 2025 at fcps.edu/mmonasauri please check it out and uh please make sure to uh enroll your child to participate if you're interested i hope everyone has a safe and restful spring break especially all of our students and staff thank you thank you Mr dunn dr anderson um I do want to say happy assistant principal week is it week or month Dr reed is it a week or month it is only a week oh it needs to be a month that is one of the most challenging jobs in a school because you're doing discipline all day and you don't really get the joys often of the
259academic work so better you all than me but congratulations on that um just one thing I wanted to share last week I had the opportunity to go to False Church High School to attend the Amy Baker Memorial bench dedication which brought back so many so many Jaguars who graduated they were class of 1989 while they came for a somber moment it was wonderful just to watch them walk around the school and to see the new school that they you know that they um that they attended how many years ago um again it was just fantastic so I appreciate um the individuals from the community one of their classmates who got that together as well as Dr noak's support to ensure that he could be supportive of this community because they made a beautiful moment out
260of a very sad event thank you Dr anderson Miss Marin Miss Dixit i'm just going to say have a great spring break good night everyone thank you thank you Miss Dixit miss Marin yes i also just want to wish everyone a um happy Easter happy Passover happy spring break thank you Miss Marin miss St john Cunning okay I'm going to try to go fast to cover some of the things I didn't cover at our last meeting because I couldn't talk uh I was happy to attend the cares of the quarter presentation to Twain Middle School's Miss Vivian Beck and she received this quarter's cares award for showing special care for those who have not yet experienced success region three awards for outstanding operational employee Janelle Lewis at Bucknell Elementary School outstanding leader Mary Beth Starky
261at Edison High School region Six Awards outstanding new secondary teacher Sheridan Lusk who happens to be a Hayfield graduate and the daughter of Franconia Supervisor Rodney Lusk outstanding new elementary teacher Mackenzie Fagan at Springfield Estates Elementary School also Edison's chef Walden and culinary students invited me and community members to judge a chopped competition and though I was unable to attend due to the flu it was a wonderful experience for my staff aid Mara Kaiser Bger who filled in for me this past Saturday I started my day at the Hayfield craft fair and ran into Sheila Holmes instructional assistant from Mount Vernon Woods Sally Bole Shelberg retired Rose Hill preschool teacher and Christini Bar former Bucknell teacher all displaying their crafts i ended the day at the Edison Theater Company production of Greece which was wonderful
262this past Tuesday I was honored to attend the schoolboard leadership program mock mock forum where my student representative Natalyia Langden from Hayfield Secondary presented her topic expanding crew to all high schools throughout FCPS i'd like to congratulate John Micah a math teacher at Hayfield Secondary School who has been named a Virginia finalist for the 2025 presidential award for excellence in mathematics and science teaching and congratulations to Dena Ulv in Integrated Engineer Teacher in Edison's Global STEM Challenges Program for being recognized by the Air Force for STEM Excellence i do hope you all enjoy your spring break happy Passover happy Easter while you're out please go online and look at all the spring musicals you can see when you come back also save the date for the community conversations with Superintendent Dr reid on Monday April
26321st at Mount Eagle Elementary School from 6:30 to 7:30 i'll be joining her that night and just all of you have a great break thank you Miss St j cutting Mr moon thank you Mr chairman as you probably know that uh last week I was able to spend three days three four days in Atlanta Georgia attending National School Boards Association's conference i just wanted to see I know rest of the colleagues you know went to different conference but I wanted to see how the NSABA conference has become uh realized that compared to prepandemic years the crowd size has probably diminished quite a bit and and there were fewer choices of the sessions that I could take however at the same time I was able to get uh really a lot out of conference uh you
264know including uh how we can better provide a programs for the multilingual learners and language and culture emerging programs as well and also as we focus more on a our you know advanced courses for our students that you know how we can make that successful and in the age of AI I about how to deal with the deep fakes and misinform disinformation but most of all a lot of people a lot of people had concerns about the challenges posed by federal directors in one one session you know I attended it was closed door we closed the door so that we can have an honest conversation and media was not welcome to that room we have pretty lively but very serious conversation that's something I I would like to share with my colleagues of record thank
265you thank you Mr moon uh Vice Chair Anderson I hope everybody has an amazing spring break thank you Miss Anderson uh a couple quick things i also enjoyed attending the 50th annual sixth grade all county coral festival um uh week weekend before last it was really great to see uh so many talented kids singing their hearts out uh and playing a variety of instruments as well um it's not lost on me my partner told me he was there for the uh about 30 years ago as a sixth grade student in the uh all county coral um festival so um it's it's still turning up very talented students and um very much appreciated being able to join folks there and open with a joke which I will now share with my colleagues who were not there
266why are pirates such good singers because they can hit the high sea oh isn't that a good one uh I also had an opportunity to join several of my colleagues at the opening of the Nova Prism Center uh which is the only LGBTQ center for youth in um Fairfax County and perhaps even Northern Virginia uh but definitely Fairfax County so we're grateful to have them in MLAN you should look them up uh so you can see their services looking forward to the false church pyramid art show uh next Wednesday um or the w the Wednesday after next um at Falls Church High School um and want to remind constituents that Senator Mark Warner is having his annual Academy Day uh coming up on Saturday April 26th um at the University of Mary Washington uh you
267can find information on his website and Congressman Jerry Connelly is hosting his annual congressional art competition um which you can find more information about on his website as well um uh with uh a timeline uh I believe the uh nominations have to be in by May 5th so with that I appreciate everybody's hard work tonight and getting us through this meeting at 11:22 p.m we are adjourned