001[Music] good evening everyone apologies for the delay the board will start at approximately 7:15 for Tech if we we could put up for online that the meeting will start at approximately 7:15 thank you [Music] a divide in coner [Music] for [Music] for [Music] board members please take your seats we'll get started in a moment e e e the September 26 2024 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the national anthem by the Chantelly High School chamber Corral under the direction of Evan SS I pledge allegiance of the United States of America and to the for stands naisy andice for all [Music] by the dawn's early light what so proudly we at the
002Twilight who stripes and bright stars through the per the parts we were so G streaming and The Rock the BS bursting in air gave Pro through the night that our flag [Applause] still the sangled yet W the land of the free and the of the [Music] [Applause] [Music] bra can we hear another round of applause for those talented [Applause] students agenda item 2.02 announcements miss lady has submitted a written request to attend this evening's meeting virtually due to a personal conflict she is attending a conference in uh Los Angeles California all those in favor of approving Miss Lady's request Miss Marin Miss Dixit Mr mline Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seore Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning and myself that is unanimous miss lady will you test your microphone yes
003test all right we can hear you loud and clear thank you if you would like to review a copy of the agenda please see the back of the auditorium to obtain copies of the items being presented tonight please reference the QR code on the agenda or on the website fcps.edu Schoolboard boarddocs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu tv99 Agenda item 2.03 Hispanic Heritage Month I call on Dr Anderson for a proclamation thank you whereas National Hispanic heritage month is recognized annually from September 15th through October 15th across the United States celebrating the histories cultures and innumerable contributions of those whose ancestors Trace their roots to Spain Mexico Central America South America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean Nations and whereas September 15th is a historically significant day
004marking the independence of the Latin American countries Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras and Nicaragua the designated period also honors Mexico and Chile which celebrate their independence on September 16th and 18th respectively and Indigenous people's day or or Dia DEA razza recognized in mid October Falls within within these 30 days and whereas Hispanic History is inex inexplicably entwined with United States history as California Florida Texas New Mexico Nevada Arizona Utah Colorado and parts of Wyoming and Kansas and Oklahoma were at one point Spanish Spanish or Mexican territory as part of the larger ethnic group of the United States Hispanics and Latinos have significantly contributed to our nation's identity and have played a vital role in shaping American am democracy economy Cuisine and culture whereas this year's theme pioneers and change shaping the future together celebrates
005past and present Hispanic Trailblazers who drive positive change for a more inclusive future activists including Sylvia mandez who played a key role in The Landmark Brown versus Board of Education case and Dolores wera Hera labor and civil rights activist public servants including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sor and the first female Surgeon General Antonio Antonia noello artists including Celia Cruz the first afro Latina to sing on television and have her likeness in a quarter I'm sorry and have her likeness on a quarter and Bad Bunny king of Latin trap rap rapper singer and record producer and the first first non-english language musician to become spotify's most stream artist of the year authors including Sandra S cisos award-winning author of The House on Mango Street and Oscar huos Pula R Pisa Prize winner and whereas prominent Hispanic
006Virginians include Michelle zajur founder of the Virginia Hispanic chamber of commerce Susanna Marino and an entrepreneur founding presidential and founding president and chair of the northern Virginia Hispanic American Chamber of Commerce and major league baseball pitcher Javier Lopez who attended Robinson Secondary School and whereas nearly one in five people in the US his Hispanic or Latino the highest concentration of Virginia's Hispanic Latino population resides in Northern Virginia and accounts for 16.5% of Fairfax County's population one in four FCPS students is of Hispanic Latino Heritage and whereas FCPS is fortunate to have Educators and staff who value and work with our Hispanic Latino students our employees Empower them to to be the next generation of leaders reinforcing the school board's belief that diversity is a strength that creates resilient open and Innovative Global Citizens now therefore
007be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board hereby proclaims September 15th through October 15 2024 as Hispanic Heritage Month we encourage Fairfax County residents to participate in programs and events taking place in our County I'm sorry in our schools and Community to learn about celebrate and Elevate the rich Hispanic Latino Heritage thank you Dr Anderson I call on Miss St John cunning to provide the proclamation in Spanish much gracias and welcome to the family lit program that meets here um on Thursday nights um mexo Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua California Florida Tas NOA Mexico Nevada Arizona Utah Colorado partes the Wyoming Kansas [Music] EZ Brown noos e bad bunny trap Latino rapero [Music] G The House on Mango Street yos sus Marino Robson FCPS re isana Latina thank you Miss St John cunning is there
008a second second Miss seore Heiser I'll call for a vote all those in favor Miss Marin Miss Dixit Mr mline Dr Anderson Mr Daniel Miss Anderson Miss eisor Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself that is unanimous congratulations the proclamation passes I would like to welcome all those who are here uh to support this Proclamation the Hispanic Heritage Month proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the deas e e e agenda item 3.01 Community participation the next order of business is community participation we welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening additional information about signing up to provide comments at Schoolboard regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the School Board website
009during the signup process community members acknowledged they were informed of the school board's expectations for property Quorum when providing comments these expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials at the back of the room we ask audience members to be respectful of one another shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain at their seats including when recording or taking photos we're grateful for those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation school board members will not be will be listening but not responding Madame clerk please call the first Speaker Malik burugu Kina makoy good evening my name is Kina McAvoy and I'm
010a local advocate for phone free schools the Virginia Department of Education guidance for celf cell phone free education was released last week and includes a school day that is completely smartphone free in classrooms hallways and cafeterias please revise current FCPS policies to reflect VOE guidance and Implement a bell-to-bell smartphone free school day for all grade levels we are facing a collective action problem with our children a bell toell phone free school day is a powerful and intuitive way for us to collectively act the entire school day is an instructional period digital Wellness Education and Leadership are critical pieces to this Evolution to a fully phone-free school day it is a cruel optimism to imply that parents can handle this crisis in their homes when provided with a webinar or a list of parental controls they
011should Master the current FCPS digital citizens program is sourced from Common Sense Media an organization which counts Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates as found founding Partners an FCPS digital Wellness Department should be informed by partners that are not allies of the technology industry A continuing conversation about digital Wellness is essential and demands more than a yearly lesson on digital citizenship one of the most important jobs of an adolescent is to develop the ability to choose what they will pay attention to a smartphone tragically removes that challenge during the most consequential time of their lives when my children were in high school we didn't have the capacity or information to demand a smartphone free school day but we do now we have the Virginia Department of Education the phone free schools movement Jonathan height and the
012anxious generation the US Surgeon General and scores of advocacy groups please partner with families and Advocates to do the hard thing and return our school buildings to places where laughter and conversation are heard in the hallways and heads are held high and not buried in smartphones thank you Kathleen Gillette Mard good evening I've had so much time this evening I got here early for a change and um so I've scribbled a lot of stuff but I will be submitting my revised statement later uh good evening School Board I speak to you this evening about your responsibilities to safeguard and protect FCPS students ensuring not only students academic engagement and success but also their environmental and physical safety including their intellectual mental moral and ethical health and well-being that's a lot of responsibility and I know
013parents and citizens alike greatly appreciate the efforts that you all have been making to provide not only safe schools but great Personnel admin cafeteria staff Etc in past statements I've focused on your resolution declaring January 22nd human awareness trafficking month um other concerns include drug and gang activity tonight however I will focus on US federal child pornography laws and what appear to be violations of this law by FC PS specifically obscene materials available to miners that impact on their well-being of students uh section 1466a of Title 18 I will be including this information makes it illegal for any person to knowingly produce distribute receive or possess transfer or distribute V visual representations such as drawings cartoons or paintings that appear to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct there are a couple of books that
014you all have said are are appropriate Oh I thought I would cut off um gender queer lawn booy for example now our superintendent took his oath of office on some of these books um I don't understand that these books violate federal law um for obscenity and I really hope you all will reconsider it's not Banning books we are not as people are not asking to ban books deselect them okay Harry Jackson I stand before you today to address serious and Urgent and Urgent issue the long-standing pattern of violence and harassment against black high school football players over the past 20 years instance like the Jenna 6 in Louisiana in 2006 and more recent cases in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania have shown how young black athletes are disproportionately targeted and harassed these incidents often escalate into larger
015acts of racial violence now at Hayfield Secondary School we find ourselves at similar Crossroads parents have reported and FCPS has confirmed the stalking and harassment of Hayfield football players many of whom are black their home addresses have been leaked they have been followed their safety is in Jeopardy yet instead of taking proper action like conducting a violence violence threat risk assessment scps has chosen to mute the voice that could expose these truths coach darl Overton a mentor and leader of these young athletes has been silenced sidelined and targeted for removal this is not just negligence it's a clear effort to suppress the truth at the same time black parents and students are being harassed and surve failed while their white counterparts are spared this intrusion this selective enforcement reflects blatant racial discrimination FCPS is protecting
016White Privilege while undermining black success I know these tactics quite well as I live through them as a youth football player in New Jersey where I was stalked threatened with weapons and harassed by white Vigilantes tactics rooted in fear hate and a desire to maintain racial Purity in certain spaces what's happening at Hayfield Echoes those same injustices and I refuse to stand by in silence as Dr King once said Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere we cannot allow this to happen not 2014 not 20 not in fax County heyfield by 40 Malik burugu hello everybody I came uh here to uh voice my opinion on like a and Grading as a parent of uh like two children at fairfest County so I recently came to know in fact only like two weeks back
017uh how the loopholes every system has a loopholes and fair FCPS looks like they have a lot of loopholes in getting first point is AAP so how they got into AAP programs majority of the students first point is I can clearly see my son uh who is very Superior to a lot of people I know everybody went to AAP except my son and I came to know like the one of the reason is I don't want to name anyone here due to some of the coaching programs and tutions which I absolutely like uh I feel it's not only for my son even if you take in general aspect for unprivileged students there's no choice they cannot pay like $6,000 per year just totally like like he's brighter than many of their students who got AAP
018I feel this is not fair and I think you are doing very good steps last year by Banning some of these institutions I came here to strongly recommend you please continue like some constructive process so that only gifter students will get into AAP programs not everyone who goes to like a coaching centers CS by paying a lot of money and second thing is uh for grading also like I I think I have like only 4 seconds but anyway like I please I can just came to here strongly to support that chair frish that is our last public speaker thank you agenda item 4 4.01 student representative matters I call Miss Swan thank you Mr chair good evening everyone and Happy fall as the proclamation mentioned earlier as we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15th
019to October 15th we honor the contributions of Hispanic Americans to the history culture and achievements of the United States with the rich diversity of our community here in Fairfax County we recognize how the influence of Hispanic heritage continues to shape our local schools culture and future and I really enjoyed the proclamation earlier today along with that speaking of celebrations I wanted to congratulate the 191 FCPS students in the class of 2025 who are National Merit sem finalists and I think this is just a true Testament to to the incredible talent that we have here in Fairfax County last Friday I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the kickoff for the portrait of a graduate innovator cohort 3.0 this cohort is for a dedicated group of teachers and administrators across elementary middle and high
020school who work to embed portrait of a graduate presentations of learning practices with others who are at similar points of Readiness the goal of this program is to develop lessons and strategies to improve practices that lead to successful POG pole implementation for all students while learning from each other throughout the year I was just so inspired by the ideas that the teachers brought to the table and just the good energy in the room I love that I started at Navy Elementary in the portrait of a graduate pilot program back in 2013 and just seeing how big it's grown since then and how many teacherss are involved in the program I'm looking forward to how it'll continue in the future but as I spoke to teachers about this program my experience is just one of many
021in the last decade that portrait of a graduate has has been implemented we've experienced rapid change from the pandemic learning how to shift to Virtual learning and the rates that we had in chronic absenteeism that went up how have our skills and needs in FCPS changed over the last 10 years how have the questions that we ask to identify student learning change with these questions in mind the portrait of a graduate secondary advisory committee is open to students who are interested in working closely with the portrait of a graduate instructional Services team I've had some interest from students who are in in the Madison leaders program and I'm optimistic about the growth and the feedback that students can share in this program this year students please reach out if you'd like to get involved on
022Monday I also had the privilege of attending the Fairfax global leaders kicked off H hosted by Mr mine I'm looking forward to the amazing things that we have planned this year in partnership with the 17 rooms project and the global classroom project on closing the gap between what we teach in history and how students apply that in the real world this initiative perfectly aligns with our iic plan and provides fellows seniors uh with opportunities to engra with engage with global leaders and Advance their General understanding of international Affairs and Global issues and I'm so excited to be part of this amazing initiative along with 134 accepted fellows I was also able to have a productive meeting with the superintendent on Monday as well thank you Dr Reed about how students can work with the accreditation
023policy that's been passed down by Virginia this year and issues important for student voice to Advocate this year I brought these issues and ideas to the first superintendent advisory council meeting made of student representatives from all of the FCPS schools of the school year at Woodson High School as Dr Reed mentioned in her academic matters last time the changes currently proposed don't support FCPS Learners just such as having students graduate in four years even if they're approved for extra time or multilingual Learners having three semesters to learn their second language um before they have to report it and before it goes onwards the idea that schools will be penalized for something that students need genuine help with isn't on the right page with our strategic plan I wanted to bring your attention to the new
024student perspectives and questions that I got from the superintendent advisory council meeting and the students who spoke to me about it they're eager to learn more about the reasoning and the intention behind the state's decision and how that kind of factored down to the county level and how that affects us here accountability is important but we want to focus on a more accurate representation of FC PS success this year in the superintendence advisory Council students have been talking about creating a committee or a focus group that will work this year to ask students what do they find is important to their index of success and their performance in Fairfax County and how we might be able to create a parallel structure to measure student performance one key takeaway that I wanted to share with you
025from our meeting is how students are reacting to this accreditation policy and how important it is to share with students how this policy will affect them and they can get involved with advocating and I actually do have a few students who are interested in writing blogs and sharing things in paax County to get involved with this Mission over the coming weeks I hope to share more resources through the social media and through the superintendent advisory Council to educate students and families on how this policy will affect us here in Fairfax County and how we can be better prepared and I just wanted to express my thanks to miss Marin for really helping us in this mission to learn how students can advocate for themselves and I think it's just a perfect example of how how
026we can be active participants in this County another significant issue raised during the council meeting was Equitable access to after- school activities particularly regarding Transportation one student from anandale mentioned that their school went from having two days of late buses to just one while another school still has two days of late buses as we went around the room it became clear that the number of late bus days varies widely across the county some students said they had four others said they had three others said they had one it wasn't the same across all of the different schools a student from Centerville High School shared how the reduction in late bus days has forced clubs to meet at the same time times that students can come to those meetings which makes it difficult for students who
027now have to choose to participate between multiple activities that may happen at the same time so even if students can stay after school they now have to choose between the clubs due to the limited Transportation options overall the question that the students was asking was why is the number of late bus days that each school has different what determines how many late bus days a school gets and what makes up for the difference between the amount of late buses that uh schools are getting students are concerned with um want to learn more about how these decisions are being made and how they can get involved with it I know this was a lot of information but I just want to thank you for paying attention to these important concerns of the students supporting student leaders
028and giving them the tools to engage civically with the decisions that affect our schools is critical I hope we can continue working together to find Solutions throughout this school year thank you thank you Miss Swant agenda item 5.01 action item certification of closed meeting compliance in order to comply with Section 22- 3712 D 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 September 26 2024 to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements and only such uh business ma 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 movine
029do I have a second Dr Anderson all those in favor Miss Marin Miss Dixon Mr movine Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seis Mor Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning and miss lady can't vote on this I don't think uh or can she all right this lady uh and myself that is unanimous agenda item 5.02 action item confirmation of action taken in closed meeting I call on Miss St John cunning for a motion I move to expel the student who committed a serious offense in violation of the Schoolboard policy by being convicted of one count of felony murder non- capital in the community is there a second I second Miss Marin all those in favor Miss Marin Miss Dix Mr mine Dr Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss uh Mr Dunn Mr
030Moon Miss St John cunning and myself all those opposed abstentions Mr MC Mr McDaniel miss lady Miss seore Heiser and Miss Dixit who were not present all right uh any and there was no opposition the motion passes I call on Miss seore Heiser for a motion I move that the board authorizes the chair to send the letters and to prepare related documents as discussed in Clos session is there a second second Mr McDaniel all those in favor Miss Maron uh Mr McDaniel Miss seore Heiser Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning Miss Anderson miss lady and myself opposed Mr M mline Mr M Mr mline Dr Anderson and Mr Moon abstentions Miss Dixit had abstention Miss Dixit will the clerk read the vote 831 the motion carries thank you agenda item 5.03 action item legislative program
031I call on Dr Anderson for a motion I move that the school board adopt the 2025 Fairfax County School Board state and federal legislative program is there a second I second Miss Marin Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion yes um the legislative program is our board's message to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and to lawmakers in the general assembly to speak about what we find to be important what our priorities are as a Fairfax County Community it is the culmination of collaboration of the school board members with very strong support by Mr Malloy so I do want to take this moment to say thank you to him and all of his work he is our eyes and ears on the ground enrichment um when the general assembly is in session thank you
032so much for your leadership and ushering us through this work I want to highlight one uh I want to highlight some of the legislative priorities the program has many many positions and if I were to um read them all to you tonight we will still be here through tomorrow but I do want to highlight on the federal side some of the key components that we find to be um of higher importance that we will be engaging our um delegation on in on in October once this passes one is the full funding of idea um if Fairfax County received its full share of idea funding which is the 40% that was um committed to in 1975 we would have received an additional $17 million this year um last year I'm sorry this is an important piece
033because we know how much it takes to educate all of our students and we know the additional supports that are required for our special education students and having that funding is really Paramount we have never been close to that to that amount to that 40% I think the closest has been 11 to 12% and last year was roughly 99.5% so we do call on our legislators to um fully fund idea um we ask for um for meals reimbursement Federal meals reimbursement we know that many of our families and many of our students rely very heavily on the meals that we serve in our schools and having Universal meals for all of our students will be a great protection to them um some of the new components that I wanted to highlight of our legislative program
034is the cyber security and educational technology components um we do know cyber security has been a um a challenge for all School divisions and businesses and organizations over the past um several years I think in Fairfax County we've also encountered a significant amount of um challenges in that area in the past 5 years particularly and to combat that our division has had to um commit significant supports personnel and dollars in order for us to um address some of those challenges and I think one of the things that I want to share while we do have crime that happens around our schools and in our schools we have not had to erect police stations in our division so we are asking for federal support in order to provide some guidance and organization in this area because
035the millions of dollars that are being spent to counter these attacks can be spent on our students and student safety one of the things I must highlight is that we are asking for all of um states to participate in the FBI's Next Generation identification um and non-criminal Justice wraback service this is an important component for the safety of our students um I know Miss Marin is going to be speaking quite a bit about many of the State Legislative positions but a few that I will highlight um is the local support the I'm sorry the local control of our schools we know what is best for our students we understand our community and decisions that are made about how to um instru R how to educate our student population should be local control there should not
036be backdoor attempts um from Richmond in order to usurp that Authority so that is part of um some of our priorities um and also we have many priorities regarding student academic success um because that is our first job first and foremost um so I think that was the bell and I will stop here thank you Dr Anderson Miss Marin would you would you like to speak to your second thank you yes I would very much like to speak to this so we are committed to full steam ahead to a strong legislative program um more than ever this year and the timing couldn't be better because we know that when the laws get passed at the state it impacts us right here and and also federally obviously so last week myself chairman frish Dr Anderson we
037were in the Richmond area with the Virginia state school boards Association for the legislative um session to get ready for what's coming at us in January we are hosting our Fairfax delegation on October 8th again to let them know how things are going with us and how we can partner with them November is take your legislature to school month uh January we're going to do sessions we'll be we'll be down to the general assembly sessions and advocating but you know what's what's really key there's two things and our student representative already talked about one of them so one is that jayar report so that jayar is that term of the research arm of the general assembly that found that there is chronic underfunding of our schools in Virginia so we've been talking about get that
038money but it's important so some new things have happened and this is why this Federal um agenda is so important excuse me the legislative agenda is so important because it serves as this document that's going to guide us even as new information comes about so the subcommittee of the jlar um for the jar study met last week in the general assembly and we learned all sorts of more more things so it's important to know there is no surplus of funds in Virginia there is a need for more state revenue any talks of a tax cut is wildly out of touch with reality with how people are living um we know from this report that the formula produces amounts that are well before below actual School Division expends by $6.6 billion that it's found in the
039report that 50% of the funds are being provided locally um so this legislative agenda again will help us to continue messaging this and getting our word out and the status quo just won't won't do anymore so that's a really important part the other part is the accountability and the changes that are very severe for our schools so that is a huge part of our advocacy um and then I also wanted to mention that um you know again the students are interested and we're working on ways to incorporate their voice because they are powerful and they know what's going on in in our schools and if they're not into education we're never going to succeed so again I want to thank Michael Malloy our legislative director and also Beth Beth violi our executive director of communications
040for helping us to get materials together in a way that is um information informative and gets it done because we have a lot of information to share so um yes so thank you and thank you to the board for um amendments that you all submitted and we did a really good job of working things out together and coming to a nice consensus thank you thank you m Marin Mr dun thank you um this is something that I think every Fairfax County resident uh should care deeply about uh the state is one of the best places to obtain a high quality uh public education for your children um but if you look at um how the state funds Public Schools it's one of the the 10 uh worst uh among the 50 states in our Union
041so while we have uh a public education system on par with New York and Massachusetts um our state funding is more like Alabama and Mississippi and that is simply not sustainable uh the disparity in in funding from the state needs to be remedied um positive work was accomplished uh this past year but there's much more that needs to be done the total amount determined by the independent uh uh jlar uh which is a part a component of the state legislature is $ 5688 million that's more than half a billion dollars per year so if you if you've lived in the county for 20 years as I have that's uh over $1 billion that Fairfax County residents have had to make up for because the state hasn't paid its fair share and if you wonder why
042your property taxes are higher it's because the state is not paying what it's due uh what Fairfax County should receive um under the state funding formula uh there's an assumption down in Richmond that all of us are rich folks who you know can send our kids to private school or public school but what we have is a system in which onethird of our students 6,000 students out of 180,000 uh are economically disadvantaged we have special education students that's almost 20% we have uh English language Learners also approximately 20% we are a much more divers much more complex place than we might have been in decades past and so we need every taxpayer dollar because uh from the state because if the state doesn't provide it then we as as local taxpayers have to pay it
043uh in kind so I ask your advocacy with your state legislators state legislators um to ensure that they pay their fair share so your property taxes become more reasonable thank you thank you Mr Dunn I will take a turn uh it was just a couple months ago that Virginia was named the best state in America to do business the best Commonwealth uh in America to do business um and the reason given was because of our exceptional public education system and so um imagine what we could do if we were just given the average amount of money that other states get uh to um support our students and our educators um and so even despite the conversation about how great our schools are in the Commonwealth of Virginia and how they're leading to us being the
044best state in the Union to do business and to create jobs um public education is under attack in Virginia and we have never had a more important legislative program than we have this year because we're dealing with two ex essential threats to public education number one the in inadequate funding we receive from our state Partners obviously it is an entire team effort and they can't get it done alone especially with an adversarial governor and number two we have a Virginia Board of Education that is hellbent on damaging um the very schools that have led this Commonwealth to be determined as the best state in the Union to do business um let me be as straight on this as I can the new standards that they have cooked up without thinking through because let's be clear
045there are dozens upon dozens of questions that they have not yet thought through even though they've already approved them would rule that almost all of the schools in Virginia are off track that only one Middle School is doing a great job in all of Virginia if you think that sounds like it's Half Baked it's because it is on top of that you know the last time we went through this process it was kind of phased in over time School divisions were partnered with the state so that it could so that the transition would be smooth this time not so much this time it's happening Midway through the school year there's no phas in plan there's not answers to fundamental questions and there's no additional funds not Al let alone to actually fund the work we
046do at in public schools but to also deal with transitioning to this new network so when I tell people that the new standards that they're pushing uh for the uh the governor's Virginia Board of Education include penalizing families penalizing schools for supporting families whose students have IEPs they're shocked how could anybody do that well I think that is a question that is perfectly ripe for the the Virginia Board of Education to be answering and that is just one example of the many many things that we're talking about so I appreciate the the hard work that's gone into this from our legislative liaison because it does Center those two fundamental questions one about funding but the second one about how we support our schools with accountability so that they can remain exceptional we all want high
047standards we all want high standards but we also want to be able to meet them as a commonwealth and to make them reasonable if you set people up for failure because that's your goal that is exactly what you will get so we've got a long year ahead of us but this is going to be a fundamental part of that conversation and I very much appreciate all the collaboration that colleagues have had on this because this is something we need a united front on our board our Educators our families our students thank you Miss Swant for speaking to this topic uh We're All in This Together We sink or swim together um and uh I think we're ready for the conversation so thank you all very much Miss Dixit thank thank you Mr chair um lot
048of my colleagues have shared really great uh information and awareness piece I'm going to speak not only as a board member but also an immigrant uh a parent of FCPS student who's um my son just graduated from FCPS and um and a minority Community member the FCPS schools is were so is so important for our our community are our immigrants who are coming um to this great County and creating a family here we our students get great education and um it's very disheartening to see that the taxes we pay and to the state and the money is not coming back to us uh it's uh most of the the wealthiest one of the wealthiest County in the country fairfest County and we are seeing like $500 million of deficit uh from state so that is
049unaccept acceptable I think Community should know I'm going to create awareness in my community about this and we need to hold the Virginia state accountable for this thank you thank you Miss Dixit Mr mlen thank you I too want to thank uh Mr Malloy for his his dedication to this work over many years uh as well as Dr Anderson and Miss mirin for very ay uh bringing forward uh this program to us tonight um it is a very impressive program and particularly because it is coming to us on an accelerated time timeline um in the past as folks may may remember uh this would be brought to us um in the November time frame and then we would present it to legislators in December and that would give us no time to work with legislators
050on potential legislation um so I'm very excited that this um uh expedited timeline we'll get this in front of our legislators so that we can actually um work on getting some of these things uh put into um language for for bills this year um I do want to just highlight our priorities document uh there have been questions from board members and the public as to what our legislative priorities are yes this is a massive program it always has been although smaller than it had been in the past um but if you want to look at one page that really um uh identifies what this board sees as the most critical priorities at the federal and state level uh you can find it in this document um and I do want to pull out a couple
051things from that just to to highlight um my colleagues have obviously talked about jar but there are a few other funding priorities that we have um listed in here um which really cut to the core of the work of this board and our community's needs on a day-to-day basis uh one of which is the wraback program uh we need funding for that so we can get real-time background checks on our employees that's something that affects everyone in our schools every day um uh increased funding for uh free meals for students um I would love to see Universal free meals for all students like we had during the pandemic um and that's something we will continue to fight for uh in this program pedestrian safe safety um folks may have seen in the news that we
052had four pedestrian uh deaths in a 10-day period just recently um in this County we've had students hit in in just about every Community I know just in my my own neighborhood we had a student hit on the first day of school um so um this is a major priority um and vot frankly is not doing enough to address it uh mental health funding infrastructure funding and last but certainly not least early childhood uh funding which is something that this board has been passionate about for many years uh and we we must continue to uh work to fund adequately um so thank you again to our our liaison for this it's a great uh great work thanks thank you Mr Maven Miss seore Heiser thank you um I Echo the sentiments of my colleagues I
053also want to thank thank um Miss Marin and Dr Anderson for their hard work and Mr Malloy for their hard work for his hard work as well and getting this done so quickly I did want to mention I think the advocacy for fully funding Ida for free meals for um the jar AS my colleagues have mentioned is very very important and I think that information really needs to get out as well as in combination with the extra difficulty of meeting accreditation standards in the middle of the school year without any phasing um but I also wanted to to mention that I think we need to think about when we're looking at public education funding we're looking at our teacher salary and I'm hearing from constituents who are disappointed that certain teachers that they wish they
054would come or very qualified teachers are turning down the jobs because of the salaries they're getting paid um and we in Virginia are less than the 50 state average in what we pay teachers um we need to think about our special education funding has been underfunded for many years these buckets of funding that we're advocating for cannot just be replacements for what we already getting but they in some ways need to be in addition to and that balance needs to be figured out because public education is underfunded currently and so the conversation about making sure that the state and the federal government pay their fair share has to be done in conjunction with what is the appropriate amount that we need to have an excellent public education system and I don't want that point to
055get lost thank you Miss seore Heiser Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman uh echoing the sentiment you expressed Mr chairman on accountability unfortunately a state board of education or appointed by a current governor uh it's just for the political gain uh they they did this to us this to a public schools entire public school system in the common of Virginia I don't know whether we'll be successful in making a major changes from that through upcoming legislative session but I mean what I see is what I see is a great Grand Design grand plan behind the governor and his appointees to discredit the public schools discredit public school system so that they could divert the resources to sus Mr chman that is very unfortunate thank you Mr Moon all right uh Miss St John cunning um
056I Echo what everybody said and I really want to thank the the work of the two colleagues that were that our two colleagues that did this work on legislative um agenda they put a lot of time into this I just want to say that the most impactful investment as a community that we can make is in our children that's our future and a free and public education is the Cornerstone Cornerstone of our democracy that's why all of this matters that's why all of this is important thank you Miss St John cunning I'll go back for Mr Dunn oh okay I apologize all right um let's see here uh I would like to call on Dr Anderson for an Omnibus amendment I move to amend the 2025 Fairfax County School Board state and federal legislative program
057by adopting amendments 1- 16 as detailed in the agenda item on board dogs is there a second second it's Miss Marin Mr D uh Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion yes I was hoping that they would be posted thank you um in addition to some of the information that was just talked about I want to put a final point on some of these amendments some of these amendments are to clarify existing positions that may be a little obsolete because their time has passed but there are some that have been listed to really offer greater clarification for for example a great deal has been made of the na or the nape scores of um recent years in terms of their importance but one of our positions in this um agenda is I'm
058sorry in these amendments is to clarify those nape scores for example how many students are taking them just to offer some context because they are very limited and so we want for the federal government to be um in the Forefront of ensuring that that kind of data comes with context um we also want to ask and for flexibility to use alternative assessments such as AP and IB we know those students are excelling um in our schools we know when they go off to college they're also excelling there so we'd like to have flexibility to include some of those test results under the accountability and I won't go into some of the details that have already been shared um and we also um one of the Amendments is to maintain ultimate authority over the establishment of
059charter schools we know that there's a grand plan at play so we want to make sure that the final Authority rests with the school board um and lastly I want to just share that there's 16 I'm not going to be able to cover all of them but the last one that I want to highlight um is that we want for the federal government particularly HUD to end their Reliance on working with organizations such as great schools in order to determine School quality great schools has no idea of what happens in our buildings I would much we would all much prefer that there be a more robust system of of gathering that information because we do know how impactful it is to our community thank you Dr Anderson Mr Dunn would you like to speak to
060your second no I I just wanted no I just wanted to thank my colleagues uh Dr Anderson and Miss Marin and everyone on the board who has worked on these options because um making making sure that our schools have the necessary funding to provide a world class education to every child regardless of their background regardless of their family situation regardless of which school they attend so they have the opportunity and the resources to explore their uh interests and realize their potential it should be not just the highest party of the school board but also of our community because as the supervisors as our state legislators say as we always say our schools are the foundation of this community are the foundation of the local economy and the foundation of everything that happens and the basis
061of our quality of life thank you thank you Mr Dunn Miss Marin so as been said there is this big theme and it is the dismantling of public education and I know it sounds unbelievable but I've seen and we're seeing people catching wind and when we looked at these amendments you know we really focused on trying to further reinforce the local control of our schools there's a reason in Virginia that school boards retain the local controls and that's part of the State Constitution and when the governor does things like pass executive orders or change State Standards without input from local school divisions or funding for those changes that undermines our local Authority and I personally have seen this before because this is No Child Left Behind 2.0 so that was a federal education law that
062came in in 2002 um when I worked in the title one office in the US Department of Education and the whole design was show that schools are failing stop funding them give families vouchers and then public schools are gone this is the same thing the new accountability plan wants to show that we're failing uh create that narrative but it's very dangerous and we only have to look to Houston as an example in Houston per state law the superintendent was removed and the elected School Board of Houston was put to the side and a new board assigned we don't want that to happen here we have we know what's best for our students I know the community believes that they want to be as close to our schools as possible so these amendments in this legislative
063program further bolster our and remind us all and when we speak with our legislative Representatives we have seen this before we've got to fight to not let it happen again so I thank my colleagues for adding in these and adding in some really nice ones like college and Workforce Readiness um pieces especially about Steam and Quantum information science and artificial intelligence brought by Miss Dixit so we got a lot of ground to cover but I'm glad that we could put this in one nice neat package thank you Dr Anderson yes one of the things that I failed um to share earlier is that this legislative Pro this program has three parts obviously the main body then we have the priority positions there's also a third component that is not available yet which is our joint
064priority position with the Board of Supervisors that will be coming in the next few weeks as they take on that work we are a little bit earlier in our schedule as um than we've been before which is why it's not part of the program at this point but it will be an addendum that is added um when we are able to meet with the Board of Supervisors after they have started their legislative work thank you Dr Anderson seeing no others we will go ahead and vote for the motion that is scrolling on the screen it's rather extensive of maybe we can go back and forth a couple times all right it's also available on board docs uh all those in favor of the Omnibus Amendment Miss Marin Miss Dixit Mr mline Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel
065Miss Anderson Miss eisor Heiser Mr dun Mr Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself that is unanimous the motion passes uh aend item 5.04 action item Special Rule of Order on motions I call on Mr moon for a motion I'm so sorry just point of clarification we vote point of order we voted on the Amendments but we did not vote on the main motion your point of order is recognized and agreed with uh we have amended the main motion uh with that Omnibus motion uh and we will now move on to voting on the legislative program as amended all those in favor of the legislative program as amended please raise your hand all right uh Miss Marin Miss Dixit Mr movine Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson missis Mor Heiser Mr dun Mr
066Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself that is unanimous as well the motion actually passes this time thank you for the point of order all right agenda item 5.04 action item Special Rule of Order on motions I call on Mr moon for a motion thank you Mr chairman I moved at the school board to adopt a Special Rule of Order requiring school board members to submit final language for non agendized motions to the board Clerk and all other board members at least 48 hours in advance of the regular meeting in which it is to be considered as a detail in the agenda item this Special Rule of Order shall be reviewed by the board no later than the end of the 2024 25 school year to determine efficacy is there a second second
067miss seiser Mr Moon would you like to speak to your motion just briefly uh Mr chairman this is something that b discussed at The Retreat a few weeks ago this motion is part of the school board's efforts for continuous Improvement in doing its work the board can do the best to work when each board member has a sufficient time to the research to consult with other board members and staff and think through before making decisions giving notice to the other board members at least 40 48 hours in advance for a motion that a board member wants to propose should be a minimum requirement such 48 Hours of advance notice also helps the public providing their feedback to the board before the vote there may be some board members hopefully not uh who are uncom comfortable
068with this new approach but I believe that this will help the board become better disciplined and produce better work I hope that my colleagues will join me uh to giving ourselves an opportunity to try this the board can review its efficacy by the end of this Careo year and change its mind if this new approach does not work uh one more thing to add is that the difference between a majority vote and a super majority of 2/3 will be just one vote in the most of cases for our Board of 12 members a majority is a seven votes while the 2/3 is eight so the difference is only one vote and if there is any matter that a board member has been unable to give the required 48 hour notice but yet the matter is
069considered so important that the board member will just need to convince one more board member to achieve the super majority I ask my colleagues for the support of this motion thank you Mr Moon Miss seore Heiser would you like to speak to your second I think uh Mr Moon covered it very well but I just also wanted to add that um this really only prevents new amendments or main motions that aren't on the agenda if there's um an amendment to a board member submitted motion or other board members or a follow on to a board member submitted motion that's allowed within the 48 hours and again this can be suspended for two-thirds vote as Mr Moon said there only one more vote than it takes to actually pass but the other thing I wanted to
070mention is that any motion that may have been thought about during that 48 hour window can be brought at the next meeting so it's a twoe delay which if for anything that doesn't fall in these rules within a 48 hour window and that really gives us a lot of time it gives us more sufficient time to do our work thoughtfully sometimes when things are brought um within that 48 Hours unless there's some significant emergency by which point we can get the two-thirds vote if it's that much of an emergency it makes it difficult for all of us to have the conversations we need as many of you may know um the sunshine laws um restrict our ability to have conversations more than oneon-one be um outside of a public meeeting and while that's really really
071great in terms of the public being aware of the business we're doing it does take longer for us to have conversations with with 11 other people to make sure everybody understands what a motion we're bringing the implications to have those conversations to to work collaboratively to make changes that need to be made and so this just makes sure that we have at least 48 hours to have the time to have those one-on-one conversations with each other um and to be thoughtful and and talk to staff and think through the implications of what we're doing if there's something that's urgent we can still do it with a two-thirds vote and things that are not urgent within that 48 Hours could always be brought at the next meeting so it just gives us space to be thoughtful
072about our work thank you Miss eore Heiser Dr Anderson thank you um just a couple of questions um the follow on motions um a few months ago we had a motion that was at the table in which we did not find the superintendent to be in compliance of an elel that was not predetermined and that is not a member submitted motion how would that work under this um new proposal because there are two possible outcomes to the agendized item as written in uh the agenda and that is compliance or not so then last time we were able to submit a a uh we were able to submit a substitute motion rather than voting not in compliance we offered a substitute motion so that would not then be allowed it would if it was provided 48
073hours before the meeting and I believe the El reports are provided to the board well in advance of the meeting okay so just the fact that it's already written does not will not preclude from switching correct if something's on the agenda the Amendments follow on whatever have to be submitted 48 hours in advance okay so that one is already built built in yeah um and another point of clarification I think I'm a little unclear um the first portion that says per Roberts rules this motion can be adopted by either 2third or with a majority um maybe our parliamentarian can help is yes can help us with that why either usually we have one or the other why is this one like particularly flexible because why would you shoot for 2/3 if you can just get
074majority it's a majority of the entire membership not just a straight majority vote and it's actually an elevated voting requirement because this is a Special Rule of Order I'm Sor can you repeat that second part this is actually an elevated voting requirement because it's a Special Rule of Order but a majority of the entire membership that would be seven regardless of how many members are here is sufficient to adopt this in other words 2third of a of a seveners quorum would not be sufficient for adopting this I see so we need okay thank you for that that's it for right now thank you Dr Anderson Mr Dunn when the motion was originally circulated Schoolboard members there was a lot more explanatory language but this is the totality of the motion is that correct uh it
075says as indicated on the agenda item and the agenda item is the same that's been circulated okay um 48 hours in advance of the regular meeting meting I just wanted to clarify my understanding the regular meeting starts at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday so 48 hours before that would be 700 p.m. on Tuesday is that correct yes and what determines whether a motion is agendized or non- agendized sorry uh the chair and the superintendent as the governance manual States work together to build the uh meeting agenda so if a motion is subm Ed by a school board member more than 48 hours in advance it will be included on the agenda yeah okay are there any exceptions to the term non- agendized motions uh there are two categories there's agendized motions and non- agendized motions right
076so if you brought a motion that would not be an agendized motion so it would require 48 hours if you wanted to change something on the agenda uh on a motion on the agenda already that would require 48 Hours uh the things that don't require the 48 hours so for example somebody couldn't bring a motion at the last possible minute and think nobody can amend amend this nobody can replace this Etc so if you bring something to the agenda other people are allowed to offer amendments Etc inside of that 48 hour uh and that's detailed in the agenda item so so amendments to motions don't need to board member brought motions in other words you have the agenda before you a week in advance of the meeting right so if you want to offer amendments
077to agendized items or substitute motions or follow on motions 48 hour rule applies if you bring a new motion to the table outside of that 48 hour window somebody can offer an amendment to that we can't cut somebody off just because somebody may have submitted at 6:59 p.m. on Tuesday Tuesday and think ah now they can't touch it not the case also there's a big carve out here if you get two-third of the board you can bring any motion is there any does this affect at all uh the rights of school board members to object to items on the consent agenda no even on the day objecting is not a motion okay just want to clarify thank you although I would say that the consent agenda is also posted a week in advance of the
078meeting giving board members ample time to study it and provide their objections early uh I'll note there there it is a regular occurrence that items on board docs are not posted until sometimes the day of the hearing uh so it's certainly not the case that the full agenda and everything that goes with that agenda are posted a week in advance that has not been the case for any hearing as long as I've been on this board Mr shman since this is my motion could I respond to that uh you not been you have to wait to be recognized Mr Moon I'm sorry um and since there's nobody else you can have a go back thank you Mr chairman we discussed that aspect at The Last Retreat to Mr D so we are we did ask
079a superintendent or anybody else to post on necessary documents as soon as possible so we can do our J jobs in the best way we can thank you Mr Moon Dr Anderson I'm sorry Mr Moon I could not make out what you had said can you repeat your last statement we did ask a super in you're asking me Dr Anders Mr chairman may I okay we did ask a superintendent to provide you know post you know all the necessary documents that we need to make a decision at the regular board meetings as soon as possible okay would as soon as possible be more than 48 hours hopefully more than 40 hours yes because we need to have the 40 hour okay I I just want to make sure I I got lost a little bit
080and I apologize because I wasn't at the retreat when this was discussed regarding substitute motions um let's just kind of go back to an example that I have just so I can kind of structure my thinking when Miss Marin and I brought the sub the motion for phasing to the um boundary policy clearly that was done way within 48 hours can substitute motions to that be brought at the dis in this setting and this under I believe the final language for that motion was brought the night before the meeting so it would have to be brought uh 48 hours in advance just like the substitute uh The Substitute motion would have to would not qualify because it was brought within that period in other words you can't run out the clock by submitting a motion
081at 659 and think that nobody can offer an amendment or something else the motion that you're speaking about not the uh substitute was sent to the board final anguage the night before the meeting so that wouldn't have been possible because it was not within the it was not outside of the 48 hour window so let's just walk this back a little bit let's say it was sent within 48 Hours substitute motion can just be brought at any point after that correct or an amendment or what have you that way a board member is not or the board is not penalized for somebody sharing a motion at the last minute what I don't agree with your timing um thank you for answering the question Mr McDaniel a quick quick question um and I should I could
082probably gather this if I write closer um if an item is like we had an item pulled off of consent this morning which it's fine um how would this rule if passed impact amendments that would potentially be brought to an item pulled off consent for Action if at all it is it is not an agendized item and since that's happening within the 48 hour uh window you're allowed to offer amendments all right seeing no others we will go to the vote all those in favor of the motion on the screen Miss Maron Miss Dixit Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss eore Heiser Mr Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself all those opposed Dr Anderson Mr Dunn all those abstaining Mr mavan will the board or will the clerk read the vote did you
083indicate that miss lady was a yes I'm sorry correct okay so then it's 921 the motion carries thank you agenda item 5.05 Award of contract outdoor classrooms phase one excuse me phase one bid package one I call on Miss Marin for a motion I move that the school board award a contract for the outdoor classrooms Phase 1 bid package one to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder Henley Construction Company Inc in the amount of 1 mil 397,000 and authorize the division superintendent or the chief of facility services and capital programs to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board thank you Miss Marin is there a second Mr mlan second all right Miss Marin would you'd like to speak to your motion I've been waiting for this day since September mcber
0842022 when the board approved the use of one-time state provided funds to do things just like this to improve our facilities for students now you'll see that there are two other contracts later on in the consent agenda that are very similar with two other bid packages and I chose to pull this off because I think it's really important that we stop and understand the process of getting our facilities upgraded and also celebrate that we're having so many schools um the number is 17 17 schools uh getting these classrooms so um the other two contracts that remain on consent they're all all fine in Dandy I just pulled this one off to speak to it and also happens to um include a lot of schools that I represent so I do want to share that what
085um MO is motivated this is to have equity and Outdoor Learning in our schools up until a few years ago we had schools that happen to have parents or volunteers or teacher that could make an outdoor classroom I actually made one out of tree stumps at my child's element school and that's great but that's not Equitable and research shows that students learning outside actually has a ton of research proven benefits in academics and Health and Social and it's also if we're trying to get our students to connect to the climate even more this is a great way to do it um so uh we approved the funds and the funds were there but it took a long time to get to this point and I do have some questions that I wanted to ask the
086superintendent to understand more about this process and so in hopes that we could learn um how to improve this process in the future so what was Dr can you speak to what was the timeline of this initiative from initial board approval vote which I said was September 1st of 22 to contract award tonight the timeline I think you've established it would be from 2022 to this evening so it's roughly two years right that I did I did say that I'm sorry I'm so excited um it's okay so we had money earmarked for these Outdoor Learning spaces and initially the construction was expected to begin in summer of 2023 and completed within two years so Dr re can you speak to how we got off of that timeline why did that not occur yes ma'am uh
087Miss samansky I know has been tracking this process since she arrived in Fairfax County Public Schools uh would you please clarify some of the challenges we faced certainly so as you mentioned we had funding approved that funding loaded in Fall of 2022 we then went on into procurement and had an architect on board to start the design process and I'd say January or very beginning of 2023 since then we've gone through the design process and spent quite a bit of time going through our permitting and so what you're seeing tonight is three packages those are the first groupings of projects that have received a permit and we're able to go out to bid uh the remaining are still with the county or close to being ready to to go out to bid okay thank you
088and I do have to admit that I had knowledge of the permitting process because as I learned in January of this year of the 37 outdoor classrooms slated to be reviewed and and construction begun the previous Summer by this January only eight of those sites had been permitted so due to some continued followup by June 8th the School Division had received 19 permits so that's a pretty rapid expansion over that time um can you explain what in the permitting process like takes so long um each school is site specific but I think in general one of the biggest hurdles we have hit with the Outdoor Classroom project in particular is an interpretation by the county they were seeing this as adding additional space or capacity and therefore needing to bring things like the plumbing code
089back up to code and asking that improvements be made to the inside of the building which you know we definitely felt strongly against because it was way outside the scope of building this outdoor patio space uh we didn't have the funds obviously to add like drinking fountains and whatnot and what have you to all these projects so that kind of just speaks at a high level again each project is a little bit more nuanced from one to the other but you know during that time we got involved and had more conversations with the county and got some of the ones that were a little you know more amable across the finish line and then we wanted to make sure we had enough ready to go to put together a competitive package we wanted to bundle
090them to make sure we had a good economies of scale and that's why we got them into these three packages that you see up here tonight thank you so in summary and I want to correct myself 22 are being approved tonight and 15 remain so these 22 schools are all middle and high schools which all have a population of at least a thousand students so we're talking about a lot of students using these every day and I think we really need to you know look to the county to be a leader with us and a collaborator to prioritize these public projects that are being used by thousands of students every single day and um I I certainly hope that future facilities Works don't does not take this long because our students Remain the County's constituents
091even when they're inside our school building I will leave it at that thank you m Mar and Mr mine would you like to speak to your second thank you yes well I I do want to first thank uh Miss Marin for her persistence with this this was obviously something that came forward during the pandemic not only because of the pandemic but because it's important for students but um it has certainly the process is well outlasted the pandemic unfortunately um but that does mean we're prepared for the next one at least in this aspect so that that is good um but I do think it also shows the importance of persistence uh what I have seen um coming back back to this board is that things in the past that this board has uh approved um
092and expected to move forward whether it was salad bars that took 12 Years or or there are countless examples uh but uh we need to find a way to make sure that the the initiatives that we set forth um aren't just um wiped Away by by midlevel staff um and uh this is this again is a good example but I'm uh very grateful to staff as well who have persisted and made sure that this comes forward this is a great benefit to our students to our teachers um and um it will certainly help uh teach the importance of um not only getting to Green but environmental stewardship uh and that's something we can all be grateful for thank you thank you Mr mine Miss seore Heiser thank you and again I appreciate the hard work
093of Staff this was something we talked about when um we started the the previous board about expanding outdoor classrooms I did have a question though I noticed that there's about 15 maybe a few more schools that aren't contracted either on the two that packages that are on consent or the one that um is on action and two out of those three are in the bradic district and our large schools Robinson is an incredibly large school that doesn't have a contract Woodson is another one um anandale which is not located in the bradic district but has a decent amount of bradic students so I'm kind of curious in in fact I think the only one West Springfield and Irving are on there but again I'm kind of curious why such large schools with a middle and
094a high school combines as Robinson hasn't gotten a contract yet sure I'd need to get more information because again it's really nuanced to the design itself if the existing plumbing code was way off from what's in the existing building again we really have to take it on a Case by casee basis I will say though since getting involved and we've been trying to build stronger partnership with the county at the staff level and so that's where you saw that big uptick in a bunch of permits being released and we're continuing to work very collaboratively with them to get the rest over the finish line and so I do want to commend um the staff and the county staff working with us through that in the last uh six months that's I'm so glad to hear
095about the collaboration with the county I know that environmental stewardship and Outdoor Learning spaces is important to them as well I just wanted I was just kind of curious when I saw the few that were left why there were so many in that particular district and what was going on um I don't think it's a county I just was curious if it's something with the school if it's something I need to advocate for as that District rep um but I'm glad to I'm really glad to hear about the collaboration I know this is a an issue that's important for both of us I know the county supports it as well so I'm glad to hear that thank you thank you Miss seore Heiser Dr Anderson thank you uh and thank you as well to miss
096Marin for her continued advocacy on this along along the lines of what we just asked can you speak a little bit Miss um zensky regarding the criteria that was used to determine the schools that would um have outdoor classrooms you know that was determined back in 2022 when they were figuring out how to allocate that one-time funding so I would have to go back and look at that I believe middle schools and high schools were selected because that's what the funding could allow there's a lot more elementary schools so I believe the strategy was to focus on the secondary schools and also those schools typically have a much higher enrollment and can affect more students and impact them okay and that's very curious because along the lines of what Miss seis moiser just said none
097of the middle schools in the that serve Mason District students have been identified Glasgow which can serve a lot of students and Po and home and um I'm sorry and Luther Jackson those are not on the list so I'd be curious to find that information um secondly can you speak to what the scope of the Outdoor Classroom what should families think will what should families look to being erected in those spaces sure and I'm happy to actually provide a little narrative um we were actually working on that this morning in advancement of the hopeful passing of this um action item and it at a high scale it's going to be nice paved area so that you can actually have teaching and learning take Place seating um I think rain collection U and a variety of
098sustainable features thank you thank you Dr Anderson all right seeing no others we will go ahead and have the vote all those in favor of the motion on the screen Miss Marin Miss Dixit Mr mline Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seore Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself that is unanimous the motion carries congratulations all right agenda item 6.01 performance review instructional program el9 monitoring report I call on Dr Reid for a monitoring report on Executive limitation 9 instructional program so good evening chairman frish and uh we are teeing up the presentation for executive limitation 9 and uh this is discussing the instructional program and we recently had uh several Lively conversations both at senior leadership and also this morning at the All County principal meeting so
099this is clearly one of our core missions our instructional program here in Fairfax County and I'm not sure Janet are you running it or dancon okay let's go ahead and go to the next slide thank you as a reminder um executive limitation 9 talks about uh our program of instructions for all students that's aligned with the division's Strategic plan goals and offers um innovated academic learning experiences and so forth as you see on the screen um and again with as with all executive limitations at the time of this report to the best of my knowledge information and belief we've gathered information and evidence that I believe supports compliance with the board's executive limitation associated with this topic so this evening I'll walk through the essential uh components there are actually 11 areas of el9 and
100on this slide you see items 1 through five and on the next slide you'll see items 6 through 11 so what I'm going to do is uh tonight uh again we've tried to work with adding some newly added or updated areas of executive limitation 9 and I want to remind those watching um and those uh here this evening uh to note that the full report is available on board dos so the first topic area of this El is to deliver academic curriculum and a rigorous instructional program uh and it's important to note that FCPS aligns its academic curriculum and instructional program to the Virginia standards of learning or our s Sol's and there are new standards in English math and social studies the full implementation of the 2024 English standards of learning and the 2023
101mathematics standards of learning will happen in the 2425 school year uh that would be this year so while we're doing all the other accreditation and accountability conversations we also um updating standards uh and social studies is currently being revised to match the implementation of new standards in the 25 26 school year which will be next year uh planning and pacing guides here in the division provide a high degree of Direction and high quality curriculum resources to guide instructional planning and to work towards ensuring all standards of learning are addressed want to remind folks that our mathematics planning and pacing guides reflect vooe uh revisions and support our goal of all students minimally reaching algebra by 8th grade again this is one of our strategic plan goal three measures the basil curriculum materials that have been
102purchased for k6 language arts um are also being adopted at this time so we want to make sure that we're ensuring programs curriculum and materials support Equitable access and opportunity and and we'll be talking a little bit about that later this evening in the academic matters portion we'll be drilling down into literacy uh but I also want to note that we have new English language development basil resource materials for the 2425 school year um and in fact this is actually a first in the school division to have um aligned materials that are basil materials for our English language development for multilingual Learners so as we also work uh to think about Equitable access want to make sure we're highlighting our Universal Design for Learning work and excited to continue our work with in-person high impact
103tutoring and you can see the data on the slide as of May this past year we had 10,800 students served through high impact tutoring and for this year uh will'll be in 169 elementary and middle schools with approximately 550 tutors uh we also want to make sure that in el9 we are regularly reviewing instructional programs and practices we also have a seven-year cycle uh for conducting review for new basil resources which are generally aligned to the cycle of revision for the Virginia standards of learning however those are moving more quickly than we're uh able to continue to uh keep up with them particularly this year uh I do appreciate uh that the board members will be be um identifying K12 social studies uh representatives for the basil resource adoption review and we've moved up our
104K12 mathematics uh basil resource adoption review um a year into the 2526 implementation for next year which is a year ahead and 2627 for elementary as we recognize um new math standards are also going to require um a new approach so Additionally the department of special services is going to continue reviewing the enhancement plan and Associated data we want to continue to ensure consistency and instructional expectations across all schools and program and this did Garner quite a little bit of conversation um with the team but we do know that um with the Virginia literacy act uh the same training and evidence-based strategies have really been provided across the entire School division during this past summer we had over 5,800 Elementary teachers and Specialists attend three days of professional development um and we've provided specific Divi
105uh guidance for language arts and social studies teachers to ensure that sixth grade students in the middle schools and at the elementary schools are all receiving comparable time with evidence-based literacy instruction as sixth grade um so sixth grade whether they reside in the three middle schools or the elementary schools are receiv receiving the same um guidance so um I think we're on slide 10 great uh secondary grading and Reporting guidelines were updated this year for a one-year um purpose while we're reviewing uh those obviously in the governance Committee of the board um as well as subsequent to the governance committee review likely the grading committee will reconvene um the division's assessment plan outlin a collection of Assessments that fulfill various roles um in measuring um academic participation student learning and so forth at the elementary
106level schools are provided with instructional time allocations as well that support um the development of academic learning so um here we see the final set of newly updated evidence about consistency across all schools and programs when we look at our multi-tiered systems of support and how we're working across the system with that there are division-wide expectations and a research-based framework uh for this particular school year all interventions are going to be documented and progress will be tracked through our student information system all schools also have developed a school Improvement and Innovation plan that aligns to goal three of the Strategic plan so that level of alignment really provides some organizational coherence which I believe and you will see in our goal reports um is really moving our student achievement forward so um this item talks
107about how we effectively um measure student progress for this uh 2425 school year we have division-wide common assessments and this is a first in terms of more formative common assessments and these will be in mathematics reading and science at the Elementary grades this will be at the unit level and sixth grad students in Middle School will also participate in the reading unit assessments um at middle and high school levels division-wide Comon assessments will be used in select courses uh primarily again in reading math and science at designated schools uh screening and growth assessments will continue and staff will continue to monitor strategic plan goals uh during this particular Academic Year we will continue to have updates on the efforts of the division in all five goal areas in FCPS again we do have a strategic
108and intentional data collection effort that ensures um information is collected on a regular basis um and reviewed by the team and where necessary resources deployed so just a lot of uh data collection as part of this work the next part of this executive limitation shows how we provide an instructional program that includes opportunities for students to develop executive functioning skills uh social emotional and portra of graduate skills as well as talents and interests in other more specialized areas we have a consistent scope and sequence and required advisory lessons um as well as Equitable access to lessons in academic and career planning academic habits and social emotional learning we also um this particular school year have actually implemented uh we worked on the design last year but we implemented a pilot to expand the develop Vel
109M of executive functioning skills and support in grades prek through 12 at several of our schools now I'd like to highlight how we Implement inclusive and accessible instructional programs and practices uh there's an extensive list on the screen of our work related to the enhancement plan for students with disabilities in the 2425 school year and um there's several I think that we want to highlight uh particularly um implementing machine translations via the Google Translation Hub finalizing the Sear's functionality to securely translate I AP and 504 documents um and looking at an inclusive instructional education framework with guiding principles um that I think are really critical I know another piece that I don't think made it on our slide around this topic is our connection for staff very very early um like at the by the
110first day of the year in terms of what the accommodation needs are for students um in General Ed classes so as we uh provide more opportunities in general education classrooms for students with IEPs that the um IEPs are more accessible to General Ed staff as we work with students um also want to talk about um some efforts around our Twilight program and last year of the 275 students that were served 94% either went on to the next grade level satisfactory or graduated again our summer learning program provided additional opportunities and enrollment for Last Summer the summer of 2024 across all learning programs uh was approximately 35,000 students so I think there's a reason why many staff are saying it was a short summer because many staff were doing summer school um with 35,000 students involved
111item nine on this report is about supporting meaningful research Arch based Innovation and instructional delivery again this is about embedding our portrait of a graduate and learning model in our core content um we're also looking at a framework of AI principles and guidance for staff around this topic uh We've also revised FCPS math standards infusing uh computer science standards into the curriculum and our espit in collaboration with our educational technology team are working with staff to advance meaningful learning experiences around the development of digital literacy and digital citizenship in alignment with our International uh standards for techn technology and education also want to mention that we have appropriate And Timely input from students parents and staff in the development of curriculum and instructional programs we have a list of those committees on the slide um
112and these are examples but they're not exhaustive as we have many opportunities for um stakeholders to provide input to conclude uh this executive limitation I want to share that we do ensure families have access to resources and information to support School Success we've launched a redesigned website this past August um which is more accessible usable and has a better and more consistent and intuitive structure uh families are accessing a variety of tools to support Children's Learning around schooly and talking points um um resources are being provided on our public website on a variety of topics and back to school nights have been exceptionally well attended so at this time uh board uh this concludes the summary of the monitoring report for executive limitation 9 instructional program thank you thank you Dr Reid at this time
113I now invite board members to ask any clarifying questions or provide comments we're going to start with Dr Anderson thank you I'm going to try to go in order of this um I think for the first um section of this which is number one one of the things that you provided one of the EV new evidence SEC um information that you provided is the provision of pacing guides which have been in practice for quite some time can you kind of share a little bit in terms of why that is identified as new evidence yes ma'am I believe it's because they've been updated to reflect the new standards so they're not the uh former pacing guides they are new updated slides that match the new standards okay thank you um another question that I have because
114I know we have had this continuing discussion on the provisions that are put forward by the central office and whether or not teachers are utilizing them and finding them useful what information can you share regarding the pacing guides who is using them are they guidance or are they expected to be utilized what feedback do we receive from staff regarding their utility so at this point I can speak directly to the new reading basil in the K through six realm I've been in a number of elementary schools recently and the pacing guides are really being utilized heavily because I know that our elementary teachers went through what was called the launch um in classrooms and then as we hit unit one pretty much we were hitting unit one across the division and um staff I know
115unit one has been more of a lift than the launch uh but it's been very clear that the pacing guides are being utilized because as you move from school to school grade levels across schools are very much so working in the same pacing space and how are we collecting that data or are we collect that those anecdotes I will have to say that Dr Presidio or Miss clco are we collecting that particular data um I know that uh well be quiet are we collecting that data well we're trying to decide who's going to answer this question so maybe we'll both give you some answers and together it'll make a complete answer um the first thing I would say with the pacing guides um they are used heavily and have always been used heavily it's been
116my experience since working here um we get feedback from principles from resource teachers instructional coaches that work with teachers to use those guides and then we collect that information and feedback on an annual basis and do typically during the summer curriculum revisions and updates to those guides um with teachers from our schools right so it's not just done in central office it's done collaboratively um so those are highly utilized U I don't know if uh Noel wants to provide any additional information on the basil materials as well so I think what I would provide is this year and Dr Reed mentioned it we've also moved at the elementary level to Common assessments um and so those common assessments are not just open to give them whenever you want they're in a certain window and they're
117based on those pacing guides so I think we're going to have some really good data this year about pacing and um an achievement um with that addition thank you Dr proa just a quick followup and that data that you collect at the end of the year what was the usage of the pacing Guides of last year well we again collect qualitative data we're not collecting quantitative data so qualitatively they're used heavily um but again I couldn't tell you school by school grade level byg grade level classroom by classroom quantitatively thank you um I I hope that we can perhaps get there one of the components of this um section is rigorous instructional program just really emphasis on the word rigorous how do you evaluate that the rigor is consistently applied across our schools I know
118that the program is available but how are we determining rigor and whether or not that is consistent well I think that what's been important is matching our curriculum to the standards right the standards of learning so assuming that the Virginia Department of Education is putting out standards that would be identified as um rigorous then our curriculum and our pacing guides have been designed to match those standards I believe that we're really trying to um and we'll talk more about that in goal our goal three report and probably goal five report um we're looking at the academic intensity of our course taking patterns right middle through High School in particular and it's specifically high school right now and I think what we want to make sure is that as we look at uh the match between
119um the level of intensity of courses the GPA and test scor and then postsecondary success that there's a match that would by backmapping determine it was rigorous um also to miss Clo's point with the common assessments uh you know we have high expectations here in Fairfax County and we want to make sure we maintain those for each and every student and the ability for us to provide these time sensitive common assessments means that we will know in real time not at the end of a semester or at the end of a year but in real time rather we need to provide resources to um lift our students to those standards thank you and if you were to look at my notes when you get to page 10 one of the things you will see is
120when you talked about the common assessments I wrote very exciting that to me is a a great opportunity to evaluate consistency but from what I think I understand the rigor that we are utilizing it's not our own definition it's as defined by the standards as laid out by by vdoe currently but as I mentioned um we are creating internal um common assessments which we believe um will likely be more rigorous because we're working to accelerate our math uh trajectory specifically right now thank you uh the continuing evidence this is again very helpful information to have but what would be helpful for me is to understand um better the impact of some of these activities um for example there's lots of information here regarding the use of tital One funds can you speak a little bit
121to the impact of those funds as not anecdotally but as you have gathered it in some way so that we know that there's a great return on investment even though I think all of our gut tells us it is I'm just looking for the evidence so you know I think that the schoolwide instructional models in particular that we're looking at um we are seeing an improvement in um students achievement you're going to see that in goal three when we uh present that um we're also looking at participation in programs the board has been very clear that all Title One schools need to have an opportunity to participate for example in Science Olympiad math Olympiad this year every school every Title One school elementary school has Science Olympiad and math Olympiad and three years ago that
122was not the case so I think there's some really clear data points that say you know what this was is I mean not unlike outdoor classrooms or salad bars right like this is a high interest expectation of the school board so we need to make it so and our team has gone out and worked really hard uh to make sure that we have those programs now in our Title One schools um I will say our Title One School Staffing this year we were very intentional um with Staffing early and much much uh more robust Staffing both from our R department and our Title One Department recruiting and Staffing our Title One schools night and day from last year to this year I I don't know if you want to add more about the impact of
123Title One miss clco or Dr Presidio no I mean only thing I would add is some of the things that we've add centrally like the math Olympiad the Avid you're not going to see it very um discreetly I think it's going to be a long-term investment when we start to look at cour taking patterns you know for Title One students as they matriculate up hopefully we're going to start to see that increase of of rigor in the courses they choose and um and their outcome so I think there's a long-term investment here too that needs to be recognized yeah the Avid numbers why don't you share those because I know that was another uh really heavy lift last year in terms of integrating Avid into our Title One elementaries and I don't have the number
124but we are we are um on track to have every Title One school have an avid program I think by next school year right sure completed and I appreciate that and when this is presented and we have some of these initiatives as designed to do certain things what I would look for are some of those data points to really articulate what the impact of these activities are because that continues to be uh Missing I think we're going to get more but this is the core this is the instructional program so this is the place where I'd like to see those um alignments be a lot tighter um I will take a go back thank you Dr Anderson Mr dun thank you um I I appreciate all all the positive changes that are reflected in in
125the presentation um I want to ask specifically um there was a a report prepared in September 2022 by the American institutes for research uh entitled a special education comprehens of program review and there were uh 10 pages of recommendations Pages 122 through 132 it had been my prior understanding before uh being sworn into the board that um there had not been uh complete Fidelity of implementation of those recommendations not for any negative reason but pandemic and other reasons coming out of the pandemic so I wanted to ask whether um this this program doesn't make reference to that report and and there's a lot of um positive changes uh recommendations in that report that that should be implemented so I wanted wanted to ask what is the status of that report and the implementation of those
126recommendations yes sir we actually did note that here I believe on number three page seven of the actual um report and I don't recall where it is on the presentation but on item three it's under new evidence and again uh We've this year one of the things that we um I think it's sprinkled throughout but in number three we've retained a consultant I know this fall and I believe this week was the kickoff meeting with Dr Julie Cen who's going to work with us on a number of the um Associated data points and um enhancement plan pieces um Dr Presidio do you want to I think you've kind of worked on the special ed enhancement plan also it looks like um it's in continuing evidence in some places and new evidence and others because some
127things about the plan are launching this year and some launched last year do you want to sum up kind of where we are with that yeah I mean just real briefly to start I would say I mean it it's a great question because this is one of the major pieces of work for uh us right now in the instructional World um after we received the report from Air um we engaged in the development of an initial draft plan uh we presented that plan to community stakeholders to the board in 2023 um we got requests for revisions which we made uh We've presented uh that updated version uh to the board and the public it's posted on our website it's um basically the enhancement plan for uh supporting students with disabilities it has responses to all
12819 of the recommendations from air but as Dr Reid mentioned a number of those are multi-year uh efforts that we're going to have to put in place uh to be able to actually meet uh what the spirit of the recommendation is so for example we want to make sure that we're exceeding our uh Virginia Department of Education targets for inclusion um we're not meeting those right now we've got a long ways to go to do that so it's going to be a multi-year effort to be able to do that we want to make sure for example that we're supporting our twice exceptional students and accessing um the advanced curriculum that they need to be receiving that's going to be a multi-year effort to make sure that we're able to do that because those are going
129to be some significant changes uh not just to our instructional practices but to our programming as well um so we're continuing to work on that we are working with a consultant right now primarily around um the focus on inclusion and making sure that students are educated in the least restrictive environment uh so we're excited about the work we had a great meeting um with Dr C and her team uh actually just earlier today um so we'll be happy to provide the board uh with more updates as that work progresses I I think it would be beneficial I I appreciate that response I think it would be beneficial um just for transparency for uh FC CPS to establish a a a scorecard that's on a website saying you know of the 19 recommendations these have been
130implemented or these are the dates by which they will be implemented and and as uh M doc Mr Presidio said uh you know update that you know every six months or so just so the public can see you know has this been implemented or not because to my understanding all of the recommendations were accepted and endorsed by FCPS is that correct that's correct yes sir um I also want to ask about a May 2020 uh program review of the advanced academic programs um es especially uh focused on ensuring Equitable access for all students in all schools um you know in the mount Veron District that I represent uh we have uh had issues that for example we haven't had Equitable access to uh to TJ uh but now with the reforms that were made to
131admissions we have greater participation but we also need to make sure for all of our Advanced academic programs uh from elementary all the way through high school that every student has equal opportunity uh and equal access so I was wondering if you could speak to that is is has have all of those recommendations been accepted where are they in terms of implementation so yes sir uh I think there you talking about the Jonathan plecker report in 2020 right I just reviewed that again actually as a result of a an email we all received so I think in reviewing that it's it's critically important that we have access and opportunity for each and every student that is able um to meet those expectations and I I know that something in 2020 um you know that that
132report certainly uh shed some light on so Dr Presidio maybe you could provide um an update on how that report's been um integrated into the work in the division yeah we did not um re receive as many recommendations as we did in the air report um some of the main recommendations were looking at our identification process and trying to make sure that that was really uh as Equitable as possible particularly um having opportunities to identify students that might come from uh linguistically diverse backgrounds for example so making sure that we have the right screening instruments so um we did make some adjustments to the uh screening instruments that we use in the identification process um as well as some procedural changes to that process so it's it's quite um it it's quite an onerous process
133to be honest with you we screen about 7,000 students per year uh for advanced academic Services every student is screened by multiple screeners who have to go through a rigorous interr reliability process now um there's an appeal process if if a family doesn't like the determination so those were some of the things that we tightened up with our identification process we also been working on access issues uh making sure that uh students have the ability to receive uh level four services at their base school if they would like to do that um so we're pretty close to having robust local level four programs in all of our elementary schools uh we've got about five schools that we still need to do some work to make sure that they've got that sequence grade through grade three
134through grade six uh there were also some recommendations with respect to secondary work uh tightening up uh consistency of honors classes and having an honors framework um that would support again consistency across uh all of our middle schools and high schools that have honors courses um and we did some additional work around identifying Talent Development um basically looking for students that maybe were not screened into advanced academic Services uh but were basically showing signs of high aptitude so we put some enrichment programs in place our Young Scholars Program uh for example um increasing the amount of opportunities for after school and summer activities for young scholars um as well as a Fel of implementation with Staffing of advanced academic resource teachers uh across all of our schools so those were some of the responses to
135the major recommendations I I believe one of the recommendations was to provide all elementary school teachers with uh training in advanced academics and identification of of students with uh particular talents uh has that been accomplished yeah we do have we do have professional development in that area um again the amount of professional development opportunities that we have for staff right now far far outweigh the amount of time for staff to be able to complete them so there's initial training um that staff receive and then there's additional training that staff can receive if they choose to receive it um but again you know we don't have a super high participation rate in some of that optional additional training but the base level training uh exists yes if if there's a desire if there's a recommendation from
136uh professional reports to provide that training uh has FCPS looked at providing Financial incen or additional time uh other measures to encourage uh teachers to actually complete that optional training which may be optional from their perspective but from uh the benefit uh to every child to be able to have Equitable access to Advanced academics uh we should consider it mandatory because both from a system perspective and a child's perspective providing them the opportunity to realize their their full potential um May that shouldn't be optional yeah I don't know that I gave you the best answer to that I I need to distinguish between the um training that that staff Reed to be able to identify signs uh that a student might need to be screen for advanced academic Services um students are not dependent on
137a teacher identification for screening though um a family can refer a student a student can refer themselves for screening um our Advanced academic resource teachers are trained specifically to look for students in the classes that they provide instruction and coaching in to advocate for students uh to go through the screening process so screening does not require a teacher recommendation but teachers do receive training to identify those behaviors um in in uh abilities that students um might be exhibiting that would uh need them to be screened um the additional training that I'm talking about is more training in uh the types of instructional strategies to really support those Learners in their classroom there's some base level training for that but then there's a series of courses that teachers can take to basically earn like a micro
138credential uh serving Advanced academic uh students and and those are those optional courses that I was talking about thank you thank you Mr dun Miss eore Heiser thank you and um I appreciate Mr dun bringing up the special enhancement plan and the um air report because that was actually one of my questions is that um I'll just start with there I'm glad to see that the enhancement plan is mentioned in this report and I know we've had lots of conversations yes ma'am over the last two years on this enhancement plan um so I'm glad to see some of the things that are working I'm kind of curious to talk about updating the I AP progress report form in sear so I'm still hearing from families um regarding the rating scale on the I AP progress
139report which is one of the recommendations from the air report and I believe one of the things that was in the special enhancement plan so I'm kind of curious if the update still includes that rating scale or not that I don't know the answer to yeah I think I better double check that when I get back to you in writing just to make sure I'm giving you the right answer on that one I know we've started that I don't know if it's been completed and is currently um in use or if there's still more work to do on that so I better double check on that one for you yeah I just I think that's great I just the reason I bring that up is because it's listed here as newly added or updated evidence
140and so I would recommend that if something isn't completed that perhaps it's not evidence of compliance which which number was that on it's on page 13 um under enhancement plan for special education students with disabilities it is bullet uh one two three four five six updating the progress rep report form and I I would recommend perhaps is next year once it's updated but updating to me isn't really evidence of compliance it's evidence of working towards compliance yeah I just don't know how many have been updated I don't see ter one progress report form it's not like updating individual ones right like it's a form and SE Stars that's used for progress reports that there's a one through five rating scale and then teachers can put narratives if they want to and these progress reports are
141sent quarterly and so you wouldn't be like you would update a school at a time right it's one form that's used no you're absolutely right my my point just is I know we're working on that I just don't know if it's live in sea stars or not so I better just double check on that one I know I appreciate what you're saying I appreciate the double checking I'd rather get the I just don't think if it's not done it should be listed as evidence yeah um and similarly the inclusive education framework I recall the last time we talked about that it was really we're going to do inclusion by doing inclusion and so I'm kind of curious what additional guiding principles and implementation it says implementing an inclusive framework so has it been implemented or
142where are we in the implementation so again that's an area where we have created um documentation and guidance but that's part of the work that we're going to be doing with Dr C um to really make sure that she's reviewing that and that we've got the right model uh before we scale try to scale things up across the division uh but we are piloting uh new inclus programming models right now so for example at the pre um uh level we've got three different inclusion models that we're piloting in preschool classrooms this year um with the intent to try to figure out which of those models or if all of those models are going to be scalable across the division um but obviously we've got to do the same thing at k12 and um that's a
143lot of the work that we're going to be doing with Dr C over the the remainder of this year I appreciate that I guess what I was trying to say is the Inclusive Preschool and I believe that was listed separately here is great and I love it but it's different than the inclusive education framework and The Guiding principles and so I don't want to complate the two here but there were specific guiding principles in a framework that I know was presented as part of the special at enhancement plan materials in fact it was also submitted to vooe as evidence of inclusion and so I just want to have more information on what that is different from what we had talked about a year ago so again we've created documentation around that an updated framework but
144again we that's where work that we want to make sure is the best work that we can do and we've got the best model possible um so that's work that we're engaging with Dr C and before we scale something up across the division so maybe we should link to that form can we go back and link to what we've developed so we can provide a link to you for that that's what I was going to ask I understand it's it's ongoing work of course but I'd be curious to see what change since it's again listed as newly added I'd be curious what changes were made so that was another question that I had um same with the progress report i' be curious to see what I because that's been a big bone of contention this
145rating scale because it ends up being somewhat difficult to interpret progress and so I really if it has been newly added evidence I'd love to see what the change is um so that's another piece I'm also I I have to me I love the fact that there's executive functioning Pilots after 10 years of asking for it so I'm really thrilled to see that however I'm a little concerned um at the elementary school that's only for tier two and tier three because a lot of twice exceptional students may not be receiving tier two or tier three instruction they may be receiving tier one but developing those executive functioning supports for twice exceptional and general education students is super important to ensure that they can maintain that generaliz the inclusive atmosphere in middle and high school so
146I'm concerned that the pilot at elementary school is only tier two and tier three can you help me understand why and also how many schools this pilot is at so there were a couple things we wanted to do with this pilot right a couple things one at the middle and high we wanted to integrate executive functioning into like advisory period for students they didn't lose an elective so we have several of those Pilots at I don't know how many how many middle and Highs are we doing I want to say seven but I could be off on that it's about seven yeah okay seven schools and I we'd have to get back to you with the names of those schools um but we did create uh new guidelines for IEP meeting this year to offer
147that as an option uh for families as they plan for next year because that was one of the big uh challenges last spring as we began to work on this pilot is we'd have to go back and redo IEP meetings so that's guidance that's being provided right now in IEP meetings um so that we can set next year up for not to be a pilot so we're trying to be uh how do I say I mean some of the things are complete and some of the things we're doing this year but that's a big shift for the uh system to do that uh for the Elementary uh we picked um this was the name of that un this is unstuck and untarget uh at the elementary and we've been working with the authors at Children's
148National around how to use that right um a number of our schools had been using it previously at elementary and it really is designed at elementary for tier 2 and tier three um so we brought more schools on board uh with that work to expand that work this year uh with the goal of scaling that up to all elementary schools um I think 2 years from now is where we would be so my time is up but I still wanted the number of elementary schools I'll take a go back thank you m I'll get you the exact number but it's like two dozen thank you Miss seiser Heiser Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman I what I didn't realize was that the presentation that was is giving to us this evening is newe evidence or
149updated evidence and I should have gone and gone back to the last year's report and review the Baseline first and then and then take a look at the updated that's that's my mistake so this might have been already included what I'm about to ask you might have been included in your base report from last year I don't know exactly when last year this was presented but I was trying to find under eight uh number eight meet a a instructional programs and practices that meet the unique strengths backgrounds and Readiness and learning style of each student and supporting the students in their learning uh I think this is something that I think I had shared with you before in a public setting that uh you know we have a many students many multilingual students in ESO
150programs and our es students when they come to our school system they get they get assessed and then they are placed at the certain level my question to you is uh whether this goes to you or Dr preso or Miss clemco upek uh does their student need to stay in particular level throughout the whole year throughout the whole semester or if there are students in the class who may be moving faster than others who are slower than others is there a different pricen they can move into throughout the year so I think the one of the things we're looking at right now with our multilingual students particularly in the area of math is providing the continuing content movement uh because we've actually at our multilingual student Summit actually heard that we have multilingual students that
151felt like they were placed in courses that they' already taken in their home country and actually I think Megan we heard from several students that felt like I'd already taken algebra I'd already taken geometry but they put me back in it again right so we're really working hard to make sure that um our multilingual students are placed in the highest level course that they can be coming in um particularly in those content heavy courses so I think that's really been a a bit of a shift over the last year and we're also looking at uh Dr Pon who's not able to be here this evening but we're looking at actually um alternative language math textbooks um in secondary middle and high school as well so students can come in and as they work on their
152English language development not lose ground in content in mathematics but I think uh Dr Presidio I don't know if you want to add um kind of some of our thoughts we've actually moved into more Global training for staff around multilingual Learners I shared this evening for the first time we have um basil reading materials for multilingual students which we've never had this is a new it's new for Fairfax County so we're really like doubling down on supporting our multilingual students but do either one of you want to add to that in terms of how we're making sure students are in a more rigorous course because sometimes I think we've maybe um anyhow I'll leave it there well I mean I think you did a I think you did a really good job of covering that
153um I guess maybe just the one thing that I would add is that we're also doing a lot of consultations with schools so when we look at our data and we see uh that for example we might have multilingual Learners that aren't making the expected progress that we would like them to make uh we have consultations with the schools to look at the student schedules um our esol department is actually even having individual consultations with individual students families uh and counselors and administrators at a school I think they did like 300 of those consultations last year uh to try to make sure that students are getting not just placed in in rigorous classes but the appropriate support to be successful in those classes okay thank you thank you uh you I understand what you said
154about the math and other content classes but I my main focus right now is and the students it need to be provided with the right level of instruction in whichever level the place should is placed in so for example if a student moves fast enough to get out of their level to move to the next level do not wait until the end of school year or next year following year to move the street line up that is where where we have a system already in place to provide that kind of a support to the students to the multilingua students I'm talking so I think our intent is um like a triage right as soon as they're ready to be out and doing the next level we want them out and doing the next level I
155would love to see the data well we are excited to show it to you it's in our goal one data and for the first time in a long time we have double digit increases in our multilingual performance you'll see that in goal one okay thank you thank you it's a big deal we're excited our principles were we had a lot to celebrate with with them this morning all right thank you thank you I had another another question but I'm going to wait until it's some other time because that my question that has to do with supporting a less commonly taught World language teachers planning time does not really fit into your e line so I'm going to wait the right time to ask that question yes sir thank you Mr Moon Miss Dixit Dr Reed
156thank you for this presentation uh I definitely um enjoyed talking to some esol teachers at my one of the school visits recently and they showed me the books and the instruction material and they were so excited about it this is the first time ever in FCPS that they had uh you know something to go with now it's a lot to cover right so basically uh now we have to have enough staff to to support that uh curriculum so um I believe some staff some schools and Elementary School have two Esa teachers some have one some have one and a half how do we do that Equitable and because a diversity need is there in pretty much every school like we need that support system so it's a great question Miss Dixit I think we're really
157looking at the models that some of our states um have used where part of becoming part of getting a teaching license requires uh certification in m multilingual learning and teaching strategies so uh I know our team is thinking about how we're going to provide like a micr credentialing program so there I think the data from uh Rich polio last year was that over 80% of our teachers are teaching students who are multilingual so I think all of our staff benefit when we all have uh improved skills around instruction for multilingual students so I think our stry while we're trying to hire more teachers to work with multilingual students directly it's also to make sure that we understand the strategies uh for Effective instructions glad strategies scop strategies and um I think the more the entire
158system understands those the more support our students have across the board um because we're never going to find enough um multilingual teachers to satisfy every content area and we want our students to be able to be you know in AutoCAD Orchestra um advanced math science the Arts Etc right so I think if we all understand those strategies it's going to improve the experience for our students thank you Dr read I have one more follow of questions uh you mentioned about Title One schools have Science Olympiad math Olympiad and I was at uh you know a school and I said do you guys have Science Olympiad math and it's not a title one school but they didn't have it I it was an it was a kind of a sad moment for me to to hear
159that because I think every elementary school should have those programs so a non-title one school so let me know we were supposed to making uh anyhow the focus for sure was the 51 is the 51 Elementary Title One schools 41 uh 41 Title One elementary schools 50 total with middle and high right our 41 schools had to have that program so we'll check in on who is not most of our nwn non-title one schools already had uh math Olympiad Science Olympiad so we'll do a check on that all right I I'll talk to you and but uh but they they have spelling B so I was actually okay spelling B spelling B I think is in the in the classroom activity they they they're doing it which again is a a really great way to
160fun way to learn spellings and um I I I think um that's again used to be a club but now I hear that they're doing more in the classroom so so I I heard really great great things about the new new uh curriculum thank you I I appreciate you mentioning it I also know that it's a lot of work for our staff right because uh the lift of learning the new pieces and how they work together we really appreciate the effort teachers are going to thank you Miss tix Miss St John cunning so I don't have a question but and this is a very comprehensive Report with a lot of information and I I want to compliment the staff um and the superintendent for the breadth and depth of the programs offered from prek through
16112th grade and you know some of our c um our Career and Technical training programs um based on the previous discussion we were having about education and talking about how our schools might be failing but when you look at everything we offer we've had a discussion here on this board board from prek to special education multilingual Learners advanced placement not to mention Arts programming and enrichment programs uh I really commend that we're concentrating on getting staff to teach all these programs because a Common Thread is like we need more we need more of this and I know that we're coming out of covid and not having enough staff and so getting enough staff and the time that it takes to train the staff um there's not enough hours to train the staff for every but
162I want to commend the work that has been done and if you I know from being in the schools the amount of dedication and time teachers put in and how these programs really make an impact and touch our students um just this weekend I was at the White House and there were three graduates from FCPS that were there and they had their High School esol teacher there one of the students works at the White House that's she graduated from here and works at the White House and brought her esol teachers because she was the best Mentor that she ever had and so I know we talk about a lot about the data which obviously is critical but sometimes we miss out on those very personalized connections of how you can have three students that five
163years out are inviting their teacher to come to an event because they value her so much and the impact that they've had and that's one inst one instance of many in this County and so I just want to commend the work and I want to commend the outof the-box thinking with some of this programming um to address the really unique needs that we're seeing so um I know some things are working I know we're working towards some things um but I'm just proud to be a board member for the school district thank you thank you Miss St John cunning Miss Marin yes I just have um two questions or two topics one is so you reiterated that the plan is for a seven-year cycle for Basil renew and we know that we just renewed The
164Literacy one which was quite longer than seven years and that was not on your watch but are there ways that we can try and build in some protections like are the contracts for the basil materials tied to 7even years so that some board in the future has to wrestle with that or you know what can we do to prevent having this delay in the future for any of our basil materials well I I think one of the key um strategies is an annual review of our instructional program which we're doing tonight right so I think um an annual review included where we are on our cycle and what we're doing so this evening I shared with you where we are and I think as years go forward it's at this annual review of the instructional
165program that the board would want to review rather we're staying on track to be honest with you and I think when when you don't have an annual review of where you are it sometimes things get lost in the shuffle because we get busy we get focused on other things and at the end of the day our core mission is educating each and every one of our students right like that's our core Mission well I think something that could be included in future review at least you know while you're you're at the helm is to put like you know T minus how many years until the contract expires this way future boards are confronted with that um in writing so that's one point and the other point is around the executive functioning that's that's great stuff
166it was on slide 14 and there was some talk about Avid and expanding that but so I'm just wondering a little bit more about how Avid can fulfill that need since we are investing in that already is there much overlap or is it kind of different and and I know Elementary Avid isn't as you know um prominent as middle and high so what do you think well I think Avid is a great program for all kids personally um I think that we've committed to Avid in every Title One Elementary again and that's all 41 uh with over three years last year this year and next year by the end of next year that commitment will be complete uh we have aided a number of our middle and high schools and secondary schools um I think
167Avid helps with study skills and personal organization the Wicker strategies note taking and that type of thing I do think there is another element uh that unstuck and on target likely provides uh that might be even more which is likely that tier 2 or tier three support uh Avid might be more of a tier one support for executive functioning if I'm generalizing um but uh you know I I just think that I also uh think that the self-discipline of like homework matters too right like actually having to take something home and bringing it back as long as it's not new material as long as it's just practice material at home um I think that ability to develop the self-discipline the routines the habits of uh effective studenting um will carry over into adulthood so I
168think those are honestly very important thank you Miss Marin I'll take a turn um so I'm realizing that the new format of the El reports creates an interesting dichotomy of focusing on the new stuff right and kind of being like oh good we're still doing the good stuff right yes and the other thing that I've noticed is that there's no you know a bullet does not do sufficient work to show the weight of uh the impact that something has right that uh every bullet looks the same in a document although any one bullet might be a much more significant lift can our members of LT if you don't mind Dr Reed raise their hand if they've had any role any role at all in our transition to literacy based on the science of reading and
169our adoption of the uh language arts basil materials any role at all look at that mhm most everybody and you know even even the people didn't I see a role like you know Mr Malloy was part of the legislative lobbying uh Mr Solomon is hiring people to do the work Mr Foster keeps us making sure that it's legal and that we're servicing St so everybody has a role in this work and so when I see the progress we're making on rolling out not only the transition but also the the basil materials you know I remember when Miss Maron came back to the board having viewed them super excited and now we're seeing that in our staff and in our amilies and so as the board begins to appoint people to the social studies basil selection
170committee I'm seeing on the horizon another opportunity for excitement in the transition of this instructional program and you in passing you told me we're going to speed up our basil selection for math which I see is in the report as well yes sir I mean these are the types of things that will move those numbers that we're after uh and I think of what we're already doing you look at our so data the Improvement that we've seen even without the full adoption of new basil materials um we have a lot to look forward to here so yes sir and I when you look at page 13 when I when you mention bullets meaning something this is the first time we've provided school-based administrators Advanced courses on instructing twice exceptional Learners uh Dr Oli indicated that
171our Academy classes it's the first time we've had um our 2E instruct C Academy classes fill up to the point where um she's added a second section so I I really believe that our staff as we recognize uh the new strategies or the strategies that are going to enable success for each and every student they're really they're diving in and I'm really proud of the staff for creating the the space for this new learning and the staff that are taking advantage of it all the while maintaining all of the other things that we're talking about in this El that were maybe talked about last year but are just as equally important as they were before so um you know I'm going to have to do my job as a board member to remember that um
172the ongoing work is equally important um and to really interrogate whether it's having the desired impact um and I'm very hopeful uh for what we have in store for us especially around the selection of these materials and know that just as everybody at the other deas was involved in the language arts basil selection and implementation they're going to have similar roles for the most part in these other adoptions as well and those are huge lists I don't know if there's a way to uh I'll finish my sentence and then move on but if there's a way in future reports uh to indicate the significance of the lift that it took to accomplish something I think that would be beneficial for the board as well because uh a a little circle on a piece of paper
173just doesn't do it so yes sir I think our staff um would like me to recognize their lift a little more often so I think I'm sure that resonates I think we all could y all right um we have some Gob backs so we will get started with uh Dr Anderson thank you I wanted to talk about um on page six where you had some um information that spoke to the impact of the Lexia program this is indicative of what I was looking for what I've always been looking for which is we're doing this thing what is its impact so that's very clear so I would love to see this show up a little bit more frequently with some of the other areas um being that it's not there and I know how much of
174an investment it is I'm hoping that you can speak to the impact of the high impact tutoring how will we measuring that it's having the desired um impact sure yes ma'am I thought we had a slide on high impact tutoring so let me go back here slide seven maybe um we had let's see here we had as of last May 10,800 students served and um we had the number of students uh we now have 169 Elementary Middle with approximately 550 tutors and I believe um let's look at the next page I thought we had some data on kids being able to move to the next grade level successfully but maybe that was Twilight that was related to Twilight that was Twilight program all right so we will get you some data on the high impact
175tutoring yes ma'am thank you having the numbers is a very good start but knowing what is it that they how they spent their time and how you evaluating um the effectiveness of that time would be very helpful one of the other things that you talked about out here are the instructional rounds similar thing that's a fantastic um strategy in order to really see what's happening in the classrooms so last year administrators and central office folks got involved with that this year I think it's St is stated here that it will be school-based what was the impact of those administrative instructional rounds how do we see that being funneled into some of our current actions so one of the outcomes of last year's I think were the development of the plan to do common assessments this
176year so but I don't know if there are other elements that the impact of the walkthroughs might have had um either Miss Neil or somebody on the team I welcome others because we had many people along this road who attended School uh different schools to um to participate I think one of the strengths is really just grounding each other in what we're seeing right what are you seeing in these classrooms what am I seeing what do we really hold up as as rigorous and and um high quality instructions so the conversations among leadership team members um I think are really important because we all bring our own perspectives and our own experiences together and we come and you know Janis was at at many walkthroughs with me people bringing different perspectives to the table and
177then it was amazing as we did that we started to see some commonalities the things that we all recognized and the things that we all wanted to see and we wanted to see a little bit more commonality hence common assessments or learning targets things that came out in some of the conversations SE definitely wanting to see more student engagement at times and less less teacher talk right like I mean just some common things that we could see and we could really Norm ourselves as a leadership team which makes our work moving forward um you know more uh streamlined and and um more On Target thank you I appreciate that again that's the through line that I would like to see embedded in this report because some of these activities are occurring but it's not obvious
178um a quick question that I had was regarding the teachers remaining um yet to complete their required training I think that's outlined on page eight how many teachers have completed um that literacy training and how many left how many are left so I'm going to rely on uh Miss clco but I know that the summer was like a jump start on the training but my belief is that we did complete training this fall but miss clo so with with such a large population we have to have multiple Avenues to complete this and we definitely had the largest chunk almost 4,000 teachers attend a 3D a three-day Institute so the next best thing was to capture as many as we could on the um teacher work week back so you can imagine it was definitely a
179compressed exactly what you need just to get started those people have also been obviously surrounded by their colleagues who have attended the long GR for training so they're getting some job embedded support um and also through the reading Specialists we've also pulled them out for a day um with substitutes we are very close to our 6,000 we are not quite there yet we've also added some training in for our instructional assistants because they're incredibly invaluable um in this um in this work so we continue to offer um this training and actually academic matters is going to be on this topic too so we'll see it again but we also have asynchronous training that's available for teachers who haven't yet had the opportunity or just want to go back and go over it one more time
180um so we continue to offer both um sessions live with Benchmark uh facilitators our people are out in classroom supporting and we have the asynchronous so um it's almost an everyday thing to keep supporting uh teachers and moving forward with this thank you I appreciate that I'm I'm hitting the same point every time embed it embed that in here of X number of teachers we have this left this much left to go it gives us a greater sense of how much work is happening um on page nine you talked about the guidance regarding the daily number of minutes to ensure consistency in elementary schools now is that guidance or is that a mandatory um recom um expectation sorry I was sidebarr um you saying about instructional minutes yes on page nine I I think it's
181yeah the second large bullet where you talked about guidance to have consistent daily number of minutes and classrooms so we provide that guidance to them and within each subject area it's a little bit of a range um not a 30 minute range but you know 5 to 10 minute ranges so there's some variation there we know with the new basil in order to do it well that you need a certain amount of time and we also are pretty tight on the 30 minutes of intervention every day that happens outside that block there are things that we need to do because they are um set by uh Virginia code as far as PE but in general the schools have to work within their parameters to adjust but we give them guidelines and and um schools I
182think are very grateful to have that assistance and that help I know that that was my time thank you Miss seore Heiser so I'm not going to take my colleagues time to ask all the questions I may have on this report um I understand that there's a lot of things that are being launched this year um either out of the enhancement plan or not the enhancement plan um one thing I wanted to mention when you were mentioning the title one schools versus not I think in fall into one of my colleagues comments about um Science Olympiad I would really encourage you and your staff to look at the schools that were formly Title One are now on the bubble from what the title one percentage changes from a few years ago because I'd be curious
183to know the the breadth of programming I believe it was and correct me if I'm the number is wrong it used to be 40% free and reduced price meals qualified for title one now it's 55% is that correct or there was a change in ratio if I recall change in percentage that qualified for title one and for two years I believe the system this is before your time funded that extra support to those schools as a sort of transition but I'd be curious those schools that were on the bubble how they're doing with some of these programming so something to look at okay yes ma'am um I I want go back to Executive functioning there's there's so many different things but I want to really dig into this a little bit um it mentions in
184here under executive functioning seal and I want and executive functioning are not the same thing correct right and so I don't I think it's great that we have our social emotional learning I think there are some really valuable lessons in there but I don't want to think that that takes the place of executive functioning the other thing I wanted to mention as you're looking at is some of the grading changes that were announced by the administration in June I'm hearing anecdotally actually disincentivize the devel and executive functioning skills so I think it's even more important to make sure we have explicitly teaching and practicing and incentivizing those skills um I see you mentioned Fine Arts in here in that same section and I just would encourage you to look at the numbers in Fine Arts
185um especially after Co and look at the numbers of what levels are being offered and what levels are being combined into classes versus offered individually to talk about the the quality of our Fine Arts programs and I think that was my buzzer okay well I will what that noise um I'm sure you breathing a sigh of relief that was my my buzzer one sentence and all I'm going to say on the executive functioning Pilots please do not limit it and expand it quickly acsd recommended those 10 years ago on unstuck and on target specifically thank you thank you Miss eore Heiser Mr dun uh thank you um so uh in the report it says that FCPS has adopted Benchmark advance for the elementary language arts basil resource which is the science of reading is that
186right yes sir so I think that's a huge advance for um for FCPS after the failure of balanced literacy uh for so many years um we're actually getting back to what works um which is phonics uh what concerns me is just some of the anecdotal reports that um I and I'm sure my colleagues are receiving from teachers um I'll just read you a couple um I'm feeling extremely stressed with the Benchmark the timeline feels too short and the expectations seem quite high it's especially challenging for my English English language uh students and uh or sorry English learner students and I feel helpless trying to support them also believe the training provide wasn't sufficient um there also reports I've received saying that it takes just an extraordinary amount of time uh to prepare just one day
187of lessons and teachers who have been teaching for 30 years years in the county saying that uh while you know the pendulum uh swings in different directions in different years that this is uh Far and Away the the largest burden they've ever had in terms of preparation and and just time required to prepare just one one day of class um so you know it's the right direction clearly to to move forward with the science of reading um but you know we we did Implement quickly um we don't have 100% um training yet and I'm just concerned that the manner of implementation which you know to no one's fault it's a large Workforce a large system uh teachers need more need more support maybe need more classroom planning time maybe need more training and how to
188plan their lessons so it doesn't take 10 hours to plan 20 to 30 minutes um and and so I just wondering you know if I'm hearing these reports I know you have multiple methods where you meet directly with teachers and staff and principles and I commend you for for doing so maintaining that you know you you cut through the top down um so you can engage with front line you want to get to the yeah so uh what is the solution what is being done to to help teachers on the front lines so it's a great question Mr dun I think it's also a good reminder when you look at the instructional cycle the planning the implementing the assessing and then the reworking the number one uh phase that's going to have the biggest impact
189on learning is the planning right we know that so I so appreciate our teachers spending time planning um and I appreciate the board's Grace around the early release Mondays the seven uh seven of those we've provided because um I know many of us in the leadership team were out in elementary schools during the planning time time and our um Elementary Educators were really using that time particularly those delivering the literacy lessons and I do want to say it does take more time to learn something new um it's not unlike learning to drive a car right the first time it takes you kind of not like especially if it's a stick shift but you know it takes a while to learn it all but then after a year or two you don't think about all those
190things and you get in the car and you go more quickly whereas before you're checking mirrors your dials and everything right so I think that it's going to take a lot more time right now we're in the first unit right we just finish the launch and as as the year progresses I believe that that planning should get shorter and shorter as we become more familiar with the tools um and I think even as teachers are concerned about that we also recognize that we have to do things differently if we're going to get different results for our our children so I you know for those teachers watching this evening um just big thank you big shout out for all the work you're doing with planning uh we are adding more retired teachers too who are coming
191back to help uh coach and work in classrooms to support um our staff our central office team is working hard to provide um more supports uh but it is hard right now I it is hard right now and I just I know um we all appreciate app the effort that folks are going to um and it's still the right work that we need to be doing so I don't know if you want to add anything Miss clco to the support uh supports we're providing yeah I think we're trying to um make sure we provide as much time as possible I think October 14th is a teacher um is a staff development day so we could be doing a lot of different things on that day um there's a a training that everyone's going to do
192in the morning um at each school but the majority of that day didn't plan a lot of things for people to do because we want them to take that rest of that day to do some planning as as Dr Reed said there is a learning curve right there's new resources and um when you are trying to teach all the components of literacy it's not just one lesson and then practice there's reading there's writing there's there's the comprehension versus the phonics right there's there are a lot of pieces and they need to put it together I do think that it is laid out and we've provided them um a lot of structure too but you know this is the first time they're going through we have the most professional and skilled teachers and they want to
193ensure that they are prepared and they understand it and they are ready so I know they are spending a lot of time our team is out um supporting and listening um as well you I think you all probably remember and academic matters is on this topic so I don't want to get be too redundant that we're not just doing the basil we also have a new screener which is one toone testing for our primary um we have reading plans coming we have that training from the state like this the teachers are under a great deal of stress right now from um all the things happening at one time um I also want to say that we've also receiving a lot of positives that though people are planning a lot teachers are finding that the resources
194are providing them uh materials that they've never had at their fingertips before right and things that really are so comprehensive there's lots of excitement around the comprehension building where kids are really digging into um topics of um uh that build their background knowledge science and social studies type topics so there there's a lot of positive too I don't want to pretend that um that it's all perfect it's not and the resource isn't perfect so we're going to work through it we're going to listen and we're going to support teachers all the way thank you thank you Mr Dunn I call on Miss Anderson for a motion I move that the school board finds that the superintendent is in compliance with executive limitation number nine instructional program I further move that the school board approve the
195monitoring report based on the superintendent's reasonable interpretation of executive limitation 9 instructional program as outlined in the Strategic governance manual is there a second second Mr McDaniel would you like to speak to your motion Miss Anderson for two seconds I didn't talk so um the reason I didn't talk is because my comments are really overarching and I want us all to be very careful as we move forward for the very fact that um Miss clo just talked about is that our teachers AR under a huge amount of pressure related to instructional programming and they are amazing and it's it's a lot of work right now so I think moving forward we have to make sure that all of the work that's represented here represents real people in a classroom that are doing real work and
196hundreds of hours of planning to make sure that our kids are successful and I want to not lose them in the data and the bullet points and so I think that it's really important as we move forward in this work in the iterative years that we keep that in mind so yes ma'am thank you Miss Anderson Mr mcdel would you like to speak to your second no thank you Dr Anderson just kind of one final question since I got called on I know it's not completely related there wasn't um information about writing can you speak a little bit in terms of the writing efforts because I know that's been an area for us it has there is writing in the basil at elementary so I don't know that we called that out I think it's
197a little bit in the academic matters or did we probably not we probably talked mostly about reading but it is included go I'm sorry it's definitely included and they um we were just talking today we had a a meeting in um amongst our team and the the students are doing reading right in science and social studies type topics and then they're writing and what the comments we're hearing from teachers is they're they're writing so much they have so much to write about because of the reading they're doing so there's a real connection between the reading and writing that they're doing as as as part of the language arts block thank and I think the language arts block is also providing vocabulary instruction which is providing support for voice and writing so I think we'll see
198perhaps more prolific writing with voice that we may they likely be excited about are they shorter pieces or just more extended expository writing or is that a question for the next I think there's all types of writing throughout the units um but I was just speaking of the first unit where they're doing some reading and then they're responding to those writings with justifications okay thank you thank you Dr Anderson seeing no others we will vote for the motion that is on the screen all those in favor Miss Marin Miss Dixit Mr mine Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson uh M Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning and myself all those opposed uh Miss seore Heiser all those abstaining Dr Anderson will the clerk read the vote it's 101 uh sorry it's 911 and I W
199need to note that miss lady is not present thank you the motion passes agenda item 7.01 policy review instructional program el9 the next order of business is policy review for executive limitation 9 instructional program annually the board will review each of the 13 executive limitations at the time of the monitoring report is provided to determine if any revisions are needed moving forward the board may also review any of the executive limitations at any time uh that A change is needed at any time so plenty of time to bring this to colleagues and discuss at this time board members May provide comments on Executive limitation 9 instructional program to determine if any revisions are needed Dr Anderson your your light's still on at this time uh there are no uh hands so if there are no
200further comments or discussion I will call on Miss Marin for a motion 7.01 correct the um I move that the school board maintains executive limitation 9 instru instuctional program as it is currently detailed in the Strategic governance manual is there a second I second Miss Dixit would you like to speak to your motion Miss Marin I really liked the comprehensiveness of this and I know last time I um led a motion to have even more quantitative data so I look forward to that but this is really a cool document to have that compiles a lot I'm excited about it so thank you I think so I think the policy is doing what it should do thank you Miss Marin Miss Dixit would you like to speak to your second uh no no thank you very
201much all those in favor of the motion on the screen Miss Marin Miss Dix Mr movine Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seism Mor Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning and myself with Miss Lady away from the table the vote is unanimous the motion passes we will now take a uh short recess while board members complete the form that is at their table or the online version uh it is 10:12 we will be back at 10:22 [Music] for [Music] go [Music] board members please return to your seats [Music] board members please return to your seats all right welcome back agenda item 8.01 academic matters I call on Dr Reed for academic matters thank you um this evening sorry I'm having a anyhow I will talk about the elementary literacy update um
202the Virginia literacy act um really is The Benchmark training and I just need to catch my breath minute no well why don't you take it from here Ahad and say sure so um I think we covered a lot of ground earlier during the executive limitation but um this year part of the Virginia literacy act required us to adopt a a high quality instructional material and as you remember last spring we adopted Benchmark advance in preparation for um launching Benchmark Advance this fall we did have Benchmark training I think some of this is some of the data we talked about previously the summer literacy Institute which was 3 days two days with the vendor and one day with our FCPS staff then we had um through Great Beginnings we want to catch our new staff right
203away so that was 353 uh teachers we caught that week we did in service uh week catch up that was another 1,600 teachers and then we did the IAS and Subs because we know we have substitutes in our in our schools and we want them to be able to um to keep the the learning going as I mentioned earlier we continue to offer the in person support to teachers who do not attend this summer and there's optional asynchronous uh training available on demand uh for either redos or um for people who haven't um got the training yet so all right thank you Noel and uh it really is pretty exciting quite honestly because the literacy act in uh actually affects every single one of our kindergarten through sixth grade Learners and every adult working in
204our K through six schools as well as our three middle schools with our sixth grade and the three middle schools so we would like to take a moment and share with you a video which was put together uh from Chesterbrook Elementary I think it's our cheetah or our Chipmunks it's Chesterbrook Chipmunks I think anyhow so let's take it away Chesterbrook please Janet or danc it j a k t and then are we done this full sentence what are we missing good job I think our teachers really appreciate the explicit guidance of reading instruction it's allowed them to um work together tightly as a team as we unpack our materials and it doesn't matter if you're a novice teacher or if you're a brand new teacher um they really are pulling together and working together for
205the for the success of our students as we're jumping into unit one what I'm really excited for is the link and the connection between the reading lessons we do that day the word study lessons we do that day and then it finally connects to the writing lessons we're doing at the end of the day so for me just having that connection through all through three of those topics is just such a huge massive bonus right it just makes the learning easier for these kids Catherine uh I remember when we read the book encounter and we were talking about this I think encounter is to like me to come face to face with somebody who you have like you maybe knew not know but you just like came face to face and you encounter that person
206I like that you built on that background knowledge of the prior prior book that we read and I saw a lot of people did that too the book that we read the kids are really enjoying it I think because it is so rigorous the children feel really challenged but they also feel really motivated to do it um I think it's fast-paced but that keeps them interested so we just finished the launch unit and my students really enjoyed the constructive conversations and we talked about how this is not just a reading skill but this is a skill that we'll take with us in all of our subjects and into life it has been a bit overwhelming but at the same time we're all starting fresh we're all starting all over again with this new curriculum um
207I'm very excited about it there's a lot of resources that are available to us I'm very interested in expanding the learning for our students it's like a marry Poppin bag you going know you can reach in and there's something for everybody and it's not me trying to make something up or trying to pull something off the internet to see if it works there's a lot of variety in the bag and you can gear tear it towards each student's needs that they have we're incorporating the science of reading into every classroom every single day starting in kindergarten all the way up to sixth grade our essential question is the question that we get asked in the beginning of the unit and by the end of the unit we should be able to answer that question of
208how do we respond to Nature all right I'm going to give you about two minutes on my timer turn and talk about these questions I think that the teachers got a really nice preview of what the whole year is going to look like in the launch unit which kind of overwhelmed them at first as we started unpacking unit one last week they realized the launch unit was just an introduction to everything that's coming and now that we're getting into the actual content units they have a lot more time to focus on one skill at a time in each area of phonics comprehension um vocabulary all that the supports I'm perly providing is definitely you know making sure they have access to that whole group instruction you know they're getting the content they're getting the lesson
209and if we have to provide you know certain accommodations or modifications you know that's very accessible through the program and then you know during those builtin um small group lessons I'm able to provide you know intervention or re teaching collaborating with my co- teer uh so we are able to I think uh provide access to all Learners so it's really I think gives that Equity that we uh really strive for in uh FCPS my favorite thing about teaching first grade especially is like the reading and seeing their confidence grow it's great for them to come to school and say at home over the weekend I was able to read words with magic e or words with diagraph so that's really great and that's really heartwarming and it it kind of answers my why of why
210I teach and so uh that gives you a little snapshot into the classroom for our um Chester Brook Elementary School students and I think one of the things that our teacher um that was teaching our I special education class said that really I really want as a board you to note um is that we're not doing pull out at the time of the instructional that the lesson that that's happening at grade level for all students and that's really something we've been very clear about in the training and that following that grade level instruction there might be enrichment or uh intervention that's necessary but everyone's receiving instruction at grade level and that's really critical I don't know if you want to add anything to that Miss clo nope I think you got it okay all right
211so next slide um this is uh comes out of the Virginia literacy act implementation Playbook and it's just important to remind um those who are watching and you as a board that Benchmark Advance is grounded in the science-based reading research and does provide um our students access to high quality materials um in every classroom so as we look at the common topic this is actually kind of exciting and I know I've seen a number of you at open or I guess back to school nights and um very often this is a slide that uh families are being shown at back to school nights because it's the same theme across grades in other words in unit one the knowledge strand is life science and so it doesn't matter what grade you're in that theme of life
212science kind of cuts across the whole school so if you have elementary students in multiple grades you can really talk about life science um pretty much 247 with your young student and it's been very exciting because a couple of the classrooms I've been in the last couple weeks the monarch butterflies have been coming out of their Chrysalis um so the teachers are really excited that some of the science topics are really um articulating well I guess with the reading topics so lots of excitement about these um common topics and we have some homeschool connections which we're really excited about uh these homeschool connections are student magazines that at the end of each unit go home so families can explore and talk a little bit about you know what students have learned uh those are great
213little cheetah pups or wouldn't they be cheetah kittens I guess um in their plants and animal habitats um but it's exciting I think for students to have materials to take home and to have families be able to um really be in dialogue and these are things we could the take-home activity calendar for example these are things our young people can do with families um long after the unit so we're very excited about that the uh scaffolds and supports again English language development is an important part of core instruction and our multilingual teachers are going to use the curriculum we talked about that in the instructional program report uh Benchmark Express is a comprehensive English English language development curriculum which is aligned to Benchmark advance and our multilingual Learners will have access to both um The
214Benchmark Advance as well as the express um and all students receiving Advanced academic Services uh will participate in Benchmark Advance which also has extensions um and extension materials so over 7,000 students have been enroled red in the state training courses um and it's just uh they may have from three to nine modules to complete which is what we talked about earlier in terms of a heavy lift for our staff but these are our strategies for moving forward um with implementation we're going to continue to provide PD deepen our understanding and definitely be partnering uh with families uh to make sure that any additional needs are met so that is academic matters this evening thank you Dr Reed Miss Maron yeah this is so great and I'm watching it um in my own child's school the
215only question I had was about the Family Resources so I mean as a parent waiting until the end of the unit to get the materials is like well I could have been talking with my kiddo that whole time so um and I can't say I've heard a lot like the back to school presentation was great that they did at the school um but I haven't like received links or things so what can we do about that to make sure families know or like where could they read extra books like are they using Mayan or are they using you know I don't know right and I do think we're working on a family resource or Academy type uh presentation Miss clco do you want to update us on where we are with that please well I'll
216say a couple things um the the series has several parts to it that can support families one is there's a take-home letter which your school may not be using yet but it comes in multiple languages that kind of I think set the families up for the unit so we probably need to get some some more communication out to people to make sure we're using those um one of the things we're looking at is how do we provide parents some education around how to support their child at home more than just using the resources but really um many of our parents may have been products of of whole language right and not really have learned to read in the way that we're teaching to read so we're looking at trying to partner with the the um
217Family Resource Center to have some more kind of um instructional opportunities for parents too so the gamut from just helping your child with what's coming home to really um learning a lot more cool well thanks I think too something I've observed is that the families you know constituents seem to generally trust our schools so even if you know I ask people like what do you think do you understand this they're like not really but you know it seems great so maybe that too is you know sort of hindering parents but again like if they you know I don't know and I don't want to single out anyone's school but um so I just want to know more about the because I I remember in the past there's just been like lists of websites and books
218and things and and the material is so cool and pretty and I'd like really like to see it before they're done with the the unit that's a that's really good feedback and maybe we can take that back to the team and see um even if we put that document online maybe to share with families or sent like a link to an online ones and then they bring their real one home we're really trying to also in the particularly our early grades minimize screen time around instruction for reading because we really want it to be um a relational task right um and um we're really excited about those possibilities but I do think parents we might benefit from having that conversation throughout so we'll take that back as feedback thank you Miss Marin thank you Miss
219Maron Dr Anderson thank you one of the things that I wanted to make sure that we highlighted as uh Miss Marin brought up earlier regarding the delay in adopting a basil don't forget we also had that hiccup where we had to wait for almost two years from the state while they completed their list so that did not help our efforts here so I wanted to make sure that that was you know part of the conversation um one of the things that also uh Miss kco mentioned earlier was consistency and learning targets can you speak a little bit more about what you meant by that so so I don't that wasn't specifically in relation to the basil right that was just kind of a comment of things that we noticed when we were doing the instructional
220walkthroughs that some classrooms had learning targets um posted where others had had it written in different ways just that was just something that we had noticed we do support um through the basil like sort of what the objectives are for every day um so that is that's part of the basil program is kind of baked in okay thank you um one of the teachers commented on materials being readily available that she doesn't have to go look for things on the website which I think is a great timesaver because the workload issue is real how El how else can we potentially help reduce the workload we know that there's a lot for them to learn it's year one of a program they'll get some things on automatic later on but I'm very curious in terms of
221how can we assist by taking some things off their plate and what could that potentially be at this point well I do think the search for material cycle um doesn't need to continue right because materials have been provided and that does take time to to do that I don't know what we could take off people's plates at this time miss clco you have some thoughts that is the um million-dollar question for everybody right what can we take off their plate um um I think that what we're trying to do is we're trying to build a lot of capacity within the school right um so one of the things we're doing is ensuring that that our reading Specialists are getting even more training and getting more familiar so that they can help with teams help them
222smooth the way and help them sort of get out of the weeds and maybe step back a little bit Diane leig is in the um audience and she works in our schools almost daily with our principles in our schools and she was telling me a story that you know the teachers get into it and they get like they're just so worried about what to do tomorrow what's this and what's that but sometimes a reading specialist or somebody else can say well let's just step back what exactly is the skill we're trying to teach today and then the teachers go oh you know brings down so maybe I can't take things off I can't provide more training uh planning time which I would love to but if we can build the capacity of others the other
223strategy that we have is called core teams where once a quarter the principal comes together with a grade level representative for more PD more training more unpacking of the upcoming units so we're building that familiarity and that person's going back and being part of the C that has had some additional support so we have just multiple layers of trying to um create increased familiarity and increased support for teachers thank you um one of I had the opportunity to see this in action just this week and I was just really encouraged and this was at the middle school the sixth grade at the middle school I was just so encouraged that there were actually materials for students to to write in and engage with in lie of just going through slide deck after slide deck on
224the computer um we had a lot of conversation regarding the materials for elll students for multilingual students I would love to see some of that captured in the video because it's a slightly different experience and I'd like to lift that up as part of um some of our work here and and lastly and this will be no surprise I would love to hear a little bit more about the daily allocations for um for the delivery of this instruction um when we had these conversations before before um prummer there were recommended there there was a wide range of recommended time what have we landed on on being the recommended period for delivery in English language classrooms so as I mentioned earlier there is a range and I don't have it memorized and it did shift and
225change over but it's a I don't remember but I can definitely put it in the Friday letter tomorrow um so I don't it's around 100 minutes it's around 100 minutes give or take but there is some variation um at the lower grades it's a little more and the upper grades it's a little less and and so at the sixth grade level um the students I think are able to do about 80 minutes every other day I know that we are going to try to capture some of the additional information some of the additional units in the social studies for sixth grade in the middle what feedback are teachers giving in terms of how they need to make decisions or is that something that that centrally is being done for them in terms of reducing um
226how much they cover during the 80-minute period every other day yes so we're we are calling the service that we're giving our six inth middle uh schools our White Glove service so they are getting more attention probably than any schools because we are asking them to accommodate and make some tweaks different than everyone else we need to make sure they training is very specialized so they've been getting support from Diane who's in the audience and also um other from our office where the language arts teachers have been getting very specific support and we've redone their sort of pacing guide for them to show them how to fit it into their structure as well as our social studies um our social studies specialist is working with the social studies teachers and our language arts um Team
227to support the social studies they the social studies teachers have not picked up any units yet because they're later in the year so it's not like we're all starting at the year they need to go in a sequence um so far um we have not um the princip have reported because I have met with them that it is going well um and they're all trying to figure it out just like everybody else but as I said White Glove service is what our aim is so if you hear anything other than it's going well please let me know well I appreciate the white glove service because as you know those roughly 3 thou 3,000 students include some of the most um neediest students that we have in the division so that's really important um what I
228would also ask is as you are um administering the common assessments and whatever other assessments that are being evaluated in the a that are being administered in the area of reading or English language arts I would love to see some analysis of any differences that we see between sixth grade students and our K sixes and sixth grade students in the Middle School yes ma'am thank you thank you Dr Anderson Miss St John cunning I apologize Mr Dunn I'd like to understand um the data that you presented uh either two weeks or four weeks ago uh showing you know increases in uh so and vaap scores um was very heartening but when you broke it down by demographic group um you saw that um you know economically disadvantaged students black students Hispanic students English language Learners
229were learning um at significantly lower rates or succeeding at significantly lower rates than than whites and Asians and uh I think that's that's you know almost the challenge of Our Generation right uh that there have been these persistent variations and and they can't be allowed to persist anymore and part of the solution surely is uh the science of reading that we're implementing but I was wondering if if there is any plan Beyond you know what's being provided for everyone maybe it's the white glove service maybe it's something different but um you know I you know there are certain populations that may have more immigrant students that may have not received as much formal education but you know for black students who have been here for hundreds of years you know I don't I don't understand
230why we haven't cracked the code on on bringing up their achievement so I was wondering you know what what is FCPS doing or what are you considering doing to remedy that achievement Gap so that EV every student at every School receives a worldclass education and comes out achieving at at comparable level levels so I think that what's critical is making sure that we have the same level of rigor across all parts of the County so I think the um assessments the common assessments are going to give us that information very quickly I also think that one of the things that I talked about was the um Express ELD materials so this is the first time uh in Fairfax County that we have materials that are compatible to the basil that are specifically for multilingual Learners
231so that work will happen in parallel for our students that are multilingual students we haven't had that before so that's an intentional strategy to focus on closing gaps for our multilingual students uh the common assessments will be that's an intentional strategy around students who don't have language uh concerns um because then we're able to at the end of each unit provide intervention instead of waiting till the end of the year which is too late right so that more flexible grouping um with the common assessments should close gaps um you're going to see in our data that we are actually making progress in our um traditionally underperforming student groups um and we have intentional strategies focused on that right now do we have sufficient Staffing to provide all the interventions because I mean we have a
232fair number of students who are you know one or two or even three grade levels below where they should be um and we we know that already without going through these assessments and so do we do you have the resources you need to succeed I think if we were um fully funded we would have more resources I I think the half a million dollars a year or EXC me half a billion dollars a year would certainly provide resources that I think would more quickly remedy this situation um but we're just you know we believe that the strategies we've put into place right now that we will continue to see growth and by 2030 that we'll have closed these gaps um it would uh certainly be easier to do that with more resources for sure and
233and do you feel that your strategy that you've that you're leading FCPS to adopt is it differentiated from other school systems or is there a general consensus Across the Nation now about how to close the achievement Gap I think what's um I think what we are doing as a team as we get more aligned more coherent and just more disciplined in our focus with the right materials the right use of time right grouping uh we're going to close gaps sorry but is is that different from what other school districts are doing or is there a national consensus I mean there seems to be a national consensus about the science of reading right like there correct so so is there now a national consensus about how to close these uh these achievement gaps have persisted over
234decades I think there's a body of knowledge around what often is considered the 9090 School research and that's consistent disci approach to Nimble grouping the multi-tiered systems of support those are all accepted practices that do close gaps no question I think our challenge is staying disciplined um in that approach and not um veering off from that until we have closed the gaps which is why uh this year our goal is still making sure third graders are reading by the end of the third grade right that um eighth graders minimally are in algebra and that we have rigorous and academically intense course taking patterns for high school students and we haven't met those goals yet so we're still keeping those goals right um we're not picking some other goals this year we're staying the course and
235that's what we're going to have to do is stay disciplined if we're going to get these um not if um to get these gaps closed we have to stay disciplined and focused thank you thank you Mr dun Mr Moon you know Dr Reed you know what we do in scools is a one thing but I think the one big component that we may want to work find the ways to do a better job that is to work with the families especially with economically dis saged families multilingual families do they have all the information they need tools and resources to help their children's learning at home I think that's very critical component about child's growth and I a lot of times I have to wonder because I see in my own Community the vast differences between
236those who have the knowledge who have the information person who don't yes sir thank you Mr Moon all right we will move on to agenda item 8.02 opening of schools report for the 2024 25 school year I call on Dr Reid well hello everyone everyone I am thrilled to be sharing this recap of our strong start to the 2425 school year and I know they're bringing up the uh report but every single staff member here and all those um out uh in our viewing audience had a role in uh tonight's report and what we're doing as a School Division so this evening I'll be sharing who we are and what we do to provide a world class education here at FCPS I want to take a look back at our successes and a look forward
237at what this year is bringing to our students so we're going to be talking about ready set grow um and let's take a look at our first day of school my parents are going make me take phot hey hey [Music] well you know th this is an amazing community and the kids are still leaping off buses running into classrooms to read do Math Science Social Studies your hearts and so so forth so much excitement um anyhow so much to be proud of so let me talk about our numbers real quickly again as the ninth largest School Division in the nation we do serve a very diverse student population uh which is one of our many strengths um our enrollment continues to grow uh right now as at the end of the 17th which was last
238week we're at 181,182 October I don't you know at this rate we're a little I think ahead growth-wise uh from where we were a year ago so we'll see what happens um we're a lot of uh just a lot of excitement about school this year let's take a look at our demographics again a reminder that our students come from 204 countries and that is a true statement right we did confirm we have 24 countries or territories uh with more than 200 home languages and when you look at the numbers of our um student groups um it's really clear that uh you know we have again um one of the largest military connected student populations with and then almost 30,000 of our students receive some type of um special education services again over 38,000 are multilingual
239Learners and we are now at 63,500 um students that are economically dis advantaged um which means one in three students are eligible for free or reduced meals uh which has gone up honestly over the years one in five of our students are multilingual and one in six receive special education services how exciting that we have uh the opportunity uh to support and uh work with these amazing young people our staff um as of this fall we have 4,040 employ employees which include part-time and hourly employees and we felt it was very important to put our part-time and hourly employees as part of our labor staff because traditionally we've only listed our full-time positions but so many of our staff members are part-time and hourly we want to make sure we recognize all the staff in
240the division um so this is our uh sort of breakdown of staff and with 40,000 employees uh we're clearly one of the larger employees um in this area our HR team deserves a lot of credit for our hiring processing and managing of staff and we're excited um to be as fully staffed as we are our families this is a uh our families are vital Partners here and this is um the results of our annual family engagement survey we had more than 26,000 uh families participate and and we're feeling very positive about um really our welcoming environment communication skills and so forth and are working hard to continue to grow this data um but again really excited about the the work that our school-based staff in particular um are doing because our principal school-based staff liaison
241office staff teachers I I mean this is It's a team effort so very excited about that um we have a lot of Community Partners for mentorships and tutoring uh Workforce Development Etc and um as we say many times School can't schools can't do this work alone so we very much so appreciate our Community Partners as we engage our community we've had quite a number of opportunities last uh year and this year um this year on the schedule already are the following meetings that you've had a chance to take a look look at um we'll also have a significant amount of community engagement with our uh boundary planning and our Middle School start time finalization so just uh quite a few meetings that will be part of our community conversation this year uh as we look
242at the class of 2024 which was our most recent graduating class we had a 94.6% graduation rate for four years on time and just uh honestly uh class that had a lot of achievements you can see those um on the slide here and we again the class of 2024 or the school year 2024 we did con see a 99.5% increase in our eighth graders taking algebra one or higher um and uh continue to provide increases in a variety of areas so let me let's take a look at uh how we fuel success and again our um breakfast and lunch options there's so many new options that uh we think are healthy and scratch cooking as well as uh a little bit Greener and more ways in one uh We've served a record number of breakfast
243and lunch and we continue to serve um honestly 77,000 lunches every day that's incredible um 28,000 breakfasts and we do have 16 new options for lunch and breakfast but just a lot of excitement there also want to thank our um just our food and nutrition team for their impact on our attendance last year I don't know if that's going to be on our slides coming up but 191 of our schools improved their attendance when it was all said and done out of9 so that's incredible and we want to credit also our food um um in our nutrition for um our increased attendance and engagement so in terms of on track for learning big shout out and a thank you to our more than 1,400 school bus drivers attendance and Route supervisors um we are one
244of the largest school bus fleets in the nation and we transport nearly 130,000 students every day on over 1,600 buses um and honestly that's I remember I shared with you as a team that um on our fourth day of school we only had 2% of our routes running late and that's with 100,000 over 100,000 daily miles on the road um that's an incredible data point so just have a real um shout out to our team transportation and all the work that they do uh looking at our energy um consumption also just want to recognize we have 72 energy star schools um and we've realized 12 million in savings for FY 23 um and a total of nearly 96 million since fy13 so our facilities team is working really hard to maintain this status and it's
245a a strong step in our get to Green goal process as far as our technology um you can see just the significant data points here um again we're moving as quickly as we can through student online registration and really heard some positive feedback at our Blue Star Family welcome breakfast the other morning at West Springfield High School uh where we have military families who really appreciate the opportunity to register online which is new in the last couple years um and just a variety of features that we're able to provide online that haven't been so our it Department a big shout out to it this is a lot of work um and continues and building our future um our capital projects Construction and design teams infrastructure work this data is incredible um and just the amount
246of projects uh we provided also in a Friday letter recently I think there were um a number of pages of projects so with eight schools under construction two are completed on all of the different infrastructure summer projects it's an incredible amount of work and a big shout out to all our grounds facilities design and construction staff their work often goes unseen but it makes a huge difference for our students so what's new uh we have Dr King is going to be sharing more data as we go through the year on our uh cell phone storage pilot programs and uh she's getting quite the uh how do I want to say this quite the group of friends around the Commonwealth who are calling for advice so Dr King is uh becoming kind of a the advisor
247I think for many folks around this area on this topic early release Mondays we've gone through a cycle now for both halves of our elementary team and really feel like uh as we've done that now once we've learned some things to um even improve that experience but um just again a big thank you for all of those who support that and especially our principals teachers and school-based staff that had to implement this um we're in year two of our plan and we've added some sports this fall the boys volleyball which has been pretty fun to watch uh very competitive um actually Justice High School's boys the Wolves were undefeated until they ran into the Hayfield Hawks and it was a great game at uh Falls Church High School the other night lots of energy and
248excitement uh we'll be adding girls wrestling and we'll also have our second year back for winter cheer um and our Middle School sports are continuing Middle School sports have until or middle school teams in December will make recommendations for the sport to add next year uh we've got our basil curriculum we talked about tonight our Universal Design for Learning initiative and our new Family Academy initiative so lots of excitement and new things um this year and that's it for our wel welcome back to school report uh thanks everyone for uh watching and we'll uh continue to have a fabulous year thank you Dr Reed Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman just a few things first of all school bus drivers are we okay with the number of drivers that we need we always need more
249uh but we are managing at the moment but we certainly could always use more school bus drivers how many more do we need about 100 or probably about 100 I would say be an accurate statement mrck okay okay all right thank you uh immunization shots for the children who are waiting to be able to come into class is that still 12,000 waiting or well thank you Mr Moon we've actually over the last two years brought the numbers down we're now um lower than 12 12,000 that was a number you gave to a supervisors about a week ago right and we've been sending central office staff out calling families texting families um emailing families about immunizations I'm not sure exactly where we're at Dr Presidio yeah I think I mean we've got a ways to go
250but in July we had 29,000 students that weren't compliant with immunization requirements were down uh just a little bit over 9,000 as of today uh so we've got a ways to go but we're making really good progress uh we're partnering with uh the health department a safe way to have clinics that are going to run from October through December to try to help our students you Doctor we we need to put we need to put maximum pressure I I'm I'm sry to you know characterizing it this way describing it this way but we are already what world than a month into school and if we have a Ste of 9,000 kids waiting to get immunization shots that is criminal that is Criminal Dr Reed uh the lastly that enrollment what was the enrollment projection the
251number that we used to come up with this year's budget was it around 183,000 no the I would think we projected it lower so uh Miss Burton what would what did we use for Budget projection purposes I don't know exactly but it was near 180,000 Arman we generally project lower for Budget just so that we don't um a little bit lower for Budget uh so I think you're right it's probably right around 180 and we're right now I believe at a little over 181 closing in at 182 was a lower than that is still lower than end of year last year which was 182 we kept growing last year like it's traditional for us to start lower and by October our graphs around enrollment continue to grow and we have our higher numbers as the
252year goes on okay I was just wondering whether this these numbers have anything to do with 9,000 kits still waiting to be enrolled through with imidation shots well they're not waiting to be enrolled some of them are enrolled but we do have a number of students waiting to get enrolled um due to immunization as well and a number risking being unenrolled if they don't get their shots so it is a problem for sure okay thank you thank you Mr Moon Mr Dunn um I wanted to ask about cell phones so uh in in most of the communications the Friday letters and the reports we've been talking about the cell phone pilot but there were two motions on cell phones and uh the second motion that was approved by the school board required uh multiple options
253to be presented to the school board including a complete prohibition on uh cell phone use in at all School levels uh by March 1st and uh obviously at the time that those two motions were were enacted I think it was April um that was before VD VD and California and all these things that happened this summer um I just wanted to check in and see are you on track to still meet that March 1st deadline to develop multiple options to present to the school board yes sir okay um The Family Academy I think it's so amazing um I'd love to see one of these great videos that your video team does about the Family Academy but I also wanted to see how many sites uh you know how how accessible is it how available is
254it is it available is in the Mount Vernon district for example so Miss Hall thank you we're actually developing the um expanded programming for the external facing uh programming that's actually in the communities um a lot of it is online right now they're webinars but we do have some out in the community and I can get that list together for you that would be great do you have a sense of how broad you're going to expand it in terms of how many sites or do you have a a sense we're trying to expand it across our our regions we think that's important to meet the community where they are okay and and how many languages do you intend to offer uh oh that's a very good question I think it depends on on the location
255um and the need but wherever we go we try to make sure we're offering all of the languages that are requested okay yeah I look forward to re giving more information thank you thank you Mr Dunn Dr Anderson thank you the family survey I know you had mentioned at some point how many of our families um completed it can you refresh my memory yes ma'am I believe it was 26,000 and that's probably one of the highest we've had for a while or ever what do that bring just to give me some contact Miss Hall sorry um actually it was a little lower than anticipated um we did leave it open a little bit longer than usual and trying to um get as many responses as possible um and we're going to continue to work on
256that for our next uh family engagement including um the timing as it relates to other surveys that are happening at the same time and why what was the target what was the target the target was as as many families as possible this was there are different types of surveys I think and I apologize I don't have that up in front of me um this was this is sort of a sampling of our division and it's you know we're never expecting 100% um we're always trying to increase over year-over-year or I know I'm sorry I know um but but we didn't I can find out what the Target was I don't know if we had a specific number so you mentioned it was a little bit lower than anticipated I was just curious in terms of
257what you were hoping to have and do you recall what it was the year before it was a little bit more the year before if I'm not mistaken okay it was I can provide those numbers to you thank you um the algebra starting point nice to see that we've had an increase of 9.5 can you give me a sense of what our starting point was well I believe we're at 695 right now so it must have been about 60% okay thank you um and the elevator modern modernization Pro um um projects that took place this summer can we identify which schools because that was a big problem at anandale high school and I'm hoping that was one of those places I know five out of the six uh from memory it was grro Community Center
258and then we did two at mlan high school and two at Mount buron there was one other one I don't believe it was at anandale but we are continuing to ramp up this this is the first time we really did a more bigger modernization program instead of just being reactive and fixing apart when something's out of service we went ahead and proactively took the summer to go and Tackle those six elevators and do a big uh new parts replacement and we're going to continue to do that this fiscal year as well well thank you I would love for anandale high school and for Glenn Forest to make that list because they have really old elevators and the parts can't be procured and so the elevators were out of service for the bulk of the year
259which made it difficult for students who had you know leg injuries and just couldn't tackle the stairs um I wish we had had this report and for you to make the statements that you made before Justice High School lost that one game um because they were undefeated and that was fantastic yes and I also want to say to Mr sethy that my middle schoolers is very excited about the brand new laptop that they received so thank you thank you Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel uh I I want to say that you you kind of read my mind when you mentioned military families in the online enrollment so thank you and your staff for the work that was done on that I that was really important to that Community um how many question on on the the
260slide about buses how I'm just curious how many miles do we get out of a diesel bus before we have to shelf it or replace it does anybody know that answer Mr muick do you know how many I'm gonna say we get a lot um but uh maybe Mr muick has something a little clear I've been in divisions where we were I don't know if Church mice are thing still but we were that we were very frugal and um I know we well we went well over 200,000 on a diesel engine but I don't know what we do here what's our threshold here I I think a lot was a great answer um and I will uh I I will find out and get you I asked because I for some reason I had the
261number 300,000 sticking in my mind that works for me and I it's amazing because by these numbers that means that we're replacing a bus every 3 days based on the number of miles that this says that we're driving if you amortise out over the entire bus L I know we're not doing that but I think it that would be correct we not I think it goes to show the efficiency of our bus routing system especially considering the9 % on time rate um I spoke today at a government class at a high school that was not part of the cell phone pilot program and I felt kind of um trapped because the teacher introduced me as the guy who put forward the cell phone pilot program oh and uh I I it was like daggers it's
262like oh boy um but from all the feedback that I hear nothing but nothing but positive feedback um and lastly are we getting I want to bounce off a question that Mr Moon asked are are we getting cooperation from the county health department on immunizations we are really hoping so that was for Moon please allow the that was for recognized speaker to speak superintendent I I would say that we desperately need the assistance of our County Health Department to accomplish the goals of having our students immunized and I think it's been a challenge if I must say um and I don't take any pleasure in that but I I know that our staff has just been working like crazy um for the last couple years because the answer can't just be removing students because then
263we deal with attendance issues with the Commonwealth and frankly um a lot of our students are struggling to get the appointments it's not an objection to this we're talking measles polio right menitis manical um immunizations these are things that are important for our children to have so I do appreciate that we've got a partnership right now with Safeway they're going to take care of some Elementary clinics and I believe our Health Department's going to do some onsite School clinics in October um at middle and high school so we're we are hoping that we're going to be able to accomplish this next month so I hope to bring you better Tidings but it we've just it's been very difficult to um to partner thus far okay thank you thank you Mr McDaniel Miss St John cunning
264thank you I I wanted to get a little bit more Nuance on the immunization because in my work I used to get some clinics together and partner with people so in terms of our immunizations where are we seeing the greatest lack of immunization because I know when a kindergartener comes in they have you know a preschooler they have to H have all of those are we seeing a greater lack of immunization with the kids that have to get those in the fifth grade and in the you know the older kids that it's not that routine um or is it across the board it's it's actually interestingly very much so across the board we looked at was our middle and high school numbers were actually really high for the menitis vaccine also new students have to
265have a physical as well and right now it's four to six weeks for an appointment so you could move here and if you don't have a primary care physician or if you require the health department you literally could miss six weeks of school not being in school because you're waiting on a physical and we do have students still not in school waiting on medical appointments okay um my other question is of of are we taking into account because we do know that after the covid vaccine there were people that were reluctant to get after the co situation some people were reluctant to get vaccinations and do we know how many people are claiming that they need that exception and don't have that exception um because these were things that I was seen when I was
266in the school system that were saying we're not going to get it we need and then I was like well you need the exception and they're going to try to get the exception do we know any of that most of the families as we're connecting um are not saying they want an except ception uh often there's a language barrier uh often there's a lack of transportation to get to the health department um and at times parents are told check in with Medicare but if they don't know how to go find out about Medicare then they can't check in with Medicare and therefore don't have transportation so if you don't have transportation you can't get an appointment and there might be a language barrier it's going to be difficult to get your children immunized so trying
267to do right now is work through these barriers and I think Dr Presidio SAS Smalls uh Terry Edmond heard um are working really hard on creating plans for families and so if you're a family out there has been getting texts emails phone calls talking points it's because it's a full core press right now on immunizations um okay I mean i' I've dealt with some of this so I understand and so are we seeing the grow greater lack of immunization with our marginalized students in terms of access and language barriers yeah uh we definitely are um it's not quite as simple as that but to generalize about 50% of the families that have students that are not compliant right now are uh multilingual families and about 70% are economically disadvantaged families okay thank you thank you
268Miss St John cunning Miss Dixit Dr Reed thank you for this presentation um I want of the numbers I which is very encouraging to see how 75% of our high school students have completed at least one college equivalent course like apib de um I know we could do better in this area because FCPS does offer a lot of courses and dual enrollment is not a very um it's not like AP and IB it is with the community college and I I I I know there's a very limited de classes in lot of schools of options and if these students can get more de classes when they go to college or or they actually um have a shorter like they can actually skip a whole semester of college and it is financially also is really good
269for the families who are I know college fees are going really high so I wanted to see if we can put more focus on our de curriculum uh which definitely helps with the college credits as well so I know there are some requirements for Teacher education and certification um for dual enrollment the other thing we're looking at with our um academic intensity of our high school course taking patterns is our students who are taking dual enrollment IB or AP are there different results like on the standardized sat or act exams um and is there a pattern there so I think we're taking a really deep dive and we'll know a lot more I think this spring um and definitely then can move forward with I think what a very clear strategy that's pretty focused uh
270later this spring so stay tuned on that topic for sure I think Northern Virginia Community College wants to partner more with us in terms of offering more courses and I don't know how we could use their uh teachers uh with us and uh so that we don't CL cancel classes last minute uh when we don't have a certified teacher so that was my one point the other point I was looking at is one of the uh slide number six that uh which kind of stuck out to me is when my uh the last one my child enjoys going to school is 89% that should be 95 five like fcbs is great our schools are great I mean how do we make them feel like going to school and G well you know I my child
271enjoys going to school I I agree it ought to be 100% right we ought to all bound out of bed you know racing into school yeah who saw the buses right and uh either on our buses looking forward to a good breakfast and ready to go I I I think that's a great question so I think 89% is pretty high uh and we can get it higher obviously so and I don't know if uh you know which grade levels are more represented in the positive um side or not but uh we'll take a look at seeing what we can do for next year and see we can get it above 90 thank you I hope it's not the seniors who took the survey because they definitely don't want to go I know it's was going
272to say it depends on what time of the year if it was seniors right so time of the year thank you so much you bet thank you Miss tix I'll take a turn and I remember from looking at previous uh surveys that uh not surprisingly it gets lower the older the the kids get let's talk about vaccines a little bit I know that we learned a lot about vaccine hesitancy uh during covid um we also learned a lot about the difference between hesitancy and what the underlying reason might be that somebody doesn't have a vaccine lots of presumptions about why somebody wouldn't be vac vaccinated right largely based on on privilege really and so um all of the data shows that for the most part people who are unvaccinated it's about access access access whether
273they are near a a place where that whether it is at a time when they can get to it you know before work after work uh during Co I partnered with supervisor palic in our community because we were uh using Graham Road Community Building to offer co co vaccinations um and you really had to make it as accessible as possible so my I have a couple questions one you've mentioned texting and emails and making you know Partnerships with pharmacies and bringing clinics into schools all of those things are about one thing right like bringing access to people I'm interested to know how these numbers of where we are right now compare to previous years are we doing better now than we have in the past I yes sir when I first arrived in the school
274division that many years ago it was we were at 27,000 students that were unvaccinated and um we are now at just under nine I think so just a just a little bit over nine as of a little bit over so that's a big Improvement it well it's huge and I I do feel like there are times I'm just going to be as thoughtful as I can in saying this but really our number one charge is making sure our children can leave this division Reading Writing doing math science enjoying the Arts and activities and we're spending a lot of time doing things that we really would um expect hope wish that our Community Partners could be more supportive of because we're spending a ton of Staff time right now that we could be spending supporting folks
275in the new reading basil um on phones and computers and trying to organize clinics and trying to do things that a County I think like Fairfax County ought to be able to provide that support for us so we can stay true to the mission um that our community expects from us which is a world-class education and so now we're in this position of needing to do as much as humanly possible to make things accessible especially during this critical time before a decision has to be made about whether students can attend school or not so we really need to do everything we can with our partners and others to ensure that that access and the message about access Maybe we could all put it in our newsletters uh to ensure that everybody has uh that information
276from one more touch Point um people often talk about in order for something to make an impact with somebody they need to hear it from seven different Messengers so um there's 12 of us up here uh perhaps we can help be those those Messengers but it's good to hear that we've significantly improved over the the last uh two years since you arrived here uh significantly so if it's in the high 20s to being around nine now so I appreciate the update and also uh would be remiss if I didn't note that uh the 40,000 employees does not just make us one of the largest employers in Northern Virginia I believe it makes us one of the top employees in the Commonwealth of Virginia uh and so um that's a good talking point for us when
277we talk to our friends in Richmond for sure yes sir thank you all right some gocs uh Mr Dunn um I'd like to ask mrky uh because I do appreciate proactive is always one of my favorite words but um the elevator repairs uh or proactive repairs uh at Mount fernon High School didn't work very well um so I could was wondering if you could advise what happened there exactly we're actually still looking into that ourselves we had our elevator maintenance team and that elevator modernization team work together to figure out what went wrong we were able to fix and get it back into service and um I just need to get more information on that but yes rest assured we are working towards getting everything back online is there more than one in service right
278now I will need to check on that I know one is in service right now I need to verify if the second one is in service okay and I mean it's been almost a month now I think that the elevators have been out of commission and they they were just I mean did you say they're brand new elevators or just proactive repairs they were I would say modernized they're still the same elevator but we did a big overhaul and replaced a majority of the parts have you had any other issues like this with elevators that have also been proactively repaired as part of this summer program no this is definitely the outlier of the group we haven't had issues on the other ones okay thank you thank you Mr dun Miss seore Heiser thank you
279I wasn't going to speak to this um but I wanted to you kind of alluded to this point I was going to make I I'm surprised you didn't read my notes um but first I wanted to say since I was I did vote against compliance for the executive limitation I did want to thank staff for all the I mean this report from the state of the schools really does Show the incredible hard work that your leadership team central office but especially our building level staff our principls or admins our teachers IAS you know custodians all of you know lunch folks bus drivers all of the folks and if I miss anybody I apologize that are involved in providing this I mean incredible experience I agree with my colleague I'd love to see this 100% but
280you know I think back to my school days and I'm not sure I could say 89 to 94% of people were this happy with the school so just kudos to you and your staff for that um I do think as we talk about we talked earlier feels like yesterday but was earlier this evening about um jayar and and our underfunding of schools and the teacher salaries below the 50 state average and all of these things and I think it's important as part of that narrative to talk about all of the things schools are expected to do now that they weren't expected to do even 10 20 years ago right I mean we talked about this during Co significantly but like setting up and running vaccine clinics is not part of the core mission of schools
281but we do it because we want the kids to be able to go to school right right and if they can't get doctor's appointments or can't get into clinics in the community we're going to make that happen cuz we that's our core so you know the significant amount of Family Outreach that we're doing is not something that schools traditionally have done you know we just kind of assume parents will get their kids to schools and now we're recognizing and day is showing the importance of that for Student Success so we're doing it and it's important that we do it um but I know our principles are spending so much more time making these phone calls and knocking on doors or whatever it takes to get the kids in schools and then when you have a
282governor who goes and changes accreditation standards and after the school year starts which makes it impossible for us to meet and then we're scrambling which is Staff time that could go to implementing literacy that could go to Executive functioning programs that could go to expanding Advanced academics and steam and Ai and all these things we talk about I think we can't we have to have that combined together right our community expects schools to do more we are doing more because we want to get our kids in school and yet our teachers are still underpaid and our staff are working incredibly long hours that that don't let them get to as much as I think they would want to our core mission of schools and meanwhile the support from the state from the governor is just
283to under and make it look like all of these people who are working incredibly hard and you look at these numbers of people who are satisfied with their schools and they're going to made to look like they failed and I think that narrative needs to be out there so I just needed to say that thank you thank you to to the staff for all the hard work behind all of these thank you Mr Eiser uh Mr Dunn did you okay Miss uh St John cunning so yes I just wanted to also thank um thank you for including our part-time employees because I know that there are a lot of uh part-time employees that do full-time work and they are very valuable to our system and I think we need to recognize you know this that's
284almost close to 30% of our Workforce um and I just want to thank you for acknowledging them and putting them in this graph because that represents a huge lift for our schools yes ma'am thank you m St John cunning we will now have a short interlude uh before the next item on our agenda which is 8.03 uh which is titled superintendent matters um and as part of agenda item 8.03 superintendent matters I will um call on Dr Reed that was well done for superintendent matters well thank you chairman frish it's uh my pleasure to share a couple topics uh this week is blue star welcome week um which is really exciting because we have approximately 13,500 military connected students uh and on Monday I had the chance to uh swing by West Springfield High School
285to have breakfast with our students and families and also reiterated that our commitment over the next two years to become a purple star division which means 100% of our schools will be per purple star schools currently we have 69 um and we expect to see the rest come on board in the next two years want to give a big shout out to Spring Hill Elementary School uh named a 2024 National Blue Ribbon School by the US Department of Education uh the Blue Ribbon School program recognizes high- performing schools and schools making exemplary progress uh towards closing achievement gaps and Spring Hill was commended as an exemplary High performing School based on high achievement in reading and math during the 2223 school year uh go Panthers and principal Amy Briggs for this hard work and achievement
286also want to mention that last night I attend attended the foundation's annual uh Hall of Fame uh induction and it was really an exciting evening event and it was great to hear from so many incredible um alumni from Fairfax County and so many alumni that really credit their adult uh success um to Fairfax County Public Schools and were intentional about bringing their families back to have their children in school so I think it's fabulous um I think Megan our student board member mentioned the superintendent student advisory Council it was great to be a part of that work um and then attended a number of um back to school nights the Mount Eagle Elementary School 75th Anniversary we've done a couple Community conversations and I've had an opportunity to attend the Fairfax County Council for Economic
287Opportunity um and the County Workforce Readiness group um so just a lot of uh a lot of great work going on around the county also visited a number of elementary schools Vienna elementary and coven run most recently and several athletic events so on that note um I'll turn it back to you chairman FR thank you Dr Reid agenda item 9 just nine consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure Robert's Rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for the approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through Board review and documentation has been provided for 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 on the
288screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing and seeing no objection the consent agenda is approved agenda item number 10 new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled at a future meeting agenda item 11 board committee reports I call on Mr movine for an audit committee report thank you so we contined to um review the audit plan for the year uh and we've embarked on um some uh new audits as well uh we will be uh bringing something for uh board discussion and close meeting uh shortly thanks thank you Mr mine agenda item 12 board matters the next item on the agenda is board matters I will call on each School Board member to offer an
289update uh Mr dun uh well I I think we saw tonight that uh the return to school has been fantastically successful so I'd like to thank Dr Reed for her um tremendous leadership um and long evening of reports this evening uh it's been a very active couple weeks since the last board meeting um I've been working with um region for assistant superintendent uh Pablo rindes to ensure that uh a teacher uh through participate learning who wasn't uh ready to be in the classroom was removed and we're continuing to work together closely to ensure that we get a highly qualified teacher uh in in place quickly uh I also worked to support waynewood uh Elementary to obtain an additional kindergarten teacher to reduce some of their uh large class sizes um I'm also currently working closely
290with Bucknell Elementary which is uh has the uh lowest enrollment uh of any similarly sized Elementary School to explore options for increasing their enrollment uh to include uh perhaps the adoption of a magnet program uh if any Bucknell parents are watching we have a meeting on Monday and there will be a food truck in attendance uh and child care provided with Spanish translation so that you can uh you know provide your thoughts on the different options will be presented um I also had the opportunity to present last night to the Mount Vernon Council of citizens associations on different issues including cell phones and School boundaries I look forward to engaging uh more with the community on these important topics uh and finally uh we have uh just a lot of exciting things coming up football
291games tailgating uh and of course new sports that Dr Reed mentioned during her presentation so I look forward to uh coming out to some of those games and seeing our great students compete thank you thank you Mr Dunn Mr McDaniel none good night thank you Mr McDaniel Dr Anderson have a good night thank you Dr Anderson Mr mine Dr Anderson was wondering where the tailgate is because she's very eager to to join pass I like how he's giving your update uh Miss Dixit good night thank you Miss Dixit Miss Marin I just want to uh wish those who will be observing like myself the Jewish New Year that begins on Wednesday evening the rashash Shana holiday we say l shat TOA which means have a good year and I hope that um it's a nice
292holiday and we can all be in peace thank you thank you Miss Marin Miss St John cunning um so I am really proud of the Franconia District's National Merit semianal Edison High School Nicholas aretta Vasquez and Grayson H Hayfield Secondary School Mato comra Thomas Jefferson High School uh William black and Nila aladi uh I encourage you and all students to stay true to yourself and dream big I know you will continue to thrive I also want to wish our 10th and 11th graders all the best on October 9th when they take their PSAT uh I appreciate the visits and tours this week at Hayfield Secondary School and Mount Vernon High School I want to thank murn in high school for Lending me this flag which I didn't know I was going to be able to
293use but I still want to give them a shout out it was for Hispanic heritage week if you want to see it stop by Mount Vernon High School and you'll see it in their front office uh I was happy to join Mount Eagle Elementary School at their 75th Anniversary I then helped kick off the Hispanic Heritage Month uh celebration at the high BL Valley Community Center where the consulates from El Salvador and Mexico were in attendance and we celebrated Mexican Independence Day with the traditional Gro this past Saturday I had the privilege to attend the back to school event hosted by first lady Dr Jill Biden and secretary Ed of Education Dr Miguel Cardona with students from drainville elementary and Holmes El Middle School it was great to see two Forest ale teachers in attendance
294and three Justice high school graduates one who now works for the White House and who introduced me to uh secretary Cardona and they brought their e their esel teacher as I mentioned earlier last night I attended the FCPS Alumni Hall of Fame and was inspired by the amazing contributions the inductees have made to our community I was touched by how each inductee credited the impact that FCPS staff and teachers had on the trajectory of their lives apply on Blue Star welcome week that one of our inductees was General James R Clapper who received his official anandale high school diploma last night this morning I was proud to represent the Franconia District at the nonpartisan Commonwealth coffee hosted by Senators Mark warnett and Tim Kane in the honor of Hispanic Heritage Month it was great to
295connect with my class community school coordinator colleague Delia montesinos and finally a shout out to M Micheline lavier and the family lit class that joined us tonight for the national Hispanic heritage Proclamation thank you Miss St John cunning uh up next we have Miss seore Heiser that was well timed thank you I will just say given the lateness of the hour um just I'm excited for all the homecoming games coming up and all the musicals and plays coming up and um I'm really excited to hear about what a great start of the school year the back to school nights were great um and beyond that I'm going to pass the rest of my time and let you all go home early thank you Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman initially I was going to share
296three things but since a lot of my you know colleagues have simply said good night let me just point out one thing that I forgot to mention at the last meeting so this is a belated uh belated a wishes for Happy CH in Korean or J qua in Chinese the Harvest Moon F Festival is a significant holiday for many families and feis County who are who have a Roots going back to East toward Southeast Asian countries including Philippines and Singapore this holiday is equivalent to American Thanksgiving and those families celebrate this holiday day on September 17th I'm not mentioning it because he has Festival has my name in it but but but I I but I'm sure that the full moon the biggest moon on September 17th brought a lot of Happiness to those families
297thank you Mr chairman thank you Mr Moon Miss Anderson have a wonderful night everybody all right I do have an update and I know literally every face in the room is looking at but I have to uh because I value my staff A's hard work on pulling together this update um but uh I do want to say how much I appreciate our legislative uh liaison for the hard work that they put into our uh trip down to Chesterfield County um where one thing that we didn't really talk about was that in addition to hearing about cell phone policy and um other uh updates about legislation is we had an opportunity to connect with Schoolboard members from all over the Commonwealth and talk to them about uh jark and other things that are important so I
298appreciate the work that went into that and the update that's been provided to the board um additionally uh this weekend I will be attending and speaking at voice which is Virginia organized for Interfaith Community engagement we'll be talking uh about fentanyl uh at their behavioral health assembly I know the superintendent will be there as well this uh weekend at uh Fairfax High School um we had a community meeting for the dunloring elementary school project uh which uh we had about 50 people for and uh close to 70 questions really great conversation there uh and we'll be returning uh for another uh meeting probably sometime in the late fall um the I just want to one more reminder that uh Providence District uh supervisor Dalia palchick and I are hosting a Providence day and back to
299school celebration on Saturday October 5th from 11: to 3 at Marshall High School lots of activities for everyone of all Awards uh music performances food trucks food it's going to be a lot of fun so please come uh I also want to congratulate the 16 students from Providence District who are National Merit Scholarship uh final semi-finalist for 2025 uh Marshall High School's uh shre deay Ethan strak uh yuzen Wang Oakton High School's Christopher Campbell bum Q Kang uh and Lisa Sun Madison High School's Robert Marty rosian uh Woodson High School's Khloe Choy uh Shan Cranford Elizabeth D and Steven leiz uh and then TJ high schools uh Jude Caldwell uh drv uh Shandra uh Jason hoe uh sasri uh kagadi and Julia zedi uh and then uh it was exciting to see Oakton High School's
300uh uh football game featured their homecoming featured on Channel 4 on NBC uh Channel 4 for the students watching at home is a network where they run television programming and your school was live uh from a chopper so that was really exciting um and you can probably find it on Tik Tok or YouTube um if you'd like to watch that um and uh also really exciting shout out to our our false Church High School um coach who was recognized and honored by the Washington commanders um and and will receive a $2,000 uh gift coach uh kugan very exciting lots of other updates and happenings happening in Providence District but literally every eye is upon me in the room and it is not yet midnight so I am very grateful to say thank you all for
301making tonight's meeting of success every single one of you and this meeting is adjourned at 11:50 p.m. [Music] for