001[Music] for [Music] hello mine's working hey Andrew the board memb mics are struggling on the front hello hello test board members please take your seats e e is this August 29th 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 Hughes Middle School student I pledge allegiance to United States indivis [Music] by the early light what so proudly we H at the twils last gleaming who's brought stripes and Bright Stars through the per fight or the parts we watch were so Gallant streaming and the rockets red the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag w still there oh say does that star spangled B yet
002wave or the land of the and the home of the bra [Applause] can we hear another round of applause for our student nicely done agenda item 2.02 announcements Mr moon has submitted a written request to attend this evening's meeting virtually due to a personal conflict and is attending tonight's meeting from South Korea all those in favor of approving Mr Moon's request Miss Marin Mr mine Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning and myself and miss lady and Miss seore Heiser all those opposed abstentions the motion passes Mr moon will you check your microphone please thank you Mr shman can you hear me okay loud and clear thank you sir thank you Miss Dixit has submitted a written request to attend this evening's meeting virtually due to a medical conflict and
003is attending tonight's meeting from Sully District all those in favor of approving Miss dixit's request Miss Marin Mr mavan Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning Miss seis Mor Heiser miss lady and myself all those opposed abstentions the motion passes has M Miss Dixit joined us yet yet all right we'll test her microphone when she is online in accordance with the changes to Virginia code two do section 22- 37083 B which occurred on July 1st 2024 members of a public body who have a disability or are caregiving for someone with a disability now count toward the Quorum as if the individual was physically present in this case miss lady and miss seore Heiser have both notified the chair and Clerk of the board that they are using remote participation as
004they are caregiving for an individual with a disability thus they will not excuse me thus they will be counted as in person for the uh the person requirement for Quorum tonight and do not need to be voted in by the board if you would like to review a copy of the agenda please see the back of the auditorium to obtain copies of any items being presented tonight please reference the QR code on the agenda or on the website fcps.edu schoolb boardboard tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website fcps.edu tv99 agenda item 3.01 Community participation the next order of business is community participation we welcome all community members who are here with us and those who signed up to speak this evening additional information about signing up to provide
005comment at Schoolboard regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the school board's website during the sign up process community members acknowledged that they were informed of the school board's expectations for proper deorum when providing comments these expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room we ask audience members to be respectful respectful of one another shouting and Outburst will not be tolerated please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain at their seats including when recording video or taking photos we are grateful to those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation Schoolboard members will be listening but not responding Madame clerk
006please call the first Speaker student speaker number one thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you today I a senior at West Springfield High School I'm required to put away all my devices to give my full attention to my teachers I respectfully ask that you give me the same courtesy to tonight I want to express my thanks to all the teachers and administrations at West Springfield High School I'm grateful for all they have done for me and my education I think they are the reason I feel West Springfield High School is the best high school to attend I play sports at West Springfield and I have two younger brothers who are also part of this community I bring them an international night club events and sporting events the 5-year boundary redraw and
007policy 8130 sorry can we pause the speakers time for a moment while we figure out that issue I apologize apologies we're having an issue with the video in one minute okay we may resume if we could add a few seconds to the speaker's time go ahead sir okay The Five-Year boundary redraw in policy 8130 could force me and my brothers to graduate from three different high schools because of our age differences my parents bought our house specifically because we wanted me and my brother to graduate from West Springfield this would be extremely traumatic to my to our family and our community if we all cannot for my younger brothers in my community my I want to uh it all it is uh School Board needed for externi from families and students from policy 8130 pened
008pending boundary adjustments and perceived future capacity concerns restricting this could be the should be the last option for the board to use in school I'm talked about the power of the people democracy and the vote many voting parents and conserved students have contacted the board with disapproval with policy 8130 pending boundary review I will be able to vote in the next elections and the actions this board takes will greatly impact my future votes as well as the votes in families and my community thank you Kina makoy Craig Bowman thank you very much first of all isn't it great to see youth coming up here and giving their voices to important topics so my hats off to you extremely welc [Applause] so my name is Craig Bowman um thank you for the opportunity to speak I've
009been a proud resident of Great Falls for about 14 years and also a youth group leader for about 30 years at Andrew Chapel United Methodist Church right off of trap road so today I stand before you representing not just my own family but many families that as the previous speaker just said are concerned about redistricting and I know the questions on your mind must be if not this board if now then when because this has been talked about for a very long time but and I'm not here to talk about property values uh I know that argument's been given and quite frankly it's a weak argument what is not a weak argument is that the students that are going to be affected by this are not just like the students that were here seven or
010eight years ago when we probably should have done the redistricting what's different about the kids now is that they're covid kids and this is very different because the effect that Co had on the generation of kids that going be affected by this redistricting already had a massive impact to their learning and to their emotional state right the statistics from the CDC from from from NIH say that attempted suicides of this age group shot up over 50% and then if you look at the research about moving kids from school districts guess what the stats about covid are Amplified when you move kids to new school districts so the board is here to protect our kids and I know it's difficult I know it's difficult to look at the redistricting and say you know let's just rip
011the Band-Aid off let's get it done because if it's not this Bor then who will it be but that's the wrong attitude for us to be having and if if any of those conversations are happening behind closed doors then you're not doing it for the right reason so Cali ainger January 17 2018 fairfest County included an unredacted internal document with a furo response that provided to me within the document titled Hot Topics fairfx County admitted concerns with confidentiality of Student Records failure to ident students with dyslexia and cited over 400 violations of non-compliance January 29 2018 Scott Bray brand advised then congresswoman Barbara Comack that my concerns about furpa violations had been addressed the furpa and special education non-compliance continued November 7 2018 I met superintendent brbr in person and advised him that as of
012that date fairfest County had violated my kids privacy and that of over 30 students and staff and I provided more examp of special education non-compliance Bray brand replied I don't know about that and then said his team had advised him it was more like to I told Bray brand he'd been provided false information and handed him a copy of the Hot Topics document record for his keeping around the same time I spoke with Megan mclin after a school board meeting and she said she'd been told there were only two violations too I advised her this wasn't correct but she chose to believe whomever advised her seven times between June and October 2019 South County High School violated the privacy of my child on one of the last times the principal included a pile of papers
013on his desk with a fural response provided to another parent that parent not the school made me aware of the breach in addition to South County High School providing her 12 pages on my child it provided her resumés for staff issues related to other students discip disciplinary actions Etc I filed numerous complaints videoe found Fairfax in non-compliance but it all continue Karen Corb Sanders got emails from her Bray brand more emails from her a lot of things back and forth but everybody keeps saying it was handled but you know it's the same thing that continues to happen we got John Foster we got Don schaer we got a lot of people who had been here before Michelle Reed you need to look at what the comment thank you ma'am Madame clerk please call the next
014speaker other people need to use their time too thank you Regina dorsy Regina dorsy Vanessa Hall hi all um first of all welcome to a new school year uh I'm Vanessa Hall and I'm a founding member of four public education yesterday we Road tripped to Richmond to ask the Virginia Board of Education to reject their disaster ous accountability plans rather than be accountable to Virginia they voted to upend student and educator success with arbitrary half bed standards thank goodness accountability is more than a word with you as you finally updated policy the boundary policy 8130 this summer however the devil's in the details boundary policy guidelines developed over the upcoming year are critical because they'll guide decision-making over the next decade or more as such people are desperate to be part of the conversation some
015are multiple multi-generational FCPS families like my own who've seen good bad and really ugly changes and others just need to be heard respectfully I ask that you include the families who are often ignored like those in title one and Community Schools uh in addition to lower income immigrant and other families who are typically underrepresented in decisionmaking in so far as I've seen in decades of Education discussions those who are heard most are the wealthy connect Ed who already have access to news media bullhorns to advance their narrow agenda unfortunately these loud voices typically spend more time fear-mongering with a not in my backyard mindset than focusing on community or student needs but personally I think there's enough chaos and uncertainty in this world without more fearmongering and the NIMBY mindset ignores our interconnected community of
016fair effects families instead we all need to learn listen and understand the facts to make the best decisions for our community of students families and school Personnel while being accountable to each other and thank you guys very much Amir mashor good evening members of the school board parents and community members my name is Amir mashur I'm an FCPS parent my parents are FCPS parents and I would like to uh remain as such in the next few years we moved out of princei County back to Fairfax County so that my kids can go to the same schools that my siblings unfortunately didn't have the chance to go to to these schools and enjoy the rich educational experience that my daughter currently has in West Springfield High School as well as my neighbors so I stand here
017I I understand the challenges that our school system faces I do that we have a real problem with with overcrowding of uh in our schools but I firmly believe that the redistricting and Boundary changes that were proposed should be the last result should not be the first choice to address a very important issue these are short-term fixes solutions to to a problem without addressing the underlying issues here why are we here why why why we have been discussing the redistricting for months and months me and my my other community members Mr dun uh enlightened us a month ago I was watching the recordings from the July 18th uh meeting and he pointed out that we have an underfunding issue from Virginia by about half a billion dollars so this is preventing us from building new
018schools and from expanding current schools existing schools so it looks like the fix or the burden got thrown into the parents with the r restricting uh solution which is not always bad I I I don't agree with reding is always bad I mean we have a pro we have a good example with glass Cole Mard Cole Mard Shelly arnaldi Shelly arnaldi George Basera good evening chairman F school board members and Dr Reed I'm here unfortunately to talk about your last meeting in July Where Mrs Marin and Mrs St John cunning stated the children are watching concering the members of one specific group that were in the audience Dr Reed you may also say this correlates to what you said this past Tuesday at Hayfield High School concerning the civility of our times as you recall
019in July a group that stated for two weeks in a row during your meetings that they were for children when dealing with the boundary policy where was that sentiment when a child spoke in a video testimony had a different opinion from them and their student speakers and then and then they boed that child this was the first time in 15 years that I've attended or listened to these meetings that a child was boed way to make a mark what if these adults experienced the same treatment from adults when they were at their age just learning to become civically minded and want to make a difference in their community and Country how proud these people's living or deceased parents or grandparents must have been at that moment whatever day that they worshiped on that weekend of
020Friday Saturday or Sunday how proud their religious family must have been of them to that group which stated that they had a board of directors that there be some type of structured Norms of me measure membership and and behavior I know when groups come into this Auditorium they are still accountable for their members and supporters where was that when this so-called with this so-called board of directors to this group let me welcome you to false church and tell you that there is more here than just Mosaic and Fairfax Hospital sorry the whole County cannot be like your one area that you're from now for everyone else let's back to let's get back to reality and T where scps needs to improve but at the same time praise the things that Dr Reed has done the
021last two years in this praise let us let this board as promised publicly post a summary of the superintendent evaluation from July thank you Dr re for stating multiple times you don't mind posting your summary evaluation thank you and happy School New Year please play the video testimony submitted by Stephanie lanquist Aurora good evening I have a question who is in charge are elected school board members or superintendent Michelle Reed from Seattle it seems to me that Michelle Reed is in charge because during the July 18th meeting when many of you were deciding on whether or not to vote for ricardi Anderson's Grandfather Clause amendment to keep our children in their same schools you looked to Dr Reid for how you should vote uh which seemed really backwards to me um so she definitely seemed
022like the boss on July 18th and and when I went to go review that meeting I thought it was so strange that you had taken it off of the FCPS YouTube channel um it didn't seem very transparent that that seemed really sketchy to me so I was also wondering who was responsible for taking that video down and a lot of information about policy 8130 has been removed as well um I'm also wondering if the Schoolboard members have access to the same information that superintendent Michelle Reed has access to um did you know that six high schools in Fairfax County are basically imminently going to or it seems that they're on the path to lose their accreditation um especially since the state changed its standards and nobody mentioned that to us um the Fairfax County uh
023residents voters parents when you were um discussing uh redistricting um and I just wanted to say to your credit Schoolboard members you actually did the right thing and listened to your constituents by not including the combined sex classes starting in fifth grade for um Family Life Education so I thought it was really weird that superintendent Reed went through the back door anyways and I was I was wondering if you knew about that she implemented that pilot program for 14 Schools um even though it's very anti-democratic and not uh transparent so anyways your constituents are beginning to understand that Dr Reed is the one running the show before she stals off into the Seattle Sunset please play the video testimony submitted by Christina nadova hello members of the school board thank you for allowing me to
024speak today my name is Christina I am a senior at lingley high school and today I want to address the critical issue that is the censorship in the removal of literature in FCPS classrooms as well as the lack of diversity in my 10th and 11th grade reading class curriculums I read a total of zero books by female authors two books by African American authors and zero books by authors representing minority groups such as Pacific Islanders Native Americans and members of the lgbtq community these limitations are not just about the books that are available or absent but about the broader impact on our students emotional and intellectual development when we censor literature or create an environment with a lack of diversity in literature we inadvertently contribute to a climate of polarization and division among students a
025curriculum enriched with diverse literature promotes critical thinking and empathy encouraging students to explore and grapple with complex issues in an environment where different view points can be discussed openly and respectfully by embracing a broader spectrum of voices we help students to develop into well-rounded individuals who are prepared to navigate and contribute positively to a diverse world I urge the board to reconsider the current restrictions on literature and to support a curriculum that values diversity and minimizes censorship of books in doing so we can create a more inclusive and understanding School environment where every student has the opportunity to grow and engage with the richness of our Collective Human Experience because literature is a fantastic reflection of what each person of what each Community goes through and unfortunately right now many FCPS classrooms we are simply
026not getting this experience with the books that are in the reading curriculum or the books that are absent from the reading curriculum thank you for your time and consideration chair fish that was our last public speaker thank you agenda item 4.01 student representative matters thank you Mr chair and good evening everyone happy end of the second week of school it's been a busy August and I'm so grateful to the teachers staff and administrators that have helped set up for such a wonderful school year I also want to express my gratitude to the school board members and curriculum leaders that I've had the pleasure of meeting with And discussing my ideas and I look forward to continuing these conversations into September I've also been able to attend the Great Beginnings and multilingual learner Summit which were
027amazing experiences learning more about how the Strategic plan is being implemented in several ways today I wanted to share some takeaways from the conversations that I've been able to have and I wanted to start with meeting with some of the students across FCPS about some of the issues that they're passionate about and changes they would like to see specifically through the citizen advisory committee application and interview process for student Representatives I'm pleased to say that 15 students have been nominated across seven advisory committees and I look forward to the work that they'll build this year and the Legacy they'll leave for students who come in future years there is still an open spot for a current nth grader in FCPS to the Family Life education curriculum advisory committee and the application link can be found
028in bardocks and its rolling a recurring theme in my discussions with students no matter what committee they were applying for was the need for greater awareness and support around mental health for example a student from Fairfax High School expressed a desire for more programming on mental health education selfcare and Stress Management not just at the beginning of the year but as the year progresses and we get more into midterms and the middle of the Year another student emphasized the importance of personal interaction especially during the mental health screenings that are mandated by the county rather than just answering questions they want more followup after and more talk with their counselors yet another student wasn't even aware about who the school psychologist was at her high school and the ways to reach them the issue here
029is the disconnect between the resources we have and the paths in which they reach the students for example while it's clear that Hazel health is a valuable resource for teletherapy it's not the only one I hope to focus on promoting these full range of resources programs and and training available because FCPS has a wealth of resources we just need to let students know that they're supported and how to find that information when they need it in August I was able to attend and speak at the multilingual learner Summit held uh where several students reflected on their journey of success in FCPS as well as the resources that helped them in their multilingual learning experience I was honored to sit with these students and hear a little bit about the passionate meaningful stories they had which
030I know will resonate with others two students on the panel shared how impactful Avid which is the advancement via individual determination program has been for them in terms of discussions about postsecondary plans and organizing themselves for Success they specifically emphasized the connections that they were able to make with their Avid teachers that motivated them throughout the process it wasn't just about getting organized or preparing for post-secondary success but also also about building connections with teachers who supported you throughout it another student who wasn't at this event who spoke to me in her third year of the AVID program said that it helped her get her organized for class in thinking about college and even starting to think about essay ideas this program is incredibly valuable and I strongly believe that it should be expanded to
031the high schools middle schools and even elementary schools that it's not even at right now another student on the panel reflected on his experiences as an ESO student and the support he received throughout his language learning Journey one thing which shared which I thought was specifically meaningful was that while he struggled with English he didn't face the same challenges in math this highlights the importance of recognizing that students have different strengths across subjects and they should be able to advocate for themselves and talk to their planning committee about you know where they struggle and where they don't struggle and placing them in the classes that best fit their needs this year I'll also be working with the amazing curriculum integration and management team in central office to further expand the portrait of a graduate skills-based
032learning and career application in High School classrooms um the implementation of portrait of a graduate and strategic plan can vary differently from building to building influenced by the specific AB IB or leadership classes that are offered like AP seminar um the Lewis leadership program at Lewis High School and the Madison Wings program at Madison are two examples that aim to build leaders through volunteering meeting with local leaders and experiences outside of the classroom but I'm working on creating a secondary voice committee another committee for portrait of a graduate graduate kind of as a centralized data collection tool to evaluate the need for any new skills that may be needed to add may be needed to be added to portrait of a graduate as we move past covid-19 and we see new um things that are
033happening like the development of AI and that use in school there are skills that students need to know about that didn't exist when portrait of a graduate was made years ago um I also want to look more into like the insights on enrichment incentives for doing portrait of a graduate as well as feedback on more implicit or explicit lesson that students would like to see implemented when they see portrait of a graduate in the classroom I do have more details on this initiative coming soon but if you have any ideas or concerns please feel free to reach out and I'd love to hear from you lastly I would like to touch on the recent matters with Virginia about the misrepresentation of Fairfax County student performance data as Dr Reed mentioned in her letter earlier this
034month and the topic of academic matters tonight FCPS has been using both SOS and Virginia alternate assessment programs to test students on the skills that they've been learning throughout the year a student that I recently talked to was excited about being able having access to these alternate assessment programs and being able to show her Mastery in science and writing in a different way than just the standardized test and she appreciated that her English teacher didn't have to spend a month teaching to the test however she felt disappointed when she realized that these results weren't fully recognized when Virginia presented the FCPS stats across standardized testing which leaves her hard work and her teachers efforts unacknowledged incorporating the Virginia alternate Assessment program paints a more accurate picture of public education in FCPS and is better aligned
035with our strategic plan of demonstrating Mastery in subjects through different methods um I'm continuing to seek back feedback on the new policy of having cell phones in school as well as the new grading policies in high school um and I'd love to hear your feedback from that as I look through that in the next couple months and see what we can improve there um I also wanted to drop one leadership opportunity the school board is now accepting applications to the student leadership development program which is for high school sophomores and juniors who are in good academic standing when you you can get more familiar with what the school board does if you're interested in government so I strongly recommend to students to apply for that program and you will see that on social media later
036um there are do are more things that I want to touch on in the coming weeks and I've always got links and resources that are linked on board docs for the fleak application as well as the school board um and I just look forward to sharing more updates throughout the school year thank you for your attention thank you very much 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 to close meeting on August 29th 2024 to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements and only such business matters as were identified in the motion convening
037the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting do I have a motion Dr Anderson is there a second Mr mov all those in favor Mr Maven Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning Mr Moon Miss seore Heiser miss lady Miss Dixit and myself that is unanimous wait oh sorry abent uh opposed extensions Miss Marin will the clerk read the vote that's 1101 the motion carries thank you agenda item 5.02 action item confirmation of action taken in closed meeting I call on Dr Anderson for a motion I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who physically assaulted another student causing injury and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent is there a second I second Miss St John cunning
038all those in favor Mr mine Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning Miss Dixit Mr Moon Miss seore Heiser miss lady and myself all those opposed extensions Miss Marin and Mr McDaniel will the clerk read the vote that's 102 the motion carries thank you I call on Dr Anderson for a motion I move that the school board approve the following resolution participation and the proposed settlement of opiod related claims against Kroger and its related corporate entities and directing Council to execute the documents necessary to effectuate participation in the settlement whereas the opad epidemic that has cost thousands of human lives across the country also impacts the Commonwealth of Virginia and its political subdivisions by adversely impacting amongst other things the delivery of emergency medical law enforcement criminal justice mental health and substance
039abuse services and other services and whereas the Commonwealth of a irginia and its political subdivisions have been required and will continue to be required to allocate substantial taxpayer dollars resources staff energy and time to address the damage the opioid epidemic has caused and continues to cause the citizens of Virginia and whereas a settlement proposal that has been negotiated that will cause Kroger to pay over a billion dollars Nationwide to resolve opiod related claims against against it now therefore now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board this 29th day of August 20124 approves participation in the proposed settlement of opiod related claims against Kroger and its related corporate entities and directs Council to execute the documents necessary to effectuate participation in the settlement including the required release of claims against Kroger is there
040a second Mr mavan all those in favor Mr Marin Mr mine Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning Miss Dixit Mr Moon Miss seis Mor Heiser miss lady and myself that is unanimous agenda item 5.03 action item Financial year 2024 year-end budget review I call on Mr McDaniel for a motion I move that the school board approve the revenue and expenditure adjustments is detailed in the agenda item is there a second Miss Sear Heiser Mr McDaniel would you like to speak to your motion I will be brief um budgets fundamentally are an exercise in balancing uh competing priorities and they are one of the few situations in life where they are literally a zero sum game spending money on item a inherently means that you are taking away money from
041Item B um I support this package I think it's responsible some back to the napkin math uh it it represents about a 2% spending variation of my numbers are are correct which is is remarkable considering that's it's about a $3.6 billion budget um we fulfilled the commitment that we made to fund the special education extended day contracts we've kept money in reserve for Staffing 140 teaching positions um we're dedicating $9 million to heavy maintenance to include $2 million for security vestibules Mr McDaniel can you pause for a moment we're having a technical issue with the microphones for those joining us virtually Madam clerk should we take a five minute recess I was about to say can we recess for five minutes so we can resolve this thank you we'll take a five minute recess [Music]
042test miss miss lady and Miss seore Heiser and Mr Moon can you hear me or are you hearing The Interpreter we can hear you without The Interpreter thank you board members please return to your seats e e e Mr McDaniel would you like to pick up where you left off sure we're good to go okay um what I said the last point I was going to make is I think there's always attempt there's always an assumption that IND of Year packages that have these big surpluses are just turned into piggy banks that we can just spend on pet projects that's not in fact the case at least not in Fairfax County and not in my experience that's certainly not the case in this package um the last item in this in this package I think
043it's important to speak to is the $28 million that we are setting aside for the beginning balance of FY 26 and what that means is in planning for the next budget that we have to put together we are recognizing that there is likely going to be some shortfall there is always a shortfall between what we need and what we have so in planning for that shortfall we are allocating $ 28.1 million to that um this is a responsible package as I said I want to say thank you to Lee and Alice and all of your staff and the superintendent for putting this together uh and I'm I'm happy to move this forward and support it Miss siser would you like to speak to your second yes thank you um I don't have a lot to
044add to what Mr Daniel shared but again I think this is a very responsible um year end knowing that as we've heard from our colleagues On The Board of Supervisors it's going to be some tough budget years not just this year but coming forward so we want to make sure we plan for that um and we plan for what we need right now there's some really big um priorities that the board has indicated in terms of the the drop program we heard our students loud and clear so we've made sure we have funding for boys volleyball and girls wrestling we um kept the special education extended day contract and recognition of the hard work that our special education teachers do and the extra burden from their paperwork that they have as well and then um
045so you know we're looking at middle school late buses and um we're making sure we plan for the um early release Mondays and many other things and so it is important to make sure not only that we plan for priorities now but we have reserved for the future for next year because we don't know what the budget's going to hold for next year so I'm happy to Second this um yearend budget and I look forward to the good work will do moving forward thank you thank you Miss seore Heiser Mr Dunn uh I move to amend the main motion as follows uh the school board eliminate $8 million from the FY 2026 beginning balance set aside and allocate $8 million in year-end funding in addition to previously allocated funding for one a comprehensive facilities condition
046assessment of all buildings facilities to include athletic facilities and fields and infrastructure to include tracked and untracked to inform the development of new repair and renovation cues and to enable different tiers of renovations to be established two to develop criteria for a new renovation queue and three to establish new renovation cues is there a second second Mr mine Mr Dum you'd like to speak to your motion yes on May 23rd I brought identical motion to uh allocate $6.4 million from the uh for in the regular budget for FY 2024 or to allocate money from year- end funding and so here I'm bringing this motion again uh while this may seem uh in the weeds uh let me draw it back to the 20,000 foot level we have uh over 225 buildings that we own and
047operate 199 of those we operate at as school buildings uh I have spent the summer visiting almost every school in my district and what I've seen is that uh there's a wide uh variation in the condition of our schools and it's not based on the age of the schools you might think oh the schools that are highest priority for renovation are those that haven't been renovated in 30 or 40 years but that's not the case when I visited uh a school in South County that had only been recently constructed it's age system is displaying the kind of malfunction you would expect from an HVAC system that had been installed 40 years ago schools that had not been renovated in 30 years looked almost brand new so it's not a age alone is not a predictor
048of the condition of school buildings we're now coming to the end of our current renovation queue and our renovation queue has grown from around 25 years to almost 42 years that means in my lifetime a school will have only been renovated once that's crazy and we need to make sure that we are continuing to provide worldclass educational facilities as well as worldclass athletic facilities and infrastructure from playgrounds to sporting fields to support our children in every aspect of their educational Journey not just in the classroom but all the extracurricular activities we must do more and plan responsibly and so far we're not doing that we have almost $250 million we spend every year on school Renovations construction infrastructure and and we don't have good data on the condition of all of our buildings our infrastructure
049our sporting Fields our facilities we need to gather that data because if we don't know the condition then how can we make any rational decision prioritizing one building over another how can we make any rational decisions also with respect to School boundaries because if if we're going to be saying more children should go to this school but it's not in the condition to receive them then uh that may not be a well-founded decision so for me this is uh a strategic and necessary move to guide billions of dollars in funding uh $8 million is on top of $2 million that was allocated at the end of FY 23 uh in year-end funding uh at that time our facilties staff had estimated that it would cost 8.4 million so this provides that full amount of money
050as well as a little extra to because FCPS has since expanded the scope of work so we need to make sure we're getting good data uh to to guide our Renovations our construction and we have consulted the facilities planning advisory committee which advises the board on these issues and they have affirmed that this is the right amount of money so I think now is the right time to do it because as we enter years of budget constraints going forward now is the time now is the time to start planning so that we can make good decisions in the future timer has gone thank you uh Mr movine you would like to speak to your second uh nothing further thanks all right uh if you have your light on but are uh in the queue for
051the regular motion can you turn it off I've made a note of where you stand so that we can have people line up for this motion all right Miss Marin I appreciate Mr dun um bringing this motion look we talk a lot about our operating budget which comes from Mostly from our taxpayer homeowners in Fairfax County but we don't talk a lot about how we fund our facilities and that is done through the bond on public vote every other year every other year so one year it goes to the schools and the next year it goes to Fairfax County to do upgrades on other public services such as libraries Public Health Services or Emergency Services everything is a priority however if we have 200 buildings and a lot of them need extra care and a
052lot of them might need new things because technology is changing or we need different types of accessibility we really need to examine what we're what we're doing so I was glad to support the vote back in May to place two 200 two million into um The Reserve then and I'm aware that there's a lot of planning happening to figure out how much we can get for that 2 million in terms of a um you know facilities study during that time I have learned a lot about Athletics facilities and just how much our Athletics facilities need to be repaired and upgraded um we've certainly heard from students here but that's like a whole other area I I look at what's on the um the the paper here the uh the budget sheet there's three line items
053dealing with construction so just so we're all clear we are funding capital projects through our operating budget and I'd like to know if that's a best practice is it a preferred practice I think we need to have that conversation um I'd like to know what the costs are for specific upgrades what's the menu to sustain safe and quality facilities and we need to have the Board of Supervisors in lock step with us they transfer the funds to FCPS and and they are the ones who manage the bond that drive our timeline of reviewing what we're going to what we're going to need in terms of facilities and ask for that but I really would like if we could have a work session on this to really dig deep into the status of our facilities and
054actually have updates far more regularly like we have this quarterly budget update I'd like an update on our facilities and what's happening how we're um staying on top of the needs despite my um my match passion for facilities as Mr duns I am not ready to commit an additional 8 million at this time to this work I'd like to see what's been done with the 2 million already allocated and I certainly am open-minded in the future but I do think understanding how much we're spending from our operating budget on facilities um construction and capital projects is something that really needs to happen before I'm comfortable committing more funds to do so thank you Dr Anderson um thank you I appreciate the comments that both Mr Dunn and Miss Marin have just shared um I I
055I hate the fact that very often we just respond to the squeaky wheel we have parents and students they come to these meetings they email us and they they want to wave the flag and to alert us of what is happening in their facilities that should not be how we handle business we really need to have a comprehensive um review of the state of each of our buildings and to really make a plan to that I love the idea that Miss Marin raised regarding having a regular review because typically we speak about our buildings once a year and all of the things that she's highlighted in the yearend fund here um that are going to construction need to be part of the regular discussions um I think this is a good idea I think this
056is a good way to evaluate um our buildings I think this is a good expenditure we have these year end funds that I think you are asking for it to be removed from the um from the um beginning balance to be moved over I I'm willing to to create that to make that sacrifice in order to get that information because we just have such need and we just continue to not really know clearly what that plan could be now I would anticipate uh Miss zensky if you could sh share if you do not need $8 million it can just go back to where it was but if you need it at least it's set aside in order to do this comprehensive review is that an accurate description certainly we wouldn't want to spend more than
057what is necessary does that answer your question it does but at least if it's needed it is there and available for your office to use thank you Miss St John cunning so having worked in many of these buildings as well as visited them I understand the need for this and I appreciate the theory behind this um however I still don't feel comfortable in terms of knowing having more information I'm open to the idea later on when we maybe do have a work session um because I think that there are a lot of variables when we consider this um and I know that there is a need absolutely um because I have worked in buildings where you know that if you're going to be in this classroom you have to bring a sweater or if you're
058going to be in this classroom in the middle of the winter you got to make sure you're dressed for the summer because of how it all works out so I know the reality of it I just am a little hesitant about doing it at this particular time so I appreciate the theory I'm just not comfortable with doing it right now um I would be open to work session and learning a little bit more and seeing how we could be move forward with this and also the idea of I don't want to set a precedent of us doing Capital Improvements out of our year and budget all the time uh because then we're going to start setting a precedent and I don't know that that's something that we want to do thank you Miss St John
059cunning Mr McDaniel I have some questions for staff um for for for staff if this item passes and the overall uh end of your item passes as well what effect would this $8 million transfer out of the beginning balance have on the beginning balance in FY 26 so miss Burton I think essentially we would be required to ask for another 8 million transfer from the county so effectively this would be deficit spending or increasing the Gap in FY 26 that would be my understanding Miss Burton is that correct yes so we're spending money we don't have um for staff as well can you just give us a very brief overview of where we are in this facilities assessment process so thank you Mr McDaniel my understanding is we sent out an RFI for information from
060a number of uh vendors and we received the results Monday and it's going to take a bit of time for the team to analyze to read through review it's quite a significant amount of uh documentation and so the team's going to take likely several weeks to review all of the documentation uh there's a lot of really good um feedback honestly about facilities just in those documents um so I know the team's going to take some time and make sure they're thoughtful in review okay so is it safe to say that if this amendment does not pass that we're still going down the route of doing a facilities assessment that's correct okay um that's all thank you Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson so on face value I agree with uh my colleague um I definitely understand that
061we're coming to the end of the renovation queue and that we need good information moving forward I would like to renew the same concern that I had when this was brought up in May is that I do not think that every that we need to fund every single one of our schools to be looked at in terms of a renovation queue that when we know that they are not going to be added to that renovation queue so I would like to look at this after after staff has an opportunity to look through the rfis and and gain what information that we're actually going to need moving forward I would like us to make sure that we look at it as an iterative process where we can plan out over time I 100% agree that we
062need full understanding of what status our buildings are in I also am wondering um and this is a question for staff is are we maintaining any records at all on our own that that considers our our current assessment of buildings yes we do maintain a significant amount of a number of Records I do understand the need to have one coherent cue and um continuum in terms of facilities planning and I know uh the team also understands the importance of that which is why this RFI is very important so taking a look at all the possibilities um within the 2 million I know that has been allocated already is certainly um a stronger start than we've made in a while on um if you will centering um this work uh we also have a number of
063systems right in our buildings I know HVAC today uh want to apologize for students and staff today our HVAC systems um in a number of places were really um uh challenged and we have old old major systems that we're continuing to work on but yes we do have a lot of documentation and we look forward to integrating that into um information that we've received as per the RFI and the other thing that I wanted to mention is that um my colleague and I were actually at an fpac Retreat earlier this year that had a had someone come down down from another County nearby that was able to talk through some of what they're doing in their County that were their intermediate Renovations so they're more systems Renovations that wouldn't necessarily have us focusing so significantly
064on the full renovation queue that I think that would be a better path for us to at least consider moving forward so that we don't have to rely on these you know whole building Renovations as the only standard of the way we we kind of make upgrades so I can't vote on this tonight but I do appreciate the sentiment and would like us to keep moving forward to figure out what the answer is to get the a solid list thank you Miss Anderson Mr Moon well thank you Mr chairman I I am going to support this motion I think uh even back in May I I I was supporting this motion at the time uh this is money we spent uh as Mr Don stated that we are talking about currently 42 years renovation cycle
065uh you know over 32 year period of time probably would have spent uh a a amount extending 10 billion uh in order to make sure that we are efficiently and effectively spending that kind of money on school renovation repair $10 million maximum at this point we're not even saying that we will be spending all $10 million it was setting aside $10 million which is 0.1% of what we'll be spending less than 0.1% of what we will be spending over next 40 years uh thank you Mr Tom for being tenacious and bringing this motion to the bation thank you Mr Moon I will take a turn um so this agenda item about the year end has been uh with this board since since July um we've had access to this document um and uh certainly the
066problem is described is dire um if you've been to our schools you know that many of them are in need of of serious work um and so I think an issue as dire as that is deserving of the the preparation and care it takes to get the um the result designed achieved and so I can't support this um at this time and I also don't think it needs to be voted on at this time because we're talking about funding that is being that is being put aside for the year ahead we're not talking about clawing back money from the year end we're talking about money for next year so that could literally be decided next month or the month after um and so you know and it would provide an opportunity for the things that
067did did not happen with this motion no advanced notice we got the motion 15 minutes before close session started no phone calls to solicit our opinions or advice no meaningful conversations before the board took this up at the deis um all of those things can lead to success on something that is extremely important without those things it gets very hard um and so like I said it does not necessarily have to happen tonight if those questions can be answered and we can have a fome discussion perhap perhaps this could pass at another time um but on its face I worry about encumbering the school division with an $8 million outlay next year when we are likely to have a difficult budget year and um be looking to raise pay for uh teachers or staff or
068other things that might be included in the budget during our first um uh Union contract negotiation um we should be setting ourselves up for success in that Realm I think we can do both but it requires a lot more conversation and thoughtfulness than we've had uh in the preparation for this motion tonight Mystic sit thank you Mr chair I wanted to kind of agree with a lot of my uh colleagues here that it is uh it happened very sudden I got the email and we all got the notice pretty quickly right before the board meeting I did not have a chance to digest all the information even though we discussed this $2 million RFI earlier I come from the Contracting world as well and I wanted to say that we do not put set aside
069money for something with RFI out we have to wait till the responses come in this proposals or any uh RFI responses come in and come up with the budget that time I do not believe it is that time this is the time to do this and make uh put set aside money from our uh starting year funds because that could be a very Risky Business and fiscally as a board member I I will not do that thank you thank you Miss Dixit Mr dun uh I appreciate all the comments of my colleagues um I'm gonna look past the somewhat snarky comments about bringing a motion late because the people who make those comments have brought motions late without any notice at all including in July so uh beyond that this motion was thoroughly discussed in
070April in May in June um I have been a squeaky wheel about facilities condition assessments I've provided memos to the board from the facilities planning advisory committee I have had extensive discussions uh oneon-one in groups in work sessions in uh on on this day inclosed session so this is certainly not anything new and uh if so maybe they had a great time with tequila on the beach um by comparison right city of Fairfax just spent $73,000 per building for five buildings with $2 million which was allocated in FY 23 we would be spending uh just under $99,000 per building if you go to a consulting firm and you say tell me the condition of this building for $9,000 when in high school is tens of thousands of square feet you're going to get very bad
071data if anything uh certainly nothing to base billions of dollars in capital Improvement spending on um with the $8 million that would be allocated we would be uh closer to the industry average of 30 to 45 cents per square foot right now with $2 million we're at s cents per square foot so we're just it's inadequate by every measure we already know that um we don't need to wait for RFI responses because we know the content of those RFI responses we've already had expert input from fpac the facilities planning advisory committee we're really at a point where uh are we going to continue to kick this can down the road and wait until the budget gets in such a dire situation where that will be the new justification there's never perfect information there's never a
072perfect time it's just like having a baby you just it's just you know the time you choose and right now when we're uh redistricting when we're uh developing a new renovation queue now is the time because we need sufficient time to plan for the future and and so again uh now is a time when we have money we have money to set aside if we don't need all the money it can come back and be used for other purposes but at least we need to set aside the requisite minimum to do a good job so we have good data and can make good decisions and make apples apples comparison for buildings throughout the county thank you thank you Mr dun Dr Anderson thank you I I fully agree with you Mr frish that these discussions
073and these decisions are best made when there has been advanced notice when there has been deep conversations when there has been opportunity to interact and ask questions of each other but I won't sit here and pretend as if we are consistent in that application cuz we haven't been because we sat here in July and I saw a motion in the script so not even an email so I I want to be sure that we have that expectation of every single one of us not just of some of us um so I I could not I could not let that go I I just wanted to make sure that I countered that point um my other question is for staff if this is not passed this evening and we find that more funds are needed to
074actualize this work what's a potential path to to find the funds well there's always the Schoolboard flexibility reserve and that's the an appropriate use of that um that's budgeted annually at $8 million and the School Board of course could direct um staff to access those funds to pay for any gap between the facility Improvement RFI results versus you know the 2 million that we already have funded would that be the only funds that would be available to do anything in this effort yes all of the funds in our budget are allocated to specific purposes so we would have the Schoolboard um Flex um Reserve which is of 8 million which would essentially what but this would wipe it out okay thank you thank you Dr Anderson Mr Dunn uh I wanted to ask uh Miss
075Burton about the syncing fund because that's been raised by a school board member as if uh if that would be an appropriate source of funding for the facilities condition assessment I don't believe so that syncing fund is for a different purpose um it's for infrastructure improvements and enhancements not maintenance or Consulting type costs um that's what it's been used for historically and that's the language that the county uses uh as what the purpose is when it's allocated to us uh so we probably would need to have a conversation with them um to be able to do that but that sinking fund also is something that we've been getting for a few years now and I believe that you know we already have plans for what those funds will be used at used for and of
076course those plans would have to be delayed if that decision was made are there any other County allocated funds or joint funds between the county and FCPS that might be appropriate or available to dedicate to this effort not that I'm aware of thank you thank you Mr dun Mr Moon thank you Mr shman uh Mr chairman I actually have a question uh of you uh if if the motion doesn't pass and and you know so far there seem to be number of a board members who wanting to have a a a more extensive conversation about on this issue uh will you be able to schedule a work session on this particular issue sometime soon uh I will have to look at the calendar but I I would presume so if it's a priority another question
077yeah another question question is when is our B Bud view can you repeat that when is our Med budget review I don't have that information in front of me December uh December all right thank you thanks for the information I I still support a motion but in case the motion doesn't pass I'm hoping that we can schedule a work session to discuss about this and and address this in the B year bu review thank you Mr Moon seeing no others we will go to the vote for the amendment that's on the screen all those in favor Mr mlan Dr Anderson Mr Dunn miss lady and Mr Moon all those opposed Miss Maron Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss St John cunning Miss seore Heiser Miss Dixit and myself will the clerk read the vote 5 to
0787 the motion fails thank you we are now back to the uh main motion so uh misstic sit Miss Dixit did you want to speak your hand is up no I've just was the voting I'll bring it down thank you Dr Anderson thank you just quickly speaking to the main motion um I I just can't wait to share this but I'm very excited in order to support this um part D that's in the um adjustment here which speaks to girls wrestling and boys volleyball that started this week and the excitement around volleyball has been tremendous so I wanted to just really highlight that as a point um the other question that I had is regarding the Staffing Reserve I know we're just two weeks in are we feeling comfortable with this number is it just
079right or do we need a little bit more how what are we thinking here with the 140 positions yeah thank you Dr Anderson I last year's attendance and enrollment actually was more robust than we had anticipated and which created a more rapid and long-term depletion of our uh Reserve but I'm going to ask uh Mr Solomon to respond if we think that's sufficient and Miss burden if you could also support the response just historically where we're at so Mr Solomon and Miss Burton please yes we've been meeting with our regional assistant superintendents and our principles quite regularly um throughout the summer and of course leading up to the start of school and now at this time I am confident that the Staffing Reserve is sufficient okay that's good to hear and my only other comment
080is regarding the closing the achievement Gap um allocations I know we have 3 million in this one in the year end and we had some additional funds from the main budget I'm really hoping Dr Reed that we can have a clear accounting of how you plan on um achieving um our goals of closing the achievement gaps using these funds do you have any idea as to um when that could become available to the board I believe that as we move forward with our goal reports it's going to be very apparent how those funds are utilized one example is the uh purchasing of Spanish language algebra texts uh we have more and more students in algebra at uh the eth grade level and even those at ninth grade level that we want to make sure are
081a able to uh meet those uh math standards and I'm really pleased that our numbers continue to increase and uh Dr Presidio also provided data recently that our performance continues to improve and we want to make sure that our multilingual students uh don't get behind in content as they learn take time to learn our language the English language in terms of the assessment needs so um actually the amount of money we've set aside is a very small amount uh in terms of the funds we're going to need to really be significant in closing strategies which I mean at the end of the day we are an education institution and that is our core Mission so I'll be excited to share um an inventory of those funds oh that would be fantastic thank you so much
082thank you Dr Anderson Mr Dunn thank you um I'd like to uh just applaud the fact that this budget includes $ 24.2 million for uh special education extended day uh we've heard um from numerous special education teachers the importance of providing them an additional 30 minutes each day uh and uh I'm pleased to see that we are supporting this it was one of my highest priorities uh and I'm also pleased to see the expansion and well establishment and expansion of boys volleyball and girls wrestling expanding AC um not just academic but also extracurricular uh opportuni for our children is absolutely essential to enabling them to achieve success both inside and outside the classroom so they can then apply those Lessons Learned on the sports field and in the classroom uh to success uh throughout their
083lives thank you thank you Mr done seeing no others we'll vote for the motion as on the screen all those in favor Miss Marin Mr movan Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning Miss lady Miss seore Heiser Miss Dixit Mr Moon and myself that is unanimous the motion passes agenda item 5.04 action item Hayfield Athletics I call on Mr Dunn for a motion I move that the school board uh preserve the Integrity of our athletic programs and provide a Level Playing Field for FCPS athletes by directing the superintendent to retain an outside Law Firm to conduct a comprehensive and independent investigation of all allegations arising out of or relating to the Recruitment and transfer of football players to the Hayfield high school football team from high schools outside of Fairfax
084County to include involuntary reassignments of FCPS Personnel improper fundraising improper expenditure of funds cyber bullying and social media policy violations and residency and eligibility of players is there a second second Dr Anderson Mr Dunn would you like to speak to your motion yes thank you uh we uh I I'd like to commend uh Dr Reed for uh causing FCPS to conduct uh a a very comprehensive investigation using internal resources uh using 420 hours of Staff time um an outside Law Firm was is only retained uh for the limited review of the uh alleged involuntary reassignment of an scps employee um and to subsequently review the notes the notes gathered by FCPS employees as uh an attorney who has worked for uh law firms in the private sector and led and conducted countless internal investigations for
085multi-billion dollar companies and other organizations I can tell you that um an internal investigation uh is not credible there is simply no uh capacity there's no competency there is no experience and expertise within FCPS to conduct a complex and multifaceted investigation of this type so while I appreciate the best efforts and the good faith uh intentions um what I have heard since the community meeting at Hayfield on uh Tuesday which was announced at the last minute um and still not having received any reports from anyone as a school board member to review the actual written uh results from anyone internal or external um I must uh call on the school board to uh direct the superintendent to bring in an outside Law Firm to or other organization to conduct a independent and thorough comprehensive investigation
086of all these allegations because we're at a point where we're eroding public trust in our High School athletics program and undermining the Level Playing Field that has existed here to for there are two facts that I cannot reconcile in my brain one is 15 players 15 players came from outside of our County to Hayfield the second is that there's nothing wrong with that which is what uh the superintendent investigation found I cannot reconcile those two facts because somewhere somehow there must be a policy regulation or something that was violated through those actions not to even mention the raft of other allegations that have Arisen we must have a transparent independent review so that we can say what was done was it done correctly and if there were any issues we must resolve them because what
087I won't support is the de facto creation of a free agent Market in high school sports because if we're going to allow 15 players to come in one year it's going to happen again and again and again and I won't sanction that I won't support that that's not what we want so again we must put our draw a line in the sand here make sure that these allegations are thoroughly reviewed so that the unintended consequences are not realized thank you thank you Mr dun Dr Anderson thank you and thank you to Mr dun for what he's just shared I I fully agree none of us want to have this kind of system where we feel as if there's going to be um individuals trying to game game the system I I don't think any of
088us wants that I also want to say I think staff have put forward Valiant efforts in doing this investigation um but because I've been part of other um investigations that Dr Reed has I think very wisely brought forward to external individuals that are completely independent of Fairfax County that has given the community a high level of assurance and it deepened the trust that they have in us and I think there's a little bit of space here where this may not be present in the Hayfield Community which is not my community I just know what it's like in order for um for parents and students and everyone involved to know this was truly independent and outside of the organization so that is why I've offered to Second this um this motion thank you Dr Anderson Miss
089St John cunning well this is my community and frankly I'm a little surprised that this was introduced at without anyone discussing this with me um Dr Reed how many of the players that were alleged or that have been confirmed that have residency here is it 15 players that have confirmed residency here I believe that's it's 14 or 15 the number as I mentioned um Tuesday evening when I met with the community uh recall that I said the number is fluid uh because the division um investigation really looked at residency uh for the primary um purpose of attending school which is really our core mission that we still the eligibility list Tuesday evening What's called the Mel that Master eligibility list needed to be done in conjunction with vhsl who often particularly in transfer situations actually
090attests they have a um protocol if you will and a procedure that's required in certain types of transfers uh for vhsl approval so I believe it was uh 14 or 15 students you're correct in that and I I believe I've gotten several um messages even today not all of those are deemed eligible at this time we haven't put all of them on an eligibility list until that vhsl process has concluded thank you um having worked in the system for the many years that I have and having worked particularly with residency requirements for many reasons I understand how that process works and I understand how you have to verify residency and I can wrap my head around 15 people being here because we cannot control if a family makes the choice to move from one area
091to another area that is something that is beyond our control and there are some families that believe that the only chance that their kids have to get to college is by playing a sport do I like that it happens no but can I control a family and tell them you cannot move to this area and follow this coach I can't we have no control over that it's not our jurisdiction as long as they are living there there is nothing we can do about it so even if an external investigation proves that they're there there's nothing we can do about it I have every confidence in the work that our internal investigation did I know how that's done because I've worked in the system I also understand that some of these issues are personnel and they're
092confidential and it's also confidential for the children I have every confidence in the work that was done by this system I also have every confidence in the review that was done by an attorney that was an attorney general of this state should we keep our eye on it [Music] absolutely does it look bad that these families moved here it does look bad it does doesn't look like if it's fair but we have no control over that I will not support this amendment at all and I would not I don't want to have more expenditure going to something that has already been has already shown no findings thank you Miss St joh cunning Miss Anderson I agree with my colleague um that I I think that we've spent enough time on this particular issue um I
093am significantly concerned with the fact that we're calling out that 15 children would have moved into a school that is heavily in or heavily impacted by Fort belor community so being that there are a significant number of military families that move into the area all the time in Hayfield specifically um I don't think that it's okay for us to be calling that particular aspect of this into question so I would very much like us to move forward from here I have talked to Dr Reed myself about the fact that I hope that there are all every ounce of sportsmanship is appropriate as we move forward in this season um but I agree with my colleague that we cannot control where people live within Fairfax County so we need to and and Dr Reed I would
094like to confirm one more time that the residency of all these children and we're talking about children uh all these children has been confirmed I believe there The Residency of any student that that's currently enrolled in our high schools has been confirmed there's a paper usually a lease or some type of uh paperwork that was provided and then our Registration Department in the case of this particular situation um also added um residents uh checks to make sure that students were coming and going from those homes again know that the residency threshold for enrollment in school is different than the threshold for eligibility to be able to participate in the sport and that is something that still has not been cleared for all the students perhaps who might wish it to be cleared and that again
095is being in many cases processed through a vhsl process which we're fully cooperating with I would just like to say thank you to staff time for the amount of energy that we have put into this to ensure um with the community that that we've done everything that we can to ensure that it is appropriate and be good stewards of the money related to all of these expenditures thank you Miss Anderson Miss Marin yeah I'm aware that a lot of Staff time has been dedicated to this and I'm glad for that I think as a board we need to always be aware of how much money we're spending on external legal costs it's you know a times we're criticized for it at times we're allowed for it um I would like to not spend more money
096on outside legal costs and if anything you know the staff seem to have done a very thorough job and I would like the board to continue to monitor our legal costs and sometimes it is just necessary for a lot of reasons in order to protect the Integrity of the school system that and the education we ultimately deliver to students thank you Miss Marin miss lady uh thank you uh I appreciate the comments shared thus far um I I just want the our community and our public to understand that people move for academics and people move for athletics um and it's been my experience in my time in the system that people move more often for academics than for athletics we heard Community uh participation tonight talk about I mve specifically in West Springfield I mov
097specifically into Langley's district for the academics so um I I just want to say that I do know um that we have the capability internally to do a thorough investigation as someone who was a director of student services who had to question sometime a you know 6' s um person coming in to transfer from a school just across my boundary um I knew to pick up the phone and call the DSs from that school and say hey are you about to lose a basketball player um but the bottom line I'm trying to communicate here is people do poach in Fairfax County for this particular situation um I there's a fine line between what's legal and what's eth ethical we all believe in good sportsmanship as someone who is a three sport athlete in Madison High
098School um I think that what we teach our children about being ethical um and being good sports is of utmost importance um and I I think that we do background checks for a reason uh I would hope that moving forward when we're going to hire um in any position we're going to pay attention to perhaps uh situations like these that may have happened prior to um the enrollment at one of our schools um and so I I also want to share that um I can go back to my time at Marshall High School which is early in my career I mean I watched one of our biggest Rivals win a state championship had four kids who actually lived in Marshall's District were members of that team because they managed to get addresses that that that
099that worked so my my point is I believe we've legally these people have done everything that they that they need to do um and I also understand that some parents will move their kids for academic reasons and some will move them for athletic reasons because if you're on a losing team quite frankly and you're not going to get the looks from college coaches you might get if you're on a winning team that can be that could be a life-changing event for for a young person who's an athlete so um so I I don't believe we need to spend any money I think we have we spent enough on the legal things that come our way that are actually you know very disheartening and if the public knew all the layers of what comes towards us
100um um I think they would stand and protest but we have to deal with what with what comes to us but I don't want to spend any anyone on outside Council I trust our internal investigation uh I just want to say that as a system I would hope that all the people who work for feris County who coach uh who are instructional assistants who are teachers or principles would always pay attention to being the most ethical they can be in all their endeavors thank you Miss Lady Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman I I I do not know whether I'll have enough time uh to indicate my support or not support of this motion because I have to leave for another meeting very soon uh but you know Mr Don thank you for bringing again
101even though this came in the last minute this motion for a bull discussion I am not going to support this motion right now but what I'm going to support is a bold having a discussion sometime going sometime in the future that how we as a school system how we as policy makers or Educators find the better way to be fair with everyone when I say everyone is uh what I understanding is uh you know due to the high number of athletes leaving a particular school they used to be at that schools football program has been decimated and whether any of our Personnel or our polical regulations maybe a contributing factor to that and I would like to have that discussion sometime if that has to be elevated to vhsl level or state Lev then I
102think we owe it to all the students and all the schools in the common to have that opportunity U Mr Don thank for bringing off but I'm not going to be able to support today thank you Mr Moon Mr McDaniel couple questions for staff um how many total investigative entities have looked into this particular situation I know there was an outside firm I believe our independent auditor our auditor general did and I believe HR did is that correct yes sir and we also would add our Central registration attendance residence Checker department so four separate offices have looked into this is that reasonable to say because we had the outside right we had the in U we had the HR and our residency departments those are two internal departments um the board's auditor general which reports
103directly to the board looked at the finance concerns and then Miss Cynthia Hudson um who is an external attorney in a former deputy attorney general for the Commonwealth reviewed all of the notes and reviewed the investigation to provide a recommendation based on her review okay um is is vhsl looking into this what what have they where do vhsl stand on this I did speak with the executive director for VHS SL Dr Billy Han and they are we're still working through the process not all the students have gone through the full vhsl process for eligibility yet we've only posted um I think a fairly small number of the students who are involved in this transfer to the eligibility list so at this time uh vhsl will go through the process for each of the students who
104initiate that process and then they may also conduct their own investigation into the um eligibility of these uh student athletes okay I I'm satisfied with the results of this I'm just not willing to spend more taxpayer dollars on this um and a point of note our auditor general is an independent auditor that's employed directly by this board and I'm old enough to remember when that position did not exist many many years ago and I'm old enough to remember how it got created and it was created specifically for instances where we needed a non-internal investigative function to look at we have citizens that sit on that board the auditor general is a direct hire of this board so I don't think it's quite accurate to say that this investigation was solely internal um because it ignores
105the fact that that the auditor general reports directly to this board and provides that firewall of of uh Independence and accountability um so well I I appreciate that we we want to take this seriously and we want to look into it I'm I'm satisfied with what's been done so far thank you Mr McDaniel Mr Dunn uh thank you uh you know ultimately this is about the Integrity of our athletic programs and uh you know there's been uh lots of comments uh by my colleagues and I appreciate them uh but frankly uh they are intended to distract from the truth to say that the office of auditor general reviewed this that would be false Foya the oeg report uh they didn't review 90% of the allegations uh those that they reviewed they reviewed only in part
106to say we don't have the authority to review they reviewed maybe one piece which is maybe 5% of the total raft of allegations so they didn't really review it did not investigate so their independence is pretty irrelevant um to say that that 420 hours were spent that is a very small amount of time if you think about 40 hours in a week times let's say 10 people across four different units that doesn't add up to a lot of time given the seriousness of these allegations and the implications long term for the creation inadvertent of a free agent Market within our within our County within the DMV um there is no evidence on the record no evidence on the record that any of these families are military connected so that was just total falsehood um to
107release that information would probably be a violation of furpa and other things but until they step forward to say we're a military family I'm not going to accept that um at all uh proper protocol was not even followed by FCPS in its internal investigation at the community meeting on Tuesday and I wish more people had attended the superintendent spoke that on the Sunday before two days before the regional assistant superintendent had gone to seven homes on 15 minutes to 1 hour notice to see if the students actually live there does anyone here think that that's actually the way things are normally done in residency investigations the answer is no we don't involve someone who is a couple levels below the superintendent on Sunday mornings that's your time Mr dun Miss St John cunning I think
108the thing that I really want to say right now is that as a board we it is also our responsibility to not get caught up in suppositions and gossip which was something that was swirling around this entire situation as I said earlier this is my community I every time I went out shopping every time I went to go get coffee every time I was out in public I was approached by members of my community students parents and the many teachers that I do know that work at Hayfield there was a lot of misinformation out there that was published for maybe eyes on their papers and their readership because there was a lot of fallacies that were out there are there two sides yes I got it from both ends and I got both kinds of
109of responses from people but the majority of the people I spoke to are happy to be at Hayfield they like what's going on in the school they're happy with the principal and believe it or not I had fam say because we heard about this we weren't going to have our kids play football but we went to scrimmages we sat there and we watched it and we saw that that is the best place for my freshman to be because those kids respect the coach this is not anything about an investigation this is about what's happening down in the ground this is about my community this is about my school and this is about not getting caught up in the gossip that went around this and we when we talk about integrity that's something that we have
110to as board members be responsible to thank you Miss St John cunnings see no others we'll go to a vote can we put the motion on the screen please thank you all those in favor of the motion is listed on the screen Dr Anderson Mr mline Mr Dunn all those opposed Miss Maron Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss St John cunning miss lady Miss seiser Heiser Miss Dixit and myself will the clerk read the vote okay so we're at 3801 um since Mr moon is not present the motion fails thank you all right agenda item 6.01 performance review asset protection el7 corrective Action Memo I call on Dr Reid for a report on the executive limitation 7 asset protection corrective Action Memo with chairman frish um let me grab the notes here [Music] so this evening
111um and thank you Kevin okay thanks Kevin um this evening I'm bringing back to you um the corrective Action Memo for executive limitation 7 asset protection which uh I presented um during the last Board calendar year so um just a reminder about what executive limitation 7 um addresses and with the corrective Action Memo this evening I'll be providing to the best of my knowledge information and belief information that is uh and does Support Compliance at this time um associated with this El originally this um executive limitation was presented on June 13th of this year and at that time uh the board board uh directed me to develop a correction act a corrective Action Memo to address the items shown here I think we skipped a slide Kevin there we go thank you these were the
112four um that we needed to that I needed to come back and provide evidence uh that these items have been addressed and the steps that the division will take to ensure continued compliance with this executive limitation now we can go to the next one thank you Kevin uh the regulation and policy shown here outline ways that we manage intellectual property um and these are uh listed but not limited to uh these particular regulations which have been reviewed since June um and this uh regulation also uh speaks to the protection if you will of intellectual property next I want to touch on the um records management uh which is around this is designed to ensure student and St privacy and as you know we've had some challenges with that um however what we've done um in
113the last uh several months is to set some clear guidelines for records retention um and destruction that align with State local and federal requirements uh this includes a records management manual identifying which office is now required and responsible for keeping the record how long it's kept and any special requirements additionally the document management office office works with departments and offices to identify records created by those offices and then establishes and maintains the disposition instructions to align with state and federal law inactive Student Records are transferred annually to the document management office where they're securely stored uh for long-term retention beyond the items um that I've highlighted there are several other ways in which we protect uh student and staff privacy regulations 2701 and policy 2730 focus on the handling of these records our systems the
114CIS system and the SE stars and CIS would be our student information system SE stars is used for um individual educational planning or IEPs um we have house student information that's secured or stored securely access to these systems is either determined by staff role and work location or appropriate approvals which have been reviewed regulation 4220 establishes procedures governing the content of employee files which are located in the department of human resources and at times local work sites access to these systems are also restricted to authorize users that have certain role responsibilities finally in this section we have implemented uh several changes in the 2324 school year uh to increase the protection of student records and this has been a obviously a key area of focus and I appreciate the scrutiny and the second look at
115this we have uh changed the fura response including direct oversight the way in which we review and the way we index and label files that are available for inspection additional furpa and incident response training has been uh required for school-based administrators and in particular staff in the special education department Department of special services staff and our leadership a reorganization has been done to place public records Foya furpa team under the office of division Council um as well as oversight of the Department of special services bdoe and OCR complaint processes and this is important to note because previously our Foy and fura team uh resided within our Communications Department and we feel this provides um some more safeguards the next topic I'll discuss uh was our um cyber security policies regulations and controls and again el12
116and 13 highlight many of these efforts our cyber teams actively monitor um digital incursions and Implement proactive security measures conduct routine risk assessments and respond to incidents while providing ongoing training in fact I believe this is the first year we have required cyber training as one of our modules for professional development um oh there you have it starting in school year 2324 the mandatory training um has been occurring to recognize and mitigate cyber threats even um some of our faux fishing uh drills while not popular with staff um have been a key strategy that our cyber team has utilized to help prevent cyber threats uh our email actually is one of our more vulnerable spaces so it's really important uh that we continue to work on that uh risk based authorization and monitoring for third-party
117vendors and in-house applications has also created a cyber checklist which is both uh designed for our security um and also has been a challenge I think for many departments as we try to order materials software and uh complete contracts uh so we know that sometimes there's a a price to pay for security um the additional measures taken to uh ensure protection from legal liability again the office division Council serves as in-house legal uh for the school division um and does consult with staff as well as the board on a variety of matters um the office of division Council also reviews documents and provides trainings to ensure legal compliance um while keeping a breast of changes in the laws um and some other uh topics along this line um we discussed in Clos session this evening
118the next section uh talks about knowledge Management systems and structures in place and there are a number of uh types of knowledge of or types of Knowledge Management with are which are critical we have explicit knowledge tacit knowledge declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge and these are all um examples of Knowledge Management for which we have had to find really clear um targets and strategies uh on the screen there are several examples of management systems and platforms forms and structures where some of this Knowledge Management occurs but we know that um if we have an absence of a robust Knowledge Management strategy that can lead to the inadvertent loss of valuable information which is important to move on um that's not position dependent uh but rather structure and system dependent otherwise everything becomes uh person driven
119and when the person leaves so to the knowledge leaves so we need to be really thoughtful stewards of Knowledge Management um and these sets of practices that help us improve the use and sharing of data and information and decision- making I think will continue to sustain the division well into the future one of the um processes that we're utilizing in terms of these types of manuals are examples of staying on top of this I also appreciate the direction of the board to look at the Baldridge uh model and this is something that's enabling us to answer questions questions about our division and capture uh portfolio of information again around Knowledge Management so we're really pleased to be updating uh those documents another aspect of Knowledge Management is how we use newsletters uh and infograms and
120action grams and all manner of uh information also on our employee Hub as well as on our newly uh redone website uh again websites we have electronic Knowledge Management as well as documented manuals um which are I think very important both to keep our staff updated uh but our community as well and the final aspect of existing Knowledge Management practice uh will be all of those pertaining to providing training and mentorship I appreciate those of you who were able to uh attend our leadership kickoff as well as our new beginnings um Great Beginnings not New Beginnings Great Beginnings um and our we've had a CSS site Institute for the first time this summer and our mtss Institute so our Summits and it's just a great time I think to bring staff from around the regions
121and um different pyramids together across this Division and make sure that we have some core understandings and gotten a lot of positive feedback from that work so finally I want to talk a little bit about ensuring assets are reviewed and utilized in accordance with strategic plan goals and in particular this is around leasing agreements uh which was connected to a budget followon motion from last year so the property management team uh currently is responsible for all aspects of leases uh these terms are reviewed quarterly by the property management team and at this point I know we're looking at um a number of those because I have to get back to you here in the next two months with all of the uh leases we currently have and what if any we can Sunset to be
122more um efficient and so the property management team continues to estimate costs to Leasing Property including rent rent escalations maintenance and operations and so forth as directed by the board the office of facility planning is creating a lease consolidation plan that you all asked to have presented this coming year the 2425 school year it's hard to say that actually it is the 24 25 school year um but anyhow it's part of executive limitation 11 so that uh lease consolidation plan needs to be provided when that elel is provided and that's going to support a review of all the leases some that are deemed necessary those cost analysis and any that we can uh Sunset next I want to review our contract process uh again this is the office of procurement Services which in uh is
123ensuring compliance of these procurement uh practices regulations 512 and 511 provide guidance for acquisition of goods and services as well as outlining who has authority to enter into these contracts the contract request and management system must be used when submitting quotes and contractual agreements to procurement for review and um their uh mandatory terms and removal of prohibited terms are complete with compliance in this area under contracts again the division Council provides internal guidance uh with the office of procurements and contracts there's a continuous review of contracts that occurs in several ways that you can see on the screen uh at the time of purchase the approval workflow and focus requires multiple levels of approval by procurement to ensure compliance and in addition approval review ensures fund and commodity codes are used appropriately the focus workflow
124utilizes appro approval thresholds to ensure a multi-level approval process with clear separation of Duties moving on I'd like to highlight our current practices for memorandums of understanding um and there are a variety of these in the division and typically initiated at the department level again the office of division Council has created template M us for several departments and department and attorneys typically review and provide feedback during the Drafting and negotiation process uh Theseus are currently maintained within departments or schools although one uh piece of Knowledge Management around this topic is we are collecting those to have one dashboard within our office of legal council moving forward we also have a number ofus with our County uh Partners uh which we continue to work to update on a schedule basis so in order to be in
125compliance with the executive uh limitations set 7 the division will take additional steps to ensure that Theus are reviewed annually and align with our strategic goals again that's part of our baldrich work so here I've outlined the division plan and these steps will help us build a clear and consistent plan forus and you can see these and these areus that are anything from uh our Sac program for example to utilization of a variety of services and Community Partnerships uh and we have uh quite a number of these so uh continuing uh our plan for knowledge management practices including onboarding offboarding and standard operating procedure practices will continue to be implemented consistently through the division and um you can see the uh steps in the plan uh which again will address the Knowledge Management and so
126I um Mr chair are with this corrective Action Memo again uh completed and I'd be happy to take questions from the board thank you Dr Anderson or thank you Dr Reid I'm so used to calling you first I know um Mr dun uh thank you Dr Reed um I have uh lots of questions questions um so for procurement um what systems have been established since our discussions last year about the uh picket Street Warehouse which I in my opinion is an egregious example of waste to prevent imprudent spending so the picket Street Warehouse uh was leased early on I think um to store food right includes freezer space uh particularly during Co when it was difficult to get the supply chain wasn't predictable for food so one of the things that Miss samansky um and
127Mr Foster and I have talked about is I have there's a chart of all of our leases that we're reviewing both their beginning date uh their uh Sunset date and we've paused one procedures we've paused any add-on for subsequent years without my direct approval in that conversation um but uh I'm not sure who could speak to the picket Street Warehouse current status is that what you're requesting Mr D no I'm sorry I was just using it as an example um so um you know we we've talked about previous contracts over the course of since January when this board was uh put in place about the need to review contracts that previously were just kind of automatically renewed and and so I was wondering have you put in place any systems to be besides requiring yourself
128to approve every contract have you put in place any systems or mechanism so that every contract every lease not just every lease but every contract is reviewed to say is this something we should do or would this be wasteful so I apologize for my um lack of clarity I'm not personally approving every single contractor lease what we put into place was any lease that was coming up for reconsideration we're bringing to that team uh to look at because and we have a we've collected in one place all the leases so that's we did put that into place um for all contracts we do have a contract review um office our office of procurement we haven't added new procedures to Contracting um other than the thresholds the board has already approved and we're meeting uh those
129thresholds working within those thresholds can I ask uh why why is the office of procurement it appears that some procurement is under Miss Burton other is under Mr muick what is the dividing line there the dividing line is the capital um dollars versus general fund dollars in other words Mr muick is um the procurement for those things in facilities as a checks and balance because you wouldn't want procurement within the same department so we have Mr muick is responsible for Capital or facilities funding um Miss Pratt in uh procurement under Miss buron in the budget office is all things general fund and Miss Burton do you want to add anything to that I think that's essentially the short answer to that's correct okay thank you Miss Burton um with respect to cyber security um I
130don't see any mention of ransomware which seems to be one of the greatest threats almost existential to FCPS because there have been school systems in cities within the United States that have been held hostage by Foreign hackers what are we doing to prepare for that eventuality or or prevent it from happening besides the random uh fishing test emails that get sent yeah thank you Mr Dunn I know there are a variety of strategies no one strategy is going to um eliminate uh cyber threat in fact I would guess there's no strategy that's foolproof for that because there are so many um vulnerabilities within a system I'm going to ask Mr Seth to comment on our strategies currently um please Mr sethy yes absolutely um I think things that are mentioned in the current uh report
131where we intentionally did established the office of cyber security which was to say instead of having cyber security being part of individual offices we're going to streamline it and bring it together in one place which allows us to ensure that consistent practices and policies are applied throughout the system we have already done measures which are public so I can speak off and certain things we can certainly debrief you in a Clos session because we wouldn't want to talk about our practices and procedures but just tightening up protocols around user access uh one of the recent moves was moving everyone to a more secure MFA system what that implied was all of our staff members now have to use an application to use MFA which is initially burdensome to staff but that protects us from measures
132such as SMS Spas fishing which is becoming really prevalent where you would get an SMS message and SMS is not secure it's technology Circa 1998 which hasn't been updated so there are individual practices that we're putting together ultimately all of these come together in what we would call defense in depth where we have multiple strategies protecting assets which are more need to be more secured and restricting access to those assets along the way have have we had any independent audits uh or red team analysis of of our cyber security to validate that our defenses are where they should be and that we're budgeting sufficient amounts of money to protect our now entirely digital uh population so we certainly uh have individual internal controls and we have internal audits too we also run audits with our
133external entities in terms of pent testing um and those are informing strategies which will then reinvest and this is a continuous process right technolog is evolving fast security practices are evolving faster and then we think about funding strategies just like CIP as we build towards stronger and stronger systems that requires more and more investment in technology but it's a balancing act when we look at those strategies and say where should be be prioritizing the Investments where our risk lie and that is becomes the focus of the division and the and the projects and the funding strategies associated with it thank you um Dr Reed how how can we uh or what systems have you put in place to to uh combat the rise of anti-Semitism within our schools um i' I've heard some constituents Express
134concern that with the one-year anniversary coming up on October 7th that there will be walkouts or marches on that day which would goes to the disrespectful element of this uh El um can you talk more about um uh that's one of the words used that you're preventing disrespectful things um unsafe inent Etc in y 7 sorry uh oh I'm I'm on el1 I apologize um all right well I'll I'll put throw that question then thank you thank you Mr Dunn Dr Anderson thank you um thank you for a lot of this information there's a lot here but I I think I was having a little bit of a hard time pressing out what activities are new since the um June U 13th meeting some of the in some of the areas I've been able to
135call that but it's been a but it's been a little bit of a challenge for me to identify it in all of the four areas under discussion um for example for the first section you talked about regulations reviewed since June what does that mean have they been updated reviewed just reinforced I just want to build a little bit better understanding I think some of the purpose of doing a corrective Action Memo is to become clear about what we actually are doing in the division so um and I think perhaps in my original report I was not as clear as I could have been so going back to looking at the four uh bulleted items that you called out as a board that you wanted more information about that doesn't necessarily mean we're changing adding or
136deleting a practice but we're providing more information about what we're actually doing but we did go back and review the regulations that I note in the corrective Action Memo we didn't write new regulations since June but we went back to review them um to share them this evening and I think that's why I'm struggling a little bit because I was under the impression that these regulations already existed so all of the practices already existed but it still led to some of the concerns that um identified this El as non-compliance so I'm as non compliant so I I'm struggling to see what will now be different moving forward in some of these areas not in all but in some of the areas I'm not seeing how we will have a different result so perhaps you could
137name the area that you're not seeing it that would help me uh because I think one of the things uh that came out of the last review is really a lack of speaking thoughtfully about Knowledge Management for example so I went back to make sure that we did some research on what best practices around Knowledge Management were to make sure that we could codify what that actually looks like here and what we need to work on so let's just take the first one um protection of intellectual property um to address the management of Student Records not the legal liability component because I know we've already had that discussion but what is going to um result in a different um in a what's going to create a different result based on what you have done since
138June well it's what we are making clear since June I know um for example this morning one of the things we reviewed was um what are those uh checklists of priorities that we need to make sure we get out to particularly school principls at elementary middle and high and I emailed a team this morning about saying we have certain topics that we just every year uh they in some way trip us up as a division um and we have new principles right so we need to make sure that we get uh clear guidance out on in particular some of these topics except acceptable use of copyrighted materials for example that's not a new regulation but how do we communicate it so that everybody out in the field understands the importance of that and understands how
139we need to take care of that so a lot of this is not so much creating a new um um new body of work but it's how do we communicate how do we remind how do we have systems to check back that it's done in the way we expect it to be done and those are those feedback loops um not unlike uh later in uh the corrective Action Memo we talk about onboarding um and just making sure that we're clear every year that not that was a focus last year and it isn't this year because it's all some of these things are focused every single year and it's building those systems to make we're communicating uh with uh program directors and school principls just reminders about this and then checking back did it get done
140okay thank you um on the last page of the document under Knowledge Management you talked about some of the new activities these I think to me are all fairly new that the chief of staff will engage in which is the um the operations using the bdge framework can you speak a little bit greater detail in terms of what does that mean how will that be manifested in our processes so the Baldridge framework again this is um really around Knowledge Management and uh Mr Smith in his office is leading the review for this Baldridge framework and uh that will identify areas of improvement in knowledge man management practices it's a a lot about portfolio management and when we think about portfolio management we think about all the different departments that have to participate together to bring
141an Initiative off the ground uh it's really uh our senior leadership team took time this summer really to look at how do departments work together and we utilize several case studies out there where perhaps that hasn't worked well for other businesses or organizations um because it's critical that our departments uh work together so part of this work will be U making sure that the portfolio man management across different departments and regions uh work because as I said uh both at the leadership kickoff and we've talked at the you've T at the dis it's critical that we become a school system and not continue in many areas as a system of schools was that my time was that okay thank you um speak a little bit more to Theus what I see here here are there's
142going to be just better structures in terms of gathering Theus ensuring that there is um uh a place where they are all are organized is there going to be any change to their structure I don't know that there's a necessarily A A change in the structure other than we want to make sure they align with the Strategic plan and so wherever possible we want to make sure that there's a tie in um if we're doing us for example on crossing guards how does that connect to what we would expect um for safe students right umus on safe routes to schools get to greeing activities just making sure that we integrate language around our 2023 2030 strategic plan would be the template uh piece that we would want to make is sure is division wide and
143um coherent uh I also want to make sure that uh any M us that bind us as a division have um our office of division Council reviewing it because there at times has been um maybe for expediency or whatever that where mlus are signed out in the field um and haven't always had a review from our office of legal counsel so that's a more of a system or structural um expectation at this time thank you and given some of the information that was shared tonight during the community participation component of the meeting um we we could not underscore enough some of the details that were highlighted on page three of the full report regarding the fura and foyer responses so I will invite you to please highlight that again so our community's assurances are increased
144regarding our protection of their Student Records yes ma'am uh we're working hard again I think page three here I'm sorry um we've moved our Foya and furpa office uh from our communic ation team to our legal counsel team uh We've also worked on the labeling the tagging and Framing and really working with digitized uh student records and um this will continue to be a high priority thank you and training we've provided as well require training for staff are you finished Dr Anderson thank you all right uh Miss Marin yes thank you for preparing this this was our first exercise in not approving an El and doing this correction action process so I I'm a fan of it I continue to advise that the memos be more thematic in what's changing so my my biggest concern
145or one of my biggest concerns that led me to vote against the memo was the handling of student information and I understand you you you said you moved Foya to legal and you've got these systems but I don't I I don't have a sense of the progress on some of these things um and not just that but other systems as well so you've captured a really great snapshot of what's in place but that growth and that change I'm I'm unaware of you know um maybe we can't know in some cases like we can't know if maybe there would be a furpa leak if it didn't happen but I just am not clear on what exactly has changed because as we know we have lots of regulations and lots of rules and you know sometimes they
146you know in any in life right like sometimes they're followed and sometimes they're not but like so how are you ensuring that these things are being followed where is the perhaps change in I don't know if it's Personnel like um you know job performance or something well obviously the Personnel changes wouldn't be part of a public meeting conversation right um so what I would say is um I think that um it one of the case studies we looked at uh interestingly this summer talked about the culture of celebrating sort of the saving the day events right we solve a crime or we solve a big mystery or we like there's some big event and what we almost never celebrate is things running smoothly right or those staff who um day in and day out prevent
147a headline from happening because we don't even know all the headlines that could happen so I think that's a perhaps a long way of saying we're working harder to celebrate the non-events um and so my expectation is that with the changes um over time that we're making that we'll have fewer if you will events uh that draw negative attention and you know harm people okay and by by Personnel I meant you know are there is there a factor in an annual review that includes you know the staff members shall do this this and this and that you can measure so not a specific person is what I was asking about but even if we take something like computers and asset management of computers just like you give us dashboards on you know your teacher hiring
148I mean all year from January we saw that you got down to almost zero you filled those those gaps yes ma'am well I'd want to know like so each year how many of our laptops get damaged how many get stolen how many are you you know to that I would like suggestions on you know what's feasible but like what is important for us to know and but especially with that student information how are we really ensuring like can we say how many you know forms we've digitized with encrypted software or how many you know we can do that like something collect data yeah like the data about how these systems you have in place are actually producing the safety that we're seeking it's a great idea we'll take a look at that and think about
149what data um we can present it's not unlike Mr Dunn asking about the leases that's coming back to you in el11 the lease management profile I think that uh looking at data on different types of assets um more than happy to to to look at that and Now's the Time to do it right start of the year and I also wonder if perhaps when I now that we've had this conversation going back to the policy for el7 might be adjusted to better reflect the conversation of the board and the impetus for having the corrective action so I think we could do that at any any time so perhaps we can all think of that um and to be clear I'm not just talking about assets like things it's like really all the stuff okay y
150thank you appreciate it yep thank you thank you Miss Marin Miss seore Heiser thank you you I appreciate it and I will just say can you guys hear me okay I still see the presentations I can't you're good perfect perfect thank you um I will say as the maker of this motion um back when we voted to to hold you in non-compliance Dr Reed I really appreciate the um detailed information that you've brought back to this board and I want to say as I said at that point um I know I and my colleagues take our responsibility very seriously to ensure that the information you provide meets our expectations so we can have enough information to know whether you are or are not in compliance right with this um El or any of the Els
151that we vote on and at that time you know I felt I think I said it then that you were not in compliance because we didn't have sufficient information it wasn't and so we couldn't make the determination regarding compliance without more information especially around things like Knowledge Management and risk mitigation um from legal liability and some of the other things that you've discussed so I really appreciate all the you've brought back to um to us and you know I have to say I I appreciate my colleagues and I really taking our job seriously in ensuring that we have sufficient information to make that determination and not just rubber stamping but I I do have to say it was you who brought us this process as a public and transparent process to use and so um
152I'm glad to use it I um as the board member who wanted to work on revising Asset Management I think this is Inc incredibly important um and it goes to the to the you knowbody the core of protecting our system right intellectual property risk management contracts Knowledge Management as you know and you know I have talked it can make us so much more efficient effective and deliver excellent education while saving taxpayer money so um there's always more that you can share but I appreciate you taking seriously the board's desire to get more information bringing this back having said that um I was just curious what you think think the Baldridge process will add in terms of the information you bring or what you think it might um help bring to your attention in these areas
153that you think you could work on so I think one of the real benefits of the Baldridge work is our ability to Benchmark with other divisions and other um I don't want to say companies corporations but it's not just schools that Baldridge works with so other organizations and benchmarking best practices for scaffolding um and Knowledge Management right and efficiencies because that's one of the things you were very clear about with budget uh are we appreciating uh all of the efficiencies that are possible as we look at our return on investment for the funds that um our taxpayers are holding us accountable for so I I'm really looking forward to the uh in particular the ability to Benchmark uh how are different uh operations managed and other organizations that are uh defined as highly effective and
154where we can learn things and improve we will and we may be one of those highly effective organizations in other areas uh we know certainly academically we've done great work over the years here in FX County so it's really a continual Improvement right to say all right what we're what are we doing well and how does that compare to other effective and highly effective organizations so what we can find where we can improve an independent yeah I think that's that's really wonderful um and again I appreciate you giving us a chance to get the full information that we need to have to be able to know whether you are in compliance with this executive limitation or not um one thing I wanted to mention in terms of the cyber security and um the ransomware attacks
155um you we've been through that in fairfx County I will say I was on the board and so um it will be interesting to see what continual Improvement the Bal shows around cyber security work um and I also would love to know a little bit more about your standard operating procedures and specifically how they are improving our knowledge management um do you find that they're being utilized at a good rate or do you find that there's room for improvement in terms of the utilization of Sops and I heard that was my time so I think the the standard operating procedures uh I think just committing to those uh in actual like at in the hub and in places where departments utilize them really helps us be more efficient an example is I was just I'm
156really proud and I know the board is proud of our transportation department uh we run the largest school bus fleet in the country and by day four of our uh first week of school only 2% of our routes were running late um I think that's a testament to efficiency um and really uh very strategic planning and there were many drivers actually that were out running their driving their routes prior to the school year to make sure they had the right routing and that's a little extra care um I couldn't be more grateful for our staff here in Fairfax County I think we care just a little more and it shows in the results so I want to make sure we have the best systems in place uh to support our team thank you again I
157appreciate you bring us more information so we could determine compliance thank you thank you Miss seore Heiser Miss s John cunning um thank you first of all I want to thank you for bringing us this detailed work back I I think that's what a lot of us were looking for um the responsiveness and all the information I know this is a huge system I know there are things that it was the Fairfax way and trying to make it a school system rather than a system of schools it's it's a large ship to to turn without heading that Iceberg uh my question is aboutus and as you're working this I don't know do you have a list ofus and do you have a list of when the renewal dates are um just because of past experience
158with certain situations um I know that there are maybe some M us that have not been renewed um uh and this is just a personal situation that I'm aware of and I don't know how broadly that exists or doesn't exist so a aside from just making sure that the language is correct making sure that whatever that renewal date is that we're keeping track of that and being on top of that so I appreciate that and I know our staff we have some M us that just keep rolling and probably not probably but very much so we wish could be um finalized I think uh I I won't go into detail this evening about which ones those are but um some we absolutely there's language that they just roll right while we work on negotiating them
159but some of them uh we have sort of our higher priority to negotiate M us uh so I I really understand your point and appreciate the question because there are some that I think worked maybe 10 years ago and are less effective now and we're still operating within those while we continue to work on negotiating newus and I'm mostly talking aboutus with our County Partners yeah thank you Miss St John cunning I now call on Miss seore Heiser for a motion sorry I was having some technical difficulties with my mic so my apologies um I move that the school board finds that the superintendent has made adequate compliance towards executive limitation 7 asset protection I further move that the school board approved the monitoring report or the corrective action plan based on the superintendent's reasonable
160interpretation of executive limitation number seven asset protection as outlined in the strategic government is there a second Miss Dixit second thank you Miss eisor Heiser would you like to speak to your motion I think I already did just again appreciate uh Dr Reed um coming back with more information to help us determine compliance Miss Dixit would you like to speak to your second yes I'm pretty impressed with Dr Reed's presentation and how we are going to um move forward with the new plans and uh and and the benchmarks so thank you thank you Miss Dixit seeing no others we will have a vote for the motion on the screen all those in favor of the motion on the screen Mr mine Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss St John cunning miss lady Miss seism Mor Heiser
161Miss Dixit and myself all those opposed Miss Marin Dr Anderson abstentions will the clerk read the vote it's eight yeses two Nos and then two not presents the motion passes thank you all right agenda item 6.02 Global Executive limitations el1 monitoring report I call on Dr Reid for the presentation thank you chairman frish this is um the the global expectations which really is sort of the most uh it's kind of the preeminent uh executive limitation in the group of 13 um so I want to start obviously uh by noting that at the time of this report to the best of my knowledge information and belief um that I've gathered information and evidence that I believe supports compliance with this board executive limitation associated with this topic uh again for those watching at home the full
162report is posted on board dos so uh to begin with I think we can go to the next one Kevin thank you to begin with we will look at ways that um in this case um I will not cause allow or fail to take reasonable actions and so forth I think as you can read it uh regulation 4116 relates to employee background checks uh refers to criminal background checks for employees new hires and volunteers and we continue uh to work on this as a high priority as the safety of our students and staff I want to be able to report that as of May 21st of last year 100% of our required background checks were completed um we've submitted 3,663 employees for criminal record background check and an additional 9,509 background checks for new hire
163candidates including employees and volunte ters um we expect to process again this year anywhere between 6 and 9,000 um background checks uh for new hires and we're working to enroll uh Fairfax County Public Schools in the FBI wraback program uh which will actually be available to us for the first time in the Commonwealth in July of 2025 and this will allow us to have realtime information for any staff member that perhaps has an arrest somewhere else in the country country other than in the Commonwealth or even elsewhere in the Commonwealth where we might not otherwise have previously for sure been notified so um just as an aside I would really encourage our leadership at the Commonwealth level to um fund this for all School divisions and honestly all um occupations that deal with vulnerable adults
164or children I think that a commitment to the health and safety of all of our uh children and vulnerable adults in the Commonwealth U necessitates that type of investment and other states have made that investment so I'm hopeful that that will happen here further um add some additional items on this topic include the mandatory annual training and professional development for staff uh We've recently uh put into place a dashboard which I've shared with you so we are monitoring um required professional development and following up to make sure this is occurring and um we're definitely looking at our risk management um looking at in-house claims and handling uh claims and um recovering funds as well as um working on making sure that our Foy and furpa teams handle requests in compliance with relevant laws and regulations
165um next we'll talk a little bit about taking reasonable measures to prevent practices activities or organizational conditions that endanger our Public Image or credibility um we again have um guidance around social media um our office of Safety and Security monitors social media for threats and over the course of the last several years and particularly last year any type of uh online threat and we had several of those were immediately uh worked on researched and strong cooperation with our County Police Department I want to thank um Chief Davis and his team um and our County Executive Brian Hill who provides support in these areas uh during the 23 24 school year we did hold 62 Community meetings um that were organized by the office of community relations um and these were 62 Community meetings that I
166personally attended uh on a variety of topics and I think our uh website that's been relaunched will continue to also provide um positive Communications and a transparent approach to work we're doing in the school division we do maintain Emergency Management plans and our office of Safety and Security works hard to respond to emergency situations most recently we also um last year began new protocols on protocols on air quality with smoke which hasn't been a Mid-Atlantic tradition before uh but we had to adjust and learn some new things about air quality uh obviously our heat alerts have taken on a whole new life of their own in the last uh year or so as well as our snow and ice and um just any management Emergency Management um operations and just really have felt so uh
167grateful for our staff in that area and our County partnership we also participate in annual mandatory Safety and Security Programs for the school year 23 24 we were 100% compliant with these drills and in July of this year we completed and certified the required 2324 Department of Criminal Justice annual safety audit schools turn in their uniform crisis plans and those are reviewed um at the division level and Safety and Security training and tabletop exercises um at each site are scheduled to begin August 26th which was this week so um policies and regulations addressing conflict of interest are also um managed and the conflict of in uh interest and statement of economic interest forms for school members and the superintendent are um identified under policy 1801 uh there are other policies and regulations that talk about
168that for other employees and non-school employment is also something that's addressed um we have specific guidelines for employees to tutor or provide private instruction and so forth um our last two areas cover data and form systems focusing on continuous Improvement um and how we monitor our efforts towards achieving the goals in the Strategic plan again I'm going to call out the baldrich work because this is work that really has tentacles that run throughout a lot of our executive limitations um we've developed and are continuing to develop data dashboards for monitoring key division metrics the senior leadership gets those Monday morning at 6: 30 and we've also developed uh data bites for our principles uh that will be that get um data relevant to their um grade band level of school uh and we're going to
169be adding departments within the next month that will be getting data bites so data um will be reviewed uh and is continuing to be re reviewed at the beginning of every senior leadership meeting so that we can stay focused on our uh our core work of Education uh the Family Vision Group groups uh we have scheduled for this year we had I think over 360 uh family members uh at the kickoff at Fairfax High School and appreciate the uh attendance as well as the uh Fairfax High School staff for hosting us on the final slide we're looking at ways we Implement and monitor efforts towards achieving our goals and priorities um particularly with the board's educational Equity policy uh we have policies and regulations that work on creating the safe welcom and identity affirming spaces
170um this Equity policy was adopted in June of 2023 um and continues to um align with our vision uh values and commitment to academic Excellence uh regulation 263 establishes procedures and guidelines um for uh ensuring that all our students including gender expansive and transgender students experience a safe supportive and inclusive School environment and we have systems processes designed to ensure Excellence equity and opportunity for all students by centering this experience um and the needs of our diverse student populations so um our enhancement plan for students with disabilities our focus on Universal Design for Learning this year our training for all school-based administrators uh Dr King and her team have done a great job with the training around srnr hearings office procedures and um Title 9 UM as well as currently with our cell phone uh
171pilot and policy so at this time Mr chairman this concludes the summary of the monitoring report for executive limitation number one Global expectations thank you thank you Dr Reed Mr Dunn I think I know the question oh the that's only one of many so um in terms of U ensuring that uh the schools are providing a safe environment for our children um what measures or systems have been put in place to ensure that there are UV lights or similar uh mechanical systems to uh to catch and and kill uh covid empo or other viruses diseases that are passing through our our air ducts UV lights within our schools is that what you're asking yes what I mean we we just had a pandemic right and now we have empo coming out we'll have more and
172more viruses I'm sure come in the future years um there are systems like UV lights and and similar uh features on HVAC systems that can be installed in homes and certainly in in commercial and school buildings uh has has FCPS implemented such systems in 100% of its school buildings so I I don't know Mr Dunn that I can speak to 100% of our buildings having UV light systems for that purpose I know that um I assume I should say assume I believe that Fairfax County Public Schools like many school divisions across the country uh worked on interior air quality as an outgrowth of the pandemic right because it was so critical to have uh I know we ran our filters uh through much more quickly um our air filters uh filtering percentages of outside Air
173versus inside air which created higher energy costs I think for many of us but I think if they're healthier it's certainly critical I'm gonna ask U Miss zamansky if we have any UV actually I'm seeing a shaking head here so I I don't know that we have a UV lighting uh plan per se but I can take that back to the team and take a look at that I know our HVAC um systems um and our air quality is a priority I also know that that were're behind in our HVAC system upgrades too so um but uh we believe that we're working on the air quality do you want to add anything to that Miss samansky uh no not at this time I can actually go back to the team and get more information I
174I would appreciate some kind of inventory to see what what measures are in place and where they're not in place so that we can address that um can I just to clarify it's all measures to address that topic not just the UV light not just UV lights that's that's an example but not the only method to to kill viruses diseases that are in the air well we do I know our building custodial teams are using you know cleaning Tool Cleaning measures and so forth and I must say uh big props to our custodial crew because our buildings here are taken care of um I think better than almost anywhere in the country so there's a lot of effort that's going into that as well so I just wanted to make sure I give them a
175shout out tonight I I I I would second that I've been thoroughly impressed with every building manager and custodial um employee who I've met um there's there's a consistent uh theme across the schools I visited in my district that HVAC is not working well no matter how recently it was um installed in including at um South County Middle School where uh that school is only recently built within the last 101 15 years um there's an issue there with um three or four classrooms are above the HVAC system and have uh the potential for students to experience hearing damage because of the high frequency vibrations caused by the HVAC which is right underneath and so I just ask you to maybe work with Miss samansky to look into that to avoid um both damage to our
176students ears and um potential liability but there's also not just at that school but at every school I visited um almost constant reports of breakdowns hot and cold areas in the school and that can uh be very troubling especially with the rise in the number of excessive heat um so what what is being done to um expedite the replacement um of HVAC systems um especially those that are generating High numbers of work orders right that's a good metric for you know whether an HVAC system is working uh efficiently or not yes sir I um miss samansky you want to comment on our HVAC systems and I will share um that that is a priority and we had yeah yeah uh we are addressing those when we do renovate projects as part of our renovation cycle
177but we also know that the average age and useful life of an HVAC system is not 42 plus years like our renovation cycle so we are focusing some of our infrastructure money on HVAC specifically uh and it's interesting the syncing fund came up we were actually just today going over the fy2 syncing fund spend plan and putting it majority to HVAC system Replacements because we know this is a very critical need in our division um and is msky aware of the hearing issue the hearing damage potential at middle school I'm going to follow up on that for you okay thank you um what what is being done to ensure that all of our athletic equipment uh is is um modern and up toate um I've I've had reports of football helmets at some schools not
178being uh fully uh compliant with concussion protocol and uh students having to basically switch out the new modern helmets with older helmets um when you go on the field so the health and safety of our student athletes is a priority so if um I would want to know where that is occurring and I would ask Mr horn our recently named executive director for student Athletics and activities to look into that we absolutely want to make sure football helmets or um pads for any sport or for baseball right like the helmets batting helmets uh catcher gear um any of our Sports we want to make sure our equipment is safe so where there's a concern um I'd be happy to pass that on to Mr horn and make sure that's addressed uh that might just be
179the squeaky wheel though is there any uh proactive effort to conduct an inventory across FCPS to to see not just for people who raise concerns but proactively to go out and look at this equipment to make sure it is compliant and keeping our students and athletes safe my understanding is that's one of the roles of our athletic administrators we actually as you know in the budget maintain the assistant athletic administrators as well at each of the Comprehensive High Schools um I will reiterate that and ask Mr horn for an inventory but my understanding is that that's checked annually thank you um in terms of um uh potential uh you know there's a growing atmosphere of anti-Semitism in in our schools and across our country and um you know to to protect our students um especially
180on the oneye anniversary of October 7th um what is being done to to combat the rise of anti-Semitism within our schools so as you know we partner with the jcrc uh in work on professional development with our uh staff as well as making sure that uh when we do have access of anti-Semitism we communicate clearly and definitively about those with our school Community where in which that occurs um we want to make sure also our office of Safety and Security I mentioned earlier in our corrective action to el7 that we monitor social media and monitor threats so those are monitored um so it's really important uh that each and every student feels safe uh seeing uh included when they go to school so we'll continue uh to monitor monor um events and also work to
181create inclusive environments on our campuses thank you Mr Dunn uh Dr Anderson thank you um just kind of pivoting a little bit I I've been very curious to see what the year 2 reports um could potentially look like and this is our first real substantial one the succession plan is pretty straightforward um and I also know that the intent of these reports is to also add to your annual evaluation so I'm really looking for it to be as useful as possible um when I take a look at what we had last year La last year's report and this year's report there's a lot of the same information um I I've highlighted many many areas where the information is exactly the same but that's okay it exists it's the same and there's some areas where it's
182it is um expanded a little bit for me as a board member and perhaps for the public who's also looking for this information in a digestible way I I please implore you to kind of reevaluate the format of this document there's a lot of great information that is just background information some of the things that are happening yearly um I'll give you an example you talked about here regarding the Emergency Operations the business continuity the pandemic influenza that's the same thing as last year that has not changed um I think that could live in a section where this is just the background information but in terms of the accountability piece the assessment piece that we are evaluating I need to be able to see the year-over-year growth progress Innovation whatever are the new processes um
183I'll give you Al also another example in last year's report you talked about the um you talked about the the background checks it was in beginning stages this year you have 100% of the background checks being done for employees and you have some really great data that speaks to how many have been happening thus far 9500 that's new I would like to see that pre- and post because that's how I can evaluate the growth and perhaps the compliance in many areas as it's provided it really reduces the utility for me as a school board member to see where are we making changes where are the Innovations happening so I just wanted to offer that for your consideration and I appreciate the feedback I would say that um one of the key purposes of executive limitations
184is really to make sure it's like um taking your car in for a 50,000 mile checkup right it at some point these should just be routine and the data probably isn't going to change much because the systems are in place and we just check on them every year there may not be Innovation around background checks it may just be that we're double check checking every year in a public transparent way that we are doing our background checks right like so I think that they're going to be some um executive limitations that aren't going to necessarily be very different year over-year but it's a check-in to say this is the time we're going to double down check with the department check with staff are we still on course because where we should see our growth is
185in our five goal areas right because the executive limitation are the way in which we do the work but the work that's critical is meeting the goals of that strategic plan so it's these are the means to that end which are the goals so I for sure we'll try to find more ways of doing um comparative data and it's also important just to be able to publicly review that every year just so that are you know the community wants to know are we doing tabletop safety exercises absolutely have we gotten those background checks done absolutely are we going to look forward to rrap back for sure right so I mean I think there's always going to be a little bit of balance there I guess is what I wanted to say and I think with
186just some a little bit more strategic formatting we can just identify these are the continuing efforts kind of the annual check-ins and these are the things that we're really honing in on because I'll tell you one of the areas that I find that is new this time um of the data dashboards where you've begun to talk about that that was not in last year's presentation um clearly we've always been data rich but I think right now we're more data focused in figuring out what to do with that information which you've begun to articulate here and I would just like to see this set up in a way that it's easily accessible that we can see we are making tremendous growth the impact I think Miss Marin mentioned it earlier in her comments with the other
187e we are always looking for the impact of whatever it is that we are doing so we've established and spent lots of time I know both you and Mr um sethy have been together putting together these data dashboards now I'm curious in terms of the so what we have them what are they doing and I'd like to find some way for us to articulate that in these reports because that's what would be helpful for me was that the timer I never know thank you Dr Anders miss dixet you Dr Reed for the presentation um I actually have a couple of comments uh one is the the FBI wraback uh program I know we discussed that and you had uh you had mentioned it before too it's absolutely important for us to have that and get
188that access because we are seeing increased um you know criminal activities in our and arrest and uh other things which uh will prevent some of that and also people who are have criminal background other states and moving to Virginia um that's going to support so um and I would try to you know do anything in my power and I I guess all my all the board members that we want that uh to be in play put in place and so thank you for mentioning that the second thing I know uh Dr Anderson was talking about data dashboard this is one of being my interest too I've uh I wanted that data dashboard it is very viable tool but I I wanted to ask you how much of it it's available for public knowledge so for
189just yeah no that's a great question I think we're looking at which of those as we um which of those are going to be maybe public facing and maybe creating some that are uh some of these are very operational uh but I do think that uh We've separated now out our principles and then we'll be separating out directors program directors and then Senior leadership and we pretty much look at all of them but I think it's a good question I maybe that's a growth point for next year yeah and the reason I say it that we do so much good work in FCPS and as with students and teachers and the staff working very hard and uh sometime there is a lot of misinformation goes out and it's a narrative which is um it's hard
190to then you kind of do later it's better to have have the information out in public it's a scores is our is our attendance and those kind of things if we can be more kind of transparent up front to share those that would be uh showing how we're improving that is why I was saying that thank you and my last comment is about what Mr Dan said earlier uh I have uh researched a little bit about those lights and other products which can be used safely in our schools so that the students can and um have more Health uh they have less health issues and especially when the the flu season's going on and viral outbreaks and we have seen that this causes pan uh academic uh you know there is a delay this they
191miss schools and also the you know teachers also getting sick so I think there should be a some like plan put in place to research this uh because ultimately we talk about safety and uh our students and education and this cover covers both of them so I'm not sure about ultra white lights but I know there are other products in the market uh which can be used with the hpsc system thank you we'll look into that yes ma'am okay thank you Miss Dixit Mr mine thank you and thank you Dr Reed uh for the presentation so I'll just start off by saying that I um agree with my colleague Dr Anderson who's away from the table that um it would be helpful if we can pull out the new things um that has you've done
192that a little bit here but um just better emphasize them on each page as opposed to what we've um seen before um I I don't want to and I don't want any of us to be in the position where we're hearing the same presentation every year I know that's not the intent but um uh when I reflect back to ancient times when we had the OES um those were actually very informative um every time we heard them because they were really updated with with new statistics every year they showed us what was going well what what what wasn't and it was really an opportunity for the board to have a significant discussion on operational areas um at least once a year so anyway that's that's my reflection on that um I uh also want to
193um Echo things that um Mr Dunn has said um on um HVAC um and I think that you know as we as climate change changes upon us I think it would be helpful to know what we're doing differently with HVAC because obviously we're going to need stronger capacity um we know that air conditioning is is here here to stay um and needs to be even more powerful going forward um so it'll be helpful to get get a sense of um what we're doing there um and the kind of issue that goes in tandem with that is um something I'm very excited about and I think you are too which is our tree canopy uh and I know U Miss um sansky has has been looking looking into that so I'd be eager um I don't
194know if you're prepared tonight uh but just give us a sense of the the work we're doing there I know over the past year um past couple of years we've been partnering with um Casey trees uh and do you have any thoughts on um high level thoughts you know you're right we've been working with Casey trees and typically what we've seen is that schools that are interested might reach out and get trees uh planted at no cost to the division but we want to make sure that we're maximizing what's available to us so we connected Casey trees with our grounds team so we can identify really good potential sites and that all the trees that we're able to get to get from grant funding we can maximize so we're making some good Headway with uh
195the team identifying the sites and working with them direct yeah that's fantastic um yeah I hope to provide some data on the increased uh canopy uh real estate I guess for lack of a better term right right I no that's that's great so look forward to hearing more on that and then just finally um I would support Mr Dunn's request for an inventory on disease prevention efforts um whether it's UV lighting or other things um I think we can't lose sight of these things just because the pandemic is uh in the rearview mirror um and as I've discussed with you Dr Reed I do hope to bring a forum topic this year on um just kind of taking this issue to a higher level on um uh pandemic prevention going forward um and um lessons
196learned and what we can do better next time so anyway look look forward to further discussing that thanks yes sir thank you Mr mline Mr dun uh thank you um can you please uh speak more about um what is being done to prevent hazing in our athletic programs because I've received multiple reports of uh athletes being hazed in the recent past and um again this is an area where we can be reactive or proactive and and make sure that um you know students are being protected from uh unethical practices so I think any um form of hazing whether it's student athletes or students period is unacceptable so I would encourage those reports to be made to the principal of the school uh and obviously the coach of the program if it's an athletic program and
197if there's not a satisfaction satisfactory response from the coach of the program uh the athletic director and the principal also should help with that um I'll speak to Mr horn but I do believe that's part of parent nights for uh new Sport Seasons and that type of thing but uh hazing in student Athletics or in schools has no place in FFA County um can you also speak about what is being done uh to uh educate students about uh the social media policy and and um you know the the potential implications of uh cyber bullying on social media I mean we we we've lost just too many students uh across this country uh to suicide because of cyber bullying and and we have to be very proactive in uh and helping students to to not be
198subject to such abuse so I know that uh we have some required training uh r srnr that you as a board approve addresses cyber bullying um and the excessive use of social media I think the cell phone policy that the board has had in place for several years addresses perhaps the cell phone connection to those causality or those causes so I think um there's the digital citizenship uh work that's being done I know and promoted and supported through instructional Services um so there's I think a significant amount of work on those fronts and there seems to be a need for continuing to increase that level of work so sorry for the digital citizenship is that training that every student takes as part of their normal coursework um I believe there's digital citizenship that's occurring um
199at each grade level but M or Dr pidio do you want to speak to the digital citizenship curriculum yeah there there is required training that students complete each year we also have a lot of resources that parents can use with students at home to talk about some of the issues like the you know pros and cons and D dangers of social media and the like um a number of our schools have kind of gone above and beyond even the division requirements and have done additional work to earn um National kind of certification under Common Sense Media um as with respect to their digital citizenship work so there's quite a bit of work that's being done um and I reviewed a report and I found uh references to conflict of interest policies but um Beyond policies
200um what proactive measures are taken to identify conflicts of interest or is it or is it simply waiting for reports that someone may have had a conflict of interest there's a requirement that um there's a required conflict of interest training for all staff I have to take it I think the board actually has to as well um and we're all required to understand conflict of interest rules and regulations there's a form for staff um particularly in leadership positions that has to be filed with you that has my signature on it as well uh to ascertain whether or not there is a conflict of interests that's duly noted and um has to have a approval right if somebody's going to be doing work outside the division so I think that's proactive in terms of checking whether
201somebody is conflicting their interests um I don't know that there's a scan that's done for that but there is a proactive training required forms that are required to be filed and where there's a a question obviously HR Human Resources would investigate that thank you thank you Mr Dunn I'll take a quick turn um on the subject of conflicts of interest the previous board uh updated the conflicts of interest policy after many many years and I think we spent about a year working on it um certainly far more robust than it was previously uh the superintendent's correct that it requires certain paperwork to be filled out when a employee wants to do work outside of uh the school system people at home might be wondering well what on Earth could somebody want to do outside the
202school system it includes all sorts of things like having a small business with your spouse or um wanting to lecture in the summer at a university because you have some experience that people find uh useful so that has to happen but we also have uh the fraud waste and abuse hotline so when people do find examples that might need investigating they can report it there as well um and obviously that is very much looked into I also think on the question of um cyber bullying which I think is always worth uh discussing two things I would note one last year the School Division or the school board approved uh our participation in a lawsuit against uh the major social media companies um taking them to court for the impacts they're having on our school system
203um and two I believe and uh perhaps somebody can respond to this our health curriculum at varying points throughout a students education also brings up these issues not only uh from a cyber bullying perspective but from an intimate partner uh perspective as well Dr presidia would you speak to that please yes no um chairman for that's correct there are uh lessons uh related to the dangers of social media in the health curriculum as well thank you um Miss Swan yeah I was just going to voice that opinion in srnr when we watch those videos before we take those exams there is a lot about cyber bullying and digital citizenship ship and then in the advisory lessons we have at the beginning of the year in the social and emotional learning it does come up very
204frequently so we do get that programming validation thank you very much the trenches good to hear Dr Anderson Mr fr chairman FR I did have my hand up also I'm sorry I missed you U miss siser your first turn apolog no worries thank you I appreciate it sorry Dr Anderson if you want to go ahead I don't mind waiting till I you your second turn no please go ahead all right thank you um I won a lot of the questions I have been asked by my colleagues I won't repeat them but I did want to sort of mention as you're looking at some of these facility upgrades and I completely agree um we may even need to look at sort of our schedule given um climate change and how much hotter things are um I
205think we did definitely need to look at HVAC looking for diseases um I think it would be good also to get sort of an accounting of how our facilities funding is and how it relates to the these improvements you want to make right we often talk about being on a 42-year renovation cycle and best practices being 25 and having to spend money out of our operating funds for maintenance and so I think as we look at what we're spending now and what what our bonding and other funding gets us now and what we really need to be doing some of these things we really do need to be looking at are HVAC systems and are they able to keep up with the changing in climate um what do we need to make sure our athletes
206are safe our facilities are excellent you we've talked about sensory rooms all of these things that really take us to be sort of the the best or or top it would be good to get a sense of what we can afford as well right because I think our public needs to know that they have high expectations in Fairfax which they should we love our schools and we're proud of our schools but we've got to be realistic too about what we can and can't do funding wise so it would be good to kind of have both of this is what we need to do here's what we're funded for here's that Delta yes ma'am I well I think we're not funded to do everything we want to do it would be a probably an understatement yeah
207I mean I know for example um I've had a lot of constituents reach out about athletic field conditions and you know some were surprised to find out that you know it it's not included in some of the the bond funding so I think we just need to sort of get that information out there as well because we want to make sure we can meet our community's expectations and maximize our tax pay dollars yes ma'am thank you thank you Miss seore Heiser Dr Anderson yes just a couple more things that I wanted to emphasize on page five of the report you talked about beginning in the 2425 school year data will be presented annually um I am very much looking forward to that as you know I've been asking since last year because some of the
208um go reports did include yearend um data goals for 20 for the 23 24 school year and I am very much waiting to hear how close did we get to those goals and I know we also talked about this last year during multiple goal reports in terms of the seven-year Arc that exists to actualize all of the um goals that we have for the division will that be part of what we see this year you will see the measurements for each goal this year like whatever the measurements are for each goal that data will be provided last year was more of a baseline this year you'll actually you'll see year-over-year growth right I I guess what I'm asking is um I know that the um recommendation from orc was for 5 percentage points increase but
209across seven years which is the lifespan of the Strategic goal how are we are we going to ramp that up and is that information going to make be made available during this year's go reports information so or presentations the goal data will be obviously presented I I'm not sure I'd have to go back and look at ory's recommendations but the goals that well and we're going to report on all five this year so the data that applies to each measurement will be provided right I I I guess I'm I I I want to make sure that I'm clear because I want to be sure that this is part of your Calculus when these are being presented when we talked about this last year some of the goals um were were incremental and were so incremental
210that we could never actualize them by the end of the Strategic plan and one of the things that you said at that time is that across the seven years obviously some years you're going to have larger goals more aggressive goals and others and that we would have the full span of that Arc so I guess I'm looking for that to be um in this year's goal reports so that we can get to that 100% where all students are actualizing um the impact of the of the Strategic goal that's what I was referring to the last thing that I want to mention um because I so I also see this as an opportunity for you to show the growth in last year's you report you talked about how the team was going to be writing the
211regulation that is to accompany the equity policy it was written in May so that would be a great thing to add in here just to also show the progress yes ma'am thank you Dr Anderson Miss seore Heiser did you want to go back no my apologies I low on my hand no worries that's what I get for missing you the first time all right uh I call on Miss St John cunning for a motion I move that the school board finds that the superintendent is in compliance with executive limitation number one Global Executive limitations I further move that the school board approved the monitoring report based on the superintendent's reasonable interpretation of executive liation number one Global Executive limitations is outlined in the Strategic governance manual is there a second miss lady Miss St John
212cunning would you like to speak to your motion no thank you miss lady would you like to speak to your second no all right seeing no other hands we will go ahead and have a vote for the motion that is on the screen all those in favor please raise your hand Miss Marin Mr mine Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning miss lady Miss seore Heiser Miss Dixit and myself all those opposed abstentions Dr Anderson will the clerk read the vote it's 10 011 um we have Mr Moon away from the table the motion carries thank you at this time the board will take a few moments to document their individual feedback on the monitoring report School Board members May complete the hard copy found at the deis uh or the online
213linked version in the script if you have any issues accessing the online form please contact the clerks given the hour I'd like to not take an extended recess because it'll take us forever to get back to the days we'll give everybody one more minute obviously you can return your forms at your leisure agenda item 7.01 policy review Global Executive limitation el1 the next order of business is the policy review for executive limitation 1 Global Executive limitations el1 annually the board will review each of the 13 executive limitations at the time the monitoring report is provided to determine if any Provisions are needed moving forward the board may also review any of the executive limitations at any time A change is needed at that time board members May provide comments on Executive limitation one Global Executive
214limitations to determine if any revisions are needed at this time I invite board members to make suggested revisions or they can reach out to colleagues in advance of a future meeting and we can put it on the agenda all right see no others I will call on Miss Marin for a motion I move that the school board maintains executive limitation one Global Executive limitations at is as it is currently detailed in the Strategic governance manual is there a second second Dr Anderson Miss Marin would you like to speak to your motion just to say that I like this practice of looking at the policy as earlier this evening we saw that we might have an opportunity to do it in another thank you Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your second all right
215thank you seeing no other hands we will go ahead and vote for the motion on the screen if we could put the motion on the screen all right all those in favor on Miss is Miss seore Heiser voting or did she have a oh I'm sorry Miss seore Heiser voting just voting thank you uh all right all those in favor Miss Marin Mr movan Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning Miss seis Mor Heiser miss lady Miss Dixit and myself that is unanimous agenda item 8.01 academic matters I call on the superintendent for academic matters thank you chairman frish this is an exciting night to talk about our annual Pass rates for our so and uh VAP tests and so this evening uh I appreciate the team putting this together
216uh this is quite a bit earlier than we normally would report this data um I think Dr prido indicated traditionally I have two years of tradition but traditionally this is data released at the end of September so we're about six weeks earlyish um and so I just appreciate the team working hard to pull this together for tonight uh want to share the data up here um and it again uh shows that we continue uh to improve modestly in math and science and hold steud and reading and we continue to outperform the Commonwealth in all subjects uh reading math and science I will say that we are looking forward to seeing our reading improve with our new basil this year um I know sometimes there's something called an implementation dip or when you work with new
217materials um we might not see a jump right away which may affect that Arc that Dr Anderson was talking about it's sort of like it takes a little bit to gear up and once we get geared up I think we can really move so we're excited about those opportunities um and we want to make sure that we thank our students for their hard work as our staff for their hard work as well and our families for supporting this and our many Community Partners across the division who provide tutoring um um and safe spaces for our students to engage in school work so um I also want to note that on the far right Dr presidia was able to provide us some data points um which we're excited about um which we saw a 6.8% increase
218in fifth graders taking advanced math across the division and a 99.5% increase last year and the number of eighth graders taking Algebra 1 or higher and those are really specific measurements and targets and we're really excited to see that progress I was at uh several back to school nights last evening and over the last several days and I just really am so so proud of our teachers as they talk about uh some of the strategies they're utilizing um in reading math and science and um I just uh I'm thrilled um for the second week of school there's a lot of excitement around our teaching and learning in the classroom this slide I know has gotten a bit of attention um and this is that uh a nod really to what is our Real Performance here
219in Fairfax County Public Schools in the areas of writing and the social sciences history and I I want to say that the Commonwealth provides vdoe provides approved assessments that we chose to use and our writing uh has maintained a 96% um pass rate uh with an N of over 18,000 close to 19,000 students and our social studies with um over 24,000 students actually improve 3% year-over-year um and you know I think that the excitement for our students is the ability to take these Commonwealth approved assessments and we just want the hard work of our student staff and families to be recognized I also want to say in a footnote below and we're going to have more information it's a teaser little bit of a spoiler alert around AP and high expectations but we did want
220the community to know that in fact uh the number of AP tests given last year went up by over 6,000 across the division and that is significant um and I will also say not only did the number of AP exams go up by over 6,000 um our scores uh the percent of passing tests went up as well so when you think about that that's more access more opportunity and a demonstration of Excellence so um I'm going to move on to the next slide this slide's a little more complex uh and really what it talks about here is returning to these Pass rates this slide allows us to view FCPS outcomes for different uh student groups and it definitely indicates the amount of work that we need to do um and simply must continue working on
221I will say um that our um we looked at it looks like the scores are low in the chart I know it's hard to read but for our Hispanic students it looks like um they are performing under the state average and one of the things our team our multilingual team um looked at was um when we look at our Hispanic students who are not in the multilingual learner uh category they're actually uh performing higher than the Statewide averages in other words 84% for reading which is five percentage points above the Statewide rate um and 78% in math and 75% in science so I think it's very important when we think about um looking at students in uh different uh demographics that our students are performing actually um extraordinarily well and as we work on refining
222our strategies to meet the needs of our multi lingual Learners um we're going to continue to see improvements I know we've got some structures and strategies with our multilingual Learners this year as well as our focus on Universal Design for Learning uh so we're looking to see some great progress there I think the next slide also covers this um and I think this is one of those things Dr Rich polio talked about last year um but this is another key point that our students who have exited multilingual language service actually surpass the average Pass rates for all Fairfax County Public School students so that we know um that one of the ways that um we close gaps is by making sure that students have acquisition of English um to be able to successfully take these
223so and VAP exams and our ntion all right next one students with disabilities Pass rates on so and VAP tests uh we were very careful to pull out our VAP test only so only and then our combined scores uh in both reading math and science and one of the things that um we were a key Point here is on the far right that um the sols represent over 96% of the state tests taken by students with disabilities um so that the combined annual pass rate really is primarily reflective of so results um and then again just a reminder that our special education enhancement plan is focusing resources to strengthen these outcomes um and we'll continue um to work on this we it's really um division efforts in this area will continue I also want to
224uh draw your attention to our very last slide uh we've had a lot of discussion around the National Merit topic here in Fairfax County and I really want to point out that um when we look at semifinalists last year in 2024 was the highest number of National Merit semifinalists even going back to 2016 um and we're very proud of that um reminder that our Nationwide pool of semi-finalists represents less than 1% of us High School seniors um including the highest um scoring entrance in each state so I just I want to share that even when our enrollment was higher pre pandemic we still currently post pandemic um have uh a higher per higher number of National Merits than my fin so that is academic matters Mr chair and I'm happy to take any questions from
225the board thank you Dr Reid we're gonna start with Miss Swant because she can't stay with us all night so miss Swant go ahead hi Dr re thank you for this I had one question looking at slide three that was showing the students who took all of the different types of approved assessments as compared to the ones that took s sols and if you can disclose this information at least for the writing and social science when you look like there were only 110 students who took the writing exam the pass rate is low and it was the same for social science or it was only like 400 students so I'm wondering if you guys have any explanations or reasonings for like maybe like a group of students or the setting that the students took that
226examine or any like way to address that specifically just because it's such a small number right and I think I think what you can see uh missant is that over time it's been a little bit larger number in fact what we don't show in 2122 for writing it was actually 2500 students then it went to uh 500 and then 110 we're really students are choosing these alternative assessments the um Boe approved alternate Assessments in some cases some students have to sit for the so to take an adapted assess ment um so we have pulled um the profiles for students who've taken those and they're often in unique circumstances and that's really all I want to say about that at this point but it is a very small number okay thank you yeah thank you thank
227you Miss Swant Dr Anderson thank you um I just have a few questions so I'm just going to go through some of my slides here the first one that shows that we've increased the point over um in mathematics and science and on the side you talked about the increase of fifth grade students and sixth and eighth grade students taking Algebra 1 and um advanced math can you speak to some of the efforts that have resulted in these increases absolutely and I really am proud of the work that's being led out of our instructional uh Services Department Amy Hunter Dr Amy Hunter spoke to you last year about some of our curriculum um I don't know if we want to call it compression but some of our I think that's the best term uh Dr precidio
228do you want to take a run at that because I there have been a variety of strategies not the least of which is our data dashboard around registration so I I would say I I think the first thing is just having the Strategic plan goals targeted around these areas of increasing the enrollment in our Advanced courses and being being able to communicate that that's a priority for you know every one of our schools so working with our principles being able to communicate that uh with all of our teachers uh we've been able to really be focused on this particular issue so we've done curriculum work which is really important but I think what's more important is some of the work that we've done around the professional development the coaching in schools um the work with
229our counselors to really look at students that could be challenged at a higher level um and to communicate with them and their families to make sure that they're enrolling in some of these more advanced courses at a at an earlier age I think the other thing we looked at is we have the algebra data by region and pyramid um so one of the things we've looked at uh those pyramids that have really pulled together and made that a conversation if you will K12 have likely shown the most gains um so we're really taking a look at that like I said by region by pyramid which should speak to you um and that's where right there that's where um I think you know because you don't just drop into algebra in eth grade if you haven't
230had a strong K7 experience so I think the alignment that's occurring is um you know when we can get those arrows moving in one direction we're going to make the progress we can move mountains and that's a good setup for my next question and if you don't know the details because I am really looking for some specificity um I'm happy to get that information offline how are we um and our investments in young scholars how is that speaking to these efforts because sometimes I don't see the through line Dr presidia yeah I don't have the data off the top of my head it's an excellent question we'd be happy to get that for you I mean we do track enrollment patterns for students that are young scholars they're uh flagged in our student information system
231so that schools will be able to see those students when they transition from school year to school year um that's part of what the work that we do with our Advanced academic resource team teach to advocate for those students with counselors to look at that profile look at the courses that they're selecting so we can get you the the more precise numbers I would be very much interested in that and of course I'm interested in the data by pyramid and by school because that speaks to the growth that I need to see in my area is that already available we haven't no we haven't run it by region and pyramid just yet uh but like we've done in the past we'll uh be doing that again this year and partnership with the chief of schools
232office and then um the region assistant superintendent will be available to go through those data reports with each of the board members do you anticipate an additional presentation later on when you have more robust data that you can disaggregate as we have done because I think last year was September 12th or will this be it for this year I you know I think what we're trying to do is match data with the goal reports because the goal report um that will identify this data will be very much so more detail because we have a whole work session and goal four no this would be goal three I believe um and I'm I would have to go to the calendar to look at where goal three is and if we needed to do it sooner um
233I think we could pull something together probably the soonest will be those conversations you have with your Regional assistant superintendent for you know your region but we can look at when the goal three report will be that would be very interesting to have thank you uh my next set questions are regarding the the the history and writing one of the things that you said which is a little bit unclear for me is that students are choosing um a state assessment versus the so I thought it was a School Division decision has that changed it Dr Presidio perhaps you can better articulate that yeah no I mean as you can see it's a really small number of students that are taking the S sols and as Dr re pointed out that's come down over time because
234more and more of our schools are choosing to use those alternative exams but again there are some students as Dr Reed pointed out that special accommodations might be made available through the so so they they might access that test so for example you might think of even a student who transfers into our school system and didn't have the opportunity to sign up for an AP course or an IB course um and or in a standard level course might default into taking that particular so or a student who needs special accommodations um that might be provided in that format so again it's a small number of students the numbers come down over time uh because you know we're really getting to a point now where these alternative exams are the standard uh for us uh to
235be able to offer to students because they're more aligned to what's being taught in the course uh and in most instances they're much more rigorous when you think about AP and IB exams for example so these assessments are represented by high school students are we no longer doing the eighth grade writing or is that an option for those students it it's an option but again that all of this is um represented this is including all of the uh 8th grade and high school and of course exams in the slide I see yeah thank you um I'm not going to dig too much into slide four because there's a lot to be said there because we know there's a lot of work to be done for with some of our uh populations but I do want
236to speak about the last Slide the National Merit um semifinalist thank you for sharing that and I want to confirm that everyone has been honored in some way certificates have been sent home for all of these students and will continue to be to to happen so Dr Anderson that's one of the uh items on our checklist uh for High School principles but remember National Merit semi finalists get notified um because they then progress towards uh finalist uh consideration uh we're still in the process of receiving information about our commended students who will abs absolutely be receiving their commended certificate in due time in alignment with our recent regulation update thank you I'm really looking forward into um forward to the go report where we can dig into this um in a lot more specificity thank
237you yes ma'am thank you Dr Anderson and I'm pleased to report that conversation will happen at a work session on February 4th so all right Mr Dunn uh I bought a refrigerator a year and a half ago and uh the ice maker broke within the first week and I had to have it uh have repairment come out six or seven times until they finally just gave up and they gave me a new refrigerator and and so the fifth time he came to my house I said um you know I had a refrigerat with an ice maker in 1981 uh which was 40 years ago um you would think 40 years later they would have figured out how to make ice right um but they explained well that was mechanical this is semiconductor so different but
238my point is uh that's a you know there should be a scientific approach to making ice just as there should be a scientific approach to raising the test scores of these black students Hispanic students students with disabilities economically disadvantaged um in talking with principles it seems often there's more art than science to it but um the the the the principles who have really impressed me the most really dig into the data and really have a deep understanding as as I've consistently found in my conversations with you Dr Reed a very deep understanding of what works what doesn't work and for the students who aren't succeeding for the groups that aren't succeeding how to how to you know bring them up to be at least at the level of all students right um so I was
239wondering is there any systematic collection of best practices Lessons Learned um you know identifying the the leaders at the school level or within the schools who are really pioneering the best approach or maybe importing best practices lesson learned from other school divisions as you've been at other school divisions because to to have so much autonomy is good in one way but to to leave so many people to kind of figure it out on their own through trial and error seems uh inefficient uh it seems we should have you know principalis or more uh ways of providing a scientific management approach to ensuring Student Success and better student outcomes yes I um can appreciate that sentiment and there are best practices and context matters right because I mean as children um are not ice cubes right
240like in the sense that science is replicable once we have the right formula and the right temperature I think that um we know that Universal Design for Learning for example as a framework um is a best practice to enable that accessibility and opportunity for each and every one of our students we know that um scop and glad strategies for multilingual Learners are critically important and we're working um to make sure that that professional development is out there we know providing effective feedback enables the uh the autom 80% of our students to perform as the top 20% so we know what best practice looks like and at the end of the day it comes down to an effective educator in every classroom uh with effective leaders in every school and all of us on team FCPS
241supporting that instructional core in the classroom it's that relationship between a student teacher and the content being taught that's critical whether it's the Arts um CTE languages reading math science or writing so I think as we drill down on that and get very clear about that with the support of our families and Community we're going to continue to see the data move in the right direction you you speak about a school system rather than a system of schools right so um shouldn't there be an effort to develop an FCPS approach to Student Success that's correct there should and um we actually that's what the Strategic plan sets the Target right and then it's our responsibility to make sure that every school and department is aligned to that Target we do have an instructional model although
242there's still a bit of debate about that but Dr precidio do you want to elaborate short briefly on our instructional model I mean just briefly I would say we we have what we refer to as the FCPS learning model it's got four you know main domains we look at the type of classroom environment and experience making sure that it's inclusive and culturally responsive that we've got good relationships in every classroom with students and with families we look at the types of instructional strategies that are evidence-based instructional strategies like direct instruction like udl removing barriers for students we look at content again that is you know concept based so we're really focusing on those big ideas and skills that students need to transfer from one subject and from one grade level to to another and we
243look at varied types of assessment so we look at the type of assessment information that really targets the skills that students have and the skills that students need to develop but we also look at more performance-based and holistic based assessment where students are producing work writing samples projects things that can really point to how they transfer that information into learning Beyond you know what we might see in a standardized test that they take in you know one day in in a school year so those are the major areas that we're working on and again as Dr to read that it's about making sure that every teacher has the support and the skills that they need to be effective so teachers need planning time they need professional development um and they need as much support as
244we can give them thank you Mr Dunn Miss Marin thank you for this sometimes I'm asked about um rigor and you know why are we teaching social emotional why are we teaching skills and not just like more hard Core math science um and we're looking today at a lot of very the core perform core um academics mostly on tests I'm wondering Dr Reed if you can speak to the other data points that are indicators of Student Success that perhaps might not be measured by tests but which we teach for and measure on so great question and also just note that healthy kids do better on academic achievement uh uh data points like we're looking at this evening um I know Mr mine has spent a great deal of time for example on healthy food um
245and that makes a difference our food is healthier today as a division than it was a year ago today and that matters to children who are developing I think that uh attendance matters and as we talked last year 188 of our schools improve their attendance many of them significantly year-over-year when students are in school they're going to learn when students aren't hungry and they've had healthy food they're going to learn so I think there are other um we can look at discipline data that will be on one of our goal reports um Dr King's been working on uh that I think the cell phone policy uh enforcement this year will um we've got a number of Pilots going on to determine whether students with uh cell phone enforcement actually do better academically that's part of
246our you know control and active pilot uh group so I think there are a number of data points we'll be able to look at not just s so's VAP tests and bdoe approved assessments I think we look at graduation rates right the um the employability and academic success after graduating from Fairfax County Public Schools the level of academic intensity of High School coursework uh they're just a number of data points I think um that over time uh will become clearer their connection to um just you know the educational experience students have with us I think that's really important to State those uh factors as we also talk about the straightup academic achievement especially um when we're talking about standardized tests as you all know Governor Yan's Board of Education at the state Lev yesterday passed
247a number of uh state standards that now will reduce learning down down to high stake standardized testing so I think we need to keep talking about that that is not all that children are and that there's other aspects that school does um to provide them you know the best learning environment um relatedly how are students assessed in non-core academic programs such as the Arts Music World Language well World Language often could be AP or IB right um I think the Arts are probably the truest performance-based assessment possible because most assessments are performances right the in the fine and Performing Arts um the CTE I think often are credentialing you know possibilities um but you know I think and sometimes it's just sign up and enrollment right like students often vote with their feet if they're
248going to if there's a high interest in certain content areas we're going to see enrollment Rise um in certain content areas um I also think it's important to track the number of our students involved in co-curricular and extracurriculars right fpla um FCCLA Deca um forensics um there are all types of activities I think that are part of a well-rounded education experience and I know in my community where where I represent people know that our schools are not just test scores and they're not just demographics and I've seen a transition over the last few years years um when I'm on a social Media Group people like hey I'm moving to the area what are the best schools and it people are pushing back saying well you can't just go by what greatschools.com says like there's all
249sorts of factors and I see my community defending their schools because they know that there's more than the straightup academic performance even though at the same time they want the best and the most rigor and the most access so I do think that we need to um you know to to fight back against this reduction mindset of that all we do is teach kids take a test which is again what the state is now going to be pushing forth on us that we must educate our community that we know that that's not just what's best for kids finally I just want to ask about Slide Five which shows our um multilingual Learners and you know my understanding is if you're a multilingual learner and you're in the you know not passing yet place then you're
250in that subgroup but let's say then you become proficient and you move to the proficient group if you're not measuring that transition you're always going to have students in that group that are never going to be passing corre can you speak to that and how that's currently measured and how the changes that the state just put through are are going to um influence that or impact that that's a great observation right because if all you ever measure students who haven't made it Beyond which we work very hard to get them um so they're able to exit those intensive Services um the state I will ask Dr cidio to comment uh what I do believe is that the state is planning to take um the 11 semester Rule and move it to three semesters and I
251think um Miss St John cunning had a great uh question during our work session which is you know would the Board of Education members be able to take an exam in a second language unfamiliar to them after three semesters of that language right it's it seems like a a high threshold but Dr Presidio do you w to respond to miss Marin's um analysis yeah I mean I think the point that you were just making about the changes that are going to be forthcoming for next year to go into effect in Fall of 2025 at the state level to reduce the uh amount of semesters for multilingual learner students from 11 to three for accountability purposes is is incredibly Troublesome but what we're looking at here are the raw testing results for our students that are
252multilingual Learners and even this slide is very frustrating for us because we have advocated on this point year after year after year that the state should include the students who have exited services for multilingual Services have exited and are still being monitored by the school system to make sure that they're making progress but have been able to demonstrate that they're proficient in English those students should be included in the multilingual learner subgroup when reporting for accountability purposes because as Dr Reed mentioned if you're only including the students that are still becoming proficient you're really disadvantaging students and not recognizing the performance and growth that they've made so we're really frustrated that the state doesn't include the former multilingual learner students in this subgroup because they do allow it in some categories like graduation rate and
253it and it's something that we've advocated again and again and again and we'll continue to do so um but again we're skeptical that we'll see policy changes on that anytime soon thank you from what I've heard from community members and staff they are troubled by the forthcoming changes they want to know more they want to Advocate um they only came through yesterday I think there's a few more you coming through in September so you know we're relying on you Dr Reed to help inform us so we can assure our families that we have excellent schools we're always going to try and be better um but I feel like I'm having flashbacks because this whole question about growth was No Child Left Behind early 2000s it is the same discussion and Governor yunan is now regressing
254us back to these models that we know don't work so um I'm glad to see that your data are showing that our children are improving and we've got to figure out a way to keep doing the excellent work our teachers are doing our staff are doing and we cannot let them get demoralized by this attempt to undermine their work yes ma'am agreed thank you Miss Marin Miss seore Heiser think thank you and I appreciate the chance um many of my questions were asked um I I do want to reiterate what my colleague Miss Marin just said that while s scores and standardized test scores are an important data point there are only one data point and at the end of the day I really think that our schools purpose is to graduate students who are
255um who have the education Knowledge and Skills to be successful on their paths and so standardized test scores only show a piece of what that education is so I think we continue on our path of really looking to assess all the skills our children are gaining um while of course making sure that their test scores reflect the knowledge that they're gaining as well um I wanted to mention just Dr Reed I wanted to thank you the main reason I was speaking is just because I know how much I have um what I it stated over and over again I would really like to see the so and Bap scores and so only scores and VAP scores separated out so we could really get a full sense of how what difference it made making right in
256our report so thank you for slide six and for doing that um proba been asking for five years and so I'm really glad to see that it really does not make much of a difference it's a one percentage Point difference in what it's reported but I will say that you know it is interesting with the 50% Pass rates for students with disabilities that I wonder what happens to their diplomas for those students who aren't passing it that's a great question right and I wouldn't expect you to have the answer now but I think it's something we need to look at right are they taking advantage of some of the alterntive assessments or what's happening with their diplomas because if we know if they don't pass those SOS they're not getting a diploma at least not
257a standard diploma so if they're on the track and not passing which it looks like it's about 50% right they're taking the SOS right they're not you know less than 50% what's going on with their diplomas and what are we doing to to help make sure that um they have alternate ways of assessing or getting them um the supports they need so just something to put out there to think about um I do think with our multilingual Learners Miss Mar makes a great point and I don't know if vooe in their sort of race backwards to No Child Left Behind they're willing to look at seeing whether multilingual services are working in that as our students are graduating out of our intensive Services they're passing s sols and from our data looks like they're passing
258in higher rates um and it would be great to have that reflected that students who are coming here you know know speaking a language that is um not English giving them time to actually gain the skills they need to be able to take the test in English that they pass at higher rates and I wish that that was reflected in how B um gathers it data so the more we can Advocate on that to our delegation I think the important it is and then finally I just wanted to say on slide three with the writing and social um history social science there are alternative assessments for students for whom they do not best demonstrate their knowledge on standardized test but unfortunately a lot of those students have to take the standardized test first even though
259they best demonstrate their knowledge in other ways so that may explain some of those numbers and I'll kind of leave it at that so um again I really appreciate that slide I just have to say it um because I know I've I've asked for two years and you've been you've moved the needle significantly more than I've seen before so thank you y you're welcome and I'll thank staff for that they they've worked hard on that thank you Miss eore Heiser Miss Dixit you Dr re for the presentation um it really um makes me very happy to see the the the the results actually and especially the uh the students picking up uh higher uh grade maths uh Advanced ma math courses and I was wondering if FCPS has a math path for uh every student
260uh I know we do discuss that in middle school high school level but um do we do that um for like Schools starting in elementary and maybe that can enroll more students in the early math courses like Advanced courses so I don't know that we have individualized math paths but I know I was at um an elementary school back to school night last night where they were talking about uh the ability um to um provide that more advanced uh level mathematics earlier and I know every Elementary School is supposed to be providing opportunities for events mathematics as well um it's just uh I don't think it's student by student in terms of an actual plan uh Dr precidio we have more of a schoolwide pyramid plan I think but not an individual student plan well
261I I'd have to get more information on that I mean again when um we're working with students and families on their placements we're doing that at an individualized student level um but we could try to get some more information for Miss Dixit with two students of mine personally in FCPS I was never discussed my students uh children's math or any other elective courses or any course levels they went and did it themselves they came home brought the sheet we discussed just me and my kids and they went back to school with their selection seat I don't think parents are getting involved in that um Mr procedo um maybe I I it was a unique case for me but I'm just speaking from my experience but um I don't think parents are getting involved in what
262what courses and our our in in in the I know you mentioned back to school night but they're like uh the teacher parent uh conferences it it's an opportunity to also discuss with the the parents that you're you know this is the opportunity and you know this is available courses for at school that your child can take um and especially with the multilingual Learners or their parents because they may not know what is out what what is available to their CH children unless school is approaching them directly uh speaking with them so that's my input and and I definitely see that improvements happening but it's u a long way to go for some of us yes ma'am I think uh I hear you so we'll work on that I think there were more children ready
263to do more advanced math than we are ready to Su yes you're absolutely right that's what I wanted to kind of get there thank you so much yes ma'am thank you Miss di said I'll take a turn um I want to provide a little context for part of the reason we're having this conversation tonight last week uh the governor held a press conference about so Data before the information was shared with school divisions on its face there's no problem with that right if the information is presented in a fair way and it was not to be charitable somebody looking at the so data from Fairfax County would see that we still outperform uh the Commonwealth uh on the three required by state code uh subjects for S sols and then they would see this big
264drop in writing and social studies now a person who's actually looking out for public education their first thought would not be how do I put this into a slide in a press conference before I even tell the School Division about these numbers their first thought would be well that's an outlier I wonder why that is and then they'd dig and they'd see the the tiny number of students who take the so exams in those subjects in Fairfax County and then they'd Wonder well where's everybody else what are they taking and they'd see that oh they're taking the approved alternative assessments that are approved by my very own Department of Education that's some of the context that might appear in a press conference if there's actually a care to partner with school divisions to see students
265improve and that would be the charitable way of describing it but their slide actually acknowledged the small number of people taking these exams and yet they persisted anyways and then when they were called on it by media this is a day after they got what they wanted what they wanted was not accuracy they wanted their headlines and they got their headlines about Fairfax County Public Schools misleading can confusing a lot of people disrespecting our hardworking Educators and the students that they teach and when they were called on it when the story was corrected and they were called on it they said well this is the information we have to report to the federal government first of all that wasn't the point of their press conference one thing that we teach kids to do in our
266schools is admit when they were wrong it is the very least we can expect from the chief executive of the Commonwealth of Virginia so here's a question for you this exam that they were raking us over the coals on uh for not taking or for having uh a lower test score what standards does the writing so exam fixed to what year were those standards created and how long has it been since they were updated it's my understanding they're still testing the 2010 uh writing standards and they are not current we have current writing standards that are more current than 2010 I I I believe i' have to triple check I believe they're I believe for that when they're testing 2017 but we'd have to triple check said yeah 2010 am I correct that the alternative
267assessments that are approved by the Commonwealth that we administer some of those are AP exams and IB exams correct yes sir those are college level exams so we're being penalized by the governor for allowing our students to take a college level exam instead of an outdated so exam wonderful it's good to know whose side he's on thank you superintendent Reed I appreciate it yep thank you think all right you're up next again I know do you want I'll just stay here so I don't spr you're welcome to okay thank you uh up next on the agenda is agenda item 8.02 superintendent matters I will be quick chairman frish I just want to say this is absolutely one of my favorite times of the year what could be better than going back to school seeing all
268our friends our staff our families and back to school nights there is such an excitement um so on the first day of school it was uh thrilling to bound out of bed at 3:15 uh to be at school starting at 4:45 and I did have a chance on the first and second days of school uh to visit 17 schools um welcoming students families in our incredible staff um including our transportation team who's up early every day in our custodial and maintenance teams um grounds did a great job preparing and our design and construction folks managed an incredible number of facilities to be ready so just loved it and I hope hope uh those watching have gotten out to see a number of open houses and back to school nights there are amazing things happening in
269our schools also excited to have attended couple boys uh volleyball practices and looking forward to them uh playing and last uh I guess tonight's Thursday Tuesday night I had a chance to watch uh some volleyball at Hayfield our girls volleyball team was playing Lewis High School so lots of excitement um I understand I was monitoring athletic events tonight um and we did have some of our athletic events canceled this evening which will be rescheduled for tomorrow due to the thunder and lightning um want to thank all of our staff members who attended training this summer we had over 6,000 staff members attend various training uh I want to mention that yesterday I had an opportunity with Mr Dunn to attend the fort bore Community leaders lunchin and met with Fort belar leadership and talked a
270little bit about our theme of being back to school uh also attended an our voices our future multilingual learner Summit which is our first summit here in Fairfax County uh sponsored and led originally um by Dr Pon and brought in a guest speaker it was really a powerful evening with the student panel as well and finally just want to reminder that uh parents and caregivers Guardians and family members please update your students immunization record um it's critically important with flu season around the corner uh that we get immunizations updated um Monday May 30 or Monday September 30th is a really important day uh to make sure immunizations are done and welcome again to the new school year thank you chairman frish thank you Dr Reid agenda item nine consent agenda are adopted rules of parliamentary
271procedure Roberts rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval by the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through Board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda is on the screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda seeing and hearing none the consent agenda is approved agenda number 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 future action will take place agenda item 12 board matters next on the agenda is board matters I will call on each board member to speak miss
272lady I know she was having some technical difficulties there she is thank you uh I'll be brief um I just want to welcome back everyone as we end our second week of school and prepare to celebrate the Labor Day weekend and give thanks to all the FCPS administrators teachers staff families and students for your hard work leading to our successful start of the school year I have touched base with lots of my schools and have heard from most of my principles that they have had an amazingly smooth transition to this new school year we as a community need to remember school is back in session to make sure we are extra vilant when traveling during student arrival and dismissal times we need to remind our students as drivers bus drivers and pedestrians to be safe
273and take their time drivers need to follow the rules of the road around our stop school buses and to stop for pedestrians in Mark crosswalks but also encourage parents to make sure their students cross streets in crosswalks huge thank you to our FCPS Transportation staff and bus drivers for their hard work getting our students back and forth from school and to Echo Dr Reed's comments earlier this evening we are running at 98% accuracy and on time with transportation in the largest school bus fleet in the so kudos to the transportation team I'm very excited to visit my drainville schools this fall and especially interested in seeing how the new cell phone pilots and policies are helping students stay focused on learning uh both Westfield and mlan high schools are part of a formal pilot to
274secure phones during instructional time while other schools are addressing the requirement for phones to be put away through a variety of strategies you can learn more about the current cell phone policy on the fcps.edu cell phone policy web page as many of you know the governor has ISS issued an executive order number 33 to bring a cell phone education to Virginia on the doe. virginia.gov you can read the draft celf free proposal guidance and resources and submit your feedback on the video draft Executive Board number 33 guidance through September 15th by submitting rep remarks excuse me on the video website please make sure your students as Dr Reed just shared are up to date on their mandatory shots required by Virginia starting Monday September 30th students who have not provided proof of immunization will not
275be allowed to attend school we do not want this to happen um so please work with local Health departments Andor with your school to find out ways where you can get those vaccinations that are required for school and then finally congratulations to the marching band members and fall athletes can't wait to check out School sporting events this fall including the new new boys volleyball league and starting their second season soon Middle School cross country with meets on September 28th October 5 and October 19th hope you have a fun and restful Labor Day break that's it thanks thank you Miss Lady Miss seore Heiser thank you very much and I'm also very excited to welcome everybody back to the new school year I've Loved all the energy excitement of back to school and I can't wait
276to continue on my badic district school visits so welcome back everybody um so much incredibly great things happened over the recar but one of the um really really awesome ones was a well-deserved National recognition for one of our own talented students Woodson High School student and bradic District president himon beeli excuse me has been named Time magazine's kid of the year that is amazing for his work to help develop cancer fighting soap which is just an incredible thought to think that you could have soap that would help fight skin cancer um he's really Drew National recognition for his continuing passion for Science and helping people um I had the pleasure of speaking with his parent recently and they are so proud of him and I can't wait for the world to see the amazing things
277he's going to do so if you have a chance grab a copy of the Time Magazine it's it's going fast it's about to become a collector's item and speaking of recognition I'm really proud of the Robinson Secondary School symphonic band under the direction of director Andrew LOF the band has been chosen to perform at the December 2024 Midwest um Clinic international band and Orchestra Conference held annually in Chicago this is the second time Robinson has has achieved this high honor and as they were chosen 30 years ago in 1994 so this remarkable accomplishment really shows the excellent music programs that we have here in Fairfax County they were also invited to perform at the prestigious music for all national concert band Festival in Indianapolis and are currently fundraising for this trip so while you're at
278it please check out your school's emails and websites and you do not have children in the schools take a look at our Fine Arts calendar there are some amazing musical and theater performances check out the Athletics and activities calendars and emails for all the athletic um and the sporting events there's a lot of fun stuff that to do in the community and I know the kids love it when folks come out to support all of their hard work we have some incredibly talented um students on our sports teams and in our Musical and theater Productions as well as in our um Deca and other um great ways to get involved in our schools and lastly I've been busy holding um roundtables with the badic district's PTA PTO PTSA and ptso presidents we're going to be
279doing these every month and the energy and passion of these incredible volunteer leaders is infectious and I'm looking forward to supporting their good work and I encourage you all to get involved with your local schools PTA PTO PTSA or pts so they do great work to support our school communities um and just ask how you can help every little bit helps our schools be excellent and um inviting for everybody so with that thank you very much and good night thank you Miss seore Heiser Miss tix thank you Mr chair um I'm thrilled to welcome you all the new 20124 25 school year I hope everyone had the first good two first week two weeks of school and uh we are ready uh to go forward it was wonderful for me to attend the 30th anniversary
280celebration as CRA Elementary School last weekend with my colleagues Miss Anderson and Mr McAn thank you uh to principal Dow and the incredible staff and volunteer who put together this joyful Community event with lots of activities and inspiring speakers go Eagles a very big shout out to our own FCPS student he and B and uh um RNA just mentioned that so I will say congratulation to this incredible student I'm looking forward to attending the installation of a Captain Planet Foundation project Learning Garden at Center Ridge elementary school on September 5th this was donated by our community partner cost communication to help educate children on the benefit of consuming more fruits and vegetables and I'm also looking forward to attending 5K run and walk with our community partner Asha JY along with superintendent Reed and student
281and staff from many of our FCPS schools this this is on September 15th please register to support our school it is a funfill family event with music delicious food and a friendly course by and Asha joti uh donates 100% of registration money coming from each school back to the school for its stem needs um this is my um board matters have a very fun and relaxing Labor Day weekend holiday good night thank you Miss Dixit Miss St John cunning thank you I'd also like to welcome everyone back this is my first year that I have not been in a school welcoming everyone back so it was kind of a little bit of a shock for me uh but I did manage to get out to some schools um I was warmly welcomed by principal uh
282Christine prw and assistant principal Dixon and cubc at Lane elementaries back to school night it was great meeting parents and students and I was pleasantly surprised to see an FCS slm bring her son to his first year as a kindergartener um there was a long line of families waiting for the doors to open at Cameron for their open house and when students walked in they were hugging teachers and staff and saying how happy they were to be back in school and I even saw two preschool little girls dressed in their finest dresses walking handin hand they had just met and they said they were best friends um the PTA held a picnic afterwards with games and the requisite summer hot dogs uh I was fortunate to visit a couple of our schools with Region 3
283assistant superintendent Ray Lanette uh at Franconia Elementary School I saw the great work that our general M their General music teacher Jen Lucius is doing as well as the work that um Valerie babis is doing with special education students it was really inspiring to see what they are doing there at Groveton I was able to see a Spanish immer Immersion class with uh Marissa Lugo the teacher there had some wonderful things going on and I met met one of our new Ambassador teachers from bise who is already starting to have a pen pel program going on with her fifth grade students to the with the kids in bise and I think that's going to be a great experience for those kids at Claremont I was also able to see uh meline de deeni who is
284their art teacher who was already teaching kids some really exciting artwork I think I need to take her class so I could learn how to draw things um at 5 what was it 5:40 in the morning I was able to join the Rose Hill Elementary school administrative team including principal Edwards uh with their um with their backpack uh program it was broadcast on NBC and they had the annual Supply drive it was sponsored by Apple Federal Credit Union along with uh Omega Sci-Fi fraternity uh there was a lot of people driving up driving dropping off backpacks that early in the morning and that was really inspiring uh kudos to a Gold Medal winner at Twain eighth grader Ethan Dole is a talented fencer earlier this month he represented the United States at the youth veteran
285Pan-American championship in Costa Rica and brought home the gold medal in the men's pre-cadet boil congratulations um for Ethan for for representing us so well and finally Edison receives the green flag award it's the EOS schools US awarded Edison what I'm sorry they awarded this flag this green flag award their highest distinction it honors Edison student Le programs and Community engagement they are one of the only two high schools who got this award and one of 22 out of all FCPS schools Edison is also the first USDA people's Garden in FCPS this year they will organize more sustainably stewardship projects so as you can see there's a great beginning to the school year and I'm excited to see what more our students are going to do and kudos to all the teachers staff and leadership
286team that helped make this kickoff a great way to start the year thank you Miss St John cunning Mr dun I I had uh the pleasure to visit uh more than a dozen schools this summer and meet with the principles and and uh I and and many of their staff and to a person they were all excited enthusiastic uh about the mission about providing a worldclass education to our children and uh they were all busy preparing their schools their classrooms uh their uh outdoor areas their athletic fields uh for for the new new school year I think the most important thing any any Resident of FFX County whether you have kids kids in the school or not is to know that every single school provides a world-class education to every student um we the school
287system meets them where they are provides them all the resources that they need to succeed provides an inclusive and supportive atmosphere and uh where they fall short um there are there are remedies there are recourse uh to uh to the principal and and to others and uh you know for myself I welcome the opportunity to assist any students any families encountering any difficulties but um I am heartened by the Excellence the everyday Excellence brought by our uh by our staff um from Dr Reed on down uh I was also uh heartened by the beauty of our schools um it's not just um you know the the the concrete and the pain and the and the bricks it's the incredible decoration that teachers work unpaid hours and administrators work unpaid hours the murals that students paint
288on our walls that bring a sense of home a sense of community to our buildings um and greater Beauty to their daily daily lives in our hallways um I'd like to celebrate the fact that we have so many people who give so much of themselves um sometimes beyond their their working hours to ensure that our our children are able to realize their potential explore their interests and and and envision um different career Pathways or or futures for themselves that they can continue to pursue both inside and outside of the classroom um you know I've dealt with every matter large and small this summer and we'll continue to do so going forward um but please uh don't hesitate to reach out to me and my office uh to provide you with whatever assistance uh that that
289you need in order to ensure that your experience uh with scps is a positive one and and that we continue to to meet and hopefully exceed your expectations thank you thank you Mr Dunn Mr McDaniel I um I dropped in I did one of those things that you're probably not supposed to do but I was at a school so I just dropped in and paid it a visit um that was earned in high school this morning and uh Dr Noto was very uh gracious and gave me a really quick tour um and I asked her about cell phones and even though hearnen High School is not in one of our pilot programs um the the feedback was that because of the awareness that's been raised about cell phones um the kids are actually paying attention
290and they're putting their phones up um social interaction has increased talking to each other in the Halls has increased um not only between students but between students and the staff um I've received nothing in addition in addition to that I've received nothing but overwhelmingly positive support um for our efforts to address cell phones in schools um so I want to say thank you to our our staff and this board for putting that program forward um and welcome back and looking forward to a productive year thank you Mr McDaniel Dr Anderson um thank you I also want to say thank you to all of the staff for all of the opening of school activities I know how much it takes to ensure that that building is ready that teachers are prepared um to receive students um
291also want to give a big shout out to our teachers and um principes and administrators for their back to school night efforts because it's often very taxing to be um at the school until 8 8:30 only to have to turn around and be there just a 12 short um 12 short hours later so thank you for those efforts um I also want to say congratulations to boys volleyball Justice High School the boys volleyball team won their first game in straight sets that was very exciting um so go Justice Wolves and the fall stretch Jaguars also won their first um game of the season um I want to remind the Mason District that the first superintendent Community conversation of the school year is going to be scheduled for September 9th at homes Middle School from 6:30
292to 7:30 so please mark your calendars because it is your opportunity to ask questions and to share your thoughts with the superintendent language interpretation is available so while registration is not required it is definitely appreciated um just want to highlight because I've been receiving a lot of questions to this end the governance committee will be beginning its work I guess very soon uh miss lady as the chair will tell us exactly when regarding the grading policy this is a hot topic for our community and I expect to have a an update for you very very shortly um lastly on Saturday September 14th just a reminder that the Bailey Community Center will be renamed and dedicated for mini h p it will be renamed the mini H patent Community Center at baes mini patent was a
293long-term resident of Springdale Springdale a historically black community and Bailey Crossroad that originated as a home to freed men after the Civil War I'm very excited to be able to participate in that renaming on SE on September 24th again thank you all for all of your efforts and ensuring that our students have had a wonderful couple of weeks of school and as I shared earlier with the superintendent I think first day everybody made it home good night all thank you Dr Anderson Mr mine so welcome back everyone just one quick thing to share is that everyone's favorite acronym is back the sbsl DP the school board student leadership development program so we're all very excited that this program is coming back after a brief uh pandemic Hiatus um it the deadline for applying for as
294we heard from our student rep earlier today for our our freshman sophomores and juniors who are interested in learning more about policym at the very very most very local level with us and our colleagues in the school system is September 30th you have to apply to your principles um and then they will choose five students to uh uh push forward in the process on October 15th um very much looking forward uh to this program restarting hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend thank you Mr mine Miss Marin yes I just want to acknowledge that during our consent agenda tonight we welcomed our new Deputy clerk Janet Brown so welcome and thank you for joining our team uh I guess you're back in your home setting though because you used to work right here at Luther
295Jackson so here you are not much has changed right um I also want to say thank you to the Fairfax County Police Department who helped the resting Community stay safe during a very um horrific violent crime U between two people and um I spent a lot of time talking with Dr Reed and other people and I do think we did the best for kids and staff and um it was just one of those horrible things but I really appreciate um our Police Department working with our schools and and doing everything no no stops I mean just pulling out the stops to to keep us safe I feel like I've I've been in a lot of schools uh I think yesterday I was in four the final one was me and a PTA hat on as
296my own for my own child's school and um overwhelmingly I've heard positive comments from parents and staff and even students uh we've got some new principles and students are pretty jazzed about that and you know I've just been pretty consumed with what the state's been doing uh to undermine our Public Schools so doesn't look like that's going to go away anytime soon so I guess I need to figure out how to keep making time for that in my agenda as I continue to work with my colleagues to get the money I didn't say that tonight yet so I had to slip that in okay thank you very much and uh hope everyone has a nice four- day weekend thank you Miss Marin and our vice chair Miss Anderson so is a busy month over re
297over our recess I was personally able to welcome staff back at our annual leadership kickoff in July and attended the great beginning summer Institute for new teachers I was also able to attend the multilingual learner Summit in early August I joined Dr Reed and my colleagues at Centerville Elementary School's 30th um anniversary celebration where we had a a principal come back all the way from Cambodia to come talk which was really awesome um today I was able to attend greenb East Elementary School's house pep assembly where all of the kids kiddos that were new got separated into their houses which was is a really cool thing that they're doing this year to kind of create School Community across across all the different grade levels um I'm looking forward to hosting my Springfield District PTO PTA
298PTA PTSA ptso presidents we really need a better better acronym for that um presidents in an in-person school year kickoff with my colleague um Kyle McDaniel very soon um I'm excited about the new school year and welcome all of our students and families back last night I was one of those new parents or I was one of those parents navigating High School back to school night for the first time um I was both so impressed with the enthusiasm of our staff and I'm also in awe of our students ability to navigate our hallways um I'm also and I'm really excited to attend my first volleyball game and PS please don't forget to um complete your child's digital consent form which I heard about in every class from everyone so yes we definitely need those in
299so please make sure you complete those forms thank you Miss Anderson um before I jump in on some some local stuff I was talking to Dr Anderson before the board meeting and I was like you know what we should have a video that shows parents how to set the uh settings on their their child's cell phone and she said well you know I'm putting screen grabs in my next newsletter and I said well I am going to steal that from my own newsletter so be on the lookout for that um in my newsletter and I will give Dr Anderson credit for it um uh additionally my partner and I got the covid and flu vaccine this week uh they have the new ones out so go out and get your shot and join the rest
300of us in in this herd as we seek immunity um over the summer supervisor palchik and I uh teamed up for the summer Smiles campaign to help the dunloring center's map Clinic uh build a robust supply of Children's Dental products so that every child um leaves the clinic with the basic supplies they need to practice ice good dental health um you can see more about that in our newsletters um I also had an opportunity to visit Marshall High School on the first day of school with Miss Lady and the superintendent at approximately 5:50 in the morning um and I had not yet had my coffee but the presence of our football team and our cheerleaders and our band really uh you know got the juices flowing uh that early in the morning it was great
301seeing students talking to local media um and really cheering in the uh first day of school um this past weekend I attended the fourth annual Oakton day at the Oakton Community Park and got to talk to many of our constituents in Providence District uh about 800 people attended um and I also this summer was able to attend and welcome um more than a thousand new Educators at the Great Beginnings conference again this year um some upcoming events that are happening in Providence District I am co-hosting with Providence District supervisor Dalia palek the Providence day and back to school celebration on Saturday October 5th from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Marshall High School you can come celebrate our vibrant diverse and welcoming Providence District community and enjoy food trucks giveaways and prizes activities and entertainment
302for all ages including an up close look at the fire uh Fairfax County Fire and Rescue and police vehicles and a visit from one of FCPS is electric school buses um there will be shuttle services that run from the Jim Scott Community Center um on Vaden and the James Lee community center on annendale road so be sure to check that out um also coming up the food for others 11th annual Tyson's 5K and fun run I'll be doing the Fun Run uh is a family friendly friendly event that I encourage everybody to attend Saturday September 28th 8 A.M At Tyson's Corner Center Plaza um and uh they are a great organization that I volunteered with many times including right here at Luther Jackson Middle School uh they really help uh address food insecurity in our
303community um and then finally some upcoming events there will be a historical marker uh installation ceremony um at gunnels Chapel um this stems from the uh joint effort of the school board and the Board of Supervisors to develop a experiential learning opportunity for our students to investigate uh the experiences of black residents of Fairfax County um historically and bring those to the surface and find Opportunities to install historical markers so we're very much looking forward to this the second installation of a marker that was sparked by that um uh contest among our students and then finally the false Church Jaguar theater boosters are hosting a patrons evening in FSE Church High School's new blackbox theater Wednesday September 4th uh 6:30 to 8:00 P.M that new black blackbox theater is thanks to the taxpayers of Fairfax
304County as bits and pieces of Fairfax furch High School are slowly uh turned back over to the school Community as part of the massive renovation of the school which is coming along very very well uh so to that I want to say thank you to all my colleagues for being here at our first meeting of the school year together and with that we are adjourned thank you everyone [Music]