FCPS School Board Meeting- 7/18/24

001[Music] says mcdel [Music] they didn't speak [Music] please do not tell me that [Music] board members please take your seats yes this July 18th 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 West Springfield High School student Ruby Carlin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America the Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we held at the twilight's last gleaming who brought stripes and bright stars through the perous fight or the ramp parts we watched were so gantly streaming and rocket red glare the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there

002oh s does that star spangled wave or the land of the free and the of the [Music] [Applause] Brave can we hear another round of applause for our incredibly talented student agenda item 2.02 announcements miss lady has submitted a written request to attend this evening's meeting virtually due to a personal conflict all those in favor of approving Miss Lady's request Miss St John cunning Mr Moon Mr Dunn Miss seore Heiser Miss Anderson Mr McDaniel Dr Anderson Miss Dixit and Miss Marin and myself that's unanimous for board members present miss lady will you test your microphone we will test her when she is connected Mr movine regrets that he is unable to attend tonight's meeting he is leading a 27-day tour of China with recent FCPS graduates that was arranged prior to the scheduling of this

003meeting if you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight that information may be found in the back of the auditorium or on the website at fcps.edu schoolb boardboard docs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website fcps.edu tv99 this is a reminder that the school board members will no longer make remarks about a proclamation when it is presented to the board for a vote they may choose to make such remarks during board matters agenda item 3 2.03 honoring Penny GR Proclamation I call on Mr moon for a proclamation thank you Mr chairman I have a proclamation honoring Penny gross a longtime friend of mine retiring from FCPS whereas Penny gross exemplified our outstanding leadership and extraordinary dedication throughout

004our tenure in Fest County Public Schools living on indel Mark on FCPS and well as Miss gross has more than 20 years of experience as an educator at the elementary middle and high school levels she began her exceptional instructional career as a teacher in the Houston Independent School District and the District of a Columbia Public Schools system and started her career in FCPS as a first grade Spanish emerging teacher at ravensworth elementary school in 1996 and well as Miss cross served as assistant principal of hondon high school and Robinson Secondary school and has served as a principal of a key Middle School Glasco Middle School Justice high school and Lake Brock secondary school and wellas as the executive principle for school Improvement in Region 2 m gross mentored and supported school-based leaders and facilitate the

005professional development in the Anand there Forest Church Justice Marshall mclan pyramids and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and well as Miss cross was appointed reason for assistant superintendent in 2021 and has left student achievement assessment hiring of principles and promoting positive capable and diverse leaders across the Caville Lake bradoock Robinson South County and West Springfield pyramids and well as as a military spouse Miss Ross utilized her own experience and understandings to address the challenges present for the many military connected Youth and families across region for and well as Miss cross's career reflectional commitment to fostering educational excellence and Equity she leaves behind the Legacy that every student deserves access and opportunity to attain the high highest quality education possible and well as during her illustrious career as as an educator Miss gross

006has on numerous a and honors including the ously named Panic Ross leadership award top rated principle and the educator of the year and well as Miss gross holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Spanish from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in education leadership and policy studies from Virginia Tech and well as while teaching Spanish in District of Colombia Miss gross was also waiting tables at the out back Stak house one of her customers turned out to be her own FCPS middle school Spanish teacher who recruited her to come back home 25 years later with the detours to New York and Chicago along the way Miss gross is looking forward to following a lesson her father unintentionally taught her retired early and spend the years ahead on the things that brings

007Joy now therefore be reserved that the Fest County School Board extends its highest Commendation and deep his to appreciation to Penny gross for her outstanding and unwavering service to Fest County Public Schools and to the students and citizens of this community so I move thank you Mr moon is there a second second thank you Dr Anderson I'll call for the vote all those in favor Miss Marin Miss Dixit Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seore Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning and miss lady and myself that is unanimous congratulations I would like to welcome Penny gross and invite all those who support the proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the deas e e e miss lady could we have you test your microphone best

008best uh we hear you loud and clear thank you thank you agenda item 3.01 Community participation I would like to take an opportunity to acknowledge our former student representative Rita Kareem uh who is with us tonight somewhere there she is the next order of business is community participation we welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening additional information about signing up to provide comments at Schoolboard regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the school board's website during the signup process community members acknowledged they were informed of the school board's expectations for proper decorum when providing comments these expectations are also provided online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room we ask audience members to be respectful of

009one 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 speak 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 school board members will be listening but not responding Madame clerk please call the first Speaker Isabella oison folks please please hold your applause until a speaker concluded you run the risk of running into their time thank you fair facts matters my name is Isabella Olson and I am a rising seventh grader who is about to attend Cooper Middle School this upcoming year represents an exciting milestone in my life however there's a significant concern that

010I need to address as an AAP student I am a high achiever I value consistency as it helps me to maintain order in my life in addition to working Harden school I'm a member of the swim team basketball team choir band and safety patrol captain and recently was awarded the president's award for educational excellence and The Optimist award the one thing I didn't plan for was the need to potentially change schools either during my time at Cooper middle school or when I'm in high school the revisions to policy 8130 make that more likely not only would I have to leave school that I have dreamed about attending since moving from New Jersey to Virginia but I'm afraid afraid that I'll also have to leave behind friends I've grown close to friends that I play basketball

011and swim with these people are more than just friends to me they're like my extended family we've shared countless victories defeats and cherished memories together the stability provided by these friendships have been essential to my adjustment and happiness here in Virginia while I understand that change is an inevitable part of life and can lead to New Opportunities I also believe that stability is crucial especially during these formative years constantly changing schools can disrupt not just my academic Journey but also my social life and the extracurricular activities I am passionate about I hope we can find a solution that allows students like me to benefit from Advanced academic programs without the constant disruption of changing schools it's important for us to have a sense of belonging and continuity which are vital for our academic success and

012overall well-being thank you for listening and understanding my concerns I hope we can work together to ensure that all students students receive the stability and support they need to thrive in one United [Applause] Fairfax student number two hi I'm Mia a Fairfax County student focus on global citizenship our c c curriculum emphasizes diverse perspectives rights responsibilities and Community impact learning isn't just from textbooks it's through Community relationships were global citizenship is modeled teachers encourage critical thinking and respectful dialogue in our supportive classrooms we feel safe to express ourselves and recognize the privilege of our education connecting with peers and teachers makes us part of something bigger it's disappointing that children directly impacted by school changes are often not consulted as our relationships are crucial to understanding and shaping our community losing the support network would

013be devastating to our growth as a Global ciens in [Applause] FCPS student number three good evening I am a resident of Great Falls and currently a student at Cooper Middle School tonight I'd like to give you a students perspective on the negative impacts on our student Community due to the potential rezoning of schools first the main reason I like going to Cooper Middle School is because of the many friends and classmates there with whom I interact with constantly according to the National Center for biotechnology information friendships can positively impact students academic performances and grade point average by providing emotional support in reducing stress thereby leading to improved focus and better concentration on studies my friends helped me with many things I couldn't have done alone and without them I would feel very alone and stressed

014second there are various School clubs and activities I am currently involved in at Cooper for example I do Science Olympiad and band Science Olympiad is an event that builds knowledge and collaboration skills and I've devoted many hours to it it requires teamwork and dedication and having friends to help greatly increases eff efficiency as you may know Cooper Middle School's Band program is one of the best in the state and I am lucky enough to be in the highest band where we can play high school level pieces pieces and partake in trips that have mostly never been done before for instance going to Chicago to play in the midwest conference was one of the best experiences I've ever had after spending so much time practicing having that taken away is something that I along with many

015others would never forget lastly as you know the pandemic has caused psychological psychological crisis among students setting over a computer for extended periods to learn is not something I want to do again I'm grateful for living relatively close to many of my friends because hanging out with them was reassuring during a time of Crisis middle school students gave me Middle School gave me a lot more responsibilities thus making me feel more stressed if you care about our emotional well-being and the bond of our community and our academic performance it would be best to give a careful consideration and get feedback from the community thank you [Applause] haresh meta respected board members good evening I'm an individual I moved from bestest County New York about 3 years ago our decision to move here was based on

016a lot of Engagement with people who live in this community the schools my kid would go to and the kind of education they would receive I'm not talking of the value of homes I'm talking of the dreams that we've given our kids my kid is preparing hard to get into the langly swim team she swims four five days a week sometimes one and a half hours it's schools become good because parents invest in the schools with the kids by adding a level of disruption which is probably unwarranted under the pretext that we are trying to optimize a school system looks like a little unthought of process I'm an auditor by training if I get into the school system I'll find out 100 places where you have fraud waste and abuse that you can stop it's

017not just like me you can hire a million Consultants who will find fraud waste and abuse a school relocation or disruptive anything that's disruptive to the life of a child should be the place of last recourse it should not be a primary approach when we say just 15% 15 % is a huge number when you look at schools like Langley or McLean almost 250 or 300 kids will get relocated it's almost like saying my kid will get into a school team which she's worked so hard for and after one or two years she might be asked to relocate to another team how is she going to build relationships how is she going to grow how is she going to believe in the concept of government When government has left a short change at the early

018age of 12 or 10 please think about this you're representing us without taking us or taking our thoughts into consideration if you make such changes I think that representation is not fair please do consider very carefully your decision about this policy change thank you Courtney dinkin Courtney Dinkins good evening members of the board I need you to close your eyes for a few moments and envision a workplace where you feel safe where you feel honored where you feel validated now I want you to keep that in mind every time you walk into an FCPS building as an instructional assistant a special education teacher a general education teacher a cafeteria worker a custodian a bus driver or security guard you have worked so hard to make a difference in kiddo's lives yet every day and every

019time you walk into a building start up your bus go into a kitchen or classroom you have no idea what it awaits you will you be validated if you voice a concern will you be heard or thrown to the walls you call your principal or vice principal better yet if a kiddo bites you or scratches you even hits you to the point of having to go to the ER will anyone support you with this contract yes it's about money but it's also about our rights as FCPS employees it's the admin who greet us every day who want to know they matter it's the custodians who help run a building in god- awful heat during the summer who just want better working conditions it's about the IAS who work in special education who want Hazard pay

020and better training to protect ourselves elv now open your eyes as we celebrate this huge win in over 50 years this is why we matter this is why our voice matters this is why we are happy extremely happy to have a seat at the table and discuss what matters to FCPS employees all of us thank you [Applause] Arthur olison my name is Arthur Olson and I'm a member of the board of directors for Fairfax matters thank you to the community for your presence here today and to the school board who have so graciously provided us with the opportunity to speak here and share a proposal for everyone to consider of one United Fairfax one United Fairfax is a proposal to form a public and private partnership which will provide the means by which we can

021permanently address the Myriad of challenges is currently facing Fairfax County and its citizens we understand that such a proposal takes time to consider and that's why Fairfax matters is asking the school board for a one Monon pause in voting to revise policy 8130 as an act of good faith this provides us with enough time to seek feedback regarding our comprehensive plan from the community as part of this pause we propos the following actions action one in a meeting with the school board we partner to craft objectives and key results with a Target date of one month out based on school board's upcoming recess action two work begins immediately with major corporations seeking to generate short medium and long-term Investments with the intent of generating equal and Equitable outcomes for all of Fairfax County students examples

022of such long-term Investments include the creation of new schools expanded schools state-of-the-art Recreation fields and facilities and as many after school programs as we can possibly create action three the school board and Fairfax matters works together with the community to put this proposal to a formal vote on the ballot as early as possible this ensures all groups are held accountable while also allowing the voices of all the great citizens of Fairfax County to be heard if these actions are completed and the one United Fairfax proposal proves to be agreeable to the school board then Fairfax matters kindly request the school board commit to indefinitely pausing any revisions to policy 8130 in favor of focusing on one United Fairfax and leverage the existing policy to address key concerns with schools requiring immediate attention such as Glasgow

023we proposed this to the board in a sign of solidarity because of Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr once said Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice everywhere we also proposed this to the board based on actual case study and corresponding Playbook which has been playing out for the last 10 years by the world's largest financial services institution and JP Morgan Chase in close partnership with the city of Detroit we are confident in this plan's success we can only hope to achieve this success if we unite as one United Fairfax Emily vanderhoff good evening chair frish Dr Reed and members of the board my name is Emily vanderhoff I'm an FCPS teacher and a proud member of my union fcft I first want to Mark the momentous occasion of the certification of the election results

024that will confirm feu as the exclusive agent representing the instructional and operational bargaining units one of my first public comments to this board was February 20th 2020 when the board voted to remove language opposing Collective Bing in the state leg federal legislative program thank you Mr fresh for bringing that um look how far we have come uh FCPS employees have just secured the largest public sector Union election win in decades I'm grateful for a board that accepts the will of employees to have a seat at the table and look forward to what we accomplish in this new era I next want to speak to the boundary policy 8130 I read the current policy and the proposed draft and watched the 2021 work session I support the board's plan for a comprehensive review of division wide

025boundaries and urge you not to delay tonight's plann vote Dr Rita shared that has been since at least 1986 when the policy was written that a districtwide boundary adjustment has taken place think of how Fairfax has changed in over 40 years first of all I I was born in that time we cannot keep making one-off tweaks when a systemic review with an equity lens is needed I also support the plan to complete a review a review mind you every five years which the MGT consultant shared in commonly is commonly used and best practice this does not mean that every school will change boundaries every 5 years but hopefully speakers but hopefully a regular review um will keep the will help the district stay responsive to the new developments and population shifts I appreciate that the

026draft policy specifies Community engagement at every step of the comprehensive review additional engagement is also outlined with each Community considered for adjustments I trust that the district will take lessons learned from Bucknell to ensure that impacted communities will be actively engaged in decisions about their schools from the start thank [Music] you please observe proper decorum for all speakers Kathleen Gillette Mard good evening board um it's a lovely evening outside I'm glad to say um but I decided to come this evening I didn't realize that you all would be addressing FC policy 8130 revisions this policy dictates how School Geographic boundaries can be changed as I entered tonight I was handed a flyer requesting a pause in the revisions someone asked why a pause why is a pause needed the response was because sufficient data has

027not been collected in order for you to make that decision this dovetail with the topic that I was going to uh talk to you about tonight that is the of human trafficking I think you remember in January 2022 you all passed a resolution on human trafficking and in that resolution you self- admitted every High School in Fairfax County many middle schools in Fairfax County and some elementary schools in Fairfax County have had reports of human trafficking this is data that parents need to [Music] have so I the other the other issue I was going to talk about is the boundaries between parents and school board and the schools because sometimes those boundaries are exceeded uh I have a handout which I I will not quote any of the stuff that you're teaching the kids from

028grade six where they are in now this is not Family Life Education it's uh emotional uh social health in intense sex trafficking video includes a screen saying victims are forced to have sex with up to 30 customers a day this is a atic video that you were Ryan St Pierre thanks for having me today we gather as a community concerned with the future ility of our schools families and businesses recent studies underscore the challenges our students face losses in learning increased anxiety and depression and socialization issues postco these findings emphasize the critical need for stability and thoughtful decision-making in educational policy the proposed revisions to policy 8130 demand our attention they threaten to introduce uncertainty through frequent frequent boundary changes disrupting communities and compounding existing challenges our students deserve better than policies that Overlook the

029impact on their education and well-being we urge the board to pause the revision of policy 8130 until meaningful Community engagement occurs this in includes acquiring sharing and analyzing unbiased data that can be effectively used to inform decisions transparency and Boundary adjustments is crucial shifting districts should be based on clear datadriven criteria and be the last resort after exhausting other alternatives ility is Paramount for our students and families Central to a thriving School environment and Community cohesion as we consider the long-term implications of dra draft policy 8130 we must ensure that any changes align with our Collective commitment to educational excellence and Community well-being in conclusion the strength of our school system is foundational to Fairfax County's appeal to its and its ability to attract and retain families and businesses let us prioritize ility and Community

030engagement in shaping the future of our schools we respectfully call upon the board to Heed These concerns and ensure that our children's educational Journey remains stable and prosperous by pausing on the 8130 revision thank you Thea Hussein good evening my name is Thea Hussein I'm a mother of six children all attending F fast County Public Schools I'm here on the behalf of my community Muslim and Interfaith as a concerned parent to address the concern about passing the pilot program for gender ideology and um teaching children about sex to FCPS elementary school children according to the First Amendment you may have personal belief but you may not impose them upon others referencing last year's SCP experience survey the majority chose not to pass gender ideology education and sex education to school curriculum my second point is

031a concern about availability of sexually inappropriate contents of books available in FCPS libraries those books are not just sexually exploiting children but also offends and touches our core values as Muslims the books specifically being this book is gay gender queer and all boys are in blue parents want school to be educational and nurturing children from all walks of life while respecting all beliefs thank you Edward Phillips good evening thank you for this opportunity I am Ed Phillips from the great fall citizens Association or gfca gfca is a nonprofit all volunteer community organization with a long history of community advocacy in the Fairfax County why is gfca asking for a pause in the boundary change policy update when there's no immediate proposal to physically adjust the boundaries because it is our observation that Fairfax County Public

032School's holistic review of its boundary policy it has not engaged with the community to gain meaningful inputs on what prioritized policy criteria should be used to determine boundary changes the prior prioritized criteria that you are considering tonight and the methodology you use can largely predetermine the boundary changes across the entire Community without meaningful inputs from students parents businesses and communities Now's the Time to pause recommend you get inputs from all your stakeholders the strength and quality of our successful community-based schools system is a significant factor in attracting people to Fair ax County and a primary considerations for families with children and those who plan to establish their families here the draft policy 81308 threatens that appeal once again gfca respectfully ask the board to pause its action create more opportunity to engage with the entire

033County on this critical policy thank you John Smith hey we didn't always have public schools the process of establishing the local public schools was an exercise in community building the actions of local people coming together to run their schools to build School houses to hire teachers and to collect taxes this helped Forge a powerful sense of community Through common investment in the children large school systems came into existence via the consolidation of smaller Community Centric schools into larger and more operationally effective facilities this consolidation resulted in systems that fundamentally are still communitybased in Legacy School boundaries largely reflect that if the superintendent directs a boundary study with priority consideration for the existing Community Centric architecture and instead is optimized around the proposed four alternative prii primary criteria the boundary map will bear very little resemblance

034to the existing map this is an unequivocal certainty and the difference will be staggering when the public first sees a conceptual boundary map in the in work product or final form the public o cry will be defin this map will be will be more than seemingly benign words on a piece of paper it will visually and powerfully represent the very real impact to every child parent teacher and homeowner the initiative will most certainly fail due the public opposition I ask the board to look beyond your ideological vision of this effort and understand that as constructed it can work in theory only also please revisit MGT Consultants boundary policy Best Practices page three three overriding principles must always take precedence stability ensure that boundary policy causes the least disruption by for students and families thank [Applause]

035you Julianne link Julianne link Vanessa Hall Stephanie Valeri good evening I'd like to talk about resilience when we bring up questions where we want to understand what's going to happen or what our children will experience we get told it's okay they're resilient resilience is what happens when you face adversity it's how you survive and maintain psychological well-being it needs to be developed it's not something that you just are born with it's built through Community it's built through consistency it's built through predictability when a child comes to their parents and says what's going to happen next year I heard they might change our boundaries and I can't tell them an answer that does not build confidence it does not build stability it doesn't give that child a sense that the adults in their lives are able

036to give them any kind of comfort so when we come to you to ask those questions to try to be able to take them back to our children and you tell us it's okay they'll resilient they'll be all right that's not enough we need to know what's going on we're not telling you what to do we're not trying to tell you you can't do something we just want to understand we want you to tell us what you're considering why you're considering it what else you're considering because we are a community every single thing that we do impacts each other we have spent a lot of time focused on our own pyramids and I think that we need to do better we need to understand how what happens at one impacts another part of what I've

037learned in all the research in the last just about a month has showed me that we aren't doing the best we can we want what's right for all of the kids nobody in this room holding up a sign wants you to favor one school over another we want you to consider what our options are and we want to know so so that we can help we have a community that is full of please Place student number one's video testimony chairman fish school board members and superintendent Dr Reed hi my name is Mia and I'm a freshman at cerville high school I'm here tonight to talk to you about the policy on School boundaries it's time for the school board to vote in the changes proposed tonight for this policy this policy has not been reviewed

038or edited in 40 plus years these proposed edits are from a different lens which it should be not from a Fairfax County from the 1980s I have a unique student perspective on this matter because I have attended six SPF scps schools from kindergarten to now which have been located in half of all the regions there are sometimes no logic of why some my schools were overcrowded and some undercrowl belonging and worth also why do some students have to travel so far to go to school or pass another similar school on their way to their school it's time for the superintendent to review this policy with these new directions and to not follow old processes it's called being efficient and being modern most of last week's speakers commented a lot about datadriven decisions asking where are

039the facts I agree with all this but this will be in the next phase of of this boundary discussion when the superintendent comes back to the board with potential changes or not last week I heard speakers say these policy edits were done without notice of transparency you all started being Schoolboard members this past January and from what I could read all of your meetings have been public and posted I may not be on the same side as most of the speakers last week and this week remember there are over 100,000 FCPS families that you represent and not just, 1500 from one group thank you please observe proper decorum especially when dealing with our students please play the video testimony of Robert Rigby Jr good evening friend my name is Robert rgby I record this in

040advance of the meeting with the hopes that all speakers speak with charity and kindness to all people residents and children of this County I first want to express that I've taught or substituted in every District in this County I want to expressed the need to alleviate the overcrowding all over the county I myself have experienced it most at Glasgow Middle School um I want to say that I support um policy 8130 as proposed uh and and and all that comes with it I also support the proposal from Dr ricardy Anderson uh I do this for several reasons because they increase transparency by because they will bring the actual boundary changes into the light uh and will have them when they come up for for much public discussion um and it makes it more accountable because

041these these boundary changes are made by our elected Schoolboard members who are accountable to us their constituents and frax County um I I think they should be done every five years um because many many things changed over the course of five years rather than doing it please pause the video doing it peaca can you please hang on a second please observe deorum or Security will ask you to leave can we please take the video back to where it was interrupted many many things changed over the course of five years rather than doing it peac meal doing it peac meal periodically in little bits and drops has gotten us to the really Dreadful situation that we're in where there's vast overcrowded throughout this County so again I support policy 8130 and I support the proposal by

042Dr ricardy Anderson thank you for listening to chair fish that is our last public speaker thank you agenda item 4.04 student representative matters I call on Miss San thank you Mr chair first I'd like the students who came tonight who came here to voice your concerns on policy 8130 your voices matter and I truly appreciate your bravery and initiative in speaking in front of the board for some brief updates within this past week I had the honor of attending and speaking on a panel for the chief academic office kickoff centered on strategies to foster a collaborative environment that ensures success of different Learners under the Strategic plan I think it's super important to recognize the whole office for all that goes into powering our teachers and classrooms from developing curriculum in the instructional services department

043and serving students with IEPs in the department of special services so if you're here tonight or watching online thank you one main topic that we discussed was creative ways in which we can build connections and orchestrate success in FCPS throughout the school year one resounding takeaway is the importance of networking between departments and for students this means networking between regions and between schools and having opportunities for students to talk about their FCPS experiences outside of board meetings at the superintendent advisory council meeting that I attended in April attended by students from each High School it was so interesting to hear the various student experiences about extracurricular activities scheduling and Grading that varied from school to school I hope to extend these uh connections through implementing student Town Halls to get student feedback within the next

044year I'd also like to discuss the impact of Virginia Senate Bill 707 which took place on July 1st this bill permits each middle school public middle school and high school to establish Career and Technical education student organizations or ctsos regardless of whether the schools offer Career and Technical education or CTE classes this includes organizations like Deca FBLA TSA HOSA FCCLA FFA skillsusa and Educators Rising this policy change will positively affect students in FCPS by allowing them to join these CT um so organizations even if they don't have space in their schedules or the prerequisites to take the once required CTE courses I spoke with a student who was interested in participating in the TSA challenges but couldn't because he didn't have room in his schedule for the pre-requisite CTE course another High School student I

045talked to was interested in the business ctsos like fbaa and deca that have events like that but wasn't able to participate in these clubs because she hadn't taken a business class however what this new legislation these students will now have the opportunity to explore and engage in several ctsos this policy aligns with strategic plan goal five which is ensuring that every student will graduate After High School with the skills to navigate adapt and innovate for a sustainable future measure a of goal 5 specifically mentions the importance of the availability and accessibility of M multiple Pathways and work-based learning opportunities such as ctsos CTE courses and ctsos are vital in preparing ing our students for their future careers and providing them with learning experiences in competing through these organizations by expanding access to these opportunities and

046removing the barrier of having to take a class I know that this will positively affect student Readiness for a career postgraduation looking ahead the citizen advisory committee student nominations are to be finalized once school begins with interviews taking place this week and next I hope that everyone has a restful cool summer as I know it's hot outside and a great start to the school year which starts in a little less under the month and we'll see you thereafter thank you thank you agenda item 5.01 action item certification of closed meeting compliance since we have to return to closed meeting we will come back later uh to do this portion of the agenda agenda item 5.02 action item confirmation of action taken and closed the same thing we will come back to that when we return

047from closed agenda item 5.03 action item amend policy 8130 Local School boundaries program assignments and school closings I call on Miss seiser Heiser for a motion I move that the school board amend policy 8130 Local School boundaries program assignments and school closings as detailed in the agenda item attachment on board docs is there a second I second Miss seore Heiser would you like to speak to your motion yes thank you as chair of the governance committee I would like to offer my sincere thanks to my colleagues on the committee and other board colleagues who came to our meetings for their hard work work over the seven meetings we've had since February and the board for it thoughtful deliberations in conducting its first thorough review in nearly four Decades of FCPS is policy for making School

048boundary adjustments I also appreciate the community who's shown a great deal of interest and spoken to us as the community voices from across the county are very important to us in making our decisions to reiterate tonight's action is the approval of revisions to the boundary policy no boundary adjustments are currently being considered with the approval of this update FCPS will have the tools to solve significant long-standing problems that have long been raised by the community including overcrowded classrooms in Schools transportation issues safety concerns from the use of trailers Staffing problems split feeders and much much more these new changes include a much more robust public engagement process before during and after decisions are made a specific set of PRI priority criteria for the superintendent to use to evaluate the need for any boundary changes which

049include enrollment capacity Transportation time transportation in general proximity of students to schools and access to programming enhance benefits for students in terms of better instructional quality shorter commutes smaller class sizes stronger social connections for themselves and their families and caregivers and greater access to facilities and programs and effective and efficient use of our resources and greater oversight as the school board must approve all adjustments except those related to a true emergency this review began in 2018 with four Public Work sessions in 2018 and 2019 the board directed the superintendent then Dr Bray brand in 2019 to hire an outside consultant to identify boundary best practices and engage the community in 20121 MGT held three public virtual community meetings and collected Community input and present s its report to the school board in a public work

050session the work was paused due to covid creating a new strategic plan and hiring a new superintendent the board resumed this work in February 2024 with seven public meetings through the governance committee a public work session with a full school board and posted twice on regular public meeting agendas as new business before the vote today if this passes it'll be up to the superintendent to start the robust imp implementation process which includes significant public engagement I want to thank the board for doing this very difficult work I want to thank the community for their voices in this process and sharing their their perspectives and I want to thank everybody for their love of our Public Schools please observe proper decorum Security will ask you to leave thank you despite the NOS I do believe people

051all love our Public Schools it has been a long and thoughtful process and I truly believe this revised policy would lead to better education for all of our students across the county if you cannot if you cannot remain quiet Security will ask you to leave the room and you can observe the meeting from the Overflow thank you for the thoughtful work and engagement and I look forward to hearing comments from my colleagues thank you Miss Riser Miss Anderson so as we can hear this evening um we all understand that this is a sensitive topic um I've heard from several people that I don't that I take this lightly it's not true um I grew up here I went to high school here I understand the situation that we're in I've watched it happen and what

052I will say respectfully is that we have paused we paused for six years during the during the pandemic to to to create the opportunity for all of us to have the stability during that time during that time we have 44 schools that are overc capacity or will be by 2029 we have 22 schools that are attendance that have attendance Island we have 44 schools that are split theaters these are the things that my constituents are bringing to me as concerns this is the reason that we are taking this work on we understand we are we want to listen to you but I want to share a few I want to share a few things about the differences between the previous policy and this one the previous policy we could move 5% of your children at

053any time yes we could through ad administrative boundary changes that were suspended several years ago because of the problems that they caused we this is not a call and repeat please remain in theorum do not speak we also review boundaries every year we look at capacity every year our statistics last year were 99.9% accurate they it's published every year so I understand where we are and I am looking forward to where we can go when we engage with the public comment at the appropriate moment are you done thank you Miss Anderson Dr Anderson I need to confirm that this is have the lights been changed I okay Dr Anderson go ahead it's okay Mr McDaniel was first he can go first good I believe um as many of you have heard because I've had the

054opportunity to speak on this topic not only at the governance meetings but also at the work session and prior to that I've been speaking about boundaries for my community pretty much since I've gotten on the board from Glen Forest to Glasgow I take very seriously my role as a school board member um I take very seriously that I am here to be a representative of my community it's not just to represent what ricardi Anderson believes and you all have been here you have heard that my community is wanting a boundary adjustment for our schools that are overcrowded we have glasow Middle School which is larger than Lewis High School and we have two schools right nearby with a much lower I I'm not going to speak over your voices if security could please help keep

055proper decorum I hope we can really be a little bit more productive in this discussion because I sat here and listened to the speakers and took notes I'd like the same courtesy and I will not speak over anybody's voices so if you're going to speak I will completely stop and wait for my turn to assume whenever it is quiet um as I was sharing with you I have a middle school in my community which is so overcrowded it is again larger than a high school that we have in the division and right nearby we have two other schools that are a are that are at much lower capacity I have an elementary school Park laon Elementary which is a sea of modular and trailers we're talking probably about 40 to 45 trailers and modular out

056there my community is asking me to make those adjustments I am here to be that voice to ask for those adjustments to be made and also as many of you have seen from coming to the governance meetings I've been very vocal about the areas of the previous versions of the policy that I thought had shortcomings the expedited um the expedited boundaries without board oversight I thought was a shortcoming and I didn't that that was not okay with me and I continued to say that that is gone because we need to also be able to do our jobs we can only do our jobs when we have a public conversation and that's when we bring what our communities are thinking into the discussion if it's happening outside of this Das that means means we don't get

057to raise the voice of our communities so that was one of my concerns that has been resolved my other issue with the initial um with the initial versions of the boundary policy was that the community engagement was not robust enough do I think we and I think the version that we have right now in terms of having a regional meeting a pyramid meeting before any changes are proposed after changes are proposed after the board approves whatever those changes are that is very good do I think there's space that we could maybe have come out the gate with things a little bit differently certainly we can always do things better in hindsight that's what you know 2020 is that benefit but we are in a good place with some of the things that have been outlined

058did I share that we needed to have a structured space for us to have some feedback on the policy itself I did and we did not have that but I still believe that what we have right now will result in some good work and as the representative for Mason this is really necessary for us thank you Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel um Dr Anderson really summed up most of my comments but a couple I'm going to cut to the chase I'm supporting the policy um there's four key things that I'm talking to my colleagues now because we've been going over this for a long time um there's four changes that in my mind make this policy Leaps and Bounds over what we currently have what we're currently hamstrung with um the first item the administrative adjustments

059they're gone unless the school catches on fire there is no such thing is an administrative adjustment anymore when this once this policy passes it is gone every adjustment has to come to this board for a vote the second thing is we are finally giving our staff something resembling some sort of guidance on some priorities capacity Transportation keeping communities together aligning pyramids uh and you can go in the policy and read everything else that does not exist in the current policy it will exist in this new policy uh we are going to have a conversation about boundaries every five years Lowden does it every year so to me 5 years is somewhat reason able MTG said 5 7 10 I'm I'm comfortable with 5 years um and let me address that cyclical review when I take

060my car into the shop and I get the oil change doesn't mean I swap the engine it means I fix what's broken sometimes a mechanic will say Hey you know you should think about these things but we can defer that for now but we might have to fix it next time you come in that's a cyclical review and that is exactly what this policy does and the fourth item that this policy accomplishes is it significantly increases the public input and I'll be bringing a follow on motion after this vote that we have but it significantly increases the amount of public input and it gives our public it gives our teachers our parents it gives everybody across Fairfax County much more of an insight into what we have to decide when we make these boundary decisions

061so I'm supporting the policy and I'm looking forward to the discussion tonight thank you Mr McDaniel Miss Dixit thank you Mr chair um as a representative of s District I just want to tell everyone we have severe o overcrowding issues in our area uh specifically with it's shant High School uh we have a it's a school of capacity of 23 2400 student we have about more than 3,000 student there uh parents stent students have been emailing me I'm a new board member I have heard from the community that there's a need the student who spoke here earlier from cville high school as well that's my constituent again I am speaking on behalf of my community and I feel that's a need with the Amendments on this policy it's definitely something worth pursuing I'm supportive of

062my board fellow board members and I will be in support of this thank you thank you Miss Dixit Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman I am not going to repeat what some my colleagues have already stated uh as a someone who has been serving on the school board for a long time has gone through uh many different boundary changes uh I can share with you with a certainty that anytime when you have a boundary change discuss comes up uh uh there are a lot of people a lot of parents and members in community who become very anxious and there are a lot of people who simply do not want any change for their children and families for many different reasons and I get that I get that but what you are dealing with tonight is

063policy change not actual boundary as a someone who had work on prior policy review this what's being proposed right now tonight is an improvement over the cor policy but at the same time at the same time I'm sure they will be discussing the some amendments that will be presented to us by a some of our colleagues I think you know those discussion on those amendments will probably clarify some of the points some of the concerns on on the part of the committee members but I want to ask a superintendent sorry to put you on spot because you will be implementing the policy on the policy is adopted by the board and there were in a number of number of speakers tonight and there were many many emails that the board members all have received regarding

064not having enough data not sharing enough data we need to collect data first and also another concern is there has not been enough public engagement what is the public engagement process both such a policy and superintendence comes up with the regulations to implement a policy superintendent Dr what are your thoughts under regulations you may be thinking of coming up with what are your thoughts on how we collect the data how we share the data how we use our data to come up with the recommendations and what about the public engagement process itself what do you have on your mind at this point in time so thank you for the question I think that we would definitely be looking at what the policy would have been that was approved and then we would be providing a

065project management plan following the approval of the policy in whatever form it is approved you know Dr R I'm so sorry because of Applause from the audience I missed the very first part of your statement would you mind oping what you said please hold your applause so that we can all hear so I'll repeat myself again um I said that that was a good question and that following the approval of whatever the board determines on the policy will be providing a project management plan publicly which will include all the elements you've discussed and that will include a public engagement plan our data usage how we're planning to use technology the Geo positioning of students and residents as the transportation study there are a variety of data points that will be intersecting this many of which

066actually are currently published as part of our CIP process and working with our enrollment demographers as well so we'll be publishing a rather comprehensive project management plan by the end of the summer uh following whatever the parameters are that will be determined uh potentially this evening thank you appreciate your response could I ask just one more question regarding that as you do that work would you be able to collect reflect upon the feedback that may be provided by the public I apologize would you repeat that what is the question as you do that work right and and share with the public and with us by the end of the summer would your would your work include getting feedback from the community members I think there there will be a plan within the plan um the

067project management plan for that feedback for sure um because it has to be iterative we have to think about um how that will be rolled out but that would be by the end of the month the board will be on recess following tonight till the end of August so I think when we bring the plan out we'll try to get feedback in some ways uh but there will be a significant amount of feedback that will be a part of the plan that's written within the plan thank you y thank you Mr Moon Mr Dunn so uh most of us are new school board members eight of the 12 and when I ran I ran for one simple reason because I wanted to make sure that every single child every single child residing in the Mount

068Vernon District which I represent receives a world-class education in modern school buildings and Facilities uh all three of my children attended FCPS from first grade onwards and my youngest graduated last year um I've been involved as a PTA dad as an education Advocate as a Sunday school teacher and so I've been on the front lines uh for over 20 years uh my second commitment was not just a world-class education but fiscal responsibility we pay so much in taxes in Fairfax County and the reason is because the state is underfunding Fairfax County by 5687 million every year there was a study done by jar j LC which is a think tank attached to the state legislator State Legislature showing that we're being fund underfunded by that amount every year so over decades the reason you're paying

069higher property taxes is because we're not getting enough money from the state we're also being short Changed by the federal government which back when the students would Disabilities Act was passed in the 70s and 80s promised to fund 40% of the cost of special education now it funds only a fraction of that so we have to make the difference and so the question is do we have enough money to keep building new schools to keep expanding schools and the answer is no we don't that's a hard fact you can look at the 500 page budget that's online you can read the 500 page CIP that every year is reviewed and approved that's what I did for 10 years as an education Advocate and I encourage you to get involved and and review for yourself we

070have a 42-year renovation cycle why because that renovation money comes from school bonds that are every election are approved by voters but we also have a AAA credit rating and we can't borrow too much money or we'll lose that credit rating and we'll pay more in interest and you'll pay more in taxes so we have a limit of how much money can be brought in to make sure that every school is renovated in a timely manner 42 years is not the industry standard it's 20 to 25 years so we're Way Beyond and it's not because of mismanagement it's because material costs have gone up it's because of the procurement and construction methodologies that we're pursuing and on my end and with my colleagues we are doing everything we can to make our school system efficient

071and effective to bring in new money from the private sector through public private Partnerships and other means and we're trying to make sure that your schools all of our schools countywide are world class and able to provide worldclass education with great teachers great support staff Etc so that's why I'll be voting today to support this motion so we can eliminate the abuses that were available through the old system where boundaries could be changed with no public input with no vote of the school board now every every single School Board uh every single change of any School boundary anywhere in the county will require a full School Board vote and public engagement which is not currently the case thank you thank you Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning that one wasn't turning turning on um can

072I ask the clerk to put up an infographic that I prepared thank you you um we prepared this infographic my my staff a did a wonderful job in 24 hours because I believe that there's a lot of misconception out there and I want you to see where we are in this process we are here the policy revision if you go to the next slide you see where there is public engagement and where there is the the conduct the conducting research solicit Community input analysis impact draft plan and then we move forward I think that that's important because what I heard here tonight from everybody is community input you're going to have the opportunity to do that that's what you're going to have to at the next step we are at the first step but I

073want to shift the conversation a little bit everyone in this audience and everyone that has sent letters to me on both sides of this boundary issue be they individuals or organizations have one thing in common and we can't forget that they or should I say we all want what is best for our children our students our immediate community and our greater Fairfax Community look we need to stop talking about what is really important here as I said at our last work session on this our teachers our staff are listening our community is listening our children children are listening and they're watching I can tell you that I have worked for 26 years in many of those school buildings that I have heard some people malign the students in those schools are curious capable and they

074are excelling those teachers and the staff in those buildings are amazing and they are going above and beyond the teachers recognize each of each of the children and students uniqueness and their strength and they celebrate them not only for their academic achievements but also for their creativity their resilience their artistic abilities compassion critical thinking skills athletic abilities sense of humor and on and on our schools and our students are not just school ratings and test scores the Lewis High School Lancers from my district are just as proud of being Lancers as the Langley High School Saxons are they are just as proud of being FCPS graduates and their families are proud of being Fairfax County residents that's what we need to Value the best of our own children but not only for the best not

075only for the best of our own individual child but for the best of every student the best the best in our community but also the best of all Fairfax I challenge everyone in this room everyone that has written me to channel their energy and continue working on providing an excellent education for every single student regardless of s CIP code that is what this boundary policy is intended to address that is why I support it the concern about our tax Bas will take care of itself when instead of focusing our energy on property values we focus on what is truly important human values thank you Miss thank you Miss St John cunning Miss Marin so I've always focused on on Community Schools uh neighborhood schools the data show that strong schools make a strong community so

076the notion that the board is seeking to tear communities apart is simply unfounded I think that 40 years is long enough to use an option that's available to use um I Heard speakers tonight asking the board to fully consider the option the board can't consider the options until we update this policy working on working on school divisions policies is the core part of our jobs as Schoolboard members this means creating updating and retiring policies um in response to the current and projected challenges and opportunities they're databased decisions working on public policy has actually been the focus of my entire career since getting my masters in public policy 20 years ago you know the school board is in charge with seeing overseeing all policies and and it's good news that the board is reviewing the policy

077it needs to be reviewed this is business as usual the school board does this all the time we are constantly reviewing policies this boundary policy simply seats to make the process cyclical and transparent to clarify the criteria that the superintendent will or will not use or consider when recommending boundary changes for our vote and it will increase the board's oversight by requiring that board vote and requiring a massive amount of Comm engagement I would say a large well it's true a large portion of this policy talks about the community engagement that is all new language that's how much we value Community input um the superintendent can identify the opportunities where potential boundary changes can positively affect the educational experience and instructional achievement or instructional um experience of our students as well as the use of

078facilities by our community boundary adjustments can positively affect instructional quality boundary adjustments can improve the operations of school facilities and Max maximize our limited Financial Resources our taxpayer dollars your taxpayer dollars I cannot ask our funders the Board of Supervisors to give us any more money from taxpayers um when in real estate taxes when our facilities are busing the more when we have options that we haven't yet used this is why I'm also working on the other option to get the money from the state 500 6 68.7 million over half a billion dollars that the state is holding from us and I invite you you to use your advocacy to go to state electives and let's talk about what's going on to get that money I'll speak later to the Motions I'm co-sponsoring related to

079phasing including to provide options to students as future adopted boundary changes are implemented for now I hope that those who are here and listening um that you remain true advocates for our public schools for the hard work ahead lastly please remember the children are watching right now they are watching the behavior of adults in this room booing student speakers booing adults booing elected officials from the national I I'll wait as well as my colleagues from the National Arena to this de the examples of Civic discourse are on display for all of us to take responsibility for thank you thank you Miss Marin Miss Swan so I've only been here two weeks but as a student I speak for both sides of the coin so I'm going to share both sides of the story right now

080last week a student mentioned their mental health when you are forced to go to a different school it affects the way and your friends go to a different school it hurts and I agree with that I agree that you know it when you I have switch your policies and then you go to a different school that hurts but when I looked in and I read this policy you do not have to move to that different boundary if you're already in that school there was a student here that spoke today that she was in AAP and she was at a school that she liked and she wanted to stay at that school and if you read this policy it actually says that if you're in the final two years of elementary school um or if you're

081in a magnet program language emergin or receiving um a special education program at one of these schools you can choose to move to the different boundary school or you can stay in that school if you continue to read this policy it also does say that students in 10 to 12 can also choose to remain in that school or move to a different school I agree that it is hard to move to a different school but when I represent all students I'm also representing students who come from high schools and middle schools that are overcrowded like sh like Glasgow and I don't think it's fair that they have to be in those overcrowded schools and can't receive the same resources that someone in a school that isn't overcrowded can receive again I understand both sides of

082the coin I understand students that don't want to move that want to stay in the same boundary that they are in but there's also students who are in overcrowded schools who need options um and so those are just my two cents thank you Miss Swan miss lady Mr fr um the primary goal of updating the Browning policy is to maintain and improve the operational excellence and efficiency of our school system by doing so we can continue to provide the worldclass education that FCPS is known for the student population of 183,000 students is essential to ensure that our policies and boundaries reflect our current needs and realities I've heard from several constituents they want to ensure that the revised policy reflects constituent requests to ensure robust implementation considerations and Community engagement as my colleagues have shared

083the current draft requires more of both this is clearly articulated in the boundary policy presentation on slides 13 and 16 via a side-by-side comparison when operationalized the revisions of policy 8130 will require far more Computing engagement in the current version the entire board and staff are committed to engaging with the community throughout this process public hearings consultations and transparent communication will be integral to the process while on the campaign Trail families shared their frustration and fear due to their child's classroom being outside their school building because of overc capacity I could not agree with them more one of the key benefits of revising policy 8130 is addressing issues of overcrowding and under enrollment balancing enrollment across the division allows us to utilize our facilities more efficiently reducing the need for temporary classrooms there are currently

08493 temporary classrooms trailers in 54 modular classrooms on campuses where drainville students attend school this is outrageous this needs to be addressed and when talking about overc capacity I have to mention the need to alleviate overcapacity and address issues at mlan high school and specifically at coats elementary school but I have others in drainville that are that are in great need of of of being um dressed in terms of overcrowding I also have been listening to our teachers and staff who have posted about this work and I quote as as a parent of kids who have been in overcapacity schools for most of their FCPS careers and as a staff member at an overcapacity school that's surrounded by under capacity schools I fully support this actual movement in this work I got da staff from

085a school I love because the school's numbers kept dropping that's has empty classrooms while the school closest to me is currently adding trailers for additional space adjusting boundaries every once in a while makes sense another staff member shared my current school is overcrowded we are in desperate need of a boundary change the issue with the current policy is that it is slow and piece by piece schools which are more affluent and vocal have historically been accommodated more meanwhile less affluent schools who are less vocal are often overlooked and the situation is untenable from what I understand the current policy requires a board member to bring boundary issues to the attention of the rest of the board I don't think it's a bad idea for the board to get a full picture of the boundaries and

086re-evaluate based on the data the mission of public schools is to ensure that all students receive an equitable educational experience without redistricting students at overc schools languish at schools where they can't access sports teams drama or highly desirable electives while students at schools that are under enrolled can't even field teams or offer certain electives also want to add that our Focus has always been on the well-being of our students shorter commutes which are a potential result of boundary adjustments can significantly impact students daily lives contributing to better sleep reduce stress and more time for extra cooker activities thank you Miss Lady as part of sorry your time your time is up I'll take a good Dr Anderson yes thank you um a couple of things that I want I wanted to add and then a

087question to the superintendent um one of our students earlier talked about um community and how impactful it has been for her to connect with her swim team her basketball team I have a part of my community that students a bust from far away and they have to drive literally past three schools in order to get to the school in which they're enrolled that is not community and I expect for this boundary work to address that we also have students who would benefit so greatly from having greater access to programming um in the Mason District we have one school that is a middle school AAP Center the aforementioned over crowded Glasgow I expect for the boundary work to have that conversation about that we have students who are desper L wanting to access various Academy classes

088that will literally be lifechanging for them because when you walk out of those programs with the certificate it can mean that you can have a productive and a productive job right away but my students can't travel that far away and so they don't have that access I expect for that to also be in the conversation of the implementation one of the things that I want to ask um Dr Reed which we talked about last week week and I told you I would ask this because it is a conversation in the air potentially because we're not there yet we haven't run the numbers we haven't run the data so this is not a foregone conclusion but it is potentially something that could occur when and if these um boundaries are adjusted there is a potential for

089schools to have greater concentrations of poverty what could be the implications for the management plan that you've just Ted talked about to address that so I think we have schools with greater and lesser poverty today and I think the goal really is to think about I think as Mr Dunn was commenting we have efficiencies we can realize which free up resources to better support the classroom our teachers our students uh to continue to work on improved outcomes I also feel like in many cases it's our students who have um the least Advantage who are being busted the furthest and one of the things we see is that often then families when they need to engage for curriculum nights or be able to be part of that school Community are not able to because their children

090are busted past three or four schools or they're at a distance where the family really realistically can't have the type of Engagement that other families across the county are able to have so I think that the um our schools really I think what it the community engagement is going to be something that's so core and important I know to this elected board and to our community that every neighborhood and every community in this County needs to be engaged because there are a number of communities in this County who have not seen or felt the Equitable access to resources and programs that are possible if we do this work well this isn't a zero sum game just because some of our students will gain from this doesn't mean that others will lose and the longer we

091approach this as a zero sum game I think the more challenging this process will be thank you I appreciate that and also in the conversations this evening from our community who spoke to us there were a lot of proposals for how we can continue how we can work together I hope that no matter what the decision that occurs here tonight that we stay in that Spirit of working together because I see this and I see the opportunity for us to talk about Public Partnerships the p3s that has to happen so please don't aband this effort if you are not in agreement with the decision that is made tonight because if we are really committed to all of our students we will continue to have these conversations and I'm looking forward to some of the uh

092motions that will be coming um in a little while I hope um that will address that there are some places where our policy has been silent and it is on the phasing and my colleague and I we have several motions that will offer some additional information some greater Clarity to the public so I'm hoping we can get into that as soon as possible thank you Dr Anderson Mr dun um Dr Reid uh I'd like to ask is there any cost effective and fiscally responsible alternative to a comprehensive boundary adjustment in order to address underc capacity and overcapacity schools in FFX County no sir um can you address the potential impact of boundary adjustments on chronic absenteeism there's a great deal of research that indicates that neighborhood schools where children have better access and parents have

093better access actually increases um attendance do you feel uh during our work session on June 25th I asked you uh if if this policy if adopted would result in a more effective utilization for resources and and you said and I quote I think much of our High School boundaries won't shift much is that still your opinion I believe that yes so what I can say uh to my constituents and to the county is um that I I believe you had also said that elementary schools depending on their attendance are more likely to change than high schools is that right I believe given my observation to date that I believe that I think we're still going to look at the data but it appears appears to me that a lot of our transportation as we look

094at overruns and over routing it appears to be much more prevalent at the elementary level and and I can say that my wife and I bought our house 20 years ago for a specific elementary school foron elementary where half the kids are busted past two or three elementary schools to attend that school there's a similar School in the southern part of my district uh Haley Elementary where uh the residents of Hegel Circle are busted past two or three elementary schools and those are communities suffering from Transportation insecurity so if the kids miss the bus there's one bus and they're not attending school that day and the data shows that if you miss 18 days of school per year then your likelihood of graduating from high school having a successful career rapidly diminish um so I

095I believe strongly that strong schools make strong communities and strong communities make strong schools so we should have local schools walkable bikable schools ideally or at least schools that are close enough so even if you don't own a car you can get to school reliably safely so every kid every single child in our County can receive a worldclass education and given your assurances I'm confident that um when we talk about middle schools and high schools the boundaries May shift uh somewhat but not dramatically and the elementary schools that will be primarily affected are those where students are being transported long distances and and because I want to make sure that every school has a strong connection to local community and every family is able to engage that's a part of this policy that I find

096uh very beneficial and I look forward to seeing that implemented once the the lines are redrawn thank you Mr Dunn I call on Dr Anderson for an amendment we are missing Miss Mary this is not the time for public participation I I appreciate that people have views of what board members say from the deis but we don't well we'll be happy to talk to you after the meeting thank you I call on Dr Anderson for an amendment thank you um this is in regards to Elementary when I'm sorry I moved to amend policy 8130 to add the following language to Section 8 phasing of adjustments Elementary when a boundary adjustment occurs at the elementary school level attendance in the The New School boundary shall be mandatory except for students in their final two years of

097elementary school students with instructional program placements and language immersion and or magnet programs and students receiving site specific special education services such students shall be given the option to remain at their current school or attend the school in the new boundary these allowances shall not be applicable in the opening of a new school or in the closing of an existing school is there a second a second Miss Marin Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion yes I would um as I mentioned just a little while ago our um the proposed policy is silent in terms of what happens when there has to be a boundary adjustment what happens to our students so I have three motions that I'm going to be bringing forward for elementary for middle and high school essentially what

098this is saying to parents is that we're going to be clear that your students that are at the up level of the elementary school for schools that are K5 um in my area they are K5 it will be for fourth and fifth grade students for schools that are k6 which is in the bulk of um Fairfax County it will be the students from grades five and six this is to offer a little bit of cushion for our students but also to continue to expedite the process because the goals are to have the reduction in capacity I think we need to be be clear to the superintendent in terms of what is our expectation when it comes to moving students and phasing students out because right now there is no language that is um supportive of

099that in the boundary adjustment and this also speaks to a lot of the things that we've heard tonight our students are saying Mental Health Community um so those are the things that will be addressed with this um with this amendment and I will save some of the rest of my comments for the middle and high school thank you Dr Anderson Miss Marin would you like to speak to your second yes thank you Dr Anderson for uh working to bring this option to our families you know we for me I have a child in elementary right now and I thought about the transitions year to year and you know elementary school kids largely have one classroom teacher in some schools they might have a few so they could have a fresh start but we still wanted

100to provide families the option to consider if they're at the upper um grade levels of the school to stay so so we hope that this brings a little bit of that um comfort and options that we've heard some of our community members ask for thank you m Marin uh Mr McDaniel Mr chairman I move to amend the amendment by striking the full text of the amendment and replacing with the text is on the screen that reads when possible adjustments under this policy shall be implemented through attrition and limited phasing a grade byg grade phas in of adjustments may be allowed for students beginning with the incoming class at the middle or High School levels when feasible and other phasing plans as appropriate to the individual boundary study may be allowed parents of rising sixth or

101fifth graders eighth graders and 12th graders affected by a boundary change may be provided the option of having their students remain in the school they attended prior to the change is there a second second Miss seore Heiser Mr McDaniel would you like to speak to your motion um I I I will I I want to say first I agree with Dr Anderson that the current draft is relatively silent on phasing I me it is I agree with that um I think the disagreement is going to be on how to address that um this language that I just moved to amend is from the current 8130 policy it's the current language that we have been operating on for a while now um I have four concerns and I I've been going back and forth on on

102the the various phasing motions I'm just going to make comments on all of the phasing language that's being moved at the middle Elementary at the elementary middle high school level um I'm concerned that by boxing in our staff and our superintendent to very specific grade levels that we are effectively double booking seats um and while that that may work on you know American Airlines double booking seats that's not going to work in public schools um my second concern is transportation um if we do allow phase if we require and force phasing to this extent um we're going to have to send two buses to neighborhoods because we're going to have to provide transportation and we've already had extensive concerns about busing issues in transportation um the the third concern conc ER that I have here

103is and fundamentally and Dr Reed this may be a question for you if all of these phasing motions that that are coming up pass and they require phasing at six levels so the last two and uh elementary schools one in Middle School potentially two in middle school and three in high schools that's six [Music] um in your expert opinion would that therefore Drive the boundary so my question is if this passes and these amendments do pass as as they're going to be proposed would that inherently Drive the boundary conversation effectively putting the cart before the horse so I think that um that is possible because the um how do I say the restrictions are they they could have a uh I think a chilling impact on the ability to actually look at the boundary shift

104in other words I could bring you a boundary shift that the community may want and that we may think makes sense but we can't actually execute because of a requirement for phasing and I think I certainly appreciate strong language that wherever possible we would absolutely take that into consideration I think if it's a a have to I think it could negatively impact a decision down the road that we might want to make further I think that whatever scenario comes back before you you still have the opportunity to send it back to me I guess to relook at the phasing or relook at other options but I think we want to be able to look as wide as possible um and the potential of having six different requirements I think would be very challenging those might

105become an overriding topic rather than the actually boundary okay thank you that's all thank you Mr McDaniel Miss eore Heiser would you like to speak to your second yes just briefly I think one thing we want to talk about is this is this is really about a timing issue you know in terms of the phasing we want to lock in and make it very clear with in our Cent policy that we want to allow for um phasing as appropriate as needed and especially that last year of any school however if we at this point lock in seven years of phasing it will then drive the data collections for the boundary we need to let do the community input let Dr Reed to bring back cral plans and that will then give us the full information

106we need in order to determine the phasing as opposed to having the phasing determine um the boundary changes and in particular I want to make sure that we have the transportation to do this as well so this isn't a matter of no this is a matter of this is the wrong timing for this and so we can bring the language from the previous um and to really talk about the importance of phasing and giving um guidance around phasing and then as a placeholder now and then when we're when we come back with the implementation plans then we can look at um more prescription to phasing so thank you thank you Miss seiser Miss Anderson I just wanted to to talk a little bit about the fact that I was one of the people who wanted

107a whole lot of consistency with phasing because I've seen phasing work differently in parts of our County um compared to others so I am in support of the amendment to or the amendment to the amendment um because I believe that it takes us back to a place that it does lock Us in to a certain level of phasing but it allows us to flexibility to use that as a floor rather than a ceiling or as the requirement so I think that this is something that um I am also worried like my colleagues about Transportation um specifically I worry about long bus routes and and having to run them for for two separate schools so I definitely in support of this thank you Miss Anderson Miss Marin yes I'd like to again thank my colleague who

108proposed the original motion for working on this over for several days and talking with the entire board and so I'm trying to get my head around this proposed change right now as it's being presented to me it's not my preference on how I like to work what is absent from so much of this conversation is that some families want to change in schools that better meet their students and families needs there's this supposition that there will be you know people are going to take that option and they're all going to leave well I could tell you we have split feeders my Wolf Trap Elementary to Kilmer Middle to Marshall Madison that is the number one issue my constituents ask me about those families I think would be okay with switching so that their kids can

109stay as we heard from our student from middle school on through high school also families already have choices they're already leaving their schools for AAP magnet Lottery IB AP so the idea that everyone is going to oppose A change is really not founded and I really I really am frustrated about the positions about transportation and yet to Be Imagined boundary changes we don't know the data we've been asked for databased we've been asked for we've been asked for databased decisions and we will not know the data about Transportation needs but I'll tell you what if we have neighborhood schools where kids are walking and biking to school we will have to use less buses so and I don't understand how we're double booking or double counting of seats when the language seeks to use attrition

110as a factor but if we only use attrition it's just going to slow down this whole process of trying to create the optimal instructional experience and working environments for our staff so I strongly oppose this um uh this this sub Amendment on its content and also the way it's been brought up thank you Mr Maron Dr Anderson thank you the boundary policy is our opportunity as the policy makers well this policy and all other policies it is our opportunity to give the superintendent what she likes to say her swim Lanes it is our communication from that she creates an implementation plan and that is how to operationalize what we've said you should or you should not do I could not be more opposed to this to this for so many reasons what this says to

111me is this we're going to have inconsistent practices in terms of who gets to stay and who gets to go we need to be 100 % clear so what happens in Mason is what happens in Sully is what happens in drainville this does not allow us to do that furthermore I could not be more against the fact that we have spent months talking not even months years talking about how important it is for our students to build connections to make connections because those are the uh those are the things that avoid void the misbehaviors to get attached to sports teams and we're saying if we have a boundary adjustment only 12th graders will be able to remain that is anti the caring culture that we have that we're supposed to have here in Fairfax County

112I am vehemently against the fact that we're are also saying that a student can go to seventh grade for middle school and pop over to go to another school for eighth grade I will not support that and my in my conversations with Dr Reed last week when I decided to bring these motions when I was thinking about these motions I didn't even have language for elementary CU my primary focus was on middle school and high school and one of the things that she said to me when I really pressed her to get her opinion is that when she has done boundary adjustments before when the kids start the school they end they finish at that school and I said that's great because that's in alignment with what I wanted to do for middle and high

113school because Elementary I think is slightly different it could be up to seven years but saying that we're going to take it on a caseby casee basis but the language we're putting forward is only the top of the class can remain 8th grade 12th grade I think that is not consistent with anything that we have said in terms of having kids jump around from schools after they finally have built connections especially at the high school level I could not even fathom a world where even my child who just finished 9th grade will start 10th grade some someplace else starting all over again learning the school learning the teachers learning the Rhythm and we would do this for 10th graders and 11th graders Juniors who are in the middle of college applications we're going to say

114move this is not a respons ible move yes what I have proposed and will continue to propose does it extend the re the the redistricting does it extend it by a year or two it does but I think our kids are worth it thank you Dr Anderson Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman I want to thank both Mr McDaniel and Dr Anderson for bringing respective amendments for discussion because by doing that way we can have this kind of discussion and public can hear us that that that how and why the board will have made certain decisions and that is how the Democracy policymaking Works how about at the same time Mr mcdan I wish that I had a little more time to citate reflect upon your Amendment to the amendment because it wasn't until like

115a half an hour before I had to come to the school board meeting that we had disc discussion but a one of the questions that I have on your proposal is about the very last sentence in there where it says if you see uh in the second line in the middle it says may be provided and I did ask you you didn't mean to say shall be provided but you said may be provided so then may not even be provided and your answer was if it could maybe my answer was May is not shall correct so it's a maybe so it may not even be provided so I would actually point of order please the chair needs to recognize speakers State your point I didn't hear you the chair needs to recognize speakers that's correct

116Mr Moon would you yield your time for an answer from Mr McDaniel yes thank you uh May is permissive not compulsory so may here is may be provided not guaranteed to be provided okay oh thank you thank you for Mr MCD uh when the governance committee began its deliberation discussion on this policy change I favored flexibility to the superintendent and to all of us in providing phasing however over the course of Leverage last several months given the level of anxiety on the part of a community this is where I am tonight is I want to provide more certainty to the community members to what to expect out of this phasing so uh Mr mdo thanks for bringing up so that we can have a discussion but I'm not going to be able to support your

117amendment to Amendment thank you Mr Moon Mr Dunn I would like to move to amend the amendment not to make it too complicated um I would would one second um I don't believe you can have a stacked Amendment unlike a stacked motion so you'll have to wait until this passes or doesn't okay yes so here's where I am uh there's there's no way I'm going to uh support a motion that does not include school board approval of a phasing plan if we're not going to be specific as Dr Anderson has argued uh then this uh language is not verbatim identical to the existing policy the existing policy um requires Schoolboard approval of a grade byg grade phase in of adjustments and if we're having Schoolboard approval of every School boundary change which is the what's

118on the table every School boundary change from here until at infinitum school board will have to approve then we should also have a school board approval of every phasing plan so that we can listen to the voices of our constituents and make sure that what's being proposed by the superintendent for implementation is actually consistent with with what our community needs and so I will be proposing an amendment that we actually just stick with the existing language of 813.010 Miss Lady you um this is certainly a difficult conversation um on the one hand I certainly can understand uh vague language uh since all of the boundary adjustments need to come to the board um but I also know that uh in my experience um based on the previous um uh policy there were some adjustments that

119were uh very very limiting and some adjustments that were 5 to six grade levels um and I think that's um what my colleagu some of my colleagues are speaking to is they don't want inconsistency from jurisdiction to jurisdiction so um I actually um in theory am and more supportive of the um Amendment brought by uh uh Mr um McDaniel and Miss seore Heiser because but however I would do a friendly Amendment and change the word may to will um because I do think that we need to guarantee the final grade level of every single level can remain at their school but I also like the language that says under the policy shall be implemented that it it allows the superintendent to propose more phasing you know having said that I personally feel most strongly about

120high school um granted I spent the more majority of my career there but when kids start to develop relationships um as a former athlete who made Varsity in two sports as a freshman at Madison High School had you told me I had to move to Oaken the following year I don't know that I would have made those same teams or held my positions because they already have been established whether we're talking about robotics or drama or model end or forensics um you know we do know that our kids um when they start ninth grade they kind of have to start making their way within that school and that's where they're building uh for for many of our students who are colleg going or building their colleg goinging transcript so um and and I I guess

121you know some of this might be related to the faith I have in our current superintendent um who understands that at a deep level um so again I will eventually vote One Direction or another um but I just you know my priority is at the high school level um I honestly don't see a need for phasing more than one grade in elementary school um and I don't see a need to to phase any more than than eighth graders at a middle school because Middle School years are tough um I'd rather prioritize the high school um that's just my thought so I'll share that and we'll see where we end up with uh the different Amendment votes thank you thank you Miss Lady um Mr McDaniel so couple of items um my expectation was by putting

122this in this policy that it would come back as part of the 5-year cyclical review for school board approval so um the point that was raised I I think that that's a fair point to point out but my expectation is that by folding it into this policy that the phasing comes back as part of our cyclical review so it would come back to the board for school board approval and that was why there was tweaks from the old policy to the to this language was to reflect the more operationalization language that's in this policy so I agree with you uh that that is the case my expectation again is that the phasing comes back to this board for approval so I I want to make that comment um Dr Reed I have a question for

123you if this policy passes and my Amendment language passes and we make changes countywide and if the numbers show that every kid can be phased is that something that you're willing to do yes sir okay thank you thank you Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson I agree with my colleague that the phasing was absolutely part of the boundary plan so I do believe that the phasing would be considered as part of the review um the question that I do have though for Dr Reid is and I'm putting you on the spot slightly so I apologize um the amendment that was originally offered does not allow for any anyone past the two years uh the last two years of elementary school to stay put so if we are going towards that it may not happen with this first

124go round but if the eventual goal is that every kid is able to finish the school that they start in this amendment doesn't do that am I reading that correctly the first or the second amendment the First Amendment okay so again you don't believe the first amendment allows well if we lock in the last two years and we don't allow for anything further if we are so prescriptive that we don't allow for more it means that we don't have the opportunity to go beyond that it doesn't become the floor it becomes the ceiling which is why I was a in particularly as we're learning more about what this is going to look like over time then I think that we need the flexibility and the language to create the consistency that we're talking about yes

125ma'am I would agree on that and I I do think that part of the project management plan I would Envision which would be similar to processes I've worked with in the past um in rebounding divisions would be um a Cadence of updates and I think the picture will become clearer as we move through this process and you may at some point it may become clear enough to actually put some um how do I say put some uh flags on certain topic areas but right now as we haven't begun that work yet countywide it's difficult to do that to your point it could actually be limiting factor and that and that is specifically what I'm concerned about is that we if I I want the consistency for our schools I am just as concerned as my

126colleagues about ensuring that schools in one area of the county are allowed what I am also concerned about is if we have SE six or seven years of of kids locked into the schools that potentially the work that we're doing to try to alleviate a problem could eventually actually create a larger issue when we have kids kids coming in and leaving or you know staying so I would hate to go through the process of of all the hard work that we're doing to make sure that we can fix this policy and come out the other end with schools that are still overcrowded so that is why I will be supporting um this second Amendment to the language thank you Miss Anderson Miss seore Heiser hi um thank you Dr Reed do you know at this

127moment if we pass the amendment brought by my colleagues that we would be able to Prov all the transportation needed for students who chose to move and students who chose to stay for seven grades I'm sorry eight grades no ma'am I have no idea because we haven't modeled do theth again nine grades we haven't modeled transportation for that please observe proper decor and allow the board to do its work so if we were able to put in the alternate language proposed by my colleague Mr McDaniel and myself here it would signify to you would do you read us signifying to you that it's important to ensure that we allow for phasing whenever possible and in particular in those last grades but whenever possible does that what that signifies to you I I believe it would

128and I you know Dr Anderson's correct when we spoke last week I think it is a high priority both for myself and I know for the board that we minimize disruption while we maximize space efficiency and opportunity and access to programs so it's not I think leaving the language a little more flexible and allowing us to look at more more options and keeping that still as a strong um desire I think we can still do both with the Second Amendment thank you I also look at this as the prescribing all the years is a little premature we want to make sure we have everything in place and there's a space for that after you come back with your project plan and the first implementation plans to then figure out the phasing because we may we

129may able to do more than what's being proposed right but we don't want to prescribe you to that now because then if you are required to do the phasing as proposed now then you can't look at boundary plans that would allow for more phasing than that could you not likely that's correct because we're telling you this is the phasing period that's correct so it would it would be going against board policy to try to do more that would not be wise right and so the language now would actually allow you to do more with the information around transportation and the board at that point once we have the information would build then if we wanted to change to be more prescriptive could do it at that time to make sure we have the transportation in

130place to do that but I don't want to restrict you from doing more if that ends up being a possibility so I do believe it provides greater flexibility clearly thank you and so that's I guess the main reason for this is that at this moment putting a strong stake in the sand it's premature at this moment to be this prescriptive around phasing but putting the strong stake in the stand that we had in our previous policy and allowing for you to do the work to bring us back to the implement a plans without restricting you and then looking at phasing and to the best that we can at that moment is a better path forward and while I do understand that this came in late the amendment language only came last night so it has

131all been very rushed and quick so um around the phasing so it is is the best we can do I know it's a lot going on so um I just want to say I appreciate that um your willingness to kind of look at the most we can do to keep stability for our kids and I think at this moment this is the best path forward so that we can get the full information around the boundary scoping and the full public engagement around it before um locking in phasing thank you Miss seis Mor we have a couple people who have not yet spoken on the amendment uh Miss St John cunning um thank you I um had a conversation earlier this week um I think it was yesterday with Dr Anderson and I did mention that

132I did have some concerns about the amendment I wasn't completely um convinced for various reasons what happened in my district was that we opened a new school a new high school and if we go by this prescription that new high school would only have ninth graders and wouldn't have 10th 11th and 12th because your Amendment would prescribe that those kids could stay at their school so I appreciate the amendment that um my colleague brought because I do believe that that the allowing that flexibility is important for our superintendent and the other piece that I think is really important is that as much as want consistency and we strive for consistency we also recognize that communities are different and we want that Community input as these decisions are being made and if we stick to something

133very pres prescriptive then that Community input would not would not move the needle so um I will be supporting Mr McDaniel's language thank you Miss joh cunning Miss Dixit thank you Mr chair uh Dr I just have a couple of questions uh it's about uh the AAP program um and both my kids were in the AP program and they were in the center school I should say so if somebody is get got into an AAP school and um they will continue to be that same school till they finish Elementary School in the AP program if someone qualifies for the AAP program they have a legal right to stay in the AAP program I think what we're discussing right now is where that would be cited but certainly they have um a right to be in

134the AAP program and uh the other question was about uh the the CTE courses our academies with the uh Mr McDaniel's um uh suggestion on Amendment would that help to alleviate some of the issues like a lot of our students are not able to get into those program because that some of these academies are not in the district so would that help and also IB programs as well so I think that you know phasing touches a lot of topics but the program access and placement touches a lot of topics as well I don't know that um we just don't have an equitable distribution of our Academy programs across the county we don't currently and I don't think phasing has an impact one way or another on the access to those programs because most of those

135are outside a base High School those that are within a base High School um there we our data in our recent goal report showed that the most highest percentage of students attending Academy classes come from the school the academy cited within right for a variety of reasons Transportation giving up a class period and so forth so I think that um the phasing really is uh maybe a little less connected to that uh for the CTE program or AAP the IB programs um again I think if a student has started in an IB Program you would expect to stay because you're working towards an IB diploma right so it would be I think very important um to stay within that program having said that I honestly think it would be important to the degree we can

136do it to keep students within High School wherever they start in high school I think we all agree that that would be a best practice however I would also say that there are some students um in particular our Centerville student who spoke tonight on the video I think if we're an overcrowded high schools and we have an opportunity perhaps um as we look at other Magnet High School possibilities whether it's um Aviation or art find and Performing Arts or whatever programs as we begin to move um into those uh more evolving and dynamic topic areas there may be students that choose to step away and participate in a specialized program which leaves more space in the base school which would negate the need to continue moving the boundary does that make sense so there are

137many ways we can address this and at the end of the day we want our students to be able to access program regardless of the high school they're in res thank you so much yeah you bet thank you Miss Dix Miss Swan yeah uh I just wanted to apologize earlier because I was reading from the old Amendment um and I misspoke I shouldn't have said that because I was was reading from the old Amendment with that being said that does say that I do support the old Amendment just because it allows for students who are in more grades to stay in that school if they're needed um so I think from the student voice I don't think that I would support this specific amendment I do support the redistricting for the schools that need it

138but I don't think that I would vote for this amendment thank you Miss Swant Miss Marin the governance committee had its chance to put phasing language in and they did not they recommended to the board not to include it and upon further consideration and discussion I wanted to give families the opportunities to stay in their current school or choose to go to school in a newly drum boundary we don't know what the review of the boundaries are going to show and we don't know what the superintendent will present in terms of Transportation access to Pro programming I expect and will advocate for AC access to Greater programming look this substitute amendment is about elementary middle and high the amendment that I proposed with Dr Anderson is about elementary the board must do thoughtful and deliberate

139work bringing a motion at the deis for a topic like this is just not acceptable we broke out the Motions in three grade bands so that they could each be considered elementary middle and high just the fact that this substitution groups everything together shows the lack of really thinking through look I'm one of the only scor Schoolboard members who actually has an elementary school student and and I know the culture in my in my schools in my pyramids that I represent there's a strong culture of Elementary School Community I'd like to give my constituents the opportunity to decide whether they want to move to a new boundary or not in those last years of Elementary I'm eager to talk about middle and high which spoiler alert we actually have this uh we actually have a

140lot of choice built into that too the purpose here is to think about the students instructional experience interrupting it in middle and high is is just I I can't even understand how we could think about not allowing sophomores and juniors to remain in their school on that reason alone colleagues I hope that you will please not support this substitution the original amendment is about elementary school the original motion is about elementary school only that was our purpose this changes the whole thing thank you Miss Marin Dr Anderson thank you and I I'm glad that uh Miss Marin brought up the fact of phasing because I raised this when I intered into the governance committee meetings because I'm not part of that committee and nothing was brought forward I sent this language out several days ago

141I stalked some of you in order for us to have conversations and I actually have those text messages it's like sorry to stalk you but I just want to make sure we're having those conversations this is just not how we need to do our work I literally saw this in the script just now and the chart that I have in my home on my desk on in my home office which outlines everybody's thinking what I got was full support for Middle School across the board from every single person that I spoke with full support for the Middle School plan what I also received were Elementary well we need to do two years initially it was one year but everybody said well we want two years fine we compromise on that well we had some conversation

142where some board members said well I need to think about high school a little bit but it wasn't that we were only going to do one year of high school if it is a high priority then we need to codify it as a high priority otherwise it's just a wish and what I'm worried about is we are going to have a space where in school a we have a very different experience and what happens in school B and that's not fair to our kids I was an elementary I'm sorry I was a middle school principal and that transition is so challenging and we're staying here well we may be able to have them stay for the whole year I mean for their whole experience or we may not I am not going to be able

143to support this boundary policy as desperate as I am for it with that this phasing it is not it is not for the reasons that you all came in came in here with but this phasing I think it's an important it's an important thing it is definitely my hill to die on thank you Dr Anderson Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman without repeating why I am preferring Dr Anderson's Amendment over Mr McDaniel that I just want to respond to a concern raised by one of my colleagues uh related to Dr Anderson's amendment that Dr Anderson's Amendment it provides if you look at the very last part for the opening of a new school it says these allowances shall not be applicable in the opening of a new school or in the closing of an existing

144school so opening up a brand new high school is not going to start with the ninth graders thank you Mr Moon seeing no others we will take a vote on the amendment to the amendment if we could put that on the screen please thank you all those in favor of the amendment to the amendment which is on the screen please signify by saying I or raising your hand Miss St John cunning Miss seiser Heiser Miss Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Dixit and myself all those opposed oh sorry what oh and Mr Dunn was in support thank you all those opposed Mr Moon Dr Anderson Miss Marin and miss lady will the clerk read the vote the vote is 7 to four the motion carries the amendment to Amendment passes all right so the the the new

145primary motion for consideration is the one that was just adopted uh I call on Mr Dunn for an amendment um I move to amend the amendment by striking the full text one second it's not an amendment anymore it's now the motion okay I move to amend the motion by striking the full text of the motion and repl and replacing with the text that is on screen when possible adjustments under this policy shall be implemented through attrition and limited phasing a grade by grade phase in of adjustments sorry hold on only members of this body can make motions it's not unclear in our governance manual thank you go ahead Mr Dunn go ahead Mr dun okay um I move to amend the motion by striking the full text of the amendment of of the motion and

146replacing it with the following language when possible adjustments under this policy shall be implemented through attrition and phasing the school board May approve a grade byg grade phase in of adjustments for students beginning with the incoming class at the middle or High School levels when feasible the school board May adopt other phasing plans as appr rate to the individual boundary study parents of rising sixth or fifth graders eighth graders and 12th graders affected by a boundary change May at the discretion of the school board be provided the option of having their students remain in the school they Pro they attended prior to the change is there a second second Mr McDaniel Mr D would you like to speak to your motion uh yes briefly um again this is uh identical to the existing language in

147the phasing section of the existing School boundaries policy which requires school board approval for any phasing plan to ensure that the school board has the opportunity to review and approve uh the phasing so that it's consistent with the voices of their constituents and their communities thank you Mr Dunn Mr McDaniel would you like to speak to your motion just briefly um I I I agree I appreciate the clarification um that was my intention so I'm happy to support adding in the language around it so fine happy with this thank you Mr McDaniel uh Dr Anderson Mr Moon Miss seore Heiser um thank you I'm happy to support this as well this was the original language um we had I think Mr McDaniel and I had assumed as since it's all the Schoolboard vote that it

148the phasing would also fall into that piece of it but putting the original language back in is still consistent with what we're like trying to do so I appreciate the clarification I'm happy to support thank you m Mor Heiser Miss Marin I I just find it so curious that we're putting the original language back in I mean what did the governance committee spend all this time doing if we're just going and last minute amendments um you know we committed to a process and um I'm just really stunned that this is the kind of way we want to work and um it's unfortunate that it's unfolding this way thank thank you Miss Marin seeing no others all in favor of the amendment which is on the screen all those in favor of the amendment which is

149on the screen Mr McDaniel Miss Dixit Miss Anderson Miss seis Mor Heiser Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning and myself uh all those opposed Dr Anderson Miss Marin Mr Moon and miss lady will the clerk read the vote no no sorry I'm a four okay I apologize uh without objection we will retake the vote thank you um all those in favor of the motion on the screen Miss Dixit Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seore Heiser Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself all those opposed Miss Marin Dr Anderson and Mr moon will the clerk read the vote so the amendment to amendment number one still is 8 yes three no the motion carries all right so now we have an amended motion that is now the primary motion for consider ation which

150is the amendment to the um overall proposed policy seeing no speakers on the amendment we will now take a vote all those in favor of the amendment to the policy under consideration Miss Dixit Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seis Mor Heiser Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself all those opposed Miss Marin Dr Anderson Mr moon will the clerk read the vote the vote is 83 amendment number one carries thank you the motion passes all right I call on Dr Anderson for an amendment I move to amend policy 8130 to add the following language um to Section 8 phasing of um sorry phasing of adjustments this is for middle schools when a bound re adjustment occurs at the middle school level attendance at the new School boundary shall be mandatory for incoming

151sixth grade students and schools with a six with a 6 through eight grade configuration and for incoming seventh grade students and schools with the six with a seventh through eth grade level configuration currently enrolled students shall be given the option to remain at the school or attend the new school in the new boundary these allowances shall not be applicable in the opening of a new school or in the closing of a new school is there a second I second Miss Marin Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion I I would I think we've talked about this to death what this means is that our students when we have made an adjustment in the boundary for our for our middle school students who either have two years in that middle school or three

152years in that middle school we will only make the boundary mandatory for the incoming class we're not going to separate kids and having them start Middle School in one in one school and end in another because that is too quick of a transition and it is not the right thing to do for our kids kids and I say this again if this is something that we find important then it needs to be codified there should be no flexibility around this it should be what we say should [Applause] happen and the buses have to go to the neighborhoods anyway they're just going to drop the kids off at a different place thank you Dr Anderson Miss Marin So currently most of our middle schools are seven and eight with the exception of the three in Mason

153that are 68 we've heard many times from the superintendent that 68 is actually the preferred practice and what is actually done all around Fairfax and what I understood is that the board does aspire to look at those opportunities to have 68 so if we're only going to allow the eighth grade students in we're just walking back from that research that says actually keeping your population together is beneficial we are not mitigating the transfer of students every year the turnover of population again as one of the few school board members who actually well I just had a middle school student she'll be a nth grader I can tell you it's quick it's two years and our kids need stability we're talking about stability it's two years this would undo the damage that was just done by

154the change in the other Amendment and again this was something that when we talked to the board as recently as 2:00 this afternoon there was support for this thank you Miss Maron Mr McDaniel um overcome by the previous amendment I will not be supporting thank you thank you Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson I agree um this this isn't as relevant as it was a few minutes ago in terms of just the placement however I would like to ask Dr Reed a question um because our middle schools flip over 50% of most of them not all of them but most of them flip over 50% would you ever anticipate moving kids in the middle of middle school in the same way or would you Pro would you most likely abide by the policy um that exists saying

155the eighth graders get to stay where they are in the seven eight schools you know I think to the degree we can make that happen I think it's a good idea um so my question is because we we often make distinctions related to our three um secondary schools that are specific to that would would the three schools that we currently have that are six through eight would they take that that difference into consideration as well would they take that consideration so basically we wouldn't anticipate moving kids just because they have we have three middle schools that are 6 through eight I wouldn't anticipate that the county would move those kids differently than other schools no that's correct I mean I think the same guiding principles you're essentially establishing working rules which would apply for all

156schools in all communities that's correct and again we're still in the same boat on this where it would be that what the existing language is is the floor not the ceiling of what we would be required to do yes ma'am thank you seeing no others we will vote for the amendment that is on the screen all those in favor of the amendment on the screen Mr Miss Marin Dr Anderson Mr Moon and miss lady all those opposed Miss Dixit Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seis Mor Heiser Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning will the clerk read the vote Mr freser a no or a yes um no I apologize I had my hand up that's okay so the uh vote is then 47 the motion fails so amendment number two fails thank you we'll move

157on to the next amendment I call on Dr Anderson for an amendment hold on sorry I've lost my place I move to amend policy 8130 to add the following language to Section 8 phasing of adjustments when a boundary adjustment occurs at the high school level attendance at the new School boundary shall be mandatory for incoming 9th grade students students in grades 10 11 and 12 shall be given the option to remain in their current school or to attend the school in the new boundary these allowances shall not be applicable in the opening of a new school or in the closing of an existing school is there a second it's me melie Miss Marin Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion I I I have no new words we need to protect our

158kids we cannot have a 10th grader move to another school and 11th grader mve to another school and if the superintendent says it's a high priority write it down so all of us can know it will happen that's what this is asking us to do is to put to pen to clarify to everyone in our community in all nine magisterial districts that what happens in one place will happen in the other we should not have our families wait and hope and wish that they make whatever arbitrary Cuts May need from not having this cified language thank you Dr Anderson Miss Marin would you like to speak to your second the majority of the board has already decided that half of our student population which is an elementary school will be held to what has been

159voted so if that portion of the board wanted to move change as fast as possible you've achieved it it is deric to not allow families the choice when it comes to high school we talk so much about the student experience um if this amendment does not go through the upcoming boundary Pro process will be a nightmare this vote decides whether this process is going to be civil or not so I am begging my colleagues to allow families to choose minding that families who already have students in IB families that have students that are placed in CTE they're all going to stay where they are we're talking about a very small population of students that's going to overwrite our students with special needs which by the way we crafted with language particularly to work with some

160of our colleagues who are particularly concerned about that that IEP is going to keep them there we're talking about a small number of students and you're talking about the rest how can we even talk about college readiness and Career Tech programs when you're not going to secure all four years of high school it's derelict I am begging you to please vote for this amendment this motion thank you m Maron Mr McDaniel overcome by the domain uh amendment to this policy so I'll not be supporting thank you Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson um so when we had all the conversations over this week to try to get ready for tonight this was the portion that I had the most concern about because while I do understand that it could potentially be a small number of students it

161could potentially be um the the largest issue I have three high schools that kids in my district go to that are significantly overc capacitated and the issue is is the presumption that certain schools are better than others which I violently disagree with um the issue is is that if we have some kids coming in to to schools and then other kids being moved out because that's the way this will likely work in some cases yes that's how boundary changes work um the issue is is if we leave 10th through 12th we have more kids that potentially would be staying in the same school which is not going to alleviate the issue that we're trying to actually take care of so I want consistency for our kids I think it's really important if we determine that

162it is a small number of kids which we have we have guessed in this first iteration that for high school students it may be fewer children that are actually moved if that's the case then I believe that this can be handled in the phase portion of the discussion which means we could actually have the same thing happen but we're not locked in and so we have to I'll wait for you are you done so I think that we are in the process of of coming up with a solution here that's going to work for the greatest number of kids at the same time and so that the kids that are in those schools that are vastly overc capacity that can't get through the hallways similar to what's going on in some of our middle schools

163that are important to colleagues on the board I I think that that is the case in many many schools including several in my district where we desperately need to find a location for a Western High School but we can't really do that until we figure out which kids actually need the available school so I am not in support of the the 10th through 12th and haven't been throughout the entire process thank you Miss Anderson Mr Moon thank you Mr Mr chairman at the risk of repeating myself I am prepared and I'm willing to give a comfort and uncertainty to high school families thank you Mr Moon Miss Dixit so I wanted to just say that all of us have students and all of have kids who have been to uh you know I'm a mother

164and I also have kids in FCPS just graduated and I I feel like some of our board members are saying that like we are not thinking for students or our our community which is totally uncalled for because I am representing the community I come from I have the most overcrowded School is Rachel Carson it is it's it's uh Shanti High School in centralville high school and then I want those students to also stay from 9th to 12th grade in the high school but we don't know yet I there has to be some kids who will have to be moved out of of Shanti high school they rather start in a new high school somewhere else rather than getting moved at 10th grade or 11th grade that's why I want to support that they want to

165go to the new school from the ninth grade so they can finish the four years in that school and not get split in in that so that is why I don't want to support this split High School thing and I will support the one where we put the Baseline thank you thank you Miss Dixit Miss Marin so I just I just want to make sure I'm understanding the thinking of some of my colleagues so when this policy gets Implement passed then the next phase implementation so the superintendent goes gathers the data that's probably going to take a few months if not a year then we start implementing so that implementation year if the largest amount of change is going to happen at the outset of that first year that means the maximum disruption and that

166means that those kids who are halfway or starting their High School career will then have it interrupted the further away we get from this point in time the less impact it should have because it should be a little bit of like a trim you know haircut cut every few years rather than like a total new do like could happen we don't know maybe it won't but the idea that you know a kid who's in a crowded high school but the the idea that the superintendent can not only balance capacity balance program access balance Transportation simultaneously at the same time it's not going to happen I mean look at how we're doing literacy instruction it's taking us several years to get everyone up to speed how is if student is taking an IB course and they're

167or let's just say a CTE course and they're on their way to certification and then their boundary switches how how is that kid G to stay or what if they're on like you know a certain science track or something like it I'm trying to make sense here um it's it's just that that kid only gets that one chance and so if that kid is in a crowded high school but has access to the program I think that's the least worst option because then how is that student going to go to another school if it don't have his courses because I don't think Doctor Reed is going to be able to offer all that access and change the staff assignments and change the equipment that's needed all at the same it's a big thing so can

168we just do one thing at a time and just secure this and then you know what we can I looked at the history of when we've done this policy in the past it's been tweaked every few years this doesn't have to be the be all endle can we just ease into this thank you Miss Marin Miss St John cunning so I just want to say that I have a lot of overcrowded schools too and I have schools that are under capacity my concern with prescribing and being very prescriptive with operations is that that is not going to allow us to to do what our ultimate goal is and the fact that people believe that anyone sitting on this board does not care about what happens to students particularly when a lot of us are devoting

169our time and have devoted our time 26 years of my life in a public school and the fact that if I vote one way as opposed to another is not going to be something that is going going to be for the greater good of all students and not just the families that are represented here because I'm going to tell you there are families that cannot make it here and they've been writing us letters they they support this movement they support what we want to do they cannot make it here so there are more families and more voices and the flexibility is allowed with what the amendment has so that is something that I want to make very clear I if we were to follow this and if we were to go with the middle midd

170School prescriptive then the change that one of my colleagues wants to make in in at glasow would be a boundary change of glasow but you can't move them if we went with her with that prescriptive so we would be locked into that so we've got to be honest and realistic please continue Miss St John cunning please continue Miss St John cunning if security could please ask those who are speaking up to leave Miss St John cunning please continue the reason this is being discussed at the table is because we have Sunshine laws we can only talk to each other two at a time we cannot sit here together and discuss this unless we if unless we have public meetings which we advertise to all of you these discussions must all be held in public if

171there's more than three of us together discussing any of any of this then it has to be a public meeting the reason this is being done this way is so that it can be public that's what's important for you to note we are managing our meeting we are discussing this robust convers ation is how these things get done and we also want to hear robust conversation from the public in the proper Forum with courtesy when we have Town Halls when the when our superintendent is going to allow for when the superintendent is going to do that when we go to that second phase so yes courtesy from everyone from everyone on this board from everyone in the public I remind you our students are watching this Behavior miss lady Miss Lady thank you chairman frish

172um I I just want to um speak to this as I did earlier my remarks around High School um as someone who worked at Chantell High School which been has been referenced repeatedly this evening which was grossly overcrowded and continues to be um had a boundary adjustment taken place and actually one did take place during my 10 years was quite some time ago um there were students who opted to leave um even if they were in the phased in process there are kids who feel like because of the size of that school that if they were in a different place that they maybe would make that sports team or they might be able to get a part in a drama play or they might be able to be on the forensics team or they might

173be able to you know um do some things or be involved at a level that they want to uh where they're squeezed by the numbers um and at the same time there are kids who would not want to leave um so as someone who spent majority of my career at the high school level I have to elevate our high school students um and I have to support this particular motion that's on the screen because uh as I indicated before you know there are some ninth graders who get involved and and to reposition yourself transferring somewhere new as a 10th grader um to establish that same space is hard um and uh I just I just you know that's where they're developing their college transcripts I also want to talk really briefly about building Master schedules

174um you know the phasing at a high school is a little different uh because Master schedules and Staffing is done differently um when we're phasing in an elementary school uh it's it's a different situation if I've got a you know class I've got 93 kids at a grade level then I've gonna have to offer four sections and those numbers aren't good at the high school level if numbers are not really good then you eliminate a section because kids have four years and they can take that class the next year or you eliminate the ninth graders because they can take it as 10th 11th and 12th graders you don't eliminate the opportunity for the kid to ever get the course um but you can work within that Staffing model so when you talk about U sort

175of double seats as as one of my colleagues referenced it um you know that's not the case at a high school level when you're building a master uh and you know yeah we there needs to be um phasing and we definitely have issues but um I have to uplift our high school kids and support the motion on the screen thank you Miss Lady Dr Anderson thank you couple of things that I want to make sure that I clarified one I I don't think that um people here don't care I if I said something to to convey that I want to make sure I clarify what I want to make sure that we do is convey that into our work which is building the policy that is it secondarily I I think I kind of heard

176some things maybe I misheard when we are making those boundary adjustments if we make a boundary adjustment there's going to be impact the first year because the incoming class will be dispersed whoever will go to the new place we go to the new place whoever will remain at that school will remain at that school and we're not holding the 10th 11th and 12th grade students hostage they have the choice of going or of staying for the very reasons that miss lady described some kids they see it as a better opportunity to to leave some kids it is going to be so much more anxiety for them to have to start all over again so I wanted to make sure I clarified those points because I think that was missed in in this conversation thank you

177Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Dr Reed would this be um presumed to be a portion of the community conversations that we would be having related to phasing so that we could get some indication as to how many kids would be interested in staying or going yes ma'am ma okay so this would be something that with the flexibility in the existing language that we would be able to accommodate depending on what feedback we receive from the community yes ma'am okay thank you thank you Miss Anderson Miss seore Heiser just briefly I want to clarify that the amendment that has passed the purpose of that is not not ever it's just not yet because we need to get the information about transportation we want to do the Robos Community engagement and so that is the important piece is

178that you want to we want to make our phasing decisions once the implementation process of the community engagement and the um data is drawn so we can make the best phasing decisions it doesn't mean not ever I just want to clarify that I think everybody on this dice cares about our kids and I want to make sure we give the maximum flexibility and the maximum ability to listen to the community thank you seeing no others we will vote on the amendment on the screen all those in favor of the amendment Miss Marin Dr Anderson Mr Moon all those opposed Miss Dixit Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson oh I apologize miss lady uh will you state your vote for in favor all right miss lady in favor all those opposed Miss Dixit Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss

179seis Mor Heiser Mr Dunn Miss St John cunning and myself will the clerk read the vote the vote is for seven on this amendment the amendment fails thank you I call on Dr Anderson for an amendment I move to amend policy 8130 to revise the following language on page three section 7 establishment of School boundaries adjustment including School openings and closings support optimal family and caregiver involvement second is there a second I second Miss Marin Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion just really briefly this was a small change is just to ensure we were being a little bit more inclusive in our language a little bit clearer in terms of recognizing that not all of our students reside with a family member and so we wanted to be sure that there

180was not an intentional um omission of those other family um those other Dynamics thank you Dr Anderson Miss Maron would you like to speak to your second this is just a a simple change that will be more reflective of the community of people that um help take care of our children thank you seeing no speakers we'll take a vote for the motion on the screen all those in favor of the amendment Miss Marin Miss Dixit Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss Miss eisor Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself that is unanimous the motion passes all right I call I guess we are now at the point where we have an amended motion uh the amended policy for consideration which means the primary motion is back as amended

181seeing no speakers we will vote on the amended policy all those in favor of the amended policy please raise your hand Miss seore Excuse Me Miss St John cunning Mr Moon Mr Dunn Miss seore Heiser Miss Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Dixit and miss lady and myself all those opposed Miss Marin and Dr Anderson will the clerk read the vote the vote is nine to the uh motion carries the main motion passes I call on Dr Anderson for a followon motion I move that the school board direct the superintendent to adjust the boundaries capacity at glasow middle school during the implementation of the countywide boundaries adjustment anticipated at after the completion of the initial review of School boundaries to include a Regional Community engagement in Region 2 and in the Justice High School pyramid is there

182a second a second thank you uh Miss Anderson Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion I almost feel like I've talked about this already in my opening remarks um I I've been talking about this for several months we have a dire need at Glasgow Middle School and this will just cement the fact that it will be addressed under this new boundary policy thank you Dr Anderson Miss Anderson would you like to speak to your second um I have always been in favor of supporting glasow Middle School just within the boundary policy and or within the the over the countywide look the issue that I always ha had was that I was concerned because they are lower on the list there are if I understand correctly um there are 50 schools potentially depending

183on how you're counting that actually are worse off than Glasgow just to give you a full scope of what we're dealing with so I absolutely support the M ensuring that Glasgow gets what they need um and I'm happy to solidify it within the entire process thank you Miss Anderson Miss Marin yes I'm I'm looking forward to voting for this I really commend the representative for Mason for her continued persistence to get to yes on this and I know it's been a long time so I'm glad that we can move forward on this tonight thank you m Marin Mr Moon I supported Dr Anderson's motion to do this number of months ago and I still support the motion thank you Mr Moon Miss St John cunning I too commend uh Dr Anderson's persistence uh I like

184Miss Anderson I wanted it to be within the scope I know that glasow is overcrowded I know I have many schools that are over crowded as well um I'm happy that we're doing it within the scope of the boundary change and I'm happy to support this thank you Miss St John cunning um I'll speak um I'm happy to support the motion and appreciate that it will be done under the GU of the new boundary policy um and that it's not uh putting one school ahead of others it's making the conversation part of the holistic change um because it certainly needs to be addressed at Glasgow as just as it does at other places uh and I appreciate the work that's gone into finding uh a path forward here seeing no others we will vote on

185the follow on motion which is on the screen all those in favor of the follow on motion Miss Marin Miss Dixit Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seis Mor Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself that is unanimous the motion passes I call on Mr McDaniel for a follow on motion I move that the school board direct superintendent 2 in addition to the community engagement outlined in policy 8130 section 6 which includes engagement before the cycal review begins and after changes are ultimately recommended establishing advisory committee consisting of community members to provide feedback throughout the review process is there a second I second Miss Anderson Mr McDaniel would you like to speak to your follow on motion uh briefly I think this is fairly straightforward um you know

186I I talk a lot about the Fairfax way and the way that we do business in Fairfax County um you know we we do a lot of advisory committees and this motion um my my comment that I made during the work session was I think that um the the policy does a really good job of bringing the community to town hall meetings um but I think this extra step which I came to me from a constituent to be quite Frank it was a constituent idea um this motion brings the community in addition to meetings it brings the community to a seat at the table for that um conversation so that was the purpose and um happy to move it thank you Mr Anderson would you like to speak to your second I agree with my

187colleague we're the intention despite um what people may believe is that we would like to ensure a a robust Community conversation um now to move forward with this thank you Miss Anderson Miss Marin yes I'm aware that the superintendent has a number of standing uh Outlets into which she obtains input and shares information and I wonder if she could speak to the breath of way is that she collects information currently from the community um we do hold or I do um host region meetings uh fall and wi or fall and spring we do have a family panel meeting that includes uh two family members from each school that meet every other month um we have um our strategic planning quarterly uh community group we meet with different advisory groups a faith group a um different

188advocacy groups citizen uh homeowner groups I there are a number of groups and can you share what's can the superintendent please share what's involved to manage this schedule like what kind of Staffing is needed to make all these arrangements and the staff time needed to uphold these commitments to engagement we do calendar those commitments and there are staff that do provide interpretation interpreting services and often um child care as well and registration services I don't know that I have a specific number for each event but there there are staff that attend those events so prior to Dr Reid's arrival in FCPS just about two years ago a little bit over two years I actually took a did a review of the number of committees our previous super intend and kept and it was um well

189over a dozen if not two and I know know Dr Reed is is even more engaging in the community so I'm aware of principal roundtables student round taes including our student uh government leaders our student Equity leaders and others Community organizations including ptas HOAs nonprofits Faith bakes orgs neighboring jurisdiction superintendent her strategic plan advisory committee which I believe has 50 members on it I think there's a lot already in place and our robust Community engagement section of the policy which calls for Pyramid surveys Outreach to engage communities and perment Community meetings everything that we encumber when we encumber the superintendent's time for one thing she loses the ability to focus on something else I don't think this is necessary I appreciate the spirit of it but I do think the superintendent already has her finger

190on the pulse of community engagement and this could be rolled into some of those existing Avenues thank you Miss Marin Mr Dunn uh I support this amendment I think uh it's important that when we talk about School boundaries we don't just uh speak to uh parents and families uh and students um but we speak to the entire community and uh there are many great uh organizations the Fairfax Federation um the Fairfax scacp and many others that uh both for the County Board of Supervisors and for FCPS uh can speak to uh the entire County's interests um different groups that have existed for decades and are assigned uh sometimes by rule regulation specific seats on specific uh County and FCPS advisory committees and so making use of their expertise um making use of their experience and

191insight I think is important so that ultimately um boundaries which do affect more than just schools um uh are consistent with the broader Community interest and that input is considered thank you Mr Dunn Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman I'm going to support this motion uh the I mean this is going to be a very important work and involving uh involving more community members as many as possible will be helpful not only just for the process itself but also buy in from the community as well which is crucial I understand about the workload on the part of superintendent who already does a lot superintendent does not have to go to all the meetings superint can certainly designate someone else to cover for her as needed a superintendent is not going to be the only person

192doing the a boundary boundary adjustment work I mean they she she has to work with the whole team that she she doesn't have so I think this can be handled and this should be handled and I'm be supporting the motion thank you Mr Moon um I will take a turn um so I I uh agree with my colleagues concerns about how the superintendent uh what kind of bandwidth it takes to do um Community engagement uh especially when so much is already being done by the superintendent one thing that I when I first read the motion that came that I thought of was that unlike the typical engagement that we do in the community where an event's held at a school or we have a topic specific uh seminar for families um a committee like this

193an advisory committee like this offers an opportunity for repeated engagement with the same people over the Arc of the creation of something new and I think that's a valuable um set of uh assets to bring on board to this process as part of the broader um Community engagement aspect um not everybody who shares their views with the school system is going to find follow every facet of the work and I think that there will be value Insight gained from having a you know similar to with our strategic plan uh committees um having an iterative process with the same engaged community members Miss eore Heiser well I'll pick up right where you left off but I want to say that um this follow on motion actually encompasses what we talked about in governance which is having

194kind of a a through using the model of the Strategic plan the core planning teams to having sort of a broad um spectrum of different community members and different stakeholders to provide regular um input as we go through the process so it it's I think just encompasses what we talked about anyway in governance as part of the implementation process so um I trusted that Dr Reed was going to do that anyway so I I think it's important to recognize that I everything I've seen her Implement in the stry plan has involved significant Community engagement so I trusted she was going to do this and it was part of what we talked about but having as a follow on motion is fine also because that makes it clear that this is something we want to set

195up so I'm happy to support it thank you Miss sear Heiser seeing no others we will go ahead and vote for the follow on motion which is on the screen all those in favor Miss St John cunning Mr Moon Mr Dunn Miss eore Heiser miss lady Miss Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Dixit and myself all those opposed Miss Marin with Dr Anderson away from the table will the clerk read the vote the vote is 91 um with Dr Anderson away from the table the motion carries the motion passes thank you uh agenda item 5.05 board action regarding policy 24 excuse me chair frish may be recognized please yes may we take a brief recess please uh we'll take a 10-minute recess and I will correct my place in the agenda when we come back it'll be

196agenda item 5.04 when we return [Music] oh [Music] oh oh [Music] oh [Music] sh rise together we fall apart Vision in our society musts be heal Americans we are down together [Music] board members please return to your seats board members please return to your seats e board members please return to your seats e all right we are back next item for consideration is agenda item 5.04 action item election results certification and exclusive bargaining agent recognition I call on Mr moon for a motion thank you Mr thank you Mr chairman I am very happy to make this motion I move that the school board to certify the results and recognize and certify the Fairfax education unions Fu as the exclusive Bing agent for the operational and licensed instructional bargaining units is there a second she's away

197from the table I second Miss Anderson Mr Moon would you like to speak to your motion uh just briefly Mr chairman uh you know this is something we've been waiting for long time and for the employees they've been waiting for the case but even for the school board this has been going for a couple of years and finally you got to a point where a uh Fairfax education education unions became certified and then there were votes by operational and instructional employees to vote for the organizations to represent them so that a collective bargaining negotiation could begin in honest uh for the public I just wanted to share a a the voting results at the top on on the screen we have a two separate voting results Mr Jackson would you be able to show that

198could you enlarge the screen is that possible let me just read uh you know for the operational bargaining uh unit votes a out of all the votes you cast the feu feu received more than 80% of the votes in support of it's representing uh the operational employees for the licensed of professional B gaining unit instructional employees basically uh a out of out of more than 8,000 ballots cast uh 96.9% 97% almost 97% in a supporting FEA to represent them so with that uh you know I'm asking my colleague to support my motion to certify feu Fu to represent them thank you Mr Moon Miss Anderson I am extremely excited to support this um I love the fact that our staff is going to have a seat at the table in a very um solid way

199um however my colleague was supposed to Second this and she was away from the Das so I'm going to I'm going to yield the rest of my time for her thank you I am very excited that um our that we're doing collective bargaining I know that you have put countless hours to go get all the cards and you've gone and talked to everyone um coming from a strong union background I really believe that um you are there to help support our everyone in our Workforce to ensure that they are not just compensated adequately but are also being provided a place to work that's safe and that they're in a in a climate and in a culture that is welcoming so that they can do their best work and um I know a lot of people

200sometimes think that um collective bargaining is just about the payche and it's not it's about conditions it's about a positive Climate about a positive culture and we know that if our staff and our teachers our custodians um our bus drivers are happy then our kids are happy so I'm really excited about the work that you all are going to do to move forward um the one thing about this is that we can't talk to you about it anymore so um that's the one thing and that's the way it goes but good luck thank you Miss uh St John cunning Miss seiser just briefly because I know it's late for us I'm also very excited to support this I'm really it's been a um four years in the making I think I believe from M when

201Mr fris brought his first motion to start the process I was really excited when I was chair that we're able to get the resolution passed that then allowed for the organ organizing of our employees and um I'm just really excited to see the strong support that are um our unions were able to get from the the staff the teacher staff and um I'm just really glad that people have a seat at the table I am a union member myself in my other job and I can say personally it has made such a big difference in my working conditions my salary and just being able to have that voice at the table has been so impactful on my job and I'm really glad to be able to be part of a board that's also giving our

202our staff that ability so i' be happily to support to certify thank you Miss sear Heiser Mr dun as a former Union member myself um I I can't tell you enough uh how important it is to have unions who will advocate for the workforce um historically what I have personally seen with an FCPS is that uh sometimes despite the best of intention um FCPS employees are treated as uh cogs in a machine and uh the reason uh and and and this will change that so that uh Educators administrators uh support staff are treated uh correctly as partners in a shared Mission rather than cogs in a machine ultimately at the end of the day uh the reason our schools are great is not because of um the concrete blocks that make up the walls it's

203not because of their location it's because of the human beings who day in day out go in to put in long hours more than hours than they're paid for uh to educate our children care for our children transport our children feed our children um and make sure that uh the operations are running smoothly and we have uh an incredible um superintendent who uh just oozes empathy and uh love of mission and love of the uh public schools and right down to uh the cafeteria workers the bus drivers the teachers um everyone I've met within the four WS of FCPS is just incredibly committed to the mission and needs to be honored and respected um obviously through compensation but also through uh working uh terms and conditions and uh I think this will provide uh a

204great Avenue by which we can bargain uh across the table not the school board directly but through the superintendent and her team um bargain uh on an equal shared basis uh to discuss how FCPS should go in the in the future uh to provide a worldclass education for every child thank you thank you Mr Dunn Dr Anderson thank you I'm very happy to support this motion as someone who in as a teacher had been in a bargaining unit as an assistant principal had had a similar um opportunity also as a school principal was in a bargaining unit this is just coming full circle um so I'm excited that we are finally here it has been a long time I think it was March of last year that the board had approved the um regulation I'm

205sorry the policy and so I'm glad to be able to support tonight I think it is going to really change how we do business in Fairfax County Public Schools thank you Dr Anderson um I will take a turn um so uh my mother was a waitress and my father was a a union had a union job growing up the only reason that we had a middle class existence was because of his union job when he got hurt at work it was his Union brothers and sisters who helped make sure that our family had what we needed to kind of get through that uh period um and so you know you talked to our um Educators who have been around the longest and they'll tell you about how long this conversation's been happening um I very

206much appreciate uh all of my colleagues but my four returning colleagues in particular um who uh helped reposition this school board in favor of collective bargaining um in in Richmond becoming the first school division in Virginia to endorse collective bargaining at the state level to provide that right for employees at the local level um and then uh you know two of my colleagues who served as chair uh of our board as the resolution was worked on in a methodical approach and then finished and passed um and then it was all in our employees hands and the work that goes into getting to this point is Monumental right it is conversations one-on-one with your colleagues uh after school on break it is you know answering questions it is getting to know people you may have seen

207in the building that you didn't know before um and that's just to get them to sign on the dotted line and then it's getting out the vote and so that all takes place and what you're doing at that time while you're trying to get to this point you're also building what will be a better bargaining unit as a result of that hard work because relationships are built stories are shared and now now the bargaining unit is even more prepared to carry that message into negotiations and I do appreciate my colleagues uh tongue-and-cheek comment about we can't talk to you anymore not entirely true right but the principle is we have to be careful about what we do talk about because we need to protect your rights as employees and ensure that we are not stepping

208on um any of your rights that are guaranteed under federal state uh law and and um uh in our resolution so um I am encouraged by our superintendent to experience with this process um and the work that is the collaborative work that has gone into getting us here and excited about the path forward um tonight we're just voting to certify that the election happened and that the results are legit and uh that is in fact accurate and so I am happy to cast my vote accordingly and see this process through to its conclusion and I appreciate everybody for sticking around for this important moment all right seeing no others will go ahead and uh vote for the motion that is on the screen for 5.04 all those in favor Miss Marin Miss Dixit Dr Anderson

209Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seis Mar Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady are you there with Miss Lady away from the table and oh there she is I'm not away from the table but I couldn't turn my video on oh no worries how do you vote uh I vote for it great thank you and myself that is unanimous the motion passes agenda item 5.05 action item board action regarding policy 2418 reporting student progress to parents and Guardians and secondary grading advisory committee I call on Dr Anderson for a motion it's definitely my night um I mve to IR the governance committee to revise policy 2418 reporting student progress to parents and Guardians and provide recommendation to the school board for discussion no later than November 1 2024 I further move

210that the school board direct the superintendent to one suspend the work of the secondary grading advisory committee temporarily and to pause in the adoption of additional recommendations regarding grading and two develop a clear charge for the secondary grading advisory committee to update its recommendations for secondary grading practices to aligned with the revised policy 2418 and the 22 I'm sorry 2023 2030 strategic plan and three communicate to staff that the grading changes distributed to Middle secondary and High School principles and teachers on June 10th 2024 will be implemented mented for one year only pending the revision of policy 2418 by the school board and subsequent updated recommendations from the secondary grading advisory committee and four present the secondary grading advisory committee's updated recommendations to the school board in a public meeting no later than June 1st

2112025 and time for implementation for the Sy 2025 2026 school year year I ask for unanimous consent to change the date of the last bullet of the motion from June 1 20125 to May 1 2025 without objection the change is noted and will be reflected in the motion on the screen please Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your after it seconded I would love to speak to it thank you is there a second second thank you Miss seore Heiser Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion yes I would um we all know that grading is one of those one of the most important tenants that occurs in our schools it's important to to our teachers it's important to our parents and it is definitely important to our students in terms

212of its implications we're talking scholarships um opportunity and admissions into post-secondary um opportunities colleges so this is a component that we really have to get right and I appreciate the work of the secondary committee um the secondary grading advisory committee and what they have come up with but I think we missed the opportunity for two things that I think this um policy this uh motion speaks to one the opportunity for a larger conversation we need to bring in our community into this discussion for there to be Clarity for our students for there to be Clarity for their parents and caregivers in terms of what is it that we do in our schools in an area that matters so much secondly we need to be much better aligned with our policies I I don't think the

213policy has kept up with the recommendations that were provided which still rais a lot of questions for those of us who have reviewed that 44-page report a little bit more indepthly and this hopefully if this passes it will it will give us the opportunity to really dig down into that report without public to really align work to our strategic plan and come back and have a full sum conversation so that we can move forward in on a consistent basis I think that is one of the key pieces that I want to highlight because the current recommendations allow for so much fluctuation and there's also a lot of questions regarding the research and the data and right now we're just kind of middling around in the dark a little bit and we need to come back

214and have a full suum conversation so hopefully this can be um approved um and that's it thank you Dr Anderson Miss seore Heiser would you like to speak to your second yes just briefly I think Dr Anderson covered it very very well um I will say one of probably the number one thing I hear about from parents and students um and even teachers is regarding the consistency of grading practices and the concerns around grading grading practices especially the difference from school to school I think there's some um really good work going on around grading I appreciate the secondary grading committee's work to date however I do think that policy should then drive regulation should then drive practice and our grading policy has not been updated in more than five years um so I think it's

215important I know that this grading committee is planning to continue its work for another year so and while some recommendations have been rolled out I think it's really important to sort of take a breath make sure our policy is up to dat so then it can drive the um practices and it can drive the regulations around that so what this motion really and I also think it's really important to both look at what the grading committee has recommended to so far in a public meeting as well as once our policies done ensure that the grading committee has a clear charge for its work and then does its work in alignment with an updated policy and in alignment with our strategic plan as all of our policies and regulations should be in alignment with a strategic

216plan so this really is just putting our typical structure around our grading work and ensuring that there's more trans transparency and um ability for the public to sort of follow along as we do this while still giving time to have it done by next year so it can be impl for the following year whatever additional changes there may come from this um in a way that's consistent um across the county so I I appreciate um my colleague Dr Anders for bringing it I'm really happy to support it and I hope that U my colleagues will support this also thank you Miss seiser Mr Dunn um as as someone who grew up up moving around a lot changing schools frequently um I have found uh that there's a certain population within Fairfax County especially economically disadvantaged

217students uh and military families who who do change schools within the county um with some frequency and uh what I have also found is that grading um at different schools uh especially middle and high schools can be uh surprisingly different and there's a lot of autonomy provided to principles and administrators um to to have different practices and uh this is something where uh I'm all in favor of experimentation but that's not what this is it's not deliberate it's inadvertent in many cases and it's it's harmful to our students uh when when kids apply to college uh when they're seeking to measure their achievement against those of other students at different schools or within the same school there should be a consistent policy a consistent yard stick by which to measure uh their achievement and to

218enable apples to be compared to Apples and uh you know what I've heard directly from students because I've held um uh small meetings with students from uh most of the high schools within attended by Mount Vernon District students is that uh grading is among their top concerns and the inconsistency and the variability not just from school to school but from year to year and so I think it's time to end that inconsistency to have a consistent systematic approach um and and so I support this motion very strongly because I think we need to be very thoughtful as we establish a consistent systematic approach uh to have robust uh uh study and research but I think we also need to have uh robust uh Schoolboard review and approval because something like this is so fundamental to

219our student experience to our family expectations um that we we certainly need to have the school board uh be fully on board with whatever uh system uh and policies are ultimately uh proposed by the superintendent thank you thank you Mr dun Miss Marin yes I'm happy to support the effort to renew and revise our policy um again that's business as usual for the board or should be um actually I do want to correct this policy was last updated just a few months ago it was in December of 2023 when the previous board did update the policy um rather quickly I'm reminded of that process um that happened this evening too and at that time all that was changed was the grading scale which the superintendent um had put out and that was codified and my

220advocacy at that time was that we really needed a more robust review of our grading policy so I'm very glad that that's happening now but I you also think that is an example of when the board isn't regularly updating its policies every 5 years as it should be it becomes more and more difficult to um meet our our sworn duties so I'm happy to support this motion and thank you for bringing it thank you m Marin Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman I'm going to support the motion uh and a so much echoing what my colleague Mr Don has already stated about need to maintain consistency you know among different schools but even more important about consist related to consistency is within the same school amongst different teachers I don't want students do teacher shopping

221based upon how they how different teachers grade uh so it is good to have our policy to uh guide our teachers to be consistent among St scol within the same school thank you Mr Moon um I will support the motion and one of the things that I appreciate about the motion is that it's asking things to work in concert together the work that's being done by the committee the work of the superintendent and trying to bring um uh sense to this and uh the work of the board to refine our policy um one of the things that's clear when you talk to parents is that there even if there was greater consist in our in in grading from school to school there's not a lot of clarity about the reasons that we do things the

222way that we do them and so I think this will bring Clarity to that as well um and I'm eager for the conversation I appreciate the work that went into bringing this motion missan yeah actually speaking to this I do I do really like this um but I do also have a lot of questions about what what would be changed and what would be coming up so I do look forward to participating in these discussions and also Distributing it to the students so they can have their opinions because I know there's there's a range of opinions on this issue so I don't even know where to start with uncommenting with this Miss seore Heiser hi thank you and I appreciate my colleague's clarification that yes the policy was added to an updated in December 2023

223but it hasn't been reviewed holistically so that's I think I want to make that clarification I appreciate that clarification it has not been reviewed holistically in over five years but it was there was one one section added to it at the last minute um in 2023 so I think it'll be helpful to review it holistically thank you very much signal others we will vote for the motion that is on the screen EXC see my hand is up I apologize I'm very sorry Miss Lady go ahead okay um so I just want to share a couple thoughts on this um as somebody who you know worked in our system for a long time but also was a director of student servic and was in meetings with other directors um we had this conversation often uh if

224any of our kids changed schools um was there inconsistency how things were done in terms of retake policies um formative summative percentages all that um I just I guess I just want to point out that in reviewing the report that came from that grading committee uh it is very very very clear that it seems like and I'll speak just to high school even though I have thoughts on middle school because it's preparation for high school that there the High School principles um there's a lot of diversity in that in in the in in in the things that are happening um I will say that I think that what every school has been tight on is that their Collaborative Learning teams if you're a CT of world history 1 that you are consistently doing things the

225same way um and so teacher shopping should not be a thing because people should be in the same pacing guide and doing collaborative work and doing formative and summative assessments consistent with their with their colleagues teaching the same course um and I guess I just want to say and and and you know maybe this is just you know for me but I do think that what we do in terms of grading is very different than when we went to school certainly me a long long time ago where we graded behavior um and and we didn't understand that time was the variable in learning um and I just want people to be careful and and understand that as we as we engage in this work to understand our our personal blind spots around how what worked

226for us as students versus where we are now with uh focusing on standards focusing on understanding and and evaluating kids maybe in a different way so and that might require us to read the books consult the experts um and have conversations about grading uh we must be educated on current research and learning and so I just throw that out there because I know November is a pretty quick timeline to write a policy that's going to drive this um and I'm all about supporting that I do think we need to look at the policy um because it's very vague and it doesn't say anything um and I'm hoping that this will be done in conjunction with um in collaboration with if you will um you know our educational experts um because while I was an educator

227for quite some time I would not ever um put myself as an expert in grading um while I actually do believe I know a lot about it um I'm not gonna um you know I would still say this is an evolving practice so I think we have to mostly um ask the question um you know what should grades be communicating to students and families and what do grades actually represent um and I think the tough part of that is that you when you ask that to 50 different Educators you might get 50 different answers so I will support this um but I just want people to understand I don't think this is easy work thank you Miss Lady Mr dun uh sorry just a quick uh go back um as the grading committee does its

228work um I just wanted to highlight a couple things uh for Dr Reed um that that might be considered um one is uh the uh continuing and alarming trend of great inflation where everyone gets an a um I I think uh a study from a few years ago showed like something like 75% of students at Harvard were a students which you know there should be maybe not a bell curve but something reflecting that some students are achieving more and some less because if you don't I know when I got bad grades sometimes it was an incentive to do better to learn more to put in more effort um second um you know we have a vast uh difference between students in IB curricula um and students in you know advanced placement honors and similar curricula

229uh as well as students taking CTE classes so that should be um considered um because we don't want to have whatever grading policies adopted across the entire system to uh be preferential to one curriculum versus the other um and finally um I don't know if it fits within the scope of this uh but I I've been alarmed by the anecdotal information I've been receiving of increasing frequency of students using uh cell phones in the classroom to essentially take photos of you know multiple choice tests um to enable their peers to who may not be taking the test at the same time to thus figure out the answers so there might be some thought given to moving away from multiple choice tests which are you know fixed in their answers and and more um you know

230writing um exercises essentially to an now uh because you can write long answers in math and science as you know not just uh provide the answer but show the work um and and that's certainly something we need to address now um with the rise of generative AI that may make cheating on tests um even more rampant thank you thank you Mr Dunn Dr Anderson yes thank you I miss the opportunity to kind of highlight some something that the committee recommended which I think was really important um we have schools that have vastly different uh approaches to the waiting of summative assessments some schools it is 50 um 40 some I'm sorry 5040 so 6040 and some schools were 9010 these are students that are vying for the very same things we should not have that

231discrepancy across our um divisions across our division what the school what the secondary grading committee recommended was that it would be 7030 with 70% being summative and 30% being formative and while that is consistent now across the um our schools which I think is important I think it's still begs the question why that number should it be 8020 should it be 6040 should it be something else and I'm really looking forward for those into those conversations and and when it comes to retakes when it comes to those other kind of work the work has changed a little bit the research has moved a little bit with grading it's not oh you have a failing grade and it's one and done it's really offering students a lot of opportunities to show proficiency to a concept um

232because we also get that at our work if you hand your your boss a report that is substandard you're not fired you get to you you are told go do it again so we're providing the same opportunities to our kids and these are the things that I think we need to elevate to help parents understand what is actually happening in our schools and so I I'm really looking forward to these discussions because I'm particularly fond of grading practices thank you Dr Anderson miss lady I don't know if your hand is up for a go back I can't see you on the screen unfortunately no I'm fine okay thank you Mr Dunner Mr Moon your lights are on thank you all right see no others we will vote for the motion that is on the screen

233it is agenda item 5.0 five all those in favor Miss Marin Miss Dixit Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss seore Heiser Mr dun Mr Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady I I know you said you would but I can't see in the screen can you vocalize your vote yeah I don't know why you can't see me anymore but yes thank you and myself that is unanimous the motion passes all right agenda item 5.06 action item strategic plan goal two Baseline report addendum safe supported included and empowered I call on Dr Reid for presentation of the Strategic plan goal to Baseline report addendum all right thank you chairman frish and tonight tonight uh this presentation is a followup to our goal 2 Baseline report which was originally presented on April 25th um at 2024

234well on April 25th of 2024 at that time uh the board uh directed me to add student academic inclusion and engagement which is measure a of goal two as an additional early identified priority and revise the goal to report accordingly so that we could bring the information back to the board for a full vote I've included the full report which is available on board dos for those of you watching at home and um that will include the current data that we've added so uh in our goal one Baseline report we did share information about the importance of academic inclusion including a recent study conducted by the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services that highlighted the importance of inclusion for students with disabil ities in prek and the academic and social benefits

235of inclusion so let's kind of let's move through this and take a look at this uh during tonight's report excuse me I will be referencing data from the vdoe special education performance report and we'll also be looking at indicators that measure outcomes and compliance with the requirements of idea the VOE produces annual special education performance report report s that summarize overall State and individual School Division performance these include two indicators each with three parts that focus on inclusion for students with an IAP so the indicators from these reports will be the focus of tonight's presentation and Baseline data so we'll begin with indicator five which focuses on the learning environment for students with an i in kindergarten through age 21 the this uh vdoe performance on indicator 5 on this slide we have an opportunity

236to look at the overall Virginia performance as a reference point so um these are the 5A 5B 5 C and this is um where we would begin so on the next slide this is an opportunity to look at our performance on indicator 5A in particular and this is the one that um talks about uh students included in the regular classroom 80% or more of the day and as you can see in our Baseline data report we're still uh below uh the state expectation for that and our uh our line is shown in yellow and the state targets for each year are shown in Blue uh to reach the 2526 State Target FCPS will need to make at least 5.7 percentage points of growth each year so just want to make sure we note for reference

237um that the 2526 is the furthest oute where the state Target is known and the target for future dates including 29 2030 are not yet known it does look uh that we are making progress in 2223 and our 2324 data I don't believe is available yet so again we want to make sure we reinforce while this is Baseline data our Target is to meet or exceed the state targets and next we'll take a look at VOE indicator 5B which focuses on students included in the regular classroom less than 40% of the day kindergarten through age 21 and during the three most recent years of reporting Fairfax County has not met the state Target for indicator 5B as we continue to focus overall inclusion efforts um on 5A we expect to see Improvement on 5B as

238they are connected so our targets for upcoming years for 23 24 this past year was 7.65% 24 25 7.40 and 2526 7.15 and lastly we'll look at uh performance on indicator 5C and again 5c is measuring the percentage of students with disabilities in kindergarten through age 21 who are served in separate public or private school residential homeschool homebased or Hospital facilities uh during the most recent three years of reporting Fairfax County Public Schools has met the state Target here and we do provide a wide variety of services and programs which allow the division to provide the majority of special education services actually within the county and this does support our ability to meet indicator 5c I want to reinforce for those listening that this does include students who attend Davis career center pulley Career Center

239Cedar Lane School quanda Road School Burke School Kilmer Center and key Center as well as multi- agency services homebased or Hospital facilities as we look at indicator six um this is the indicator where we're looking at learning environment for our students who have IEPs who are Age 3 to five as you can see on this chart in indicator 6 this is the overall Virginia performance on indicator 6 as a context and a starting point um which we'll nest in and zoom in right now on Fairfax County indicator 6A outcomes compared to State targets I will say again on this slide uh there indicator indicates that the percent of students in preschool with IEPs um who are attending a regular education program and receiving the majority of special education related services in the regular program is

240below the state expectation and it continues to be the our Fairfax County actual is in yellow whereas the state targets are above that uh to reach the 2526 goal we'll need to make at least 1.87% uh percentage points of growth this does include students uh who are in classrooms providing different types of inclusion single teacher inclusion paired classroom inclusion or itinerant classroom inclusion model um and we've obviously got a lot of work to do again in this area as well on indicator 6A however I do um I am optimistic that our trend line is moving in the right direction and we've worked very hard in our early childhood department and Dr Edmund herd Dr precidio and the team on making sure we're crafting more Inclusive Preschool classrooms and I also want to say our principles

241have been working very hard as we find spaces and um opportunities to collaborate on the indicator 6B this focuses on our students um with the percent of students with IEPs in preschool who are enrolled in a preschool program attending a separate special education class separate school or residential facility during the most recent three years of reporting again Fairfax County did not meet the state Target for indicator 6B um but as we continue to focus on our overall inclusion efforts and a Target to meet indicator 6A it should enable us to see improvements in uh the ability to meet 6B so now we're going to take a look at indicator 6C um and this 6C again is the percent of children who are in preschool programs receiving special education and related services in the home and

242during the most recent three years of reporting Fairfax County again did not meet the state Target for indicator 6C but the data is trending uh in the direction we would expect to try to U meet the vdoe target um hopefully in the next uh couple years this includes children again who are accessing special education services provided by FCPS Early Childhood special education teachers or staff in the home these Services may include speech occupation or Physical Therapy Services as well so some of our current strategies we thought it would be helpful to share what the division is doing to address um some of these uh data points that are deficient and again appreciate the board uh drawing us back to taking a look at this being a high priority uh set of data points because we

243know it is so to that end we were putting some high leverage um strategies in place and this particular slide looks at our current efforts to improve inclusion across the School Division the um use of our LR tool which we continue to refine which is used during I AP team meetings uh we've had significant develop uh professional development around Universal Design for Learning it's been an administrative Focus teacher focus and support staff focus and again the um introduction the purchase and uh use of a new basil resource curriculum that actually has multi-tiered systems of support threaded throughout so we're very excited about the opportunity uh to utilize uh the new curriculum and um this summer we've had teachers and a variety of both General and categorical programs being uh trained and supported and we're looking

244for great outcomes as a result I'm I think I'm a page okay all right so again we're going to look ate K inclusion strategies and um particularly our grow your own program that provides a dual licensure is really something that we're hopeful that will enable us to hire more staff that are certified in early childhood and early childhood special education in the 23 24 school year we did uh prek classroom expansion enabled us to increase our preek access to more than 200 students um seven of the new prek classes open open at schools collocated with Early Childhood special education classes and three new Early Childhood inclusion programs single teacher inclusion classes so it's really a high priority as we roll out and develop and add more courses or more classes for our youngest Learners um

245so strategies under development and consideration these are things that we're working on as um a second tier there under development uh but they haven't been implemented in contrast to the strategies I previously uh mentioned and we're working to develop a multi-year plan that we believe uh will uh meet the targets uh because that's the expectation that we meet the targets we think this is going to take roughly three to five years it's going to involve all staff at every level and we'll obviously continue to be reported to um to the board um what our goal is really to move beyond the State indicators we don't consider that to be a ceiling but rather a floor in terms of our work and we do continue to work on our Universal Design for Learning by continuing to

246incorporate High leverage practices um we're excited uh to continue the process and finally we've got uh the 2425 school year we have several new inclusion models that we're contemplating and again these include the single teacher model as well as um code teaching in the 2024 2025 school year all 61 classes at 42 schools with collocated prek in early childhood will implement the paired classroom inclusion model this is a major step for our division um but we're really excited and committed to making that happen so at a minimum 300 students with ipps will be served in these inclusive programs so lots of excitement about that uh flexible grouping will continue to be important um as we begin the implementation of also an itinerate classroom inclusion model this year and just a lot of excitement around uh

247inclusive prek so that's the addendum to our go to report that optimized um our indicators let me go back here are several indicators um let's see here the student academic to include Baseline data current future High leverage strategies for achieving measure a um and indicators 56 as well as measures D and F thank you Dr Reid Dr Anderson um thank you this is very um interesting information just a few questions regarding 5A which speaks to 80% of our students uh I'm sorry students needing to spend 80% of their day um in included spaces how would that work with our centers what is what are the implications there so Dr Edmunds herd do you want to uh comment on the role of the centers versus our base schools from my understanding those students are not counting

248in that 80% that we're looking at but don't they impact the overall goal that the state has they are the ones that um in they're in 5c those were the centers that those are the separate centers that are there that that's where they are counted which we still have not met those targets so I think the question would still be applicable how do we include more opportun needs for inclusion when the entire School essentially is a special education center I think it's still continuing to look at the needs of those students and when they can move to a least restrictive least restrictive setting is when we will be making those moves to as well but it's difficult to do that of course when they're in the more restrictive setting sure so if we were to

249move them from a least restrictive setting which means out of those centers and into a traditional school then they wouldn't go ahead I'm sorry me then they would not count in 5 C anymore they would be moved to 5 a they would be mov but then we will still have the same issue with kids who are in 5c yes so for for our students who are not going to be able to move to a traditional schools how do we then impact what needs to happen for them at the places where they are I don't have a specific answer for that yet I can do some checking though for you on that and how they might be impacted and how we can make changes for them too or or how um we can impact that particular

250um indicator for those students I think one of the things we're trying to do is lower excuse me lower the number um or percentage of students that actually would be in the centers that would be part of the 5c data um calculation and as students moved from centers back to base schools or fewer students would be moving from base schools to centers um we want to make sure that our students in base schools are spending more time in General Ed classes with supports sure and that would be 5A which I do have a question about but I I still I I'm just really wondering how we would impact um those students who fall into 5c in a substantial way to meet this because similarly to our students who are El's once they're no longer El's

251they fall into another category continuing to diminish the growth that could be seen with that group so I I I I'm very curious in terms of any additional information that you can share now regarding 5A um where students need to be included in regular classrooms 80% or more of the day how will that be operationalized are we now going to have IEPs have that as a goal um what it what should parents look forward to happening in those IEP conversations so this past year during every IEP conversation there was actually an LR tool which I'm going to ask Dr edans herd to comment on here in a minute we realized when we rolled it out initially I think that it was a fairly um intense tool and I believe we refined it to make it

252more streamlined and not um quite as onerous uh and also it was new for IEP teams to work through so um by utilizing that tool it asks more questions and poses more scenario possibilities um so Dr edman sir do you want to comment on the LR tool and its role please um yes we did roll out that tool um in the fall of last year and then we continued to make some refinements to it um we did ask all schools to start using the tool and getting exposed to it in January of this year we also provided training to our department chairs in regards to the tool um we've gotten a lot of feedback on it and we've continued to make refinements on it but the main purpose of it was to make sure that

253our school teams could have more robust conversations around um our stud students and what their needs are and how we can possibly move them into a least restrictive setting because we know that many of our students are taking so assessments and the more exposure that they're having to the general education curriculum as well as development of their social skills is going to be beneficial to them so you're not looking to have a mandate that students have 80% of their time you're using the tool to kind of guide the discussion in that area exactly what what what's the change maker because I'd like to think you know got my glasses on I'd like to think these are conversations that would happen if you have a really robust and fair you know IEP process well the tool

254is very thorough and it covers many many areas that um may not have been covered before in those conversations and it's more of a guide too for our um teachers when they're having those conversations to guide them through the process to make good decisions um and so they're discussing some areas that may have been left out before and so we're hopeful that the tool will continue to grow and we have seen some small changes um with that that was actually my next question are you seeing any changes yes we have we met we've been meeting meeting with our um principles over the last couple of months we had ACS I mean I'm acsd I'm sorry we had our um principal meeting where we were talking about the tool and doing some um talks around um

255increasing our inclusion settings and same thing in our leadership conference this week that we've continued to have a conversations about it and being able to help our principles to look at the data um I think Dr Reed may have even mentioned the dashboard that will be coming up too so that they can be monitoring that data and taking a look at it okay thank you um and moving to 6B 6B has three groups of students students who are in special education classrooms separate schools and residential facilities how can we impact the residential facility component because obviously the class we have a little bit more I hate to say flexibility but we have a little bit more influence in that area how would we impact and reduce the number of students in the residential facility and

256even more importantly which one of these three has the um like what's the data for each Dr Edmond s have that I don't think we have the data for for each one tonight but we can get that and I do have a couple team members on line too as well I'm not sure if they have the answer to that I'm just very curious because that's a big gap it's going to be a little bit challenging in to meet this Target in the time frames that we have without really digging into it um I Heard the sound but I do have some additional questions so I'd like to go back thank you Dr Anderson uh Mr Dunn uh well first of all I'd like to congratulate you and your team this is um you know some

257great news and great progress and I appreciate everything that's being uh implemented for these students um when there was a new tool mentioned for creating IEPs um is that a software tool or is it a paper what what what is meant by Tool the LR Target so Dr Edmond's heard the LR Target is paper software I think it's been both I think it's still paper right now I think they are trying to move it into the sea stars but that takes a um quite a bit of time but I think it is a paper tool right now thank you um so these targets that are established for you know the different slides you've presented um are these I I mean are these pulled out of thin air are these Based on data or research um

258just in your experience are these evidence-based or just kind of arbitrary the targets um we're essentially looking at Targets that will enable us to get to a goal and trying to make sure that the targets are something that we believe we're going to be able to hit with the moves we're making each year the strategies under consideration and those that are coming but I'll ask Dr ad heard how they were calculated or Miss Neil just to clarify I meant the state targets oh the state targets um I think the state targets has stayed smooth but I'm going to defer to Dr Presidio I guess yeah so I mean you you can see on some of the slides the chart in terms of the incremental growth of the state targets but those are calculated obviously by

259the Virginia Department of Education based on feedback about how well the state is performing in terms of the feedback that they're getting from the US Department of Education so it's kind of a flow through from federal to state to local so I what I'm trying to understand is um you know if you look at our surrounding jurisdictions in the DMV area or peer school systems of similar sizes um if I if I looked at that data for you know other jurisdictions similar to our size or in our region are there any jurisdictions that actually meet these State targets so that I mean for all of these slides we're below significantly and that's not because of anything under your leadership Dr Reed but I'm just trying to understand if we're below our peers or if we're

260roughly in the same place I Believe In some cases it is both yeah no that that's 100% right it is both but again on some of these slides you can see we provided where the state is at and the state is really not meeting the state targets right to your point so there's some outlier districts that are doing a little bit better um some like us obviously that are not hitting the state targets but I think the important point for me is what Dr Reed mentioned a little bit earlier is that the state targets are are not the ceiling for us they're the floor and we've got to get caught up to the floor so that we can move Beyond them and that's what we're in the process of trying to plan in terms of

261strategies and actions that can that can move us forward so so what I'd like what I'd like to understand is if you look at Slide Five for example um there's you know a little bit of a drop in 2021 to 2022 and a little bit increase but you know this graph only shows the last three or four years um but I imagine there's more years of data 10 20 years of data so I'm just wondering are we just constantly kind of moving up and down within a certain band or are we if you kind of plotted it over time are we steadily increasing um our performance improving our performance to where we're actually you know incrementally moving closer to the state targets yeah I I wouldn't say that we're making consistent gains um really like

262when we calculated the data for the Strategic plan reports we kind of made a strategic decision to look at the last three years to see things that are a little bit closer in time um and you can see we're up and down there our internal data and Dr Reed mentioned we don't have the state confirm data but our internal data for 2324 shows that we're probably up another five percentage points on this particular indicator so we're really interested in kind of tracking where have we been going back 3 years and then going forward but certainly if board members wanted more data historical data that's something we could provide I I would say that I believe when we looked at it we have not met the state Target ever so I to be very honest about

263that I my expectation is that we will be there in the next two years um and I think part of that is just making it a priority and I think bringing this report back and saying the board wanted this to be a priority is one of the a major step in that and I think signaling to our community that this is very important and also I mean I think that's that was our Equity Symposium Dr King and her team um was around Universal Design for Learning um we that was a theme for our leadership kickoff that several of you attended um so I I just know when we focus on it resource it and align our mission we'll get there that's helpful um can you comment on would it be uh I I assume that

264uh this you know our ability to meet these State targets and and exceed these targets is affected by um the state underfunding and federal underfunding for special education programs can you comment on that there's no question if we had the funding that we believe we should we could be making progress much more quickly I think to your point the half a billion the jar that he calls out would make this a lot more achievable more quickly and and uh I believe the federal government committed to paying 40% of special education costs do you know what that percentage is roughly in reality Miss buron I'm sorry what was the question the um what what uh so the the federal government had committed to pay 40% of special education costs is my understanding and I'm just trying

265to understand of our total program cost for special education how much does the federal government actually contribute as a percentage I think it's about 9% 9% okay so we're missing about 31% of funding then and that impacts our students with the greatest needs yes sir thank you thank you Mr dun Miss seis Mor Heiser I would like to address the question that was asked to Dr Presidio um in 2122 Prince William was at 65% Virginia Beach at 69.6% Lowden at 81% Arlington at 67% false Church City at 71% henrio at 76% and scps at 48.61 per. so there's the answer in terms of how we're doing it compared to a lot of our string jurisdictions I would also like to mention that while I completely agree with my colleague that we need to get the

266jar funding the Ida funding those same restrictions apply to all of those school systems so I agree completely that we need that however we can no longer and I hear it too long too often from staff use that as an excuse because it doesn't seem to be as much of an excuse for all of these and I've read seven of them thank you for that I just want to put that out there it's really important to know that we can do better with what we have yes ma'am so I appreciate this report I think it is really important for our staff to be aware of these numbers I don't have the 2223 but we should know that we are at least according to this the closest school to us is 65% in 2122 and we

267were 48% and it's important for staff to know that so I appreciate this I want to switch the l tool I appreciate hearing that we're making tweaks to it however I would like to say having been on an inclusion work group many years ago I want to make sure that the l tool isn't being used to make our numbers look better that it's actually being used as a tool to have robust L discussions I've heard from a lot of families about concerns about the LR tool and concerns about family training in particular so they can be full members of that I team in the process of giving information and talking through the LR tool so I guess the question I'd have is what are we doing to make sure we're provide that family training as

268well so Dr Edmond's heard I know we're planning a family I want to say Academy and maybe that's Miss Hall but I know you guys have been working on that together perhaps one of you could comment please I'll comment that we was a part of the enhancement plan for our students with disabilities we do have some opportunities for our parents and parent education pieces in there and of course connected with the Family Resource Center so I'll look into exactly what those are and those opportunities will be and make sure we have something connected to the l tool I would respectfully I appreciate that but respectfully I would say if this tool has been in use for a year it is way too late to start thinking about that because should have been done when this

269was ruled out and I don't know if it was or wasn't maybe it was but what I'm hearing from families was that whatever was there if anything came well late after this tool is being used and that's a problem so I'll uh work with staff to address that and I know we're we've had some conversations about um sort of re-energizing the family Summit in the spring of the year not that we're going to wait till that time but I do think that that's a key um that's a key uh and critical foundational piece as well as with our um I know our basil new basil curriculum we're talking about how are we going to make sure parents understand how best to use that and to support um children at all um abilities within that basil

270thank you and I know my tone sounds harsh but the first time I mentioned this failure was to Dr Garza yes at a community meeting when she first started I was one of those parents with a microphone saying you know we haven't passed this indicator so just we're on it I think it's so I appreciate very much my colleague supporting bring Ling this a priority I the last question I want to ask is I appreciate the conversation about one of the strategies we're going to use high leverage practices but I asked this the last time that was mentioned as a strategy I appreciate we're talking about udl but what else are we talking about in high leverage practices and what are we doing to address the mindset issues I appreciate that acsd is looking at

271how to have disability affirming if I may finish my sentence practices but I don't see any of that in this plan yes ma'am well I think the mindset we spent quite a little bit of time in the leadership kickoff talking about mindset and how we um view the capacity of each and every one of our students right and our responsibility um in addressing their hopes and dreams I think the high leverage instructional practices I know next week we're having a session Susan hence is coming in with very specific instructional strategies really for general education staff um and I plan to attend part of that and I'm very excited that she's going to be here in Fairfax County so I think we're really working this you know Universal Design for Learning is not a special education

272in initiative it's a general education initiative so we're asking a lot of our staff with a new basil and new strategies um and uh there's a lot of excitement and we also that's part of why we've needed some of this time for professional development no I appreciate that and the udl work is is really critical and really important and I'm really excited to see that being rolled out as robustly as it is so I appreciate this report I appreciate the time it took to sort of come back and and amend our goal report and I appreciate my colleagues support of that because this is important I'll just mention one more time because I think it's important we have several new leadership team members to realize that the reason this is so important is because if

273our goal is to give all of our students the knowledge and skills they need to be successful when they leave us whether it's career you know college military wherever they end up going it's important to know that the college completion rate for autism is 35% and the unemployment rate for autism is 70% and we can fix that here and this is why this was so important to have this as a priority now so I appreciate you doing that appreciate this work I would love to talk to you more about those High leverage practices and what we're doing so maybe offline we can have more of those conversations um thank you for putting this together I know it was a lift to add this in but I would just ask perhaps when we're talking about this

274we we talk about the why a little bit in that mindset you know talk about where the numbers have been and the last thing I'll say is and the data that shows that I mean for years that inclusion helps outcomes academic and social outcomes for students with disabilities and students without disabilities it's just been proven it's it's not just because he feels good right right it's data is behind that thank you thaner it's okay Dr Anderson um thank you I just have like three more um on page seven of the report you had the chart that talked about students who receive services in the home and obviously that's one of the ears we'll we'll try to reduce did we get to the um root cause as to why parents elect to have services in the

275home in lie of in our practices I'm sorry in our um classrooms because if we're need if we are going to change that we need to know why that's happening and that setting so Dr Edmond I I'm not um personally aware of what those reasons were but I can definitely collect that information so that you can have a better idea right and these also include students that are in the centers so it's home um homebased or hospital as well as our centers and I think that's why disaggregating that data will be more helpful so we know which is the I hate to say it but the lowest hanging fruit because we do know this is challenging work yes ma'am um the other thing that I wanted to add I think on page eight you sort

276of talking about some of the strategies and and it's very clear that we have greater levels of success in our elementary levels for inclusion what are going to be those specific strategies of secondary schools and by that I mean middle and high schools because that's where it gets to be terribly challenging it sure does I think really when you think about how elementary schools are structured versus how secondary schools schools are much more compartmentalized by content I think we're going to have to work very hard also to think about how we modify curricula at the secondary level as many students could be in general education classes with modified curricula and I think that's something we're embarking on um in a more focused systemic way but I'm going to defer also to Dr Edmund sir or

277Dr precidio in terms of how I think the strategy is different at secondary than Elementary just because of the structure of the school day I don't know if you want to comment on that one of the things when we were talking with principles just the other day is that the scheduling piece um when students are coming in transitions to as well so looking at the scheduling a lot of times we've had issues with changing schedules of course midy year at our secondary school so starting off the year already with the inclusion pieces in place is going to be helpful as those IEPs you know transition up um I think the co- teaching models at high school are going to be import imperative too as well um paing teachers that can work along with that curriculum

278and making sure that we have more co- teing models going on um at um secondary to as well and I think the transition pieces we've talked a lot about um as those IEPs and those students move up to the next level making sure that um there's a lot of collaborations between those levels as they move up um to ensure that um we have um you know robust conversations about what's needed at the next level and that the receiving school is able to paint a clear picture about what you know they're able to do um with students too as well that may be a little bit different than um the sending school but making sure we're having good conversations around that for transitions thank you for that but I I I think My worry is these

279are things that already exist these are things that we're already doing and yet we're having these results I I'm just struggling to see why now they will be yielding different results that's fair point I think what we're trying to employ those strategies uh more often with more um IEPs which should yield different results in the aggregate okay um I think my next to last thing is on page nine where you're talking about the basil in terms of what it will um how it will support our students to impact some of this data um can you speak to that a little bit because with specialized supports not be needed I'm I'm I'm having a hard time picturing how that would impact some of these things that we need to just because we have a a basil

280well one of the things about a basil curriculum and I think uh Miss clco and her team did a really thoughtful job of selecting a basil that has a a lot of um supports integrated within it so often you have students that are if you don't have a really comprehensive basil you can have students pulled out to work on uh something completely different than what's happening in the classroom and if you have leveled materials within the classroom as part of the classroom instruction for all children then it's easier to what we do is push in support right adults can um our instructional assistants and Co teachers can be in the classroom with um curriculum that um is going to be integrated not something completely separate so that we believe the literacy instruction will be less

281fragmented and more um comprehensive and focus so that our often uh children that have the most needs get the most fragmented instruction when they're pulled out to something very different than what the classroom is um learning I the example kindergarten right if they're learning a certain letter in class and then get pull out support with a different letter when everyone else in the class is still working on the one letter so it's just something I we feel like um the basil is going to provide that wraparound support in ways we have not been able to still with the support of the specialized case manager or assistant okay that's very helpful and lastly um talked here a little bit in terms of the community peers program I guess which is one of the strategies to help

282impact um inclusion opportunities or rather yeah inclusion opportunities in the centers so Dr precidio Community peers that's not something I'm familiar with from other divisions but that's been a a bit of a has a bit of a history here in Fairfax County yeah so the community peers when we're talking about that pertains to the preschool setting so where we've got Early Childhood special education preschool classrooms in a in a particular Elementary School without the general education preschool classroom the opportunities for inclusion for those students are pretty limited so what we've tried to do is bring in other students that might not qualify because they don't meet income eligibility requirements for us um that don't have IEP needs to come into the classroom and serve as Community peers to those students so it's really a stop

283Gap it's not like the best inclusion model um we've got several different inclusion models but it's kind of a stop Gap when we don't have those opportunities to have collocated programs that we can actually blend together in an inclusion model I see thank you much appreciated thank you Dr Anderson miss lady chairman fres um I appreciate the conversation and I do uh realize that given our statistics related to our surrounding jurisdictions that we have great work to do um and I know that there are situations or at least is my understanding where uh we are not um creating the most least the most least restrictive environment for our PE for our students but I also want to point out that it was my experience you know in my last you know I would say five

284to eight years um that I found um some difficulty and some resistance out of sort of fear of failure or not succeeding um that while the school um IEP team was recommending team taught or mainstream um that often Guardians and caregivers and parents at the table wanted something more restrictive and so I guess what I'm trying to say is in you know IEPs um the parents have to agree to the recommendations and so my question is is it possible statistically to capture um as we try to drill down on this and ensure our kids are are provided least restrictive is it possible Dr Reed to capture in any way sort of from a data perspective when we have attempted to um provide a least rest restrictive environment but a parents requested something that's more restrictive

285I hope that question makes sense it it does make sense and we certainly could capture that data okay thank you I just I I just feel like if memory serves me well um from my perspective and that of my colleagues it happened more far too often than than just an anomaly um which is very frustrating when you see a potential in a child but yet there seems to be some fear and from the Paris perspective of of allowing them to be more more mainstream if you will thank you yeah I think one of the things that we talked about this morning in particular at the leadership uh professional development week is this the importance of whatever strategy we're employing we were discussing academic intensity this morning we can't just decide to be to have academic

286intensity when students get to ninth grade right so if inclusion is a critical um and we believe it is foundational critical to Student Success and we have to make sure that inclusion is happening from the the time children begin with us and ironically and I think um Dr Anderson that pointed out actually at elementary our numbers look far um more promising it's when we get to secondary um at that Middle School start that we I think we have less and less of the inclusion inclusion so I can see families Maybe by high school because those transcripts are permanent maybe being less willing to take the risk so I think we really need to think about how we um how we work on that at younger ages I agree 100% I do think that that transition

287from elementary to Middle um is crucial in setting up students and and for success and famili seeing that Student Success in a more inclusive environment which then leads to that high school so thank you yes ma'am thank you Miss Lady Dr Reed we're done with this part of the meeting I'll turn the gavl over to miss Anderson section 5.07 action item strategic plan goal 2 Baseline report agendum I call in Miss Heiser for a motion I move that the school board approv the addendum to goal to Bas on report as a division starting point for the work towards achieving the goals in our strategic plan 2023 to 30 is there a second second thank you Mr frish Miss sear Heiser would you like to speak to your motion um just briefly because I I spoke

288earlier but there was a couple things I didn't mention that I wanted to say for this round and I see that look um I love that look but Dr Reid um Dr Anderson touched on this and I think I want to follow up on what um she was saying but while our indicator data is a great starting point I think we and I know you mentioned dashboards are you planning on those dashboards are sharing data that is split into elementary middle and high school levels in terms of inclusive environments because if we really are going to address some in the needs I think it's important to know what it looks like at the different levels of school yes ma'am we're planning to do that okay um as part of your strategies around this the high

289leverage practices going to be included looking at Service delivery models yes ma'am and um I agree with Miss Lady I do think that there are sometimes families and this is why I think the family education and mindset piece for everybody is most important because um I will say what I tell families a lot when I used to do my advocacy work is and parents would tell me they're afraid of inclusion and I said well or they didn't think inclusion worked for their kids I say well until we do it right you don't know so right yes ma'am so I think it's important to help our families understand that what the data behind it is and what our plans are to do it right consistently I think we're doing it right in a lot of locations

290but that consistency is what is missing so that was my question that I just wanted to clarify that those High leverage practices include Service delivery models because until we look at how we're delivering services I don't know how we look at creating inclusive environments and that secondary versus Elementary um and the last piece I'll talk about is are we looking at making sure all of our IAS who are working with our special education students have training we're obviously I believe uh those that's critical right every adult that surrounds our children has to have the training so um I will work with staff to confirm that that's occurring thank you um so having said that I I will just say I appreciate the work to amend this goal report and as a starting point I think

291I would encourage you all to really flush out those High leverage practices looking at a variety of areas that might need to be addressed can create inclusive environments and with that I'm happy to support this Mr fr would you like to speak to your second sure um this is how this process should work right when the school board see something lacking in a goal report we should ask for more information and the superintendent can bring it and I'm happy to support the goal report now that the sendum is here and look there are a lot of questions and I think that's what this is supposed to do is surface those questions and what we see now though is that there is the beginnings of a plan for how we're going to accomplish the goal of

292reaching the state standards and hopefully exceeding the state standards um uh and because we're measuring that year toe we'll be able to check in on it see what the you know these when we do identify more of the high leverage standards or uh practices um which one of those are working best to leverage those even more and so on so I appreciate the work that went into this and the rest of the goal report as well and I'm happy to support it seeing no other members that wish to speak I'll call on a vote for a vote on the motion which is on the screen all those in favor Miss Maron Miss Dixit Miss Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Mr fresh Mr fresh Miss seiser Heiser Mr Dunn Mr and Miss St John cunning and myself

293and miss lady I think yall not see me no but we do know thank you so that is unanimous for all at the table thank you agenda item 5.08 action item continuation of community advisory committee membership structure staff Lea on and committee charge process for school year 20242 I call on Miss heis Mar Heiser for a motion I'm busy tonight um that the school board I move that the school board continue the 2023 2024 Community advisory committee membership structure and staff Lea is on appointment process to determine Community advisory committee membership and staff leas on appointments for the 2024 2025 Community advisory committee term I further move that the 2023 2024 Community advisory committee's annual charge development process be used to develop the 2024 2025 annual charges I further move that the requirement to use

294the email template reference in section vb3 B of the community advisory commit committee operating manual the posting of informational videos as references v1a of the community advisory committee operating manual and the availability of the toolkit as referenced in in Section 5 C sorry it's not V 4 C1 I read that wrong sorry a little tired tonight of the community advisory Comm committee operating manual be delayed until August 2025 I further move that the number of student representative appointments to the community advisory committees be maintained as approved on June 27th 2024 thank you is there a second I second Miss Anderson uh Miss seiser would you like to speak to your motion yes um absolutely I know this seems really clunky and kind of technical um we you after our several years working on the advisory

295committee handbooks the policy and the governance committee updates um given a little bit of the delay that it took from the time we finalized it to voting on it realized that there are certain pieces of it that would be very difficult for our advisory committees to put into operation this year because that we didn't vote on this till June 27 2024 and our committees were already in the process of figuring out their memberships for or are needing to appoint people for their memberships for next year appoint staff leison and they already had developed their charges because we have to vote on all of those pieces the memberships and the staff charges and our staff have to get the Le Liaisons together in addition there are some requirements of videos to be created um uh toolkits

296be created and an email template to be created that we did not have time to create in time for the Committees to use next year because the timing of the vote so we're delaying that for one year to make sure we can create those in a fome inappropriate way however we did want to um make sure that our student representative we know she's gotten quite a few applications for the student representative positions was able to move forward with the changes to the student representative um appointments that were voted in this year so we miss Anderson and I went through the documents to make sure that we sort of pulled out the things that might need to be delayed for a year or continued from last year just to make the smooth transition from this pretty

297significant change for our advisory committees given the timing so hopefully that explains this motion um and it's really just to delay a few things for a year so we have time to move forward thank you Miss seiser Miss Anderson would you like to speak to your second yeah bottom line is that we're just in a transition moment and so we need to accommodate that transition as we move into the new um document and the new guidelines so I'm in absolute support of this because I want to give our advisory committees everything that they need in order to do the work they they do thank you Dr Anderson yes thank yes thank you for the explanation um I did ask for this to be moved because I just wanted to have the conversation as to the

298rationale um which definitely makes sense because of the timing um just maybe in the future just to kind of avoid this I think a quick email would have been very helpful um when this was posted because I had no idea and I'll just be honest when this was posted for business for new business last week I was kind of kneed deep in some of that other work we were taking care of last week and so it wasn't until today when I was asking myself well why are we moving this we had all of those conversations a little bit more communication will be helpful just to offer some clarity um but just one small question the email template that was referenced we weren't able to get why was that one not allowed they couldn't get the

299email template together in time we just haven't had a chance to actually create it we are creating it this is something that we are helping them create so it's just that the public engagement committee hasn't had the opportunity to go ahead and do that yet but they will still have the email addresses that are going to be this not this is not in relationship to that may I may I also address this so the email template is actually an email template for the committee members to use to email the board updates regular updates unrelated to email addresses so it's different no that's very helpful um thank you so much thank you Dr Anderson seeing no others we will go ahead and have a vote on the motion on the screen for 5.08 all those in

300favor Miss Marin Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss eore Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself that is unanimous for board members present agenda item the motion passes agenda item 5.09 action item excuse me contract notification and approval during school board's summer recess I call on Miss Marin for a motion that the board gives a superintendent Authority on behalf of the board to approve contracts included on the list provided to the board on July 18th 2024 and after consultation with the chair and vice chair to sign on behalf of the board other contracts that need to be authorized during the recess is there second I second Miss Anderson Miss Marin would you like to speak to your motion so the board takes its recess beginning tomorrow which is

301now um and so we um need to be Forward Thinking and have the operations of the school division continue I think this is a very routine thing looking at the list of items um there are things that the board has talked about in public previously and deliberated and given agreement to one one um a large one of6 uh billion dollar $6 million sorry um is the maintenance of LW in which if I'm remembering that is our HR system that we are phasing out so obviously we need to keep doing that as the phas in of the new HRM the um human work Resource Management platform comes in uh the other is our Benefit services with Kaiser um to the tune of just about $400 million again this is something that we have entered contracts into

302to and need to keep going so our um employees have their services the others um driver Zed the um the Harvard strategic data project uh might have been is this what the staff recently went to no it's something different okay um utility bills World Language basil resources and the testing assessments for students in our International Balor so I am comfortable with this and again I think this is a routine thing so that our superintendent can continue to keep the lights on and business running while the board does not have public meetings in the next month thank you m may miss Anderson would you like to speak to your second I won't be labor the point I also agree that this is this is just as as my colleague said just a way to keep the

303lights on and keep things moving thank you Miss Anderson Mr Dunn I can't say enough how shocking I find comments that have just been uttered we have a practice at the school board above a certain dollar threshold to receive a one or two page information memorandum for each contract that is requested to be approved I requested a list of contracts that would be approved by the superintendent with sign off by the chair and vice chair a week ago I received it just a couple hours in advance of the meeting today um I did not receive any information memorandum instead I received a basic spreadsheet for just want to say this number really clearly 4143 billion with a B billion dollar over4 billion dollar in contracts to be approved in the next six weeks our total

304budget for this year with the $200 million increase by the county and the state is $3.7 billion so we're being asked to approve with less than a couple hours notice before the meeting tonight and without any information on what these contracts are and I know many of them are sold to us meaning not competed we're being asked to approve over 4143 billion in contracts there is no scenario under which I will support this motion we can call it routine we can call it anything we want but it is not routine to approve more than the total annual budget of a multi-billion dollar organization on a consent agenda which is why I requested this to be pulled off um I believe that until we receive information memorandums uh describing what these contracts are describing whether they

305were competitively procured um and obtaining the information necessary to provide sufficient oversight it would be irresponsible and Reckless of this school board to approve as a package these these contracts and again not being critical of the superintendent but there is a process that we have followed the last six months and it has not been followed here and there may be need need to be exceptional measures Extraordinary Measures taken um to provide us with the proper amount of uh information but I'm not going to derogate my responsibilities as a Schoolboard member and as a representative of the Mount Vernon District just because people didn't get us information in time to provide proper oversight and make a determination on $4.1 billion dollar in taxpayer dollars my fundamental commitment is fiscal responsibility achieving maximum return on investment for

306taxpayer dollars and I'm not going to do it uh in this fashion thank you thank you Mr dun Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman I had similar concerns when I look at the numbers amounts you know for example uh n life insurance company $1.2 billion dollar uh K marks PCF has this is Benefit Services 1.07 billion dollars and Signal health and life insurance 1373 billion dollar those are huge numbers and my question to you uh Dr Reed for example I'm going to go back to the last one 1373 billion estimated our date is August is that do you expect that to be wire the Bold is still in recess I think will be awarded and has to be awarded at that time because again this is a large number these are a large number contracts

307right several of these are um re-ups for major insurance coverage for the county for staff and it's my understanding also many of these are multi-year contracts like five years that the total is spread over five years I believe we can put some of these off until August though that's not ideal I'm gonna call on Miss verden to uh comment on the large insurance I believe Etna KARK and siga were just identified by Mr Moon as some of the large Insurance uh commitments Miss Burton yes that's correct um the dollar amounts listed in the um attachments to the document represent five year The Five-Year contract that we already have um siga and Etna um we're doing um amendments to those contracts that are already existing and they are no cost amendments um Kaiser is um we're

308adding a health Improvement program for employees at an annual increase cost of $64,000 per year um KARK is a retiree drug change um I don't have the cost of that but those four Health Care contracts that are very large um do represent 5 years worth of cost in existing contracts that we have and we are just making slight changes to those and M won thank you for the response and I appreciate that however given the hours 12:15 15 minutes after midnight and this is first time at least I am being provided Ed with that information you have just provided in your response and and I as a one board member who has to indicate my support or not support of this is going to be very difficult to respond to community members voters out there

309that Mr Moon did you know what you are doing without all that information in advance that's where my difficulty lies and I unless this has to be done has to be done I I'm not going to be able to just give car Branch authorization for superintendent just to sign without board's foral formal approval thank you Mr Moon Dr Anderson thank you I I appreciate the the challenge that has been raised by Mr Moon and Mr Dunn um and just trying to find a solution how do we find a path forward so miss buron I guess this question is for you what would preclude us from having these conversations about these contracts in April May in advance is that not something that we could do it's a workload um and staff resource issue um we processed

31050 uh contracts during the month of June obviously if we had been able to we could have included some of these but we do not have the staff resources to be able to do that volume in that short period of time I see I I just what would you need to make that happen in terms of Staff resources is it one individual two a part-time person we would have to we'd have to do some analysis of that and get back to you sure if I could recommend um just for your consideration to to get into that um analysis because if we can just avoid this conversation and just um frontload some of this work um throughout the months I think we avoid this um issue because clearly the board takes very seriously its fiduciary responsibilities

311these are billions of dollars and we do need to have more information rather than the one line to give some um confidence that we are spending the taxpayer dollars in a way that is and keeping with um our mandate and so if there's any way for us to try to plan ahead and I know that's hard to do because there's just always so much to do there's no downtime that's the only way that I see that we can avoid this outside of not voting for these things or not taking a recess and coming back to vote on these items um but I think we do need to do due diligence and I am too I'm uncomfortable in signing off on so much money without the benefit of the one pagers that or the two pagers

312that you have provided thank you Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel I I would also agree with what's been said um you know I was originally going to be okay with this but the conversation at the dasis kind of swayed me um it it's it is uh you know after midnight and this is a lot of money um I'm I'm I'm not comfortable moving it Forward unless I can be told yes or no it if we don't move it forward do are our employees not going to have health insurance what is the implication of not moving this forward tonight can we just get a straight answer on that for the healthcare ones because again these are uh amendments and slight changes to existing contracts um the repercussions um probably wouldn't be negative um I mean I doubt

313very seriously that you know we would lose any Services um the other 147 million I believe that represents five years of all of the other contracts excluding the four healthc care ones um those contracts are a little bit more critical because they're kind of more day-to-day things than these big contracts so I guess if um pressed my recommendation would be to defer the for health care but approve the rest for consideration by the superintendent and discussion with the chair okay I um I would move that whatever that needs to be need to be said I I would I would be supportive if we would carve out as staff just described I'd be comfortable with that I'll second that would you like to speak to your motion Mr McDaniel and to be clear the motion is

314to strike um from the consideration in this vote the items on uh page two the first and second line item and the 10th line item is that correct which one said can you please repeat that Mr yes I apologize I believe the Kaiser was the one that I missed uh to strike line six from page one and then on page two to strike lines one and two and 10 is that right Miss Burton um it's I I don't know what line number it's the Kaiser contract it's the Signa it's the uh care Mark and an Etna yes okay so that's right is that your motion Mr McDaniel that is my motion and and no comments further uh I'm sorry did you say you want to speak to your motion I do not no okay Dr

315Anderson I just think this is a good compromise and if we have some flexibility we should exercise it all right I have several lights on on the D I don't know if it's to this motion or to it is okay um Mr or Miss seism Mor Heiser um Dr re you may not have been here at this point but I remember there was a time with the previous board and I believe this was with Dr Bray brand perhaps my colleagues could help me remember that where we had this conversation regarding the summer recess contracts um I I know Miss Burton was here and the conversation we kind of landed on was ensuring that we only authorize what we is absolutely needed to be done over the summer recess right just because we recognize it's it's

316you know it's it is our duty to approve the contract over a certain amount and so if we're able to pull these I guess the question is why were they listed in the first place um if they don't need to be approved if they do need to be approved then why um then what's what's the um impact of pulling them so on the four insurance I think as Miss Burton mentioned these are current contracts that we have these are modified amendments and I'm not sure the amendments are the full costs that you've listed to the right the amendments are actually the what you listed were the full contract costs not the cost of the amendment exactly so I think that's an artificial inflation inflation of the actual amount of money you're actually approving so um

317do you want to clarify that because I don't know what the actual amount in the amendment is because the fome total of the contract you've already approved M yeah the um Etna and um Signa ones are no cost amendments but you know typically we this is only the second time that we've done this summer contract process and so this year we basically followed the same process that we did last year which was include the ones that we knew were upcoming that had amendments that needed to be processed um or you know changes or new contracts um but you know we can certainly change that in the future most of these Healthcare ones don't really have a a huge cost to it again 64,000 for the Kaiser one but we do include typically the full cost

318of the five-year contract um in the document right so I guess Miss seore Heiser the 64,000 on Kaiser and the no cost amendments on the others really are a net approval tonight of farla you're net approving those four contracts 64,000 so it's not clear in this chart but that's what you're actually doing because the 5year total several billion dollar contract has already been approved that's what I thought I was very confused that all of those contracts would be need to be approved at for the full amount no these are reup amendments so we're not reupping the C was there just amendments amendments I'm sorry not reupping we're amending the contract and there's some language which we didn't um attach but uh there are no cost amendments except for Kaiser and what would be the impact

319of not approving those until after the recess I I I'm sorry I did reach out to staff to find out that answer if there were any negative repercussions by doing this but unfortunately they've all gone to bed so I would just say that um well I I appreciate that it is after midnight and so I I understand why they've gone to bed it's just difficult to especially considering that it's $64,000 as opposed to the number that it seemed like on the it's difficult to know whether we should approve this I I I agree with my colleagues that whenever possible we should be approving contract changes when the board's in session right absolutely but if these amendments are $64,000 I'm not even sure why it came to us and maybe there's a there's something in that

320says that if it's a contract over a certain amount even though the amendment is only a certain amount it do to come to us that's maybe what it is the board has previously said if the contract total value is over a certain amount and we adjust the contract the board wanted to approve it so that's why it's been brought to you I think it's a little um it I don't know if it's it's not as clear and the but where it says estimated total contract value on the chart um I think that was stated total contract value to differentiate what this year's approval is and I would expect honestly looking at a couple others of these we're not asking the approval of that total but the in the past the board has asked for the

321total contract amount the reason I bring that up is I remember when Signa was first approved it was a five or six year contract and we were told we were locked into it right so the fact that it would be coming for an approval now made no sense to me right in same with the other one so that's why I was asking these questions I guess I don't know how we can vote on this without knowing the Imp of like I mean to be honest I would maybe ask my colleagues if we don't the answer and the actual dollar amount is only 64,000 maybe we pull it if it's clear that what we're approving is a total cost of 64,000 but I don't want to not approve this if we if it has a negative

322impact I don't want our staff to not have health insurance or whatever the impact may be but if there is no impact I think it's better to wait because I think in general we should have the board approve contracts whenever possible I Believe Miss Burton has stated that we can wait on the healthc care contracts for which the Amendments total 64,000 it's I believe it's yes I it says not ideal what does that mean by not ideal um no I what I said as I Believe Miss Burton has said we can delay the you know I understand but I thought I heard she said we can delay but it's not ideal or it's not I just want to know the impact of it if we don't know that's fine I'll support the motion because I

323I think in general we the board should should approve contracts are needed but I would say that I agree with what Dr Anderson my colleague said about looking to next year M we need to just figure out a different process for this yeah well I I think part of the impact not being ideal is on August I think our next meeting is August 29th the all the tempo is picked up right school's back in session we're going to be working on year and it's just again it becomes a um Staffing and workload issue and and to be able to process it now in the end of July is just simpler but is so that's the ideal part but can we wait AB yes we've stated we can wait just one last comment I think a

324lot of this could have been avoided if it was a little more clear as to the actual dollar amount what we're doing here because I I agree when that number is presented it's a wait a second right right but when it's more clear that the actual impact is $644,000 it's a little more comfortable to say all right we understand this right so just for next year don't yes ma'am all right um Miss Anderson very quickly I would like to say that I I appreciate the fact that we are creating contracts that are starting when they're starting so that it can align with our fiscal year and so that it it is it makes it more movable if we are going to a to move contracts particularly related to any education materials it puts it with

325the school year too so I did want to speak to the fact that I appreciate the fact that staff is working on those types of alignments as well thank you Miss Anderson Mr Dunn thank you um I I appreciate I think there's a motion on the table to uh delay the healthc care contracts um but not $147 million um I so I wanted to speak to that uh from the very first Schoolboard hearing uh as someone with uh a lot of expertise and experience in Government Contracting I've been questioning contracts that are less than a million dollars or a few million dollars and and some of those have been pulled off the consent agenda some of those have been withdrawn by the superintendent and deficiencies have been found uh instances where we've been doing business

326as usual for decades and uh without evaluating whether certain contracts are successful or desirable um and so when you elevate that to from you know a million dollars or small number of millions to 147 um I'm I'm just not I'm still not comfortable because uh I calculated $147 million could give every single FCPS employee a 5% pay increase that's a lot of money now some of these things listed if I look at refu and Recycling services sure I support that but there's no information provided other than the estimated total contract value I'm not sure why it's estimated and if you look at the information memos we normally receive even though they're short they'll actually say the amount of money for this year as as my colleague has said might be $64,000 but the total contract

327value is $10 million right um I I can't judge is it $140 7 or is it something else I also can't judge you know there's a bunch of these that are soul Source uh why they're Soul Source um and when competition will achieve uh lower cost and better value um for our for our uh employees our students our our uh our County um and uh and and so and and even where there is something saying RFP which indicates request for procurement I don't know if that was you know compe if there was only one bid received which is sometimes the case in the information memorandum um and and so for for me um I can't support uh approving any of these contracts um because again I don't have the bare minimum of of information to

328be able to say that I uh reviewed some information I if if I wanted more information I requested it so that I could say uh in good faith to my consti constituents that I'm scrutinizing every dollar because every dollar wasted is a dollar extra in property taxes that they have to pay um so uh so that's that's where I stand um if I understand that we can postpone the healthc care until July 29th sorry August 29th um and I would just ask that given that I don't see anything in here that's emergency like asbestos removal which was cited as very urgent a few weeks ago I'd ask that we postpone all of the all of the cont contracts until uh August 29th so we can have a fome discussion and and and get all the

329information we should be receiving uh in order to perform our essential oversight role thank you thank you Mr dun miss lady yeah so we're kind of all over the place I don't really support the amendment since we're talking about $64,000 having said that I do think that we've Revisited this repeatedly that when it comes to the consent agenda item that staff needs to be clear on what exactly we're voting on and what the monetary value is because we have already voted on these Health Care policies but I also have a question for Lee um you know this is a new experience for me um but I'm not I'm not alone in this but I it was my experience when per in the past I had Blue Cross Blue Shield I did not get an annual

330email from one of my doctor do s or one of the practices that I have participated in alerting me that they're no longer going to take my insurance um Signa did this to me last year with Capitol Women's Care and Signa has just done it to me again with neurology center of Fairfax can you explain to me or help me understand how we have a contract and certain things are covered and then it seems like once a year or every nine months I get some alert from a doctor that says sign is no longer going to cover my work uh it's not that sign is no longer going to cover your work the issue is that the um latest move among um providers that agree to be in our network from siga part of their

331negotiating strategy is to ask for more money and then threaten to pull out if they do not get those additional funds it is a negotiating tactic and more and more providers are using it these days okay I guess so my point is that I never experienced that with Blue crossb Shield so um that maybe that's my criticism of Sigma but I hope that in the most latest version of the neurology center of Fairfax that this will be addressed like it was with Capital Women's Care and we can put the hard press on Sigma to not do these things um I mean they've got to figure out how to work and pay so um again I I oppose the amendment at $64,000 I do understand my fiduciary responsibility but I also stand understand that the staff's

332need to work um I feel like kicking the can down to another month is not best practice so we can have this conversation again um so I'm comfortable uh with the consent agenda as it was listed and voting favorably for it thank you Miss Lady Dr Anderson um thank thank you after hearing some of the conversations regarding the dollar amounts that were posted I I think now I have even greater questions regarding is it $64,000 or the amounts that are listed here given the time of the day given the lack of information I just think this is just not a really thoughtful way of doing this work which is one of the cruxs of our jobs so I am going to remove my second and go back and um offer my prior objections to this

333um to this because minimally the chart that we have in front of us should have been as accurate as not I'm not saying inaccurate should have been a little bit more comprehensive to show what exactly the current expenditure will be versus the total contract and we don't have that information we have no way of getting that information in the next five minutes so I will be a no tonight thank you Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel I you took the words out of my mouth I I'll I'll either withdraw it and just vote against the main one and call today or we we can go ahead and kill this amendment because I'm not going to support moving anything forward tonight miss Baron so if some of us vote to approve this then we're the ones trying to

334keep some lights on and if some people don't then the burden is even more on the ones that do so can we just get really clear is this for $64,000 and is it just poorly laid out I would say that the healthc care pieces have a net um cost of $64,000 the rest of them um you know I think are I think you're fine postponing all of it some of these are multi-year contracts and again I think what Miss Burton said is last year this was the chart provided to the board the board wanted the total contract values for this conversation this year I think we're learning that we want the total contract value the current adjusted value and the summaries with the chart so I at this point I think um we can postpone

335all of it and just do the work in August great so I would like to make a motion to postpone don't need to do that chair okay chair all right um really quickly without objection I would like to postpone to a date certain uh consideration of this question agenda item um 5.09 agenda item 6.01 agenda item 7.01 and agenda item 7.02 to the next meeting Dr Reid I just want to be I want to clarify we're postponing this list which is a separate question it's a question but it's not the only question a separate question is last year we did have two emergent needs that arose during the recess one related to our 911 phone service as a county request and the other was a a software license related to instruction that came up at

336the 11th Hour that we needed for um our elementary school so I what I need is clarification and direction I understand we'll postpone these if there is an emergent need that arises between now and school starting which will start before the board meets again I need to have some clear Direction on what to do at that point all right without objection um I would like to remove the list provided page one and two from consideration in this motion which lead seeing no objection that leaves the motion at hand which would enable this practice for emergency uh contract procurement uh Mr dun uh I will s thank you for removing the list and thank you Dr Reed and thank you to my colleagues I know it's late and this is uh a lot to discuss um

337I would just ask that if there are emergent needs that at the first meeting in a August 29th there be a full report provided of any and all contracts total contract value year value all the normal information provided so that even if it is authorized you know signed by the chair and vice chair or authorized by chair and vice chair in our absence during our recess that we get a full briefing afterwards and then all of the information on this list be provided on August 29th and and and not just on the day of but well in advance because I I like to read things that days in advance so I can ask questions in advance the school board to not pull things off consent agendas Dr Reed even though you all are on recess

338I'm not so I'll be continuing to provide a Friday letter so if in the event there is an emergent issue I would include that I'm not going to I won't wait till the August meeting you'll have full knowledge thank you Mr dun Dr Anderson that was actually going to be my ask because I do know you all are not not working so I think these things should be communicated and we could just perhaps as school board members if we choose to move away from whatever those activities will be in the next month to just check those Friday board letters to ensure that there's not um emergency um expenditures that were brought up but I'm also very supportive of the idea of bringing it back to a public conversation just so we could pretty much kind

339of ratify the things that had the action that um had taken place but I also want to see how else can we avoid this all together whatever backwards um planning that could take place in order for us to avoid this I don't know what resources the office needs but they should get it so that we're not in this situation again come next August thank you Dr Anderson seeing no others we will vote for the amended action on the screen which is the language permitting the execution of contracts during recess removing the list of uh expected contracts and leaving only the emergent contracts all those in favor Miss Marin uh Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss eore Heiser Mr Dunn Mr Moon Miss St John cunning miss lady and myself that is unanimous thank you

340uh the motion carries without objection ction we will delay to a uh postpone to a date certain agenda items 6.01 7.0 fresh I'm so sorry but back to when you said it was um uh unanimous Mystic sit away from the table so we just need to note that uh unanimous with Mystics it away from the table my apologies thank you um without objection we will postpone to a date certain the next meeting agenda items 6.01 1 7.01 uh and 7.02 all right uh I turn to Dr Reed for agenda item 7.03 Financial year 2024 yearend budget review thank you chairman frish uh for our yearend budget review I'll ask Miss Burton and her team to please provide the presentation if we could load it please good evening I guess good morning uh chairman FR members

341of the school board and Dr Reed the yearend review offers an opportunity for final revisions to the fiscal 24 budget and provide carryover information and other revisions to the fiscal 25 approved budget once the year end is approved by the school board in August it's forwarded to the county for inclusion in their year end packet for any necessary adjustments to FCPS is fiscal 24 budget and revision to the fiscal 25 budget and of course all of the data is as of June 30th on page one of the attachment the summary identifies the changes to fiscal 24 based on Revenue adjustments and unspent expenditures and then adjustments to fiscal 25 for routine commitments like incumbrances Central projects schools and Department carryover previously identified adjustments at the May adoption uh as well as superintendent recommended adjustments the

342revenue variance from budget to actual is a net decrease of 7.2 million attributable to decreased sales tax and uh carryover of unspent federal uh idea funds offset by increases in tuition uh from TJ and Fairfax city so overall a net decrease of 7.2 million as far as the expenditure balance we have first the routine carryover which are Reserve funds at 10 million which is the 8 million Schoolboard flexibility reserve and 2 million fuel contingency incumbrances or undelivered orders at 88.5 million schools and projects carryover of 137.5 million and then Department carryover of 26.2 million previously identified adjustments are items that we've talked about out since the release of the fiscal 25 superintendent's proposed budget um in February and include a half hour um Extended contract time for special education teachers at a cost of 24.2

343million achievement Gap closing strategies at 3 million recall that that item was reduced uh in the approved budget to balance to the funding levels that were provided the erfc drop program at 1.3 million you may recall that that number in the budget was also pulled in order to balance to the funding levels at that time it was 6.5 million which represented 580 um 100% of the participants um would enter the drop program of course now we know that everybody did not in fact it was about 120 so the 1.3 million represents the the number based on that that new lower number one time boys uh volleyball and girls wrestling is8 million that is you know also was done at the at the beginning of the fiscal 25 budget process because it represents one-time cost of

344uniforms equipment supplies those sorts of things and then the fiscal 26 beginning balance set aside is 28.1 million um historically the beginning balance that we carry forward is always 25 to 30 million and remember this represents what the beginning balance will be for fiscal 26 not this year and it is the exact same amount that the beginning balance was in this current year after the routine carryover and items that were previously identified the FY 24 expenditure savings is 34.9 million the expenditure variance represents about 1% of the total budget and is smaller than experienced in previous years due to Improvement in the number of vacancies and turnover throughout fiscal 24 the FIS the uh recommended expenditure adjustments include Staffing Reser replenishment you may be aware that our um Staffing reserve of 310 positions that we

345had in the budget has been completely depleted you may also know that we air enrollment has been running higher than we actually have projected in September so we are going to need some flexibility in case we get a September surprise with enrollment so we're requesting 16 million or 140 positions we also have a transfer to the construction fund for major maintenance uh um you may not be aware that in 2014 the school board decided we'd always budgeted 10 million for uh the major maintenance and because of fiscal constraints they were only able to fund 6.4 million with a promise that 3.6 million would be continued every year and funded out of year end to bring them back to the 10 million um that they had in the budget originally and so we've been doing that

346since 2014 but the last couple of years we have tried to double that because we know that the major maintenance backlog is is very big and so we're we're trying to help with that so that's 7.1 million the substituting uh incentive um will support incentive pay and threshold bonuses for substitutes um that helps us achieve adequate substitute coverage levels um we similar action was taken uh to improve fi rates in the most recent two school years and we would like to continue that um and anecdotally you may also be aware that we've not heard as uh much chatter about not having enough subs and we think the substitute incentive is working another item is the mobile data terminal upgrade for buses and that's to upgrade those to provide a better student tracking system um it

347upgrades to a paperless electronic vehicle pre-trip inspection it eliminates paper trout paper route sheets um and provides turn-by-turn directions to improve safety service and efficiency we also have another transfer to the construction fund and that's for the security vegetable installation at 2 million and that's to complete phases two and three of five um with this funding contracts will be awarded for an additional 41 schools by the end of fiscal 25 um elementary school early release Monday's placeholder you know it's it's possible with this Monday release that every every kid in a school would decide to stay at school and if so then they're going to need a little bit of hourly help to be able to help organize and supervise those students uh you know if it's only part of the student population that probably

348won't be needed but there may be some funds needed and so we've budgeted or we're requesting uh 700,000 for that there's another transfer the construction fund um for softball field upgrades it's about a half a million dollars and that's for the upgrad of the softball dugouts at Marshall High School and lake bradock and that's to ensure that they're Title Nine compliant middle school late buses during the fiscal 19 final budget review the school board allocated additional resources to provide a fourth day late bus at eight High poverty middle schools and then we used Esra funds to provide an additional day at uh 18 other middle schools and this will continue that because of course the Esser funds have run out Woodson High School renaming you may recall that uh midy year we allocated $100,000 um

349for that project since then we've had an opportunity uh staff had had the opportunity to you know look at uniforms look at what needs to be replaced and we think those costs are going to be about 300,000 and so we're requesting an additional 200,000 for that school operating fund grants um largely represent idea funds that is one of the few grants that that uh resides in the operating fund instead of the grant fund and um those unspent Grant funds need to be carried over and that's 13.2 million the other funds um are detailed on the the the other pages and that represents basically multi-year programs whose funds flow from year to year with fund balances stabilization reserves uh as required and uh you know we're just representing carryover of unspent funds and authorized Bond funding

350for school construction and increases to um existing grants or new grants um in the Food Services fund the ace fund and the grant fund fund statements are also included with this um which basically display Revenue expenditures transfers in transfers out changes in fund balance for each of the nine Schoolboard funds then we have the supplemental appropriation resolution whose purpose is to transmit to the county changes to the fiscal 24 budget U for midyear third quarter and year in Combined and then the fiscal planning resolution represents the transfers from the operating fund to other funds and then on page 22 the last page is the grant development summary which provides uh information about fiscal 24 Grant thank you Miss Burton couple board members with questions Mr Dunn um so I had brought a motion back during

351the budget process about the facilities condition assessment and uh and it got six votes so very close to passing um but I don't see it in this year end and I know the top uh question that my colleagues had in conversations were uh let's see what the other priorities are for yearend funding so is there any part of this that um you have set aside money in one of these categories for uh an increase to allow a comprehensive facilities condition assessment uh which is necessary uh to inform the uh development of a new renovation queue no there is not why actually we did discuss that because I did meet with Miss semansky about the um transfer to facilities and just find that real quick again transfer to construction major maintenance it would need to come

352out of the facili transfer so we didn't know I think what we talked about was about how much we were thinking and so I think we would start with that the facility transfer funds to see how um the facilities Department would choose to prioritize which funds for that study but that was part of the calculus in that conversation yeah I wouldn't know that what the detail are of what she's going to spend the 7.1 million on that's not the level of detail that I would know and and so just just to confirm my my understanding from what you said is that it's 7.1 because that's double what historically had been funded for that transfer nearly 3.6 million was the commitment back in 2014 and we have been transferring 3.6 million um since then with the

353exception of the last 2 years when we tried to double it nearly um because we're aware of the maintenance backlog okay so well and we're also adding the 2 million to the vestibule which otherwise would have been a part of that so we're there's a bit of a it's a total of 9.1 million that's going to facilities honestly so we don't again I don't want to presume the actual cost of the um assessment but I think with within that there's some flexibility okay so I mean I I see $3.5 million difference between 3.6 and 7.1 so I provide some Flex depending on the outcome of the ongoing RFI that uh is being conducted to determine how much money uh should be allocated for that is that correct yes sir and C can you provide an

354update on that RFI can I provide an update on the RFI sure the RFI has been posted we actually had a pre-proposal conference this afternoon and bids are or responses are due in two weeks and uh can you describe the participation in that pre-planning conference yeah I had a chance to look at the uh uh Zoom invite and I saw about 50 different emails on it now some of that might have been some of our staff but I believe we got good participation that's great and is the outcome of that RFI an actual proposal or is it it's just informational purposes correct it's for information purposes and so you'd have to issue a separate RFP after the RFI in order to get you know actual proposals with actual numbers correct that's correct okay thank you

355are you done Mr dun funny things at one o'clock in the morning all right Dr Anderson I'm so sorry say that again okay so thank you um one of the things that I noticed here is the first of all the 4.5 for the substitute incentive I think as much as possible as we can keep those buildings staffed I'm in great support of that um the threo um the 3 million for the achievement Gap closing strategies can you speak a little bit about that um recall that um we had budgeted 6 million for the uh achievement Gap closing strategies but because we uh did not receive full funding um from the county we had to redu we had to trim our budget essentially and as you may recall we pulled 2% of the salary increase out

356and then we still had a little bit more that we needed to pull out and one of those items was 3 million from that 6 million line item with the understanding that we would try to fund it with your in and the um and the FY 23 budget how much should we allocate for closing achievement Gap strategies I'm going to have to call a friend while uh we're doing that I just want to clarify at the work session when we talked about budet that one of the reasons we didn't spend that early on is because the plan was put into place we have Baseline data now and so it's to be used to roll out strategies and there are several examples of which I shared at the work session one of which was Spanish algebra

357textbooks and also utilizing different strategies with our multilingual students now that we have a plan in place so uh Dr Pon and the team uh Miss lemon and so forth we have a number of initiatives now that we're going to be moving into the regions and that's what these funds are going to be used for after the Baseline year so they will be well spent this year 12 million right and I think out of that 12 million we had only expended a very very small fraction I think it was a couple of million so you kind of got ahead of my question a little bit Dr Aid because I also see the um the early release Mondays as part of those closing the achievement Gap strategies and I wonder why did we not use that

358fund to help support that effort and maybe reallocate the additional you know s maybe it's to facilities for the work that we discussed previously or some other um effort well generally speaking the funds that have been set aside for closing achievement Gap strategies um it wouldn't fall into that I mean the reason that we we've included some funds was for supervision activities those sorts of things on the the seven Monday release days at the elementary schools only you know if um a a school needed that because a large percentage of their population decided to stay at school so that's kind of a different purpose than I don't know if I agree with that because the whole purpose is for teachers to have the opportunity to have the training which is supposed to support the basil

359um roll out which is supposed to support literacy work which is supposed to close the achievement gaps so there's a clear you know line for me there so I I would expect that to have been better connect I to have been connected not better connected um I I would love as at earliest opportunity Dr read some of the things that you've mentioned that you are planning for this year um to be out lined and maybe priced out to um determine how those funds that we have which is upwards of $1 million still remaining in that fund plus these additional six that's quite a bit of money that are that is essentially not accounted for on paper and that just makes me a little bit uncomfortable like how are we going to spend it it's just

360sitting there so I'd like to have an accounting of that as soon as um possible so that it's not what you know previous board members have called a slush fund sitting around and and I think that's it for me thank you thank you Dr Anderson Miss Lady thank you um given the number of times we listen to community engagement around the Woodson baseball fields I see that there's something related to Title 9 softball fields and as a former Marshall employee I Elevate the fact something's being done there I guess my question is is it possible to fit in what what what needs to happen at Woodson because that baseball field is quite inferior is that possible to fit this in here or is it or is it somewhere else I miss lady I I think

361that uh it isn't currently on the docket for work I know there's been a a significant amount of work on athletic facilities at Woodson U which we could enumerate in an upcoming Friday letter unless Miss samansky wants to enumerate some of the projects that have already taken place at Woodson this evening sure we've um we've done a number of projects at Woodson High School and I would like to possibly provide some clarity to the two projects that Miss Burton mentioned we received one-time State money to do a grouping of high school schools to make them Title 9 compliant so in FY 24 we executed softball improvements at numerous schools unfortunately due to Rising costs we were able to get through all of the list with the exception of Two And so this additional funds will

362complete that list uh to make us title n compliant appreciate all of that but I also want to say that I don't want to sit through another year of community engagement from Woodson players and Woodson parents based on what I've seen and based on those videos and and I can go back in time to when I played as a soccer player on Woodson's field it was like playing in a swamp um and I know some of the drainage has been improved and maybe that's football and soccer fields um and it's not even in my constituency but if we can find a way to address the the woods and baseball field situation I think we would all be appreciative is that it Miss Lady thank you yes thank you Mr McDaniel um thank you and looking

363forward to having conversations over the recess and for action on this as we return in the fall um I did want to very quickly point out and I I I mentioned this to some colleagues we're moving about $10 million into into maintenance um and we need to be really careful as we go forward and tackle heavy maintenance items and Mr Dunn I know has brought this up a couple of times moving operating funds to maintenance is not ideal unfortunately we're in that position because of bonding issues um but I did just want to uh make a note of that but looking forward to further conversations and returning in the fall thank you Mr McDaniel Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman just a couple of questions for clarification that $60 million plus steing reserve for 140

364positions that's on top of 310 positions correct correct so 450 so last year did you put in 310 last year for the last year I'm just trying to compare fiscal 25 or fiscal 24 or 24 that I I think it was 310 310 but we expecting more needs higher needs next year that is why you are put in another 140,000 140 140 positions yes are you expecting enrollment to go beyond our projection yes do you know the magnitude hundreds thousand no we all we know is that we were running 1500 2,000 kids above at the end of last fiscal year what we had projected for this year but that doesn't always mean that we're going to get that many more in the fall but it could mean that we're going to exceed our projection okay

365do you think with audition students coming in beyond our initial enrollment projection then should we also expect additional per P per state aid to come in as a revenue yes if our enrollment goes up then we do indeed receive additional state aid okay now next next one has to do with a substitute incentive of $4.5 million I know there are you know couple of sentences for explaining that could you provide us with a little more detail as to whether we are increasing the amount of substitute to pay or we how we are providing additional incentive um I don't have the details with me but I know that it is um that that substitutes who agree to work on Friday which is our our day when we have the least amount of Subs are paid a

366prum in could you we can provide all this in writing okay thank you thank you Mr Moon uh want to pick up a little bit where miss lady left off with woods and high school um not long ago Miss seore Heiser coordinated a trip for uh the two of us to to visit the field with our facilities team and uh members of the uh the boosters and and PTA um and you know we saw firsthand many of the things that uh the facilities team is doing to uh help there and where we still need to do work um and so part of the work around our facilities and budgeting and looking at how we Bond future projects and and find different ways of funding things and create the queue of athletic facilities that need renovation

367all of that will play into it and so I think it's important for all of us to stay connected to our communities and um you know raise up uh the concerns of our communities for these conversations that will come when we finally have uh what the superintendent has talked about for these various things that have not been part of the normal queue and what Mr uh dun has advocated on is you know all of these you know what is the queue on the haax what is the queue and so on all these major renovation needs and so we will have a clearer picture but that's going to take time um and at least we are now you know it's that thing when you move one degree to the right and you walk for 10 miles

368all of a sudden 10 miles later you're entirely place that's kind of where we're in the midst of when it comes to the planning on those kinds of Investments so I appreciate the work that facilities and the superintendent have done to begin riding that ship all right no other comments you're free thank you thank you all right agenda item 8 consent agenda our adopted rules of Parliament procedure Robert's Rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through Board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda is items are on the screen

369is there any objection to approving the consent agenda Mr fres we've lost Quorum at the table so I need Quorum back at the table for us to continue with the consent agenda thank you I am here if that helps it doesn't unfortunately I mean we love having you here but it doesn't help with Quorum all right Quorum is restored the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing and seeing no objection the consent to agenda is approved item number nine new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these this evening but action is scheduled for a future meeting uh without objection I would like to skip agenda items 10 and 11 this evening all right we will return

370to closed meeting and are now on recess at 1:11 a.m. [Music]