FCPS School Board Meeting - 6/13/24

001myth is evidenced by varying levels of high school dropout among different Asian-American subgroups greater than average incidents of limited English preference proficiency less return on degree for compensation when entering the labor market and higher risk of contemplating or attempting suicide among aapi college students and whereas aapis have made significant accomplishments and contributions in all areas so of society that have propelled our country and have played a pivotal role in America's history for centuries and famous aapis include vice president kamla Harris Jun Lahiri pit surprise winning author Sal Khan founder of Khan Academy AJ bot co-inventor of the USB George takai trailblazing Asian-American actor xen Xiang Wu known as the first lady of physics Steve Chen co-founder of YouTube and Philip Vera Cruz a Filipino American labor organizer who worked alongside Cesar Chavez and Dolores herera

002to found the United Farm Workers and whereas Asian-American and Pacific Islander students and their families are an integral and long-standing part of the United States Virginia Fairfax County and Fairfax County Public Schools and also reflect the rich and vibrant diversity of cultures histories and languages of the many different countries of Asia and the Pacific Islands now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board proclaims the observance of Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in celebration and recognition of the many contributions asian-americans and Pacific Islanders have made to our society is there a second second I will call for the vote all those in favor looking around the room and online it appears to be unanimous Madame clerk please announce the vote that Proclamation passes thank you agenda item 2.08 Rachel Carson Middle School

003theater renaming Proclamation I call on Miss Dixit for a proclamation it's my honor and privilege to bring this proclamation to the school board whereas John Bickford or Mr B as student affectionately call him is an extraordinary teacher and Mentor he has been the theater teacher of Rachel Carson Middle Schools in the school's opening in 19898 in the 30 plus years total years of teaching 25 of those years at Carlson he was responsible for teaching thousands of students and consistently went above and beyond to create opportunities for his students and give them the support they needed to grow and whereas through theater Bickford taught students to be confident in themselves lead others speak and perform in front of crowds and be creative his unparallel talent of nurturing creativity fostering a love of of the Performing Arts

004and instilling invaluable life lessons in his students his unwavy commitment to Excellence in his plays and musical at a level beyond what most would expect of Middle School created environment where students were inspired to push their boundaries and explore their potential to the fullest and whereas Josh bigford was the glue that brought the community together like no one else could and went above and beyond to create something F fantastic for all the enjoy over and over and over again veras outside the rcms school year Josh bigford ran a very popular summer camp called performers corner where kids across FCPS learn acting skills wrote and performed skills and put on two fulllength musical at the end of summer Mr bigford has also impacted students beyond the cson community for many years he was a teacher at

005Institutes of the for the Arts and also served other theater programs and workshops through throughout Northern Virginia and whereas Mr Bickford is retiring from FCPS after 25 plus years of service at FCPS and has directed a dozen of dramatic produ and musical his retirement marks a turning of an important page for the rcms community he leaves a profound Legacy of promoting excellence and opportunity for students for the majority of time from 1998 to present he was the only theater teacher at Carlson where he crafted a well-respected theater program by this careful thought for students attention to detail and honoring for students imagination he provided a vibrant platform for student to display hard work and Talent on stage now therefore be it resolved that the lecture hall at Rachel Carlson Middle School be named as bigford

006theater as a testament to his exceptional leadership and education but also to inspire generation of student to strive for excellence in the Performing Art the school Bowl also extends its deepest gratitude for his service to FCPS and heartfelt congratulations on his retirement is there a second I second Miss Marin I'll call for the vote all those in favor Miss seis Mor heisner Mr McDaniel miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Marin Mr Dunn Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit Mr Moon Mr Maven and myself that is unanimous uh before we continue uh it's the custom of this board to recognize the presence of elected officials and current and former school board members and we are graced with the presence of Michelle tby the former student representative on our school board would you like to stand

007up and say we've still got it we can still make you embarrassed all right I would like to welcome Josh Bickford aka Mr B and invite all those in support of the Bickford theater at Rachel Carson Middle School naming proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the deis e e [Applause] I would like to invite all those in support of the Asian am Amer and Pacific Islander Heritage Month proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dis e e I would like to invite those in support of the lgbtqia pride month proclamation to please join the board for a photo sorry I would like to invite all those in support of the lgbtqia a plus pride month proclamation to please join the board

008for a photo at the front of the Das I would like to invite all those in support of the juneth proclamation to please join the board for photo at the front of the dis I would like to invite all those in support of the juneth proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dis e I would like to invite all those in support of the Immigrant Heritage Month proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dis I would like to invite all those in support of the Caribbean American Heritage Month proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the Das e e agenda item agenda item 2.09 Virginia High School league teams recognition the school board is very

009pleased to recognize the recipients for the winter 2023 and spring 2024 vhsl state championship teams tonight please stand when your team is recognized after all recognitions are completed individual teams will be invited to have a photo at the board Miss Dixit the board would like to recognize the Shanti High School forensics team for being awarded the vhsl class six state championship the board would also like to recognize uh principal Amy goodlow director of Student Activities Cory bman and Coach Barbara clar for their contribution to the [Applause] team the board would like to recognize the Lake brck Secondary School gymnastics team for winning the vhsl class six gymnastic championships again the board will also like to recognize principal Lindsey Karns director of Student Activities Janice Pritchett and Coach Mike Cooper for their contributions to the team

010congratulations [Applause] the board would like to recognize the Langley High School boys swim and dive team for winning the vhsl class 6 swimming and Diving state championship the board would also like to recognize principal Kimberly Greer director of Student Activities Jeff notto and uh coach Megan overand for their contributions to the team [Applause] the board would like to recognize the Langley High School boys tennis team for winning the vhsl class six Boys Tennis state championship the board would also like to recognize principal Kimberly Greer director of Student Activities Jeff notto and Coach Jack Porter for their contributions to the team and the board would like to recognize the Langley High School girls tennis team for winning the VHS class six girls tennis state championship the board would also like to recognize principal Kimberly Greer director

011of Student Activities Jeff notto and Coach Stephany henron for their contributions to the team let's go Saxons continuing the eate for langy high school the board would like to recognize the langy high school debate team for being awarded the vhsl classics debate state championship the board would also like to recognize principal Kimberly Greer director of Student Activities Jeff noro and forensics and debate Coach K for creac for their contributions to the [Applause] team the board would like to recognize the mlan high school baseball team for winning the vhsl class six baseball state championship they didn't care much about districts or regions but they went and one on that state champ Championship just kidding the board will also like to recognize principal Ellen Riley athletic director Greg Miller head coach John Ding and coaches Ryan Kristoff

012Joey kugan Kai parrot for their contribut to the team congratulations mlan [Applause] Highlanders the board would like to recognize the mlan high school vhsl Film Festival best documentary Champions the board would also like to recognize principal Ellen Helen Riley director of Student Activities Greg Miller and broadcast journalism adviser Lindsay benedict for their contributions to the team the board would like to recognize the mlan high school vhsl class six Scholastic bow champions the board would also like to recognize principal Ellen Riley director of Student Activities Greg Miller and coaches Lindsay Benedict and Jeff bretti for their contributions to the [Applause] team the board would like to recognize the Robinson Secondary School boys lacrosse team for winning the vhsl class six boys lacrosse state championship the board would also like to recognize principal Tracy Phillips director of

013Student Activities Andy jimo and Coach Matt Curran for their contributions to the team congratulations the board recognizes the South Lakes High School boys basketball team for winning the vhsl class 6 boys basketball state championship for the first time in school history [Applause] the board recognizes principal Kim reter director of Student Activities Andrew Dugen and Coach Mike Desmond for their contributions to the team the board recognizes the South Lakes High School girls indoor track team for winning the vhsl class six indoor track Championship the board recognizes director of Student Activities Andrew Dougan head coach Scott rxo and assistant coaches Jeremy Lee and Damon Johnson and also recognizes again Prin princial Kim rer and congratulates her on her retirement thank you for your service to our school the board would like to recognize the West Springfield High

014School men's crew team for winning the VR division 2 men's state championship the board would also like to recognize principal Mike mukai director of Student Activities Leah con and coach Mark Hempel for their contributions to the [Applause] team the board would like to recognize the West Springfield High School boys outdoor track team for winning the vhsl class 6 boys outdoor track state championship the bo the board would also like to recognize principal Mike McKai director of student activ Lea Conte head coach Chris Pelini and assistant coaches Darren Williams Danielle Breedlove Katherine sherake Hannah Arts Adam poite Charlotte Cruz Colin Eckles Charlie Lynn for their contributions to the [Applause] team and last but not least the board would like to recognize the West Springfield High School women's crew team for winning the vasra division one women's

015state championship the board would also like to recognize principal Mike mukai um director of students activities Leah ke and Coach Shan Miller for their contributions to the team the board would like to invite members of the chanelli high school forensics team School staff and reporters to please join the board for a photo and I ask my colleagues to please remain in front at the de for the other photos e the board would like to invite the Lake bradoock Secondary School gymnastics team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the Lake bradic Secondary School gymnastics team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the Langley High School Boy swim and dive team School staff and supporters to please join the

016board for a photo e the board the board would like to invite the Langley High School boys tennis team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite Langley High School girls tennis team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo e the board would like to invite the Langley High School debate team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the boy would like to invite mlan High School uh boys baseball team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo e e the board would like to invite mlan High School best documentary Champion School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo e the board would like to invite the

017mlan High School Scholastic Bowl team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo the board would like to invite the Robinson Secondary School boys lacrosse team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo e the board would like to invite the South Lakes High School boys basketball team School staff supporters to please join the board for a photo e the board would like to invite the South Lakes High School girls indoor track team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo e the board would like to invite the West Springfield High School men's crew team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo e the board would like to invite the West Springfield High School boys outdoor track team

018School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo e and the board would like to invite the West Springfield High School women's crew team School staff and supporters to please join the board for a photo for Mr chair that was our final photo board members that was our final photo e e e before we continue with the agenda tonight I'd like to recognize Bill Curran who is with us tonight uh the director of student activities in athletics bill could you stand up he's retired ing from FCPS thank you s thank you for your service agenda item 3.01 Community participation the next order of business is community participation we welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening additional information about signing up to provide comments

019at Schoolboard regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the school board's website during the sign up process community members acknowledged they were informed of the school board's expectations for proper dequorum when providing comments these expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and materials uh meeting materials in the back of the room we ask audience members to be respectful of one another shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain at their seats including 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

020please call the first Speaker Sophie Zing good evening my name is Sophie Zang a junior at mlan high school thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today about an issue that I believe is crucial for the success of our community the need to implement financial literacy education in our elementary schools at the mall I'm often appalled to see the countless Young Elementary or middle school students swiping their parents credit cards left and right when my girl scout troop conducted a money smart session at a local elementary school I was surprised by how limited their knowledge was on some basic concepts even in my high school's Business Club I noticed many high many students lacking a solid grasp of financial knowledge like topics of loans and debts researchers at the University of Michigan found

021that children form persistent habits with money as young as age five and will be more likely to develop lifelong financial habits Elementary School is the perfect time to start they pick up new Concepts quickly and can develop good habits early on it's like learning to ride a bike the earlier you start the better you get now imagine the impact of every child understood the basics of money management by the time they reached Middle School we teach kids how to read books but not how to read a bank statement we teach kids how to solve math problems but not how to solve financial problems we teach kids how to understand history but not how to understand interest rates these are fundamental skills as essential to any other subject in our curriculum I remember participating in Junior

022Achievement at hok elementary school while these sessions were valuable they were conducted by parent volunteers and were infrequent many Fairfax County elementary schools didn't even have this opportunity thus to address this Gap I propose that we incorporate formal financial literacy instruction into the elementary school curriculum as Fairfax county is a leading School District in the nation I hope we can set an example for the rest of the country ensuring that all of our children have the tools they need to succeed SRE Simpson um good evening chairman frish and members of the school board my name is secret Simpson and I am a proud parent of a rising first grader in the Franconia District we are here tonight on behalf of a group of parents who have concerns and questions about recent incidents at our school

023mainly around communication with parents and Guardians about those events we feel that these concerns need to be addressed but not in a public forum to maintain uh privacy and safety we are in touch with representative St John cunnings office to schedule and private meeting so um I want to express my gratitude um thank you representative St John cunning for responding to us so quickly and agreeing to meet um we wanted to bring these concerns to your attention alert this body of our progress and we look forward to working with you all to address our concerns um thank you chairman frish and members of the school board for the opportunity to speak tonight [Applause] Kyla Newman hello my name is Kyla Newman I am here with secred and we represent a group of parents who are

024concerned about recent influences and said communication and followup on the lack of communication and improve safety and the community well-being very grateful for all the board all that the board does and for this opportunity to meet all we rely on you to educate support and protect our children very much looking forward to continue this conversation Christina McCormack chairperson frish members of the board and Dr Reed happy pride month um also forgive me I lost my voice um being the hype woman at the Cappies on Monday and it was lovely to see so many of you there so um anyhow uh my name is Chris McCormack I'm the co-chair of FCPS Pride a board member for the transgender Education Association and most importantly the parent of two FCPS students um I wanted to come tonight and

025thank you for your support support this year of our lgbtq students um we youve reaffirmed regulation 2603 which was wonderful we've resisted book bands and supported inclusive theater uh we have more work to do and more ways to grow including updating our fle instruction and improving the climate for our FCPS staff at recent aride events I've had the opportunity to talk with many FCPS families and staff and more often than not the employees are sharing with me that they don't feel comfortable uh being out at work work and that they may not have the support from their administrative teams even the recent um FCPS Pride Proclamation email failed to mention specifically lgbtq it referred instead to all people and omissions like that um are perceived as a microaggression and a form of eraser so we

026can and we should do better we also need to bring our fle instruction in line with current evidence-based best practices as has as has been recommended by fleak the national sex education standards recommends comprehensive sex education designed to be inclusive of all gender and sexual identities our lgbtq youth are already experiencing bullying and stigma separating them by gender for sex head furthers this and completely ignores the existence of students who identify outside of the binary and further perpetuates heteronormativity with about one in four FCPS students identifying as lgbtq we are failing to serve a large portion of our students thank you for your continued and I hope increased support of our lgbtq community I look for Vanessa Hall okay hi uh my name is Vanessa Hall thank you for letting us all speak I'm the

027proud parent of two FCPS students one of whom just graduated thank you all for attending so many graduations we really appreciate it I'm also a co-chair of FCPS pride and I'd like to thank you for your support for our lgbtqi staff families and students by today's Pride Proclamation and all your work this year we held a very small rally to celebrate the proclamation and other successes this year like FCPS reaffirming transgender and non-binary student rights by loudly rejecting young kin's anti-trans policies and implementing policy 26 3 by updating the fle curriculum on consent safety and health by working to make F fle more inclusive to all students including our uh lgbtqia Community also um I'm guessing you're going to be up implementing the updated title 9 uh regulations from the US Department of Ed that

028protect students from harassment and provides con more consequences for assault however there's still lots of work to be done for example our fle curriculum is about three decades old interim changes have been beneficial but cannot address deficiencies at the core of a curriculum developed in a previous century when gay marriage was illegal and nearly all of our students and staff were still in the closet Virginia laws exist that prevent fle from providing medically accurate and inclusive education to students and students and staff are still targeted or bullied for actual or perceived sexuality or gender identity obviously schools can only do so much so I beg parents and Guardians to think about their words and actions since students model what they hear and see we should try our best to treat others in our community with

029kindness and respect yet we must remain Vigilant to prevent bullying and harassment and harm to the to our community our work may never be done but we appreciate working with all of you the school board to make our school safe and welcoming space for students and staff to Samantha Phelps howy congrats on navigating a challenging budget season now I want you to I want to suggest some creative ways to help retain staff and prepare for next year's budget which Mr Dunn has indicated will likely be even worse firstly as many of you have mentioned FCPS should use its influence to negotiate benefits for our staff many employees cannot afford to live within our County why not make their commutes more affordable by collaborating with other divisions to secure discounts on toll roads and mass transit

030for School Employees as someone who commutes from Stafford to Tyson's I can attest that this would help me feel appreciated by FCPS secondly address policies that are currently causing harm such as the daily rate calculation that means a day missed in June costs an employee double that of a day missed in in May for those when leave without pay this PO policy causes tremendous harm to already vulnerable employees and their families while we can wait until 2026 for the year round pay this issue needs immediate attention show us you care and address it now finally continue your good work on leave sharing by allowing more open donations this would help ease the financial burdens of many such as those forced to use 21 days of leave to qualify for disability when my one-year-old daughter was

031sick several colleagues offered to cover my classes themselves and get a sub for their own classes just to prevent me from having to go without pay amazing colleagues right but why should they have to go to such links to help one of your employees when you can show you care and help thank you for your time and considering these suggestions Kristen l good evening I'm here to speak on behalf of a Fairfax County contractor Goyle services and to ask the board not to award the contract that is on item 9.02 tonight because this contractor was improperly removed from board consideration his from bid consideration there are I submitted handouts and I asked that the board consider them before um taking any action on that motion today the three reasons that they were improperly removed were

032um the go the county improperly rejected the Goyle bid based on an incorrect allegation of a pricing error and they cited to an email where the the contractor asked to correct a scrivener's error that amounted to an improper period that was a typo and one line item price and in that email which is attached uh as attachment B to your packet they the contractor confirmed that there was absolutely no error in pricing that the sub totals and the totals were absolutely correct and he stood behind and was committed to the pricing that was in the bid so however there was no error in pricing and the board uh the county rejected them and said that it was because there was errors in pricing section 11 of the ifb allows the board to wave uh these

033informalities and to allow scrier errors and had allowed them to be corrected in the past so it was an arbitrary arbitrary and capricious rejection of their bid on that basis they secondly um rejected the bid and removed it from consideration based on low item pricing and you'll see in the packet that that is not an improper um it's not improper to have low amount of pricing on certain line items and it's not commercially unreasonable because Goyle stood by its pricing and the county had awarded Goyle pricing a contract previously based on the same type of pricing and had told it and other contractors that it could not have a zero line item but that it could have a 1-cent item and previously awarded contracts for that same pricing system finally PJ Goyle thank you board

034my name is PJ Coy I am president owner of Services Asian o emergency response hazardous material batement contractor Pera county is one of the largest school districts in which companies 407 square miles uh the buildings in this contract require emergency response within uh with four crews in four hours uh to surfice the 28 million square feet and 199 schools and the only way that this is possible is to be here uh the contractor being asked for you to approve a 9.02 is out of Hopewell uh Virginia which is 140 mil away from Great Falls to their office um it is impossible to bring as best as removal workers and staff and equipment and arrive at four schools in this District in four hours um on our bid uh we were going over the reasons of

035why uh facilities has always this is an emergency response contract and uh facilities has always done a great job of having a plan A and A planb to handle emergencies and for decades no school has never opened unlike most other school districts in our region uh due to an hisb bested contamination or contractor being behind uh that is due for the last 12 years we've been one of those two contractors for the nine last nine I've been the primary contractor I live in the Mount Vernon District uh I am local I live uh my base school is Holland Meadows I have four kids that have gone through the schools I work where I live uh so uh again uh there's no way that the existing contractor being asked can possibly perform the scope of work

036and it is one of the major facets of the award of this contract secondly they are uh eliminating there were three bids on this contract two one of which was me uh both are large uh and the second contractor Mark Spooner good evening the uh Community survey about the fleak proposals was almost impossible to find on the website and it didn't describe the 41 proposals that were we were being asked to comment on so I was only able to comment generally I did learn that fleak wants to teach gender gender identity in the elementary schools a terrible idea kids at that level shouldn't be told that their biological sex may not be real and even worse the lessons would create a firestone of controversy are they going to be told that their sex is artificially

037assigned at Birth will will they be told that mental health issues are at the core of many question their gender don't do this it it it is not uh appropriate and it will cause too much controversy on another issue one of last year's proposals to put boys and girls into co-ed sexed classes in elementary schools was overwhelmingly opposed by parents students and employees but not wanting to say no to The Advocates this board didn't vote on it this year and I have been led to believe that it won't be voted on this year either but this may be beside the point because I've learned that such classes are being quietly added anyway in a so-called pilot program I think this is a slap in the face to the community no one wants it except for

038a tiny minority this isn't an issue of exclusion or fairness or fundamental rights it's just a question of what's the best way to teach sensitive subjects to Young Minds don't do this this just because there might be one kid in a thousand who doesn't want to choose whether to attend the boys's class or the girls class say no for once why should everyone else's rights be subservient to the transgender agenda whether it be in the classroom the please play the video Testament testimony submitted by Stephanie lanquist Aurora good evening as we approach June 26th when you'll be considering the changes to the Family Life education curriculum of course when families leave for their summer vacations I'd like you to ask yourselves how inclusive are you really how much do you care about parental and Community

039output as you consider these changes you've appointed an ideologically homogeneous committee to advise you so basically you selected people to advise you who already agree with you pretty much strategically and last year survey respondents overwhelmingly disagreed with the recommendations from the committee they disagreed that we should have combined sex education and family life education curriculum they disagreed about gender ideology education in elementary schools uh overwhelmingly and when we said that on the surveys Dr Reed said well the majority doesn't always dictate right was she foreshadowing how you're going to vote it kind of seems that way as we approach June 26th in addition to those absurd recommendations this year your committee recommended that the fourth graders should watch a um video where the children would see the explicit images of of the drawings of the

040genitals and the puberty journeys of the opposite sex and what's your hurry really why do children in fourth grade need to know all of this stuff right now now I know how much all of you claim to care about inclusivity because you talk about it all the time so I'm wondering have you went around and made sure that everybody understands what you're trying to do before you vote for example have you pitched this at the mosques have you got everybody's opinion about what you intend to do when you want to IND indoctrinate our children with gender ideology I think you should ask yourself that for the sake of inclusivity please play the video testimony submitted by Rob Robert Rigby Jr good evening my name is Robert Rigby Jr a hearty and happy Pride to all

041who can safely live as themselves in their families and communities and a hopeful prayer for those who cannot yet do so congratulations to the graduates I will speak tonight about the effectiveness of family life education curriculum and its Pro and the process of development in Fick County Public Schools much research over the years tells us that comprehensive sexuality education is of great benefit to students the Family Life education curriculum in FX County Public Schools is not yet comprehensive sexuality education we need to begin at first principles and develop a program that meets the needs of children that is we need to start over we had a good start in the 90s and people have worked very hard to improve on it alas I think we have been distracted over the years by much smoke that

042is really unconnected to the topic of sex education so we need to start over we need to base our program on the scientific educational research that exists with the best interest of our students in mind as for Family Life Education as it stands now in this County my estimation is that it does more harm than good from a progressive child centered point of view an important task while we revamp the program from its first principles is to remove those elements that cause harm while we're doing that revamping note I abjure and forbid the use of my words here or parts of my words for purposes antithetical to mind and by groups that are unwelcoming to students on the basis of race disability gender sexuality religion or culture chair frish that was our last public speaker

043agenda item 4.01 student representative matters I call in Miss kin thank you Mr fris good evening everybody as a reminder my remarks are always posted on board docs for anybody who would like to follow along at our last board meeting we discussed significant inconsistencies in the availability of classes across our schools particularly in computer science education Dr reads data clearly showed that offerings vary widely some schools have robust programs While others have limited options this variability challenges our District's ability to meet the video mandate to integrate computer science from kindergarten to 8th grade currently we are constrained by two main issues a lack of sufficient Staffing and limited funding despite these challenges we have a valuable valuable resource our students the technology Youth Empowerment Group founded by the student Equity Ambassador leader program exemplifies how

044high school students can make a substantial difference this group of high schoolers has formed their own 501 3 nonprofit organization and are passionately teaching stem education throughout Fairfax County their initiative is entire entirely volunteer-based driven by their commitment to addressing inequities and stem education these students are making a significant impact Beyond bridging gaps they're actively enhancing our educational offerings by Leading after school programs they allow us to expand educational opportunities without additional Financial investment this approach not only helps us manage our Li Li mited resources but also sign significantly enriches the educ educational experiences for everybody involved students are constantly seeking opportunities to engage and I can attest to this from my own experiences while these efforts often originate at the school level we as a school board should take the lead in promoting and

045facilitating this involvement as it is not happening as extensively as it should by proactively facilitating this engagement we can also ensure that students with disability in esol students are included these groups are often underrepresented in school activities and through the establishment and support of these programs we can guarantee their participa participation and representation creating a more inclusive School environment moving on we need to optimize the use of advisory periods to communicate valuable resources within our County more effectively currently many students end up scrolling through social media when they aren't studying or working on assignments by better utilizing this time we can reduce these distractions and provide essential information for example when I encounter a challenging math problem I often give up and turn to social media for a break but if I were aware of

046how accessible and userfriendly tutor.com is I might be more inclined to use it and be more productive similarly students who complete their work could benefit from exploring opportunities on Naviance but they may not know how to navigate it efficiently advisory periods should be maximized to ensure produc AC ity by highlighting available resources like tutor.com navian our career Specialists Hazel health and even the safety tip line our objective should be to make these resources so well known that students are more surprised if their peers are unaware of them by focusing advisory periods on sharing and educating students about these resources and how to use them we can enhance overall productivity and ensure students are well informed about the support available to them moving on I want to discuss another issue regarding the variability in classes across

047our school system although I've previously mentioned how courses can vary depending on the school's location and how grading differs a new concern has emerged about the inconsistency within the same school achieving the grade you desire can often depend purely on the luck of which teacher you get for instance if I were to take AP langing with Miss Johnson I might face a very different coursework and work workload compared to another Junior who is taking the same same subject with Miss Kim this issue isn't limited just to AP laying it's a widespread concern across various subjects it seems unfair that students enrolled in the same course at the same level experience such discrepancies I believe it's essential to encourage our teachers to standardize their approach within their respective departments I've heard countless complaints about having the

048harder or easier teacher but ideally there should be no such distinction The Experience should be uniform for everybody we need our departments to collaborate closely to ensure uniformity and teaching standards across all subjects no teacher should have a different retake policy or assign varying amounts of work compared to another teacher who teaches the same subject this way achieving the desired grade depends solely on the students performance not on the luck of what teacher they have I also want to address a concern regarding the rounding rules currently implemented by FCPS for students grades often students find themselves just point 2 or three away from the next higher grade and according to our current guidelines grades calculated on a 100 point scale are rounded up to the nearest whole number only if they reach 0.5 or above

049for example a grid of 89.5 which would be a B+ would be rounded up to a 90 which is an A minus however a grid of 89.4 which is a B+ remains unchanged because it doesn't meet the 0.5 threshold even though it is only 0.1 away from the A minus threshold the same principle applies to 4.0 scal with a threshold of 0.05 this method May prevent students from a achieving a grade that could be crucial for their academic progression suggesting a need to revisit and potentially expand these rounding roles lastly I'd like to address the challenges faced by students who join FCPS later in their academic Journey particularly those who do do not start with us from a young age this issue frequently AR arises when courses taken in other districts do not align with

050our curriculum for example I have a friend from can Ada who transfered here just before 9th grade despite completing Algebra 1 in Canada the difference in course naming conventions meant she had to repeat Algebra 1 instead of advancing to Geometry the option of summer classes exists but it's not always financially feasible for everybody similarly another friend who moved from another country with in Virginia started with us in a sophomore year and had to enroll in biology a year behind the typical schedule where sophomores are expected to take chemistry this delay hindered his ability to choose from the broad range of AP or IB science courses typically available to Juniors the frustration of retaking courses due to transfer issues is avoidable these students are advocating for the introduction of exemption tests similar to those used for

051language credits in subjects like Algebra 1 biology and more it's essential that we do not force students to repeat courses if they have already demonstrated proficiency elsewhere providing these tests would not only prevent unnecessary repetition but but also ensure that all students have the opportunity to engage with courses that truly interest them for example my friend who took biology his sophomore year he had to take chemistry his junior year this meant that he could only choose one AP science his senior year in contrast someone who was in FCPS before high school has the flexibility to choose any science they want for both their Junior and senior Years thank you thank you agenda item 5.0 1 action item certification of closed meeting compliance since the Board needs to reconvene our closed meeting we will take care

052of action item 5.01 after we complete our closed meeting later tonight agenda item 5.02 action item confirmation of action taken and closed we will come back to this again uh after we finish our close session this evening agenda item 5.03 action item suas 619 South picket Street Warehouse I call on Dr Anderson for a motion I have it thank you I move that the school board authorize the division superintendent or the chief of facility services and capital programs either of whom may act without the other to take all actions reasonably necessary and appropriate to solicit negotiate enter into and administer one or more agreements and related documentation for the suas of all or any part parts of the facility located at 619 South picket Street Alexandria on terms and conditions deem advantages to the school

053board and with the advice of division councel is there a second second miss lady Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion no thank you miss lady would you like to speak to your second no thank you Mr Dunn um I I have a fairly large problem with this uh contract um it was entered into in June 2022 a five-year contract uh ostensibly to provide for the refrigeration and and uh storage cold storage of food during the pandemic the issue is that the pandemic was already over in June 2022 and yet we are burdened with a contract that will waste potentially millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars um I understand that I requested abundant information on this contract to understand why it was entered into what we can do to remedy it um

054the answers have not been to my satisfaction um I believe that well I'd like to ask the superintendent do you have an understanding why this contract was entered into in June 2020 22 after the pandemic had ended um I was not here in June of 2022 uh but I have the documents which have been shared with you that I've reviewed which I think you've already described it was to store food right in the freezer right it was to be used by our food and nutrition services at any time has this Warehouse actually been used for the storage of food for FCPS I I'll have to Mr muick has the warehouse been used to store food it was for a little bit after they got that lease and what led them to get the lease back

055then I wasn't here as well but the meals they were serving went from 110,000 to 160,000 and they were still serving those kind of meals when they made that decision so I know we say it was tied to the pandemic and the pandem pandemic was over but those were the meal numbers they had at that time and to what extent has why why would the the why would FCPS not consider breaking the contract given that the landlord has a duty to mitigate and having done similar breaking of Warehouse contracts in the Alexandria Area uh at most in my experience you pay a couple months rent uh what is the downside to FCPS to pursuing it as any commercial vendor would I would say we you know certainly can continue to pursue it what we've been

056looking for is someone else to lease the property and there haven't been a lot of someone else's interested in leasing the property so the current uh consent agenda item for a subas is sort of the best deal that has um come across our path here as we've worked to sublease it and and I certainly don't blame you uh Dr Reed since this was before your time but uh will this not will this course of action that is proposed on the agenda not cost a couple million dollars of taxpayer dollars well what's on the agenda is actually sub leasing so it'll save some of the lease that were already paying um so I don't think it's going to cost us more to subas it it should save us money my the analysis I've seen said it

057would it would cost approximately $1.7 million even if you sublease it because you're not recovering the full cost of the of the contract lease it is costing us money for sure what we're trying to do is minimize the cost to us so um I certainly if we could find someone that was interested in leasing the whole property we would um value that as an option as well I I I guess my question again is uh why are we not breaking the lease if we're not going to use it for five years and we're only a year into it um would that not save more money ultimately I believe there are certain legal concerns about uh breaking the lease but and I'm happy to discuss that further I think perhaps if we get into the legal

058risk that's connected to that it would be a better an item better suited for a closed session thank you thank you Mr dun Dr Anderson just to clarify we have a fiveyear lease on this space and we are not using it currently is there any way that we could use it or is it just too large uh is it just too much um facility for our needs just trying to find a way to make it useful since we have to pay it well one of the things we've talked about uh but one of the things we've talked about is utilizing part of it for the warehouse for our theater um props and all of the you know sets and those types of things which we want to have a warehouse for um we sort of

059didn't want to start moving things into that property if we're trying to sublease it right like because all we need to do is move everything in and then find someone that is interested which we would then want to suble it to save those monies so what we're hopeful is if we can sublease the freezer area or sublease some of the area to save some money we could use um part of the warehouse for storage um or go back to the Fort Center which is sort of where we'd lean which wouldn't be an increased cost but an opportunity to begin the warehouse of theater sets and so forth and I know that uh board has a high interest and I'm directed to identify a solution for and just one last question is this a fiveyear lease

060or a one-year lease with four oneye extensions to Total it's a fiveyear lease it's a fiveyear lease and it did not have good termination clause in it from the get-go which if I could I couldn't get off of the uh the mute button earlier to address Mr Dunn's question which led um you know to to be able to just terminate in default that ties into the County's Bond rating and the the risk and it was just something that just did not seem worthwhile to do and the total of this each year is again uh it's uh 60,000 a month so $300,000 thank you thank you Dr my uh thank you Mr chairman uh just a couple of questions I know a superintendent and our Mr mck hopefully you are listening that I know neither of

061you were there when this contract was entered this lease agreement was entered into but it's but is it true that at the time that we need to find the space rather urgently and and my understanding is that this was the best we could get at the time is it is it fair to characterize yes sir the situation as such yes sir it is and then now uh we are trying to minimize mitigate our losses basically because we're not using the space but we need to under the contract under the lease agreement we need to continue to pay the rent correct and so we try we are trying to subase at least part of the premises right now and then what's remaining we are trying to find another another s let's see subtenant to is that

062fair for me to for The Bard to understand understand that the plan for the staff yes sir it is okay uh and as far as a Lander's duty to mitigate is concern I know we have a legal counsel here but uh the Landor may not be able to find the kind of subtenant that can take over entire promises and being able to pay full rent yes sir we've been working with a broker uh to find uh Su leasers and we've had four that got close um but then just lost interest for various reasons and those four were looking at the entire space and we now have a fifth who is very interested in um the warehouse part of it which is a little over half uh which is which led us to what Dr Reed

063said hey this would be a good way to mitigate as much of that cost as we can good so rather than it is a judgment of the staff and superintendent that rather than us rather than you know rather than just waiting for the landlord to find subtenant we have a willing subtenant to come in to take at least part of the premises and with certain rental rate is that that is how we wanted to mitigate and minimize our losses yes sir there is no incentive for the land Lord to be going out looking for somebody to replace us so it pretty much falls on us I mean obviously obviously you know many of us were not there when you know bold might have approved you know school system entering into this lease at the time

064um but it's a regrettable that we are incurring you know losses in rent payment but at the same time at this point in effort to minimize our losses this is a prudent way to pursue so with that in my mind uh in mind our support motion uh what I'm hoping is a staff to make a diligent efforts to find a audition of sub tenant to be able to subas the remaining space yes sir thank you Mr Moon Miss Marin there was a reference to the county and the concern about the bond rating of our school system has there been any involvement by the county can they use this space u just curious about that there's not been any connection with the county I do wonder if this space is of use to the county since

065we are tied together in our bond rating this could be an area for some partnership and support So Dr Reed you have inherited this is now I think the third five-year contract that has been of concern um this one schoolagy while may not financially concerned I know the users have had concerns with it and Signa I'd like to know what kind of council you're developing or what your approach is on Contracting and having you know going forward putting in place these these fail safes so we don't find ourselves in these situations in the future so it's I think sometimes um in this case perhaps hindsight is 2020 right I think in the moment people made the best decision they could um particularly about the Warehouse if there was an urgent need and again I wasn't

066here in 2022 and if you the food uh preparation exponentially increases probably there was a feeling right that there was an urgent need I think what I um what Mr muick commented on is I think it would be it's incumbent upon me to make sure that our staff has Clauses Within These agreements that are more uh division friendly perhaps to uh the change in conditions that we might find ourselves over the course of multi-year contracts so that's something I think in particular we can work on um I will say with regard to siga we are partnering with the county um on siga benefits and the work and I also want to publicly thank um uh Brian Hill the county executive for supporting and really providing a tremendous um intervention support to uh maintain Shady Grove

067as a fertility clinic client of siga so that our 286 employees that are in the middle of IVF uh treatment are able to continue that and I really appreciate the county and Brian's intervention on that so we do work together on topics I think that are very important topics um but I think it's those Clauses that are critical it's not just rather we do it but like what do the conditions within the contract and be very thoughtful about that um so I hope that answers your question yes thank you Mr Dunn have there been any discussions with the landlord to seek to terminate or exit the lease I have not personally been involved in discussions to terminate the lease yes sir there have and he has no interest in terminating okay um you mentioned the

068county Bond rating um I consider that a red herring so do you you have have you had any concrete conversations with Brian Hill or any member of the Board of Supervisors or any representative of the County government that stated affirmatively that terminating this lease breaking this lease uh would affect the county Bond rating no sir okay uh given this and other procurement issues have there been or are there underway any procurement reforms Within FCPS to avoid this happening again so to miss Marin's question I think that was a similar question um I know that uh we had a I Believe Miss Co is here this evening and there was previously a procurement audit done I think relatively recently um maybe so I don't know I think the recommendations of that audit certainly were presented I

069think to the prior board and um those recommendations I believe those management uh recommendations would be acted on in terms of a management response I don't know I know Miss Co didn't plan to talk about that this evening so um I don't know if you want to comment or not yeah and thank you uh Dr re so uh my recollection is that the last procurement audit was somewhere somewhere around the year 2020 and in a little bit later on um for item 8.03 I will be Pres planning to the board about the next year um audit plan and then we will speak about the procurement audit that I propose to do in Fisco year 25 Miss Co have in in your uh judgment have all of the recommendations of your procurement audit from 2020 been

070fully implemented at this point at the time when we concluded and follow up upon the ud recommendations those recommendations have been Incorporated and implemented okay so this five-year contract was entered into despite all of the procurement recommendations being fully implemented so our review at the time I don't have the audit objective right in front of me so I think it's a fair question but I have to really looked at what we looked at uh what we audit because there are so many things within the uh procurement Arena right but I would like to say that in the upcoming audit tonight I hear there are different no challenges that would definitely be a considerations in the next year audit thank you thank you Mr Dunn we will go to a vote on the motion which is

071on the screen all those in favor of the motion on the screen Miss seore Heiser Mr McDaniel miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Maron Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit Mr Moon Mr Maven and myself all those opposed Mr Dunn abstentions will the clerk read the vote the votes 111 the motion passes thank you agenda item 10 new business the following are whoops I'm way too far ahead sorry folks everybody got excited real quick agenda item 6.01 performance review asset protection el7 monitoring report I call on Dr Reed for a monitoring report on Executive limitation 7 asset protection thanks Armon all right um so this evening it's uh my pleasure to present executive limitation 7 um which is the last executive limitation in our Series this year uh and it's the one discussing asset

072protection here in Fairfax County so um as we look at uh executive limitation 7 there's a fairly straightforward um description uh if we can go to the next there we go uh and one of the things that I of course want to acknowledge is that the time of this report to the best of my knowledge information and belief the information gathered and evidence I believe does Support Compliance and is true and accurate at this time so there are nine areas of el7 um these nine areas are enumerated here one through four um and these have been posted um for quite a little while um and then five through nine and so in tonight's presentation I'm going to highlight selected areas of this but if you're watching from home or you're here uh the full report

073is attached to board dos and attached to this agenda item in the meeting so the first requirement is to ensure that division assets are protected maintained and properly disposed of or recycled when no longer in use and there are a number of policies and regulations that govern this um we do require proof of liability insurance from Community users and vendors our Capital Improvement program allocates funds for capital projects um that also include Renovations um which honestly are pretty critical for some of the Aging infrastructure uh the office of facilities management implements processes for routine emergency and preventive maintenance and repairs uh our vehicles are properly disposed of through an auction at the end of their asset life cycle which is 15 years for buses and 150,000 miles for County vehicles which is kind of interesting

074because my car has more than a I mean my personal car so and I haven't disposed of it yet it's um kind of a fan favorite um but anyhow the Fairfax County Department of Vehicle Services conducts these auctions on behalf of the County schools and all proceeds from the auctions are allocated back into Fairfax County Public School operational funds our get to Green program is also the environmental stewardship program offering specific procedures for the responsible disposal of various materials um so in item two as we move to item two this really talks about maintaining appropriate Insurance um and is relatively clear around uh liability insurance um which our risk management team monitors and I also want to um kind of nice background music here for this um but I want to clarify as I go

075through this report uh there are some aspects of this report that I may pause and if when you have questions and indicate that they're more appropriate uh for a closed session in terms of some of the potential questions around legal risk but well I'm just R viewing this at a higher level publicly um we do maintain appropriate insurance and we administer um these insurance plans um liability insurance in particular to and also work to try to negotiate favor favorable premium rates um I know the Signa contract came up earlier and we do um the county also uses that insurance and I think we at some favorable rate because we're we're both um working off of that we also provide fiduciary liability coverage for individuals who either have a part in the decision- making of employee

076benefit plans administer the plan or its assets or whose name or title is included on Benefit Plan documents item three um ensures that all personel all Personnel who have access to material amounts of division in school funds are bonded um in in accordance with Dakota Virginia all Personnel have access to material amounts of the division and school funds are um this list is updated annually to designate the number of employee roles that will be bonded um all of the FCPS employees under the crime liability coverage are insured through V Virginia Corp or vorp uh with the requisite Fidelity coverage in lie of a shy bond is permitted under the code of Virginia therefore individuals do not need to specifically and separately be bonded as their covered under the policy through vacorp so that's a uniquely

077Virginia um sort of Interest I guess um item four uh protecting all the division assets including but not limited to the division's Public Image and credibility intellectual property information files equipment real property and fixed assets from loss or significant damage um to accomplish this scar risk management overseas in-house claims um and the management to effective handle liability claims we also have an earned media report highlighting news items we have a regulation that surrounds employee use of social media and finally our brand guidelines um are created and are actually being reviewed and revised at this time to make sure that um FCPS is visually represented in a consistent manner as we move on to the next topic uh we're going to take a look at how we Implement comprehensive risk management theft control inappropriate destruction or

078unauthorized sale um or distribution and we uh follow generally accepted accounting principles or the Gap principles our office of the com controller and SEMA is here this evening um and our risk management uh person um is also here Miss Peach um so that they're going to be a sort of our backup for questions um but this the office of the controller is responsible for the oversight recording and accounting of accountable equipment uh the Distributing or the Distributing and tracking of accountable equipment property identification tags um scheduling and monitoring inventories coordinating property transferer and disposal of surplus property and reviewing financial data uh also internal controls are used to protect inventory and assets included but not limited to asset policies restricting access to assets um physical inventories reconciliation of asset records uh as well as the

079segregation of duties of asset acquisition record keeping and Disposal we follow reporting and Reconciliation procedures to ensure Surplus inventory is validated and accounted for and finally our office of cyber security is in the process of establishing a robust risk management system aligned with the National Institute of Standards and technology and IST risk management framework number six um is about the office of division Council uh where we take responsible steps to protect the division its board and staff from legal liability um the office of division Council also serves as the in-house legal council and resource for the School Division and consults with the board uh and staff on a variety of matters to mitigate potential legal risk our legal team also reviews documents and provides trainings to ensure legal compliance in a number of areas honestly

080a very wide number of areas while keeping a breast of changes in laws and regulations item seven uh is really around adhering to federal and state laws as well as our policies regarding the retention and disposal of Records related to the business of the division we do follow the code of Virginia regarding disposition of public records and our regulation 6701 about our records Management program is one that's consistent with Commonwealth expectations as well as policy 6740 which outlines records retention and disposition the FCPS records management manual uh provides staff with guidance to ensure that all claims records are maintained and destroyed in alignment with the Virginia Public Records act number eight um talks about how we utilize Knowledge Management to ensure that assets are known maintained and transferred uh we do have some things I'd

081like to highlight here policy 5028 is our system system of inventory management um which establishes procedures and responsibility for system notice 6250 is our request it asset management system certification schedule and in this case for 203 2023 2024 it specifies the annual schedule for certification of computer and peripheral inventory data principles Andor program managers must provide certification by reviewing and ensuring uring the accuracy of their data once a year additionally FCPS exercises physical controls over inventory to include restricting of assets through proper storage and conducting periodic physical inventory counts with a Reconciliation of asset records our accountable equipment is asset tagged tracked and physically inventoried every two years through the accountable equipment audit and all fixed assets are purchased or acquired through a grant must be tracked separately finally on number eight the office of

082the comproller is responsible for the reporting of capital assets and ensuring the proper inventory record records are maintained and focus and finally uh to conclude tonight's executive limitation report I'm going to touch briefly on WE how we annually review existing leasing agreements um I know isn't that timely it's uh and uh I know just stay with me here and contracts and Lease agreements um we do have uh a risk management team which is Miss Peach heads up um that does review M contracts and Lease agreements from an insurance and risk management perspective um the review of the language that potentially implicates FCPS financially or legally is performed and FCPS does eliminate the language um or offers alternative wording before moving forward with the agreement so this is more one um area that we do utilize

083prior to um finalizing M us and contracts the office of division Council reviews agreements contracts M Us and other agreements to ensure compliance with the school board purchasing resolution and the Virginia Public procurement act and other state and federal laws a plan for exploring the reduction of annual leasing expenses will be presented in the 2425 executive limitation and this is going to be responsive to the followon motion passed by the board on the May 23rd meeting um which was a followon motion to the budget uh directing me to make sure that I explore reduction of these annual lease expenses we've had about a month since that um Direction so it'll be something I present in our 2024 2025 el7 presentation and at this time Mr chairman this concludes the summary of the monitoring report for

084executive limitation 7 asset protection and I'll take any questions the board has thank you thank you Dr Reed we'll start off with Miss seore Heiser I know that look just thank you very much I appreciate it and I know um for a little history when we first started to look at revising the El's many of my colleagues were surprised when I asked to work on this one and people were looking me like why would you want to work on asset management and so it is with real sadness that I'm here telling you that I'm not not sure I could vote for compliance on this okay El um I wanted to work on Asset Management because one of the things I don't talk about a lot in one of my passions and I think really um

085not just protects us from risk which one of the reasons I'm looking at non-compliance is because we're only talking about risk not only but most of this is talking about risk protection which is in my opinion the traditional way we talk about asset management but I one of the reasons I wanted to work on this and some of the number four six seven 8 and N are not just framed from avoiding risk but also framed from um for example number four protecting the assets of credibility intellectual property Knowledge Management isn't just inventory tracking and it tracking Knowledge Management is the management of knowledge so we're passing down information and knowledge it's a huge passion of mine I don't talk about it a lot from person to person so when we do have change in leadership

086or change in Personnel we're not Reinventing the wheel and this knowledge management section doesn't talk at all all about that it talks about risk it controls and inventory controls so my concern I'll be honest with you here is that well I really appreciate the work that you've done I really appreciate the risk management and I know there's been some additional controls youve put in place since you got here around um you know protecting our assets protect from threat from liability around um some internal controls as well um for security there a lot of good work you've done I don't feel this report reflects the true intent and even the words of what we asked for so I will be in a non-compliance today I just wanted to be honest and you know there's a few

087other things around um some of our you know I think things that may be better off in a different session but other risks that I think still need to be mitigated in um some of the advice that we get thank you yes ma'am thank you Miss seore Heiser Dr Anderson thank you I have a couple of questions and then I will share my comments um and looking at page two this is under number one where you talked about I think it's the first second bullet under ensuring the division assets are protected you talked about how delays and cancellations also help FCPS protect buildings equipment and ground from damage I don't think I understand that I which slide are we on again or which number I don't look at the slide the full report okay um

088under number one there's two dark bullets the second bullet that says ensure division assets are protected it's the first sub bullet the open radio button got it yes yes ma'am I how do school delays and cancellations protect the buildings from damage the buildings are out there well I think that um during inclement me during inclement weather um one of the things that we are very uh critical about or very concerned about is making sure that when they're dangerous conditions uh there are times we may have to cancel so that we're not uh like plowing areas which may take out things if there's a great deal of snow I don't know I'm just trying to okay understand this myself but the buildings equipment and grounds from damage sometimes it's hard to know where the parking lot

089ends and the sidewalk is if we have perhaps a lot of snow so if we are uh taking making sure we're plowing properly we might not plow down the um landscaping or the grounds okay I'd love to hear more at another time um my second question uh on page three um where you talk about the posting of FCPS excess equipment on the external Surplus website I never heard of that can you say a little bit more how is that disseminated and shared with the public at large yes ma'am um how are we sharing that at large do we have a oh a response on that how are we posting the excess equipment on the external Surplus website um you know I am taking over the warehouse uh in July and I've started to learn about

090it a little bit they have an active website that they post everything up uh uh I don't know the exact number of days prior to when they're going to auction or make it available but it's fully accessible they're continually updating with the EXs I can get you more details I would love that because I know we have some nonprofits in my area that might benefit from the things that are being surplused from FCPS will I add a link to that yes thank you um I think this is where I've kind of have struggled a little a little bit and I want to make sure that I get to this a little next year when this report is presented how do you anticipate it may be different so I think one of the things that will

091be different is in particular on um the item around um theou review because you've asked for a different level of review um next year we'll have a report a full report on the view of I'm trying to look here I think it's seven maybe it's 8 it's nine of course it is uh thank you um so item nine uh one of the things that the direction was is to have a plan uh to explore the reduction of annual leasing expenses so I'll be presenting that plan as part of the 2425 report that's something that's been a clear expectation from the board and so why will be different at maybe 1 through 8 eight well I think um there will be some things um the bonding I think is going to be the same I but

092it's a double check that it's accurate I think one of the reasons we review these annually is to make sure that all of the pieces are continuing to be managed um the um I guess the websites the get to Green programs the maintenance of appropriate insurances it's it's a checkin annually to make sure all of those things are current so some things will be different and some might look very similar okay are there any new um processes that are outlined in this report that were not present before you arrived at FCPS um actually we do have a few I'm trying to think of let me think about this we um certainly have taken a closer look at um some of the Surplus practices um around um Surplus items and again I think uh that's related

093to um a topic we discussed probably about a year ago um but just creating some checks and balances around Surplus items sure uh that is I think a new process um we're also looking at um I'm just trying to to do a read through here the com controller's office is similar um the bonding would be similar um the cyber security uh risk compliance would be new the uh work toward the risk management framework is not something that we had prior to my uh being here um the um established procedures and Reconciliation around auction and surplus um have been updated um I think that probably is it at this time that I can pull up but I happy to go through it again and send you something in the Friday letter that would be more specific

094that would be very helpful because the task before us is to make a determination as to whether or not you're in compliance or making progress yeah and I I have to have that information in order to see what new things have you brought in to make us better in being compliance and having that be highlighted would be so helpful there's a lot of good information in all of these that I have found to be very helpful it has given me insight into the division's work in a way that we have not had before so I appreciate that but it's the second part that I struggle with the evaluation of compliance versus progress and I know that's a piece that I've come full circle with it's where I struggled when we first started these like is

095this compliance or is this a progress issue for most of them it's both this one for me it's probably more compliance than it is progress but we have got to have the data be outlined this is otherwise a very nice list of this is what FCPS does right haven't said that uh oddly enough I find myself to be in a very similar place to miss um seism moiser um and I articulate I've got the same numbers for me it's numbers four and number six um I would not be able to U vote in compliance for this because of those issues and I know I probably should not go in great detail here um because these may be sensitive issues but I think there have been some significant concerns in the areas of numbers four and

096six that for me are are more important than maybe some of the other um or rather way more than some of the other components of this El thank you thank you thank you Dr Anderson Mr movine uh so I have just a couple of interrelated questions um pertaining to um climate resilience so we this was a very tiny piece in there with reference to get to Green um but I'm curious what we are seeing as a district in terms of our insurance premiums we're seeing around the country where jurisdictions have um not been able to get flood insurance catastrophic damage insurance is that affecting our community uh at this point that's a great question I just saw um what do I want to say a documentary on Water Rising on a coastal uh community so

097um Miss Peach could you respond to that as you review our insurance policies please so every um year our insurer does a um a review of our flood plane and we currently do not have any um building that is in the flood plane except for um one Elementary school and that is so far removed it is just one small little corner of that property and it it's not even going to affect the building at all C can you share which Elementary School it's the one in what is the one in Fairfax city Daniel's run yes Daniel's run I couldn't think of it okay got it um a secondary question um is on our reinsurance policies you know we've we've only had to dip into to reinsurance uh a few times during my term again for

098catastrophic occurrences but can you give us a sense of uh We've increased over time or just the St current standing yeah thank you Mr mine Miss Peach so I I don't mean to correct you but um it's not reinsurance it's our excess insurance so we are self-insured up to a a limit and then once we have access in place for uh general liability vehicle liability and Schoolboard legal liability and it's been I thank God we have not had to access it very often so okay thank you appreciate it thank you thank you Mr mavan Mr gun thank you um in reading through previous year's minutes because because I have nothing else to do on a Saturday night um there's reference to vehicles for the school board are there any Vehicles currently utilized or maintained for

099use by the school board not to my knowledge Mr dun is there any do you need to check with Mr muick or anyone else none of my knowledge either sorry okay how about how about FCPS leadership are there any company cars for I'm not aware of any company cars for FCPS leaders okay um so one of the factors oh let me clarify I know our Safety and Security Department has vehicles that our Safety and Security staff utilize of course so I mean from that standpoint there are vehicles but they're not like um you know cars that people are driving every day um and so forth so I I appreciate this presentation um as Dr andon said I previously said you know it it's it's hard to sometimes just look at these e reports and say

100this is a description of what FCPS does but I don't know if it's always done it this way and and what I'd like to to evaluate ear performance right which is the function of these e reports I'd like to be able to see like what you're changing what you're doing different so the progress piece is yeah can I clarify that Mr Don a little bit the purpose of an executive limitation is about compliance right it is about is the organization compliant in the EXP expectation that you have the executive limitations the progress is really in the growth and that you're going to Hope and I expect that we will see in our goals right but the goals are really the um outcomes that we want in the division and the executive limitations are the the

101means or the ways in which the division gets there so I I really am expecting that we just make sure that the structures and systems in the division are working in a compliant fashion and at the time at any time when you want to adjust how those are working like um the board did with the annual leasing directive then we're going to be responsive I'm going to be responsive and make sure that happens but there are a lot of systems in Fairfax County Public Schools that work fabulously and we just need to make sure we check in on them each year on how they're working and where they're not fix it but there's not like a tremendous amount of like I don't it's not this isn't where I'm looking at a lot of progress I'm

102looking to make sure we're compliant with the limitations that you've set in other words the boundaries for which the division can work within to achieve goals is about compliance to be honest which is different than progress in the goal reports thank you for sharing that um you what I don't see in this report is any discussion of uh waste um we've just had a very clear example of it tonight not under your leadership right but um you know within the last 48 hours we had a major crisis you went in and you solved it and then it's resolved um I don't I'd like to see that same proactive leadership decisiveness applied to the procurement because um I looked up the 2020 audit there were no findings for the procurement audit and and and so we

103get a clean audit and then we have multiple instances again not under current leadership but the S there there are systems that are broken that allowed this to happen and and so part of my expectation is um I I I don't think I've seen any e report maybe I'm missing it where there's been a finding of non-compliance by by you and your staff um so when I say you know progress we're we're told we're compliant across the board that can't be the case if we're having instances like this um and finally I'd like like to really take a step back and and have you and your team analyze should we be doing procurement at all if you go back to 1968 The Joint board resolution um it say the county will provide procurement services on

104behalf of FCPS it's only since 2009 based on the data on board docs that FCPS has been doing procurement and it's not doing a very good job um so if we can't do the job and in a cost-saving measure perhaps the county can do it for us under our contracted Arrangement many that would make a lot of sense um and again if we're not a center of excellence let's use a center of excellence um we already have cooperation on cips and other things and we have the purchasing res resolution that's adopted annually by the board um so let's further leverage the efficiency and workflow piggyback on their processes personnel and and um try to avoid disasters like um this 5year lease agreement which I want to reiterate could be handled legally in a manner without

105affecting the bond rating um it's done every day of the week I've done it personally and it's not even something I do as part of my core legal practice so uh I just would ask for your attention to that thank you yes sir thank you Mr D Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman I I normally try to send in questions in advance with attending all those graduations I really haven't gotten around to be able to do that so I apologize for that a a my question and concern lies with number four especially where it says division's Public Image and credibility uh I'm not just talking about our legal liability uh but I'm also talking I'm I'm talking about uh our division's reputation as a premier School District where we are very very proud of academic

106achievements kind of quality of Education quality education we provide to our students I'm not saying that we are not a premier School District I am not saying that we're not providing quality education but what are the steps you as a superintendent along with your staff who are working with the school board should take to protect that image and cred credibility because I want to I want to see our school district faest County Public Schools to be the number one school district in the entire nation if not the whole world I agree um so would I'm sorry would you clarify the question in terms of what steps what are the yeah what are the steps that we should take take you have been taking to protect that image and credibil credibility of a FX County public

107school as a premier School District well I think that we're doing quite a bit of work around the Strategic plan and making sure that we're making progress towards our strategic plan goals I think um making sure that our um Communications team is putting out uh stories that are reflective of the experience of students and staff in the county and uh there have been many many um multiple I think that's one of the points I put in here the board does receive an earned uh media report monthly that highlights those stories and the work the Communications Department is doing um and that work that occurs um around branding and around the um protection of The District's Public Image and credibility is critical um so I think those are the steps that uh we're working on and

108at the end of the day uh the steps we have to take is to make sure that what we say we're doing we're actually doing and that uh we are that preeminent division on a hill that we have been and need to continue to be agreed uh Dr Reed however at the same time uh unfortunately there are a number of people quite a large number of people in the community that a that reputation as a premier School District was in the past as opposed to being right now so we will be incumbent upon all of us especially you as our superintendent bring that reputation back to FCPS yes sir thank you Mr Moon Miss Anderson I just wanted to make a comment of the fact that I do think that that is what we're working

109towards um collectively as a board and with your obviously with your leadership I believe that there are numerous moments within what I've seen in my short tenure on the board that show that you clearly and and completely understand that that is what we're working towards and I am in support of the work that you're doing to make that happen I fully also understand the the reservations um that some of my colleagues I'm assuming um are are discussing currently related to this particular executive limitation I would like to remind um I think that the problem that I have with all of these executive limitations is there are so many components within one bucket that it's really hard to say that we're not in compliance because there are so many different things going on I also think

110that it's it's problematic to say that we're I do think that we're making adequate progress towards I so I am in support of of of the movement that we're making towards I also understand that at some point if we're doing our jobs well including you doing your job well is that we're going to get to the point where you do come and give us a report that says I'm in compliance and it's not going to be a huge amount of progress that's been necessary because we will get closer to where we're trying to go so I with all of those that said I do recognize the fact that there are components within particularly this El more than many that we have work to do and I appreciate the fact that you recognize the work that

111needs to be done and continue to lead our staff in that direction thank you thank you Miss Anderson Miss Dixit I'm just going to make one comment uh Dr Reed is about the the safety alarms going off in schools quite often is uh there's just faulty alarms I believe um so I don't know the cost to get them fixed because the preventative maintenance is not on track with FCPS and that's I think one of the reasons that that uh that can be improved um if we have the money but we don't have the money right so at least those concerned because I know a smoke alarm going off disrupts the entire school and the you know the St the education instructions so so maybe if that could that part can be U focused on a

112bit I agree thank you and I'll uh I'll make a note to and when you talk about safety alarms are you talking about like fire smoke yeah smoke alarms are going off like you know you'll just get emails that their school has yeah that's yes ma'am got it yeah M joh cunning um as one of my colleagues said this is so comprehensive um and I know that there is a difference between outputs and outcomes and being in compliance with structures is what makes everything easier um I just want to say that because I know there is so much involved I've been to the warehouse I've you know was here when we had problems with things being sold out of the warehouse by staff you know so I know that tightening all of that is really

113important and protecting our assets and that's just one little piece not even speaking about school buildings and um as we're talking about [Music] leases I want to commend the work that's being done because I feel that I have seen that you're putting a leadership team in place that is competent and that is maybe making changes that may take a little bit of time and that may be there might be push back because people are used to the Fairfax way which sometimes is not always the best way um I just want to compliment you on the work that you've done I know that there are so many pieces and we cannot be 100% at every piece it's impossible but I think we're in on the right track and I think you're on the right track I

114think the staff is on the right track and I think this board is also on the right track um and I just want to commend you for that thank you thank you Miss St John cunning Mr dun uh I would like to address uh number I mean first of all echo my colleagues I mean there's a lot in here as there are in all e reports and um I you know I'm I'm a big fan I think you've been doing an outstanding job but the one thing that sticks out here is number six take responsible steps to protect the division its board and staff from legal liability um I just think for that bullet point in particular there has been um multiple instances that I've witnessed in the last last six months where um not

115through your own actions but through those of your subordinates we have been exposed to Legal liability that should not have happened in a well functioning organization and so for that reason um and because lawyering and legal liability is at the at the very heart of any well-functioning multi-billion dollar organization um I I would urge consideration of what I saw at Penn State many years ago which is they had one lawyer for a university the size of Penn State so who provide the lawyering outside councel provide what they call general counsel Services we already employ multiple outside law firms that may be approach that uh you wish to consider here thank you Mr Dunn Miss cunning did you want to go back okay Miss eore Heiser thank you and so first I want to apologize Dr

116Reed that I didn't bring this up earlier to be honest it's it's been that kind of week and normally I like to talk to you before we get to this moment so my apologies to you my apologies to my colleagues also it's just been that weak um one of the things I loved about the El process is that there's room to say this is not that this there's great stuff and your staff is doing great stuff but there's big pieces that are not here Knowledge Management in of itself is not here and this is what I love about this process is we can say say hey this is not in compliance because of these three things we can ask you to come back with a corrective action plan and then we can vote to say

117with this corrective action plan you are now in compliance and that's what I love about this process because it is you're in compliance you're making adequate progress or hey you're doing wonderful things in one three five set I'm making those numbers up but we do want to see some corrective action on number four we want to see some corrective action on number six and we'd love to see some information on Knowledge Management and a little more what you're already planning on bringing back or on reviewing leases around contracts and procurement I think that's a good thing because that shows we're doing our job and saying yes your staff is amazing there's amazing stuff that and I and I know having worked with you there's a lot of controls and risk management processes you've put in

118place since you've been here and I commend you and your staff for that but I do think in this instant there's some pretty big pieces that I would love to see a corrective action plan to come back and address those concerns the procurement leases the um the Knowledge Management um number six and um some issues on number four and so I would ask my colleagues to to you know support me in letting this process maybe do what it's supposed to do in all the different ways and come back and say we want to see more in these areas and some of these things we've talked to you offline about so let's bring back some more and give you a chance to with the corrective action plan being compliance um I do think compliance isn't progress

119but I do think compliance has to address the areas that are in here and there are some areas that are just not addressed and some areas that I have concerns about so I would ask my colleagues even though I apologize for doing it this way let's give Dr Reed a chance to come back and address the concerns we're hearing today it doesn't mean she'll be in non-compliance forever it just means there's information that we'd like to see more that's really big chunks that are not addressed at all in my opinion so um I'm going to with that I'm going to bring a substitute motion to a I think it's a substitute there's no motion on the table at this point I will that's what I want to ask there wasn't there's not a motion to

120no see you would be making a motion to vote for non I just emailed you all the language but I would like to make a motion for non-compliance with a request for a corrective Action Memo um to have Dr re come back with the corrective action to address um number four standard four protection of in intellectual property to adequately address records management to ensure student and staff privacy is protected and further on cyber security policies regulations and controls additional measures to ensure protection from legal legal liability and describe Knowledge Management systems and structures in place and um additionally additional information around procurement controls and leasing agreements so and I I'll write all that up and Madam clerk you have the language I know I said that very fast I'm happy to try to I forgot

121one when I email it to you all I believe we do we're trying to get it into the motion's document now we'll just pause for a moment and I would love to see this process work through this area as well because I think it's it shows it in some ways we're looking for the full information that we're asking in this yes ma'am all right excuse me so M so the motion is on the screen is there a second but there's a motion there's a second Miss seore Heiser would you like to speak to your motion I I think I I did I just wanted to read it real quickly because it went by very quickly just to kind of make sure it captures everything but I think I I did and again I apologize for

122doing it this way I would just like to give Dr Reed a chance to address some of the the gaping areas that is are not addressed here so um um I would appreciate my my colleague support Dr Anderson would You' like to speak to your second yes I would and I had my light on to make some other comment so I'll just do it all right now uh one I I do appreciate what Miss um St John cunning has shared and I I just wanted to really elevate it because this is I think this board has tremendous confidence in you Dr Reed um and this is not a a personal attack we have to evaluate what takes place in the division and no one single person can we need the whole group we need the

123whole team to move this division forward and I I don't want for the two things to be conflated um the confidence in you does not mean that there's not things for us to address and then address them and then we'll move on as Miss seore Heiser has has shared so I just wanted to make sure that I articulated that um and then speaking to the motion I think there's two pieces there which is four and six and8 and I think in light of the conversations that we've had here we need to add number nine because that's missing yeah and I think I said it in my phrase is number nine to I don't see number six either oh no what was that no that's yep 4 six8 and nine yeah I mentioned nine as um

124I'm sorry I didn't mean to take speak out of turn we're going to recess for a moment so that we can get this thank you thank you don't go too far can I raise a question in recess I'm just nine is the piece and nine are we wanting me to come back like in the next meeting because that's really for the 2425 like we're not like I'm a little confused okay um because that's the review that's a reduction of annual leasing expenses I'm it's not likely I'm going to be able to get that done in a month I think it's the review component oh should I be speaking I know it's still my turn technically okay yes we just need to add number nine um misset low I just need to know exactly what you

125want for number nine we could just put I'm not sure for I [Music] yeah I wish in the future board members please return to your seats for thank you everybody for your patience without objection I'd like to allow the sponsor of the amendment to amend her Amendment as seen on the screen which she will read can we aloud can we scroll it down to the I can see part thank you so again my apologies to my colleagues for last minute um but I move to that the school board finds that the superintendent is in non-compliance I move to request a corrective Action Memo for El number 7 ask of protection that includes the following number four protection of intellectual property files that adequately addresses records management to ensure student staff privacy is protected as well

126as further ensure cyber security policiy regulations and controls additional measures to ensure protection from legal liability given board rais concerns related to the subject of the standard describe Knowledge Management systems and structures in place or planned information detailing how leasing agreements contracts M and other Agreements are to other to ensure assets are being reviewed and utilized in accordance with strategic plan goals thank you is there a second second Dr Anderson Miss seiser would you like to speak to your motion yeah um I just wanted first again I apologize for the last minute I really really do I just it struck me as I was reading it again today um the non-compliance are for things that are missing right adequate progress is things that are addressed but maybe not as much as we'd like these are

127things that I feel are missing I do not feel that for number nine one thing I wanted to mention is the two things that are talked about in the report are from compliance with legal standards and compliance with um risk management but the standard itself asks for utiliz in accordance with strategic plan goals and that is not addressed at all it's missing Knowledge Management is missing um I don't feel number six even gives us is is not even adequately close to addressing that concern and same with um some of the privacy concerns so that is why that's why it's a non-compliance because these are missing and so or so wholly inadequate addressed and this gives the superintendent a chance to come back to us and address them so I I hope I can get your

128concern thank you Miss seiser Dr Anderson yes briefly just with the recognition that while we're a while we are requesting for this corrective action um I know that that's usually provided in this setting that we may want to consider the more sensitive topics to be covered um in a different Forum um because I think there's some limitations to what we can be discussing in this setting as part of some of those um so that's one of the things I wanted to flag but other than that I think we've had robust discussion on this um thank you Mr dun I have a question about the way nine is written go um is that would avoiding waste and procurement reform be encompassed within the way is that is that within the intent of that it's part of

129the Strategic plan I think that would be part of the intent of the Strategic plan that's right yeah okay thank you all right Miss St John cunning um I have two questions uh one what is the time frame and then after we get that I'd like for uh Dr R to let us know if that is a reasonable time frame the governance manual says it will be delivered at a subsequent meeting so it's fairly open ended um I think we'd all want the superintendent to have the time necessary to do that um so are you requesting a specific date I am not whatever the superintendent thinks is reasonable for result is fine with me yeah I just want us to be realistic I don't want to burden staff or the superintendent with something that ask

130them for something that is going to be impossible to get to us yeah whatever is whatever Dr Reed and her staff thinks is reasonable is fine with me all right um if you have your light on and you're not intending to speak please turn it off all right thank you we will go ahead and vote for the motion that is on the screen if we could go back to the top of it thank you all those in favor of the motion on the screen please raise your hand Miss eore Heiser Mr McD Daniel uh Miss Marin Mr Dunn Dr Anderson Mr Moon Mr movine and myself all those opposed miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Anderson extensions Miss Dixit uh and can we have the clerk read the vote the vote is 831 the

131motion passes thank you all right so timing is that it's well the governor manual says it a subsequent okay meeting so not this meeting uh you have time to to the time that you need to bring an adequate memo back to us in your eyes okay all right agenda item 6 point excuse me 7.01 policy review asset protection the next order of business is the policy review for executive limitation 7 asset protection el7 following the board's vote in September 2023 and our vote at our February 8th 2024 regular meeting each year the board will review each of the 13 executive limitations at the time of the monitoring report is provided to determine if any revisions are needed moving forward the board will may also review any of the executive limitations at any time uh and

132make changes at this time board members May provide comments on Executive limitation 7 asset protection to determine if any revisions are needed again you can do this at any time it does not need to be tonight seeing none at this oh Dr Anderson I'm sorry I I don't have anything specific to share regarding this one but I do want to say I think this is a conversation we may want to have in a retreat because now that we've gone full circle with all of the Els there are some that lend themselves to be more for compliance base and there are some that lend themselves to be more there's progress because the the the data is a little bit more um absolute I just want to throw that out for consideration because now we've wrestled with

133it I think there's a lot of space for improvement um especially even with the language that's used to forward um our vote on this thank you at this time I know we already did that if there are no further comments or discussion I will call on Mr Dunn for a motion I move that the school board maintains executive limitation 7 asset protection as it is currently detailed in the Strategic governance manual is there a second I second Miss Dixit Mr D would you like to speak to your motion no thank you Miss Dixit would you like to speak to your second no all right we will take a vote on the motion all those in favor raise your hand Mr McDaniel Miss uh seore Heiser miss lady Miss s joh cunning Miss Marin Mr Dunn

134Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit Mr Moon Mr movine and myself that is unanimous agenda item it the motion passes uh agenda item 8.01 academic matters I call on Dr Reid for academic matters thank you chairman frish I appreciate that and this evening I have an opportunity to talk a little bit about a very time sensitive topic and that is uh the recently uh released um video professional development requirements just wait a minute for our presentation to load thank you so the recently um released vde professional development requirements for Elementary staff um are quite significant and I know we've seen divisions around us um talk about this and make plans and I think it's important to think about how we in Fairfax County Public Schools are responsive to these new requirements uh it's also important

135to note that for the first time in probably close to 30 years we're going to actually have a new basil curriculum uh for Literacy for our kindergarten through sixth grade students and that is a huge lift for our staff and I think it's a fabulous opportunity and lift particularly for our newer staff um because it provides real structure Ure and I've heard from a lot of elementary teachers uh the excitement around that structure particularly for our newer staff but it's going to create a significant need for professional development and I let's go ahead and go to the next slide please Kevin thank you one of the things I just want to put in context as well is here in Fairfax County uniquely perhaps we've had an inequity in planning time that's been a bit of

136a longstanding concern conc ER honestly uh between our Elementary staff and our secondary staff and our Elementary staff over the last I don't know eight years or so have um been performing Herculean tasks around instruction uh to Mr Moon's point in terms of being the best of the best these uh staff have been working hard um and really had less planning time than their Secondary School colleagues who also perform Hercules tasks and have had a bit more collaborative planning time together so that's the context Within These within which these requirements sit number one our elementary planning time has not been adequate over the last several years and number two we're going to be expected to do a significant amount of state required professional development and it's good professional development we're not fussing about it it's

137appropriate and a good and right thing to do uh to think about how we improve our literacy performance for our Young Learners and three we have a new basil curriculum which the board and our community has invested a significant financial investment in and we want to make sure as we roll it out that we roll it out well so let me just review for our public um what the Virginia literacy Act is requiring um and essentially this act as you know was passed in 2022 and to Fairfax County's Credit we were ahead of the game we'd been working on professional development um in anticipation and because we recognize that literacy um instruction is important so this at this time though I think what's happened is that there was a statute passed that had a timeline

138set which honestly is asking for a bit more training than you would normally do in this short time span um and I did speak with leadership at the state level at vdoe and they understand that this may seem um challenging uh but nonetheless that is the law at the moment so one of the things that um is clear that the Virginia literacy act requires that at the start of the 2425 school year which is this fall that contracted teachers have to start receiving evidence-based literacy instruction which is called ebl this training um an initial training has to conclude by the end of the 2425 year and on you know that seems like a fairly straightforward statement and then we go to the next slide it's not just a few hours folks it's 27 hours for

139all kindergarten through sixth grade teachers that's a lot of time in a schedule that already doesn't have sufficient planning time not including the basil reading curriculum that needs to be uh learned so this is a significant lift um and our reading Specialists uh k6 are going to be required to have 54 hours of time so I I really think that as we've been wrestling with this and our I will really just say Dr Pon and uh Marie lemon our elementary principles um our teacher Association leadership um have really raised this as a concern honestly and um our elementary principal executive board board um Mari usty Kelly Shear Sarah Harper the team has worked very hard um on thinking about how we could best provide this training for staff and I will tell you in past

140years it's often been a possibility that we could pull teachers out for example during the school day and have substitutes uh be able to provide instruction in the absence of classroom teachers and what I can say with great uh certainty right now is that there is a shortage of substitute teachers and we really want to use that as a last resort for professional development because we believe having our classroom teachers in front of our students is the best education that our students can have so we're trying to look for a model that does not pull our teachers out of the classroom during instruction leaving substitute instructors in place so this slide um talks about the actual training we're going to provide for the new basil and standards oh and by the way also new math

141standards um this year which we're obviously needing to address in addition to all of the literacy work um but this summer over 4,000 of our teachers are going to be receiving three days of training they're coming in during their summer and honestly it's a huge Testament to their commitment and dedication I mean we are paying them but this is three days out of their summer that over 4,000 of our staff are going to come in and do this work um and I know I'm grateful to them for their efforts and I know you as a board also are um with the new uh vooe mathematic s sols that are going to be implemented we're going to have to take some time to address mathematics and this totality is really a need it generates a need

142for additional on-contract teacher planning and professional time so I want to share with you this evening uh our proposal proposal and plan which I um intend to share with our staff in the morning as well as our families um we did meet with principles across the division but our belief at this point is the best way for us to um address these needs as well as um provide the strongest instruction during the day is to have seven early release Mondays next year for only Elementary schools um which is one a month uh but not in December I believe and not in January uh because we don't have Mondays sufficient numbers of Mondays um these early release dates um tomorrow in the letter to uh families we'll have uh the actual date for the pyramids that

143families find themselves assigned to which is the High School feeder patterns um and the time will be used for teachers to participate in this required professional development and it minimizes the need for school day substitutes which there is an extreme uh shortage what makes this Monday early release different than prior Monday early releases in Fairfax county is they're not every Monday number one they're just one a month um and only seven but secondly we're committed to providing supervision for students uh who are unable to access um the early release schedule which means for students whose families can't have them come home because they're working or uh are not able to access uh child care we're going to provide um activities and supervision for students on campus um we have spent a lot of time this

144spring um our elementary principal team partnering with Fairfax County um including the sac group uh to provide additional supervision and I'm really proud to say that the partnership with the county has been fabulous they're going to be adding hours to sack employees to support uh this program I've also um announced that we're going to have our central office licensed educators of which they are about 300 myself included many of the people sitting um in the gallery will also be deployed to schools during these afternoons to support learning activities and supervision for any students that are uh that need to because of whatever circumstances stay even though it's a an early release end of the school day finally I want to share that we are going to um be seating a steering committee next week that

145will include teachers principles and parents uh to make sure that the development and problem solving of this uh plan are that it's done well and that there's a group of shared interest stakeholders that will continue to develop and work through that plan I've spoken personally with the principal leadership the teacher leadership um and we've sent a note out to our uh PTA um I know and I've also personally spoken with um our SEPTA leadership to make sure we have representation and participation um in the steering committee uh We've committed it took quite a little while to work out the details but we have transportation twice for these schools both at the early release time and for those that need to stay and the late release time so it doesn't create a hardship on families and

146we have this one moment in time this year uh where we have monies for high impact tutoring and this is also a time where students who need extra tutoring will be able to stay and receive that because there are funds to pay those positions at this time um I also want to share that uh it's just critical that we think about uh the strength of working together uh Ted one of our elementary principles said today it's so important to think about teachers working together to learn how to use this curriculum and not on some kind of an asynchronous um professional development it's just far more uh valuable these will be onsite iners um staff development times on school campuses and um um the other thing I just want to clarify is that uh each it's

147one of the I think it's going to be one of the first times that 141 of our elementary schools are going to be consistently working on the same professional development goals to be able to effectively U utilize this basal curriculum and meet the vooe guidelines um and I think that's really important and um there's a strong commitment to making that work so um I wanted to share that this evening and as I said I think our communication options um are going to be tomorrow morning we'll be getting a letter out to families uh there's not really a scheduling urgency as we know that we're going to be meeting uh needs that are not able to be met um we're going to have our landing page on our website ready um up and running tomorrow so

148that families will be able to see um which Mondays we're talking about for their student students and one of the one of the strategies we're using is that they're going to be two Mondays a month some pyramids will have one of the Mondays and other pyramids will have the other that way we can use our Sac volunteers our boys and girls club volunteers scouting uh math Olympiad Science Olympiad all the activities the uh resources um we only need half as many of them because we can split them over to Mondays so we're trying to be really thoughtful and strategic in that so at this point uh Mr frish I'm happy to take any questions thank you Dr Reed Miss Le oh let me clarify I apologize um one of the really important things one of

149the things when I worked with our principles as we said we could not do something that would impact our learning time hours we had to still stay above the minimum so the hours we're utilizing don't get us anywhere close close to being um close to the state minimum in fact we're using some of our excess snow day hours here so we're well within our hours our um yeah so I'll just leave that there thank you yeah Miss Lady thank you um I love the plan I I I especially love the reality of inperson PD it's what it's what folks need and teams to work together learn together support each other um just a couple questions um you know I don't even know what year it was where we actually used to have an early release

150on every Monday um and I don't know I would hope that might be something that's considered in the future I do understand the hardship on families um but in terms of planning time I think we have to keep in mind that we have lots of people in elementary Master schedules who are coaches Specialists um espit things like that when they are in the master schedule it doesn't mean that um uh the the teams that they should be supporting the CLT teams they should be supporting they're not available to attend their meetings and so I I get how we're using those people to create planning time during the regular Elementary day but I think we're missing on the opportunity to have those instructional coaches with CLT teams um so I also I do know there's some

151elementary schools using monitors uh very effectively um but the other question I had was you know is this My worry is that we've come so far with attendance that um we hope we're going to do some communication with parents around while this is a shorten day it's a day it's important because I'd hate to see some people look at it and say well it's only you know five hours or four and a half hours um there's also concern around lunch you know I guessing lunches would start at like really super early and then my last question is and this could be part of your steering committee is do we look at all at any late starts versus just early releases um in terms of you know I get it we're doing an early release but

152could you possibly do a three-hour late start um down the road maybe or just as another thought or just even parent preferences you know based on you know different communities I don't know it's just just a thought um because I think that our teachers are pretty fresh too in the morning around their own learning so sometimes at the end of five hours I just want to make sure they have the um that they're energized by what it is they need be learning but uh but I absolutely like what you're doing thank you so just as a response to that one of the other Keys is and I heard that from several of you as I've spoken uh with you um individually we are putting in place an evaluation for this project this is not I'm

153not presenting tonight a multi-year plan this is a one-year plan to address the vdoe um requirements and our new basil curriculum um and so I think one of the things I've tasked the steering committee with is having an evalu valuation before the year starts that we at the end of the year can say as a result of this um planning time our student um achievement in literacy at the elementary level has been improved and also let me just say our teachers um I I think we have the best teachers in the country they're just hands down they work hard they're passionate they're dedicated they need some time to make sure this gets done well and I I believe that given that time um it also will help our our staff retention thank you Miss Lady

154Dr Anderson um thank you just to confirm you're not asking anything except for feedback from us this is just for our information correct ma'am okay thank you um I'm going to start here um one of the things that I looked at when you I think this was page I don't know what page this is but you said the classroom teachers need 27 hours um the three the three Mondays at three hours each do not come up to 27 hours how will the additional six be made up so it's seven Mondays at 3 hours so it's 21 so you're right it'll be six not we're planning as part of the pre the August days there's still like a couple days during the school year that are staff development days um so I think they're going to

155we're going to have to slide the six hours within those or the other planning time that um teachers have okay thank you and this training is for teachers of K8 the k6 is the training for all k6 teachers grade level teachers K8 is for the reading Specialists okay then I think I got confused on the first slide um not the first Slide the second slide you noted that great six teachers in the middle schools thank you by the way for bringing that for thank you um it says that they would participate with their grade seven and eight colleagues how are the seven and eight colleagues grade seven and eight colleagues involved they're reading specialist colleagues I should have been clear about that so I'll add that footnote okay that's why I got confused so so

156just share with me articulate for me what will be happening with the great six teachers in the middle schools so uh Dr presidia and I just talked about that they will not um on those Mondays what we're going to really work towards and I think there's a there are a lot of tangential benefits uh we're working towards pyramid alignment as well so I think one of the things that we've disced discussed is the possibility of sixth grade teachers working with their sixth grade pyramid colleagues so they may need a substitute uh for part of their day on those one Mondays a month so that they can participate in the same training as the sixth grade pyramid colleagues um and we have three middle schools that are in that situation so it would just be the

157literacy teachers at sixth grade the language arts teachers that would work with their pyramid colleagues the reading Specialists is kind of a specialized position right and okay sorry I I I don't think I have a question about them I just want to know what are the teachers doing did I hear you say that the grade six teachers in the middle schools will be working with their sixth grade counterparts in the elementary schools I think what we're going to have to do is they'll either work with their sixth grade counterpart for that generic sixth grade training or it's possible that the three sixth grade middle school um middle schools of uh language Arts teachers could come together also in work because their role will look a little different um and I don't know that I have

158a specific answer for which way that's going to land um I think that's something the steering committee will probably come back to me with but we want to make sure that wherever someone's teaching k6 literacy they're getting ample time to plan it's just that it seems to be by pyramid so they're not NE because we have homes and po there and glasow they in different pyramids I'm just trying to see how that would work I think it could go either way I think they could choose to participate with their sixth grade pyramid colleagues or their sixth grade pyramid where would that be they are the sixth grade colleagues there's no sixth grade in the rest of the pyramid they're Elementary elementaries don't have any sixth grade in our pyramids right well then there would have

159to be a different pyramid like a I was trying to get out yeah sorry a little slow tonight my apologies they are the sixth grade teachers there's no so they would have to go elsewhere and that has to be I think managed um are you anticipating that this work will be happening at the school sites or will will um teachers be moving to be together in some other location I anticipate it will be happening at school sites uh it is possible that a pyramid may come together at some point um but I it's the uh collaboration time is to happen at the school site okay I will say one of the benefits of having some schools in session and some planning is that and principles have talked about the ability to visit other schools and

160kind of see practices which again I think just help us work through some Fidelity concerns and how we're rolling out uh what we're doing so I think there's some again tangential benefits sure and I really I'm I'm enjoying the idea of having the license empy employees that are essentially based being deployed to the schools and I would love to see Dr presido put together you know the plans that he's writing up in central office for him to deliver it then you'll have firsthand knowledge in terms of the feedback that some teachers should have so that I will make a special trip to go see when that um space happens um speaking to the student supervision piece there will be space for every child who wants to remain at school yes ma'am and so they'll be

161able to be properly monitored and be productively and constructively using their time that's the expectation okay um one of the other things that I just tossing it out again I can't get out of my elementary school hat is just ensuring that the lunch times are aligned so that the teachers lunch periods are not now are not now encroaching into these three hours because if they didn't get a chance to eat they're going to have to do that before they start this work and I do agree with uh Miss Lady you know if there was some space to do this where the teacher when they're fresher because they still would have had a full day of work I know the constraints but I I did want to lift that up as you're just better when you

162haven't worked all day and it's time for you to do more um I do have a couple more questions I'd like to go back you don't for go back Mr movine thank you uh and thanks for the presentation Dr Reed so um to to Robin's question it was actually at this meeting 10 years ago um the J first meeting in June where we um approved the full day full school days for Mondays um and I remain very proud of that vote um but unfortunately it wasn't implemented as we ex were expecting we were sold a false bill of goods we were told that fles would be implemented universally throughout the district we that the TTT time would allow for um proper Elementary School teacher preparation time and U unfortunately that has not happened so that's

163that's a lesson uh learned um but the the main point I want to emphasize which um uh Miss and Dr Anderson just just touched upon um is the fact that we need to walk into this with the expectation that every child will stay a full day and we need to make sure that we have uh on-site uh work ready for them to undertake um the biggest concern I'm hearing is that uh principles or other folks on staff won't be able to be with their staff as they undertake the professional development because they're going to be having to monitor students um so I can't emphasize this enough I know Dr Reed in her presentation and at other points has um emphasize that that will not be the case uh but I just want to lay lay

164the ground here that it's it's my expect expectation as one board member um that we're going to have something for every student to do without encumbering um our school-based employees that's all I have thanks thank you Mr mline Mr uh Dunn um you mentioned that this is a one-year pilot is there a possibility that it could be extended to Future years Beyond this one year I think it'll depend on what the evaluation shows uh is the purpose of this half day Monday uh to essentially allow the transition to these new basil standards the math standards yes sir okay so so once those standards are fully implemented the half day Mondays arguably wouldn't be needed anymore right I think that um to Mr mine's point I think there are ways to create adequate planning and if

165we don't continue the early release once a month Mondays then we need to do something else so um I know I in meeting with Elementary principles today as well we're allowing some flexibility for steam or fles staff with monitor funds it's a whole another conversation but I think we I don't believe we can continue on the trajectory of excellence and again I'll go back to Mr Moon's expectations that I lead this um Excellence uh brand piece and I I'm going to tell you that I don't think we can make the progress we need to make if we don't give our elementary Educators adequate planning time and how we do that is going to be incumbent on me to come to you with a plan that makes sense I think for one year the expectation from

166the state and the new basil we cannot accommodate in our current structure we can't um I don't think taking full days off for Fairfax works because our secondary students need to be in school for their AP IB and so forth and um we don't need they have half days for other testing and those types of things so I don't think having full days for us is a good option um other divisions don't have this discrepant planning time between Elementary and secondary that we've lived with so it puts us in a little different situation um and we certainly don't want to have Elementary children home all day with no secondary children right because many of them would not have any kind of supervision so I think for us this is our our best shot at this

167for a year and um given our unique circumstances and wanting to make sure we have uh thoughtful um learning experiences for those students who are not able uh to head home for whatever reason um that still to Mr mine's Point enable school-based staff to uh have the planning they need but um a short answer I'm giving you a long answer to a pretty straightforward question which is I apologize but I we can't go back to what we've been doing it's not enough I don't know that this will be an answer Beyond this year if it's not you need to expect that I come to you with something that does provide that planning because it's not sustainable in in the school systems where you were previously superintendent or taught or as a principal what was the

168solution used in those systems to ensure Elementary School teachers had sufficient class planning time well um we actually I think it's called Triple T time here but we had the time that our Specialists um looked different it was scheduled differently um than it is scheduled here I'm sorry what what do you mean scheduled differently the PE Library Arts music um was scheduled in a way that provided adequate planning time for our Elementary staff and um it's just not scheduled in that way here to accommodate that do you mean the the those classes those enrichment activities are longer periods of time perhaps in a big block I think that we um provided more frequent and longer periods so that our classroom teachers were are our non-specialist teachers were able to plan in the same amount of

169time that our secondary um teachers were I I appreciate that because um you obviously have vast experience across the country you interact with people at conferences and you have a great Network um as you as you look forward I I hope there will be no sacred cows um what I know is 1970s through 2013 or so we had half day release Mondays which maybe parents weren't very fond of but in reading about it teachers were very fond of and that was also a period of time when Fairfax County became the gold standard in public education so we should consider especially given that we're in this era of remote work it's a completely different world now than it was 10 years ago whether it's something uh that should be Revisited for possible enactment or uh other

170approaches such as the one you mentioned in other School divisions but um having a concentrated block of time where we can actually use especially for children who need more enrichment or um looking at fles fles has been a crutch instead of really trying to enrich students through fles it's been used as a as a way to provide classroom planning time but it was never expanded as my colleague mentioned uh we could use half day Mondays for World Language instruction getting back to one of the goals um from the board 10 years ago to have every child fluent into Languages by the time they graduate so I just hope uh you will be willing to bring um you know uh you know think outside the box and and present a full range of options rather than

171just one approach because I think the board is uh would be willing to be creative and and look at this in a fresh way yes sir thank you Mr dun Mr McDaniel I applaud the Ingenuity um there are many things that we can create create time is not usually one of them but here we are um the question I have as you mentioned the magic acronym PTA um can you kind of go into some more detail on what has been done what will be done kind of that onramp to make sure that in school where we do have um a working relationship with the ptas that that's there it's consistent um and specifically how is that going to work in some of our schools that maybe don't have the most active ptas so great question

172and I you know one of the things I probably should have prefaced this with and this one of the last things I said to Elementary principles this morning uh we cannot let Perfection get in the way of progress we this is going to be a little messy it just is we need to be prepared for that right it we're gonna have a little challenge here a little challenge there and that's it's okay we're going to work work through it right um I think that we one of the things our elementary principles this morning uh they were making calls to their ptas this afternoon and evening because they want to make sure uh we want to make sure folks understand the why and the what and the how right um so I think we have some

173schools that have robust Afterschool activities which will move maybe earlier on Mondays um and some schools that don't have ptas that are as active and those are schools probably that some of our central office licensed folks are going to be spending more time at right um or um the sac volunteers or the high leverage high impact tutors that were um that we have hired that are there um we have a lot of instructional assistants too that aren't necessarily going to be doing literacy training that'll be supporting activities we have um you know it's it's going to look that time block is going to look a little different school to school it just is and um maybe we can even look at some youth teams or youth activities um in addition to what the Count's doing

174but um it may be even an opportunity for ptas to try new things that they haven't previously tried so we're just hopeful that that steering committee again is going to look at all the options and share best practices um and share um opportunities it could be a great time to think about composting you know I think we talk about a lot of the projects we don't have time to do I'm going to put in air quotes and maybe it gives us some time to do that and it's just again three hours a month um but it's it could be a great three hours a month um could be a running club could be all kinds of things we could do uh but I think we're going to find out a little bit um when the

175steering committee meets and you know we're going to have that chart of 141 schools how many kids are choosing to stay at each school what can we provide we may you know some ptas might create buddy ptas right if our school has an abundance of support maybe we'll have a buddy school where we can support a buddy School across the county I just think there are all kinds of options that help us be a stronger community and help our Educators be even more effective in their roles thank you Mr McDaniel Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman thank you Dr Ria for a making a presentation on this very important issue I agree with you that we need to provide additional planning time especially for upcoming school year 2425 to our elementary school teachers so our

176support there whether you need a school with member support or not I would stay in my support for that you know having said that couple of messages that I don't want not send out what people to see that we are sending out is that first first we are not going back to Half Time Mondays it's only seven Mondays out of year it's not every Monday in a second when you mentioned about deployment of the staff from central office to Schools are they were you saying that you are deploying them to work with the students or work with teachers I didn't quite get that I at this point it's teachers first or excuse me students first we want to make sure all our students have the best experiences possible that choose to stay or whose families

177have them stay I think there will be staff clearly that are going to be out working with teachers uh but we have strong teacher leaders and strong principles at the school based level so um we want to make sure our students um needs come first sure I mean I agree students needs should come first but at the same time another message that I don't want us to be sending out is that our central office staff have nothing else to do so they can spare they can spare half a day Monday yeah you know once a month for seven times to do this work with students to to uh supervise students activities otherwise as some may claim that we are over staffed in the central office and we can do away with some of those or

178if not many of the central staff that's a wrong message yeah I think we'll be careful about how we talk about that but I think three hours a month to spend in a school for a central office staff that support schools is actually quite reasonable I'm in schools a lot more than three hours a month already and another thing is I don't want that our central office staff do not have enough work to do to add another three hours to to be deployed to work with the students I mean that's additional work you know we are asking central office people to do because they have their ongoing work already right and next one is next one is when um as you are sending out communication to uh entire entire FIS County just to make sure

179you know make it clear that we are going to be evaluating this program at the end of the year and make a determination whether we may may not continue this in the future yes sir and and and and one last thing I think I had this conversation with you previously is that the for the students who who choose to stay at the school rather than going home on those seven uh Monday afternoon I hope that their time spent at the school to be as enriching as possible yes sir thank you Mr Moon Miss seore Heiser thank you um I know I'm very excited about our basil materials and and making sure our teachers have adequate time to get trained on them and I know this a lot of Demands from the state requirements so I

180appreciate the creativity and trying to find a solution while balancing um student learning um and you know I'm supportive of this for next year to kind of to make sure you have that time and space to do it I I really do appreciate the creativity you put into different ways to make sure the students are are supported right because it can be especially a little bit late difficult for families as well um so a couple things one when you talk about looking potentially at morning versus you know ear you know late start versus early release have you talked to done any surveys of of families to see maybe they have a preference I don't know but I was just kind of curious if that's something that you've thought about but it would be interesting to

181see what the community as someone said so much has changed in the last 10 years maybe they have a preference but yeah see I want to be clear that I haven't talked about decision between early releas the suggestion that came up by apologize you're correct um I think it's something that in the evaluation of this year we could certainly take a look at I've been a high school principal that had late starts um we had a two and a half hour late start every week to do planning and it was great planning those were some of also our most difficult days with students um for a variety of reasons um so I I've been in districts where we've had early release and I've been in districts that we have late starts and um I think

182it is always um prudent I think to think about in an evaluation what might work better if we even continue that you know down the road yeah and I appreciate that it's just for this year given the need for PD and and then but I also just wanted to to mention I liked what you said that in other divisions you've done scheduling different ways to ensure teacher planning time I know one thing that I've heard from many elementary school teachers is the need prep parody and teacher planning time and so I hope that you know since we kind of need to do this for this PD that we can look at it as ways to maybe more innovative ways to get the teacher planning time and fulfill some of the goals of the Strategic plan

183because one of the goals in the Strategic plan was equital access to enrichment opportunities and maybe we'll find in this year that this is a way to do that in in similar ways the TJ has that eighth period right maybe this is a so I would just encourage I hope as you do this your staff looks at how it works such just an evaluation from a PD perspective an evaluation from how can we provide some of the um as I think Mr M mentions fles we've talked about steam how can we provide these in a way that maybe maximizes or um teacher planning time or addresses some of the teacher planning time concerns so I hope that's some of the things you're looking at as you implement this this year um because as I've said

184to you sometimes we can't continue to do things as we've done them and expect different results so this is an opportunity to see if there's other ways we can do things um I also just wanted to make sure since again it is a little bit on the later side that as your team is looking at implementing this IEPs are mostly done for next year which means service hours are mostly set for next year and I want to make sure as we're removing you know a half day of school you know with enrichment or other you know supportive opportunities that we look at ensuring those I AP service hours are still able to be met by the teams um so I don't know if that's part of the conversations that are going on um in addition

185to to um related service provider time I know sometimes their time is really tight and they schedule things in really tightly to make sure this doesn't impact their ability to do related services in a pushin model I imagine it could allow them to do related services in a pullout or indiv you know separate model so just some things to think about I'd love to talk to you offline about your thoughts around those right yeah I yes ma'am and I I think the uh we are already having those conversations around the services and then what this one um three hours seven times might how that might impact it and what services we could provide um as a continuation so I think that's and again um I think the steering committee is going to really be helpful

186in those conversations as well thank you Miss seiser Miss Dixit uh just real quick I know just noticing the number of hours uh which is allocated 27 uh for the classroom teachers uh is there a m uh PD part of that 27 hours other than the reading and that's just the reading from vdoe that doesn't include the math so I know you also mentioned the new math standards are required for 2425 is there are going to be enough support for the teachers to get py if they don't have allocated time for that I don't really feel like there is to be honest with you I think people are going to be using planning time just traditional planning time to do some of that work um and that's not ideal so math is like a center

187of our Excellence as well other than reading and U you know their goal strategic goal so I mean I know you've allocated three hours but if we could you know add couple of hours for math any other day or the same day it's just to kind of P push that school towards all the especially the elementary the math skills are developed there those that that's the best time uh and I think teachers learning and teaching better and in different ways and in fact some of the computer science um curriculum can be also taught at the elementary level if if teachers are getting that PD well I agree and um I think we're going to be adding some steam staff at elementary so um in all truthfulness right our elementary school teachers are responsible for teaching

188a lot of content right that continues to evolve um and it would be fabulous if the standards would just stay still for a little bit um I think you know it's hard to master something that keeps moving um so I think this is a start to see how we can do a division wide roll out um but the math you know where my heart is on mathematics so um we're going to have to figure that out as well okay thank you so much thank thank you Miss s joh cunning hi um first of all thank you I'm really excited about this I'm really excited about the PD for the teachers and the consideration of giving Elementary School teachers uh enough planning time um as someone whose children were in school when we had half day

189Mondays um I know that it's doable I know that parents adjust I know that part of that part of it is going to be communicating great time to make doctor's appointments for your kids and they don't miss I mean so it's all about how we approach that communication I think that's really important um and also we're talking about enrichment opportunities we're talking about elementary school and guys recess play is a great enrichment opportunity I don't think we have to over complicate this I think there's just a lot of things that our kids need that time to to play and Studies have shown especially the younger ones they need that so I think sometimes we get over complicated in making sure that you know these kids are being you know having all this material thrown at

190them when sometimes our kids just need to play and that is enough enrichment for our younger ones particularly um I do not have a problem with half day Monday being something that moves forward because I lived it and that was when I personally would do doctor's appointments for kids braces all of that and then they didn't have to miss school at other times I think parents can be creative I also think this is a great opportunities for for us to partner with our County and being on the skip committee like how can we partner for some of those opport opportunities within our rec centers um and provide those opportunities for those kids so I do think that this is a time that we can be creative um and I do know that in terms of

191central office staff uh three hours a month I think is not going to take them away from a lot of their work and a lot of our Central Staff office do spend time in the schools anyway that is part of their job so um it doesn't mean that they don't have enough work to do because a lot of their work is coming into the schools and so I just want the public to understand that central office staff does not always just stay in the central office they're out there supporting our our our teachers our students so this is just something that they're going to continue to do but I'm really excited about the possibilities and also being on the skip committee working with skip to see how we can work on those three-hour um you

192know a month Mondays to see how we can partner with them thank you and I um the other thing I forgot to mention is we are planning I'm gonna do a couple Community evenings for parents if they you know to hear directly from me and also to provide direct feedback so as well as we're going to have an email um within our website the web page if people have questions it'll go to the steering committee so we can get answers out right away thank you Miss St John cunning Miss Marin yeah let's be bold let's make change I mean I support this I you know I thought after we got through Co that would or during Co it would be the opportunity to pull in Virtual learning in a new way to use technology a

193different way and we just couldn't make that happen and we got to change some things and there's nothing more important than literacy academically um i' love to know more about why that why that change was made and what the data show how did that work well before and like where we are now maybe it's kind of a moot point but you know I know there's regulations about planning time for staff it was one of the first things I worked on before Co stopped us all in our tracks but they've been talking about this like you said I think it was eight years actively so um they definitely need this there's no going back I think my colleague is absolutely right about how to Market it and play and activities I think the one thing I

194want to be cautious of is that there's not a gross inequity of schools that can and schools that can't but like what a great way to ask people to be part of this you know um so i' I'd like to also you mentioned our scheduling is not um common in other places I'd like to know how other school districts schedule I don't know how we got here it's clearly not working I'm glad you're working on a solution I also think the schedule for secondary needs to be examined I hear from people all the time they're taking their kids are taking PE in the summer so they could get in their band and their world language in high school I mean this stuff is we've got to fix this stuff kids should not be choosing between

195music and World Language or business and whatever else they want to do um and finally yes it's a great opportunity to partner with our County um I believe the sac memorandum of understanding was issued in 1987 and has not been updated since so what a great opportunity to update thatou and figure out how to provide school age child care as well as our inhome child care providers who are pivotal people in the County's um Early Childhood child care system so I'm I'm all for it and I'm happy to um address the Public's questions and encourage us to this is what we need to do for our students and our teachers need this and our teachers say they need this we have to do it so thank you for coming with an Innovative solution yes ma'am

196thank you Miss Marin Miss Anderson so I love being in the messy middle I think it's awesome um there's always opportunity for excellence in there somewhere um so I'm fully on board with that I love the fact that you guys are pulling in the ptas I would really strongly suggest that you make sure you're going through the principles so you get to the p too um if you just focus on the PTA level support you're missing a a a huge trunch of our of our programs um in that vein we also should probably be talking with the county to make sure that other Community Partners are aware of what's going on certain things like buses from the Pentagon don't run until 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Mon like any day of the week and

197so those are types of things that we should be responsive so that we can make it possible for parents to get home um so if that is all at all possible I think that that would be an awesome thing to be able to do in that vein also we've talked a ton about Community Partnerships in terms of business Partnerships this is would be an opportunity to maybe have corporate volunteers come in in in you know in controlled ways um also I will say that I have had the opportunity to talk to several principles who are doing an amazing job utilizing their classroom monitors to also provide extra planning time because what they're doing is using that the classroom monitors to help aid the CLT meetings and so the benefit of doing that I just want

198to make sure that we're actually talking to the principles to ensure that we have those robust sharing moments to talk about how that is all happening and then the other thing that I'll say is that I think that some of the things that you guys were doing with Sprouts um over spring break could obviously be utilized here particularly if you were trying to do some sort of remediation kind of kind of work with our kids so I think that that's a particular good opportunity and I know that um Miss clo is already extremely excited about some of the things that you guys were doing so I think that it's an opportunity to share some of those so yes ma'am and I have to say that's a great connection um because a lot of the Sprout

199activities would be very uh transferable to the early release so thank you thank you Miss Anderson Miss Kareem I'm also very excited about this um I like how you mentioned how they'll get tutoring services and like other after school activities um after the early releases I think something we could explore is getting high school students involved so in my school we have um Woodson math Partnerships like we'll walk over after school and teach the middle schoolers math or like our computer science on our society we'll like go to local elementary schools in our pyramid and just teach computer science um and I know like this would be like during school hours but I do think it wouldn't be too bad if we missed like three hours of school anyway um and like we could switch

200around groups so it wouldn't have to be like the same groups each time and like you could jump around and what uh Sophie was saying earlier in public comment about having financial literacy like that could be another thing students teach um after during these hour early release hours um and I also think it would help with teacher planning because like high school students are mature enough that they don't really like obviously like a teacher would be there to supervise us but then they could also use that time for planning so yeah just my thoughts thank you U Miss Kim I that's fabulous because we have a lot of high school Partnerships where the high school students walk across I've see them when I'm visiting schools so it's a great idea I I just think that's

201what's going to happen right Learning Happens best in community we need planning our students need the best we have and coming together I think we figure that out together all things are possible thank you Dr Reed agenda item 8.02 oh I see just under the gun I apologize M seiser just one really two quick things one quick thing um Dr re one thing we've talked about in the Strategic plan and one thing that you've talked about is opportunities for inclusion yes this might be a good chance to have social inclusion opportunities I think it's a great opportunity so thank you yes ma'am I'll stop there thank you Dr Anderson yes um I I think the idea of sprouts is one of the things I wanted to raise but that's already been covered I just wanted

202to kind of throw in there the steering committee if I like the idea that you've ensured that SEPTA is participating if we could also make sure that our title one group participates because that's a different set of issues or maybe even MSA I'm not sure which is um the most um germine or maybe it's both but there are some issues that are happening in those communities that should be part of this conversation um in the survey that you talked about teachers um being able to do I would also encourage you to consider having parents do it at the end of the year you know was this a problem was this not a problem um but I'm really looking for that plan for the grade six teachers I know we kind of were not speaking the

203same language just a little while ago because it's a matter of equity and I'd like to make sure that that is in place and once the steering committee com um completes their work will that plan be shared with the board yes ma'am okay thank you I would plan to keep them in place all year okay right because it's not just the development too often I think we put a team together to craft the development and launch and then they disperse and then we Implement and go off the rails so I want to make sure that the steering committee stays in place um and we'll also facilitate the evaluation at the end of the year that would be great I think that's a a good thing to do to continue that evaluation um and I'm really

204really excited about this being in person and not a virtual not another module but opportunity for people to really work with each other um and my final thing is more of a question than a comment um I'm not sure if this is a Dr pidia question but can you speak to what kind of supports are typically provided to our teachers when there are new standards it happens every eight years in one subject or the other so it's not something that is not a frequent occurrence how do we typically support teachers in that um space I will defer to Dr precidio on that question about how we do that here in Fairfax County yeah no thank you for that question so I mean we do it in a number of different ways one of course is

205updating our planning and pacing guides and making sure that you know teachers have those uh Shelf ready lessons and materials um available and updated with the new standards so that they don't need to do all of that work on their own um and then we do a lot of job embedded support for that work so so you know for example with our uh new math standards schools that have instructional coaches math coaches uh the administrative team will support the collaborative teams with opportunities to process that work and basically run job embedded professional development that way yeah because I think we have math this year and I think the next one is science or social studies it's one of the two coming up very quickly thank you thank you Dr Anderson agenda item 8.02 superintendent matters

206thank you chairman FR so I just I'm going to be brief uh because we've got another meeting after the meeting I just want to um note that yesterday was the last day of school and if anybody's continuing to go to campuses uh but just a big thank you to all of our staff a great year and just want to give my grateful thanks also big shout out to high school principls and all High School staff involved with graduation ations um and those principles who came to be a part of graduations who don't work at high schools um we it was a great graduation season I'm really proud of our graduates um our families that came to celebrate and our staff also enjoyed the Cappies uh I think uh for those of you who are there

207uh just unbelievably talented young people and a big shout out to our Educators in the music and Theater Arts um had a chance to attend the Asian leadership Alliance scholarship banquet in our Hispanic leadership Alliance scholarship reception uh some incredible graduates headed off to do incredible work I just so proud of our students um and at this point I'll leave it there um it was fun to see the kids all uh cleaned up today our athletes I did go down and watch a couple of the State final events and um whether our kids are on an athletic field in the classroom on stage or in the shop we've got amazing young people so a lot to be proud of up thank you thank you Dr Reed agenda item 8.03 Financial year 2025 risk assessment and

208audit plan presentation I call on Miss Co for a presentation on the financial year 2025 risk assessment and audit plan good evening Schoolboard members FCPS colleagues and the community members for those of you who may not be familiar the office of auditor general reports directly to the school board via the audit committee so uh tonight I will present our fiscal year 2025 risk assessment which is the road map guiding our audit efforts for the upcoming fiscal year which will be be uh beginning next month July 2024 through June 2025 so we will um focus on the presentation right now this slide two is the summary of of what we are going to cover we can move on to slide three slide three sets the stage of our discussion this slide outlines our mission and Authority

209each year the office of auditor general submits the annual audit plan to the audit committee and this year happened in may now I'm going to present it to the school board slide four maybe I can slow down a little bit first and we are at slide four slide four sheds the light on the details of how we craft our plant we have gathered inputs from various sources including feedback from the Schoolboard members a committee citizen members surveys interviews with FCPS staff and neighboring and look at our neighboring and Nationwide school districts in internal audit reports you will see the numbers and the percentage of involvement from our stakeholders so rest assured that as Auditors we are leaving no stone unturned in considering all all types of risks Slide Five even though it is a little

210bit late at night I will need a drum roll here because it is the result of our audit assessment so um here are the key outcomes for the fiscal year 2025 risk assessment and I will go into each audit Topic in more detail next slid six and seven represent a key metrics so this slides explain the why we selected this audit topics so this topics are supported by benchmarking financial and other indicators as well as the support from FCPS employees school board members and audit committee members and I will go through each one of them um briefly for the first line item is the business process audits these are performance audits of financial transactions mainly for school and we also include Central offices as well as schools are our bread and butter and it is

211essential to continue to perform this audit and then for the second and the third line is the construction and renovation Contracting process as well as the critical process review for hiring one can see that we have obtained overwhelming support to perform plus uh the industry relevance as well because we all have a yes for benchmarking that the other K12 audit shops are also conducting similar Audits and moving on to slide seven slide seven we start off with local school activity funds it is a requirement per the code of Virginia so we uh propose to the school board that we should continue and then the next one is the procurement process including the relevant information technology processes it also receives strong support and it also has the uh industry relevance last but not the least student

212disciplinary process it is an area that has not been audited by my office before and so we propose to include it in the next year audit plan slide eight is the operational plan which laid out the timeline for each audit aiming for completion before June 30th of next year the only exception is the local school activity fund audit um which requir the year-end balance validation so after we go through the title the topics and we are now going to uh go through the wats to be included in each audit at a micro level so slide nine and 10 they are the carry forward audits from fiscal year 2024 these are ongoing audits that are currently happening with Scopes already approved by the board so I'm going to spare some time to go over to slide

21311 slide 11 explains the business process audits which is I think one slide uh yes thank you as I mentioned before we will audit Financial transactions at schools and non-school sites uh Career Technical and education fund accounts will also be included as part of this audit slide 12 uh which is the construction and renovation Contracting process audits its objective include the evaluation of the checks and balances and regulations sampling of contracts to review and comparing with other K12 organization contract mechanism for constructions and Renovations moving on to the next slide critical process review for hiring I'm sure all of us would agree that tent acquisition is critical for the success of FCPS so in this AUD we will review the relevant process for design and operating Effectiveness identify key and redundant controls and provide recommendations

214for improvement moving on um next slide is the local school activity funds we talks about that already so I think we can go to the next one which is the procurement process audit this audit will focus on the procurement process managed by both the office of procurement services and the department of Information Technology um since we talked about the procurement process a little bit ago in the meeting I would like to compliment that that the last contract audit completed by my office like we discussed was in 2020 with the focus on Soul Source contracts only then moving on to the next slide which is the student disciplinary process the objective are to evaluate the disciplinary process including appeals for compliance and also the Fidelity of implementation across all schools tools we are also hoping to

215do benchmarking so that we can compare and contrast our practices at FCPS the next slide is the continuous monitoring and I am almost done with the presentation and this slide will um talks about what we are going to focus next year for continuous monitoring that we will be ramping up our analytical reviews and also help us to make some smart choices in sampling and and I'm sure all of you know that for auditing we are selecting a samples to review because we cannot looked at all of them so hopefully with this tool can help us to make smarter choices then uh the next one are the uh all the other duties as described is the other ogag duties and I just want to highlight a few here that we will be um continue to focus

216on the fraud ways and abuse inquiries as we discussed in the previous meeting and the audit committee meetings right now we have received more than 70 cases as a year um so again I want to thank for all the Schoolboard members support in spread the words of the important to see something say something and we will also continue to be active in providing training which is item five to our employees and we will continue to also ensure our own audit quality which is item seven and we will follow up on each audit recommendation and Report the status regularly to the audit committee as well which is item eight mentioned here and moving on to the next one the next slide um it talks about next steps so today we are the Bold line number two

217um that I'm presenting the plan to the board and there will be a work session scheduled on June 25th there will be sitting together to have more time to discuss um with the approval schedule on July 11th and the last slide here uh for those of you who may be interested to find out more about our office you can find some helpful links and with that this concludes my presentation tonight I would like to hand the time back to chair fridge thank you very much uh auditor general as a reminder we are going to have a work session on this later this month all right Mr Dunn um I'll keep it brief since we do have a work session I think the ogag having worked with office of inspectors Generals in the federal government uh

218government accountability office outside Consultants you know um Accenture and Bane and others I think there's a a a mission that needs to be defined more closely by the oag um earlier we had the example of the procurement contract um and uh and you know I have a lot more to learn about oag but what I expected to to learn over the past six months is that oag has saved us significant amount of money because every oig audit in the federal government will say we did this audit the this is the fraud waste and abuse we found or the inefficiencies and this is how many millions of dollars we're going to save through um grants that are rescinded or um Pro business processes that are improved and and and essentially you know we need to see

219the return on investment from the oi oag because you know there's the theoretical you know con consistency with other standards but I don't see the cost Effectiveness and from a taxpayer perspective you know that's what I would expect to see I would expect to see um things prevented so that we don't have 5-year freezer Warehouse contracts um and uh and so that's what I would just ask that while you have identified some good audits here that I support we need to have a um a mission that aligns so that ogag is not working hand inhand with staff in some sense you should be adversarial to staff because you're reporting to the school board and our function is oversight so if you're working too closely with staff then you know it's it's like regulatory capture and

220so uh I would just encourage as part of your mission for 2025 to not just conduct these audits but to think about the mission and how to be more effective at that mission so that at the end of the year and and how you frame your reports um you know we can see the the value in our taxpayers our constituents can see the see the value and and and thus you can contribute in a POS postive manner to the increased efficiency of the of the school system operations thank you thank you Mr Dunn Mr mline uh thanks and just one sentence Esther appreciate all this work and I appreciate the effort you went to to get uh input from all four team members and crafting this plan for the coming year so look forward to

221working with you thank you thank you Mr movine and thank you Miss Co all right agenda item nine consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure Roberts rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval excuse me of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through Board review and documentation has been provided to all board members in the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda is on the screen are there any objections to the adopting the consent agenda atem items by unanimous consent uh I I object to adopting item 9.02 Award of contract hazardous materials removal contract by unanimous consent adopting item 9.02 by unanimous consent is objected to and we

222will consider it separately after consideration of the remaining consent agenda are there any objections to adopting the rest of the consent agenda by unanimous consent there being no further objections the consent agenda is amended as adopted the question now is on item 9.02 um with unanimous consent of the board without objection uh I would like to move 9.02 to consideration at the next school board meeting seeing none we will move agenda item 9.02 to the meeting on June 207 7th thank you agenda item 10 new business the following are new business items there will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled at a future meeting agenda item 11 board committee reports I will now call on the following standing committees uh for their committee reports public engagement Miss Anderson

223do you have a report very very quickly um I am excited to say that the public engagement committee has worked hard to ensure that we received um robust feedback from our advisory committees and we have um submitted the document that that we've been talking about the operating manual for our community advisory committees as new business this evening and we will vote on it on the 27th so I'm excited to share those those documents with my colleagues in the next couple days and we will move forward with that to actually get that over the finish line so we're excited thank you Miss Anderson governance committee Miss seore Heiser do you have a report yes the governance committee continued to work on policy 8130 at our last uh committee meeting and we have finalized all of the

224sections except for the community engagement section so we'll have a meeting next week on June 18th to fin like that section and then look forward to the work session on policy 8130 on June 25th so that is my report considering the hour I'll keep it short thank you Miss Eiser cpdc Mr dun do you have a report no I do not thank you audit Mr mine do you have a report given that we just heard the audit plan for next year I think we're good thank you Mr mine all right uh agenda item 12 board matters next on the agenda is board matters I will call on each School Board member to speak Mr Moon thank you Miss Dixit thank you doc uh Miss Anderson pass thank you Dr Anderson um just a couple of

225things I do want want to say congratulations to the new principal at Justice High School Dr Shawn Roland who is coming to us from an in I'm sorry from false Church High School he was the assistant principal there um he's since he was appointed he's had a community meeting and I have to say our community is very enthusiastic over his appointment expectations are high but I think um there's a lot of excitement with what he will bring to to Justice High School I also want to say very quickly congratulations to the Justice High School Wolfpack theater that were nominated for eight cppy Awards and with two wins earlier this week Sophia hemmond for supporting actor in the male role in a play the picture of Goran day and Elijah cassa also lead actor in a

226male role in a play also The Picture of Dorian Gray um just want to quickly give a big shout out to the students at badier elementary um once again they they have been so impressive with their py PX presentations they are thoughtful in terms of what problems they tackled and have had some tremendous um ways to address those issues um last but not least I do want to say congratulations to miss Shay hmar at Columbia Elementary um who was named the outstanding elementary teacher and also outstanding new principal where we sit currently Miss Raven Jones from Luther Jackson um yes and we do share her so I know you want to share that as well um again great graduation ceremonies I don't want to go into all those details I'll be putting that in my

227newsletter so I do want to say congratulations to the class of 2024 and most importantly happy summer to all of the students who began their summer sessions today thank you Mr Dunn uh well I want to celebrate for uh to start with that at the FCPS honors uh last night we had uh multiple winners uh from the uh Mount Vernon District or schools attended by Mount Vernon District students um including uh Maryann casselle uh a multiple disabilities teacher at Lauren Station Elementary School uh for outstanding Elementary new teacher uh Simone keilani Jenkins an English teacher at West pic High School uh for outstanding secondary new teacher and uh Daryl C Byam uh at a special education department chair at Lewis High School for outstanding non-school-based professional employee congratulations to these amazing Educators um I also

228wanted to share that we have some fabulous new principles um at Mount Vernon district schools including uh Mr Carrie dimmi at Mount Vernon High School uh Katie Miss Katie plunky at B Haven Elementary School and uh Jean consola at Fort Hunt Elementary congratulations to these uh fabulous administrators for joining these schools and helping to ensure they provide a world class education to every student finally I just wanted to celebrate the fact that um Holland Meadows Elementary uh which has uh about half of the school uh coming from a nearby apartment complex has finally received school bus transportation after more than a decade of advocacy by by the community so I wanted to very much thank superintendent Reed and coo Andy muick and executive director of Transportation Paul dandre for making this happen I also wanted

229to thank U my predecessor um uh Dan St and Karen Corbett Sanders for their advocacy and the community who really lifted up these students who for too many years have been forced to um walk along an unpaved path in a area of increasing crime uh to to school uh in inclement weather and and all all year round so the school bus uh transport a ensures these students are protected and safe and uh provided with Equitable access to to their school on on a regular basis which will help to resolve the chronic absenteeism that uh has confronted the school in in recent years so thank you again to the great FCPS leadership for making that happen thank you Miss St John cunning so first of first of all I'd like to congratulate all the graduates I

230had the honor of attending 11 graduations I won't name name all of them but I started I believe with the first one which was key Center and ended today with the last one which is was the adult detention center and I want to commend FCPS staff for educating all of our kids regardless of what their needs are and these graduations especially the smaller ones were just so compelling uh I also had the privilege to speak at the claron Elementary School sixth grade sixth grade promotion ceremony which was really exciting um at the award ceremony for our for our staff I was honored to be able to present the outstanding School operational employee to a person that I've had the privilege to work with for five years Miss Abbott who was fantastic and very well-deserving as

231well a highlight our Lewis High School special ed chair uh department chair that also won an award um I was able to attend the Early Childhood Roundtable moderated by supervisor Dalia chak and we discussed different ways to Spotlight uh opportunities for kids with early childhood education opportunities I was also very proud to attend the walk-in my shoes program that was spearheaded by Olivia who Olivia Bradley who came and spoke before this board and it was fantastic to see kids learning about different abilities uh and it's amazing to see what a second grade student can do when they're really motivated uh she presented me with hundreds of signatures in support of expanding the programming among third and sixth GR graders across FCPS um I would also like to do a shout out to the Cappy winners

232uh from my district uh featured actor in a female role in a musical Jordan suly for lisov from Hayfield Elementary uh Hayfield Secondary featured actor in a male role in a musical Carter ellf also lisov in Hayfield Secondary and the amazing set from leral also won a Cappy um finally something I've been wanting to say but we haven't gotten to board uh matters uh in several meetings in several at several meetings is that I was really happy to have a tour with Dr Pon of the wish center with supervisor Rodney Lusk uh to look at the work Innovation skills Hub the wish Center and start looking at possibilities of how we can partner with our Community Partners to expand offerings to our students um perhaps in different settings to make sure that they get the

233skills that they need so I'm looking forward to maybe developing Partnerships that will help our our um students I hope that everybody has a relaxing and happy summer our students and our teachers take care of yourselves teachers you deserve this time off thank you Miss Lady thank you I'd also like to do offer congratulations on the FCPS honor nominees and winners um congratulations to drainville Elementary School principal Jamie gadley for winning the 2024 outstanding principal Jamie sat through our entire meeting this evening uh waiting for the board vote to award the contract for the renovation of drainville Elementary School renovation project uh so she is quite a leader and very proud of her also congratulations to her new Middle School's principal Monica verb for being the region one finalist and the outstanding new principal category

234um I also attended the Cappies on Monday and had the honor of presenting the award for stage management to Hearn and high school's Charlie olssen hearnen won four Cappy Awards second only to West Springfield's eight Awards um very proud of my drainville school winners critic Awards to Langley's Alden Walcott and hen's Ellen lton the critic team award to TJ stage management heran Charlie olssen stage crew hearin amalay abun and Haley kleene and vocalist in the mail row hernan's Ethan Hardy um and then lastly I just want to lift up two people who were on the debate team for Langley uh the class six Lincoln Douglas first place recipient was visha rasi and then the class six public forum second place was an sha and sahil gubbi congratulations those students and congratulations to all of our

235graduates uh who crossed the stage at some point the past couple weeks um and again I want to um Echo what my colleague has shared and that is to wish everyone a restful um summer and come back refresh for next year and that's for all our faculty uh and staff and also our students thank you thank you Mr McDaniel pass Miss seore Heiser I will skip most of what I plan to say I but since we did celebrate with AA Pi heritage month and immigration and immigrant heritage month I had to say something as the first Asian-American woman on the school board and the first indian-american person on the school board I just had to just say I really recognize how much um representation matters and it's amazing to me sometimes that I think that

236my mother was a refugee and um my dad came here on a scholarship and I I don't think they ever thought that their daughter would be an elected official so it really matters and in IM immigrants bring when I think about what it took for my parents to leave everything they knew and the culture that they knew and come here with no money to get an education so we could have a better life that determination and grit is what makes our country wonderful and I just had to mention that beyond that I just wanted to say because I'm such a fan of theater congratulations to the bradville cppy winners including Wes well including Robinson Secondary School Kira Gilligan who won for best comic actor in a female role for Pride and Prejudice Riley kosal and

237the props crew at Lake Bic secondary for their excellent work on props and Romeo and Juliet and a little extra shout out to Lake brck Secondary Schools for best play two years in a row this year for Romeo and Juliet that is the first time in history of the Cappies that a school has won back-to-back best play Awards so one last thing a huge congratulations to West Springfield High School for winning best musical award for Sweeney Todd that is also really amazing um and I will just one quick thing I want to give a shout out to the Woodson High School pyramid Community for holding a really difficult conversation about the power of our words about the impact of hate speech anti-Semitism racism and really starting a courageous conversation that was led by students so

238give a shout out to that pyramid hopefully we can have more of those conversations in other parts and and our student rep was part of that student panel Rita and she did a great job along with her peers on leading that conversation so with that congratulations class of 2024 thank you Miss seore Heiser Miss Marin excuse me Mr movine I just wanted to extend a virtual handshake to to Mr moon on another Valiant uh competition this year for graduations well done sir um and then uh just very briefly want to uh extend a hug to uh Miss Dixit and Mr Dunn whose Offspring uh graduated on the stage this year we enjoyed um ACC costing your your children uh and uh wish them all the best in the future thank you Mr movan I'm sure

239The Offspring appreciate your sentiment uh all right agenda item oh see what I did I got messed up with the list Miss Marin thank you well we all know this is a time of year of transitions this week in South Lakes we had two major transitions two new leaders Miss Britney Rogers will be the new principal at Lake an excuse me principal at forestedge elementary she comes from just down the road from Lake Anne Elementary and Mr Carlos sewer joins us for South Lakes High School to be the new principal from elsewhere in Virginia so I was there for both of those announcements and the staff is really ecstatic so as such with this time of transition I want to share here tonight that I will not see be seeking to remain Vice chair for

240the next year after my current term concludes in mid July since being selected as Vice Chair by my colleagues in January and throughout the budgeting process it's become painfully clear that we must get the money and that is due to our Public Schools being chronically underfunded by the state as I've also been the vice chair of the Virginia Schoolboard Association North Eastern region during this these months I've observed a ground swell of Interest across School divisions to work as a coalition to get the money the effort must have attention if it will be successful and I believe I can play a role in this I served as Vice chair knowing it was during a transition time and I believe I've tried my best to do my duty to get this board situated and put some

241processes in place and orders that I think will remain to be and uh the work still has to be done but I think having two veteran members in the leadership positions has been successful for the start of this board now that there has been some time to get settled I think it's appropriate to consider the leadership for the board not only for this coming school year but for how this July's decisions pave the way for the next year so I look forward to helping with the smooth transition of leadership uh that is to come when the board makes such votes next month happy Sumer I hope our Educators and staff rest and uh we will be back later this month good thank you Miss Marin uh agenda item 12 one second here go uh the

242board will now recess to go back into closed session and hopefully be back soon for e e