001this microphone this March 21st 2024 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will come to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the national anthem by the Spring Hill Elementary School orchestra under the direction ofs graduate class of 22 of his original song I matter uh for me in honor of neurodiversity affirmative a neurodiversity affirmation week aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all two [Music] l [Music] all [Music] [Applause] by thank you thank you thank you how are you feel feeling good yeah all right and let's give it up for spring hair Elementary School for playing national anthem and this song
002I that I wrote is I'm out for me this is one of my favorites we hope you like it as much as we do and this water I matter for all I'm not the boy with was locked the boy thought something to be fixed I'm a limit to VI not a boy with gifts words I say secary you see the past the ordinary find my sanity Joy is my w in my family I'm out of for all of my Humanity I'm out for all of my [Music] Humanity seing fire strength and desires I have it all which can you see te and fire strength and desires it's all in you and it's all me hey I should M to you cuz I matter to me I should matter to you cuz I matter to me
003that's my feel music in my soul autism doesn't mean I'm off and it's not all that matters about me and music I find by Harmony and music you hear my Humanity hold a miror on you is me you see to send fire strengths and desires all that's in you is in me too to and Fire strength and desires I have it all can you see Ching fire strength and desires it's all in you and it's all in me I should married to you cuz cuz I matter to me I should matter to you cuz I matter to [Music] me what you see is why also [Music] breathe I'm out of for all of my Humanity I'm matter to me I matter for me I matter for you thank you for letting my mom play for
004you thanks for cariari let's see this again sometime can wear one more time for our performers in order to comply with Section 22- 3712 D of the code of Virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a close meeting on March 21st 2024 to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as I were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting do I have a motion miss lady do I have a second Miss St John cunning all those in favor miss lady Miss A J cunning Miss seore Heiser Miss Marin Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit Mr Moon
005opposed abstained that's unanimous for those at the table all right Madame clerk should I be reading in the new members before we take these votes unclosed actually yes given that they were inclosed we should have them thank you all right uh Mr mavan has submitted a written request to participate remotely for a personal reason this evening all those in favor of accepting his request please raise your hand Miss seore Heiser miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Marin Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit Mr Moon that's unan and myself that's unanimous for everybody in attendance Mr Maven will you check your microphone good evening Mr chair one more more time good evening Mr chair wonderful we can hear you loud and clear wonderful uh Mr McDaniel has also submitted a written request to participate remotely
006this evening for a personal reason all those in favor of accepting his request to participate remotely please raise your hand Miss seore Heiser miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Marin Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit and Mr Moon and Mr movine that is unanimous and myself that is unanimous for all in attendance Mr McDaniel will you test your microphone good to be here thank you all right we hear you loud and clear uh at this time I'd like to recognize in our audience this evening we have Virginia delegate and former School Board member Laura Jane Cohen we're not going to let you leave if you stay all right I call on Miss St John I call on Miss St John cunning for a motion I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a
007student who assaulted another student at a school and cause substantial disruption to the school environment and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent is there a second I second all those in favor Miss seore Heiser miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Marin Miss Anderson and Mr Moon all those opposed oh uh sorry and Mr McDaniel and Mr mine all those opposed and myself in favor all those opposed abstaining Dr Anderson Mr Dunn Miss Dixon are you voting and misstic it uh so will the clerk read the vote sorry I have nine yeses and three abstentions thank you motion passed appreciate it this is a reminder that uh according to a recent vote to amend the Strategic governance manual school board members will no longer make remarks about proclamations when it is presented
008for a board vote uh they may choose to make remarks during their board matters agenda item 2.05 Music Theater and arts month Proclamation I call on Mr moon for a proclamation thank you Mr chairman uh for tonight's Proclamation celebrating Music Theater and Arch month I know that there are several teachers from our theater Arch programs uh along with acting theater specialist Miss mave Nash and art specialist Mr Aaron Stratton and we also have a teras elementary school course director and music teacher Carla Uchi and we have a couple of students upon my invitation CL came from s High School also M youth from langy high school with them Mr chairman March has been officially designated as arch in our school's month encouraging communities Across the Nation to focus on dance music theater and visual Arch
009education this month serves as a reminder that all students deserve access to an equiry in the delivery of dance music theater and visual art education and well as County public schools has thriving fine and Performing Arts education program with an average of 650 music educators over 255,000 students in instrumental and coral programs nearly 400 our Educators and about 25 students 25,000 students in elective secondary art FCPS hosts one of the largest theater education programs in the United States FCPS dance has programs at the Elementary and high school levels dance music theater and Visual Arts students at FCPS demonstrate the importance of qualityy and Performing Arts education programs to the lives of young people and well as FCPS art programs are known throughout the state and Country as a model of Excellence emphasizing conceptual learning personal
010relevance and innovation ation in March and throughout the spring FCPS grp pyramid to celebrate the arch with the pyramid AR shows exhibiting the works of Elementary Midland high schools in each Community each year Midland High School artists are recognized with regional and national awards through the Scholastic art Awards as well as other art recognition programs and well as FIS county music ensembles perform at many confer es and have received several National ACC notably the S flag of honor the sou cup honor band blue ribon School induction into the national band Association Midwest clinic and others FCPS groups often receive Superior ratings at the state assessment local competitions National competitions and festivals throughout the United States and abroad well as FCPS theater and dance for a vast array of extracurricular Arts experiences including dance showcases plays
011musicals drama clubs improv competitions student directed one act Festival the VHS State one act competition and the capis the capis on International High School programs that celebrates theater performance journalism and student ownership resona in Fairest County Public Schools FCPS theer students and teachers are recognized at this annual Gala hosted at the acclaimed johnf Kennedy Center in Washington DC now therefore be reserved FES cany Public Schools recognizes March as dance in our schools music in our schools theater in our schools month and youth art month to celebrate and acknowledge every day their fine and Performing Arts education experiences and opportunities are an essential part of every student's well-rounded education ISO move thank you Mr moon is there a second I second Miss Anderson I will call for a vote all those in favor Miss CIS moiser
012miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Marin Mr Dunn Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit Mr Moon Mr mavan and Mr McDaniel and myself that is unanimous agenda item 2.06 read across Amer America and Library recognition month Proclamation I call on Miss Marin for a proclamation whereas read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every Community to celebrate reading and whereas parents and families teachers students students and members of our community all come together to celebrate the joys of reading and to encourage it to become a habit and where as public schools are places where every child is welcome and where students are encouraged to delve into different books from a variety of offers that will appeal to an increasingly diverse student population whereas April 2024
013has been designated the 39th Annual National School library month we recognize here that school librarians and Library staff are entrusted to teach the skills of locating and using information through traditional resources and new technologies to provide literature appreciation activities and to guide and encourage content and recreational reading to every student and we as school librar serve as positive environments for all students to access and engage with a well-managed library that provides for free expression and access to ideas and school libraries provide materials which reflect the ideas and beliefs of different religious social political historical and ethnic groups and their contributions to the American and world heritage and culture and whereas lifelong learning begins in it and is systemically developed through the school library curriculum of Elementary and secondary schools and the school library contributes to
014the individual growth and development of all students while fostering both excellence and equity in education whereas Fairfax County Public Schools is firmly committed to promoting reading and literacy as the Catalyst for our students future academic success their preparation for America's jobs of the future and their ability to compete in a global economy and whereas Fairfax County Public Schools has provided significant leadership in the area of community involvement in the education of our youth grounded in the principle that educational investment is key to the communties well-being and long-term quality of life now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board proclaims April 2024 as Library appreciation month in recognition gratitude and Commendation of school librarians and Library Information Services employees the Stellar contributions they provide to school communities and urges students to visit their
015school and local libraries and therefore be it further resolved that the fair Amer program calls on the Fairfax County Community to celebrate the privilege of being able to read and recommits our community to engage in programs and activities to make our County and country's children the strongest readers they can be is there a second Mr Dunn Mr Dunn I will call for the vote all those in favor Miss seore Heiser miss lady Miss Miss Dixit Mr Moon Mr McDaniel Mr mine and myself that is unanimous agenda item 2.07 neurodiversity affirmation week Proclamation I call on Miss seore Heiser for a proclamation thank you whereas neurodivergence is a biological fact and the neurodiversity movement is a civil rights movement that emerged from social justice efforts and social science research beginning in the 1990s whereas every person
016on our planet is neurodiverse as we all think behave feel perceive and learn in different ways that are unique to each individual due to their identities and experiences all meaning there is not one better way or what Right Way whereas within the neurodiversity perspective there are neurodivergent ways of being in which an individual's cognitive functioning is different than society's perceived quote unquote functioning and is associated with diagnosis such as autism ADHD dyslexia auditory processing disorder PTSD and more whereas since a strength based approach to ADHD autism and other related diagnosis is better than the medical deficits based model that also recognizes that society's current Norms beliefs and structures can create barri barriers to access and affirmation for neurod Divergent students whereas according to the National Institutes of Health an estimated 15 to 20% of the
017world's population exhibit some form of neurode Divergence exhibited driven by both genetic and environmental factors and many successful and famous people such as Emma Watson Travis Kelce Simone biles Richard Branson Carl Sean Daryl Hannah and Billy ish are neur Divergent whereas this neurodiversity Equity work is about building mindsets that drive our language address biases promote spaces of belonging and Center human variability at the Forefront of our decision-making processes and actions whereas Fairfax County Public Schools is committed to ensuring Equitable access to a quality education for all students by un universally designing instruction and educational environments employing a neurodiversity specialist in the audience the first in the nation for K12 school divisions lifting up neurodiverse staff members recognizing that there are different ways of being in our schools and communities affirming the abilities and unique strengths
018of each and and every Stu of every student and staff member presuming competence promoting positive self-concept and identities and ensuring that spaces and school communities do not require students to mask their unique individual characteristics or assimilate to participate thank you Miss tore Heiser now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board renews its commitment to creating neurodivergent affirming schools and hairby progr claims March 18 to 24 2024 as neurodiversity affirmation week in recognition of the cognitive Brilliance that every student brings to our system schools and communities thank you Miss seore Heiser is there a [Applause] second I second Miss Marin I'll call for the vote all those in favor Miss seis Mar Heiser miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Marin Miss Dunn Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit Mr Moon Mr mine
019Mr McDaniel and myself that is unanimous I would like to invite all of those who support the neurodiversity affirmation week proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the deas do turn everybody [Applause] I would like to invite all those in support of the Rita Across America Library recognition month Proclamation including Rachel Grover Rocky Ron middle school and 2023 Virginia school librarian of the Year Kimberly Adam shood Elementary School Jennifer bton Katherine Johnson Middle School Canon kingr Claremont Elementary School Katherine Dugen Washington Mill Elementary School Stacy Gilbert Hayfield Secondary Mary Goen Woodburn Elementary School Christy Hall William Haley Elementary School Trisha haer Weston Elementary School Carrie K Falls Church High School John Landis anadel Terrace Elementary School Alyssa lingler Mason Crest Elementary School Allison mmer Lorton Station Elementary School Mara
020Madigan North Springfield Elementary School Lauren May rides Providence Elementary School Christine Millet Rose Hill Elementary School Carrie Ali Ames Bucknell Elementary School Terry Orvis dogward Elementary School Danielle Powers Frost Middle School Samantha Reynolds rolling ele Valley Elementary School Chrissy Ronin Marshall Middle School Megan Cino Longfellow Middle School Melissa Thorp Pine Springs Elementary School Elizabeth Elizabeth Toledo Marshall High School Kim seagull Angela C Amy tbet Jim Woodall instructional Services Department Terry Ral manager Library Support Services Natalie Lorenzi coordinator Library Information Services and all school librarians Library information and support service employees and staff present to please join the board for a photo at the front of the Das [Applause] all right I would like to invite all those in support of the Music Theater and arts month Proclamation including Meredith U Langley High School student winner
021of a 2024 region Scholastics Arts award Miss Carla Uchi chorus director of music teacher at Tara Center Elementary School Mr Aaron Stratton art specialist Miss mave Nash theater specialist and all music theater and arts teacher and staff present to please join the board for a photo at the front of the Das e [Applause] every con think that's the plan plans y board members please take your seats all right 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 have signed up to speak this evening additional information about signing up to provide comments at Schoolboard meetings Schoolboard regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the school board's website during the sign up process community members acknowledged that they were
022informed of the school board's expectations for proper decorum when providing comments these expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room we ask audience members to be respectful of one another shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remark 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 please call the first Speaker Bernie D [Applause] [Music] Leo good evening my name is Bernie Deo I'm the theater teacher at Marshall High School school last year
023around this time in a meeting two things were announced by the school board first you approved generous raises for after school stiens for which we we are very very grateful right good they know they're cute um it was also announced by the school board there was an approval for a warehouse for scenery props and costumes for our shows and while that was exciting news and a longtime dream for us there has been no movement that I know of for this I'm here to lobby for that warehouse which would serve a number of needs we spend thousands of dollars and hours making scenery much of which gets tossed into dumpsters because we just do not have the room to store it after show closes case in point many years ago I had a professional set designer
024build me a 1950 style Booth Diner Booth it was great it was beautiful after the show was over it was a space killer in my set shop I couldn't store it I reached out to all my colleagues and said who wants this it's beautiful somebody take it or I will have to dismantle it nobody could take it nobody had the room we tore it apart threw in the dumpster and it broke my heart cut to this very month two teachers sent out an SOS email hey does anyone have a 1950 Style Diner Booth had we had that warehouse we would have had that now someone's got to build that again twice and throw that out and that's valuable resources um the same goes for uh Not only would it save us time and thousands of
025County dollars but also too it would help save the planet it would help that we're not throwing so many set pieces and lumber and things into a landfill um I'm leaving the profession because I'm exhausted maybe if I didn't have to build so many things I could borrow things it would make my life easier and more of us St thank you Cheryl [Applause] Binkley I'm G to turn this upside down and give you the least important first um first of all though this I'm telling you why that every school in Fairfax County in fact the nation should have a theater Arch full-time Theater Arts Teacher K through 12 not just 9 through 12 okay that's because Theater Arts uh kids who participate in drama are more likely to attend other classes and less likely to
026drop out they they Theater Arts can close the most persistent achievement gaps and I will send you all of the studies to show you these and they contribute to student resilience and social emotional well-being students who participate in drama performance score 65 to 100 points higher on the SAT uh verbal portion and usually score 35 points higher on the math portion um we have a limited number of electives in our schools and when you start adding in all of these things that are unproven we are losing our best proven Solutions um okay so the important part the theater arts program is one of the most important elements of the school's repertoire of offerings because in the theater all are welcome and students learn to be accepting of the wide array of humanity in all its
027beauty it has always been and will remain a safe place for all of our unique commonplace variedly abled and Divergent students to learn and be their authentic selves that is so important so students the the other important parts are student learn to clean up after themselves it's a cardinal rule of the theater first thing we teach them um the other is they learn to memorize and to recall what they've learned and improvise if the memory fails they also learn to ask themselves why did I do that that way Christina McCormack [Applause] good evening chairperson frish members of the board and Dr Reid my name is Chris McCormack I'm the co-chair of FCPS Pride I'm a board member of the transgender Education Association and most importantly the parent of two FCPS students I'm very grateful for
028the opportunity to speak tonight after celebrating our transgender community in a rally outside just moments ago you may know that March 31st is transgender day of visibility which is important now more than ever in the face of attempts to eliminate critical protections and health care for transgender people I'm also here tonight to celebrate and speak up for our Fine Arts and theater te teachers during art and our school's month I'm thrilled to be here with our amazing theater teachers we know that lgbtq students are frequently the victims of bullying and harassment and discrimination they're often made to feel alone or scared or unsafe at school we also know that a firming adult adults and spaces drastically reduces youth suicide rates in other words theater saves lives I can personally attest to the role it's played
029in the lives of both of my students and I'm forever grateful to the amazing staff that creates a space for my students to thrive as their authentic selves please keep our Fine Arts and libraries safe and welcoming Spaces by ensuring representation in books music and theater all of our students deserve to see themselves reflected in books to see the divers of experiences to which they will be exposed and to learn to think critically for themselves I'd like to finish tonight by urging you to take action and support of our theater programs having that warehouse space would save money and greatly Aid the continued success of our FCPS Performing Arts Community I've seen a lot of you at Kappy's Awards so you know how good we are I believe that the warehouse has been approved so
030I urge you to create it as soon as possible thank you for your continued and I hope increased support of both our the staff and our lgbtq plus Community lastly please see and stand with our transgender students staff and faculty Willow [Applause] woki Dr Reed board members my name is Willow Walky she her hers president of the transgender Education Association and board member of FCPS Pride I live in the drainville district I'm a parent of four hearnen High School grads and two grandkids in the past couple of weeks The Washington Post published an article about how bullying at bullying of lgbtqia Youth has increased overall and doubled in states with anti-trans legislation National media cover the death of a bullied trans student in Oklahoma and a crowd organized by outside organizations descended on lcps Schoolboard
031events the students who do this bullying learn from adults the adults that they see trans kids are a safe Target trans kids are being bullied by their state government the school systems and those bullies see their parents yelling at Schoolboard events I'm grateful FCPS has stood up to the bullying by our state here in our safe little faira the Board of Supervisors made a proclamation about transgender V visibility this week the stats about suicide attempts are often cited when you hear speakers on trans but those attempts don't happen because we are trans study after study shows that trans people are happier after transition but the effects of losing loved ones friends jobs and for kids their homes and families can lead to despair the people demonizing trans people keep working to ban books Force schools
032to tell parents if their kids might be trans before the kid knows their parents are ready and wants to remove safe restro restroom access for Trans people reading books informs us about other perspectives it doesn't change who we are Banning books is done by people who are afraid of those perspectives I have never read a book with a trans character in it in school and that didn't change who I was thank you Lauren Mahi who is virtual good evening my name is Lauren Mahi and I am speaking tonight as vice president of the Fairfax County Special Education PTA SEPTA members include an array of students and their families representing a wide variety of neurot types talents and disabilities FCPS claims to support every student by name and by need but for many neurod Divergent students
033this has been a hollow promise two often mandated assessments are not provided in accessible forms to all students students with Developmental and intellectual disabilities lack access to appropriately challenging curricula and to their general education peers despite the research supporting inclusion and the need to presume competence gifted Learners who need small class sizes are told they must choose between advanced classes without support or small self to Advanced academics students who struggle with executive functioning are given failing grades because they can't find their assignments or figure out how each teacher uses schooly differently those who struggle with organization or emotional regulation are told to give up one of their elective choices to take strategies for success or personal development neither of which has a coherent effective curriculum used across schools two weeks ago SEPTA hosted an event
034with Dr Reed and a number of FCPS staff to discuss the needs of twice exceptional or two e-learners those who are gifted and and have disabilities the recording of this event can be found on SEPTA's YouTube channel and it contains very exciting promises for the future we look forward to a time when the full range of neurodiversity has a place within FCPS with differentiated offerings and appropriate settings available to the students who need them we greatly appreciate the work done so far by both Kristen haor The neurodiversity Specialist and Dr Nono olad The twoe Specialist and the statements made by the school board in its neurodiversity affirmation week Proclamation tonight we look forward to ongoing actions to improve the educational experience for all neurod deer students thank you George Basera good evening Dr Reed and
035school board members as this school board is beginning to to settle in it sounds like two early themes will Define it first it's the updating of a 40-year-old School boundary policy with an expected vote in May of the of this year and staff will recommend potential boundary changes to the board with a vote by June of next year and the implementation that fall as a member of the board of supervisor recent redistricting advisory committee I would suggest having a community task force on this made up of no more than 20 people the second is implementation of the Strategic plan where the school board understands that everything is not the number one priority but real accountability metrics are needed throughout the plan next I would like to add one General item and one personal item the
036general item is whatever happened to the superintendent's Collective bargain update at these meetings the collective bargain resolution was passed last March 9th a new strategic plan can be created in less than n months then why can't we have a near First Agreement by now there's nothing to report from scps that should be stated at the same time the associations should State updates on their end as they are frequent speakers up here covering where they are now to their timeline of sitting at the table with the district the system has paid for resistance in HR they're just sitting there and waiting for Next Step from the associations where probably around or over 200,000 salaries can be utilized somewhere else during these tough budget times next the personal item is from my daughter I've already related to
037Dr Reed and Dr Pon and Dr King can relate my comments tonight to Dr Pon why do nearly all high schools high schools never have girls and boys varsity basketball games played back toback in the same location the way this inequity stands is that nearly all varsity girls are nearly all at all scbs high schools will never play at home in front of their full school and County community because most people choose to attend boys games on that one night my daughter would love to see at least rival Varsity high school teams play each other at at the same location two sets of games on two different nights out of a three-month season I've heard school officials say where where will we put the lockers and money lost at the gates for over 20 years
038the district and Regional championships have occurred back toback boys and girls at the same location how do we need more uh this is occurring and high school do you need more Mr D Ro or is the real hurdle the athletic directors at our site at our schools Daniel Bradley good evening my name is Daniel Bradley and two weeks ago you heard from my amazing daughter Olivia who was a few row behind me in the pink dress she was very excited to be invited back for the proclamation on neurodiversity but was disappointed that she would not be able to read her speech due to procedural rules don't worry though she did record Her speech last night and we'll be sending you all the link later on I would like to impress upon the board that the
039rule preventing students from speaking at consecutive meetings could be changed in instances where no other students have signed up to speak if we are here to help make life better for the students of FCPS why not give them every opportunity to do so to share how they could be helped with that in mind I am a neurotypical person with a neurot neurode Divergent daughter and I learn more every single day that the way our minds work is very very different but mostly I've been learning just how exceptional she truly is it's an amazing feeling of pride and joy every single day but there's also a deep-seated sadness that comes with this experience at 38 years of age I'm only now learning basic things about 1 of the population 20% of people Lear learn in a
040different way than I do neurod Divergent learning is not a disability it is a different ability in the same way that some people can throw a ball further than others and some can play an instrument far better than I can which is always true with this in mind I would ask each of you on the board to continue moving forward on the request my exceptional daughter made just two weeks ago to enhance the learning opportunities for those that are neur neurode Divergent and to create a day of learning for all students to learn about their fellow classmates that are neurode Divergent I didn't have it as a child and I am way off I am way worse off for that experience let's continue to grow our understanding of each other in every way possible and
041as my shirt says ADHD is awesome thank you Lissa cotz who is also virtual so I'm here on behalf of Olivia a young lady who asked asked me to read her speech to you this evening I'm back I'm Olivia Bradley and I'm a second grader at WSS I have ADHD last time I told you about myself and my idea and asked you to create a day in all schools to teach about differences I think this should be taught not only at FCPS but all schools across the world there are a lot of famous people who are neurodiverse like Greta thunberg Daniel Ratcliffe and my favorite in the whole world Emma Watson oneth of the whole world is neurodiverse if you don't teach about differences kids will still be mean and I know that because kids
042are still being mean at my school as the school board can we please work together to make a day of learning about differences happen some ideas I have are that schools could create stations where kids learn by doing different activities or an assembly like my school's going to do or if you could get Emma Watson to come swe speak that would be even better Sunday I had a coffee date with Miss Lissa the CEO of Milwood and herself Simon we both had yummy croissants and she thinks my idea is really important and wants to help we're working together to figure out how to get funding for my idea to be done in every school in Virginia as the school board can we please talk and work on making my idea happen words have power but
043actions speak louder than words and everyone has feelings and emotions and I want to make it better for everyone if this happens we can all live happily ever after and I can change the world now I'm going to switch for a second from Olivia to Lissa my son Simon has similar concerns to Olivia's he has been avoiding using necessary accommodations at school because he's worried about appearing different and being made fun of we need to familiarize students and faculty early in the education process meaning from kindergarten on and at the beginning of every school year at a minimum I hope that Olivia and Simon can help change the world and that you and I can help them do it thank you please play the video testimony of Dominic ewalt hi my name is doil and
044thank you for taking time of your day to listen to this um I'm part of the Woodson varsity baseball program and I've been in this program for three years now I'm a junior in high school um I just want to talk about the flooding and um equipment and facility issues we have here at wood um on a pretty much weekly basis we are taking care of our dugouts and draining them whenever it rains and they get destroyed and we takes time out of our practice and game preparation um I've lived here my whole life and I've been playing baseball for around 13 13 years in this area and I've never seen any any problems like this before I have a lot of friends in the area in Fairfax County and in our baseball District that
045have never had a trade dugouts I don't even know what that is because they've never had to deal with it and we have one of the worst fields and facilities in our district um also they're standing water in our storage rooms which are which hold electrical equipment that could be hazardous and dangerous um we also share a wall with the concession stands in the storage room and um yeah it's just it's it's a whole mess and yeah so thank you T for taking time out of your day to listen to this and now please play the video testimony from nethaniel Moore um hello my name is Nate Moore um I'm a senior at Woodson uh I've been a part of the varsity team for about three years now um in that time me and my
046teammates have spent um countless hours uh before and after practice working on the field and Facilities to make make sure they are presentable and playable to our fans and uh opposing teams um whether it be vacuuming water out of our dugouts or sweeping water off the walkways so that uh fans can safely enjoy our games um we we do a lot of work that I don't think we should have to and that other teams in the area don't have to um we also still have the original dugouts from when Woodson was founded um it's very old and the the benches you you can tell um I'm pretty sure most if not all other schools have had their redone in recent years um they're also really small and they aren't big enough to have 20 to
04730 people in them uh we can't even have like our own bags in The Dugout during games like we have to put them on hooks outside of the Dugout and it's a really big inconvenience having to go out of the Dugout to get something on my bag um you know when we play at other schools this is not something we have to do we have plenty of space to put our bags down um thank you for taking your time out of your day to watch this finally please play the video testimony of Dan Fitzgerald hello I'm Dan Fitzgerald I've been teaching high school in Fairfax County for 23 years I'm here on behalf of the transgender and non-binary students and staff of FCPS in honor of the transgender day of visibility March 31st trans and
048non-binary people exist in every school and neighborhood in the county there's an ongoing Nationwide attack on trans people being waged in the media and in legislative bodies across the country including the state of Virginia this vicious campaign of bullying and intimidation recently claimed the life of a teenager named next Benedict in Oklahoma I have seen firsthand the effects of anti-trans haate on trans students who often face discrimin ation and harassment at home in the community and in our schools in these troubled times we must stand against the forces of prejudice and ignorance and stand up for our students rights to exist as themselves without fear in our schools I say to my trans and non-binary colleagues and students I see you I value you and I'm ready to fight for you I urge the Fairfax
049County School Board to say the same both in word and In Deed I urge them to fight against those who would seek to erase us I urge them to recognize value and protect transgender and non-binary students just as they recognize value and protect every student who walks into an FCPS classroom trans kids need our help if we don't stand up for them who will thank you for your time chair fish that was our last public speaker thank you agenda item 4.01 student representative matters Miss Crim is unable to join us this evening her statement can be found on board docks agenda item 5.01 action item Financial year 2024 third quarter budget review I call on drct Anderson for a motion I move that the school board approve the FY 24 third quarter budget review detailed
050in the agenda item is there a second Mr McDaniel Dr Anderson would you like Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion yes briefly as we discussed a couple of weeks ago the revenue adjustments of the third quarter budget are primarily from a $3.2 million um that were recommended to be put towards Safety and Security measures and enhanced summer school reserves um which is also a from a set aside of $3.3 million as a one-time Reserve to support greater and more robust summer school programs there is a um an adjustment for construction funds for um a little bit over $143 million and some other smaller funds and I hope that we will be able to support this adjustment because these are I believe good expend good expenditures thank you Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel
051would you like to speak to your second no thank you seeing no other speakers we'll go to a vote all those in favor Miss seore Heiser Miss sa John cunning Miss Maron Dr Anderson Miss Anderson miss stickit Mr Moon Mr McDaniel Mr mine and myself and miss lady all those opposed abstentions Mr dun will the clerk read the vote it's 11 yeses Z knows one exstension the motion carries thank you agenda item 5.02 uh action item erfc proposed plan design changes I call on Miss Lady for a motion I move that the school board approved the RFC proposed plan design changes detailed in the agenda item is there a second I second Miss St John cunning miss lady would you like to speak to your motion yes I would briefly um as a former employee
052and someone who uh stays in touch uh with a lot of Veteran employees uh the drop program is an excellent um idea uh and a must do in my opinion uh because we are losing too many of our veteran teachers um I don't know that it's detailed in the budget but I I believe that among the people we could lose if we don't approve the drop program we don't know they're all going to participate in drop but those eligible if they did include several principles something like like you know 19 Math teachers several science teachers several special education teachers so a lot of our veteran folks we don't lose so I'm very happy that this is in the budget thanks thank you Miss Lady Miss St John cunning would you like to speak to your
053second yes I would just like to Echo that we talk a lot about recruiting teachers but retention of our qualified Personnel is just as important and I fully support this thank you Miss St John cunning Mr McDaniel some questions for staff so if this motion passes tonight specifically referring to item one the drop item not the leave or the work after retirement uh if this motion passes tonight what ability does this board have to modify the drop program if any so thank you Mr McDaniel at this point the vote this evening with reference to that part of the drop program you refer to is simply approving the possibility of the drop program applying as it's been uh described in the agenda item it doesn't fund it that vote would happen later in May in terms
054of the flexibility uh to determine who of the Legacy employees that drop could apply to it's my understanding that cannot be amended later that that's um all of the Legacy employees of which currently 85% of the active members in this plan um erfc legacy plan are teachers okay uh next question budget presentation that this would cost $6.5 million per year and it's a five year program uh however in a presentation given to the erfc board uh the figure came out to a little bit over $7 million based on some back the na calculation so on the one hand we're being told 6.5 the erfc was told higher than that could someone please speak to what the actual cost estimate is for this program yes sir I think that I'm going to ask Miss Burton to
055comment comment on that in just a moment I also want to reiterate that what we've picked is a projection of a budget number that would be the absolute most that would be a year one expenditure if every single person in the Legacy uh program eligible chose to participate it's not likely that every single person would but it is possible we want to make sure we give you the most accurate number so miss bden would you please um explain the difference I believe Mr McDaniel's asking from the presentation to erc's board and the presentation to our board um yes there are there were two numbers a 7 million number and a 6.5 million um you probably are not aware that we um issued an RFP and we changed actuaries um last summer and the first actuary
056came up with a cost of 6.5 million and then when we got new actuaries they did a costing and it was 7 million but at the time that the Board of Trustees approved this was January 26th which was about 12 days before the superintendent's proposed budget we had already used the $6.5 million and again as you indicated it is an estimate it is a projection we will not know the ACT going to participate Miss Burton would it be accurate to say that the 7 point whatever that number would 7.2 million would be the outside that that would be the most um the high estimate it's it just represents the difference in the actuaries assumptions having two different actuary groups do the same analysis they may have used um different methodologies they may have made different
057assumptions I don't know what the difference actually could be attributed to um we could have maybe had we had more people when the first actuary did it and those people retired last summer and so now that number is going to be lower we would have to do some research to be able to figure out what the difference is but it generally was the difference in two Actuarial firms calculations of the projected cost in the first year thank you and to be clear after the votes tonight assuming this passes um we could not as a board determine as the budget process continues that say school-based versus non-school-based employees there's a delineation there um you know employes above or below a certain salary threshold could or could not uh qualify for the program is that so Mr
058McDaniel that is correct uh given that all members of the Legacy program that would be eligible for drop have been putting a similar percentage into the program uh all members of the legac y drop program would be treated similarly it would not be um it's not our uh understanding that you could differentiate later okay um I I I will not be supporting this motion um I've made my uh opinions on this program very clear we have conflicting numbers on cost um we were given the lower number not the higher number and that lower number was used to justify our request for the Board of Supervisors with $254 million um we cannot delineate between who qualifies to this program um but the biggest reason why I'm not supporting it this is a budget item and we
059don't even have a budget uh a firm budget number uh in the works yet uh we haven't we're nowhere near approval of budget the Board of Supervisors nowhere near finalize their budget numbers um the vote tonight is the timing is off on this I would prefer to see this taken later I think we're 80% the way there on this program but forcing my hand tonight I cannot uh support this program that has nothing to do with uh whether or not I think it's a good program I think it's a great program to Miss Lady's points um again I think we're 80% the way there but tonight if I'm being asked to up or down vote this and set it in stone uh my answer is no that's all thank you Mr McDaniel Dr Anderson um
060thank you I I think Mr McDaniel asked a lot of my questions but I have only one um I think that's still remaining being that we're still in the budget process why do we have to have this um approval right now is there a time sensitive urgent reason because as Mr McDaniel shared we've not completed the budget process so again I want to clarify that this evening's vote is not about approving budget dollars for the erfc board adjust m to the drop program it's simply um approving the erfc board's recommendation their action to adjust the drop program you could vote this evening to support this and in may not vote to fund it could we could we also subsequently vote to approve their recommendation in May in conjunction with the voting of the budget I
061will defer to miss buron on the timing necessary for the paperwork because there's several options here that the erfc adjusted both with leave calculations and so forth so uh Miss Burton is there a time sensitivity to this evening's vote Yes in the sense that the vote tonight is for the plan design changes because in order for us to make this happen by July one we have to communicate to those 500 of the 2700 employees that would be elig ible um I don't know if you know that um deciding to do anything that has to do with pensions or retirement is a very emotional decision people do not make those decisions lightly they are going to need time to figure out what their options are and we wanted to give them at least three months to
062be able to decide if they wanted to participate in the program um and so that requires development of communication documents um the critical shortage areas I mean all three of these plan design changes will take some time to be able to get ready to implement so that's why the plan design changes are coming uh to you all as a recommendation from the Board of Trustees of erfc this evening is so that we have ample time to implement to develop the program um for our employees ready for this summer sure and I I think on its face what you're sharing makes a lot of sense um if I could just um give a a little bit of a recommend St um if we have budget items in which it requires that kind of lead time um
063as we are engaging in the work sessions that that be part of the discussions as well thank you thank you Dr Anderson Miss Anderson um very much like my colleagues I am concerned about the fact that if we vote this into place and and ensure that our um members that are in this category understand what's coming and then we don't we aren't able to actually vote to fund it that that sends a very inappropriate message to them that we are not that we are not supportive of of ensuring that they stay with us and so I am extremely concerned about um voting for this today just because we aren't 100% sure what our budget forecast looks like at this moment because there are lots of factors that we don't have yet so I I have
064a lot of pause related to this um that I'm concerned about as we move move forward well and if we are able to move forward we will then know within a couple of months exactly how many people have chosen to participate which will likely reduce that placeholder estimate that we have prior to your budget adoption I understand um my concern is is that if we ask or if we let I mean this is this is widely known so people understand what's coming um my concern is is that if we ask them if they want to participate and then we aren't able to fund it that we can guarantee that we will lose them within our system and so that is my concern is that this actually will force hands um in a way that I
065don't that I'm that I'm concerned about until we have a better number that we have related to the budget thank you Miss Anderson Mr Dunn Dr Reed how many counties and the DMV area have a program like the erfc I believe we're the only one is this drop program uh required because we have an erfc the drop program is not required but is it required to solve a problem created by the fact that we do have an erfc I don't know that it's required but it does address a challenge that the erfc um timing has created for those uh employees that are in this legacy plan and again I'm going to double check that I'm getting some nods here um so I think it does address a timing challenge which is several years between the
066vrs retirement and the arfc um timelines I'll I'll take that as a yes it's a problem created by having an erfc how much uh of the average salary according to the wayy study does a erfc deduct from the average teacher salary Miss Burton so that we're accurate would you provide that please 3% is the employee contribution I saw in the Wy study based on the compensation breakdown that it was 6% is that wrong it is 6.5% is the employer contribution 3% is the employee contribution okay so the 6.5% if we didn't have an erfc could Prov be provided to the teacher as a as part of their salary is that correct well it's not really that simple in the sense that um if you wanted to give employees the value of the employer contribution as
067as salary instead then you know we have nine Sal schedules we'd have 18 salary schedules because some would be with erfc and some would be without erfc but the base result of not having an NFC would be to increase employee compensation regardless of their pay schedules correct that's something that we would have to research and develop a plan on okay so uh my concern uh oh couple more questions how many employees who are hired each year to uh to FCPS uh have cited erfc as a major factor in their decision to accept employment with FCPS as opposed to other jurisdictions generally um very few because 22 I mean if you if we're stealing someone from another jurisdiction that is absolutely the reason that they're coming to FCPS but if it's a 22 23 year old
068just out of college it is all about the money it is not about pension it is not about um you know health care it's not about any of the benefits it is all about the salary um of course you know if we can get them to stay 5 years until they vest then we have a good chance of them not leaving us because of erfc so it's actually a better retention strategy than it is a recruitment strateg stry assuming that the those that we're recruiting are newly graduated from college do you have data showing how many employees leave within five years of starting with FCPS I do not but one of my colleagues from HR might I do not have that data at hand but I can get that for you and what is the
069rough ballpark number of people hired who are at the younger age 22 23 as you mentioned versus stolen at a later age in time from other poached from other school systems again that's HR and they would probably have to research that I'm not sure that we have historically done a lot of um research on the age of people coming in to FCPS would it be fair to say that it's much larger that people being hired at a younger age than people being poached from other school systems at this point I think what I would say Mr dun is that I think traditionally that was true I think right now with the shortage of graduates coming out of education programs I think that pendulum is Shifting again we have a lot of career switchers and um
070Educators uh transitioning maybe from other parts of the country or other parts of the world uh to Fairfax so I think um what we traditionally saw were new teachers who were coming right out of University programs and we now moving I think more to um early or midcareer transfers and and do you have the numbers on that we can get those okay so my concern is we have a program that deprives people of a base salary when um if they are if they leave before 5 years they get taxed and uh they don't get to keep that money they don't get to put a 401k are the things that's portable um and uh and and so we're not sure if erfc is actually achieving the original purpose of causing people to come here and stay
071here we don't have that data and yet we're seeking to solve a problem created by the RFC and without having clear data showing how much is this going to cost a longterm impact Mr D your time is up so I would just consider okay I'll take a go back Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman as you know some other board members have already indicated that I have a I have a concern regarding the timing of making this Deion tonight that you know it sounds as if on the board decides to pass this in a motion tonight uh the affected employees will see that an indication that they can sort of rely on it planning their retirement or continue to work with us and if at the actual budget decision time which doesn't happen until second
072in second meeting in May if the board has to make a decision on budgetary adjustments as far as these items are concerned we have already made the decisions on these items this is how we have to assume moving forward and so with in mind I my I question to you is for any plan change I understand we need to have a and implemented uh is today the absolute the latest time we have to make a decision this if you want to do this this to start from July one so I think thank you Mr Moon uh when you you say absolute latest date uh I think Miss Burton has shared that as we look at best practice to communicate to staff enable staff to make reason decisions and to roll out uh this possibility we
073really looked at three months and that would be April May and June because July one would um come at the end of those three months um if we need to delay that decision to approve the framework of the plan until maybe the first meeting in April I think that you know each each time the longer we delay the less time we have to communicate to staff and the less time staff have to make a decision if um the program obviously the program funding decision will happen um in May uh but even the possibility of the plan and its possible funding I think we need to give staff some lead time both to communicate and to make a decision but miss burden what would be I believe you want to know the absolute latest date well
074as I said March is ideal but you know if we could do April we could do may I mean it'll just our notification to our employees will be delayed as a result and if I may the other piece that I might add and good evening everyone is that uh we try to give our employees enough lead time so that when they do choose to retire from Fairfax County Public Schools and provide that notice to erfc that there is enough time to process that so that there is an uninterrupted uh payment for those individuals when they leave so that they are able to be paid continuously and the further that we go into the school year and they announce their retirement uh they may then encounter uh an interruption to that normal pay schedule for compensation
075so we try to get them to at least provide that 60-day notice to erfc so that erfc staff can work to uh ensure that they are uh paid without that Gap in in compensation with uncertainty on how I will be actually voting on the final budget and for tonight I will not be able to support this motion thank you Mr Miss seore Heiser thank you um I have some of theil similar conversations I understand in some ways this is a bit of a catch 22 because if there are folks who with this program would want to stay longer we want them to know before they make other plans right so however I also don't want folks to make other plans and then us not be able to fund it right or make plans based on
076thinking this is coming coming and then us not being able to fund it because as others have mentioned there's still quite a large gap between what our funding ask is and what the Board of Supervisors so far has recommended giving to the to us and um we don't know what the state budget is going to be yet I don't I understand the importance of communicating early however I don't want folks to think something's coming when we don't know if we're going to fund be able to fund it whether we want to or not we're going to have to make some tough decisions I imagine if we don't get all the funding we want um so I I'm just wondering if there's a way to find a bit of a happy medium where perhaps we defer
077this a little bit longer and as we talk about different things in our budget we talk about the fact that this is one of the things we're considering in our budget and one of the things we're considering here and given the uncertain times we're hopeful we'll have the funding for it and people have to figure out whether they want take that risk or not but I don't want I don't want people to think they're going to be able to stay here and use this program if we then get to May and say oop sorry can't fund it I just feel uncomfortable doing that I don't know what tough decisions we're going to have to make I don't know where we may have to find other funding for it um so it would be helpful I
078think to have some of the numbers that Mr Dunn was talking about in terms of the career switchers and who's coming here for this right right and how much we're able to recruit from other jurisdictions because of this I think at least some surveys or some sort of information that we could say we have a survey that shows 60% of of teachers come here because of this program or whatever it may be I don't know but some data to to look at but in that meantime I feel like if we vote for this here we may be giving some false hope to folks that we just don't know what we can do because we're $89 million short in our budget ask at this point for my understanding so I guess the only question I would
079have is that is it possible to say this is a consideration under the budget and maybe defer this it'd be helpful to know from staff when we can defer but we can't vote to we don't vote to our budget till May I believe the Board of Supervisors votes in early May so I'm wonder if we can at least defer this till after their vote so then we have a better understanding of what their budget would be maybe we'll have some better understanding from the state would that be possible to kind of give a hint that this might be coming and then do the paperwork piece of it after May or how much of a burden would that be I guess is a question I mean I think anything's possible it's whatever you decide to as
080a body to make possible I guess the question is how much of a burden would that be in terms of making sure folks know in time to make their decisions and you all can do the paperwork on the back end that's needed I think Mr Smith indicated that 60 days has been the I think the norm for notifying erfc to do paperwork around retirement 60 to 90 yes 60 to 90 days so we were taking a conservative approach with three months which is why we're bringing it this evening um I think you know I I don't think we've done it in less time than that before but obviously uh we'll be responsive to whatever you determine to do to this evening thank you thank you Miss seore Heiser Miss Dixit thank you Mr chair um
081i' like to make a motion that we uh make a vote on this on April 25th meeting because by then the Board of Supervisors already made their decision on their budget second that's not an order Mr parliamentarian yeah the a motion toos that would be the nature of a motion to postpone to a certain time and those can't go beyond on the next regular meeting but you could Mo uh move to postpone to the next meeting and at that point you could continue postponing but that's just the timing issue every meeting until until April 25th so maybe hold on that for well I mean it is possible to move though to postpone until the next board meeting itself that's all right and that would have to happen every board meeting until after the funding is
082known about okay I'll propose it to postpone it next board meeting again all right would you like to speak to your motion I think we all uh Shar that we need time to review different aspects of it uh my concern is also about the six months of uh the separation from the schools and then they they will be rehired back uh I want to understand it is uh a little bit more that the requirement for that it was one of the point points and the uh working after retirement point three Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your second yes um and my haste to talk about the item number one I forgot to mention the other two items so I'd like to ask since this primary motion had three parts is there any
083way to decouple these three parts are they all following the same time frame because the sick leave credit is a very exciting component that I'm very excited that we're bringing to FCPS it has existed everywhere else where I've worked and I've worked in multiple school systems so I think this is a a bonus to begin to structure this and the cost to um implement this system is um very reasonable I I'm wondering if we are pushing forward um this motion until next meeting and then subsequently until we get the information that we need should we consider or could is it possible to decouple number one from two and three so that we can begin to act on those other two issues but if they're tightly wound and intertwined and cannot be undone I'd like to
084know that as well I can speak to that yes it's possible I was I can tell you it's possible through parliamentary procedure I think I was asking more from an operations perspective do these have to be together I think their budget implic ations right for all three which I think we've stated this evening or I think I've heard there's a concern about not having clear budget uh information right but if I'm reading this correctly Dr Reed it says the program is expected to slightly increase the employer contribution and fut in in rates in the future the plan Administration cost um is approximately $20,000 that's for the sick leave bank and the third item which is the working after retirement the implementation cost of the administration of course is 10K are there other costs therein that
085have not been identified with these other two plans I think the yeah the increase in the employer contribution I don't think we've defined that yet on the second item and how about number three um Miss I don't again I don't know that we calculated out the numbers I don't know if you have that this evening no and again these these are just the approval of the plan design changes um the timeline for the other two items is is not as tight as for the drop program because the the war program you know there's a six-month waiting period with that um so I mean you could decouple these three items but it's probably not necessary to do that you can just wait until the drop is decided and approve all three at the same time thank
086you um given what Dr Reed just shared regarding not having defined the employer contribution when this comes back may I ask that we have some sort of estimate of that as well for the board's consideration yes ma'am and lastly um I am very sensitive to what Miss um Burton shared earlier which is we need to have some sort of communication with staff about their intentions um again as a former School leader every January February we've got that intent and we know it's not binding but at least it gives you some sense what would would we be prevented from informally surveying people who would potentially fall into this category just to get a sense without any board vote so we will I'm I'm sorry was that a yes yeah I mean we um we have Rick
087Tierney who is the new executive director of vfc with us here tonight he's he's been um on board for a little less than two weeks now and uh he and I were just discussing that that if it wasn't approved tonight we're going to do a survey of the 500 people that are eligible and determine who is interested and who is not interested that'll also give us um some assistance on what the actual cost will be instead of just a projection so yeah we're as I believe when I asked earlier why we needed to engage in this activity this evening it was so we could get that information but hearing that there's a way to gather that information without necessarily committing to the budgetary impact because as Miss seis moaz said we are in a challenging
088space budget-wise currently and I would like to get for one get a better picture of that landscape before really kind of cementing even unwittingly um certain items so I I'm glad we can still do that survey thank you Dr Anderson um I will take a turn on on the question of the motion um I really do not want to have to deal with this every meeting until after the budget is done there is a better way to proceed um and we have other colleagues who have other motions uh that I think they are planning that would keep us from having to do that um but what the board is committing to with this motion is having this conversation at this deis at every meeting in April and likely in May there's another way of doing
089this so I think the sentiment of the day is very clear so I invite my colleagues hang on a second I it may not be unanimous but there seems to be a very clear voice being presented here there is a different way of doing this than committing to doing this every meeting until the end and that is without actually we don't have to have the question of whether we're you know we're we're ultimately voting for or against it yet but delaying it now would end the debate entirely and we'd be committing to having this debate every meeting until the end of May so I invite my colleagues to oppose this motion so that we can continue the conversation we and there are other opportunities in this conversation to do what the folks pushing this amendment
090or advancing this amendment would like to do I have several lights on I do not know if they are to speak on this amendment or if or excuse me on on this uh motion or if they are to speak where they were typically in the lineup already miss seore Heiser thank you I appreciate this was specifically on the motion I wanted to talk about bifurcating the the concept bifurca I I really think all of these have budgetary impacts that I want to get a better understanding about and I think in some ways they they're these three items are in conjunction with each other so I would be uncomfortable bifurcating this I think we should postpone all of it or not postpone all of it until we can get some more information for all the pieces
091I think doing one without the other causes me a little um heartburn as far as postponing and having to revote on this have this Recon conversation every meeting I'm not not sure I fully understand that if we have it in our mind that we want to postpone till April 25th but we procedurally can't do that then I don't know why this wouldn't just be a this motion's up we vote to postpone motion second vote move on I don't think it's as complicated we I mean obviously we can talk about it every meeting if people choose to I don't think we have to so just my two cents that I think we we're the drivers of how long this would take every meeting to do if other Solutions that's great but I'm not sure I understand
092that thank you Miss maren thank you I object to the motion because I don't think this is a decision that should be delayed I think that we need to make look I'm in favor of options and I trust the superintendent's knowledge of the market of Educators and staff and her assessment of HR Trends and in retaining Educators I also know what I've observed and experienced and it's that teachers want to to see support by the school division now so delaying our decision today is not in line with what I've seen teachers are leaving for many reasons and I'd like to see the board consider all possible options at every set step of the way um a decision was made a long time ago to set up erfc in a certain way and now we are
093dealing with the results of that and it's not what we would like but we are at this point in time teachers are making decisions right now to day if they are going to stay or if they are going to go and if we keep pushing this off we are going to lose teachers this is a retention strategy and it's one of the best ones we have at the table in addition to a budget that is focused on compensation thank you I don't know whose light is on because they wanted to speak on the motion or whose light is on I do have everybody who was on before the motion was made on my list so if you are wanting to speak on the motion at hand please leave your light on Mr moon I I
094would support a motion but however Mr chairman I didn't quite understand parliamentary ISS you know interpretation of robbery true about postponing a motion to a day certain that's not permissible go ahead Mr Morgan uh it's from Robert's Rules of Order newly revised section 146 which just says that a question question may not be postponed may can be postponed until but not beyond the next regular business session if the board does want to postpone beyond that like all the way until April or May you can do so under a suspension of the rules but without a suspension of rules you can only go to the next business session I obviously you you are a parliamentarian I do not have a rule book with me to argue against that uh but you know over 20 years we
095had prior prior boards had always been able to postpone to a day certain and I thought that earlier my colleague Miss dii was trying to do exactly there but there was a Ru down I'm going to have to you know go back to my Robert rules and then come back to you with the questions but for now since the motion on the table is the postpone cheer next group of meeting which is on the 8th I'm sorry 11th April 11th I will support a motion thank you Mr Moon Miss St John cunning so I'm going to object to this motion I understand the concerns everybody has about funding however we said our priority was taking care of teachers com compensation and retention we owe it to retain the teachers that we already have here teachers
096are already putting in their commitments I know teachers that already are putting in commitments to other counties if we don't show them that we're going to support them and when it comes to the hard time of cutting the budget we don't focus on keeping this in then that's on us we're saying we don't know if the money's going to be there there's other places we're going to have to trim I'm not going to trim on this I'm going to retain the teachers that have dedicated their time their energy and their years these teachers are not the teachers that are going to retire if they're going to retire they're going to retire this is to keep the teachers that are going to be able to go to another County and get another paycheck and get their
097retirement so as far as I'm concerned my commitment is to retain the heart hardworking teachers that have already invested time and energy and provided for our students in our communities they deserve the commitment that when we need to trim the budget we're not going to we're not going to put it on their backs I cannot support this amendment thank you Miss St John cunning Mr Dunn I appreciate the arguments are Advanced by Miss Marin uh what's surprising to me is that they Echo most verbatim the arguments were made made by Dr Anderson myself to argue for including in the adverti budget $24 million so that we could send a signal to our special education teachers one-third of whom are long-term subs or provisionally licensed that we care about them and they are our priority and
098instead of uh adopting that including in the advertised budget instead we said well we'll gamble that there is year-end funding available and so so if we care about retaining these 500 people I wonder what message it sends that we care about them but we don't care about the special education teachers especially at a time when we're eating our Seed corn and we don't even have a game plan for fixing that crisis that is already in the making five years from now will we care more about what happened with the drop program or will we care more that we did nothing to resolve the crisis in our special education teacher Staffing issue so I ask if if we're going to speak uh of a commitment to keeping talented and dedicated Educators we speak consistently rather than
099inconsistently all right I'm going to ask that people speak to the motion at hand and if they want to make a broader argument about the merits of The Proposal the motion in the main Motion in front of us that they wait until after the conclusion of the motion to um push this to the next meeting so if you would like to speak to to the topic of the main motion wait until we get back to that if you'd like to speak to the topic of the uh motion for Miss Dixit keep your light on Miss Anderson I will say that Mr McDaniel's hand has been up far longer than mine I'm aware okay I just wanted to make sure um I well actually not speak right now y all right thank you very much Miss
100St John cunning sorry everybody turn off your light everyone everyone don't worry keep your light on if you're speaking to the motion and please remember to turn your light off when You' finished speaking Mr McDaniel well miss Dixit kind of beat me to the punch on a motion to defer I would agree with what Mr Moon said um I I you know on the other board on the other side of the county referring to a date certain is is a relatively routine procedure so I'm not sure what the Parliamentary nuances need to be but I would support deferring this it needs to align with budget um no one else no other employee group no one is getting an out of pension adjustment pay raise um so why this is coming outside of the budget cycle
101I don't know um I think we'll probably get there but we need to get there with the budget cycle so I would support the motion or whatever language we need to have to defer this to align with with the budget adoption thank you miss lady I oppose this motion um I'm gonna be pretty Frank with my colleagues we've been debating this for a long time we've had a lot of intel on what it is exactly so I'm surprised by some of the questions I also don't think it's a surprised anyone that the original motion came from two former Faircrest County Employees I'm going to tell you something we got a billion dollar budget this is five to six million and puts employees first our most loyal Seasons employees first you want to put your money
102where your mouth is we need to make sure we retain these people we're only talking about Legacy these are folks who started with us prior to 200 and one the tier one and tier two is a different mathematical equation okay this is going to run its course um the timing to hire you're going to have you're not going to have strong applicants if we push this off and people don't resign until because it's going to anger them because I've lived this in the trench and they're going to just hold off on their papers and then we're going to be stuck trying to race and get teachers at the last minute when they've all been they've all been taken up trying to hire in July is too late um I'm also going to share because of
103how against this motion I am I just visited Osborne High School because I had a constituent asked me to come visit him who used to work for fairfx County and left because of drop he's collecting his his fax County Retirement and still working and getting paid more at a different high school there are four counselors at Osborne High School that were in Fairfax County two of them were for former directors of student services and they're making more money there and collecting their erfc the they have a college counselor they don't have career center Specialists they pay their college counselor as a counselor he too was a director of student services and they have an assistant principal that worked with me I didn't go through their entire faculty but I'm just telling you these are veteran
104folks that I wish were still in our school system and to the sped teacher comment from my colleague we have crisis in several areas we have crisis in hiring psychologists we have crisis in hiring Math teachers we have crisis in lat and yes we have a crisis in sped teachers but that funding will be there at year end I'll bet my salary and all my retirement payment uh pensions we are going to have that money for our sped teachers and I'm just really frustrated because if you study the entire Legacy program you should know the answer to a lot of the questions that you're posing tonight miss seore Heiser um so the biggest reason I'm very torn about this right now is because I don't want to give a promise to teachers that we can't
105then fund but I also very much much hear what you're saying about people are making decisions July is too late to hire I've also talked to colleagues at different school systems and they I wish we had more data but they do have a lot of our veteran staff who gone there for this exact reason I what you were saying is correct also oh can you not is that better thank you so I guess the question is if we if we do this tonight and then we get to the budget and don't have budget funds for this when you mentioned year end is there year end funding for this and how would that impact going forward if we didn't fund this in our budget this year so thank you Miss heis Mor Heiser actually it's um
106it's interesting you mention that because Miss Burton and I have actually already taken a look at that possibility uh we also know that the highest cost year is going to be year one um because the costs will go down each subsequent year and at the end of the three-year drop program there will be no more costs so we know that um really in some ways the yearend funds make it a more reasonable that may be where it is best situated we believe we could cover this um at year end and Miss burden I don't know if you want to add to that but I believe it might actually be um the best place to locate These funds yes I mean we we always include in our budget um everything that we think we need but
107this particular item is onetime funds and so very suitable to use year end for that and by the time we do year end it comes to you all mid July because year in doesn't actually happen till June 30th so we can't get it before then and then uh you all go on hiatus and so it doesn't come back to you all for approval until September um but I'm confident that we will definitely know then what the cost is and then we would roll it into air year end item if this did come out of year end or if we defer this to year end um would that impact the ability to do the special education teacher contracts at year end no it would not and it's just it's a three-year program you're anticipating the highest
108cost this year you're pretty confident you can do it out of year end so that may be a solution to what I think I'm hearing from my colleagues in in terms of we don't want to promise something we can't deliver we going to have a tough budget Year want to have all the options on the table when we're going to have a tough I mean it's just reality right like if you know we we need to we need to wait for the county to figure out their budget and um right now we're short from what our ask is so we want to be able to have options on the table we don't want this to take an option away however we want to give staff time to be able to make their chance so maybe
109that's a solution is to defer this to year end instead of part of the budget or that maybe that's an option when we get to our budget and if we may don't have funding for this so I just share that my colleagues instead of this motion maybe we pass this with a follow on that says we need a plan for this funding to come out a year end I I would like to thank you Miss seore Heiser I'd like to go back to miss buron just to confirm um my comment around this being the highest year year one and I think the drop program is only a threeyear or it's fiveyear excuse me a five-year program but I know when we talked about it at one point the slope was a downward it's not going
110up after year one so if you could explain that please yeah the contribution rates are determined the which is the employer share the employee share of 3% is um is is always 3% um but the employer rate contribution rate changes every two years the actuaries recalculated it and so the 6.5 million was the absolute highest that we thought it would cost in this first year but from thereon it will just be factored into the contribution rate which is expected to go down in fiscal 26 thank you thank you Miss seore Heiser Miss Anderson okay I'm ready now um my colleague actually said exactly what I was going to say over here is we had naha that on the side of the DIA said um it made more sense for this to come out of your
111end I want in no way shape or form to for anyone to to believe that I don't want to retain our highest our highest achieving staff obviously I would want to keep them with us my concern is is that if we end up with the budget numbers that I fear that we're going to end up we're going to have to make hard decisions and we potentially if we commit to things that we can't fund we are going to actually lose more staff in the long run that will become our our most loved long long-term staff and so that is my fear overall but I would love love to be able to have this committed out of your own funds and that way we absolutely could move forward with it tonight thank you Miss Anderson Mr
112Dunn thank you um I'd like to understand why the FCPS proposed drop program differs so significantly from the existing County drop program what do you mean differs uh three years versus five years um I can go on if you want me to itemize well the five years is because the disconnect is of erfc full unreduced retirement and 30 years vrs full unreduced retirement so that air employees that are in the legacy plan when they reach the minimum require the minimum requirement of age 55 and 25 years they start looking at other entities that use vrs usually other school divisions around us because they can then collect five years of their erfc pension while still building their vrs years because they're going to need 30 of those the county doesn't have that issue with its ement
113plan and I believe that their drop program is you know for succession planning and so it's they're we're we're trying to address a different issue with ours so can you address that why why is succession planning not uh not a feature of of the proposed FCPS drop program if you look at the federal government retired to newon program which is very similar or the county drop program um if these are the best employees as one my colleague said uh then shouldn't a fature of the program be training the Next Generation or or mentoring at least yeah and that was something that was um discussed and as part of the U budget work session that we had on um the 20th um February 20th uh and we talked that is one of the components of our
114drop plan is that it does enable us to know 5 years ahead of time that you know we're going to lose 19 Math teachers for examp example and so no succession planning has always been part of why we wanted to do the drop program as well as that disconnect between 25 years service with erfc Legacy versus 30 years with vrs and and and the county uh does not allow uh drop program participants to continue to earn pension benefits from vs after entering drop so why is FCPS taking a different approach uh the county doesn't have the vrs plan they have the FCS plan which is a county plan and I don't know the components of that plan okay thank you all right before we continue I've been very gracious in allowing everybody to speak to
115the efficacy of the drop program when the question before this board is whether we are going to delay a decision on this item if anybody else would like to speak on that question I will allow it if you use as a vehicle to address the efficacy of the drop program I will call you out of order and ask that you refocus your comments back to the question of the main motion this is not targeted anyone specifically because most people have done this would anybody else like to speak to the prime the motion that is before us not the main motion the motion from Miss Dixon Miss seore Heiser I think I changed my mind and I'd like to have more conversations about year end in the drop program so I'll oppose this for right now
116we can always bring it back after that conversation I'll talk more closely into the mic thank you what I saying I think I've changed my mind and I oppose the motion for right now because I would like to have more conversations about the efficacy of using year end funds for the program we can always bring it back after that conversation if we need to in this meeting thank you all right there are no more Mr McDaniel um I I will also oppose the motion for the reasons Miss seore mentioned and after that conversation um I do have some language for a motion to potentially move this to May if if we need to I didn't catch that could you repeat yourself did you just sorry I said I will also oppose the motion for the
117reasons that Miss seore Heiser mentioned thank you Mr McDaniel all right uh seeing no other lights or hands I'm going to take a turn um and strongly encourage the board before we commit to having this conversation every other week for the next two months that somebody make a motion to suspend the rules to continue this conversation to a date certain as the parliamentarian indicated a 23s vote of the board would allow us to have a conversation at a later date instead of at the next board meeting meeting would somebody like to make that motion Mr Moon upon Mr Chairman's recommendation I move to suspend the rules is there a second Miss St John cunning would you like to speak to your motion Mr Moon sorry I would have preper the motion to be postpone until
118second meeeting April rather than next meeting so uh I'm I'm asking the suspension of rules Mr Morgan Mr chair for whether to suspend the rules that requires a 2third and it's undebatable if it passes then you would consider whether to postpone until that a certain date thank you so we would have the conversation after the vote Yes after the vote on whether to suspend the rules all right all right so there's a motion and a second on the table to suspend the rules which means it goes directly to a vote and then a discussion if you point of order please yes can you please clarify exactly what the process is I there was a motion to oppose yes I can clarify thank you chair the motion on the table prior to Mr moon was a
119motion to um push this to the next meeting and because you cannot delay to a date beyond the next meeting if we want to delay this until after the budget numbers are available in May that would require us to do the same thing at every meeting from now until then the motion for Mr moon to suspend the rules would allow us to then set a date certain for that discussion so that we're not repeating this discussion in every meeting until then can I have a point to order can I withdraw my second I was confused without without objection Miss St John cunning would like to withdraw her a second all right we are back to the conversation about the motion for Mystic sit may I second Mr Moon's motion we have a second all right
120um would you like to speak to your second Oh wait we're not doing that I apologize back and forth all right uh all those in favor of suspending the I'm new to this point of order so if we vote to suspend we're still going to take the other vote on the motion no the other motion would require us to discuss this every two weeks until we have budget numbers unless we all vote no and well unless we all vote no but Mr that's that's kind of my point all right we have a motion and a second there has to be a vote for that so all those in favor of suspending the rules until a date certain whether people are not whether or not people understand or whether you perceive people to understand is irrelevant
121Mr Moon Dr Anderson and myself all those opposed oh sorry Mr MC Daniel and Mr mine all those all thoseo they did have their hands up all those opposed Miss SI Mor Heiser miss lady Miss s John cunning Miss Marin Mr Dunn Miss Anderson we are and Miss Dixit uh the motion fails we are back to discussing Miss Dix's motion she wants to withdraw her motion Miss Dixit would like to withdraw her motion without abstention that is without objection excuse me you're welcome to abstain if you'd like without objection that's correct all right so now we are at the primary motion that we began with Mr McDaniel uh let's see um so I think that based on what I've seen there is enough um uh concern about the vote tonight that it be deferred um
122so the language that I believe we need to do is a motion to suspend the rules to defer this to a date certain my preference of that date would be to align with the budget adoption in May after the Board of Supervisors approves their budget so with that being said I would make that motion as I just stated Mr Morgan are we allowed to do the motion that we just voted down there really hasn't been any intervening business that would make it appropriate to bring it back up again at this point in my opinion so we are back to the primary motion unless Mr McDaniel would like to continue no my previous comment stand we need to take this up in May align it with the budget um so if if again if I'm asked
123for an up or down vote tonight my my answer Mr uh Mr chairman I must note uh my surprise and my rather unhappiness as to how a a doct re and Bist has answered question about whether we can do this in the year end if this we were able to this year end just like a special education teachers case we should have put this in the year end from the beginning rather than putting in the main budget for the next year and present to the Board of Supervisors now what would the Board of Supervisors think they put it in the main budget and we passed that made our advertised budg and made a request to a board of supervisor saying that this is not a one-time funding this is basically recording cost and made a
124request and now we are saying that we are walking back I I cannot support the motion thank you Mr Moon Miss Anderson so this is the first time we've done this in this way and we're learning and which is awesome because we're a school system so we should like that um I guess my question is how can we move forward or is it possible to move forward identifying urine funds um what would be the mechanism that we could actually make that happen the mechanism um I'm I'm specifically asking and this may just be a point of order or a question about how to move forward is is this a motion that we need to put forward that this would be that we could approve this based on utilizing year-end funds you good amending again I
125want to reiterate that this evening's ask in terms of the vote was not a vote to fund this this evening it's really a vote to approve the framework um of the erfc board program changes and and I completely and totally understand that um my concern are in in that case my concern is the same as it was previously is that I don't want us to move forward not having an identifiable source that we can actually fund this moving forward and so I don't know the mechanism at this point to make that happen can I offer you some absolutely possibilities there are motions to amend so you could take something out or add something to the rules again asking that this be brought back up at the time of uh you're in funds you could um
126restate Miss dixit's motion I I mean we could allow this to finish to the conversation and have a vote on it okay thank you Miss Anderson Miss eore Heiser well I was actually going to say I'm wondering if if we vote let's say we vote in the affirmative on this today I am wondering if we can pass a follow on motion that would then dedicate I'm just waiting for side baring I was trying to answer your question Miss Anderson which is why I was waiting for so I'm wondering if a way to do this is to say that we could get pass a followon motion to this to say that this funding um can be come can come out of year-end funding if we need to because we don't know what our budget is going
127to be right so I don't want to say yes this will be year end funding or not to Mr Moon's point I I totally hear what you're saying I do think at least in my experience it has happened in the past where we have items that we're considering for our budget then we end up having to put to put to year end for various reasons so I'm not sure if that's that unusual you you have more experience on the board than I do but I don't think that's that unusual to say there are things that we that are ad I budget is our ask for our needs-based budget we are we have no control over whether we actually get the funding that we consider as our needs based budget so we have yearend funding that
128we can use for various items the challenge of course of the year end funding is that it's a one-time source of funding it's not recurring but it can be used it's in some ways what we've done with our special teacher contracts um so we using onetime funding for that so it's not ideal but this is not an ideal budget Year from how everything's shaking out out so I would wonder maybe Mr parliamentarian you may have an answer to this whether it would be appropriate for us to pass the followon motion to this saying that this funding will come out a year and funding if there if our budget ask is not fully funded I can't speak to the substance of a follow on but it's long been the practice of this body to allow for
129related followon motions to action items that have been passed so I know you you mentioned other ways to do this but I think that may be a follow on motion to do to say that this funding um will come out a year on funding um in the event that we feel we do not have sufficient funds Dr Reed I do think that that um the last part of that statement is really critically important uh we're still holding out hope that we can be fully funded in which case these dollars that we plan to dedicate and again they are dollars planned to um be dedicated to this project we would expect to come out of the uh budget the general budget I think what we are saying though is that this is an important enough uh
130project an important enough uh retention strategy uh because we've heard from many of our experienced Educators that this is something that matters to them that we would be willing to say that this is something we would prioritize at year end if our budget wasn't fully funded but I do think it's a if our budget isn't fully funded otherwise it really we would prefer to take it from there miss seore Heiser yeah that was what I was looking for is follow on that this will be prioritized in your end if our budget isn't fully funded I do want to say that um I do very much think that retaining our experienced teachers is vitally important and I think many of my colleagues feel the same way so I'm speaking for myself we hear all the time
131of the amount of new teachers we have and the value our experience teachers in helping Mentor our new teachers and just in teaching our students so if we can do something that is fiscally sound to allow to retain our new teachers I think it's important to do that and I think what I'm seeing is what we're voting on here is a step to allow us to do that and if we can identify a source of sort of a default funding if we can't get a fully funded that might address some of the issues so I would be willing to bring a follow on motion if this motion passes to say that um that if our budget is not fully funded that this will be prioritized in year- end funding thank you Miss seore Heiser all
132right seeing no other lights after Miss seis Mar Heiser turns hers off I'm going to take an opportunity to speak um to the thrust of the issue here um two things one I support the drop program uh two I support erfc um erfc is deferred compensation for a world that has walked away from providing employees with suitable retirements where they can grow old with dignity where they live it is a huge Boon for our Workforce that we continue to offer a pension that provides that dignity at a time when many places have turned their backs on their workers making it harder for them to continue living in retirement my father retired like 30 years ago as a as a law enforcement officer with a pension after uh you know nearly 35 years on the job
133and he and my my late mother were able to live uh a reasonably comfortable life with their pension because their his service was recognized with that deferred compensation you may not get a 22-year-old who understands the value of a pension at 22 but when they start approaching 30 those conversations start happening in Earnest and by the way and perhaps we could get a a memo from HR about the different options that we have for our employees we do have 403bs for employees who want to invest more in their own retirement um in other ways we do have various levels of the erfc that have become less and less generous over Generations so I can't speak for everybody but I can only speak for myself I will not turn my back on erfc it is a
134boon to our system it is something that if anything we should be looking for ways to explain to our youngest employees what a great asset this is in our system and we should be looking for ways to make it stronger and more powerful in the retirements of the people who have served our system for decades that's it all right seeing no other speakers we can go to a vote please put the motion the the main motion on the screen I just want everybody to be clear all of the other stuff was withdrawn or defeated we are back to the main motion that is on the screen all those in favor Miss seore Heiser miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Marin Miss Anderson and myself all those opposed Mr Moon Dr Anderson Mr Dunn I
135can't see the our folks joining us virtually maybe they could verbalize McDaniel opposes uh movine in favor all right can the clerk read the vote I have eight yeses four NOS the motion carries the motion carries I call on Miss uh Miss seore Heiser I would like to propose a follow on motion that if our um advertised budget is not fully funded that these funds be prioritize miss lady would you like to speak to your motion I think we've had plenty speaking on it I just want to say I also fully understand the better job around it um as well as our HR but I I understand the value it brings to our teachers our erfc program and um our drop program and I think as we entered into tight budget times we need to
136figure how to keep our best and brightest here because without good teachers and our experienced teachers we don't have good schools so I'm hoping that this will be a good compromise what is it the budg let me just read it because it's the budget Pro prioritize the funds at year end the funds sorry funds for the drop program at year end all right so let me try that again how about if the funds for this program do not remain in the budget after our vote do not remain in the budget the the board will prioritize the funds for the drop program at year end I'm wondering since the erfc motion was three parts whether we need to specify if the funds for the drop program do not remain in the budget because the other two
137parts were separate of this the motion was one motion no I know but I'm saying there's three different buckets of spending in that one motion we passed so that's fine we'll just leave it as it is all right miss lady would would you like to speak to your second I think I already passionately spoke to my second thank you Mr Moon just in principle I don't want to make a decision on the EOD end today uh and I don't want to make a decision on our final budget today either that is why earlier I voting know if this motion passes what happens its effect is telling Board of Supervisors you can you can cut out the $6.1 million from our request because we're going to fund it at the year end I don't want to
138I don't want a send I don't want our board to send a message to the Board of Supervisors because whether they fully fund us or not we're going to we're going to continue pushing them for the maximum amount of a transfer I don't want to say say today that we have a we are expecting enough year end so that we don't have you don't have to fully fund us thank you Mr Moon Dr Anderson thank you I I just wanted to offer some clarity at least on my position that my opposition to the previous motion was not because it is a referendum on erfc it is not at all it is certainly as a former teacher myself a referendum on wanting to to keep our new te our experienced teachers because I think that's important
139my concern was the timing that we are dealing with in terms of the messaging and I think Miss Anderson did a really great job of articulating this I would not want to add that in the main budget and then we are still faced with a deficit and I'm not as optimistic as you are Dr Reed um but I would not want to dangle this and then not be able to support it I will support this followon motion because I do believe we can prioritize this at year end this is something that we can do so I will be supporting this motion but the timing of the previous it just gave me a lot of pause given where we are if our budget climate situation landscape was a little tighter for me this may not have
140been a conversation it's just we are pretty far apart and we may have to make some we may have to have some really difficult and challenging discussions and I would not want to dangle this possibility without knowing firmly that we would be able to accomplish that without jeopardizing some of the other things that we have said are very high priority so I will be supporting this motion and prioritizing this in our year end thank you Dr Anderson if you've already spoken and you are not wanting to have a go back please turn your lights off Mr dun I also wanted to clarify I'm not opposed to the erfc uh what I'm opposed to is making decisions in a vacuum based on incomplete and insufficient data um I think at this critical inflection point in our
141history when our teachers are underpaid our staff are underpaid by uh great amounts and varying amounts compared to Market we need to be looking at the money we have available and then making decisions with a blank slate saying how can we help each teacher each uh staffer to earn a living wage so that they can live in dignity not in 35 years but today so they can provide for their family today so we can provide them maximum autonomy for how they want to spend their money today whether that's to save for the future to participate in a pension um Etc that is something that I believe we have to uh in order to be responsible and accountable to our Educators and our staff for the reason we have a great school system we need to
142be thoughtful in our decisions and not commit the school system to large expenditures that may be small in the near term but may be large in the in the long term um without thoughtfully considering in a holistic way all of the potential impacts and all of the ways that we could use the pot of money available to us to achieve our objective of paying people at or above Market making sure that they are fully compensated for all the work they do and providing them um the opportunity to live in dignity thank you thank you Mr dun Miss seore Heiser yeah just briefly I just wanted to lift up um I really appreciate what um my colleague mentioned about um the Board of Supervisors and you know cutting or funding but I I actually think and
143this is what I mentioned by Communications I actually think the message is almost the opposite I for me I think the message is we so value our experienced teachers and we so want to retain them that and we I mean reality right now we're $89 million apart we need this in our budget we absolutely need this in our budget but even if we don't get it because we can't get we cannot control our funding we're still going to prioritize this at year end to me it's a similar message that we sent to our special education teachers that we're prioritizing the contracts at year end it's sending a message to our teachers that we recognize we need our experienced teachers in our our teachers in those areas as miss lady mentioned that have um higher vacancy
144rates or higher needs and that's what our whole budget is is prioritizing compensation for our Educators and I think that's could be also another message to be sent I think this is work that maybe staff need to work on but yes ma'am okay thank you Miss seore Heiser seeing no other hands or lights we will move to to a vote for the followon motion on the screen if we could center that please thank you all those in favor of the follow on motion on the screen Miss seore Heiser miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Marin Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit Mr mlan Mr McDaniel and myself all those opposed Mr Dunn abstaining Mr Moon will the clerk read the vote I have 10 yeses one no one exstension the motion carries thank you
145all right we're going to take a 10-minute recess thank you e [Music] for e for board members please return to your seats e all right let me dust off my agenda agenda item 5.03 action item revised Glasgow Middle School boundary study scope I call on Dr Reed thank you uh Mr chair um one of the things that we were asked to do at the last meeting is take a look at the scope that we had presented for the Glasgow Middle School boundary and do a downsizing of that and in light of the larger more holistic uh policy development uh division-wide so at this time uh we are presenting a scal down scope which will not include clud the um if we could go to slide 11 please um Madam clerk okay so essentially the um
146what's under consideration in this if you will revised scope is um that the revision will still include Glasgow Middle School holes middle school and po Middle School in the boundary adjustment uh we will consider consider the implications to High School attendance based on the outcome of the Middle School uh possible adjustments and will continue to explore multiple strategies to reduce Glasgow Middle School to a membership of close to 1350 students or less uh with the density and geography of the area in the Glasgow Middle School boundary um what we removed uh from the scope and from consideration was the analysis around academic Advanced uh or at AAP programs local level four Center boundaries um at multiple schools um including Canterbury Woods badier Frost uh and so forth we felt like that was uh a larger
147scope that um would be challenging uh in light of the more holistic uh boundary work so this is the um scaled back uh version of the scope that I would be recommending this evening so so I'm happy to take questions thank you Dr Reed Miss Anderson so do we need the motion first no okay um I did a lot of digging on this because one of the schools that is significantly o or not significantly but is over 100% is one of the schools that I have kiddos that go to and when I dug in because I I understand that part of the reason this was brought to the attention of the board before I came on the board so I kind of did some digging um and pulled together some information based on past conversations
148and things so we have eight other schools that are middle schools that have I I kind of the same question that I asked last time about the fact that this is 6 through 8 instead of 7 through 8 so if you extrapolate how many kids you need to have per grade we have eight other middle schools that have a higher grade have a higher average per grade than Glasgow does um including three that are also over the 1350 and this is exactly the reason why I am excited about the the work that the board is doing in order to look at boundaries overall so that we don't have to do these one off conversations anymore where we're privileging one group of kids over others and so I think it's really important um we also have
14912 schools middle schools that were designed to be over 1350 so we have worked to do in terms of both fixing maybe looking at the Ed specs to ensure that they are appropriate for the school buildings that we have and also I am fully in support of the boundary work that We are continuing to move forward with as a board so I won't be able to support this tonight but I did want to make sure that everybody knows that I am eager to make sure that we fix these problems and I think we can do that holistically across the county thank you Miss Anderson seeing no lights their hands I will take a turn or Miss Marin will take a turn thank you chair I want to commend um the representative who brought this forward
150because I know the dedication that it took and months and months of community input and I I always try to support uh when I can but for reasons similarly stated I do want to let the decision of the board to move forward on holistic boundary policies a policy review further give the advantage to the community and this particular Community that's been identified because I think that the goal with the boundary policy update is to make it as good as it can be to get the resources that all of our students need to the places they need to be so I won't be able to support this tonight but I'm very hopeful for what can be accomplished through the um holistic boundary work thank you Miss Marin Dr Anderson thank you I will still be making
151this motion this evening but I also wanted to make sure that I shared a little bit of history and for those of you who've been on the board you know how long I've been working at this had it been absent uh a a staff air this would have already have been approved and done last year with Kent Gardens but there was that error and so it created this delay so that's why we are ended up here the other thing that I really want to make sure that I highlight is what we discussed at CIP regarding honoring the past work of the CIP tonight is not the conversation to approve the boundary that's not what this is this is just to approve the scope it's the scope that the superintendent supports it's a scope that is
152in keeping with the with the CIP work we had an extended conversation regarding the renovation queue we all know that there's work to be done there even the superintendent herself has said in that meeting and many of us also agreed that once we have our renovation queue in place some of the schools that are in that renovation queue may not even remain on that M would will likely not remain on that queue but to honor the work that was done we're going to forward and go through that queue I expected the same consideration for Glasgow Middle School and it really tickled me as with I I've just never heard that we've been privileged before but thank you um and so I was looking for that work to be honored and and speaking with Dr Reed
153about this multiple times the um the presentation that came to us before the recommend I was not in support of that recommendation it was wildly larger than I think anyone had wanted it to be or what the community was expecting it to be this is a task a conversation that's been almost now two years in the making in order to rightsize that school with the other middle schools with which it can only be right-sized we have to keep in mind these three schools that are in this presentation are the only three middle schools with six seven8 so you can only do something within those schools and luckily there is space to do that Glasgow currently has 1722 kids Holmes has 883 kids fewer po has 8232 fewer kids it's twice the size of those other
154schools within a threemile jurisdic um area this is not a new conversation this is not going to usurp or upset or be out of alignment with any pending future work we've had this conversation just earlier Dr Reed would you mind to confirm what we've talked about yes ma'am um we Dr Anderson and I this afternoon talked about um would the uh modified downsize scope of Glasgow conflict with um the um more holistic uh boundary work and my assessment of that at this point is that as long as we identify those factors by July that we plan to include as the if you will business rules for the more holistic boundary work and those become the same factors if you will or parameters for the glasgill work I think we can keep the modified scope in
155alignment and not um controvert the more holistic um boundary work thank you I appreciate that again this decision tonight it's not to address the boundaries that's not what this is this is just to approve the scope which means just looking at these three schools so that this staff can go back to the community and say this is what we're looking at that is the only ask for tonight that conversation in terms of what it would look like the boundary the business rules that Dr Reed just talked about we will have a space to see that come together as the work furthers I I would not want for tonight to be when this ends for this community thank you Dr Anderson I will take a turn um the presentation says consider the implications to high school
156can somebody explain what that means yes sir the implications I think where that sits is we discuss the possibility for example if 100 students that are currently assigned to Glasgow became assigned to PO for example and po feeds Falls Church in anandale would we then make those 100 students go back to Justice and create a split feeder at po so the uh bullet that says consider the implications to high schools might be would we consider if those students students then became po middle school students would we shift them to anandale or Falls Church they would matriculate to high school with their middle school um classmates so that's we would consider that implication right now we know that our facilities department has indicated that Falls Church anandale and Justice once we open the new addition will
157all be similarly um occupied in other words the percentage occupancy will be very similar so the we wanted to leave open the possibility that uh students would not become a if you will a a three-way uh split feeder so it's leaving that possibility open as to the the work of the previous board and honoring that the work of the previous board was passing a follow-on motion that requested staff to develop a uh scope study that's been done so the motion the work of the previous board has been accomplished whether this board decides to move forward with with the rest of this process is new work um I I'm curious um making it work versus whether this would so staff often is told what to do by this board versus what it can recommend to this
158board right and the two perfectly viable ways of doing business um this board told staff to come forward with this um this study scope um is it your recommendation that we would move this forward in a vacuum had the board not directed this work to be done would you be recommending that we move this forward before we finish the work that's being done on the holistic boundary I think um um so I'm going to answer that in two ways uh one way I think I want to be very uh transparent to say that Dr Anderson is correct in her comment about the timing of this work which is to say that we did have an interim person that was leading our facilities uh work that did provide the advice that we could hold on not
159putting um Glasgow in the queue at the time that I think Dr Anderson otherwise would have so under the engagement rules at that time Dr Anderson's correct this evening that we perhaps would be done with this already so I want to be I want to say that that is um factually I mean that's that's accurate if you're asking today do I think that this work is it's in our best interest to move this work forward uh in light of the holistic work I staff would not I would not recommend doing that I think it would be better subsumed under um a more holistic work um I do believe that the scal down version is something that I can support and I have said to Dr Anderson I could support the scale down scope um but
160it's also true that staff did not come forward with the recommendation at this time thank you Miss seore Heiser Dr Reed out of curiosity there are many things that this board has this this board has directed facility staff to do an infrastructure policy review and infrastructure policy the tracked and untracked and with all due respect to your very wonderful facility staff and to you the board director of Performing Arts Warehouse over a year ago that hasn't happened so my question question is if this is something staff didn't bring forward what would the impact of moving forward with this be on the Performing Arts Warehouse and the other work directed by staff by the board for the staff to do well um I think we do there are a number of followon motions to the CIP
161and there were also a number of next steps I know U Miss samansky has been working um diligently to move through the list I think any body of work that we undertake um has an impact on on other work that we're undertaking so are you asking if we do the scope will we not be able to do the warehouse or I'm asking I to be perfectly honest am pretty frustrated about the warehouse because you know I've asked several times in the last year plus about the status for the warehouses so I'm concerned because it seems to continue to be an issue an issue that we're adding more work to staff when they haven't completed work from January of 2023 it's a fair assessment and um that was directed by the board I should say yes
162ma'am and that any new task obviously impacts our ability to complete work that's been previously directed that would be correct well then I would recommend before we add new work to the staff that staff aren't bringing forward that we complete the work the board has directed thank you Dr Anderson thank you um I appreciate what's been said but here the warehouse is an important thing we've heard people talk about it we need someplace to store sets but this is kids in a school for me that would always take priority every single time over storage of sets this school this principal these individuals have done so much just in order for kids to get get through the hallways and it still is insufficient dismissal is a crazed process with almost no over 40 buses trying to
163leave at the same time and I'm not saying other schools don't have that issue that is not my argument but I am not responsible for those other schools I am responsible for the Mason district schools and I have followed this process to the tea this is our process board members raise things for those of you who've been on the board with me for since we got on together that was my main concern my first CIP meeting with Jeff plattenburg I said why is this up to board members to bring things up are you kidding me how is this a thing but it is a thing that's how Glenn Forest came to be that's how Ken mlan Langley came to be that's how Kent Gardens came to be that's how parkon came to be in this
164conversation that's how coats came to be in the conversation even though staff wanted to raise this they had to come through us to raise it because that is our current process this is the process that we have right now and I could not disagree anymore in terms of the scope that the board the the I'm sorry the motion that the board had agreed upon is not yet done this is the scope there's been nothing but a community conversation saying hey we're thinking about doing this what do you all think this is actually doing the scope will accomplish the directives by the former board thank you Dr Anderson Miss St John cunning so at the very beginning of sitting here we considered two other schools and I sat here and I said we have collectively as
165a board said that we need to do boundary changes for the entire County all of our districts have issues but we said we've got to take a holistic approach and be fair and be Equitable at that meeting I said this is the last time I will vote for a oneoff because I made a commitment to all the board members here when we had that discussion that we have to look at this holistically I know teachers at glasow I know people at glasow I understand the situation I have situations like that in my district but we have to look at this holistically if we're going to tackle this problem and be Equitable and be fair and be considerate and look at the entire County not just one District so I understand that every single magisterial district
166has one issue like this or two or three I am I can't support this because I made a commitment on this Das that I would not do any more one-offs until we did the holistic approach and I'm going to stick to that thank you Miss St John cunning Mr dun I I think there is potential Merit to the um survey given if if I'm understanding correctly that these three middle schools are the only ones with six through eight um that does seem to put them into a different bucket and might require additional considerations or data Gathering that does not apply to other schools but um but that being said uh I do have to agree with my colleagues that many of us said I know I said this was the last one that we would
167approve uh previously and though it breaks my heart for the community given that they've gone through such efforts and my colleague Dr Anderson um uh I I do hope that since we're putting all our eggs in the holistic bucket that that will be a fair Equitable and inclusive process uh that will uh actually be operationalized in a fair Equitable and inclusive way that involves a lot of community input because otherwise um we're going to be saying no to this uh and potentially have bad outcomes on the holistic process so the expectations for holistic process are going to be higher if if we vote no on this thank you Mr Dunn Miss seore Heiser thank you I just wanted to clarify can you hear me I know you couldn't hear that better thank you I just
168wanted to clarify what I was saying earlier it isn't one thing or another thing it is if we're going to do if we're going to hopefully to Mr Dunn's Point fairly and Equity inclusively fix the issues that we all have in all of our districts I'll say in lake lake bradic the sixth and seventh graders are in a 4,300 student school system and I can't move in those hallways either and I know we all have situations like that in our districts and I think if you take the um the six seven seventh and eighth graders I think there's 1,400 maybe a little more but um maybe close to 1500 sth and eighth graders at Lake bradock so I just lift that up to say I think we all have issues in our system in our
169in our districts that um that are outside of best practices or overcrowding or other issues and I'm really issu of the whole County the point I was trying to make and the warehouse was an example as opposed to if an and is we staff have finite resources in time and if we want them I've said from the beginning if we're going to do holistic boundary policy work we have to do it well and we have to do it right and that means we have to be inclusive we have to have robust Community engagement and we have to give staff and us the time and thought to be able to do it in a thoughtful way and if we overload staff with too many different things I worry that we will not have the bandwidth to
170do that so that was an example of that I I um it's it calls from making hard decisions and sometimes in my experience when you stop to do the big picture work it does put the individual things on hold and it sucks at that moment and it's terrible at that moment I know one of the reasons I think this way is being at a different PTA meeting for a different school there was there was concern about issues for that school and that um and access to certain programming and I think all of those can be better addressed by a holistic process and I'm hoping that this board is really committed to alongside staff doing in a thoughtful inclusive way to fix issues across the county thank you Miss seism Mor Heiser I call on Dr
171Anderson for a motion I move that the school board authorized the Glasgow Middle School boundary study scope to include Glasgow Middle School holes middle school and pole middle school as shown in the attachment is there a second second Mr McDaniel Dr Anderson would you like to speak to your motion um I have not Soo much more to say except for the fact that one the superintendent supports this work and two she does not see it to be outside of a pending holistic boundary review so I do not see any reason why we should stand in the way of this community the only Community with three grade levels which is going to be a different boundary conversation because if these three schools are going to be part of a boundary conversation with other schools that means
172either those other schools are going to become six uh 36 I'm sorry 678 or will'll be reverting to something else I don't know if this is part of the boundary conversation but right now it isn't and so I I I would like for this to be supported because I it just needs to be it's been two years in the making thank you Dr Anderson Mr McDaniel would you like to speak to your second uh the only comment I I I will not support the motion that I'm seconding and they might that might seem counterintuitive um I I do believe that uh members of this board are not entitled but uh is a a matter of of collegiality uh should be um you know have votes up and down I think that we started this process
173and we owe it to vote up and down as to whether or not to continue this process so I'm voting I'm I'm uh seconding for discussion purposes only but for the reasons previously stated uh by Miss Anderson by Miss St John cunning um I I made a commitment to not do any more of these one-offs and I'm going to stick to that thank you thank you Mr McDaniel Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman our support motion I I'll be honoring I am honoring the work of the a new initiative uh initiated by this board or one board member a a you know starting from January 1 uh of the this time of this new board and also when you consider uniqueness of these three schools six through there is no other school in the county
174I can I can possibly fathom to be able to convert to become bu to6 through eight uh our put to motion thank you Mr Moon Mr mline thank you Mr chair uh I joined Mr Moon uh and uh issuing my support for the motion um I appreciate the work that Dr Anderson has done with staff to to bring this into line with the community comm's uh wishes um Mr Dunn referred to putting all our eggs in a countywide boundary study basket um as one board member I will tell you I have zero eggs in a countywide boundary study basket um I don't believe we should put things like this on hold uh that are very important to our community uh just in in support of a long-term um political Folly uh so I will support
175this motion thank you Mr mavan Miss Marin I want to again commend the advocacy of the school board member who is bringing this forth and I too have lamented that boundary decisions in the school division have been made upon School Board member advocacy which is precisely why this board voted by consensus to aess that was transparent and Equitable I think it's egregious that we have schools that are overcrowded that's the result of not doing a holistic boundary work in decades and the policy that should be reviewed every five years is over 10 years overdue that's putting work on hold so if we can get into the best practices habit of reviewing our policies which we know is difficult or or reviewing our boundaries it will get better and I want it to get better for
176the the students and the staff and the community in these schools I also from my understanding of what has been most recently presented is it impacts a lot more schools and a lot of magisterial districts and that just really opens it up and in the time that this was first brought until now a lot has changed we're doing the policy work we have a new director of facilities so I'm hopeful that it's going to work out for the better and I have the utmost urgency to get this work done so we can relieve some of this pressure and give every student what they deserve thank you Miss Marin seeing no other lights we'll take a vote all those in favor of the motion Dr Anderson Mr Moon Mr mavan all those opposed Miss Dixit Miss
177Anderson Miss Marin Miss St John cunning uh Miss seis Mor Heiser up in Mr Dunn and miss lady can I have the oh sorry McDaniel was also opposed that's all right opposed opposed yes Mr McDaniel opposed can the clerk read the vote I have three yeses seven NOS two exstension the motion fails thank you all right uh the objection to items 5.04 5.05 5.06 and 5.07 have been removed these items will go back to the consent agenda action uh agenda item 5.08 action item consultant contract Amendment Center for Creative leadership I call on Miss Anderson for a motion I move that the school board one approved the amendment to renew the contract for with Center for Creative leadership for one year to replace the assessment certification workshop with the assessment certification course and two authorize
178the division superintendent or the director of office of procurement services to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board thank you Miss Anderson is there a second second miss lady Miss Anderson would you like to speak to your motion um this was pulled off of the consent agenda this afternoon so I am um eager to understand more about why how however I do support fully um creating opportunities for um professional development within our staff and I understand as someone who creates professional development what a significant task that is and so I understand that we need to be able to have robust opportunities for our staff to improve and so I will am in full support of this thank you Miss Anderson Miss would you like to speak to your second yes
179um you know making an analogy to if we were a company of this size uh but certainly as a school system of this size we have some amazing expertise um but the reason that we are Forward Thinking and we are as Innovative and where we are as a system is because we seek that uh professional development from other people who are out in front of the industry um and as someone who who worked in the system for several years uh who had to fund my own professional development that was not provided for me by fairis County Public Schools um while we try to do a really good job there are areas that we definitely do not have expertise and I fully support uh when we can allow U our employees to be trained or have
180trainers come in with those expertise thank you Miss Lady Mr Dunn uh Dr Reed who are the beneficiaries of this contract I mean ultimately the students in the school division would benefit from the contract but it is um generally principal professional development modules and I I do want to um I've gotten a little bit of information a little bit more here uh while the contract number is above 300,000 that's on the um on the consent agenda for background the spend since June of 2019 has been $185,800 which average to just under 40,000 a year so it enables access um for our leadership development cohort which are generally our new principles um to take a number of courses um and they're called leadership Compass courses uh for mostly new principles principal induction thank you uh I
181would just ask when we have consent agenda items uh to the extent that there's that type of information that's available um I think we can all speak to the value of professional development but 385,000 is not going to provide professional development for 24,000 employees so understand the target audience uh is helpful so that uh that's certainly something I think we can all support um but if it's going to you know uh different audiences for that amount of money which is fairly modest for a large Workforce that would just be helpful so that we can keep it on the consent agenda thank you yes I'll do a better job of making sure we've got that detail thank you Mr dun Miss Dixit thank you Mr chair um I've been speaking to some principles and uh one
182of thing a principal of 12 Years uh and he brought to my attention that when he was a new principal FCPS had this great leadership program which helped him uh to be the the principal his and all the seers and now there is a program in place for first two years I believe and then after the second year to like say fifth year fourth year we still like they're um I guess newer and uh there there has to be cons consistent support for those principles and what from worked they are they need that support from the leadership and just just to get the O overall um leadership uh development I should say not the support but they have they need to have more leaderships uh uh development courses and part of a uh I would
183even um suggest if if it's not in place to have a a mentorship program um till year seven and um and then they can be a team of principles supporting the newer ones or the um bouncing ideas and so so that was something uh I feel it's very important to develop the leadership and I mean the principal uh development and um and then it should go to obviously other staff members in different places uh in leadership but um this one this is definitely something I will support thank you thank you Miss Dixit see no other speakers we'll go to the vote all those in favor Miss seore Heiser miss lady Miss St John cunning Miss Marin Mr D Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit Mr Moon Mr mavan uh Mr McDaniel and myself will the
184clerk read the vote that's 120 and the motion passes all right thank you agenda item 6.01 strategic Plan update I call on Dr Reid good afternoon uh Mr chair it's my uh pleasure this evening to share a strategic planning update and it's been a little while since we've had a chance to do that um this evening I'm going to share a little bit about our early implementation stages on future initiatives uh that we're really excited about and right now um I want to share a little bit of the work that we've been doing on attendance as you know this has become a new vdoe accreditation data point and it's very important that we address attendance because we know that students who are in school tend to learn more effectively so today or this evening I'm
185going to talk a little bit about what our schools are doing to support regular attendance I want to remind our community that's watching um the importance of attendance and again our staff doesn't need a reminder because we know that uh it's our children when they're in front of us obviously are able to learn better um our students who show up for school schol regularly develop fundamental reading and math skills um they improve their chances that they're going to read on grade level and one of the things that I thought was really an interesting data point um was that the missing 10% or more school days a year is honestly a primary cause of lower academic achievement um and in particular it really doesn't matter whether the absences are excused or not excused if they're not
186there it's really difficult to learn um and the again then the flip side of that's true students who attend 90% or more of the school year are more likely to graduate high school on time so all of these data points are really linked when we think about um The Chronic absenteeism which is really the more danger point this has really been an increased Focus nationally and I think we've seen it in a number of our local Publications as well as Regional chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10 % or more of the school year for any reason so that's out of any 100 days missing 10 days or two weeks our attendance campaign has been nonstop and honestly for those of you who are parents and watching you know that you've received a lot more
187um communication about the importance of attendance for many of our families who were firsttime parents of schoolage children during covid the uh messaging might actually seem a little uh contradictory uh it's often we talked about if any sign of illness during our covid times we were um asked to keep students and also staff staying home and the guidance has gradually Chang continued importance of School attendance this year we launched a campaign across the division and developed a toolkit um we also want to make sure we provide timely and important messaging around attendance another um possibility that we've been looking at recently we have a team and honestly our principles have been looking at the flexible programming options and this allows an adjustment of up to 15 recovery days and this is important because we have
188as we monitor our School's attendance and notice some schools maybe where we have students who have missed more days than other schools we're able to provide programming where students earn days back which the state refers to as recovery days and we're excited to make sure that we um work within those boundaries I want to share the exciting news and Shout a big thank you to our principls and all of our school-based staff and those in the central office supporting this initiative because 190 of our schools have showed Improvement and that's that's huge honestly um the number of schools with at least a five percentage Point Improvement is 93 of our schools that's almost 50% of our schools and 20 of our 19 of our schools um if had at least the 10 percentage Point Improvement
189so we're just thrilled with that work um and it does show that when we focus on data points we can move uh mountains so because it's a strategic planning report there is a short video highlighting our Fairfax County Public School students so Madam clerk let's roll tape [Music] as a part of goal two of our strategic plan one of our areas of focus this year is reducing chronic absenteeism addressing this is a partnership between our schools families and the community throughout our division schools are making significant progress in this area through a variety of approaches strategies and Partnerships the core of our beliefs is that we know that our families want their kids in school and so our assumption is if that's not happening that there's some challenges there that we might be able to
190support we're about to start morning meeting our teachers are doing so much they're using talking points they're making phone calls um emails to communicate with families we had a lot of families who just really did not understand the impact that attendance had on their child's academic progress and so we started having those conversations one by one family by Family how can we help you another thing that we put in place is our mentoring program this year we have identified kids who need a mentor some is based on attendance some not but kids look forward to spending time with an adult for 30 minutes a week I think the most vital thing has really been that we've ensured that everyone is on the same page I was wondering for next our attendance team meets every every
191other week it's our social worker school counselor administrator our office assistant who does the attendance our family liaison and so when that team gets together and it's systematically going through it's about what's going on with this family sometimes it's about education families not understanding that it is really important um sometimes it is something more complex and we need to make sure that we're helping to connect families to either Child Care um sometimes Medical Services sometimes it's as simple as helping to connect them with transportation services I I want them to feel like that we're we have a shared goal in their child success our primary families who had only ever experienced the pandemic they had heard if your child has a sniffle or a sore throat stay home and Anthony and his team did a
192great job communicating with families to re-educate them about when they should keep their child home and when they should come to school nothing replaces the voice to voice face Toof face phone call parent conference whether it was virtual whether we were able to speak in the morning afternoon evening just being able to communicate with families the importance of having their children here and making the time to have that true connection and our teachers were absolutely on board and on top of it to emphasize those great news phone calls being sure that families knew we are so excited to have your student here and kudos to you what else can we continue to do to support your success Excellence equity and opport well well so um it's important for those of you watching um to stay
193informed we're going to continue to deliver reports to the board and the public about our progress towards this goal and the next uh strategic plan Bas Baseline report for goal two will be shared at the April 2nd work session so we're excited uh to continue to share information um um and I also want to I do want to acknowledge as I close this um strategic plan report that we have um heard some feedback about uh how this messaging May at times be a challenge for uh students who have um legitimate uh medical reasons or uh conditions or circumstances that create absences uh for students and so what we want to do is we're being trying to be very thoughtful about while we're putting a full press on the importance of attendance also being thoughtful and
194sensitive uh when we're working with students and families for which um absences are necessity so not to create anxiety around that we want to make uh attendance at school be something we're excited drawn to inspired by and not a source of further anxiety so anyhow uh Mr frish that would be uh our strategic plan report this evening thank you Dr Reed uh Miss seore Heiser thank you and I couldn't help but asked this question today I love the work we're doing I I applaud our schools the numbers that you showed in that about the decrease in chronic absenteeism is is miraculous I know it's due to in for a lot of hard work by our schools and our teams and so I'm I'm really I just want to say I'm really grateful to the hard
195work that your staff has put in and especially our principes and um counselors and everyone else in the buildings have put in to do this so um it's great I just wanted to mention given that it's music and arts in our schools month and given some of the testimony we heard earlier and some of the articles that I've sent around about data that links um addressing trauma through using Arts data linking reduction in chronic absenteeism in the Arts I'm wondering as we build out a long-term plan if there can be some intentional use of Arts curriculum to address chronic because there is data that shows right it's it's a place where kids have their social emotional needs met find those connections I would say sports and Athletics provide a similar uh I think there similar
196benefits to the physical activity but how do we get an understanding and building intentional programming of ways that kids want to come to school one of my concerns I will say is that I wonder the intense work we're doing now how long-term sustainable that is on our our staff time right I mean the intensity we need to do now I think is great uh but trying to get our staff to do this level long-term may not be as sustainable so what other um things that can we do to help supplement the work they're doing yeah I think those are great questions and I think at the end of the day the more activities that students connect to that have another adult um to connect with uh and that feeling of connectedness right and inclusion the
197more uh likely it is students want to be at school and so whether it's the find and Performing Arts um Athletics um Career and Technical classes academics that they're drawn to um I do think it's critically important for students to feel like somebody will notice if they're not showing up so um I mean I think that's part of our conversation around Middle School sports creating that activity um the addition of our boys volleyball girls wrestling those types of things making sure we have some activity or team or connection uh that matches an interest for each and every one of our students would be a goal um I agree and I think as we're en entering and maybe continuing to be in tough budget times I think showing those connections to Chronic absenteeism showing those connections
198to some of these programs that we're doing to um getting our kids mental health right I think it's really important to intentionally build out the programs and show the connections there's data out there um I I would also encourage um you mentioned something about having another adult to connect to through these programs but I remember when we looked at the data on the core planning team for the Strategic plan and what was really interesting in that data it actually showed a much higher rate this is the student survey data showed the students felt much more and I I remember that data it was because it jumped out and we talked about in the core planning team and so these authentic places for connection isn't just to an adult which I know is very important but
199maybe positive peer-to-peer connections which also provide and relying on each other right if you're on a team whether it's putting on a show or a concert or Athletics or there's I mean people join gym there's a there's a level of peer-to-peer connection on hey where have you been that I think we're maybe not touching upon as much and I so I think as you build these long-term plans how do we create structures that don't require such intensity from staff that get to the same results and I would just encourage you and your staff to think innovatively around that around this issue and then figure out how to lift it up to our funding Partners so so everybody understands the importance of what people may think of traditionally as electives yes ma'am I think what you're
200talking about is preventive versus um reactive programming so thank you and I do think team play I mean such as anyhow Oakland that was a basketball reference it might have been yeah all right Dr Anderson um thank you can you speak a little regarding the flexible scheduling opportunities it's listed here that VOE has provided um opportunities for flexibility have we already started any of this I am so glad you asked that question because we have a team that has created spring sprouts and our spring Sprouts are going to be a number of our students um that are going to be attending school during spring break and that flexible scheduling is going to enable them to recover days in their attendance plan and many of our uh leadership staff that are here with us this evening
201are going to be part of our spring Sprouts program um in including your superintendent um and we're going to an opportunity to be with our students uh next week um as they work on their early literacy and numeracy as well as other skills so that flexible scheduling also we're looking at it secondary in Virtual spaces um which I think uh we could speak a little more to the virtual possibilities that our secondary students have as well as outside of the school day um flexible um I think the really between 612 they're three three hours with equal one day present of our students will be able toar earn back quite a few days next week thank you which are the five elementary schools in which spring Sprouts will be taking place oh dear um anyone have
202the spring Sprouts locations and is it just for would they be only for students from that school or we're just collecting students from throughout the area oh dear um I'll have to get back to you on that it seems like we were hubbing schools we were bringing students together um to I think they're doing some looking while I'm answering um but we were bringing students from some of the schools together um at a particular school so it's not just you know a few it's not just five schools but I can get you that data specifically I apologize thank you um one of the things that I do want to share I think this is a great opportunity to have this flexibility um and I think our students who are chronically absent getting them for 2
203hours or 3 hours is better than no hours right but it it could be of a double-edged sword I wouldn't want for parts of our community to rely on this as being the substitute for school because being at schools for you know at a school day for seven hours it's a very different experience than being in this program for two again better than none but that is not the goal so I want to make sure that's that that still continues to be part of the conversation yes ma'am and I would also say our Twilight program which we expanded to 14 Schools also will be part of this recovery program for our high school students because Credit Recovery is a um a part of this initiative I I'm actually glad you raised this because I believe
204I raised it during the work session last Tuesday but I don't believe I received an answer on what does the typical day look like for a student participating in the Twilight program is it can they just come in for the afternoon part is it an extended day or of student I mean I think it kind of depends but the the idea is that the students who are typically accessing the Twilight program need some additional support to make sure that they're ready to graduate on time so they would be attending a full day and getting some additional support in those Twilight uh you know late afternoon early evening hours however if a student had been experiencing some chronic absenteeism and needed you know to to get back and you know just access the Twilight program before
205they were able to make a full return to school for some reason they could do that but that would be atypical the norm would be a student would attend full day and also access the Twilight program I see I think I was working under the impression that it gave flexibility to students who may have had to work so they would have had the chance to shift hours um nevertheless that's um thank you for that answer um transportation is that part of spring Sprouts yes ma'am and I do believe we have the names of the five schools Miss Neil we do the five elementary schools that are hosting spring Sprouts are hia Valley London toown Mount Vernon Woods Washington Mill and woodlon okay thank you um and my final question was regarding um group settings what
206are we looking at even with the Sprouts or the others are we looking um group size not settings are we looking at smaller groups or regular class sizes what's the cohort for the spring Sprouts program and just kind of your your thinking going beyond that sure I can speak a little bit to the spring Sprouts program with um Miss lemon who's not here tonight Who's coordinating the program but it's 30 students per site um for the program that they're going to be offering so is that 30 students per teacher per site right so are we talking small group there will be five teachers and six kids in each of these groups it's two teachers and including and one special education teacher is needed thank you yeah this is really a pilot program with the thought
207that it if once we work out kind of the um the bugs this spring that pun intended but once we work things out this spring um the Sprouts will um grow further grow further yes thank you they will continue to flourish they will thank you they will reach the skies um one more um question this is slide seven The Chronic absenteeism improvements that you've talked about um 93 of the school schools have made at least 5% Point improvements and 19 at least 10 um how how about the schools who are not making that Improvement what are some of the additional supports that are going to be provided between now and so that to help them achieve that 5% that I know is the goal for most of them so I know that we have a
208central office team supporting schools I think what we're going to be working on um is also creating flexible scheduling outside of the Sprouts because spring break will have uh come and gone but doing some after school work um some outside of the school day work because for every two hours of inperson flexible time they're able to um if you will buy back a day um but we also you know continue to hope that our students um well not hope but continue to staff continue to work with parents our family liaison social workers counselors um administrative staff teachers everyone uh is working uh at all of the schools to try to make sure that we have the resources to support students and families being uh connected to school in a more regular basis thank you thank
209you Dr Anderson Miss Dixit thank you Mr chair uh Dr Reed thank you for the presentation and the video nice video there um again I wanted to so see which of the schools have shown the most Improvement is it like elementary school middle school or high schools in that any numbers on that um I would say that the uh video shared a couple of our elementary schools that have made the most significant gains and I would um I would have to defer to my memory which doesn't serve me perfectly right now but it seems like more of our elementary schools have made dramatic gains in attendance is that correct or do we have a we're happy to provide that analysis we'll provide that uh perhaps this Friday letter with sort of a percentage we have
210a dashboard for this oh um so that we have schools in red orange um and green uh so that's really good to hear at least that the elementary schools are the making making the Maximum Impact uh because we we need these younger Learners in school and that's where learned the most uh one idea when I'm taking that uh from uh Miss moiser earlier she said about continuation of this activity like how to make this um a continuation of like we don't have this issue anymore where do we reach that stage where there's no chronic absentismo to achieve that and then moving forward um because I think a lot of resources are going in right now we kind of situation we're going from 20% to I mean glad to see 13 10% now um one of
211the things Theater Arts was mentioned and um arts and one one when we little ones come to school they go to the classroom they do the you know morning exercise or you know activity and um but then I they go to a middle school and high school there's no physical activity you know they go to classroom after classroom and and then they have afternoon Sports um it just becomes some like when I was in school I remember we we used to have like when we had a c lunch break we used to play as well right a little bit and and playing time with friends or or coming in the school and hanging out with them like gym time uh I think that really bonds them with each other to be able to come they
212want to come to school right I mean I mean there are so many distractions now now anyways so it's harder for the teachers and the schools to get them there and the other thing U and one of the principal mentioned is like parents are just so used to that covid LIF style lifestyle that they are taking vacation whenever whenever and going to Disney and like during the school year so maybe for giving them ideas when they can take their Disney Vacations or like giving them some pointers like if you read need to go like you know this may be the right time or uh something like that so I know a lot of creativity is going into that but we just have to kind of go there to a level that we'd never have to
213face this again thank you thank you and I I know our principles would and I believe we have secondary schools middle and high schools that have also made tremendous attendance progress so I don't want to leave them out and I would also say our principles uh would want our community n to know that the excused absences also are counting as absences right so we're having to make those up so to your point I think more and more of the adults in the community can work remotely from other places um so we just are hoping that happens more on the weekend or uh right uh at vacation times because it's really helpful to have our students in school during academic learning time thank you Miss Dixit Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman as couple other that
214I'm glad to see that video is providing us with this recovery days as an option for us to uh in a pursue and and you know having two hours or three days is better than having no hours but at the same time we don't want this to be an incentive to rely on this because we want to reduce basically the absenteeism so I don't know when the next time you'll be providing us with absenteeism data about when you do that when you do that I'm hoping that you'll provide us both sets with a days is one data another data is without counting those so so I can see whether there has been true uh improve ABM that's what I want to see and also I'll be very curious to find out you know including spring
215Sprout which will start next week you know basically uh when I think this was on page six of your slide says that you you know those days will be focused on content missed or content where a student needs support how a whoever the instructor or teachers might be whether they are from the same school while outside or even L members who may not know these student sh or may not even be a licensed teachers uh be able to tell whether a a a particular or needs additional support in certain areas because we we don't want this such to be a playing time that's not the intent that this should be a way to help their provide additional instructional support yes sir and it's clear that we do have to have a licensed teacher but I
216to your point it has to be someone that knows this the Sprout um so that we can make sure that we're strategic and intentional so and the next time we'll be presenting data will be April 2nd uh and to your uh point will provide data that's unflexed and then data that's flexed I think is what you're asking for yes Dr re okay thank you Mr Moon all right agenda item 6.02 academic matters I call on Dr Reed thank you Mr frish another exciting opportunity to learn a little bit about what our young Fairfax County students are up to and this evening in academic matters I want to talk a little bit about my favorite topic which is mathematics uh and even though we've had a lot of conversation on early literacy I don't want our
217community to think that we are not having fun with uh numeracy particularly in our primary grades so one of the things uh in fact last week one of our most profound holidays I know many um of you on the board and many in our community celebrated Pi Day I had an opportunity to be at Crestwood Elementary School with our uh young Crestwood Elementary School students and I think they were the Bobcats and we had an evening of math filled games um challenge 24 was a new game I had never played and um actually our senior leadership's going to have an opportunity to play challenge 24 because it's a fabulous metaphor for many right answers um and many ways to solve problems so I think uh we'll all benefit from more time with that what is
218numeracy um one of the things we need to think about when we think about literacy and numeracy is that numeracy is the ability to um you know mathematics as a language and it's the ability to utilize that language understanding and those Core Concepts to become fabulous little problem solvers and why is numeracy so important it really is I mean when you look at students who have strong numeracy skills the confidence with which they attack mathematic problems is is just contagious um and that level of contagion can just be overwhelming sometimes in classrooms full of strong numeracy skills um the ability to critically think work together as a team set students up for Algebra 1 and further math and math-based sciences um is just uh it's exhilarating so you might ask how are we improving numeracy
219since it's such a core confidence Builder uh one of the things we do is we want to make sure we invest in professional development and one of those areas that we've been professionally developing in since 20120 I believe is Advantage math recovery or avmr so a number of our um primary mathematics teachers uh are using this scripted intervention curriculum also call Ready Set math um which is an opportunity to support teachers in providing research-based numerous instruction which we want to make sure everything we present in Fairfax County Public Schools is research based and best practice so one of the things when we think about avmr trained teachers um this Focus again began in 2020 with the goal of maximizing the number of avmr trained teachers in each of our elementary schools these teachers are highly
220skilled at providing research-based mathematics instruction as a result of this which helps our young students students particularly in primary grades build a strong foundation in numeracy and more importantly um it actually really enables a positive impact on our students the confidence as I mentioned earlier is contagious um avmr trained teachers uh are able to assist our youngest mathematicians uh eventually to become strong mathletes in math Olympiad and other math uh related opportunities so let's look at the impact uh of our avmr uh work and this is a chart that basically says that we've trained over 2,500 of our elementary teachers since 2020 and 100% of our elementary schools today have at least one trained avmr teacher while 91% of our first grade teachers will be trained by the end of June this school year there's
221evidence to suggest this training is having a real impact and teachers are continuing to report that the training has been some of the most impactful PD they've had for mathematics our pre- and post avmr training results confirm that teachers report higher confidence in their teaching and higher confidence in the mathematics our students can master and this is really important because a number of our primary teachers have tremendous strengths in literacy and expanding these numeracy strengths really supports our again our young mathletes in their um Zeal to become confident uh mathematicians and problem solvers so what's new this year is we have some very explicit direct instruction around scripted numerous lessons of reading and I forget the new Noel can you help me it's not called science of reading anymore evidence-based literacy instruction e e thank
222you so our evidence-based literacy instruction talks about direct explicit instruction right that that's very important for those core foundational literacy skills so too scripted numeracy lessons that are direct and explicit instruction are really a positive in terms of providing uh confident mathematicians in very young ages in 2023 as I mentioned earlier we did purchase Ready Set math for all elementary schools which provided uh supports for mathematics and numeracy instruction this can be used to support and supplement classroom instruction both for primary intermediate and Middle School classrooms and it does support all Educators regardless of their experience level so let's see some of this incredible small group differentiated mathematics in action let's count and check how [Music] many how many seven can everybody let's tap seven four five 6 seven how [Music] many [Music] red why
223do you think this is called a square raise your hand tell me why you think this might be cing 100 square the one Fabiola why do you think this is cing 100 has 100 it has 100 dots oh wow so I'm going to pass to give each of you one a 100 square and I want you to look at it carefully and tell me what you're noticing about the 100 square okay every single like Tin Can you put it down so your friends can see every single like square has 25 so if you by 25 255 whatman was noticing he's noticing that there's four squares he saw this square right here and he says it's 25 and the second square and then there's a third square and a fourth square and he said 25 50
22475 100 oo I led it let's see what if I added 3 100 squares under this screen 4 + 3 = 7 and 400 + 3 300 = 700 so you were thinking about some things you know about the number three and the number four when you put them together that strategy helped you know that 300 plus 400 will equal 700 wow I like all that thinking well if that doesn't look like a group of young confident um mathletes um anyhow pretty exciting as you can see from the video our students are benefiting from the professional development and the curriculum we're providing and um these 2500 students uh or excuse me these 2500 staff I've got to get the math question right here if each avmr trained teacher has approximately 25 students then our impact
225is a minimum of 64,000 students impacted thus far so that's really an exciting data point and we look forward to more strong numeracy skills from our Primary students and that is academic matters this evening Mr chair thank you Dr Reed no lights I'm going to take a turn oh we got a light Mr Dunn um on the avmr uh you mentioned that uh there's evidence showing that it's effective um but that's not reflected in the in the slides could you share a little bit more about that because there's the survey saying teachers feel but i' I'd love to know that it actually works you bet thank you Mr D and Dr precidio you have a couple um data points please I don't know I have data points as much right off the top of my
226head but I think it's an excellent question so thank you um the Institute for Education Sciences is funded by the federal government to really look at uh best practice research uh to support programs that have a evidence base a scientific evidence base and a number of uh independent third-party evaluations have been completed on Advantage uh math recovery and um it has a really high rating from The Institute for Education science they've done randomized control studies which is pretty uncom common actually um in social science research or at least in education research so there's a pretty strong evidence base that's about the best thing I've ever heard um uh and and that should be in our presentations I mean having randomized control studies that's the gold standard for for scientific studies and and so I just
227say that's something we need to publicize right that um this Ready Set math uh is are there similar randomized studies on that I mean we're all in obviously um on Ready Set math but is it share a little bit more on that yeah and that's your first question is a great question and we can create a slide with the information Dr pidio presented and add that to our presentation that we'll Post online so that that is there um sort of a similar back stop on The Ready Set math it's the it's the same company um those materials are newer than the professional development Studies have been done on that but we can check on that and include that in an updated presentation slide as Dr Reed said thank you I appreciate it and that was
228a very exciting thing to see visits thank you Mr Dunn Miss sear Heiser I just had to share something personal when you mentioned challenge 24 but 24 competitions in her elementary school and she made it to the regional round or whatever it was and what really struck me when I walked in the room to watch do be one girl for every four boys so I'm hoping if we bring back challenge 24 competitions that maybe that um it I I love the videos I was actually at Fairview watching some of our mathletes do math and I I loved walking into one of the classrooms and having them explain the three different strategies that they had learned for how to add um two-digit numbers and I loved it because if one strategy didn't work for a student
229a second one probably did and they even explained to me why which one was their favorite strategy and why so it was very cool to see some of this in action but I just I had to mention my challenge 24 and maybe I'll bring her back and see if she wants to challenge you to a game uh oh just kidding but no thank you for this work this is exciting yeah yes ma'am and I think Noel's got a light in her eye there I think we're gonna likely be talking more about challenge 24 thank you Miss seore Heiser Miss Dixit thank you Mr chair Dr Reed I'm definitely impressed with the uh the what kids are doing in elementary school but I'm we're far far away from where we would should be in mat in
230general in public schools and this is going to be an issue when we are raising these kids to learn you know later on you know go to higher math and then Ai and other stuff um we are competing in in you know in with China and India and other countries we have really strong math skills um and I I it it just um hard for me to see the kids in second grade not doing double digigit additions and not going to that level where they can start the concept of multiplication which we thought is a really easy thing to do when we were young and so I I don't know that um I know you want to increase a standard of math um in FCPS but there is a long way to go from where
231we are right now so I appreciate that and I I our second graders are doing double dig addition um and I would say uh we want to build that solid foundation and uh Vault from that because you're right we we uh have some opportunities in mathematics yeah yes ma'am Mr moon since M Miss Dixon mentioned about India and China I'm going to mention Korea when I was growing up when I was growing up a calculus was a graduation requirement and and our schooled Juniors all Juniors finished calculus by the end of junior year not senior year end of junior year thank you thank you Mr Moon we'll get to go backs in a little bit um miss lady um I'll just be brief um I just am delighted and commend you so much for coming
232here and and making within and with the help of your team putting in a strategic plan that all kids should finish Al one and eth grade um and I think we have to keep keep track of that we didn't have this type of um aspiration um for all every student in Fairfax County Public Schools some of us come to school uh having been to preschool and having been read to and having been around vocabulary words that grew us and and we were are the youngest as I was and and certainly mastered my times tables as a younger child I but I just I just want to lift that up because we we are I mean it nothing ex excites me more than what's in our strategic plan and then scaffolding the steps to get us
233there um so I just I Delight in what you shared tonight um closer and closer that goal yearby year thank you thank you thank you Miss Lady I will take a turn before we hit some Gob backs um picking up where miss lady left off um I had an opportunity to visit an 8th grade algebra team talk class at thorough and very much enjoyed uh the collaborative spirit that was going on in the classroom as students worked on um uh I think they were doing pooms and other things and here's here's the question connect that work here because one of the things that I've heard from some Educators is that because we're just now beginning this eighth grade Algebra effort um that it is harder to get the students to make the leap right and
234so this is kind of backfilling right to help that if you could elucidate on that perhaps sure thank you Mr frish I think one of the things that we've talked about is the Strategic plan is not a oneandone plan right it's a plan that we this is our first year of implementation and by 2030 we expect to realize these data points for real and so when we look at that line of our graph from 2023 to 2030 we want to make sure we're making progress in a linear fashion over the next seven years um and if our second grade mathletes seven years from now will have finished 8th grade and will be in ninth grade our first grade mathletes will be in 8th grade so what we want to make sure is that we're building
235this solid mathematical numeracy Foundation so that when our students have that confidence they're going to be able to move through content and be ready by 8th grade for algebra now there going to be many other students that are ready for algebra in seventh grade or ready for algebra in sixth grade and some maybe in fifth grade and so what we want to do is make sure that the numeracy is solid and then you know our kids can just take off and for many of our students math is their Friday Night Lights can you speak to whether this approach uh helps identify students who might otherwise be overlooked in terms of you know really focusing on their abilities and seeing a talent that's latent that needs to be sparked sure I think honestly we've kind of
236chuckled a little about challenge 24 but often it's games like that and there's a lot of uh research around gamifying mathematics quite honestly uh but when you are in a room with students that are able to have for example there are students that have that spatial thinking and if you go back to some of our youth the ability to look at flat um how do I say flat uh rectangles and uh triangles and so forth and then being able to see what that would create coming together uh 2D to 3D um those are uh really special I think uh gifts that aren't always apparent unless you're doing work that really focuses on that or the ability to see patterns that move forward or the ability to solve problems in different ways that are not maybe
237the textbook way or the modeled way um it's just uh I think um there's so many I mean mathematical opportunities but when we think about uh core numeracy skills it does um allow I think all students to begin to rise in ways that we haven't previously been able to see so with our literacy work we're seeing signs of promising de velopment in IR scores for example and we'll see hopefully eventually in the so data are we measuring in any way that we might be able to see in the in the short years the short term um how this work is having an impact before it shows up in the so yes sir I I know that in particularly in K2 as you know we don't have so we have to have alternative ways that we're
238assessing our students um just as we do in literacy Dr Presidio do you have some thoughts I think we do some I ready MTH screening but there may be others we we do I ready is the primary um assessment and progress monitoring tool that we use for math as well as literacy great I'll look forward to seeing how this impacts those numbers and ultimately the so data so we we'll take some Gob backs uh Miss Dixit oh your your light is off I should have looked before I said Miss seis Mor Heiser just briefly I think what I'm kind of hearing a little bit the the Das is is a um a recognition that we need to lift up and identify all students in math and make your point gamifying I I can say my
239daughter went on to is in a Tech Career now and I think challenge 24 was an early spark because it was a fun right no pun intended challenge um so I think that's what I think this great work is doing is making math fun and ident and igniting that sparkk in students who may not have had that's sparking knited and and this is I think something I said at the work session we also need to make sure we're innovating and challenging students right to um sort of get to higher math or more um complicated math as their potential allows them or as their potential would lead them to and I think that's where M Mystics Mr moon I I don't mean to speak for my colleagues but I think there's a space for that as
240well I know when my got to high school she took AP Computer Sciences a sophomore and at that point there was no other right right and and this was not that was a few years ago but not that long ago she graduated 2017 so I think there's a space to say and this is in our strategic plan right how are we making sure we have every single person you know every single student reaching algebra by eth grade which has so many data points right to to postsecondary success and providing that acceleration for students to be able to do more as you said algebra 7th or sixth grade how do we do both and I think that's the the piece we need to celebrate what we're doing to get students by algebra by by eighth grade
241because that is amazing right and tied to success and how do we provide the um the Innovative work that leads us to AI Innovation for our students and the careers that don't exist yet yeah well stay tuned because we've got uh some plans cooking in the development stage so we're hoping to um we want to make sure every student reaches their Mountain Top experience right their potential and it's going to enable us to offer courses perhaps that we haven't within our division um because who doesn't love mathematics right I mean it's a tremendous opportunity uh mathematics is in everything it's patterns it's music it's it's an amazing language well one might argue as Tech becomes more a part of our world mathematics is a core skill that's expanding as you know as a need so
242I'll just leave it at that and say as someone whose mom had a PhD in math in the 1960s it's been part of my family for a long time yeah thank you currently the data is math limiting math limits 84% of our career choices and that's I think a data point we have to turn so you know that I work for an amazing organization um that look that is the spark for fifth graders often because they've figured out that that's kind of The Sweet Spot that if we can get them interested in stem fields or steam fields around that time then it really things that happened when I first came on with that organization is that we had worked to disconnect our math from the rest of the curriculum which when you're dealing with stem
243Fields is often easy to embed math um and we've successfully done that by creating meaningful opportunities in the lessons that we've created for our for our program however I was wondering how we as a organization or as a division can actually embed math in more areas so that kids can see the connection and it's not as much Standalone because I do think that that's part of the gamification it's part of the idea behind it and I'm wondering if if if we're taking those opportunities to really in in science lessons and things like that to call the math and reinforce those those Concepts that the elementary and steam labs when I visited some of the Drone work right and plotting coordinates or some of the um the Bots um and planning the coding work and the
244mathematics involved in that um I don't know if we've done done other uh miss clco any other intentional math integration into particular Elementary science yeah I think you will see a lot of connection especially around data data analysis all throughout our science um you'll see a lot of that um I know you're talking about embedding math into other things but one of the things and I think we brought it up a couple weeks ago in academic matters as we roll out the new standards for mathematics which hit in the fall we are embedding computational thinking at every grade level um starting in kindergarten which isn't coding it's patterns it's you know it's the thinking it's the thinking that is needed um around that so I think it's it's integrating you know where things make sense
245and um and we see that in within math and we see it within science I don't think we see a we haven't done a lot um in integrating into other subject areas but I think there's probably Endless Possibilities absolutely um the other thing that I wanted to mention is as I was learning more about the Strategic plan and all the work that's involved one of the first things I said to you was the fact that in order to make sure that those kids can hit algebra by eighth grade we need to be more robust in our um instruction at the at the lower grade so I'm I'm very happy to see the work that we're doing are we going to be looking for for more opportunities of varied instruction in a particular classroom so if
246you have a kiddo that is excelling in a certain way that maybe isn't identified as a level three or you know that isn't identified on the AAP scale at all that is is going to be able to receive those extra services and a little bit more challenge because well I think you know with the new math standards which you know I don't know how different they're going to be from the old math standards actually miss clco is leaning in so she's ready to answer that question so I'm gonna let her go so um we've been just building out like really building out the scope and sequences for next year as these new standards were just approved and just kind of accelerated um and it is our full intention that when a third grade teacher goes
247into their scope and sequence and planning pacing guide the advanced standards will be right there aligned so same topic so it's a very easy it's much easier than it currently is for a teacher to be able to see the students in their class and really meet that that learner need um because everything will be there including the materials for them to differentiate so we're very excited about that excellent that's the best news I've heard all night so thank you we we aim to please we've got a strong team um working to develop our math leetes thank you Miss Anderson Dr Anderson thank you I I'm just going to pick up on that a little bit because I know so much of the work relies on our teachers to create we have school after school sitting
248in CLT meetings essentially recreating the same work and not only does that add to their load but it also creates inconsistencies because in places where you have experienced staff you have a better product than in places where you have long-term substitutes or um brand new teachers they just haven't had that experience yet so I'm glad to hear that these materials will be ready made by um um centrally for teers to use but I also urge you along those lines to check in with teachers to ensure that what you are Desiring and your results in creating these documents is having the impact because I won't say often at times um it has been raised that they are not as helpful to people people on the ground as the people in Gate House or Willow Oaks believe
249them to be so I I would just like for that loop back um going back to um some of the information that you shared the slide of impact that talked about um the number of schools that have had um teachers trained which is 100% And 91% of first grade teachers will be trained by June 2024 which is great um what is the plan and the expectation for second grade for third grade what's the plan to capture our schools that do not have regular teachers or have high levels of turnover so that that first grade teacher that's been trained this year is gone and how will we capture that individual or those individuals so I'd like to kind of understand the long-term um plan for staff development a little bit so my expectation would be that
250that would be part of Great Beginnings for teachers that are new to the division we also on any given year will have a number of teachers move grade levels right so maybe I did first grade last year and I'm doing second grade this year um I would presume that avmr strategies probably are transferable rather I'm teaching first or second grade or perhaps kindergarten the content might look different but the strategies would look similar I would also say that one of the things we talked about last last week or two weeks ago in um academic matters were the Glad strategies right that we're using for multilingual students um which are good for all students so we want to make sure we're integrating those strategies into the avmr strategies um Dr Presidio do you have thoughts on
251how we're going to ensure that um our second grade teachers have the same percentage of um training and perhaps also you know I think to Dr Anderson Point year over-year sometimes initiatives drop off right as people move on if we don't attend to that so I'm sure you all have thought of that yeah I think you know again just to reframe tonight's presentation we're really focused on the primary grades and what we're doing to build that strong numeracy foundation and all of our students and we had that one slide that showed kind of the the growth in terms of the number of teachers that have been trained we've got a commitment to continue to do that work to make sure that our teachers through second grade are trained um and again again you know that
252that is going to be a multi-year Initiative for many of the reasons that that you mentioned um but we have a commitment to do that because we want to make sure that all of our teachers are supporting our students and building that strong Foundation because at third grade that's when students formally can get access to the advanced math and we've got to make sure that everybody's got equal opportunities and equal access to that so the professional development is targeting K2 teachers that's where we're really focused with the with the PD right now and and so since the majority of first grade teachers seem to have been captured already is your goal for the kindergarten and second grade teachers to be completed by end of 25 or end of 26 what's the general thinking right now
253I don't want to necessarily lock you in yeah no else remind me we got to we have to be a little careful on that because time is an issue budget's always an issue um but yes over the next several years the goal would be to get that Gap closed all right staying vague okay well um my last um question um Dr Reid and this is not going to be a surprise because we've talked about this continuously as we want to continue to encourage students to love math because you just said math is everywhere my husband's going to be very excited for that because this is what he tells our children on a constant basis um what is the plan to ensure that those additional opportunities as Miss Dixon had talked about um exist in all
254of our schools such as math olympiads because as we've discussed there are schools that are able to establish robust teams to field them with parents to fund them with PTO and they are able able to have students participate and schools and some schools just don't can you speak to any efforts to bridge that Gap yes ma'am uh our title one uh dollars we actually set aside money this year to make sure that all Title One Schools elementary schools have a science and math Olympiad and uh right now we have for next year I believe we've planned to have 50 elementary schools that are Title One and the intent is to make sure we have registered math Olympiad and Science Olympiad at all of those schools as well as the other 91 elementary schools so it
255won't matter whether it's a PTA or not because to your point we want to make sure that our mathletes have access regardless of the elementary school they're at and I don't see our Title One folks here tonight but you either um miss clle or Dr precidio uh I don't know if you've had a check-in with Miss Miller or uh M white or Dr White our Title One schools um we are we as Dr Reed said we've set aside uh Central funding to ensure that Science Olympiad and math Olympiad are in every Title One school next year um many of our schools had it this year or started to to dabble in that but we kind of started late with them so we're looking forward to being able to start the year because those comp competitions
256actually come pretty early they don't come at the end of the year so we have to be on top of it but we want to just really level that playing field and make sure that those experiences are in those schools so the goal for next year is for every single Title One schools to have Math and Science Olympiad because funds have been set aside yes ma'am and we will principles know principles have been have been um informed and we will make sure that those funds are not just only set aside but accessed those are two different things we we actually have a chart that lists all the schools and then there a column next to it for Science Olympiad that needs a check in it and who they're okay um and then math Olympiad with
257a check and who they're working with and those funds I would imagine also to be utilized for um funding the program and stiening a teacher yes for stiening a teacher there are also materials that require purchase uh we're entering into a partnership um H Mr Sharma who works with one of our Hindu congregations in the county uh has a large number of Engineers that are interested in volunteering their time to support Math and Science Olympiad in our elementary schools as well so we're very excited and we're meeting uh with him uh if not next week I think the following week after spring break a PTO president here he might be at Luther Jackson I believe that is him okay um and then kind of a similar question regarding steam classes stem classes some schools have
258a dedicated teacher it becomes part of the electives some schools do not is this going to be for the foreseeable future a school Endeavor or will you have expectations and support around that so we did provide data I believe last week in the board brief on the number of schools who have a current steam lab I think that's a little more complicated because it's not just Staffing it may also be space so we have uh some schools that are utilizing every square foot of space for classroom without a steam lab and other schools that have space for those um and some schools that have made decisions About Steam staff uh haven't gotten as clear about that as we have about science and math Olympiad so more to come thank you thank you Dr Anderson Mr
259dun for a go back um someone mentioned making math fun and um I that gave me a body shiver and I don't know if you have the same reaction but I uh I think there's there's a problem in American Education when we try to make everything fun or gamify it because usually it's only had you only have to make it fun because you've divorced it from reality right I mean people used to um from the time of the pyramids you know use math in a very practical applied way and we I visited um the Edison Academy for construction and they're learning math you know for running a business right um for calculating estimates for putting together plumbing and and you know home construction um and the same could be said for you know children of
260all ages if you just take it out of kind of an an ivory Tower context and and show the Practical usage people are going to definitely be interested you don't have to make it fun it's just important because otherwise you can't live your life right so um I would just encourage as building on Miss Anderson's comment which I thought were wonderful um to really uh embed it more in the Practical reality like this is why it's useful and use that practical reality I read many accounts of you know in the 17 1800s you know you would go outside you'd say how tall is that tree and you'd have to you know figure out the isoceles and what do you need to bring the tree down and what do you need to cut the tree into
261planks and it's not so much like a tool question it's a math question right so so having practical uses for math which you can find you know anywhere in the building um uh is something that I think should be encouraged as part of our overall math curriculum Miss Anderson all right thank you superintendent Reed thank you we'll give you a few seconds to get to your seat all right agenda item 6.03 superintendent matters I call on Dr Reid thank you Mr frish um just really want to share that I appreciated tonight's um proclamations and also want to um say a big thank you to our superintendent advisory committee students uh our students really presented some incredible projects with research-based uh background and I honestly they really uh have me thinking about some of the some
262of the work we're doing in the division so a big shout out and thank you to our uh strategic plan core planning team folks uh we had probably 30 people again at our quarterly review meeting uh and want to thank uh Dustin Wright and Marcy Neil for helping to set that up again that was an opportunity to share a strategic plan program us our Family Vision Group meetings we did two of those this week and had an opportunity to meet with a significant number of family members and appreciate in their really poignant story um as well as two of our Centerville students um related to the passing of Kaden their son to fentol we had a large turnout and want to thank the team that uh presented information on that International Heritage Festival night at
263Wayan Oak that was held at Holmes Middle School was an incredible uh evening and just really a lot of excitement by many students in a packed gym full of parents and also had an O Northern Virginia Football Hall of Fame awards banquet and the banquet really celebrated a number of our um elementary middle and high school football students coaches and in graduates into the Hall of Fame so we also had a chance to attend the edututor VA event and um the northern Virginia Science Center Foundation launch we have more conversation about and finally some of our school visits I've really enjoyed our Madison High School visit around instructional practices and Grading practices uh principal Liz Cal and her team are to be commended with the passion they brought to that and also Fort belar primary
264and upper visits uh were Fabulous As We Begin uh pivoting to April and the month of the military child had to see some composting at Marshall Road and we have some of our young students really leading the way as well as our pin Spring Elementary School student visit and of course I mean who wouldn't be excited by the science fair uh event that we had last uh Sunday that was held at um Robinson so that's uh superintendent matters this evening thank you Mr frish thank you Dr Reid uh agenda item seven consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure Roberts rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone members on the public in advance items may be removed from the
265consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda is on the screen hearing no and seeing no objection the consent agenda is approved agenda item number eight new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled at a future meeting agenda item 9 board committee reports I will now call on the following standing committee chairs to offer an update on their committee's work comprehensive plan development committee chair Mr Dunn uh thank you uh chair frish um so cpdc uh met uh recently to consider uh uh or received two a memoranda from the uh facilities planning advisory committee um one that recommended a a facilities planning framework um composed uh bringing together disparate elements uh
266that currently exist within FCPS but to unite it in a holistic framework for strategic consideration and and planning uh including uh the renovation queue uh the uh CIP uh infrastructure replacement and Investments and and so forth in addition uh uh fpac provided a memorandum uh regarding uh con construction uh procurement uh and recommended a shift away from design bid build which is the current um somewhat outdated methodology used by FCPS for major projects recommended limiting it to uh small on trade projects for example involving only an electrician um such as the security vestibules um and instead adopting uh design build as the preferred approach to uh construction procurement going forward which uh is seen as providing advantages both in time and cost reduction and uh I understand that uh Mr samansky is already moving to
267provide training to her staff in that regard uh but with this uh hopefully we'll provide encouragement and momentum uh to um and whatever additional training uh funding is required to ensure that this objective is achieved which will have positive ramifications for um uh FCPS and its uh construction and renovation and infrastructure activities thank you Mr dun governance committee chair Miss seore Heiser do you have an update yes the governance committee met this month and we continued our work on policy 8130 the boundary policy um work I think we had a productive meeting where we had many rounds of conversations going through Section by section of the policy we did not finish getting through all the sections but we got through quite a bit I appreciate my colleagues on the board with bring their great and
268the committee bring their great ideas we are now um making phone calls to our colleagues who are not on the committee to to get their feedback on the the um the status of the policy and our hope is to create a working draft at our next meeting in April to then take back to the board um so and we're still on I think our timeline to get this to the board in a final draft in May to go to a work session and go from there thank you Miss seore Heiser PEC committee chair Miss Anderson Do you have a report yes we also had a successful meeting um shortly after the governance meeting um where we discussed some of the implications of the boundary work that could possibly be related to our public engagement and
269we also discussed finalization of the advisory handbook or the the community citizen advisory handbook operating manual and we will have that up for vote very shortly thank you thank you Miss Anderson agenda item 10 board matters next on the agenda is board matters I would call on each School Board member to speak Miss St John cunning thank you I'll try to get through this quickly I was really impressed by the student science projects last week uh I'm not going to read everything but I do want to say that uh one of the nine grand prize winning teams is from Hayfield Secondary School and I want to congratulate Isabelle AA lra and Daniel SED for their project on environment mental engineering Roby a novel autonomous pollinator I also had the privilege to share the love of
270reading with our littlest Learners earlier this month when I joined all ages read together the enthusiasm of our littlest readers was priceless um I had the opportunity to present uh outstanding uh leadership and outstanding operational employee Awards in Region 3 and region 6 Mark Twain Middle School presented an outst standing assistant outstanding leader award to Mr Andrew orstein their assistant principal Mount Vernon Woods Elementary uh presented outstanding operational employee to miss Abbot um whom I've worked with and known for many years so that was a really special occasion uh lindbrook Elementary presented uh the family liaison the region 6 outstanding operational employee and Forest stale Elementary presented Miss Lon Tate the principal the Reg six outstanding leader good luck uh to all of them I also want to invite all of you to attend the
271frankonia budget uh town hall meeting tomorrow night at 6 PM I'm joining frankonia supervisor Lusk to discuss uh our budget uh uh our Lee Burton will also be there to help out um so you guys can come it'll be on tune in on channel 16 and Facebook live thank you Miss St John cunning Miss Lady yes uh today is National Down syndrome awareness day uh why is uh 3 March 21st uh 321 uh the date of March 21 holds special significance as it symbolizes the tri triplication of the 21st chromosome individuals with Down Syndrome have Forestville Elementary School celebrated today by wearing colorful mismatched socks to celebrate wearing mismatched Remer of the beauty found iniversity Down syndrome like other genetic variations contributes to the rich tapestry of human existence embracing mismatch socks allows us to
272celebrate the uniqueness of each individual regardless of differences um I also have enjoyed visiting schools watching High School sports and meeting with our community uh in celebration of our students over the past few weeks um and also holding uh advertised budget meetings uh thank you to supervisor Beerman his staff the Hearn and high school custodians and staff and all those who attended the March 18 drainville budget town hall and also also thank you to our CFO Lee Burton for being present and presenting we had a good discussion and answered multiple questions if you'd like to share your thoughts on FCPS fy2 advertised budget please email me or sign up to speak at the May 14 budget public hearing um I also enjoyed attending the 20120 student peace Awards recognition ceremony and congratulations to the following
273drainville recipients Hearn in high school Susie Reyes langland High School Lena Laos Marshall High School Omar Ahmed mlan High School Kaia Williams Mountain View High School the mountain view mirror School newspaper Thomas Jefferson Namaste club and Westfield High School Westfield student ambassadors um also the 69th annual fair county regional science and engineering Fair showcased 400 student science projects from over 300 different high schools congratulations to all um but I specifically want to give a shout out to shun vobi Mitra from Langley High School who won one of the nine grand prize Awards and shria Jadu Langley High School who was a grand prize alternate um also want to congratulate Langley High School's ice hockey team that won their third in a row Northern Virginia Scholastic Hockey League Championship and had their second undefeated season um
274Andia State Scholastic chess tournament K2 K12 championships TJ won the state championship Langley was third Marshall was sixth in K8 Championship Spring Hill Elementary School won fourth K5 Kent Gardens won the state championship Churchill Road was fifth K5 under 1,000 students Lemon Road was fourth and K3 under 600 students Lemon Road Elementary School won third place very proud of these aspiring chess players um and also want to give uh everyone uh friends and well rested the spring break thank you thank you Miss Lady Miss St John or Excuse Me Miss seore Heiser thank you um I appreciate I know it's the late hour so I appreciate my colleagues to holding board matters I had many things to talk about about school visits and awards and music and arts um that I wanted to share with
275you but this is the first meeting that we don't speak to proclamations and this is also the first time ever that Fairfax County has had a neurodiversity after let this moment go by without talking about what that means to me personally and I'm going to channel my former colleague Laura Jane Cohen and probably get a little teary um I started this journey many years ago with my own son when he was diagnosed and we were told not to believe he could ever do anything and he he's the one who taught me that just because people think and behave differently it doesn't mean that they're any less than and he's the one who taught me that there are so so many different types of strengths out there and you saw one of his tonight his music
276and his song but the other one you may not know about is his big heart and how he reaches out to people and cares for people um during the pandemic he wrote hundreds of letters to his friends and the letters all said I'm sending you sunshine and smiles and I know I'm talking very personally about this because what I I want to lift up is that 10 years ago when I started any idea what I was talking about and all of the research was in England there was nothing here no one understood that diversity of thinking is true diversity and we are all different and we are all valuable there was this patronizing charitable oh look at us for being so good to take care of those people instead of looking what value everybody brings
277to this world and I'm really hopeful so when I ran for this office in 2019 for the first time I would my campaign slogan was strength based education and no one knew what that meant and I kept having to explain it focus on a student strengths first focus on a student strengths look for what they can do not what they can't do and schol that says talk about student strengths and here we are with a strategic plan that says focus on student strengths and it's just to me seems so basic and it's because it's what my son taught me because every year in school when he was told no you can't take music class because you you autistic and therefore you have to be in this room and in this setting he said well fine
278I'll just go figure it out on my own and he watched YouTube videos and taught himself how to play guitar and when he was told you can't be in the orchestra concert unless a parent sits next to you because we don't trust what might happen happen because you're autistic when you're in front of a crowd he said fine I'll just go play on the National Mall in front of 5,000 people and go audition on Broadway so I'm hoping and I I'll indulge my colleagues to have a few extra seconds I'm really hoping what we did tonight and I'm so thankful for your support we'll send a message to thousands and thousands of students and families that we value every student and we see every student for their strength and we'll no longer talk about them
279as if being different in Behaving and thinking is bad automatically and maybe somebody else someday will get on that stage and perform a song that he was told over and over again he would never be able to do so thank you for lifting up student strengths thank you Miss seore Heiser Mr Moon thank you Mr chairman since a Super Nintendo loves math uh you know when I was in elementary school some of the numbers game the math games that we played with each other you know incy something like this 5 * 5 25 15 * 15 225 25 * 25 625 35 * 35 1225 55 times or 45 time 45 20 25 55 time 55 3025 65 * 65 4225 75 * 75 8625 so forth fun to learn your math doing that way
280with that said we have a spring break coming up next week and our kids going to students going to have break for 11 days in a row to have them for every hour of the day for 15 11 days and good luck to them thank you Mr Moon Miss Dixit Miss Anderson so it has been a busy couple of weeks and I'm I've cut this down a little bit but um so I've had several School visits including the Burke school um and silver Brook and sster elementary schools I also stopped by Robinson Secondary with my colleague um Miss eisor Heiser and we were able to present the symphonic band their certificate for being recognized um in the Virginia music educators Association because they couldn't be here the other night so we were really excited and
281they sounded amazing so we got to see we got to hear and play which was really awesome um I helped the League of Women Voters um register voters at or register brand new voters at Oakton High School during their model Congress event and met a bunch of students who were really enthusiastic about voting which was pretty awesome um I've attended a bunch of community events including the Arc of Northern Virginia's benefit breakfast yesterday morning and um Fairfax County naacp's advocacy agenda roll out the Chantelly High School Tech fair and the South count or I'm sorry in the Fairfax County student peace award ceremony where students were recognized for their work as peacemakers I would like to congratulate Springfield District student Eden aklog um from South County high school as well as other different groups in
282in my particular District um I also spent time at the in awe of what our students could do at the science and engineering fair and I have a list of people and that were from the Springfield District that I'm not going to read just because we're short on time um Miss seiser Heiser and I also had the opportunity to go to the FCPS parent Orchestra who also sounded amazing at anandale high school who was directed by our amazing Grammy Grammy winning Orchestra direct director Annie Ray and I got to play the cello um I will not probably be playing the cello again but it was it was pretty it was pretty awesome and I got to experience that with my kiddo who who has also worked with a couple of the teachers that were that
283were a part of that program and last I wanted to shout out to a special friend of mine Connor um today is world's down CND day and my family will be walking our 3.21 miles in his honor along with the rest of the lucky few this weekend so we do that every year for him so he's particularly awesome in our house um and I would like to wish everyone a fantastic spring break thank you Miss Anderson Dr Anderson um thank you last last week I was pleased to be in attendance to surprise the Performing Arts teachers at holes middle school as they were honored with the region six cares of the month award and Miss seism moiser was also in attendance so congratulations to miss bongard miss Edinger Miss Murphy and Mr Perez it is
284a very well-deserved honor um just a few reminders for the Mason Community the Middle School start times um commun the Middle School start time community forums are scheduled for April and May um so please join the Prismatic services with their presentation I'm glad to share will be held in the Mason District at glasow Middle School April 29th from 6: to 8:00 p.m. there will be three additional opportunities available and listen on the website language and interpretation and child language interpretation and child care will be provided I know this is of particular interest to the Mason Community because we have the longest um tenure in middle schools so it's not just two years of waking up at 6:00 a.m. and being out at the bus stop at 6:00 a.m. it's three years of being at the
285bus stop at 6 a.m. so my community is really looking forward to some positive um changes there that will allow more sleep for our students and some greater safety for them as well um just want to remind folks that the VIP summer camp registration is Open Homes middle school students it will be at homes middle school students to serve Rising sixth and seventh and eighth grade students from Glasgow homes and Po and Rising seventh and eighth students will from Luther Jackson Kilmer and thorough um the cost is $100 for five weeks it is a fantastic program my own children participated in that for many years and scholarship scholarships are available as well as Transportation so please do do not miss out it's a great opportunity especially for those Rising sixth graders it really makes the
286transition into middle school so much easier um tomorrow is the deadline for participation in the family engagement survey it is also the deadline to apply for the position of student representative to the school board for next year um I do want to say thank you to the Justice High School community and their robust participation both in person in writing they've taken every opportunity to communicate with us regarding their concerns and their criteria and their wishes for the selection of the next um Justice High School principal and thank you Mr Moon I am going to enjoy every single one of those 11 days day in hour in hour out with my children and so I do want to wish everyone a Happy Spring break thank you Dr Anderson Mr Dunn uh well it's a it's a
287pleasure to be here tonight and it's been a busy few weeks um I participated in a budget town hall with supervisor Dan stor on March 13th I've met with multiple committees and and groups um participa in multiple uh principal selection Community meetings and uh on March 19th I had the pleasure to visit in person with the Washington Mill Elementary School PTA um I a lot of my information is provided in the newsletter that I send out on a bi-weekly basis so I encourage everyone to sign up but I wanted to mention that uh we have 76 students from the Mount Vernon district and schools who received awards at the 2024 Fairfax County Regional science and engineering fair I look forward to recognizing them and celebrating their accomplishment in my newsletter but special shout out to
288our grand prize winning team from Hayfield High School uh Mount Vernon District resident Daniel SED and Franconia resident Isabelle Isa lra they won a grand prize award for environmental engineering for their project Roby a novel autonomous pollinator um I'd also like to give a shout out uh to the 76 scientists in addition of the 76 scientists we also have 26 students who won Regional Scholastic Art Award I'd also like to uh give a shout out to the Mount Vernon High School winter guard who placed first out of 11 guards in their division at their first competition of the season at Forest Park High celebrating four band students who participated in the 2024 vboda all district 10 band congratulations to Mayor Hammond I also wanted to note that we have some uh fantastic teachers who have
289achieved national board certification um that includes Katherine DeVille at Woodley school and rosalene siffer at Laurel Hill Elementary School thanks very much thank you Mr Dunn Miss Marin well in the past 24 hours um it started by attending a budget meeting um hosted by the Hunter Mill supervisor in the town of Vienna where the most uh Hot Topic was The Proposal we got there to remove nine crossing guards from the town of Vienna impacting four of our elementary schools and one of our middle schools so there was quite an upro about that and I'm so pleased that town officials and the community turned out to say that this is absolutely not acceptable so uh that remains to be seen but I was you know feeling really disheartened that things like crossing guards for our children
290could be put on a chopping block and then we had the devastating news about a Westfield High School student being killed by gunshots um yesterday and that story continues to emerge and of course when something so horrendous happens it really changes you know what you think but ultimately it's the same theme about how much can we do for our children to protect them problems are not going to get solved in schools only and it just renews my call for our community to continue to stand up and work together to really find Solutions and not just talk about things um it's just really devastating um but I'm very hopeful there's a lot of good stuff like tonight the math instruction I want to attend those Math and Science Olympiad events um I to attend in the
291Oakton High School model Congress amazing to see a h hundred hundreds of students talking about politics and having fun with it there are some very creative proposals to be elected to be the leadership of the different chambers um I went to the Crossfield Elementary Multicultural Festival which was incredible and such generosity of the community in providing food and performances and had lovely conversations we also honored a recently retired principal Tom Lundy at the Cedar Lane School he got his name on a huge plaque uh in front of the gym and that was something this board approved so thank you to the colleagues who worked on that last year uh celebrated one year of composting at Marshall Road Elementary and these kids they got it down it's where it's at uh they have done tremendous work
292also with the help of the support of the get to Green Team and amazing parent volunteer uh miss Monica and PTA funding so we got to make that happen in more schools and not just dependent on PTA funding also uh art youth month South Lakes pyramid they had an art show I went there to see my own kiddos art and there too cross town Hoops the R versus Kilmer Hughes versus Carson I went to that one uh and I too visited Miss Annie Ray at the crescendo the actually we went to the crescendo Orchestra first period on Wednesday morning phenomenal I mean just her energy the students who have intellectual disabilities they are musicians and it's just amazing um today I was at terce at elementary volunteering in my own kiddo's class and missed the
293activities tonight in South Lakes the teret basketball Challenge and the college fair hosted by our Avid students at linkston Hughes so tremendous stuff just want to wish a continued Ramadan Mubarak to those who observe and a happy Easter season for those honoring the holy days that are forthcoming and have a great spring break let's all take a rest thank you Miss Marin um I'd like to start by thanking all of the Brave students and parents who joined us in and outside of this uh school board meeting tonight to lift their voices in support of safe and inclusive schools for every student um it has been a busy couple weeks since our last board meeting um gosh the the day after our board meeting I was reading to prek kids uh at the Graham Road Community
294Building uh with the all ages read together program uh we read the circles all around us by Brad montigue it was a lot of fun drawing circles on the ground with those kids um that weekend I started off by volunteering with food for neighbor uh here at Luther Jackson uh with principal Jones and my responsibility was very important I sorted cereal oatmeal and pancake mix um and they collected thousands of pounds of food for pantries they are really great organization uh that same weekend I also attended the Fairfax NAACP advocacy agenda roll out um and the Fairfax County peace Awards with uh several of my colleagues and Congressman Connelly and then the week after uh as I noted earlier I went to uh an eighth grade algebra class at thorough Middle School um and the
295next day after that uh I joined Mr Moon and Miss Marin at Oakton High School we got to kick off the morning observing the model Congress there and watching The League of Women Voters registering voters they told me they'd registered uh a few thousand students already this year which is fantastic um last Thursday I attended the glisten rise up Gala with delegate uh la Jane Cohen um it's a organization committed to making sure that uh schools are welcoming places for our lgbtq students um and then last Friday I had an opportunity to read for fourth graders um right around International women's day uh at mosaic elementary school we read uh the tree lady which is a really fun book um and um on Monday I attended the community conversation at Lake bradock on Fentanyl and
296other opioids uh um and then later in the week I was on hand at Oakton Elementary School uh as we celebrated the announcement of gu cner as this uh region one outstanding school-based uh operational employee which was exciting and then finally uh yesterday I was on hand for the Arc of Northern Virginia's breakfast which is always a great event uh supporting families and and making sure that we continue to grow opportunities for transitional services for our young people and last night I was uh talking to the Miller Heights homeowners association um about our budget and about our strategic plan which they were very interested in um and I am very much looking forward to spring break I know everybody else is as well it is not yet midnight and this meeting is [Music] adjourned [Music]
297e [Music]