FCPS School Work Session - 6/22/2023

001uh before we begin Miss Keys gamara has submitted a written request to virtually attend today's work session due to a personal conflict all those in favor of approving this request Miss Tolan Mrs moheiser Miss Corbett Sanders Miss Marin Miss Amish Miss McLaughlin myself that's everybody um so miss kiskamara can you check your microphone can you hear me yep loud and clear okay all right um why don't we go ahead and get started we have an assortment of Staff here with us today as well as Harry Henderson the chair of our advisory committee for students with disabilities do you want to get us started thank you it's good to see all of you again my name is Harry Henderson I'm with the I'm the outgoing chair of the advisory committee for students with disabilities this is

002my last term as chair of the committee and it has been a wonderful two years that I've gotten to serve in that role and I'm I'm excited about it I would be remiss if I didn't mention that particularly even here today we have um Elizabeth zielinski who is the incoming chair of the committee she has been the vice chair for the past two years on the committee as well and we also have Ali balasari who is our recording secretary we sometimes refer to her as Queen by law for the uh uh for the uh acsd um our good friends obviously are here also from uh from DSS uh Dr Boyd and Dawn and a good good friend of mine I'm Mike Bloom here who has helped me in more ways than I can possibly count

003and I also want to make sure that I would mention that our uh liaison Laura Jane Cohen who is always incredibly helpful with us and particularly um passionate about these issues um you have our report in front of you and you know we're in the interest of time we'd love just kind of to move probably into questions if you don't mind with it we've had more than a few issues to have to deal with over the last year with the committee and you know we're we know that you all have probably a number of questions that are associated with those issues uh do the best we possibly can to provide those answers for you and uh so I'm more than happy to provide uh answers to questions thank you would anybody like to get us

004started actually would you would you mind Harry just for the public to maybe just go very briefly over the overview just so the public in here and then we can sure if you don't mind as quickly so we have uh our report is separated into uh into a number of different uh uh sections per each of our uh subcommittees that we have um they are detailed and we have the listing behind us here for each of the recommendations uh in the past our recommendations have mirrored very carefully what we have um uh what has appeared in the air report and other matters in the past um essentially our report with regards to the committee charge which was very specific as it related to the public day sites and I will tell you I think those

005truly are the crown jewels that we have in Fairfax County I don't say that only because my daughter attends one of them at Key Center she is centering 10th grade there and even though I don't approve of that necessarily that she's that old at this stage we do uh they do just amazing work but our charge was very specific as it relates to challenges associated with uh with referrals with regards to Staffing and a number of the other issues um there are total of 6 18 actual uh recommendations that came out of that specific subcommittee the reason that there are so many in that is that that subcommittee focused so strongly into it I want to make sure I thank our folks from DSS and particularly Dr Boyd who um allowed us to do some

006uh surveying of staff that was there some of the results that came out of that those surveys were particularly eye-opening and a lot of that information is contained in our recommendations that are within it specifically the numbers talk about issues associated with referrals creating a referral checklist issues associated with flexible funding for individualized educational materials recommendations [Music] associated with help and funding from central office to remodel former exclusion spaces as it relates to um moving beyond restraint exclusion increasing of support staff the need for King Kilmer to add bcba to their full-time school-based staff um discussing a need to create better Partnerships to train special education teachers and professionals as it relates to our public day sites and life you'll notice that a lot of these recommendations mirror a lot of the airport recommendations that

007came out that is in part deliberate but also it's a result of the years of work that our committee has worked on on these topics we've heard these recommendations from our staff members and from our parents over and over again and so you know trying to stop uh improved retention of our special education teachers improving teacher development teacher training and things to that end uh these are issues that we focus in in a significant way our folks over at policy and regulations uh probably the biggest issue that they have focused in on is the use of differential pay uh to recruit and retain special education staff this has been an ongoing issue and an ongoing topic for us for a number of years the creation of specific tuition reimbursement Pathways and again you may notice

008here that a lot of this seems to mirror back to a lot of the recommendations that came in through air as a result Improvement of mentoring challenges auditing of existing professional development requirements uh all of these areas within uh the policy and regulation side of things lay into much of what's involved with the special education enhancement plan that I know you all have been involved with um our student achievement and outcomes subcommittee particularly wants to uh I think they would highlight a need to establish enhanced Data Tracking systems to capture information about 2E students I know that is of particular interest it's been out there you'll notice a lot of the recommendations that come out of this are focused around data and data collection this has been an ongoing issue with regards to what we've

009seen and I know Mike probably gets about 50 requests a week for me and I I'm only slightly exaggerating I think that number that are associated with data requests that are involved in I think the most common answer that I get back from Mike is well we don't really have that data segregated or we don't really collect data to that end and I think a lot of what we what that subcommittee looked at and tried to find results where were associated in that particular area um the folks over at uh family engagement uh and community outreach uh a lot of what you'll see with that is focused around IEP training in IEP issues um Improvement of access for sea stars uh eligibility testing IEP documents and progress reports uh have to be translated for all

010parents in a variety of languages budget issues that remain a key challenge budgets always equal priorities with any organization and this has been an area I know Laura mccockney of our committee is always the one that is uh pushing so hard on the issue of budget and budget uh issues to that end um and I think that that's an important issue and then changes to the IEP methodology um uh for discussion and review it you will notice unto this that this is of I think a particular issue of concern that we've had over the last number of years and you know I um it is important for us to have adequate time on the acsd to review and provide uh effective response back to issues that are involved that's more than just one person being

011involved that needs to be a committee as a whole we have 34 members on our committee and you know they come with 34 different points of view as you might imagine and so for them to have a chance to understand the challenges and the issues that are out there and to be able to effectively uh provide the response Ms kiskamara your microphone is on uh is to provide um is to provide thoughtful response back in a timely uh fashion for it uh I could probably go into a lot more detail into this that I uh that are involved into it but I I I'll leave it at that at this stage thank you for that overview um we can go ahead and get started Miss Marin thank you thank you Mr Henderson and Mr Bloom

012so I first want to address a few things that are not acsd specific I think but more about the work of um The Advisory committees and I know I've mentioned some of this before but it's particularly relevant because the board just yesterday was talking about uh governance and how we use work and how it's going to align with the Strategic plan and so as I'm looking at as always the very robust work of the acsd I see that on board docs it referenced many of the or in your report or referenced many other documents that are not linked into board docs and when I look at our school board webpage about acsd it is not current with our information I'm thinking about the data dashboards doctor really even putting together for all hosts of things

013I'm thinking about you know I want to be able to go somewhere to look at what you're doing so that I can then talk with my colleagues about what's happening so you know our School Board office is staffed the way it is and um you know I don't know if this is something the superintendent can think about because this is information that we want to convey to you and the board will further crunch it but it's clear that we're you know there needs to be a better system here that said I also um did want to recall that last year or it was last year fall 22 I really appreciated that the department of special services had created one document that included not only the questions we'll included the answers to acsu responses and I

014don't see that today and so again as we start this um so if I looked back at the fall 22 it was a nice and I even commented at the time it was very helpful but I don't see that today all I see is the three page piece from acsd and so what I want to do is can we set the stage here because this is the first of many uh committee work sessions what is the standard for what the board's going to receive are we going to receive feedback on these reports per committee was that just a special thing for acsd that one time just want to get expectations clear here thank you Mr fresh thank you I'm going to defer to Dr Presidio just for maybe some historical understanding at least to know

015what we've been doing and then I think obviously we're open to doing something different moving forward and I think if as we transition to policy governance that might be obviously something to think about so Dr Presidio so I think it's definitely something to think about certainly following yesterday's work session on policy governance I think there's a lot of a lot more consistency we could probably bring to the process for each of the Committees staff prepare a staff response for each of the Committees but it looks very different depending on the committee so we don't have a standard format a standard template for that I mean that might be something that we might want to consider in the future historically and you know I work with eight different committees and varying capacities historically I think it's

016worked better in some committees than others so some sort of you know discussion about what the board would like in terms of what's going to work best for the board I think would be helpful but right now we're set to prepare those staff responses and send those to the board in August I'd like to go back Mr Fish because I didn't get to ask my contact question if I could to we we were delayed last year in coming to you all uh we had a number of times where we were pushed pushed on the schedule and so I would say this last year we got responses back in a much more timely fashion than we did the year before I think was was a challenge that we had but I think one of the reasons

017that you may not have answers to these uh responses is that versus last year was just the timing associated with it from last year well on that note so so far ctac is scheduled for the fall so that's my committee maybe we're going to postpone the rest of this meeting for another day I'm just kidding uh we're gonna do miss Sizemore hyzer than Miss Corbett Sanders yeah well thank you and um thank you for this very detailed report and the recommendations to your entire committee and Harry just for me personally because we have a long history so thank you for all your hard work um I want to point out a couple things that are really first a question I know the charge talked about evidence-based practices for public separate day schools and I was

018kind of curious what your committee had seen in terms of best practices around this I know a lot of school systems don't have their own public day schools so I was kind of curious what you'd found it's a it's a good question about evidence-based issues and that was particularly our you know I would tell you that alibabasari our um recording secretary and R was heavily involved on our um uh on our uh executive committee with regards to the school board charge um what we've discovered I think throughout this year was what probably is well known we we spent a significant amount of time discussing uh meeting having meetings with uh all the principals all the assistant principles from each of the um poete sites we had field trips I think would probably be the best

019way to kind of describe it was for our um committee members to get out and have a chance to be to meet them the issues associated with the um uh with the surveys helped us significantly to put data behind a lot of the theories that we had heard or anecdotal evidence that we had heard in addition to that I would say the communication that we had from the principals and the assistant principals and from Educators that were out there let us what we would hear essentially is referral process that is going on is creating a significant number of challenges that are within those particular areas where you know my daughter's been a key center from the time she entered into the school but I that's probably not correct for everybody to be involved into those

020particular areas and I think from talking to a number of principals they came to the same assessment which was which was we're getting referrals for people that have spent a week and a half in some cases at a different uh at a different school that's not effective to be able to uh to come to Solutions and I think that that evidence is leading us to to some serious issues that are associated with what needs to be done to both protect and also to continue to develop those public day sites um there's a reason they call them the crown jewels and it's again not just because of my daughter's uh uh placement there it's because nobody else has this um within my daughter's Association uh the Williamson Durham Association we have friends in the uh the

021Loudoun County Schools they tell us all the time we would love the opportunity to be in the similar school that uh that Jackie said and I think that that is both a credit to what we have but it also represents a serious challenge that we have to be able to make sure that this special uh ability that we have there is is maintained that's why I wanted to ask that because it is very unique what we have and I think it's important to lift that up that we are keeping many of our students here that other systems don't have that opportunity but you know I wanted to lift up a couple things recommendation 16 and 18 under the school board charge in particular right I think we need to have the descriptions of programs I

022think this is important because we are seeing from what I'm hearing anecdotally an uptick of students being referred and sometimes very quickly to these day sites so I think it's beyond even the psls and case managers I think our administrators really need to get a real good understanding of what these are and what these aren't and all of our the CSS sites or public day sites right and what's maybe more of a consistent process Dr Reed especially as we're going to go into of what are the steps school-based administrators and maybe you have this right should follow in making these referrals right and from case managers to psls to school-based administrators and what should be done before the referral is made you know I think there's we do need a holistic look at what is

023being offered at these day schools and what is not and who's being served and who should be served and if if we have a gap in what we're offering and and it doesn't fit everybody's needs we can't keep shoehorning them into these programs right we need to find what can serve them best so that's the other piece of 18 I want to lift up I love this this is probably one of my favorite things which is not how can the needs of the students not be met but how is the environment not meeting those needs because that's key it's it's about I think that we need to really look at all of our environments to see are they meeting the needs of our students now as opposed to maybe when they were designed my time

024is up I'll take a go back but I want to lift that piece up go ahead um thank you so much um Mr Henderson and Miss Sizemore Hazard one of the things that we've been working on during this year with we meet regularly with CSS administrators and um AP and principal representation from faasp mspa HSPA Etc um and the piece about that referral piece has been something that's been elevated regardless of the the seat that you sit on on the bus whether you're at a comprehensive school and you're saying hey when I refer it's taking too long for somebody to come and observe and this should be able to happen if you're at a CSS you're saying hey they're referring and they haven't done all of these things so everyone has concerns and as we've

025been talking about that talking about the summer working on what's that process that can be very streamlined clearly communicated so that it's not contingent upon which PSL you have who has the louder voice in the room that's clear and consistent and we've also been working on a draft Matrix and we started specifically with Burke CSS and our special education settings to support our students to have social emotional and behavioral needs to talk through the various aspects curricula what's the curricular offerings there who's the um what's that liner profile look like at the program how are the social emotional behavioral supports addressing each of those pieces so that we can see what's the difference from one place to another and really looping in I know you all are probably tired of hearing it the least restrictive

026environment data collection tool because that really begins to talk about what are the services and supports the students Dr Boyd can you pause for a second we don't have Quorum oh reminded us all and now none of us will do it but I I totally could have been that person so yeah I apologize Dr Boyd no worries no worries um they're really talking about what are those supports to looking at the least all of the supports and whatever that least restrictive environment is for a particular child first so for some students it will be key Center camera Center might be public private day for some students it'll be the genetic setting but just wanted to share that um much of what is discussed here is reflected in the draft enhancement plan and work that's already

027been begun to be started with you know again stakeholders right now because that certainly to Mr Henderson's Point has been an issue of concern that um that we're working through even now with with school-based leaders thank you um all right up next we have Miss Corbett Sanders followed by Miss omish thank you and thank you for the report um IT addresses many of the things that each of us have spoken to uh you Dr Boyd about over time as well as you Mr Bloom and it's wonderful to have it in one comprehensive location I think some of the recommendations you make are excellent but there are recommendations that um have some budgetary impact as well and so I do ask that we have that budgetary analysis done prior to the start of the school year

028so that we can if necessary build that into a budget going forward a particular has been something that this board has talked about quite a bit which is the um the salary levels for not only our teachers that are in special education settings but are those staff members who are providing those wrap around services such as the phds the phtas you know the whole range of them and so I do think that's going to be really important I also thought it was very helpful and I had not seen this recommendation in the past and maybe it's been here before but to recommend having extended year contracts for the staff at our comprehensive sites and our extent because of the esy piece what we have found in the past with the esyps is that because people

029are not on those year-round contracts they make plans to either do something fun for the summer or they make plans to take on additional employment and then when we go to staff esy we are faced with that challenge and so I would um be encouraging you to set that as a priority then the other piece and I don't know if I just missed it um but the assistive technology piece and how do we become much more intentional in that assistive technology piece and in particular for those students that may be non-verbal but are able to use assistive technology and then all of a sudden it's not non-verbal anymore and um so I would like to see a little bit more of um maybe next year if you all could do a deeper dive on that

030would anybody like to respond to miss Corbett Sanders um I would point out that uh Amanda Campbell is probably our resident person when it comes to assistive technology particularly for communications issues and so I'll be I'll make sure to to relay your your concern onto it the issue of year-round um contracts that is a particular uh issue and it's been one that dates back a significant period of time within the uh the committee that at least as far as as long as I've been around and probably um going back with uh with Raja when she was with me onto it but I think these all lay into issues associated with retention and staff making sure that we are effectively prioritizing those staff members uh that we recognize the tremendous work that those staff members are

031doing and that we recognize that it is not just a uh one-off situation and I'll relate just one issue with assistive technology from communication perspective and I did this at um uh I made public comment for the first time at our committee this past month and it was because at my daughter's IEP her teacher used assistive technology devices to allow my daughter to provide input during her IEP of the things that she appreciated that she enjoyed that she was engaged in and I getting those types of tools out there that we can do that to allow for these students to be able to participate in their own IEP processes are just as critical that's how they become their own Advocates and it's so important so I would encourage that and then you you're out of

032time Miss Corbett Sanders I'll put you down for a go back Miss omish followed by Miss Tolan well thank you so much for your work Mr Henderson and team I know how much goes into this every year um I especially liked seeing some of the recommendations around IEP access parent view and other recommendations so important I don't know how we expect families to you know do all that needs to be done for their kids uh keep monitoring without understanding or being able to access their IEPs so that's definitely something I've heard from the community but before I get into my more substantive points uh do you mind just outlining what change um between last year and where we are now in terms of responsiveness to recommendations or perhaps new new findings I would say there

033were two changes from last year to this year one would be on the air report um which frankly I recall sitting in front of you last year and the statement saying boy a lot of these recommendations that you guys made in your report showed up in in the air and we're like well yeah that's probably because we hear from those parents on on those particular issues um that and I believe that the focus that we were given particularly as it relates to the uh the school board charge with public day site would be a way for us to be able to dive deeper into a lot of those particular subjects uh which brings us back to issues of uh educator retention issues associated with access to these particular issues I know it seems to be

034an ongoing issue with us at DSS particularly with uh the changes in in IEP um efforts but I know that these are going to be ongoing issues as we we get there so I would I would mention that as well aren't particularly those particular challenges sure I appreciate that because um I was going to speak to the air part because I was really concerned seeing this report specifically Pages 1011 where the committee is reporting you know they were not involved in the effort it wasn't as imagined that their role as a key stakeholder within the steering committee of the AAR process didn't occur that it was impeding the implementation of the report and then outlining phase two the timeline of of items that did not occur um so I just want to gain some understanding

035like I I don't want to pick groups against each other here staff and committee but I'm really concerned as a board member I know that was something that was a commitment of our board to make sure that the acsd was a key you know teammate in that process so I don't know Dr Boyd maybe if you want to address that clarify what went down and then I'd love to hear more from whoever wants to contribute from the committee about how that was experienced thank you Miss so much and and I think we'll if it's okay with you I'll let Mr Henderson speak first and I'll follow him thank you for the question um I think it's important to remember a couple of things here that when you have a 34 person committee having one person

036serving on the steering committee does not amount to direct discussion with that committee for or that direct with that group as to the steps that need to occur how they can occur I did serve on the steering committee um I think the issues that are raised in this particular section of it and you know I don't serve on this particular subcommittee so I want to make sure I I highlight that to it but I think the statement that I would say is this is far-ranging issues these this is Once in a generation attempt to look at special education and take the next best steps that are forward into it um the overall strategic planning efforts that took place that I was fortunate enough to be a part of there would be the core group that

037would meet first then after that you would have select um staff that was involved following that you would have parents and student input and then you would literally return full circle from that aspect of things I think as we move through these particular issues in these particular challenges when you're talking about something that impacts some thirty thousand plus students in the area bringing together and spending more time with a group of parents volunteers Specialists individuals that have such range of knowledge I think I even said this Mr Bloom at one point if you were to list 50 people in Fairfax County that knew more about special education in the county and if 10 of them weren't on on that committee I think you would probably need to re-examine the list that were involved with it

038there were three of us from the committee that were on this on the standing committee steering committee for it but I do believe that it is something that needed to have greater engagement and greater involvement with the acsd um in those particular processes thank you so first we want to say that we certainly appreciate the partnership of acsd as well as a number of committee and organization representatives to include students from a number of schools that participated I think in looking at our initial Vision in terms of how we collaborate and engage the steering committee was intended to have representation from a number of organizations whereby those organization representative whether it was from you were from acsd whether you were from msaoc fa ESP Etc that you would be that voice in the room to

039present your organization's views and perspectives and really highlight those priorities that are elevated within a respective organizations and be that conduit and serve as a liaison between the organization as we drafted Mission Vision Values Court core goals and things like that and then receiving some feedback from the acsd it was shared that the they wanted to be able to have some more opportunities for engagement as a collective body and so that was the rationale for extending the timeline to allow for their full membership to to engage in that process and so we did that and so I think that we certainly did hold to what we outlined in November certainly for the board so I want to make sure we're clear about that that we did Implement what we stated that we would do but

040also that we were fluid and listening to that stakeholder feedback and made adjustments accordingly to ensure that there were additional engagement opportunities I I mean I can understand the representation piece I guess part of the concern is number one is it seems transparency around who's a member what the minutes are Etc attendance records whatever but then also the phase two Focus that lists draft Mission share draft Mission review and revise share updated draft implementation plan what's alleged in this report is that none of this happened from from last December all the way through April of this year that was I guess meant to be share outs or something and perhaps Mr Henderson or someone from the acsd might want to clarify because I can assure you that those items took place as outlined in the

041plan and I'm happy to share any correspondence that we shared with steering committee to solidify that okay um Mr Henderson I I will concede that there was probably communication and that that there was communication that needed to be made I mean I don't want to put I'm not trying to put you in the hot seat specifically sure whatever staff commitments were made that we that we're delivering on our end to support the committee's work so I know that's my time I'll pick up later thank you Miss Amish uh Miss Tolan followed by Miss McLaughlin thank you um I was very uh happy to see the recommendations that you have in here around 2E I have a number of constituents that have you know children um that are 2E and so I've seen and I just

042wanted to get your input I feel like I've seen over the last several years of being on the board a lot of improvements and an additional opportunities for 2E students do you think that is necessarily the case in some places yes I would say that's case but I think I would argue and I would I would also State this that I'm hearing from I'm not a a parent of attorney person this is not what I would refer to a as my particular bailiwick of of uh specialty to it that being said I what I hear from parents what I hear from anecdotally is now um I don't necessarily have anything that I could specifically point to you to that end but I would tell you that anecdotally we hear repeatedly from our uh from our

043two e parents that come to us and they say no we don't that we we see continued issues we see the continued challenges and we see those continued challenges that occur so maybe Dr Boyd can you help me I know there's some joint work with ISD in your department can you just moving forward what you see happening absolutely so I certainly think that there is definitely opportunity for improvement for growth we as you share we've been collaborating with ISD on how we can support students who fall within that 2E Continuum in the least restrictive environment making sure that they're able to access the information and the material in those events courses and they don't have to sacrifice in these services or accommodations that they would need as outlined in their IEPs and 504 plans and

044making sure that staff are equipped with the skills to support students and so that is the work that we're currently engaging in now again looking across what do those supports look like across settings and we know that we there is work to be done to ensure that Services if needed that are appropriate in honors classes AP classes Etc are provided in accordance with students IEP so so we do acknowledge that that's an area of growth and opportunity and we're working diligently on that so it seems like some of the things that they're asking for here like the Data Tracking System would be extremely helpful for us in figuring out our programming ma'am any Improvement on data collection would be significant steps forward for us and I think we're doing a lot anecdotally right now we

045need to be able to get some more solid footing to make recommendations that are coming through meetings as we as we know IEPs are just that individualized and so some of the pieces and some of the data elements are pieces that um we have a lot of data fields that we can pull from that are drop down boxes form boxes but much of the narrative that's really individualized that's the pieces where there's those gaps so if we want to talk about how many students do we currently have in FCPS who have Down syndrome there's not a clean and efficient way for us to pull that because Down syndrome is not a disability category that would be something written in The Narrative of a student's present level of academic team academic achievement and functional performance I

046had to slow down to get that out see I didn't use the acronym I'm training myself um but those are those pieces and so um when Mr Henderson talks about the data requests many of those requests are those very individualized unique things that would be have to be pulled from that narrative element so we certainly have data on again the number of students We Serve by disability category level of services lre accommodations all of those things we have the data we monitor that data those type of pieces but it's those very individualized elements so again there's no category for 2E if you will and so we couldn't easily pull students who would fall into that 2E Continuum we'd have to create and again I'm not saying that what we have is what we have to

047always have but we would have to have some additional functionality to say this is a student who is in advanced academics and also has an IEP so that we can pool that data and then look at where those students are served along the Continuum because that's some other data elements that were identified so I just wanted to provide just that bit of clarification as we talk about the data and what we have and what are some opportunities moving forward so my other comments um kind of follows what Miss Carver Sanders was talking about the whole budgets impact of a lot of these and this is that a committee report that is packed packed with items that have budget impact um my original thought listening to the earlier conversation was maybe to you know think about

048when staff responds having some part of that if we would and I would certainly support having more of a a certain format that we might use for each of the different committees in a section of it being what are the budget priorities but I would want to make sure that those were reviewed then again by the advisory committee because I not necessarily given that how the conversation has been going this evening not necessarily feeling like The Advisory community and staff may agree on exactly what the budget priorities are so um I think that might be an interesting part as we move forward you know because we do want to make sure that the advisory committee ideas and the expertise that we're bringing to the table with the advisory committees that that is appreciated in the

049prioritization of of work whether it's with this committee or any committee so throw that out thank you Miss Tallinn we'll go to miss McLaughlin and then I'll take my turn before gobex thank you um first of all I want to thank the entire acsd once again you always bring us incredibly important and substantive reports and it's greatly appreciated um I also want to extend my deep appreciation to my appointee Carolyn Hayden for the Braddock District Carolyn is not only a credibly knowledgeable parent but Dr Reed Carolyn used to work in our HR and so she brings with her deep experience about the challenges we face in and the vacancies we've had for special education teacher vacancies and so when she and I spoke before the report one of her deep concerns is we opened schools

050last year with about 150 vacancies we're right now showing at about 300 and so she came at her perspective on this report is twofold one we've got to make sure that we get those vacancies filled because for every sped teacher we don't have it means the workload on the teachers we do have spills over because we have mandatory services so she saw that as like our number one focused and strategic concern number two the special education enhancement plan well intentioned but her concerns again about overwhelming the existing and onboarding new sped teachers she's fully supportive of the the air 19 recommendations but collectively you know I'm always talking macro macro what she said is you've got to fill those vacancies you've got to get the training and supports and be mindful that we may have

051to go slow in order to go fast because we cannot overwhelm and lose people she said a recent teacher saw some of the things coming with the enhancement plan and when we already have the comprehensive services that were under the federal you know VRA said I can't do it and I really worry about us losing teachers to the other school division so two minutes went super fast not happy I'm going to put on record that I don't agree with how quickly we squeeze in these reports we should have had an hour and a half thank you Miss McLaughlin if I can just real quick Carolyn Hayden is an absolutely tremendous member of our committee um and I don't say that because I sit on the policy and regulations subcommittee and she is the chair of

052that group her input this year has been absolutely fantastic and you should be very proud of the tremendous work that she has done uh on your behalf on the committee I will take my turn I want to start by thanking David Bean who is a local parent in Providence District he's also a former special education teacher and a vet who has been serving us for I think we've just put him on for another year so very grateful for his service I think if there's frustration this is what I've been able to surmise among the things that there might be frustration about is that the air report validated independently much of what the community has been saying for a long time and to see and so along with validation comes the expectation right and then what

053creates maybe an apprehension is when expectations are not met and so when we do have our conversation about the enhancement plan one of the things I would like to zero in on is how we are aligning it with the not just the letter of Errors recommendations but the intent of Air's recommendations as well so starting there second on the issue of data um you know when when the Department of Homeland Security after 9 11 and was created and they had to figure out how to share data between the FBI the CIA every local law enforcement agency Etc the biggest issue they ran into is that everybody kept their data differently different types of data different forms different computers everything and so they had to figure out consequently these same types of issues present themselves in

054every bureaucracy within a government or even in a business and FCPS is not unique I would recommend that we have some kind of a data task force particularly around issues like this where we can determine what things are even possible to clean up and make accessible the the dashboard efforts currently underway by the superintendent it was like moving a small Mountain to get those different pieces of information to work with each other and and speak to each other so there's that and then the third piece is how our committee our advisory committee's function right we want to make it clear from charge to work to report to response to updates exactly how this should work for every committee and what's to be expected from staff the school board liaison Etc fortunately Peck did a lot

055of work around that we just have to have a work session on it and hopefully we can do that and align it with the Strategic plan so that we can go forward and have um some expectations you know that things are going to proceed in an orally way every year and that there's some things that will just happen because that's the way we do things I very much appreciate everybody's work so thank you very much we'll begin with go backs with Miss Marin thank you I was wondering if the superintendent could elaborate more on the work for our twice exceptional students it's come up in different conversations and I'm just using the recommendation as a springboard to learn more about that please thank you Miss Marin um I did just have my regular meeting with

056SEPTA this afternoon that was one of the topics was our twice exceptional progress and I think we've developed an incredible handbook honestly for twice exceptional students I think the the challenge right now is to take I think we have people creating tremendous resources and then for some reason they're not um being utilized at scale across the division in what I would call um as Fidelity type of manner I don't know I see Noelle looking at me I'm trying to think of the right words but I think that that right you if I think you go in different places in the county and there are times people haven't didn't know we had a 2E handbook and then there's maybe a different site that's been using it for a couple years and you know really has embraced

057that work so I think part of our challenge isn't that there isn't good work that's going on it's making sure that that work is going on in all um on all sites and we're all students who have twice exceptional needs where their needs can be met so I think again that's part of an organizational structure conversation the board discussed our Equity policy last night and I would say a twice exceptional student needs being met are honestly an equity issue here in this Division and I think that that's um you know one of the tasks we're going to need to partner with our regional assistant superintendents and our chief of schools and chief Equity officer Chief academic officer I mean this we can't have different scripts we all have to be singing on the same script

058here I guess if we don't sing off the script sheet music thank you Mr fresh but I the resources are there um I feel like we just need to have a a broader understanding deeper understanding and I I think perhaps kovid interrupted some of that work but now I think we're ready with the Strategic plan because I think the twice exceptional students are actually uh very clearly a piece of this work so to answer your question directly we are not where we should be and we're not we're I believe acsd expects us to be however the work is there so it's really now sometimes you call it the knowing doing Gap or the implementation Gap right like we need to the implementation work is I believe um the challenge at the moment well thanks for

059the update and it reminds me of what's happened with our get to Green program where you'd have amazing resources that maybe teachers aren't aware of and some schools use it and some schools don't and until we make big steps like investing in the outdoor classrooms at the PD the professional development that's when it will happen so I'll share that so my student who is dyslexic was just um identified for advanced academics so I am very interested to go through this process myself and just even trying to explain to this Rising fifth grader what that means and trying to understand what that looks like in the classroom and I always will put in a plug for the made by dyslexia Campaign which elevates dyslexia as a true asset so I'm very eager to help make consistent

060these services that are needed to bring equity and I'm so glad you raised that as an example this is directly related to equity thank you Miss Marin MS eismoreheiser so a couple things as someone who I think was the most passionate I've ever been watching the AR report and saying we've been saying this for 20 years it was very validating and I think it is hard to know where to start I'm going to start with a 2E think we need to have a really good definition I think this is all when we talk about data collection the data dashboards of what we're looking at right and that definition like 2E it's not just academically 2E so when we're saying we're going to collect data on 2E what are we talking about right and that's in

061terms of all the data we want to collect I'm glad you mentioned you know Down syndrome right but where what do we need to collect and then how are we going to put on the IEP and part of that has to be overcoming some of the barriers and mindset because I can't tell you during the steering plan how many times Special Education data was missing the answer was well we don't do that we don't collect that and it wasn't we can't or we haven't it's we don't so I think that mindset is really important to overcome as well the C stars is really important for the esy teams to have access to sea stars earlier because they don't often because the esy is so short especially shortening it by one day this year but there's

062got to be checklist for IEPs 2E handbook transition handbooks bed hand I didn't know what transition handbook existed and neither did Miss bakarski and we're on the board right so these are all handbooks that exist but they've got to be a checklist to be handed out can I have another go back if we have time let's see we'll cross that bridge when we get to thank you thank you uh Miss Corbett Sanders followed by Miss omish I'm so happy to be down the Tui as the um the kid in the community that uh was the chair of the aipac um it was the first time that acsd and APAC work together and that's where the Genesis of the 2E handbook came from and it took four years to get the 2E handbook actually published and

063at that time it was supposed to be put on the website so that it was prominently available as a resource in each for each and every school in the county because we know that we have two e-kids at every school in the county and so I know it hasn't happened I'm begging for that to happen as well as the transition handbook which was also part of those conversations early on and I know you were one of the biggest advocates for it messiahiser and so one of the things I think we have really good Genesis of ideas we get the work done and then it sits and collects dust in today's We're All Digital citizens today so I think when we look at our website we really need to reimagine how we profile these resources and

064push them out thank you Mr Corbett Sanders Mr Mage followed by Miss Tolland yeah two final Thoughts with my time um one regarding the questions that the committee asks can someone just flush out the process for that a little bit because and specifically answering the restraint and seclusion ones I know there were questions about where we are and where we are in the training card and whatnot so can that be addressed and then just more broadly on what that process is to respond to a lot of these questions that I didn't particularly see responses to in the report sure thank you Miss Umesh we have a process that we put in place where after each monthly meeting members of the acsd who do not have an opportunity to ask a second question or if there's

065no time left to ask questions they would submit questions for the record and so when we first started questions for the record last year we were utilizing a month-by-month process where questions would come in I would fan them out as the liaison to the different speakers who came to the meeting and spoke on a specific topic we would have answers generated get them back and then moving into this year Well actually the end of last year the question started to come in uh in a semester group of questions so we would take September through December and then January through June and we would have questions answered we've had discussions with the executive officers because the original intent of the questions for the record were to ask questions at the monthly meeting and then if there

066was no time then we would follow up and what ended up happening with a lot of the questions is and we had talked about data requests in here quite a bit so what ended up happening in the questions for the record is a lot of them became large data requests so they weren't questions that you could answer in the general meeting but we had lots of different requests now for data and so we went through a process last year where we internally were wondering should these uh be foia requests or should we go through just our internal stakeholders to answer questions and and so I'm still working with the executive officers on a streamlined process I think some of the delay in getting questions answered is that when I fan questions out sometimes questions are

067of school-based Administrators other departments and so I'm constantly trying to track down answers and so we might not be as efficient in getting answers month to month and so I really and I at the last meeting I really talked to the executive officers about next year really putting a process in place that's manageable efficient and we can get answers in a more timely manner because I do know the last couple of years it it hasn't been as efficient as it could be so we're really looking to streamline that and and create some more efficiencies with that process I really appreciate that and I've only heard accolades about you and your work with the committee Mr Bloom in particular so I appreciate that and Christina maybe we can add that to the list of things for

068reconsideration it's inconsistent across the Committees when they have data requests questions what happens with that um this is actually more of a process than most committees have so um it's good to hear just with the remaining time I want to harp on this translation piece over 25 000 translation requests for IEPs over the past year we only have 180 000 students 25 000 is not insignificant if this is not going to happen I'm going to bring a motion and I'm going to add it to new business and bring a motion at some point I know it's down the line in air Dr Boyd how soon is this going to happen and if it's not happening this year I think this is a very obvious one that has been years and years and years of recommendations

069thank you Mr mesha I'll pull up as we're talking because I don't want to hold up the group we are certainly looking within C stores to have that automated translation of IEP documents so that as we're even engaging in IEP meetings and making adjustments and things like that our families can access the information the same time and we're also looking at a process in our translation team is looking at a number of different pieces on how we can translate documents and support interpretation requests because sometimes there are challenges with conducting meetings at a particular time because there's an absence of an interpreter and so then families can engage and so again I'll pull it up while we're looking at this information to see where that action is drafted in the timeline but the teams have

070been actively working on that and that is a the Crux of the communication implementation plan and focus so just give me a moment and I'll pull that information up for you thank you Mr May Smith tollen and then miss McLaughlin most of our questions have actually been asked by others so for my time thank you Miss McLaughlin great um I would just say Dr Reed that um as we are going to approach the Strategic plan rollout implementation um having done this for so long I really want to make sure that this report in particular does not get sort of well that was nice and thank you for your work but that we really look to incorporate this as an action plan and I do think because it is extensive and based on what my own

071appointees concerns are we will have to be strategic about taking these recommendations and and which ones are are going to be Mission critical but I do know as one board member um I think sooner rather than later it will be good for us to have an understanding of what we're going to do with these vacancies and how do we also reassure our existing special education teachers how valued they are and that we're mindful that we want to address the workload concerns they're having um so and there's my time thank you Miss McLaughlin all right so I'm going to take a quick pulse of those of us who are here we began at 5 42 so we're a little bit over our one hour allotment if anybody um are there any objections to allowing 30 second

072Go-Go backs to anybody who wants one all right Miss eismore higher Heiser requested one first if anybody else wants one please put your sorry quick question BCA ba versus bid I saw the recommendation for bcbas what about bits sorry behavior intervention teachers versus bcbas because there's more bits than there are bcbas my understanding because curious what that thought was on that I'm gonna have to get back to you okay I understand the need for behaviors assigned I just didn't know I need to I don't have it at the top my head onto it I need to go back and check through and I there's also one member of the committee I know that is particularly interested in that topic I want to make sure I'm going to get I can I can communicate that extra

073mic or through um Lord Jane either way okay yeah and I'll just mention that the uh because of the significant behavioral challenges at some of our public day sites the board certified Behavior analysts come with a lot more training and certifications and expertise around Behavior so I think part of the thought was uh you know many of the ABA coaches and the bits are bcbas but not all of them and so I think the specific request for bcba was based on the behavioral challenges at those sites that makes sense I just wanted to get a better understanding of why one versus the other and then um I just wanted to say I wanted to lift up a couple of the things I agree we need to be Mission critical and we have the unspeed enhancement

074plan on Tuesday so this is good timing for that but the translation is important I think and also the staffing needs are super important because you're not teachers we can't teach this but I also want to look to the PTA part for it's public day schools that's a real need too so I'll stop my time's up thank you anybody else Miss Corbett Sanders two seconds to follow up on Miss McLaughlin when staff provides the response to this report it would be very helpful if we could get a prioritization of what the most important budget items are in year one year two year three please thank you anybody else just want to make sure Dr Boyd yeah so in terms of the machine translation the draft enhancement plan has that Focus for August of 2023 through

075November of 2023 and again the team has been working on that through this year's and leveraging Google translate with our IEP online software provider in terms of additional interpreters that is later and again I can follow up and I don't want to belabor the moment too much but I look very quickly for that immediate IEP translation piece that I think is going to be Mission critical for our families with IEPs and both 504 so I just want to make sure I Elevate that as well so you're saying by November 2023 families should expect that they will have interpreted or translated IEPs that is our Target date for having the machine translation of our in our IEP system and our c-stars for IEPs and 504s so families should be able to access translated IEPs by that

076point that is our goal okay and if it's just going to be a machine translation like whatever our quality assurance uh commitments that's a big deal with like I have never seen anything Auto translated that made any sense in Arabic or Spanish absolutely absent on that so I'm happy to connect our um co-lead Leah scherbsky with you so to get some additional details because she's been leading that work yeah okay because it's a technical it we're not just talking about like plain old conversation and that's why this process has been they've been working on this for probably the last half of this year okay I'm gonna hold you that November 2023. all right thank you uh Miss uh Marin yeah I have to follow on um especially I've mentioned this book before voices from around

077the IEP table which really goes through some of the experiences of the different folks that are in the room and especially parents and you know uh computerized translation just I don't think it's what we're aiming for we need someone to be able to speak the language the body language in the room and translate with that specific type of language so yeah I just I I can't agree more with what Miss Amisha saying and just to clarify so we're talking about talking about the about the referred to interpreters those are two different pieces the information that I just shared with Miss um omesh was specific to translation of the written document the interpreters that's also included in here the actual supports the meeting and that's when I said I can follow up and talk to you

078a little bit more about as we flesh through because all of that is outlined in the communication plan I just want to be respectful of the hour okay everybody will quickly add that even even the IEP is so technical I mean I shared with you my own son's IEP to say look at these there's confusion here and there so there's just even that basic sense of we need to get out of the Ed speak and speak to parents who are not experts in special education yes ma'am am thank you Miss Baron and I will make one final Point um I know that uh Mr Bloom mentioned the possibility of foia's for data and this is one of the reasons why we have to hammer out this process because we shouldn't you know that could require

079money and we shouldn't be charging our advisory committees for access to the data to work on the issues that we've agreed to let them work on um so I will leave it at that I very much appreciate staff and our advisory committee members for being here and for the open discussion so we're going to take a five minute go ahead and I just want to again on behalf of DSs to just thank Mr Henderson for his time I know he's dedicated a lot of time away from family and friends and um I know we ask a lot of him so just want to take this moment to publicly thank him for his commitment and his service to FCPS and since there are only seven of us we're going to take a five minute recess before

080coming back for our tpec go ahead and start with t-pack and the dream team of TPAC I'm a little biased I had the honor and the pleasure of working closely with you all this year and as I uh mentioned earlier I truly believe first off TPAC like acsd is a mandated advisory committee and so the work that you all do is so important and we need to have that very intentional feedback from you all uh I think that tback is a bit unusual in its structure so Mike I hope when um you introduced the report tonight you will also give a little bit about your Innovative approach to the advisory committee because there is no other committee structured like you all do okay and with that what I would like to do is start by

081introducing uh the Dream Team Courtney aren't you going to be up there there's space and I would start with the the chair of the TPAC and uh is Mr Mike Waltz he has been the chair now for four years I think it's four four I think it seems like 20 by four you know that's because you've mastered it so well and we have Maria warthin from the NAACP as well as um this year's uh very brand new director of title one but somebody who knows the issues of Title One schools extremely well because she was an excellent principal leader of one of them and that is Amy Miller and we have as well um Courtney White who is the coordinator of Grants and for Title One Noel are you getting up there too or no

082well you're listed on my list so you there is a seat up there if you would like to join us and Noel clemenko needs no introduction but she is air assistant superintendent for instruction and with that Mike if you could do do a brief overview of what you all have been doing and then once again your innovation of believing that this work is so important and why your charge is structured the way it is thank you for that and even though you mentioned them I still want to say it again and give some acknowledgment see her on the on the screen who is our rep the previous school year just want to acknowledge and thank you for your support I want to also thank Miss Corbett Sanders for support this year as we came back

083to in-person meetings and Noel this is our first year working together and you know huge thank you to the title one team with Amy Courtney and Tim paper who's not here but who have supported us in and out before meetings during meetings after meetings to help us you know do the work that we do and we wouldn't be able to do it without them so appreciate that very much if you could go to I think the third or fourth Slide the first few slides are more of their introductory and they're more referent for your reference and background we really want to get into the content of what we've been working on we want to talk about one more slide up please so as Miss Corbett Sanders said the TPAC is it's really a component of

084requirement of the elementary and secondary school act to provide an opportunity for input and consultation with parents and teachers and as you see those four bullets it's an overview but it's not everything that we've done everything that we do and I'll say that we are working on strengthening how each of those things are happening but what it has provided is an opportunity for parents at schools to step into leadership and learn more about what goes in the county and start to cultivate relationship with their principals and just so you know the flow of it Marie and I will take turns and go back and forth as we discuss the topics tonight so I'm gonna walk through the actually if you could go back to the fifth side thank you um so I want to walk

085through the roles and functions of our TPAC members who um come from uh every title one school in the division um and uh also includes not only parents but teachers principals um anyone else who wants to attend can come and it's really it's more than an advisory committee it's really a learning um it's a learning collaboration I think for both us as parents as well as for staff and we have spent this year learning together about Title One about each other's experiences and about the science of reading and how it's rolling out in our schools um and so uh the first two bullets here are are some things that worked really well I think for us um we spent some time we devoted an entire meeting to learning about Title One and what it looks

086like specifically in Fairfax County we got an excellent overview of that from Courtney White and I have to say even as someone who has myself a pretty deep understanding of the federal policy on title one I learned a lot of new information because it's truly unique in Fairfax the way it looks and the way the funding rolls down through the state and District so I think having that level setting for all of us was very eye-opening and laid a good foundation for people to be able to approach or work together in terms of being able to provide feedback ask questions and express ideas to further enhance family and school Partnerships that was at the core of our meeting design this year I think you know during the pandemic it was challenging to have that two-way

087communication it was more of a webinar format but this year we were back in a hybrid format and our meetings were designed very intentionally to allow for learning but also reflection and exchanging information and so as parents we learned a lot from each other we were able to kind of compare notes like this has been my experience with I have a first grader at beach Trail Elementary we've had overall pretty great experience with with the school and and then you know maybe having a parent at the same the same table saying well that hasn't been my experience and kind of understanding the variability that can happen across the county I think to Dr Reed's point during the prior report that we have a lot of great resources and information and task forces and things here

088in Fairfax County but it doesn't always get rolled out in the same way at every school and so I think just sort of as a source of qualitative data TPAC is truly a gold mine um and it's one reason why I think you should really listen to us and take our report seriously because we really do represent that full sort of breadth of experience of what it is like to be a parent of a child in these schools both the triumphs and the struggles um in terms of being able to offer stakeholder input to inform Central Title 1 action spending and guidance for Title One schools I just want to acknowledge the wonderful Title One staff this has been really truly a joyous collaboration for me personally and I know a lot of the parents

089on the committee feeling like we are really heard and not just that we're heard but that they are learning from us um and in in a really authentic way um we've had the opportunity to meet with superintendent Reed and we really appreciate that she took the time to come to one of our meetings answer questions and listen and learn with us um but that said it is unclear and I think Mike will speak to this later on the extent to which our recommendations are heard outside of that sphere um and then finally a really important role for our Representatives is to bring the information that we're learning back to the schools and to develop a partnership and collaboration with our school teams and our principals and I will say that this is one area where

090we you know we talked a lot about this we heard from some good examples but we need a lot of help and again one of our recommendations recommendation for is gonna speak to this a little bit more about the help that we as parents really need to um for more meaningful Partnerships and communication with our principals you know the next slide please it's a little bit of a history lesson how we got here so two years ago we had issued a report and the previous school year we had had meetings and discussions and when it came time to I guess report season had not heard anything back on the recommendations or anything in the report and you know it was I think this was Dr Reed's first three weeks or so she met with Boards

091of school board committees chairs of school board committees and I said you know I'd chaired the TPAC and a few others were like we do this so and so we similar to Portland the spring somewhere at the spring I said we're not submitting report this year we did a letter reaffirming what we said the previous year and from that it was frustration to be honest because we had worked very hard and we are representing and I'm not saying necessarily us but we are representative of a group of parents who are from the schools that are most vulnerable in the county and the time and effort people put into and give is precious and we feel that squandered you know that's not respectful to what to them their experiences their life so we didn't submit one

092and but from that came an opportunity because Dr Reed we met over the summer we kind of talked about it and a subsequent meeting with chair Sizemore Heiser and kind of came to this charge and really focused on science of reading as it's being rolled out and thought it would be not only something that falls under under the jurisdiction of what the tpac's title I'm supposed to look at but who is against their kids reading it's we fight about a lot of things I haven't heard anybody say no I don't want my kids know how to read so that's how we got this charge and you know it's important to know that you know no matter what an idea is how positive how impactable it could be implementation is everything and tracking that measuring it

093refining it that's you know why I think it's such an appropriate one for this group and over the course of the year we had such interests from everybody who attended both folks who presented and parents community members who were there I'm just really glad we came to that to that point yeah yeah and just I think a little more background on why this issue feels so important you know other than the fact that we all need our kids to learn to read to be successful that's really the Bedrock of of The Learning Journey um is that we have known um as a country um what the science is behind how children need to be taught to learn to read for over two decades you know you look back the national reading panel convened in I

094think 1999 and came out with its recommendations we had a national program reading first that put billions of dollars into disseminating the science of reading across the country under Hotel Left Behind which unfortunately became politicized as part of the sort of overall uh backlash to No Child Left Behind I mean I think this is one situation where the baby really got thrown out with the back the bath water and [Music] um and so um you know I um as the liaison Community liaison from the Fairfax County chapter of the NAACP I also want to shout out to my colleagues on the education committee there who worked really hard and partnered with many many of you um to ultimately convince you to um take this issue the issue of of Science of reading on morning meaningfully

095um and so even though it feels like a no-brainer these are battles that have been fought over and over again over several decades and um so we as we go through our recommendations um we also you know think about how important the communication is about what we're doing and why we're doing it so that we don't backtrack ever again and so that our kids um who are most struggling will be able to learn to read and if I can do a time check if we can kind of spend another 10 minutes on your report and then we're going to go to question and answer okay okay so if we can go to the next slide I'm just going to go through this very quickly being mindful of the time um so this is just kind

096of our syllabus for the year these are the topics we covered during our meetings we had the opportunity to meet with various staff and advisors from the division um and really learn together and compare notes as parents and other school team members about how things were working or not working at our respective schools so at this point I'll hand it over to Mike to introduce the recommendations I'm going to go through the recommendations and not repeat what's written but just kind of explain a little bit behind it so recommendation one is really about the communication of this and we recognize that it wasn't you know as if September 10th every school had a certain thing every every school had the same materials the same amount of time but it's really helpful for parents to get

097a sneak peek of what's coming and it could be just it could be sent in an email it could be discussed at back to school night I think it should be and not an or I read too many emails about National Merit stuff we can share good news and we should share good news and tell folks this is coming so parents know if they see whenever they see the materials they have a little bit of background a point of reference and they can have a better dialogue with their kids with their teachers but I think the same token the message needs to be communicated effectively to staff as well whatever it is that they need to know they need to be comfortable with it so if they're asked about it they know what to say

098they know how much they can say and if they know what level they are of implementation their respective school but that's something that we need to be much more proactive in doing talking about and communicating about this is coming some history of why it's being done because that always helps to explain you know why are we doing this what was wrong before and the path forward so the next recommendation is around professional learning um for teachers to be able to teach to the science of reading with Fidelity requires a lot of training a lot of job embedded ongoing professional development and coaching um and so this is an area where that's just a really worthy investment of um of time and ensuring that that teachers do have the time to learn this to get feedback

099on their practice in a really constructive way and that they're not being you know evaluated on on that right out the gate before everyone's had the opportunity to um to really get that information um it's um I know you know at my son's school at beech tree you know that his first grade teachers got the Orton Gillingham training just a few weeks ago but I think it's a you know several days they were out for week it requires sub coverage so this is a not insignificant amount of time and I think also just to kind of follow up on that getting the feedback from the literacy leaders in their schools um you know it takes time it takes personnel and this is something that should be prioritized okay so I'm going to go on to

100recommendation number three uh around response to intervention I'm not sure if it would be helpful for me to give a quick explanation of response to intervention I don't want to assume that you don't know I don't want to assume that you do um so essentially response to intervention is a multi-tiered system of support that is used to ensure that students are learning to read and sort of their proximal um zone of development um the that they're getting the help they need they are learning um that they are learning and so um tier one is sort of the whole group instruction the instruction that everyone's getting and then evaluating with assessments um how are students doing if that's not quite meeting their needs tier two is more differentiation in smaller groups if that's not working tier

101three is more intensive interventions could be one-on-one or very small groups in response to intervention also helps us ensure that we aren't over identifying students for special education and that we're kind of running through every that we're really throwing everything we have instructionally as students before we um uh sort of evaluate them for a learning difficulty but as a parent who has been going trying fighting to get my son evaluated for four years now we finally we did finally just get him eligible at the end of his first grade year um based on dyslexia so he'll finally be getting services in second grade um and it's too bad it couldn't have started earlier but um but the um even as someone who has professionally worked on response to intervention and science of reading and special

102education I found the process very confusing and I I think that um not just me you know many other parents on our committee you know whether their kid was behind or ahead going to their school and saying what can you do for my child to meet them where they are what and um some schools just were excellent in a response and others were saying well we're already going above and beyond for your kid well you know what more do you want from us kind of so it's so this the recommendation says in response to intervention but really the recommendation is overall what is the communication around where students are in learning to read and how is the school communicating about what are they doing to ensure that they are getting to where they need to

103be on grade level and what is the communication around that special education evaluation process so um next recommendation is kind of a resurrection of a previous one and it came about really from the committee members themselves talking about challenges they have in building relationships with their principal and debriefing them because ideally after a meeting there'd be some sort of debrief whether an email whether a phone call whether a sit down and a lot of it wasn't happening and In fairness principles that we had in 2019 look very different from the principles we have now and some of them started on a computer screen and they're just they just met kids for the first time probably in the fall of 2021. and they have a lot they had to have to manage and TPAC could be

104what's that may not have an idea what it is and don't don't realize how valuable it can be as an asset in a resource and a place they can get guidance and community and strength from so we're bringing this back and encouraging that principals administrators or vice principals attend at least one a year and the reason why that's important is not just for principles knowledge but folks get nominated to get put onto this committee by principal nomination and if you don't know what this committee does how credible is your not informed is your nomination or recommendation going to be if you ask a parent to do something and you don't really know how to explain what it is they're doing you're not really going to get the turnout you're looking for and when we last

105made that recommendation and what really helped was that title one would meet with principals and stresses them the importance of and just inform them about the TPAC our attendance at meetings shot up and it stayed strong and the pandemic obviously impacted all of that but we think we had a good year like rebuilding if you will this will only help in those efforts especially as we as we undertake this discharge about science of reading last recommendation which is really the most important so let's see so in 2020 our kids were sent home everybody was sent home and because we had a global pandemic where people lost lives lost loved ones were Gravely ill they were at home people had a more attentive viewing audience if you will there was a more attentive viewing audience folks

106saw citizens get murdered by the police long extended videos they saw people storm the capital to subvert an election they saw the worst examples of human behavior and they also were separated from Friends they spent more time on these electronic things that we carried around that buzz all the time that was basically their teacher their babysitter their everything for a good stretch of time and then we walked back in in 2021 and we're just back to school and everything's back to normal and it will never be normal again none of us will ever be normal again we are all living in crisis we are doing the best we can but that's the situation we're in so when you hear and when I hear about oh it's crazy there's fighting kids don't know how to act

107they know how to behave my son was in fourth grade when it started he was in Middle School when he came out my other son was in Middle School when it started he was in high school when it came out if we do not recognize the impact that these kids have been subjected to the impact of what's gone on none of this will matter if we don't look after staff who've been through the same trauma that students they're not going to be able to learn what they need to learn to deliver to instruct administrators all of us we don't have a sense of community right now because everybody is hurting everybody is on edge and no amount of learning no amount of great ideas will make its way in if we're not available we must

108have a systematic and ongoing trauma-informed response and resource support system for this school Community as a whole so staff students families we don't talk about it enough everybody walks around and it's like we don't see it we really need to acknowledge and give space for it and we need to work at it otherwise all the great ideas won't matter all the kids we want to teach to read won't learn all the staff if they stay won't be able to teach us effectively really want to make that point that we have to do something different we have to acknowledge where we are we will never be where we were in order to move forward with Clarity we have to do something different being that this is a new Paradigm of instruction our charge for next year

109and I would say subsequent years but at least for next year we're going to continue oversight running parallel with the Equitable access to literacy plan because it is so new and there's going to be bumps along the way and there's going to be refinements needed and there's going to be instructional curriculum materials that we want to have a role in reviewing and cons and being consulted on because our group gave us so much information this year about the things that were working well and what wasn't working well and we need to continue to be part of that process so that's the charge that we put forward and it's something that it's only fair and reasonable for the county itself to give itself time and for us to do the same by walking you know hand

110in hand and giving it time to really take root we know right now it's mainly being done at elementary school level but what about kids in middle school and high school who really don't read or can't read There are kids who can't read in high school they're there what do we do about them so that's the charge we want to have for that we're proposing for next year and I would be remiss if I don't acknowledge real-time events happening last night you all had a thorough work session about the equity policy and I've been on committee that was developing that two years ago I said different framework but same topic that dealing with this issue of Reckoning with our history and where it has brought us now is going to be one of the seminal

111events of your tenure and now you have an equity policy to decide on implementation will be the challenge voting for it is easy vote for it we need you to support it done now you all know why it's so much fun to go to a TPAC meeting truly is an inspiring committee and really um because of your your approach I've seen when you wanted to First be all virtual I think having this hybrid is getting people really excited and wanting to be part of the process and increasingly comfort zone of principles to have people involved so thank you I do have three board members who have actually Four board members who have indicated they would like to speak um and I'm going to start with Mr Frisch followed by Miss Marin thank you and thank

112you for the presentation and all the work that went into it Dive Right In on recommendation four that seems like a pretty easy ask Dr Reed do you think we can require our principals to attend and our assistant principles well we can do a lot of things what I would want to do is make sure we go back and have that conversation at the senior leadership level but I certainly think that the recommendation there's a reason for it and it also is perhaps a principles aren't aware of how important this is and the topic that's being discussed so um I will address it um the one I want to zero in on the recommendation wise is number three because that's what I hear most frequently from parents um is the the difficulty in accessing Services

113um as I was listening to the presentation some things that came into my head were how are we going to help how do we better help parents understand how to navigate the different tiers and get the supports that they need for their kids because one of the things I've heard many times now in the last year is that when looking at the IRA assessments parents are seeing something different than the educators are saying and so how are parents to make sense of the services they're getting from their Educators if the recommendation recommended fixes or helps are not matching up any thoughts on on how we can be doing this better so um and I might need staff to weigh in on this but um the one thing I'll say is assessment really helps and there

114was some there were some new um reading assessments that were rolled out this year I believe that really give more granular information about student reading um they on the eye ready and I'll say just in my again my own case I uh my son I think one of the reasons that he was not identified earlier was because the i-Ready was okay you know it's kind of like on the low end but he was still within but then when they went into some of the other assessments he was very very low and so having those I'm really grateful that those new assessments were added because it allowed us to really hone in on where he was struggling um so I think um and you know I I want to acknowledge here how much pressure the special

115education teams are under how much pressure principals and assistant principals and teachers and everyone else is is is under and there's so many different processes related to getting those students evaluated um but yeah there is a lot of lingo you know were sent these very thick informational packets and told well you already have the information but um I couldn't I honestly couldn't find anything written anywhere about what happens before you get to local screening I I there's nothing um I've combed through the website I've come through the Hub um I I can't find anything so I think just to start it would be good to have some basic information about what is RTI and um for parents and what is it you know if you have you or a teacher has a concern about your

116your child learning to read this is what should be happening and I you know one thing we talked a lot about and in terms of engaging with our schools is like just knowing what questions to ask so we've kind of helped coach each other on that you know I'm having this I I don't know what to ask my principal I don't know what to ask my child's teacher so just kind of understanding what questions to ask to start those conversations I don't think anyone's willfully holding back that information parents just don't necessarily know what questions to ask well and along those lines you know um I imagine the work around implementing our science of reading program is a bit like drinking out of a fire hose and then being like I need more water right

117like it's just there's a lot to do and there's going to be a lot until it's you know increasingly a lot more um I wonder if there's not room for instructional services to work with occr you know people have their expertise right occr's expertise is marketing uh engagement Communications design maybe they can assist in you know helping to create materials and web resources videos Etc in conjunction with TPAC that help explain these critical uh opportunities for parents and their kids that is is definitely on our roadmap we've actually been meeting with some organizations who have federal grants to kind of help with that you know to try and leverage some free resources that will help parents not only understand the why but also to help their child at home so we have some things for

118overall General communication and support I also wanted to just note that as part of the Virginia literacy act one component that was goes into implementation in school year 2425 are reading plans so I think this is going to be incredibly helpful to parents as the students who are struggling with reading will have a plan that's developed individually for them with parent input that not only States the data but States the plan and what are the progress monitoring so we have lots more to unfold as the state kind of reveals that template that we'll be giving the board updates as that becomes apparent so I think that's going to be a real game changer for parents sort of understanding where their child is and what's being done to help them when it comes to reading thank

119you and speaking of the state do we have approved materials yes we do oh my gosh basal resource committee starts the summer oh my goodness yes big news couldn't come a year too soon I very much appreciate everybody's work and participation in today's meeting very much thank you thank you and before Miss Marin goes I do want to inform the people in the audience that we are running about 45 minutes late and uh because we have just enough for Quorum so we're going to go we will be starting the next agenda item between 8 10 and 8 15. we'll let you know closer to the time Miss Marin so I'm thinking about a lot of different connections that you you might not be privy to including yesterday we went it was public but the governance

120work that we're seeking to do we talked about advisory committees we talked about even in the previous report tonight you know I'm bringing to this to you to listening to your session you know my own experience being on msaoc in the early 2000s Beyond hrec in 2017. frustrations about serving on advisory committee and honoring the commitment of people and I respect the way that you've navigated that you know something I've asked the board to do is to figure out how we can update one another more about each of our committees I think that could be a start you know I've asked could we have these at our regular meetings everyone share what is your committee up to and so that's something that I'd like to revisit and I see that as an opportunity for us

121the other thing that so I'm looking at our school board webpage about TPAC and so in Hunter Mill I used to have three Title One schools then the threshold got increased and now we have one although I know the need is still greatly there and we just keep getting squeezed and squeezed to spend our title in dollars so I counted 31 schools listed it said we used to have 42. but just because I only have one Title One school and even if I had none I think I should have a representative on your committee because it's not only an issue in part of the school division it's an issue that I want to be responsible for so I think the board too should reconsider the makeup of the committee in that yes we have representative

122from each Title One school but also why not have a representative of the board on each of each board member just like we do I think on every other committee I think this is the only one where there's not so that's something I didn't do an analysis right here but you know and just thinking about equity and understanding the needs um and Ms Miller is nice to see you since I last saw you over at Kilmer Middle School but I'm I'm also wondering you know what is the update on title one we know you know that's where I started my career in Title One office U.S department of Ed what's happening the funding you know reauthorization I think those are kinds of things again that the full board should know about on a regular Cadence

123thank you Miss Marin um there's probably nobody better to update us on what this current status of title one is then uh Miss Miller as the Director of those programs and if you wanted to give a brief update then I'm going to go uh and your other recommendations I think are subject to a more robust board discussion if you don't mind sure absolutely um so in fact we will have to check the the website because it should actually have 44 schools on there we are um expanding Title One by two schools for next year we are welcoming Mason Creston and Glasgow Middle School um so you know we went through a process with leadership team to look at the um the level of uh poverty rate in um across the county and identify our thresholds

124there is one component that has shifted over the years and that is how we determine a title one status so previously we always use free and reduced meal forms which were collected at the school level and now it is a requirement that we use Community eligibility program data and so um you know there's conversations and that shifts you know how we're looking at those needs within schools so you know when I look at where we are we're taking on two additional schools next year so now we'll have two middle schools one more Elementary School and every year we'll be looking at where we are as a county and where we can expand based on the budget that we're given thank you Miss Miller uh Miss McLaughlin followed by Miss eisnerheiser great thank you um first

125I want to say um I'm very sorry um that your son had to wait that long to get Services it was one of the reasons when I first ran for the board in 2011 that I heard from our families identification unless families knew what to ask my own son I did not get tested till he was a junior in high school um and and even then we had to get outside private testing to identify because he was doing well in school and so everybody said well then he's fine but he knew he wasn't fine and um he learned to just cope so um I'm glad you're getting the services you need and Dr Reed I'm I'm glad to hear that we're getting better at it um secondly um I want to say that number five

126when I think about trauma-informed care and um this is one of the reasons why I've been a champion of community schools because wraparound services are essential our classroom teachers can't do it alone our school social workers and psychologists are stretch thin a lot of them doing IEP and 504s and so I believe we can help our Title One schools in that Community Schools model and that's that's bringing County Services in and wrapping around and helping our families and our students nothing is more crucial than how do we help support parents to know what to ask for and you can't know what you don't know and in my last 26 seconds I will say that I absolutely agree about the pending Equity policy vote the vote is easy the implementation is hard and as I shared

127the uh just last night it was in 2017 that we passed the One Fairfax policy a race and social Equity policy so for five and a half years the School Division along with the County government and the Board of Supervisors were committed to equity work so we need to recommit ourselves and we need to know what that's going to mean words or words actions are a whole other thing so if there's time for a go back great but thank you again for your investment of time with this thank you Miss McLaughlin I'll put you on a go back Miss seismer Heiser thank you and thank you for your time and energy and effort and as two students who as a parent of two students one with an IEP and one with a 504 I can

128say my son who has more significant needs getting him identified was not difficult but my daughter it took several years and also private testing so I'm sorry it took so long but I understand that it can take a long time for some students and and we have gotten better but we need to keep doing more um as for trauma informed I really appreciate first thank you for the meeting last summer and I really appreciate you lifting that um Ms bakarski and I actually and she is ill today but we actually brought a forum topic that this board heard in June 2022 to have a systematic policy and approach to trauma-informed practices and it was referred to a work session and then when doctors just before you started Dr Reed but when you started with this

129strategic plan I think it was part of finishing that work and then looking at those pieces of it but we actually it was all about and there was a lot of research we linked to it about covid and the rise of anxiety and the Imp and the need for a systematic approach to trauma informed because of what we recognize I've said for a long time that kovid was a global trauma and we all have Global PTSD and I've been saying that I think for two years and many of my board members my colleagues have heard me say that but that was something that this board I really appreciate supported having that trauma-informed approach we do have a trauma-informed specialist I believe so I think this is really timely for you to lift that up um

130the other piece I wanted to lift up is the theme between acsd which we just heard in here was that parent engagement parent knowledge process and translation came up as well of the IEP documents and so I wanted to really lift up what you said um I mentioned in the previous one about we have all these handbooks that parents don't know about right and we have a special education handbook and but when you read about the referral process in there it's not really that clear right and when you Google special education it really links to the handbook and has a list of definitions so I think there's a lot of room for improvement in kind of writing to for the perspective taking of someone who's new to this process and I talk about perspective taking

131a lot and I think that's a really important point I know I'm out of time so hopefully this time for a go back but I really appreciate these points you've lifted up they're super important any response sure I want to stress that crisis didn't start in 2020. we were in crisis long before the pandemic it just stripped a bear it made it more clear and maybe some people who weren't in were in and then started to look at others maybe appreciate what's happening so I want to underscore that we it didn't just start it's just been you have more economic instability housing instability mental health trauma and I'm glad that you all are taking it up and it's I mean it has to happen from top to bottom level I mean when I think about

132and I hear how you know I had discussion with my kid one of my kids teachers you know they know how to act it's like you realize it was in fourth grade last time he had to sit down in a classroom things that we think are so mundane that we all take for granted you know We complain to our kids about how we had to walk and whatever to school when we were growing up and you know we didn't have a pandemic that kept us home for a year and a half like what we have done because we didn't have technology then how would we have done school if we had to be at home so and if I could just add to that I mean we have to connect the dots here um it

133you know the the crisis we're having with drug abuse that's self some of that is self-medication some of that is you know I mean we have to connect the dots here and I think there's just this running theme that we heard with the ascd report and this we have a lot of great resources and committees and specialists in FCPS the question is is it getting to the kids um and and I think that's where um that's the challenge right words the words are great but how is the implementation happening um and we have with the trauma we have to connect the dots between all of these challenges we're seeing and and acknowledging not just acknowledging but also addressing the role that trauma plays thank you Miss Tolan followed by Miss omish thank you um I

134really appreciate everything that you've been doing and I really appreciate the um your statement at the end where you're going to continue to work on this into the next year because as you pointed out it's very wisely you know implementing the science of reading is going to take years and you know we've kind of started in the lower grades and we're trying to move up and we're trying to do with high school you know situations like you're talking about um so I think that's a you know I really appreciate that you're willing to you know continue with that charge um I also really appreciated your comments on on trauma we've uh several other members have brought that up as well but I think it's real you know we've been talking about it and it's something

135we really need to stay focused on and um you know working with our kids and our staff as you pointed out um I do want to mention um I represent drainsville and so we've got some pretty amazing work going on at Hutchinson and Clearview that have been able to um observe firsthand um Dr Reed and I were both at Hutchinson and I've been going in and just asking about you know what's happening with the science of reading and um you know they've been doing some very uh forward-thinking and Innovative work using you know coaches and reading Specialists that co-teach and really co-learn with teachers and you know move this forward so if you know when you as you talked earlier if we're looking for a bright great story to tell um you know there's some

136great things going on in those schools in particular um but they also kind of do their own work around Community Schools Ms McLaughlin brought up um you know that whole framework how bringing in these Community Resources and how important that is for the schools to be successful so you know figuring out how we can possibly help these schools you know bring in those resources as well um you know will be really helpful but um just helping those schools to communicate what they're doing the good news and communicating among the schools on what's working and what's not working and moving this forward as efficiently as possible it will be fabulous to have your you know help on that that's the benefit of having administrators at our meetings because principals can I think understandably so be very

137locked into their planet and not realize there's a whole solar system a universe outside and just because something is happening here they believe it's happening elsewhere and they're kind of shocked to find it isn't so they really it helps them see the bigger part that the broader solar system if you will and how they're related to other planets if you will and I only learned that because I heard years ago when principal was like well every student has access to Advanced learning right no and when I think is when I presented to the board that year and Dr brayburn's like I don't think everybody really has it and it helps them realize maybe how not just how fortunate they are but what's going on in other places and I don't know if principals come to

138together to advocate for certain things but if they get a sense of what's not going well and maybe it's at their feeder schools if you're a high school what's happening at the middle school elementary school level you have a greater awareness you can advocate for it because you know we represent mainly elementary schools but they don't finish they don't go out into the world after fifth or sixth grade you know it's a journey throughout and folks need to have a better sense of beginning to the end thank you thanks for your work summation yeah thank you to the committee I'm a huge supporter of this work and I was excited to serve before and and just I'm pleased to see the recommendations here because I they couldn't be overstated um I did want to you

139know offer an opportunity I know that this is technically a school board committee but Dr Reed there's huge opportunity here as we continue outlining how we implement the Strategic plan um specifically with those family engagement pillars to leverage TPAC I think connecting them more um officially with the family engagement uh Partnerships office and having some of that work go through the TPAC I think is a great opportunity and then the second piece is with the literacy plan uh since they are reviewing it and there's a lot of buy-in on their end and understanding the details of it I I think Deepak could be the face of presenting it you know once we finish you know I know Noel you outlined that we're on our way um but once that's set and we're starting to communicate

140to folks how to make the most of these resources and whatnot once it's being deployed I think it'd be a great opportunity to have TPAC folks invited to the school board meeting or whenever that's presented uh because they are effectively Liaisons to every one of these Title One schools with their members so I I just wanted to offer that maybe you guys can follow up you know Mike and others to see where your role might be in in taking it even further than where it is already I did want to ask just in terms of um the role of the committee in reviewing the policy the title one Grant policy specifically there are different charges for TPAC depending on the web page you look at um so I know we're looking focused on the literacy

141plan right now but I am curious if that was something you guys discussed at all this year Jose we have we really right the group and not in terms of reviewing it I think I don't think we've done that so we we got an in-depth presentation and information session about it but we have not taken that on I mean it's I think it's part of my conversation with Dr Reed over the summer we kind of tossed around you know types of things that the committee could be doing so it's definitely worthwhile I mean while learning a lot that night and forgetting a whole bunch of it too because it was so much information what stuck out to me I remember maybe I asked her afterwards but when Miss White said it's like 25 million dollars

142is all that goes to it I was floored 25 is not enough not close to enough I mean you shouldn't have ptas ptos whatever bailing out underfunded schools we need a lot more money yeah I think that's where the we might really benefit from you all taking a look at that our internal I don't know if we call it a policy I don't know where it's housed but basically how FCPS chooses to deploy Title One um because the grant is meant to supplement not supplant and we're supposed to obviously compensate all kinds of things that are not covered by the Federal grant right as a part of our own so that's a chance to look at you know what are those percentages I personally don't know what they are either but and then looking at

143you know which of the programs we choose to take on so are we Distributing funds on the school-wide level so such that each School gets a certain amount of money and uses it for whatever or is it targeted assistance right where it's by child and I know that's not what we do but we might want to reconsider maybe that's a better way of reaching the need I don't know but those are opportunities I think if we take a look at that um that shouldn't be missed in addition to the threshold which I know is already in conversation but I think also I need some reconsideration I know my time so thank you so much thank you Miss so maybe and uh we're keenly aware of the importance of looking at how the federal government actually

144fully funds or does not fund their obligations under um Title One the impact Aid idea and we can keep on going so thank you I think the more we raise awareness to that the better I have two go backs so far and if there are any more please let me know my intent is to give people one minute for their go back starting with Miss McLaughlin followed by Miss seismerheiser one of the things that I was wondering with the charge that you all have I I totally support the science of reading but Dr Reed I think that given how engaged this committee is I would really like to consider that there be sort of analysis of the title one schools the 41 identifying which ones are showing Best in Class results in growth student achievement

145and maybe identifying what then can be adopted and um you know maybe taken into account by the other schools because we're always talking about how do we share best practices and so I would love to have the committee objectively looking at these 42 schools and saying what are we seeing in the test data and the trends and make recommendations on which schools those are and and then also to look at where some might be struggling and identifying um the schools where we're not seeing that that sort of growth and what supports we can bring and why so that was my added input I think that's why we stress the importance of making sure every school had a baseline in terms of resources and time to implement it because if one school has as an example

146of they have Lexia for a month another school has it for six months and then two months later you have some type of assessment it's not going to be it's going to be skewed the information you get everybody needs certain amount of time before you start measuring and assessing what growth is and that's something that you know from a central standpoint there'll have to be a kind of a tracking to make sure to make sure of I think it is useful I think the broader sense to use science of reading within Title One schools and then take lessons learned and you know you know flatten it out or distribute it out but we want to make sure and that was something we're really sensitive to should not be measuring them until we know they have

147what they need to do the work yeah let me clarify I wasn't talking about their science of reading results I'm just talking about their annual test scores that we get through the sols and things like that that you know it Beyond getting to the science of reading I want to start having a real annual look and I think you guys are the objective advisory committee to the board to be able to tell us and say we're looking at our 42 and what's the five-year examination of where things are and then each year keep checking in who's who's growing and who's not and why so I was looking at it more globally of just achievement and growth for each of the schools I think this also goes back to the fourth recommendation about encouraging principals to

148come to TPAC and I think if they do come they will immediately see the inherent value and they'll want to keep coming because it's not it's not only a chance to learn from parents but it's also an opportunity to share what they're doing and and what's working or not um and I think you know that could mesh with the process of like identifying who would come but we did hear from several principals this year for example from Forest Edge and Woodlawn who came and told us about how they were rolling out science of reading we have one very active um Anna Del Terrace is that where Felicia is way an oak as well yeah so um that that come frequently I there's a first grade teacher from my son's school that always calls in um

149and and which is fun you know we can kind of tag team um so I I think yeah there is the quantitative data piece but where I see our true value is in the qualitative um being able to share that information and ask questions in sort of a safe environment where we can just be really honest and prank with each other again just to clarify if if you guys are an advisory committee to the board and we want to look at where the 42 are and what their growth is and where the progress is being made to the point about implementation not just in action and I think you guys are the place for us to do that staff brings you the data you look at it and you can you know bring some recommendations

150thank you Miss McLaughlin um I will urge that um the title one committee is structured slightly different they do not meet every single month the executive committee does and so putting more on their plate and part of it is because of the challenges some have to get to the meetings we need to be very strategic in it and I think you make an excellent recommendation but it would be great if the staff could kind of take a look at it as they've suggested and come back with a recommendation uh Miss seismer Heiser thank you and I'll be brief I wanted to actually get your feedback when I mentioned the trauma-informed Forum topic from June 2022 I wanted just to read to you what we had in the board thankfully had passed I want to read

151you what we had directed the staff to do just to see you hear your thoughts and it was a systematic trauma-informed policy and approach to address the rising of anxiety disorders that was in place before covet through covid it directs School leadership to develop trauma-informed policy regulations and incorporate trauma-informed practices into curriculum with a holistic approach that supports every student's potential so just that's I would love to hear your feedback as you looked at this whether you think that's a good approach or just hear your thoughts and I know I'm putting you on the spot so it's okay if you're like no I'm fine yeah I think it's a great idea but my concern is so your challenge well School leaders you mean principals are supposed to develop it would be the central office leadership

152okay so does that mean central office has been sufficiently trauma informed it would be for central office develop the policy and practices and then the implementation will be training everybody right but I want to make sure that central office self has that capacity and understands what it is to be developing so that's that's why I'm asking it's a great question I think the central office certainly understands trauma the practices Dr Presidio you have a several folks who are expert in that area is that correct I do have a trauma-informed specialist and we have a project team that works on that but I do think the comments about building everybody's capacity are really important including central office staff capacity we need more than a few people who understand the work deeply and understand it well and

153we're continuing to try to build that central office capacity while supporting schools at the same time so I would say I think we've made taking some good first steps and there's a lot more work to do to your points that's a great question and I was at an Aces adverse childhood experience conference back in 2019 and I was able to interact with and you know connect with some trauma-informed you know Specialists who provide those resources so it's been on my mind for a while and it's something that Dr Reed and I have kind of communicated about we'll continue to talk about so absolutely I like where you're going I just think that we need to make sure that folks they understand exactly what it entails no that's an excellent point I I appreciate that feedback

154because if you don't understand it well how do you then implement it and train others and know that's being implemented properly so that was what I appreciate that I'm glad I asked that question so that was really my main point um I really appreciate everything you brought in the work you do and I look forward to um helping Dr Reed look at these recommendations and make sure that you know we're implementing the changes that we need to do and really lifting up the schools where the greatest needs are so thank you and I do want to say encourage principals even before it was encouraged I don't want it to come down like a mandate I think if it's discussed and shared from leadership level and then title one as they meet with them emphasize the

155importance I think it'll come you know we don't want to seem like we're coming around saying make them come because they really do get value out of it if they show up and that's that's the part of our meetings we never we just about always run out of time before we're done talking the challenge was getting people there and really it was getting people informed by what we are what we do once people show up we're in good shape so thank you very much this is uh it's been a pleasure to work with all of you I look forward to continuing to working with you out of tonight's meeting there are a couple of things that I think were really emphasized the importance of better communication about what we are doing in the science of

156reading and bringing our families along so that they can be part of the solution and understand it as well as encourage best practices at home as well as something that came up about it was the very first question that Mr Frisch asked about do we have a state standard and we do but there is work going on this summer for the adoption of the basal materials for the science of reading and that's where I think your committee can play a really important role of having somebody active in that review process the third area is the um the sharing of best practices in a more consistent and deliberate manner because as it is now and Mike you're one of the best sales people I know on encouraging people to get involved I wish I could clone

157you and put you across them too saved my time I know but but it's so important that we actually find a a structured process for ensuring that we share those best practices and getting people into the room with you is going to be critical so thank you I don't see any other I do see Miss mesh's placard up I'm going to give her one minute and then we will close out this session we will take a five minute break okay I'll give Miss okay um and then we'll take a five minute break go ahead Mr yeah I guess just to bring uh the point on the title one piece home anyone from staff the 25 million is that the Federal Grant okay so then how much are do we as FCPS supplement that every year

158do we have a set number so we do not so the title One Federal grant is the title One Federal Grant and we don't supplement FCPS doesn't supplement that the majority of our grant does go to the schools um the vast majority so when we determine the number of schools we determine the allocations and then lots of what was talked about today is when we talk about the embedded professional learning that we're seeing at like Hutchinson and Clearview and many many other schools that's all as a result of our schools using their Title One funds to staff literacy Specialists they also staff math Specialists many of them are our funding positions to support student wellness additional social workers school counselors um and so that's how that 25 million is used yeah no I really appreciate

159your candor there because I think part of where I'm concerned and where I think there could be some value at in looking at it is some of that stuff we're supposed to be funding already like to get the counselor Ratio or the social worker ratio up to a certain point or interpreters or math reading Specialists Etc on the school level ideally that's a resource we've already committed that's something we should have and for us to dip into the title one pot to hire those individuals is where I have a little bit of concern it's perfectly legal I know but that's where I'm having an issue with then maybe we should be targeting those those monies towards specific like I don't know tutoring hours or something that can support those students specifically and and keeping in

160mind that there are a lot of Title One eligible kids that are in schools that don't qualify as title one either but if we're choosing to do these right sums at schools we lose that anyway thank you thank you Miss stolen all they wanted to do was mention that region one I know Ray Lynette is running kind of a collaborative look at what's happening across the schools in that region and I've heard from the school-based people that's super super helpful thank you so this part of our work session is now concluded we will take a five minute break and we will start at 8 15 for the final um report [Applause] all right everybody thanks for hanging in there we have one last report to go so um I appreciate all your patience and our

161board members I know there's only seven of us so we need to take breaks in between for the board so I will go ahead and turn it over to staff to present the report and then we'll move from there well thank you so much did you all right I'm gonna I'm gonna take the lead on this one and um good evening and thank you for the opportunity to bring the Family Life education curriculum advisory committee which we will refer to as flea cack during this presentation thanks for the opportunity to bring this year's report as you can see on the slide here this one is a little bit unusual you'll see it's a review of the report that was created by the school year 2122 committee as well as the committee from this year so

162you're getting two for the price of one tonight so we have lots to share with you if you'll go ahead and and oh I have the clicker sorry sorry about that oh so we're going to start off just reminding people a little about a little bit about Family Life Education in Fairfax County and then an overview of the flea cack we're going to talk as I said about the revisions to the recommendations from the committee that were in 2122 and as just a quick reminder about a year ago we were together to look at those recommendations and there was some significant recommendations for change including the suggestion for gender combined instruction in grades four through eight and the board decided that the best thing to do was to take a little bit more time to

163ensure that we have public comment that was happening during during the school year and not during the summer so we did that and we are going to be bringing you tonight some revised recommendations we will also bring you some recommendations about consent so this year's committee also took on some new work and that is around boundaries and consent so we'll be bringing those recommendations to you and then we'll follow up with next steps for the board I just want to take a moment to recognize that I think you all know Dr Presidio he's with us tonight as well as Miss Carrie Reynolds who is our coordinator for health PE family life and drivers education so she has quite a few things on her plate and she also serves as the the chair of this committee

164so as a quick reminder Family Life Education in Fairfax we use a local a local curriculum so it is based on the Virginia guidelines and the standards but it is a curriculum that we create here in Fairfax and each year when we want to make any changes we bring those changes to the school board for your consideration part of that process is always a 30-day review period so we typically bring you the recommendations then there's a 30-day review period and then we bring it back to you all for vote the curriculum coordinator does gather a team after the recommendations are approved to create the new curriculum and professional development that's needed and the other thing to remember about our family life education is that parents do have the right to opt their child out of

165any fle lesson either one or all of the lessons now please hack as you'll notice that the three of us are here and there are no parents with us because Sleek hack is not a school board Advisory Board in the same sense as your other advisories it is really an advisory to the curriculum coordinator so Fleet cat gathers and they make recommendations to Miss Reynolds and the Miss Reynolds brings them for you all to actually approve and they're different you'll notice that the kinds of recommendations you hear from the other committee are sometimes big and over sweeping and these are really very intentional the the kinds of things we bring to you are about objectives new subjects media so it's a very different it's a curriculum recommendations that we're bringing forward to you all for

166this year the school year members you can see we had community members that included nine of you were able to appoint this year the County Council of ptas the health department and representatives from local clergy and practicing Physicians so we have a variety of different stakeholders and as well as school-based administrators and teachers and then we also have students now the students only do serve a one-year term as opposed to a two-year term and as I stated before Miss Reynolds is the chairperson they do meet monthly and the meetings are open to the public so the two things as I said and we've broken this presentation into two parts and I will take the first one really talking about the recommendations from the fleetcac 2122 and then how um what was suggested that year and

167how this year's committee has revised those recommendations and then Ms Reynolds will talk about the new objectives related to setting and respecting boundaries and consent so as a reminder there were seven recommendations that were made by last year's committee obviously the first one is the most significant around the adoption of gender combined instruction for the human growth and development unit in grades four through eight so that was a very significant recommendation to you all as I mentioned earlier there were also some others that were related accessing modified curriculum will be gender separate for explicit instructions so the committee decided that there are some things that would not be combined there also was some information around the testicular self-exam at 10th grade just for your knowledge Grade 9 and 10 are gender combined for the majority

168of the curriculum at this time there was also some smaller changes some more technical changes that I'll talk through and then there was some media that was also looked at the final recommendation was the suggestion that in the future a future flea cap might consider exploring gender identity in elementary school at Valley to create a more inclusive fle curriculum overall so these again were the recommendations of the committee from school year 21-22 and these are the recommendations that went out for Community review as I mentioned each time with fleecac they bring their their recommendations we bring them to you and then we have a 30-day open Community review period so during that time they're posted and information goes out and people submit their comments we've done it in different ways as far as how they

169submit comments for this year we wanted to have it during the school year so we opened it from October 31st to December 1st we did receive 2650 responses the way that the community input sometimes we leave it very open but this time we did provide a little bit of structure to it so question one asked for the level of support for gender combined instruction realizing that was the most significant change and then questions two through six were open-ended responses so that period was open and well even before I get to this what happened with those results is we took all of the results and we asked um subcommittee of Bleak hack to kind of go in and help us to summarize all of those comments and those were brought forward so we'll share a little

170bit I mean this is the overarching and probably something that is the most easy to see being quantitative of the level of support now we do have more detailed and disaggregated data that you'll find in the report on page six and in the appendices but this data definitely showed that from the 2000 plus responses overwhelmingly there was a do not support for the gender combined but the independent comments we wanted to just highlight some of the themes that sort of emerged these were some of the themes for people who opposed gender combined or some of the recommendations is is really as you can see about students right about students being embarrassed or uncomfortable that they might not be mature enough to hear about such topics and in Combined classrooms that some parents would really feel

171the need to opt their students out whereas they might not have if we kept it gender separate certainly concerned with boys about girls in class with boys confusing students about gender and then there were some comments around gender identity should not be instructed in elementary school and I just want to be clear that there's nothing in these recommendations that say we would be teaching gender identity in elementary school as part of fle so that was a common theme but I just want to clarify that that's not part of the suggested changes at this time there were also some comments supporting and you can kind of see the reasons I think these really aligned with some of the research that we shared with you last year and through other reports about just normalizing puberty and reproduction

172and taking away that sort of unknown about the other gender fostering understanding among students and increasing empathy for what others might experience and being more inclusive and just less stigma and shame that can be associated with puberty we also wanted to get students involved and so we went into schools and we talked to about 48 students which again it's not a ton of students but we did try and get some of their feelings about things and there were 25 Elementary School eight middle school students and 15 high school students and and they also had some concerns about being awkward and embarrassing uncomfortable which is not not a typical with a First Response there was also some people some of the students who thought it would probably be okay and that it might promote some understanding

173and and reduce stigma so there were some mixed some mixed feelings from the students for sure so what I was going to do now all of this information that I just shared with you was shared with the entire current year flea cack because we wanted them to have the community review and re-engage with the recommendations from last year to see if they would put forward the same recommendations or make some revisions and you'll see in recommendation one on the left I I've listed what the original recommendation was that combined gender combined in grades four through eight and on the right hand side you will see the revision so I am going to go through this one a little bit slowly because again I think this is a significant change and the grade four the committee

174suggested that we keep grade four gender separate that we don't combine starting that first year I think you can I think there was a feeling that the first time students are hearing this in a classroom setting might not be the best time to have gender combined there is really only one lesson in grade four but it would remain gender separate in grade five they suggested that they stay separate for three lessons and those lessons are on the topics of topics of puberty reproductive system and human reproduction so they would be separate but we would begin to combine them for things around abstinence and sexually transmitted infections sort of having a a realization of which topics might be more sensitive to kids and again but starting to build a little bit of that common understanding I

175think grades six through eight we would gender be gender combined for all lessons that's five lessons in grade six and four in in grades seven and eight and the topics are listed there they're similar there's also a grade eight that also includes content on contraception in addition to the topics listed so they definitely took their time I think this was probably Miss Reynolds would agree the thing that they spent the most time on really trying to refine that original recommendation and take into consideration the data and the res research that was provided I'll move to the other ones oh I think I kind of talked about this as I went through but just some of the reasons why they decided really about that normalizing gender combined instruction there were some more specific recommendations you'll see

176on the left last year the change for this year was there was no change they wanted to retain the same the same recommendation as last year's committee where the students would be receiving instruction from the modified curriculum will continue in gender separate for explicit instruction on the use of menstrual pads and viewing media so this is the level of detail that they went into really looking at very specific groups of students and very specific information what might stay gender combined and what might be gender separate there was another suggestion currently boys and girls are separate in grade 10 for testicular self-exam video that the boys see and the recommendation last year was really to remove the video it's out of date we don't have streaming rights it's not um it's not something that we want

177to continue to use and the idea is to go ahead and combine the 10th graders and learn about both breast and testicular cancer together recommendations four and five are more Technical and basically if the board decided to move forward with gender combined we'd have to go in and do technical changes to both objectives that would be what's in bold and descriptive statements to remove places where they talk about um I'm sorry that's not what this one is sorry revise the objective for grade 10 to include gender identity so you'll see in the Bold it says development of sexuality and gender identity we were suggesting that we had the words gender identity to the objective because you will see that it's already included in the descriptive statement and then therefore the lesson so we don't think

178that the objective is as transparent to students and and families as they're making decisions about opt out so that's a technical change really just to clean up language for that objective this next one which is just a lot of words so and I know I have a lot of words to say too but if the board were to decide to move forward with gender combined instruction we would need to clean up objectives and descriptive statements to remove everywhere where it refers to gender separate girls only boys only so again this is a technical change full if you wanted to see all the different ways that would represent this is one example 6.1 you could see that in appendix h of the report grade six is a media this is not a I don't think this

179is a a big change but we do have a media called hormones body odor and acne oh my it's a puberty 101 that the group last year suggested that we use in both six and seven when the committee looked at it this year they thought it would be better just to use it in seven we already have some media and six and to watch the same video twice didn't make a whole lot of sense so there was a revision recommendation and this final recommendation really was that flea cack suggested that future flea might want to explore the inclusion of gender identity in elementary Family Life Education they were not recommending it be added they were recommended exploration of that as well as a second task for a future flea cack is really to make recommendations

180for the development of a more inclusive curriculum to ensure that all students are able to understand and access our family life education and there was no change to that recommendation so there's the Seven original recommendations as well as the revisions from this current Year's Fleek hack I'm going to stop there and I'm going to turn it over to Miss Reynolds to talk about the the new content that this year's committee has is putting forward yeah so in addition to all that we also continued some work that was actually started a little bit in the 2122 school year but we got much further this year in our discussion around objectives that would support um personal boundaries and consent so the work to enhance this instructions I just said began with the 21-22 school year and what

181we were able to accomplish that year is we pulled all of the current objectives and descriptive statements that related to those topics and we had a chance for the flea cap members to look at those provide some input on where they thought there might need to be changes what they thought was important at the different grade levels related to boundaries and consent and we also saw input from school counseling staff and staff in the office of equity and employee relations once we had all that input staff and instructional Services took the feedback took our current objectives and drafted some revised objectives and in some cases some new objectives that we could bring forward to the committee this year for discussion at the start of the year we did have a presentation from Miss Bethany Demers

182on the Fairfax County Youth survey data which we thought was relevant to many of these topics and we wanted to have that as a foundation to ground some of our work um so then we worked on reviewing and revising and we were able to complete our recommendations for kindergarten through grade 8 during this year so what I would like to do is I'm going to share with you some of the key ideas and the themes by grade level bands if you would like to look at the specific recommendations they are also included in the report most of these changes um Noel those was just talking about changes that would be in the human growth and development unit most of these changes would be in our emotional and social health unit which is the second of

183the two Family Life Education units there are two objectives that where consent is actually included in a lesson in abstinence at grade six and one at grade eight and those are in human growth and development there are also lessons at both of those grade levels in emotional and social health so we're really talking mostly about emotional and social health with a couple of exceptions so some of the key ideas that the committee was very intentional with as they moved through each of those grade levels was looking at the differentiating between trustworthy and trusted adults we wanted students to be able to understand what might make somebody trustworthy but then also be able to recognize who a trusted adult is for them as an individual certainly in our very early grades giving examples of who trusted

184adults may be and then helping students to be able to identify who those trusted adults are in their lives because they may not be the same individuals from one person to the next we wanted to use concepts of body autonomy and body boundaries so students are really recognizing that their body belongs to them they have the right to make choices about their own bodies and ultimately in terms of consent to say no to individuals who may be approaching them touching them whatever in inappropriate ways or ways that make them feel uncomfortable inclusion of ways to communicate no for non-verbal students currently the curriculum is very much you say no or we know not all of our students are able to say no so we wanted to make sure we recognized other ways that students may

185be communicating and supporting them and understanding how to do that as well I'm looking at the language our current language is safe and unsafe or I'm sorry our current language is comfortable and uncomfortable which may be challenging to understand so we were looking for some other language that might help students understand those Concepts and the words that they the committee came up with was safe and unsafe and additional to comfortable and uncomfortable thinking that that might Aid on understanding by our younger students and other students who may just not understand fully comfortable or uncomfortable really introducing the word consent and earlier right now I don't think the word consent actually appears in the curriculum until high school so using that word and that terminology much earlier in our curriculum along with the idea of hearing

186and respecting no so we're teaching students to say no we also want to teach them that if somebody says no to them they need to hear what that individual is saying and respect the other person's boundaries and then introducing sexual harassment um in the Middle School level so looking at our grade levels kindergarten through grade three some of the concepts that we see scaffolded throughout those grade levels is how to say no and respond to behaviors that might make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe those characteristics of trustworthy adults and identifying the adults they Trust and we want students to really identify the individuals for themselves and be able to name who those people are differentiating when expressions of affection are appropriate and when they are inappropriate responding to inappropriate electronic messages or pictures are introduced

187in grade one we know a lot of students are using electronic devices much earlier at younger ages and understanding that there are inappropriate messages that they may be receiving and how to respond to that and then how they can set communicate and respect body boundaries introduced in grade three in the Upper Elementary grades four through six they'll start to learn about warning signs of threatening or uncomfortable situations and how they can respond child abuse specifically emotional social physical and financial abuse along with neglect is introduced in fifth grade consent and bodily autonomy is also introduced in fifth grade and then trusted adults as well as resources for help and looking at resources that are available to them both in the school and in the community in the Middle School grades seven and eight we have

188we're introducing sexual harassment in grade seven I'm really getting into that idea of respecting when someone does not give consent or if they withdraw consent changing their mind that you can't you need to respect that as well exploitation and situational awareness being introduced in grade 8 and again continuing with resources for help some future flea cat topics um for next year explore possibly explore inclusion of gender identity to Elementary we've heard that idea already we will continue and finish the work on the objectives and descriptive statements around boundaries and consent at the high school and then making recommendations to enhance the curriculum to better and meet the needs of students with disabilities our English language Learners and students with diverse backgrounds there are some needs in our curriculum to make it more inclusive make it

189more accessible by students from a variety of different backgrounds and different individual needs that is the combination of the two parts that um I shared we would be covering Tonight Tonight is obviously not a decision making it's really an opportunity for you all to ask questions of us thinking about what it might look like as we move forward with this once we are ready we would bring forward a new business item to the school board and then we do need to have another Community review period which is a 30-day review period on the consent objective so I've not gone out to the community so the part that Carrie just shared with you and then it would come back for school board action and curriculum development professional learning would take some time depending on which parts

190of this we put forward and then full implementations you'll notice there's no timeline because we know that this is going to take some time to to process and we just wanted to kind of lay out the next steps without the timeline to be determined at this point so we're ready for questions thank you and before I turn over to you I just want to turn to Dr Reed to make sure there's anything you want to add to that before we turn to board member questions mind repeating that Noel for just a quick second I apologize no I was just saying that we do not have a set timeline for moving forward but the next steps really will be to come to bring what whatever parts of this to new business have another review period um

191on the consent so we can get community input and then move forward with a vote and then it does take time to do curriculum development professional development and implementation would all this would have to be timed out into the future which there is no set date at this point thank you Noelle and I appreciated that I I caught the last part of that and I thought I want to make sure that anyhow so I appreciate that and I want to share with the board as well that uh Dr Presidio and I've had several conversations about just how hard flea cack has worked on these topics this year and the prior years and obviously it's a very sensitive topic as well so we want to recognize that I do know that we've discussed that we are

192not ready to move forward for a vote at this time that we feel like it's important to really be thoughtful about what professional development might look like in terms of preparing staff for a shift of this nature potentially as well as our opt-out practices and looking at what's uh what model or what abilities we might have to make sure that really important content is taught in ways that feel like safe spaces for our students so I think both the a PD the opt-out model and just making sure that as we you know take this close look at that that when we do roll this out that perhaps we even so anyhow that we're really ready to be thoughtful about it so I I think what we need to do is a little more research and

193to your point Noel I think make sure that our PD plan looks uh is complete and thoughtful that our pacing guides would be thoughtful around that in the opt-out model so I think what we'd like to do is do some work on that with staff and then come back perhaps later in the fall with another update and report to the board at that time for possible placement on a board agenda moving forward in the future Dr Presidio is there anything you'd like to add to that no I mean I think that sufficiently covers it the one other thing that Noel had also mentioned is that we do need to do that additional Community review period for that second set of recommendations that the committee worked on regarding consent and Boundary so that's another piece that

194we'll have to work into that timeline it's also my understanding I think that this is phase one of the consent and Boundary uh work and I don't know at some point I know you were looking at another Well phase two probably um in the secondary realm but even deepening that work I think in uh phase one a little bit in terms of again what does it look like not just the targets but what would instruction potentially look like and what would that curriculum potentially you know be thoughtful about so I really appreciate the thoughtfulness because what we want to do is make sure we're doing this really well because uh that's important so thank you Dr Presidio and thank you Miss komenko and Miss Reynolds thank you Dr Reed and with that I will turn

195to my board members for questions so also miss Corbett Sanders Fall by Miss Marin thank you um I will tell you in eight years of being a board member and or almost eight years and um a good 12 years prior to that of attending these meetings this is the first time that I can ever remember not having parents and citizen members attend as part of the presentation so I'm a little surprised there usually are some members of the flea cack in the audience somewhere there's this is the first time um shall we have a member of the committee here okay in the audience I'm sorry we didn't I apologize for not introducing them okay so that would be my first um and and the reason I mention that is because uh one of your recommendations

196is to go back out to the community for your second area of recommendations we went out to the community on your recommendations here and the recommendations were that 84.68 of those that were surveyed didn't support it and that um there were limited support in the student groups as well because of concerns about anxiety and the need for privacy so I guess my cons my approach to this is slightly different in that rather than looking at the opt out approach when 84 percent have already said they would probably opt out is that we need a parallel model a model that allows for people who want a joint curriculum to be able to do that but that the focus is on respecting what the feedback has been from that and part of this is in reading the

197report the report actually says that there is no best practices that says that this is the approach we should be taking and so my concern is that we need to go slow and be more deliberate and having that parallel process is probably one that meets the needs of our community and then because I am concerned that we want to make sure people get access to this very important curriculum in a safe in nurturing environment the second thing is that um you the consent piece which I fully support however several years ago we had long discussions your time was up okay I apologize uh go back that's absolutely on the list my apologies um Miss Marin yeah thank you uh this is certainly a long time coming and I wonder if that's why perhaps there aren't

198you know as many of the community members uh here although certainly appreciate people coming tonight I think the way that this information was presented in a respectful thoughtful research-based way and transparently is is an example of how the expectation what the expectation is for how it will be presented in our classrooms um you know the information here is about safety it's about health it's also about confidence of our students it's to make sure that students have information so they're not uninformed or misinformed even if that's you know and unintentional and certainly to combat bias I think about my own kids now and um you know what if students learned more than my generation did about other genders I think this is a step towards further accepting everyone and understanding people's biology I mean it's just

199straight up biology I think two I was just thinking about how I used to try and steal my dad's cigarettes to throw them away and that was in the 80s and 90s that was the big Health thing well now I can count on multiple you know 10 times over how many women I know who have breast cancer and survived and you know what their moms and FCPS so I think talking about it normal I don't even want to say the word normalizing it's just you know our culture is how it is um and you know there's other ways to appreciate and learn about these really necessary Health pieces I'm glad that parents will always have the option to opt out I also really appreciate about consent because when we hear discipline cases from the board

200sometimes things come because perhaps there was misunderstanding about what consent means so this is again something the School Division has to address because our students are presenting with these challenges so I am eager to move these forward into practice to get the curriculum designed and the training delivered and the family is educated to know what their their options are for our students thanks thank you Miss Marin Miss McLaughlin before I comment I do have a quick question um do we have survey results from our staff the fle instructors on how they felt about combined classes and staff received all teachers received the the same survey as the community did and they could indicate on there if they were an employee of FCPS but we did not specifically send something to our fle teachers to receive

201their responses separately okay uh well looking at the report I don't see any data on the staff responses so if somebody can comment on that yeah I don't know that we disaggregated by staff members Kerry can you but if we haven't we still have the data so is that something we can go back and and share with the board yeah and Dr Reed I think that would be really important because we're talking about 86 percent of responses but we should see what the responses are by staff who teach this instruction and then the parents and students so um you know I I'm one of those board members that constantly ask about research best practice and how can that drive our decision making and so um while I appreciate that this was Revisited and you guys

202carried out what you did um what is concerning to me is the lack of research that there isn't anything talking about at the elementary school level what's the research and best practice for doing it it looks like there are School divisions that are so if there isn't any research or best practice that's been published then why don't we go get from those School divisions what was that change in that transition from going from Single Sex to combined how did that work for them and maybe what we could learn from it I would say given the the extraordinary responses of people not wanting this um and we we are a representative body of the board representing the community um you know it is concerning me to turn around just throw that out especially when we don't

203have research and best practice then say well it's just because you just don't understand um because we have opt out I don't want to risk 86 of our students and our families opting out so I would agree with Ms Corbett Sanders that and I believe Mr Presidio that or Dr Presidio that Ms darnak kofax had asked in a prior conversation that if it's that small of a number that would like to have it gender combined then maybe we offer that and do it in a pilot setting and see if how that grows and gets done but with 200 schools well 150 Elementary I don't want to experiment with 150 right out of the gate to just make a change when the survey results don't tell us they can support it so and I'll need to

204go back this is like speed talking no words I got you on the list Megan if I could just respond to a couple of those please please Dr Presidio go ahead um comments first I would say I definitely take your point about the research but I do want to point out for folks that might be watching this in the community that we do have in addition to the presentation materials we do have a full report posted on board docs that does contain the definitive research that we were able to locate independently and with our independent research Partners like EAB so there's just not a lot of published research available but we pulled really those seminal studies that are available and I think what you'll see in those studies is pretty much what we encapsulated in

205the slides there's benefits there's challenges and concerns and we tried to capture those in the slide so I know that it's not really sufficient in terms of what we would like to be able to point to to to research but we did pull what we could and I would also say you know the some of the questions that you're raising Miss Corbett standard erased about different ways to implement whether it's a pilot or a different model those are certainly things that we can consider as Dr Reed said you know the intent was to try to get feedback from the board tonight and direction from the board as a body about how we would move forward so you know we're just presenting the recommendations from the committee as they came from the committee tonight so thank

206you for bringing up some of those points all right but just to clarify I I went through the report and I didn't see elementary school so no I would like that clarified for the public and for me do we have research on elementary schools having gender combined I did not see any research on Elementary School gender combined classes we were able to find was with older students not with Elementary students thank you Miss McLaughlin Mr Frisch thank you first on the issue of consent I'm curious why uh developmentally appropriate instruction on exploitation doesn't begin until eighth grade I think most parents would tell you that there's significant concerns younger than that too and I do think maybe don't use the word explicitly exploitation in the younger grades but we do for example begin our instruction

207on teen sex trafficking in the sixth grade which certainly has ties to exploitation and um but we could I mean we could certainly consider be more intentional in that instruction at a younger grade I think that's worth considering and also seeing the alignment with social media usage in that work which is obviously something that impacts students much younger than that we do have um we do have lessons in our General Health curriculum starting as early as third grade that talks about social media and electronic gaming different types of ways students are interacting online that's something students can't opt out of along the lines of consent this board voted to request a a method of training all students on Title IX so um I think if we're going to have a conversation about consent that's something

208that needs to be followed up with um at some point um in terms of um the question of of gender integrated Family Life Education this is something that is done in varying ways all over the country and all over the Commonwealth from rural counties to more urban counties is that right is there several School divisions that do provide gender combined instructions and there are states that require it like Missouri in California and others right yes um I think what's different and what we don't get from the recommendations is how they do it right and so um what I would want to have a conversation with or have the superintendent look into is you know what are the methods um that have been most uh effective in those School divisions have those conversations um and and

209let the board know the different ways that it's been implemented because that's something that's lacking um on the question of the survey let's let's get Frank about the survey how was feedback for the recommendations solicited and how is that different from family surveys so a community review period is not a survey right and it's not sent directly to families it is fanned out through our FCPS Communications um but it's open to anyone and you know anyone who has a computer who has a link can provide us information I um Carrie could could talk about what demographics that we collected we asked if you were a parent or a Community member correct I mean we asked those questions to disaggregate but there's no assurances but we go to Greater lengths when we do staff surveys or

210family surveys to guarantee that that's who those people are right yeah it wasn't intended this was you know it was really um done as we have always done uh flea cack sort of community review as opposed to a survey particularly which is something else that could have been done to be to get to every family or to attempt to get to every family but it was done more of a community review so if I'm a Reddit warrior in Wyoming and I have two cell phones a laptop and I iPad and maybe web access over my television I could submit answers to this survey as many times as I have access to a device yeah we have no guarantee that the people reside in in Fairfax County and I raised this as I raised I think

211people would agree every time we talk about survey data I talk about the efficacy of the data and whether it is representative of anything other than the people who filled out the survey this is particularly Troublesome because people are presenting it as family research research from our families when there is no way to say that it is family I'm not saying you did whether it is families who filled out the survey whether they live in Fairfax County at all the only guarantee that we have is that the same IP address did not fill out the survey more than once and so I hope in the future as we embark on these that we take a a closer look at the way that we engage the community the community families staff Etc so that we're actually

212able to speak to what the data represents what the data represents is that more than 2 000 people from wherever filled this out and this is what they said but that's about as reliable as anything else that you put online thank you Mr fresh do you want to go back we'll see Dr Presidio do you want to speak to that yeah well I just wanted to give one more point of information and I really appreciate Mr Frisch's questions and comments about the you know the validity of the information based on the methodology that we use to um to collect it and one other piece that we were just sidebarring about here um that I just want to make sure that the committee was aware of or that the board in the community is aware of

213is that an individual member on fleetcac did do kind of an independent survey if you will of fle teachers in that particular pyramid and there were some concerns that were raised but I want to make sure that that information is part of this discussion but that was not something that the flea cat committee did or authorized or Ran So that is a piece of information I think that maybe some folks were curious about so we just want to make sure that everybody had that information tonight thank you very much um Mr Fish let me know if you want to go back I'll start with um I'll take my turn and then we will go I'm sorry Elaine thank you um just a couple things very quickly um I would like to follow up with what

214Mr Frisch was saying I think given that that we really don't have Elementary School research that we can look at it would be super helpful to just for me anyway to hear more about how other school districts are actually implementing this you know which has already been mentioned um on the consent piece I fully support this I mean having dropped off you know two different young men at college um you know where you walk in the dorm and immediately there are signs plastered everywhere no means no you know it's like is this the first time these kids are hearing about this when they're going to college that is a big problem so um you know the more that we can do to help our students understand you know uncomfortable situations and what that means and

215you know the the on the list of bullets that you had I think is super important so I appreciate that work and I just want to share that in appendix B I believe it is we do include information about other school divisions about what they're how they're currently implementing and at what grade levels thank you Amber yeah thank you um I guess I just wanted to start it by start by making sure that we we ground ourselves in the idea that saying opt out is an option I don't think that's like a last resort we want our kids to be learning this material in school and we want to make sure we're catering it in a way that is inclusive to all children um so just putting that up there I did want to ask

216why the vote on this is delayed though or like why we don't have an idea of when that's coming well we wanted to have this conversation right to see when we're ready we also know that um we had public comment on last year's committees but we did we have not had our comma period on the consent and and Boundary objectives which will be a 30-day period so once we get scheduled for a new business then we would have the public comment and then we would have the follow-up so it's just about a matter of scheduling it when it would be appropriate to bring it to the board in the fall presumably presumably but yeah um okay I also just want to be clear that I guess the single flea member that was here was not

217asked nor invited to be here so to miss Corbett Sanders point I think that's just important to note um so good to hear that fle teachers were surveyed what were the outcomes of that survey well that that I can't tell you other than because I was not done on behalf or by flea cack that was done by an individual member my understanding and I just recently learned about this myself my understanding that there were concerns about how to do that based on some of the teachers that responded to that but again I've not seen the survey I don't know what the questions were and I don't know what the results were okay um I guess based on what we have employee-wise 88 of employees it's 100 out of 114 say they do not support so

218that's a data point if we don't have more than that um but I mean I guess I also wanted to point out when looking at the data black Hispanic Asian native were overwhelmingly do not support so I think it's weird that we disaggregated by race anyway but if we look at it that way it's largely middle-aged white individuals who are supporting it all um so that's something to keep in mind too about our cultural responsiveness in the community and what you know we're choosing to do and and who we're choosing to hear from in what we're doing because I I just I mean I genuinely okay the research we have is tenuous I don't who wrote the lit review I'd like to know so we collected the information I believe we we worked with our

219library services to help us do some of the research and make sure that we um yeah I'm sorry oh yes and we do work with an independent researcher who also pulled together some of the research for us maybe our and then our health and PE our health and PE team put together the um the synopsis okay so it's 16 plus research that is tenuous and limited we have data from the community I understand the limitations of that of course but still that are telling us overwhelmingly over 80 percent and then the study the the research done on fle teachers or even just employees in our own survey is overwhelming 88 of our employees and then 81 in the fle staff specifically I guess I I just what is pushing this like why are we doing

220this if that's what we the data we have all of it has limitations but we also have no other information and everything else is telling us no so can someone help me understand like what is the push where is it coming from and why so I I think some of the the data right wasn't nuanced and I think the committee looked at it and looked at some of the overarching concerns that families had about kids feeling awkward right and said well let's revise the the recommendations and not start so young and let some of and let it happen at older ages like we have combined um we have combined fle at grades nine and ten we can start that a little bit earlier but let's not start it in fourth grade so I think the

221committee didn't take it in in the vein that maybe you're taking considering you know we have 2 000 submissions which is a lot of submissions for a community review but we have a much larger Community as a whole they took that as a signal that perhaps these recommendations were were you know a bridge too far and maybe we could revise them and build up to that so that's that is the best way and and Miss Reynolds feel free to to add anything to it but I think that's how they interpret it much of the conversation on the committee particularly from our Public Health our experts our health department Representatives really talked about the need to normalize instruction make sure that all students understand all genders and receiving it together and I would also share when

222we talked with our students especially our elementary students there a lot of them were like we're saying they sit in those classes wondering are they hearing the same information in the other class like I'm a girl are the boys hearing what I'm experiencing and they're concerned that their peers don't really understand they don't know what is happening to them and that was something that we did here multiple times from from students a lot of curiosity about what was happening so while they were concerned and there was that you know embarrassment awkwardness you know they weren't sure there was also questioning as to what was happening in the other classroom my time but I'll take a go back if we're doing them yeah I'll put the challenge will go back so I'll go ahead and take

223my turn before go to go backs um I appreciate the conversation I appreciate sort of the thoughtfulness on taking some more time to sort of do look at the pacing guides the research all these other things that you've talked about I think it's important to do this right um you know and to take the time to to do it in that way I wanted to talk a little bit about the consent pieces I really appreciate the work on consent as I think Miss Tallinn said you go to colleges and it's very much a zero tolerance around a lot of issues and I think we need to build that capacity um there was a lot about teaching how to say no baliatani which I think is very very important right but there's only one line that

224I saw and I I don't have it in front of me about what to do if somebody else says no and I think that's a really important piece at a lot of levels not just what what I think it didn't say what to do I apologize I think it said what it means when someone says no super important right but then what was missing was what to do right and I think that's really important too to understand your own body autonomy and consent for yourself what it means when someone else what it looks like when someone is giving consent or not giving consent but also then what do you do because we are you know we need to teach that piece too what's the replacement behavior and I think we need to I mean just

225I know you're all shocked when you do that from a neurodivergent lens as well as a neurotypical lens right because what consent looks like for somebody's neurodivergent might be different what understanding of what someone else's consent or lack of consent looks like may be different and what to do may be different so I think it's that piece I cannot emphasize enough that it has got to be done you know 1 in 35 just with autism and there's a lot of research around the criminal justice impacts of not getting this right so I just wanted to lay that out there that I think I would agree with Dr Reed going back and looking at consent a little bit deeper for the younger grades as well as I think that's so important I don't see that work

226here yet so I'll my time's up I can go back but if you want to comment I'd appreciate that we and the the committee did try to spiral some of those Concepts and come back to the you know can what consent means what it looks like over and over we do have I believe in both the upper elementary and the middle school you know when we're saying hearing and respecting no I that I think is what you're is what you're talking about as well so if somebody says to you no they don't agree they don't consent to this like what do you do how do you respond what's appropriate inappropriate and that would come out in the lesson maybe more than it's coming out in the objective in the descriptive statement um thank you and

227I'll respond to that might go back so thank you all right we have um three go back so far Miss Corbett Sanders followed by Miss McLaughlin thank you um I think you've heard my concerns and I regarding proceeding as you've suggested for the six through eight a particular concern is if we are going to go ahead and develop uh develop pacing guides and other information then we are essentially giving a signal that we're going down a path without actually having um having come to that agreement and I think that it's important that we look at ensuring that we have that dual path that if we want to either trial it but I would actually suggest we can have combined classrooms for those that want to opt in to combine classrooms in separate classrooms for those

228that want to keep the status quo for six through eight you read this documentation there's no nothing that says this is that we should be immediately going to gender combined the second thing is regarding the consent I I am all for increased education on consent and I would suggest as Mr Frisch's suggested that it needs to start earlier we we see behaviors happening as early as early elementary schools so that consent piece is critical and I do think we should also tie it in with some of the education on Title IX what I don't see here is the bystander intervention and the previous board did a lot of work on bystander intervention of what happens when you see somebody whose consent is not there and they're still facing a chat facing an aggression how do

229other people step in to help and that was something the previous board agreed and this was going to happen so where does that fit we do have bystander intervention in our high school lessons so these objectives were k through eight and it does not fall currently in those objectives or in the recommendations but it is in the high school lessons I think it's an equal part of consent and needs to be included in there um and uh can I just comment one other thing you know historically we have um uh gone through the process the board has voted and approved and then we start all the work right we write the curriculum we do that we haven't done that I think Dr Reed was probably considering that if we did some of that it would

230maybe give more information about you all making the decision not to presuppose a decision so what is the downside of actually going a parallel path the parallel path of students yeah I'm having so some of it we've talked a little bit about that and and um you know we've worked on like what would that look like and what would the steps be and um there's a scheduling right just for the school to figure out how to make that work um there and maybe this is just my interpretation and talking to you know some of the students I know that sort of feeling which room did you go in did you go in the the boys room The Girls Room the combined room like that the awkwardness at the school level for the student and then

231the parents who said I wanted my child in this room but the child actually went in the other room and he'll you know there becomes a little bit of a complication not saying it's not possible certainly it's possible to do a parallel but just trying to think about how that actually is um implemented in a school and the considerations well we have in seventh and 8th separate um girls and boys Health classes and uh health and PE Mr Sanders Dr Reed did you want to add to that thank you madam chair and thank you Miss Corbett Sanders I want to elaborate on Miss clamenco's comment part of the reason why we feel like we need to do a little more study and a little more work before we come back to you is what would

232those models look like and as we think about in particular you know 141 elementary schools and the nuances and the sizes and schedules and the complexity of that as well as our middle schools we really want to make sure when we come back and if we're talking about multiple tracks both gender combined gender separate and of course then the opt-out of the instruction completely so really three tracks so we want to make sure we're able to staff those models in a thoughtful way so that we have safe spaces for students to learn this curriculum or be part of this work or if their families opt them out to also have spaces for the opt-out but that's really work that hasn't been uh done yet so that's part of this in terms of looking at all

233these schedules and how that could be possible so I think that's something that's part of this work we would want to come back to the board with in the fall so to be clear you're not precluding coming with multiple models oh heavens no okay because that's no I think what we want to look at is what the models are I don't believe I heard that staff are not they're not wanting to preclude it I think they're we're seeing challenges to it potentially but I know we can overcome those so we need to be able to come back with those scenarios it's not how we've done it in the past but it's it's something we're going to need to look at I understand that so we do need to take a look at that which is

234why I wanted to make sure we elaborated on that this evening thank you Miss Corbett Sanders go go back if you want just clarify quickly um I think what Miss Corbett Sanders was saying at the end was our health and physical education courses at Middle School are gender separate which is not true they boys and girls are together in health and physical education they only separate for the four days when they're receiving the human growth and development lessons that's worthless thank you um Miss McLaughlin yeah I I do want to emphasize again Dr Presidio my question originally had been what is the research at the elementary school level and it's my understanding that that is almost non-existent and so I appreciate that you were trying to say there's research but my statements had been accurate

235in saying we don't have at the elementary school level and I think that's really important um Dr Reed I think at this point what I'm struggling with is that we have so many challenges facing this system and right now our community has not said as a whole and I've been on this board 12 years and I've not had people coming to me and saying when are you going to fix this about how you're delivering fle so I have been passionate about fle my twin sister who's a nursing professor and a research expert was very Progressive as my representative um but I also know that it is so important that if we're going to survey our families and we believe that we know what's best then inform people with the research first then survey them I

236say this on every survey don't ask people to to their opinions in a vacuum where they don't have information and then we want to discount it so and I also think that in general Mr Frisch is right if we if we are going to say that these survey responses matter they mean to do them more scientifically it's such a shame that we're racing to have this conversation um but I do want to say to staff as always I appreciate your coming at this with your best intentions so if I'm sounding critical it is not because I don't respect your commitment to doing good work thank you Miss Amish yeah um so I guess this whole thing is awkward no matter how you teach it or what uh is just something to keep in mind but

237okay so so here's the reality right we obviously know this is an issue a lot of people land in different places the problem came because some students didn't feel respected affirmed included in the current setup so then the question becomes okay how do we find a solution for those students without necessarily flipping the whole thing on its head in a way that clearly the you know Community is not interested in so maybe we can be a little bit more creative I think looking at models isn't is One Direction the other possibility is these could be online modules we could do this in a way I mean we're trying to incorporate e-learning and all that stuff anyway we could have these be something students are required to do individually with you know maybe there's reflection time

238maybe there isn't we can think that through but that's also an option um you know I think rather than kind of making this push and pull in two different directions we can try to generate ideas that ensure we approach it with compassion but also with intellectual Integrity you know I I think consider the online thing I look forward to seeing other possible models but I really think that's a potential way out of this a whole mess but just just my two cents um I'm trying to remind us again being compassionate and not dismissive of anyone's perspective thank you before I go to Mr fresh [Music] so the students who you know this part of this centers around are not necessarily in a position to self-advocate nor are they necessarily in a position where um their

239selection would not out them to their classmates I think that needs to be said um and so when we have these conversations we need to accept that they exist they exist in every demographic we have every Faith tradition that we have they exist in every race that we have they represent every gender they are tall they are short they are plump they are skinny they are every kid we have in our system there is a kid that is represented in that group and we know about some of them and we don't know about some of them and some of them want us to know about them and some of us some of them don't want us to know about them and so as we navigate these Waters I think it's important to remember that those

240students exist that they are real that trans boys or boys and trans girls or girls and they deserve the same services from FCPS as anybody else thank you Mr Fish Miss Marin thanks so what I'm craving here is consistency so one is that I do share um the interest in anytime a new instructional practice is rolled out way before the staff have to be surveyed they have to be distinctively sought for their input in a very consistent way we've now done a lot over the last year or two on very consistent Community engagement practices what is the model that the division will use anytime some kind of significant instructional practice is changed we've got to go to staff because all I hear from not only here but I often hear from staff it's just one

241more thing and they're just piling stuff on we got to get their input secondly um Dr Reed I would like um I don't know if it's the help of orc our research department or strategic Communications but I think the board really needs to be clear on its parameters for what it's going to accept as a level of research because in the last week alone I've heard one parameter for strategic planning there weren't enough comments and in this parameter we're taking two thousand you know surveys and saying we'll see all these people disagree the whole question of serving Mr fishbart we've got to figure this out I mean this is like seriously like the 12th time we've had this conversation about 2 000 people it's not represented 20 000 what is the bar of this board

242that we're going to accept as representative data um finally I've taken my own straw polls one fifth grade teacher said please don't combine another sixth grade teacher said it's fine I asked a few principals they were busy doing other things like trying to keep kids in school so you know I think if people are interested they'll respond we just did a huge Community engagement piece we've engaged we will never be able to get everyone because people are just trying to survive so I agree with this if this is staff's recommendation this is why we do these practices it has been a year we are not racing through anything we've put this on hold from decision for at least a year yeah so thank you um before I go to go go backs Miss Dolan did

243you want to say anything more um I'm just going to briefly say I think there's obviously a lot here I think um I appreciate staff want to be thoughtful in the fall I think it's important um to lift up also what Mr fresh said I think it's important to lift up some of the words that we've heard around needing to engage staff I think it's important to lift up needing to do this in a thoughtful way to have plans from for Dr Reed to bring back to us in the fall so I think this is a good path forward recognizing that we want to make sure all of our kids find a place to belong so um that's really my only comment on this piece I will say on consent I'm just going to go

244back and say well I really appreciate that that the committee did think about some of these pieces what I was trying to lift up is I think it's such an important topic that in my experience in the 20 years that I've been raising special ed kids advocating for specialty kids 11 years I spent on acsd I don't think this conversation has nearly happened to the depth and understanding of what a neurodivergent experience is like in neurodivergent mindset is like so I would ask strongly that you go back and really engage folks who understand it and include that in their consent because this is dangerous if we don't thank you so if I could just very briefly comment on on that before you close out um I really appreciate those comments and suggestions and that is

245really why we bring these recommendations to the board before we start developing any curriculum materials we haven't even started that process yet right so those thoughts those comments those suggestions are the things that we use to incorporate and inform our future work so I think your suggestions about that are definitely things that we can incorporate if the board approves those uh those recommendations then as we're developing the curriculum we'd be happy to do that so thank you thank you I'll take a couple Go-Go backs and I'll respond to that in my turn Carl did you have a go go back okay um puts a good Karen and then Megan I've read and reread multiple times your lit survey and there is a distinguished by age is to the appropriateness of combined versus single gender or

246the receptivity and so when you come back with models I would encourage that there is a deep dive into the research you've probably provided yourself and also recognizing that we have Elementary School which goes through sixth grade primarily throughout this whole County when you talk about making changes while kids are you know at that Elementary level I read this lit and it's not there and so come back with some flexibility in modeling come back with some your best thinking on it and please um you know I'm supportive of making sure every child feels safe and successful and well educated in this these critical areas but we have to do it in a thoughtful manner thank you Karen Megan so I I just want to emphasize Dr Reed that in the absence of any real research

247at the elementary school level um I disagree with some on the board who think that well staff recommended it the reason the board asked staff to not do the recommendations from this last year and to go out and get the research is because we want to make a research-based decision for this division of 180 000 kids so I would say in the LA in the absence of research what I also didn't like in the report is that what I saw was a listing of school divisions that are teaching it combined at a younger age I didn't see school districts being listed out that look like us and are doing it the way we're doing it right now and we know there's thousands of school districts so I do appreciate that we gathered some for benchmarking

248but and it's not exhaustive but it would be helpful to see the ones that we also consider to be peers and if they're all there they're all there but I can't emphasize enough there's nothing wrong with doing a pilot given that the the general population in our school division has not been clamoring for this I respect the fle committee very much but they are a very tiny group of 19 members and we don't have the research to help drive this decision at this moment in time thank you and I'll just say Dr prasida I really appreciate those comments and lifting it up but I will say sometimes what is written is what gets done so just my two cents on that piece and I appreciate you lifting it up I just wanted to put that

249out there that you know if it's not written it doesn't get done and it has been in my opinion an oversight for a long time or perhaps something that just hasn't been as maybe I shouldn't say oversight let me rephrase there hasn't been as much awareness perhaps as the urgent need for it so I just wanted to say you know for consent sorry that can be clear the consent piece on you know the urgent need for really recognizing the different perspectives on the consent piece of it and I just would urge at what's written gets done so I would love to see when you come back in the fall maybe I know you don't want to change flea tax recommendations but your follow-up to have more explicit around that piece um yeah yes I do

250thank you madam chair I I think one of the things that I mean this is clearly a difficult topic right we're all wrestling with this the research um is not abundant nor is it clear and I think what is clear is that I believe we have a shared interest in each and every student having a safe space to learn what's critical health information and safe is Def I mean safe is just going to be safe right we need it to be safe for students that have all perspectives and families who do it needs to be safe for our trans students our gender fluid students our CIS students our students who have beliefs that are and all of our students and families have beliefs that are across the board so I think that's that's why the

251models we choose to present this have to be really carefully thought through because I believe um that when we talk about each of our students being seen heard and affirmed and learning the skills they need to be successful when they leave our division I think that's a shared interest so I don't want to lose what we believe together so it's going to be incumbent on us to think about how do we provide those models that don't leave students feeling unsafe or staff feeling unprepared or families feeling unheard and we also know that honestly majority doesn't always dictate right because we have to be concerned about what keeps each person safe whether they're in that majority or not so I just those are I think just things that I want to remind myself about and remind

252us about that that's that's really at the core of this conversation and I know with the people around this table and the people working on this we're going to get there but it's also I think something we don't rush this evening and it's something we really we've taken some steps to be thoughtful about and we have some more work to do and as this is a topic these lessons are not taught till later in the year next year it's it's also not you know setting us way behind it's just I think a really important time to to pause be thoughtful about what our options are and then come back to the table with more information so I just want to be clear about that thank you um where I saw your pocket go up do

253that do you want to go go back before you finish I was trying to get your attention sorry go ahead okay um no it's fine I mean I I think Dr Reed shared actually a lot of the sentiment I think the idea is this can actually turn into a really unifying process I think if we you know spend the time and and that's what dialogue enables I think in being able to have this conversation uh and recognize that absolutely you know transgender students should feel safe and affirmed and valued at the same time uh we're mindful of what realities are for all kinds of kids right so that's the one piece um and the fact that it shouldn't be up to one board member too to have to advocate for any particular group but we

254all want to make sure that this works out for all kids um just in closing I didn't comment on the consent piece but I I'm very happy to see it and I also wanted to build upon what Mrs seismheiser said I think that's critical I think that's actually where we fall into a lot of mess when kids don't learn early on not only kids with disabilities but also kids about kids with disabilities and how they communicate so I would be a huge I would hugely support adding the language in there and perhaps even more expansively about cultural responsiveness because you know In some cultures kissing is normal and like things like that that might be taken differently so maybe being um more culturally responsive and certainly uh neurodivergent aware about how we teach that to

255all kids I think we'd all benefit thank you Miss Amish and with that I think I once had their turn I was looking around for last minute placards before we um I want to thank you to to you the flea cat committee and to staff for really your thoughtful conversation today and it is a difficult topic that we're trying to thoughtfully wrestle with so thank you very much and without this meeting is adjourned