FCPS School Board Meeting - 2/9/23

001foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign he's like hold up board members please take your seats this February 9 2023 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance a moment of silence and a performance of the national anthem by the Daniels Run choir under the direction of Michelle mccartan into the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] oh say can you see [Music] me lose [Music] through the night [Music] was still there those days [Applause] [Music] foreign in order to comply with section 2.2-3712d of the code of Virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed

002meeting on February 9 2023 to the best of each member's knowledge only public Mrs matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the close meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the meeting do you have a motion Miss Cohen seconded by Mr kilfax all those in favor please raise your hand Miss Keys gamara Miss Marin Miss Amish Miss Tolland Miss Corbett Sanders Miss Janet kofax Ms McLaughlin Dr Anderson Mr Frisch Miss Cohen Miss bakarski and myself that is unanimous that motion passes if you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight that information may be found at the back of the auditorium or on the website at fcps.edu backslash School

003Board backslash board docs tonight's being is being broadcast on channel 99 and live stream on the website at fcps.edu backslash TV backslash Channel 99. the board would like to invite each recognition recipient for a photo after the reading of all recognitions I call on Miss Marin for recognition Career and Technical education or CTE month is a public awareness campaign held every February to celebrate the achievements and accomplishments of such programs Nationwide according to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics 18 of the 20 fastest growing occupations within the next decade will require Career and Technical education Career and Technical education prepares both Youth and adults for a wide range of careers requiring varied levels of Education including a high school diploma post-secondary certificate certification and two and four-year college degrees Fairfax County Public Schools has a

004vast selection of programs that are that exemplify Career and Technical education through these opportunities students are able to get a sense of careers they may wish to pursue and understand the necessary steps it takes to become a professional in that discipline all of our Career and Technical programs incorporate workplace Readiness and portrait of graduate skills industry credentials work-based learning and Career and Technical student organizations this year we have 16 students going above and beyond by serving in various state-level leadership positions for their Career and Technical student organizations we appreciate the time and effort these students and their teachers put into their organizations to benefit students across the state and we are proud to recognize some of these student leaders here tonight thank you to all our Career and Technical education educator Educators and staff who

005help and ensure students are College and Career ready and with us tonight our student leaders from technology Student Association or TSA [Applause] deca the future Business Leaders of America or FBLA if you want to stand up come on we want we want to use rise as you're called family career and Community leaders of America or FCCLA HOSA for our future health professionals skillsusa Future Farmers of America or FFA and Educators Rising [Applause] Miss marriage I just speak to your recognition yes I would just like to say how lovely it was to hear our students present just beforehand in a reception and celebration and it's so clear how your involvement in this work is paying dividends your articulate motivated and also you know collaborative and sharing your skills so it's really exciting to see what you're

006doing thank you for being here tonight and for all you do not only here in Fairfax but in the state keep going [Applause] Dr Anderson but you're like was on sorry Miss Cohen yeah I just had to give a quick shout out to uh the Lake Braddock Bruins and everything that you guys do to promote thank you see Silk's back there thank you so proud of you guys and it's just really really cool to get to see I so appreciated being invited to the school along with Dr Reed when FCCLA did their event thank you so much and um just continuing to include us in your journey and what incredible Future Leaders we can't wait to vote for you all so thanks foreign ers thank you madam chair I too wanted to thank all of

007the students for being here but I also wanted to thank all of our Educators who are so committed to ensuring that our students who are enrolled in CTE programs and Workforce Development programs are amongst the finest in the country they win national awards but more importantly they are put on the path for lifelong careers that are incredible and I'm going to put Dr Reed on the spot a bit the last time I checked did we have 65 000 Career and Technical education certifications last year I believe it was something like that Miss Corbett Sanders yeah thank you I too believe it's something like that and it's an amazing number that very few people realize the breadth of the programs that are available to our students here in Fairfax County that range from agriculture to intense

008Sciences to uh Veterinary careers and also the trades with all sorts of opportunities and marketing we have our kids who actually can build a house one group of kids and another group of kids doing the marketing for it we have kids who are involved in pharmaceutical Tech and we have kids who are involved in automotive and the trade so I just want to thank you Dr Reed for leading such an amazing team of of Educators in this area [Applause] thank you and before I say a couple words I'll turn to our student representative Michelle togbe to say a few words yes thank you I mean I have to say my ctso is DECA so not to play favorites um but it is really great to see our students participate in CTE whether it be again

009from marketing to learning how to build a house I mean it really ranges and it's amazing thing to see but I also want to shout out our Educators the people who work behind the scenes I see the way my advisors work but not just that the people from across the county we have amazing advisors over at Oakton from Mr Barrow Miss Hank house Miss Thorne and then I have Role Models like the wardenskis over at Lake Braddock to my own advisors Ms Scott who I see in the audience and it's really they're a strong group of people and the work that they do is really admirable so thank you foreign thank you and I'll just briefly say again congratulations to our students for all your hard work and your dedication to your families for supporting

010them and especially to the teachers shout out to Lake Braddock out there sorry but my kids alumni school so I had to shout out and I will say my son participated also in um I think one of his favorite classes with family and consumer science so um you know his last year at Lake Braddock so thank you for that incredible experience and since I could never teach him knife skills I'm glad you all did so um I appreciate you and thank you so much for all your hard work congratulations actually one thing I for all those who don't or won't be listening out there we have amazing Academy and Career and Technical programs in the academies and in our schools I was recently at Marshall Academy and I met the student who wants to be

011the goat and he had a big old Medallion on that said go and I said what are you the goat of and he said Microsoft certifications I have nine so and he's got a bright career ahead of him so just you know you too can be the goat so having said that thank you very very much for being here we'll move on to the next one and please stay for photos of the board when since we're done so I will going I will call him his keys gamara for recognition thank you the theme for the 2023 National School counseling week helping students dream big will focus public attention on you the unique contribution of school counselors within U.S the U.S school system National School counseling week highlights the tremendous impact school counselors have and helping

012students achieve school Success and plan for a career Fairfax County Public Schools employs close to 700 School counseling professionals including school counselors directors of student services and College and Career Specialists these professionals are committed to Preparing students to become lifelong Learners and productive members in a global Society with a focus on social emotional Wellness academic success and College and Career Readiness thank you to all of our school counseling Professionals for the tremendous work you do foreign yes thank you there are probably so many of us in this room who when ass would say our school counselors played a key role in helping us reach our dreams as students I'm no exception so it's no surprise that the theme for National School counseling week 2023 is school counselors helping students dream big National School counseling week

013highlights the tremendous impact school counselors can have and helping students achieve School Success and plan for a career the special week honoring school counselors recognizes school counselors who Implement comprehensive School counseling programs a vital part of the educational process for all students as they meet the challenges of the 21st Century our counselors spend each day actively engaged in helping students examine their abilities strengths and interests and talents for working in partnership with parents and Guardians and as well as our students as they encounter the challenges of maneuvering the educational system and exploring opportunities our school counselors play a vital role in helping students academic career and social and emotional development by working with teachers to provide a system where students can realize their full potential and sell set healthy realistic and optimistic aspirations for themselves

014as we continue to recover and move forward from Life in a global pandemic this role is more important than ever and I couldn't agree more so once again to each and every one of the school counselors out there helping Fairfax County School students to dream big we celebrate and honor you this week thank you for all you do thank you very much I will now hand the gavel over to my vice chair mrnado Koufax I will now call on Miss Sizemore Heiser for the resolution whereas School Board clerks in each locality through our great Commonwealth are appointed by law to fulfill their duties and responsibilities and whereas School Board clerks are responsible for keeping accurate records of the meetings and proceedings of the school board records of all receipts and disbursements and record of all

015official acts and whereas School Board clerks perform such other duties in connection with the school business of his or her county or city as may be required by the school board and whereas School Board clerks maintain frequent contact with the public including parents employees families in the media on behalf of the school board and superintendent and whereas School Board clerks in performance of their duties are often required to work extra hours many extra hours attending school board meetings and whereas School Board clerks join with school boards to help ensure that students achieved their Highest Potential and whereas the Fairfax County School Board joins the Virginia school boards Association in recognizing the many and varied contributions of school board Clerks now therefore be it resolved at its meeting on the ninth day of February 2023 the

016Fairfax County School Board officially recognizes our two clerks with appreciation for their hard work and service I so move I will second this resolution thank you [Applause] this Sizemore hyzer would you like to speak to your resolution I would be honored to speak to my resolution and I'm sad I only have two minutes to do it because there is these two ladies sitting up here or two clerks understaffed by one clerk for well over a year are truly the engine and the glue and the brains and the memory and the hard work and the dedication that keep us running despite ourselves keep us running um and really honestly make us the best that we can be in all honesty work very very hard many long hours are available anytime day or night when I call

017or text I need this doesn't matter when it is the answer is with utmost professionalism calm patience kindness and a little touch of humor that just makes the day that much better and so we on the board and doing our work to help support students and staff and families in the community could not do our work without really the engine that keeps us going and they sit here every week quietly Fielding a bunch of messages and making sure that we're doing our work the best we can and we wanted to make sure we took a minute on this week of school board clerk Appreciation Week to really recognize that again despite being down a clerk you haven't missed a beat and you've never complained and more than anything else serving 12 bosses which is not

018easy for those who had one boss imagine 12. and you do it with such patience and kindness and professionalism so thank you from the bottom of our hearts Mr Annette Koufax would you speak to your second yes I will you've done a great job about telling the public who these ladies are you see the ladies in the back there as well they are the support staff for all each and every one of us hi and they are here because they too appreciate you so much you are there for them you are there to help manage them direct them um restore them when the time gets tough and it's often tough sometimes in this office I just want to say I thank you each and every day for being here for us sometimes more than sometimes

019you are here long into the nights you are doing 10 to 12 hour days plus sometimes weekend work just to keep this board and the system on track we so appreciate you and I am so grateful to both of you Bev and Laura for all that you do um I am honored to have the opportunity to work with you and to work with with you and all the professionalism you exhibits you have my heartfelt appreciation for your remarkable talents and your skills and all that you do to keep us together up here and sometimes that is not an easy task so from Justice Rochester said from the bottom of my heart thank you so much for everything that you do for us it's Corbin Sanders gracefield empathetic caring student focused and Steel Magnolias ladies that

020is the way I think of you as people who are incredible colleagues who make every day at the school board a little bit easier and that when things are a little bit rough because as you can imagine the past couple years been a little tough um you always remember that we're all here for the same reason the common good is the love and passion for our kids and so my colleagues have talked about um how much they appreciate you and I too appreciate you I love you and I also very much appreciate that you both keep each and every one of us in your prayers so thank you thank you Miss Tolan yes um Bev and Laura are incredible professionals that as has been mentioned have persevered some through some very difficult times with the

021school board um but you have done an exceptional job keeping our office running smoothly and in compliance with our governance manual while balancing the needs of 12 very different people our schedules Relentless with meeting after meeting and you are at all of those meetings calmly making sure everything runs as smoothly as possible and as mentioned this is often outside of normal business hours you deal with people at all levels in FCPS and that takes some skill but you do it with grease and charm and you successfully move us off forward on behalf of all of us thank you so much for everything that you do I always look forward when I go into the school board office to your welcoming smiles and um you know worm activities and and work thank you so much [Applause]

022Dr Anderson thank you I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to thank our clerks they are behind the scenes getting it all done getting us organized and I know it's very hard work and I'm not going to believe at the point I think my colleagues have made a fine job of sharing with the public the work that they do but I cannot miss the opportunity to just say my thanks to you you all do it with a Grace with a smile and it's been a pleasure for me to work with you so thank you and I'm very glad to honor you this evening and also shout out to the team back there I cannot not say thank you to you all because you are part of the engine that makes all

023of us run so thank you Christy coffee you're awesome Mr fresh thank you um I get to spend a lot of quality one on two time with our clerks when I show up early for work sessions and and whatnot um I'm struck because when we talk about resolutions a lot in this room we talk about how it's important to express the meaning behind the resolution not just on that day but in the the days around the calendar so I will say that I'm committed in the other 364 days of the year as we talk about the calendar tonight to show my appreciation and action and how I treat the clerks and talk to the clerks and work with the clerks and um and make sure that they know even when I've had a a weird

024day at my day job or whatever maybe a bad day of traffic on the freeway um that they're appreciated and that our work would grind to a halt without them also onboarding our staff aides and and executive assistants is no small feat and our office runs the way it does because of the diligence of our clerks and of course my ability to work with Jackie would be hindered entirely if if our clerks were not there so very much appreciate all of the work of our clerks and the entire office that the clerks run it's a tremendous gift to this board thank you Miss Cohen I guess it's a testament that we're going down the line here to get to sing your Praises you know I think so much of what has been said is about

025your professionalism and how you professionally help us but you're also the first people when we lose parents who remember to send flowers who give us big hugs when we come back into the office you are the first ones when days and different things we do get completely derailed to give us that nod and that smile and remind us that you know we're going to work together to fix it and um for me with Stephanie who I get to chat with every single day um the most amazing human being in the world and the reason I look remotely organized which is a total illusion um the number of times that Stephanie and I say in a day um oh you know I'm not sure let's ask bever Laura and thank you for always being that person

026always being so responsive as it was said unfortunately kind of any time of night or day and thank you to your families who give up an awful lot of time and an awful lot of energy that you have to expend starting to hurt cats you you two both are are kind of like swans everything looks really good above the surface and underneath I know you're always always paddling away so thanks for just being who you are and making sure that we look like a somewhat functional human beings Miss mccarski okay thank you of course I cannot let the opportunity go by to not express my gratitude I feel like we have been through a lot better Laura in the last year um and although most people I don't think realize just how much you do

027and what your job involves um and I do though and for that I am extremely grateful to both of you you are professionals you are organized you are problem solvers you are managers of a group of interesting people with different needs and ideas and you do it with a smile and you really make our lives better and I know that you do that for our staff aides too because Shaheen who is my amazing aide tells me that so you are just as wonderful with them as you are with us so thank you miss Kiss Camaro yes thank you I miss Corby Sanders stole some of my words but I'm still going to use them no I um the words I came up with were calm cool and Collective kind and gently instructive I am so

028grateful that I have personally been able to depend on both of you and when we are trying to figure things out myself and my a Nelda Brown you guys just seem to know everything and that is so comforting so I want to thank you I also want to thank Nelda um I wouldn't make it without you guys so thank you for being there and for putting up with all of us is a mesh thank you um Beverly Medea and Laura Cornell I I was just telling Miss toland I am kind of at such a loss for words um because I I can say I I really do love you dearly and I hope that this is more than platitudes really that are at the diocese but an opportunity for us to remember and um recognize

029our own appreciation so that perhaps we can show it in action as well uh but you know to the public I it's one thing to tell them how much we appreciate them and they know from the various relationships we have with them what that means but I do want the public to realize that these are women who have inspired me and how loyal they are to our system they're women who have sacrificed a lot of their family time their personal time their well-being I mean there are days where when I've seen you know uh Bev and Laura I mean they'll sit they'll be sick they'll be trembling in the cold they'll be whatever it is they'll carry things into their cars and sometimes I mean none of us even notice that and they're out there

030carrying boxes and putting things back and here and there uh and it'll be late I mean some of our meetings last long and they wake up early in the morning and sometimes they're expected to show up the next morning and there's not a single time I would call any either one of them and they wouldn't pick up or answer immediately or call me back and uh just just the amount of sacrifice really to me makes it very clear that you you two are women of God and I know you are Women of Faith and I know that drives you through uh and I know how important that's been and putting up with a lot that you don't deserve um but I uh I I think that's that's a testament to really um the kinds of

031people you are and how lucky we are I have no idea how we're supposed to find people after you decide to leave uh whenever that day comes but uh we're truly very lucky to have you and uh the other thing I want to mention is to the public as well the length these women will go to ensure that everybody is included and that members of the public whether they be speakers when they make comments or folks who are trying to reach out are respected or heard uh there's even a time when somebody who didn't know how to use a computer and was really flustered came and they walked her through step by step to make sure that she could have her opportunity to speak I mean these again these are truly women that have exemplified

032tremendous character Beyond just fulfilling their role and exceeding it even but I I could I could talk all day but but I'll leave it there and just saying um I sincerely appreciate you guys you guys have been my friends in in some of the toughest times uh when I felt isolated and alone even in this space so thank you both so much words will never uh suffice Miss McLaughlin well as we all know once one board member starts talking then everybody's gonna make sure that you know and and hear how much we love and appreciate you so I will just certainly Echo all of the incredible praise that my colleagues have shared with both of you as one of the longer serving board members I uh truly cannot express how incredible you have both made

033me feel as a board member feeling supported and cared for and the fact that this is an incredibly difficult job and is noted the the professionalism that you bring and the fact that you have shown each and every one of us such incredible respect it's a model for us all to follow so thank you for being so not just patient but really tenacious and staying the course in a job that can be so difficult you are truly loved Miss Marion yes I want to say thank you to our school board clerks and our School Board office staff to the public you might not have noticed but it's a little tough to work in public education these days and particularly in school board offices so it's really amazing that we have staff that continue to do

034such a high caliber of work so thank you for keeping us going and we honor you tonight thank you and miss talking I mean I don't know what else there is to say there really are no words um you both have been my day one quite literally before my first day you taught me how to be really really patient within this role and you've also been patient with me when I barely understood how to navigate Outlook and I just have to say I really really appreciate you guys and I don't know what I'd be doing Without You thank you all and thank you all I will now call for the vote all those in favor and that is unanimous thank you ladies [Applause] I will now hand the gavel back to Mr chair Sizemore Heiser

035thank you and thank you once again to our Clerks I really appreciate it so what I would like to do is invite all of our guests um here starting with those here in support of National School counseling week to please join the board at the diaspora photo and students and staff please stick around you guys will be next so please come join us for a photo yes I don't know yeah if you are here this evening in support of School counseling week please join the board at the dies for a photo sorry my apologies if you're here this evening in support of CTE please join the board at the diocese we do have one more resolution but I wanted to make sure our students and staff were able to get home in time so since

036I bought my mistake a seat I will call on Dr Reed for the resolution thank you madam chair whereas the education of Virginia's school-aged children is the foundation upon which the economic social and intellectual capital of our state is built and whereas locally elected and appointed School boards play an important and vital role in a constitutional republic and decisions made by local Boards of Education directly influence instruction in Virginia's public schools excuse me and whereas these decisions affect the present and future lives of children and also set direction to prepare all students to be competitive in a local State national and here in Fairfax County Global 22nd century knowledge economy and whereas local school board members work with parents businesses education professionals and other community members to create the educational Vision we want for our

037students and whereas this year's theme rising to the challenge reflects the leadership of local school board members as they serve their local divisions and advocate for public education with local state and federal leaders on behalf of all students and whereas School Board appreciation month provides an opportunity to celebrate Virginia's school board members who Champion the mission of public education now therefore be it resolve that the Fairfax County Public School Community recognizes the contributions of the Fairfax County school board for the academic success of its students and expresses its sincerest recognition for their focus on the well-being and achievement of students and be it further resolved that Fairfax County Public Schools declares February 2023 as school board appreciation month and encourages staff students parents and community members to appropriately recognize these dedicated school board members so

038I'll just speak on behalf of our leadership team and our clerks and our staff that we recognize that there is no more important work in this country than the work of public education that all other professions go through public education K-12 and the opportunity for us to focus on Excellence equity and opportunity for each and every one of our students and shaping our future is a deep responsibility for all school board members our staff would like to thank you for your efforts the countless hours attention to detail dedication and passion for this most important work so thank you foreign thank you Dr Reed would you like a photo I'm sorry would you like a photo yes we would love a photo staff let's do a photo we would love a photo sure all right oh

039okay the next order of business is community participation speakers must limit their remarks to no more than two minutes in length at the conclusion of two minutes the microphone or video will be turned off school board members will be listening but not responding to individual speakers the school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings such as the capital Improvement program budget and boundaries comments targeting criticizing or attacking individual students are not permitted during public meetings complaints regarding school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate School principal or school officials speaker should refrain from using personally identifiable information in connection with an individual student or school-based employee additionally speakers should be respectful and observe proper decorum in their statements avoiding profanity inappropriate gestures shouting and comments that run counter

040to the spirit and letter of the school division's non-discrimination policy the school board welcomes community members to provide comments at its regular business meetings and public hearings on school deliberations school related issues or particular topics all statements should be directed to the school board and speakers should remain at the podium until concluding their remarks as a reminder speaker substitutions are not permitted a speaker may not yield their time to another individual before or during their remarks shouting and Outburst from the audience will not be tolerated we are grateful for those who have come to speak to us today and we thank you for your cooperation Madam clerk please call the first Speaker our first speaker is student number one hi good evening school board members did my parents ask me to give my opinion yes

041do I like all these extra random days off of course I do show me a kid who wouldn't like School free days but I also want to do well at school it's hard to concentrate on my work with so many incomplete weeks it has these extra holidays are not doing any good for my routine projects and test results never turn out great when you work on them over a long period of time with lots of breaks I will start forgetting about what I've already learned before before my test because of the random days off and I do not want that I'd rather study and work hard and be done on my school year earlier than normal also even if there is no school afternoon sports are still happening at school so I can't really do

042anything else with my friends or family on those days I would also want a longer summer if school starts earlier my summer break is even shorter because next year I'll be in high school and I start schools sports three weeks before actual school starts and is already at the end of July and that leaves me with barely a month of summer break it's fun and I want to do sports but it cuts time that could be spent with family friends or for travel many of my friends think the same way please listen to our views thank you thank you our next speaker is student number two student number two student number three our next speaker is Michael Luli foreign good evening thank you for having us and all you do for the Performing Arts we're

043very appreciative of that none of us got in this business to get rich so talking about money is kind of difficult but when Loudoun County is starting to poach our talent and our other teachers it's time to kind of talk about that to see what we can do to support the people we have here and keep them here during the pandemic people used to talk about how teachers deserve a million dollars now that's not the case now they have a lot of other opinions about what we're not doing incapable of um I took some time to do my hours for marching band and concert band after school of 3 15. my marching band hours are 127 Hours my concert band hours are 363. that's nearly 500 hours of after school time that I give to

044my students I had posters but I was looking dangerous so I wasn't allowed to bring them in if you take the high school choir stipend of 200 and 400 minus the high school band stipend of forty six hundred dollars it's about twenty two hundred dollars making the high school stipend twenty two hundred dollars and the concert band twenty four hundred dollars if you do the math for the hours I've put in each you'll have some digital forms for that as well it's about 17 an hour for marching band six dollars an hour and 60 cents for concert band at a marching band game that would be 17 70 an hour versus what the Athletics office is allocating ninety dollars an hour of extra overtime our reciprocal resource officers which is needed but a stark contrast

045concert band wise we had all district band auditions a couple weeks ago I was there for 10 hours doing auditions that would be basically six dollars and six cents or 60 cents an hour for that to be about sixty six dollars if I was a school resource officer working on that I would get nine hundred dollars the proposed budget that the Fine Arts office is presenting is about twelve hundred dollars for that five hundred dollars or five hundred dollars would be about 24 hours thanks thank you our next speaker is Sandra Martin good evening thank you my name is Sandra Martin I'm a parent and for 14 years I've driven a bus for Fairfax County Public Schools you're hearing some Transportation employees saying that we were not represented and were kept in the dark about

046the collective bargaining committee's workings over the last year as a long-serving bdac team representative and officer I can tell you that this Summer that this is untrue and is being used to by a few to split transportation's voice from the proposed Operational Support Unit we were given updates at bdac for reps to disseminate regular postings were made on the Fairfax County Public School website of the collective bargaining meeting minutes and FAQs our elected OTS representative on the support services advisory Council sscic updated bdac regularly and sent multiple advisory notes to All Transportation employees which included the links to the public and employee only collective bargaining FAQ the summary page and the employee only meeting notes all are posted on the employee employee hub and English as a second language co-worker said Miss Sandra this is

047not good for us little fish get eaten how profound creating a mini unit for just Transportation will leave us with an insignificant voice when negotiating with leadership and this moves us into the draft calendars again included one month of lost wages for support professionals 25-26 draft has up to 34 unpaid days thousands of hourly transportation and Food Service professionals have their paychecks reduced every time a school day is changed to a non-paid holiday or teacher work day we're the ones that can least afford a loss of income we ask you to make any additional non-school days a Payday or follow out in other systems where the non-school days are paid all of them finally last year we were told by leadership would present a scale compression study on all pay scales before the budget was

048presented to you if the study was done it would show bus drivers medium is a step four well thank you our next speaker is Alico pedestar good evening we shared our concerns with you and superintendent since Feb November we looked at the poor documents and are even more worried as you will lock Us in for three next years your proposal have over 40 percent of incomplete weeks if we add the weeks with old days it would be 50 half of the school time the purple calendar includes 40 school days off in 2025. this is two months of no school on top of summer vacation the proposals try to accommodate many interest groups except gets in their future it feels like you're trying to fit 30 hours into day of 24. it's impossible to give everybody

049everything git should be our first priority half of your kids have graduated uh Fairfax County Public Schools they got a high high qualitative equation you wrote in your profile write-ups that you your priorities education ensuring the success and kids offering them opportunities and yet your calendar proposal does exactly the opposite you are taking these opportunities away we understand it's important to respect diversity but it can be achieved better than giving kids random days off our proposal is inclusive and non-destructive following federal holidays replace religious holidays with four or five days after that can be taken at the discretion of the families and used as they need it why don't you show that you can think outside of the box being Innovative respective and unaccountable it's your hands to prove that you have heart and care

050about kids thank you our next speaker is Austin Isaac good evening my name is Austin Isaac I teach High School orchestra at Lake Braddock and I will Echo some similar sentiments that my colleague Mike Lilly just shared with you I also share some new information Performing Arts teachers are passionate about teaching our content our love of the Arts and we work hard to share these things with our students in order to cultivate these ideals and inherent part of our job is to help students perform for an audience which is typically outside of classroom hours students experience a multitude of performance opportunities that directly linked a portrait of a graduate skills these skills are primarily attained in the Arts through practice and doing the after contract hours commitments quickly add up but the compensation in this

051school district does not and yet this is an expected part of our job whenever there's an opening for a secondary Orchestra position the Fine Arts office sends an email to all FCPS Orchestra teachers with a job advertisement here is part of the description that is used in each of these emails and I quote the orchestra director leads the orchestra's participation in school activities such as concerts festivals and competitions as well as school events such as graduation and the music department spring trip end quote I gave my high school orchestra colleagues a very brief survey about their after contract hour workload and here are their answers question number one how many non-contract hours during the school year do you spend rehearsing for and carrying out concerts trips graduation and any other performances the average answer was

05290 95 hours the second question how many non-contract hours during the school year do you spend working on recruitment in your pyramid the average answer was 19 hours the third question how many non-contract hours during the school year do you spend working with your booster organization and the answer was an average of 23 hours is long past due that extracurricular stipends more accurately reflect the non-contract hours that Performing Arts teachers put in so their students have an optimal experience the Performing Arts stipend proposal was given and forth by the Fine Arts office it is a total of just over three million dollars with FICA and with a three billion dollar budget it would be great to incorporate it thank you thank you our next speaker is Ryan Walker good evening my name is Ryan Walker

053I'm a parent of two children in the Lake Braddock pyramid I'm here this evening to ring an alarm Bell on the growing Safety and Security concern not just at Lake Braddock but across the entire District there's been a student stabbing at Mount Vernon High School frequent fights in schools reported drug use in bathrooms and an overall disregard for rules and regulations there's an epidemic and you have an opportunity to take proactive steps to protect our children because if the four fentanyl deaths in FCPS in the past two weeks isn't enough of a wake-up call I don't know what is this isn't just one man's opinion last week during a community Forum I noticed in the provided survey results that nearly 40 percent of middle school students do not feel physically safe in school this is

054unacceptable the same attention that is given to accommodating students who identify differently changing names on schools and reducing FCPS carbon footprint should be given to to allow students to feel physically safe in their learning environment with a budget over three and a half billion dollars 200 million dollars in federal emergency covet funding simple steps can be taken to ensure the physical Safety and Security of our children additional sros in every school frequent unannounced screens from police K-9 units to search for drugs ban the carrying of backpacks around schools without proper screening methods school systems are blind to what's being brought into schools on a daily basis install metal detectors enforce rules and provide punishments that mean something stop worrying about litigation and bad press just do the right things for the right reason don't delay

055any further don't study this issue ad nauseam or conduct a series of dilatory discussions about funding you were elected to take action to represent your constituencies to find the money to keep our children safe please do so thank you our next speaker is Shelly arnoldi [Applause] good evening my name is Shelly arnoldi I'm the chapter chair for moms for liberty for Fairfax County moms for Liberty is dedicated to the survival of America by unifying educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government prior to moving here in 2010 I spent half of my 20-year career living overseas my ex-husband and the father of my two daughters is an immigrant and a non-native English speaker my daughter's best friend from kindergarten to seventh grade had two mothers who are very good

056friends and my daughters have two friends who are transgender in their front Circle so I am not sheltered or insensitive to the ways other ways of living I've recently met the mother whose daughter was victimized by sex trafficking Predators aided by the failing system that places transgender ideology ahead of parental rights Sage's law also known as the child protection act aims to protect the rights of parents and the safety of children who are dealing with gender confusion this board has allowed policies to be adopted that violate this law and endanger our children and it needs to change as you continue to ignore the Virginia Department of Education 2022 model policies on the Privacy dignity and respect for all students and parents in Virginia Public Schools you confirm that you don't care about the parents or

057citizens that elected you for this reason I've dedicated my time and energy to find 12 new school board members candidates to replace you we see candidates who will pledge to advance policies that strengthen parental involvement and decision making to increase transparency defend against government overreach and secure parental rights at all levels of government the requirements are simple we're seeking candidates who will honor the fundamental rights of parents including but not limiting to the right to direct the education Medical Care and moral upbringing of their children use your last month in office to focus on academics and teaching the basics Reading Writing and math and stop pushing unwanted ideology on our children thank you our next speaker is Dennis Allerton hi um um my name is Dennis Allerton and I'm a bus driver with Fairfax County

058Public Schools I sent you guys all an email that kind of dispels some of the myths that all employees are best represented in a single big group and I hope you will read that thoroughly and uh understand it some of us have met with you recently some of you and I want to thank you for your attention and for your time in doing that those that have not met with us yet I do hope that you're still listening to us and you're still hearing us uh collective bargaining is not an issue that is contained in one District it is county-wide and it is and it affects all of uh Fairfax County Public Schools we are not in association we are not an acronym we are the bus drivers van drivers in attendance of scps and

059I hope that you're hearing us some groups feel that we're incapable of speaking up for ourselves and making our own decisions and I can assure you that that is not the case recently I received and completed a survey asking how we as bus drivers would like to be represented I implore you to listen to those voices there are people in places who go to Great Lengths to see that you do not hear our voices and that speaks volumes to me as it should to you we have no further agenda we are the bus drivers that are asking for representation if our wishes are not represented in this initial process this resolution that I fear the likelihood of receiving meaningful and effective representation in the future will also remain unattainable thank you our next speaker is

060Cassandra akui Cindy Walsh hello I'm speaking to the school board today to ask to support parents parents are the experts in their child parents who with great care chose their child's name parents have certain rights such as the right to be notified when outside speakers outside experts speak to their children which is HB 1803 and it uses the language that parents have the right to opt out the reality is parents should have the right to opt in parents have the right in the care and upbringing of their children this includes the right to review curriculum surveys or instructional material this is HB 1507 and sages law which is the right to notify parents about gender dysphoria a child is taught a hundred different acronyms to identify genders that if your mother does not recognize these

061terms she is transphobic in fact there are so many terms the people who are lgbtq don't know what they are you should educate them and do not use tick tock to do so parents do not use tick tock parents are not a hate group and parents rights are human rights thanks thank you our next speaker is Melissa wike 5 a.m I clocked in this morning 135 miles per day it's hard but I'll wake up at 3 45 tomorrow and do it all again partially because I love this job but also because I can't call out and leave my route with extreme special needs open we are tired all staff are tired but we're the ones with signs in the front lawn of every FCPS building pleading for people to apply to overcome the 160 driver

062deficit we start with each day 23.83 per hour reads the yellow sign 26 880 per year to work and live in Fairfax County I know that you know it's not sustainable we must do better the next step for recruitment is a strong union representing a strong Transportation unit 15 job types coming together to finally be heard instead of being lost in a sea of 430 other jobs somewhere around 2 000 employees no mini unit getting the recognition we deserve getting a strong contract to once again attract drivers from all around employees in a unit considered by them to be appropriate May initiate a request for bargaining Virginia code section 40.1-57.2 Point C I want you to know that's what the majority of employees have asked for our voices were already drowned out once in a

063large group making decisions on the behalf of others and these supposed Communications cannot be found please don't let that happen again in regards to tonight's calendar decision I stand behind any calendar I want equity for all I want instructional staff to have the planning time and work day as they need I want students to have productive five-day weeks but remember that each calendar adds unpaid days take the time to listen and look ahead to what the changes mean for the future of Transportation in your Workforce thank you our next speaker is Dave Hatcher [Applause] our next speaker is Amanda Campbell good evening I'm speaking tonight as president of Fairfax County SEPTA we've appreciated this board's collaboration in recognizing and moving to address the long-standing problem of disproportionate discipline in our schools our membership has consistently

064been opposed to measures that will increase the impact of disproportionate discipline on our students with disabilities and so tonight we ask for your collaboration again this time in opposing House Bill 1461 in Virginia's General Assembly this bill would mandate uniform responses for all students and staff and that would not address individual students needs nor best practice responses it is well established by multiple studies that students with disabilities students of color students living in poverty and males are all disproportionately subjected to school discipline in FCPS students with disabilities and black students are three to four times more likely to be disciplined than their peers HB 1461 will make this situation even worse the proposed edition of a work group will not solve the numerous inherent problems in this bill relatedly we have significant concerns regarding fcps's

065discipline practices in the wake of the prohibition of seclusion there have been multiple incidents of assaults of students with disabilities by staff since September which leads us to ask what supports are lacking in providing staff necessary de-escalation and prevention tools we appreciate that FCPS has been quick to take action to protect the students once these incidents come to light but that is not sufficient we have also received multiple concerns from staff at the level one required training on Ross Green's collaborative and proactive Solutions is inadequate due to a lack of accountability for being fully invested in the training additionally we are receiving concerning reports regarding an appropriate involvement of sros and school discipline at an alarmingly increased rate these are all concerns that have raised at the beginning of our efforts to prohibit seclusion in

0662020 and we are frustrated to see them playing out as feared our children do not have the luxury of time this crisis must be addressed now and we are here to continue to collaborate with you to ensure that the voices of students families and staff are are included in this work thank you thank you our next speaker is Max selig good evening members of the board Dr Reed leadership my name is Max salig I am a bus driver I've been such in this business for going on six years now I am a member of uh bdac bus drivers and attendance advisory Council as a team rep I'm also the Transportation representative for the support services employees advisory Council and as an arm of that I'm also the transportation rep for the support employees Association realize

067I'm going to ruffle some feathers here it's a messy business politics setting policy employee relations it's not easy and I'm on board with all you and everyone in here this is tough stuff I'm a supporter of the planned three unit collective bargaining plan it's a plan that will bring equity to an unbalanced system it's built around a coalition of all operations employees and I refuse to not stand with all operations employees and Personnel the cafeteria workers the janitors the electricians the plumbers etc etc etc there are these Notions out there that the three unit plan was concocted in secret but we all know there were updates online on FCPS sites all along this notion that there was not extensive study and extraordinary time commitment by many many people and the notion that we're actually against

068the teamsters we're not we just don't want the teamsters representing just Transportation it's all for one and one for all foreign thank you our next speaker is Aaron St Germain good evening I came here tonight with a speech prepared but um I decided last minute to read you something that was read at my local high school the high school I went to the high school my kids will go to something that was read by a 10th grade English teacher and it was read to the minor students so I just wanted everyone to listen and to really think about what what what it takes what's going on in someone's head when when they read this to Children it was a woman poems type poem is titled fingers in bed at night my fingers search a heat

069I have no name for sliding into a center finding a hidden core a Sten or stem or maybe the root I'm learning how to caress and breathe at the same time how to be silent and feel something grow inside me and when it all builds up I sink into my mattress I feel such a relief such a relief I feel such a shame settle like a blanket covering me head to toe as an adult woman I cannot imagine reading I mean actually I just did but in front of children I mean 15 year olds 10th graders a woman a grown woman got up there and made the decision to read this poem to children thank you we also have one video testimony this evening submitted by Robert Rigby good evening I speak for FCPS Pride

070tonight we are an organization whose membership is 80 feminist and 70 educators standing up for lgbtq people in our Fairfax schools we all must keep the people in our school safe respected welcomed and included then we must take intend action to hold Richmond accountable for trying to drive some people in the Commonwealth into hiding local school boards must Shore up decency against the flood of animosity from Richmond there is a broader tactics of trying to dismantle public schools by weaponizing anti-black anti-lgbtq ableists and liaison anti-hispanic and anti-immigrant sentiment I again made the alarm about the safety of lgbtqia students staff and families here in Virginia even in Fairfax the forced outing Bill 2432 has passed the Virginia House of delegates does passages effect is to push leader schools and families into rejecting lgbtq children a

071commitment from the school system and supervisors to keep us all safe welcome and respected in our schools at the county would be a good start efforts to persuade senators and the governor to hold the line against this attempt to drive trans children and their families and hiding would be a good follow-up thank you for listening thank you I will call on Dr Reed for his strategic Plan update thank you madam chair um and thanks uh Laura I think we've got the um I'm not sure if we have the right slide deck up but let's go ahead there we go yep we do thank you tonight I'm going to share a few brief updates on the Strategic plan uh particularly given the board just had a retreat on the Strategic plan this week on Tuesday we've

072successfully held nine forums thus far and there are three remaining so we're doing a total of 12. um Saturday excuse me Saturday from 9 to 10 30. we have a virtual and then again Wednesday and Thursday next week we have our last two in person and we're really excited about the number of voices and the Really incredible wide and diverse ideas that are shared we also want to encourage the community who are watching to visit our website for additional information and to register for one of our last three opportunities of our community forums we've had five focus groups held this week with students from grades three through twelve and kicking off our division Wide Elementary and secondary student focus groups have been really a key Cornerstone of our strategic plan staying resolutely student centered is

073a critical feature of this work we did hold the elementary and secondary student panels separately and we received some amazing feedback from participants and their parents about the students experiences during these focus groups the core planning team and the board will have a chance to review the feedback and we're really excited to incorporate that into the work I want to give a shout out to Leona Smith and Kevin Morris for their thoughtful leadership with the student Voice team their championing of this work is really critical and lastly just want to encourage everyone to stay connected the website we continue to have the latest breaking news as well as tuning in to board meetings or attending one of the last three Community forums finally I want to invite anyone watching to think about using our K-12

074let's talk tool and there's a link to this on our strategic planning website where you can continue to share your thoughts and feedback as we develop our strategic plan and that is our update this evening Madam chair thank you Miss kismar did you want to speak thank you very much Dr Reed I just want to say first of all I'm very very excited for the strategic planning work and the board retreat I thought was a really really wonderful Retreat to be able to dig into the data that the other teams and Community forums have been digging into and we talk as a board as a whole about where we see our vision going forward and our goals for the system so I just want to thank you I want to thank your staff who've been

075working really really hard in your in your core planning team here to put all these Community forums together to put all of the core planning teams the other teams together and to work with the board as well this is really really tough work and I just wanted to give kudos to the staff for the work they're doing as well thank you and I will call on you now for an update on academic matters well one of my favorite parts of our board meeting and it's really an exciting opportunity this evening to share some great news Dr Sloan Presidio and his team spearheaded the writing of a grant and we did receive a U.S Department of Education Grant which is a five-year grant for 13.5 million dollars which in this case will be supporting school-based Mental

076Health Services projects we all know that even prior I love that right I mean if there's something we can all come around it's the mental health of our students staff and community so just really exciting I think that even before the pandemic we were seeing epic rates of mental health concerns among our students staff and families so the goal of the grant is really to increase the number of credentialed school Mental Health Service Providers and we also want to talk about making sure we increase the skills of our current staff across the board as well we want to also really push for training and professional development around mental health first aid for our students because we know that if our students and our staff across the board have skills this is really going to increase

077the culture and climate health of our schools and we know that students learn best when they feel safe intellectually physically and emotionally so Laura next slide currently there is a national shortage of school psychologists and school counselors and quite frankly there's a shortage of a lot of staff and these are key staff and when we're short of our school-based mental health support staff that just creates more anxiety and honestly more of a concern so the funds are going to be utilized for recruiting and hiring as well as retaining our staff and we definitely have multiple vacancies that we could fill we also as I mentioned earlier are really thinking about providing targeted And Timely Health mental health consultation to both students and staff reduce caseloads and really provide a more present approach to student needs

078so we're excited about these possibilities as well as across-the-board training for staff and our students next slide great thanks Laura this grant project is going to in 2023 provide some funding for recruitment support and retention of professional staff as well as the expansion of professional development and Leadership growth because in Fairfax County we absolutely want to recruit and retain the best mental health professionals to support again our students and staff so in looking at the Timeline just want to remind our board that the grant was awarded in January of 2023 and the grant was 2.35 million for year one which is this year and then again in March of 23 and June of 23 we're going to be moving forward with new plans and we will have a similar process although we're pressing a little

079on some optional ideas in terms of not just we I think there's a strong belief that we're not going to find the a number of mental health professionals that we actually really might want to hire so one of the goals that we really are going to advocate for is the ability to use funds to support training for all of our staff that are working with students as well as I mentioned earlier the student to student Mental Health Training supports and that is academic matters for this evening be happy to take any questions thank you Dr Reed I see Dr Anderson in the mesquis Camara thank you first of all um kudos to Dr Presidio this is really fantastic news so great job and thank you for bringing all these great dollars to US um one

080of the things that I wanted to ask about as you talked about mental health first aid for individuals who work with our students can you speak to how that would impact our security officers at our schools and if there's space for us to consider providing the same training to the sros that are currently in our schools because I know that's a point where we can do better to provide a better experience for more of our kids I think what's really important is we think about each and every staff member that works within our ecosystem that is Fairfax County whether we um our school resource resource officers certainly would benefit from this training as would all staff that have an opportunity to work with our students in fact the data right now is that one in

081four persons are experiencing a mental health concern or situation so we know how important it is for our school resource officers to have that training as well as those staff who see our students first and last are bus drivers our counselors our social workers anyone who's working in a school or around students or around our staff so I definitely think that our school resource officers would be included in this professional development okay that's terrific the other thing that you talked about is using these funds to help be more competitive and attracting and recruiting mental health professionals how would I how is that going to better our efforts because we already know that there's a shortage of these individuals how will These funds help to create a greater attraction of folks here to FCPS outside of

082the professional development how do we even get them here so I think one of the things the funds provide is a coherent recruitment strategy it'll enable us to recruit across broader audiences I also think that as in any field working conditions are really a key to recruiting and retention and if we can have more mental health professionals then our caseloads are lower and I think there's a greater satisfaction among employees that are working in that field that they're able to make a difference when the caseloads are more reasonable right I understand that but I think my question was what is it that we are going to be doing with these funds that we could not have done without them we'll be able to hire more staff and we're going to be able to lower case

083loads we're going to be able to recruit in wider areas okay that's not quite my question I guess what I wanted to get to is since there's a shortage which you talked about why would we get now a greater share of that shortage how are these funds going to help us to do that well I've I can re-state what I just stated but we will continue to be able to provide we'll be able to hire more positions which will enable us to have a lower caseload which we believe one of the things applicants look at is what is the caseload going to be when we take a position so if we can have working conditions that enable a higher likelihood of success we believe that will be something that attracts candidates we also want to

084make sure we're able to recruit on a wider net and this will provide monies for us to do that recruiting but it's both recruiting and retention and retention is connected to how do I feel about the work I'm able to do so we believe that we're going to be able to create those working conditions with increased professional development lower case loads that more of those folks that we are able to recruit will stay okay and that I can definitely understand um and my last question is this grant is for three years I believe so yes what I thought okay what is our long-term kind of thinking if we recruit all these wonderful individuals to FCPS how would we retain them once the grant expires that's going to be a great question and we'll be continuing

085to work on that I think that's the case honestly with a lot of Grants we end up looking at um the sustainability I think we just had that discussion with our Title One Grant recently in terms of putting adding more schools on but if we had more schools and then they come off the title one list how often do we start things and then have to stop them so at this point I think that's going to be part of our Odyssey in this planning thank you yep great thank you Miss Keys Kamara thank you um exciting news thank you Dr Presidio um you know this is this is really critical uh in in my work I am seeing more and more young people um lacking the coping skills and um really understanding how they can

086maneuver from day to day um that is and certainly is reflected in the shortage of counselors um and I just feel I I'm sort of feel in the post-pandemic world um the lack of connectivity um is requiring a greater work I do applaud our staff members who have been assisting students with the SEL work but I'm wondering going forward because this is so critical if this would also include um a few things one I like Dr Anderson have some concern because every time I need to find therapy for a young person I'm working with there's waiting lists it's very very difficult to find these people so I'm wondering if we could perhaps think about another tactic um perhaps actually helping to get information to families to support students so that um you know they're that

087is enhanced the support from home is enhanced and perhaps dealing with some of those areas I'm also concerned about our employees because they've been on the front line and I think that it impacts their mental health their emotional well-being as well and so I'd like for us to give some thought to how we might support our employees better and recognize what those needs are and perhaps and find ways to support them encourage them and I think that helps with our strategy of keeping our employees as well and then lastly I I didn't know whether Dr Wilson had any and I'm so sorry I didn't get to give you a heads up um but I'll talk a little bit so you can think uh um maybe she can give us some ideas because I I I

088have found that there's a real shortage and what's the difference in what we're going to do to try to fill these positions so um I'm not sure Dr Wilson do you feel like you have a some thoughts about that um yes um recruitment actually can be a very costly Venture in terms of um you know going to specific locations I think it's all about where we Target and so this will give us an opportunity to look more broadly and as Dr Reed stated to cast a wider net and to actually have the the face-to-face time that we need to have with candidates and build those relationships and perhaps even invite those individuals to Fairfax County Public Schools and spend time and in our classrooms and see exactly what's happening and and let them see that

089it is truly it would truly be a benefit to them to be a part of our district it if I could just add a couple things to that as well just very briefly I think Dr Reed did a really good job talking about how some of these funds can be used to build the the working conditions really that are going to attract folks and Dr Wilson's team is doing an amazing job on expanding recruitment but we're talking about other opportunities here as well so internship opportunities for individuals before they enter some of these professions where they can come and work with us in a really supportive environment and understand that if they come to work for Fairfax they're going to be part of a learning organization and a learning community that's going to continue to

090be invested in their professional growth and their development where they're going to have a support system those are really big recruitment tools and so we've got some ideas in that area and just two other things real quickly I would say this is actually a five-year Grant so we do have a little bit more time to expend These funds which is really good and this was really a team effort to do this work so it was folks from the Department of special services from Financial Services human resources that really came together to write this Grant and Mike axler who's our director of intervention and Prevention Services I really want to thank him for taking the lead on this project he's actually online with us tonight so if there were any super detailed questions he's available to

091answer them but I think Dr Reed's done a really good job kind of laying out the vision for what we want to do and as you mentioned we are targeting Support Services to families and to teachers particularly around working with you know students that have mental health issues and need those additional support so this is a pretty expansive project for us Madam chair would you prefer I have one more question would you prefer I do go ahead and ask you a question okay um as we approach this and try to make sure we're doing predict preventative work we all know we're in the middle of a opioid crisis and we are you know having difficulty where families aren't expecting things to happen um is that a component of the work that we would use this

092grant for in terms of providing supports maybe preventative supports I think it's certainly a possibility because it's certainly connected to mental health often drug use is a self-medication due to mental health issues so it's certainly a possibility and working to continue to frame out all the possible opportunities but point taken thank you I look forward to uh hearing what your thoughts your base thoughts later thank you thank you Miss Tolan congratulations this is so so exciting I can't believe it um you know with the hours that you know Mike axler and Dr Presidio and I have spent in Miss McLaughlin you know with the successful child and youth policy team and a number of people here at the board over the last years we know how acute this problem is and how hard it is

093to hire people whether you're trying to hire for saps or any organization in the county um a number of my questions have been answered I'm super excited that this we have a five-year Runway to work on this the only question I was wondering about is I know often when we apply for Grants of this size we partner with other organizations and I was just wondering if we were partnered with anyone else for this a grant opportunity or whether it's all for FCPS um this is really I mean money targeted for FCPS but again as we think about building some strategic Partnerships to expand opportunities and services there might be some opportunities to you know enter into some agreements um you know with private providers if that was something that was going to enhance our capacity

094to provide services and support so you know we're still looking at some of those opportunities for the future but right now these are funds targeted uh just for FCPS awesome thank you again congratulations thank you Miss Cohen Miss Corbett Sanders thank you madam chair and thank you Dr Presidio Dr Reed this is a really important area and uh your number of 25 that's 25 of our potentially of our students but it's also 25 of the adults in this community we are having a national pandemic on mental well-being so and mental well-being does contribute to how people are able to come and fully participate in school how they can show up for work and how they can be contributors in our communities so this is really really important I do have a couple of questions in

0952009 I believe is when we had the support cap implemented in the state of Virginia is that correct in 2009 he was a phone a friend um does someone know so I moved to Virginia in 2012 so no I have a friend two two chairs over who I think can confirm that when the economic uh downturn in 2008 to 2010 that's when the legislature came back and said we need to cut uh expenses and it's like 2009 2010 is when the support cap was implemented across the state of Virginia and for many people when you hear the term support cap you think that it is um some you know not enough EAS or uh clerks and things like that but actually the support cap applies to how many social workers how many psychologists and many

096of these positions that uh you will be restoring through this initiative and it's long overdue but it's also one where this may be a transition program to actually get us ramped back up and not only ramped up to where we were but to allow us to build a forward-looking program um so I hope that we will look at a couple of different areas one is certainly encouraging um as part of the discussion with our legislature that continued discussion because this board has said it is an important uh uh initiative which is to get rid of that support cap so that we can have these jobs full-time forward looking the second is is to perhaps look at the ability of pushing in some of these lessons and these skills into our classrooms because these are essential

097life skills for all of our kids um and third is to look at multimodal delivery of these services thank you thank you thank you Ms Corp thank you Miss Corbett Sanders and thank you Dr Reed for that I just want to say I'm very excited to see the good work we see the student youth survey results and anxiety in particular is very high amongst our youth so having lower case loads and our counselors and psychologists more able to really focus on our students is very important so thank you Dr Presidio and your team for all this hard work this is going to be very exciting thank you Dr Reed and with that I will call thank you I will call on student representative medals I'll call him Miss togby thank you so much Madam chair

098good evening and happy Thursday everyone special shout out today we have James from Troop 976 who is here with us this evening fulfilling his citizenship and Community requirement one last note about our ctsos I had to say most of them arguing up for competition season so I just wanted to say best of luck to all of them and I'm super excited um and of course strategic planning the community forums have been hosts are going to be hosted in every pyramid and it's been super exciting to hear the feedback from my peers and to also see what's been going on online um there are a couple of virtual sessions happening and in person too it's been great to get students involved to attend these meetings we're shaping the future of our County and of course it's

099really important to have those who are directly affected by the decisions that we make at the decision table or decision making table um on Tuesday I was able to join the Board of Supervisors and congratulating all of our students and Educators who were involved in the historical markers project which was so exciting and words literally cannot describe how proud I am together they were able to lift and tell all the untold stories some also unknown of our community from a total of 53 submissions from groups whether they be students classes Boy Scout Troops and more the six finalists actually came or the six finalists stories were of Colin Powell the West Springfield 16. William Blackwell Annie Hartwell Annie Harper gunnels chapel and Luis Archer these submissions came from a range of students from West Springfield

100Woodson Louise Archer and it was just really great to be there I have to say these kids giving me so much hope for the future because they're our next leaders and I the best part of the ceremony for sure was when the board moved to approve the resolution and all the kids said I um and then of course it is counselor appreciation week I have to say our counselors really don't get enough credit especially at the high school most advised upwards of over 300 kids and I have to admit on occasion I'm leaning on my counselor and she's the glue that keeps me together I have had the pleasure of watching videos on social media from certain High School accounts like Lake Braddock and South counties who have been highlighting their counselors and just really

101celebrating them which has just really been a joy for me and then lastly I am super excited to say that we have been gearing up to roll out applications for the next student representative to the school board which is kind of crazy to say yeah um just last year I was in the same position so it's definitely going to be interesting to see how it all rolls out and it's going to be great to see how it works with this team so let's have a great end to the week thank you Miss hogman it's hard to believe that's already happening it feels like you just started with us so thank you for everything you've done to you've been wonderful to work with agenda item 3.05 I will call on Dr Reed for superintendent matters thank

102you madam chair it's been a fabulous couple weeks the only really I don't know a difficult morning was Groundhog Day morning I is one of my favorite holidays and for those around the country that know that I got a lot of um sort of conciliatory texts when the groundhog did see his shadow uh puxtah honey Phil actually saw his shadow so while we have not seen snow this winter there are six more weeks of Winter the way in Oak woodchucks were able to soften the blow so I was really appreciative of the opportunity to visit on Groundhog Day with Woody the woodchuck at Wayne Oak Elementary School and want to thank principal Felicia Usher for hosting me and I had a chance to get in the classrooms and see our woodchucks working hard that morning

103also had a chance to attend several basketball games I went to the boys basketball game at South Lakes High School where they played Oakton High School lots of excitement there and I really loved the halftime dance team performance I think Miss Marin was there as well and it was an opportunity for our High School dance team students to really teach our very young Community students our elementary students dance routines and principal oh dear I'm not going to remember Kim retzer Reisner thank you her little girl actually was on the dance team as well so it's just a fun evening also had a chance to watch the girls game at Herndon High School between the Hornets and the Statesman of Marshall fabulous game and their step team at halftime was amazing as well um had a

104chance to join several board members in visiting schools thank you to our chair um Miss seizemore Heiser for inviting me to the Davis Center and the Marshall academies and it was just fabulous to have a tour of the Davis Center and see how hard our young people are working on their transition work and also at the Marshall academies the cyber security the um just all the different pieces I know the I particularly enjoyed the culinary arts and the types of cooking that our students are doing far exceeds my talent as my family could attest I also had an opportunity with Dr Anderson to visit Holmes Middle School Poe Middle School and Mason Crest Elementary and did take a few moments to shoot hoops with our students at I believe it was Holmes Middle School so

105I'll have to go back there and redeem myself it wasn't my best outdoor shooting self we also had a chance to visit Hayfield Secondary School Linbrook Elementary in the leprechauns with Miss naranak Kovacs and our leprechauns were doing some fabulous ceramic art as well as mathematics so it's just you know anywhere in the division that we have a chance to go and be in classrooms there's magic happening all across this division with our students and staff I also want to mention that Miss Corbett Sanders and I were invited to to attend Walt Walt Whitman Middle School celebration of National History Day and we had a chance to hear from several students in their projects and oh my goodness I actually learned quite a little bit about a couple topics and just the depth that our

106students are going into to demonstrate research their ability to articulate their work again just is amazing I want to close by sharing that we do have a career day Dr Wilson and her team and on human resources is working unbelievably hard and we have over 400 applicants and just about every school in the division represented this Saturday with a priority of hiring for our Title One and hire free and reduced lunch schools we're just so excited about getting out and having the opportunity to hire early so Props to Dr Wilson and her team Marty Smith and Dr Ivey and our regional assistant superintendents were just pulling all of this together it's a team effort and we're just excited about the weekend so if you have a minute to stop by and maybe visit a candidate

107or two on Saturday we'll be out there recruiting for Fairfax so thank you madam chair thank you very very much for the request of a couple board members we will take a five minute recess before we move on to action thank you I can't believe foreign absolutely foreign board members please take your seats we're gonna move on to agenda item four action agenda m 4.01 confirmation Miss Corbett Sanders I call them as Corbett Sanders for the motion it's right here okay and Madam chair I apologize I moved to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who physically assaulted another student while at school and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent is there a second I second it all those in favor miss Colin Mr Frisch Jenna Koufax Ms Corbett Sanders Miss

108Tolan Miss Keith gamara all those opposed miss amesh all those abstaining Miss Marin Miss McLaughlin that motion passes and Dr Anderson's away from the table thank you I call him Miss Cohen for a motion I move that the teacher identified in closed session be dismissed from employment from Fairfax County Public Schools is there a second miss kiskamara all those in favor please raise your hands it's Keith gamara Miss Mary Miss actually that is unanimous so that motion passes thank you very much agenda item 4.02 policy 8610 school bus transportation and walking in bus routes I call them Miss Corbett Sanders for a motion I move that the school board approved policy 8610.9 superseding policy 8610.8 is there a second second Miss Cohen so to speak to your motion yes Madam chair uh there's really not

109a whole lot to speak to on this motion except to kind of go through the history this is really an updating of this of the policy to reflect the free bus pass program for all of our students in middle and high school and also reflect our commitment to provide alternative bus transportation options for those students who are the subjects of disciplinary actions we will have one minor Amendment tonight to clarify the possibility of instances where we may have to have overloads on a bus on a temporary basis thank you Ms Cohen don't you speak to your second uh no I think Miss Corbett Sanders covered it thank you are the board members wish to speak Dr Anderson would you like to speak are you ready for my Amendment okay I wasn't sure where we were

110here um I moved to amend the main motion by inserting overloads may be allowed in cases of emergency as stated in the Virginia code under Part D additional resources is there a second second Mr mesh Dr Anderson which is PT your Amendment yes briefly just to explain why this is here the state code does allow for school divisions to provide overloads during cases of emergency when there's a bus breakdown Etc I just wanted to offer some clarity to our public because the language strikes out the use of overloads entirely and I do not want it to be mistaken that they could never happen under any circumstances so I felt that it was more transparent for us to include this language rather than not thank you Miss amazing feature a second yeah I'll just add that

111my understanding is that there's not particular objection from the governance committee chair and that staff agree this particular language will just help be more explicit about what is already the commitment to ensure student safety in our buses thank you so you know the Boardman who wishes to speak I will call for the vote on the I'll call for vote the motion is on the screen all those in favor the amendment is on the screen that is unanimous I will now call for a vote on the main motion which is the one on the screen all those in favor please raise your hands and that is also unanimous so thank you agenda item 4.03 school year 24 calendar it's actually I will call on Ms Cohen for the motion all right everybody take a deep breath

112I move that the school board approved the blue option draft calendar updated on February 7th 2023 for Sy 2023-24 and blue option draft calendars updated on February 6 2023 for Sy 2024 25 and 2025-26. there's is there a second I'll second Miss picarski Miss Cohn does your speech your motion I would thanks so much um you know there's a few reasons and and it's funny I think how we all kind of come to this just for the the public to understand I know that many of us did our own surveys I know that as a system we did two surveys the folks on the um staff who worked diligently with school board members to try to get this we each had multiple two by twos and then I imagine an awful lot of one by

113one's probably more than any of us uh uh know and we appreciate all the work um that um Mr Smith and Lisa youngbud Hall and the whole team who worked on this really appreciate it um for me you know I originally walked into it in all honesty I said this in the work session that I thought that we should move to a shorter winter break that aligned with our neighboring counties um I will say the people of Springfield have spoken uh very differently to that uh staff families divorced parents who have come to talk to me about the importance of the two weeks any number of people people who have to travel by car long distances to see their family because they can't afford to fly and so this is one of those times that

114I'm taking off my hat of of staying with what I originally thought about and just listening to the people in my district who feel really strongly about this blue calendar it received the largest number of votes from folks in my district and received overwhelming support on our community survey that we did and the biggest thing that the feedback that we've continued to get is um about not having as many five or less than five day weeks as we have uh this year and that's been one of the overwhelming comments um the other has been a multi-year calendar um and I absolutely understand and agree with that as somebody with kids in the school how difficult it is to figure out child care how difficult it is to figure out summer camps and vacations and all

115of those things if you don't have calendars to plan by and I had a few parents who said honestly I don't even care what this looks like just get it done because you guys already screwed up Park takes and um and they're just frustrated they want us to be done with it and so I understand that feeling as well it is far from a perfect calendar we worked very hard to reach out to teachers and staff in our district I had input from 81 schools that we send kiddos to in the Springfield District and felt like I got um a lot of really good feedback I know we couldn't accomplish everything but I feel like the iteration that was posted on Monday of this calendar really speaks to some of the concerns that people shared

116and and tried to embrace a little bit of what people liked about the purple calendar while maintaining the 180 days and um you know for me this was a calendar that kept 27 weeks at five day weeks and again that was very important to our community it was a big piece of what acsd asked for as we went forward so I I feel committed to this calendar and am very grateful that we're going to move forward with three years so that people can have some sense of understanding uh when and where they're supposed to be so thank you Miss bakarski to speak to your second yeah thank you I will briefly as I think we are going to be speaking um a lot in the next few minutes um I I just want to say

117thank you to staff who've actually spent um a very long time on trying to provide us with um different options different ideas it was the most extensive calendar process that we have had to date I would argue probably a little bit too um time consuming but that is a conversation for another day I think the blue calendar as posted this week tried to keep intact the themes that we saw from our surveys and our feedback about what was important to Educators and to teachers to Educators and parents in the community it is a compromise I said this at the works session I think I said it at the second one and I'll say it again we are definitely not Penning World Peace there is no perfect calendar like Miss Cohen said I have heard over

118and over that parents just want to know they want to be able to schedule their lives they want to have predictability and I think that is what we can give them here tonight um I think the calendar in its latest form the blue one maximizes the number of uh uninterrupted weeks um I think as much I think it was 20 percent more than the last blue option which is while at the same time respecting our diverse community and the priorities that they have said matter to them and I hope um that my colleagues will be able to support this calendar for the next three years and I think that that's it thank you thank you Mr fresh beautiful let me ask ing me Mr Parliament would you would we do we go to the substitute

119motion if the light isn't on do I need to recognize a member first no no okay it's our it's let me let me figure it out should I follow the script Mr Morgan uh who was next to be recognized it's whoever asked me record call on Miss McLaughlin thank you everybody um the clerk of the board and I spoke during the break and I was supposed to be the next recognized person for the substitute motion so that we can present The Substitute motion speak to it vote on it and then everybody can speak to whether it's this main motion or it's the substitute motion so I was following the script I moved to substitute the main motion with a substitute motion such that the school board will approve the superintendent's blue option amended draft calendar

120that was updated and provided to the board and the public today February 9 2023 for school years 2020 324 school years 20 24 25 and 25 26. is there a second a second Miss McLaughlin will just beat your motion uh yes before I speak to the motion I would like to call on Dr Reed because as the board is aware um Dr Reed and her team worked on making some additional changes all day today and at 4 pm sent her recommended changes that we're referring to as the amended draft and so Dr if you could share why you're you created this amended version and recommended it to the board point of order can hold on hold on can we just have it put up on the the board so we can see it yes it's

121it's here in front of us we can have them on behind us as well the actual calendar I'm sorry the actual calendar yeah Madam click the post the substitute motion at calendars on the screen which which one well we can we do we can't do all three so so thank you Miss McLaughlin I just want to do a short recap last fall more than 78 000 parents caregivers employees students and community members provided input on the calendar development by participating in our survey staff have reviewed the data with the calendar committee that was comprised of staff students parents Guardians and community members in late January and the early part of this month we went back out to the community for feedback on four draft options and more than 37 000 participants participated staff then developed

122four three-year calendars that addressed concerns in the educational new needs of our students and I think it's been said already that no calendar will ever accommodate everyone but we believe we've come as close as possible with the calendars that we are presenting this evening the draft calendar for the next three years continues our commitment to centering the students educational experience recognizing the diversity of our students staff and community and continuing to support the growth in professional development of our teachers and staff school year calendars features the three years already spoken to 180 days of instruction to maximize permitted instructional time 15 days of professional development for teachers and staff to ensure the most highly qualified instructional staff are serving our students and to allow staff time to close out each quarter I will also say

123that we are committed staff is committed to providing staff and the board the clear identified purposes for our 15 days of professional development in terms of which days our staff directed teacher directed principal directed versus division directed and that should be out Dr King tells me by April 1 that will be available it also is a recognition of Key Community cultural observances or religious holidays a start date that allows for almost two full weeks of instruction prior to the Labor Day Holiday and again a reminder that school divisions that start before Labor Day are required to take both the Friday and Monday of the Labor Day holiday weekend as student holidays it does provide a two-week winter break which has been an overwhelming feedback that our community staff and students prefer and a spring break

124that is aligned with surrounding counties and school divisions as many of our employees live outside of Fairfax County we've also one of the adjustments that we made was making it clear that our quarter wherever possible ended prior to a break so um in the spring break quarter I believe we had ending prior to spring break so students staff and families can put their pencils down and actually have a break given our earlier conversation around mental health as well we did remove the green calendar from consideration because it was clear it would not receive approval but the new iterations We Believe create the best possible scenario for consistent and meaningful student instruction it increases the five-day instructional weeks from our current year and it does continue to provide building staff for the professional work days needed

125for appropriate grading training and professional development so we can continue the level of Excellence our schools are noted for thank you I I had thought Dr Reed you were going to walk through the why you decide to submit changes today I could walk through um well today we we have received more feedback this week uh both from the calendar survey that was remaining open um as well as from our labor groups and several board members and the adjustments we made were to move the professional work days in August to start at that full second week so that staff had a summer where they didn't have to come back if they're returning staff that prior week where it's our new teacher group so we were able to slide that across we also tried to we needed

126to rectify the January semester ending grading time which we moved the professional work day for January of 24 I believe it previously was connected to the holiday and of President's Day but we wanted to make sure we had a grading day at the end of the semester and then we linked the professional work days following spring break so that again once we returned we were back in school and I believe those are the key changes for 2324 in the out years we created similar a similar pattern really again to maximize flexibility during our summer and as well to create grading days and professional development days that we felt were reasonable I know there's a bit of concern about the number of professional work days at the end of the school year it's my hope that

127once we have our strategic plan in place that our school teams will be able to utilize one of those days as they plan forward for the coming year because one of the things we know is that summer is a great time for professional development and if schools are able to identify their plans of action in June they'll be able to select professional development opportunities that best match those plans during the course of the summer we also um I'll just leave that there at this point so I'm happy to answer any further questions thank you in personally speaking to my motion what I'd like to share with my colleagues is I know how much we're all committed to ensuring as many five day uninterrupted instructional weeks but what I've heard very clear from our employees and

128I'm still getting messages from employees is if you look at this substitute motion we do ensure that all of our teachers who now take graded work late graded work and they've got to get them into the books for QE2 not having any professional work day at all to do that is highly problematic and I know that was feedback that Dr Reed received from one of largest teacher associations my other concern and why I really hope the support will be here is that as Dr Reed noted our returning teachers we're going to have to return on August the 11th for a Friday now with this change they can come back on a Monday and we can shift the new teacher training from Monday on to a Tuesday through Friday what we're hearing from our teachers is

129the short and summer break is a concern in keeping with what we have in 2026 we really should be continuing to have the professional work days follow spring break to create less chop for our families who've said it's really hard to be in to be out it's better for consistent learning as Dr Reed noted so those were some of the key changes the only other change that I will propose regardless is addressing the super Tuesday which next year will be on May the 5th and prior County requests from the Board of Elections have been that we do not have school on that day because March sorry March 5th Tuesday super super Tuesday past boards have had to go and change the calendar after we approved it because of that I'm I will again speak to

130that but that would also address a professional workday I think is ill placed in June this to me is important if we let stay the main motion I very much worry about the impact on our new teachers our returning teachers and I worry especially about that qn QE2 in January not having a professional work day for our teachers colleagues I can't tell you how problematic that will be for our employees who we say that we care about and want to make sure that they have adequate time to get their work done so I do hope that given this is what Dr Reed and her team worked on all day that it was her recommendation that as she had said um and I quote this is an integration of ideas that continue to be generated as

131we work to develop the best possible calendar I believe there are some features of these attached drafts this was the ones that are in the substitute motion that make a great deal of educational sense I don't have a dog in the fight I just believe in Dr Reed I believe this is the right thing to do and given that changes were made Monday and Tuesday by the superintendent and now made today I think everything that's in front of us the main motion or this one has been done in just the last few days but if people are intent on voting tonight then I truly hope you will support the substitute motion thank you mrnado speak to your second yes just briefly uh I want to say that this calendar process has been both Broad and

132comprehensive you have staff and 12 individual board members trying to meet the needs of a hundred and eighty thousand constituents and we are doing our very best no calendar will be perfect that's been said several times tonight I do want to thank for being thank staff for being so responsive and respectful and I want to thank my colleagues for talking together even though we might not have always agreed I appreciate everyone's passion and hard work but we must come to a conclusion tonight for our families and it's the right thing to do I ask everybody remember that the hard work for the diversity and inclusion we all desired in the calendar is hard work that we've already accomplished last year and this has been much appreciated by our families and families also like their two-week

133winter break and this simply means that other compromises have to be made and that's earlier starts later going into June with with many other things many other variables beside so what I do is I support this revised blue calendar as the best possible solution to support our students our families and our teachers and my colleagues I appreciate all of you but we need to work together and if we're going to stay here and until we come to a conclusion let's do that but let's just do it with respect and um I thank you thank you Miss Marin yes I'm committed to passing something tonight um I have said before that for me the ends right don't justify the means is that the right way of thinking of it we had this process and um I'm

134confused at how it sounds like one or several board members could approach the superintendent and ask for a new proposal Dr Reed can you share how or this may be a question to the board chair but it's difficult for me to do this job when in the minutes leading up to a meeting I'm getting new information and I would argue it's also not transparent to the public so can you share with us what is your criteria for turning around to a board member their request for a document to come back to the board thank you Miss Marin I think um what I want to share this evening is that this is my first walk through in this calendar process here with our board it's a unique process and I think there is a lot of

135processing in the process right as I mentioned there are 78 000 pieces of feedback early on and 37 000 pieces of feedback really at the end of January in early February that's an incredible amount of feedback to sift through our staff over the last several days have been under again the direction of Marty Smith we have Julie Fowler Christine Wilson Brian booster Michael Draeger and the whole Chiefs team continue to look at that data and everyone is continuing to speak to board members as well as Association leadership there were some things about the blue calendar that became apparent to us and it wasn't one or two board members coming to the superintendent you it was a look at a number of board members Who provided feedback in the last couple days actually through the weekend

136even both to myself and to staff as well as labor as I said labor leaders and review of the feedback of the 37 000 one of the things we noticed was that we had left out that professional work day in January and as we looked at that it's the most probably important professional workday because that's where you have the most data in terms of semester grades which might take more work even than quarter grades so there were some pieces that we realized in that blue calendar that really did need our attention so we began to Tinker with it and honestly today just became an extraordinarily busy busy day it was my intent to try to get it out to board members by one o'clock and I simply wasn't able to do that with back-to-back meetings

137and I apologize for that so at this point I'm not sure what the process is in its purest sense if that makes sense but I'm committed to perhaps a more efficient process next time but at this point I I think we've kind of tried to feel our way through what we have felt is perhaps a bit of a thorny path in terms of trying to meet as many needs as possible while staying students centered in our approach to the next several years I hope that answers your it is helpful and I'm heartened to hear that it was a blend of things since our last work session and not just advocacy in this week because that's what I had heard the most of you know I think that you've striven you've strove to focus on the

138five days of instruction there were clear criteria and I want to assure the public that those haven't been thrown out the window along with all of their feedback I'm eager for Miss omation Miss Anderson's follow-on motion about setting or revising our calendar policy which has not been updated in eight years and that is incumbent on the board to do and our governance committee I do see this as an operational task so I would love to get the board out of the the lane here in this work I do know some of the things that this calendar seeks to amend I have raised myself about you know the days after the spring break it's it's too bad that the staff didn't catch that the first time around because it seems pretty obvious I know that's a

139challenging task but that is just one glaring thing so you know I I want to feel good about this vote I don't like voting under duress and that's how I feel so I'm going to have to just figure that out now I wish we could have a much better process among our board and then with the with the superintendent's support in the future thank you yeah Miss mayor and I I support a clear policy and process moving forward 100 percent thank you Miss Mary did you since you had also addressed the board show did you get additional answers for me or did Dr Reed answer this device all right thank you um Miss Tallinn yes um thank you very much for going through step by step sort of the thought process on each of these

140items um I just had one question I was wondering about your conversations with our um you mentioned you talked to labor regarding the amendments I'm a little curious about the the move of the professional workday from summer at the beginning of the school year like from August to June um you know it seems like kind of you know we're seeing me when they want a longer summer but it was so you know do we take the day at the beginning or do we take the day at the end I guess so I'm just curious you know if you talked to them if they had some reaction to those different days um you know what you heard yeah thank you Miss Tolan I think what the uh persistent uh request was that week where we have

141new teacher training coming back in August the strong preference was to not start professional work days for returning staff until that second or I guess it would be the third full week in August apparently that Friday and again I can't see the dates from here but the fourth new teacher day right now that's on the screen on that Friday often is a day that new teachers spend in their schools and it's oh thank you for um the uh four or the 11th of August which had on the prior calendar been a professional work day um they there was a real strong feeling that having new teachers in the building a lot of our returning teachers might be in the building but the opportunity to Mentor or support new teachers on that day would be positive

142um but then that they wouldn't return until that full week of the 14th and because the work days um we already have holidays at the end of June that it looked like that would be a preferable um setup at this point so for some reason it was saving that whole week in August seemed more important than the June week and you may not know the answer to this at this point but I know um with that professional work day being on Friday this particular year we gave teachers quite a bit of leeway on um you know what how they utilize that day we kind of said it was sort of their gift of time to work on some of those um certifications and requirements that they had um you know I'm sure some of that

143could happen at even in that June time frame as well would you think of that um I guess what is the June the 18th day as being very flexible for our staff as well and maybe that would be the um a day that a core team might work on the uh strategic plan for the school I would guess um number one that Dr King who oversees our professional development planning in her Department one of the things we talked about was that she by April 1 would have a determination on which of the 15 days are going to be identified as staff direct teacher directed versus principal directed versus division directed and I think that we would probably Grant more flexibility in the out days but again I don't want to get ahead of their work

144and one of the things the last professional development day has historically been a work from alternate location day so that's that's been a pattern over the last several years so to your point around the 18th of June likely that could be a staff work day that could be worked from an alternate location which could be modules professional development modules you know that are asynchronous or other types of professional work so I I will say I have heard from a number of my principals that they think it would be very beneficial to have time available to do their school Improvement planning sort of this strategic planning of the school in June versus waiting until much later in the summer particularly if they're looking at urine funds availability you know at the end of the year so

145they could think about how they might use them or other you know funds that they have available particularly there are Title One schools you know have some funding available and they need to plan how to spend it so um I don't know if you have any comments on that um I I guess that would be a pro for that June date I think that's a tremendous Pro for the June professional workday dates because data should be in and they'll be able to utilize their school planning process to then identify perhaps professional development during the summer that might be available and might also inform the professional development the division chooses to provide over the summer that staff might participate in I think if you wait till fall to do the plan you've missed a real opportunity

146to sign up attend or participate in professional development that might match the plan we're thinking about so I think personally the opportunity to plan button it up and then head out for the summer to refresh and renew and come back and we know we're ready to go in particular this year your commitment to have our strategic plan in place by May is going to really also be an asset because we're are going to be able to look at what are the goals and measurements what's the current data and actually be able to plan ahead of our summer this summer so I think there's a lot of potential in the utilization of those days it's just one of their comments along those lines I know you know with our Esser funding our schools have been reviewing

147every quarter you know how those funds are being used and then revising their school Improvement plan accordingly so again I can see some uses for that day at the end of the school year versus you know sending everybody off and then coming back and and looking at that agreed yeah miss Corbin Sanders thank you madam chair I really appreciate your questions Miss Tolan because many of them are the same that I had especially about the end of the year certifications and the school Improvement planning process and one of the benefits I see of having the team get together before they go off on July break is once they leave the building you still have your administrators in the building who will operationalize and make appropriate adjustments so I do think that's uh those are some

148pluses to this I will say I don't think that there's ever been a calendar process that has worked well for me I think that it's messy and I don't think that it this calendar or any calendar before us satisfies all of the needs of our community I will be offering a follow-on motion to whatever calendar gets adopted which is really going to address the needs of the people who live in my area and who have spoken very clearly about the challenges of multiple days off and the two-week winter break where we have people getting out on the 15th and our Working Families actually work that next week and so I will be making a follow-on on that I do have a question though about the professional work days I believe that it was you miss

149picarski and I last year who had a follow-on motion asking for more detail about our professional work days and actually having a real plan for them um we haven't gotten that detailed plan I'm glad to hear that Dr King will be providing one by April 1st that's great but along those lines I do think that there are a number of days here that we've heard from our teaching community that are absolutely essential for them to be able to ensure that they are able to do their jobs and support our students the best way possible those are the end of the quarter professional work days and is there a way or do I need to do a follow-on motion requesting a commitment by you and your staff that that professional work day at the end of

150the quarter is actually preserved for our teachers for planning and Grading time and not used by other professional work day opportunities because it is precisely that need that we heard from people so what I would say to that is that I think we should let that process run its course and that Dr King is planning to meet with our labor groups principals teachers and all impacted in that group I'm not sure entirely who's traditionally in the group but have them come up with a plan and I will my commitment would be to bring the plan back to you with that as a strong expectation but I don't want to get ahead of that group and make those decisions before they have a chance to meet and determine what they believe would be best Okay the

151reason I ask is because that was one of the primary drivers I understand to make these modifications is to ensure that we had that end of the quarter professional work day for our staff and so I would urge you and your team to honor that requirement by our staff yes ma'am and then so you're saying I don't need to do a follow-on motion I don't believe you do I believe I'll take care of that thank you very much and then finally the last question and it's a question that we hear from many of our families is the um the opaqueness of the O days could you speak to adding Clarity to what the O days are really meant to be what they aren't meant to be and new new learning opportunities thank you yes I

152would be um actually what I'm going to do on the o days is I'm going to ask Mr Smith to explain those because we actually created a new Legend on the calendars we created these the half o day box and then an O day box and um I believe Mr Smith has really clear um language about that this morning and there there is and uh good evening uh uh Madam chair on the board and thank you Dr Reed uh there's more information about o days it's regulation uh two two three four it uh outlines uh the school day for students and uh within that regulation we outline uh the work of O days I know that with our first iteration of O days there was no new uh work on those particular days we heard

153loudly and clearly from the board and the community and from our teachers and students the difficulty without having new information on those days so we have amended to allow for new information to be shared that day and for information to be shared within schoology for students we've also shared that there would be no test quizzes or assessments on those Full O days there would be no auditions that couldn't be or tryouts that uh couldn't be rescheduled on those o days but there is the ability for new information for our half o days and those are the ones that are the slash prior to the O that is where we have no evening events on those particular dates and so our schools will not have back to school nights or any after-school events we will allow

154for practices for sporting for our athletic groups but there would be no athletic events on those evening o days and so that's a very high level overview of what occurs on those o days and again there is a hyperlink on the calendar this year that will take members of the community to the O day regulation and the religious observance regulations so they can get more information and so Madam chair if I can just clarify real quickly and I will not need any more time the O day the communication about the O days nobody goes and reads regulations so if I could ask Dr Reed if we could have somewhere prominently attached to our calendar site clarification on what o days are and what they are not yes ma'am thank you thank you Dr Anderson thank

155you oh first of all thank you no matter what I say this evening I want to be sure that you all are walking away with my thanks for all of your hard work this was not easy um I was actually a little bit overwhelmed with the 12 calendars at the beginning um and I know it's been a lot of man hours and I particularly want to give a major shout out to Mr Smith I've given him the business quite a bit but I do want to at least recognize the hard work even though we have some profound disagreements on the calendar but thank you to you and all of the staff one of the things that I've heard quite a bit even in the conversation right now is how your focus was to center student

156experiences and to recognize the diversity of the community this is not the first time that I've raised it I've raised it before I would love to hear why Ash Wednesday is not even identified here in any way because it is a holiday that is observed by a good number of of our community I was not making a request for it to be a holiday but just so people know it is there it is happening um I would love to hear some feedback as to why it has not made this even despite multiple asks so Dr Anderson one of the things on the amended calendar is it is listed under February uh 2024 it's not on the calendar as an o or an H but it is listed below in the box 14 Ash Wednesday and

157then on the March 2025 it's listed for March 5th as Ash Wednesday and I may have wrong copies I don't see it anywhere oh yeah I should probably look behind me I can't read here well it's yeah you can pass these down my apologies that the print is so small but February I think in 2024 March and 2025 and I can't recall what it is in 2026. maybe I printed out the wrong versions there have been a lot of these versions thank you I I do see it um now that you've mentioned it one of the things that I also wanted to lean into is um I'm just going to make my intentions be known right at the onset this is not a perfect calendar I am not happy with this calendar but I would

158like it to be the springboard to our conversation so I I will be in support of this for the next part of the con for the next part of the conversation but whether or not this is the final calendar that I vote on that is yet to be determined because I too have been listening very specifically to the people in Mason District and this calendar does not meet none of these calendars meet their needs but before I get into that I will hone in back on what is in front of us which is the amended I do want to say it is really important for our teachers to be able to have those work days after the semester's um end so I'm very grateful for that change but one of the questions that I have

159is regarding um not all of them but some of the early release days for example let me just pick November 2023 that week students are at school on the 30th and the 31st which is a change then there's two o days they're still at school and then we have the early release day on the third and then there's two professional work days the Monday and Tuesdays of the following week I'm kind of wanting to know what is the expectation for those early release days on a Friday before two before the weekend before a two day work period for teachers because it's really hard for parents to struggle with some kids who are walking through their doors at 12 30. so the expectation for that day um that's a great question I think that um we

160have I believe two early release days left in this uh 23-24 calendar um and I I see your point in November where you have the early release on the third plus two professional work days following it's likely one of those would be division or principal directed and one would be a day for grading given those two work days I will say principal Millard at uh the high school level used that for kind of a wellness day where they had a kind of a breather day which turned out to be kind of maybe one of their most incredible days but in terms of academic expectation on a half day I would guess I would have to say that it's probably not a one of our stronger academic days given how early students get out and that's

161actually all of the early release days that's how that's how the high school is in the Middle School to speak about this like why buy the go to school so it's essentially a non-day so I would love for some review of those early release days particularly if they are coupled or attached to additional non-student work days yes ma'am it looks like they both are right and I will save the rest of my comments for when we speak to whatever the main motion becomes because that was my time right okay all right Miss keys gamara thank you uh Dr Reed I want to thank you for continuing to push to try to find some solutions I know I too was being contacted by staff members um families parents and Guardians and even students who were concerned

162about especially in the beginning of the year being able to have more five-day weeks because after that summer when they have that long break that's the more difficult time I think to get into the learning environment and and build that consistency so I personally want to say thank you I also want to say that I was prepared today to really urge us to only vote for one year because I was consistent I was very concerned that the first quarter only had five weeks I believe out of 11 with five day weeks I see you have increased that first quarter to seven um which may not be perfect but it actually provides a great deal of comfort to me and it seems to address the concerns that I've been hearing from the community um so I

163want to thank you for um your best thinking um and and I will also say um I too don't remember a really easy calendar discussion um we're always trying to figure things out and so I I know that we can maybe get to where we're not trying to figure things out at the last minute but um typically that has happened in the past um I will be supporting this and and Dr Reed it is because of whatever you did or why that I I feel so much better right now um and I think that it helps me to be able to answer folks who specifically reached out to me because they said don't forget we our kids need to be in school and I I know that we all know that um but when we

164when we don't have when we when we have an opportunity to increase increase the number of five uh day weeks I think that we should and so I I appreciate your efforts and I will be supporting this thank you thank you Mr fresh thank you um I will say on the on the question of having things you know still being churned out leading into a meeting I very much look forward to our board evolving to a policy governance model so that we can avoid this in the future um I think it'll make it easier for everybody to navigate the work of of this board um but I do want to set some some notes here right when we first begin these conversations as a board and after talking with members of the Providence Community I

165came forward and said I have here my Top Line big picture things we all said basically here are the things we we want and for me it was I was open to a shorter winter break I identified them with their weekends involved and I said I wanted 12 versus 16 to 18 whatever it was um and I wanted more five-day weeks continuous five-day weeks I wanted an earlier end of the school year for everybody um and the Blue Calendar the non-substitute increases the number of five day weeks by nearly 20 percent over the current calendar are the one that we're living in right now The Substitute motion does it by half so rather than increasing by nearly 20 it increases by nearly 10. so there's a big difference there and that's one of the things

166that matters to me instead of 27 consecutive five-day weeks we would be doing 25 by voting for this so if the value is on continuous five-day weeks the initial motion does more of that um on the question of the winter break this is where I had to compromise um you know we talk a lot about the continuity of instruction being important and that the breaks make it more difficult and then we kind of close our eyes to that conversation when we talk about winter break um and I didn't see much of a difference other than getting kids back in the classroom between 12 days off from the last day of school to the beginning of school in the new year and um having 16 or 18 days off between the last day and the first

167day but it would get them back in the classroom sooner I didn't win that argument and the community didn't want that based on all the survey data so here's where we are but given the choice also the the calendar from the initial motion not the substitute has everybody finished I believe on the 13th or 14th 13th 12th uh well there's still work days 14th and the substitute motion moves that to the 18th so on that account and I would be open to other changes but um I I will oppose the substitute motion because it reduces the opportunity to increase our five-day weeks by half and it extends the school year for staff by an extra four days thank you Mr Frisch Miss Cohen yeah just a piggyback on that if you look at the out

168years of the amended calendar this next year our staff would have to come back uh for the 18th so they would lose intent uh possibly a week of summer employment it gives them one more week that they don't have off which we've heard is a big problem for recruiting teachers for esy um so that's this year the next year instead of three professional work days after the end of the school year there's one and then in the third year there's four professional work days after the kids have gone home um which again pushes them halfway into the third week of June so there's no when we say we traded one day in August for people to have a longer summer break but you just took another week out of a whole week out of it

169at the end so that's not that seems that's not a trade as a former educator that I would want to make um you know I I do understand the January conversation I think one thing I would say is that that professional work day on the 16th came just about a week and a half before the quarter end and you know in my mind you have that professional work day to um get the bulk of your grades in and then what's remaining you have an early release day that you can fill in I mean everybody would be overwhelmed if they're waiting until that last day to put in every single one of their grades that's a conversation though that if somebody wants to make a substitute I'm willing to have that conversation if our staff feels

170that pulling the the professional work day to back align it in January but we lose another week of five days if we do that if we make the change here that adds two more days to spring break again making a longer spring break when some of our families have continued to say that these long vacations are difficult we lose another five-day week like I cannot vote for something that not only gives our teachers another you know fewer week of Summer potentially makes esy harder to staff and gives our kids two fewer weeks of five day instruction I feel like we came to this all saying that we valued it so I I don't I I do I am frustrated to be fair that I feel like at the end of the day there was a

171blue calendar that took in the feedback from the final rounds of information from our constituents from our community and we advertise it on Monday that sat there we got a lot of good feedback and it's not just one we had another teachers union that said they liked it so we can go back and forth about what teachers people talk to I don't want to pit anybody against anyone we're trying to do the best by our students we're trying to do the best by our staff and so I I just don't think this one does it and I appreciate the attempt to make some changes but I don't think this one does it Miss Amish uh thank you and and I'm going to Echo a lot of sentiments from Dr Anderson I know staff you've been

172beat over and over and pushed in many directions so I'm just grateful for the effort to get here um though I guess I'm I am dismayed that we couldn't have discussed this before the previous work session because I think that was the intention really was to come back with some of the modifications hopefully we can learn for next year um but in any case uh I guess for the record I just want to remind everybody that the two-week winter break piece yes was a strong preference of the community but so was starting late and ending early and we never compared where people landed on those so and none of those are possible to do together so we just have for the record we have to keep that in mind for future planning and just thinking

173about um what we prioritize I did want to ask how how hourly employees or 11 month contract Etc are impacted by the changes if you guys could please speak to that in addition to the planning timepiece please so um the planning time pieces are just rearranged they're not shortened the same ways of planning our professional work days are still 15 days they're just in different places and the hourly worker impact Mr Smith so I know that there have been questions about Transportation employees and we have two pay plans for our employees who are at the hourly contracted and we can build in additional time on one of those professional work days to balance out their work schedules they also have those paid non-working days as part of their contracts I'm sorry wait so how many

174is it for each of them I don't have the numbers but I know that for our transportation plans we have an old plan and a current plan and so in the current plan our bus drivers have a higher salary with fewer uh paid non-working days and then the older plan our drivers have uh lower hourly salary with more paid non-working days built in to help smooth the impacts but what we see here with the number of five day weeks the consistent number of five day weeks and even four day weeks in the calendar that does help smooth out the pay for our hourly contracted workers right but how many unpaid days does that leave them with for each version so there are no unpaid days because they are paid for the work that they do

175so they're they're paid for a contracted number of days so there are no unpaid days uh within the calendar uh there may be days when they aren't paid because uh they aren't driving that day but they are paid for a set number of days throughout the entire year and we provide those paid non-working days to smooth out uh their paychecks during the course of the year but these calendars do not take any days away from our hourly contracted individuals I understand that but the unpaid Days end up impacting them regardless right like whether they're booked or not so how many days are they not booked then in the 11 month period that they're contracted for how do they compare well I don't have that analysis for all of the calendars we've provided 12 calendars tonight

176so I don't have that analysis but what I can share is that individuals are mostly impacted during that two-week winter break and so when we have a two-week winter break when we had shorter winter breaks we were able to use some of those days to smooth their pay during the December uh work month we use more of those days now during December to even out their pay when they're not driving in December so that they're not just paid for those yellow days that you see those two weeks work worth of work days on the calendar so we use paid down work days to smooth their their paychecks for those months so again our drivers are not losing any dollars by any one of these calendars they are paid for the number of the set number

177of days that are within their contracts to work yeah I guess I would want a clearer idea of I think it would have been important for us to know a little bit more clearly how they're how they're different how they're differently impacted based on each of these versions um because I know that even in the prior years planning they ended up losing uh what was it six days or something of what they could have been could have been included to be paid uh so I just I don't know Dr Reed if we can commit to at least should there be a deficit making up for it in professional development days or whatever it might be some kind of opportunity yeah I'm happy to take a look at that my understanding is that no days were

178lost because the days need the days are worked it's the Cadence of the pay in other words there may have been and Marty maybe you could try one more yeah so it's because I don't I don't think we're losing days it's when the pay happens we're stretching them right yes that would be great it's the Cadence of the pay and so it's the the number of days that they're paid in any given month and so if you have fewer days that you would have normally worked in that month we have paid non-working days that we provide those employees to balance out their pay during those months we also uh have worked with our transportation services folks to ensure that they're on one of those professional work days I believe in April it will be a

179training day for staff so that again is a day where drivers will be working and they will also use that as a day to balance their pay for that particular month so I guess then how many paid non-working days do they have and how many are we creating in this calendar like how many of these non-working days are ultimately going to be unpaid so for for our transportation drivers on the current plan there are six paid non-working days because again they have opted to have a higher uh hourly salary with more paid non-working days or with fewer paid non-working days and I believe that for the previous plan they have a lower hourly salary and there are approximately 20 paid non-working days okay and do you know how that compares to the other calendar that's

180consistent in their contract so it's not based on the calendar that's consistent with their contract that is a component of their contract we have a a landing page on our website that has a full explanation for our drivers with the two plans uh we we show a clear delineation between the hourly pay and one plan versus another plan we have given those drivers the opportunity who are on the old plan to switch to the new plan for a higher hourly rate with fewer paid non-working days as well as giving them more opportunities and better opportunities for any overtime pay that they might have okay but those I guess I think you know what I'm trying to get at because those six days are going to ultimately fill in for those gaps but if they're if

181it's stretched more then they're ultimately going to end up with more days throughout the year that are not paid right but they're still being paid for the same number of days okay I guess um that's something I I think we should look into because just in terms of how we might make up for the stretched days that we're taking from them if there's a difference between these two which I believe there is given that we extended the work days in the end I think but um let me see yeah since the work year was stretched a little bit but and I say that because I continue to hear these concerns from hourly employees I mean there's obviously some kind of Gap um and if I wasn't able to cover it here then I guess that's

182it I mean I'll take a go back I didn't realize my time would end all right thank you Miss Amish I do have a I'll write you down for a go back um I have almost every single light on so I'm assuming everyone else wants to go back or if not please turn your lights off and we can oh I'm sorry and still I know hasn't gone yet I just wanted to you want to go back no no it's your turn it's your turn next you're next yeah it is my turn okay sorry yeah I mean I'll just say I guess I'm really disappointed because I feel um badly for staff that have been put in this position I feel badly that this is not transparent to our public posting things after an extensive amount

183of time to work on it um it's just not the way we're supposed to do business and honestly there really is no excuse because we've had months months months I do not want to repeat what has been said by Miss Cohen and Mr Frisch I 100 percent agree with that everyone on this board has said we want to maximize instructional weeks that have five days and now so many of us are getting ready not me to vote on this amended version that has less than the other option we have or any of the other options honestly that makes no sense to me and with somebody who has kids in school and need my kids in school and many other parents do we've got a long winter break we compromised because people said that was important

184so now we're looking at a long spring break you know it's the long weeks are difficult for parents to get care a day here a day there that's difficult too but there are camps in high schools you know grandparents can help a neighbor can help a babysitter it's too much I believe it's too much and I think we've talked about what is best practice with professional development and that is not lumping three and four professional work days at the end of a year and extending the calendar for teachers um it doesn't allow for the type of professional development that helps our teachers and then helps our students can we deal with it can we do something with it sure we can if we have to it's kind of what I'm hearing but will it be

185the most impactful and effective type of professional development if not we're being fiscally irresponsible that's my opinion I'm not going to support it I do see a space where maybe there's a few things we can tweak and marry these two I'm sad that we're doing it at the board table but um I guess I'll see where others are thank you and I will take my turn before going to go backs so um I really appreciate for staff's very hard work over these many months and Dr Reed helping to take a lot of feedback back and helping to take to add to the process you know when we felt like we needed to reach back out to the community with all these options um and you know Mr Mr Smith and your staff I really appreciate

186all the work over these months and taking the feedback so thank you for that I know it's not easy there's never a perfect calendar and um you know when you have to somebody I think two days ago when you have many many competing interests all coming together it is um all about compromise I know several of us were worried about the two week winter break we heard very strongly from the community the importance of that we heard very strongly from the community about the importance of the uninterrupted learning the five-day um weeks so um you know and the one thing that I I don't want to repeat what people have said but the one thing I hear often from staff at the end of the school year is that they're they're tired they're done they

187want to have their summer so I wonder I understand about the Strategic plan and things like that but I do wonder the um and I think our teachers have amazingly high capacity but really the capacity of our teachers at the end of a school year to really dig into some robust professional development and some of these calendars where we have you know three or four days at the end of the year um and extending the every calendar into the following week I wonder if that's the most effective use of some of these professional work days um and extending the summer I um I appreciate Dr Reed talking about what you think some of the benefits of the latest draft is that came out and I wish we had a little more time to dig into

188that and understand that so I guess I'm listening to what I heard from the community and the two things I really heard were the two-week winter break and the five days on uninterrupted learning so I'm and I also hear my colleagues about what they like about this I meant to draft so I am very torn about this Dr Reed I hear what you're saying too I'm going to ask you a question Dr Reed in terms of the differences between these two calendars professional work days at the end have you talked to teachers associations about wanting to stay longer into school year and their thoughts on the um the professional work days added to the end of school calendar um I have not talked about staying longer in June with associations I have um I think

189the intent no I have not thank you um have you talked about the I know one of the changes was to move that professional work day on that Friday I guess what was your thoughts or staff thought about having that professional work day on that Friday before school starts that the week before the full week of I think there was a strong um I have spoken to staff about that and there was a strong desire not to have the six professional work days in a row at the beginning of the school year and really a belief that the returning staff really preferred to come back the week of the 14th rather than the one day and then the next week so this was the thought that it would be better to move it to the

190end of the school year well we have to move it somewhere and I think where we're caught I think everyone at the table right now is trying to do the best we can to create as many of these five-day weeks and so it either goes if we pull it out of the 11th of August if we're looking at the 2324 calendar it either needs to go in the middle of a week or at the end right it's there aren't other choices so it either creates a less than five day week or it goes at the end of the year and I know there's been some thought about the super Tuesday or moving in other places but that would create another so it's just it's it's a challenge is what I'm trying to say um so

191I'm going to sit and listen to the go backs but I do feel like with this calendar coming today it is difficult to really get a full sense of the thought of going later into June and what that thought is for our staff so I'm going to keep listening thank you with that I'm going to go to the go back so I'll start with Miss McLaughlin thank you I want to just sort of make sure the public and the board are really clear on a couple of facts one um not a single board member directed superintendent read today to do anything about changing it that was all on her own just like superintendent Reed chose to revise earlier this week the main motion so what our superintendent decides to do when board members or teacher

192associations email her feedback that is her professional decision whether she wants to do anything with it or not so I want to make sure every board member stands not a single board member asked her to do anything today we didn't ask staff to do anything today Dr Reed chose to do that and I respect what they've come back with secondly I did send some feedback to Dr Reed and her team and I absolutely agreed that we don't want a June 18th professional work day there I absolutely recommended that we do Tuesday super Tuesday March 5th because I guarantee you the County Board of Elections is going to come to us and say please do not have children in your school that day and preferably have your teachers telework that is what has happened to us

193before I wish I were seeing this in here but the draft calendar that Dr Reed gave us is a better base than what we had early in the week but I also want to be clear to board members who keep talking about transparency several of you gave feedback to Dr Reed she changed it and that got posted on Monday and Tuesday so if we're all about transparency then what we should have the main motion is what we posted two weeks ago's new business and every one of us who felt that it wasn't where it needed to be could have had our amendments but the second thing I'll say is if we're really about the five day interrupted which I believe we all are then we could have been pairing some of our religious holidays with

194our professional work days because we already have protections for staff to observe their religious holidays instead going into the the going into the third year for board members who are so concerned we have six religious holidays so that means six up to six interrupted weeks of learning so there's a little bit of a cognitive disconnect but if we don't have a professional workday for our teachers and that in the second quarter for this coming year I want to make sure every teacher know I fought for that and I would hope all of you are going to fight and put that into the substitute calendar thank you Dr Anderson I have to rush back over here um just very quickly because I do know we want to get to some other things and and Mr Smith

195I do have a couple more pointed questions that I wanted to ask because it is it it is an issue and I know we're balancing a lot and I'm going to speak about this a little bit more during the follow-on motion a little bit later but I think in my little funny math we have 33 days during the gaps not unpaid because obviously all of our drivers everybody who is an hourly employee who works less than 11 months they're going to be paid for the times that they worked they're going to be paced for the days that they work what I think Miss omish wanted to speak to is when we have these holidays they are not at work so they have those gaps in their earning power because had they had a much more

196truncated period where they did not have those gaps or if they were involved in professional development they would have had greater pay because now even their summer is overly shortened and they can't secure secondary Employments which many of them do by my math I think there's 33 unpaid days in the 23-24 calendar 33 is that what you confirmed well I don't I haven't well you haven't done it I haven't okay so let me just say it then my math brings me to 33 days in the 23 24 year 28 days and 24 25 and 36 days and 25 26. um but the other thing that I wanted to say I know that's a concern for all of us we have many concerns and these are competing interests we have not locked down to what is

197prioritized which has been a question that I have asked for the past two years when we talk about all of these factors but one of the things that's been an issue here is the timing we've had this survey that was sent out to parents in the community and we see that they responded it closed on Tuesday no was it Tuesday it closed Monday we didn't have a chance to collectively come around that conv that data and to have conversations similarly with the calendar that was posted on Tuesday we didn't have a chance to come together so we're making the sausage now because the timing was off and maybe that's something else we could pay better attention to you miss Amish I can actually uh I mean what I'll say is that I'm in a similar

198place with Dr Anderson where if it's my understanding that staff after more thought given to this than we were able to give at this table thinks that this is option is is um better I certainly want to make sure that the hourly employees piece is given some thought to be a little creative around how we might address that and I appreciate you Dr Anderson for um for for clarifying that um then perhaps folks this is it's very obvious that while we need to plan ahead and it was actually an admirable thing for us to think about a three-year calendar and you know wanting to that's an aspiration and I think we need to get there it is clear that if we're not in agreement right now the process has been chaotic and subjective enough that

199we haven't been able to determine criteria by which we do this and not even specify or even have an understanding as a system of who owns which parts of this uh then I think it's incumbent upon us to approve a one year today develop a policy and then come forward in the future uh to develop a two-year so I mean or however many three more years or whatever it is so at least to ensure there's fairness and and we minimize the subjectivity and and improve the predictability of this so um I hope that folks can consider that I know both motions right now are for three um depending on what happens with this one I I guess I'll offer motion uh later but I I urge us to just be reflective on that because I

200know it's like we came up with this goal of the three year we came up with the goal of wanting to finish the calendar today and being you know responsive to the community but merging those goals is actually Landing us in a place where that's actually counter to either of those goals so uh in any case um I I and I'm mindful of where the community is at too with the engagement piece of and transparency where we're kind of doing this now um it's not a great place to be but I appreciate you all for considering thank you Mr Mrs Corbett Sanders thank you madam chair um I'm just comparing how most of our families look at this calendar and they look at the calendar when we start when we end when is spring break

201when is um fall break uh when are the days that their children are not in school then I look at our support employees are our bus drivers and food service and they're the ones who want to be able to work during the summer and take on extra employment so the more continuous weeks that they have options to work during the summer either for us or for other organizations are important so when I look at this and we've been having these conversations about professional work days I look and I see on the amended calendar that our kids get out on June 12th in the first year June 11th in the second year and June 16th in the third year versus the blue which would be 12 13 and 17. so they're getting out earlier what that

202means is that our bus drivers and others who would like to take on other employment during the summer could actually take on other employment in the summer um I do get frustrated at the three years because we haven't seemed to settle on the criteria however I also know that our community needs predictability they need the ability to plan and so I would urge that if anybody considers moving back from a three-year calendar to being a one-year calendar that it has to be that a one-year calendar with the commitment to have years two and three adopted prior to the end of this school year because we cannot keep doing this to our community folks people need to be able to plan Miss Cohen I just I feel like we're doing that right now to be honest

203like my frustration is I don't know why we had months and months and months of all of this process and I can't even imagine the hours of Staff time that have gone into four different versions three years each multiple times now three versions of the Blue Calendar times three years each you know I just think like if we're not ready to do this then let's not do it this is like the worst to me kind of our family Works our families work so so so hard to participate in these surveys and studies and then we just say like well you know we actually at the end of the day like we don't care what you think and that's what people feel like you know I I feel like it's just it's very very frustrating to

204sit here too as a parent with kids in school and I like I I just don't know why we why we can't pull the trigger on what we advertise to people and they had an opportunity to comment on and it gives us the you know most amount of five day days thank you no I'm not done I just was waiting because people were talking over me so I miss gone if we wanted to make some substitutions and try to merge this thing I absolutely understand that but this time now at the table we haven't even done our Capital Improvement plan it's 10 43 and these are two of the most important things that we do so you know I I just remain so frustrated that if the Blue Calendar if people want this I think

205it's a bad idea it leads our employees a whole extra week where they cannot get further summer employment which a lot of them have to do because of what we pay them I don't even I just I we're where none of us are going to convince each other everybody showed up here today knowing what they're going to do I'm gonna go through the rest of this two more go backs and then we're gonna call for the vote Miss picarski it's late I made my point I don't need another turn Miss Marin yeah just thinking of two things um one is an Oakton High School the keynote speaker a few years ago at graduation a beloved teacher said honor the process that's what he told the entire graduating class so I'm thinking of that and I'm

206thinking of last night at Crossfield Elementary where our students gave portrait of a graduate presentations of learning and the topic was giving and taking feedback so um I'm gonna stick with what I had planned when I walked in which was to vote on the original motion and not the amendment I'm honoring the process and all of the input given and I am ready to vote when people are oh would that with that I will call for the votes you know this speak the motion before us is on the screen all those in favor please raise your hands all those opposed all the sustaining that motion passes all right I thought the amendments were all the main question but there's amendments for she she wanted them to vote I apologize I'm there's a lot of people

207it's going did you have a question yeah I was just asking that that was on Megan's substitute motion and the vote was eight four eight four thank you and Jeremy asked this question of her parliamentarian sure okay okay Mr Morgan so um as many of us were discussing just here at the dais that this was a recommend this was a substitute motion for the main motion many of us said that yes this was a recommendation we got from the superintendent and we believe this was the better main motion but we still want to amend the substitute motion so now that this has been accepted as The Substitute motion becomes the main motion can't we still be amending now what is the new main motion yes that's my understanding the the current main motion is the

208substitute motion so now we can amend this one based on any concerns so I did have one amendment that I shared with everybody in both both my speaking points to fix the June 18th professional work day because of what people said they're concerned the impact on teachers and I am still concerned that we're going to have the county coming back to us about super Tuesday so I did want to present that and that's what I'm trying to understand I also understood that there were some board members who were interested in combining the professional work days and holidays so the question is can we have amendments on the main motion that's the question the answer is yes so we will move on to the amendments to the main motion so I call on Miss McLaughlin for

209an amendment point of information Madam chair I'd like to just make clear and if I'm understanding we've turned this into the main motion but we have not voted on this calendar to be amending it I apologize I apologize I'm trying to figure out thank you so let me wait to now what what Mr Morgan our parliamentary was explaining is this is now the main motion just like before we amend it before we vote as it's finalized yes that's what I'm trying to get out so hang on a second guys so we're going to now have amendments to this main motion and then we'll vote on the main motion so I call on Miss McLaughlin for an amendment thank you um Ms madeja can you pull up the amendment that had to do with the June

21018th professional work day and yep all right so that one that yeah yeah these this is not the right one so um it's it's supposed to read this is when we weren't changing anything so if you can just yeah I'm just trying to get the language there if you can please pull up the one again that's showing the March 5th and the amendment needs to Now read because of this the The Substitute motion August 11th needs to read June 18th so then I'll read it I move to amend the main motion by relocating the 2020 324 it's not a Friday we're just going to say June 18th professional work day to Tuesday March 5th the super Tuesday presidential primary Day based on past County Board of Elections requests to closed schools on that day and

211then the rest is struck because it's not related yep so that's that's my immense suggested Amendment is there a second so I'll second yeah okay I'm what's that Miss McLaughlin can you please read your motion again sure it's on the screen I moved to amend the main motion by relocating the 2023-24 June 18th professional workday to Tuesday March 5th super Tuesday presidential primary Day based on the pass County Board of Elections request to close schools on that day is there a second Miss Keys Camara Miss McLaughlin should I speak to your motion just briefly because I've spoken to before again I don't have a dog in the fight if people have apprehensions about doing this but I heard people say they didn't want to encroach on our non-12 month employees ability to work the following

212week and I completely agree so by doing this we're going to absolutely address which I am certain going to be a concern of super Tuesday having children in school so you make it a professional work day Dr Reed can determine if that's going to be a telework work day or not but this needs to happen and this way we take away the concern that a lot of our colleagues had on whether or not to have a wraparound professional day on the eight on the following week I know that we don't want to be creating these less than five day instructional days but if that is what the goal of this board is then we should have been combining a lot of our religious holidays with our professional work days and we didn't do that not

213with this one not with any of the versions so at a minimum I do believe this is still a better fix I hope you'll consider supporting it but there are no hard feelings if you don't but I will say if we come back because we hear from the County Board of Elections Dr Reed I put my marker on the ground it's Keys come out to my speech your second yes um thank you Miss McLaughlin I am always concerned when we have elections and we have members of the public that we have not had an opportunity to vet and we're trying to conduct school at the same time it is always a concern for me and I don't I think it is an inappropriate burden to place on our staff to try to figure out a

214way to separate children from that traffic so that's um I also you know that is the reason I think this is important and I'm happy to support it thank you Miss Amish yeah no thanks I guess I just want to clarify because this is for that last week we're trying to basically allow teachers to end early earlier right rather than having like a hanging right and the Friday and then the primaries okay yeah I think I could support this I mean I don't love the last minute none of this was talked about work sessions and stuff but this is where we are tonight on everything so um but yeah I mean it does seem like a good idea Dr Reed is there any um concern or objection that comes to mind uh about the on

215this off the bat no no concern and I um I don't think I know staff and I did not discuss super Tuesday coming from a state where all voting is mail-in this is new having people um in the schools and I can see the concern okay cool well thank you Miss McLaughlin for catching it all right Dr Anderson yes I I'm really super conflicted here because as a former building administrator I definitely understand the concerns that take place at the site I am just really struggling with the fact that we're not doing a substitution here so that we still have a five day week someplace else I would love to see that there is someplace else where we can take something out to create a five-day work week if we could get that I can

216be on board with this without I am struggling and I don't think I can so if anybody sees one please shout it out since we're workshopping this thing you see the staff does anybody see a space Maybe where we could do that I'm sorry would you repeat that I let me just clarify um that if we move the 18th professional work day to March 5th what happens is then we have to move the end of the school year an extra day because we've taken a school day out so it would be a professional work day on the 14th and 18th it just would only be two of them rather than three of what June and 2024. because moving a professional work day to the day of super Tuesday makes it a non-school day so everything

217so we do need to get it so pretty much you're getting at my question because we've just eliminated days we've gone from 180 to 179 which I am not interested in no it would be at 180 still it's just that we would still have a work day the last day of school will now be the 13th correct so you're saying the teacher work day will be on the 14th and then the 18th and then the 18th that's correct so we haven't solved the problem well we've gone we've solved the problem of the city super Tuesday problem but not the end problem because the teachers are still coming back that week that would be correct I don't know if I'm interested in that trade I just want to be clear about what it the implication I

218appreciate that I think I'm going to mull this over um Dr Anderson are you finished George Houston so I was going to put Mr Smith on the spot um can you tell us in the past um I I just can't remember in 2020 um if that if super Tuesday if we have been requested by the county over the last years I know you've been here a lot long enough to have been through a few of these do we are we generally asked by the county to close the schools we have been asked by the Board of Elections to uh have no students in the building that day and and I have to go back to see what the calendar actually showed on the 20th um or in 2020 but uh I don't know if we

219had staff in the building that day but I know that we have been asked in the past for no students did you have anything else no no I'm good thank you thank you um Miss Corbett Sanders yes thank you and I really appreciate the um the reasoning behind this based on prior years where we had super Tuesday um and a number of our schools were used as precincts I would just suggest that things have changed since how we did things in the past in that the state of Virginia now has significant early voting which takes place for a couple of weeks in advance and so the number of people are actually coming into our buildings that's one piece the second is with our newer with our newer buildings what we've done is really created more

220of a cordoned off area for students to vote or for the public to vote in and so I would ask um rather than making this decision tonight without real data on what percentage of our electorate actually votes in person today and knowing what the status of our schools are as far as having a cordoned off area for example the school that I vote in now has an entrance into the library which is where they would do it and there's no way for people to go beyond that spot and I know that that's been part of the Ed Speck elsewhere so I'm reluctant to vote on this today until we actually and if there is a situation in the future where we have to address it then we will be informed about it miss Colin yeah

221I wish that we had that problem with primaries that we had that many people who were voting in person um I I there's I I cannot now we'd be at a calendar that has 24 five-day weeks so that's only one more week than last time when overwhelmingly we heard from the community more five day weeks and we are chipping it away again like what a waste of people's time so um I I agree I think we have no excuse absentee voting now which has taken down that day significantly um and again I agree with what Miss Corbett Sanders said that if we start to see that there's going to be some huge surge then I think we can have that conversation we did that with Eid we've done it we did it with um Inauguration

222Day sometimes we have to make some adjustments in it but I can't support another another week where we just have a random Tuesday off Miss picarski yeah I agree it just keeps getting worse with every comment I I see the value in the argument maybe um I cannot support that though not another lost week I think there's a couple go backs here but I'm going to take my turn to speak before we go to go backs um if you do not want to go back please turn your lights off so um I very reluctantly voted for the substitute and the reason I did I I'm not a fan of how we got here I'm not a fan of all of any of that and it's and it's not about the hard work that people have

223put into this calendar but if Dr Reed feels that this substitute calendar in her professional judgment on the professional work days is the best one however having said that I do not I cannot support this 100 we have no excuse absentee voting not all of our schools are precincts so now we have students missing school on a day when it's not even an issue so I think this far ahead I think this is we've just spent 25 minutes on something that we could have if it wasn't issue done it or 20 minutes at that point so I think it's it's something that we need to not add another lack of five day a week and if we need to work on it we address it we can but I don't think we should be doing

224it here and right now without that information so Mr Frisch I see your light is up so can I call the question well I just need like 30 seconds uh two points one I don't believe either of the major political parties has set its primary schedule yet for 2024 so I think this is early um super Tuesday you don't know what states are going to be and what they're still working it out there have been art I mean looking at an article right now from February 4th about the calendar being close to being finished or agreed upon but the party sets that and we don't have that yet for either party secondly the original motion calendar had 27 five-day School weeks the substitution which is now the primary calendar that we're considering has 25 this

225would have 24 and the current calendar we're leaving living in the 23 20 22 23 school year has 23. so we will have done all of this to increase the number of five-day School weeks by one thank you um the general copics have been spoken to do you want to speak no Madam chair I called the question why did you take a vote on calling the question all those ideas are a second to call on the question Miss McLaughlin all those in favor of calling did you want to speak or you take voted on the question all those in favor of calling the question please raise your hand all right that motion passes so the motion before us would you put the motion for us on the screen please Madam Clerk the motion before us

226is on the screen I will call for the vote all those in favor yes or no Mr I'm just recording it but it doesn't matter all those opposed all right that motion fails oh all those abstaining I thought you no okay that motion fails all right is there any other amendments because there are no the script has changed a bit is there any other amendments for the to the calendar before we move on to voting on the main motion all right so Madam clerk because if you could post the main motion on the screen please oh I'm sorry uh uh yeah I I'd like to move to decouple uh this motion so that we vote to approve um only the 2023-2024 calendar and postpone voting on the uh the other components until a policy is

227developed is there a second second all right the summation should just be to your motion yeah I guess uh just briefly I mean I shared mostly earlier but um we're desperately in need of a calendar policy I think last year and this year have demonstrated kind of the subjectivity to the process staff are and are forced and the reason why they have to put in so much work is because there's not as much clarity about who owns Which components and what are the priorities of the board in developing this and so it ends up being a back and forth over an extended period of time with different things and trying to reconcile what is the community saying what is the board saying going back and forth so I I remind colleagues we all agree that

228we need to plan ahead and we think long term we would like to get to a place where we are actually planning three years at a time it's a best practice divisions across the country are doing it but we can't commit ourselves to three years when we know we have got serious problems with the calendar uh you know for me number one there's a fairness issue that I've been raising from the beginning of this whether it's how we determine which holidays matter uh which ones are prioritized why are certain holidays that have a comparable population size uh professional work days o days versus holidays to full holidays um that is stuff we have not resolved the idea there are also opportunities with the calendar that we can think about whether it's early release days which

229was something that was shopped around and we discussed or planning days trying to find new ways of of incorporating those I think there's more work to be done to get a fair justice-informed Equitable calendar that prioritizes uh that ensures we're at least considering all all layers of employees and all subsets of the community whether we hear from them or not so I just again I urge my colleagues to consider that yes a three-year planning process is what we want but we're not there yet right now to do that in a way that that that has Integrity in that that that is bulletproof uh such that we can commit to that um lest we find ourselves in a place where we discover new mistakes the following years so I urge I urge my colleagues to support

230this and we will work towards the three-year plan Dr Anderson you want to speak to your second yes I do um obviously I'm in full agreement with what uh Miss omesh just shared but additionally I want to make sure we clarify that the timeline is not going to be elongated we want for this policy to be fast tracked and we want for this calendar to be done before the fall would be prep will be preferable by December definitely of next year we do not want to have families in this position again so I would urge us to commit to one year commit um complete the policy as soon as possible and complete the other two years very very soon I and I don't know what is reasonable for you Dr Reed which is why I'm

231kind of hesitating around a timetable but I would love it to be done by July is that in any way reasonable for a policy to be determined and then subsequent calendars to meet that policy I well the calendar piece the policies us I you know I if that's the will of the board we'll make it happen and governance committee chair who is that thank you I almost said Miss um Cohen would it be possible for governance to Fast Track a policy so that we can do by July 1 a calendar Dr Anderson I think before I could say fast track on the this policy versus others we have a work session scheduled on February 21st in which I would hope that the board as a whole would look at all of the various policies that

232are up and we as a collective would decide what our priorities are because it seems to be quite fluid and I know that we have a number of policy issues that um you know I our governance committee is committed to getting as much done as possible I think we have achieved quite a bit in a short time together but um I would like to have a prioritization from the whole board and not make a spur of the moment decision thank you and continue to speak to this second I I don't think we're ready in order to I don't think we can commit to three years right now we're not ready we don't have the criteria that we need to make sound decision making and I do not want to compromise that because we want to

233provide our families with planning which is important I think we still have some space to to get this better so thank you Miss McLaughlin so I'm going to try to add a little levity believe it or not um and here's how I am looking at what we're faced with I know no one is enjoying this whatsoever I will say that um again it was two weeks ago that we posted his new business so when we say there was months and months and months to just hear input on the things that people are interested in but we only had Community feedback on actual draft calendars of what all their feedback might logistically look like in Maine for the last two weeks I lobbied that we were going to postpone this to March 3rd because we wouldn't

234want to have the same amount of a budget it was not supported so here we are we've got a couple choices one we vote for The Substitute motion as it stands we can then at any point in time if you vote Yes you're allowed to reopen it if you want to revise the years two and three if that's the concern I don't want to be voting for three years I've been clear for everyone who's heard me in every public meeting I didn't want three years I was told we had the votes I don't think we do I'm counting it up right now at a maximum we're at a six two don't want three year at all and four who wanted the main motion to begin with so I'm I'm willing to compromise and put my

235vote in for three years even it goes against a lot of the things that I wanted but otherwise then we're down to five people who want the substitute motion three who are going to be uncertain and four who wanted the original so you guys I'm just trying so to say we've got a compromise somewhere I am willing to come to the three years on this substitute motion even though it is far from perfect that's my compromise I'm going to ask my two colleagues sitting on the fence who voted with us on substitute motion we're going to need you to get to seven or the four who didn't like the original decide if you want to have to come back another night but somebody's got to come join me and be seven thank you Miss McLaughlin

236Mr Frisch okay um Ms Corbett Sanders thank you madam chair so calendars are incredibly emotional because they impact all of our lives and they impact our lives in different ways families need the predictability staff need to know when they're going to be needed when they're going to be able to do other things and if you're the superintendent of the school system you need to know how you're going to operate your school system so my question Dr Reed and you have been very gracious in responding that you will make whatever happens will happen you will make it work what is your preference in addressing what what do you think provides the most stability for you operationally what do you think allows you the most flexibility in being able to go out and recruit people and what

237do you see as the downside if we were to adopt three-year calendar if at some point you had to go back and Tinker with it a little bit but not hit not address things like the beginning of the school year or the end of the school year that breaks and I know that's a lot and I apologize no it's um I appreciate the question um I you know I think if we could get a multi-year calendar that would be preferable just for stability um and planning and then as we think about if we want to make adjustments in out years it's not so time sensitive right now we're in February um as hard as it is to believe we're on the second half of the school year and knowing when the year is going to

238end I think it's very important to our staff students and families in terms of knowing when next year is going to begin right and planning for just a variety of things so I would prefer a multi-year contract or a calendar I mean and I think I don't know how close people are in terms of what other possible amendments or however you process the calendar at this point but I feel like if we could get to a multi-year with the additional expectation of a clear calendar policy moving forward I think that would be helpful I think doing the policy and two more years all at the same time um is also possible but perhaps more challenging at this point thank you Dr Reed Mr fresh it's um what time is it oh good I was afraid

239it was a um you know 10 15. um so it's it's a strange position to be in to oppose the calendar but be inclined to support a three or three year version and I do that because I don't have as much hope that this board can get there as other people might have um certainly not in time to get two years two more calendars written at the same time as a policy I do have trust that the governance committee can come up with a good policy um and I say we shouldn't rush that policy um I'm happy to make it one of our priorities when we have that conversation in two and a half weeks um but if they come to us and they have a draft policy that is fantastic there's nothing to keep

240us from having other conversations um but I want everybody to replay in their head if their short-term memory is still capable of working at this hour um exactly what Dr Reed just said right and that's what's motivating my vote here is that for the continuity of the system for for at least some expectation of consistency um that's the right move to make um and you want to talk about compromise I didn't and won't be voting for this calendar but I will be voting for us to have continuous for for three years well governance works out it's policy not the point of order Madam chair yes can we please have the motion on the table um posted on the screen please yes Miss Amish can you please read your motion again I had moved to decouple

241the main motion so that we vote on a 2023-2024 calendar adopted 2023 2024 calendar okay to vote on the 2023-2024 calendar which the amended blue which point of order if I may yes Mr first the calendar in front of us is three years and so to change that there's no decoupling it from anything so it would be an amendment to change it to a one-year voting on the first calendar alone foreign amendment to to change the calendar to just one year not I mean you could do it either way sure we can do it that way so then I moved to amend then that would mean I would move to amend we can either split the first motion or just change it all together we can change it all together so I moved to amend

242the main motion do you mind just scrolling down above yeah exactly um yeah there we go uh okay there um by striking the language beginning at uh Sy 2024 2025 so essentially that comma would turn into a period and we would strike the remaining portion yeah the period would be after 2023 2024. all right do we have it I moved amend the main motion this is my striking language beginning all right we're going to take no because okay so the motion before this is on the screen yeah I know I'm going to get back miss corbetts Mr fresh did you want to finish speaking to it Miss Cohen all right the community wanted more five-day weeks we didn't give them that they said whatever you do for the love of God please make it three

243years so we actually know how to schedule things and we're talking about not doing that either and I just I want to apologize to the staff to be honest how many hours you guys put into all of these versions to hear this play out this way is I can only imagine demoralizing I'm apologize to the people who were part of the calendar committee I apologize to the people who did the survey because what we are continuing to show up here is that we we're not we're not going to listen to your actual feedback so I'm I'm definitely a hard no on this um and I just I just wanted to apologize because all the work that's gone into this when we're in the middle of strategic plan uh we're in the about to be in

244hiring season where all the things that we're asking are our central office staff to do and make right and and we're just you know making a mess of it today so I just want to apologize I actually have a point of order question Miss Amish did you want to add there was language around doing it in the spring is that part of your motion or is it just voting on The One calendar I mean that's why I had decoupled couple tent here is for us to development summation it's not the intent is I'm asking did you the language and the motion is it just to vote on the one-year calendar or is it to vote on the one-year calendar develop a calendar policy and the other two-year calendars by spring because that was what I

245heard I want to make sure we had the motion correct I had not specified a time frame all I had said was and to develop the following two calendars uh after a calendar policy is developed okay I just want to confirm that this is the correct language all right I mean that could be added if that's the concern I'm not saying that I'm asking what your emotion was that's all that was my original motion oh Mr hold on a second Miss McLaughlin yeah I don't I don't care when I speak I just haven't had a chance to I apologize and there's a lot of lights at all oh of course so yeah no that's okay um is it because chair and vice chair go last yes yes okay all right well then I'll take my

246turn um look as I said earlier um I appreciate what Mr Frisch said and I want to make sure all of my colleagues are crystal clear from the very beginning I never wanted three years and I have been very concerned about the lack of five-day weeks and I really asked lots of board members why we weren't going to pair our religious holidays and our professional work days and I was basically told there wasn't the support for it so while Mr Frisch is making a massive um sacrifice I I want to make sure everybody understands I always said if I had to be the seventh vote because this system has to move on I will but respectfully I disagree with some the remarks made by my colleagues we are not here because this is a dysfunctional

247board we are here because we as a community or long-standing system at least my time you're on the board we do one calendar at a time our new superintendent had wanted us to strive for a three-year calendar and as she noted this evening it's been a learning experience for her and I appreciate her humility so I I would really like for everybody to understand this is a no win for just about everybody voting tonight but the I am willing to compromise and I'm willing to get us over the Finish Line Tonight knowing that as Mr first said we can make changes after the governance committee comes up with a policy a new board will be elected and come sitting here in January and they could blow up the next two years so nothing is sacrosanct

248we're just trying to do our best but for the idea that I will say again for people who want to make sure they're heard I did not hear from the Braddock District that they wanted three years I didn't I heard people actually saying you threw out 12 calendars and expect us to make hiding her hair of it in the manner of less than two weeks so miss McLaughlin Miss Jennifer bucks so Dr Reed I was going to ask you the question that I'm sorry I apologize I'm sorry Miss Picard three times I'm sorry I'm go ahead Miss mccarski and then go let's go this way okay it really doesn't bother me um I'm not going to support this I do feel as I've said that tonight we have not respected what uh parents have said

249is important to them uh by choosing to go with a calendar that had more interrupted weeks than what we could have um actually landed on and I have heard that people just want to know so I'm not going to support this because at some point we've just got to listen to people and I I do not see this group doing this more effectively if if we have to do it again so can't support it now for the third time's a charm is doing that kofax so Karen Corbett Sanders also um she hasn't had her first child yet thank you Karen Corbett Sanders act asked Dr Reed what I had wanted to ask what you thought was best and what I assumed when we made the first amendment that when we made the substitute motion is

250that what we were looking at was a three-year calendar um I've never done one before during my 12 years on the board but I think it's okay to do this and that is the compromise that I feel that we are making we are going forward with a three-year calendar which is the updated Blue version that came out today and when you looked at that you looked at all three years correct yes so that was the intent that I moved my vote when we voted to on the substitute Amendment so I will not be supporting this and I think it is time I I think it is very unrealistic I appreciate the fact that there will be policy but as Miss Corbett Sanders said the governance has many policies that they have to review and when

251you look and I know Miss a mess you said you you spoke to it originally and you said perhaps we can do it you know in the spring or in the fall there we have the Strategic plan we have graduations we have committee reports that we didn't even hear last year because we couldn't fit them into the calendar I cannot imagine going back and doing this calendar this process again I think the public owes it to those who have been asking for it for a while we are delivering for those who you know who said we're not quite where we need to be we're trying our very best but I will not support a one-year calendar because it was my understanding that when Dr Reed and her team looked at it and presented to us

252it was a three-year format and that's the way I think we all need to look at it and move forward foreign order again is this the motion that you wanted because you seem to think it's not I had said that I would included the other two I shared I just shared some exact language with Miss madeja she can post it I don't know what you're saying it's the same meaning everyone's understood it's just to be very clear is this the motion then this is the same I'm telling I just told you miss Medea has it there all right is Miss Tallinn thank you um I would like to just kind of address the idea of listening to the community uh we have had surveys we haven't talked to people in the community we had a

253group work on this we had two work sessions um you know I heard loud and clear from people they wanted of course the two-week break which we have in here they wanted a multi-year calendar so that they could plan ahead they they wanted more five-day weeks but they also wanted more weeks that were less disjointed like you know a day off on Monday and then a day off at Wednesday we cleaned that up and I the amended version is actually I think a little bit better at that than the the original version so and we're differing by you know one one five day week in these different versions so that is you know I can handle that which is why I voted for the amended version I will not support not doing the multi-year calendar

254and I also you know I really appreciated Mr and I koufax's um comment that the other thing I'm hearing loud and clear from our community is they would really like us to work on things like our strategic plan on academics coming out of covid they would like us to work on the traffic issues that we have at all of our schools we've got facilities issues in drainsville that I need to work on we have significant behavioral health issues with our students we need to work on that so can we please vote on a three-year calendar and move on so that we can put our energy in what our constituents are asking us to work on thank you all right do you want to call a question do you have so with that I'd love to

255call the question all right is there a second to call in the question Miss Corbett Sanders all those in favor of calling the question all those opposed all those obtaining all right that motion passes the motion before us is on the screen all those in favor of this of the motion raise your hand you're in favor of this motion this is to make it a one-year calendar this is the motion on the screen all those in favor of this motion all those opposed all those abstaining the motion fails we will go back to the main motion that is on the screen that's this that's the substitute all right foreign Mr Mr Morgan can you please help us so this this is the substitute motion but the amendment that was the two amendments that were brought

256failed the one was the amendment was on voting on primary day what the other amendment was on the one-year calendar those two failed so is this as amended or is this yes it's these the main motion is as amended so it would be the blue option amended for all all three school years but it should not read I moved to substitute the main motion past the main motion as amended correct correct that would be fine or I moved to adopt this that would be fine all right the most the most well hold on the motion before us is on the screen all those in favor please raise your hand all right well done all right the motion before it's on the screen we need to dot the main motion hold it says at the end

257man to speak to it all right so I apologize it doesn't actually need to say as a matter the motion is to approve the superintendent's blue option amended draft calendar that was updated and provided to the board today February 9 2023 for school year 2023-24 school year 20 24 to 25 and 2025-26. that is the current motion before the board all right so the motion before it's on the screen does anyone wish to speak want to speak to the main motion I have okay can everyone turn their lights off and then turn them back on because we have like five lights on so please turn them all off not anyone wish to speak to the main motion all right Dr Anderson yes as I just said earlier I wanted to investigate this amended motion but

258in terms of what my support um is for this I I will not be voting for this for a number of reasons obviously the three years that I don't think we are getting right will be one of them and what I said I was going to share earlier is the Mason District feedback was quite clear um wanted to 71 of those who took that survey wanted an increased number of five-day weeks I was hoping for us to be able to get that in here it has not happened 83 percent of our folks wanted a two-week winter break which I think this does happen and more than half wanted to have more than more instructional days they do not feel like this is sufficient my community is not happy with this number of days off that's

259just the long and short of it so I'm not going to be able to support it um Miss McLaughlin thank you um I just want to say in advance that I really appreciate any and all board members who are going to vote on the main motion myself Mr fresh have been in particularly articulate MS roshna seismheiser this is a bitter pill to swallow it is not fun to be voting on this one but if this board wants to adopt a calendar tonight rather vote to postpone till March 2nd then this is where we're at so I hope we will continue to look at ways to improve the calendar including to what everyone said we increase the number of five day instructional weeks by coupling your religious holidays with your professional work days because that would

260increase from anywhere from three more weeks of uninterrupted learning to as many as six in year 25 26. that is the reality so for every board member who's committed to that you might be able to fix this in the out years I welcome it but in the meantime I am willing to fall on my sword and vote for this in the in the spirit of compromise and I again appreciate that this is a painful vote for probably just about everybody tonight but it is where we're here I've got we've got to find seven somehow and I'm willing to be part of the seven Miss Cohen yeah I just wanted to for the community for transparency just to State I will not be voting for this calendar for all the week all the reasons that I

261mentioned previously that this does not meet the desire of the Springfield District to have more uninterrupted weeks and does not meet the desire of the teachers who reached out to me to ensure that they were not working into the third week of June so I'll be voting though Miss picarski yeah thank you me too just to be on record again I'm very thankful to staff for their hard work but I will be voting against it I do not feel that this is the best calendar for kids I do not believe it honors the request from our community for the most uninterrupted instruction possible we had other options that would have done it and I do not believe we're following best practices when it comes to the placement of professional work days and ultimately you know

262for me that's a that's a fiscal consideration so I know this has been difficult but thank you um it's Corbett Sanders sorry I think your light was up next sorry I apologize I think you were next thank you madam chair as I've said none of the calendars actually met the needs of what I expected to come out of this calendar process the ones that are most important to me were the ones that met the needs of working families and the continuity of learning this amended calendar does actually increase the number of weeks of uninterrupted uh five days compared to the one that we discussed at the work session a couple of weeks ago and so I believe that everything is filled with compromise I'm none of us are fully happy but when we look at

263the operational expectations and the conversations and the comments that have been made by our superintendent I think this is the best we're going to get and I would also urge that sooner rather than later we clarify those professional work days to address things like guaranteeing at the end of the quarters those P professional work days are used by our teachers for planning time and ensuring that that date of uh June 18th is a flexible date that people can work from wherever and with those two you're pretty close to where we're at the other calendar that was put forth may have gotten rid of a um five-day continuous learning but it had a two-day week in it in April and so there are lots there were trade-offs in both and there was significant input via multiple

264surveys by a work session by people speaking with their their constituents and I just urge people it is now quarter of 12 and we have to get a vote and then we have to move on and do the capital Improvement program thank you Miss Marin yeah so I um will be voting for the calendar because we have to have a calendar and for my colleagues who are going to vote no you can only vote no if people like me vote Yes in order to keep this school system going I don't understand the inconsistencies of some of my colleagues who opposed a calendar on some issues and yet will not vote for this calendar because you're saying you didn't want the um it wouldn't have enough time for Governors to do it in the spring families

265have said they want a calendar they need a calendar and yet you're going to not vote which means you're essentially doing the things you said you didn't want to do so by not voting and if this calendar fails we will not be responding to people's requests to get them the calendar already we will not have a calendar before the spring and a policy so I I respect your principal and I was with you when we voted on the additional motion but I think now we have to get a calendar otherwise work what is the next option here so um I also must say I don't understand why all this work couldn't have happened in the work session I'm just perplexed by that this is the kind of dialogue that should be happening in the the

266worst sessions not the drilling of Staff of question after question on every aspect of the calendar but the talking to each other and finally I must defend our employees who are not in the religious majority it is disrespectful to ask people to choose between their religious observances and cultural observances or working that is completely not an option that should be on the table and I think it's very disrespectful to keep raising it as such I am ready to vote whenever anybody else is thank you Miss Keys Camara okay um I will be voting for this and and I I had significant concerns I don't see a significant change between what was proposed earlier in the week and what the superintendent is recommending um but primarily one of the big concerns I had and I think

267the superintendent addressed it in her proposal is one of research suggests that when our students take off that long break in the summer it is very difficult for them to it is harder for them to get back into the learning um the the rigor of our schools and and we had fewer weeks in the beginning of the year in the previous calendar than we do that by which that that was recommended by a superintendent um so for that reason I'm I'm accepting her best thinking and um I'm I know that she needs some time to figure out what works here in Fairfax but I want to support her in what she's recommending I think it's the right thing to do so I will be supporting this and if it's appropriate I'd like to call the

268question got a second all right the question has been called I I didn't I thought everybody has spoken so I wasn't trying to cut people off no smoke okay no I have not but that's okay I'm sorry that's all right I don't mind and Mr Frisch wants to speak so do you still want to call the question it's okay if you do I'm just it's all right emotions already been seconded all right so the question's been called and seconded so I'm gonna call for the vote all those in favor call in the question please raise your hand so all that was Mrs kumara Miss Marin and Dr Anderson all those opposed Miss McCarthy miss calling Mr fresh Mr McLaughlin Mr and I come back myself Ms Corbett Sanders Mr mesh so that motion fails we

269will continue on um Mr fresh all right I this is going to pass in a moment but I want to make sure that we don't pass it without being very clear about the numbers that we're talking about every version of the Blue Calendar offered had more five-day uh day weeks of instruction than the calendar that we're voting on tonight this calendar does have more five-day weeks than the calendar we currently live in but all of the calendars that were offered in this process had more calendars than the one we're currently more five day weeks than the one we're currently living in just to be clear so that we all have the data that is accurate the calendar that was replaced had 27 on a five-day uh School weeks this version has 25 and the status

270quo that we live in right now has 23. so those are the numbers period um also coupling with religious holidays would gain us two which would put us back at 27. it wouldn't gain us three to six it would gain us two thank you um Mesquite tomorrow did you want to speak again or all right I will take my turn I will be voting for this I'm not happy about it because I think this process has been a mess but we need to have a calendar we need to have a calendar for three years because we have a strategic plan we have collective bargaining we have our literacy plan our staff needs their time to focus on our student Mental Health and many of the other initiatives that we have coming down the pike and

271we need to have a three-year calendar because I don't want to go through this process again next year so all right let me get focused talk to you later all right bye um excuse me okay so um it's Tammy so with that I do want to say thank you to the staff I'm sorry we're here so late thank you for Mr fresh for explaining that this is still better than what we have now and everything is a compromise so would that I see no one else wishes to speak I will call for the vote the motion is on the screen all those in favor please raise your hand are you voting two three all those opposed I'm sorry did you want me to call this I apologize let me call for the vote against they

272can call the name so I forgot our caloric acids to call the name so all those in favor of this motion please raise your hand Miss Keith gamara Miss Marin Miss Tallinn Miss Corbett Sanders Mr not Koufax Ms McLaughlin myself all those opposed miss picarski Mr Frisch Miss Cohen Dr Anderson Mr mesh that motion passes with that I'm actually going to call for a five minute break because I think our staff and more have been going for quite a while I between five minutes all right we're going to come back together and try to keep moving on on our agenda keep moving on because it's a fun night it's Friday already so without objection I would like to postpone the follow-on Motions not the amended not the Amendments but the follow-on Motions to the calendar

273and the CIP to action at the next regular business meeting so if there's no objection we will move all follow-on motions to action all right so yes will we do those in advance of other action items on at the next meeting we will start with those okay we'll start we'll put them to the top of the action item without objection at the next regular business meeting so okay so we will do that so give me a second to figure out where we need to be agenda item 4.04 Capital Improvement plan I call on Miss keys gamara for the motion thank you I move that the board approved the proposed FCPS fiscal year 2024 through 2028 Capital Improvement program is there a second Miss Tolan Ms Keys Camaro which I just beat your motion yes just

274brief no I'm good thank you Miss tall I would like to speak to your second Place actually um so I I just want to say you know I understand that the CFE is not perfect same conversations we just had but but there's lots of data and information and a spending plan that we need to move forward on to continue our construction and enrollment projection work efficiently um staff has done their usual good job of summarizing where we are now and what our enrollment projections look like for the next five years and we do have several amendments that I understand we will be dealing with in a couple of weeks um that improve the current CIP but the CIP really The Five-Year enrollment projections are used for our short-term planning purposes the numbers are used to

275determine the need for staff at each school and short-term changes that need to occur to accommodate the number of students such as modifying or an existing schools building or adding a modular our principles need to move ahead in Staffing for next year so they need to have us vote on these enrollment projections that are in the CIP and so that they can use this data to move forward with planning um so I hope my colleagues will approve the CIP and I guess we'll deal with the amendments next time oh we're doing amendments oh we are but not follow-ons thank you very much I appreciate that clarification you're welcome thank you thank you Miss Corbett Sanders yes thank you very much Miss kiesgamara and Mr Holland for this motion because it really is a time sensitive

276action that we must take tonight because not only for planning purposes for our staff with enrollment numbers but it's also critical for us to be able to adopt our Capital Improvement plan so that it can be provided to the county because the county uses it for its planning and also for Bond future Bond activity and so I welcome this and I also welcome the Amendments that will be made tonight thank you thank you Miss McLaughlin yes I just wanted to say I will be supporting the CIP but most importantly I want to thank our interim assistant superintendent Doug fanshaw not only for being here so late into the evening waiting his turn but more importantly just the incredible amount of work you have done stepping in um and learning so much about this process meeting

277with board members and really helping Dr Reed and her team and all of us uh it's been fantastic and every day I'm just so grateful that we have your knowledge and expertise to help the School Division so thank you for everything you keep doing every single day Miss bakarski sorry I know it's late but last year we did have a follow-on that we would have um some information come back to us about the Western High School possible site acquisition uh can somebody please speak to that before I vote for this so my understanding is we've contracted with jll which is a consulting firm who has looked for sites in the western region that would be able to cite a comprehensive high school and at this time my understanding is there is no site large enough

278that they've located so an alternate strategy is looking at a couple of our very large Parcels that have elementary schools on them and looking for elementary size sites which I think there are a few that we've discovered and I've asked staff to pull together that report I know we sent a note out a day ago maybe unfortunately and I apologize for that but we will put something more comprehensive together but it looks like um that's the land acquisition possibility the other question on the table that we discussed most recently was does it need to be a comprehensive high school do we need to have a conversation which is different than the follow-on motion I understand that do do we need to have a conversation about you re-utilization maybe of a commercial building as a high

279school prototype or are we looking for a traditional Comprehensive High School so I will get the jll report more clearly to the board but that's the update that I have I don't know Mr Fanshawe if you have anything you'd like to add to that no ma'am I think you did a great job well we just talked about it so I've been that um some direction my question is then when do you expect to have that and when we'll be having that discussion as to possible Alternatives which I think are wonderful ideas and I have advocated for so really we were looking I wanted to get through uh the CIP so then we can focus on on coming up and and working through those Alternatives talking with uh the superintendent in the cabinet as to some

280of the ideas we have uh and then after we do that we can bring that forward okay thank you thank you and I will be voting for this year this year thank you Miss picarski I see no other hands up so I'm going to call Miss Tolan for an amendment I moved to amend the main motion by relocating Kent Gardens Elementary School from table three monitoring capacity concerns by the Fairfax County School Board to table four priority recommended boundary capacity adjustments on pages 38 and 39 of the proposed CIP with a scoping during spring 2023. this will allow staff to do a full scoping to determine if a boundary change a program change are both are good options to reduce the capacity issues that Kent Gardens Elementary School is there a second second Miss Amish

281Ms told you to speak to your motion yes thank you um this amendment is long overdue I want to thank principal mcguigan and the Ken Garden Elementary School students parents and the community members for speaking to us over the last year on this topic I do agree with them that dealing with the overcrowding should have happened long before this and I will not make any excuses for the delay Kent Gardens is at 121 percent capacity at this point we need to amend the CIP so that a full analysis of student membership changes that are projected to occur with program changes or boundary adjustments can be done staff will come forward to the community with this analysis and recommendations in 2023 taking into account the public input we have already received and Community input will be

282sought on these options before our final decision is made the comprehensive planning and development committee and the facilities planning advisory Council will also analyze options that will be presented um I have to congratulate you know ISD and Facilities have worked closely together and have maximized efforts to increase the capacity at the school without making these significant programmer boundary changes um but what they have exhausted um you know ways to modify the building they have done things like added a new duplex they added a quad of classrooms they've adjusted the interior of the building many times and we did adjust the French immersion program to now have 25 outer boundary students versus 40 is what they had previously um Ken garden and parents are rightfully frustrated with our process to work on issues like this and

283it is my hope that as we move through this process um throughout the next months that um we can learn some lessons on how to deal with issues at other schools in a more timely manner um I'll stop there thank you Mr May she'll just beat your second yeah um I want to first thank Miss toland and staff for their patience and helping me understand this and walking us through it um I three quick things one I I definitely came in skeptical uh you all know where I stand on trying to elevate specific schools or communities without thinking of a holistic county-wide process but with a a little more research and understanding I did it did come to my attention that this is actually the top uh school that has an overcrowding problem right now

284in an area where a solution seems to be within reach so well you'll you might notice in the CIP we have Wakefield Forest at 135 percent but that is underway and there's a renovation coming up that will have a capacity enhancement as a part of it so that brings us to Kent Gardens which is at 121 percent and there is room here to have some Creative Solutions both programmatically and then potentially also with rethinking uh zoning a little bit to look at how we might address it so that's my first point the second is we find ourselves here because in 2018 there was a halt to any administrative boundary changes that staff can recommend to bring to the board as the board supposedly develops a policy to ensure the predict that uh the prioritization of

285boundaries and whatnot is predictable and we have yet to do our part of that work as a collective I'm excited to see when that will be coming forward but that means that in the meantime Kent Gardens the problem there has only grown and we haven't been able to address it so this is an opportunity to do that and my final point is really just taking a look at that region we look that the school Kent Gardens itself is at 121 capacity but all of the schools nearby have significantly lower than a hundred percent so you know Franklin Sherman's at 77 percent Chester book is 77 percent Spring Hill 84 Church Hill Road 86 and on and on of examples of where there's a big opportunity here Miss McLaughlin yeah it's late and I'll be brief

286Dr Reed I would just say that I'm I'm very happy to support the amendment here from Ms Tolan and again knowing that both you and Mr Fanshawe are completely new to this process but I will say that I am concerned that your predecessor um really kind of put us in a tough spot it really this amendment shouldn't be coming from Ms Tolan this should be the expertise of the facilities team and you've heard me say in Prior meetings I support funding whatever positions you need so that we don't find ourselves with 200 schools where in this case with Kent Gardens I think this is long overdue so I want to thank Ms Tolan for your incredible Outreach to all of the board members and I hope your community knows that it really put a lot

287of work into it but I don't want to have board members in the future feeling the burden because the idea is obviously it's operational you guys come and give us your operational assessment and Analysis and then we as a board agree disagree or mend so I'm looking forward to it for the future board because I will not be here this is my last one um but for the future board and your future team that maybe this gets done by the team thank you MS bakarski all right so you know the board members who wish to speak I will call for the vote the amendment is on the screen all those in favor please raise your hands Ms Keith gamara Miss Marin Miss Amish Miss Tolland Miss Corbett Sanders Mr Koufax Miss um McLaughlin Dr Anderson

288Mr Frisch Ms Cohen Miss mccarski and myself that motion passes I will call on mrnado kofox for an amendment thank you madam chair I move to amend the main motion by reallocating 0.5 million dollars for the design and planning of an early childhood education center on the land currently designated as a route one Pinewood Lakes Elementary School is there a second Miss Corbett Sanders Mr nankofa sorry Mr Neco flash let's beat your motion yes thank you um colleagues this is something that I have been sharing with you for several months now but for the public here is a recap a brief recap we have a bonded property in the Franconia District on the Route 1 Corridor that was originally slated to be in elementary school because of overcrowding in that area it is referenced as

289Pinewood lakes and was originally funded by the bond referendum in 2013. right after the bond approval process for this property the Department of Defense had a realignment that resulted in over 11 000 jobs being relocated to Fort Belvoir shortly after this FCPS was able to secure Federal grant funding construct a new Elementary School on the Fort Belvoir base alleviating the immediate capacity need for the previous bonded School in the spring of 22 Mr Smith and his team put together white paper about how we might use this bonded site as a standalone Pre-K and why it would be so important Dr Reed shared this with us in a Monday letter on sept 12 2022 as many of you are aware study after study showed that for every dollar invested in pre-k there's a seven to fifteen

290percent return on investment with the greatest impact seen with children from disadvantaged backgrounds many and many of us here have allotted the impact of equality pre-k program however it's most unfortunate that many FCPS children come to our doors without this experience we for years have worked with the county the skip team and state and federal legislators to try to get funding needed and slots and space for our underserved students unfortunately after many many years we are only serving one in six children ages birth to four based on the current budget this project would have available would have available approximately fifteen thousand to twenty thousand square feet for dedicated classroom use the space would allow for up to 400 Pre-K Early Head Start or preet or preschool special education students to gain that critical strong educational

291start today we'll be voting on the design and planning to get this started we are putting five hundred thousand dollars of the 21 million in funding already approved for this project into the five-year cash flow and today let this be the start of a new model for Early Education for our community and I look forward to your support Miss Robert Sanders would have to speak to you a second yes thank you madam chair it's an honor to be able to Second this amendment to the CIP we all recognize the importance of early childhood education to lifelong learning early childhood education allows our children important to gain important life skills that go beyond the numeracy phenomic awareness in their letters it also provides the opportunity to begin developing the essential life skills that we see in

292our portrait of graduate to include collaboration creative problem solving and working together covet had a significant impact on the availability of early childhood education opportunities across the country the state and here in Fairfax County there was a 32 percent decrease in spots available for early childhood education for economically disadvantaged students across the country along the Route 1 Corridor the needs for early childhood education have been significant since well before covet prior boards worked with the superintendent to address concerns by providing resources for our in-home providers many of which shut down during covid the in-home provider approach to early childhood education was not sufficient nor was it the best approach to educating our youngest Learners especially those who come from economically disadvantaged homes in essence we had an uneven landscape for early childhood education and at

293best at best and the pandemic worsened the conditions skipped was established I believe 10 years ago to address these needs skipped continues to work on these issues and I do support a collaborative model between the county and public schools to address this need because of the funding structure here in the state of Virginia in particular which is a K-12 model so now we have an opportunity to begin to address the deficit in Fairfax County and as you've heard the money has been set aside to build this facility the project of establishing a new response I'm almost finished there is a huge demand for this program the community the community in which it will be residing has 50 percent of English language Learners would you like 30 more seconds I only need fun thank you um

294the community in which this would be situated has over 50 percent of the residents speaking a different language than English in their homes it will greatly they will greatly be benefited from this program and I expect that the superintendent and her team will work with the county to ensure that what we are doing is complementing what they are doing thank you Miss McLaughlin Mr Frisch Mr Frisch thank you um I want to congratulate Miss darinette Koufax on bringing it this far um uh you know in in the same couple week period announcing her retirement this is quite a legacy to leave behind we've we've heard from the superintendent that um if we want to move numbers this is how we do it with early childhood education and so she has indicated that there must be

295a plan to achieve closing the gap of early childhood education by 2030 and so I'll be looking forward to seeing from the superintendent of the comprehensive plan that includes how this fits into that and I'm sure many colleagues at this Deus will learn a lot from what we what we do here in Providence District we have Graham Road Community Building property owned by the school division um in an area where early childhood education is needed very much or opportunities are needed very much and I will we will undoubtedly benefit from the process moving forward here and seeing how this works out and what Partnerships we can benefit from as as we grow out this work but again I look forward to hearing from the superintendent down the road um as you know I think the

296current budget has 10 classrooms in it uh of early childhood education it'll be interesting to see how this and that investment in future Investments tie together to get us to that goal in 2030. thank you Miss mcgaughlin Westfield children youth policy team uh when it was founded in which I'm a founding member was absolutely two two issues early childhood education and disparities in juvenile delinquency and um in student discipline so it's been a long time coming um Dr Reed I know when you toured the Braddock's district schools with me one of the things that was your number one question in each school we visited was are there any rooms that we could be using for pre-k so I would just like to ask you to speak to Ms darnak Koufax amendment in terms of your

297support and desire to see this amendment go through as part of your larger plan for expanding Early Access to childhood education which I believe every single board member supports oh thank you Miss McLaughlin and I even at uh even sort of looking for classrooms as we move around the division I think um it's critical that we really put a stake in the ground for An Early Childhood Center and in particular in the community where we might have high needs in terms of our young students coming to kindergarten less ready than we do in other parts of the County so I I really would support the plan and think it's a key piece that would anchor our Early Childhood Program even as we identify other classrooms within other schools thank you Dr Reed um I just

298also want to say having been with Ms kofax from the very beginning I just want to thank you again for always being an incredible voice and Champion um particularly the hard work you've invested in this project but tirelessly for 11 straight years and before you even joined the board that we know this is how we move the the needle for closing gaps so thank you so much for really bringing this one to us tonight thank you seeing no other people who wish to speak I will call for the vote the main motion is on the screen so I'll call for the vote the amendment is on the screen excuse me all those in favor please raise your hand it's Miss Keys gamara Miss Marin Miss Amish Miss toland Miss Corbett Sanders Mr Nickelback Miss McLaughlin

299Miss Dr Anderson Mr Frisch Miss Cohen Miss picarski and myself that is unanimous that motion that Amendment passes congratulations I will call for a vote on the main motion not to cut short your congratulations which is on the screen all those in favor please raise your hand again Ms Keith gamara Miss Marin Mr mesh Miss Tolan Miss Corbett Sanders mRNA kofax Mr McLaughlin Dr Anderson Mr Frisch Miss uh Cohen Miss bakarski and myself that is unanimous that motion passes thank you very much Mr Fanshawe for all your hard work and your staff and Dr Reed for all your hard work and stepping in here um I'm I meant to also ask without objection I would like to skip committee reports we can do the committee reports next time and board matters so we're just going

300to draw a consent agenda new business and be done so consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure Robert's Rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval by the board for of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through Board review and documentation has been provided to all board members in the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to proving the consent agenda hearing and seeing no objection the consent agenda is approved new business the following are new business items there will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled at a future meeting the new business

301items are on the screen and with that this meeting is adjourned