001foreign this December 22 ranking of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance a moment of silence and a performance of the national anthem by the Island Creek Elementary School 5th and sixth grade chorus under the direction of Sarah Laird and debtion and to the Republic for which it stands for all oh say can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we held at the twilight's last queen stripes and bright stars streaming [Music] it came through the night that our flag was still there oh say does [Music] for the land [Music] [Applause] thank you parents of Island Creek Elementary we're so happy to have your kids here we appreciate you and them and they were amazing agenda item 2.02 certification of closed meeting
002compliance 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 convenes a closed meeting on December 1st 2022 to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting do you have a motion Mr Mays do you have a second Ms Janet Koufax all those in favor that is Miss bakarski Miss Cohen Mr Frisch Dr Anderson Ms McLaughlin Miss darinak kofax with Keith gamara Miss omish Miss Tolland and myself all those opposed I was abstaining Miss Marin that motion passes with Ms Corbett Sanders away
003from the table agenda item 2.03 announcements if you would like a copy excuse me if you'd 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 Board backslashboard docs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu backslash TV backslash Channel 99. Miss Corbett Sanders is absent this evening item 6.02 fiscal year 23 mid-year budget review has been rescheduled for the December 15th meeting item 6.05 School Board liaison and committee assignments will be rescheduled for a future meeting I call and Miss talk before an announcement rights day is observed every year on December 10th the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted
004in 1948 the universal Declaration of Human Rights this year Human Rights Day marked the 74th anniversary of the universal Declaration of Human Rights a milestone document that proclaimed that inalienable rights which everyone is entitled to as a human being regardless of race color religion sex language political or other opinion National or social origin Property birth or other status it is the most translated document in the world and available in more than 500 languages drafted by representatives of diverse legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world the Declaration sets out universal values and a common standard of achievement for all people of all Nations it establishes the equal dignity and worth of every person thanks to the Declaration the state's commitment to its principles the Dignity of millions has been uplifted and the foundation
005for and the foundation for a more just world has been laid while its promise is yet to be realized the very fact that it has stood the test of time is Testament to the enduring universality of its perennial values of equality justice and human dignity the universal Declaration of Human Rights Empower us all the principles enshrined in the Declaration are as relevant today as they were in 1948 we need to stand up for our own rights and those of others we can take action in our own daily lives to uphold the rights that protect us all and thereby promote the kinship of all human beings thank you agenda item 2.04 National inclusive School weeks resolution the board will invite each recognition recipient to the diocese for a photo after the reading of all recognitions I
006call on Miss McLaughlin for the resolution thank you chair whereas since its Inception in 2001 National inclusive schools week has celebrated the progress that schools have made in providing a supportive and quality education to an increasingly diverse student population including students who are marginalized due to disability gender socioeconomic status cultural heritage language preference and other factors and whereas inclusive schools week is an annual event sponsored by the inclusive schools Network and is held during the first full week of December and whereas this year's theme Unity within Community inclusion around the world united we are stronger to focus on our common need inclusive practices in our schools and in our communities and whereas to ensure that our children belong Thrive and feel supported by their teachers peers family members and neighbors we must continue to learn
007more about the work of other organizations and groups in our community and share ideas resources and support and whereas we must teach our children by our actions how to treat others how to communicate and build relationship and how to work in harmony to address our common needs and now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board reminds the entire FCPS community that education takes on a beautiful shape when all children are included ISO move is there a second a second Miss bakarski Miss McLaughlin would you like to speak to your resolution uh thank you just briefly I I want to say it was an honor to read this evening's resolution um as a social worker I just feel very passionately about how we recognize that each and every one of us walk this
008Earth coming with our own individual stories our own individual experiences and our beliefs and our our love and our value of things on this Earth and uh we live in complicated times and I think we've we've sometimes Fallen away from understanding that the complexity of our world by our backgrounds and circumstances actually makes us a more Dynamic world and so I just can't think of a better way for this board where I know our dedication has been for inclusion to give voice and Elevate this and so I hope everyone sees this as a celebration of what we strive to be every day here in Fairfax County Schools thank you Miss bakarski I'd speak to you a second yeah sure just briefly um I too I'm honored to bring um this resolution forward I think the
009greatest gift that we can impart on our children through our schools is the gift of learning how to work together how to understand each other how to have compassion for our differences how to have empathy for others that are unlike you and um and the fact that at the end of the day we have much more in common with each other than we have um a difference from each other so I know we all really Aspire for FCPS to be a place where every single child is seen and is understood and is really respected for who they are and you know I think there are challenges and there are um still many ways and many places where not all of our kids feel this way every day but it continues to be a focus and
010I think it is it is a lofty goal so thank you thank you Miss Marin yes there is no question that the board supports numerous facets of what's needed to provide students with an excellent education and this evening we highlight another worthy necessary component which is to Spotlight the need for inclusive inclusive schools for each child I do want to share that I'm eager for the school board's governance Committee of which I'm a member to review the topics that the board brings before the public as resolutions and the process for determining those topics I am eager to contribute to policy and budgetary work that embodies the essence of these resolutions thank you Miss Tolan thank you um I just wanted to mention a couple of incredible um examples of this work across the district I
011reached out to my um advisory committee for um for students with disabilities representative to ask her about the specific work that they're doing this year and they're looking at our public day programs to the extent to see where these sites make school accessible to even those with some of our most severe learning disabilities and we heard during our report from as our acsd this week that many of these day schools are nationally renowned we're looking they are looking at assistive technology service referrals and how that is Equitable across schools and they're looking at how honors coursework in the later grades can be accessed by students with IEPs and those are just a few examples in addition I'm super excited to attend Kent Gardens International night I know many many of our schools have international needs
012to really celebrate the school communities cultures the foods crafts parades Etc because we do understand that our diversity is really our strength uh I also want to remind everyone that we do have family Liaisons now at every one of our schools to help make sure that we are including all of our families and those are just a few examples Miss Keys Kamara yes I just really wanted to use this as an opportunity to just celebrate the diversity of our schools we um we speak about 200 languages we have people from all over the world we have different cultures within the United States and when we come together in our schools It's a Wonderful Melting Pot where learning can occur in a unique environment and so I'm just really grateful for that I've also had an
013opportunity to visit some of our schools where we're specifically focusing on special education services and talked with groups regarding making sure we have what we need so that students that speak different languages can really benefit so it's it's really an exciting time and I want to applaud our staff members we have amazing Professionals in our schools that are working hard to make sure that every student can benefit from our educational process and it's just joyful to think about not just what we've achieved but what we can achieve as we continue to work together so thank you thank you and seeing another board member who wants to speak I'm just going to take my turn briefly on this um as many my colleagues know and and people this is very very personal for me National inclusive
014schools week and and I'm really thrilled to see it expanding from where it originally started which was inclusion around students with disabilities to really inclusion of everybody in learning to work and live and accept and and love one another and really recognize the value in each other and learning how to work with each other because inclusion is Beyond Disability it's everybody so I'm thrilled to see that but I would be remiss to not talk about where this started and it did start with inclusive schools week to celebrate inclusive efforts for students with disabilities who still tend to be some of the groups that are the most separated in our school system and one of the great programs that many schools have and some still do is a called walk in your shoes walk in our
015shoes and it's a program often the PTA runs where students um go through a series of stations to feel a little bit what it might be like to be a student with a disability with a mobility issue with a language issue with um sensory issues and it really helps build that empathy amongst our students I would be remiss if I didn't mention how much from me as a parent my own son's inclusion because of his strength has meant to his students around him and over the years I've had students tell me stories like I didn't think a kid like that could do this I'll never think that again I didn't think a kid like that could make me a better person I'll never think that again I want to be a music therapist because a
016kid like that is amazing and the reality is when we are included with each other when we look at each other for what we bring of value and strength to the table when we're given that space to do so not told to do so because you should but given a space to authentically work be play relax together where we just get to know each other where people who aren't seen for strengths have a chance to have their strengths shine that's when we become the best world that we can be and so I'm really thrilled to celebrate this I'll stop talking now because I could talk about this for hours so having said that I will call for the vote all those in favor please raise your hand that is Miss kiskamara Miss Marin Miss Amish
017Miss Tolan Mr netcofax Miss McLaughlin Dr Anderson Mr Frisch Miss Cohen Miss picarski and myself that motion and abstaining absence that motion passes with this Corbett standards away from the table agenda item 2.05 computer science month recognition I call on Miss Cohen for the recognition thank you I know it's a little unorthodox but we have some really special VIPs in the audience today um so I just wanted to recognize them before um I read this recognition because they were the inspiration for doing it well the gems of Braddock Elementary School stand up please [Applause] hi guys thank you so much for coming I know we have an honorary gym too who's a middle schooler I don't wanna thank you all so much and with them is Miss Joyce Matthews who is the inspiration behind so
018many of the steam programs throughout FCPS and lots of other places and was the first person who really taught and showed me um everything that not just you ladies can do but that all of our kids can do if given the opportunity and the access and materials and you guys are amazing and I see Miss Jackson Muir the principal is back there too hello in fact if you're if you're a steam educator do you mind standing up for us thank you so much and I want to take the opportunity to thank Miss Alex Fuentes who helped me write this she's the FCPS program manager for Steam and computer science um so thank you so much Alex So to that end the week of December 5th through 11th 2022 is recognized as National Computer Science Education
019week schools Across the Nation will participate in numerous activities to promote computer science in the Pre-K learning environment in Fairfax County Public Schools students will participate in computer science learning experiences like the hour of code to inspire interest and excitement for continued computer science learning the Commonwealth of Virginia was one of the first to pass legislation to support schools with integrating computer science curricula and FCPS the science technology engineering arts and Mathematics steam Department provides our schools with resources and training to support the integration of computer science in pre-k through 12 classrooms our students go beyond coding and programming by applying computational thinking to solve problems with or without technology they use portrait of a graduate attributes content knowledge and computer science and engineering practices to become creators of technology and they investigate real world
020problems design Innovation Solutions and prepare for future careers modern employers seek knowledgeable skilled and Innovative graduates equipped to enter the ever-growing digital age computer science and steam are important for all students in Fairfax County Public Schools students engage in computer science as creators explorers and innovators and learn their ideas matter they see themselves as belonging in computer science careers and build a strong foundation for the needs and demands of tomorrow's Workforce the school board recognizes December 5th through 11th 2022 as National Computer Science Education week to raise awareness about the benefits of Computer Science Education and exploration and to celebrate students just like the gyms and staff alike who Embrace computer science learning in Fairfax County Public Schools thank you Miss McLaughlin miss Colin would you like to speak Miss McLaughlin yes uh thank you
021I do want to say that uh it is remarkable how FCPS is really trying to grow computer science and steam stem education for our students having had three children come through the public schools uh certainly what I've found is almost earlier in in our education we really weren't getting there for the students and so we were hearing that students were going to college before they were really having that exposure to careers and um you know fields that that employees around the nation are trying to find and we were actually bringing people from around the globe when we had so many amazing college graduates right here but just weren't being trained in in these high demand fields and we've also found that there is a work pathway that isn't always requiring to go into four years
022of college debt to also have really rewarding careers in computer science and steam So to that end I do want to do something that's a little unique we don't normally give an opportunity for our community stakeholders to give a special message but I I've been given this opportunity to share with all of you that on behalf of the students staff families PTA board community and the business partners who support the extreme programs at Braddock Elementary they would like to extend a deep thank you to the Fairfax County school board members the FCPS leadership team and superintendent for taking the time to acknowledge the importance of steam and computer science programs events and activities in all of Fairfax County Public Schools we appreciate your thank you and it's wonderful to have you here with us tonight
023keep up the Fantastic work everybody Miss Tolan thank you yes as someone that um since college has been trying to promote women in stem careers that's just a few years um and I was thrilled to meet our gems through my work in FCPS and many many of our steam teachers and just always amazed with the incredible work that they've been doing many of our schools will be taking a part in the hour of code this month or next and I want to encourage our parents to sit down with your student and hop on code.org you can participate as well and learn how to play poem art or dance party and you might be amazed at how quickly your students catch on faster than you do but anyway give it a try all jobs of the
024future and ones that are not yet to be invented as Dr Reed often reminds us will rely on a deeper knowledge of coding in computers and so it's important that we promote this I did find out from her in a presentation that I had with my PTA leaders um just yesterday with our FCPS manager of tutor.com that some of our students are so motivated in computer science that they are logging into tutor.com over and over to learn Java and python so Mr Sethi you may want to get those memes to support your development of a pipeline for a technology organization great thank you I would like to invite all of those here in support of computer science month recognition to please join the board for a photo at the days and ask my college to
025remain in front of the days for the next photo come on up Braddock thank you I would like to invite everyone here in support of the national inclusive schools week recognition to please join the board for a photo agenda item 3.01 Community participation 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 a capital Improvement program budget and boundaries Commons targeting criticizing or attacking individual students are not permitted during public meetings complaints regarding school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate
026School principal or other school officials speakers 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 to the spirit and letter of the school division's non-discrimination policy 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 outposts from the audience will not be tolerated we are grateful for those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation our first speaker is Jonathan Randall hello thank you for allowing me
027to speak today my name is Jonathan Randall and I was a teacher resident I come to you today to address an oversight with the teacher resident position in FCPS and how it's treatment fundamentally undermines the entire culture of FCPS in the spirit in which the position was created it was clear from the start my administration had no idea what to do with a teacher resident as it was a very new position and there wasn't a lot of answers there's no regular meetings or observations with admin I did not feel like I had a supportive and growth focused environment for a long time I didn't even have a mentor I arrived early stayed late and combed through the video resources and prayed to the good book of the pacing guide daily I had no previous indication
028when my evaluation came up that I was going to be terminated regulation 44 29.4 States the dismissal of an employee constitutes the most severe type of disciplinary action authorized under this regulation what did I do that constituted the most severe type of disciplinary action a and I quote lack of student engagement and failure to effectively manage student Behavior end quote in my first quarter as a teacher assistant or teacher resident I was even condemned for admitting areas I needed Improvement in during my evaluation as a substitute I had more rights and protections than a teacher resident I was told the teacher resident is considered an operational employee which can be fired for any reason within their first year in the learning position that relies heavily on supporting and learning that makes you sign a 12-month
029work contract you have no respect or protection there's no opportunity for feedback or change no warnings a teacher resident can only succeed through continued learning and is directly at risk for termination based on the willingness of admin to embrace professional growth yeah thank you our next speaker is Mark Spooner I often criticize this board but tonight I'd like to give credit where I think it's due at a meeting in October a board member moved to put a new item on the agenda at the last minute it would have committed the board to implement quote anti-racist equity-based and justice-based instruction these are all the buzzwords for a divisive race-based victimhood curriculum four board members had no qualms about trying to Ram this through but a majority of you rejected it and for that I think you
030deserve the community's thanks the question though is whether this was a sign of new moderation the pressure from the left is going to continue in fact practically the next item on your agenda not tonight but soon is a proposal to throw boys and girls together together in the same sex ed classes the girls haven't asked for this nor have the boys nor have their parents nor is there any evidence that the existing system hasn't worked well this is being proposed because of the transgenders Community as chosen as their next issue du jour after all there might be a student or two who might not want to choose which class to attend so let's just throw them all together to them to them the interests of the other kids don't matter the parents don't matter Common
031Sense doesn't matter and common decency doesn't matter this seems outrageous but how will you vote and after you vote on that Fringe proposal what about the next one moving into 2023 the eyes of the community will be on this board as never before I urge you to focus on the ABCs of Education rather than ideology but for tonight I want to thank you for doing the right thing in October thank you our next speaker is Tyrone Santos all right so I can't believe that uh this board thinks A Book Like Lawn Boy is okay in our school libraries our our kids shouldn't be reading about pedophilia so get the porn and the pedo crap out of our school libraries please um on October 6 I heard you miss a mess trample over free speech like
032it was nothing the government which is all of you okay isn't allowed to compel speech in this country we don't even compel kids to say the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of the allegiance but then you turn around and compel people to speak made up pronouns so please go open up history book because what comes after the government compels speech is what is uh is the worst of what Humanity has to offer Dr Reed a couple nights ago I asked you uh you told me students have the rights have the right to use facilities consistent with their gender identity like I don't really know what planet you guys are on because boys and girls are different biology matters and removing the words boys and girls from the curriculum doesn't stop boys and girls from existing combining
033them into the same sex ed class doesn't stop them from being different women-only spaces have been safeguarded for Generations as far as I know and like this estrogen pack Board needs to get real and stand up for the girls you're responsible for uh you're forcing people to speak lies to children you're keeping secrets from parents you can't even answer this ridiculous question on my t-shirt okay how are parents supposed to feel good about sending our kids to you for seven hours a day that's it thank you our next speaker is Samantha Phelps howdy and good evening thank you for having me this evening um I'm here to talk to you about regulation 47 60.9 concerning the short-term disability policy for employees uh it states that sick employees must use their accrued leave and annually leave
034for the first 20 work days of an illness or injury if the employee does not have accrued leave equal to the number of days absent from work the employee will be placed in a leave without pay status which will count towards their elimination period this equates to a hundred and forty hours of lost leave or pay by comparison the elimination period required by almost every surrounding School Division is no more than seven days additionally Fairfax County Employees themselves have no elimination period what this actually means for an FCPS employee like myself an employee would not take or would not would have to not take off a single day for a medical or personal reason for the first two years of their employment to have enough leave to be able to afford the elimination period this
035is my sixth year in FCPS and I only have 170 hours approximately 24 days which would mean I would have only a total of four days left for the remainder of the year in case my child due in January husband or myself becomes ill after that I would have to use leave without pay additionally that I would have to wait an additional two years without taking any time off for any reason to have another child if I so choose what this really meant for me was when I lost my first pregnancy in January of this year I took only one day to mourn my loss and seek medical help when I lost my second pregnancy in April instead of focusing on yet another loss I found myself grateful that it occurred at the start of
036spring break so that I could take one more than one day off to mourn my loss please consider thank you our next speaker is Laura Hanford I'm asking you to oppose Fleek act recommendations on five grounds first they're unlawful Virginia guidelines require teaching such topics in sex separate classes and requires schools to abide by content parameters which exclude gender ideology from Elementary grades secondly the recommendations are drawn not from science but from the activist materials of gender Spectrum per appendix a the author is an attorney who travels the U.S training schools to conceal gender transition from parents and assisting judges in taking children away from parents because of their views on gender that alone is disqualifying the recommendations deny science and the irreversible harm done to children who alter their bodies to match their feelings
037there are no long-term studies none that prove the benefits of gender information in children or that it prevents suicide European nations have comprehensively reviewed the evidence and found it so weak and the risk so high that they have sharply curtailed the instant gender affirmation in children that Fleek Act is pushing gender dysphoria typically resolves and as France States there's no test to distinguish permanent dysphoria from a transient phase England now classifies social transition as an active intervention not a neutral act World expert Dr zecker warns it actually dramatically increases the likely consequences of lifelong biomedical treatments which leads to my fourth point there is a billion dollar gender industry preying on our children and it begins with teaching gender ideology the recommendations push children right into that school to Clinic pipeline teaching gender and gender
038ideology to kids is opposed by doctors researchers therapists all kinds of people in your communities including most Fairfax County parents and Faith communities teach kindness for all but don't harm kids under the guise of inclusiveness these recommendations are unlawful anti-science and anti-family vote no thank you our next speaker is Kathleen Gillette hi good evening uh Kathleen Gillette Mallard also but I identify as an eagle not a mallard duck okay um good evening many speakers tonight are extremely concerned about the proposed changes to the Family Life Education also known as sex ed but in my opinion it should also be known as how to confuse traumatize sexualize groom our students at a younger and younger age I ask you do we need to come back here week after week month after month year after year to
039ask you to please get back to the basics of Education it seems like your social engineering issues are never ending why are you working so hard on issues which have nothing to do with academic preparation of our youth to become productive skilled members of the workforce over the years you have taken on so much more than Reading Writing and arithmetic yeah we want to have safe skills schools yes we want to have our kids learn skills yes some of our kids need extra help but uh you have determined some teachers have determined their role is to create a utopian orwellian world where students are told to question their gender question their reality now the real issue I'm here tonight is why don't you all go back and look at your resolution in January about human
040trafficking you are missing students you did not use some money that was intended to track those students down where are they 750 mainly Latino students and there's a person here tonight who's been tracking that um human traffickers are known to Target not only Middle High School every Fairfax County Public Schools has had a human trafficking incident go to Tyson's Corner Mall you can see it it's there I met a young lady who was from Fairfax County Public Schools she met a guy she he he groomed her she was already groomed partially anyway um let's all you know do a well thank you foreign thank you our next speaker is Cole mallard good evening has already been stated the Fairfax County School Board is considering the Family Life education curriculum advisory committee's 2022 recommendations to its
041fle curriculum which include endings sex separate sex ed instruction replacing the terms boy and girl with assigned female or male at Birth teaching sex is not binary and pushing radical gender ideology in Elementary grades these radical changes violate the modesty and innocence of our young students as well as undermine Family Values regarding sex and sexuality the recommendation to explore instruction of gender identity in elementary school and create a more quote unquote inclusive fle curriculum overall unquote blatantly ignores science-based approaches to teaching family life and sex education these changes seek to expand an extreme way state level guidelines for Family Life Education which don't even prescribe gender topics for elementary grades the recommended changes allow schools to adopt gender combined sex education or human growth and development lessons as early as fourth grade throughout the fle
042advisory committee annual recommendations documented document references are made to gender Spectrum an advocacy group that partners with Planned Parenthood originally called The Negro Project in addition to some of the largest and wealthiest lgbtq activist groups such as glsen glenson I suppose is pronounced and the Human Rights Campaign please consider these changes reconsider them please our children and grandchildren deserve protection from these efforts to groom them thank you our next speaker is Mark Smith [Applause] hi I'm Mark Smith I'm relatively new to Fairfax this is my second time speaking before the board but it's nice to see you all this evening there are two things I want to talk about before I get to the little notes that I wrote first the elementary school kids doing computer science thing I had no idea that that was
043a thing 10 out of 10 big fan so thank you for that also the leave policy thing please fix whatever that is I would appreciate it uh I'm here to talk about the teacher pay steps that teachers didn't get after covet that if a teacher's first year of teaching was the year we locked down that spring that the next school year they did not receive a pay step and then last year they did not receive a pay stub so it's my understanding they got a pay stub this year and what that means is that a teacher who's this is their fourth year of teaching is being paid the same as a teacher who is their second year of teaching and that paying our the teachers of this county is showing them both their value to
044us as a community and to you that is how that you compensate them and I would want you to give them those two steps back they deserved it and they earned it they worked hard during that time whether it was teaching digitally or doing distance learning that was hard to do those weren't regular school years and not giving steps for that is not great I know you guys have had two thousand dollar uh bonuses that have been distributed to the teachers but that's not the same as a pay step that doesn't equate to what you deal with retirement when you're down the road or people close to retirement whether it's 5 10 15 or 20 years down the road I know that's not a problem that you can fix probably right now because Fairfax county
045is enormous and you have a multi-million dollar budget and so I don't expect anything to happen like quickly because that'd be nuts but I would like you to do something about it or at least look at it or do it five years down the road that's fine but I think it does need to be addressed because I think they deserve those steps thank you very much and have a good night thank you our next speaker is Karen's salon tonight hi I am my name is Karen Solon I am proud to add my my one voice to the many that you've heard in support of the changes to the fle curriculum that is better respects our lgbtq students and their families I've been a resident of Fairfax County for 50 years Fairfax County Schools have educated
046my own two children they're friends and innumerable children I have taught as a child care provider and preschool teacher I care very deeply about children and I know that what we teach them matters growing up in the 50s I was left to absorb many negative attitudes and prejudices of the day which I did and I was left to educate myself as an adult about the complexity of gender which I have done with the help of many many faces that are all I'm speaking for them today we do assign gender at Birth and we do not always get it right period cultures vary in how they treat transgender people and non-binary people but they have always existed and from birth through childhood and throughout their lives they deserve the same respect and dignity and love and
047protection that is the birthright of every child and each of us as adults they are our neighbors our friends colleagues ministers Architects EMTs nurses other health care workers and more they live among us many people here are not aware I I am because I know them I am sure that among those who oppose the changes our parents and others motivated by a genuine love and genuine concern for children I suspect there are others whose motives are based on unfounded fears of these people or on deep-seated prejudices perhaps I don't like to assume that but regardless of their motives I ask you this question who will stand with the vulnerable young person who thank you our next speaker is Jessica daoosung esteemed members of the board I am actually not sure if this is the right
048platform and I am very sorry if it's not but I'm super passionate about what I'm about to talk about and I signed up and got accepted so here I am and we're gonna have a lot of fun I'm here to talk about an opportunity to add an option for high school students who do not want to go to college or who want to earn enough to support themselves through college uh or anybody who wants to support themselves part-time any students looking for a stepping stone into Industries like business or Healthcare and not only is the projected job growth uh look at 22 percent but the available job to uh available practitioner rate is two to one so ladies and gentlemen the board my name is Jessica deluson a widowed single mother of four and a
049licensed massage therapist of over 10 years with the state of Virginia and I have a whole presentation full of logical reasons why Fairfax County where the students of Fairfax County schools would benefit from learning about a career in massage therapy and hopefully one day implementing it as part of Fairfax Academy I think it would help the county greatly the people and lots of local businesses furthermore I'm from here and I know for a fact that Fairfax County leads the state and kind of by default the world a nation in education so I think it's time to lead the nation and be the first country to educate students about the oldest Healing Art in the world that has survived the industrial and internet revolutions uh and the 08 housing crash and because you know everybody loves
050their massage therapists thank you [Applause] thank you our next speaker is Nick Matic thank you I'd like to address you about the proposed changes to the fle curriculum and the proposed mixing of boys and girls in grades four through eight when they're covering very sensitive topics about body development puberty it makes makes no sense it's why what's the rationale for this change I can't figure it out because it no one's asking for it like a previous speaker said children at that age are trying to understand their own bodies and many of them are embarrassed and having the opposite sex in the room with them will stifle discussion will cause embarrassment and will hinder open questions on these very very important topics so this change of mixed gender instructions makes no sense at all and the
051second your misguided use of inclusive language of assigned at Birth of gender at signed at Birth it's not inclusive it's abusive it's anti-science sex and gender are not assigned at Birth they're determined that conception at the genetic and chromosomal level that can never be changed and this proposed language will just confuse very young children as to gender because many children will go through phases where they are confused and to affirm that confusion will create prop much bigger problems long long later will confuse them on biology those who suffer from that terrible Affliction of gender dysphoria deserve our love our tenderness our compassion and empathy but they don't deserve lies you would never tell an anorexic teenager who self-identifies as fat that yes dear you're fat and you better eat less because that's what you're doing
052so please follow the science and follow science and not some misguided fad thank you thank you we also have one video testimony this evening submitted by Jen hands perk up your school board because it's time to hear from our voters the top five ways that you sexualize our children number five the school board asks little kids their gender preferences these are kids too young for sex but you ask them anyway then you're so proud if the kid is unhappy with their biological sex number four the school board conducts in-depth surveys asking our children detailed explicit questions about their sex lives number three School Board allows biological boys in the girls bathroom which has led to in Loudon multiple rapes all the while the school board covers it up number two School Board pushes sexualized books
053as mandatory reading jeopardizing the innocence of the children and violating parental rights the school board even says how they enjoy the sex books paid by us the taxpayers number one as if going through puberty isn't hard enough for a kid the school board now is soon to vote on combining girls and boys sex talks into one class most kids will be uncomfortable with this change but as long as the less than one percent is happy with it that's what you the school board focuses on overall the message you the school board pushes is sex sex and more sex groomers that's what you are agenda item 3.02 strategic Plan update I call on doctor excuse me I'd like a point of order please yes Miss Baron um is it acceptable to use slurs toward the board
054and calling us groomers I thought we discussed um a certain level of decorum for the language that would be used for us in in public I just wanna note that it is not appropriate Miss Marin to use the slurs thank you okay thank you strategic Plan update agenda item 3.02 strategy Plan update I call on Dr Reed for the treaty Plan update good evening um and it's my pleasure this evening to present our strategic planning update uh this afternoon we concluded two full days of our core planning team with 130 community members staff and students and I must say it was a highly energizing time as we had the opportunity to talk about our current data and really think about what's possible in terms of Fairfax County Public Schools moving forward so thank you Laura
055um one of the things and let's go one more please I want to share with the board that our strategic plan student survey window as you know open November 2nd and it's scheduled to close this Friday for those students not opted out by their families as of this evening we've had over 90 000 student responses that have been received and we're hoping to hit a hundred thousand of the 138 000 that we have pinged on that survey we're really excited about the return rate and feel that that's a strong showing on behalf of our Fairfax County students once the survey closes the data will be analyzed and the planning team will be having an opportunity to review those in January so many thanks to our students the staff that facilitated that and the principals who
056led it moving forward we have principal-led focus groups which is another opportunity for student input as of December 1st 129 of our school sites have completed these focus group discussions and this is a fabulous rate of work I just want to pause for a moment to thank our principals across this division it has been a really I think busy busy many competing interests but the fact that they've taken the time to sit down our students and be thoughtful about I believe demonstrates the depth of their commitment and faithful for our principals and scholarship here in Fairfax County once these focused finished just as the surveys the data will be analyzed that data will then begin to the alignment team and back to the core planning team and the board of course will also have an
057opportunity to review that data but many thanks to the principal-led work core planning team is the team I was referring to that we had an opportunity to convene Wednesday and Thursday I want to give in a special thank you to Dr Francis Ivey who's here this evening if we could give it up for Dr Ivey um she and Marcy Neal and Dr Iona spikes spent a great deal of Time Dr Ivey and Dr spikes are the champions along with Mr George Becerra we have three Champions to staff and a community champion for our core planning team and the three of them really led a significant amount of work over the last couple days Dustin Schmidt as well as Marcy Neal and Angie our project manager very hard as well to do technical details and prepare
058us remind the board that the core planning team is composed 150 members you can see the percentage breakdown we talked about who was in the room today and it's a very broad cross-section of our community and I'm tremendously proud of the conversations at times difficult but what they were able to craft this afternoon was truly inspiring um just filled with hope our instructional Focus team will convene tomorrow and on Monday and I'd like to command Dr Sloan Presidio who's going to lead that work if we could recognize Dr Presidio on that give him a hand please the instructional Focus team I think is going to be very core to the work that work is going to happen in parallel with our planning work it'll include 121 team members including two champions 71 percent of the
059team are school-based members um then 29 central office members it's been very important for us to think about involving what we call known voices with voices and we really want to think about that as we work toward um our future is including known voices new voices our family team has its first meeting on Thursday morning if we could move to the family teams thanks Laura Saturday morning we're going to have an opportunity 85 people minimally everyone was invited who was nominated and you can see the breakout there it includes members from all five regions and we're going to have interpretation language services and child care provided I'm looking forward to spending time Saturday morning with our families who will also be looking at student data as all teams have another group that will be convening
060this coming week is our faith house of worship team 190 faith-based organizations were reached out to after two rounds of invitations at this time we have 34 affirmative responses and we plan to begin at 10 A.M on December 1st really excited about that and it's not too late to RSVP for that the alignment team as you recall convenes on December 5th and these are comprised of essentially electeds higher ed non-profits and Business Leaders so we're looking to kick off our work December 5th again next week and finally our community and staff surveys and forums want to remind our board and community that we're currently evaluating the really best time and method for these surveys since we've already established that we are a survey Rich environment and we want to make sure that that we have
061an opportunity to really focus on these when they come out Community Forum dates are also being finalized as you know we're going to have magisterial sessions as well as at large opportunities for Community input so there you have it it's our strategic Plan update and I'd be happy to answer any questions the board might have no questions move on to agenda item 3.03 academic matters excellent call again on Dr Reed feature Sizemore Heiser this is really an exciting it's an opportunity to showcase the audible work that goes on in our division you know we well for so many topic areas and most importantly is you know is the lifting up of the potential and work of each and every one of our students the sounding we're going to talk a little bit about our English
062learner data so if we want to go to the next slide I want to invite umio who's joining me this evening because I did an expert next to me in case you had some tough questions and Dr polio actually I'll sort of be here and he's going to walk through as he prepared for me so Dr polio please hi everyone uh so the slide you're looking at right now is to start we want to understand who are Learners in FCPS uh the largest Circle shows our K-12 September membership so you'll see 176 000 this does not include Pre-K students 176 168 the end of September in grades K through 12. the second Circle the next Circle includes language minority students these are students who have indicated that they speak a language other than or in
063addition to English that's 48 of our entire student population in grades K through 12 84 464. the smallest Circle are our English Learners and these are students who are currently receiving English language development services in all of our schools these students constitute 20 percent of the entire FCPS student population and actually this is data as of September 2022 as of September we currently have over 36 000 English learner students as of the end of uh this month as of the end of November can we go to the next slide please so this slide shows the Pass rates of English Learners former English Learners and students who were never English Learners on SOL tests in Reading from this past spring as a reminder English language proficiency levels are determined by an annual state test which occurs
064each winter generally between January and March English language proficiency levels 1 and 2 represent our newcomer students and entry-level students and English language proficiency levels three and four are our intermediate and advanced English learners the First Column to the left represents the combined Pass rates of all English Learners levels one through four and this is the data that we generally share with you the school board and with the public so tonight what we wanted to do is share with you the breakdown of that left-hand dark blue column as you proceed from left to right you can see that English language proficiency level one students have a pass rate of 11 percent as students gain English language proficiency and move on to level two it rises to 12 percent at level three it's 38 percent and
065at level four it's 67 percent once students become officially English proficient as measured by the Wida access as measured by the wheat access exam for the first two years the pass rate is 83 percent we've divided it there because in those first two years of becoming a former English learner that's when we're required to Federal federally monitor all of our students to ensure that they're making progress that next column is former L's three plus years beyond their uh level Beyond when they reach proficiency 91 of our former L's who have been reclassified for three or more years uh past their reading uh their reading Sol tests and those students who have never been English Learners the pass rate is 90 percent so as you can see our former L's reach a level equal to or
066in this case just one percentage Point higher than our students who were never English learners so as the more time I think what this what this graph shows is that the more time students have to learn English the better they perform academically and they do learn our they do learn academic content at a rate just as equal to our students who were never English Learners if we could go to the next slide please and the next slide you'll see similar results when it comes to mathematics so in mathematics our current English Learners the pass rate is 37 percent and as I've mentioned this is really the number that we share most frequently with the with with schools very often with the school board with everyone and so as you can see as again in mathematics
067just as in Reading as students gain English language proficiency they also gain content understanding and Mathematics it's particularly exciting I think that our former English Learners continue to be successful in FCPS I mean this is really what we want when it comes to English Learners they are not stagnant individuals they don't stay at that same level forever and we it's really encouraging to see that our students gain academic content understanding as they gain that English language proficiency um is there one more slide so we want to stress and uh we'll take questions I think in just a moment but we do want to stress that you know we consider uh certainly in our office and I think across Fairfax County Public Schools we consider multilingualism a superpower and uh our students who gain uh who
068are English Learners as they gain English we know that they're highly intelligent highly capable students who really we want to acknowledge for their strengths improving the educational experience and outcomes for our elves is really the collective responsibility of all of us it's our Esau teachers our classroom teachers School administrators central office staff school board and the community all working together this is what's going to make our English Learners Thrive so thanks very much and we look forward to your questions thank you Dr Anderson thank you you're appreciative of the data we go back to either the math meeting I would appreciate that moving forward we are presented with the demographics performance information that this also is because it tells the full story it tells a story that language action is powerful and so I would
069love to hear from you because this tells us that once I achieved proficiency English language see then they're able to perform well on these assessments some of the strategies that are being utilized to advance and accelerate that um language proficiency uh first and foremost I think we're really in our office and across but we've spoken with principals and teachers and foremost is really just tier one construction ensuring that our Learners have daily reading writing speaking and listening and that they have daily work with and and you salty an English learner teacher in their school of course we look at it and the way the research shows that we should be working is that to our level one beginners will have more time with the new Saltine more time with English language development for example a
070student who has um uh is a level four the other thing we do is we provide data all schools have to what we publish learner data portfolio does a breakdown of every single English learner has a breakdown of their goals in Reading in writing and listening and speaking you know that just because a student is example level three a student might be skilled doing just fine have reached proficiency level officially let's say speaking and listening but there yet in Reading editing so that helps teachers administrators like kind of focus resources and focus instruction on particular domains for students as they're moving up through uh through those lists so I mean that's just two examples no thank you for that the other piece that I would be interested in as you're speaking about students they navigate
071through the Continuum of the data throughout the levels I'd like to sense of how long does it take us to Traverse through those levels one year is it after one year they've moved to the next Wida we have kids who are at levels at the lower levels for years at a time and if so what are we doing differently for those so I know you don't have that data in front of you right now but I would be interested in that breakdown because I'd like to know how many of our kids are making gains in one year and how many are taking multiple years in the ELD levels yeah I think you're talking about what we long-term learners for some students that take long say five to seven years and we have that data video
072e data as well so you know we can share that with you later and also on average how long it takes students to move from one level to the other on average um on average it would take for each it's about one and a half years per level but students move differently you know sure each usual student is different um and it depends it's kind of like we sometimes we compare to um Olympics coming and Dr Rita appreciates this analogy because you know from the Athletics perspective is that so when you're just learning how to swim um the first time you try and you know you swim across the pool you swim one you may swim it in let's say three minutes um maybe next week when we swim in you know a minute and
073make this great gains right but when you're in the Olympics you're already at such a high level you're really just trying to make you know milliseconds or you know just a little bit of time and that's a big deal for you so it's the same level one student you can see tremendous gains as a summer student you can see tremendous gains particularly in that social language uh listening over a few years as you get as it as students um need to learn academic content that becomes a little bit more challenging and just takes more time to learn so it can be a little bit it can be uh more challenging for even our level three and level four students to make significant gains just takes a little bit more time sure and since time is
074what we need for our students I'm particularly concerned with our students who do come to us without a lot of time left in their academic careers if you're coming to us as a ninth grader 10th grader an 11th grader so I'd also be interested in this Breakout by grade level if you can offer that because I'll give me a sense of where are we seeing the largest gaps so thank you sure thanks thank you Miss Cohen I'll add one more disaggregation point but it would be interesting I think for us even if you don't have a lot of data maybe even just qualitative data about the difference between kids who come here with limited or interrupted formal education to see the difference between kids who we get who have had loads of Education in that
075native language and come to us with an ability in a different literacy probably skill set I would guess then our kids who haven't had those opportunities do you have any sense of that sure yes we definitely we have that data and I think you're so you would be speaking of our life students students with limited or interrupted formal education and we started you know several years ago five or six years ago compiling that data we did it on our own Fairfax County I think was really a trail laser in that and the state has since just about a year ago has since required us to report numbers of slife students and we do recognize that those students need additional resources and support so yeah we can yes we can definitely share that data with you
076and talk more about I would certainly be interested in talking more about you know things that we can do collectively again to support those students that'd be amazing um I think the other question I have you know we've seen in recent years and I'm not gonna only one of us up here actually taught English as a second language so I will defer to my colleague over here but um just in seeing more recent research about educating kids and they're using more native language instead of sort of the old school frame of thought of that you only gave instruction in English how much do we incorporate that here for for our students I don't know the number offhand we do have a number of two-way immersion schools here in Fairfax County Public Schools and the research
077shows that that programming does do tremendous has tremendously great positive effects for students so that's a the most formal way we have of teaching students in their native language because those schools those those programs have 50 of students in a Target in their home language either Spanish or we do have one school in Korean uh in the and the target language and then 50 who are native English speakers so in that that program that's definitely supportive but we also do encourage students to speak home languages in classrooms um both to help them understand content and to understand uh practices in the classroom we have many bilingual teachers in the school system and we encourage you know our bilingual teachers to speak uh home like the current the home language of students with students in the
078classroom as a means of helping students to understand for example procedures and what to do and to certainly to make students feel comfortable and families feel welcome thank you Miss Tolan actually I'm really happy to follow that because I had a very similar questioning I was going to ask about the the two-way immersion programs and successes you're seeing there and also was really interested in the idea of teaching kids in their home language especially like Mrs Khan was talking about students that come to us with a lot of education but it's just not in English what are you seeing you know how are those kids doing on math for example I could see how the reading festivals could still be very difficult for them but are they doing better in math for example if they've
079got strong math background it's just not in English I think I would be careful about I don't I don't have the data in front of me specifically for those students I can say that we do have a few schools in the uh a few elementary schools in the county where we have some programming that is focused on using the home language as a bridge to English so they spend a short period of the day working on Spanish literacy skills because we know that as their Spanish literacy seals grow that they will have an easier time learning English that English will come easier and quicker over time so I don't have the the mathematics data for those students but we are finding that that's been beneficial for for students and and staff at the schools awesome
080thank you thanks for being innovative sure thank you Miss bakarski okay thank you Dr polio for being here with us tonight my questions were actually asked by Dr Anderson so I'm going to take this time to just put a plug-in that I would love and I know we have busy schedules I think it would be so helpful and informative for this board especially as we're talking about our strategic planning to have you um as part of a work session to talk about what is happening in our schools maybe bring some of these Esau teachers to talk to us about their experiences in serving the different ell population so it's just a plug I really hope that we can do that at some point because I really am very interested in this life services and that
081is something that has come up in my high schools repeatedly as we are getting larger numbers of students so that's it I'm going to put that plug in since you are here but I really appreciate the disaggregated data it's extremely helpful thank you thank you Miss Amish thank you and thank you Mr Polio I know you've been a long time advocate for Esau students and Dr Presidio for your leadership in this area as well um I guess can we go back to that slide with the the numbers of students the um not really a Venn diagram but yeah thank you concentric circles concentric circles yeah um I guess I I wanted to ask you just off the bat why you chose to talk to us about this today for the academic matters what what was
082going through your old Minds for me the reason why I felt it was important to share this information is because we often confuse who in our division is an English learner with who in our division may not be an English learner but may speak another language at home you know I can give one example if it's okay for example last year when we had our special education review there was data that was shared with you saying that a certain percentage of English Learners were also in special education I was watching on my computer in my office and noticed right away that the number was was very high and it was because an accident you know and it was not it was not intentional at all that um there was confusion between who was an English
083learner um in the data poll and who was not an English learner but may have a family that speaks the language other than English so I think it's important that the school board that we that that all of us understand the differences um and also that you know our language minority families our families who you know students who speak English who are English proficient still may have their families may still have a need for translation or interpretation at home so for this I think in the in the spirit of I think academic matters is meant to try and provide Clarity on certain issues of academics that we don't always get to talk about and and I think this um this slide in particular from a demographic standpoint can help all of us understand the difference
084between you know different groups of students yeah no and I really appreciate you highlighting that I was certainly one of those kids who was referred to you know the ell program despite being born and raised here and then having my family have to fight that fight and I don't think I think Stella you might actually have been in the same boat we were an English language learner right yeah even though we were up here yeah yeah um so that's a common Challenge and I've certainly heard it in the community uh and I guess I you know it's one of those things where perhaps it's not that they need to be referred to ell but maybe that's where we provide additional literacy support because I will tell you the experience too of exposure um is different
085uh I remember you know some of the analogy tests they would have us do in sixth grade would make a kid feel stupid only because they didn't necessarily recognize her in English like the word Regatta you know like things that wouldn't have necessarily come uh come to a kids experience by Elementary School simply because of language exposure so that goes to speaking to I think the importance of a culturally responsive practices in this area as well um in in how we address the needs of that uh Second circle of students um so I appreciate that but even more broadly than this I guess you chose to bring the the piece on the instructional uh needs or Sol Pass rates as a part of our academic piece I was seeing it as an area of high
086potential that this is an area worth investing in because the returns are so high but I'll let you speak for yourself on that so you're asking why we chose to yeah I didn't even mean this slide only I was really talking more broadly when I asked originally well Dr Reed said I could only bring three slides so that's why yeah yeah but I meant the whole thing not just this slide I know I know I'm just I'm just joking I apologize um I think the Sol information is critical because also you know for our English Learners our ultimate goal is that they learn is that our English Learners become academically successful and learn uh content learn English you know are successful on SOL tests we need students need to pass Sol tests in order to
087graduate Sol tests in English and reading and Mathematics and excuse me in Reading Writing mathematics and social studies and science so I think that's really important that we share the academic information with you about how our our elves are doing yeah no go ahead doctor yeah thank you um I the other reason and Laura would you go to the reading slide please thank you one of the things I guess I also just from a timing standpoint two things one it came up yesterday in our conversation at the strategic planning meeting which is you know we often sort of create monoliths about certain demographic data and the monolith around well if you're an El student you know there are these tremendous struggles and the reality is there are struggles and staying with the struggle try our
088El students are gonna yeah Triumph thank you our El students not unlike Miss togby as a swimmer are gonna you know hit that Mark and we need to remember that and not just think of the 31 percent secondly I would say that Dr Anderson at the beginning of this hit the nail on the head what we really need to be thinking about is how do we accelerate that movement between those levels and as we are moving into our budgeting process right now and as I contemplate with our staff what our highest priorities are I would argue that as we think about this work that Dr polio and Dr Presidio and the entire team has been working on what we know is that we know what works what we need is to be able to use
089time and a few more resources especially to accelerate those steps so that our English Learners can see those Triumph moments sooner in their academic career which will enable them to take more advanced courses sooner and really create a very different path for their future and we think that that's very important so timing wise it was important for those two reasons so I just wanted to be clear about that no I appreciate that and I mean it seems like an area of high I don't want to say one of the highest but return of investment opportunities really in academic performance and I mean the the most dangerous thing to me is to look at this and I'll speak for myself first where we tend to think oh well that makes sense obviously if they speak less
090English they're going to perform you know lower so we just accept it because that's that's what we would expect but the other way to see it is oh wait a minute this there's a differentiating factor let's invest more in it because it can really move the needle right rather than um accept what we'd expect of the data so I really appreciate that and hope that that's the takeaway and reframing how we think about even for my colleagues whether this is a worthwhile investment um you know in lowering ratios which we know are egregiously high across Virginia but even in FCPS compared to the best practice right right one other thing just to leave you with and I know we don't want to take too much more time on this but one of the things we're
091really batting around I know at the cabinet level and leadership team level is how do we provide more esol training to all staff right it's not simply so I mean in terms of acceleration strategies it it may be more people but it's also how do we support differently all of our staff currently there are many states in the country that require a level of esol training to even have a teaching certificate so we're really thinking about all the opportunities and all the paths in which we can all become sort of more effective in this Arena because what's good for our English language Learners is good for all Learners right and we want to make sure all of our Learners have access to tier one content that they don't become curriculum disabled by not being able
092to access tier one instruction there's that targeted universalism I appreciated that comment and and to that point I was going to mention next was the advanced programming access because when we look at the reading data okay great people don't speak English don't do well in an English exam duh but then when you look at math um that's still a little troubling right I know the this the assessment is in English which is a whole another ridiculous issue but um that that's something we think about right if a kid are we putting a cap on their potential because of the offerings that are available to them in English right um and maybe we can follow a model similar to the special ed one where they have an uh someone with them or you know we invest
093more in that so I appreciate that that's the direction we're headed in and just I'm grateful that you guys chose to prioritize this because it is a major segment of our population and they're not always the ones filling these seats so thank you so much thank you Mr fresh thank you um next on the sixth I think we're having a work session about our goal one and two report and it made me think as we were listening here um about the unique needs of our uh El kids when it comes to learning recovery from the pandemic so I'm interested in um hearing from y'all um about those unique challenges and what unique strategies are being used to help close those uh learning recovery gaps well I think first and foremost kind of what I what
094I went back to before is that the the first most important thing that we've been working on is ensuring that every English learner is receiving Esau Services every day and really working with getting the best tier one instruction so our office we've made a goal to visit we have about 20 of us in the esol office at various levels and positions and we're visiting every single School in FCPS so far we've been to 100 since October 1st and we have we have an hour and a half meeting with each School reviewing their data uh reviewing the English learner data and talking with them about listening to their challenges and how they're doing so because we really feel like and we did this today actually in our strategic planning work we really need to know what
095the current reality is now that we're through the pandemic in order to move forward so so that's one one piece that we feel like is really important and I and I do plan as director to make sure that we compile that data and look and see like what exactly all schools need and all English Learners need I think the other piece to the the second piece I would say is communication with families and as we communicate uh the more we communicate with our English learner families and have true two-way communication the better we can know what their needs are and the better we can support them so you know since the when the pandemic started in March 2020 we introduced United language group to all schools we paid for it centrally and that was a
096real game changer at the time and since that time the school board supported funding for talking points which is now up and running at all schools and that's really we've sent out almost I believe since we started since talking points went live on October 1st we've sent there have been back and forth over 800 000 messages text messages between families and and teachers which is incredible um all and I've I've read through not 800 000 messages but I've I've read and to look at kind of themes of what what people are talking about and mainly it's you know clarifying oh there's a test tomorrow um you know and you know uh please be ready for it um your child was absent today how are they doing and so it's kind of basic things that we
097take for granted that English-speaking families have you know easy access to teachers about on a regular basis that and I think that um you know more instant communication is really going to help families in the English learner families in the long term so those are two you're in my mind about family engagement I was going to ask you what more we as the board can be doing to support that type of work where do you feel there are needs that are not being met or could be met more robustly um you know I would say going back to what Dr Reed mentioned is that for me the number one um Improvement or uh thing that we can do is provide training and support for all of our teachers our English Learners are not just with
098ESL teachers each day they're with Math teachers biology teachers CTE teachers second grade teachers kindergarten teachers special education teachers and and music teachers all the all the electives all the specials music PE art and so you know these teachers work with else every day and there's a wide Continuum of confidence of self-confidence in working with else so I think that that's really if we can work on planning time we can work on you know uh strategies things things like that where we have time for teachers to collaborate time for our office or other entities to train teachers I think would be really helpful thank you thank you Mr freshman Ms McLaughlin yes hi um Rich I just had one quick question to something you had said to Ms omish about the middle circle the 84
099000 students um that was called language minority I had had a family reach out to me um several years back concerned that their children English was their primary language yes the mother had been foreign born but and the father was not and they you know spoke both languages at home and the parents were upset that when they registered the kids they were automatically being designated as a language minority student so just looking at that chart again and what you said earlier is it that we designate them based on if the family indicates that another foreign language is spoken at home yes so we use a home language survey it's part of the registration packet for All For All Families not not and um it's federally federally required that we do this we use the Virginia
100has the same questions for every single School in Virginia so we use the same home language survey that Arlington that you know um that Richmond that everyone uses around the state and if a family indicates uh answers one of the questions on that survey with language other than English then we are required federally required that 84 000 students represents students who must be assessed to see if they require e-cell services and we do have um sometimes uh we have uh families who feel that they did not fill out the form properly for example and so we work with those families we always work with those families individually to you know work with them just to make sure that what's reflected on the form is accurate for them and and we'll work with any family on
101that and I I I wanted to press this because I think it's important for the public understand these you know various populations so again just pressing a little bit on this some more if Ace and Ms Amish I think you were sort of seeing this if a child is born here in the United States they're speaking English in their home and also it's considered their primary language but simply because one of the parents is bilingual because English is a second language for the parent we've now are going that by law we're required doesn't matter what the family says so unless they either lie on the form which we would never want them to do but they choose to do it because they're frustrated I just remember the family was very upset in saying I don't
102want my child to have to go through this we do speak with some upset families at times yes okay I just think it's the law so we we follow the law on that yes well I I would say Dr Reed for a a PowerPoint slide like this I I would like because again our Public's always learning with us along the way there should be some footnotes there and and explaining that a little bit because I I think some people may look at those numbers and and say I'm I'm not sure how that's even possible or just really trying to get a handle on where the English language needs are with within our students and obviously I think the the El population in the end speaks to the the needs as opposed to just designation so
103we will make a correction on this slide and repost it with a footnote thank you yeah and and I think even just like a hyperlink that lets wherever you know you guys can end up sending people so they can understand that this isn't something that FCPS has done to create more red tape because we get that reputation sometimes we're just following the law thank you right thanks thank you Mr net Koufax thank you and thank you Mr Polio I was at your table yesterday with the core planning team when we were talking about this and I I just do want to say to you you know we've come a long way and it's been under your leadership when we went from Pilot schools in uh what are now uh you know Justice and and um
104and Lewis high schools where we were just doing near pull outs we explained that to the table yesterday so thank you Dr Reed for considering bringing this up I don't have questions because a lot of them were asked by some of my colleagues or their things that I through the years have have no but I do want to make I appreciate Miss McLaughlin's point because that has also been an experience that I've seen and I think it's important like you said we have the footnote but I also think it's important that we have definitions when we talk about this and maybe this is in this home like if you're going to post um these uh these edgy these instructional um you know yeah these things when you're when we're here tonight I think it's important
105that there's a link but there's also then a link to all the definitions what a slife is what an English learner and I don't know if that's already on our thing but it has been quite a while since you have come before the board to talk about the progress that we've been that we've made I mean it is I don't know you will know better than me but it's been several years and of course there's been many reasons why but I think it is high time that we really look at this particularly in light as you said Dr Reed with a strategic plan what progress we've made where we're going I personally have been so involved in this that I think I know some of the answers but I think it would be a really
106good refresher for me as well as other people on the board to see because I'm much more familiar with what's going on at the high school level but I'm not even certain where we are with our elementary school English language Learners right now and what programs they're having and what success they're they're making and you know when we talk about the duration everybody's different but I asked you this at the table yesterday I said is it still on average if you get um a slight student in is it going to take five to seven years and that's still about the average and I think that's important for people to understand and know when we as we look at the data as we talk about the data in these groups because that is quite the tenure
107when you are getting students at a high school level and not be in and trying to make progress but um I I really appreciate this tonight this this data I would just like an elongated version of this when we can and so we'll put that on shares now add it to the list thank you miss talking did you wish to speak I kneelite was up earlier if you're okay that's fine okay thank you um I agree with many what my colleagues have said so I won't repeat them but I did want to um just flag a couple things I really appreciate actually this slide talk about language minority and the explanation that you gave so I appreciate I apologize I can't which colleague asked for that explanation at this point but the explanation you gave
108as to why this was included and that confusion that sometimes happens between um you know El students and language minority students and I think it's just I just wanted a flag it's really telling that 48 almost half of our students our language minority and you know which means they speak a different language at home but I want to ask you does this mean the student speaks a different language at home or the family speaks a different language at home you know I don't have that data specifically I couldn't tell you but I think this is that 84 000 comes specifically as Miss McLaughlin asked from the home language survey so it means that the language is most likely spoken at home either just from the parents or it could be with the the student it
109just Flags in importance that you know the shows our changing population probably in Fairfax County in some ways and the increase of people who do speak a you know different language at home than English I'm as another person whose English was my second language and he was often identified for El students on Services well past my need for El Services um you know it is it is an interesting dilemma that we have to by mandate if we put a home language is different by federal law assess and I think that's a good thing to make sure we're not missing anybody but I can understand it can be frustrating for families and having lived it myself right to um actually place an El classes um but I just think it just flags as we go into
110Australia planning work the importance of recognizing perhaps the need you know for supporting families where English is maybe not be their first language and some families are proficient in English or fluent some may not be but to make sure we provide those supports and understanding cultural backgrounds um of our families and for some of our students I know some translate for their parents some don't need to and that's an important support to provide our students so I think all of these it would just be interesting to dig more into how we can support the language minority students and families and what they may or may not need for support so I just wanted to flag that as a thought there's no question there so um with that thank you I appreciate my colleagues and I
111will add it to the list and we don't go back to the regular meetings we will we'll save that for a work session so I appreciate it's on the list as we've as we've been asked for so we'll but we don't at regular meetings we don't do go back so um with that I appreciate it thank you um thank you so much for your report and then um I would like to go on to agenda item 3.04 student representative matters and I call Miss togby thank you madam chair good evening everyone and happy Thursday I am still in disbelief that it's December 1st I don't know how we're here already um in the time since I've asked last updated you all I've gotten the opportunity to participate in a lot of activities the seals met
112two three weeks ago and we discussed the equity policy and adaptation students would really like to see do it and it was really enlightening to be a part of that conversation the SBA was so much fun I met students across our student reps across the whole state and we discussed many ways that our division operated and the ways We Gather student input and ways we might even change it um and it was just really insightful because it really reinforced the whole idea of how important student voice is the Gum Springs Gala I had the pleasure of attending the Gum Springs Gala with Miss Corbett Sanders which was an amazing event I didn't know much about the Gum Springs Community prior so it was really a big education educational experience for me and it was also
113very exciting to have Miss Cohen at South County this week along with delegate Chan for take your legislator to school month they got to participate in a few classes and I have to say I really think they enjoyed the theater to warm up in regards to strategic planning yesterday and today I had the opportunity to participate in the process where I got to discuss strengths and concerns within our County with multiple Community stakeholders faculty members and students I can certainly say that the value of meeting students not only by name but also by need is something that is not only heard but I think is really being stressed during this process and I do have to say my favorite part so far has definitely been sitting next to the advocate icon herself Miss Jen Wright
114who has provided me with fresh Insight at every turn and just being able to view that available data and sit with that information has been really powerful and just a big educational experience for me I also want to make a note about the national inclusive schools week resolution it really warmed my heart because being able to see active examples of not only the faculty members being inclusive but also my peers from events like International night to organizations and clubs that highlight and value our diverse Community is really powerful because FCPS is truly leading when we show that inclusivity within education can be life-changing really I've spent the last few weeks reminding students that they recently received mail and in it included their favorite activity filling out a survey the 2023-2023-2024 school year student calendar survey
115went live and I have to say I have spent quite a bit of time encouraging students to fill it out so much so that I think my advisory class is very tired of me speaking on it um because it really is an important step in their voice being factored in the decision-making process and what will happen to the school year calendar um to wrap up I really want to say that I'm excited about the progress that I've been able to make with student groups and these last couple of weeks have really been great so I can't wait to see the outcomes thank you thank you very much and as always we appreciate your um we appreciate you thank you very much I'm going to leave it at that in your updates so it's wonderful to
116see I will move on to agenda item I apologize I lost my my computer went to sleep agenda item 3.05 superintendent matters I'll call on Dr Reed thank you chair Sizemore Heiser and uh thank you to miss togby and besides moreheiser Mr Knight Kovacs for uh participating in our core planning team over the last couple days it's really been I think an inspiring opportunity to be in community with so many people in our community I hope you also all enjoyed the recent holiday weekend a little bit of a break a little bit of a chime to rest uh reflect perhaps and renew our commitment to this amazing work in an abundantly joyful fashion I want to share since last we met that I visited Cooper Middle School where I had an opportunity to visit classrooms
117and hear the Cooper symphonic band perform they were pretty incredible I believe I was with a board member Elaine tolin there and oh my gosh when we walked in I thought it was a professional band playing and it was a middle School band they're just really phenomenal also had an opportunity to meet with our McLean high school student leaders called the committee on raising student voices and just excited about the ideas that they were lifting up and how they centered the needs of their friends and fellow students in the room it was really amazing and also had an opportunity to be at least Corner elementary schools Thanksgiving breakfast with their Sac team and the sac team is fabulous I got to meet a lot of young Sac members who were serving up breakfast and just
118really excited about the opportunity to visit with staff I also want to Mark a moment that I did have my last Community conversation of the first series so I finished 28 of those this week I know right so we uh the Annandale High School Adams uh Dr Anderson and Miss Sizemore Heiser were there the atoms were a a very proud group and very well attended and raised a number of concerns ideas and a lot of pride in that pyramid Community last evening I also had the opportunity with my our leadership team and Miss omash to meet with members of the Muslim Community and we had a fabulous dinner meeting with Community Advocates and leaders and also an opportunity to meet with community members following that to hear concerns and thoughts and ideas and to share
119the experiences of our Muslim neighbors and community members as well as students um I want to thank all of those who have come out to various community events there are all kinds of music concerts theater Productions athletic events going I mean you can't visit a school 24 7 that there isn't something happening and that excitement is fabulous this past week in fact yesterday I think it was just yesterday I had an opportunity to be part of a smart Biz sort of panel activity with a number of our Business Leaders here in Northern Virginia and wouldn't you know it our kids were there and they were so amazing and inspiring to all of these elected leaders and business Executives we had our Wan Oak woodchucks they're doing their be bought programming and just my challenge to
120the young bebot programmers where I were I wasn't seeing the bee Bots flying yet so they were to try to figure out by next year how to get them to fly we had our Juniors or actually two seniors from Chantilly High School who had created The Walker to support our Parkinson's patients who I think were negotiating a deal for their Innovation and then our young Braddock Eagles were there um with their Coatings so it's really a proud moment to be from Fairfax County with our Young Learners and high school learners leaving you know engaging in such amazing activity and today I want to share that I spent time at John R Lewis High School had an opportunity I did not see Miss talking but I had an opportunity to shoot hoops with Cohen Samuels and
121I'm excited to go back and watch them play we uh he plays on the team there the basketball team I was really there for an interview with their student media production group and had an opportunity to visit with the entire broadcasting team and just a group of young professionals Lancers it's my understanding right Miss togby so they had a lot of great questions I got to take a tour of the school and shoot a few Hoops so it's been a great day so thank you chair seismorheiser thank you Dr Reed and we'll go on to agenda item 3.06 goal 3 report I call on Dr Reed for the introduction the goal reports in a regular board meeting are more succinct reports as we do have work session opportunities to go into more detail so if
122the community is watching this might be more of a summary type report as we then move into a work session which provides more detail so for our goal three report it's my pleasure to introduce Marty Smith our chief operation officer who will identify the staff supporting him in this report okay thank you Dr Reed and good evening to everyone on the board and I do want to do just a quick shout out to Dr polio for a great presentation it was great to have the discussion uh focused on our L students and I love how the academic matters creates this opportunity for dialogue and so he did a fantastic job we're here tonight to bring the goals three and four reports our final goal reports from the 2015-2020 Strategic plan ignite and for those board
123members who are on the board in 2015 you may hearken back to our time in the cafeteria when we had Retreats we were looking at data we were thinking about the way forward with strategic planning and here we are in yet another cycle and I want to take this opportunity to thank miss lady haruda and her office of research and strategic Improvement they've been here at our sides the entire time helping us work through metrics helping us work through the language whether it's goals whether it's desired outcomes and so at the time it was Dr Ricardo sockwell it's then gone on to miss Aruda and we certainly do think that entire office for their help and support with our strategic planning efforts today we have goals three and four which is human resources and resource
124stewardship and along with Miss harudu we have Dr Sherry Wilson here who's going to provide an update on goal three we also have Mr Chuck Fanshawe who's going to provide an update 8 on goals for along with Miss Lee burden who will provide an update on staff work on Gulf War and with that I will turn the presentation over to miss haruda thank you Mr Smith so this report is a look back at fiscal 22 so what was going on last year and in particular we're also sort of take a journey over the five years that this strategic plan was in place as always the request for the school board is to approve the report um we have an agenda here it's similar to what we did when we were doing the goals one and
125two reports so we'll go through some actions about what the school board has done to support this goal area we'll go through the metric performance a summary of how we've done since Baseline and then our goal Champions who are leadership team members responsible for each of the goal areas we'll speak to it and we'll also end with some future considerations here we have our two different desired outcomes related to this goal we have our exceptional employees which is really around recruitment hiring and retention of our staff as well as our Market competitive compensation so in terms of reports and things that are linked to what the school board has done many of the school board actions over the last year or so are described on this slide that supported our Premier Workforce and a lot
126of them were in support of competitive compensation for our staff we have our summary of performance you can see the six specific aspirations for this goal area listed here it was what FCPS wanted to achieve in the area of Premier Workforce and overall FCPS meta exceeded the Target on three of those aspirations made progress on one of them and had no progress on two now going a little bit more into depth on each of these aspirations we'll start with one of the ones related to exceptional employees that has to do with recruitment every open teaching Position will have at least five highly qualified applicants and you can see that FCPS continues to move further from meeting this aspiration each year with the declining qualified applicants per open teaching position accelerating over the last two years
127and this downward Trend over the last five years really reflects National and Regional teacher shortages and this acceleration is probably also related to the covid-19 pandemic over the last few years our second recruitment aspiration has to do with the diversity of qualified teacher applicants matching the diversity of Fairfax County and here FCPS moved the ethnic diversity of its qualified teacher applicant pool closer to that of the county while not making similar progress progress with gender diversity and the ethnic diversity in particular increased from 25 percent at Baseline to 29 most recently but nonetheless we did not meet the 2020 targets for ethnic or gender diversity of this pool now we'll move on to one of our hiring aspirations this one has to do with all teaching positions will be filled by July 1st and until
128the coveted pandemic occurred FCPS had consistently met the target for this aspiration which was to have 97.5 percent of our positions filled on July 1st but we haven't done as well in the last two years and in fact performance this past year was below the Baseline for the first time now nonetheless FCPS still had 95 percent of our teaching positions filled by July 1st and putting that put FCPS in a good position to prepare for the school year but it's important for us to continue to consider how to bolster recruitment within this post-covid pandemic context and then moving on to our hiring aspiration that's focused on diversity the diversity of higher teachers will match the diversity of qualified teacher applicants FCPS successfully met or exceeded its diversity Targets in hiring by having all racial ethnic
129and gender groups move closer to their proportion of qualified teacher applicants in fact we increase the representation of our black and male hired teachers since Baseline buy a combined 22 percentage points and that appears to mean that FCPS has taken appropriate steps to ensure that once our diverse qualified teachers are recruited that we are effective in hiring them and our final aspiration having to do with exceptional employees is around employee retention rates will be within the national average and FCPS continued to meet or exceed the target retention rate of 85 percent for teachers administrators and operational staff now our final aspiration for Premier Workforce moves us over to the market competitive compensation outcome here FCPS will maintain all pay scales within 95 to 105 percent of Market pay and starting in fiscal year 20 FCPS
130attained this for the first time and has been able to maintain that level of pay scales within the desired range since then so with that I will turn it over to Dr Wilson for the gold Champion response thank you Miss heroda and uh good evening has more highs members of the according to a 22 report by the American Association of colleges for Teacher education the number of students completing teacher education programs in the United States dropped by more than a third between two eight and 2019 those numbers continue to dwindle this phenomenon is evident evident our ability to recruit the numbers of candidates that we were once able to recruit and hire from traditional teacher education preparation programs as a result FCPS is Shifting Improvement efforts to strategies such as grow your own program early
131Recruitment and alternate routes to licensure understanding that a diverse educator work produces positive outcomes performance our team continues to strive to Source a diverse teacher Workforce next up please retain our Premier Workforce HR continues to administer exits and coordinate with the state on climate and conditioned surveys while working to develop State interviews to assist the district in assessing what motivates our employees to remain and what can be done to improve the employee experience based on summary exit survey results salary and pay continues to be a top stated reason for leaving the division as a result HR will continue to analyze and compare compensation data to ensure that FCPS remains competitive in terms of pay more information will be shared on this within the next slide um and I also need to um to boast that
132FCPS continues to maintain a robust Awards and recognition program honoring 3500 employees each year with an additional 5 000 employees recognized for their service annually through the Service Awards program in response to the goal to offer Market competitive compensation packages FCPS was well positioned to maintain all eight pay scales within 95 to 105 percent of Market pay in fiscal year 2022 however 2021 benchmarking reflected the H schedule coming in just under Market goal at 94 percent of Market so seven of the eight scales were within Market at the time of the study the study also revealed that FCPS pay scales are lower than in than the market particularly in the maximum salaries and the percentage of positions below Market goal have increased which is an indication of concern around competitive pay additional funding and staff
133will be necessary for continued ad hoc Monitor and review of jobs as well as pay scale modifications to properly action classification and compensation concerns which have been noted at this time Mr Ruda will provide future considerations thank you Dr Wilson so in terms of future considerations there's continued innovation in the recruit qualified teacher applicants really needs to be an ongoing unsure that we continue to have adequate instructional community in addition FCPS should evaluate the reasons why FCPS staff choose to stay and then leverage those maintain High retention rates especially among our teachers operational staff additional GPS must continue to conduct ongoing work on our Market competitive and fundamental adjustments to remain attractive to current and future employees so funding of those Market scale adjustments and step increases will continue to be necessary and that ends
134our goal three report thank you for that great influence the sickness we'll also go on the agenda 307 Go 4 report and a just a reminder after we hear the presentation both three and go four we will do one board question we will have a work session on goal three and goal for reports at on January 3rd so there'll be more time to ask questions there so this is just a preliminary streamline and I appreciate the streamlined presentation so I'll call on Doctor full report thank you matter at this point it's my pleasure to just uh again I'm Marty Smith our chief operations officer to introduce staff from personal goal for report thank you Mr Smith and I'm just going to turn the preacher over to saruta thank you Mr Smith so here we have
135our goal again the request that the board is to approve the report um we have as we just went through for goal three this particular goal we have one tired outcome it's our effective and budgeting and allocation outcome and here again are some specific linkages to school board questions and support you can see on here school boards leveraging of federal grants to support our one-to-one devices for our Pre-K to grade two students as well as advocacy for fcps's piloting of electric buses amongst other things we have our summary of metric performance for goal four Gulf War includes four aspirations and that includes two the first two about fiscal issues one around facilities or classrooms phase and the last one about school safety which includes three separate metrics one related to students families and to staff
136you can see in terms of a summary we met or exceeded one of those we progressed toward the target on three and no data were available on two of them that was due to surveys that did not include these items last year digging a tiny bit deeper on that on our first aspiration all spending will be allocated using I'm sorry on our first aspiration FCPS will maintain a cost per pupil plus or minus one thousand of the average cost per pupil of the Washington area Boards of Education or maybe average FCP has continued to meet this aspiration being within one thousand again during fiscal 22. our second aspiration that all spending will be allocated using the Strategic decision-making cycle or sdmc as we refer to it and this is the approach that scps has adopted
137to continuous Improvement in its efficient and effective use of resources now since the Baseline FCPS met its aim of aligning all spending to its eight strategic outcomes but more recently has backtracked to a more General alignment of spending to the four goal areas while awaiting its new strategic plan and under the leadership of our new superintendent FCPS has committed to developing an updated plan which will set the priorities for our future resource allocation moving on to our facilities aspiration all schools will have adequate classroom space for students eliminating the need for trailers at the end of fiscal year 22 FCPS had 70 more temporary classrooms than it was expected to have based on this 2020 Target with most of the progress however coming over the last two years as the speed of removal of our
138temporary classrooms picked up and since Baseline FCPS removed 289 temporary classrooms with a neck decrease of 189 over the last two years and then our final aspiration in this area FCPS will maintain schools that all students families and staff consider safe unfortunately the metric data has not been available consistently for this aspiration so it limits our ability to interpret progress since Baseline and with that I will go ahead and turn it over to Ms Burton to begin the gold Champion response good evening a K-12 often uses cost per pupil that allows us allows us to Compare costs while factoring an enrollment we've historically fought in the middle of cost per pupiling among the wavy participants salary class size policies to drive overall spending and as Ms haruda said we have met our aspiration over the
139past five years um in fiscal 22 the wavy average is a little higher than normal three divisions opted not to participate in 22 in the the wavy guide and those three divisions tend to have a lower cost per pupil so of course that pushed the average up again comp is a big factor and our wavy participation allows us to monitor the surrounding divisions on a pretty regular basis and we will likely continue to meet this aspiration in the future foreign as far as a strategic decision making we've made strides in aligning the budget to the Strategic plan but we will need to enhance our ability to align the budget with the Strategic plan in the future and that will likely require a shift in processes and culture and require greater resources and now I'm going
140to pass it off to Mr fanshawk for the next skull chain response you good evening uh adequate classroom space continue Reliance on renovation conditions are our main way of removing temporary classrooms increasing programs may impact the pace of removal continent increasing Support Division wide for removal due to age and condition regarding temporary classroom and consultation with the local schools looking for efficient and appropriate use of space as we move forward moving on to safety over the last two three years we have received a significant significant amount of Esser funding which we have devoted to improving indoor air quality in schools providing a safer environment within the schools in FY 22 we had 47 schools that were either in progress or completed and we anticipate an additional five schools to be replaced in FY 23 we've
141also funded the external safety audit which is in the procurement process at this time so wrapping up the goal for report or some future considerations the first slide focuses on finance ones so it's going to be critical to complete the CPS strategic plan so we can have clear multi-year properties to continued efforts to align fcps's budget allocates with strategic aims we also there will need to be considerables as Ms Burton alluded to um in order to embed stmc thinking into the FCPS culture including how schools and departments operate and the repurposing of funds for in effect from ineffective or less than optimal activities scps also will need to consider incorporating the stmc concept more directly into both processes but also the FCPS policy 1405 could be enhanced which covers accountability for division Effectiveness efficiency and
142Effectiveness and then lastly resources will need to be reserved that can be allocated for the high leverage actions that will be needed to address the division soon to be updated strategic aims in terms of the facilities Side Opportunities For review of space utilization by facilities planning services in conjunction with school administrators can assist in maximizing the capacity there's also a concern that there's no dedicated funding to remove temporary classrooms an updated boundary policy that supports optimizing school capacity throughout the division May assist in achieving the removal of all temporary classrooms and there is a deferred maintenance backlog which leads to outdated equipment due to insufficient funding and Staffing shortfalls and then lastly green initiatives such as electric buses will require ongoing resource stewardship to implement and maintain and that ends our core reporting thank you
143very much I appreciate it and just as a reminder to my colleagues we'll do one rounded questions as we do have a work session for goal three and goal four on January 3rd so with that I will call on Miss McLaughlin followed by Dr Anderson thank you I'll just uh sort of Spotlight some of my areas of interest and then that might help staff with the actual work session um Mr fanchino again you're in our your are acting interim so uh you're just overseeing uh what you inherited um but the security vestibules has been an area of concern for our community and certainly for the board as well so I I don't see it listed here as a bullet point or a metric but it would be helpful for the work session to bring us
144up to date on where that is and let us know what the needs are for your department to address that for temporary classrooms I'm really happy that you're focusing on age and condition um and the challenge with programs and adding in programs and then therefore kind of reinforcing the need um but Dr Reed I'll point out that in I think it's slide 14 there's a reference that you know space uses ultimately decided by a school's Administration I mean I think that with your new leadership we need to have that conversation with our principals I deeply respect them but the bottom line is we're trying to deliver optimal instruction and I think that the facilities and leadership team needs to be setting some guidelines I mean uh keeping kids in temporary classrooms is just not not
145optimal so I think there needs to be a little more collaboration going on there um and then there was the reference about an updated boundary policy that supports optimizing school capacity May assist in achieving the removal of all temporary classrooms you know I will say again that our existing boundary policy as I understand it has always continued to focus on minimizing students on bus buses you know trying to have them attend attend the schools that are closest to their homes and communities and so I I don't want the the boards work on the boundary policy to be a rationale to say if if if we've got students contiguous to one another and there's vacancy across the street or in you know that's nearby and the same token um I know my colleagues are well aware
146of my position on this I don't believe in busting children past schools to go to another school I don't think that's necessarily where the Mandate is from our community at this point in time and that is what a boundary policy conversation would be um but I I certainly know from my my community that uh people come to Fairfax County because we have exceptional schools and they spend a lot of time figuring out where they want to live and Community neighborhood schools are a high value thank you Dr Anderson thank you I just have one point of clarification but before I get to it I did want to go back to the academic matters that you shared I quickly wanted to I was following up and I actually was on the same kind of line of
147thinking as mrnado Koufax when it comes to some of the terms that we use and those reports it will be very helpful to outline the differences between the following because I think often we use them interchangeably e-l-e-l-l-e-s-l-e-s-o-l people need to know what the difference is between the between these four terms are and some of them are interchangeable uh to interchangeable but some are not so if we could offer that clarification when you update that document that would be helpful my only comment and I would like to have an answer this evening is um I believe this is go go three I'm a little confused by some information I see on page 12 and on page 15. totally could be user error so I'm looking for you to guide me a little bit um on page
14812 it states that starting an FY 20 FCPS attained its aspiration of 100 of pay scales to be within the 95 to 100 percent I'm thinking this is from 20 from FY 20 until now that's was the assumption that I had until I saw page 15 that says that Schedule H is below market so how should I be utilizing the statement that is on page 12. can somebody set some context for me there so on page 12 it's what where are we in terms of fiscal year 22 and our understanding from the HR department was that all of our scales at that point in time were between 95 and 105 percent just FY 20 off fy20 moving forward that's kind of how I'm writing for it so um this is specific to FY 22 in
149particular so fast at the end of FY 22 or during FY 22 we were at Market with all of our scales at that time I'm sorry can you say that once more so at during FY 22 starting at fy20 so fy20 FY 21 and FY 22 all of our pay scales were app market meaning they were between 95 and 105 percent at that point in time I don't know whether Dr Wilson can speak to the statement on slide 15 around about where we are right now in terms of our Market competitiveness so the data that I was provided indicated that 2021 benchmarking reflected the age schedule coming in just under the market goal of uh 94 so at that time there were seven out of the eight scales that were within Market at the time
150of the study so then these are conflicting statements I would say that they are config conflicting statements and my apologize or my apologies and we'll look at both of the statements and come back for the work session with accurate statements appreciate it thank you thank you Mr fresh thank you um this is one of the ones where we always get my least favorite uh survey result which is do you feel safe because it doesn't it doesn't have any weight as far as I'm concerned because it doesn't give any it doesn't give people something to base that off of um uh it's it's a it's a nice anecdote I guess but we do have a lot of things to be excited about when it comes to student safety um especially over the last few years um
151one thing addressed tonight was the money put into our security vestibules for the schools that did not have them we again we have the security and safety audit that's ongoing we are looking forward to a work session where we'll review curriculum around gun violence prevention and suicide prevention and whether or not we are using best practices there we're sending annual letters home to families to remind them of Secure Storage laws for fire homes firearms in homes um and you know when it comes to Ed specs the rules around the kind of construction that we do in our schools future schools and renovation projects will have restrooms that are more accommodating of our trans and gender expansive kids and provide everyone more privacy so we have a lot to be proud of in the work that
152our staff has done over the last few years to give us confidence in numbers that say people feel safe and we have a long way to go but I'm sure we can get there thank you thank you Miss Tolan yes thank you a couple questions on goal three I was wondering too you know we it is now we're now working on the fy24 budget so um I'm hoping for the work session we'll be able to have that well where we were in 22 what happened in 23 now we're moving to 24. and we know that our neighboring districts are also competing for the same people that we're competing for so as we've been bringing our salaries up you know we all have heard certainly from you know out in the schools anecdotal stories of people
153leaving for you know salaries in Loudoun County Prince William County et cetera et cetera so um I just want to throw out there too um you know since we are competing with for these same people is there any thoughts to do kind of a regional look at salaries um so that we can be a little bit more collaborative on some of this absolutely that is definitely something that we're looking at we did know that there were other school divisions particularly our local districts that they both modified pay structures and implemented significant msas and fiscal year 2022 so with that noted that's something that we definitely want to to look at more specifically can you just tell us we keep talking about Schedule H who is on Schedule H Food Services apparent liaison's in transportation thank
154you um I also just want to throw out there and I put a budget question in on uh potential changes to our retirement system so that we can retain the people that are you know at the point where they're ready to retire but we we would love to retain them for a couple years I know Mr Smith and I had a little bit of a conversation about a program that we used to have a work after retirement program I would be really curious if that is something we could really look at to try to retain you know some of these highly experienced incredible people that would like to stay for a little while but financially it doesn't make sense the way we have things set up right now so so what I can say to
155that we may not have information by the January third work session but the Board of Trustees with the erfc has asked the executive director to work with the actuary to provide some possible costing what the implications of such a move would be and and once we get that information we'll be able to share that with the board that would be great thank you um uh Mr Fanshawe could you give us a little bit more of a reminder on the safety Audits and what the dates are for um the progress on that sure happy to uh the proposals have been received the evaluation team has started uh reviewing the proposals we received and that will continue through this month uh in January the interviews with the offers will take place and we're looking to award by
156the first of February with completion of the report by the end of May thank you um of course the whole idea of Aging trailers as you know is near and George my heart with the work that we're currently doing with Kent Gardens Elementary School I would love by the work session at least um you know we're having these continuing conversations and I've talked to a number of my board colleagues too just about what's happening and what we're thinking about with Kent Gardens and the research that we need to do um but by the work session I would love to have and maybe you have this information now you know the comment that there's no dedicated funding for the reduction of these uh trailers or these outside classrooms is it operational funding that you need or
157is it capital funding that would be operational funding when we look at Capital funding we look at using Capital funding for new construction and also for our modulars but for our learning Cottages trailers however you want to call them uh that would be operations money all right thank you that's my time I think so what well look forward to more questions at the work session thank you Miss Marin followed by Miss Keys Kamara Thank you regarding the goal report around our facilities I would love if during the CIP part of the capital improvement process as well as the work session that we could talk and hear more strategically about how to look at facilities so you know we have our community our Capital Improvement plan and it's a multi-year plan but can we really get
158specific about what actions the School Division needs to take and how the board can help so for instance increasing the bond cap that our County currently has on our excellent Bond rating to fund the renovations that are decades long in queue to get to Construction in a more timely manner like what would it actually look like for us to to make that happen um we have to have a special working group do we have to have special advocacy approach another area is using space more creatively and in conjunction with time as we you know someone mentioned that the building level administrator decides the use of the space well we've got a whole range of discrepancies we have one HVAC program in the entire School Division and that's in one location can we offer additional courses
159in that space so that it's doing double duty in a day what about students taking buses it was mentioned that you know busing students is is opposed but we do it all the time and the board has endorsed it for advanced academics for World Language instruction and for that Career Development instruction so how does the facilities plan really answer these questions and so not looking for the answers at our work session or even in the next Capital Improvement program but like what's the multi-year answer here what's the plan that we can work for and perhaps this is getting in too early to the Strategic plan that I know I'm trying to be patient as we figure out that Vision but I think that we can all agree that having our students travel on buses for
160you know hours a week is not optimal and so what is the strategy to get away from that what's the strategy for removing trailers we know that they're not a favorite they present security issues and others what's the plan for that and finally something I've been thinking about asking a budget question but I've I've decided not to because I really want to continue to focus on education as our mission but I would love to know how much money the School Division spends on trying to prevent gun by violence and that is not a criticism of anybody in the school division it's a criticism of the rest of the policy makers that are not doing their job that makes us try to do all these things from curriculum to security fortifications to Communications but I think
161you know we mentioned five million dollars on security vegetables I would love to know how much we spend on training on security on you know hard facilities of of what we spend other that we could be spending instructing people if other parts of our community and policy makers pulled their weight to prevent gun violence it feels like a very big burden that's on us but I I want to ask that question Miss Burton but that's something I've been thinking about the last few weeks so I'd love yeah so something to think about Dr Reed all these items as you know your team prepares to present the CIP and the Strategic plan and the budget thank you thank you Miss Keith Kamara yes uh I appreciate this summary and I have reviewed these documents uh Dr
162Rita I want to go back to the Strategic plan score card which was a part of what was posted and just mention a couple of things so that when you prepare for the work session perhaps these things can be addressed and I'm also specifically looking for some priorities um as you know we've had some data collection uh going ongoing it may not line up specifically where our strategic plan will end up but we do have these this document and I'm wondering if it can be a part of how we plan to move forward so um on the Strategic plan score card school year 2021 which was printed off for me there are a few things that I would like for us to explore in the second column where it says it starts with elimination of
163gaps the second row row three down percent of students participating in AAP grades three through eight there there are significant discrepancies there um percent of AAP students demonstrating Advanced performance in reading or mathematics additional discrepancies uh percent of just below that advanced coursework percent of students participating in Algebra 1 by 8th grade in the next uh row it talks a little bit about portrait of a graduate I'm not sure whether we'll continue with that language but the very last Square in that row talks about percent of students who demonstrate Proficiency in the portrait of graduate presentation of learning and then the last one is undercaring culture number of Staff referrals for disruptive behavior per 100 students which also shows some significant discrepancies so I wanted to give you a heads up also let the community
164know this was a part of this report and if you know if you can let us know how you might include that in your planning going forward I would appreciate it yes ma'am thank you thank you very much um and so you know the Boardman that wants to speak I just will take a really brief turn on most my comments I'll wait to the work session but I just wanted to to say Dr Wilson um I would love to see I know we're having um Staffing challenges as all school systems I think are across the country Staffing in both teachers and administrators and staff and and one of the things I've I appreciate the the comment about um salaries in the wavy guy but I'd love to dig a little more into what our surrounding
165jurisdictions are doing in terms of salary and benefits comparison for us um I know recently we've we've lost some of our very seasoned wonderful principles to another surrounding jurisdiction many of them gone in there so I'm just curious what they may be doing compensation or benefits to you know to be attracted or what the difference may be between us and there may not be any difference um and same for things um just a little more detail in terms of compensation benefits to see if are there are areas where we could be more competitive or we or we or maybe we are very competitive and it's just something that we're all facing Nationwide so I just want to put that in your ear that's something I may ask for more detail at the work session thank
166you we'll bring that to the table we're not I wanted to ask if you could clarify your request to her on because you're you're asking on that salary and compensation but one of the things that we're going to need is not just year by year but total earnings I appreciate that but as part of the salary and compensation benefits it is the full compensation benefits in comparison so we can see what we're offering versus what other jurisdiction drop Miss mcgaughton thank you so you know when we look at that sort of just a little more data on what's going on in our surrounding districts versus here so we understand to get a good picture of what we're offering for our our you know people because we want to make sure that we're competitive and I
167think we are but it'd be good to sort of have some more information on that so having said that we will move on to agenda item there are no action items on today's agenda so we'll move on to agenda item five consent agenda our adoptive rules of parliamentary procedure Robert's Rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through Board review and documentation has been provided to all board members 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 seeing and hearing no objection the consent agenda is approved agenda item
168six new business the following of new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled at a future meeting the new business items are on the screen agenda item 7 board committee reports our next agenda item is board committee reports and I call on Ms McLaughlin for an update from the public engagement committee great uh yesterday PEC held a meeting where we discussed procedures for uh how we want to handle student speakers as well as walk-in speakers at our regular business meeting for student speakers we drafted some language that will allow students to indicate if they wish to have their names read out loud and publicly displayed or not for walk-in speakers we discussed a new proposal that would extend the request time to speak right
169now the cutoff time is before the start of the meeting and so we would like to see if the board wants to give consideration that sometimes we don't know if the speakers are showing up and if those slots are going to be utilized or not and so we'd like to extend that sign up period And so that up until if we know that people haven't showed there could people can be added to the waitlist and it's not before the meeting or not not at all we also received an update from our office of communications and community relations on the school board members newsletters and email distribution lists and occr is working with it to develop specific magisterial email distribution lists so they're going to geo-fence so whereas currently and for many years a family that
170lives in um or attends a school that has like four different magisterial districts feeding into it they might end up with four magisterial newsletters along with the three outlarges and so the geo-fencing would really enable that if a family lives in the Braddock District they're just going to get their Braddock district school board members newsletter and the three at large they wouldn't end up getting the three other magisterial board members who they don't live in that District they just happen to be a shared School site so um we're going to continue to work with occr on that but wanted to let you know um but that is the goal also looking at updating these lists because uh it was discussed and discovered that it was only board members who won in an election were seated
171in January were inheriting an existing list from the prior magisterial board member and that doesn't really take into account that unless families know to opt in which had not been our practice for some time then we weren't automatically capturing families so I won't go into a lot of detail but I wanted to I thought that was an important one for board members to know um and then uh we will continue next week having another public engagement committee meeting just the way the calendar worked and we will get an update on the communications engagement plan and project management plans on the school year calendar and on the Strategic plan development process so that's it great thank you agenda item 8 board matters next on the agenda is board matters I call on Miss bakarski ready thank
172you thank you sorry okay I hope everyone had a nice um Thanksgiving break um it's been a busy couple of weeks we all had the opportunity to be together at vsba um and be with other board members around the state which was it was a nice opportunity to talk to um others and kind of see what was going on in other school districts I've had some great visits since then I was at Union Mill um actually yesterday where apparently it was a movement Wednesday uh where they have these like alarms go off and everybody gets up and does movement and I was like um I am I going to be participating in this dealer because I don't know if I want to come in no but it was great it was a lot of fun
173we got to um I got to see fifth graders writing fraction stories and sixth graders um working on my own books and talking about perspectives of um you know literature and I always love to ask the kids when I see that um do you like reading real books or do you like reading online and it's amazing it's amazing without fail the majority of kids always tell me real books which is just to me in line with the research so anyway I just I mentioned that I had a great visit with the Cub Scouts of pac-16 um zero one about our job and what we do and ask them about their wonderful ideas for our schools and I left with a very long laundry list so and they all wanted to know what my email was
174so they could send me more ideas so I thought that was um wonderful we had the opportunity all of us to go to the Board of Supervisors School Board joint budget meeting which is really kind of the first opportunity we have to work with our partners in the budgeting process I also was able to go with a few of my colleagues and Dr Reed to the world day of remembrance for road traffic victims at Oakton High School which was very moving and really highlighted uh how there is a lot for us that we still need to be doing to ensure that our roads are safe for all especially when we have so many kids on them I'm looking forward to many more visits in the next few weeks so thank you thank you Miss Cohen
175thanks very much um I agree it was nice to have a little bit of a break for the Thanksgiving holiday and in that time the Cohen family had the very exciting news that we have a child who got into college so really big big deal in our household for sure um also in the last few days I've gotten to go to the Fairview High School um Fairview High School elementary school they were that good um chorus concert and they were amazing and some of like the most excited children I've ever seen seen and the musical selections were just so amazing and things I had never heard things from every different culture and region and background and just really really cool so I wanted to give a big shout out to Fairview and those kids and
176especially child in the front row whoever you were who just kept letting your body get into it when you really were feeling it I was I was right there with you um I also as Miss togby mentioned got to go to South County High School and show it off to delegate Kathy Tran is one of the take your legislators to school month events and we did have an extra exceptionally good time in the theater classroom with Miss rumberger who had US participate in the warm-up activities so I think maybe we all were bit by the acting bug so you know any theater teachers out there if you need our services we would be happy to oblige and then today I was uh fortunate I think with Miss McLaughlin to be able to have attend a
177meeting with supervisor Harrity um Dave jagles who's one of our EPs and principal Cindy Conley from Irving and Mike mukai from uh um West Springfield High School in really trying to deal with and I know it's not unique to us here in our district but having helping kids find a place after Middle School hours are done to go and have fun but make really good choices and so it was just such an awesome opportunity to get to have oh and Captain Ryan Morgan from the West Springfield Police Department so to try to have everybody working together in the shop owners as well to really come together to try to come up with some good and Creative Solutions and we look forward to working with our County Partners to try to come up with some short
178term and some long-term goals and of course I would be remiss to not put a plug-in for Middle School later start times which you you know would get the kids home a little closer to when their parents were coming home so um just a little more information but um it has been a great week and we're looking forward to all of the amazing chorus band Orchestra everything that's coming up in the next few weeks thank you Mr fresh thank you um I had a an eventful couple weeks leading up to Thanksgiving as folks will be saying on this panel on this day of several of us went most of us went to Williamsburg for the Virginia school board association annual conference I had the opportunity to attend sessions about special education advisory committees and the
179upcoming State legislative session among others it was a lively conference and it was great connecting with colleagues from around the Commonwealth the school board also held its annual legislative briefing at gate house where we convened with Fairfax County state and federal delegations to discuss our legislative priorities for the year ahead we talked about this at a previous school board meeting so I won't go into the details but it was a good meeting and finally I had an opportunity to attend the world Remembrance Day at Oakton High School with several of my colleagues hosted by Fairfax Family families for Safe Streets the superintendent was also there honoring all the victims of traffic violence that we lost this year in the county with 22 lit candles as a reminder of the Stu of the the folks we've
180lost in the county it was a very special opportunity and we have a lot of work to do each of us in our own roles as community members to help prevent these these deaths from happening in the future and other community news the Oakton Pantry just celebrated its sixth anniversary in honor of this anniversary and the outstanding commitment to our community the Board of Supervisors recently presented them with a resolution of thanks uh just this past Thanksgiving the Oakton Pantry provided more than 150 meals to families in need and obviously thank you to the Oakton Pantry for all that they've done if you're able please do donate and support their good work finally on the subject of newsletters this past week I put out a newsletter detailing so many of the amazing shows and winter
181concerts this month from our band Orchestra choir and drama students after sending the letter I guess the newsletter I guess you could say I had it coming I had it coming I only have myself to blame I will be seeing the Falls Church High School production of Chicago on Sunday and I hope that you will do the same thank you that's actually one of my favorite shows and right now I don't know if I'm ever going to get that out of my head um so thank you Carl so much for all of that I'm also going to be going to see Chicago at Foster so I will see you there on Sunday um just completed the three superintendent Community conversations in the Mason District I was just so glad to hear our community come out
182and to really articulate to Dr Reed their concerns and I think the theme of all three of my pyramids Mason Falls Church and um Annandale were that they wanted to be provided with Equitable access to academics Equitable facilities and pretty much what everybody else around Fairfax County has they want it at in our pyramids our families do not want to be left behind so thank you for listening to all of what they've shared um I also had the opportunity to take my legislator to school I had Senator David Marsden who visited Annandale high school with me and he was so engaging in teaching the history class about the Dylan Rule and so students were fascinated by that and um there were also surprised by our lack of um ability to do certain things because of
183the Dylan rule so I definitely enjoyed that and I saw some fantastic things going on at the school that day and the one that I really want to highlight particularly as an as an educator it spoke really very closely to my heart where I saw English class after English class where teachers had students in small groups in the back or on the floor of a high school that was just fantastic to see that kind of attention to the needs of students that's a great opportunity and a way to differentiate I know we typically see we typically think of those strategies as those that belong only in elementary and it was just so satisfying to see it at a secondary level so yay you at Annandale High School I also want to give a big shout
184out to principal De Rose in terms of uplifting the facilities at Annandale high school so that it's bright and cheerful and it's a great place that kids can come and visit it really has made quite a difference from what I've noticed from when from before he got there and also a big shout out to the second chance breakfast that is provided at Annandale high school around 10 30 or so they have various stations throughout the schools throughout the school where kids could just come grab a bite eat it between that 15 minute period between I think second and third periods it's just a great way for our kids to get some nourishment so that they could be prepared for the rest of their day particularly if they had missed the initial breakfast opportunity um I
185don't think I had a chance to talk about this but a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to um visit Wayne Oak Elementary School with um Dr Reed where principal Usher took us through so many of her woodchucks which I heard and understand now is a favorite animal of Dr Reed uh thank you good night thank you Miss McLaughlin um yeah I did want to share with my colleagues that during the Williamsburg conference um I did speak to a couple of vendors who represent a mid-size School divisions and the Mid-Atlantic Virginia and also like the southeast and I have shared with Dr Reed that um I know this board has a lot on its plate but I I'm increasingly concerned that prior boards invested a lot for us to get the salad bars and
186healthy food in schools and the pandemic I understand set us back um but Dr Reed uh there I think that the patience is running thin in our community um we we can't use the pandemic as an excuse anymore our salad bars have got to be like a light switch flip them on and get them working and then I really would love as part of our strategic plan I mean we know that healthy bodies healthy minds and with a poverty rate of over 30 percent these kids are relying on healthy food and um I mean talk about focus groups I I want my colleagues to know I think we might want to start some intentional dialogues in our town halls around food it's just not good the second thing I wanted to make sure was on
187everybody's radar because I just learned about this apparently 20 or so of our 25 high schools are using the electronic e-haul pass software technology where instead of students having traditional paper Hall Pass they get from teacher it's a software that they can that it does a lot of monitoring and controlling and and there could be UPS you know up I guess pros and cons to it however um as I shared with one of my rasses this was one of those things that happened before before your arrival Dr Reed so I'm not putting it on you but I explained to a Ras this should never come as a surprise to a board member when you're talking about how we are monitoring and tracking student Behavior I mean compulsory education means they have to go into that
188building and so it came as a surprise I had never heard of it so board members if you had heard about e-holl pass I had not but I I don't expect to hear every you know software technology we employ but when you were going to do something that is this different and one of my schools piloted and they chose not to do it they they didn't find that the teachers liked it and so they chose not to so they're one of the fee the five out of the 25 high schools so I just wanted to use that sort of as a um example that uh you know I'm not asking you to always have to mind read what the board wants to know but that one and I still question how come it's just left
189building by building to decide what's best thank you Miss Tallinn Miss McLaughlin I was just paging through one of my the recent Highlander McLean magazine there's an article from the student perspective on the e-holl path so it might be interesting for people to take a look at um I I do want to just say and you know I'm so excited about all the hard work that is going on around the Strategic plan but if you haven't clicked on the FCPS this week link to the an elementary student's view of the Strategic plan you have to do it it is just absolutely adorable and the kids have some pretty incredible ideas and um I almost had to reach out to the little girl in there I have been to an elementary school that has a slide
190instead of a staircase so it is something that is done so we were gonna have to think about that one um I had a great meeting yesterday with my audrainesville PTA PTO leaders I do that in conjunction with the Safe Community Coalition and I think I might have mentioned earlier we had our manager of tutor.com come to speak to us about that resource and I do encourage people to find out more about it and really think about encouraging students to use it is an incredible incredible resource and it is being so sorely from what I understand underutilized at this point um Dr Reed already mentioned our visit to Mclean high school we did go a delegate um rip Sullivan and certainly the highlight of that um experience was talking to our the student voices leadership
191and hearing about the amazing things that they're doing to really create solutions to um Province and issues that they see at the school and of course I do have to mention again the Cooper Band that we heard from but we saw some pretty pretty amazing math going on at Cooper Middle School including sixth graders that are coming to Cooper to learn some of that advanced mathematics I was at drainsville elementary school for a family math day just before Thanksgiving which was absolutely an incredible way to get parents engaged in seeing what their kids are doing with math and Miss McLaughlin I had lunch um in the lunchroom and thought so much about all our salad bars and how um we really really do need to take a really close look at that I had a
192couple comments from parents about wait a minute this is what we're having for lunch so I do think we need to take a look at that um I was able to uh attend a Herndon opportunity neighborhood meeting I just want to give a shout out to that group they also have a Reston group these are Community people that are just working so hard to give resources to all of our families and students across those Geographic areas um I did attend the very moving World Remembrance Day also um I just have to give a shout out to the um TJ satellite that just went up with the SpaceX launch so a huge um congratulations on kudos to our TJ students and have worked on that for years thank you thank you Miss Amish happy to follow
193always delightful stories from Miss Tolan um I I do want to thank you Dr Reed and the full team for the community conversations that have been going on and especially this week I was really proud to join FCPS has made history in you know the first visit ever to a mosque to meet folks where they're at and I know that you know was it after the in the leadership of Dr Brier brand having visited a synagogue a few years ago and really just moving this division in a direction of intentional Outreach that's meeting folks where they're at uh so I I thank you for that and I look forward to continuing to build in that direction for all communities and groups um I uh also um wanted to mention uh for our sick Community that's
194s-i-k-h it was Guru nanak's birthday just this past week um you know commemoration of course of their founder and then on December 8th next week uh booty day so wishing everybody a blessed day of Enlightenment and honoring the founder of of Buddhism uh which um it's it's interesting to have both really be um near each other non-abrahamic faiths um in the idea of Enlightenment and renewal so wishing everyone blessings of course in advance of the holiday season which will commemorate many more uh that we can talk about next next meeting I do want to remind community members that the calendar survey and the family Life Education surveys both closed tonight so wanting to make sure I don't know if anyone's even listening but this is the chance right now you got two hours to fill
195out those surveys make sure you check your email if you're an FCPS parent um we also I'm looking forward of course to the dinner with the city board next week last you know we just recently also spoke with the Board of Supervisors on the budget there are a lot of important conference you know exchanges about what we're looking at ahead and wanting to try our best I know our public citizen mentioned the steps today but really trying to align with the county and having parity with our staff and then of course plenty of other things coming up the alignment team the faith team so many great things happening in FCPS keeping us busy apart from just our meetings and our work sessions um I certainly want to also just address um one of our community
196members who mentioned the maternity leave question I think that's certainly something we can take on um I'll be sure to mention it to Miss Wilson but I think that's potentially an area especially in a female dominated uh you know institution I think that's something we can do better on uh and then finally um I know many of our community members are are hurting after the announcement of uh the findings of the Department of education's investigation in special education um and uh looking into compensatory services so I do want to just acknowledge that recognize no doubt the pain I know that many of my colleagues and I have been were advocating at the time uh for wanting to make sure that um that that was tended to but no doubt we're going to continue to be
197diligent and and we're looking forward to robust work uh in the aftermath of the air report uh that's looking at special ed as a whole in our division to improve so thank you all and good night Miss Marin I think I've been reflective in the last few weeks about what's happening in our school of division and making connections and seeing possibilities and sometimes feeling frustrations both through my role as a school board member through seeing School Division practices and then as a parent so you know special special education you know being a parent going through the IEP process talking about it at our acsd work session looking at the special audit report I have a lot of Reflections questions things I want to know more about um the statement from the office of civil rights
198that agreement I would love us to be able to talk about that more the implications of that also what it says about the the status of public education at this time as defined by the U.S Department of Education I think we have to really re-envision what we're doing and while we are legally bound to provide education to students who need by definition or who are by definition special needs I think all of our children you know we talk about um you know by name and by need we just need to redefine our system to do that more fully and um I'm really eager to do that work and serve all of our kids I'm seeing you know how executive functioning is um being used in our schools how kids are using schoology or paper plan
199or planning out their work and what it's like as a parent to try and understand those things as well as um like what source materials my students are using for their work I did get to be at the Terrace at elementary math night last night for parents where we got to the teachers I mean two fourth grade teachers math Specialists Advanced academics research teacher all state after late to play math games with parents in fourth grade who wanted to come and I had done that years before at Wolf Trap Elementary and it was really enlightening and this is one of those things where I wonder you know how many other schools do this because it's so Hands-On and it was kind of like a math Therapy Group like parents we had all these memories of
200when we learned math like this and so it it really um it's powerful to incorporating our parents as partners Mr mccarski and I got to talk about after school activities with staff I know that was mentioned earlier but again you know what do we do with the kids out of school time which I as a parent I'm also you know thinking about too and my middle schooler is done at 2 15 PM but um and also you know Career Development work uh reducing barriers for instructors when we talked about the legislative briefing I'm excited that the build draft deadline was 5 p.m today that our legislators had to pre-file to try and make laws and so I think this board did a nice job of advocating to those lawmakers about reducing barriers to instruction also
201getting more Authority for things like speed uh controls you know speeding zones to create better school environments and the last thing I'll say is I am very grateful to the students at the Davis career center who furnished pies that I ordered and paid for for um my family for Thanksgiving so we had apple crumble and pumpkin and they were delicious and I ordered way too many and ate way too much but I I thoroughly recommend their services and yeah it was is a nice thing to bring into my home to connect with our students thank you thank you Miss Keys Kamara thank you I too enjoy the vsba convention very much I thought the discussions were um provoking and encouraged good discussion I particularly enjoyed a presentation by the Arlington County school board on sros
202and how they created a community discussion about how to deal with that it was really good work and I look forward to us Hopefully Dr Reed being able to discuss that I know that there's a forum topic that's been pending for some time so I look forward to that as the school board lays on to the foundation's educate Fairfax I encourage all of our staff members and board members to take note of the number of identified newcomer students in Fairfax County who are Now supported by the FCPS homeless liaison office that number continues to grow for many of these families securing essential needs such as clothing medicine emergency food Etc is a real struggle so educate Fairfax is once again holding their annual gift card drive to benefit the newcomer student population donated funds will
203be used to purchase gift cards from a variety of stores your donation can be made securely online or checks can be mailed directly to educate Fairfax and the deadline is January 6 2023. um let's see I want to say that on December 12th I look forward to hosting a virtual event with the Special Olympics and FCPS students to talk about spread the word and inclusion day um I also want to state that I had the pleasure of visiting Rolling Valley Elementary School in Rocky Run and enjoyed Elementary School enjoyed very much discussion regarding how hard our staff members are working toward inclusion but serving a diverse Community there um and I think the last thing I think that's it so um I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving all of my boys were home and
204I since I know there's probably very few people listening I want to say happy birthday to my oldest son thank you thank you Mr necklace thank you I too was pleased to attend the Virginia school boards association with several of my colleagues two weeks ago as stated by many this is always an excellent opportunity to learn best practices and meet with colleagues from around the state I do want to thank our Northern Virginia delegation for meeting with us to discuss our board's priorities prior to their session beginning in January it's always wonderful to talk and meet with our delegates to help them understand our needs as a school system prior to the Thanksgiving holiday our board and staff met with the Board of Supervisors and their staffs to discuss the fiscal forecast for the upcoming
205year Dr Reed as you all know will present her budget to us right after the winter break and this will be our official start of the budget dance as I like to call it which will end smoothly I hope in an upcoming in the approved budget when that lands in May this week I had the opportunity to attend the strategic planning meeting as part of the core team with my colleague Miss Sizemore hyzer as Dr Reed mentioned this was the first of several meetings and there were in indeed both challenging and energizing conversations at this core meeting I was encouraged to see a wide range of diverse members on this team and I look forward to several more meetings in the new year as we move forward with this very important mission with the upcoming
206holidays Miss Cohen talked about this too if you want to get into the spirit of the season I encourage you to attend one of the amazing chorus band or orchestra concerts and you will be so energized and happy that you did and so with all that jazz that Mr Frisch spoke of done I wanted to highlight that the national touring company of Chicago is currently starring two FCPS alumni in the leads Logan Floyd who attended Fairfax High School and Kate she plays Velma Kelly and Katie frieden who is a Hayfield Secondary School graduate plays Roxy heart and I have the privilege of going to see that with my daughter my daughter is friends with one of the actresses and over the Thanksgiving holiday it was spectacular if it comes back around I encourage you to
207do it but I was truly Fairfax proud of these young beautiful talented actors so that's exciting so have a good night everyone very cool and I know I'm the last one to speak between us and bed or late night snacks I'm hungry so I just want to say I really also appreciate being at the vsb conference with my colleagues and the world day remembrance as well as the core planning team and the Annandale Community conversation to to really hear from our community and I'm looking forward tomorrow to going to tour the workforce Innovation and skills Hub in Alexandria to see some great Community organizations around helping build Workforce supports for our families and for our young adults who leave our system and have hopefully a very robust conversation with Dr Reed and Davis Center principal
208Chad Clayton on transition we had to reschedule our visit but we're still going to have the conversation I'm excited about that and I am very sorry to miss Chicago at Falls Church this weekend because I will be traveling to see my own son's first college Ensemble performance this weekend so I am I'm excited to see that I'm sorry to miss Chicago but I cannot wait for all of the amazing band Orchestra chorus join Point separate concerts in the next week because it is a phenomenal time of year and they really put you in the mood for the holidays and just make you happy because the music they make and the dedication these students have is amazing so with that this meeting is adjourned