FCPS School Board Work Session - SR&R - 6/14/22

001okay do you need all this surface i can count together just a joke just a joke yeah yeah yeah priorities thank you thank you esther okay let's get started we um did have a presentation from our um auditor general um at the a board meeting recently and what we are doing today during this work session is just taking an opportunity to answer any questions that board members may have before we vote on this work on at our next board meeting on june 30th there were a few questions that came up at the board meeting and so given that um i just wanted to clarify a couple of things um if you were able to take a look at the report that was put together around this statement of work for fy 2023 the first sentence

002actually states that the mission of oag is to independently determine whether the existing processes for fairfax county schools are adequately designed operating in an efficient effective manner and fully accountable to the fairfax county citizens so if we want um the auditor general to go beyond that into looking at programs or um very specific work then we often need to bring in outside experts to do that our special education review is a good example of that in some cases some of the i think the questions that have come up or some of the audit topics that have been proposed are perhaps things that are better done by isd or um orsi or another organization so if we can just kind of keep that in mind as we bring up some ideas um what we want to

003do at our next board meeting is vote on this statement of work for fy23 as we know if there is an emergency or a big topic that comes up during the year like this year and we had the the legal invoices we do make changes to um you know the audit statement of work as we move forward and you know misco will talk a little bit more about that and she will also talk about how this work was prioritized we'll go into that in a little bit more detail than we did at the board meeting so we will today run through the presentation that you saw at the board meeting quickly because we added that additional specificity for board members to understand how that happened um also um and i just wanted to point out

004an area that was of interest for many um but is not on our list of priorities for fy23 for oag is teleworking and there's an explanation and um miss co can go into more detail if we need it but that is an example of where we don't necessarily need to audit procedures but we need to make sure we have a policy in place and regulations that can be clearly communicated and implemented as many workplaces are needing to do post covit 19. so that might be something we would need to work with governance as far as drafting a policy and not would not be something that oag would be working on in fy23 okay also i just want to note that we do have a next steps document for all of our work sessions today so

005if there are things you need to be putting into next steps that document is open in google so with that explanation i will turn it over to miss esther coat and her team thank you for being here thank you thank you miss cholin um good morning i think we're still morning everyone it's always great to come here to speak with you all at a work session and be able to connect and answer any questions and before i briefly refresh the presentation that i did earlier last month i want to introduce my very capable teams who is here with me and to my left is mr chris muyacho he is our deputy auditor general and to my right is miss danielle moore and she is our very experienced auditor three um so with that i would

006like to just again refresh our memories on the presentation highlight the key points and also the changes that we have made to further enhance this presentation just like miss tollen mentioned how to be able to answer some of the questions already from the presentation so with that here are the contents we are going to drill down about the how the how we identify the plan and what are the considerations and the proposal in today's work sessions and slide three slide three is the why just like ms tollen mentioned the school board has tested or the office of auditor general to look at processes at fcps whether they are adequately designed operated operated in an efficient and effective way and be fully accountable to our citizen members and of course also with the audit is to

007further promote our strategic goals and within the auditor general charter which is policy 1105 that the school board tasked us to present our audit plan our work plan statement of work to the school board on an annual basis and then going on is to talk about the how and i think some of the questions we got from the presentation night is about the how to prioritize certain topics so um first of all is actually it is pretty you know streamlined that we looked at the entire audit universe that we could audit and we identified 47 of them come to the list and then of course we looked at what is happening in the world as well because audit is changing the landscape similar how we operate a k-12 education that we have the pandemic and

008we need to consider that as the consideration to think about what to audit in the next fiscal year how do we prioritize which is step number two that we speak with many of you we also collected your feedback fear survey email we also got feedback from fcps employees we spoke with our leadership team members coordinator directors principal association etc and then we also do independent benchmarking with the k-12 education internal audit functions and see what they are looking and then after getting all this information we consider the different types of risk risk meaning challenges concern may not be happening but inherently it can happen within the k-12 education we looked at what is the dollar sign attached to that audit topic if it go wrong would that what would be the reputational impact on fcps

009what is the operational risk etc and then we determine the plan so um slide five for everyone um understanding this is a new slide that we added there is no information but what we did is we moved some of the tables from the detailed document that we also attached together with the presentation inside the presentation to explain about why we select the first five primary priorities sorry that i keep looking back to be safe that that is the right slide that that there are five new topics uh this year including employee evaluation continuous monitoring specifically for so3 i.t cyber security local school activity funds as well as the succession planning and leadership development here you can see that we outlined some of the considerations including the dollar impact financial indicators as well as some other

010information we included here about the interest from the school board and all the committee members as well as the employees and also indicate if such topics are identified through via the benchmarking exercise or not again the benchmarking exercise we focus on the k-12 education and the next slide is we receive a question from a school board member asking hey esther two of the topics are actually not identified as common benchmarking topics why we are doing it so with this slide we would like to address that question specifically it is related to two topics one is the employee evaluation process the other one is the succession planning and leadership development topics the reason why oag would like to propose both of them is because of the high level of interest from the school board and all

011the committee members as well as as well as that this is closely tied to our strategic goals and also we have looked at some of the research as well so we would like to put those two topics forward um as a side note at ms tollen mentioned in the opening we currently we are conducting the legal audit and because of that we have postponed the employee evaluation process audit which was identified through the last year audit cycle so i just want to add that consideration for you all so slide seven is the result i think likely we can stop here afterwards but i think here is a major result the top four topics are the one that we have started working on and we are looking at finishing in early fy 23 and i will

012go to each one of them in a little bit and then the uh number five through number 10 are the topics that we listed why they are the primary focus for this fiscal year as well as we have some other oag duties that we want to highlight so i'm a very visual looking person i love to see hey esther what is the plan when are you going to finish the audits that you proposed so here is the chart that you can see the approximate timeline between fiscal year 23 that we are going to do we are looking at finishing the top four carry forward audits before october of this year and then we will start the new audits proposed beginning in september so going through uh slide 9 over and i i'm sorry that we're

013going to talk a little bit more about details of the various audits so we're going to zoom in about the specific about the description objective who are the stakeholders and the schedule of the various audits so the first one is a very key initiative that school board has initiated about the review of our special education services so if i may just comment and i remember on the night of the presentation we add a little bit more context that the vendor american institutes for research has completed with all the data collection activities as of today so right now they are analyzing the data and we're looking for meeting the scheduled deliverable date back to the school board in fall of this year so we're looking at between september and november for the final for the presentation

014to the school board and moving on number two is the i.t technology audit where we are focusing on the flow the process of how we managing the laptops we also add one piece and i believe it was one of the school board requests last year when this audit was approved to look at the project management aspect of this audit so moving on number three is the legal audit that we just talked about and i think most of you are familiar with that so i won't go through the details here and then the next one is the local school activity fund audit for this fiscal year which is ending in a few days june 30th of 2022 where um it is a state requirement that we looked at it every year from a financial standpoint just

015want to give you all a an understanding it accounted for roughly 22 million dollars a year for local school activity fund so with that i would like to turn the mic over to chris to talk about the new audit topics great thank you so number five is employee evaluation process audit this might be familiar to you because it was on the fiscal year 22 audit plan it was postponed because of the legal audit but we are pushing that to fiscal year and i'll just talk about some of the objectives and all audits are are to answer questions and the objectives are the the questions that are being asked so it's to evaluate the existing employee evaluation process to also look at how the process is being managed throughout the district and also the benchmark existing

016processes as well used by other school districts to identify best practices in this performance audit we're looking to take about five months as you've seen on the schedule next one i'm going to talk about is the continuous monitoring which is going to include the sr3 so you're very familiar that we are doing continuous monitoring out at the schools testing some of the financial transactions so we're also including the sr3 compliance looking at the financial transactions as well um and so we'll be doing that on a continuous basis and reporting back to the audit committee the next slide just talks about our tactics with the continuous monitoring we typically do our auditing sampling basis and so this year we're going to start to include some different tactics not just doing sampling but trying to use our

017audit technology to look at the whole population and look for any irregular irregularities and um and hopefully the software will add additional coverage to the sr3 and the other areas that we're looking at with continuous monitoring next up is the it cyber security audit and then this one is just we have a lot of objectives here um just focusing on the sufficiency of the monitoring of the our network evaluation evaluating the compliance with policies and procedures around cyber security determining if the process is aligned with the leading practices and also we're going to be surveying employees okay um so this this audit we anticipate taking six months and just because of the sensitivity of this um this will be fully exempt from the public discussion the next audit is the local school activity funds for

018the fiscal year 2023 i won't go too much into that something that we've been doing year after year and we'll be continuing to do last audit new engagement for the year is the succession planning and leadership development and this is where we're going to determine whether fcvs has developed and executed succession plan and leadership development strategy for coordinators and above and non-school-based administrators and also we're going to analyze that same category of employees their profile and stat statistics such as leadership skill gaps and lastly we're going to do research and best practices research on that topic and compare those concepts with fcps's current practice and we anticipate that taking about five months as well okay i will turn it back over to miss co so thank you chris so i think with that we cover

019you know the major audit topics that we propose for the school board to consider and here on this list is some of the other oag duties that we have been focused on doing and every time when i come to speak with the school board i really want to take this opportunity to thank all of you because um you have helped us you know to promote our office so that the community members know about the hotline that they can call they know about our audit bus which is our periodical and i just can't help but to take this opportunity to say now we have over 1700 subscribers to the audit bus to really raise awareness about who we are and what we do so really appreciate for your collaboration um and with that just a few

020slides left that is talking about some other potential audit topics that have rise to the horizon but because of the limitation of like of our staff we have seven auditors including myself we are all hands on deck so some of the topics um even though that may be uh slightly higher um like uh interest focused we would not be able to do them in this fiscal year of course they are critical items it's just about the when to look at them so there are a few of them the first one is about the foia and the ferpa process audit that we know that currently there is a new process that is ongoing and our communication office is in the process of building that team so we suggest that while this is a very critical topic

021we suggest to audit it in a later time not in fy23 following that is the telework audit as ms tolland has mentioned that this topic we received quite a lot of interest from the employees and one school board member because we have already looked at one of the it trial audit topic this fiscal year so we propose to not look at it this fiscal year 23. and then the next one is the is the project management division-wide audit that this topic will receive interest from five school board members and one employee and again we know that this is a very important initiative within fcps our thought is that that our new superintendent will be joining us very soon it may be good for her to have an opportunity to take a look at what she

022has and then we can see where we go in a year and then to we look at that in fy 24. the next topic is curriculum development and this is a topic that we receive from one of the school board members like ms holland open since what it is being asked for in the description is not the core competency of oag we do not recommend to include it in fy 23 but if the school board thing collectively think this is a goal uh a subject that we should focus on we can hire a consider to hire an external expert similar to the arrangement for the special education review um but as of right now we haven't been putting it on our proposed plan for fy23 and last but not the least it's just some um

023bullet points um that if the community members are looking at it if they want to know more about our mission that we are independent report directly to the school board they can hit hit on this link to get more information and with that i would like to hand the time back to our madam chair and see if any one of you have questions okay well since you're back oh i'm sorry okay i thought you were waiting on me i was like what chair oh i am sorry i'm sorry i did not use the right terminology and i apologize it's miss tolen i was waiting for someone to put their card up and we have miss mclaughlin thank you um i i would like maybe a little more clarity on the project management division wide um

024rationale uh i really do appreciate what you're saying that we have a new superintendent coming in um and that you might want to wait but i i'm also mindful that she is going to come in and have a vast system to learn and so i think it certainly would be extremely beneficial to her and the board that we would have had a assessment of where are we to then know where we need to get to so i i will just share with my colleagues that this is not a new topic this has been something that dr brabrand i greatly appreciate you have given voice and respect for how important project management is and um i'm i'm frankly disappointed to see this one being postponed i will say to my colleagues that you know maybe we

025need to have further conversation um and with our with our auditor general to understand what it is we're hoping from um by doing this as opposed to the waiting i just i'm not otherwise i'm not sure how our new superintendent can get us there and we can't keep waiting year upon year upon year to be this complex of a system so that that part disappoints me a bit um and you know the the foia and the ferpa audit um i would get asked professionally from our auditor general and her team that if we're you know look at look at the interest level 21 employees i mean something tells you there that um this is of high interest um and we know it's an issue so one thought that i would have is if we if

026you want to wait because there's supposedly new processes putting in place and i'm respectful of that then i would ask dr brabrand you know i know you can't commit anything for the new superintendent but your team is your team that we could at least get periodic updates of what does this look like because in the end the board is you know the the ultimate body accountable to the system every lawsuit every loss of funds loss of reputation anything it all falls on the shoulders of the board and so if we end up saying things like well yeah they're working on it well we need to be asking for for very clear and timely and reasonable updates so that it's not like we're just not monitoring it all so um that's that's my 12 seconds but

027you know um in addition to dr brabra and dr uh misco i would appreciate if you could maybe respond to the things i've raised uh just a couple of quick comments one definitely on foia and ferpa we've added a few things in the budget here that you guys just passed and we can give some updates on where we are on doing that hiring and how we're better organizing that office school districts across the country this is an important thing for you all to know school districts across the country are being overwhelmed with ferpa and foia request and frankly the general assembly just passed rules that are going to make what has become a flood maybe the largest flood since noah um got on his ark so clarification mr superintendent i'm sorry to interrupt um do

028they follow the same foia rules that we do uh they do not just checking you're you're that's a good question and and honestly but we can absolutely do updates we can do updates the other listen obviously it's between you and the auditor general what your scope of work is we have taken seriously the board's feedback about project management i have taken it seriously as superintendent we've been building the team this year we're doing project management within our departments and always have been but it hasn't been cross-functional that's the part we're building and we're doing it with our esser funds this very year um so this is just about i i think in the end the snapshot of where the work is and when do you want it we're in the beginning stages of doing that

029and we're doing it focusing on esser funds right now that is really in a sense cross-departmental because we're doing it in facilities instruction we're still building out doing what are all of the projects that would be under project management so that's just the that's the reality of it when you want to dip stick it is up to the board but we have uh earnestly started uh on it and um it's going to make us a better system thank you so if i may um also uh respond to ms goflin question and um and first of all i just want to say i'm really grateful for the questions because when we talk megan always shared with us you know what we need to see strategically as a big picture from a division-wide perspective so i just

030want to say i'm very grateful for that very candid feedback and um if i may also just share with the with the board about from my perspective about why not and you can also see that we are very deliberate to put both topics in the dac it's not they are not important but is we're just trying to fit our resources into what we think are the top priorities with project management division-wide topic my my sincere understanding is that we have incorporated that as part of the it asset management audit and again this is not looking at division wide and i think the focus the school board would like us to do with this division-wide is the overall how the different departments offices are working together but my hope is from the it audit project management

031review it can give us an idea how good or how not good the system has been working out as a first step um and of course that's not the end of it if we say oh my goodness nothing like happening is correct then of course we need to put this the project management division-wide audit front and center and like miss tollen open up in the conversation this is not set in stone it can be changed throughout so this is a very fluid topic so my suggestion to the board for consideration is let's see what is the result from the i.t project management audit which we are excited to release that in fall like maybe september october is only a few months down and if we see that they are missing a lot of pieces then

032we have to like miss mclaughlin you say we really need to do this now now um so so that's our considerations for for you two to consider and then the other uh situation about the foyer and ferpa audits and totally when we first talk about how we prioritize right reputational risk legal risk is the top risk that we looked at and the reason why we don't put it in fy23 is two reasons one is because within the scope of the current legal audit we did incorporate one aspect of foia and ferpa process but again that is one aspect of a specific you know incident towards legal invoices and again i mean from that audit if we see the system is not working out it's not the process it's not efficient and effective like go back

033to our mission right then we can update our plan to elevate this topic right or to hire someone else i mean to do uh to do all the audits that we proposed but we can wait and see when we get more information to make that determination if it makes sense so that's from our office point of view great um thank you so much and you know how much i value you and your department [Music] uh miss karen keys gamara followed by karen corbett sanders thank you um i want to follow up on the question that miss tolin posed with us and i'd like to pose it to you she asked are there topics she asked us to consider whether there were topics that would be better handled by different departments and so i i think

034we need to start with your recommendation with respect to that question uh i can go first and if ms tolin or other school board members have comments to that so i think currently our hope is to be able to do the proposed audits completely in-house i think as oag i think we should portray to the citizens that that we really are great you know financial steward we would like to be able to embrace be able to look at the risk the highest risk internally first in terms of currently we still have the special education review ongoing that i'm sure karen you're fully embracing and aware of so that has a financial you know implication on that because we're hiring someone external to do it and and just similar to the legal audit as well we

035need subject matter expert we may need to get someone external to support us with the cyber security audit which we already incorporated in this year plan but fortunately we do have a very competent i.t auditor in-house so we would like to have him to help us with the it audit but i may come to the audit committee and to the school board and say hey based upon what we look at we may need to solicit outside support because cyber security change every day so that may be a likelihood in order to ask to to respond to karen your question i think for now we should be able to handle the audits that we propose in this document in-house um except for some of the ongoing audits that the school board is aware of okay i

036just wanted to give you an opportunity to tell us what your recommendations are um you did mention or at least in the question um that there may be departments that would be more likely or better suited so i wanted to get those distinctions if there are any thank you thank you for for that further clarification so um that questions come out a lot about whether like can we support and help with the program evaluation right to really see how effective a program is and um if i may just take this opportunity to explain that a little bit more is currently within the office of auditor general you have certified public accountants you have certified fraud examiner you have certified internal auditors you have certified information system auditor but we don't have phd in education or

037we don't have those very specific skill sets and my recommendation to the board is that i would rather to hire those people if at the time that we need because those are very special skill set that may be different based upon the projects that the school board would like us to do so thank you karen for clarifying that but that's kind of like what we have right now within the office and we can always tackle extra projects but we may not have the expertise in-house then at that time we will need to hire external vendors okay i may have misunderstood the question i thought she mentioned orsi and other groups within fcps are you looking for some type of reliance on them so can you let me just clarify the comment i was making was

038more i think around the topics that are not on this list for next year and part of the like curriculum there was one was you know curriculum looking at isd and how they develop curriculum and is it the best way to develop curriculum and is it innovative that may be better looked at the other departments in fcps than oag for example what esther was just saying okay so or the telework for example is really an hr kind of policy topic right but i'd see the auditor's role in monitoring how that policy is implemented is it effective is it a a an area where the board may need to set a policy right so that we don't have disparities that uh result in inefficiencies uh are in something that is not achieving the goal that we

039thought that it was doing so i see that a little bit different so i was curious as to how those two comments meshed go ahead if i may just take one last minute i feel like i have taken too much time for you all to ask questions but to to clarify that karen i think what first come to my mind is um of course internally our departments are very competent and capable to look at the program i'm thinking from the school board point of view we may also want to consider the independence objectivity component right so um and i think for me as the auditor general this is something very critical because our integrity you know is relied on our reporting structure where do we belong so we reports directly to the school board so

040we can protect that so to answer so so my thought is right if it is something that that the school board would like to have the independent point of view then we would likely be better to hire an external a subject matter expert to support but if it is something more operational that our lt members our internal research and also strategic improvement office can support that would be best right too so i think it's depending on the ask right so i think i misunderstood the question and i wanted the clarity because we can't what we're always looking for from you is that independence right and we can go directly to the department and say hey what are you doing uh but that's like a self-evaluation and and the value is you're looking at it from

041an objective viewpoint so the the second thing that i want to raise and it may sound a little bit like a tangent but dr uh bray brand mentioned the issue and i think megan asked about this miss mclaughlin with respect to the foia requests and the new state mandates this may not have anything to do with you per se dr brabrand but i would like for this board to have an opportunity to talk about how we're going to respond it is my understanding that prior to any changes we had what five or six days to respond to a foia request even if people were asking for 10 000 pages um and so the public doesn't understand that those documents have to be redacted that we have to protect uh we have to comply with ferpa

042etc um and so it creates uh as anybody who peruses twitter a uh a public uh a public image anomaly that is just not factual so i'm hoping that we can uh dr brabant and forgive me uh miss co i think that since we're talking about the foia ish issue we've got to do some clarification so that our constituents understand the position we are currently placed in and what this legislation imposes on us yeah glad to do more communication glad to do more communication about it and we can work with our occr team to better explain to the community what's going on we're committed to transparency we've tried i've tried and our team to put out more information in an easier fashion but it is a true statement that across this country there are increased

043demands for foia requests and school districts are simply overwhelmed to meet the state timelines and the general assembly has now actually made it more more onerous and there really isn't an equivalent response for that at the state level i support and i believe we all support transparency at all levels of government and we need to figure out though the right models that balance transparency in government for continuing to operate the system and serve our kids which is our all of our primary focus my time is up thank you that's cover sanders yes thank you and thank you esther for all of the work of your organization it is always really well appreciated the the thoughtful and very responsible approach that you take to all of your work so thank you a couple of things one

044i do support the succession planning piece of this i would hope that that would be looked at also with an equity lens and actually at some point i mean we talked about the need for an ed equity policy today i would suggest that we actually need to do an equity audit at some point to address whether or not we are doing the work with fidelity regarding employee evaluations i'm a little surprised that that one major list and would be supportive of substituting that one out at some point and my reasoning is that we are about to embark on collective bargaining and the whole employee evaluation process is likely to be addressed in that context so when we only have a limited amount of resources to do this type of work in the oag's office i

045think that we should take that into account additionally i think that the project management as ms mclaughlin raised is something that is of critical importance and it's not only important in our cyber work but it's actually important in everything we do to the level of school buildings and so the responsible approach to project management as a key cultural mindset and critical to the way that we ensure things are done with fidelity i think is important and so i would encourage that we re-look at including project management the questions regarding the oag versus orsi and others i do appreciate your comments on this it does beg the question of you know when the oag was established whether it was going to be an audit or general or if it was going to take on broader roles

046and so under the new superintendent i do think it warrants a conversation about whether the strategic placement of different organizations and whether we need to reinforce or move additional things into your area two additional areas and then i'm cognizant of 26 seconds left one is this board adopted a security audit at our last board meeting in the um after uvalde and i would hope that the oag would have a role in defining the parameters for that security audit and overseeing it and so i don't know what conversations have been undertaken in that but i would like to better understand it and one last on the foia and i know i'm out of time but i'll throw it out there is we should have a dashboard prominently on our site for every foia request saying these

047are the forever this is how many foia requests have been made pending satisfied so thank you again karen like as a um very clearly with the different thought with the different types of considerations for us to you know to to think about um the employee evaluation process if i may go with that one first it is an audit that was approved back last fiscal year and of course things we can adopt we we can change that when there are other more prominent topics the reason why i am still proposing that to the school board is because evaluation is such an important tool to support employees to create a caring culture to have a welcoming environment we know that that that the evaluation process on school-based staff members versus operational staff members are quite different so

048we see that there may be an opportunity to add it further to help strengthening our process and again our focus is always on the process we we do aware that with the um the the changes in the employee evaluation process as well as the um the negotiation that is happening right now with our staff members um if the school board thing you know that this topic may may be better to delay we are happy to do that we are just looking more at a process perspective that this impacts every single one of the employee um so that's why we we proposed it and then i think i i talked about the project management division why consideration a little bit ago so but i i do hear karen from your perspective this is a critical process

049that we need to consider and maybe let me look at chris and danelle other thoughts and we definitely have our equity audit to be considered we literally just receive more more more training from our chief equity officer office about how to consider that in our audit we also pay a lot of attention about how the other audit offices are doing too right across the nation um this is a very emerging area if i may say so so far i haven't really see a very tight audit program to how to acc how to how to evaluate it so far but you are absolutely right karen this is on our forefront that we have to really think about okay now we have the policy we have the different procedures that we put in how the processes are

050working out so thank you for highlighting that for us anything else chris and danielle you want to add are you going to address the security audit and the foia dashboard so um for the security audit i think um i i would love to be able to speak with our security office to understand more about the type of audit that they are doing maybe we can go in to do some kind of like quarterly checking or some kind of like review independently to assess the process thus we can sorry that i missed that that we can we would definitely follow up on that one and with related to um the other one is the foyer the dashboard thank you um and i'm wondering if i saw miss lloyd is here and um and and dr ivey

051this may be a little bit more from an operational perspective about how we manage it and also keep the school board on top of what's happening so i would like to defer to management to respond yeah so thank you for that question we have a lot of data on for you we keep a track of every single request that comes in the date that it's delivered and um the number of pages as well although that is actually a new addition to our database we weren't keeping that um prior to i believe like a few months ago um we are watching those trend lines and those trend lines do need to be posted they've already been shared i believe with the board in uh the data that we shared with you back in february so you

052can see where our trend line is going i have that data if not i will actually package for you and make sure i reshare so that you've got that data as well we are seeing a large increase in four-year numbers and we are able to track that data in terms of the dashboard i'm producing a dashboard right now i think this is something that we could look at when we uh create a records public records office which we're looking to do july starting july 1. once we've hired those positions in i think we'll have a little more bandwidth right now we have one for your officer for the entire district she's working round the clock she's the only person able to do redactions so i do know that the last few weekends she's been working

053both saturday and sunday and late into the evenings as well to make sure that we are completing that even with our reorganization we will have her as a we will have a records officer manager potentially but that for your office a role will be realigned into the public records office manager roles so we are not actually increasing a four-year officer position in that reorganization we are only increasing an analyst which is at a lower level and able to provide a support role once we do have those positions in place oh sorry the other additions will be to it to include ferpa in that public uh records office um office so that we are then aligning the ferpa and the foyer office processes um to better align to better but deliver and also to be ensuring

054accountability as well that does not mean that we're necessarily increasing those positions even though it looks like we've got an increase in that budget dashboard wise i could definitely promise something publicly once we've got those positions in place right now our four-year officer needs to be working around the clock to make sure we're delivering on the requests that are coming in and that we're complying foia timeline is incredibly tight in terms of delivery and so um we need to make sure we're right on we're we're meeting those delivery timelines as much as possible that's our priority thank you for responding that way i would just encourage that the more we put out there about how much of our resources are going to this area i think it's critical because we're happy we all embrace transparency

055but every time that we spend additional resources in this area to meet increased demands set by the legislature then it takes money away from serving our students directly because dr brabrand isn't here right now i would just like oh there he is sorry sorry i um to follow up on the security audit question our security review i have just happened to have a conversation yesterday with tom vacarello and with dr brabrand on where is that and how are we moving forward um so dr praban i don't know if you want to fill everyone in and what we talked about but mainly i think our interim assistant superintendent for facilities once that person is on board we need to have the whole discussion about what is it really what do we want how independent yeah et

056cetera yeah and we have mr smith here we're certainly um we're certainly well aware of the transition that we're about to make with mr plattenberg leaving and mr smith will be providing an update to the board very soon around our transition we do plan to have an interim name of course before mr plantenberg leaves yes and we are actively going to move forward and unfortunately every one of these times that there is a tragedy we relook and reassess to make sure we're doing everything we can to keep our schools safe and secure and there'll be some additional items that we're going to look at as the board directed us to do in the final one mr smith anything you want to add to that uh no other than again that we will be taking a

057look at this at uh with our year-end recommendation for the board where we'll have a recommendation for an overall assessment we not only look at our essential assessment but look at safety and security at a school by school level i just for logistics it is now 12 30 and we do have outside counsel coming in for our our closed session at 12 30. so and we've got three at least board members that would like to speak um i think we have options of either having people speak we're going to be a few minutes late for the council i don't know what your availability is after if we if we took a break did our closed session could we come back to the audit topic sure um right now when i see uh elaine you said

058oprah has a question and megan has a go back and laura jane cohen oh i see i'm sorry i cannot see on my back um yeah sure are you sure does that ms do you maybe do we want to try allocating just 10 minutes and like we can go and try to um let council know we'll be 10 minutes late i think if we go over 10 minutes we'll have to probably come back together okay i'll do that let's try it thank you all right thank you okay miss amash followed by miss seismer heiser all right um thank you miss ko as always and uh miss more mr mugliachio thank you all for your work uh on this um so i just wanted to clarify a couple of things um i did notice you were

059responsive to a number of the questions so i do appreciate that and want to acknowledge it from the meeting just in terms of the srps so i just want to clarify and i know um you know ms tolland and ms ko you were diligent about this so i do appreciate that and want to just name it um but just to clarify kind of uh i know we talked about the timeline of where we are and staff have already done some work uh to arrive at where we um are today that we could have discussed but i guess is outside the scope of today's conversation um can you just update us on on what that can look like and i i'm wondering if that can be delineated even in the report just in terms of those

060check-ins of when um we're gonna receive updates on on what you're finding as we're moving along just so that it's incorporated in that iterative feedback process i know you know my question already but yeah if you can please speak to that a little bit so if i'm abroad to speak about that so we have already finished our first review on the so3 funding and we have we were planning to share with the audit committee last month but the meeting was cancelled so we will be sharing the result with the audit committee in june so if i may just at a very high level to kind of talk about the key points that number one is we looked at about eight million dollars only because we only looking back right for audit and then out of

061the um is it eight or four sorry a correction is 4 million and then out of the 4 million when we looked at the processes the check and balances they are actually pretty good well done and we did observe three different observations from the first review they are um looking at the hourly rate that we uh assigned for like certain additional jobs because of covet uh some of the rate that we checked were not consistent like we're not that what it should be based upon the actual nature of the work that the employee performed the second item we we observe and we believe is likely because of clerical air unintentional uh errors is that the the time range on some of the extra duty agreements that we signed with our staff members the the time

062range is off like for example that that it is from a july 1 2022 to to june 30th 2022. so we know is off is is on intentional clerical mistakes but a contract is a contract so we highlighted that for management thirdly is more about the operating effectiveness meaning that when we looked at the documents they are not quite in one repository yet and again i mean we are still starting getting the using this fund so when we ask for support they may be reciting the supporting documents in like i'm just picking a number like four different locations so we suggest to the management that that if in the future if those documents can reside in the same place so when the federal agency or external auditors come that you can just pull it up

063and show it to them it will be making the audit process uh more efficient so these are the three highlights and uh like your suggestion abroad that we definitely took into account of the learning from this three observation and we will build upon that and then to further like improve our continuous monitoring we are planning to look at it again in a few months to see how things are going on so so that's my commitment to the school board that we will take what we learn and then it will be an iterative process to put it back you know continuous monitoring yeah excellent thank you so much um and is this uh uh sorry is this a representative sampling the 4 million or is that kind of a certain region certain set of schools yeah

064um that would be the total population of what was spent during our audit scope period which i think was oh that's the total yeah that's the total expenditure um amount um from july 1st 2021 through january 31st 2022. and we looked at a sample of that i think that may be maybe a broad question and i think we looked at is it about 10 he looked at 50 transactions which totaled almost 400 so about 10 of the total population and we're looking on expanding that if if you are interested to know about the audit process we use a stratified you know random sampling meaning we put the the the expenditures in different nature of expenditures and then we selected our representative sample from each category yeah no that's helpful because i mean we're dealing with

065like over 188 million right so it's a small small subset um but i know that that's also just what's been spent up to this point so then the question the next question goes to staff of where that information is being applied right so this is these are key findings three errors mistakes you know whatever improvements areas of improvement that have been identified already and how the sr money is being deployed used etc then what i know everybody's looking over here so i mean we always appreciate the auditor general's office's findings and we try to act on those as you know as urgently as possible um you know i'm trying to to recall what those three findings were to be honest with you so whether or not they've been incorporated into practice yet or not i'd

066have to get back to you on that to give you a precise answer this is though this is the project management team we've set up for uh esser so when esther and the auditor general's office gives us the feedback we're gonna take that back to the project management team and put those in again one's a clerical error one's about the rates of pay making sure there's consistency you've heard that before anyway in our schools about paying people the right rate of pay but we're going to take that feedback and use it and we're going to do that continuously as they give us the feedback through through all the audit work that you're going to do so i'll be glad to provide an update where we are on this before my departure okay can you remind

067me where we are in our on the other side of the program evaluation timetable because i know we broke it up into two pieces right there's like the orsi our own internal iterative process and then the compliance piece that they're covering yeah so orsi is preparing um their second report to the board the last report that the board received was in february of 2022 so they're preparing their second report that will be available shortly we're still waiting for the final end of the year academic information to come in but they're working on that second report now okay is that coming back in a work session uh before the end of the year it it is in the queue uh to be scheduled for a future work session i can't tell you when exactly um that

068will happen yet though because i mean it might be useless if we end up looking at it in the fall you know that's something you know rashna stella i think we really need to have that before the end of before recess because otherwise how is it going to inform the next stage of the esser work right and ideally we would hear about this part the implementation of what's going to change we can coordinate with dr reed about when the board gets it i think the other issue is when you schedule a work session we can get you that as soon as it's complete something i think it's already been said i think miss maren and other members spoke to it one of the priorities the board is going to have is to prioritize the work

069with the new superintendent and what's going to be first you're going to have a host of things and i i think that's important work that i know you all will be able to do but we can get this to you no matter what separate from a work session and have the document in your hand sometime over the summer when it's complete right i mean i guess what i'm invested in and i'm hearing the kind of the caution but i'm invested in that feedback then informing the work because otherwise there's no point of investing this time into it so i will add that the the information that we receive from orsi and all of our data points that we receive continuously informs the work and so as we think about when we're going to bring that

070information back to the board uh our project management team our instructional team they will be taking that information working be working very closely with principals and our teams in our schools based on the data that we get here at the end of the year so it's not as if we sit on data that we receive and wait for the board to review before we take actions on it so we will be using that information all summer long and then of course be providing an update to the board so that we can get guidance moving forward but i wouldn't want anyone to no for sure for sure we wouldn't be using that that data uh internally right right um ms ko do you have recommendations that come out of the even preliminarily for these three pieces

071or so like i started off with the remarks abroad that this report is supposed to be discussed with the audit committee in may but because it was ken so so is now what we'll be discussing on june 22nd with the audit committee i do believe that we included suggestions and recommendations in the report and at that time we will have more dialogues with the audit committee and management as to exactly what improvement can be made but i do believe that we propose recommendations in the memorandum okay so mr smith i think this is the piece i'm trying to link like they're going to have a presentation in june on the audit side of improvements with recommendations right ideally we have that be folded in in advance of uh that's my time but in advance of

072the next stage of when we reset right we're going to take the feedback reset and then apply but before that next stage of application ideally this would be folded in the compliance pieces happen on a regular schedule and again it provides information to us as we're working through we we do have to wait until the end of the year before the the data student data is back and scrubbed before we can take that data and then make recommendations for the following year so there's a timing piece to that the pieces that that misco's team have been engaged with with regard to compliance we've actually reviewed the report have been able to respond and are looking at a lot of those recommendations currently so again it's the piece of how the data are used internally how

073it's then presented to the board we take any additional guidance that the board might provide but we do use that data internally and then in the sense it's not necessarily off cycle but it's that then at the end of the year we'll get the student data and be able to inform our work based on our student outcomes we'll start to work on that internally and then bring that to the board uh to to update the board in the community it's my time but hopefully others can pick it up thank you i would just like to just say quickly that that is really the what happens in the audit committee meetings is we get the results management is there to talk about what they're doing what the recommendations are how they're implementing it and it is

074monitored monthly by the audit committee just briefly um two things and i don't need a lot of responses i just wanted to point that out miss coino you and i talked about knowledge management and knowledge transfer and the piece of that around the um succession plan and leadership plan um and i just wanted to make sure to flag that to as we're looking at succession planning it's not just making sure we have leaders in place right to take over the work but we have a clear defined process for knowledge management as well as knowledge transfer so the knowledge of some of our long-time staff members are also consistently transferred as they transfer those leadership roles so i just want to put that out there to make sure that's part of that audit to have that

075in place i don't need a response i'm trying to be mindful of time and the last thing i wanted just to ask on the um the audit of the of the legal counsel and we talked specifically about foia and the concerns about foia i know that the results that audit may not be subject to foia because of the honor of the legal counsel but is there a way to have a discussion about some of the foia concerns in a public forum so our public can be aware of some of the realities of what's happening with foia these days so just something to put out for you to think about as you structure that piece of the audit again i don't need a response now but i do think it's important for some of what you

076find if it relates to foia and the implication that it has on our on our offices to be able to be discussed in public sorry miss cohen thanks so much um thank you so much miss ko and your team you guys are amazing as always um i just wanted to highlight um misco what you said about the employee evaluations audit and just really really say how important i think it is that we do that audit this year in preparation exactly for collective bargaining the process that we have in place for our operational employees is not remotely the same our um you know teaching employees and so i just want to make sure that before we go into collective bargaining we should know a you know what we're doing b are we doing what we're doing

077with fidelity and c if we've benchmarked what other systems are doing um as the best employee evaluation method there are other systems that do peer-to-peer review there's a whole handful of methods that have come to you know light in the last 10 years or so that are potentially a better way of handling employee evaluation i would think that it's kind of key with a new hr person and a new superintendent coming in to have that evaluation so i just wanted to make sure that i was a voice in the room for supporting that going forward thank you mr mclaughlin you have your placard up did you want to go back please uh yeah really quickly um to what um ms corbett sanders said i can't emphasize enough i think we absolutely need a foia dashboard

078um there's you know we've talked about this is changing the landscape local state national our public needs to understand how much it's grown number two board members you may have seen i send an email out to the superintendent and our legislative lobbyist michael malloy and our general counsel john foster we absolutely need to have on our legislative package legislation that addresses the volume and scope of foias it can't be a one size fits all when some requests are thousands of pages and require redactions because of legal requirements it's just it's not based in reality so there's no question this board and the superintendent and his team are geared toward transparency but it also has to be realistic and and we can't be putting ourselves into this situation where the public loses trust and we don't

079want them to lose trust so we need to have that being reasonable um and then you know the only other thing that um you know i just wanted to put a fine point on um with the role of the oag um you know i fought extremely hard on this we had staff make recommendations if we were going to have an inspector general or an auditor general and we were advised at the time to go with the auditor general and at times i've been concerned that then as a result we don't do things holistically like the ombudsman's office is meant to be independent too and i credit that be a great legacy of dr brabrand's you brought the ombudsman in when i championed in so many other board members did and you led on that but

080i think you know with our our ombudsman having retired i i think that with the new superintendent we need to look at where does that get housed so i wanted to just make those go back points thank you okay do you have any additional comments dr braeburn all right that concludes board comments um unfortunately there is an audit committee meeting next week so um i i think the only kind of topic open was the project management and you know where that can fit in with what we're doing or you know that may be a discussion to have with the audit committee next week do we want to put that on for the following fiscal year how do we discuss that with um dr reed and have that discussion moving forward so that seemed to be

081the big open topic miss picarsky yeah actually that's exactly one that people ask to move this so you have time um until the last meeting in june yes we're not voting on this this week we have another um week and a half to work on this or two weeks um to finalize this and vote on june 30. all right thank you everyone so thank you everyone thank you thank you thank you esther chris danielle all right folks if we can hustle or we're behind we have people waiting for us do you need to make a motion to go and close okay so we in order to comply with section 2.2-3712-d of the code of virginia it's necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county public school board convened a closed meeting on

082june 14 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 close were discussed heard or considered by the board during the closed move by dr anderson seconded by ms omesh all those in favor all right that's unanimous we do for our public unfortunately because we had a an urgent matter come up today we'll have to rearrange our agenda a bit we will be rescheduling the goal three and four reports to another work session we will be discussing the srnr right now because it is slated for a vote this coming thursday and with that um ms kisgamar and miss mclaughlin yes we do thank everyone for their patience uh we're going to begin

083our discussion on the srnr forthwith dr dr boyd good afternoon so again i'm michelle boyd assistant superintendent for special services and joining me today is dr shannon anderson coordinator for equity and student conduct and vijay rao director of cyber security um and we'll move very briskly and then um certainly we can take any questions you might have april 14th we presented the draft revisions to the srnr that were informed by legislative changes and feedback from stakeholders following our april 14 school board work session additional stakeholder engagement ensued with staff students board members community members advisory committees and parent-teacher organizations through work groups community forums and surveys stakeholder experience legislation and fcps policies and regulations informed feedback received during the review process significant changes significant updates to the srnr draft following the april 14th school board

084work session rests within six categories cell phones student rights student behavior and administrative response table also referred to as the s bar chart mandatory police reporting glossary in our acceptable use policy regulation and looking at cell phones five items were added to clarify expectations to the cell phone expectations and to clarify the level of response for cell phone violations more specifically the following was added to the srnr draft accommodation requests for use of personally owned devices as an accommodation will be considered by students respective multi-disciplinary teams such as the iep team 504 committee english language committee and that is applicable for all grade levels use of cell phones and restrooms and lockers locker rooms are prohibited for all grade levels unless there's a medical necessity or emergency watches that serve a dual purpose such as

085smart watches have to be have to have their phone features off when cell phone use is prohibited for all grade levels cell phone violations are limited to level one and level two violations and last but not least exclusionary practices are prohibited for cell phone violations and looking at our second category where significant changes were made was to the students rights and students responsibility sections revisions in this section were primarily incorporated to better reflect the overarching intent of federal legislation or other fcps policies and regulations specifically the following revisions were made we added a right to equitable access to the learning environment educational materials and extracurricular activities in the right to equal opportunities section we added the right to have personally identifiable information and citizenship or immigration status protected from unauthorized sharing in the rights of

086equal opportunity section and we revive the language within the responsibility for a pledge of allegiance and moment of silence to better reflect students and parents right to choose to participate and the next category of change is regarding the student behavior and administrative response table commonly referred to as the s bar chart specifically examples of discriminatory harassment were added to the s bar code bsc 8 and referrals to an iep team or local screening committee were added as to the intervention example list for level 2 infractions additionally the proposed change of infractions for currently for items that are currently listed as k 6 to k-3 was rescinded so that the draft was converted back to mirror the existing delineation as it appears in the 2122 sr finally title 1 codes have been moved into a separate

087stand-alone s bar chart to clearly delineate title ix infractions and i think i may have said title one i meant title nine title ix infractions our fourth category where we had substantive changes is regarding mandatory reporting to law enforcement which was updated to reflect the passing of house bill 4. currently mandatory reporting to law enforcement is limited to enumerated acts which may quote-unquote constitute a felony under the new law school principals will be required to report law enforcement to law enforcement certain enumerated acts which may constitute a misdemeanor offense in addition to certain enumerated acts which may constitute a felony details of those enumerated acts for reporting to law enforcement that is mandatory is outlined on pages 46 and 47 of the srnr for your review the fifth category of revisions is relative to terms

088added to the glossary and that was done for clarity the seven terms listed on the screen that appear in the narrative of the srnr were added to the glossary the final category where substantive change was made was relative to the acceptable use policy regulation while the acceptable use policy regulation is a distinct regulation from the srnr the content included in acceptable use policy regulation heavily influences content and the srnr specifically as it relates to the use of scps issued devices software and internet to name a few as a result some changes to the acceptable use policy regulation are referenced in the body of the srnr examples of key changes to the acceptable use policy regulation since the last draft was shared with you on april 14th include the following use of social media is permitted

089during school hours when it's permitted by administration and use of social media must be limited to academic activities recording of instructional programs in the classroom environment generally is prohibited recording of conversations with school officials is prohibited without the official's advanced permission to do so and finally the use of tablets phones or other tablets phones or other mobile devices in restrooms and locker rooms is prohibited again unless there is a medical necessity or emergency additionally a detailed account of changes to regulation 6410 is uploaded on boarddocs for your review finally we just want to once again thank um the numerous stakeholders who engaged with us and provided feedback through this process that serves as a really a value added to us that we just really can't quantify so we just want to take the time and

090thank those persons that took time out of their day to give us feedback whether written or verbal to help us enhance our srnr and to make it a better document each and every year and at this time i turn it back over to madam chair thank you thank you dr boyd um did you did you have an opportunity to introduce the young person i did it very fast oh it was real fast i missed it all right okay um so far we have uh dr anderson and then miss uh karen corey sanders thank you i do want to say thank you first of all for putting together the stakeholder communication the the virtual town halls and the surveys i think that was very helpful in this process it's definitely a huge improvement and i like

091the fact that we've been able to get so many responses were you going to go over this in any way i was not um just due to our time um and that we posted it but certainly if there's anything that you want me to address i'm happy to do so okay i'll just come back to this and i'll just start my first round of questions on the document itself um thank you for adding the restroom and the lockers language that was missing and i don't think we realized it was missing but that's a piece where our kids often struggle when there's use of cell phones and recording them in various states um so thank you for that on page 18 of the um document i think numbers one and two this is this this document

092not the powerpoint he talked about cell phone usage for sixth grade students letter o numbers one and two number one talks about sixth grade students and number two seventh and eighth grade students i thank you for noting the differences between the sixth graders at po homes in glasgow but here we have those three schools managing two different sets of expectations for students what feedback did the principals give about that in terms of its feasibility so as we talked with all of our middle school principals we had the most engagement with them the majority had consensus around the proposal and folks generally understand that we want to make sure that there are not different expectations for students based on their zip code and so that was the impetus really for changing in the first draft i

093believe it was listed as elementary middle and high but to clarify that there would be grade level expectations that were consistent across the county and so we realize that those three schools as well as our excuse me three secondary schools do have some unique challenges where they have more grade levels in one space and we will be working closely with those principles to provide any support and suggestions that they might need to facilitate the effective implementation of these expectations sure and i appreciate the fact that you got the feedback of all of the principals but i'm particularly concerned of getting the feedback of the impacted principles because their staff will have to navigate two sets of rules and that can be burdensome plus all of the other things that we want them to do so

094i would love to have that feedback before um maybe tuesday so i'm happy to reach out to my three if you think that would be helpful we can reach out again we work through the association but we'll reach out directly to those specific principles thank you on page 23 you also made some changes to cell phones so that there are level one and two infractions i think that's appropriate for where we are right now definitely because i i think i raised this and as did many others we did not went off staff to turn into the cell phone police and for it to be elevated in this way i i don't think would have benefited us one of the things that you mentioned i believe this is the powerpoint now page 10. um the use

095of social media powerpoint page you know we just came from graduation season where we saw a lot of discrepancies in terms of how some schools allowed kids to um decorate their motherboards and some schools did not so this is kind of also very fresh for me can you give me an example of why because it's said only for academic um activities what would be an example that a school would want for students to engage in social media that is an academic activity so if they were promoting a if they were promoting a science fair or different projects that they might be doing or an upcoming event that was being hosted a pta you know night math night those type of things we really want excuse me and when we say academic activities we're really talking

096about you know our holistic instructional program so whether it's with the performing arts you know math reading writing those type of things to delineate between um i'm just posting a picture of you know me and megan for a random reason on social media maybe megan has consented or she has not those type of things and again we know we'll have to get feedback as we go through this process because these are new expectations but we really want to limit the use of social media during the school day to really be focused on instruction and teaching and learning no i'm in full agreement with that part i just i'm concerned about the piece where it is dependent on the school's administration to make that determination i'm struggling with seeing how that can be consistently applied across

097our division and i'm still struggling to see what the students and you know i hear with band etc but i'm still struggling to hear what would be necessary for students to advertise for ban or those other activities during school time yeah yeah and we'll monitor that we certainly do hear your feedback during this process we received different views and different lenses initially we were very stringent but did want to make some exceptions or consideration for times where it would be appropriate so again this will be one of the things that we have to engage in ongoing feedback and if we have to make adjustments or through professional development working through the region office to make sure they're more clear in terms of expectations because we know whenever we do an exception there's always room for

098that exception to become the rule and it becomes something else that evolution um so we'll be closely monitoring it but you know i'd i'm certain we would have to engage and re-engage with staff as we work our implementation hiccups well i've run out of time but i've got other comments thank you do you do you want to go back okay next we have miss karen corbin sanders and then miss laura jane cohen and i don't i apologize um i'm sorry sir wanted to add something oh please sir so i wanted to also add some context uh before it even gets to the administration the office of cyber security would have to approve the social media platform so some of the most egregious issues we have seen over the past year like instagram tick tock and

099so on would not be allowed period so we're really talking about approved social media sites uh which don't have you know the broad safety and security issues that we've been dealing with like facebook twitter and so on where at least some schools are actually using it they could be a group or what have you so i think yes the administration has to allow it but within the aup there's also another line which says that office of cyber security needs to approve sites and social media or regular sites so it's like a two-step process so it's not all up to the school administration it's not like the school administration can certainly approve like snapchat uh because you know so there's layers to it i just wanted to add that context okay thank you i assume somebody

100will explain the professional development that goes along with that at some point all right uh uh miss court care this is corbett sanders and then we have uh miss lara jane cohen first i want to thank you all for being here today and taking very seriously all of the concerns and questions that many of us raised at the last work session uh the bathroom issue and the use of cell phones was raised there and i appreciate it i also want to have a personal thank you to you mr rau because of your leadership in the cyber security area and dealing with some of the social media challenges that we've faced at many of our middle and high schools in the past year it is greatly appreciated and i know that my community is grateful for

101your work i do have that's true i do have a couple of questions one regarding the recording of conversations i believe the state of virginia is a single approver state and so this seems to undermine that can you address that please recording conversations yeah i think from a cyber security perspective you know here no i appreciate the sentiment uh the question is that under state code i believe it only is a single consent so i was going to have mr foster speak to that specifically are you ready okay sure uh thank you uh ms keith kamara so um yes it is correct that virginia is a single consent state there are unique and very important concerns for k to 12 school systems including confidential student information and that is under ferpa that is separate and

102apart from the virginia statute that um ms corbett sanders mentioned and so i um i i don't want to speak for mr rau but i i do know that that is one concern in wanting to limit the recording of things that are happening at school i'm fine with it i just think we need a footnote so that we're able to answer those questions when people say but this is my right similarly i am very appreciative of the language that has been added to section category d regarding malicious dead naming i would suggest that that probably needs to be defined in our the term malicious needs to be defined and while we're doing that under misgendering there is uh that definition needs to be looked at as well because it doesn't tie neatly to the malicious

103intent and that's on page 69. so if we could add those two that would be great um and then on 69 and dr board i'm just looking too which word are you looking at on 69 i know it's all those definitions so under misgendering [Music] it says or accidentally the active labor deliberately or accidentally right and you're saying malicious doesn't fit with accidental right correct so i think what was happening that the definition of misgendering is there generally speaking but once we add the definition of malicious when you look at the phrase together collectively excuse me collectively to say malicious misgendering so putting what the definition is is the malicious with it um but we just pulled the exact definition and so that accidentally piece is just part and parcel of the more broad term

104but for our application we're talking about when you maliciously use the in a pro or the non-preferred um term so we'll work with that yeah yeah i i so i think i think i know where this is what you'd probably prefer is the definition melissa's malicious misgendering and then just remove accidentally and then we're saying this is the deliberate act of labeling others with well i would actually give a separate definition of malicious because if you look at the language in b it actually uses the term malicious in multiple areas so i do think that we need to be very clear because i've had people say well how do you know i'm being malicious so all right we'll take that feedback back that's helpful okay and then the last has nothing to do with the

105sr and r but it does have to do with the with what we share with outside parties as a result of legislative action at the state and at some point we probably need to revisit that language because it when we're talking about misdemeanors we don't want to create criminal records for kids that don't need to be created we instead want restorative justice thank you miss corbett sanders uh did you want to say something okay i was just saying thank you uh miss uh laura jane cohen thank you so much um just a few things um you know i know that i have been beaten a dead horse about us using the term parent and i recognize there's a definition of it but we worked for so long to say to add parent or guardian into

106our language that i know it makes the document longer but we have so many students for whom a biological parent is not um who's going to show up and and my fear is when i read especially when talking about parents responsibilities and rights when it comes to discipline processes that the way that we've written it is not inclusive if i am an aunt who's the custodial guardian for my niece um it's not necessarily clear to me that i have a right um to be notified you know if she's been brought into the office so i know i've lodged that several times i will just take the opportunity to lodge it once more with secondary schools with the difference between middle school and high school and i do want to thank you sorry i got a

107little ahead of myself thank you so much for continuing to work on the cell phone policy i know so many of us have been absolute pains in the tush about it but it's so important that we get it right and i know so many of us went back to talk to our principals and make sure that we were helping to capture what their intent was and so changing it to just a level one and two infraction i so appreciate it um so i apologize for skipping over my my sincere thanks for working so hard on getting this right um you're welcome miss cohen we did go back and talk to the whole team about that and and i do want to applaud dr boyd for that as well thank you well if the point is

108that we want to make sure that kids are not are engaging which is what cell phones are keeping them from doing it makes no sense to me that we would then wind up putting them out of school where they can't engage so i'm grateful for that change but i was hoping that we could address that the question in secondary schools right now middle school has written that passing periods and lunches you would not be able to use your phone but at a school like lake braddock we have a lot of middle school kids who are accessing high school lunches and everybody's all mixed together so i'm just concerned from an administrative point of view how on earth are you going to enforce that thank you miss cohen so we will we've had some conversations and

109we'll continue to have some conversations about different ideas that can be utilized for those schools similar to what dr anderson was referring to um for our schools where we have you know sixth graders um with seventh and eighth et cetera um on different ways that they can do that that would work for them we know that we spoke to you know dr herring shared some of the things with a small group some of the strategies that they're currently using because they're currently implementing this practice and i know that you know his school is certainly different from some others but i think as we work together as thought partners that we certainly can come up with something and again it's just assuming positive intent looking at the unique school to see what system or strategy will

110work with our few schools that are structurally different from the majority and i think just allowing those principles some discretion about if if it is secondary school high school rules need to apply just as we do with start time and um all of that like we may need to make some accommodation because i don't want our administration you know stuck in trying to track down oh wait that's a middle schooler who's at a high school lunch period and he has his phone out like that sort of defeats the purpose to me um the last thing is on page 60 um d4 where it references intellectual students with intellectual disabilities i am still really struggling with this provided notice i don't understand how we can take a written or verbal statement from a student with intellectual

111disabilities without ensuring without parent consent i don't so if somebody could walk me through that i have to say that's such a stickler to me that i i would struggle to to vote for this so so thank you again um for that question and we did receive this question during the engagement process um as school principals are conducting investigations getting feedback um is critically important whether it's from a student that's engaged in the acts in the incident or someone who's observed the incident so that folks would have the appropriate information to take the appropriate course of action we encourage that and even in the language now is that i'm really um taking best efforts to contact the parent to inform them um of the need that you know little sloan for example needs to be

112questioned um but while we would if we would change that to um a parent having to consent in advance that could impede the investigation process um and also another piece we know that they're certainly just based off the definition of a disability category there are certain things that we know if somebody qualifies as in as having an intellectual disability we know that there's needs with adaptive behavior and cognitive functioning but to just to to have something different for just that one classification of students there could be a number of needs with a number of our students with our english language learners for example there could be language barriers even with the interpretation we have some students who have learning disabilities who have cognitive functioning at the level of some of our students with intellectual uh

113disabilities but they don't have the adaptive behavior challenges we have students with autism that do to do this due to their significant communication needs and or just perceptions have different needs and so i use all of those examples to say that i think we put ourselves in a precarious place when we begin to call out one disability category versus another and i think that you know if we were to require consent for any student that we could potentially be impeding the investigation process and certainly while some of the things are smaller in nature that might when a plot across the board might prove to be a significant barrier um across the board so that's some of the things that we just discussed miss no i i know that i'm out of time with keys gamora

114but i wonder if you might give me a second to just respond to that or if you feel like i have to be back i think there may be a mis if you would let dr brabrand clarify because the language actually says something a little bit different than the discussion so miss cohen maybe it's just double checking the page because at page 60 d4 it says a disciplinary incident involving a student with an intellectual developmental disability it talks about that that will not have a verbal written statement from the student until a parent has been provided notice right but we've argued several times a this is about behavior that can be suspended um so not just investigation of of something that a kid witnessed but also um that this is provided notice and i think

115this board has multiple times argued that notice can mean i left you a voicemail and so i have the right to have your child make a statement and i think in reference to the categories that dr boyd gave i would argue that those parents should have to give consent before we take a note a verbal or written statement from them too so so and i think what dr boyd is saying on consent that may impede the administrator's ability to real time get information about a case that may that may have safety implications for the school i think that's why we've left the languages notice as opposed to consent you know i know to mrs cohen's point this is something that i believe um is even reflected in our questions from the acsd where i believe

116we provided a narrative response to that effect and so i do want you to know that we heavily consider you know many facets of this but as we think about these things and i know the intent um of which in the spirit on which everyone is coming at this from but we have to think about is this something that can be applied across every situation every school every scenario and as you begin to do that you know and i don't want to go gloom and doom but there's a number of huge pieces that could happen and if we say consent if we put that in there we could be putting ourselves in a pretty tight space when we're trying to create a safe learning environment for kids and also for staff okay do this keys

117come on may have a go bambi place on go back yes ma'am thank you okay thank you um next we have uh mr frisch and the next person after that is ms omesh and i don't have anybody else after that okay just as a top line the community engagement information that was shared with us parents support the changes and kids do not support the changes when it comes to cell phones and and acceptable use which i think was highly predictable [Music] of the 3000 responses that we received which is obviously representative of who responded on the question of uh i will say that you know including the prohibition in in restrooms and locker rooms is great i've heard from several educators who no longer allow students to take their phones with them to the restroom

118and suddenly trips to the restroom have plummeted so um that's a a good move on the question of one party consent whether it aligns with the law there's a lot in here that we put in place that does not align necessarily with what the law is outside of our school buildings um so and i don't think the law defines a one-party consent as a right so much as it's not illegal as it is in other places on the question of rb9h malicious misgendering and dead naming can you confirm for me that this is not a change to the sr and r and that this was put in there last year that is correct and that there's no change to that section of the srnr from last year from malicious misgendering and malicious dead naming that

119is also correct on on the question of definitions i think it is important that we that we keep in there in some way um that this these two things can happen accidentally or maliciously i think where we where we mess things up and might get a little confusing is by using the word deliberately instead of maliciously for both definitions i would suggest removing the qualifiers from the sentence and adding the following to the end of the sentence which is this can be accidental or malicious and that would provide some clarity although i'm not certain that we need the clarity because i think it's pretty clear as it is and you know i would also note and those are definitions on page 66 and 69 by the way that um community engagement has been uh this

120this portion of the srnr has been through the community engagement process twice now um and other areas that i appreciate the changes being made we've refined and broadened out the concept of outing to include other situations such as immigration status and disability and other things and i think that that is progress and a step in the right direction and that is in addition to what we included in last year's srnr so very much appreciated um generally speaking i think the sr process though it's been a little delayed this year has gone in more depth and is resulting in a better end product because of the work that's been done i would say the one point that i would point out from the community engagement process is that there's no real uniform way that people want

121to digest the information but what is clear is that older people want it in writing and younger people want it in video and so i think we need to digest how we're going to accomplish making this accessible in the best way possible for the right people or for the different groups of people that's it thank you mr first did you need to go back okay miss omesh thank you dr boyd and staff for some of the changes i know the definition of ableism and faith-based discrimination and other components uh were reflected and you were responsive so i do appreciate that um i did you know i have questions um so here we go and i probably will need to go back but um i did want to just take a look at a page so

122page 10 when we talk about the right to access facilities that are non-stigmatizing for students i know we had a conversation i guess regulation 2603 is more expansive and accommodates more uh you know diverse needs of students whether that be faith whether that be disability um so i'm curious why those are inconsistent i think um and i know this can be perceived as you know ant i'm just going to name it before you know everybody starts feeling a certain way this can be perceived as anti-lgbtq for not naming this specifically but i think what i'm trying to do here is make sure that we're thinking again kind of like the equity policy conversation we had in the morning what are we missing what are we not thinking about um and what has it just because

123it perhaps it hasn't come to the table or we haven't heard voices reflecting it but may still be a need in our student body so can you help me better understand why we've left those out thank you mr mess and so um as you shared we did use specific language on last year relative to align with regulation 2603 that was new and the language in just for for everyone's general knowledge part of the language in 2603 states any student who has a need or desire for for increased privacy regardless of the underlying reason shall be provided with reasonable non-stigmatizing accommodations and so that's the more broad language in 2603 we specifically called out some specific items that are listed in the srnr because 2603 is new if there is a desire to use the the

124broader language we could certainly do that um but to your point our um our our thought in not doing that in the updated draft was that we did not want there to be a perception that we were now pulling back on something that we front loaded on last year and so i'm kind of weighing one side with the other and depending upon perspective um that may just be interpreted differently but the the protections for for for needing that additional privacy for any myriad of reasons is outlined in 2603 um and so if it's the board's desire for us to have that more broad language in the srnr we could certainly entertain that um and we welcome the group's thoughts and feedback yeah i mean because i guess my inclination would be to include additional groups

125that we know this is a concern for but then it's like okay who are we then missing you know i certainly know for disability and faith community there are issues i can think of that myself because of my lived experiences but then who and what else are we missing um so i would lean towards doing rethinking that just a little bit um you know being consistent with the regulation seems to be a reasonable path forward uh and being sure that we're clear i mean and i know certainly in the guidance it's delineated for every community either way right so that it's specific as to what we're talking about but please aurora just so i because i know she lives that ever she's been living in every day for the last three months you're on page

12610 section a and you're looking at at number two the right to access restroom and locker room facilities and other non-stigmatizing accommodations that are consistent with a student's gender identity and you're proposing different language uh you prefer different language and help me there yeah language that's more more inclusive so um we can either say gender identity sexual orientation faith identity and disability or we can try to anticipate what we may not even be considering and match it up with what actually currently exists in regulation 2603 which says uh increased privacy regardless of the underlying reason uh so long as it's reasonable and non-stigmatizing accommodation thank you that's helpful feedback for me i got it and and and dr boyd's point is that language is in another regulation so there is a question here do you

127just reference that other regulation or copy the same language in the regulation right here in the srnr i guess that's what we have to think about yes and again we're fine either way um our consideration we we just didn't want there to be a misperception exactly no i'm concerned about that so that was that was the push pull there yeah yeah no i certainly want to be extremely clear that i imagine again in the guidance we're delineating very specifically what that looks like for every group um that you know any trans kid doesn't have to feel stigmatized for picking but also that a kid with a disability or someone of a faith identity minority or anything else again that i'm not thinking of right now will be accommodated without feeling stigmatized absolutely so that's that's

128one um in a similar vein uh when i was looking at the right to disclosure uh certainly you know um when it comes to things like outing and dead naming it's very clear gender identity sexual orientation are key components i think a number of you know members of the lgbtq community have elevated that to raise our awareness about the importance of that sensitivity and i think in in following along that leadership we can think of other ways that students feel stigmatized as well for the disclosure of a variety of things i know we included a specific thing on information exchange when it comes to immigration status but it did get me thinking about you know whether that be from status disability or other sensitive information that students might not feel comfortable with disclosure of um

129so i you know i don't know if there's room to be a little bit more expansive there as well and because outing immigration status is also different than off you know staff sharing of information i think that's also an important sensitivity for us to have that that kids you know feel safe that that's not allowed within the student body and beyond just um staff exchange so broad and michelle i'm just doing a little tag team and one on section a now you're on seven and you're saying seven is too limited because we're only talking about personal identifiable information and citizenship and immigration status you want to right so looking at seven and uh two of three so non-disclosure right outing essentially okay [Music] oh it's nine online i guess when it printed out it's page

13010 10 on the red line um yeah because there are other places where we call um outing of immigration status in this document right so outing is a little more expansive than just gender identity and orientation and again i just i want to be like way way way clear that this is not to take away from the seriousness and the importance of uh you know the harms caused for for those who there's just some there's some additional language and maybe dr boyd you can help is there additional language or another number that we could add in here potentially i guess and so again um i'm to mitchell mess's point i i certainly understand the spirit and the intent there um all of the um items listed here in this section are all things that are

131connected with um laws fcps policies and or fcps regulation and so as we talk about you know staff sharing student information we know that's a violation of ferpa there's just a number of things where we talk about confidentiality and so again the challenge is when does the list when does the right list end so it's you know we want to be collaborative so some things were added because again um some of the examples are listed here were added last year or added this year to reinforce that new regulation 2603 um that we found um but one of the things i just to mr frisch's point we just thought we we know that folks you know some folks said they're going to read this the sr document some people want to watch a video how we

132make it so that this thing becomes digestible and actually becomes something that people really familiarize ourselves with to make it come to life because already we're at like 80 pages um and i know and my eyes know um and so we want to make sure and so as we have the push-pull of we don't want people to believe that this as we start listing things if it's not on the list it's not a thing because they're illustrated not exhaustive but then how do we list everything for everything and we'll so that's just something i just want us to just to consider and certainly you know the board's desire we're happy to support but that's just something to keep in the front of your mind yeah i think maybe we can match some of the language

133because i do agree that being explicit about the reason why this came to be and the exact things is important too so maybe if we said something like the right to non-disclosure of sensitive and protected sensitive information to include gender identity sexual orientation and perhaps other commitments depending on you know legal might have opinions about what work what we can commit to but frm status disability could be additional ones misamish i think that other board members are probably going to want to comment on that but there's also we could also consider definitions but i think you've opened up a good topic for us to discuss past your time yeah yeah i want to go back thank you i'll put you down for a go back but i do think you know board members if you're

134concerned about this please speak to this i think one thing we can consider is the definitions okay um all right so we had uh that that next we have miss seismor heiser thank you um first i wanted to bring up the same thing i'm going to follow up with what miss cohen was talking about in terms of the questioning of students you know just parental notice i hear what you're saying well it may be more than one student i don't quite understand how that's a barrier to addressing the concern so for example we could say translation service will be provided to el students who need it for example we could put a carve out for exigent circumstances which would then allow principals on notice to build a question around you know if there's a safety

135concern in the school dr brandt if there's a safety concern in the school if there's a safety issue if there's something that the principal needs to question immediately they can but i also am significantly concerned especially what i brought up with you around training for administrators on understanding the manifestations of disability and the way certain students with disabilities are pleasers the way they may script they may they repeat that without parental consent or without some support there perhaps you could put something in with support from a case manager or a special education department chair or something because the goal here is to get accurate information right and my concern is if we're giving parent love notification or questioning somebody who may not have the cognitive language or for a disability related communication ability to give

136accurate information or accurately understand the questions it can lead to both discipline that isn't appropriate and in accurate information it's not helping anybody so i guess my question is can we put something in here that carves out us except for under existing circumstances which by the way mirrors the mou that we will get parental consent to question a student who has an intellectual or developmental disability which covers autism by the way which you brought up earlier or translation services we provided to students who need them that would cover that or even if we say a case manager or special education teacher will be present to help facilitate the communication i don't understand why that's not in here because i think it leads to problems i'll pause there so if i was understanding miss cohen's um

137request her request and certainly i know she's here that she can correct me was to have parental consent as opposed to notice and i think what i'm hearing from you is support during the investigation process which i see is two different things and so on the piece requesting consent it's again using sloan he's always my example little sloane's parent has to say if sloane falls into one of these categories yes you can question sloane if us if his parent says no we can't question sloane slow may be pertinent to the investigation process but if we put that out there little sloan can't provide information it might be valuable even when it's not something that you know because one person's perception of safety could be something different if i punch shannon somebody may say well it's

138not now an existing youth punch in and that's over now we're trying to figure out or they said you punched shannon did you really punch in and did you not was it all of those things and maybe sloane was the only person there or you know and again overly simplified example but those type of things when we talk about consent that's what i believe was a question that was posed if we're talking about and we have some language here you know around involving the special education case manager checking with the iep making sure students have access to their accommodations so for students who might have communication devices or need translation services all of those things students are supposed to have already access to their accommodations during that process and so i'm not sure if i

139misunderstand the two but i saw those as two different things i was responding to the former as opposed to the latter so i may be a clarification is it permission or if it's is it notification right she wants yeah and the seismo heiser's talking about support i think what dr boyd just said ones that can one is notice and con consent and we still believe administratively the administration believes that we need to stick with notice that consent has too many other cases that could go what i heard you just say is even if it's about notice who's in the room to help support that kid as someone is questioning so information isn't taken out of context or someone who would understand perhaps some of the um communication communication difficulties and at least could there be

140reasonable efforts to have some support and michelle i think you just said we already have language that speaks to that or we could add language that speaks to that there's language in there i'm trying to do a controlled find to find it quickly now for us as we're talking i also think there's maybe space to all to well i'll let you find that and we can did you want to continue miss seismohazer yeah i'll um while you're looking for that i'll add another thing i would say that in terms of cell phones i will just to let my colleagues know i do have two follow-on motions that i'll be sending out drafts that laura jane and i are bringing around cell phones and special education students i've worked with dr boyd on them she's approved

141the language and it's just really going to be around making sure that our principals are intentional about reaching out to our families as well as the case managers to review ieps because these ieps were not drafted with this new cell phone policy in place and so they would not necessarily reflect any needed accommodations and or discussion of accommodations that could be provided without cell phones so i'll be sending those out and i'll i'm send talk to you about them but i will say that i've talked to secondary school principals and a school like a lake braddock where the middle schools in the middle of the school and the high schools walk back and forth there's just no way they're going to be able to tell the difference in the hallway between the two so i

142do have issues around consistency of implementation and i'll need to go back uh did you are you ready okay go ahead i thought on my word version it's on page 58 so give or take so it's in um let me see is that a red line version dr boyd yes it is yeah i'm about to go d as in dog oh i should have went up to the number uh it's d five five and i'll go i'll go back up to find the number but it says if um it's in the section that starts with consultation with the student's iep team it's the second paragraph in that section and it reads if any if any written statement concerning a disciplinary incident is requested of a student with a disability school staff shall consult with the

143student's case manager or another key member of the iep team if the case manager is not available review the iep or 504 plan and ensure all necessary accommodations are provided to the student and it reads further on yeah and i guess i was looking to questioning as opposed to written statements and that's where my the difference i had i have seen this but that was to me that's the next step up and i know i'm out of time but i just it's not quite the same i appreciate the effort so you'd be saying written or verbal statement is what your advocacy would be or questioning okay okay uh i have you down for for go back okay uh miss tolin uh thank you i i wanted to voice my support for the cell phone um

144uh what do i when i want to call them regulations ideas um in the srnr um and uh you know i just want to tell my colleagues a number of you i had the opportunity to speak with herndon high school you know came out at the toward the end of the third quarter um sort of ahead of the game and it is using these cell phone uh regulations to end i had the opportunity to be at a meeting there several weeks ago and everyone was very very happy with the outcome the aps were seeing less discipline issues around cell phone use because they had a school-wide policy that was in effect the students said well we didn't really want it in the beginning but we're happy now because we are seeing much more robust discussions

145in all of our classrooms and you know we see the benefit of it the teachers every teacher that i talked to was thrilled with what they were seeing happening in their classroom compared to prior to having this policy in place so um you know definitely i'm support this i have had many conversations with miss seismer heiser on her concerns for our special ed students and so we'll happily support those follow-on motions um you know just to make sure that those students are taken into consideration um one of the things i just uh had heard i think through discussion said mr i wanted to ask you um there was some discussion of was there a way for us to not even allow data to be used in our locker rooms you know in particular areas of

146the school is that something we're looking into if i understand your correct uh question correctly i think you're basically talking about uh making having some dead zones um we uh so there is the short answer is that's not something we considered it's certainly something we can look into um you know the question is really there are a couple of i would assume office of safety and security would have some uh um input there there are some potential problems with just like not allowing anybody to access because there may be times when not not a student but other people might need to access it also blocking is is is it just blocking wi-fi or are we even blocking cell phone signal so uh it is certainly something we can work on but i think that it's

147not just my opinion there are like physical safety folks who might have some input there but we look into it thank you very much i appreciate that um and that's that's for me i'm good thank you miss would you you want me to keep you on the list as i go back are you good okay uh miss picarski okay thank you thanks for working on all of this um i remain a bit of a skeptic only because i think when you're dealing with kids when you drastically take away things instead of giving them the tools and the scaffolds to be successful ultimately it will maybe not now maybe not tomorrow i just don't think ultimately this is going to work i hope i'm wrong because i do think cell phones are an issue obviously and

148i do think kids all of us are more focused without them i just worry um you know how much time are teachers going to spend actually policing these or are they going to give up so are we going to be here in a year two years saying okay let's get rid of them like some other districts have done um maybe it's a short-term thing post-covid you know i time will tell i guess however um having said that when we're now going you know to this to the smart watches and like you know you can't tell if i'm sitting here looking at the thing or if i'm texting my kid you know i'll pick you up in an hour so i i put that out there again in that i don't know that this is realistic

149so what feedback have you had on that so um thank you miss picarski and we know you're not texting on that on that smart watch you're fully engaged um no all jokes aside um so we wrote that um for clarity purposes and now i'll share a similar um response that i shared with someone else um and again overly simplified broad so just just for the example purposes there's a number of things that we prohibit in school per the srnr that we don't check right you're not supposed to have cigarettes in school but we're not searching purses backpacks not looking for cigarettes um enough the list cigarettes we're going to have to check dr anderson i don't know it's her birthday so we'll give her a bath but just a number of things and so i

150say that to say that these things aren't an issue until it becomes an issue i'm in um you know algebra 2 class pre-calc whatever it might be and i'm actively and you know i'm you know i may be this blunt where i'm texting on my watcher my music is going off or that's when it becomes an issue and even then halo sloan you know you're not supposed to have cut disable that because sloane is the one always um we redirect and we go back on to teaching two step equations or solving you know the pythagorean theorem whatever it is that's happening but we're not doing smart watch checks in schools that we want to be very clear about that we're not doing smart watch checks but i think that's where we get into this well

151how's this going to actually play out because you think i'm using no i'm not i was just checking the time and looking at my you know i don't know nice picture on there while we all sit and wait so um i don't know what that looks like i don't know how i just i cannot see this i just cannot see this um struggling a lot with it also to the comments that were made about the secondary schools and middle schools as well i'm still trying to understand the rationale between the different approach between those two um you know different levels so if i could get a little bit more from that it probably won't be anything different than you've heard before so start with that but if it truly does i mean many of us

152have kids of our own the difference by and large of a middle school kid and your high school kid maturity wise responsibility wise we're giving you additional benefits you can start you know just those things just the response even if you look at our discipline middle school is our most challenging place and we get the reasons why right i mean you're going through we won't do family life but there's all of those different things that impact what's happening to middle school kids and so they need that level of support and so again we did a lot of engagement around that um but that's that's the overarching thing for why there's a delineation between middle school and high school generally speaking stella let me take the other thing though because you are it's a fundamentally deep

153reflective thought i've thought about it too like what are we doing here right where is this going to go i don't know where it's going to go i just know i'm trying to listen to those teachers that are in there all year this year almost everybody was back and our principals they're begging for it and we all you know tammy was here last time we've all pre pandemic had some level of addiction to technology and phones and it got worse it did get worse for everybody and our folks are asking for i mean that's what they're asking for a zigzag and where it goes i'm not sure but i do believe they need this want this and what elaine said honestly because it was a bit of a stir one of our principals went ahead

154and said look i don't see anything prohibiting me from doing this i'm gonna do it so we had almost like a three-month mini-experiment and the worst fears weren't realized that's what i would say to the board even today as you look at passing this on thursday you know it's ultimately your decision actually the kids after a little bit understood we're trying to get back to that pre-pandemic learning environment and that's part of what this is but i'm not saying it's a it's a silver bullet and i'm not saying you all may not have to revisit it uh in a few years um and then i'll be working with you at a state level trying to figure out what to do but but i honestly think doing this will actually i think it will be one

155more thing to help our teachers um in the second year coming out of this pandemic in person that's my that's my thought and i feel good about that going getting up every day and thinking about next year yeah i hope you're right i think the real root of the issues is not cell phones but if that helps us get to those um okay fine time will tell um but i think we name that and at least acknowledge that we will probably be uh are we looking at this i think totally one of your offer justice oh before i get off this communication around this to our kids to our parents very very important we've got to prepare them for this it is going to be a big um shift for many i didn't see any

156and i it could be me anything about ear buds did i miss that no we just called out smart watches and i think we put in accessories or devices let me do a control fan so that was the big okay okay i missed that okay thank you the other one i will just since i have a little bit of a few seconds i know i brought this up to you dr boyd i brought it up with a few people and nobody has really you know taken on to this our dress code we are not defining the terms of private areas excessive amount of bare skin principles are whole inconsistent about what that means how they are addressing it it's a very big problem i hear it consistently consistently and have since we put this out

157i'll take a little bit of a go unless you want to speak to it now so the only thing that i'll say now um because as you you notice we haven't made any proposed changes relative to the dress code but to your point we have heard feedback it was even a question about sports bras at one of the the community forums and we responded to that that that's clearly an undergarment which is prohibited from being worn you know without something over it um but we do know that teachers have expressed that that has gone from zero to a hundred um and so um we didn't in full transparency we didn't take it up during this round after we received the feedback because there were already so many big buckets that we were lifting up if

158you will and so that's that's truly the honest answer and i think that as we peel back the layers of the onion around dress code if we want to have added specificity outside of adding a definition that that would truly um warrant some additional community engagement which would take you know much more time okay thank you thank you so much should i put you down for a go back maybe okay all right uh we have next miss mclaughlin wow i'm going to race the clock on this one all right first thing cell phone usage i am a thousand percent with ms picarski on this one i talked to all four of my high school leadership classes in the braddock district and the high school students in particular were saying you know what is the um

159so you know i i we talked about you want to help kids with skill building this goes back probably at least seven years to when my youngest was in high school the teacher was phenomenal she said come into my classroom take your cell phone put it on the right top corner of your desk face down in a 90 minute class she then said okay 45 minute brain break flip your phone over see if your mom and dad or a parent guardian are trying to reach you do you have any issues about after school you're going to tend to or maybe you're just going to check your phone for any text messages that are meaningful turn it back down get back to learning i mean truth be told i ask every adult in this room you

160tell me when you've put your phone away for the day entirely wait the day why do parents give phones to their kids not just because they want them to play on it because it's a way to communicate and reach your kid so i just feel like you know scott your heart's in the right place and you want to help our teachers but i'm a little disappointed that our solution was i i think just too extreme it's not based in 21st century um you know if kids aren't going to look at their cell phone let they're going to just doodle i mean you can't control when a kid's going to pay attention or not so this was the other thing the kids said is what do you what do you think happened before you were in

161cell phone kids past notes to each other things were going to happen um i would rather we build and help kids to you know the scaffolding and and and healthier habits that's part of educating the whole child so i think we've got some work to do on the cell phone thing um that one gives me pause parent consent um you know as i got one minute left um michelle could you be a little more clear because i've fought for this for ten years as many other board members have parents do not want their kids being interviewed or any other yeah i'm not using the bad word they don't want them being interviewed especially when they're minors because depending on the age and maturity level of the kid so when did we move off of because

162parent notification is very different from parent consent to interview kids so the the language that is in the current srnr i can i'll have to go back and do prior history um reviews prior to my coming but that language has not changed since i've been here now granted that's only two years so the language that's currently existing is at least uh two years old yeah the difference may be the srn r language um and john remind me you know because sandy evans i remember we were working on this too and the hearing office uh language um yeah we'll have to go back because i know there was a there was a change that we did with the hearing office language and that may be different from the sr language and i'll have to go back

163and research that i know what you're talking about i'll just tell my colleagues i think this is going to be a a real challenge and concern for me to go backwards exigent circumstances absolutely if there is an emergency and you know i appreciate dr boyd saying well who defines emergency common sense defines emergency if you're talking about life death you know drugs are being ingested by somebody um you know and then dress code i can't emphasize enough what miss prakarsky said scott has the hspa spoken to you because i'm hearing from my principals that the language with things like clothing should be fit neat and clean conform to good taste and decency that is so broad like i'm i'm just at the oh my gosh this is not working and our our families are our

164principals are telling board members this i think we changed that i almost want to say 10 15 years ago francis do you remember that when we were when we were harassed it might have been ryan no ryan because yeah we felt that there was gender discrimination in the language that's actually what it was and it was in in the last five years okay just just for history here ryan mclaven has take out the examples of what was considered unacceptable language unacceptable clothing the neat clean fit conforms to good taste and decency that was not any board that i've sat on that's that's older language and i think that needs to be tackled i think i think michelle is right this may this may be a topic that you all say and either now or it's

165a follow on that we need to look at and engage dress code is a huge issue that either can bring us together it can be exclusive or inclusive we've got to get it right i will i will say this and michelle just with two weeks for myself to go the one place i went the work was done less on the writing and more on creating visuals and i think they did a space alien to be honest and it was the space i i know and i know i know i'm not trying to but it was like e.t with the right dress code so and it took all of the whatever out of it and said this was appropriate this wasn't and um i'll tell you a little bit more about it but actually kids reacted

166to that a lot better than five paragraphs so did parents well i'll i'll need to go back on this one because that's helpful i i have you all right i'm gonna take my turn on uh just a couple of things 2 minutes with respect to notice um i know we had a lot of conversations in those hearings with respect to getting noticed to parents and so i'm i i don't recall that it was actually consent though we we they had to have enough they had to reach out to the parent but sometimes you couldn't reach the parent and due to exigent circumstances things would continue i do think we need to talk about that a little bit more i understand miss eisenheiser with respect to additional supports if a special education child is involved but

167you know when i do talk to some of the principals their concern is hey how do we wrap this up and minimize a problem so i think that's what you're balancing i don't know if you want to bring us something back on that um with respect to how we communicate i like i like the various ways i am curious as to how we're going to make sure folks are getting educated properly because i do think sometimes even our staff members are trying to figure it out in real time so hopefully we're working on that as well on page 16 we talk about unexcused absences and we define it as missing the whole day i'm wondering uh how we're dealing with people who may you know just decide to skip calculus every day that certainly has

168an impact um but it's not addressed here so stop my time please and um if you could address that so i was searching for your section on my my page my document okay sorry no no worries um and i don't are you referring to the s bar chart it's page or narrative i think it's narrative page 16 page 16 it defines chronic absences um but it doesn't talk talking about five or more but it talks about it being an entire day some of some kids are creative and they go to school sometimes to certain parts of the day that's still harming them are we dealing with that in here sure and so in this section this talks about um for the the five or more unexcused days that's just certain things per attendance codes that

169that five-day section triggers um but certainly in our s bar chart we talk about unexcused tardies to class and then um just overall unexcused absence and we we do specify that you can't have exclusionary practices there but we do while everything is not written out here in the um in the srnl we have an actual whole attendance regulation with communicating and reaching out to the family if kids are missing classes or missing school and following up so there's a lot of we piecemeal reference certain things so we just pull out snippets and so it it doesn't look really comprehensive here because we're pulling from something else to reference here okay um next is on page 18 definition of digital citizenship uh i think we do a really good job when we talk about distribution of

170literature the very next paragraph in but digital citizenship um and uh what that entails is much less inclusive and i really want people to understand when you're harming another person with a photo or etc that that's covered so i would like to consider whether in can help us in that definition you have up there in the way that you're talking about digital citizen citizenship and i wonder um and vijay may be able to help us that the information pulled in digital citizenship and um some of the other pieces are pulled as languages that's lifted up from 6410 the acceptable use policy regulation so again we're piecemealing some things because we know that the cyber security digital citizenship was something that the board lifted up as something that wanted to be reflected here but more comprehensive

171information is in that draft reg um in 6410 um and then certainly again we were just trying to think of volume extent not replicating another full regulation in this regulation and so there's pros and cons to that as we just saw with the attendance reference right my concern is with um the digital stuff it seems like we're defining that now right people are starting to learn that and the other paragraph is just so much more helpful than the general language that we're using above it so just for your consideration because i do think that's going to require a lot of community support and outreach and parents understanding and kids understanding and if it's more like in then parents can have that conversation with their kids so what i hear you saying is you almost like

172some of the specificity in in up in that top paragraph about digital citizenship yes digital means you don't go on and do these things on social media and it's and it's a clarity for the family and for the student okay okay thank you um [Music] i've got 17 seconds hold on while you're looking if i could just verify i went over with john foster we haven't changed anything in the regulations none of our regulations from notice to consent it's always been noticed what we did change with the prior board is if notice wasn't happening we still brought those packets forward to the hearing office and ultimately to the board we instituted a new packet check where notice had to be provided and that was a change made with the previous board miss mcgoff and i

173just wanted to reference that to the history i went back over and it would not come forward to the board anymore if we were not giving parents that appropriate notice and it became a part of the hearings office checklist so that was the reform we made it's still been a notice just fyi thanks okay i'll say quickly that with respect to the cell phone stuff i'm willing to try i put the wrong page down but there's a paragraph that says students suspected of alcohol use uh it doesn't mention other drugs and i'm just wondering if we want to say suspected of substance abuse so you don't have to have that discussion do you know what page that was just i see her looking on me too i thought it was 20 but i wrote the

174wrong number down so i'll keep i'll look i'll look while i call on the next person who has a go back um that brings us back to dr anderson all right thank you i want to dig a little bit into this survey um i noticed here that on the very front page it says that there are 22 community members and nine other who completed this can you give a little bit more information in terms of who are these community members i thought the survey was geared at staff parents and guardians and students yes it was disseminated to fcps staff and also families and so unless somebody else shared the link or just how people identified i'm assuming that perhaps someone may be identifying in just one category or another but it wasn't a post-it it

175wasn't a publicly posted link and so unless somebody shared it outside because i considered something concerned with our surveys that when they're posted and sent at large we're getting feedback from people who are not the stakeholders that we really need to hear from that has always concerned me so this also raises that flag um secondly i see you've got lots of questions here i think most of them were like scale questions there was one that was open-ended can you give us a summary of some of the feedback you received from the open-ended question can i follow up with you deb has all of that information committed to memory and she wasn't able to join us today and so i don't want to give misinformation around that item i will put you down for follow-up thank

176you ma'am and also i i said this last time and i'm glad that miss cohen raised it i do want to lend my support for changing the language from parent from just parents the parents and guardians so i want to share that the piece regarding parental consent i'm getting a little bit confused here are we talking about or the piece that you were talking about miss mclaughlin was that for all students to have consent before they can be interviewed by an administrator you know as a former principal this raises all kinds of hairs for me because it will just literally make it so much more difficult for schools to engage in investigating any issue and wrapping up any issue so we also stand the risk of having kids that are that have been hurt and

177then the schools can't do anything about it because the parent did not give consent and i i thought the code also provided opportunity for for the schools to be able to have that um latitude to investigate with that parental consent i don't know if you want to just talk to that a little bit john whenever you get the time because i know i've been placed in that position where a parent says you can't talk to my child unless i give consent well we do have um the the right to do that i'm just really concerned about having the pendulum swinging so far in the other way that we are not going to be able to resolve any situations with kids even the simplest things you know we're talking about all of these things here require

178conversations with kids to follow up all of this will be so extremely stunted i'm very concerned having said that what i do want to share is i i appreciate what you talked about regarding miss um seismic heisman's com seismo heiser's comments which is to provide the support with the language with the case manager and i noticed and the page that you referred it says written i would love for there to be opportunity for oral as well because you always start with the oral statements and if you have a child that doesn't speak the language or can't understand the question that's being asked they're going to need that support at that stage as well so i would love to yeah and and i think we heard some others and you've heard it now and dr board

179and i i think we can add that one word we're all frankly when administrators are in there writing written statements that's oral written we might as well just put it together and say provide the support anytime you're going to bring that kid in for questioning so we can make that change and it's something both of you have raised and this is this is why i actually and i want to thank chair picard scheme vice chair seismic heiser for doing this extra hour here instead of doing it at the board table thursday this this was i'm just being honest i wasn't sure that no this is much better and i think we just have to dr boyd we already agreed the longer timeline to do sr and are the way this board has helped bring us

180to bring the community in we need a longer timeline and we need a final look before we do the vote almost like we're doing the budget process where we did that work session right before so this has been helpful and it's going to make thursday go a lot a lot more smoothly it is it is and my last point is regarding the cell phones as a parent who did give her sixth grader a cell phone i don't have an expectation that he's going to be responding to that cell phone during the school day i've tried very hard to text them when i know it's lunch or after school and so there would be no expectation on my part that it's an english class and he's responding to me and i want to say thank you

181to um ms stolin for sharing what has been happening at herndon because i think that is a site where we could actually have some good lessons learned i also i've run out of time so i'm going to quickly point out to i think it was in may miss corbett sanders sent to us a little quick study that a teacher did regarding whether or not cell phones were allowed in the classroom and the level of student engagement versus what when it wasn't um this is not the end all to be all um you know i i don't know the level of this um mathematics et cetera but it is very helpful and we want to be responsive to okay she wanted me to stop so um i i just want to be sure we're not throwing

182the baby out with the bath water on this one we know it's going to be a shift we have a lot of things that are shifts for our kids but this is really to help them and frankly it's easier to doodle on a sheet of paper than to be watching youtube shorts thank you okay thank you dr anderson miss corporate sanders you have i have you down for a go back yes um and thank you i did just send you an older version of the srnr that had some more specific language and i would urge that we kind of mesh what we've been talking about um for our students with disabilities and communications challenges in any instance where we are having questions so thank you for uh taking a further look at that on the

183cell phone piece i did want to share because as many people know i i made most of my career was in technology and cell phones so i love cell phones however digital citizenship is really important and it's a skill that is essential it does make a difference in classrooms i would suggest you know i talk to my daughters who are both 20 something year olds and they're teleworking and they talk about how there's clear guidance in that experience or in that workplace that they are not to be using their personal um cell phones during business meetings and different and when they are conducting business they shouldn't be also sending personal texts and stuff one daughter in particular because she does work with the pentagon actually when they go in they they check their cell phone

184and so what we're asking for our kids to do is not any different it's teaching them the discipline to be responsible and sometimes it is hard to pull back from where we were but we know that you know when i grew up in the 60s and 70s we didn't have um seat belts and all of a sudden we started wearing seat belts and oh look it it made for a safer environment you know we we do add new disciplines in life and so i would just urge that um this is one where our our principals and others really do and teachers would appreciate a little bit more guidance and so i think this helps thank you thank you i believe miss uh cohen go back or go back yeah thank you so much i appreciate

185it um i i just wanted to say a few things one i agree that number five on page 60 about the consultation with the student's iep team only says written it doesn't say verbal so i certainly support the conversations that that needs to be added you know the other i would say especially in light of the changes that the legislature made about mandatory reporting i am even more fearful of how we have kids who struggle with communication and without their parents being involved we just have to show that we left a voicemail that these kids what they say in that moment or maybe not even what they're able to say like is their communication partner required to be there because our kids who are using ats their case manager or a member of their iep

186team is likely not the person who helps them communicate with the device so i'm just really concerned that i i understand this makes it harder for administrators that's not my goal but my goal is that things that children are saying to adults who are in charge in ways that they may or may not understand now have an even greater potential to impact them for the rest of their lives um thanks to the general assembly so i i am i i know that i continue to press on this but i i cannot understand um that we would say that that children who struggle with communication both receiving it and being able to transmit it that we're going to say it's just sufficient to notify their parents and not guarantee that they have somebody who can make

187sure that they're able to communicate and understand what's happening i can only liken it to like if heaven forbid i was in a turkish prison like i would pay i would pray that there was somebody in there who would say lara jane has to have an interpreter so i just don't i don't know turkish prison was all i could come up with sorry but you know point taken that i my big concern is that kids are being held responsible for saying things um or typing things that they may or may not understand the full ramifications of thank you ms cohen your time is up um any feedback no i think the i think the the piece that once we add the um questioning to the paragraph where it talks about use of accommodations i think

188that generally that will answer it because if it's if it's an accommodation that will leave little sloane alone that francis needs and it's something that she uses that's listed as an accommodation on her iep so she has access to that or accommodation on her 504. um so i think that that would i think that might subside some anxiety with the incorporation incorporation of that added element okay maybe if you can send something out to us before thursday that might be helpful absolutely thank you mr mesh thank you um happy to follow ms cohen actually and would support looking into that piece specifically and then the guardian piece i would uh just want to bring that back and say that i support it regardless of how long it makes the document if we can do that

189i want to make sure my colleagues are aware of a follow-on motion that i do plan to bring it kind of speaks to what we talked about last work session just in terms of having more accountability and central review of instance incidents of prejudice across our system regardless of what kind of identity is impacted by that to investigate monitor and then develop recommendations around action related to that i know thanks to dr ivy's leadership and a number of staff we met weeks ago and i know staff have kind of been formulating their ideas as to how that might be implemented where that might live etc but it's really just to codify those conversations and uh look look towards future um conversations around what that might look like and how that might manifest so i just

190want to put that on everyone's radar everyone is aware we've had the conversation many times over months so nobody can say they were caught off guard on thursday all right um the other thing i did want to just bring up uh the us bar codes component and this might be more of a question for john i don't know but we're categorizing uh things like malicious outing um as the same as like removal of religious headguard garb and i think there's something different about a physical offense versus kind of the more emotional piece which we're trying to capture more broadly number one i definitely think we need to add slurs and um and symbols in there somehow because that's much broader other than just kind of outing right so it's just an additional piece of what

191discriminatory harassment is uh and number two i would venture to think that the room you know any student touching a student should be at least category e as opposed to just category d which is more intangible right so i just kind of wanted to understand the rationale i don't know if that was an oversight maybe it was a mistake but to separate those out perhaps an attempted one is category d but then you know if there was a physical assault it belongs i think someone what page was that you were referencing yeah sorry i'm jumping right in um so we're on page 23 of the online document so probably 24 or something in yours um the s bar codes for category d discriminatory harassment um and then i'm curious why we also just segmented out

192certain ones over others rather than had them all as individual ones or okay so yeah a lot good to um answer a part of it so when uh miss omesh is referring to category d as in dog versus e category e each of our s bar codes are um grouped into a certain overall category category e is titled behaviors that endanger yourself for others these behaviors endanger the health safety and our welfare of either the student or others in the school community and so the items listed there are things such as assault group assault assault and battery fighting striking your staff drugs possession etc and the list goes on many of which are drugs fire gang hazing things like that and so the state delineates which s bar codes go into which category category d

193right now d is in dog um i'm scrolling up that is where the discriminatory harassment currently lists and that's based on where the state has placed that respective esbar code and so that's not a placement that we've done locally that's a placement that's done by the state and how they categorize discriminatory harassment those the codes that are associated in which bucket it falls in d as in dog versus e is an elephant no that's the nugget right there you're saying the state has dictated the categories of the codes not us but we included the example right of including malicious removal of religious garb under yeah so the examples we've added on um as examples it doesn't change the code it doesn't change the placement of which bucket falls into the code all of that is

194by the state um the examples that we added um were based on stakeholder engagement and feedback to provide what might what might discriminatory harassment look like and in some of those categories where we broke things out a through e or a through f it all rolls up into that same state code but they're delineating it by the level the letter that's really just local for local data purposes for us to say well how many times were there issues with racial slurs we could pull that data out as opposed to seeing the big overarching bucket can we change that to attempted removal and that way my concern is like if a principal is trying to identify what to do with that they're going to see that under discriminatory harassment when it also involves the physical assault

195right so maybe if we say attempted that way it's like okay there's this discriminatory piece and then there's also the physical piece of it which could be addressed with category e you see what i'm saying i do and time i know you've got big timer all right well you give me another go back then okay but is that a possibility okay could someone answer that letter respond we need to consult with yeah that's what's gonna say we need to consult offline with council because i think that's a little bit more nuanced but let us just follow up okay thank you we'll we'll do that miss eismar heiser yeah briefly i know um dr boyd you know i talked about this a little bit and i mentioned to john foster as well but i do have

196some concerns about our s bar codes given sb 36 um i nova case and i've talked to you about this of a first grader who has several assault and battery and intimidation of staff so i'd love to find out a little more about what flexibility we have in these espar codes especially when you're looking at young children and children with disabilities um and when that when there isn't intent or especially criminal intent behind their behavior so i just want to put that out there because given the mandatory reporting this is is really problematic the way we're coding some of our um young students especially behavior issues and so um yeah so i've i know flag for you dr boyd so i just wanted to bring that up i'd love to sort of get more information

197on that and what we can do and and just to bring everybody up to speed and thank you miss asmr hazard she and i chatted a couple of times about that um we have we will follow up again to get some additional detail on reaching out to the state um but the question on the table is if for example michelle strikes and i'm a student um whether it's regardless of age if i strike a staff person you know what is that and we have certain codes that are um delineated by the state and so and i was trying to pull up my email so i can look at it and reverbate them to you but one is assault and battery and i believe um and i'll pull it up in a second that's that's the

198appropriate code if there's injury and then they're striking a staff that's another code if they if i hit a teacher and i didn't cause injury um and so those are the definitions and delineations in our in the student behavior and administrative responses um codes that are provided by the state and so the question that miss seismer heiser is asking and she'll correct me if i'm wrong is do we have any additional latitude to name it something else um and so that's something that we're following up on to date we've not received any feedback that we have latitude to to name that something else we do want to say that and also we're also working with council relative to h b4 or senate bill 36 is the same thing when it talks about mandatory reporting to

199law enforcement that is referring to and you'll see the details in a document but the piece that's the broadest um which we're working with council to define is the quote-unquote wounding because they're stabbing um death some other things that are very black and white um but the wounding is the one that's a little bit gray that we're trying to get some additional detail in terms of definitions from the code and things like that because that would probably be the one that's the most broadly interpret interpreted versus the other things that are very very much black and white and explicit so we're working with council on that um and as we know more information we will certainly bring that forward um and you know that was recent passing of legislation so just trying to get clarity

200around that well and what you've referenced there was the old bill that's not even including what's under the new bill for misdemeanors so it's even broader than what you have there um i just bring this up because i've heard of young children first graders with science march four or five assault and batteries for disability related behavior on their so i'm very concerned about this and and obviously we want to keep our teachers and staff safe we want to we don't want to have students having egregious behaviors when we're looking at our young kids and students with disabilities at that age and mandatory reporting to the police and the the discipline disparities we already have i'm super super worried um i do want to say with the when you go back to the um i appreciate

201adding in you know written or verbal but i think instead of just case manager key i p partner we need to have communication partner as miss right or trusted communication partner the other concern i have is when it says needed accommodation because when you have a child with communication issues it may not be issues that need a let's say an ats device but just has needs communication support and that that may not be written as an accommodation so i just want to be careful that we're not narrowing that piece of that on page 61. um and that's the piece and certainly we can talk a little bit more offline i think it's more cut and clear when there are and again i'll use an overly simplified example so so i'll say that in advance but

202as we talk about accommodations there are things that the data has indicated that a student needs across settings and it's not just something that we implement at the time so for example testing accommodations and again overly simplified example um we don't give kids unique testing accommodations just on the day of the test this accommodation that i've used throughout instruction that i'm also using on the test and it may present a little bit differently and so our thought now is that um or just a point to chew on again we can and talk further offline um is creating determining the need for an accommodation for an isolated event that wasn't determined by the iep team so that that's something that would bring about pause and so if michelle needs a communication communication assistant if i need

203that to access my environment access to fate that's something that should be already be articulated in my iep not something that's newly added for a specific circumstance and some students have that some kids have one-to-ones or communication but all of those different things but i just think we just have to be careful about considering a new accommodation for a unique circumstance that whereby the iep didn't deem that as something that was warranted and that would be a one-off as opposed to something that michelle is using consistently as supported by the data so what i'm trying to get at is a student who is communicating at several levels below grade level in self-contained classes but may not have an accommodation on the accommodations page around communication because they're still communicating they're just their comprehension is at

204several that's what i'm talking about right and i understand we don't need to have an iep accommodation in case but but a principal could say there's no nothing checked on their accommodation page but this is a child in self-contained academic classes whether on sol track or not who has significant and it's written maybe all it's in all over their goals it's all over their their communication goals and social goals and um besides i know i'm just i'm sorry to interrupt you we have somebody that has to leave and we've got just a few people to do so that's what i i knew we need to we need to identify those in this situation and i this language i don't think it gets that that's what i'm trying to get i i understand and thank you

205for your passion i i just want to accommodate the few people that are on the list miss picarski did you need a go yeah i'll be real quick then um yeah i think that also i don't know how we get to the answer to this but i think it's even kids with anxiety um having a child who will say something in that circumstance that is very different than what will come home um anyway i we need more discussion i guess we'll take it on offline i will just quickly say hopefully somebody is going to bring some type of amendment on the parents uh portion of this throughout the document i also think it is very limiting it's not inclusive and it could be also very um you know uh to apparent to somebody who is

206a caregiver but not a parent confusing like does this apply to me i know we have the definition but this is that yeah i'm not sure an amendment maybe we can make a change in the definition and then work on the wording throughout that would be great if we could just do that parent or guardian just the way we do everything else i think that would be great um [Music] anyway i i will stop but i think miss mclaughlin and i were are gonna do something for the dress code we just are not sure what so we'll talk to you thank you miss mclaughlin just happens to be next look at that so um this is actually language that um a principal had provided to me through conversations that other principals were having with each

207other so in the dress code we define what prohibitive prohibited clue clothing can include but we don't give any definition or explanation of examples of excessive amount of bare skin so one suggestion was examples of of excessive amount of bare skin includes but not limited to colon stomachs ribs cleavage bottoms displayed below the shorts short and sweet i'll send it to all of you again this was some suggested language but all we're doing is just inserting a definition where we don't have it as i entertained you all earlier the neat clean good taste standards of what i mean that is a whole nother ball of wax i think we'll have to attack in the next sr iteration but this one i think our principals are dying for and again i i would like to see

208if we can't consider that maybe scott you'll send it around to the board and to you and michelle you guys may look at and say that's an easy one we can endorse as superintendent and yeah if you send it around tonight or tomorrow morning we can and then my colleagues all say without objection you know he can put it in as the part of these revisions we're doing um and i just wanted to say because unfortunately dr anderson's not here i would hope for anyone who's worked with me and the longer you've worked with me the more you know i am not an absolutist ever so i'm not saying oh it's parent consent or you can't ever talk to that child and that there's no variations when you talk about the severity the seriousness but

209i mean we had so many situations where principals were saying we couldn't we tried to notify we just left a voicemail then they interviewed a kid on something that happened weeks ago that was not exigent it was not any reason to not at least have had the conversation to the same the parent and the consent piece was more of most the time we notified parents simply are saying if you're going to talk to my child who's a minor even the police give the courtesy of parents to be with their child when that investigation or that interview is happening because kids are scared they're scared and to not have that respect and understanding um so i appreciate that i hope that's helpful to you i will only add one thing and that is i am very

210concerned about the new legislation coming out of richmond um i don't think that the nuances are clear enough and at a minimum dr braband i i wonder if some sort of statement should be made at our next meeting so that the community is aware that we have been given a directive from the state level that we think can create some discipline implementation problems i mean i think it is it says you know if a child has has drank alcohol has to be reported to the police i mean really i mean not that i advocate that at all let me make that very clear um but that's typically not what the police are going to handle and parents will get upset with us for doing something that we would consider unreasonable so dr brabrand i would

211simply just ask that a statement of what this means what those changes have been maybe uh mr malloy can make some recommendations or our counsel as to what we can do but at a minimum we need to notify our parents that this is the charge we have been given we don't agree with it but we have to notify the community right the state took away principal discretion in this general assembly session and we do need to let our community know so i'll work on some communication on that uh from thursday and this feedback was helpful look i'll just say today first i'm so glad we did this as opposed to thursday there still may be you know i feel like the srnr rs maybe ultimately the mona lisa you know da vinci kept it he

212never actually gave it to the owner he was supposed to he kept it his whole life and said it was imperfect so i think dr boyd has done mona lisa work it still on thursday may not be perfect for every piece there are a couple of things there are a couple of things i think we can absolutely do in here there may be a couple consent and notice those are bigger bigger things that we spend a whole lot more time with a lot more stakeholders to have conversation about but we can put that on to reflect on another time but i think we got a lot of feedback today and we can make some small strategic tweaks here that i think can get us to a good place on thursday so i do want to

213say you know dr bray brandon when i came in in 2017 we were working a lot on srnr a lot and so we have climbed we have we have just continued that continuous process so i of improvement so i want to say thank you for that we haven't arrived we never will because we we will always want to do better so with that miss keis kamara yes yes very very quickly i'm sorry i didn't see that i'm go ahead that's okay too many things in the way um i had a conversation with mr karsky week or so ago after some very lengthy conversations with constituents i 100 back the work on the dress code i just want to throw that out there absolutely yeah happy to help with that okay thank you everybody we're adjourned

214i'll send it you