FCPS School Board Meeting 5-12-22

001[Music] bye all right school board members take your seats please hello all right the may 12 2022 regular meeting of the fairfax county school board will now come to order please stand for the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence in a performance of the national anthem by the westfield chorus under the direction of miss katherine pierce of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all oh say can [Music] [Applause] [Music] april [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you bulldogs that was beautiful agenda item 2.02 certification of closed meeting compliance in order to comply with section 2.2-3712-d of the code of virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county school board convened a closed meeting

002on may 12 2022 to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during this closed meeting is there a motion moved by miss corbett sanders seconded by ms mesh all those in favor that is unanimous with miss marin and dr anderson away from the table agenda item 2.03 announcements dr anderson and miss maron miss marin will be absent this evening item 4.02 policy 4750 has been postponed and will be rescheduled at the may 26 meeting item 4.03 regulation 2601 student rights and responsibilities has been rescheduled to the may 26 regular meeting itis item 6.04 family life education curriculum advisory committee annual report has

003been postponed and will be scheduled at a future meeting if you'd like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight that information may be found at the back of the auditorium or on the website at fcps.edu school board slash board docs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu tv ch99 i call on mr chowdery for an announcement school nursing is a specialized practice of professional nursing that advances the health and well-being of students and is an integral part of a quality school health program school nurses promote health safety prevention and wellness intervene with actual and potential health problems and provide case management services they're an invaluable bridge in connecting healthcare providers public health and families the school system

004works collaboratively with the fairfax county health department to provide quality school public health nursing services to the children of fairfax county public schools and recognizes may 11th as a school nurse day in fairfax county thank you agenda item 2.05 bus drivers van drivers and attendance recognition the board will invite each recognition recipient and their supporters to come up to the days for a photo with the board after the reading of all recognitions i call on miso mesh the major responsibility for school transportation safety in fairfax county rests firmly in the hands of our dedicated school bus drivers van drivers and attendants they daily transport more than a hundred and forty four thousand students in a fleet of one thousand six hundred and twenty five school buses and ninety three vans on more than six 6

005800 separate routes traveling over 16 million operational miles each year fcps greatly appreciates the vital role that our drivers and attendants play in our students safety thank you agenda item 2.04 internal audit awareness month recognition i'll call on miss darren at cofax for this week thank you madam chair to raise awareness and recognize the office of auditor generals may has been designated as the internal audit awareness month by the institute of internal auditors the fcps office of auditor general or oag serves and operates at the direction of the school board the school board audit committee serves to promote the independence and objectivity of oag by ensuring board audit coverage broad audit coverage adequate consideration of audit reports and appropriate action on recommendations oag has an important purpose within fairfax public schools as our internal auditors

006and it provides a variety of roles and responsibilities these duties can include providing oversight and assessing controls through their expertise and knowledge the broad perspective of fcps oag can evaluate efficiency and effectiveness and provide management and the school board with assurance that the adequate controls are in place to respond to the risks that may threaten the organization they can evaluate risks risk could be everywhere to our reputation inefficient operation fraud lawsuits or policy violations the oag assesses the significance of the organization's many risks and effectiveness of risk management and communicates these to management and the school board and develops recommendation to improve risk management they improve operations with a solid understanding of the organization's objectives the oag can examine operations to determine whether they are efficient and effective they can promote ethics professional internal auditors

007abide by a code of ethics that upholds the privilege privilege of integrity objectivity confidentiality and competency they raise red flags when they discover improper conduct they monitor compliance by assessing the organization's compliance with applicable laws regulations and contracts to ensure that management is addressing these requirements adequately and they offer insight into the impact that this non-compliance could have in an organization and inform senior management and school boards of non-compliance they investigate fraud because fraud can affect any level of the organization and they the oag is provided to access to all records as well as the authority to conduct audits and investigate possible fraudulent behavior and then finally they communicate the results after conducting thorough audits the oag reports its findings and recommends appropriate courses of action to strengthen organizational success i want to thank our

008own auditor general miss esther co and her team here tonight chris migulaccio danielle moore and heidi flanagan so thank you all for all that you do to keep our system going strong thank you so much thank you agenda item 2.06 social worker of the year recognition i will call on miss darren at cofax again for this recognition thank you so much i am before i begin i want to thank miss claudia mcdowell for coming back this evening we apologize for delaying your recognition during our regular school board meeting on april 14th due to other business matters and we appreciate you and your family being here and coming back tonight so on behalf of the fairfax county school board i am honored to recognize miss claudia mcdowell who recently was named 2022 national school social worker

009of the year miss mcdowell is a social worker at lindbrook elementary school in the lee district mrs mcdowell has was named social worker of the year by the school social work association of america for her commitment to the profession and for positively impacting the lives of students families and the staff of the community she serves on april 8 mrs mcdowell received her award at the sswaa national conference in chicago she began working at lindbrook elementary school 10 years ago and she was instrumental in working with the school's attendance program helping to counter chronic absenteeism by developing support systems to increase all students sense of belonging confidence and engagement in the school she also started a mindfulness program and where kindergarten classes got to know her to see her and see who they truly are lindbrook

010elementary principal catherine saying recently said she is always there to help in a moment of need she has had many times where on her way home from work or in the early evening where she dropped up supplemental food cards to families that have an immediate need for food or formula she has gone above and beyond not only in the school and classrooms but during difficult times too there was a fire in fairfax county that impacted some families who attended lynnbrook and mrs mcdowell coordinated with county officials and the red cross to provide clothing and food she also helped to arrange temporary transportation so students could get to school she launched a crush she launched a crisis team and worked with teachers so they could help students who were living through this traumatic event that is

011what led her colleagues to nominate her for this year's award mrs mcdowell you are truly an inspiration to all of us and i hope and many future school social workers on behalf of the fairfax county school board i thank you for your service to our fcps students and to the linbro community thank you i apologize we'd like to invite mrs claudia mcdowell her husband and children lindbergh elementary school principal kathleen sane and staff to please join us for a photo with a board and i'll ask my colleagues to please remain in the front for the next two photos [Applause] foreign i'd like to invite transportation services director francine furby and the bus drivers and van drivers who are here this evening in support of this recognition to please join the board of the dyes for

012a photo and now i'd like to invite invite our great auditor general team led by esther coe so agenda item 3.01 community participation the next order of business is community participation speakers must limit their remarks to no more than two minutes in length at the conclusion of two minutes a microphone or video will be turned off school board members will be listening but not responding to individual speakers the school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings such as the capital improvement program budget and boundaries comments targeting criticizing or attacking individual students are not permitted during public meetings complaints regarding school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school officials speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information and connection with an individual student or

013school-based employee additionally speakers should be respectful and observe proper decorum in their statements avoid profanity inappropriate gestures shouting and comments that run counter to the spirit and letter of the school division's non-discrimination policy all statements should be directed to the school board and speakers should remain at the podium until concluding their remarks as a reminder speaker substitutions are not permitted a speaker may not yield their time to another individual before or during their remarks shouting an outburst from the audience will not be tolerated we are grateful for all of you who have come to speak to us today and we thank you for your cooperation our first speaker is devin hagen testing all right good evening fairfax county school board members and superintendent dr bray brandt my name is devin higgin and i'm a freshman

014at thomas jefferson high school for science and technology i'm also the proud grandson of immigrants from india and a descendant of immigrants from germany and england i'm here tonight because like my sister sabina i'm asking for fcps to formally recognize june as immigrant heritage month our country is a nation of immigrants and the demographics of fairfax county reflect this foreign-born individuals represent over 30 percent of the county population among fairfax county children over 43 percent have a parent who was born outside of the united states furthermore english language learners are almost 20 of the current student population however over the last few years immigrants have been attacked for various reasons and this xenophobia needs to be rectified my teachers at tj are immigrants from egypt cuba and india my friends and classmates are also from

015a multitude of backgrounds from countries such as korea nigeria and russia our diversity is our strength and to paraphrase to paraphrase hamilton immigrants get the job done i was surprised to learn that unlike many other school districts across the country fcps does not recognize immigrant heritage month in my 10 years of fcps schooling it was up to the school pta to arrange a heritage night it is important that we recognize the contributions and accomplishments of immigrants throughout our history and share our community's immigration stories we should celebrate the diverse heritages of our community of our fcps community students teachers staff bus drivers custodians parents volunteers and our school board members i look forward to working with you to make this happen as soon as possible thank you for your time and efforts thank you our

016next speaker is sabina hagen good evening fairfax county school board members and superintendent dr bray band my name is sabina hagan and i am a sixth grader at haycock elementary school i'm also the proud granddaughter of immigrants from india from my mom's side and immigrants from germany okay from germany and england from my dad's side i'm here tonight because like my brother devin i'm asking for fcps to formally recognize june as immigrant heritage month this school year i researched and wrote a paper on the immigration and nationality act of 1965 for national history day this act abolished the national origins quota which restricted immigrants from countries outside of northern and western europe europe it has resulted in changing our country's demographics to include more immigrants from asia africa and latin america it is impo important

017to know how this act changed our american identity to a more multicultural one i see this diversity every day at my school my teacher is an immigrant from china my friends and classmates and their parents are also from countries such as india korea egypt and brazil i was surprised to learn that fcps has not formally recognized immigrant heritage month we should recognize the special contributions of immigrants within fcps as students teachers staff and parents i look forward to working with you to make this happen thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is amanda campbell good evening my name is amanda campbell and i'm speaking tonight as fairfax county septa's current vice president and incoming president for the 2223 school year earlier this week we sent you a letter detailing significant concerns that

018we had with the student rights and responsibilities redline document made public on april 25th it is our standard understanding that this is not the most recent version of the red line but it is the most recent version that is available to the public at this time and so this is the document on which our concerns are based the new cell phone policy does not take the privacy and complex needs of students with disabilities into account instead it has great potential to violate their privacy increase their anxiety and further ostracize them within the school community cell phones provide a wealth of accommodations for medical and educational needs such as apps that monitor glucose levels for students with type 1 diabetes the ability to allow students with mental health needs to reach out to trusted contacts throughout

019the day recording lessons and more additionally our military families have expressed the need to be able to immediately reach their children during school hours when very limited communication is made available to deployed parents while we understand and in many ways agree with the concerns our educators have raised regarding the distractions that cell phones are currently we do not agree that the privacy of student special education or medical status is an acceptable sacrifice to address that need how can we work together to find a middle ground between the proposed policy that will violate privacy and the distraction-ridden environment that exists now another serious concern we have is on page 55 where it states when a disciplinary incident involving a student with an intellectual or developmental disability may result in the suspension of any kind school staff

020shall not request verbal or written statement from the student until a parent has been provided notice we believe it is imperative to change the wording from until a parent has been provided notice to until a parent has provided consent students with disabilities should also have a third party adult present in these meetings to protect their interests and rights we appreciate your attention to these concerns as well as the further concerns we shared in our letter thank you thank you our next speaker is diane cooper gold good evening i am diane cooper gould advocacy chair of fairfax county septa the srnr topic is one of great concern for us because according to the 2019 fcps osri report on student behavior discipline and disproportionality students with disabilities in fcps are three and a half times more likely

021to receive discipline referrals than their non-disabled peers and the 2020 the 2022 caring culture report continues to express similar disproportionality the srnr itself states positive approaches to student discipline and collaboration among parent teachers and school administrators have proven to be the best way to teach expected conduct and responsible citizenship why then do the revisions to the sr and r increase the intensity of required punitive discipline measures against students in elementary school who are in grades four through six what evidence has fps fcps used to determine that treating a 4th and 6th through 6th grade elementary student to harsher punishments equal to that of their middle school peers will improve their behavior or teach lacking skills students with disabilities particularly those with neurological differences developmental disabilities and cognitive impairments are at greatest risk when these proposed

022changes occur because those students may lack the ability to understand the consequences of their behavior have difficulty with impulse control or sensory and emotional regulation lag in social and emotional development compared to their peers they are more prone to fight flight or freeze responses and they are particularly harmed by discipline measures that remove them from their instruction and related services resulting in a greater widening of gaps between themselves and their neurological peers rather than increasing the use of hearts or harsh or punitive measures we would like to know if fcps has considered banning suspensions for elementary age students further we believe that out of school suspension should not be implemented for any student in elementary school unless there is a serious imminent danger of physical harm to other students or staff thank you our next

023speaker is joanne sears a new study by educational experts at harvard university discovered what most fairfax county parents knew all along remote learning which was scientifically unnecessary during the pandemic with mitigation strategies according to the fairfax health department decimated academics in our school system and students in high poverty schools suffered learning loss the most what has this board done besides ignore the pleas of parents they doubled down on investing in you guessed it online plat an online platform called tutor.com with the cost to taxpayers of nearly a half a million dollars your solution after nearly 18 months of regressive virtual learning is more virtual learning that will continue to crush the souls of our children this is nothing short of educational malpractice our school system was given 188 million dollars in federal funding to fix

024the mistake of shuttering schools and learning loss this is on top of an annual budget of 3.4 billion dollars these additional funds were not used to fix the damage inflicted by the board instead of an all hands on deck approach this board wasted precious time time our children don't have with an assortment of ridiculous pet projects outside the school system's legal scope expertise and jurisdiction instead of fixing what the school board broke in the first place every single person in gate house with a teaching license should be in our schools helping teachers with the massive learning loss you created or they should be let go and that money should be reinvested in the classroom let's be honest teachers were hung out to dry by the school board and union operatives parents and staff are constantly

025cleaning up your messes k-12 education is a national security imperative and instead this board continues to be ill-equipped to understand lead and properly invest in education of our precious children instead you continue to focus on everything but academics thank you thank you our next speaker is shauna yasher i'm here to talk about learning loss and the tutor.com contract and i'm asking that you not renew it fcps spent nearly five hundred thousand dollars on tutor.com for a quarter of the school year what's the full contract costing for next year one million 2 million cancel it did you know that for kids in grades k through 5 there isn't even an option to select math as a tutor option the kids work around this problem by lying and saying they're in sixth grade if the child figures

026out this workaround they discover that most of the tutors are only available for the chat function the child must wait 20 minutes for a virtual for actual in-person person to talk to them students then have to upload examples of the problems that they're struggling with which for the majority of elementary kids requires an adult nearby to navigate taking the photo uploading it making sure there's no identifiable information on it or the online tutor must immediately end the session also did you know that high schools like west springfield have cancelled their in-person peer-to-peer tutoring programs because tutoron.com is now available in person tutoring with peers is incredibly effective and creates those important social bonds please ask that those programs be reinstated i've been working with dr anderson on solutions for in-person tutoring but parents need your

027help please put out a plea to the community to help address learning loss we want businesses to partner and with schools to provide their employees with time away from work to help tutor kids not only will this help with learning loss but it will provide an opportunity for many students to connect with lawyers accountants engineers and other professionals that perhaps the kids may think of a future career in those fields many in the community encourage this board to keep schools closed that was a mistake and one parents will not forget about kids are now a year behind and you've provided no real solution to learning loss the reality is that a significant number of kids need to repeat grades it's time to admit that keeping schools closed was a mistake and make the necessary hard

028decisions have kids repeat grades hire more teachers for one-on-one support and engage businesses to create scalable in-person tutoring thank you our next speaker is kathleen gillette mallard good evening i just want to make a quick announcement which is i couldn't get my remarks printed up so i'm going to have to look at my iphone and i don't think it's going to be a very um let's hope i can get through this anyway first of all good evening superintendent bray brand school board members thank you for this opportunity i totally support the two speakers before me i know although i don't currently have kids in school i just know what has happened during this time of virtual learning one thing i will say is oh it's great to breathe without a mask my daughter's pregnant for

029the second time first time she miscarried but now her doctor said no mask the baby needs to breathe oxygen so if a baby in the womb needs to breathe what do you think about kids in a classroom i've told you already my background in two science degrees in language development you can't teach with masks on so i hope you will not reimplement a mass mandate anyway many of us were read with alarm the revelations that the fbi whistleblower indicated that uh and if the fbi did or maybe still does collect personal data on persons speaking to the school boards in spite of attorney general garland's denials if i'm being monitored tonight by any fbi agents our mortgage payments are up to date we've paid our taxes and we paid our extra real estate taxes to

030support fcps okay just wanted to get that out of the way um i also want to know oh did you all do your homework did you all do your homework i know it's a pretty lengthy book and it is packed with stuff but judith reisman's book stolen honor uh stolen innocence is critical if you maintain the current fle program because uh it is an effort uh subtly in many ways to sexual thank you our next speaker is robert rigby go ahead good evening my name is robert rigby i'm speaking tonight about supporting parents guardian students and families we've all seen the super duper aggression towards true history and black indigenous and all people of color with the phantom issue of crt plus the gross stuff about lgbtqia plus people booked pedophilia and even made it

031into judge katangie brown jackson's confirmation hearings all families and students in fcps feel more like we belong when we are clear that we will stand up for less powerful and less privileged people when we allow meanness towards some folks to go on without a vivid response everybody wonders what if someone bullies me when the governor tried to bully the bls board of supervisors and people who support reproductive rights by saying the residents of fairfax are a dangerous mob uh chair mccain the bls were clear that fairfax is doing it right we are following our normal processes and told the governor please do not exploit us for political gain the school board needs to do the same thing a simple way to support students as families is not to delay successful processes we have and delay

032the fleek act report out of concern about bullying from schultz and young don't back off from the rights act and the usual thing in response to potential animosity from richmond follow the normal process down a piece of the bullets approved the fleek act port report in its entirety as it is in june as usual on top i support the young people about immigrant heritage month uh in june along with pride month i think that'd be fabulous thank you for listening thank you our next speaker is willa wiki hello dr brabrand and school board members i'm willa walke she her hers president of the transgender education association board member of fcps pride and a member of fleet cac i have three children who've graduated from fcps schools and one who is a rising senior i've been

033an fcps parent since 1995. i normally come to speak to you on making schools safer for trans non-binary and gender diverse students tonight i will be talking to you about f teaching fle to mixed gender groups while this will help trans students it will also help cisgender and heterosexual students when they get older knowledge of your spouse's body and how it functions is important and that is not just about how good looking you find them or how nice they hug this is about understanding menstruation infertility how sex happens how pregnancy happens protecting against unwanted pregnancies protecting against infections what kind of problems can happen during pregnancy and being able to help your spouse detect breast or testicular cancer fle is a health class it teaches students about their own health and the health of others

034others they have in their family parents siblings cousins friends and their potential spouses mixed definitely occurs in other counties locally and other school systems across the country the main criticism is that it makes students uncomfortable we have to ask ourselves why are students uncomfortable learning about their bodies people who are afraid of ethylene have the option to opt their children out people who are afraid of ethyle will always criticize what is taught no matter what is taught in fle or how it is taught there are people who will object and will claim that the schools are teaching sex to children sexual health is not about the act of sex it is about staying healthy and keeping yourself and those you love healthy thank you our next speaker is vanessa hall hi can you see me

035i'm on a new computer we can see you great thank you um as an fcps parent i'm worried because every day this week i've read about horrific attacks on books student privacy and the very humanity of the lgbtqia community in virginia for nearly a year louden county dark money parents groups have tried to smear queer students as predators and rapists but now virginia's attorney general's joining them to subpoena private student records to identify and possibly out queer students his focus primarily on loudoun's transgender policy tells us who he fears here in fairfax county in this very room people regularly make gross false and dehumanizing statements about lgbtqia students and their families virginia's governor has signed an overly broad bill that could limit all mention of queer subjects and people in our schools which means my

03613 year old daughter was right when she said first they came to ban the books because they cannot yet ban us this means that they're going after our pride groups our privacy and our dignity with near constant attacks amplified by right-wing news and astroturf parents groups all of this is terrifying for students and their families because we know what happens once a family is targeted they've come after our jobs and have threatened physical harm towards many of us in this very room so what would they do to children who they regularly target and dehumanize on social media based on your own survey 17 percent of fcps students identify as lgbtqia that is nearly one-fifth of students which means possibly one in two fcps households has a child who identifies as queer that means all of

037us need to act now please stand up and speak out against attacks on students and their families do it in this room on social media and if the governor and his homophobic and transphobic administration comes knocking at the schoolhouse door you need to say hands off our students teachers and families and thank you please be brave i appreciate everything you've done thank you our next speaker is stacy langton the students rights and responsibilities handbook says on page 20 it is a punishable violation of the behavioral code for students to post distribute display or share inappropriate or obscene material or literature then why is it in the school library if it's against school rules for our children to harass each other with obscene books why are the adults at school supplying them with the books to

038do it if you read these books to your co-workers at gatehouse road you would be written up for sexual harassment and for creating a hostile work environment uh miss sizemore if you said to miss cohen quote i got a new strap-on harness today i'm going to give you the of your life you'd be out of work mr frisch if you said to dr bray brand quote he stood in front of me fully erect come on taste it it's what boys like us do when we like each other you'd be sent back to la in short order am i making you all uncomfortable am i creating a hostile school board meeting actually i'm grooming you i am desensitizing you to stop your normal reaction of revulsion to the obscene books i just exposed you to there

039is no literary merit to it your communist political agenda seeks to normalize pedophilia and your promotion of perversity causes gender dysphoria making some kids want to mutilate their own bodies now you want to add misgendering their fellow students to the handbook as a punishable offense at school you want to force all children to deny the biological reality of the few trans kids around the around them truly liberalism is a mental disorder your time has finished miss langton thank you your time has ended miss langton thank you thank you our next agenda item 3.02 one more oh my apologies our next speaker is stephanie lundqvist aurora good evening plaintiffs as parents of their minor children enjoy no codified rights to make decisions regarding the health and education of their children does that sound familiar to you

040guys does it okay so we have a lawsuit pending against you right now for the illegal suspensions of my sons and the illegal mass mandates after executive order two and your lawyers which represent all of you claim that parents in fairfax county have no rights read the motion to dismiss i hope you read it because your lawyers are representing you and it's out there so as a parents rights advocate i have a problem with this i was here today initially to speak against the proposed amendments to the student rights and regulations regarding gender identity including the increased penalties for fourth graders who dead name this is not because i'm against the gay and trans community because i am absolutely not i'm trying to push politics out of schools and i think parents should be talking

041about the things that the school has taken over this issue is not dichotomous it's not a binary issue if you will this is about parents having the right to explain things to their children not you guys anyhow i think maybe my my opinion bears no weight on your vote certainly when i was trying to reach out to you when my sons were getting repeatedly suspended you did not respond to me so i would like to pose the question why are you here why are you serving on the school board i think only three of the 12 of you have children what's your end goal in our children's education seriously it's time for all of you to go despite all those signatures for your negligence in denying our children in person learning for so long it's

042too bad that we have to wait until november 2023. [Applause] agenda item 3.02 superintendent matters i'll call on dr brabrand thank you chairman picarski members of the school board and community good evening everyone i just have a couple of things i'd like to share first of all last night i had the privilege of being at the fcps retirement ceremony it's our annual celebration of retirees we honored over 150 members of our fcps family and really appreciate those individuals they've dedicated their life and their life's work to the betterment of the system and the education and care of our students it's one of my favorite events and i want to tonight honor them all one more time and thank all of our fcps retirees for everything you have done and i wish them all the best

043i also need to take a personal shout out and thank dr ivey our deputy superintendent for recognizing me last night as well as a retiree and i'd like to thank members of the school board for joining the retirement ceremony last night and coming up and sharing in a wonderful photo including our former board member mr moon it was just a very nice evening for all of fcps and really reminds me of the family values that i think we all have in the fairfax family we honor our fcps family each and every day and all of our families in fairfax county it is national school nurse appreciation day i didn't know if you knew that but i wanted to let you know and we celebrate the contributions of our school nurses they make a huge difference

044every day in our schools and now more than ever as we've gone through these last few years appreciating our school health professionals and what they do for our students is huge so on behalf of fcps i thank you all school nurses for your service and all of the rest of our folks out there please consider reaching out to your school nurse this week and just saying thank you for a job well done or or providing a note of appreciation it really does matter and appreciation matters for a job well done so please do that um let me see if today is the 12th tomorrow may 13th is school communications day it is the first official school communications day so i want to thank our amazing communications and community relations team our office does such a

045great job with community outreach we've completely revamped that office under the leadership of helen lloyd and her amazing team and we are working to continue to improve all of our communications and outreach with our students staff and communities and to be sure that we're listening to all voices we're really really grateful to have that amazing occr team and i thank them very much i also want to just mention very quickly uh once again fcps magnet school thomas jefferson high school for science and technology has nabbed the top spot in the nation's rankings from u.s news and world report i think i'm going to repeat that one more time just in case folks didn't hear it fcps's magnet school thomas jefferson high school for science and technology nabbed once again the top spot in the nation

046in the u.s news and world report 2022 best public high schools ranking i think that says a lot about what we continue to do to make thomas jefferson a world-class school as we have for all of our schools here in fcps and we can continue to have excellence and equity in all of our schools including at tj these rankings uh evaluate more than 17 000 schools on six factors and um we had our media reporting that in addition to tj there were seven more fcps schools that were ranked in the top in the commonwealth langley mclean marshall oakton woodson madison and west springfield so we congratulate those two even though we know with all of these rankings they're their own limitations but it is nice to see our schools being recognized through this publication one

047thing i want to just closely wrap up on our students caring for our environmental resources we continue to have amazing work around environmental sustainability in our schools lake ann recently installed a new solar bird bash excuse me bird bath they're probably having a bird bash in the in their learning garden westlawn elementary has planted japanese hollies and installed a lending library near their outdoor dining area cardinal forest has started a composting program at their school and franklin middle school has recently installed a pollinator garden on their campus where all plants are native pollinators these are just a few examples of our amazing resource stewardship and our commitment to environmental education in our schools and finally i just want to say um [Music] uh we are excited we're wrapping up our budget we had a great

048work session with the board and i know we'll be uh working over the next week and a half and we'll have a work session actually in another two weeks before a final vote on the budget but i'm very excited we've really had great funding and support from the board of supervisors and we are going to be able to advance uh really all of the initiatives many if not all the initiatives that this board has talked about um and we'll also be wrapping up srnr in two weeks so tonight uh maybe the agenda a couple of things were postponed but in two weeks we'll be bringing some really important stuff back for you to really wrap up the school year and on srnr i know you heard a little bit from the community tonight dr boyd

049and i are working and dr board in particular and her team are engaging our stakeholders including septa including acsd and we've done a survey as well and we're going to take that data certainly share it with you and help us finalize our srnr approach in two weeks i thank you all very much i'm going to have to leave a little bit early tonight but dr ivey will take the seat and be glad to answer any additional questions that may come up this evening thank you thank you dr bray brand agenda item 3.03 student representative matters i call him mr chadry good evening madam chair board members in order to be eligible for the level 4 screening process students must get in through one of three pathways this is just for the initial screening piece be

050at the top 10 of their local cohort on either the cogat or nat or have a direct referral from their parent or guardian there's one statistic that really stuck out to me approximately 70 percent of students who go through level 4 screening come through parental referrals this is something that came directly off the fcps website we already know that basing things off parental involvement is majorly inequitable many parents can't access resources or have a language barrier and thousands don't know about the process kids shouldn't be denied educational opportunities or even the chance to be considered for programs simply because their parents can't be involved that's a regressive policy and it leads to access to opportunity falling along racial and socioeconomic lines so then why is it such a big factor for a program that fundamentally

051affects every aspect of a student's learning experience why is it that 70 of kids come into the program based on parental involvement something which is only afforded to kids whose parents have the knowledge and the resources to advocate for them according to our division's equity profile english language learners make up about 1.5 percent of our level 4 programs when they make up more than 20 percent of our student population additionally students on free reduced meals make up about 12.7 percent of level 4 when they are 27 of our student population and so i ask why is it that when i talked to my two predecessors in this office they both said they didn't feel represented when they were going through the aap program as young students why is it that one of our finalists for

052student rep this year was a young latina student who was focused on ensuring that other students could be represented in aap because she as a young scholar didn't see that growing up and why is it that one of my friends a friend who i would like to note is going to stanford next year would always tell me that in middle school she felt dumb because she wasn't in the advanced academics program well i'm going to give you a few words from current and former students to maybe help decipher a little bit of that we'll start with ddl syad who is a 2021 graduate of tj this was part of a piece she put in tj's student newspaper i started third grade on the second floor of the school with a new group of people we

053were the smart kids the general education kids were outside in the trailers filtered away labeled as dumb and otherwise forgotten we had constant support from our teachers we had cool projects and the parents always brought pie for pi day life as i knew it was pretty good as an aap student i later learned that the gen ed kids didn't have the same cool projects and they didn't get pie day celebrations later one day in third grade my class was walking into the cafeteria and a gen ed class was walking out that was when i noticed most kids in the class walking out were black or hispanic nearly zero white kids when i looked at my line i realized that it was me who was the odd one out that was the first time i noticed

054race at my school now let's rewind aap kids are supposedly smart gen eds are supposedly dumb i knew it my classmates knew it even the teachers made their respective comments imagine if you were a gen ed student imagine being told from eight years old that you're stupid imagine watching this other group of students the smarter ones do all the fun projects and have all these activities suddenly it's not just about pi anymore suddenly aap stops being this cool harmless program suddenly you can't really blame those kids those majority black and hispanic kids for not trying in school what's the point if you're labeled as dumb next i'm going to note gerleen carr who is a 2021 graduate of tj and last year's recipient of the school board's character award i once told a friend that

055i'm on pre-introduced lunch and she excuse me on free lunch and she burst out laughing asking why we go to a school where less than two percent of the students receive free reduced lunch my dad was out of the picture for several years and my mom worked long hours my parents didn't know anything about the school system or how it worked i was so jealous of all the kids who said their parents helped them with their homework i hadn't even known that parents could do that of course i didn't get into aap i was very confused about the whole thing but i figured i wasn't all that smart i was okay with that she was the only student in her graduating class who went to tj after not being in aap throughout her career the

056day before the eighth grade science sol i sat in on the aap science teachers review session that was the best day of school i'd ever had i learned so much and it was so easy to pay attention and stay interested because of how much more i was being challenged but it was a bittersweet day because at the same time i was shocked at how much more in-depth and effective aap instruction was let me read that again i was shocked at how much more in-depth and effective aap instruction was i couldn't believe what i had missed out on i was supposedly smart enough to attend tj so shouldn't i have been smart enough to receive aap instruction last is a student named sharon santos who is a current senior at chantilly high school this was also

057an excerpt in the purple tide which is chantilly's news publication from third grade to eighth grade students are separated and told that the classroom they are placed in determines their intelligence and potential the message delivered to students receiving gen ed was very clear you are not as smart as they are as for aap students the expectation of high achievement that the program sets creates an environment in which success is the only option as i look around my senior classes i see striking similarities to that of my third grade class the legacy of the aap program lives well past eighth grade despite students being allowed to choose more challenging courses in high school a student who was part of the aap program may be more likely to consider and enroll in more ap classes the solution

058does not lie in funding the programs that separated students on the basis of metrics collected when the student is between seven and eight years old and guarantees them to an elite class until high school the solution lies in ensuring each child has what they need to achieve their academic potential and so tonight i pose to you all this question why is it that we label some kids as gifted and other kids as not gifted when 70 of students who are considered to get that gifted label come in not through a test score but through parental involvement which is a really disparate measure that helps a select few kids and that select few is on average more wealthier and far more privileged than our county as a whole thank you agenda item 4.01 confirmation of action

059taken and closed meeting i'll call miss corbett sanders for the motion thank you madam chair i moved to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who threatened other students and behaved in a manner that interfered with the operation of the school and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent is there a second seconded by mr frisch all those in favor okay one two three all those against abstaining um that motion passes with dr anderson miss marin uh not here tonight agenda item five consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure robert's rules provide for consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may

060be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to approving these items seeing and hearing none the consent agenda is approved agenda item six new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote tonight uh but but action is scheduled for a future meeting these new business items are on the screen agenda item 7 board committee reports i'll call on mr frisch for a public engagement committee update and i will call on miss mclaughlin and miss tolin for a report from the skipped committee mr frisch thank you the public engagement committee met last week we formalized suggested changes to the governance manual section on community participation to provide participants who

061need it with translation services and make sure they do not lose any of their time as a result of using those services so you saw it was listed on news business and that means that it will be coming to a board meeting near you very soon for approval additionally we continued working on our proposed handbook and guidelines for school board advisory committees the end is in sight and we will soon begin engaging committees relevant staff and our board colleagues for their feedback in advance of a future work session to be scheduled at a later date thank you thank you i'll do our scripts reports we had our final meeting for the school year of skips yesterday on may 11th and last week our executive team met as well the full successful child and youth policy

062team mets we have two school board members myself and miss mclaughlin and two board of supervisor members rodney loscandalia palcek on the committee this year the idea behind skipped is that all children need to be safe nurtured healthy achieving active included and respected and in order for this to happen in fairfax county many fairfax county organizations need to collaborate for this to be true policy and resource guidance for this is given by this organization we have very senior members of scps that are active on this team dr ivey dr presidio dr boyd mr plattenberg dr king mr tysons miss burke and others thank you so much for your participation although work by this committee was slowed during the pandemic the group is planning to move forward on many key issues said ms mclaughlin and i

063really want to bring the board up to speed on the five key areas that we're working on we've got a lot that will be happening and a lot that we'll be bringing to you in the fall as far as early childhood and school readiness anne marie tohi from fairfax county amara burke from fcps gave us our report yesterday they have been leading something called the ready region capital area for early childhood and school readiness and it's a all sort of virginia unified early childhood system so we are in the forefront on that work scps did early development performed an early development instrument diagnostic instrument on all of our kindergartners and so we have this data to show school readiness and we'll use this data to inform strategic planning we'll be mapping this data to see

064what our needs are and where we really need to focus resources so we'll have that available data they are revising and improving the implementation of their strategic plan and working with george mason as a partner engaging families and using this as a framework for expanding family partnerships we are looking for the feasibility of including early childhood programming in our cip projects both for the county and for fcps and looking at space that is currently available in county facilities that we could potentially use for early childhood facilities we have an rfp out to expand part-time programming in libraries apartment community rooms etc and as i mentioned looking at these capital projects and seeing what is needed to implement additional sites school board members the fcps we plague groups have been very helpful to this program and

065the bridge to kindergarten program that is jointly funded and is now in every single one of our elementary schools has been really popular so please please advertise in your newsletters the fact that these are happening we need people to sign up fcps is having in-house discussions we have a meeting coming up in a week or so on how to expand access for three to four year olds and we are working on this plan and our experts in early childhood will get us information including budget numbers on how we can potentially expand this work on the behavioral health side the community services board and healthy minds fairfax is coordinating with our own fcps our minds matter program they are currently beginning the development of a new blueprint or strategic plan on this effort and we'll have

066a survey there's a survey out a number of you already have it out in your newsletters and i appreciate that if you can get it out that we need to get input on what people need from our behavioral health resources both from fcps and from the county we have some incredible cooperation going on with fairfax county is providing short-term behavioral health services to 15 of our elementary schools through a grant program and is currently available to all middle school and high schools they have deployed a clinician one day per week at burke bryant montrose mountain view and quander schools they are working with our scl universal screener data and our signs of suicide screenings to see where schools need the most help fairfax county is providing health clinicians in our three community schools you'll hear

067more about that too it's no secret that we have substance abuse issues across the entire country in fairfax county is no exception we do have an opioid task force between the county and the schools and staff is developing a report for us that we will see early next week about exactly what that task force is doing and what the plans are there was a plea along those lines by the school related members of skipt yesterday to focus on this work and see how we can provide as immediately as possible additional services and as i said we'll be working with staff to get an update by early next week ms mclaughlin thank you uh colleagues i just have uh an update on the other three areas of focus for skip and you know it is a

068lot of work but a lot of times because this is the joint work of the board of supervisors and the school board the system and the county um we did really want to make sure you guys understand where we are and this was sort of a recap of where we stand for the year so the other three buckets the first one is my brother's keeper this is a program that the obama foundation launched it's a national program to help boys and young men of color and fairfax county is officially launching its chapter in the fall this was an outcropping of chairman mckay's task force on equity and inclusion that occurred during the 2020-21 year after the full-scale launch the goal is to look at refining existing services within fairfax county to better engage these youth

069in early 2023 winter time frame they will hold a local action summit and from that summit they will then develop a 180 day action plan and use that data to examine um education and workforce uh social-emotional learning and behavioral health outcomes for boys and young men of color the second bucket is about career readiness and workforce development um i will preface that uh our own sloan presidio is the uh champion of that particular area within skipt and working with supervisor rodney lusk so he will be the expert if you want to know more about it um but essentially one of the big announcements for that is that they have developed a new center called wish the workforce innovation skills hub it just opened in the lead district and uh they will be working with fairfax

070county um career and technical education staff to also look at how we can implement the joint environmental task force goals around green workforce development but the goal is to assist youth 16 to 24 years of age in finding and training for in-demand careers then in terms of community schools i think we're all a little bit more familiar with that but i did want to provide an update because you all did a great job when we were presented with our community schools pilot program of which you know we have three so far but the goal is that we be very strategic as we increased this pilot to look at expanding throughout the county so where we stand right now is that we have under sloan presidio shop staff working with county in particular jessie ellis that

071they developed an evaluation plan looking at key metrics of our existing three pilots to evaluate what have been some of the outcomes to date and then not just doing surveys with our stakeholders staff in the building families who have been in those programs but also some focus group interviews as well collect all of that data come back to the board in the fall so that we can see the data of those three schools what have been sort of the measurable outcomes and then um also talk about the structure and framework for site selection management of these community schools so there will be a lot to come in the fall but i wanted to let you know that um dr presidio brought the draft evaluation plan to uh me and miss holland to look at uh

072he also then um shared it with uh both ms darinath kofix and miss corbett sanders before they were going to launch it out but we're looking at it but i i would also recommend i'll circle back with ms pikarski and ms ratchet sizemore heiser there is an urgency to this evaluation tool going out um but certainly you know i know the four of us looked it in and had some questions we want to make sure that the metrics were robust enough um and i want to reassure dr presidio that we do understand that he is waiting on us but we had only gotten it about a week earlier and we needed some time on that and then i guess i covered everything correct i did you're all done we're all done thank you agenda item

073eight board matters i'm sorry miss mccarski given the extensive update on skipped i think it would be helpful if we could ask some questions if you need to go ahead if there are no objections if there are no objections go ahead so there are two areas of particular concern that i've been very active in and have worked very closely with my colleague ms daranak kofax and so i think we both have questions on two areas one a year ago we met and discussed the importance of metrics and the community schools and how you clarify those metrics and actually having a longitudinal study associated with how success rates have occurred in the community school uh at walt whitman and uh at mount vernon woods and so we asked for a year ago those very clear uh

074metrics um which would show what happened prior to the community schools being implemented and then the growth as a result of those being implemented the information that was shared with us last friday which was supposed to be implemented this past monday did not have that it only had a one-year look can we get a commitment that we will look at the pre-communities schools and then the impact of the implementation of those community schools so that we can actually determine that rather than just looking at covid and postcovid so i i really appreciate that question because several board members have had some email correspondence with me on that and what i've tried to clarify is that the plan is not meant to be a comprehensive longitudinal eval program evaluation yet of those three sites and what

075we're trying to do is collect some information some baseline information that we can collect this spring to really inform the next board work session that we hope to schedule sometime either in the summer or in the fall as a follow-up work session to the conversation the board had in february and in that february board work session one of the requests before moving forward with supporting the skipped framework or excuse me the community schools framework and taking that information back to the board of supervisors was to have some better data and some better uh understanding of the current level of services the efficacy of those services and the effectiveness of those services um and that's what we're trying to do with this initial evaluation it's not meant to be a comprehensive longitudinal study we don't have

076the time to be able to do that and be able to inform the board of the current state on a time frame that would put us in a work session in the summer or in the fall so i'm working with the county to try to collect that information if the board wants a comprehensive longitudinal study then that's going to take longer it definitely will be something that we would have to schedule with the office of research and strategic improvement and i'm not sure how long that would be so my understanding from the work session in february is that we wanted to come back in the summer and the fall and there was a request to collect information we're going to collect quite a bit of data this the survey instrument is quite comprehensive we're going

077to do focus groups interviews with all of the stakeholders involved we'll be looking at quantitative data about you know student performance sols grades attendance rates behavior disciplinary incidents and the like but it's not meant to be a longitudinal multi-year evaluation that would require really a lot more time and effort so i appreciate your response dr presidio but as the person who made the motion in february about the importance of the baseline data both ms darina kofax and myself actually relied on the conversation we had a year ago and said we had a commitment to better understanding what the um what the baseline was and then moving forward and the baseline is not year three of this of the community schools but rather the baseline is what was the what was the quantitative profile of the

078school pre-community school and then how did we move the dial as a result of the community school implementation and you can't do that unless you actually look at the look back and so i would urge that if it takes us a little bit longer we should take the time necessary to actually have that that looked at well i mean i certainly would defer to the to the board as a body on what the expectations are and what the timeline is um you know there will be some comparison that we can look at from current state in in previous state but a comprehensive evaluation is going to take more time part of the challenge of course is covet and the reliability and the validity of the data in those two years in the cova period that

079we will have to really try to figure out how to control for in a comprehensive evaluation the other issue is that the inputs are all different we have three different models with three different management organizations with you know a variety of services that were provided so it's going to be really hard to control for all those variables and we're going to have to get an evaluation team to help us with that that's not something that i would feel comfortable drawing those types of conclusions in just a few weeks of time of analysis i would take the time to do it and get beyond because when we're talking about focus groups sir what happens with the focus group is that's a qualitative analysis and we actually have the quantitative capability because of the data collected with

080discipline data sol data and grades well just just to clarify so the board as a body knows that this proposed evaluation would contain both qualitative data through those focus groups and interviews as well as quantitative data through hard data like student achievement data attendance data discipline data and student test data and and survey data so it would be a mixed methods program evaluation no i understand but i will um i'll follow up again i did send an email detailing just this and i was a commitment that was made to uh miss darren at cofax and i a year ago so i expect that when a commitment is made that we honor it um and then the other aspect is the discussion of the opioid task force which i was actually at the kickoff of the

081opioid task force and it's something that we've worked on quite extensively so i would like to have a deeper briefing on this because both miss darren i kovacs and myself have been working very carefully with the leadership in region 3 as well as our counterparts on the board of supervisors and i've also been working with with brian hill and my concern is that i don't want to see us waiting until the fall to do better communications on the resources available because of most recently the data that's come out on the opioid deaths 107 000 people last year and the increase in most of them tied to the increase of fentanyl so if we could get a better brief on that thank you miss mclaughlin followed by miss um darnett koufax um yes thank you um

082dr presidio i i'm really sensitive to uh what we know workload demands on on central office and i was wondering if this might be one of those situations where it's it's a matter of interpretation so what had gone through my mind is as we go to gather the quantitative data on those um different metrics you were naming off like absenteeism you know testing scores discipline and i don't want to speak for miss corbett sanders but what i would hope is if you're we're already going to get one year then for our i.t department to just pull the each of the years in those subject areas i understand that this isn't about being scientific at a minimum but it is a snapshot of just to i think what ms corbett sanders is saying is we don't

083we're not asking for a deep detailed report but i think the data once you pull one year you just mean show the data in the charts and and show that that multi-year and especially since we've come because a lot of these pilots were occurring during covet and we know that there's been some major impact there i almost think pre-covered data could be very helpful so so that's exactly what we're intending to do but i think what i interpreted miss corbett sanders saying is that she wants more comprehensive analysis of you know what those outcomes and the effects of those outcomes were across the three different program models and that type of analysis is going to take a lot more technical assistance than you know what i would be able to do just on my own

084so if it's just providing the data with you know some high level observational analysis that's exactly what we were intending to do but if it's really trying to look at the efficacy of the different program models then that is going to take more time and we're going to need to get somebody who can help us with that evaluation design yeah i know dr ivey was signaling she wanted to say something but i just i want to capture what you said so we're we're all hopefully on the same page as much as possible i do think that as as many years as you can go back to the before the pilots began just on those data metrics you talked about and certainly just a high level what did we see here that that sounds really good

085to me in terms of the analysis like you noted and we've talked about that each of those three pilots are kind of operating differently and which model are we seeing is working well that is i think a deeper analysis component and i will say that for me as one board member i will give you as much runway as you all need but what i've always hoped is that this is viewed as these are our pilots and we aren't going to go expand and add more of these programs if we don't even know from which of the pilots we are finding the most effective so until we do that analysis of those three um that's where my caution is that we would adopt and expand without determining in the end which the which pilot's the best

086way to go does that make sense it does and again the intent was to get that initial program evaluation set of data to the board in the summer to be scheduled for review with the board in the summer or the fall to inform the board's discussion about the framework for community schools because the board of supervisors will not take any action on approval of the framework until this body takes action on approval of the framework but certainly we would not be looking at expanding until we had a more comprehensive program evaluation in place so it's not to to say the board we would be asking the board to vote to expand any of the sites in the summer or the fall just to adopt the framework itself and the components of the framework so we're

087sort of looking at part a right now and then we'll be doing part b on the expansion component down the road when we've got a little more detailed analysis that's the proposal for the board so the board just needs to give us i think it sounds like a little bit more direction so i'd like to call on dr ivy and i just want to remind everyone this isn't a work session we are not prepared to discuss this i i did not come prepared to have these discussions well mr make sure that questions get answered but beyond that i i agree i think that you might not have been looped into this but those of us who were being asked we're going to launch this and we want to get your feedback and so we're just

088trying to a make sure you all know this is going on and b to ask our questions of staff and so it isn't it isn't a work session we're not expecting anybody to answer work session questions but this the board has in the past when school board members give a committee update other board members can ask questions and i agree so let's keep it to questions i just staff is not prepared and dr brabrand's not here either that that's all i'm saying that's all i'm saying miss mclaughlin we're just i'm not prepared dr ivey so i think we'll take this feedback tonight in this discussion and dr presidio and i will discuss it and talk with our staff and see what it is we can do and work with ms tolland and mclaughlin and consult

089with miss corporate sanders and miss um mclaughlin and um see how we can proceed so thank you all and if the rest of us could also see this so that this doesn't continue to become a work session of the part mr kofax dr ivey i was going to say what you said i think we need to take this offline i need to be included in this as well because one of the pilots is in my area and there's more more pilots so there are four board members who are involved in this and we all need to get on the same page and uh dr presidio i you know you and i have had several conversations about this but i think we need real clarity between the skipped members those of us who have have the

090pilots in our areas and then we we need to come to some kind of consensus as to where we want to go before we give it to the full board and then before we give it to the board of supervisors because it didn't happen that way the first time you know that to nobody's fault here in this room right now so um thank you um [Music] okay agenda item eight uh board matters and we'll start my with miss stolen i can start on the are you right now okay unfortunately today we had a near accident in front of one of our elementary schools in drainsville and you know we've had we did have an accident at one of our middle schools a couple weeks ago so please i would just like to make a plea

091to the public don't drop your children outside of the normal kiss and ride procedures for your school please have your children bike or walk to school safely or take the bus and also can all drivers please be aware of stopped school buses and speed limits around our schools especially at arrival and dismissal we have several traffic issues around the county working with fcps safety and security and the drainsville supervisor's office to look for solutions please do your part slow down and drive safely i was very excited this morning on government classes at herndon high school in conjunction with cornerstones hosted a herndon futures forum i was joined by delegate irene shin senator jennifer voisco mayor sheila olum and supervisor john faust to participate in conversations around student mental health school capacity the role of state

092and local government development and small business in herndon climate change economic security career opportunities and more i surely hope this becomes an annual event the students did an absolutely incredible job of organizing this and participating well done hornets um i was able this past week to speak with a mclean high school highlander reporter about our hiring procedures and search process to bring in dr reed and had a great conversation around that you've heard about our skipped meetings and the herndon school readiness program met last week as well i last night attended the heradin high school honors reception i'm so proud of all of our students and the incredible places that they are going and i'll look forward to hearing the same from maclean and langley tomorrow i am touring the cooper middle school renovation with

093supervisor faust and i was super excited to see they just opened a whole new section of cooper as part of the renovation process great falls coven run and forestville families i'll see you at the golf tournament next monday and i'll see churchill road elementary school parents and families at the family celebration tomorrow evening and um we are selecting the new principal at herndon middle school and have our first our meeting for that on next monday at 5 16 so please join us for that we are preparing for renovations at herndon elementary school and drainsville elementary school so those of you in the community that would like to participate please let me know thanks thank you miss mclaughlin followed by mr nakova yes thank you um i just uh want to touch on a few things

094one i had a meeting with a family about one of my high schools and how they do the national honor society application process and i know that seems kind of a silly thing to bring up to all of you in tonight's meeting but um it re it rose it raised a red flag for me on maybe what is our standard consistency and how it's being done school to school because in in general the national honor society is really a wonderful thing and they have a national constitution there are best practices and how it gets done and i'll be bringing it you know to this the school and the region um attention just because what was outlined for me by the family um really unfortunately you know created some uh some trauma and i think we

095need to just really be mindful again of something that we want to be encouraging of our students to do and it is such a wonderful way to channel our leaders but uh it was it's enough for me to bring it up to you tonight that i was surprised in what i learned um the second thing i wanted to just share with you is uh i mentioned this to skipped at the end of our meeting and i sent something out in the newsletter but i would really appreciate for my fellow colleagues when i send this to you it's a survey about health research in underserved communities and it's being done through i thrive which is the integrated translational health research institute of virginia it's a partnership with uva virginia tech the carillion clinic and innova health

096systems and so it has a deadline um that ends i believe june 14th uh so again i'll send you more information but i can't emphasize enough especially the at-larges and some of my colleagues who represent our under sort under-resourced communities that this is just such a crucial way to bring their voices and their needs to the table um and then i just wanted to put a spotlight on the budget for all of you i know we're two weeks away from voting on it and i know at our work session you all heard me expressing concern that we've we've got some really crucial uh mission critical needs of our system and i spent over two hours today talking with jeff plattenberg and designing construction and facilities and one of my high schools about our athletic fields

097and how in desperate need they are of maintenance and as you all know our facilities department for annual repairs and infrastructure improvements there's just simply not enough money in the budget and so i'll be bringing you again some of my ideas but i i want to make sure that if there's anything we can do in our budget to make sure our resources are going in the right way i'd like you to all to consider it thanks thank you um i was happy to attend with many of you my colleagues a question and answer series with our um incoming superintendent dr reed last week and if you missed this opportunity you will have another next tuesday may 17th with a virtual town hall from seven to eight and you can register for that online last night

098it was wonderful to honor our 2022 retirees i think they said within that room there was over 3 500 collective years of service to fcps and this is a dedicated service so thank you all for what you have shared with us your talents your skills we appreciate you and we wish you well on your next chapter and uh there will be a spring bands concert coming up on may 19th at edison high school and mount vernon is having won and um i don't want miss corbett sanders i don't want to take too much away from you but i know you're probably as excited as i am that the band director the orchestra teacher excuse me not the band the orchestra teacher at mount vernon high school mr alberto rodriguez reached out to an up-and-coming composer

099and she composed a five-minute original score for the mount vernon orchestra and they will be presenting that it will be the premiere the name of it is free fall and that will be premiered on wednesday may 25th at 7 pm so hope to see you at one of these upcoming events um ms cohen followed by mr fresh thanks very much these last couple weeks i had the opportunity to go see our davis center career center kids in action at the burlington and the tysons hyatt and i learned a lot of things about putting donuts on the hangers at burlington and and sorting them and then how to actually roll um hospital i mean hotel grade uh utensils in a why are you looking at me like that it's a good skill to have in a

100napkin um so that was great thank you for your patience while i redid it three times um and then i got to go um and hang out with our students at the pulley center at the courtyard marriott in alexander alexandria and get to help load industrial washer and dryers and watch some amazing sorting of 500 like different kinds of sugar and sugar substitutes done very efficiently and so i'm hoping they'll come to my house later this week um i also got to go to lake braddock and speak to their teachers for tomorrow class a big shout out to ms castro's class who asked so many amazing questions and really kept me on my toes and i'm just so excited we got to award several contracts for fcps so can't wait to see these students back

101teaching for us and several letters of intent to folks in the class there so thank you thank you for having me yesterday we got to be a part of the mural reveal at west springfield elementary school incredibly cool to see kids who kept saying when they saw the different folks in the mural that one looks like me and it was awesome and they all got to put their handprints on different pillars the last thing i just wanted to say is along with a few of my colleagues getting to go to the retirement ceremony last night was amazing and i got to give a huge hug to one of my favorite people in the world miss leslie lau torres from cherry run elementary school pac program one of the first places i got to substitute teach

102and when you talk about people who go above and beyond what they do she used to come to my best friend's house with a child who was not supposed to be potty trained couldn't eat solid foods and they thought he never would and came every day for dinner time unpaid to help for six months until he would eat solid food and he now houses a refrigerator and is about six feet tall and that is all thanks to miss leslie so i know there are a million miss leslie's in our school system and we hate to see you go and we hope you'll come back and substitute and we hope you know how much you've meant to all of us thank you all right um so since our last board meeting i have visited with the

103greenway downs citizens association um to talk about the falls church high school renovation um it was exciting because my staff aide grew up in that area and so we got to talk about their community and the great changes in store for falls church high school including the very large parking improvement on the campus i've had office hours with various parents and students um this past weekend speaking of murals um i was able to attend the providence district mural unveiling uh with supervisor dalia palcik and her new daughter who is adorable um at celebrate fairfax and tysons and last week i visited kilmer middle school and had great conversations with principal miller about next year's middle school recess as well as well as the proposed cell phone policies and their plans for summer school and learning

104loss and more and i'm looking forward to visiting more schools this month trying to squeeze in a few more before graduations begin which are just around the corner so next week in the week after i will be at frost middle school marshall road elementary school oakton high school and mosaic elementary school and then on to like six graduations so very much looking forward to celebrating with everybody esqueisgamara followed by miss somas okay well i had the pleasure of being with our chair at liberty middle school arbor day with the board of supervisor folks and they have the most amazing fresh eggs for a very very low price and the cutest chickens um and so i thought oh my gosh they they're warm and delicious so at any rate i also had the opportunity to watch

105crazy for you at south lakes high school where i saw amazing performances by our students i also had the opportunity to attend the fcps hall of fame event where i was literally floored by one of our former students who is in a wheelchair but doesn't seem to know it and has been writing children's books she's been on the today show and she is an amazing speaker who brought all of us uh to tears so we have a lot to be proud of um and i hope to chat with her soon and then finally the last thing i'll mention even though there's other stuff but i had an opportunity to celebrate with the lee district where they were celebrating the opening of their community center which is quite amazing and they have a workforce project there

106for especially for some of our students to help them develop as well as enjoy and play and it's a beautiful facility so that was a wonderful celebration and i too look forward to visits to schools and looking forward to how many graduations as an at-large member we can possibly fit into our schedule so have a good night everybody yeah i think i won the competition last year but i'll you know white flag for this year uh too many things going on but no um i had the pleasure last week of joining the hispanic leadership alliance uh who has raised twenty six thousand dollars that they were able to offer to students as scholarships for their to fulfill their dreams and goals in college next year also uh was obviously a joy to join the retirement

107ceremony yesterday uh and and was more than a formality really it was incredibly touching to see people who've devoted major chunks of their lives i mean you know obviously it starts uh with the lower end but but 20 30 40 years of service to our system uh really speaks to what dr grabran said earlier about a family and that this is really something that's beyond just a job uh and and our staff are more than just employees uh but really we're a community uh that cultivates the next generation so that was really a privilege and then another really moving opportunity i had was a student of ours who was a senior the year we came into office invited me to her wedding was one of my mentees it was yeah it was really really inspiring

108actually to to see her uh you know have a momentous occasion of her life and to think about you know the importance of the work we're doing to really set them up for success in their futures and then finally i did want to just put in a plug um i am really concerned as we're having the srnr conversation uh and i know we're postponing it to be thoughtful and whatnot one of the uh modifications that is coming is really our hands are tied about uh because tsrc fairfax is being shut down and i you know i don't think we've spoken enough about this i don't think we've advocated enough to the county and uh jeff mckay and team i want you to hear us loud and clear we need a solution uh to this it's

109it's provided a critical alternative to kids who otherwise would not be afforded an educational opportunity in a secure environment and as colleagues we've already seen the impact of not having that option in some of our conversations so i i'm pleading that we really be creative about how we might um find an alternative to that uh and i'm disappointed that we're gonna have to make that change in the srnr this year but anyway have a good night everybody miss corbett sanders followed by ms seismor heiser thank you madam chair it has been a busy couple of weeks for everybody and some really exciting things and i'll start with last night's event celebrating the 150 retirees and it was truly a family event it was family by choice in that you had people who'd worked together in

110the same buildings for decades but also you had husbands and wives who had joined the school system single and got married and you had sisters who had spent their whole career together in the school system and that really just speaks volumes about the caring culture and a great place to work so it was a nice joyous evening celebrating people going on to the next step in their lives and inviting them to come back as substitutes so uh we hope they will i also um had the opportunity to brief the good shepherd housing leadership team on the work that we are doing in workforce development career and technical education and adult community education and how that work actually provides a nice compliment and a handoff to the work of the wish center which was uh opened

111last saturday and so it really uh was a great opportunity to have that sharing between the two and show how it um hands off and then i had the opportunity to work with the fort belvoir career transitions job fair and really encouraged fcps actually had a table at this job fair for the first time and we were there recruiting to see uh to have our national heroes join the fcps heroes of the future and i encourage all of our service members as they retire to consider fcps as their second career on june 4th fcps will be partnering with the naacp to have a virtual job fair for our students on the trades and working with all of the trade trade unions in the dc metro area to create opportunities for our students to look at

112the trades as a potential post-high school opportunity including having some internships this summer the south county federation invited me this week to talk about the challenges that our students face with social media and really encouraging parents that they have an active role to play and to take more interest in the social media activities of their children know what they're doing online and put in the protections as necessary and also to be aware of signs where a child may be cyber bullied and provided them some tools that fcps has created to really support families and be partners with families in this area and then of course looking forward to mount vernon activities next week thank you i will try not to have that bell ring i you know um very was very excited to finish my

113last student listening tour i've been doing a student listening tour at a high school in each region and last week was region five and i appreciate um being at mount vernon with my colleague karen corbett sanders to hear from two different groups of students on issues and concerns and thoughts they have and i will say to share dr ivey since dr bray brandt's not here the number one thing that i heard in all of my listening sessions across the county was about advisory so i will just let you know that um but really the students were really bright very articulate and had some really really great suggestions for continual improvement and it was wonderful to hear them lots of principal meetings there's lots of openings in region four so i'm excited to see what great

114candidates our region's superintendent will bring back i am a little jealous of miss cohen with pulley and davis center visit since i did those earlier this year so i know all about the donuts but i had a actually really great work site visit with our step programs at south lakes high school this week and also went to the courtyard by maria and watched our students and the best thing i heard about our step program actually was two one was the number of paid employments our interns have gotten and so they're leaving the programs because of their paid employments and the second was how creative south lakes in particular has been and creating situations where our steps students can also access classes to get their standard diploma or take other classes and so it was a

115great model for i think what what can be done with our transition programs dr presidio not that i'm hinting um and i also had a great visit with mountain vernon woods elementary school thank you prince o'neil and principal blunt at greenbrier west it was wonderful to sit out in the sun and talk about all the great things the school is doing and here's some of the challenges um if you want a sub that's a challenge i heard everywhere across the county we're looking for some great subs but what i will say is at all the school visits um especially at mount vernon woods i will say the learning and the joy and the happiness was just palpable and it just makes your heart soar when you see those kids together and and how much they're

116learning and how happy they are doing it next week i'm going to frost with my colleague mr fresh to see the renovation and south lakes to tour the rest of the school as well as the avid program at louis and i'm looking forward to celebrating all of our students across the county at graduations i loved all the musicals that were the last two weeks and i cannot wait for the cappies thank you the arbor day event at liberty really was um quite fun um especially feeding those um dry dead worms to the chickens i felt like the kids were like really egging us on to do this so um it was it was fun they had a really good time teaching us i have had great visits to poplar tree and union mill this past

117week as well and today i had the opportunity to go to franklin middle school to celebrate the award-winning vegeta rapid deal with our family and consumer services students they won the community choice award in the real food for kids culinary challenge they are amazing it was it was really we were we were all blown away by their creativity and the exciting part is that it's going to be available for all fcps students on our school menus next year so how's that for hands-on um you know activities that have very far-reaching impact uh they were they were very excited about it um and i enjoyed that i also want to give a shout out to daniel lee who won first place at the national fencing tournament from chantilly high school and a very hearty congratulations to

118the 30 national merit scholarship winners quite a few of which are from the sully district i have some more upcoming school visits and of course all of the graduations it's going to be really fun and exciting this year to be able to celebrate with everyone um thank you all for for the meeting tonight and with that we'll adjourn you