FCPS School Board Regular Meeting - 2/10/2022

001so [Music] board members please take your seats oh all right good evening the february 10 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 and a performance of the national anthem by the island creek elementary school choir under the direction of sarah laird reveal to the flag of the united states of america oh say can you see by the dawn's early lights why so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming whose brush [Music] streaming bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still [Music] oh [Music] a break [Applause] well done thank you island creek parents for sharing your children with us we really appreciate it thank you agenda item 2.02 certification of

002closed meeting compliance in order to comply with section 2.2-3712-d of the code of virginia it's necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county school board convened a closed meeting on february 10 2022 to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting is there a motion boom my miss uh uh corbett sanders seconded by miss omesh all those in favor that motion passes agenda item 2.03 announcements if you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight the information may be found at the back of the auditorium or

003on 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 a reminder a mask that covers the nose and mouth must be worn at all times by everyone in attendance if you have a mask exemption or if you need a mask break please take advantage of the overflow room setup in the gymnasium agenda item 2.04 resolution honoring black history month the board will invite each recognition recipient and their supporters to come up for a photo with the board after the reading of all recognitions i call on miss keys gamara thank you madam chair whereas the month of february is the time that we as a nation recognize black history month the theme for 2022 is black health and

004wellness which acknowledges the legacy black scholars and medical practitioners in western medicine provide and reflect on the activities rituals and initiatives that black communities have done to be well and whereas the first africans arrived on the shores of virginia 400 years ago bringing skills knowledge and traditions that have created a lasting culture impacting our communities today and recognizing the importance of teaching this rich impactful history to all students and whereas african americans have contributed to the founding and development of this nation and its culture despite the obstacles of slavery discrimination and institutionalized patterns of disparity leading to the rise of the civil rights movement and the voting rights act of and whereas african-american families developed educational institutions across the nation to assist its people to achieve including howard university that has now produced the first

005woman vice president and whereas african americans have made numerous contributions to social and scientific advancements such as those made by dr charles drew who created the process to preserve blood plasma allowing it to be stored and shipped for blood transfusions and immunology and infectious diseases and expert dr corbett the scientist at the forefront of the development of the covet 19 vaccine and whereas those of african descent have lived in and contributed to the development and advancement of fairfax county since its inception as evidenced by the many contributions of private citizens businesses and african-american organizations as well as the establishment of various communities and organizations that have enhanced the rich and vibrant culture of fairfax county and worked to preserve african american culture and the rights of all its presidents to create an inclusive equitable county

006for all now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county public schools hereby officially recognizes black history month in appreciation for the contributions of great americans who have worked tirelessly and often without recognition for the advancement of both virginia and the united states i so move is there a second second seconded by dr anderson miss keys kamara would you like to speak to your resolution i would one second thank you today we acknowledge the solemn moment of black history this was a celebration was a brainchild of carter g woodson an american historian journalist and arthur who wanted to make sure that we in our educational process learned about the journey of african-american africans as they came to this continent in contrast the united daughters of the confederacy was established in 1894 i should say carter

007g woodson started his movement in the early 1900s but in the for the daughters of the confederacy in an effort to complete their mission they raised funds to erect confederate monuments and wrote and distributed textbooks espousing a theory that slavery had little to do with the civil war even though the articles establishing the confederacy mentioned slavery explicitly in outlining its purpose i mention these two acts because they really point out where we are today despite mr woodson's efforts to make sure that our students had an opportunity to learn about the contributions of africans in the americas we still have difficulty talking about our history many have dreamed that being in the united states means that we have freedom of speech that we can learn we can talk about whatever it is we need to talk

008about but the truth is our democracy in this democracy the history of african americans demonstrates both triumph and tragedy many have believed but have not always achieved the ability to be seen in their full humanity make no mistake african-americans have achieved in virtually every effort that they have participated in we can see that our vaccine was brought to us by an african-american doctor mr drew helped us to be able to have blood transfusions we have architects that have helped to design the washington d.c um our capital thank you and on and on and on there really isn't an area where african americans have not achieved even golf so when i think about how we talk about history the rub really arises in our recognition of recognizing both our tragedy and our triumph and our struggle

009to recognize the full humanity of everyone who lives within our borders at times we have tolerated dehumanization through slavery through jim crow through our watching in the video of mr floyd losing his life but make no mistake it is the acknowledgement of our past that will allow us to grow beyond the tragedy of our past so i'd like to mention just a couple of things that i think are factual first of all black history is american history the black experience is indicative of so many have suffered endured and risen above so much tragedy and we have excelled and we join many people in this nation who have suffered as well koreans african-americans native americans our jewish people are jewish fellow citizens so many i cannot name them all so please i don't think i'm leaving

010anybody out i understand that many have triumphed over difficulty but where we really struggle is really recognizing the fullness of humanity of all within our borders so the second thing i need to say is that public education is about educating the public it i shouldn't have to say that but we in public education as we teach our students we must talk about the facts of science the writings and language arts and history so let me say this again in public education we teach history all of it critical to education is critical thinking in public education we have to discuss the facts and we have to analyze them it is contrary to the educational experience for anyone elected or not to try to hinder discussions that emanate from the critical thinking process that effort is not

011education but rather the attempt to regulate thought and a continuation of the effort to prevent full discussion of our collective history we cannot temper or hinder the educational process with arbitrary standards designed to protect the comfort of some while disregarding the educational needs of many this is not equality that is not free speech and it has no place in education if we do not respect the process of education we most assuredly allow the ugliest parts of our history to repeat itself now i'd like to speak to you just for a few moments on a personal note when i ran for school board i understood that there would be people who wouldn't agree with me and i decided that in my heart and my mind i would meet with those people and we would work it

012out and have civil discussion but now in this current political atmosphere there has been a sanctioning of something other than legitimate political discourse in the last few days i received a letter from a constituent who expressed his extreme desire to tar and feather me now i'm a bit of a history buff and so i understand the history of that practice it in the history of the united states has been used to intimidate african americans and tell them where their place is along with cross burnings and lynchings and a number of other horrific things so i wanted to say this unequivocally my place today is at this dyess i hear sit here today to say that this incident stresses the importance of not only black history month but of the need to teach history all of

013it cross burnings jim crow laws lynchings the more than one million people who died at sea just so they could be forcibly ripped and divided from their families so that they could provide free labor is part of that history and it also demonstrates that the roots of why we're having difficulty sometimes recognizing the full humanity of everyone that's in this nation the same issue has arisen for other people in this country not just african americans until we teach the full breadth of the american experience there will be those who reach back and try the tactics of the past to try to gain advantage the history of african americans is a story of triumph and tragedy it provides us lessons along the way that we must absorb and learn in order to achieve a more perfect

014union as maya angelou said in one of my favorite poems detailing the black experience she said despite it all and still i rise it is my hope that we join to get together today as a community in celebration of this history that is our history and that we rise together as we learn and celebrate one another happy black history month [Applause] thank you miss kisgamara quick um reminder we do have a mask policy in effect we do ask everyone in the audience to keep your masks on or please go to the overflow room if you need a break thank you dr anderson thank you the third section of the resolution that miss keysgamara read speaks to the contributions of african americans to the founding and development of this nation and to its culture despite the

015obstacles of slavery discrimination and institutionalized patterns of disparity leading to the rise of the civil rights movement and the voting rights act of 1965. more recent example of this type of activism are reflected in black lives matter movement the 1619 project and other initiatives that foster intentional reflections and investigation to weed out the root causes which perpetuate inequity and justice discrimination and lack of access and opportunity currently it appears that recognition of obstacles that continue to exist today due to the lasting effects of discrimination and institutionalized patterns of disparity cannot be discussed without a perceived intent of division recognizing differences in advantage whether social educational or economic should not imply racism or perceived to promote divisiveness but rather should present a chance to address long-standing issues make corrections and hopefully increase understanding and expand opportunity

016where none exists should our children not be taught that africans brought to the u.s did not enjoy slavery should they not be taught that jim crow redlining and other practices have created obstacles for black families to build wealth and achieve the american dream should they not be made aware that our daily lives are impacted by the privileged privileges either afforded or not afforded given one's circumstances as a person with advanced degrees and adequate resources i maintain a much easier time navigating the various systems of our lives but often walking into certain spaces where my color and gender are the first observations being made by others the result has placed me in a position for an uphill climb to be seen as a complete person to be heard and to be found worthy add an immigrant

017background to the mixed and the challenges are exponentially multiplied should our students not be made cognizant of this reality and be given the tools to combat inequity and pursue course corrections to allow everyone regardless of circumstance a shot at the american dream black history isn't only about the contributions of black folk it's also about the efforts to overcome the obstacles that impact black folk it's about naming the struggles to inform future practices and legislation in the hopes of developing a generation that is more tolerant more inclusive than the current in a letter written by dr martin luther king jr from the birmingham jail in 1963 dr king writes we merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive we bring it out into the open where it can be seen and dealt

018with like a boil that could never be cured as long as it is covered up and but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light and justice must be exposed with all of the tension its exposure creates to the light of human conscience and to the air of national opinion before it can be cured there is space for us to adhere to dr king's words thank you for joining us for this very important recognition and resolution happy black history month [Applause] thank you dr anderson are there any other school board members wishing to speak miss marin virginia's legacy is ground zero for enslaving kidnapped human beings puts responsibility on educators in this commonwealth to portray the full breadth of history the humanity of those impacted and involved i

019know that the constituents that i represent overwhelmingly support the teaching of america's complex history involving racism against black america through economic political and social explorations and critical thinking i began advocating for anti-racist instruction about american history that truthfully presents the role of black americans in history and society way before i was elected and i'm proud that my child received a more accurate and full account of american history when in fourth grade two years ago and i'm eager for my now third grader to participate in fourth grade virginia studies next year because he will get a better experience to the hard work we've done in curriculum and training and building a more caring culture for our students and staff thank you thank you mr mayor and ms mclaughlin followed by ms corbin sanders thank you um

020i did want to uh elevate something that miss keisgamara had shared because it's something that i have not seen us do in my time on the board and it has to do with elevating carter g woodson as she noted he is um not only a native virginian he was born in 1875 to formally enslaved parents he was the second african-american to earn a phd at harvard only preceded by w dubois but what's most important is that he is known throughout our nation as the father of black history and when we think about a man who in 1912 graduates from harvard then goes on within three years to create the african-american the association for the study of negro life and history later to be renamed the association of study of african american life and history and

021its scholarly journey journal that is now known as the journal of african american history one year later after that it is his leadership that he also then brought the negro history week now known as the black history month i just felt that it was important for our community to understand that not only can we be extremely proud of this virginian but as ms maron noted under the circumstances of the history of our commonwealth and to think that over a hundred years ago this gentleman was blazing the trail not simply to make the world better for african americans in this country but for all americans and finally i just want to spotlight as a family that's affiliated with the university of virginia i'm so proud of the fact that in 1981 that they created the carter

022g woodson institute for african-american and african-american and african studies in honor of him and this program is not only something for undergraduates to pursue african-american history but also at the graduate level post doctorate level and their research institute is considered one of the um greatest resources that people can continue to learn and understand and carry on the history of african americans so ms keith kamara thank you so much for bringing him up this evening i can't think of a better virginian that we celebrate here this evening miss corbett sanders before i provide remarks i want to thank my colleagues miss keys gamora dr anderson sharing your lived experience is so important for all of us at this diocese to understand and the most recent and egregious communication to ms keys gemara is unacceptable we have

023to find a way in this country and in this commonwealth and in this county to have respectful discourse without having personal attacks made against any member and certainly not one that is steeped in the racist undertones that you received and i apologize on behalf of the people of fairfax county that you received such a note [Applause] so i normally do not add comments to the black history month resolution however this year in light of the tone and tenor of the discourse regarding how we teach history i think it is imperative for all of us to speak about this issue you all know that i am a product of fairfax county public schools and that the district that i represent the best part of being from mount vernon is because it is steeped in history representing

024the best of the country's beginning and the worst with its history of slavery we recognize and lifted up this dichotomy last year when they own a judge marker in front of the mount vernon estate was unveiled last spring own a judge's story is one that must be told to understand better the complexities of our founding fathers and the importance of learning from our history ona's story was only recognized because of the important work of a fairfax county employee maura keaney a school-based technologist who is currently at island creek elementary school morris started a group called history hunters club and that club decided to do research on the real history of the state of virginia and then present their results to the state of virginia so that it could be recognized in a series of i

025believe six markers across the commonwealth so that's a great example about the power of education for our students and these were students who normally would not have dug deep into the his into black history so um they've they learned from it and they are stronger because of the history that they learned from it did not diminish their understanding of the importance and the respect they had for the first president but it recognized the frailties of that first president as well as an elementary school student many of you have heard the story before but i was an elementary school student in the 1960s and i had the pleasure of going to a school that was actually built as the very first elementary school opened in fairfax camp county as a desegregated school that school was named

026quander road elementary it was named after a very prominent family that still lives in the community my classmates were descendants from the slaves who were able to and they were able to tell their families history and their stories black educators in the building were amongst the best in the school i say all this because learning that history and understanding our country's history the good the bad and the ugly does not mean that we diminish the positive it just means that we tell the full story and that hearing about that history from people who have those lived experiences from families that have deeper roots in the united states than i ever will because my family didn't come until the late 1800s it's that learning from that that empowers our children to understand and to think critically

027and to want to dig deeper and so i just encourage that we remember that as we approach the importance of not only strengthening our curriculum but also broadening it to ensure every child benefits from that knowledge thank you seeing no other school board members wishing to speak i will go ahead and call for that vote all those in favor raise your hands and that is unanimous thank you agenda item to after all yeah photos at the end agenda item 2.05 resolution honoring public schools week i call on ms omesh whereas the national school boards association celebrates public schools during public schools week february 21st to 25th 2022 and whereas public education is the foundational commitment that society makes to ensure that a pathway is available for every child to succeed in life no matter their

028background capabilities or family circumstances and whereas public schools educate nine of every 10 students and indeed educate the majority of school-aged children in fairfax county and whereas this year the theme is creating safe equitable and engaging public schools which reflects fairfax county public schools commitment to our students families and staff and whereas public schools may look different this year to reflect the evolution of learning in a complex world but still retain the central commitment to students as safety academic learning and personal growth and whereas during public schools week fcps honors our roughly 178 000 students with and over 24 800 dedicated employees working in 198 schools and centers and now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county public school board joins other supporters and advocates in celebrating public schools week may all children thrive

029in public schools i so move is there a second a second second of my miss mayor and miss ole miss would you like to offer some comments i would thank you miss uh picarski uh obviously it's timely that this be right after african american history month and i did want to reserve my remarks on that because i thought the magnitude uh and importance and gravity of what mesquiz gemara and dr anderson shared um should speak the loudest in tonight's conversation so i'll just say amen to that and and appreciate my gratitude and express my gratitude to you last year and in years past this recognition to honor public schools was mostly a formality it seems to land quite differently today though to the detriment of every single one of us our public schools have been

030under attack some have genuine and valid pains and grievances they're voicing many though have sought to sow division deliberately and foment untruths i call upon us to learn from our past as we always should to stand united against division and for our public schools let us not forget the day when we didn't and the millions of dollars it continues to cost our kids for us to clean it up that was the same day when we saw assimilation schools in the 1800s that quashed native children and sought to kill the indian and save the man or when japanese italian and german members of our community were relocated to attend barracks and barbed wire schools and concentration camps or of course when we saw segregated schools into the 1950s that thought colored children and white children ought

031not learn together today is a day when we recognize that zip codes must not determine opportunity today we articulate that unfairness exists and own that action is required in the long way to go let us stand with our public schools and put our worst days behind us a lot of us are frustrated we all come at education with our various world views i have plenty of frustrations myself even at my colleagues and our system at times but we sure as anything recognize that this is something worth fighting for that this system has so much more to offer than we can afford to lose that the communities we have built and the dreams we are able to make true on a daily basis in our classrooms the result of thousands of struggles of dollars of hours

032of mental wellness expended here expended to build something expen expended to make something beautiful in our classrooms and so this week we celebrate public schools we celebrate the great equalizer the home of opportunity the incubator for potential we celebrate public schools and recommit every day when it's hope and when it's anger that drives us to channel it to build better to move forward to build a future that we hope to see our kids inherit so today with my colleagues we stand strong firm and unapologetic in support of our public schools ms marin so in my nearly 43 trips around the sun i've spent 36 of those years either attending public school or working for public education there's nowhere else i'd rather be on the most front and front and local lines of reinforcing public education's

033value than at this time and in this place this week was one full of much advocacy on behalf of our public schools to our representatives in the virginia general assembly and at moments when i felt a bit fatigued i needed to only look at the wave of communications coming to me from parents and constituents who were right there fighting for their public schools for the education all of our children deserve and none of us are going to give up on that promise to bring education into our community because that's what makes a strong community miss corbett sanders oh okay dr anderson yes very briefly um similarly to miss marion i spent my entire career in public schools as a teacher as a principal so it's hard for me to not say something here and so

034thank you mr meish for your really powerful words because those were some of my comments public schools are the great equalizer we have to protect them it is the only option for many in our community and we have to ensure that we're being good stewards of those schools despite of policy decisions for in which we don't have full agreement we must ensure that public schools continue in a manner that is well funded because they do impact all of our students all of our children so thank you for bringing this forward ms omesh and thank you for your very eloquent words on this thank you mr not ko fox [Applause] i i too i just want to say thank you for bringing this forward as dr anderson said public education is the great equalizer amongst our

035in in our community and at least you think we all take it for granted here i think we do um but last night my son who was a reporter in south carolina he did a story on a family that just came back that just immigrated here from afghanistan they worked for the federal government our federal government in afghanistan and she's pregnant with twins the mom and she said something that just seriously made me cry when i was watching it she's pregnant with twin girls and she said i wouldn't have wanted these girls if i had to stay in my country and here in the u.s she is so happy now that she is able to bring her children into this world where education is free where women can be educated where as as miss keismar

036you spoke so eloquently on black history where black women women of every color i mean it was not that long ago where women black women could not be educated in the same way as as people um as other others so i just what we take for granted here is not something that we can take for granted because now in 2021 other parts of the world don't have public education like we do and so it's extremely important that we appreciate it that we protect it and that we don't take public monies that will serve the entire population to serve private interest so i think that's extremely important and to understand what other people see and feel around the world and they come to our country and they expect this it's extremely important that we uphold this

037and we uphold the ideals that of education that is free and is a great equalizer for all racist sexist genders thank you miss eisemar heiser first thank you to mr mesa miss marin for bringing this forward i will not repeat the words of my colleagues i agree with with what all of you have said about education is a great equalizer i just um i wanted to add to that that in our system of government as someone who was a lawyer taught constitutional law to undergraduate students at george mason you see firsthand the importance of a strong education for everybody in maintaining our system of government in maintaining our democracy and maintaining the rule of law which is what sets us so apart and makes us so unique and it's it's predicated it's it's necessary to

038have informed educated citizens citizens who are capable of reasoned logical fact-based discussions with each other so our citizens can vote so our citizens can be informed that is how democracy survives we are a government by the people public education educates the people that is how we're strong so public education without public education we don't have democracy it's that simple so i am honored to be able to celebrate this today i am honored to be able to celebrate um public education and rest assured if we want our system of government if we want our democracy if we want our freedoms we need strong public education thank you miss seismer heiser a free public education has the ability to change a child's life when we send our children into our public schools to learn from each other

039to be together to hear other perspectives other lived experiences and learn that while we can be different we are able to have educated discourse and still learn how to live together how to think together and i want to thank my school board members colleagues and everyone in this system who fights for strong public schools every single day of the year every single minute of every day and we will continue to do so with that i would like to call for the vote all those in favor and that is unanimous thank you agenda item 2.06 pta 125th anniversary resolution i'll call on miss corbett sanders whereas for 125 years national parent teacher association the pta has worked toward bettering the lives of every student founded by alice mcclellan bernie and phoebe abberson apperson hearst when women

040did not have the right to vote the national congress of mothers was established as a national organization focused on addressing the education health and safety needs of children on february 17 over 2 000 people mostly mothers but also fathers teachers laborers and legislators attended the first convocation of the national congress of mothers in washington d.c whereas in 1926 selena sloan butler formed the national congress of colored parents and teachers to advocate for children especially african-american children in segregated communities whereas in june 1970 the two national organizations merged to form the national parent teachers association whereas today's pta is the largest child advocacy organization in the nation made up of millions of families students teachers administrators and business and community leaders devoted to the educational success of children provides parent voice on important issues facing children

041and youth whereas through advocacy family and community education and countless hours of volunteering in our classrooms libraries and in after school programs pta is a dedicated partner with teachers to improve educational outcomes for all students whereas their advocacy has resulted in the creation of kindergarten classes student health and safety programs healthy breakfast and lunch programs and robust programs for the arts and whereas the fairfax county pta has been a leader in bringing attention to the needs of students with disabilities with the formation of the special education parent teachers association and advocates for improvements in our curriculum to address concerns about literacy and adverse childhood experiences therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board recognizes and celebrates the 125th anniversary of the national parent teachers association and the important partnerships between parents and schools

042in advancing the academic social and emotional needs of all students iso move is there a second seconded by miss seismor heiser miss corbett sanders would you like to speak yes madam chair i brought this resolution to the board because of the important partnership that parents and educators have in fairfax county we have heard from some parents that they do not believe parents are listened to in our public schools this resolution is important because of the historic significance of this organization that is 125 years old but it also recognizes the very importance of parent voice in our decision making it is timely that this resolution celebrates the parent voice on the same night that we recognize both public schools week and black history month virginia was the very first state in the country that embedded in

043the in its constitution the right to a free public education for all and that was the constitution that was enacted as part of reconstruction a little in 1870 a little over a quarter of century later the pta was formed and here in fairfax county our parent teachers associations and our ptos are an important voice at the table parents participate in the school improvement plan process are active in our classrooms as room parents volunteers at science fair science fairs in classrooms mentoring and also fundraising as well as serving in very important advisory committees to this board pta has brought concerns to the school system about sleep grading curriculum and more locally i've had the pleasure of serving on the pta as the at the elementary middle and high school levels we were instrumental in building outdoor

044learning spaces assisting in our libraries classrooms and book fairs and participating in principal selection panels our special education pta is recognized nationally for the work that they have done to raise up the voice of our special education parents our parent organizations have been incredibly creative in engaging parents and families during the covet shutdown with virtual bingo nights ice cream socials special events on key topics impacting parents and students and much more returning to in-person learning they have volunteered to help in our schools cafeterias and playgrounds it is with great joy that i am able to recognize the important partnerships of the schools and parents tonight thank you miss corbett sanders miss seismoheiser thank you and thank you ms corbett stannis for bringing this forward i'm honored to second this motion i've often talked about the

045importance for students to feel a sense of belonging and connection to their school community and that is something i feel very strongly about and the studies do show that students who feel that strong connection that strong sense of belonging do better academically and have better social and emotional outcomes and the ptas are seminal to creating that atmosphere creating those opportunities for students to connect and belong and have fun in their schools right it through after school classes through activities through getting buses for field trips it's the ptas that bring that spark to our schools it's also a great place for families to to be able to engage with their schools with their school leadership with their teachers and strong family engagement is also shown to lead to better academic and social outcomes the ptas provide

046such great opportunities for parents to be heard to be involved and have been instrumental in making our schools the strong places that they are during the 2020 2021 school year i held five virtual roundtables with pta leaders one in each region i was able to hear their questions and answer their questions but what was actually amazing was listening to these great leaders share with each other the wonderful things they were doing to make their school community stronger and share ideas and brainstorm with each other and it was wonderful to hear the broad perspective and hear the creative ways they found to keep our community strong through outdoor movies snow day pictures virtual science nights and more and in addition to being a place for families to be heard and for students to find opportunities to

047belong their advocacy has helped improve schools with here at fcps around the state and around the country including i have to give a little shout out to the special ed pta which i used to be on the board for speaking for students with disabilities whose voice often had not been heard so our schools are so much better off because of our pta so i'm honored to bring this thank you to our ptas ms marin yeah i just want to say quickly i couldn't wait to join the pta when i when my kid got to elementary school i remember my mom doing doing that back in the day i just want to put in a plug though for for folks to understand the difference between pta and other parent organizations you know the pta is a

048national organization that has you know this history but also a lot of supports that really um help its its three goals of you know some fundraising some um supplement you know community engagement and um i'm totally blanking on the last one but but there are three specific things that they do and um i know that some of our schools and some schools i represent they have a parent-teacher organization or a parent-teacher student organization and that is a different thing so i just want folks to understand that there is a difference in that structure and the kinds of support that is available and to just be educated about what the benefits and drawbacks are of of each model and what works for for your own school community thank you ms tolen too many names that rhyme

049i just wanted to make a couple of remarks on all of the resolutions that were just passed um i was looking through some martin luther king quotes and i came upon this one an individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity and i really feel like all of the resolutions that we have tonight black history month public schools and our resolution around our pta ptas and all the work that they do really represents those that have risen above these individualistic concerns and looking at the broader concerns of all humanity so just a couple of other remarks that i wanted to make um around that i'm really happy that my mother many years ago had me out marching for civil

050rights um in the 60s and instilled me the basics of you know inclusivity like karen keys gamera and i appreciated her comments so earlier um that she said earlier i'm here working for all of our students and you know trying to enhance the learning for all of us for every every single one of our students um i am and i do want to thank um particularly our naacp has been doing some incredible work lately to promote literacy and better education for all of our students here in fairfax county they've done some great work with that i'm a product of public schools and public universities and i have spent most of my career in public education my husband laughs that he had no idea that his life would be tied to a school schedule most of

051the time even after our two boys finished going all the way through fairfax county public schools um and with all my work in public education i've mentioned this so many times in my comments i am constantly amazed at the incredible achievements of our students and the incredible things our students are doing for their community with what they have learned in our public schools and i want to see that continue i've also been a pta leader and know the power of parent input you know through our ptas our ptsas and our ptos and i cannot think i have a drainsville pta pto ptsa leaders group and i cannot thank them enough for the support they've given each other over the last couple of years through the difficult times that we've had with the pandemic but just

052in general and the incredible work that they have done for their communities so i am so excited to have this combination of resolutions tonight they all fit together so nicely thank you for everything thank you miss cohen thank you so much i i appreciate miss corbett sanders and miss seismore heiser bringing this resolution i was very fortunate to get to be a pta president for two years at cherry run elementary school the tiny but the mighty and it was great training for this gig i definitely um learned a lot but you know when we talk about all the things over this last couple of years um all of the people for whom the pandemic has been made things much more difficult um i'm not sure we've done enough to talk about how hard um your

053job has been as pta presidents as pta board members um you know you have had to totally reimagine what your jobs look like scrap together what is a virtual bingo night and virtual talent show and how do you connect a community in a school from six feet apart and the limitations on your activities you know i used to think that i had some amount of street cred when i talked to the pta and pto folks and i can't even imagine doing this job in the last two years so thank you because so many times in this pandemic our ptas and ptos were the glue that kept our communities and our schools connected and what you have done it's always so important but in these last two years in particular you have been a lifeline i

054think for many of us in the community and your service is so appreciated so thank you for what you do for all of us for our kids for our staff and for us parents we we appreciate you more than we can say thank you miss donald kovacs happy to follow miss cohen uh she said a lot what i would like to say um i i just want to thank all the pta volunteers out there you provide the sprinkles for our ice cream cones and you provide the syrup on our snow cones and them bouncy houses and um as you said it has changed a lot in the last two years um but i do want to thank you for sticking in there still providing that joy to our our students working not just for your

055child but for every child in that school and making sure the staff knows you're appreciated through they're appreciated through all the things that you do as well i have had the privilege of serving as a pta president vice president and i love doing the cultural arts for two different elementary schools so it's where i met lifelong friends and i know you do it i see miss debbie kilpatrick you have been doing this for years and we thank you you've gone to the state leadership local leadership thank you for all that you do the team that you put together to continue serving students beyond even your doors beyond when your children have graduated so for all of those who continue to do this to give you do it as a labor of love and we thank

056you so much because you really are a partner that we need and that we care about and that we just love so thank you [Applause] thank you see no other school board members i'll just quickly there's no way i could let a pta resolution go by without me speaking proud pta member for decades pta president for many many years then served on the district pta and throughout my many years of involvement it is it is a place where i have met some of the most dedicated selfless people who give so much of their time back to our students back to our public schools and get absolutely not a thing in return except can you please come and volunteer some more and we are i am so grateful to all of our parents who give so

057much of themselves this community has um strong support from our parents for all of our schools and we are extremely grateful to all of you particularly these past couple of years which have been so incredibly difficult and i want to thank all of you for being here tonight and with that we can go ahead and take the vote all those in favor and that is unanimous [Music] [Applause] i would like to invite nathan monell the national pt pta executive director hamid munir uh the vice president of training for the fairfax county council of ptas debbie kilpatrick northern virginia district pta assistant director as well as parents students and staff here tonight in support of the pta to please join the board at the dios for a photograph we are going to be doing photographs for

058all of the resolutions tonight so please stick around we want everybody to be participate and i ask my colleagues to please remain in front of the diocese for the next two photographs if you are here this evening in support of the black history month resolution we ask that you please join the board at the dies for a photo [Music] if you are here this evening in support of the public schools week resolution we invite you to the dyess for a photo with the board okay agenda item 3.01 community participation the next order of business is community participation speakers must limit their remarks to no more than two minutes in length at the conclusion of two minutes the microphone or video will be turned off school board members will be listening but not responding to individual

059speakers the school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings such as a capital improvement program budget and boundaries 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 official speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information in connection with an individual student or school-based employee additionally speakers should be respectful and observe proper decorum in their statements avoiding profanity inappropriate gestures shouting and comments that run counter to the spirit and the 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 in-person speakers should wear a mask when addressing the board as a reminder speaker

060substitutions are not permitted a speaker may not yield their time to another individual before or during their remarks shouting and outbursts from the audience will not be tolerated we are grateful for those who have come today to speak to us and we thank all of you for your cooperation our first speaker is ishii the pula good evening members of the school board my name is aishiwapua thank you for allowing me to speak tonight on behalf of girl scout troop 2090. the issue that my troop is trying to address today is the consistent lack of menstrual products available in school restrooms throughout fairfax county it is our understanding that under senate bill 232 virginia middle and high schools are required to supply menstrual products in school bathrooms at all times and at no cost to students

061in the local school division yet this is not the case of our school and many others thorough fcps we created a survey inviting middle and high school students across fcps to determine if the unavailability of menstrual products we were experiencing at our schools was a common issue district-wide our results reflect that of the 140 fcps students who participated in the survey a shocking 60 percent said that menstrual products were never available in their school bathrooms another 35 said that they were sometimes available collectively that is 95 when asked how much learning time it would take away from their day to obtain menstrual supplies from the nurse's office eighty percent of the students responded with ten minutes or more personal experiences shared with us in the survey reflect the struggles students endure with the unavailability of

062menstrual products and restrooms one student shared that she once checked in multiple different bathrooms for a pad and eventually had to go to the nurse to obtain one missing class time which she was then punished for another student said that she is only able to get feminine hygiene products at our academy school ensuring that senate bill 232 is properly implemented in schools can benefit students with decreasing amounts of clinic trips and reduced anxiety and stress in the school environment we look forward to finding a resolution to this problem so that students in fairfax county can be more comfortable while in school thank you all for your time and we hope that this brings a positive change to our community thank you our next speaker is dylan jiren dylan jiren our next speaker is anna miller

063our next speaker is angela boyer our next speaker is sharon johnson oh [Applause] good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak tonight i'm speaking tonight as a former public school teacher and i have a daughter who graduated from fairfax county public schools as well and i want to start by thanking all the teachers and the school board of fairfax county i want to extend to all of you my gratitude my appreciation and support for the amazing work that you've all done for our students especially in the face of the pandemic and i understand it may feel like you all are not getting a lot of support that there are a lot of us out here who do appreciate you and support you so please know that um i also wanted to share my

064thoughts about a topic that's been going on for a long time and it has to do with the misinformation that has been spread about the teaching of critical race theory in the public schools and the move stifle um the presentation or allowing information in literature about alternative lifestyles which are important to many of our fairfax county lgbtq student population i truly believe as a former educator and a parent and a citizen for many years in fairfax county i believe our students want the truth our students deserve the truth and our students are perfectly capable of hearing the truth and discerning what they will and they will not believe we do our students a disservice by not giving them enough credit to learn the complete picture about their culture the culture of their their fellow students

065and citizens of all cultures in which they live the history of this country is rich diverge diverse multicultural and multi-dimensional there is no one-size-fits-all in america there is much good to celebrate and there's much to learn from our nation's history to keep us from repeating past mistakes though hiding or white watching the truth only weakens us the truth the whole truth makes us stronger those who seek to deny it angela boyer okay uh thank you for having me back again to speak my topic is masks and i wanted just to illustrate by way of my prop that this mask that i'm wearing is about as beneficial as this and it probably would be legal to walk into the building with this on these masks do nothing and we really all know that they do nothing

066and we realize this for a long time but a lot of us have a conformational bias which doesn't want us to admit that what we've been led to believe in doing and are continuing to doing is really of any value at all and i think you're aware that there are a lot of studies that will show you that in fact it is not healthy for us to wear masks for any prolonged period of time particularly the children which i also think is probably known in the back of the minds of many people here tonight so i am offering you some brochures made by citizens for free speech but they will illustrate to you what happens with a lack of oxygen that will that will explain to you what happens when if you are sick and

067you continue to wear these things that you trap the bacteria in your lungs so if anybody's interested in seeing these you're welcome to have them up front i also wanted to illustrate very quickly that there are seven different types of bacteria also located in these masks once again your bias is not going to want you to admit that what they've led us to do is not really beneficial at all but i think if you read some of this literature you might change your mind as far as everything else goes i was here when luther jackson became integrated and i can speak to everything that's wonderful that's happened in this country and in this county but we're not living in that old world of 200 years ago we're well beyond that and we don't really want

068to go back to it so i suggest that we not be a victim with the masks and we look forward and we walk together and make a beautiful country for everybody and don't be dividing on things that happened so long ago that they're a nightmare that we really need to forget so thank you for your time our next speaker is holly hazard thank you madam chairwoman and members of the board i am for public education and i'm not alone tonight a group of educators parents and community activists will launch for public education a grassroots group championing public schools we demand that our communities reinstate truthful and civil conversations about education and that the bullying and the performance advocacy designed for an audience far away from this room stops public schools are the cornerstone of a

069healthy democracy as the rabble rousers on masking books and bathrooms move on to the next intoxicating fault line they leave in their wake a damaged community their kids aren't better off their schools aren't stronger and however damage is done point one the strategy mimics that of the radical right in the 1970s when they discovered the power of the abortion issue they went to our churches to foment hatred and intolerance to pull to advance their political goals now they have their sights set on our public schools with the same end in mind to scare us and divide us and then come in as saviors to dismantle our schools and our dreams of equity tolerance and a loving level playing field we are afraid so afraid that we all stopped what we were doing to come together

070and fight for public education the covid conflicts of today are a perfect example of the challenge one parent in our group with an immune compromised child was almost moved to tears yesterday by the overreach of the virginia senate others sitting here with healthy kids have had enough and they believe that mass can't protect their kids and don't believe that that mask can protect others so here you sit there is no right answer no perfect time no compromise that will satisfy all the stakeholders we should at least acknowledge and accept this and trust you the people we elected to do your best the vast majority respect and revere our public education system we aren't loud we aren't angry we now raise our hands to say we are here we are strong we champion champion an exceptional

071education and we are for public education thank you our next speaker is sarah turk hoffman our next speaker is marianne burke happy black history month from these hallowed halls rich in black with black history a school that was built for black students during segregation learning our history all of it not just the pleasant parts is important because those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat the mistakes but i see parallels between the ugly history of segregation and the politics today let me explain once it was against the law to teach even free black people to read and write later virginia passed laws against black and white kids going through the same school back then the out loud excuse was the integration would increase racial prejudice around the time this school was opened

072the virginia legislature passed a law to forbid integration this was followed by a long and painful decade of forced integration in virginia during which fairfax paid the tuition for white students to go to private schools and some schools in virginia closed rather than integrate do you see the parallels between then and now the outrage illogical claims and attempts to use legislation to limit equity the plans to siphon resources from public schools to provide other schools not answerable to the school board the provisions of vouchers and school choice just like that out loud excuse that was used during segregation that integration would increase racial prejudice today the outbound excuse is that black history is divisive and there are bills before the legislature to outlaw the teaching of our complete history some have lumped everything involving race

073into one category that they call critical race theory although used incorrectly that term has become a boogeyman to those who are easily outraged and fearful but ignoring our painful history will not undo past wrongs instead if we are to avoid past mistakes we must learn from our history thank you our next speaker is chris carter our next speaker is chris carter go ahead please thank you hello thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you this evening my name is chris carter and i am a parent of a high school student in fairfax county i am opposed to the social emotional learning screenings being conducted by fairfax county the one in the fall and the one in the coming spring i am opposed for many reasons but the issue that i am bringing

074before the board today is that even though i have opted out of the screener my students name student id school and grade level are still being given to the panorama education the private company that is conducting this survey according to the fairfax county website it states for students who are opted out of the screener the only data we share with panorama education is the student's name id school and grade level what else is there to share the website goes on to say this allows panorama to confirm that all students who are opted out of the screener are removed from their distribution list and do not receive a link to the screener i believe fairfax county should delete all opted out students names and personal information before a distribution list is sent to panorama to protect

075the identities of all students who have opted out of the screener i tried to protect my child from identity theft his school id is like a social security number it's linked to his school grades home address phone number and other personal data that should not be shared outside of fairfax county public schools i think parents should have to give permission before a student's id can be shared outside of the school for any reason let's protect our students personal information let's change the procedures and not thank you our next speaker is bob devery good evening thanks very much um i am bob devry from the braddock district um i don't believe any of the board members know me or my ancestors i make the comment because many on the board and in the community can decide

076to act as they do when teachers came up with this plan out at oakton about the white privilege bingo card that did not go through because enough parents found out and said something about it for a group that insists on not using color i find that it's not true they go judge on color not just for white males but also for many of the black americans and people of color who don't vote democrat and have the nerve to go up against crt and blm they are demonized and they uh also even condoleezza rice was called a white supremacist how do you do that the of the majority of white vote do not get up in the morning and try to figure out how to oppress people regardless of what you may think i was not

077taught to judge on color but many people want us to judge on color now i am a white supremacist to some of you who belong believe i'm a white male and at crt i in my opinion is just a horrible dividing mistake no one according to martin luther king and us should be made to feel ashamed of their skin color and that includes white folk it wasn't right in the past but today it's okay to go ahead and condemn a whole group of people my dad was combat wounded world war ii as many of my family i was air force i grew up in a apartment with five kids five of us in new york three of us in the bedroom my sister we would split time on a beach chair that's not white privilege

078none of the kids were we all succeeded though i don't i don't advocate racism it stinks but crt makes everyone look at race instead of the person individuals are called oppressors or victims and my grandkids now are being taught that thank you our next speaker is monica carpio monica carpio our next speaker is leslie kotecki our next speaker is superna dota good evening for a fact parents will remember the pandemic years for the tyranny and ignorance of the fairfax school board and the superintendent when schools around the world remained open and didn't have mosque mandates fcps dismissed science and put in mass mandates when governor younkin signed an executive order protecting the constitutional rights of students and their parents to choose whether to wear masks in school you decided to resist hiding behind phrases like

079health and safety to you politics is more important than the mental health of children suspending students for not wearing masks is cruel and callous and it goes on your record thankfully a bipartisan bill sb 739 to unmask our kids is making its way quickly and could be enacted very soon you see the writing on the wall and that's why you emailed perhaps reluctantly a potential rollback plan this morning rajna put it aptly in 2020. she called this a super progressive board as fcps races to the bottom in education you squander our tax money public education is big business you plan to spend two hundred thousand dollars for a big brother surveillance of constitutionally protected speech on social media according to a new proposal made public spending parents money to spy on parents you call it

080social media a listening service that targets the fcps brand you care about a brand not kids you contracted with panorama education to data mine our kids with 2.4 million dollars for a five-year social emotional screening as rajna urged you in an email to do more to control the narrative you spent almost hundred thousand dollars in six months on a crisis management firm called yes ampersand to help you with controversies like the teacher admission scandal back in 2020 the truth is that parents need a choice of thank you our next speaker is eric shafer for months parents have spoken to the harms inflicted on children by this board's covet policies i'm raising my kids to take ownership of their decisions you are the elected board rep re board responsible for policy not the public health advisors

081wrongly steering you you have to own the decisions this board shutdown schools in spring of 2020 ceased in classroom instruction the following year virtual learning was a disaster every parent witnessed very predictable you return students to the classroom this year but your policies continue to harm how many student athletes were coerced to take an experimental vaccine last fall their choice was to take an experimental vaccine or quit your policy forced a wedge between patient and doctor a sacred relationship where there is risk which every vaccine incurs there must be choice i credit you for finally dropping the vaccine mandates for spring sports a quiet confession of being wrong last fall but still you impose illogical and discriminatory isolation policies for unvaxxed athletes here's how the spring sports policy should have read all students can compete

082whether vax or un unvaxed if you have a covet-like symptom isolate the end for masking there are no long-term studies of masking children because no parent would volunteer their child up for this abusive experiment this board's forced vaccine or force masking policy involuntary signed up 178 000 children for the study and the results are coming in prolonged masking and children results in measurable drops in iq and speech delays among other harms today you release your rollback strategy this plan hinges on community transmission data which is allegedly science-based but is not common sense-based let's remind ourselves covet poses nearly a zero risk to healthy children and mass do more harm than good show us the data we're masking kids in classrooms reduces community transmission you can't because the data doesn't exist your policy should have read

083master optional starting tomorrow full stop if teachers parents or unions bulk point to the thousands of classrooms across america where schools remain open all year long with masculine students and no measurable transmission thank you our next speaker is cheryl binkley good evening ladies and gentlemen of the board i am here tonight just to rededicate myself to opposing people who abuse you i am here [Applause] to say thank you again but also to say not just for what you're doing now but to apologize for our politicians in richmond who have threatened you to apologize for those who said they supported our schools and are not and to promise you that i was there today i'll be there tomorrow and we will keep fighting the good fight for the number one schools in the country according to

084forbes that we created as a community as a group of people who believe in education in learning imagination and empathy for others those three values drive our schools and they will continue to and i thank you for being the people who do it [Applause] thank you our next speaker is solomon kefalu our next speaker is alana randolph our next speaker is david hatcher may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable nice side of the lord our strength and our redeemer many years ago a career coach asked his clients what are you pretending not to know but instead of asking the board to consider some things that i want to talk about pretending what are you pretending not to know i want to concentrate on one thing that i mentioned

085two months ago to this board and i mentioned to the previous board a few years ago what are you pretending not to know here in the lord fairfax who owned 150 slaves county are you pretending not to know that you talk about history and racism and separation and everything and here you will not take the symbolic step of protesting or petitioning the board of supervisors to rename the lord fairfax who owned 150 slaves county 150 slaves i served in vietnam after colin powell i worked for him at the secretary at the department of state i had many non-commissioned officers in vietnam under me all of whom like me were products of public schools so please consider taking the symbolic step instead of pretending not to know that this county's legacy was a man who owned

086150 slaves the clock is ticking [Applause] thank you our next speaker is bridget thompson i just want to remind our audience to please be mindful of the outbursts our next speaker is hassan shaw margot cujon good evening while my children are grown and are dyslexic i'm here to talk about literacy instruction for every current fcps student i want to share a little bit about my background i was on the english language arts textbook adoption committee in 1998 fighting for evidence-based instruction i went back to school and earned a master of education with a specialization in reading from uva graduating with honors i taught reading for six years at a private school and i now tutor children in reading as many know teaching children to read is a debate that has played out for nearly 40

087years finally we have a clear answer driven by science about how the brain learns to read in 2000 the nih national reading panel told us that using a common literacy program rooted in evidence will improve literacy rates for all children a school system like fcps should be leading the way in reading rates we have highly educated teachers who are dedicated and caring but they aren't given access to a high quality training and curriculum that follows the science reading with this to what 2022 update we respectfully push for the complete removal of balanced literacy including but not limited to reading recovery level literacy intervention founders and pinell lucy collins units of study and the dra assessment the scientific evidence shows that programs that use balanced literacy have negative impacts on our children data also tells us

088that 95 of kids can learn to read yes 95 percent with structured literacy level readers which are used in balanced literacy are books that rely on illustrations and contexts in order to determine the unfamiliar words thank you our next speaker is kathleen mallard our next speaker is stair calhoun we also have one video testimony this evening kate carey good evening fairfax county schools must create an emergency independent committee to evaluate all its public engagement importantly students who speak here need to be protected students should be known to the school board but by default their names should not be published additionally this goes without saying no one should roam around the audience with a video camera taking video of miners and posting it on twitter or giving it to questionable news sources without the student's consent

089such reprehensible contact should make those people ineligible for future meetings or to be on school property courthouses have no cell phone rules and that's clearly necessary here this public citizen's comment portion of school board meetings has outlived its intended purposes of transparency dark money operatives have strategized to use this form as a means for turning out propaganda and false narratives when people speak they endanger themselves to social media trolls and doxing by dubious media networks we need you to protect us people should submit questions in advance and a staff person could read the questions this approach would remove grandstanding manufactured grandstanding is working and allowing these radical groups to skirt normal avenues of complaint that's not fair members of the public are welcome to speak yet all speakers should explain their relationship to the school

090system if they have a fairfax student state that which school if not make that clear because many speakers are pretending to have students or grandchildren in fcps but do not enforce your own rules that speakers cannot name individual members of fcps and make accusations about them that includes you also figure out a way to protect your staff from supposed journalists who are posting videos staffed photos with their names all over the internet no one should have to work under constant pressure of harassment and threats it is dangerous for their physical and mental health thank you for your time this evening [Applause] madam chair we have one more speaker paul tarico uh good evening school board members uh thank you for your time in the work you do i'm here as a freshman from lake braddock

091high school and i've never been in this position before but i've decided that simply liking and sharing a post on instagram is but a first step to foster positive change at my school students at lake braddock have been have been shocked by the fact that funding was raised for a new statute rather than funding for the students themselves while we appreciate the lake braddock ptsa and the fundraising the parents have done for a new statue we need more than a new statute we need more funding for esol courses at lake braddock now i know that the budgeting of fairfax county public schools is complicated and that plans are made months in advance but i'd still like to make the student voices heard right now the students are outraged with the high ratio of students to

092teachers in esol classes and i hope that this is not the same among other schools in fairfax county our students have reached out to the administration and we have been told that there is no money for individual lesson plans or another teacher those students then put signs in front of the bear statue to contrast the priorities at our school easel students are often immigrants esol students are often most likely to be low-income they most likely do do not have parents that are fluent in english and who can advocate them and easel students at lake braddock may be only five percent of the student population but they deserve better and that's why i'm here uh please listen to our student voices please help fund easel programs at lake braddock and uh thank you for your time

093thank you agenda item 3.02 superintendent matters by calling dr brabrand thank you chairman picarski members of the school board and members of the community good evening everybody first of all i want to just share that we have a coveted rollback plan that we communicated earlier today as we had promised we shared that plan which is based on scientific data and on health metrics and it gives us a road map to move forward safely we must continue to respect and serve all of our students including our most vulnerable while we remain in high transmission right now in our community cases are dropping when the fairfax county community reaches moderate transmission and remains there for seven consecutive days the following will occur first masking will be optional universal masking dr brabrand excuse me i'm sorry please go

094ahead thank you chairman picarski masking will be optional universal masking will only be required during high or substantial community transmission rates there also may be times such as during a school outbreak when some students and staff would be asked to wear masks during mask optional community transmission levels to protect student and public health fcps employees who are not fully vaccinated or who are unvaccinated will still be required to wear a mask indoors regardless of transmission level in alignment with department of labor standards contact tracing isolation and quarantine would still continue student screening testing will be available during moderate substantial and high community transmission to the greatest extent practicable in alignment with existing cdc guidance screening testing would not be offered for students during low transmission and we certainly hope we can get to a period

095of low transmission for our fairfax county community for those community members who want to monitor community transmission rates again we're all monitoring them very carefully and want to see the continued downward trend occur this data can be found on the virginia department of health website which is linked on our website just go to our website fcps.edu and search for covid 19 health metrics and we'll be sharing them with you as well on an ongoing basis please note again as i said at this time we're currently in a high state of community transmission and mass will continue to be required in our schools we may need to adjust our labor prevention strategy should the region experience a surge which we all hope will not happen or there's a widespread illness that can impact our ability to

096safely provide in-person instruction we must continue to make in-person safe in-person instruction for our students our first and foremost goal and we need as an fcps community as many of our speakers talked about tonight to continue to respect and serve all of our students including the most vulnerable in meeting every child by name and by need and i ask our community to continue to do everything we can to come together as a school system we're all trying to do the best we can after two years of this pandemic we are all tired exhausted but we must continue to find ways to build bridges from each of our perspectives and move forward because our kids don't get another chance to be in school and we need to continue to create the best environment and model for

097them the kinds of behaviors that we expect our young people to emulate if we're going to continue to have a strong school system a strong community and a strong country i want to remind all of you too that one of the things we've been doing and we're seeing a great uh as covid cases go down we see substitute fill rates going back up yes we are not back at 90 percent yet which is where we were pre-covered we were in the 70s before winter break we dipped actually below 50 in those first weeks back in january but we are now seeing substitute fill rates of 75 percent and greater and that's just outstanding work on behalf of our hr team our substitutes our principals and i'm just so grateful however we're not going to try

098to not keep going for that 90 so we are continuing to work to hire high quality substitute teachers and our office of talent acquisition and management will have a virtual job fair on thursday february 17th so that's next thursday from 9 to 11 and i want all of our community members to consider applying to work as a substitute teacher you didn't realize how much fun you're missing it's a flexible schedule you can choose the schools you want to work in that may be close to your home you can make a true difference in your community for more information on that please visit our fcps website and search for substitute job fair i also want to mention to you that we are continuing something that we began early when i returned here i came back to

099fairfax and i wanted everybody else to come back to fairfax 2. our annual operation back to fairfax seminar virtual event will take place tuesday february 22nd from five to eight and folks who do come to this back to fairfax event will have an opportunity to network with current employees in various operational and administrative positions they can view a live operational employee panel and attend breakout sessions on transportation careers apprenticeship computer hardware repair network engineering tech support trade careers we also have current fcps junior seniors and recent fcps graduates considering an operational career with fcps they are welcome to join this event and can register by searching back to fairfax on the fcps website i also want to set the record straight about facts which are very important and one of the facts is about our

100membership our enrollment numbers have continued to increase every month through this school year and in january we have returned to being a school division of over a hundred and eighty thousand students almost sixteen hundred more students since the beginning of the school year have returned to fcps [Applause] we know there are still there's more work to do there's more families that we are going to continue to reach out to and to partner with and say we want you back we are committed to a safe and healthy environment for your child and we believe we are the premier school system in this country for public education and that public education as ms seismer heiser said tonight is the foundation of a strong democratic country so please please know that we want to continue to work as

101we do registration here in the spring for next year's courses that we welcome you to come back to fairfax finally last but not least the virginia school board association every year has in february school board appreciation month and i personally a superintendent want to thank this school board along with the virginia school board association for all the work they have done to support school boards across the commonwealth as school board members have tirelessly served this division and the commonwealth on behalf of all of our students in fairfax county and in the commonwealth of virginia this school board tackles the enormous job of governing a multi-million dollar multi-billion dollar school division and it is a job that is 24 hours a day seven days a week even pre-pandemic and now has been a set of experiences

102that i sometimes can't believe that people have had to endure even discuss tonight it is considered a part-time job with part-time pay these members you all work full-time days full-time weeks as much as i do and i make a whole lot more money no let's just be honest for this public you as school board members making thirty thirty five thousand dollars is an insult what a 32 so not that we're counting but 32 is an insult to the amount of hours in service you have to give this community and i hope one of the things that can happen is how we can continue to figure out in the years ahead to elevate so that we have anybody and everybody with the full opportunity to come and sit behind this diocese and it needs to happen

103so i hope that that's something that can happen but for now what i can offer is my deep thanks on behalf of the leadership team our principals and teachers for everything you've done these last two years especially but even from the beginning but this board truly has had only a few weeks prior to the pandemic really happening you all have been here for for me and for the community and i appreciate your grace i appreciate your support we've had our challenges but i am very very grateful for all that you have done and will continue to do to uplift kids and students and families and teachers so thank you so much and thank you for being champions for children in fairfax county public schools thank you thank you dr bray brown miss mclaughlin did you

104have your light on um just quickly um dr braeburn because i appreciate you spotlighting the good news on substitute teachers and the you know continued push to encourage people but i did want to share with you and talking to some of our employees who have interfaced with substitute teacher candidates that i think you and your team need to really visit the process because i've been told that ours is taking too long and that some teachers are saying we're losing them to other districts who are processing them more quickly and i want to just give the caveat that our interim hr assistant superintendent sean mcdonald has been working tirelessly and doing a phenomenal job on behalf of the system so mr mcdonald i'm grateful for all that you've done and one of the most difficult you

105know times in our modern history for public education um but i did want to just let you all know the feedback from the front lines so that you know hopefully we can as we're continuing to appeal and recruit we figure out where maybe the the lag in in processing them is coming through now we'll definitely work on seeing how we can speed up the process and one of the things i'm so excited about this board we just had our budget work session and one of the things in the budget this coming year is giving hr and sean and his team additional resources so that we can do a better job but we do want to speed up that substitute pipeline we're really encouraged to see the fill rate going up and we'll work to get

106that supply uh up here in the next month or so thank you agenda item 3.03 student representative matters call mr chadwich good evening madam chair board members over the past several months i have had the incredible experience of working with other student student board members across the country on the creation of a national student board member association across this nation we've seen major strides made in a lot of areas for student representation on school boards the california legislature last year passed its take a seat bill which mandates the creation of a student board member position in california school districts where either 10 percent of that district's high school student body or 500 high school students whichever is lower sign a petition demanding a seat at the table additionally the state of maryland has many counties

107including montgomery anne arundel and howard in which student board members have voting rights on the issues that come to the floor um and i'd like to mention montgomery county is just across the potomac from us meanwhile however virginia still still deals with i think a lot of long-term impacts of policies from when our state looked very different that may not necessarily serve our needs of today um there is a law from 1999 enshrined in the code of virginia that right now functionally prohibits student representatives from serving as actual board members so let me read a few excerpts one the student representatives shall serve in a non-voting advisory capacity and two and this is the real kicker when i look at it student representatives shall not be construed to be members of local school boards for

108any purpose including but not limited to making any official decision um and so i would just like to note that right i don't think there's any other level of government where those who are affected by the policies that we make the students don't have an elected representative who can vote on the policies that impact their constituency the 180 000 kids in this district and what we also witness um nationwide with student board members is the desi dire need for training upon entering the office and an ability to operate in a full professional capacity that means being able to have a robust support system just like the adults and being able to fully advocate for the kids through their position um and so i think it really is worth taking a look within our governance both

109individually as a school board and in collaboration with some of our local state lawmakers at what the purpose of the student representative role should be right because as of right now the way that things were set up on everything from making remarks on individual items to professional supports within the office they make it so that the expectation at least when the office was created was for the student rep to be a mouthpiece for the student body rather than an active influencer of policy decisions and there may have been a time when this was the best way to go about student representation but i would encourage everyone to really examine and question whether that's the best way to do things in the year 2022 i actually remember watching a ted talk by a then superintendent of

110cincinnati public schools and she talked about her interactions with student voice and students making policy differences in her district one thing she noted that really inspired her as an educator was that our schools always talk about teaching students to be productive contributors to society however if you look at the dictionary definition a contributor is merely a person or thing that contributes to something and so what she said was that it's not enough to strive for raising a generation of contributors we need to raise the generation of influencers in our schools we the students are capable of charting the course of our society's future and the policies that impact us and we're not waiting for destiny to do something for us we are getting up and fighting for what we believe in um and so the

111struggle between influencer and contributor also exists notably within all of our forums through the district that do promote student voice in fcps last night i was having a very open and honest phone conversation with our sac president and it was clear there were quite a few frustrations among the broader student body and a lot of sac delegates and so what i was told was look this is supposed to be student-led but frankly we have adults who make the sac agendas tell us exactly what we can and can't do and essentially shape every facet of how we operate in policy so in my comparative government class this year as we learn about systems of governance across the world we keep coming back to this idea of democratic deficits where purportedly democratic organizations or governments fall short

112of actually fulfilling the principles of a democracy and so i think in terms of really making sure that we are serving student needs and especially when we say that we're going to platform students we make sure we do it right and we do it in as representative of a way as possible another thing that that student president mentioned to me was look at the name it is the superintendent's advisory council not the student advisory council to the superintendent so no matter who our superintendent is whether it's an amazing one like dr bray brandt or potentially a new superintendent that superintendent picks the focus topics for the students to work on rather than the students picking them themselves additionally there is another adult on staff who decides how the meetings are run when we can meet

113what we're allowed to talk about and what policy ideas from students are or aren't acceptable and it's not just a matter of student safety either a lot of it is kind of discretionary and just like oh i don't really think you should talk about that um and so even though students are doing the work they are simply contributing to a pre-engineered system and catering to a predetermined set of goals in other words the system right now is set up so that student leaders in fcps can be contributors but they're not allowed to be influencers ensuring that kind of going back to that national student board member association and really making sure that we can advocate for students across the country it's really important to ensure that one the student board member position is promoted and

114expanded in districts throughout the nation and two that student board members have the ability to serve their own student bodies in a full professional capacity that means being able to understand um you know both the written and unwritten rules of what goes on and get that full training because i think something that is once again overlooked is that often times when student representatives come into office they're not given the same formal training as adult board members um they're given kind of a brief orientation but then really kind of put into the role and they're essentially told okay you have a year you got to figure out what to do with it and so as students on school boards we have been working collaboratively to create a space where that is possible and we have to

115dedicate ourselves to fighting the three d's of student suppression delegitimization demonization and double standard standards to help us enter a new era for student voice and so we've seen many student-led groups right here in fairfax county lead the way in uplifting student voice including the creation of a first of its kind committee on raising student voices at mclean high school which is designed to divide bridge the divide between all students and school administration but until we tackle the issue of uplifting student voices at the district level we won't reach a place where our goals on behalf of the students can truly be realized and it all goes back to that very concept that the governed are able to influence the policies that affect them and there have been amazing models from across the country also

116on how we can build up student-centered institutions for decision-making including the structure of the montgomery county regional sga their district's equivalent of sac but now it is up to all of us to ensure that our next generation isn't just there to contribute it is here to make a difference the other thing that i did want to mention that slipped my mind at the end of my remarks last week is in talking about professional support that is truly career changing to enter space that fosters growth sorry it is truly career changing and i think mindset changing to enter a space that fosters growth um for school board members and um after attending that nsba equity symposium i really got to chat with so many mostly adult board members who really felt that their mindset and pieces

117of how they did their job had changed and so that's why i would also highly encourage our board to consider attending the nsba conference in san diego which is going to be held from april 2nd to 4th and really encourage us to explore new ways where we can get creative and be willing to fight hard fights on behalf of students and i think it may be one of the number one opportunities for us to grow as student board members thank you so much or excuse me as board members at large not just student board members thank you all right thank you agenda item 4.02 capital improvement program and i call him escuse-gemara thank you madam chair i move that the board approved the proposed fcps fy 2023 through 2027 capital improvement program is there a

118second a second seconded by ms barron mrs keismar would you like to speak to your motion yes briefly uh i i want to thank our staff for all of their hard work and pulling together our cip plan this year we have struggled for a number of years with budgetary concerns and we are currently faced with a 37-year renovation cycle but the plan nonetheless addresses development concerns across the county and hopefully tries to plan for additional improvements it also reflects the bond referendum that passed allowing us allowing additional funds of 360 million that was approved by our voters and i want to say thank you it includes renovation of two high schools and covers capital programs and uh also the improvements that i mentioned before typically we have had 180 million yearly cap on general obligation

119bonds but i also thank um the board of supervisors who has allocated an annual transfer of an additional 13.1 million to improve the delayed renovation cycle what we've learned over time is that we the need to take care of infrastructure repairs such as roofs and parking lots and mechanical systems was actually adding to our renovation cycle so i do want to say thank you we continue to work on such issues as eliminating trailers providing creating creative learning spaces and improving communications within our community to participate in the capital improvement process i know that there are many people in the community who uh wish that we could speed this up and we're doing the best that we can uh with the funds that we have and uh we will i'm sure we will be on the

120camp not the the trail talking to our constituents to hear those concerns and uh i and we'll continue to work as at least this year as the comprehensive planning development um liaison for the board and work with my colleague ms tolin who works with our citizens as part of fpac i also dr brabrand want to ask you a question um in support of this whether you heard the comment from our student with respect to menstrual supplies not being available in middle schools and as you know a couple of years ago i brought forth a motion to make sure that that was available so i'd like to propose that you can bring us a report on the status of that i don't think we need to necessarily make a formal motion uh but hopefully we can

121we can uh follow up and make sure um that we are addressing that concern yeah i checked as that came out and talked already to dr board and we sent you guys some updates in both may and june right at the end of last year around this so we can get a we'll give you that information and then uh do a fresh a fresh check of where we are now including following up that student personally and find out what's going on in the survey and what other schools were involved we did a lot of work on that actually prior to the pandemic and we don't want to have that focus go away so i will follow up and get you guys some more information well i know we've been a little busy during covet but

122i thought i'd mention it thank you thank you miss maron yeah this is a tremendous document and statement and effort that holds the division accountable to the public's investment and also takes care to really meticulously plan for the use of every dollar and i also want to continue to thank our public our voters for approving the bond it's a wonderful you know a reinforcement of the community's commitment to our public schools with an over 70 percent approval rating for the bond and i want to thank our bond committee who does a lot of outreach work to educate the community about the significant return on investment of these bonds and one more thank you also to the board of supervisors for adjusting that cap on the bond to better invest in facilities because we know it's

123not only our students who are learning here but our schools are very widely used inside and outside on the fields they are community resource i think that uh this this document this cip does encompass many of the priorities of the community and as well as the board as we have reflected uh particularly some of the ones i've helped champion like net zero and solar energy i know we're gonna hear much more um about those uh those aspects of the cip in a little bit i do just wanna mention that you know the cap improvement plan is the the guiding document for how we work on boundaries and you know the board has asked for research on the model practices for setting boundary policy but the difficult work of actually analyzing our boundaries really lies ahead

124of us and i've said earlier this week it's an embarrassment that we have pockets of poverty in this county that are borne out by school boundaries and i think we need to do this hard work with a lot of community input and a lot of of reckoning of what kind of community we want to be so i look forward to that hard work and that starts with the approval of this cip thank you mr and mrs tolen yes i have read through the cip like the many other cips for the last couple of years um with great interest and uh one of the things that i brought forward to the board in in 2020 is the need for a new renovation queue our renovation cues we know was developed i think in like 2000 early

1252000s i think even spearheaded we learned by my predecessor jamie strauss so here we are in 2021 and we are getting toward the end of the list of schools on that renovation queue and um we were distracted a little bit the last couple of years but i am hopeful we will continue to move this forward fortunately and due to the many comments and the interest in our last cip work session and getting the renovation queue updated as soon as possible and continued efforts by myself and my colleagues work has already begun on this renovation queue in just the past couple of weeks and carl frisch and i have reached out to staff and we're considering doing a follow-on motion to the cip this evening but we are assured since this work has already begun on

126an rfp to look for a consultant to begin looking at the criteria for this new renovation queue we are not going to bring this motion forward and um so i'm looking forward to uh the following the work on this and seeing how this transpires over the next months in addition as miss keys gemara i think we'll talk a little bit more during the committee reports tonight our cpdc committee is making progress on looking at a more accurate student yield formula under the leadership of miss laura jane cohen last year cpdc brought this issue forward and staff has done some great work on this and this is particularly important in areas of intense development like tysons and bark and the route 28 corridor so i want to thank our planning staff also for attending a meeting

127with me last night with citizens to discuss the impact of the development in the tysons area and its impact on area schools and we did talk about the student yield formula and its importance and the importance of that work moving forward as well so i will not bring a motion on that either because i do know that that work is moving forward i do want to thank staff mr plattenberg and our planning staff for answering the many many questions i had about this cip and i'm looking forward to discussing our follow-on motions and working toward an even better cip next year thank you thank you miss mclaughlin yes thank you mr pottenberg i really appreciated um that my colleagues uh are very much wanting to ensure that our renovation queue um is as up-to-date and

128um evaluated as much as possible um i was just conferring with ms darin at kofax we do recall during our tenure on the board but i don't know if it was with yours or mr tisdat um your predecessor that we had the board work with staff about the renovation queue so is that something that you and your team can make sure that as the board certainly looks at having a revised and updated evaluation on the queue that we bring the more recent history on this this effort yeah i don't know what um my predecessor may have done may or may not have done but i do i do know that we did bring the two work session with the prior governing bodies about the queue and the information related to it um we are in

129the process because there was i believe a fall on um in one of the meetings for us to go ahead and perform the work to go and and prepare getting a consultant to come in and assist with the process of identification of what the prioritization would be the prior queue had a number of different items ones that addressed specifically the educational components that were tied to the core they were tied to graduation also the agent condition of facility and then there was also some components that tied to ancillary instructional programs that we had and i can go into a lot more detail about that but really re-prioritizing although it didn't say equity as it is the center of all of our work and it did reference that in those criteria and those rating percentages we

130would want to make sure that this uh consultant would help guide the board in creating what what this body feels are the prioritization for uh the ranking to go ahead and then go forward with uh having outside group come in and do the analysis as was done in the past yes thank you as i said i just think that uh as we we look to do this work with the consultant we would want to just bring in any of the recent work that's been done on that just to help inform um where we've been and where we hope to go um but i'm always in favor of us you know looking at our current practices and how we get better so uh ms tolland i appreciate you and mr frisch um having that um on

131your your um horizon for us to do um the other thing that i just wanted to share about the cip because again this is something that the the board recently had the boundary consultant report and in the most recent work session we had and now tonight board members are talking about our boundaries and i just want to remind our public uh that we we did have the boundary consultant come and present to the board uh and that one of the things that continues to be part of the conversation is what drives changing boundaries and looking at things like capacity looking at things like the transportation impact on the number of minutes that students will be on buses the impact of moving students out of their neighborhood schools and into other communities those are all factors

132that play a role and so while i understand that we always want to look at how do we best educate our students how do we best utilize the limited facilities that we find most of our schools with overcrowding challenges i don't take lightly this conversation that our our boundary consultant and our communities continue to talk about the value of our neighborhood schools and so i know that in the past this has generated a lot of concern from the community and a sense the board's trying to do something that i have not heard the board consider to this time and i hope we will continue to be very mindful when we talk about our boundaries and what we use them for thank you ms mclaughlin mr frisch thank you um first i want to thank mr

133plattenberg and his team for always taking the time to listen to each of us as the cip comes together i think the document itself this year is a testament to the collaboration we've had and the success we've had as i noted during the work session right there in writing it talks about some of the work around elementary school in miss uh in dr anderson's district and the boundaries the progress around the boundary considerations at mclean langley and the new elementary school in dunlaring and those were all things that just two years ago were were listed in the cip as areas of concern that needed to be addressed so i think we can all be proud that those things have moved forward with your team and you know we had a work session about the budget

134recently where we talked about the need to adequately fund the work in your office for implementing and tracking the progress on our joint environmental task force goals and i'm excited that the superintendent is uh making that one of his consideration areas as he thinks through how we're going to allocate spending so i i'm very much looking forward to working with you in the years ahead as we move forward on these issues i also want to note that this cip is the first one where we have uh projects listed that we've bonded that will be built net zero or uh planned for net zero which is tremendously exciting the last bond that we had on the ballot was the first one that came in under the new joint environmental task force recommendations that new renovations and

135construction projects be designed at zero so that's very exciting i also want to [Music] you know echo what ms tollen said about the queue i think that was an area of great consensus at our work session that we would want to move forward with figuring out what criteria what metrics we're going to be looking at as that plan comes together and it was it was great to feel uh heard uh after that work session when we reached out about doing a follow-on motion to find out that the work it was only like 48 hours and the work was already underway to get that process working so kudos to you and your team that's it for me thank you miss kawa thank you i just wanted to echo some of the thanks for mr plattenburg and

136his team um you know i remember even before on the board like my family would tease me because i went to bed with the cip i had like all these all these uh flags and notes and highlights of different areas of concern and the the planning nerd in me was very grateful to come across the planning nerds in your shop as well so i do feel so much like the cip is definitely has a lot of our voice in it and the different things that are important to our community as we move forward i am really grateful about redoing the queue i think the joint cip gives us an even better excuse to get to do that because we're very grateful to our county partners for finding a way to find some more money for

137us and our facilities and so i'm very grateful [Music] that we're going to be relooking and looking at where building in our community is is happening and has happened and how we've changed as a community i think during the pandemic this is a different way of looking at some of what we do so i have a follow-on coming up i know that we have more to come but i'm i'm excited about this cip and what's to come thank you i will go ahead and call for the vote the motion it will be posted before us on the screen there it is all those in favor and that vote is unanimous wonderful i'll turn the meeting over quickly to miss seismore heiser for the next motion to get my mic on are adopted rules of parliamentary

138procedure robert i'm sorry sorry oh i apologize i call him miss cohen for a motion sorry thank you i moved to direct the superintendent to execute the appropriate professional services contract for the purpose of identifying and presenting to the school board for consideration and concurrence a location new existing fcps or any other appropriate property for the western high school so that site may be included in the fy 2024-28 cip is there a second i'll second that motion miss cohen would you like to speak to your motion i would thank you this has been um a long time in coming i appreciate ms gillis in mr plattenberg's office sending us some history that the 2013 bond was actually the first bond that was passed talking about a proposed western high school to deal with the westward

139expansion the historical pun intended of fairfax county and and at that point 10 million dollars was bonded in the interim you know we've continued to grow as a school system but as a county too and so less and less land readily available but more need particularly on the western side and as we've seen the silver line expand toward dulles that is something that has even increased even more the need out there and more building and then we have schools that are really past maximum capacity we have centerville that's up for renovation in 2025 but it is still at like a hundred and thirty percent capacity even a massive renovation of that facility given the footprint of the school is still not going to be enough we have chantilly over capacity westfield close to capacity and

140so we just continue to need greater resources out in that out in that area and i look forward to working with facilities and seeing if they're able to come up using some of the new conversations we had is this going to be existing fcps property is it new property will purchase or are there again when we have these conversations about what's the high school of the future look like maybe there's some options that we have out that direction that's either unused office space or so i look forward to the creativity of mr plattenberg's shop in working with the county as well and figuring out um where we can finally have this western high school thank you miss picarski did i speak to your second yeah i'll just briefly miss cohen did such a good job

141um you know this is something that miss cohen and i have discussed for many many years long before we got on the board and it was actually identified as a need starting in 2011 and and since then there have been expansions at different high schools to try to you know meet some of this need but the it is long overdue and the money from two bonds now has been set aside to start that process of looking uh for land or you know repurposing a building um and even once you know we get that step we are many many years before completion of another high school so very happy to second this it's a big need in our area and growing development you know continues out in the western part of the county and ms tolen

142and i have also had quite a few conversations about some ideas about um possible programming even though it's many years away um you know we're already uh starting to talk about it and i look forward to offering some of those um suggestions and having some conversations thank you i see there's several board members who want to speak uh miss omega followed by miss mclaughlin thank you and thank you to my colleagues for bringing this i think they spoke eloquently to the purpose um i i'm chopping up my comments to where it's relevant on the follow-ons rather than commenting on the original the main motion um because i think immediately when we hear of oh we're going to build a new high school we think well where else might we need it from an equity perspective

143where does that fit is that fair so i did just want to highlight some of the boundary work that is ongoing mr plattenberg can you please speak to that briefly and then of course hopefully and i appreciated miss marin emphasizing this in the direction of where our board work should be going if you yeah thank you very much if you're asking about the boundary policy work what the status of that is the recommendation that came out of the work session one of the follow-ons for us to continue was to have staff take a look at the recommendation we said that it closely aligned with staff's initial recommendation had been there were some things that i believe miss mclaughlin mentioned that were brought up in as part of that for us to look at in a

144little more granularity so our plan is we've wrapped up taking a look at that our assessment of it we're going to be finalizing that work and presenting it uh to the superintendent and cabinet and then to the chair for scheduling for an upcoming work session so that the board can have further discussion about the boundary policy but it should be coming really soon i think in the early spring okay great ms mccarskey hopefully and miss seismohazer i'm looking forward to seeing that on the agenda if it's not already for us to make sure we resolve that because i know that the subsequent conversations of course will have more to do with the implementation and projects we want to think about building on that policy based on what priorities we land on from the consultant's recommendations

145which again a little bit tangential but related obviously as we think about capacity challenges across the county um and really just overall really excited thank you miss cohen and ms picarski for bringing this ms mclaughlin thank you um i i first want to say to um both the makers of this following motion um i know how incredibly busy we are and i also know how very large our board of 12 is um i wish we'd had a chance to talk because i feel like it there's no question i support this but i am trying to figure out a little bit more information here so i'm going to ask mr plattenberg to see if he can help clear some things up so mr plattenberg in terms of as miss picarski noted that we've been trying to

146set aside bond money for this western high school and it does fall in the tenure that i've been on the board so very familiar with the need and and all of that but what exactly is the dollar amount that we have set aside for this dedicated need yeah there have been two set-asides thank you miss mclaughlin there's been two set asides one was for 10 million dollars and the other one was for 13 million dollars in two different bond referendums um that that was for the actual site purchase now um you know it was clearly noted in previous cips that we didn't have any physical land that was set aside for this purpose even though we did have some adjacent land of one of our school properties but we believe the community use of that

147is is so rampant and so necessary in that part of the county that we'd have to look and be creative this motion the way staff interprets it is really just directing us to go ahead and get the work going to identify uh potential sites and bring them back before the school board for consideration um our process associated with that just so um as a refresher or primer for those who may not recall is really because it has to do with issues that are confidential in nature and negotiating on behalf of the school board for the best interest and the best cost for the taxpayers of fairfax county are confidential they are ones where we share contractual language and potentialities in generally a closed session with the school board for guidance and concurrence on the direction

148of staff we've done that in the past with prior property purchases the one that i will mention um that comes to mind is the bailey's upper when we went through that process so for those of you who were involved in that it's one of those things where we come back with different scenarios different options the good and the bad and the ugly of all the different scenarios that we could possibly have and then of course staff's recommendation moving forward it really would get us moving um and and what i would say to that is it gets the ball rolling and every step along the way is a process of sequential steps so within new school construction uh site identification is a critical hurdle to go over then the second step is the site design and

149permitting process before then we go out to bid much of this is articulated in the cip that you all have referenced before and i say that just for the public's awareness that it speaks to the different process the different phases of our capital program but thank you for that question i hope i answered it appropriately no that was great 23 million dollars is how i understand it then that we would have in at our um access for this potential property purchase i i so appreciate that you have the most amazing collaborative approach to your work with all of us as board members so i guess i want to just make sure are any reservations that you have as we look to support our colleagues um in this direction because you know we're we're not a

150single one of us sitting up here is is an operational expert so i just want to know before i vote on something is there anything we're not considering because it's very specific saying that you know we're going to you know put this site into our cip yeah i don't have any reticence regarding that the process associated with it i will say that i do believe this will require and the opportunity is ripe given not just the one fairfax initiatives the equity initiatives it gives us the opportunity to work with other county agencies specifically the fairfax county park authority who's been a great partner in the past and i'd look to them to continue in the future for creative solutions for us to address this the co-location of properties all of the visioning that this board

151and this body has collectively guided staff will definitely have to come into play with this selection process so for me it really is just coming forward with the selection criteria and those recommendations included in that would be if we uncover for your the for which you mention any potential concerns if we uncover any issues associated with that or hindrances or impacts of the cip the capital program or anything else would be part of the comprehensive briefing and recommendation to this body great thank you i will say to my colleagues that i have certainly shared the concerns of our residents in the western part of the county um certainly looking at where our families even in the braddock district uh where we finding the overcrowding impacts of some of the western high schools and the spillover

152effect then to where we're also trying to send neighboring elementary schools to our high school limitations so again absolutely support the desire for both of you to really help this board send that direction of intentionality to our staff don't have any reservations about that i did want to make sure that we had the funds that we would need to actually affect the the direction that we're wanting to give staff and and that part i was not as clear on so you know in general i it would be my sense that we can support this and then staff can always come and let us know if something were to develop that we we couldn't have foreseen but very happy to signal to the western part of the county we see you we hear you it's been

153long overdue um and if we have this opportunity now to finally do something with intentionality let's go for it thank you thank you mr frisch oh i'm sure miss cohen i apologize sorry i just wanted to say um that i i i really appreciate the feedback about not getting um in touch with you but the recognition of how crazy we all are during the week um i did email this to everybody on monday just to make sure i know that our emails get so piled up that it's hard to make sure that you've seen it but i did definitely want to let you know that we worked very closely with mr plattenburg shop who actually helped us craft this language so i didn't want you to think that we had gone rogue we we were

154very grateful for mr plattenberg and miss gillis in helping us put all this together mr fresh thank you um you can't undersell how much of an impact a new western high school will have in many manchesterial districts oakton high school which is coming to the end of its renovation project will open significantly over capacity and uh this will have a an effect on that school uh which is you know right in the heart of providence district so um i very much appreciate the uh thinking of my colleagues here and and looking forward and i would note that we're giving a couple years here for this to come into uh play so i look forward to seeing what that location ends up being and also um seeing what kind of programming we might offer there thank

155you miss corbett sanders followed by ms keith kamara yes thank you very much and i really appreciate uh the makers of this motion because having uh represent i continue to represent the mount vernon in south county area and i know how challenging it is when you have a community that is underserved with facilities and so i think this is a really important initiative my question though is something a little bit long along the lines of what miss mclaughlin mentioned but kind of looking out our planning process is so long we get ourselves bonded for the purchase of land and then the next step is the bonding process for the planning and then the third step is the bonding process for the [Music] actual building of a facility so given that we are utilizing professional services

156contractors to go out and find this land and come back for a recommendation it's not a signing on the dotted line of this specific location that is something that obviously this board makes that decision however i'm wondering if given that extended timeline for our bonding process if we need to just make a slight modification to this follow-on motion to allow for the uh draft to ensure that we have um what i would say is in the preparation of materials that may be necessary for a bond referendum package to ensure that the adequate funding for both the acquisition and beginning the planning process is there miss on did you want to respond to ms corbin yeah absolutely no we we just very quickly conferred um and would be really happy to adopt that language um but

157i know mr morgan will say we need to ask uh if we can adopt it without objection mr morgan yeah that's correct you can adopt it by unanimous consent if there are no objections if there are no objections because once again we would have to approve the final language anyway but this gets us moving can we see the final can you see the language that miss corbett sanders recommended sure i would just say um it ends now with included in the fiscal year 2024 28 cip and i would add to it and the preparation of materials that may be necessary for a future bond reference bond package uh to allow for the planning process to begin if there's no objection maybe include this language and then i'll continue with the next comment sorry i'm i'm

158trying to understand so we have what the ladies have just said is that you have or what you said is you have 23 million for the acquisition of a site the next bond do you have about have you already put in the bond for the um planning of the school oh no i see yeah i'm sorry i understand what you're asking for no no there's been no design funding or any construction funding and if you look on page 40 of the cip that's where we show the cash flow that i think you're referring to okay i was just trying to so that's what we want to make sure is that as part of this planning process and that the timeline associated with when the bonds would have to include to incorporate both the design correct

159okay so is there any other if there's no objection to adding this language i will continue mosquitoes tomorrow thank you i appreciate the makers of the motion and the comments uh to try to whittle down a little bit i will say as the former planning commission for this area i understand the need for this have been involved in very early discussions about how we could get this done and i wasn't on the school board at the time but there was just no movement i would say that i going forward i would like for us to be very um intentional and transparent with the community and um i just want to clarify a couple of things mr plattenberg as i see this motion we are authorizing the superintendent and he will then direct you to go

160forward and engage professional services to try to ascertain what we need to identify land for this school is that correct that's my understanding yes okay and so at what point would you notify the board of what those professional services would include and the cost well generally uh the staff work around that is once the direction is to go ahead and engage in professional services for site acquisition that's an operational component that staff would then undertake in the past there hasn't been a conversation other than the direction giving us to go ahead and identify potential sites and then we as i stated before we bring back those potential sites and i mentioned where it's included in the cip that identifies what bond it should be included in for these components [Music] yeah so we'd be coming

161back and we could also include that as part of our briefing in closed session well the reason i ask is because we're having rather extensive conversation and the number of arenas no need to give details at this point but where um people are asking when does the process begin when do we have to start outreach when does the community find out what we're doing when do you know all of those details so i'm trying to figure out what can the board expect with resp uh with respect to uh when you come back are you saying that you would just hire this professional get the information you need and then come back to us and what you know i'd like to identify that because i think perhaps the board may need to clarify what the expectations

162will be so that the community can understand as well thank you miss kiskamar yes in fact the process is exactly as you stated staff would go ahead and engage staff would come back with the recommendations that would be provided by the consultant services based upon a number of criteria the state criteria for minimum size of schools the recommendations they provide our historical approaches and then any creative ideas that we've done in the past to provide an educational setting those would be brought back in closed session the public would not be made aware of those generally because of the fact that it has to do and once you identify a location that a public entity is looking at the price escalation is usually rather exorbitant and it affects your negotiating skills at the bottom line um

163but that being said you know we we could talk about uh additional processes as a part of that recommendation the closed session when we come back with potential sites and i have some ideas that i don't want to expose publicly here that would impact the potentially impact or adversely our negotiating power but may achieve with i think where you're headed in your conversations about this so when at the time that the board would consider those sites um and give staff further direction that's the potential time for conversation i would look for legal counsel to also provide guidance on that and advisement to the board okay so i really am not trying to get in your business at all what i would like to do is make sure the community understands at what point they're going

164to be notified and that also at what point the community this board will have conversations on how to move forward so it sounds like i think i gathered from that extensive explanation is that we would you would get the professional services and also you would be talking to the board about ascertaining the land at which point once we get that land then we would have additional conversations is that correct um that is one scenario there are others where you can get first right refusals there are a number of techniques that you can for um [Music] yeah there are a number of different options but generally speaking yes okay so uh i just want to make sure we have a clear line because i don't have to remind you of some of the meetings we had

165this week where um you know we need to identify when that communication with the public would begin but it sounds like at the point of purchase we can have that conversation correct did i lose you no you didn't lose me i i thought you were restating what i said yes i could have i have a habit of doing that all right thank you i did i fully support this i you know i just wanted you guys to know that this has been something that i've worked with even before being on the board and the fact of the matter is at some point we do have to deal with capacity issues and this is one way that the community can actually be excited about dealing with those um as opposed to some other alternatives so thank

166you great ms tolin yes um thank you for bringing the motion forward i know we've had a number of discussions about the western high school where it might be what it might look like mr plattenberg i just wanted to confirm a couple of things with you um number one there was some discussion about um the hutchison school site being utilized for this high school and it's just for the community i wanted to confirm that that is no longer being considered to directly answer the question i will consider every possible option and scenario in a recommendation and not preclude or try to withhold any to the school board and and if that would be one i would that would i would include that as well i would suggest however that given the past experience and given

167the need for community space that would not be staff's first recommendation for a location of a property what am i saying what i'm saying is we own property that park authority and the community use for soccer fields right now adjacent to a school would that be considered as as an option for the school board because it is our own property i would have to come forward with that to say here is a scenario where i'd have to tear down an existing perfectly good school build a vertical school in order to make enough size for it displace the community which would be adversely that would just not be advantageous or i think in the best interest of total community building but it would be an option that i would have to i think i would have

168an obligation to provide um to the school board it it would be with a lot of costs and um you know i don't think that that would be a viable uh recommendation to your point um but i i think you know unless i'm directed not to i think it would be a for full transparency would have to be on all possibilities just that the board would be able to compare and contrast the good and the bad and the ugly of any of the scenarios don't know if that answers your question but no that answered my question um and then i had similar questions to other board members um just but i think you've already answered them just about that even though this is worded very specifically there's flexibility in here for staff to come forward

169with different ideas the timing maybe even be a little bit different depending what's in the marketplace and what we find excellent um yeah thank you for bringing this forward i certainly like um miss uh corporate sanders you know sit in a a district where we you know mclean in particular overcrowding in our schools is acute and you know something where we need to be looking for solutions so i you know we've had many conversations about this um you know and also having worked down in the centerville chantilly area i know you know what's going on down there and the incredible growth so it would be exciting to you know potentially have a new high school down there to take care of some of that and as mrs bakarski said you know a new high school

170is an incredible opportunity for a school district to think uh innovatively and creatively you know how do we really move forward um to think about you know what kind of education our kids need across the county and how can we use this new facility so thank you for bringing forward the motion thank you mr echofax so um yeah i have not had the opportunity to talk to the makers of the motion either so i do have some questions um well first i'm going to start with mr plattenberg mr plattenberg you've already said this how much is bonded already for this school the there were two bond referendums for um site acquisition and and one was mentioned was 2013. i can look them up while we're here but it was uh one was 13 million one

171was 10 million i don't know which for which but it was so 20 23 correct million and what would what's the approximate cost to build a brand new high school right now um over 150 million 100 i'm sorry it would be considerable um the site acquisition costs those are placeholders say that again the site acquisition costs that we've included we have been placeholders that have been put in those bond referendum because we realized when we first funded 10 million that that would not accommodate through some of the elementary school discussions of price price and property in that region in fact some of the per acre costs were over a million dollars so it was one of these things that we put in those placeholders to identify what we think the actual site would cost the

172planning and design can be anywhere from about six percent of what that new high school may be every year so what i'm what i'm telling you is really how to make a watch when you ask me what time it is but the reality of the situation is that the cost of the actual school would be predicated on the timing of when it's built and many factors such as inflation supply chain distribution and all of the costs associated with materials so right now to get me depending on the size um [Music] my first estimate is talking about 150 million i think it might be closer to 186 million for a high school but i'd have to really i'd like to follow up with you to give you a more clear answer but it's pretty expensive when

173you look at our bonding capacity as it currently exists now the beauty of this is the confluence of our bonding capacity has gone up as was mentioned by the work of this body and also the board of supervisors and that joint work has resulted in an increase of it's going to be eventually 50 million over our current 180 million so we'll have an annual spend i believe it's in the cip has stated that 25 million and next year by 23 and 25 we'll have another 25 million for that 50. so by fy25 we'll be at 100 at 230 million dollars annually for bonding capacity which allows for the flexibility to incorporate something such as this so my point is the timing is is good for this conversation it's a long way to say that but

174that's what i said thank you for that um so to uh miss cohen and miss pikarsky because we haven't talked about this even though we've talked a lot this week about a lot of things because we've been very busy um i'm still not certain so for you the way this is reading to me is your intent to have by 24 a property either purchased what is your intent please explain that to me since we haven't chatted um no just oh sorry i'm sorry the size more hyzer am i allowed to answer sorry um no this is just identifying and presenting to the school board um what what the decisions are what the options are what are the options where have they been where are they located in the county what are they going to cost

175us because i mean the true answer may be what we have all had in these conversations is land has gotten so expensive that we may need to do something totally outside the box and as mr plattenburg said even conversations that we've had with the team about are there campuses that we have that you know like liberty middle school we always talk about is one of our biggest campuses is it an opportunity that maybe you do a bailey's in a south county model to do something like that and then you're able to move from the other but you still would have to do something um you know up toward mr fish and miss tollens area you know are there so all what are all of the world of opportunities that may take a little more creativity

176um probably than they did even 10 years ago because of how land so it's just to present like here are the options that we think make the most sense this is what um as mr plattenberg said i think it's going to take a lot of work with the county too um and maybe looking at what some of our inventory is versus their inventory and we've talked about that we know they have an inventory they've been telling us for years about the unrented commercial properties out there so yeah it could be converted something like that yeah yeah so i think that's the whole goal is it may not even wind up looking like purchasing some you know vast fields and creating um and creating it from scratch okay i can support this then i was like

177i said we have not had the chance to chat and i really what i was concerned about was what i wasn't sure if that's what you meant so thank you thank you mr may did you want to speak again yeah um i guess after hearing that i thought i might have been the only one who didn't um get contacted about this but hearing that others maybe haven't either um i just i just wanted to i guess go back to this equity question just a little bit uh i can certainly support the scoping i don't want to stand in the way of my colleagues initiative here and i think that that's it's a good step um but i'm mindful that you know mr plattenberg when you bring this forward uh where how else are we thinking

178about needs elsewhere to just make sure that we're not uh you know moving forward a project where there's some urgency but there's no clarity on the how relative that urgency is to other areas well that would be certainly part of when we bring back whatever the recommendation may be and um oh i forgot to mention that the 10 million was in the 2013 bond and the 13.5 was in the 2021 bond that was recently passed so it was a total no i know this conversation has started way before today i mean i remember actually i think in our first months of being on the board it was brought to us in one of our work sessions uh as something that was being thought of but i still want to be sensitive to this again from

179an equity standpoint right like the same way when we think about renovations and we're like no we got to maintain a cue and it's that's based on certain standards and that's fair and we don't move people up when we think about building a high school there are huge implications for what that looks like from an equity standpoint as to where we decide to do that because we're prioritizing all these resources into doing it for a particular neighborhood right or a particular locality so i just i guess when bringing this is it possible to also take a look at where else even just to identify other maybe hot spots for potential that we can think about as a board um this one is clearly already in motion and it's been for years but again i want

180to be mindful that there are other areas that are severely overpopulated i so i know mason district is certainly one of them uh so can we do some analysis on that uh as a part of this project when it's presented mr mesh are you presenting a are you presenting an amendment to this or are you just asking a question mr plattenberg i i guess i'm asking if a certain component yeah in the spirit and trying not to be wordsmithy and adding time to our meeting i actually i just want to see if we can capture uh that in the intent of this and making sure that that's a consideration within the work to for discussion i mean to be presented for discussion whenever this is brought forward mr pottenberg did you want to answer miss

181cohen did you want to yeah i i just um i feel if i can i if i can if please go ahead the way it makes sense to me is making sure that we've considered um all ramifications and impacts and the site selection to ensure that we've taken an equitable look and and my interpretation of the definition of that is uh when was mentioned hot spots other hot spots that we had how those are being addressed and why whatever location we recommend or would come back as a result of this how those would be addressing those components as well to make sure we're equitable in addressing with this investment that was my interpretation certainly um you know as i've stated at the beginning it's equity is the center of everything we do in each of

182the departments under my purview and across the division so we would have to be able to articulate that and address that in bringing that back and to be able to have that conversation with the board right and i think that would that's the intent as i understood it right so maybe to clarify rather than predetermining the outcome of saying that we have adjustments that we've made in other areas that are sufficient maybe we can take a couple steps back and say let's take a look as a whole to see where there may be needs and where certain adjustments have made due up to this point maybe we do want to start scoping out and exploring the possibility of building elsewhere i'd rather say that than to already decide that that's not a possibility and and

183perhaps maybe if i maybe if i put it this way i as a board member when we have this eventual presentation will not be able to make an informed and and conscious decision for me without having an understanding of where else there is urgency to be able to prioritize uh effectively from an equity standpoint so so that's why i'm asking if that could be a component in this in this conversation so that we're able to make informed judgment judgments from that equity lens without maybe moving too quickly with good intention on a project that is needed and is good um but that we have no context for in in in the scale of urgency around the county and i'm thinking again if this is an at-large member looking at the whole county miss cohen did

184you want to respond to missile nations well i know you yeah i think i'm just confused because we we passed this three cips since we've been on the board and so the whole cip identifies where there's overcrowding in need and so for the last 10 plus 20 years that area of the county does not have the facilities so all those schools are overcrowded and we've continued to grow exponentially that build in that part of the county so i guess i'm just a little confused that i mean that's the the whole cip is showing the hot spots and showing where um so you know i think i i guess i i'm not sure i'm understanding your your question like i i'm not sure how to answer your question um other than just to point to the

185cip as mentioning this need for the last yeah no no and and i that's precisely why you know for me this is a welcome step in that direction but with the understanding that there are plenty of other schools in concentrated areas with over 100 capacity it would make sense for us to start conversations around those areas too because to me the signal is again an equity challenge right and i don't want to say problem yet but where we move forward with a project there are other hotspots that we know exists from these maps as you've pointed out but we haven't had conversations about scoping out schools and doing that kind of thing there um so that if that clarifies that we make that commitment in tandem thank you mr nation did you want to respond

186mr carson before i go miss mr plattenberg did you want to try to respond to that um no i don't believe anything other than what i've okay um that that's all part of the cip process which is how this was identified so you know the need is there in the context of the whole system um so that's yeah but the need is also elsewhere and so i'm questioning how we're point of order thank you mr mesh um dr anderson has light up and she hasn't spoken yet so i'll let her speak and i'll let you go miss corbin sanders dr anderson thank you um i have a couple of questions and i think it's the second part that we just added i think i'm a little bit confused on that piece i don't have i

187don't have any questions with the original motion but the preparation for materials to be necessary for bond processes i know that something that you were talking about and i was getting water so i may have missed part of it can you kind of speak to that a little bit in terms of what that means go ahead ms corbett sanders uh yes what this is is so we've heard tonight that the people of fairfax county voted in support of a high school in the western side of the county not only did they vote in support of it once on a bond they voted on in support of it twice on bonds for the purpose of acquisitions of the land our bonding process is essentially a three-step process and because of challenges we faced partially because of

188the economic conditions right around the 2010-2012 period we did not pursue purchasing at the time that the initial bonding was similar to we've we've got bonded projects that are still waiting to be done if we go ahead with this motion tonight we will be instructing the superintendent and his team to go out and find possible sites and come back to this board with options we will also because that process is going to take a period of time what this does is say when you come back to us we also want you to come back to us with what you think needs to go into the bond for the planning process for that high school and because if we don't then we essentially lose more time we lose two more years and this was really an

189effort to respect the will of the voters twice now on supporting that activity and let's go ahead and start thinking not only about the acquisition but also to be ready if necessary to have that bond language ready to go to okay thank you i appreciate that that's very helpful um the second piece is what mr mesh was talking about i i think what you were trying to get at is how do we um collate all the information kind of in one place the way we have like maybe that renovation queue but instead of a renovation queue maybe it's a new building queue so that you have an assessment of what is um what the needs are throughout the entire division and so there could be an opportunity for school board members to evaluate is that

190what you were intending on saying mr plattenberg is that something that is possible to do because we do know that there's a lot of unfunded bond i mean sorry bond funds that have not been utilized but is there a space enough cip where that request that ms omegaz can live regarding new construction new construction yeah i mean as i stated the the cash flow documents that are on pages 48 and 49 of the current cip um they delineate when we do the phases that miss corporate sanders was mentioning and i think uh the the comment about clarification and articulation of of that component as a part of this process would be healthy for an overall context and i think i think it could be done during that and incorporated as a part of this is

191either a footnote or reference or in some portion we could or even as an appendix just to be able to have the full scope mr mesh is that helpful um dr anderson did you no those are my questions because i because i i know where she's getting at because in my area it's also continuous growth and so you know you and i have been having that discussion mr plattenberg in terms of how do we get that on the list so i just wanted to offer some assistance um to her question thank you dr anderson miss corbett sanders i think through dr anderson's anderson's questioning i was able to also clarify how this has already been approved by the voters thank you say no oh mr fresh did you okay mr first and miss mccarskey um

192so last year and i'm speaking from my experience with the the bonded project for fairfax oakton and shrevewood i learned quite a bit about the cip process for new construction i also learned that if we were to discover in two years that there was no longer a capacity issue in this region of the county there is nothing to keep this board from shifting the money to another project that is more deserving that's what we did in the dunloaring elementary school case i would i cannot imagine based on the kind of construction that's going on and the kind of population growth we're seeing in the western part of this county that anything is going to make us think that there's not a need here anymore as for the issue of the queue the queue is not

193just renovations the queue is every renovation new construction project and the way that they're fit in is based on when is the funding need to happen for each of these things to happen so a new construction project impacts the queue of renovations just as much as a new renovate renovation impacts the queue for construction projects and then staff works in the bonding process to lay those things out in an equitable way so that we are meeting the needs of all of these commitments that we make with our 37-year renovation queue that's how this project ended up in front of this board and the issue in this region of the county has only gotten worse over the last 10 years it has only gotten more dire over the last 10 years and that is not to

194say that there are not other problems in the county it's just that in the way that the queue has been developed and designed over many many many many years in all the things that were considered in developing that queue this was seen as something of enough importance to be above the other items and among those qualifications for developing the queue was equity this is an issue of equity for many schools and it's not just one region either so i would just put that out there thank you thank you miss picarski thank you i'm going to try to wrap it up because miss corbin sanders and mr fish did such a wonderful job um i do apologize to my colleagues to say it has been a crazy week is really an understatement um which is it

195is why we did not have these conversations in detail although we we did miss cohen and i bring this up at both of our cip work sessions this year and um last year so this isn't too much different than what we had shared we are looking and wanted to do and you know i i i appreciate the equity issues this is an equity issue which is why it's been um talked about and put on the queue for over a decade and i will just say for the residents and my constituents in the sully district every single high schooler in the sully district attends a school that is grossly capacity except for one that is almost at a hundred percent and development continues so i do take that very seriously but the need is dire and

196my constituents have waited a very long time to see some movement on this so i do appreciate all of you for the grace in in not having the detailed conversations which i usually like to do um and in supporting um trying to move forward and get this ball rolling in this way thank you great thank you seeing no other board members that want to speak i will say the motion before us is on the screen i will call for the vote all those in favor that vote is unanimous i'll pass the gavel back to miss picarski all right thank you everyone i call on miss marin for a follow-on motion i moved to direct the superintendent to conduct an assessment and report to the board by november 1st 2022 regarding fcps facilities capabilities to support

197meeting best practices for school nutrition services which includes in part preparing fresh meals on site the status of the addition of daily salad bars in schools and a recommendation on whether the school division's ed specs will need to be updated to meet school nutrition best practices is there a second seconded by ms corbett sanders miss marin would you like to speak to your motion briefly um you know there was a lot of excitement around improving school nutrition before the pandemic and we've just been in a put into a very different situation now with school lunch and what's happening and um the matter really just needs more attention we have advocates who are asking for more you know better options you know parents i myself of having seen the food during the pandemic our kids need

198healthier options so we start with looking at where we're at getting an assessment of where we're at and then we can move forward and figuring out what the next steps could be towards making that a reality thank you miss mayor and ms corbett sanders yes and thank you miss marin for partnering with me on this as we've discussed in our meeting just yesterday with the real food for kids advocates and others the importance of quality nutritious food for our students has been a long-standing commitment by the school board and fcbs and that initial efforts were actually begun under the leadership of two boards ago i believe that was ms daranak kofax and mr mcelveen who worked very closely on this effort unfortunately in the course of the past two years we've not had the focus

199that we would like on this important issue where we were on course to ensure that we had fresh food on and salad bars in all of our schools this has been delayed efficiencies and food delivery processes have also had an impact this follow-on motion essentially allows us to get a baseline for where we are on delivering on the commitment of having the best quality and most nutritious possible food for our students so that we can then build a plan on how we move forward thank you miss mclaughlin followed by ms so much yes thank you um as ms corbin sanders noted um it was during ms jaren at kofax in my first year or first years on the board um that we started to tackle this issue um in fact we spent 150 000 on

200a consultant's that was incredibly extensive about assessing where we were and where we needed to go with nutrition nutritional meals in fairfax county schools so i absolutely support this follow-on motion i recognize because this is related to the cip and it's a facilities component to it but i did want to share with my colleagues that i will be working with all of you that i think we're going to need a budget follow-on motion as well i'm deeply deeply worried in talking to families and our advocates that um due to the pandemic due to the changes in right now how we are delivering food um using the federal government's offer to give free food to everybody um i just had a parent reach out to me earlier today saying that their children are being served like

201craft american cheese slices i mean it's we're we're you know dr brabrand i i know that your team is stretched to the max um i will say that i am so deeply grateful for our former fns director rodney taylor who came with an incredible background in this work and really helped launch fcps to a whole other level of nutritious food but because of the pandemic and some of the challenges that fns have had i i really am worried and i think we as a board need to have some deeper conversations about the quality of food we're serving what are the challenges associated with that is it funds because it's a self-sustaining fund is it have to do with the fact that we've got a food supply chain problem but uh you know i'm again hearing

202from staff and students that we are we have really regressed um from where we were pre pandemic so well while i very much support this i do hope that we'll all think a little bit more expansively um and talking with one another and and maybe doing more outreach with our community because this board has committed so much to equity and socioeconomic equity is a big component in this county and while 70 percent of our families may be in a situation where they can supplement or send their children in with food at least at least 30 percent of our children struggle with that and if children don't have nutritional food don't have enough nutritional food it's going to be extremely hard for them to focus and learn and perform um to their best so i could

203go on and i know it's long so i'm going to stop here but thank you both for bringing this and i think we've got a lot more work to do mr besh yeah happy to follow ms mclaughlin actually um and thank you to ms marin and ms corbett sanders for bringing this um yeah and not only healthy food right but healthy food that is tasty so that we teach kids good habits and they're not associating uh healthy food equals you know not tasty um yeah so that's part of what we're teaching them right as we raise them um so from the facilities standpoint in particular i also think this is a great opportunity for us to consider how facilities can be uh adjusted or organized in a way that allows for the provision of more

204inclusive uh meals that are uh accommodating of all kinds of kids and staff so for example kids with severe allergies or halal kosher vegan vegetarian etc so if if there's no objection um i did want and i was just speaking to miss corporate sanders about this but i did want to suggest if after on-site we could just add providing meals that are inclusive of diverse student and staff needs so i i should i should say more formally i move to amend hopefully without objection the language to as reflected so that that's also part of the scoping uh that we do is there any objection to adding this to the motion seeing or hearing none okay that's all thank you um you finished so much okay i suppose if we could just get clarification from staff

205that that was uh the intent of this was understood so i i do have some questions uh regarding that for me i need some clarity around the facilities piece for this for the cip and then the programming piece for when we're talking about best practices and and so i certainly understand the need for it but i'm i'm looking for that nexus of the cip and facilities so that we can ensure that we are providing versus a follow-up on on options so that i am glad you asked because the reality is that um the way food is prepared oftentimes especially in a kosher context etc does have facilities implications so i think we might want to revisit that to just consider um if that's been the barrier because up to today we still don't have those

206inclusive options so i'd like to find out if it's because of facilities barriers or not and that's something i would like for us to look at right and this would be the report right um where we explore further what adjustments would be needed thank you for that clarity msksanamara miss amesh i do appreciate your questions but i guess i'm um trying to understand i think in your statement not the words there but your statement you you are saying that the facility there may be some facility um [Music] impacts on preparing inclusive types of foods and so i i feel as though there's another step and i'm i'm not sure it can be addressed here because i don't know what you're talking about i mean honestly i'm not trying to be offensive at all but i

207think that you're asking for um an evaluation of what those hindrances could be is that correct i'd like to get an understanding of our facilities capabilities as this outlines to support meeting best practices for the the the inclusivity needs of certain populations in food preparation well the way it's written the best practices for school nutrition services which includes in part preparing fresh meals on site providing meals that are inclusive of diverse student and staff needs it sort of sounds like you're asking for a study is that correct i want an understanding of our facility's capabilities to do that right but who has the expertise to even determine that well that's what staff go back to look for right the same way that preparing fresh meals on site who has the expertise i mean well the

208reason i'm digging is because it sounds like for example you let's say you have a particular practice according to a particular culture is there anybody on our staff that would understand what that need is so i i i don't have an objection to what you're trying to achieve i'm just thinking that there's more needed to get to what you're trying to get to miss kisgamara maybe if we ask our staff if this is something they do have the capability of doing so this is what i'd say i think i don't have all of our staff here i'd like to take this i'm comfortable with the language when we go back and we start to run into some of these cultural pieces if we're not we can always i mean i know dr king is not

209here tonight physically um but we'll have her work with maria perrone and and and reach out to students if we need to to understand some of those things that kids would like to see prepared but are there things in our infrastructure right now that just doesn't make it possible stow space fridge space the keeping materials separated from each other and if we have further questions before it comes back we we would get back to you guys um and we've got a little bit of time and i'll make sure though before because i see what this time is now that i look one more time i'll come back to make sure there's no confusion before my tenure ends even though i know this is a fall deliverable i i appreciate that i i and and i

210think that that addresses the i don't want to have expectations right i can see us sitting in a work session and saying but we expected xyz um and so perhaps what we're talking about is an interim report dr bray brand that lets us know where we are in our ability to assess what she's asking um yeah i can do that i i'll provide some sort of update through the bray brand briefing or a monday letter prior before june 30th so that this is the is set for success in november and there's no oh my god this is not what we wanted at all i don't want us to have assumptions that information or structure is there that may not be there so that's the reason for my questioning thank you thank you miss keys gamara

211next we have miss darren kofax followed by miss tolin so i thank you to the makers of this motion um can we move back to it one more time please thank you um i do appreciate the recognition that um this was something that was started long ago um like you said two boards ago karen and um something that we made great strides on and then it kind of kind of stopped a little bit because we did lose the head that one we lost rodney for our food and nutrition and then um you know and then the pandemic came so there's lots of things that we did in the past that i think we need to do again we were very close to talking about scratch kitchens we were talking about things that we um i'm

212sorry what oh i thought somebody said something so things things that we have not moved on i mean we got salad bars in all the schools and that was that was a quite an undertaking actually considering where we were i remember kids like that was the that was my big claim to fame when my kids were in middle school or high school they were like mom you got you know salad bars that was a big deal believe me it seems like nothing now but when they weren't there and you were getting canned peaches and now you got fresh strawberries it was a big deal so anyway i digress and the hour is late so i will be i will be supporting this i think we do need to move um i do want to make

213one thing and miss mclaughlin i am glad you raised that about the quality of what is happening but that is with the federal program and those changes have happened i mean when and they were different administrations ago there was a huge push under the obama administration for these the these higher quality food better foods and then the next administration came in and those all of those were wiped out they were taken away so i think i mean in any way that i can i i just had i'll report out on what i did with the federal legislative liaisons but one thing i want to do say um is this miss burden is not here dr burger and i don't know if you have this at the top oh but i don't know if you have

214this at the top of your head but she gave me because part of my advocacy when i when i spoke to senator kane senator warner and the staffs of the other congress people was about how many more people now are eating our lunches as a result of way up way up do you have those numbers at the top i don't have it at the top but it's significant i'd say 30 to 40 percent um the other thing i want to give you some good news two good pieces of news if i could just with permission mrs zarnett fans answered that question um and we can let miss bernan anything as well um she was on a call today with me with congressman jerry conley along with the superintendent of prince william okay and chairman picarski

215and the chair prince william and uh we're going to work with congressman connolly to extend as much as we can the usda program so that our kids can continue we're working on it's not done the other is just in the last week the administration the buying administration has said they are restoring the food nutrition guideline standards that were relaxed um so i think you are going to see some changes based on that um restoration i think that's i think that's very important because i hope this isn't and i say this not snarkily but i i hope it's not you get what you pay for so we want we want nutritious program nutritious food for our kids we are grateful that we have this program that allows those who may not have identified as frm or

216were embarrassed to identify as frm are now getting fed through our system but we want it to be healthy we want it to be where we were going so i appreciate you working with them as i said i i spent some time talking about it as a as an advocacy group so i'll be supporting this and thank you and if i may i'd like to share that that innovative spirit is still alive and well in food nutrition services uh pre-covered we were putting in one new uh salad bar per week and then covet hit and of course we know what what occurred then many of the issues that we're experiencing now we did provide an update to the board but many of the the food issues that we're experiencing are really due to supply chain

217issues that we're experiencing across the country and so i i i don't want the board to walk away this evening feeling that our commitment to good food for kids is any different than it was pre-pandemic and i do want to do a shout out to our food nutrition services staff for being able to do the the young ones work that they have done and i know that that you all feel the same way but i i certainly feel that i wanted to share that because the commitment is still there the innovation is still there and being able to provide that information to the board we certainly feel that that will help you be able to make some decisions uh in the next cip my comments were not intended to um at all uh disparage anyone

218in that programming doctors um mr smith so i apologize if they were if they were heard that way but that was not my intent no no no i and i didn't take them that way i i did not take them that way at all miss tone i'm happy to follow mr smith with those comments um you know i i think our our food and nutrition services staff have done an incredible job of working through the covered period um what i did want to say though around this motion is that i was very fortunate to have worked for years with real food for kids i know they've been meeting with many of us and you know megan mclachlan and i met with them yesterday also we worked with them to expand healthy food and salad bars

219in our across our cafeterias and i was going to mention you know rodney taylor our previous fns director hired some very good and some very innovative personnel so i'm hoping that as we move forward with this research that will tap into those people for some creative problem solving you know how we can move forward out of covid even if we are getting some support from the federal government with food how do we start to make our meals you know just more interesting more nutritious for our students we had done incredible work with the food lines in uh during the time of the renovation of marshall high school and then schools that were renovated subsequently to that had incredible um variation in the in the lunch lines and the food that was available i also i

220know this motion i have to say this i know this motion is about food and nutritious food but we also did so much work with our food and nutrition staff our facility staff our instructional staff to make our cafeterias and our kitchens as energy efficient and waste free as possible and believe me those cafeterias have incredible waste streams especially if you've been into one of those huge high schools um during lunch time so you know really being innovative and working with this ties in with our jekylls and working towards zero waste and energy efficiency as well so it all fits together i would be happy happy to support the motion thank you miss helen miss eisenheiser thank you i um just a quick question i don't know if this is for miss omega says the

221language he added or um maybe just for our staff but when we talk about inclusive a diverse student and staff needs i'm assuming we're including students with allergies and food allergies in that i said that okay i just want to make sure i thought i'd heard it but i wasn't sure but yeah i wanted to because that i think is really important that actually does have a facility's impact because sometimes food preparation itself can you know in food contamination and preparation so i see mr plattenburg nodding and if you want to say anything i just wanted to put that out there to make sure that was understood thank you um mrs mclaughlin yeah just quickly because you know um dr braver and you were saying your excitement in working with congressman connolly and extending the

222usda's um you know partnership and all this but you know it's late hour but i want to just put this little plant the seed for our board and for you to take into consideration because our food nutritional services is a grant funded program it is a self-sustaining fund one of the things i remember during the pandemic that ms burden our cfo told us is that about 50 of our operating funds that help pay for the food that helped pay for the the workers and their benefits comes from our paid lunches and meals because the federal government's compensation rate is so much lower so i really do want to just make sure everybody's being very mindful that we're going to continue to struggle in our desire to bring us back to where we were pre pandemic

223if we don't solve the the financial challenges of you can't get good food with good workers if it's only going to be on the federal government reimbursement on a self-sustaining fund so i think there's going to be a very big financial component attached to this work and that's why i i will be bringing a budget follow-on motion in a couple weeks because i think it will partner and complement this here tonight and even though i know we've had a very broad conversation i've really welcomed it because i think there's a lot here beyond just the facilities thank you miss mclaughlin i think um oh dr anderson i'm sorry go ahead sorry about that i've been patiently waiting my life's been on um i'm glad that you brought that up uh miss mclaughlin and mr um

224smith i'm not sure if you're aware because i did raise this question to miss burden um quite a bit ago and i thought her response was that if we were to serve i believe was the number was around a hundred thousand meals then it would not be a deficit to the to the operating budget so we're under the federal program so the federal program that they've actually just raised those reimbursement rates they've raised the reimbursement rates to school systems uh this year and i do know that miss burton is on the the meeting and and could certainly is wanting to weigh in here ms burden um yes mr smith is absolutely right they have raised the federal reimbursement rate during the pandemic the solvency of the food services fund is very good right now which

225is different from what it was when we last reported on that at that time we were offering pay continuity at the very beginning of the pandemic and um but at that point we weren't serving any any meals so we had no reimbursement or or any paid meals but the federal reimbursement at this point is certainly adequate to be able to fund the program at this point in time and that is largely due to the fact that pre-pandemic we were serving about 110 000 breakfasts and lunches every single day and we regularly serve over 150 000 currently and some days on fridays when they have pizza it has reached 170 000. okay thank you thank you for that and is given the increase in the reimbursement rates what um is the number of meals that would

226be cost neutral daily we are rebuilding our fund balance the state recommends that we have three months of food service operating expenses in the fund balance that fund balance was completely eliminated at the beginning of the pandemic and you may recall that we had to provide a supplement from the operating fund and that is not the case anymore okay thank you um do we have any kitchens that prepare schools um meals from scratch do we have any or are they all a little bit more um ready to serve they're all fresh our food is the same products that are prepared fresh daily but we do our current model utilizes uh central kitchens for food preparation um but it but we do have fewer options because of the supply chain issues and of course you know

227as mr smith mentioned no salad bars okay thank you the other thing that i'd like to add going back now to the um to the motion that was presented is i hope that there's space for evaluation of portion sizes because that's become a real issue with our middle schoolers and our high schoolers who are given portions that are not able to sustain them throughout the day and so i hope that that can be part of this conversation particularly and you know to also pivot on in what some with some of the things that miss omega said for some of our kids that's their main meal of the day you know some of our kids really rely on that nutrition and not having enough of it no matter what the quality is not having enough of

228it is also an additional issue so i would want to be sure that portion sizes is part of this study thank you you and with that the motion is on the screen before us all those in favor raise your hands and that is unanimous i will now call on miss tolen for the last follow-on motion i move to direct the superintendent to include and implement a plan for the additional 32.9 million dollars that may become available from the state for facilities projects the plan is needed so that work can begin immediately upon receipt of the funds in july 2022. the plan should include work on safety concerns bringing older facilities up to the current educational specifications to include but not be limited to privacy and bathrooms provision of outdoor classroom spaces and spaces needed to

229enhance the health and wellness of our students and staff is there a second seconded by ms corbett sanders ms tolen would you like to speak um just briefly please um mainly i would like to thank our students for their advocacy for improvements to their school buildings i especially want to thank the young men from mclean high school that have clearly talked about the the old bathrooms and the lack of privacy it is for them and other students in our buildings that i feel the need to bring forward this follow-on motion um and interestingly today i was at cooper middle school taking a look at the the renovation that's in process there right now they've got two sets of bathrooms that have been newly completed and administration was telling me that they're seeing students walk from

230one end to the building to the other in order to be able to use the new bathrooms because the other bathrooms are so old so um you know that's just one of the needs um that's listed in this uh motion um you know a security improvements and wellness spaces are listed in there too um i would like to note that through the work of mr mesh for the first time in our cip we do have a list of these uh wellness and prayer spaces privacy spaces um that have been added to page i think it's 242. so thank you for all that those efforts we have also seen schools with increased interest in outdoor learning spaces during covid to have our children learning in the most healthy environment possible and an environment shown to assist

231children to recover from traumas and difficult transitions such as those they've experienced with the pandemic the wording of this motion is very broad to purposely allow our facility staff to have leeway in determining the priority use of of these funds that we really hope that we will be getting from the state and i do want to thank mr plattenberg and his staff for helping us with the wording of the motion corbin sanders yes thank you madam chair and thank you miss tolan for working with me on this important follow-on motion we know that the state funding is in flux however there is an indication that there will be increased funding for these type of building improvements with a renovation cycle of over 37 years and recent increases in bond funding these are largely offset by

232increased material and labor cost we know that many of our buildings are not up to the standard that we expect for fairfax students the fcps promise these necessary improvements are often postponed or funded by generous parent groups and boosters which creates a challenge for equity when this happens the fcps promise of a great environment for learning is not realized by all students throughout the county these delays have resulted in faulty bathrooms a limited number of outdoor learning spaces and vestibules at some schools but not all this follow-on motion is a great way of ensuring that we develop a plan and work that plan to improve our buildings as effectively as possible when we get new infusions of funds such as this potential from the state so thank you again miss tolan for allowing me to

233work with you miss mclaughlin uh mr plattenberg uh sorry to call on you real quick so i i know that this is assist you know our board and this system very much wants to get to 21st century you know healthy learning advanced learning and as someone who grew up in beautiful sunny california outdoor learning is to me a dream but one of the things i feel like we've not been having our conversations about is as we push in that direction of outdoor learning and especially when we were in the pandemic and that was just such a crucial component of really taking advantage of being outdoors i feel like we still haven't married the conversation about our indoor facilities and as we've known a major backlog in major maintenance as ms corbin sanders is talking about

234our our use of trailers and cottages or whatever you know terminology we want to use for that and so in this motion here are we helping your team to be able to holistically bring us a plan that says look like everything we do there are these competing needs and areas of focus because i know for so long multiple boards have talked about children and teachers being in trailer spaces and that is not what we want for a premier you know educational experience in fairfax county and so while outdoor learning is a component of that i feel like it can't be in a vacuum that we're having that conversation so could you maybe speak to that a little bit yeah i mean you said it best it's a matter of competing needs and we have so

235many we could go on and on about the major maintenance the requirement of how backlogged we are in the funding the cares act funding has done an amazing job of helping us with a lot of our hvac it's good it's a nice shot in the arm the increase in the bond that's been talked about has been a huge momentum since i've been here not only do we have 13.5 shifted that was in bond that's now capacity and 25 million early on in addition to that 38 million we now have the additional 50. historical proportions from back when i uh was managing the cash flow and and the bond referendums back in the 80s um which really just dated myself so anyway but the but the reality of this is i see this as providing for

236some of the things that the school board has been um desiring to get accomplished and addressed to include uh security vestibules because when we talk about enhance the health and wellness of our students and staff it is consistent with what was recommended by this body at the work session to partition off as part of the cip and i think this codifies that in the event that the governor does sign off on this funding it provides a funding stream for the partitioning that the school board collectively had asked during the last work session on the cip well since you brought up the security vestibules is just you know another facility need that we're thinking about you ms corbett sanders i didn't hear it mentioned but our stadium bathrooms you know i mean the 32 million or

237almost 33 million dollars as you know there's multiple conversations occurring with the board of supervisors and you know individual school board members and facilities about the fact that um you know having stadium bathrooms impacts our students when they're out in the school day for pe it impacts our our athletes it impacts our band it impacts our youth and adult sports leagues that use our facilities the you know taxpayers and residents on the off hours so is that something that would be in consideration with these 33 million dollars i mean because that is the facilities component well i would take into consideration anything that's a priority of the board and that would be incorporated in the annual cip as to what we what we're focused on and the short answer is yes it would however many

238of your colleagues i know ms corbett sanders and many of you have been working with the board of supervisors and with the delegation on looking at creative ways to gain funding for exactly what you mentioned the stadium bathrooms much like your work with the joint task force on artificial turf so those partnerships will continue well but this i do see is a revenue source to hopefully supplement some of those needs and miss i'm sorry uh if you don't mind go ahead yeah you're you're you're part of the motion maker so so if you read this it's really to develop a plan and then implement it obviously that plan would be brought back to this board but i would suggest that there's the 32 0.9 million that we're talking about and then there's an additional and

239i'm going to get the exact number wrong i'm sure but it's over 5 million which is also in play for the installation of the actual utilities for each of the fields in the that currently don't have bathrooms and so that is also i would ideally if both get passed then we could ask you to include a more holistic approach to it but it really is that piece on the stadium bathrooms as you know you participated in a conversation with um facility staff and our colleagues on the board that's um there's some optimism about where we're going on that but we still need additional information so that planning process that we're asking here could include that once we have a better idea and as you see it's it's really whether we get that money or not

240i mean this is this is money that was not expected with the cip so this does create a structured process for figuring out sure i just i wanted to elevate this because chairman mckay and supervisor dan stork as you know have have expressed interest in this as a joint effort um in in equity um and so i think that given the conversation tonight i wanted to elevate that for all 12 board members to understand that that you know this has been some initial conversation but understanding that if the board supervisors do end up through the advocacy in our community um you know our athletic boosters at all of our high schools are are saying that rather than this school system spending over seven the the athletic boosters are spending seven thousand dollars per high school

241every year to pay for the porta potties and so it's just money that's being literally dumped down the drain yeah flushed flushed thank you miss keys literally being flushed so anyway i you know i i did want to i did want to make sure that that would be something that as they're developing the plan and because this is something that we're looking at partnering with for supervisors anything we can share and get something done quickly there's a this has been a long time coming and i just want to add the fairfax county athletic council for which i'm also the liaison they're very excited about work in this arena so there you go i think we have to thank mr plattenberg and his staff for um coming with some innovative solutions to help us get there

242so thank you okay um and with that the motions on the screen all those in favor and that is unanimous almost there our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure sorry agenda item 5 consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing and seeing no objection the consent agenda is approved agenda item 6 new business the following are new business agenda items there

243will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled at a future meeting the new business items are on the screen thank you agenda item 7 board committee reports i'll call on mr frisch for a public engagement committee update ms keys kamara for a report on the comprehensive planning development committee and the standard cofax are federal legislative liaison for report on lobbying day the public engagement committee met earlier this month literally earlier this month last week and we received a extensive presentation from occr about our strategic communications goals and our progress towards achieving those and they will be reaching out to board members who are not on the public engagement committee to set up two by twos and go over the presentation as well thank you the cpdc committee met i

244think it was yesterday was it yesterday tuesday okay and we had two subjects on the calendar one had to do with proffers and student yield ratios miss uh tollen already mentioned this but as the county begins to consider possible changes to the formula formula our committee was allowed to give input cpdc ask staff to bring a recommendation for us to review which will then be submitted to the full board we wanted to make sure that it uh included con con equity concerns and recommendations that would not uh would be having a positive impact on areas while allowing support for our schools we are following up with the county and other others regarding the implica implications for mobile home communities which had not according to the pros process we couldn't tell exactly how it would be

245handled um so we asked staff to make a recommendation and to bring that to us so that we could then have a review of it with the with the board before it was actually submitted to the board of supervisors the second um agenda item had to do with um a report on the client planning commission schools committee that mr mesh and i attended a week or so ago what we learned was that the county has made changes to the process of how we deal with 2232 and some other types of development where previously it has been on the consent agenda it will no longer be on the consent agenda which means it will have a hearing which means it requires a whole lot of other stuff including communications and so we are in the process

246of working with fpat who i am so grateful is full of wonderful citizens that can give us some possible guidelines on how best to do that thank you and on february 1st i was honored to be part of vsba's federal advocacy day where i joined with fellow school board members from around the state to meet with our federal legislators we were able to meet with the staffs of don beyer jennifer wexton and jerry conley and we had the pleasure of meeting directly with senators tim kaine and mark warner we talked about a lot of what we're talking about tonight but presented them with the issues including what we talked about the usda lunch program are staffing shortages with teachers bus drivers and other staff members student achievement data idea funding school modernization title one funding

247and much more so it was a full day but you felt very empowered to be able to talk to the legislators particularly those the senators we were able to talk to directly who were very engaged and asking very direct questions and um from each of us about what we're seeing in our districts there is a lot of commonality across virginia as as our needs are often the same and our struggles are the same so it was a great day and i appreciate the opportunity to be able to attend thank you agenda item eight board matters um i will now call on miss cohen no it's awfully late i'm going to skip tonight um miss danacofax followed by mr frisch well i'm just going to keep it light tonight as the hour is late um uh

248on friday i'll talk about the arts uh february 11th uh hayfield secondary will present mr burns post electric play and edison has one ax on tuesday february 15th that was a makeup day from earlier there will be concerts at mount vernon high school on february 16th at 7 p.m um and that will be the the school band concert and the orchestra concert will be on the 24th i want to give a shout out to fcps graduate nick scott who will be playing safety for the rams at this year's super bowl how very exciting he is an alumni of penn state we are so we are and go rams thank you um so last week as we began black history month the school board and the board of supervisors announced the launch of the joint fairfax

249county historical marker project i was grateful to have collaborated on this effort over many months with my school board colleagues especially early on with dr anderson during her time as chair i'm also grateful for providence district supervisor dolly palcek who brought this idea to us chairman jeff mckay and supervisors rodney lusk and kathy smith who worked closely with her on the county side and of course the incredible county and school division staff and community members who worked through the details and did the heavy lifting to make this possible the purpose of the project is to bring attention to untold and lesser-known histories from fairfax county communities the rich history culture and accomplishments of these communities are often underrepresented in history books and school curriculum and to that end the inaugural the inaugural focus of this

250project in fairfax county is black and african-american communities it will expand to future years uh to include other underrepresented histories as well fcps will provide resources to support students in grades 4 through 12 as they research untold local stories of black african americans and groups who have impacted our community the historical marker project will be available to all teachers all k through 12 students residing in fairfax county can suggest topics for new historical markers throughout anywhere in the county students can access resources to assist with their research on the fcps website and as ms corbett sanders indicated earlier this evening this is not the first time fcps students have worked together to secure historical markers for the community in 2020 students from laurel ridge elementary school with help from school-based technology specialist maura keaney successfully

251petitioned for a roadside marker dedicated to own a judge a woman born into slavery at george washington's mount vernon the students efforts resulted in the marker being erected in june of 2021 very close to the estate and just last year governor ralph northam's black history month historical marker contest selected three suggestions from the kings glenn elementary school history hunters and history markers club another effort organized by miss keaney to be clear my path first crossed with miss keaney nearly 20 years ago and she will be the first to tell you that it was the students who deserve all of the credit here but i do not want to minimize her early conversations with supervisor palchek which helped chart a course for this project and for that we are extremely grateful if you are interested in

252taking part in this project please visit the fcps website for more information and talk to your teacher i can't wait to hear about all of the stories that students uncover in the months ahead thank you uh miss mclaughlin followed by ms keys gamar also keep it brief because it is late um dr brabrand i just wanted to kind of put a fine point on something that many board members got communication on today and uh i did speak with um our director of communications um ms lloyd and she's very sensitive to how important it is that we get some clarity for our community on the recent rfp that has to do with a social media consultant you know it's so important that we provide that kind of factual information to our families because the way it's

253being read by some and the inquiries coming in the concern is that it has to do with parents being on social media and you know remarks they may make and so i just really wanted to take this opportunity because i know the 12 of us and you have the deepest respect for our role to listen carefully and respectfully to our community that is not what this rfp is about at all it's my understanding it originated with the office of safety security when we look at what happened in michigan when school administrators were faced with communication from a student students were seeing things online that we want to just help ensure that we have the most holistic approach to when you read something see something say something to save lives and so i i just wanted

254to give you this moment to maybe add to anything else that i've said but i just think it's so important that we take that right off the table this is about helping kids absolutely i'll just say super quick we know that the media out there takes things and twist facts into fiction the fact is that work is around student safety we know social media has become part of the threats that we've seen from student to student we've talked about it as we've done the srnr each year and this is part of our proactive ability to begin to really work and monitor um things that we see on social media that could be seen as threats to schools to the staff that serve them and to students and we'll work to get some additional communication out

255so there's not confusion in our community for the purposes of that that's great and i know that our families don't realize sometimes but we've had schools closed because of threats and that disrupts learning for the students it disrupts it for our working families so all of this is within the best of intentions to really help support our community and uh so i appreciate your team's efforts to quickly bring that that information to the table i was really disappointed in that news report alone that did not show good journalism and i won't even elevate their story by naming them thank you megan um i had wanted to comment on that privately but that's i mean i think you you needed to that needed to be said uh guys i've talked a lot tonight i feel like

256i took up my lion's share and talking about black history month i had um i had a lot to say and i needed to say it to my colleagues who stand on the front line with me so i do want to just thank the folks that came out for the resolution today but i do have one other thing i think is important for me to share and this has to do with um a letter from a constituent who has a second grader and apparently there's this game out there where they if they sort of live out a type of online game but they're doing it on the playground and they identify other kids to chase down and they have to sit on them for a period of 20 seconds this young man the staff handled

257it well but she contacted me in hopes that i would mention it because this young man was the recipient of this behavior and he said that he was afraid and he felt like george floyd so i am saying this so that parents have an opportunity to realize that there may be some unintended consequences of things that we would think or play and we we may want to have conversations with our children about the actions what our actions can produce in other children i call it the do unto others uh golden rule kind of conversation and i know parents know their students their children better than we do but i wanted to make them aware that we believe that this may be part of the tick-tock trend and um so it this i think it's worthy

258of some conversation at home and i wanted to give parents an opportunity to to discuss that um as we all work toward a caring culture i want to thank all of my colleagues for your patience with me tonight and happy black history month thank you miss tolan followed by miso mesh yes i was happy to support our resolution tonight for black history month and i'm happy to see so many activities across the fcps to celebrate i do want to thank my colleagues dr anderson and miss keys gamara for their incredible and thoughtful comments to celebrate black history month there are some amazing student and family programs that i just wanted to let people know about at the smithsonian museums and if you haven't been to the maclean community center they still have their virtual reality

259exhibits on traveling while black just i think through the weekend so i encourage you to take a little time to see that it was it's excellent i'm excited if you recall at our last meeting we celebrated our counselors and it is actually national school counseling week this week and the time i've spent with counselors across the schools they're always amazing and they do amazing things for our students but in particular our mclean high school's kathleen o'tell recently attended the national school counseling association awards gala and was honored for being named the virginia school counselor of the year so congrats congratulations to kathleen this week is also school crossing guard appreciation week with yesterday's school crossing guard appreciation day that was yesterday thank you to all of our crossing guards and school staff that work to

260keep our students families and staff safe at our busy drop off and pick up times near our schools i just have to make a statement please i know we have our kiss and ride lines are much longer than usual with covid and i just want to encourage all of our parents please take your time and be respectful of all laws and of neighbors when you drop off or pick up your students or having issues at a number of schools and i've heard many many requests from constituents for on better driving behavior around schools and school buses please as i said be patient and respectful there have been some unfortunate accidents and close calls at our schools so please follow traffic laws as you are dropping off and picking up students a couple exciting things in

261greensville herndon middle school received a healthy kids grant from the community foundation and held a virtual cooking class with 50 of the middle school students participating in a two-hour cooking class led by a chef the kids all received a cooking and baking set ahead of time and parents purchased all the ingredients the students were super engaged in making those healthy snacks langley high school alumni lucy chen and anam khan founded codify a mclean based organization that teaches coding to middle and high school students worldwide codify just received a governor's volunteerism and community service award in november about 250 high school and college age volunteers from all over the country help mentor students and teach coding courses online and also just our middle school and high school students have are so busy congratulations to the musicians

262who have made it to the district level bands chorus or orchestra levels and they're all gearing up for yearly assessments and are having pre-assessment concerts and check your local high school and middle school calendars for these fabulous events and um be sure to check out all the drama productions it's the um season for um student written one act please which are always incredible and congratulations to many of our janesville regional scholastic arts and writing winners moving on to the national competition and congratulations to our winter athletes i know there was a we had wrestling regionals occurring today so congratulations to all of our wrestlers that participated in that and i wish the best of luck to all of our winter athletes in their regional estate competitions and good luck to everyone trying out for spring

263sports yeah yeah i'll go um today i had the pleasure of meeting with our region staff to look for and i look forward to problem solving around student achievement and and socio-emotional learning about how we can continue supporting them uh i also had the pleasure of going with miss cohen um and a number of our staff to celebrate the new principal at fairfax high school just this past friday with the city of fairfax board and dr pijardo the superintendent which we're all excited about miss a joining that school community later in the year yesterday i also had the pleasure of co-hosting with pranav our student rep a community forum where we discussed the latest updates on budget cip and try to break it down in the simplest way possible for the community so be sure

264to check that out if you are interested in what we've been doing for the past two months um i i shared earlier that i did want to give the floor mostly to ms kizuma and dr anderson on african-american history month but of course happy african-american history month to everyone and i certainly uh wanted to comment because i know a chunk of the resolution was spent celebrating the the many contributions of the community uh over the years um to just state that you know regardless of course um of the many contributions which are which are significant and and um make us proud uh the the worth of every member of our community uh stands alone um and is as uh valuable in and of itself intrinsically and inherently with that i did want to share a

265quote from one of my role models from african american history month i shared this who he was last time and i think many of you know malcolm x who was a minister and human rights activist during the civil rights movement and who challenged many us to decolonize our minds if that's a foreign phrase for you i encourage you to look it up but here it goes so he says why am i as i am to understand that of any person his whole life from birth must be reviewed all of our experiences fuse into our personality everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast there was a time when you didn't know what

266you know today we need more light about each other light creates understanding understanding creates love love creates patience and patience creates unity so that's the end of the quote but to shed some of that light hopefully and build towards some understanding uh pranav and i are going to be co-hosting a conversation about jedi initiatives jedi being justice equity diversity and inclusion initiatives specifically addressing the topic of yeah it's coming critical race theory what is it um let's learn a little bit more about it we're going to have some national experts join us on the 23rd for a virtual conversation and answering communities questions with the goal again of bringing understanding by shedding light on what i think has been severely misunderstood which makes me end tonight with a final quote from malcolm x which is

267a man who stands for nothing will fall for anything i'm for truth no matter who tells it i'm for justice no matter who it is for or against i'm a human being first and foremost and as such and for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole good night uh where are we miss maron followed by miss corbett sanders hi yeah just four quick things so i was able to uh be over at willow oaks today to review the potential the language arts basal resources that are on display for anyone to come and check them out and i was really encouraged by what i saw there's a set from benchmark education that had k-6 and i flipped through and saw phonics-based instruction and content knowledge and culturally appropriate content and so i'm really looking forward

268to seeing what our committee of appointed members of the public you know put together and hear those recommendations next week i'm looking forward to connecting with the communities at flores elementary and aldrin elementary for when i go over for a site visit and a pta meeting and next week also calling all high school students there's going to be an amazing career expo it starts on monday february 14th and runs through thursday the 17th it's from 4 to 7 p.m it's called instruction 2 industry so instruction the number two industry and it's in partnership with six other area school divisions fcps is the lead and a shout out to matt bechdel for all his work in convening that and convening about a hundred different industry partners from lots of different career paths so do check it

269out pre-register if you can so everyone knows that you're coming so again it's an instruction to industry and you could probably search it on the website or i've been putting it on social media as well and then also next week on the 17th at 7 p.m i'm hosting an outdoor learning spaces community conversation and i'm really excited to have so many people sign up in advance and even share some photos of what's happening in their school community so i hope to have another conversation online in the next month and then actually get out to some schools and see what's happening and what can be inspiring that we could do you know particularly for parents and students and in partnership with the staff thank you yes okay actually before i before i have my remarks i

270would like miss marin to also talk a little bit about the cte virtual event that's coming up i know that you had wanted to make sure that all of your colleagues knew about it but this is a great opportunity for you oh yes that was what i just mentioned that was the instruction to industry that was it's all virtual excellent thank you 14 17 4 to 7 p.m thanks ms barbara sanders great so i had the pleasure of partnering with my colleague dr anderson earlier on a panel discussion on the ib reaccreditation for the district and i just really appreciated the comments that you brought to the table as an experienced educator and really the discussion with the ib association was really about how fairfax county is leading in this area how we can improve

271the availability of ib programming and more importantly the recognition within the community about ib so that kids are encouraged to join it and i know that the ib programs have been very successful mranak kofax has two children that graduated uh having had excellent experience with the ib program at edison and we have over time expanded those programming to uh the middle years ib program and so this was and as a matter of fact i think you uh miss omega's are also a uh product of our ib programs and so the more that we can hold up or lift up people that have had these great experiences and the value of the ib program for our students i think it's the better i also wanted to thank you personally dr brabrand i know that we all

272woke up on sunday morning with a significant number of students who had reached out to us about their concerns uh on the forthcoming world championships for color guard drumline and percussion that usually take place in dayton ohio and there were some contracting problems to make sure that those kids would be able to participate so i very much appreciate your focus on that thank you i wanted to let people know that tj high school for science and technology continues to be a great place for our students to thrive and that we have two students from tj participating in the senate the 2022 senate youth program and another student partnering with a student in one of our private schools in the area have has been recognized for the regeneron science talent search which there are only 40

273finalists across the country so just another great example of the wonderful education our students get here in fairfax county and finally i wanted to actually ask for your assistance mr frisch in um because i know that you built on the programs at the state level and the wonderful work that miss keaney was doing has done on the historical markers and the thing that we haven't done is we haven't formally recognized those students who really uh profiled and inspired so much of the work that is now being done at the local level and so miss keaney has reached out asking and i said that i would work with my colleagues to make sure that we find an opportunity to bring those students here and recognize the great work they've done not only in fairfax county but

274across the state raising awareness to them please do um i spoke to her a couple nights ago and suggested that a resolution might be in order so i'd be happy to partner with you on that wonderful we'll make that happen dr anderson followed by miss seismor heiser alrighty thank you i'll try to be really quick because it is really late but i did want to highlight and thank the two schools that i visited last week north springfield and mason crest it's always fantastic to be able to see the wonderful things going on in our schools and the efforts by our staff i do want to share the dr brabrand something that has come up with many of the schools that i've visited the elementary schools there's a lot of concern from the principals regarding staff

275special education staffing the mini model i think that they typically would have had access to does not seem to be available so they're a little bit worried about that staffing so i would love your follow-up on that um and also for staffing for self-contained programs they're just very concerned that they won't have the personnel that they need to support our students um spent quite a bit of time at falls church last week and we had a wonderful renovation community update and i think at one point mr frisch who was also there we had 138 participants so it was quite a and of mesquiz gamara was also there so we had quite a robust discussion with the community and the excitement is so high because that school has not been renovated in so many many years

276decades and so their waiting would break with um baited breath also i had the opportunity to attend the false church high school boys and girls basketball games and in between the two games there was the gym dedication for miss gene kelly who remember we had the renaming decision be made here last october and it was fantastic it was so touching she had the most rising ovation from her community and i was very glad to be there even though i got a lot of flag for wearing a justice shirt over under my false church jacket but i had to do double duty um i attended the mountain view winter commencement last week and it was just fantastic to see the work of those students um they have some difficult circumstances and being able to overcome and

277thrive they're not just getting through they are thriving with high levels of gpas going into schools that are prestigious i was just very excited to be there so thank you to mountain view for allowing me to participate and yesterday i was at the plum center our ace committee mr balbuena put together a tour of the ace facility at the plum center on edsel where we had an opportunity to see firsthand the adult esol classes the ace classes and the adult education classes it was really fantastic i don't want to spend too much time to talk about it here but there was a lot that i've learned and i'm really looking forward to being able to better support as liaison to ace based on that visit there were some very wonderful things um just a quick

278reminder to mason um community to the mason community on february 15th i will have office hours at columbia elementary from 6 30 to 8. looking forward to see you there and on the 17th at the mason government center from 10 to noon and virtual virtual option will be um on february 28th again thank you all for indulging me as well with my comments black history month i appreciate your support happy black history month and also happy valentine's day that is coming up on monday good night i will try to be brief this is a couple of things i really want to share this week first um it's a big week for fairfax high um i i would love to say congratulations to nick scott but i'm still bitter over my niners loss to the rams

279but i will have to say so i'm struggling with that one but you know i'm very excited about nick scott being in the super bowl of course um i had a great visit to the pulley um center work site at the fairfax library services site and dr brabrand if you haven't had a chance to see our students at the fcps worksite in the library services they're doing some incredibly great work and i'm really helping our librarians get all these books out to schools because after during coven when a lot of our books went home they didn't always come back and so we've ordered a lot of new books and these students are doing a great job helping our librarians get those books ready to deliver and i just want to put a plug in as

280we're looking across our system there's so many great so much work that needs to be done that our students in pulley and davis can do and and that site at the library services site is a great example of that so i encourage you all to go see what they're doing and talk to peter kelly the principal at pulley and it was a very exciting visit um another shout out to fairfax high i saw newsies this weekend at fairfax academy and it was an amazing performance if you all missed it it was like a tour it was so so professionally done it was um my family all went we had a great time i'm still singing king of new york in my head and the only last thing i want to say is there's a project

281that i've worked on for a couple years now with supervisor lusk around practice traffic stops for people with disabilities it's a great way in a safe environment for people with disabilities and police officers to learn to interact together in these practice traffic stops and the first pilot of this program was done in one of our driver's education classes because it is actually a skill that learning to interact during a traffic stop is a skill that all of our young drivers can do so thank you to the fairfax county police department supervisor lusk fcps students and staff and especially carrie reynolds and dr presidio for really i'm championing this i'm really really excited about this with our driver's ed program so i just had to share that and i will reluctantly say go rams um and

282i'll leave it at that have a great night thank you everyone um it is quite late so i'm gonna leave you all with some serious anticipation to read about all the wonderful things i've done you're gonna have to go to my newsletter this month um and i'll instead say congratulations to the westfield wrestling team tonight who are newly minted northern region champions and with that good night and the meetings adjourned [Music] you