FCPS School Board Meeting - 10/21/2021

001[Music] so [Music] uh [Applause] beautiful musicianship thank you like braddock wonderful problem to have not to fit everybody on stage wonderful miss mclaughlin you're recognized yes thank you members of the audience from the lake braddock community i just want to personally convey my deep appreciation to conductor clayton allen i know that he is deeply devoted to the students at lake braddock and the orchestra work they did for us this evening and every single year i also appreciate that mr allen also serves our nation proudly with the national guard and it was during covid is during covid that he also had to tirelessly work to help our nation in the covid response so mr allen thank you again for your service to our country and all you do for our students [Applause] and i say that

002on behalf of my amazing colleagues especially the lake braddock parents watching seismic heiser and laura jane cohen as well as the other at-large members thank you miss mclaughlin okay go ahead miss seismorizer okay excellent agenda item 2.02 certification of closed meeting compliance in order to comply with section 2.2-3712-d of the code of virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county school board convened a closed meeting on october 21st 2021 and to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such 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 moved by this corbett sanders seconded by ms omesh all those in

003favor all all those opposed all those in favor again put your hands down all those opposed 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 that information may be found at the back of the auditorium or on the website at fcps.edu school board slash board docs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live stream on the website at fcps.edu tv slash ch99 a reminder a mask that covers the nose and mouth fully must be worn at all times by everyone in attendance in the auditorium if you have a mask exemption or if you need a mask break please take advantage of the overflow room set up in the gymnasium item 4.03 the division-wide comprehensive plan

004has been removed from tonight's consent agenda and added as an action item at the request of a board member item 5.03 the issuance of school bonds has been rescheduled to the november 11th meeting consent agenda item 6.03 the public engagement committee recommended changes to the governance manual regarding community participation has been removed from tonight's agenda at the request of a board member this item will be rescheduled for a future meeting we would like to take a moment to congratulate the digital learning resource distribution broadcast and streaming support team on receiving the 2021 fcps excellence excellence in innovation team award with the onset of covid in 2020 fcps was forced to conduct business virtually it was necessary for the board to move to a virtual platform in order to complete their important work and this team

005was called upon to help satisfy the legal requirements of public access to their meetings throughout the quarantine the team provided live streaming of over 200 board committee and community meetings again we offer our sincere congratulations and appreciation for this fine team and their commitment to this school board and to all of fcps thank you [Applause] agenda item 2.04 false church high school gymnasium navy i call on dr anderson for a resolution thank you madam chair the resolution is for the naming of the main gymnasium at falls church high school to the gene kelly gymnasium whereas jean ann kelly attended fairfax county public schools where she was a standout basketball and tennis student athlete a member of the marching band and student government graduating from falls church high school in 1986 and whereas miss kelly instructed

006coached and mentored students as a history teacher varsity tennis coach and freshman basketball coach as well as assistant director of student student activities and director of student activities at george c marshall high school luther jack luther jackson middle school and falls church high school and whereas miss kelly worked entirely and joyfully to perform the duties of director of student activities at fall church high school as a nationally certified athletic administrator from 2004 through 2020 performing all the required duties and building a strong sense of community throughout foster high school created and fostered beloved foster high school traditions such as the jaguar 5k in heritage night and whereas miss kelly served as a role model and mentor to coaches teachers and other directors of student activities and aspiring administrators throughout fairfax county public schools serving in

007many leadership roles among her peers and whereas miss kelly is a proud alumni and enthusiastic champion of the fall church high school community the school's number one supporter spending countless hours attending false church high school events and supporting false church students now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board names the main gym at fall church high school the gene kelly gymnasium in honor of this exemplary educator coach leader colleague friend citizen and mentor i still move is there a second second by mr first dr anderson would you like to speak yes i would definitely like to speak to this event i'm honored to present this resolution this evening thank you to mr bobby kraus the current director of student activities at falls church high school for bringing this action forward to the

008board the board has heard from many in the fall church high school community voicing their support and excitement for a chance to honor miss gene kelly for her decades of service and dedication in this very meaningful way miss kelly graduated from first falls church high school in 1986. her love for the school and community was evident then as she was active in student government marching band varsity basketball tennis among many other activities after high school miss kelly left wallstretch high school to attend james madison university earning her degree in teaching she returned back home to falls church to complete her student teaching and began her first teaching assignment upon graduating at her alma mater miss kelly spent a few years away from fortress high school with assignment at luther jackson middle where we are right

009now and also at marshall high school but it should be noted that she continued to coach at up at foster high school she soon returned full time to fall start high school and serve as director of student activities for 17 years miss kelly retired just last december as the longest-serving director of student activities in the county her loving commitment for her community and her students have always been evident she's always gone above and beyond and could always be found at activities competitions athletic events she continues to support falsehoods high school and is clearly a jaguar for life she has exemplified strong leadership and has been a model of grace under pressure miss kelly is masterful at cultivating positive and productive relationships with students staff parents and the community at large miss kelly has worked diligently

010to foster a sense of belonging and community for all she established the jaguar 5k community fundraiser and modeled kindness respect inclusion and equity for her students and colleagues miss kelly is the embodiment of jaguar pride i was particularly touched by these words that were provided by a fairfax high school student leader in addition and i quote in addition to being an incredible administrator she was our number one fan making a constant effort to attend every event that she could miss kelly has exemplified the jaguar way ever since she's walked these halls as a student so it is fitting that we memorialize her contributions to the school itself ms kelly the jungle will always raw for you close quote as miss kelly would often say go jags in honor of that i'm all outfitted so thank

011you to the fall church staff for all of my gear much appreciated i'm happy to wear this with pride mr frisch would you like to speak to your [Applause] mr first thank you i too uh would love to thank the false church high school administration teachers boosters ptsa and student leadership uh for taking the initiative to bring the renaming of the gymnasium after miss kelly to us here in fcps we have a lot of dedicated staff who go above and beyond and that is certainly what miss kelly has done in her career since she walked the halls of falls church high school herself uh as a star athlete and a student leader and a skilled musician she was an example to her peers and that is something that she has contin continued to do throughout

012her career um as dr anderson said she further strengthened her commitment by returning to falls church that's not something that many people do returning to the school they went to as an educator coach and eventually as an administrator where she took on the key role of united uh uniting staff and students and the surrounding community and there is a lot of cohesion and community in falls church that is for sure what started as a teaching assignment as a history teacher turned into over three decades of service and for that we are extremely grateful thank you [Applause] and with that we will go ahead and take the vote all those in favor all those oppose that motion passes i would like to invite miss kelly her family and the false church high school staff to join

013us at the at the deus for a picture all right agenda item 2.05 educate fairfax resolution i call on ms keys kamara for the resolution thank you this is a resolution honoring educate fairfax whereas educate fairfax the nonprofit 501c3 organization established to support fairfax county public schools formerly known as the foundation for fcps celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2021 and whereas educate fairfax is governed by an external board of directors comprised of business leaders from across fairfax county who freely give of their time and efforts to encourage the community to support fcps and whereas educate fairfax has raised over six million dollars over the past six years dedicated to fcps programs schools and teachers and whereas educate fairfax has changed its name and branding to better reflect its work to provide enhanced resources to students

014and teachers across fairfax county public schools and whereas educate fairfax its staff and board are committed to the idea that our students are our strength and that strong schools are the bedrock of a vibrant community now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board acknowledges with gratitude the efforts of educate fairfax its staff and board of directors over the past 10 years commend them on their new name and branding and looks forward eagerly to their continued support of fairfax county public schools iso move is there a second second seconded by ms darren at kofax ms keith kumar would you like to speak to a resolution i certainly would today this board steps forward to acknowledge the work of educate fairfax in a more public way they have worked silently often behind the scenes

015as the support for this school system and we are so very grateful many people do not know the things that they have done to enhance our educational system such things as providing teacher grants they have funded innovative classroom grants to foster career readiness and workforce development this has impacted more than 53 000 students across the county they've supported kids in need each year 60 000 fcps students experience need that's about 30 percent of our total student population and educate fairfax bridges the gap to make sure that these students have the tools they need to thrive by providing school supplies backpacks personal hygiene items and the like and they participated extensively in our employee recognition by supporting the fcps honors program additionally we have the marshall fund for music education in memory of former fcps student

016michael i marshall this fund provides instruments instruction and field trips to needy students who have a passion for music and they have the access for all fun in the days immediately following the covet 19 lockdown a fund was created to ensure fcps students in need had access to vital technology wi-fi and nutrition they raised more than 450 thousand dollars for this effort we cannot thank you enough for being our quiet strong warriors in our community thank you let's stare at ko fax yes miss keith gemara was quite comprehensive in her comments but i do want to say that you know educate fairfax does work with our community leaders to ensure students success and help us meet our student goals and objectives i want to take a moment to thank elizabeth murphy the executive director for

017educate fairfax her staff and all the members who serve on the educate fairfax board for your hard work we truly appreciate you because you make such a positive impact on our county on our school system and you help us focus that every fcps student has a path to success so thank you all for all that you do we really appreciate you thank you miss corbett sanders yes thank you i did want to take the opportunity to thank ms murphy for all she does but also to bring attention of this board to the innovative solutions that miss murphy and her team have have embarked upon i was lucky enough to work with her when a marshall family came and said we want to establish this we don't quite know how to do this and her can-do

018attitude and her ability to bring the right people to the table to solve a problem that ensured that we got funds made available to students especially in the mason district was just phenomenal and i just want to congratulate her not only for the success of 10 years of which i think you've been with the foundation over half of it i guess six years now but more importantly to encourage you to continue with that innovative spirit in working with our community to do what we can do the most we can for our students and our teachers so thank you miss cohen i couldn't let the opportunity to go by since i was lucky enough to get to be the liaison last year to the foundation now educate fairfax and i just can't say enough about during

019the coveted times how i know many different organizations had to have a complete rework of the way that they did everything um but you guys were amazing and you figured out how to pivot our least favorite word now and and transition in a way that you were able to be incredibly meaningful to the community to our students and we're able to come across in a way that just immediately said okay we're going to stop we're going to reevaluate everything we're going to figure out where the greatest need is and then we're all going to come together to do it and i'm so appreciative of all the work i know everybody's own lives were in absolute chaos but every morning when you showed up to the board meetings everybody just brought their best thinking about how

020we could rise to meet all the challenges that the year was giving so i'm grateful to have gotten to just be on the sidelines to watch that for a year and thank you all so much for everything you do ms seismore heiser um i will just be brief i just wanted to say for the person for the first six months of my board tenure was the liaison but never had a meeting because the one meeting was the day after we um went virtual so um i'm really grateful to the work of the that now educate fairfax does and especially our executive director elizabeth murphy but i just want to say more broadly i am so grateful to the board members and the people who've worked hard on behalf of educate fairfax you know education and

021the community have to be this symbiotic nature you know the business world and the and our schools are a symbiotic nature strong schools make strong communities strong schools drive economic development strong schools can often be the bedrock of opportunity for students who may not have had that opportunity in other ways and so i am so grateful to elizabeth murphy for leading the effort for all the board members for donating their valuable time and their energy to make sure that our strong schools provide that opportunity for everybody and our students who really need it have the tools they need to be successful so together we can be a strong community so thank you [Applause] miss tolin yes um i just wanted to put some more praise on for elizabeth murphy i haven't had the opportunity over

022the years to work with new and innovative programs in the school district you know whenever we try out something new we're always looking for grants and places to find money and i heard depth and breadth of connections across the philanthropic community in fairfax and the region and the nation was incredibly helpful and i should say is incredibly helpful to um you know people working on programs in our you know across the school district whether it's school based or in our central office so thank you very much for those connections and thank you for all those late nights working on grants to help bring money into the school district really appreciate it [Applause] seeing that nobody else would like to speak i also want to offer my congratulations and my deep gratitude to everything you do

023um educate fairfax really exemplifies one of the reasons why fairfax is and continues to be a premier school system um the community partnership and help that you provide to the students and to the staff of fairfax county is incredible and thank you congrats on the rebranding and we look forward to working with you in the future with that i think i will go ahead and take the vote all those in favor raise your hands all those opposed that motion passes [Applause] at this at this time i would like to invite the educate fairfax board members cindy anderson bill brown jerry fellerman doug guernsey rick lightwest and elizabeth murphy to join us at the deus for a photo with the board agenda item 2.06 national career development month i call on miss maron november 2021 is

024national career development month in scps students in grades pre-k through 12 engage in meaningful learning experiences to spark and sustain and cultivate skills to foster the development of successful careers students build understanding of potential careers and what it may take to achieve those careers through many opportunities just some of which can include speakers and class visitors in early grades and then in later grades internships apprenticeships and work based learning all middle and high school students in fcps have access to career technical education or called cte to the cte courses as well as additional pathway elective courses across content areas at each of our high schools furthermore fcps offers highly specialized career academies and courses that prepare students for industry certifications so learners can engage in deeper learning and preparation for a chosen career field staff

025and scps serve strategic roles in career development efforts including college and career specialists school counselors career experience specialists employment and transition representatives career and technical educators and career and transition teachers and of course our classroom teachers and other staff these educators and staff members collaborate with families to enhance academic and career planning with students and also nurture community employer partnerships to connect students with available careers for trend analysis in the economy finally the school board shows further commitment to career development by hosting its own career and technical education advisory committee or seatac which seeks to match interests and needs between students and employers on behalf of the fcps school board i would like to thank and celebrate our dedicated career development professionals and partners for your leadership and collaboration in career development at this time

026i'd like to invite staff from the instructional services department to join us at the dais for a photo with the board thank you agenda item 2.07 international augmentative and alternative communication awareness month i call on ms cohen for the resolution whereas october 2021 is international augmentative and alternative communication awareness month and the theme is get out speak up and break through the screen and recovering in a recovering world and whereas the united states society for augmented augmentative and alternative communication uss aac defines augmentative and alternative communication aac as including all forms of communication other than oral speech that are used to express thoughts needs wants and ideas we have some of it happening over there it's very exciting and whereas communication in all its forms is a basic human right and is specifically protected under

027the americans with disabilities act whereas aac includes but is not limited to gestures and facial facial expressions writing drawing spelling words by pointing to letters pointing to photos pictures or written words using an app on an ipad or tablet to communicate or using a computer-based speech generating a device and whereas aac strategies tools and technologies enable more than 2 million children and adults in the united states to access their fundamental right to communication and whereas research supports that there are no prerequisites required in order for individuals to benefit from aac access that aac users are presumed competent and given access to the tools and instruction they need to learn regardless of their speech impediment diagnosis or degree of difference and whereas fairfax county public schools is developing a division-wide literacy plan that include that ensures

028comprehensive pre-k through 12 research-based reading instruction that is aligned with the science of reading so that all students may achieve their full potential and whereas students educators and families will benefit from increased awareness about aac users and technology and the combination of strengths and difficulties that aac users can have now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board recognizes october 2021 as aac awareness month and encourages all residents and fcps staff to learn more about augmentative and alternative communication including identifying students that can benefit from aac understanding the core of presuming competence knowing and making available supports for use by educators and families and highlighting the success that aac users can have in their career and their life iso move is there a second seconded by miss tolin miss cohen would you like

029to speak to your resolution i would um i first want to thank the campbells and the latham's acsd incepta but especially sarah and calvin for always keeping me on my toes i'm so honored to have the opportunity to get to lift up international aac awareness month i've been so fortunate in my life to get to know many of our students and their families who rely on aac to interact with the world around them i've gotten to see firsthand how we must adapt to a better understanding of behavior as communication that we must train ourselves and our staff to learn how to communicate with all of our students in the way that they deserve we have an obligation to help every child find and use their voice thank you for all the help in creating this

030amazing recognition and resolution and i'm just so grateful that you are a part of fcps miss tolin would you like to speak to your second i'm so happy to second this resolution augmentative and alternative communication devices provide students with the opportunity to express themselves thereby establishing their independence and celebrating their abilities it is a method to provide voice for those students without speech or augment of students existing speech the wide array of devices to help meet our students communication needs there there is a wide array assistive technology services supports approximately 1200 students using augmentative communication devices in fcps the large majority of those devices are owned by fcps fcps has an assistive technology coach who works with every school to incorporate acc for our students and also works with staff to optimize the integration of

031these acc devices to maximize student success especially in light of in personal in-person learning available for most of our students we need to ensure that all of our students have a chance to grow flourish and maximize their abilities acc accomplishes this for many of our students celebrating october as international acc awareness month helps to further these goals augmentative and alternative communication is a means for every student to have a voice thank you [Applause] miss sanders yes i'll be very brief first i want to thank the miss princess sarah for really introducing the previous board to the power of aac technology for those of you who don't have the pleasure of knowing this wonderful young woman i remember her coming to us with her device and having her voice heard and it was such a powerful

032not only a it was such a powerful experience but it was one that i think really led the way of understanding that when we say we are meeting our children by name and by need that means that we need to provide each of our children the tools to be heard and to be part of the general community and not be in a situation where because they speak differently that they get separated and so i for one board member and i think i share it with all of my colleagues am forever grateful to our community for raising the awareness of the power of aac as the the great integrator for communications in our student body and so i hope that we continue to have this resolution every year and that in the future we will also

033add to our talking points a list of successful people in our community who use aac technology to be able to communicate and to share their brilliance because we do know that many of the people that use aac also are twice exceptional so thank you and thank you princess sarah thank you miss marin thank you to the community advocates who have brought this to the board i really want to thank those who are the first advocates for our students which are the parents and families and and really i do thank you for educating myself and the board i've learned a lot from the advocates who have raised this as a key need in our school division and you've been generous in your time and your energy and as a parent myself i can relate to what

034the challenges are and the hard work it takes to get what your children needs and see them succeed and be heard and i i do know now that behavior is communication and i say that very often and i really believe it so thank you for for raising this so that we can really make sure all of our students have what they need to to be what they want to be and build on their strengths thank you miss seismer heiser [Applause] thank you and um first i want to thank so much miss cohen and ms tolen for bringing this forward and um this one's very personal for me and so i wanted to speak to it i wanted to lift up my acsd incept advocates and friends i've worked with you for many many years and

035i so appreciate the work you bring to this board and the advocacy you bring to this board and just to share from someone who has a child who has limited communication who communicates primarily through being with others and through playing his music one of the beautiful things about this resolution to the things that miss cohen read in this resolution that i want to lift up is one communication is a human right it's a human right [Applause] and i never realized i never realized until i had my son one of the many things he's taught me is that our society too often equates intelligence with communication ability and then defines communication ability way too narrowly and that is one of the things i want to lift up with today's resolution and recognizing aac devices as one

036mode of communication is that we have work to do in our society we have work to do when it comes to presuming competence when it comes to broadly defining communication when it comes to understanding that other people's way of communicating is valid and it is our job to understand it not their job to stop doing it and i think this is a great first step i applaud our advocates i applaud my colleagues but let's continue to make sure that in our schools in our society communication in all its forms behavior devices by being is a human right that we lift up and we all agree to expand our definitions of norms to include these human rights and these methods of communication so thank you thank you to the advocates and to the students that have

037joined us today and for all your advocacy not only here with the board but the work that i know many of you do beyond the local school boards with our federal state um legislators i will say that i also hope that because communication is a fundamental right and it is the way we interact not only with each other but with our environment that we will continue to allocate the needed resources that these students need and the professional development to our staff so they are successful in helping to interact and really maximize the education of all of our aac children and with that i'll go ahead and take the vote all those in favor all those opposed that motion passes and before we actually uh go down for a picture this omesh i'm sorry i missed

038you i know you wanted to offer some comments thank you i appreciate that um i do want to thank miss cohen for bringing this forward i think you know this is a first step uh for you know folks who communicate differently to be seen and hopefully be heard throughout our system with just this symbolic moment right now um i wanted to think differently i was very happy to follow some of what ms size moreheiser said and challenging the way we already think but to broaden the definition of language to broaden even the the definition of what it means to be anti-bias and what we promote in our schools and how we teach our kids and cultivating inclusive societies that we think about communication is a part and parcel of that um that you know just

039like we factor in identity just like we factor in the walks of life people come come from that we think about communication as a component within that and that that be included you know i know uh in the resolution ms cohen spoke to words and writing and different things that can uh convey what someone intends to express and of course behavior and passion are also a part of that that's critical for us to remember and the final piece that i remind myself really as i remind the community um you know that this is a significant uh percentage of our population we have five million americans uh who communicate through devices um and and you know it's for for those with autism it's up to a half of that population that we otherwise wouldn't have been

040seeing and i'm looking forward to seeing the ways that through this resolution and through additional efforts of raising awareness we see it manifest and i know that even as a board we can do a better job of of hearing everyone out there in the various ways they seek to communicate so i'll end by saying it's on us right the the um the burden of of ensuring that we hear from everyone is on us and really um you know not on those who seek to communicate with us and so i hope that we can reflect that in our practices i'd like to invite all of our friends and families and staff members who are part of our aac community to come and join us for a photo please agenda item 3.01 community participation the next order

041of business is community participation speakers must leave their remarks to no more than two minutes in length at the conclusion of the two minutes the microphone or video will be turned off school board members will be listening but not responding to individual speakers the school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings such as the capital improvement program budget and boundaries comments targeting criticizing or attacking individual students are not permitted during public meetings complaints regarding school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or 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

042spirit 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 we are grateful for all who have come to speak to us today and we thank you for your cooperation and i will also add that if you see school board members go to the back there is a tv and they are able to follow along with um citizen participation thank you our first speaker is madeline tyler madeline tyler our next speaker is liam from tj [Applause] hi i'm a student at thomas jefferson high school for science and tech it sounds crazy but my school including parents teachers and staff has literally been under attack for 16

043months we have at least four dark money groups groups that investigative journalists and researchers say our dark money which have taken over our pta and caused great harm to the school we need your help the only group that has helped us so far is the virginia pta and i would like to thank them for that these dark money groups have repeatedly attacked black asian and hispanic students at our school they have sent threats to parents teachers and staff they've fabricated scandals targeting staff so they can't even do their real jobs here are some specifics one last year our student body president created what was in my opinion the best seo lesson of the entire year during the lesson dark money operatives stuck into snuck into our online class recorded it and posted it on multiple

044media websites one of these people does not even have a kid in my school how are we supposed to have free discussions when anything we could say could end up on the internet two two students made a survey for their peers about their opinions on admissions changes the dark money groups didn't want these kids to express their opinions and have their own survey so they fabricated a scandal called the police and the commonwealth's attorney they demanded the students be disciplined by the school system the students had to remove the survey this is yet another example in which these special interest groups have interfered with our ability to express ourselves and hold meaningful discussions about important issues three students who speak at the school board have been targeted for example by being put on the federalist

045website and baselessly tagged as being racist other students have been threatened yes students have been threatened in papers and tweets because they were at protest rallies we're being robbed of our ability to make our voices heard this is unacceptable and it needs to stop quickly we're just kids trying to be ourselves and have our own opinions but they're making our school a toxic and scary environment where that's increasingly hard to do our next speaker is veda yubo our next speaker is veda uball [Applause] our next speaker is barbara breckenridge i'm a resident of fairfax county and a parent of two fcps students one who just graduated and won high school junior getting kids through school with 504s and ieps is challenging my daughter's 504 process was smooth with competent knowledgeable administrators and teachers my son's

046ieps have been at different schools than his sister and have been painful and at times horrific over the past four years principals speculation special education chairs case managers and teachers all need to be better trained in children's behavioral and academic abilities and in how to follow and how to write ieps i know very little about special education and feel like i know more than almost every case manager and school administrator i have dealt with without fcps procedural support liaisons my junior would not be getting the services he is getting now including compensatory services the annual the annual iep turns into meetings over months with the psl and a lawyer we hired in attendance there must be consistency across schools regarding special education services after watching the last few board meetings i have a few things

047to say one students who identified as lgbtqia plus deserve to see themselves represented and accepted throughout the school district two my junior who has asthma and an epipen and learning disabilities is doing better in in-person classes please everyone will get the vaccine and wear your masks correctly so schools can stay open three thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak you will not acquiescing to the demands of people screaming at you doesn't mean you aren't listening it means you understand the demands of a few don't always meet the needs of the many and the shouting is inexcusable you all are not getting hearing the best of fairfax county you deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and thank you for all you do [Music] our next speaker is diane drezner diane dresner our

048next speaker is kevin's renda it's okay to believe that god loves you as the boy or girl he created you as i have three daughters here in these public schools and i applied multiple times to speak on the safety of the girls in our schools given the news of the alleged rape and neighboring loudoun county by a boy wearing a skirt using the girls bathroom i focus on that scott smith we pray for your family with your policies and gender fluidity you have placed our daughters at risk allowing no room for their safety or disagreement no free speech no parental notification teachers lose their jobs if they fail to use the correct pronoun school board tell the students to love one another to be kind respect one another and that you can do so while

049also disagreeing about this tell them that they are beautifully and wonderfully made created in a certain way as a boy or girl not that they can be some sort of avatar generation that is not love that is a lie i move that a copy of abigail schreier's book irreversible damage be placed on the shelves there should be room after the pornographic book involving fourth graders and sexual acts is removed schreier's book is actually educational she interviewed hundreds of teens experiencing gender dysphoria most mature and revert back to their actual gender most transgender used to be boys but the recent explosion has put girls in the majority studies show that has spread mostly along social networking lines in friend groups mostly white young middle-income suburban girls with what is known as rapid onset gender dysphoria remember

050that time when we were all against genital mutilation as something that happened overseas in some other culture her book shows most youth who undergo genital surgeries return to having the same levels of stress anxiety and depression as before even when surrounded by families that love them and affirm them love these kids but tell them the truth i want to know if this board will stand against the for support of those experiencing body dysphoria some people actually believe they're disabled and have surgically removed arms self-blind do we have to encourage them to blind themselves to pretend to love them please add irreversible damage to the library god loves me our next speaker is vanessa hall vanessa hall [Applause] hi my name's vanessa i follow the meeting rules and i expect others to do the same i

051stick to the time allotted i'm respectful i do not threaten or yell at the school board members and i do not heckle speakers who follow the rules at the last meeting politically motivated speakers most of whom did not have kids in fcps repeatedly broke the rules outlined by miss picarski yet there were few consequences how can we empower students to advocate for their fellow students if they and their parents fear harassment or attacks by people in this very room attacks that will likely continue today at the same meeting i saw the pride liberation project students stand up to an army of angry adults to support queer literature in our school libraries they rallied outside against a right-wing tide who answered schultz's call to arms against these students in this very room several students spoke up

052despite cat calls harassment by the supposed moral majority i'm in awe of their bravery and eloquence but i am angry that they were subjected to bullying and abuse by coordinated right-wing forces i'm angry that half of the adults couldn't follow the rules and that the adults in charge couldn't enforce the rules it's not a political act to follow or enforce the rules make this room a safe and welcoming space for all to speak so that student advocacy can thrive those who use this space for poli politically motivated media opportunities should go elsewhere if they can't follow the rules if they don't know where to go i'm sure there's uh we can all have recommendations on a separate note i'm sorry for the coordinated and threatening attacks on each and every one of you you do

053not deserve to feel unsafe in your home you do not feel deserved to be unsafe in your workplace if those right-wing voices truly cared about students then they would stop their attacks so that you feel safe and can focus on your work to support students and schools on queer literature on a side my own budding activist said our next speaker is kimberly adams [Applause] good evening chair picarski members of the board dr bray brandon leadership team my name is kimberly adams and i'm speaking as the president of the fairfax education association and i'm a library media specialist in fairfax county public schools in past speeches i have shared with you many times the concerns that your employees are moving significantly closer to their breaking points unfilled positions across the district continue to create an unmanageable

054workload for all whether you are the bus driver being asked to squeeze in a few more runs or put a few more students on your bus a custodian with the same size building to clean this year but for fewer crew members to do the work or the school-based instructional staff who are covering understaffed classes on top of all their other duties every single one of these examples is having a negative effect on our students employees who have always given their best are simply no longer able to get the job done it is heartbreaking for people who serve students every day to feel that they cannot meet their students needs this is causing harm that may be impossible to reverse the substitute shortage you are working on tonight is only one manifestation of the effects of

055covet on our workforce and in our community the fea is calling desperately on our community for help we must think outside the box look for ways that everyone can be more deeply integrated into the success of our public schools we must design a support system of community partners businesses and other large organizations that function outside of our schools to come in and help lift up our schools perhaps utilizing the team inside educate fairfax that we heard about tonight and our business partnership office but whatever we create it must be designed to sustain the long-term effects of this pandemic truly innovative and creative minds working together are part of the solution if you have an idea please send it to our school board or to our super our next speaker is robert worde robert worthy our

056next speaker is linda herrera hello i'm here to express my thanks to the many folks who ensure our children are educated in a self-welcoming environment every day thank you to the bus drivers who get up well before the crack of dawn to transport our children thank you to the custodial workers who keep our schools and school grounds clean and welcoming thank you to the office staff who push out communications greet children and families in the main office and are the folks who have all the answers to our questions thank you to the support staff who provide guidance and support our children and families thank you to the school level and district level administrators who ensure curriculum is delivered in an effective and efficient manner thank you to you the school board who see the big

057picture you are trying your best to ensure all children are taken care of that no child is left behind your task is overwhelming and you deserve some positive recognition for the fact that you as a community member stepped up to the plate to do your best to guide the 185 000 students in the 12th largest school system in the us thank you to the teachers you are the folks our children see day in and day out you wear many hats in the classroom and work tirelessly to ensure our children are learning what the state guide state requires you are the glue of the school your support you support our children and guide them to a better future all of you bus drivers custodial workers office staff support staff school administrator board members teachers show up

058day in and day out and most days you do not hear thank you i wanted today to be different i wanted today to be the day that offers you thanks for what you do to implore you to keep doing it tomorrow and the day after and the day after that to try to drown out the loud but minority of voices who are telling you otherwise you know things are not perfect when in life are they but we need you in our children's lives because we need to our world to be a better place and that better place begins with you thank you our next speaker is kurt kennedy our next speaker is ed hoskin hey board i uh signed up to speak on accident but i would like to make a plea for uh focus

059on critical thinking uh identification of cognitive biases and logical fallacies i think they'll solve a lot of our social issues people have got their mindsets fixed and uh that caused a lot of confusion and uh some of our problems can i do a mic job nope thank you our next speaker is superna duta good evening my name is first of all a note to the fbi if you're listening in i'm not a domestic terrorist i'm exercising my first amendment rights maybe inves instead investigate the death threats some fairfax parents received after speaking out school board meeting right here to the school board two days ago i met a gentleman who worked as capital one who said that they have trouble recruiting employees an artificial intelligence because of the lack of a domestic pipeline of stem

060educated kids eighty percent of the recruits are from other countries in the 2018 results for the program of international student assessment u.s mass performance was below the international average the u.s public schools are flunking their primary duty who is to blame people like you i've been listening to these school board meetings since june of 2020. you don't speak about raising academic standards instead you preen and advocate for twisted notion of equity the opposite of fairness parents were justifiably angry when you declared war on thomas jefferson's high school for science and technology four of you met with some of them on zoom and on by phone and expressed concerns about eliminating the race blind standardized math and science tests and which helped the school set the bar nationally but when it came to a vote unanimously

061you chose to turn your back on us and cut the school standards you hypocrites fairfax county public schools should be renamed fairfax county public scam yes fairfax county public scam a bloated 3 billion budget gets us an indoctrination scam unable to deliver basic bus service but not a good education in my opinion government schools in much poorer india provide a far better education this school board and superintendent have failed our children if you had any shame you would all resign parents if you want a better our next speaker is joanne sears good evening thank you for the opportunity to help untie the gordian knot that is fcps and laura jane i'd like you to open your ears and put down your phone tonight i'm going to review the continuing saga val fcps leads from behind

062during your most recent board work session there was discussion regarding how to spend esther funds esther funds or fed federal dollars to augment challenges associated with the coveted pandemic dr boyd not a real medical doctor but rather an fcps educate educrat announced plans for surveillance testing of unvaccinated students despite having no real idea how much it will cost and what benefits it's supposed to realize dr boyd is under the assumption private insurance will pay for or a federal grant will cover the test costs but when pressed she didn't actually know based on research i've discovered that parents in this county their insurance companies are unlikely to cover the cost of the surveillance testing program and fcps is apparently expecting them to do so this is an expensive unfunded mandate and will hurt lower income families

063so fcps is moving out on a program with no clear cost plan zero understanding if private insurance will pick it up and no plan on how the county will pay for the testing for families moreover gatehouse has forgotten the folks on the front lines of education our principals our teachers and our parents here is kilner middle school principal's wishlist list for esther funds they're supposed to be turned in at the end of the month she would like to hire academic assistants for math and english classes adding additional math teacher to the staff so classes can be made smaller after school tutoring and intervention programs for math and reading and a permanent substitute on staff so parents we as parents we recommend you dig a little deeper and talk to prince our next speaker is ryan

064wood ryan wood [Applause] our next speaker is austin rose our next speaker is angela boyer our next speaker is darcy healey kathy mallard good evening and i will express my gratitude to the work you do and all you are confronted with however there is a concern that perhaps the work you're doing is not necessarily focused on focusing on academics and bringing up the academic level of our students i mean every year you put out this very lengthy survey to students and you ask students in grades 8 10 and 12. um while uh it sounds innocuous you question them about their opinion about a number of things concerning them personally friends family neighborhood community some are of such a personal nature that it is really hard to justify this type of intrusion in the minds of

065our and most intimate areas of student lives here are some of the questions i doubt if any of you would like to have these questions asked of you there are about 40 questions of the 173 which of our sexual nature sexual habits etc how many people have you had sex with in the last three months anyway this is for 11 year olds to answer i mean this is incredible how old were you when you first had sex 11 year olds again how many times have you breathed the contents of an aerosol can to get high do you think this might put ideas into our children's heads some people describe themselves as transgender when their sex at birth does not match the way they think so another question of course another question is are you transgender

066i mean an 11 year old is supposed to answer this okay um anyway there are lots of things that are confusing our kids and i do agree with you communication in all its forms is a human right and children the little children up here tonight should have had their masks our next speaker is christine sylvia [Applause] good evening as a full-time working parent of two kids in the fcps school system my life is pretty busy like many of us who live in the dc area though we spend a lot of time hearing the news reading the news i do due diligence in reading the post and the times and politico other sources of reliable information and i had read about the attacks on school boards and threats made against school board members around the country

067related to vaccination requirements and mask requirements lgbtqia students and literature and the teaching of history and i was horrified that these attacks were happening but i was really stunned that they were happening here that that there were groups organizing to attack um these issues here and i was stunned and sickened at the last board meeting to witness the vitriol and the anger directed by some in the audience at students who are expressing their opinions and at the school board that night i decided that i would start attending these meetings regularly because i want to make sure that all students have the opportunity to read books in their school libraries that reflect their experiences i want to make sure that our schools are supported in the effort to teach students to be critical thinkers and to

068understand how history shapes the world we live in that our schools are inclusive and welcoming to all and that our students and staff and their families are protected from covet 19 by supporting mask requirements in schools around the country there are lots of parents who are worrying because their kids schools don't require masks and they're having to send their under 12 kids to schools not knowing if they're going to be safe we don't have to worry about that here in fairfax county because our kids are in schools where there are masks being worn and i'm very grateful for that life gets really busy and you take what you have for granted and i know that when you make progress though and you improve mints to a more welcoming inclusive society sometimes people want to pull

069you back i'm going to be here to make sure that doesn't happen thank you [Applause] our next speaker is george becerra george becerra our next speaker is marion burke thank you i have am a mother of three children who graduated from fairfax county public schools uh we often don't show our appreciation of you so i would like to thank you now thank you for your resolution and decisions in support of the lgbtqia students i have a niece and a great niece who are both born male thank you thanks to you the world is becoming more inclusive and safe for them thank you for making the difficult decisions you made that kept our kids safe during the pandemic you used your best judgment based on scientific data to make those decisions and had our kids welfare

070as the primary concern and for that i thank you thank you for your role in revising the admissions criteria for our local governor's school not only is it a great leap in equity it brings our local governor's school into the present as more than a thousand colleges across the country also have stopped using standardized tests as part of their admissions process because standardized tests are not the best way to predict academic potential thank you for implementing the law that passed this last legislative session that requires each school board to require evaluations training and instruction in cultural competency and for those who teach history and social sciences instruction in african-american history we're fortunate to have each of you on our school board to stand up for our kids protect them and include them all of them

071we are fortunate to have you ensure that they learn what is important and true and complete and in the case of cultural competence competency required many voters are too timid to speak up or sometimes even attend these school board meetings due to the chaos and rage that dominates the news but know that we are here we support you we appreciate you and there are many of us our final speaker is callie ottinger cali ottinger we also have three video testimonies this evening our first video is sue zoldak what makes a good superintendent a good chief executive a good leader and do you the school board know what that is with certainty accountability and transparency at the top of that list but what else we at do better fcps a community of thousands of concerned fairfax

072citizens and taxpayers will be sharing our criteria upon which we will endorse a superintendent choice moving forward we will endorse a superintendent who shares these priorities a focus on a top tier high quality education that gives fairfax students best in class opportunities a relentless drive towards measurable results in educational standards both statewide nationally and international a move away from rewarding teachers based on time served or educational degrees upon higher but rather merit-based 360 degree reviewed holistic evaluations with additional incentives for pursuing subject matter expertise and professional development such as national support certification and attendance at national subject matter conferences a move towards greater transparency across the system including making all teacher professional development and trainings transparent and viewable to parents and the public making all students syllabi available for every class by teacher online making

073each teacher's average class standardized test scores such as ap test scores year on year available as well as each teacher's curriculum vitae showing past current and pending trainings higher degree certification and their certification pursuits and finally a commitment to a race-blind dedication to serve all student needs to their best and highest ability that includes seeing gifted and talented students as a special education category with special needs who need individualized instruction and services we are not behind then show us because hiding in a school board retreat whereby you spend two hours studying equity vocabulary words is not doing it our next video is oman escobar members of the school board and dr bray brand my name is omaneska bar i'm a former student of shenzheny high school i find it extremely disturbing how a gentleman how

074a man got into the school on september 27th and no one noticed that shankily high school with chancellor high school having a security vestibule at the front door it didn't serve any purpose any legitimate purpose and with the gentleman wearing a mask it also didn't no one could detect him i believe fcps needs to strengthen the security in their schools our final video is marianne bakkener good evening i am marianne bakkener fairfax city resident parent of two fcps graduates i've been addressing the school board for over 25 years always about the same topic different members through the years always the same topic why why do i persist because i am deeply religious my religious values guide me daily i firmly believe it is my responsibility to make the world a better place that is why

075i have been a volunteer la lacha league leader for 28 years helping mothers and families to breastfeed and chest feed their babies that is why i offer all students a sliding scale for the math tutoring i do that is why my husband and i are paying for others kids to go to college and those same religious values are why i'm here again to say that lgbtqia students staff and families deserve nothing more and nothing less than equal treatment in fcps you all have heard so many words from so many citizens i have nothing new to add the thought i want to leave you with is this one when will we stop allowing our children to be used to increase conservative voter turnout what we are seeing in fairfax during an election year is no coincidence

076thank you for listening [Applause] agenda item 3.02 student representative matters and i'll call on mr shadri good evening madam chair board members um last meeting i got the chance to share with you some of the experiences that i have had in fcps as a kid whose experience frankly hasn't been all um um losing the expression um but hasn't necessarily been um perfect that is a great way to describe it um and one piece with that is that early on in my high school career i really struggled and i ultimately ended up repeating a grade fortunately my sophomore year came to my school a woman named miss diglio ms diglio was a systems of support advisor one of the full-time staff members whose full-time job it is to support struggling students kids who have that support

077are far more likely to pass all of their classes to graduate on time and ultimately to live up to their academic potential but one thing that i think is really important to note is that while sosas are currently in every high school in fairfax county they are only in a select few middle schools and um there's quite an exhaustive list of what sosas do one of the biggest things is they help kids with their academics simply get through the year and pass their classes additionally kids who have things going on at home who are struggling with school withdrawal with attendance anxiety and with their own mental health are able to confide in sosa's as mentors and as role models for what they can do moving forward and um in my personal experience i know that

078it can really be life-changing to have an adult in the room who wants to see you succeed and who is there to help you thrive you know um i think we often talk about students in the middle maybe students who aren't necessarily in that really high really distinguished level of academic performance and students who might not be at that bottom tier where they're really struggling and they really clearly need help and for those students in the middle being able to find someone to support their needs that can help stop them from falling under the radar and stop future struggles and in fact middle school is where a lot of those struggles begin and so this is really i think about providing kids what they need to succeed and as is talked about so often meeting

079students and knowing students by name and by need but more broadly the importance of academic support and making sure that there is consistent comprehensive programming from school to school can make such a major difference i've gotten to talk with some students at other high schools who have these really large peer tutoring programs and in that opportunity kids who are doing really well and who really enjoy a certain subject are able to work with kids who might be struggling a little bit and so that allows kids to build up relationships but also to live up to their potential because there are a lot of kids who aren't traditionally enrolled in advanced courses and some of the reason for that is kids don't feel stimulated by their learning environment and they're seldom given credit for what they're

080capable of but really having someone there um it doesn't just make a difference on a kid's mental health it makes a difference in terms of outcomes kids who have that adult in their lives score higher on standardized tests are more likely to graduate on time and are more likely to ultimately go on to college and um so i would love to raise the importance of sosa's and of having someone out there for students solely focused on academics i think in particular because i am huge on mental health and being supported in that area but a lot of the time kids mental health is also correlated with how they're doing in their classes oh no i'm failing this class i don't feel worthy or um you know oh yeah i got an a on this test

081that felt really rewarding because i was working really hard for that um and so just as some food for thought um i think it could be really really um impactful to look and see okay could this also make a difference in our middle schools and what can the county do moving forward to kind of support kids who are struggling writ large and of course we often talk about achievement gaps but one thing that students who are struggling lack is that just direct one-on-one support even things like tutoring that can make a huge difference the other thing i want to say to any students who may be watching or listening is i know that first quarter is wrapping up and things are getting a little bit stressful um and so i would encourage everyone to use

082this weekend next week to you know get that one thing done that you might have not gotten to do before but then use that long weekend and really relax rest and do something you love because we have gotten gone through a lot as a student body especially in a transition from online learning to in person and um i really couldn't be prouder of my peers who i think have really shown uh what kids are capable of and have just soared in this environment thank you 3.03 legislative program i call on dr brabrand for the introduction thank you chairman picarski members of the school board this is our annual opportunity to update you on the proposed legislative program for the school board as we prepare for the general assembly to convene in just a few months

083and we have our amazing director of the office of government relations michael malloy who for almost two decades now has helped support this board as it pursues government relations and and lobbying and and really pioneering a lot of great pieces of law and policy for the state and for the federal education systems that we interact with so i have mr malloy here he's going to go over the legislative program i want to remind the board that we will have a full work session around this program next week so tonight is a focus really on his uh presentation and the outlines and the chance to take the deep dive into all of the nuances of legislative program and policy uh we will be able to do at the work session next week and we look forward

084to that so without further ado mr malloy thank you for those kind words dr bray brown uh madam chair members of the board and dr bray brown i'm happy to be here with you tonight to help to kick off the process that you all go through to update your legislative program as we go into the legislative session at the virginia general assembly so if just as a reminder this is an annual process you're undergo it establishes your priorities and positions on state and federal policy issues the discussion that we have on these issues right now now and in the work session are primarily reflective of changes that have happened since the previous year whether that be state actions board new priorities that you all have adopted or pursuing new issues that have come up in

085the previous year and staff input it's important to note that because the legislative program essentially carries over from year to year it's a fairly large document it already has a number of positions on school funding on student academic achievement on student testing on a number of different issues that this board has had priorities on and positions on for a number of years so a lot of the focus of this discussion is on things that are changing in the program and one other important piece to note in terms of those changes is that sometimes there are uh actions that the state takes or the general assembly takes um that actually address some language that you already have in your program but we don't necessarily go back into your program and recommend removing it i'll give you

086a couple of examples of that the state has the state adopted last year some legislation asking the virginia department and board of education to look at how some of our older language learners are incorporated into student dropout rates that work has been continuing at the state level but it actually hasn't been completed and so that's that's something that you know it's technically something that was was achieved in terms of the language you have but it's the work is ongoing collective bargaining is another example of this the state authorized you all to undergo collective bargaining at the local level at that local choice i believe and i understand that some conversations on that have happened however i think you all will be getting more information on that come november um so that's again another example of

087legislative action but the language in the legislative program stays because it's still kind of an ongoing concern and your legislative program serves as the basis for advocacy at the federal state and local level all right if we go to the next slide it's important to understand the environment in which this conversation happens because obviously this is you know this is largely about external relations and this is about policy conversations that are happening outside of fcps uh this is what's known as a re-benchmarking year and not to bore everybody to death with this this concept this is the first year of the biennium for the first year of the biennial budget the state goes through and actually updates all of the data and its education funding formulas so every two years you kind of have this

088stair step effect where the state catches up in with education funding to changes in student population changes in teacher salaries those types of things get updated so that's you know you'll you'll see references to re-benchmarking as we go into the the biennial budget it's also the first year of a binau budget and virginia is one of those unique states where it actually will be the outgoing governor who will introduce the budget to the general assembly so this the the budget that will be introduced will be governor northam's budget um obviously whoever the new governor is will have an opportunity to provide amendments and the general assembly will do what they do with it but it is at the beginning of the process the outgoing governor's budget the virginia board of education in fact just today

089kind of reiterated their support for some changes to the standards of quality a number of those changes could have impacts on you both in terms of funding and in terms of staffing needs so that's something we'll be paying attention to because those if they were to go forward they would need to be funded by the virginia general assembly so that's a discussion for um for this january and then finally i probably didn't even need to include this on the list but you do have elections in november um and that will kind of set the priorities for the state going forward um when you look at the political philosophy of the two candidates they're a little different so you could have different kinds of conversations depending on what happens with that election so just wanted to

090make sure everybody was aware okay so um what i'm primarily going to focus on tonight are staff recommendations uh those things that the staff has looked through and and provided some input in in terms of places which change on this first slide you all have a joint position that you maintain with the with the fairfax county board of supervisors it's primarily focused on funding issues this year the the kind of the conversations that i've had back and forth with my counterpart on the county side have been to kind of reemphasize the importance of fully funding that rebench marking process to make sure that the state data is fairly and accurately updated and that funding is reflected with that a number of issues surrounding the the challenges of required local match uh policies at the state

091uh primarily around the the salary increase that was proposed last year um and the challenge that the the split between how much the locality is required to pay and how much the state is required to pay for some of those proposals how challenging some of those have become and how challenging they are particularly in a high cost of living area like fairfax county and then uh finally they wanted to emphasize the uh the importance of the general assembly last year adopting a resolution asking jaylark to do a comprehensive study of education funding that is something that has been in your legislative program literally for almost 20 years uh so it's it's uh very promising that they're going to undertake that work uh the work now becomes to make sure that when jlark does their uh

092does their study that they're consulting with local governments they're consulting with local school divisions and they're fairly inaccurately measuring the actual costs that are incurred at the local level because that drives what the split between the state funding and local funding looks like so that's those are the recommendations that we'll be making on the joint position okay going forward collagen workforce readiness you already have an existing position this is just a recommendation to address some barriers that exist to some of the work-based learning opportunities for our students an example would be transportation obviously transportation for some students is more challenging than others if it's a work site based opportunity so we're asking the state to look at some of those barriers and and how to address those uh in the special education position a couple

093of issues uh one is asking the state to kind of redouble its efforts in in terms of special education teacher shortages this has been a critical shortage area for a number of years the state has undertaken some actions to help address this but there are gaps that persist in terms of our staffing needs um so it's something that the state needs to continue to address um i do have medicaid telehealth reimbursements on here this is actually going to be one of those examples of a a change that was made at the state level but that state isn't complete or that change isn't complete so the language and the legislative program will probably stay but it is something that the the state did start to address in terms of uh being able to do some medicaid

094billing for some of our special needs students through telehealth appointments okay next is standards of accreditation and standard of learning there are a few outdated references to covet flexibility that kind of were adopted during the the height of the pandemic and and virtual learning that that no longer belong but some of the language does continue to uh be necessary particularly around uh the impact that the the covid uh that the pandemic has had on our graduating classes not just the graduating classes the immediate graduate classes class of 21 or class of 20 21 and 22 but also our students who were just starting high school at the time there's still going to be some ongoing challenges in terms of being able to address some of those graduation requirements for those students and that's something we

095want the state to continue to focus in on for those students as they progress through their high school careers the state last year adopted a new system for standards of learning assessments they've gone from a system where you have a just a single end-of-year assessment to a system where you have a beginning of year and end of year and then next year it will actually be three tests so beginning middle and end of year understanding the the concept of wanting to measure growth for students and have a more direct measure of student growth as they progress through their uh their academic career and and each year that has proven to be challenging administratively because it's opened additional test windows and anybody who's worked in the school building know this that whenever you have a standardized

096test and and testing and the uh that process can be very disruptive to the academic uh kind of the the academic day so some of those things we're asking the state to take a look at as they continue to implement that new system and then finally the final bullet there is something that we were able to get achieved last year with the general assembly there was a an illogical law that required unaccompanied youth to have parents involved in their driver's education program um which literally meant that those students could not get their driver's education or they could not complete their driver's education until um they were they were of age they couldn't complete it at age 16 because they couldn't complete a single requirement the state has addressed that so that's something that can be

097removed from your legislative program um on the standards of quality i already mentioned the jaylark funding study that's going to be critically important as it goes forward that that study had a huge impact 20 20 plus years ago not everything was adopted but it certainly shaped the conversation for a number of years and then related to the what i just mentioned for the sol assessments there's some interest on the staff side and advocating for a testing coordinator position in the standards of quality to for the state to recognize the additional administrative burdens that the new testing system has has provided for local school divisions okay under your next slide state funding educate state education funding there's some references to cobit-related funding at the state level uh two or three references that need to be updated

098just for the ongoing effect of of the pandemic particularly at some of our on our elementary schools they they have seen the largest drops in enrollment part of that is due to the fact that they do not have approved vaccines for those schools so they've been a little slower to recover than some of our other schools in terms of student attendance so that's something we want the state to continue to focus in on for student health and wellness there's a question of how fully approved vaccines will be handled by the state going forward will there be any discussion of having them included with other other vaccines on their their vaccine schedule like measles etc the next bullet refers to uh in last few years or last number of years the general assembly has adopted some

099mandates arguably unfunded mandates on school divisions essentially requiring health care in schools all the way back to the requirement to have epipens in schools you now have some new requirements for students with seizure disorders new requirements for students with with albuterol and asthma those conversations in the general assembly as you can imagine should be complex and should take time and should have the input of both healthcare professionals and school professionals and oftentimes they don't so there's been a push the last few years to create a mechanism for the state to kind of consider some of those those proposals outside of the confines of a regular general assembly session there are a number of areas where the state already does this there's already a joint commission on health care there's a joint commission on on foia

100matters where they actually take time to study in-depth particular issues this seems like one area that would be quite uh quite favorable for that kind of treatment and then finally on under student health and wellness we're asking the state to to consider how to address some of the losses that we've faced in terms of revenue for food and nutrition service programs as you know meals have been free essentially since the the onset of the pandemic for everyone which has which has obviously been fantastic for our student population but that has affected the revenues that normally would come into our food and nutrition services program which is intended to be a self-sustaining program it's intended to to sustain itself through the revenues through meal sales for those who can't afford to pay with the loss of

101those revenues they haven't been made up so that's become an operational issue as opposed to a food and nutrition services issue so that's something we're hoping that the the state will look at and then finally on this page we're asking for the state to address some barriers that we've identified to for bus driver candidates we continue to have you know shortages of qualified bus drivers and there are some areas where the state either has some delays in terms of how commercial driver's license programs operate that could be streamlined that could get us some bus driver candidates a little bit faster than they do now and then this final uh oh that is it's truly the final page all right so hopefully you as a board have something in front of you that you can you

102can read on from but i'll just continue on with the presentation as as it's posted this this slide just highlights some areas where the positions don't necessarily change but there's just some editorial changes that are made um so you'll see when when you see the language of the position uh that there's some strikethroughs that that some things have been rearranged for um four four positions english learners freedom of information act governance and poverty and student achievement and these are really just hopefully clarifying amendments to make the positions a little bit clearer for for our legislators one last or i guess not quite last slide but the next slide that i have is the result of conversations that i've had up there we go the conversations that i've had with all of you um over the

103past few weeks um just talking about particular priorities and issues that you might be interested in um as individual board members um and this is this is kind of a compilation of some of the general themes that have come up during those conversations uh state funding is in front and center um as has learning losses and in terms of how do we make sure that our students continue to progress in their in their education vaccines staffing shortages that you know i mentioned the ideas on the staff side but those are things that you all have brought up as well literacy instruction and training whether that be pre-service training uh training for existing teachers or licensure requirements um i know you had a large work session on that uh relatively recently um so that's on the

104front of everybody's mind in terms of of how the state addresses some of those issues and how teachers are trained in in literacy and things like the science of reading special education teacher licensure and training this is more of an issue this is less an issue of pipeline more an issue of teacher quality the one thing i can say about this is that the state last year did adopt a significant number of recommendations that were made by the jaylar commission on special education teacher training so over the next couple of years you're going to see some new requirements come online both for pre-service teachers for existing teachers as part of their re-licensure process and also for school administrators including training on kind of what you know what a each person's role is in in a

105student's iep process so there will be some some training coming online for that school infrastructure and proffers something that a number of you mentioned everything from you know the ability to go back to the system as it existed prior to some general assembly action over the last few years on proffers to interest in in encouraging net zero energy construction so those those issues will come up and then finally i based in part on some incidents that have happened earlier in the year we know that the state is going to go down the road of requiring some additional training for coaches in in cultural competency uh kind of broadly defined and that's that's something that a number of you had expressed some some interest in all right next slide and this truly is the final slide

106um here here is here is our uh timeline for the rest of this process uh you have a work session on these issues um where essentially what i told you today you will see the actual language for and we'll have broader discussions about about each this this monday evening new business and final action will be completed through the month of november the general assembly pre-filing deadline this year and this this is a deadline where it's a little easier for general assembly members they have a little uh more flexibility in terms of how many bills they can they can introduce or or or propose their pre-filing deadline is actually extraordinarily short i don't think it even opens until november 15th for obvious reasons with the election but it closes on november 29th so they have a

107very very short window to get some of their ideas in you will have completed action on your legislative program by that point so that's something that we can discuss with our legislators you have your legislative briefing with legislators and and the fairfax city school board and the fairfax board of supervisors on december 7th the governor's budget will come out on december 16th so that will be our first indication of what kind of budget discussion might look like going into the next general assembly session and then the 2022 session starts i think it's the latest it can possibly start according to the constitutional virginia on january 12th and it is a long 60-day session because it is the first year of the biennium so they spend a little bit more time in richmond on on budget

108matters so the session will go into uh the middle of march and with that that's your uh that's your your introduction to the legislative program process and i look forward to the conversation on monday night thank you mr malloy we'll go to board questions mr frisch no real questions just some comments uh mr malloy i want to thank you for all the work you're doing on this and um we've had some very productive two by twos with most of our colleagues on the board many of the shared priorities that you've mentioned will be a part of this draft and i look forward to continuing to work with you on that as the state legislative liaison and i'm looking forward to next week's work session thank you dr anderson thank you mr malloy and uh miss

109cohen for my 2x2 it was um a great um opportunity to speak with you about things a little bit more indepthly um i don't see the page number but the next to last page that has the board's common themes i know one of the things that we discussed and i know that also came up with some other board members was the work of the foyer commission and our position and i don't think i see that as one of the themes can you just give us a little bit more information in terms of where you think we may be on that um initiative so um stepping back something that i should have said when i got to the the the common themes page is a lot of these issues um are already covered by your legislative

110program they're things that don't actually require changes in your legislative program in order to advocate for the particular things that were that were brought up so i just want to make that clear again these are more about changes to the program than they are existing program existing program positions uh for foia there have been a couple of issues that have come up over the past couple of years one related open meeting laws and another related to actually um the the process by which the public requests foia information and there's been some discussion at the virginia foyer commission on for lack of a better term some potential limitations on school divisions in terms of how much they can charge and how frequently they can charge for some of those requests and that's going to be an

111ongoing conversation the foia commission is an advisory commission so they they will make recommendations to the virginia general assembly that will be part of their discussion in the 2022 session um so even if something comes out of there that it's it's a a topic that will be part of the continued conversation during the general assembly session thank you very much miss maren to follow up on that thanks for raising that dr anderson um just to share with the board you know we did make a lot of strides last session with getting the ability to have some members participate virtually although not having a whole virtual meeting so that was really great for electeds and um some committee members but uh from the advocacy that i am planning on continuing and with your support is to

112focus on getting the ability of our public members who are appointed to committees to be able to participate virtually and to have full-body virtual meetings because we saw how important that was and i am certainly worried that in our busy uh lives that it will be just one more thing for people to have to to schlep to and uh if we can help that i think that is that is embodying the ideas of foia and being transparent and being participatory so that's one aspect and the other thing i have been inquiring about is if we could have our closed meetings virtually since they are not public the only trick is or thing to work out is how to certify closed before we go into closed so those are the two aspects of foia advocacy that

113i'm looking to help us forward thank you miss corbett sanders yes thank you and thank you mr malloy for your incredible service um i know that you are drawn upon your expertise is drawn upon not only within fairfax county public schools and our delegation but also some of the other jurisdictions that do not have uh such an effective leader in uh richmond they often will come to you for advice so i very much appreciate it my question is actually not about the legislative program at the state level but this is the first time in many years that i've seen a presentation that only focuses on the state level and we do know that there are a number of initiatives at the federal level including infrastructure including investments in our teachers and our workforce and so

114i was wondering if you are planning on um with the expertise of miss daranak kofax who i believe is our liaison for the federal this year will you be providing us with a similar or a a section on federal absolutely um remember this this presentation was about kind of common themes that came up there were not a lot frankly of common themes that were that were discussed for federal issues that came out of those conversations the the primary one had to do with safe routes to school and the you know the the program that the federal government used to fund which i think that they have now phased out but that provided some funding for ensuring that our students got to and from school safely whether it be walking or biking or other other means

115of transportation that was the only one that was specifically mentioned there will be some updates in the federal positions again related to some of the things you adopted last year for covid some of the priorities that you mentioned in terms of infrastructure in terms of federal funding those are already covered uh by and large by like in in your existing legislative programs you don't necessarily need to make uh changes but we will update um both the state priorities and the federal priorities um as this progress can as this process continues great thank you so much and i would like to just tee up that there are another number of initiatives at the fcc as well that we should be uh including in our federal initiatives in particular in addressing funding for infrastructure and for devices

116as well as in the area of cyber security stolen thank you thank you very much for the presentation um i look forward to talking about the the details of this next week in our work session but i wanted to take the opportunity to just ask of a broad process question you know i looked at the list of staff you know recommendations and they were all so important so if you just take an example of special education staff shortages and of course the board had that on our list as well how do we really take that item from that list turn it into a bill you know working with particular um you know legislators and and get some action around it you know what what are you what would be your big recommendations for us now

117i know so for example i was in a school a couple schools yesterday with my delegate kathleen murphy and when she was able to see firsthand what was happening in the schools and talk to the principals she got pretty excited about some ideas around potential legislation so you know what what would you recommend for us and even for people in the community that have ideas to really move some of this forward because we have to do it very quickly i i think what actually what you described is is exactly the process is it's a matter of having conversations with our legislators finding people who are willing to champion particular issues you know our we have a a large legislative delegation they sit on various committees so different people have different sets of expertise in the

118general assembly you know they may have expertise in transportation or in you know they may be on the finance or appropriations committee so they have influence over the over state spending we have members on the education committee so there's there's a number of folks that we can go to to talk to part of the process that you all go through here is taking kind of that broader document of the legislative program narrowing down to four or five ideally although it might be more priorities that you really wish to focus on during that general assembly session and then just going forward with your conversations and my conversations with our delegation to find people who might be willing to pick up particular ideas oftentimes what we'll find is that people have ideas that they haven't even shared

119with us that may very well dovetail exactly with some of the things that that you all are interested in pursuing um so i think it's just that ongoing conversation that's the most important part of this whole process thank you and i do appreciate that you know the experience to bring to the table and all those conversations that you have going on so you know don't hesitate to get us to help you thank you mr mesh thank you so much and thank you mr molloy i'm looking forward to the work session where we can discuss this further um i i know that i haven't yet had the opportunity to share my feedback and i look forward to ensuring that's included um i did want to you know just looking at this just to make sure you

120know obviously there's a lot to speak to on every piece um and we can do that offline but i did in just look taking a look at perhaps um some of the glaring pieces that i wanted to elevate um i know we didn't capture mental health in here which remains a challenge in our schools and certainly when it comes to staffing ratios i know the general assembly had talked about that for some time you know and and having to move into that place so i just wanted to make sure we included that and sought staff feedback on on where we might advocate um and then finally uh in terms of some of our shortages that we have i know we included special ed which is certainly a welcome uh addition i was happy to see

121esau kids in poverty support for those areas but you know especially in what we're facing as a crisis with substitutes and and other employee categories i think there might be some thought given there to think about what we might advocate for to support those needs uh given the unique year and what's likely to be exacerbated over time so like i said just elevating those and finally um the cherry on top i know we discussed last time just as a part of cultural competency wasn't reflected last time around but perhaps we might consider requesting advocacy just for recognition of observances that we already reflect we've made that you know decision and counties across the state have been um doing so that seems like a really easy uh low-hanging fruit piece that the general assembly might address

122but and looking forward to the conversation to speak further on those and additional pieces thank you miss omesh ms seismore heiser thank you um i'll save most of my comments for the work session next week i appreciate your hard work mr molloy and i appreciate our um two by two that i had with ms cohen on this i just wanted to point out the importance of that continued flexibility for high school graduation for classes of 22 23 and 24 and i just wanted to sort of frame that a little bit um for our seniors class of 2022 the last full year they had in person full year was their freshman year for our freshmen the last full year they had full year in person learning was sixth grade i think we need to give them

123the grace and the space to be able to learn to catch up to learn how to be in school to work with each other and all these pieces without having the same really high onerous requirements to prevent them from moving forward in their life and i think it's a really important piece that we give them that space to do the learning without without punishing them unnecessarily for something that was out of their control so i think that's a really really important piece that we don't prevent our students from fulfilling the requirements for high school graduation and um and just keep in mind for for someone like me at my point my life two or three years under covid is very different than someone who's a 7th grader 8th grader 9th grader or 10th grader so

124thank you for that mr kofax yes i just wanted to thank mr malloy for your hard work and um i appreciate miss corbett sanders you're pointing that out that this was not but we absolutely talked about it and as mr malloy said it will be included in the presentation but um happy to there wasn't lots of conversation amongst the board members that he has already met within the two by twos on that issue so as the liaison happy to hear from any individuals during the work session on that and i just appreciate working with you again mr malloy this year we've done this several times as the as i often held the state position that i look forward to and i thank you for all of your hard work consistent and consistency in knowing what's

125happening um on the state level as well as the national so thank you miss mclaughlin yes i just wanted to share with my colleagues that i had my two by two with lord jane cohen and really appreciated her active listening in in getting my thoughts on this as many of you know for many many years i've had concerns about um when we have families that file um for uh their religious exemptions so that their children are not having to do the compulsory attendance in our public schools and as i have shared for many years the biggest problem with that is we are the only state in the entire united states that has no requirements zero there's only three states in the united states that even have a carve out for religious exemptions the other 47

126states say whether it's religious religious exemption whether it's for homeschooling desire that's okay no problem we totally respect your right but you must be able to demonstrate that your children are receiving some form of education and that's keeping them educated each and every year and for the longest time it's been difficult down in the general assembly to get bipartisan support for this but i do believe that this next general assembly we have a very strong opportunity here to actually get bipartisan support for this in the past delegate vivian watts along with a former republican counterpart for her in the northern virginia um locality had championed this when we when a report that came out of the university of virginia center for children found that over seven thousand kids in the commonwealth of virginia go without

127an education every year and when we have one in seven kids right here in fairfax county i i hope we understand that it's not just championing for our kids it's championing for every child in the commonwealth this is not about disrespecting religious uh exemptions this is absolutely respecting our families but also respecting our constitutional duty to make sure every child receives an education so i wanted to preface it because it will be my number one thing to share during the work session and i do look forward to just learning who else might be supportive with me on this as i start to build um hopefully some allies down in the general assembly on this but after 10 years i'm hopeful that we will do something that honors our families honors their wishes but honors their

128children's right to an education thank you mr mclaughlin mr malloy thank you for all your work for being here tonight and we do look forward to that work session on monday october 25th to discuss the legislative program and action will be scheduled later and at a november meeting thank you agenda item 4.02 increase of substitute hourly rate i call on miss corbett sanders for the motion yes thank you madam chair i move that effective november 6 2021 the superintendent be directed to increase the hourly rate of substitute teachers ranging from one dollars to one dollar to three dollars per hour based on categories of short-term long-term and fcps retiree with the specific amounts by category outlined in option two of the october 18 2021 gray brand briefing and increase in the hourly rate of classroom

129instructional support substitutes by one dollar per hour for retirees i'm sorry let me instruction increase in the hourly rate of classroom uh instructional support employees substitutes by two dollars an hour uh one dollar an hour for retirees and three dollars an hour for all substitute teachers with the estimated cost of the different substitute teacher scenarios to be approximately three million dollars based on a ninety percent fill rate for the remainder of the twenty twenty one twenty twenty two school year is there a second seconded by ms tolin miss corbett sanders would you like to speak to this motion yes thank you madam chair and i want to first thank uh mr mcdonald miss burden mr smith and dr brabrand for working with this board to address a critical need in this school system over the

130past several years even before covid we started seeing a decline in fill rates for substitutes part of the reason for that decline was that our substitutes were making less money to work in our system than in neighboring systems so this motion tonight makes our uh our market offering competitive it also recognizes most importantly that we need to have people come into our classrooms and provide much needed relief when teachers take have to take a day off or when instructional assistants or public health technicians or public health assistants are also needing a day off and what happens today is these positions go unfilled we have administrators trying to fill them we have people from central office trying to fill them and in many cases we have teachers doubling up their workload to be able to provide

131the relief to their colleagues as they try to take a day off either because of a sick child or because of a personal need perhaps even having to go to the doctors themselves and so i urge my colleagues to support this motion because it sends a very powerful message that we value the people who provide that much needed relief to our staff and it addresses the needs that were so eloquently put forth earlier this evening by our teacher representatives and thank you again dr brabrand for supporting this motion okay miss tolin would you like to speak to your second yes thank you um and i second that thank you to staff for re analyzing this after our last discussions i do think this option on number two gets us much closer to more of our

132subs having a wage closer to the rates being paid by our neighboring districts our substitutes are invaluable to the operation of our schools and we are seeing serious operational difficulties with the low sub-fill rates that we are currently experiencing i'm hopeful these near-term changes will incentivize more people to come into our schools to help i second the plea of our fea representatives earlier this evening to look into the community for support for our staff please do at community members provide us with ideas and please consider applying to be a sub with these new pay rates um this is just a start and a short-term solution along with our raise for our bus drivers um in addition to this i you know will support looking forward to a more comprehensive look at our support services salaries

133but i think this is something that we need to do in the short term and encourage my colleagues to support this thank you okay thank you mr fresh thank you um i'd like to thank miss corbett sanders and miss tollen for bringing some creativity to this process and thinking more holistically about all the different needs we have when it comes to subs and i hope and correct me if i'm wrong but this is for this school year and i hope that as we think about this in the future we can get even more creative about the types of needs that exist and that some schools have far more severe needs than others for a variety of reasons whether it's a late elementary school bell whether it's a unique traffic situation whether it's intensive special education

134programs that are harder to fill with subs i recently heard from an elementary school that earlier this week they filled three of 13 vacancies you can imagine the severe drain that has on a school when you're you know working with specials and everybody else just to try and make the school function in the middle of what we're going through so i think that this is a good stop gap to really leverage our resources to fill these positions this year and i hope that we can have a broader conversation going forward about how we can creatively solve these problems that have been ongoing for many many years but they also exhibit themselves in different ways at different schools thank you dr anderson thank you i'm happy to support this motion but i also want to point

135out that i think it's a little incomplete i think we have some more work to do in some of the areas as ms tolan mentioned being competitive with the surrounding jurisdictions is important and i think we have achieved this in some of the categories but not all of them so i will be bringing a follow-on motion later on to help to short to help to address that gap um because we do want to be sure that we're providing substitutes not just in all of our classrooms for our classroom teachers but also our ias phas et cetera because there is a gap there that is a little bit more intense than i even i than even i imagined which i'll share a little bit later thank you both ms mclaughlin thank you um i guess a

136couple questions first for dr brabrand um i appreciate uh the extra work and analysis that ms corbett sanders put into this to try and really make sure that you know we want to be competitive absolutely but we also have to be mindful that anytime we we increase pay for any position in our system if we don't do it by benchmarking where you know the area and we get too high above the market then we're going to have the other employees and the other positions saying well why are you so far above the market so um i i guess it's a long night and i don't want to draw this out certainly would welcome if there's anything you wanted to say about miss corbett sanders bringing in something that changes what you and your team had

137proposed um but i would just share my concern and my hope for continuous improvement is to really reinforce for your team that it is so critically important that however it is that they arrived at these this initial proposal where it was sort of like a everybody just across the way is going to get this as we know sometimes even in the same category within substitute teachers we can be above in this subcategory and not so far above in a different subcategory and so i guess i would just ask do you support what she's proposing from here do you have any concerns about it at all yeah absolutely i support it and let me clarify one of the things i did do we did take your feedback and i asked the hr team to come up

138with an additional option beyond what was presented to you all at the last work session so in the bray brand briefing the weekly public briefing i presented two options i asked hr to present two options frankly as i prepared for this in my own personal cabinet with the hr team i believe that the second option was my recommendation as we prepared for tonight i didn't get to communicate that in the bray brand briefing i think miss corbett sanders alluded to it just a few minutes ago but the second option is my recommended option before the board tonight and it is reflected in miss corbett sanders motion thanks thank you dr bray brand um you know again i want to convey my appreciation to ms corbett sanders and any other board members that you worked with

139this on it in keeping with a conversation we had on tuesday's work session i think it's a perfect time for me to reinforce something that i tease the superintendent on from time to time uh it is hard to have a board of 12. it is hard to have mindsets perspectives helpful advice um but i think this is a really good example of how our school board in our role to govern and provide oversight is truly your board of directors just like a ceo has a board of directors and the reason that corporations have board of directors is to hopefully provide that expert input insight additional thinking and so something that you had said during the work session that at times you get concerned if we're maybe being asking too many questions that appear to be

140critical of your staff and and i know what makes you beloved is because you're very protective of your team and you need to be but i just wanted to kind of um teasingly reminds you that i hope you will continue to see us and i hope your team continues to see us as partners and as an asset and that it is definitely not any one of the 12 of us desire to create additional headaches but that hopefully in a case like this we strengthen the work we do as a whole and we come out with a stronger outcome and so ms corbin sanders thanks for teeing up what i think is it just a wonderful opportunity to say to show why the board has value and and why i i think we're we play an

141important role for our community and for our employees and for our families and i do want to also thank dr bray brown that even though i was a little disappointed and what i felt the message was tuesday i do know your heart and i do know that you respect and value each of us but just wanted to kind of remind you because it didn't come across that way on tuesday thanks for the reminder ms mclaughlin i appreciate it and i look forward to and our principals look forward to this board passing this motion tonight this is going to be a absolute wind at their back moment so thank you very much and miss park caparsky picarsky i just want to say one more thing to what mr frisch said because it just is so critical

142this substitute shortage has been an ongoing challenge for some time and it's across the region it's across the nation but our teachers and our our school-based employees are crying out for some really effective solutions because they're already working so hard and when they have to start covering each other's classes it has an even deeper impact on their energy level and their morale and just their overall ability to be effective educators so um i do hope that we can partner again with the superintendent's team to really try and figure out how we solve this and i'll add this suggestion if we haven't already done this i think we have to do an extensive survey of our substitutes to find out what is it that we think is a detractor for people wanting to substitute teach more

143i am mindful when i look at our investment in bus driver pay to attract bus drivers i think we you know compare what educators do and substitutes our educators what are we paying per hour for them versus paying for bus drivers i i think we've gotta again do some deeper work on this and um i just want to make that final plug is there not cofax yes i i of course will be supporting this i dr bray brandt i do want to thank you and your team for bringing forward the second option um i appreciate that you listened um as i and others spoke about the many conversations we were having with principals and the difficulties they were having and this is uh you know a hopeful start to getting them the help they need

144and in addition not just as we were talking about subs basic substitutes we have added the ias and the phas and the phtas so that i i really appreciate that that was um something that was um so needed in some of my schools especially one of my center schools and i think um but i also will be supporting dr anderson's um follow-on motion to get a further analysis of where we really need to be because this is a kind of a band-aid measure for that group because i think they do some of the most difficult work in our schools and we really need to ensure that we we have um the ability to attract and attain the best and brightest and through pay options that's often the way we do it so thank you and

145i'll be supporting this miss cohen thank you i certainly wholeheartedly support this um you know i i have shared i think with you many times being a sub was the hardest and one of the best jobs i ever had and um i recognized that we were in a budget crisis but we really slashed what we paid our subs and we saw a real drop-off in their willingness to come do a really hard job for a lot less money so we've at least got to make sure people can put food on the table when they come to our rescue um i one thing i just wanted to mention two things one i'm really hopeful that everybody is going to get their kids vaccinated so that we can get our retired subs back in the classrooms we

146have just this amazing resource unlike any other county i have ever even known about the number of people who retire and six months later are willing to come back and [Music] and rescue their fellow teachers and just can seamlessly teach curriculum and jump in kids don't miss a beat and it's a miracle it's amazing we saw it at cherry run we teased our teachers some of our retired teachers that they were in the building more than they were when they actually worked there so they're wonderful so please please please get your kids vaccinated the other mr mcdonald that just wanted to check with you you said that you would look into it and you guys would have a conversation so if you haven't made a decision yet i totally understand but one thing that was

147brought up was that we um in covid suspended our policy of kicking folks off the rolls who had only contributed a few days or not enough days or it had a lag in time is that something that you're still considering looking into i unfortunately also just broke a norm and i was having a sidebar with dr anderson well if he's prepared to answer then i'll let mr mcdonald answer absolutely so we we have continued and will continue to suspend the rule that folks need to work a minimum of 20 days per school year uh in the substitute role we are we are working and have notified folks that haven't worked in the past 13 months because we do want them to get back in and help out if they can if not we understand that

148perhaps they need to separate for a time being but want to stay in touch but the 20-day rule will be suspended and continue to be suspended this year awesome thank you so much and i know many of us have volunteered put us to work we will come be subs we'd love to help you out scott just rolled his eyes no i'm excited we cannot we'll find positions um uh we'll let's let's talk about that my supervisor still has to approve my volunteering thank you so much we really this is a great move in the right direction okay miss seismore heiser thank you i'll be brief and i will definitely support this because having heard from many principals and teachers of just the desperate need for substitutes and the impact it has so i want to

149first thank miss corbett sanders and miss tollen for bringing this forward and i want to thank dr bray brand for his collaboration and working and listening to the board and working with miss corbett sanders and miss tolin in in um bringing his best thinking to his recommendation and working with miss corbett sanders to make sure that that was reflected um today so i you know i think we are at our best when we collaborate and work with each other and we make sure that we do that in a way that takes care of our people who are doing the hard work of educating our kids and i say this as a good friend of mine tonight who is a new long-term sub for fairfax county was not here tonight because she was doing three preps

150for classes tomorrow so i know how hard our substitute teachers work and i know how much they contribute to our classroom so i just appreciate the collaboration and the hard work um in this work tonight and i and i'm really glad um to also from a summation miss dr anderson for flagging the issues around our phdas ias and i look forward to that follow-on motion as well so thank you i will now call for the vote um the motion before us is on the screen all those in favor please raise your hands all those opposed all right that motion passes and i will call on dr anderson for a follow-on motion thank you i moved at the board director superintendent to provide an analysis of the phta pha substitute pay scale to determine potential enhancements

151to the adopted scale to ensure fcps is competitive with wavy districts and to increase fill rates is there a second second okay second it might miss mayor mr mesh seconded by miss omash dr anderson would you like to speak to the phone yes absolutely i would like to very much um and having some conversations with staff and it came late so my apologies to the board the data that was provided by mr mcdonald shares that the substitute pay for our ias and pht tas is fifth uh behind montgomery loudoun prince william and alexandria our phas are behind all of those divisions except um false church eking out by 89 cents 89 for some of the people who do some of the most difficult jobs in schools i i know i say this all the time

152because as a former principal i know it's hard to get a substitute to teach english third grade kindergarten sometimes it is truly much more difficult to get a substitute for for the work that is done by these individuals it is just almost impossible and we show that the data from mr mcdonald also shows that the fill rate for this year for our um teachers the average is 73.8 which is low this is unacceptable because it really needs to be in the 90s and the range is from 60.9 to 85 but for the group that i'm talking about right now the ias phtas and phas the average fill rate is 58.9 percent with the range ranging from 47.2 to 71.7 if our focus is to one recruit additional substitutes retain substitutes increase fill rates we must

153address this and i'm not asking for action tonight because i want to be sure that we all have an opportunity to review the data and really have a comprehensive comprehensive analysis but i am asking for this information to be provided and time for us for me to bring this for future action at our next board meeting for new business thank you mr mesh would you like to speak uh thank you dr anderson eloquently addressed a lot of the points and i think in the discussion to the previous motion folks raised the issue i do want to express immense gratitude to mr mcdonald you know a solutions oriented uh leader in our division and i've been extremely grateful that he's willing to provide all the information and answer all our questions um i think you know

154dr anderson touched on the numbers i think overall this is you know what with the even with the two dollar edition that we just approved um this will place us kind of in a weird place where with this uh category of employees we're above but below certain uh counties and then you know compared to all subs above or below and it's a little inconsistent so i think revisiting this um will be beneficial to the collective and i know that ms corbett sanders and miss tolin um had had considered this as well so i'm grateful that we're all collectively on the same page here as to moving forward with that um and i want to make two things clear number one to our ias phas and phtas um that this certainly uh our previous motion was

155certainly no message that your work is any less important in fact we are in dire need of you um so i want to make sure that statement is clear as a collective in fcps like i said i know that my colleagues who brought the forth the previous motion uh believe in that as well and finally if it's not loud and clear fcps is hiring subs so folks you know answer the call for service because our schools and our kids really do need you in these unprecedented times okay seeing no oh no ms sanders thank you i wanted to thank both the uh dr anderson and miss omega for bringing this uh follow-on motion because what it does do is allow for greater transparency and the importance of taking a look at these scales in light

156of the neighboring districts and then allowing it to come back to us to have an informed decision but i also wanted to remind this board that this is only part of the puzzle with ias phdas and phas and that this board has a commitment which i know that dr brabrand shares with us which is to bring all of our ia scales up to at a minimum half of what a teacher in fairfax county earns and so that was something that we started a couple years ago and it's something that as you're doing the compensation studies that we will continue to make sure that we are competitive in that market thank you okay um i i will also be supporting this it never hurts to get more information although i had not seen it before tonight

157so i'm not sure when it actually came in but i'm looking forward to the analysis so thank you um the motion is before us on the screen all those in favor raise your hands all those opposed okay now motion passes gender item 4.03 division wide comprehensive plan i call him ms mclaughlin for the motion thank you miss bakarski i move that the school board approved the division-wide comprehensive plan as detailed in the agenda item is there a second seconded by miss corbett sanders miss mclaughlin would you like to speak to your motion yes thank you i guess before i speak to the motion i would do a quick question for dr brabrand and his team as i understand it there is a november first deadline for our school division to submit this bi-annual division-wide comprehensive

158plan do we know because this is by state code a requirement of rso cues if the board were not to pass it tonight do we know what the state says about that or if we were to ask for an extension has is that something that they grant and i ask that because it it will kind of impact what i share with my colleagues next yeah i don't have any idea whether there's a extension uh for that we haven't asked and uh i i don't i don't know i've never been involved at that level of detail for it before okay it is intended to be a reflection of the strategic plan goals that we have previously shared and then we put it into a state template and that gets turned in but uh that's about that's

159what i could share with you okay thank you dr brabrand um as my colleagues are aware um we just had so much on our our plates as a board and return to school being one of our um top priorities and as a result there's just a limit in time of what we can get in front of us and so we did not have a work session on this but for my colleagues if you had the opportunity to read through the 44-page document my primary concern is that when you read the the state code of what the division-wide comprehensive plan is supposed to be and then you read the 44-page document i don't think we actually fulfill the requirements um that are contained within in particular i believe it's item number eight or nine out of

160the ten items that they tell us to do in particular it focuses on the word plan i know that our staff work hard every single day to to operate and manage the system but the the document that we have before us when i when i really examined it uh what we're seeing in front of us is data reporting and a description of our services but it's not actually a plan of what we're doing um as a division what and how we plan to address where we've fallen short in our in our division-wide goals and our commitment to academic achievement secondly i want to express my public appreciation to the msaoc or my minority student achievement oversight committee chaired by george becerra he sent a detailed email to this board dr brabrand i really encourage your

161team along with our board to read through it extensively because their analysis of the comprehensive plan i think will really help us going forward to present and submit to the state a much more effective comprehensive plan there are sections like even on page 36 where it talks about parent and family involvement and development of the plan and yet our response talks about engaging parents and families to support student achievement there's a difference between that laudable goal that we want to engage our families and how do we engage them in the development of our plan and so i i would say that um when we think about how this plan reflects the largest school division in the commonwealth and one that we consider to be one of the best in the country we i want to

162be a model i want to make sure that when people pick up this plan they not only in fairfax county understand where we're going and what we want to do but that we're a great model for other school divisions so i did a quick internet search i found a couple of other comprehensive plans from other virginia school systems and they really do lay out here's our specific targeted goal and and the for the plan it was we want to achieve this goal here's what we've done and then here's how we're going to tackle it better and so uh this is something we do every other year which means that for two-thirds of our board you've never seen this before you've never gone through this before and so as a result i i'm going to really

163come at this with a positive attitude which is okay this is our first time sort of seeing it collectively as a board together and i really do hope we can collectively encourage the superintendent and his team that we should be looking at other virginia school systems and their comprehensive plan i think we've got some uh ability here to honor what this is and i can't think of anything more important quite honestly than every two years not just reporting on student achievement and the really heartbreaking and concerning gaps that persist but anyone reading this would have no idea what is our plan then to get better and uh i i promise dr brabrand in the spirit of collaboration i will give him more detailed notes to share with his team this is not questioning anybody's commitment

164but i think that there needs to this isn't a check the box report um i i appreciate that the state requires us to file it and i think we need to have some more intentionality in what we're actually filing with them so i look forward to hearing from my colleagues i know it has to be passed i know we have to submit it but i will tell you my my first reaction was please don't make me vote for this because i don't want to put my name on this but i also know that it's not fair to ask all of you to put your hand up because we've got to file it by november 1st so depending on what you all say i will join you in in doing what we can um and moving

165forward thank you thanks corbett sanders you know one of the wonderful things about being on a board with ms mclaughlin is that um we know what she's thinking but we also know that we have to be adept at being able to be flexible and so as many people know this plan was actually on consent and i did not want miss mclaughlin to pull it off consent and not have somebody second it i also wanted you know as many of you know i sent a note a week ago or after the last meeting and i said i encourage all of my colleagues to take a look at this plan because there's some pretty important data data that should actually guide the work of this board going forward because it really identifies some places where we're doing

166okay other places where we're not and as you say it doesn't say how we're going to address it so my thoughts on this is that we do have a statutory requirement but there's nothing wrong with filing a plan and also at some point modifying the plan and updating it amending it because i don't believe that we should just disregard our statutory requirements i also think that it gives us a opportunity to be strategic and similar to the comments of msaoc in their letter this evening it really allows us to be very intentional about taking the data that we have in this plan and infusing it in how we address the individual school improvement plans the overall planning of this division but also setting the priorities for this board going forward and so i would encourage

167that my colleagues support the adoption of this plan with the request of the chair to work with the superintendent to set a time where we can take a deeper dive and to actually have those strategic conversations on how we take this data and utilize it in the work of this board over the next year to two years and that would be my advocacy tonight thank you miss marin yeah my comments are pretty similar to what's been stated i think this is more just a um you know a technical thing that we need to do you know i i would have liked to have seen this you know align with the strategic plan align with some of the other things we're doing i think the biggest glaring omission is it doesn't mention anything about our talent

168it has nothing about the human resources so i know that's not statutorily required but without our people we're nothing so um i would love to come up with a better way to do this next year and have it really tie in so that staff aren't necessarily creating a different product for the state's purposes but using what we have and that is applicable to all the things we do that's tied strategically together thanks ms omesh yeah thank you happy to follow colleagues um rather than going with a route of poking holes at this because i think we can all do that um to anything i do want to recognize that you know we also have some accountability as a board um the strategic plan is something that we need to review and have not done um

169just because of the sheer volume of what work has been on the plates i mean this is just it's a crazy year this is the reality so um i i certainly uh hate being in a situation where we have to move forward with something we couldn't really parse through as intentionally as we'd like but perfect can't be the enemy of the good either and and this is just the reality of where we are so moving forward um tonight you know after approving this there are two thoughts that came to mind one is certainly um i know the msaoc letter is important to incorporate and we want to make sure we're mindful of where our most vulnerable populations anticipate shortfalls and i would encourage us to also work with tpac and the acsd and any other

170advisory committees that can identify some of those most urgent gaps for us and then the second piece is you know after speaking with some of the region offices they did inform me that just this coming week we're going to be they're going to be taking a look at some of those school plans for how to utilize esser funds and how to prioritize what needs are going to be addressed through that money so i think that that's a great opportunity to take to revisit this and look at those school-based plans and see where we might be able to better align uh what the vision that we're moving towards is so i i think you know we can see this moment as opportunity um that that continues um knowing that you know these are always unfortunate situations

171to be in but it's the reality of the nature of the work um i don't think any of the staff came here today hoping to you know corner anyone i think that we all understand the situation we're in uh miss keisgamara yes um i will be supporting this and i just propose to our my colleagues that this is the the goals that are listed here are really things that we need to talk about over the next school year i don't given our uh current uh workload i don't know that we're going to be able to revise this that would be lovely i just don't know how realistic that is but when i look at the general topics that we have here assessment of school division objectives these are really things that pull us into work

172sessions and very comprehensive conversations that we need to have over time so uh dr braber and i understand that we've we've had a lot on our plate a lot on staff's plate and i understand that this is you know perhaps more summary than we would like but we can look forward to planning our time in the future as you're i heard you being very hopeful in our work session as you believe we are coming to the end of covet and from your mouth to god's ears but in any case um you know i do think that we have to be realistic these are overall goals for for our entire board and i look forward to being able to unpack it in a timely and more comprehensive nature thank you thank you mr gamara uh miss

173seismer heiser thank you um and i really appreciate some of the statements um from miss mclaughlin and from miss corbett sanders especially and also from miss keith's camaro in that i mean i do think that there is space and room for for doing some of that strategic work and embedding infusing into the strategic plan and this comprehensive plan and i appreciate what you said as newer board members you know this is the first time we're seeing this and it is um while we have to you know send this to the state by the deadline i do think it is vital as you said to do some of this work to to really look at the comprehensive plan collaboratively with our leadership team and um really in general to do the strategic plan work you know

174we've done some of it in our retreat we've done some of it through the program review we have pieces where we have some of these bigger conversations and as ms keith kumar said we have a lot on our plates and so this i think this is a series of conversations that we do um when we really work strategically but i just wanted to say um in addition to that dr bray brandt i would encourage as we're looking going forward in terms of the strategic planning and even looking at this comprehensive plan here to look at the data we're using i really appreciate ms corbett sanders saying we have a lot of data let's use it but some of the data in here for example the fact that our sol scores subsume alternate assessments within those

175sol scores as reported in here which is something i've flagged for two years now as problematic when we're looking at students with disabilities um there's just some data in here that i think we need to update as we're looking at comprehensive planning so i'd appreciate when we're looking at that to not just use this data but make sure it's it's updated and disaggregated in a way that gives us a fuller picture of what we're looking for thank you miss mclaughlin thank you i'm sorry ms omesh stepped away from the table because i was hoping to share with her my deep disappointment in her remarks this board absolutely needs to be held accountable for the work that is our responsibility but ms omish made the comment that the board owns some of this accountability for this

176report not actually being a plan which is required by the state and so i just wanted to share with all of you and especially for the public listening that i respectfully disagree with that characterization again this division-wide comprehensive plan is prepared by the superintendent and his team i understand they have so much on their plate i understand it's required by the state but the bottom line is the information was pulled from our goal reports and things but that's not what the code says the code puts this board if you read it we are ultimately responsible for the filing of a plan and when you read this report it is not a plan it's simply not a plan there is no plan in there and so to my colleagues i just wanted to know that i

177think our reputation matters and i think that i hope each and every one of us when we talk about when we fall short we're really careful about how we characterize this board as a body because we didn't fall short we got this two weeks ago there wasn't a work session on it but even if we'd had a work session on it you can't fix this in two weeks it either had a plan in it or it didn't this doesn't have a plan in it and i really do believe that the superintendent's team want us to be a strong system but as we know project management planning having a project management person in place is something the superintendent is working toward but this this report is evidence again that we struggle to still understand what actually

178a plan is what it looks like what the document is and this speaks for this board because we're the ones ultimately that approve it and submit it to the state so ms corbett sanders thank you for your excellent suggestion i do think um dr brabrand you continue to show energy and passion um with us every single day and so you know as we embark on the next topic to talk about which is our superintendent search um you have such deep institutional knowledge i hope that time and space will allow us to revisit like ms miss corbett sanders said because this this comprehensive plan stays with us for two years now so i think we need to to re-look at this i look forward to partnering with you on this and again this was not about

179being hard on staff but we can't get better if we don't actually examine something and say is this what it's supposed to be and it's not um so thank you colleagues for indulging me i'm sorry but that one really upset me miss colfax okay um this might have said you too so um but i'm going to say this i'm going to say i've been on this board many years this is often just on the consent agenda and i appreciate why we pulled it off and why we're having this conversation but i do want to say that last year due to covid we did not do our goal reports that was a joint step-and-board decision our strategic plan which is across what with our goal reports we really haven't worked on that either um it's been

180covent cove and coveted and nothing else and i think i really appreciate colleagues who said that this is something that can be amended can be worked on and i know miss picarski said she had done a survey of what to do with the goal reports and i'm hopeful i really haven't followed up with you but i'm hopeful that we will be looking at those goal reports and talking about those at a work session and as we move forward kind of ensuring that our strategic plan continues to be our guiding document and we as a board this this body as a board um we'll have to continue to move forward on that even as the superintendent changes we'll have to continue to work with his staff and then i think this um comprehensive plan will be

181something we are all more comfortable with and we all know um you know it is hard to look at that plan and see the gaps and know that we all continue to work so hard including our teachers who are out in the field the principals everyone but i don't i think we all need to have grace i think at this point it's time to pass it and we can as um we continue to gain control of the uh the covet situation we can then concentrate more fully on making this something we are all proud of and can and we have the bones there but we need to continue to look at it reevaluate it and move forward on it and i think it can be amended and i think we will continue to do that

182as a board and as our staff team together thank you thank you mr not kofax i will just say i echo miss keys gemara's um comments um like my colleagues i think we can improve we have to continue to improve we have to continue to work on especially these important um guiding you know plans but we also have to be realistic with where we are i mean we are in a pandemic we have been we continue to be and how do we move the ball forward and still do the work that is the right now work that really matters more than anything at the end of the day because those children are sitting in our classrooms right now so i take um the suggestions to heart i i definitely think there is space for us

183moving forward and i also agree and we will be having those goal report work sessions there will be a little bit later in the year but we will be getting the reports and have the opportunity to to come together as this new board to discuss these and the concerns that were brought tonight i will call for the vote now the motion before us is on the screen all those in favor all those oppose that motion passes with miss mesh away from the table agenda item 4.04 award of contract division superintendent search firm i call him miss tolin for the motion i'm moved the school board award the contract to conduct a division superintendent search to gr recruiting in the amount of thirty five thousand five hundred dollars plus expenses as recommended by the selection advisory

184committee is there a second seconded by mr frisch miss tolin would you like to speak to this motion yes thank you oops the fairfax county school board has contracted human resources recruitment firm gr recruiting to conduct a nationwide search for the next superintendent of schools gi recruiting has a proven record of hiring top quality education candidates across the united states the company was selected based on its depth of superintendent search experience with large k-12 school districts its understanding of the community engagement process and its focus on future transition support for the school board and the new superintendent gr recruiting will begin working with the board immediately to ensure the best candidate is selected and in place by july 1st 2022 we're looking forward to working with gr recruiting in the months ahead it is critically

185important that we have a robust search process with meaningful participation from parents students staff and the community with i was on a roll okay where were we we need the community to help determine the characteristics we are looking for in our next superintendent and ultimately hire the best person to lead our school division into the future the community's voice will be critical in helping to find leadership characteristics qualities and qualifications of the next superintendent of fairfax county public schools parents staff students and community members will be involved in the process in july superintendent scott esprit brand announced he would not seek an extension of his current contract when it expires at the end of this school year and he will continue as our superintendent until june 30th 2022 to assist the school board with this

186transition updates and additional information including the search process timeline will be posted on the fcps website i would like to extend a huge thank you to michelle pratt marty smith and sean mcdonald staff that lent their expertise to advise our board committee on making this important decision thank you ms dolan mr frisch would you like to speak yes thank you i'm happy to follow miss tolin and in fact i'd like to thank ms tolen for her leadership on our sac team i'd also like to thank miss corbett sanders and miss mclaughlin and our staff for their hard work and valuable contributions on on this process as ms tollin mentioned geo recruiting has a proven record of hiring top quality superintendents across the united states for large k-12 school districts like ours i think everybody on

187this board would agree that it is critically important that we have a meaningful participation from parents and students and staff and the broader community throughout this process to help determine the characteristics of the type of superintendent that we're looking for and to ultimately help us land that quality candidate geo recruiting is getting to work immediately on this for us and i for one look forward to collaborating with them in the months ahead thank you mr fresh miss kiskamar did you wish to speak no okay seeing no other board members uh wanting to speak i'll call for the vote the motion is before us on the screen all those in favor all those opposed not rules of available procedure robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a

188single motion many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to proving the consent agenda seeing and hearing no objection the consent agenda is approved item number six new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled at a future meeting the new business items are on the screen i will turn it back over to our chair 7.01 superintendent matters and i'll call on dr brabrand thank you chairman picarski a couple things just wanted to share with you

189tonight first of all thomas jefferson high school for science and technology we have middle school students who have an aptitude and passion for stem and we're encouraging them to apply for admission to the class of 2026 at thomas jefferson high school for science and technology and the application will be available on the tj admissions office webpage starting october 25th just a few days from now at 4 p.m applications must be started by 4 pm wednesday november 17th with the deadline to submit the application by friday november 19th so the application needs to be started by 4 pm on wednesday november 17th and it will be open starting october 25th so get in those applications soon and i also just want to mention to the board there was a follow on on motion in december of

1902020 where the school board uh asked in a follow-on that the um tj admissions essay [Music] and the student information sheet be administered locally at each middle school to all eligible students and to provide the opportunity to opt out of taking the test this out approach imposes this year a significant administrative burden significant costs on fcps given the challenges for large gatherings presented as we're currently still in the covent pandemic therefore for the upcoming tj emission cycle i do plan to stick with an opt in process as we did last year and as we did in years past however we will provide transportation to a test site for any student fcps or non-fcps student who transportation needs to go take the test i also want you all to know in the community to know that

191we're going to begin starting the process of developing the annual calendar for the 22-23 school year and the development of the 22 23 school year calendar will be guided by some of the following components the legal framework that fcps is required to consider when creating the school year calendar the need to prioritize the delivery of high quality instruction necessary for students to be successful more important than ever as we're emerging out of this pandemic operational considerations including minimized student and staff absenteeism and of course community feedback through a calendar feedback committee and through a staff student and family survey now that calendar survey will be shared with family staff and students i hope that that will be shared next week and i would encourage uh encourage everyone listening and all in our community to provide

192their feedback to that survey the survey responses will be used in combination with other division data to inform and support fcps staff as well as the fcps school board as we develop the 2223 school year calendar that's all i have for this evening and really enjoyed the conversation and really appreciate the support for our substitutes that you decisively did tonight that will really ring as a positive message to our principals and our staff and our schools right now so thank you so much for your support of that tonight okay thank you 8.01 board committee reports i'll call on mr frisch for a public engagement committee report ms keys gamara for an update from the comprehensive planning development committee meeting and then followed by ms mesh in an update on the joint cip committee thank you

193the public engagement committee met last week we worked together on some additional updates for the community participation portion of the governance manual which are being transmitted along to division council for their review and we dove back into our work around the school board's advisory committees which we hope to complete by the end of the year and submit to the full board for a work session and final action finally we spoke with helen lloyd about the office of communications and community relations strategic plan thank you the comprehensive planning development committee met on october 12th this committee is not to be confused with the with the plan we just voted for today but rather we are focusing on uh facilities issues at this meeting we uh reviewed the proper yield formula which has been worked on prior

194to my joining this committee as the chair we discussed facilities and transportation services i'm sorry our facilities and transportation services assistant jeff plattenberg joined us as long along with pranita rob his i hope i'm saying her name correctly presented the student yield ratios and proffer updates staff referred to student yield ratios and profit report and summary documents and revised documents will be brought to the committee for the november comprehensive planning and development committee so that we hopefully can revise this formula or at least recommend that so that our costs are more reflected and consistent with even nearby jurisdictions we also review the 2021 cpdc charge the committee discussed the current language which is rather non-descriptive and we are working on ways to develop a plan to focus board work on continuing facility needs and receiving

195advice from the advisory committee that is led by ms tola and that is that was our focus this time and we will receive additional information thank you at the next meeting okay um so at the uh as you all know ms cohen and i have sat on the joint cip committee along with supervisor kathy smith and john faust and two members of the planning commission um commissioner sergeant and commissioner jessica eichner for just over a year and we have finally come up with our committee report after quite a bit of work and discussion we have some really exciting developments so as you all know at this rate um facilities has have always been a challenge to fund and major renovation projects um and as of right now fcps is on about a 37-year cycle for

196for renovations but hopefully the recommendations that did come out of this work will put us closer to a 20 to 25 year cycle which is much more much much closer to what would be a plan to eliminate waste and be more efficient with our spaces so there are three major recommendations that are going to be looked at and i'll share the timeline in just a second but the first is increasing the general obligation bond sale from the limit of 300 million to 400 million this is huge i shared last time that we had a consultant take a look and come back to see that this is a possibility and the committee's recommendation is that there be a gradual increase to reach that 400 million sale per year um so basically the bond sale increase of

19750 million would be effective in january 2023 um so we would it would be 25 million for each the county in the schools and the idea is that ultimately both county and schools would receive an additional 50 million with the following bonds following each bond sale so the revised total for the county would be about 170 million and for the schools would be about 230 million that is huge by the way so if none of that made sense to you just know that we now are able to dip into more of a reserve to be able to uh fund our facilities projects the second was to dedicate the equivalent value of one penny on the real estate tax to the capital program um assuming that value of 20 of 28 million would be about 14

198million each so to the county and to schools for projects in fiscal year 2023 and then the second year would include the first debt service payment with the balance in pay down finally the third recommendation that will be hopefully adopted soon is to increase the percentage allocated to the capital sinking fund at year end and to include schools in that allocation so that the overall allocation in the to the sinking fund would increase from 20 to 30 percent of balances that aren't needed that aren't critical year-end needs um so that leaves us in a place where between now and hopefully november december when the the plan goes back to the board of supervisors and they're able to discuss it as a collective and then approve it hopefully you know and then of course as a

199board uh we have our own discussions regarding the boundary change report at least that's the hope um for potential next steps in december so that will put us in a place where this will be adopted such that the board of supervisors will approve the fiscal year 2023 budget in the spring of 2022 reflecting uh the necessary changes that um will make these three recommendations possible so we're excited um after all the hard work and i know ms cohen um and i have uh passionately fought for our schools to be included and i'm very grateful to her for her wonderful ideas throughout the the year um to make these things happen thank you to everyone for those reports nine point zero one board matters and i'll call on miss dare not go fax thank you um

200i i want to thank all the the the members of the public who came out to support our board tonight i do appreciate your your kind words your support and um i we are all as you said um working to do our best in these challenging times but sometimes we like to hear that you support us as we are working to support your families and your children so thank you i continue my meetings with our principals i'm getting lots of information from them and just as we were able to make some changes on the sub and sub rates i will continue talking to them as well as our teachers i was able to get to a few homecoming football games always a great time so thank you all for continuing that great school spirit you

201wouldn't know anything is wrong when you get to the stadiums and you see the kids and they're celebrating and they're out there all together cheering so that's always a good time thank you miss cohen gosh this is a crazy new order um i wanted to thank liberty middle school and our storm water management folks in fairfax county for inviting me to planting day they were amazing miss tolin by the way they all send their regards if it has to do with plants they know miss tollen and it was just such a cool opportunity to see so much of what we all talk about come together so propers the developers paid for these plantings to happen as part of the stormwater management um that they've committed to so these plantings were done in a way that

202did different rates of filtration as you got towards the storm drain we had the kids come out and the only thing we did was pre-drill the holes a little bit the kids came out they learned how to get the plants out of the containers they learned all about what root bound means and we tore those things up and got them in and all got absolutely filthy and um and it was super cool and there it was like they said the best science lesson ever so um it was great you you would have loved it when they come to you i know you'll be there but um i just i just so enjoyed it and you were you were on my heart the whole time um it was awesome finally getting to go to the fcps

203excellence awards we do have an award winner who's still sitting in the audience over there miss leslie houston it was just amazing to get an opportunity to in person recognize all of the incredible work that's happened i know it doesn't touch the surface of what everybody has done but just getting to see folks um and just tell them how amazing they really really are and recognize a little bit of how crazy last year was and how everybody has gone above and beyond so loved getting to see so many wonderful people and some springfield district residents and including a couple of my neighbors so shout out to christine wiley and paul downey who were recipients as well um i had the chance to go hang out with the cherry run pta who had their fall festival

204last night had my first ever pie in the face experience where everybody could pay a dollar to join the raffle to pie me in my face and there were a lot of tickets in that bucket is all i can tell you and the last thing i just want to say super excited about lake braddock homecoming next week um and look forward to seeing many of you there um and super excited to um just get back to some more normal as um mr and i kofik said and again just echoing what she said thank you so much for your kind words tonight um we don't need them to do our job but it is awfully awfully nice to hear it so thank you so much it's mclaughlin followed by mr fresh thank you sandwiched between two

205colleagues who i'm actually getting to share homecoming festivities with so this past friday on a very very hot friday afternoon mr frisch and i had a wonderful time marching in the woodson parade and it was just an incredible turnout and really appreciate uh just the community showing such great support for our our amazing woodson community and it was really fun to have mr frisch there along with supervisor braddock supervisor james wackenshaw and uh super appreciative of our amazing principal carlin floyd and the woodson staff who gave us really fun um swag bags uh as part of our attendance so we could wear a shirt and uh show our wits and pride and uh to miss cohen i'm super excited we'll now get to share the fun along with i hope ms seismer heiser and any

206other of our two other at-larges if they can make the lake braddock parade we this has kind of been wonderful after covid to finally be back in the community and celebrating with everyone this is just awesome for our kids i also want to just say to the public that you know we are a family of 12 siblings that the public brought together almost two years ago and i i just want to convey publicly my gratitude for one of the best retreats i've ever attended in my 10 years on the board it was led by our chief equity officer lisa williams she did an outstanding job while we were originally slated to talk about the important focus on equity what we really talked about was how do we as a board build those important partnerships and

207the ability to understand our differences and uh find ways to get beyond some of those differences and come to really appreciate and understand one another and so i i feel as we're about to embark on a superintendent search which is the most important thing that you can ever have a board do beyond the annual budgets and all the other things selecting leader is important and i felt like that retreat demonstrated that we are absolutely well suited to join together as a group of 12. working with all of you in the community and our employees and staying the course with our dedicated superintendent dr brabrand at the helm as we do this this important work but i hope the community knows um that we understand uh that that this massive responsibility is all in honor of

208you and our service to you and i feel like we are really well positioned to work together to do that so thank you everybody just really appreciate all that you put in every day to this job and i do also want to say thank you to the community especially your eloquence tonight and expressing support to our board it is hard work everybody has faced a lot um but it's it's nice to know that the community recognizes we're doing the very best we can out of our passion and our love for kids the families and our employees thank you uh it has been great attending homecoming events i think miss mclaughlin and i handed out enough candy during the woodson parade that dentists in the area are going to see a small spike in business so

209i am also working on uh plans for take your legislator to school month which is exciting so i'm looking forward to bringing some of our great members of the general assembly to our fantastic schools in providence district yesterday i attended the official launch of our electric bus fleet uh at the stonecroft center uh it was great seeing so many moms from mothers out front in attendance who worked very hard to make that day a reality chair picarsky and i were able to do a ride along on one of the buses in between its normal routes and from what we heard from the driver some of the elementary school students have taken to calling them the tesla buses so as i always mentioned when we talk about these high-tech green initiatives these efforts are a long-term

210cost savings and because of the hard work of our facilities and transportation department um we're saving eight million dollars a year just in our efficiencies and that's money that gets directly you know spent right back into the classroom it gets reinvested in our students and our staff so the more we can do to put those jet goals into place and make them a reality the more money we can reinvest in our students and our staff and their success so keep an eye out for these giant yellow very quiet buses we have eight already on the road in i believe most every region and we have 10 more coming so that'll be 18. quite exciting miss tollin followed by miss keys gamara um i'm very excited that we were able to increase our um sub pay

211as of this evening so um please think about applying to be a substitute teacher in our schools looking forward to moving forward with the um superintendent search and very excited to work with the community as we move forward with this process more information will be available soon a huge thank you to my school board colleagues and to john faust for his work on the um the joint cip project that mr mix explained to us earlier i know through many of my conversations with them and with john faust that john was instrumental in getting to these recommendations and i so appreciate his advocacy for our schools and look forward to having these recommendations take hold i will be up bright and early tomorrow morning and first period math at cooper middle school um just really want

212to take some time to delve into the math program and have some discussions with our um teachers and administrators about how that pro you know program is working and what improvements we have in store there be dancing next week with lemon road elementary school they're doing a dance-a-thon to raise funds for a steam lab which i think is pretty exciting and i plan to visit mclean high school to talk to the counselors there about their social emotional learning um programs and just see firsthand what is happening and you know talk a little bit about that the screening and how it's working and what is going on there i'm happy to have timberline on my calendar as well and um [Music] had lots of fun at the herndon high school homecoming parade last weekend with dr

213nodo and her administrative team i really loved each class had at their own float a number of clubs participated the color yard was amazing the marching band and the dance team it was all absolutely fabulous drainsville elementary held a virtual story time celebrating hispanic heritage month and they just did an amazing job it was a very simple event but it really was a community builder yesterday i was at franklin sherman and langley high school with as i mentioned our delegate kathleen murphy we were able to present resolutions from the general assembly honoring activities at each of these schools franklin sherman's has multiple eco school awards and continued to do their eco stewardship even throughout covid with help from a number of people in the community so we were i was really thrilled to be able

214to honor them with that legislative resolution yesterday we also gave resolutions to the langley high school girls lacrosse state 2021 champions and um to arlene randall who you may recall was a cooper middle school administrator principal for oh i'm going to forget how many years almost 20 years i think with a very um esteemed career in fcps so um delegate murphy gave her a resolution as well which is really nice and as i mentioned earlier it was a great opportunity to show delegate murphy and supervisor of house was there as well you know just what's happening in our schools and some of the really unique difficult things our school-based staff are doing to make sure that our children are safe during this time of covet 19. so i'm looking forward to this is cafeteria appreciation

215week and i just want to thank all of our food service staff who throughout the last year have provided breakfast lunch and snacks to all of our students and have just done an amazing job i was able to meet the cafeteria manager um era sarah haya at franklin chairman elementary school yesterday on my visit there and i heard about the incredible work that she is doing and if you missed churchill rhodes ethan zhang's article about maria peron i mentioned it last time make sure you take a look at it and hear about the amazing work being done by our food and nutrition staff um thank you very much i look forward to seeing people from the community out at all of these events and working with our principals and school-based staff over the next couple

216weeks thank you so i uh had a lot of fun the last couple of weeks being able to hang out with some of my colleagues uh went to the south lakes homecoming parade got to ride in the car with my colleague ms sizemore heiser miss marin was there as well it was a very well organized parade i have to say we were told not to bring candy but apparently they didn't tell everybody so we apologize to that community and that will never happen again um we also i also had the opportunity to participate in the centerville parade uh with our chair miss pikarski and we um we rode in luxury and uh we won't comment on that but we loved it it was so much fun um my my husband drove the car and he

217um said that i tested his nerves on more than one occasion but it was a blast to be in that community i also had the opportunity to participate in the naacp freedom fund event and that was a virtual event that was well worth your well worth participating and i fully support that organization i have actually been a member of the naacp since i was 17 nobody asked for numbers okay title one parents at advisory council also had the held on meeting this week and they have quite a lively crowd i was put on the spot as a board member i did not think it was my office hours but i have fun and um i also have some notes here that today is lgbtq plus spirit day a day when millions of americans wear purple

218i think is what it says purple but purple as a sign of support for lgbtq youth and speak out and to speak out against bullying and this month is also blind equality achievement month this is a month-long celebration spearheaded by the national federation of the blind to remember history celebrate accomplishments in the community and organize to advance equality for low vision and blind people fcps has 300 plus blind low vision students including almost 90 students who are primarily braille readers we continue to advocate and support for the these needs of our low vision and blind students in fcps and i will find out what fun things i get to participate in the next couple of weeks thank you miss marin followed by miss so mesh yeah so last week it was the second time that

219we as a school division honored indigenous peoples day and i was really excited to see that that the board had made that happen last year so that was great to see the different activities going on and the learning resources that were available to our staff and students and yes i did enjoy the south lakes homecoming parade and i actually brought my son with me to join in the festivities i think he was a fan and i'll be at dogwood elementary this saturday in partnership with the fairfax county police department that are doing the practice traffic stops and there are many locations for that throughout the county but i will be at the dogwood one which i believe starts at 3 p.m and this is related to hispanic heritage month but i've been invited to be

220on a panel hosted by the hispanic educators alliance the hispanic leaders alliance for their annual meeting which is this monday october 25th virtually and is open to the public and this is an organization that i discovered before i was elected and they do a lot of things to connect and promote our latino students especially in career development and post-secondary learning and they have a scholarship effort that they put forth and the stories of these students what they've been through in their lives and what they achieve in our school with the help of our staff and their own families is really amazing so unfortunately we haven't had that in person for a few years due to covid but i'm excited about this online opportunity i have to say the last few weeks we've talked in the

221school board about instructional literacy we've talked about our programs and how to better streamline things i feel like we're for me i'm finally getting back to doing the work i was elected to do which is to focus on education policy and not so much the public health policy i was really relieved to see the excellent planning that the superintendent has been doing with partners around the vaccine mass vaccination sites and educating families about the options to get their children ages 5 to 11 vaccinated once that's that's possible but you know between hearing about how we're setting up a testing program a vaccination program and continuing with supporting students who are paused due to the continued holding of the 14-day pause and quarantine requirement when other local jurisdictions are not advocating for all these public health

222related things has taken a big portion of my my service on the board so i'm glad to see that waning a bit but i think you know i am concerned about the amount that our community expects of our public schools and it's not sustainable to expect our schools to be everything for everyone so i'm looking forward to the mission focused work of course ensuring our students and staff are safe and yes lots of really exciting things to come thank you all right um okay so definitely uh wanted to acknowledge um mr mcdonald uh though he isn't with us right now but i did want to uh thank him for the the not only the hard work today and of course always but um at the excellence awards uh you know the the contributions that our

223staff have demonstrated you know it's not what not only was it a fun occasion of course to join colleagues and celebrating our staff after a tough year but it was incredible to also see some of the records fcps broke and i think that that's worth noting especially in some of our technology and language teams and what they were able to accomplish over the past year the second thing i wanted to uh touch on was that the um white house came out with some federal guidance on mental health especially in a post-covered year and i was thrilled to see that fcps actually has already adopted a number of the practices that they recommend so shout out to staff on number one the telemental health component which i know is new and we're getting we're getting there

224but it's really exciting to see that we were leading on that and then secondly the piece on hiring additional staff where coordination is needed and that was just done at our previous meeting as we all know so really great to see that we are leading the way on some of those pieces and then of course hopeful that we will continue because that piece did emphasize not only student mental wellness but staff wellness as well uh a third piece i wanted to echo ms marin mentioned indigenous people's day i think it is certainly noteworthy for us to reflect on october 11th which just passed um of when we celebrated that and then also to look forward and how we can learn you know on between november 1st and 2nd that's coming up before between now and

225our next meeting it is muertos so a number of our community members of mexican heritage will be celebrating that occasion and honoring their ancestors and then of course diwali which is on november 4th which is also going to be before our next board meeting so just wanting to make sure we honor those days and um and that being the the celebration of light um and and recognize our community members um for you know uh and wish them happy holidays and and uh uh blessed days on those occasions finally i did want to remind everyone that saturday october 31st is the last day to vote early we want to make sure everyone goes out makes their voice heard and then of course as you all know november 2nd is election day for those who don't make

226it before but highly encourage everyone to make a voting plan to go out as a family bring a friend and make everyone's voice be heard um so that is all from me and i'll be sure to cast my my vote too dr anderson followed by ms corbett sanders thank you i want to start by um thanking dr ivey for accompanying me to several school visits in the past couple of weeks we went to all of the middle schools in mason district where we had an opportunity to review the mitigation factors regarding lunch and in the hallways because that has been such a concern for our parents and we're just so excited by all of the work that our principals are doing to ensure student safety so thank you again dr ivey for joining me i

227also visited a couple more schools on my own she was not available i went to woodburn elementary and annandale high school actually just yesterday the work that is happening in these schools are fantastic i really have to give a special shout out to annandale high school they've really embraced thank you julie they've really embraced the opportunity to provide safe spaces for their kids outside they have multiple outdoor opportunities for lunches and there's a great senior courtyard where the tent is located just for seniors so they could have a quiet time for 12th graders you know they've utilized part of the parking lot to set up chairs between the building and some of the portables just really creative solutions to the issues that we have going on there so thank you so much principal derose principal

228richmond principal pannuti principal barnes i really appreciate those visits but i do want to highlight dr brabrand during one of the visits um i won't say which one but it was at a school where i had the i've seen this before obviously but during my visit there was a student in crisis the student was in crisis and told required probably four different staff members including the principal to help calm the situation and this was not something that just happened that day it happens on a regular basis this is why i'm advocating for needs-based staffing needs based administrative staffings we have schools that this happens on a regular basis and schools that it doesn't so how do we treat that it's not just enrollment and teacher you know it's not just student enrollment we have to

229pay attention to the needs of the schools and so that for me is something i did not want to miss to illustrate to you as to why it's important because if you have those three four members who are trying to support a child in crisis they are not doing their other job these were special education teachers these were reading specialists who are not attending to their normal work so i really want us to be mindful and strategic when we're staffing our schools with support personnel on a lighter note i do want to give a big shout out for glasgow middle school their outdoor movie night is tomorrow at 6 30 so please join i think the film is shrek the movie is free for glasgow families refreshments will be available to purchase bring lawn chairs

230and blankets and arrive early for a good seat i know my family will be there field hockey is making its way in mason district the justice wolves field hockey team remains undefeated in the district and entered the district tournament ranked number one they won their first semifinal game against hayfield just last night two other schools fought it out in the semifinal game this week false church came out on top 3-2 over tj the justice versus false church district championship game is tomorrow night at 6 00 pm at justice high school i will be cheering both of the teams on justice high school cheer and marching band also working hard this past weekend the cheer team was named the national district go wolves and i have to say principal narcissa's daughter is part of that cheer

231team so it's exciting to see her there cheering them on also this past weekend the marching wolves took first place in their competition at freedom high school congratulations to all of those talented students i would be remiss i think dr zuluwaga has gone because i did miss him last friday when i attended the friendly rivalry between justice and false church at the annual football game known as the bell game it was so exciting i didn't even know which side to sit on i thought i should jump from both sides during the game this was a 60-second match-up for the bell which ended up ultimately going home back again with justice wolves following their win that is a wonderful tradition and i look forward to next week's game tomorrow we have another mason district face-off with

232annandale high school at falls church the game begins at 7 pm again thank you to the false church community you're my school that is being highlighted today and thank you for the wonderful gear good night thank you madam chair and i will try to be brief i do want to make all of our colleagues aware that the budget committee continues to work with staff and we have taken all of the information that was provided at our work session and we've put it together in a draft resolution because as you all know we last year approved a motion to provide budget guidance to the superintendent in advance of the development of his budget proposal we will be making some fine-tuning to it before we send it out to the rest of you all and we will

233ask for a um for it to be put on a november board agenda for adoption secondly i just wanted to thank the community for coming out tonight it really was very heartwarming but also important to hear all the different views about what we're doing right and areas where we can continue to improve and we can only do that with the public voice so we appreciate that um i did spend some time at the msaoc meeting this past week and as you know they provided input into our comprehensive plan and lastly i actually two things one i want to thank the board of supervisors for working with us to expand the amount of funding in our bond funding that they have a particular formula to ensure that we retain our aaa rating as a county and

234this adjustment to the bond levels will not affect that it will not negatively affect it so i think it's a great move on everybody's part but last i would like to thank and honor horseman motors boardsman motors is celebrating their 100th anniversary this year and uh the bulk of their growth actually started along the route one corridor and so they were recognized at the chamber of commerce today you may ask why am i recognizing them here at this table and the reason i am is because they are an incredible business sponsor that sponsors our boosters sponsors our different events at our schools provides volunteers in our schools they are a great business to model and it's something that i am just so appreciative and that we sometimes forget to thank people so i want to

235thank them and finally i want to thank the superintendent for sticking with us as we embark on this search but that you have continued to lead with professionalism and we appreciate it and thank you besides my heiser thank you i appreciate it and um like all of you i'm super super excited to be in these um homecoming parades and i really enjoyed the south lakes parade with my colleague ms keith kamara and miss maron as well and i i have to give a shout out to mr tyson who you know when we stopped hopped off his car to give us some candy since halfway through the parade we kept apologizing to the students for not having any since we followed the rules um so i it was really really fun and i would just say

236that one of the coolest things of the parade was sitting on the car listening to the marching band play don't stop believing i think over and over again and and i say you know and what was great about that is it really i think fits the theme of this school year right which is don't stop believing that we can find the joy and the fun education again and that was the coolest thing to see from this marching band hearing that song seeing the joy of the students seeing the joy of my colleague as we we just celebrated being back together so um on that note i'm really excited i just want to give a shout out to the lake braddock golf team for coming in second in the state and thank you to lake braddock

237orchestra for the middle school orchestra for playing tonight and they have dessert on broadway tomorrow night i'll stop talking about lake braddock i'm also very very excited to talk to the students at the pure youth awards tomorrow to celebrate civic engagement and celebrate the students who are focused and working to improve their community and also to start several weekends because this is how we do it in india of diwali parties i think i have four weekends in a row so i'm really really excited about that so happy diwali to all those who celebrate and i'll be pulling out all of the sarees my mom gave me one at a time and i'm really looking forward to my visit to sanctuary elementary school tomorrow along with my colleague laura jane cohen and to woodson high school

238on monday with my colleague maggie mclaughlin as we listen to the students in particular and um and hear what they have to say i'm excited about the lake braddock homecoming next weekend and most of all i'm really really thrilled to have been able to be part of um the excellence awards and really sit and hear of the amazing things that our staff and one of our winners sitting over here have done in this last really unprecedented year and it made me so grateful to be able to serve this organization and its students and i know it's one more person between us and beds i will stop and say thank you very much thank you it's it's really difficult to be the last person of the night so i'm gonna try to go quickly um as

239i see everybody is tired i've had a a very busy last two weeks i've had many principal calls and i continue to have those into next week so i'm appreciative to the principals who give so much time um to me um and it's it's very informative and valuable uh i had a pta meeting at rachel carson this week um as mr frish mentioned uh we attended the electric bus event and my late father who used to be a automotive mechanic for arlington county and worked on these large vehicles would have gotten a a kick out of it so somewhere you know hopefully he's looking down on that but it was it was a great event i also got to go with dr brabrand to the virginia executive mansion where we had the opportunity to hear

240the virginia teacher of the year announcement and honor our own mr brewer centerville day was wonderful throwing all that candy to kids and i also had the opportunity to attend the bull run elementary school trunk and treat um so lots of lots of great things going on in the schools tomorrow's centerville homecoming parade followed by the dance this weekend i'm looking forward to that and it's a full next couple of weeks thank you for every everything everybody has done for tonight and i wish you all a good night thank you miss corbett sanders for the candy corn tonight [Laughter] good night everyone meetings adjourned you