FCPS School Board Meeting - 10/07/2021

001foreign you good evening the school board is currently in a closed meeting and the regular meeting will begin at 7 15. thank you you oh you i really am this is gonna be you the october 7th 2021 regular meeting of the fairfax county school board will now come to order please rise as student representative pranav chaudhary leads us in the reciting of the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the national anthem by the annandale high school singers under the direction of patrick vaughn i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all oh say can you see [Music] lights lastly [Music] wash [Music] in [Music] was say

002does that star spangled [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] follow me okay that was wonderful thank you so much annandale high school singers [Applause] agenda item 2.2 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 close meeting on october 7th 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 miss corbett sanders is there a second seconded my miss o'mesh all those in favor please raise your hands all those opposed abstaining

003that motion passes miss tollen has submitted a written request to virtually attend this evening's meeting due to a personal travel conflict i will now call for a vote from board members who are attending in person all those in favor of approving miss tolin's request for virtual participation in the october 7th meeting please raise your hands 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 tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live stream on the website at fcps.edu as a reminder tonight masks must be worn by everyone in attendance to see

004evening as per school regulations we'd like to welcome former school board member miss elizabeth schultz who is in the audience this evening welcome miss schultz [Applause] welcome miss schultz i know [Applause] [Music] what a fan club okay and i now call on mr chowdhury for an announcement please go ahead national red ribbon week is celebrated each year from october 23rd to october 31st it was established in 1985 in memory of enrique camarena salazar a u.s drug enforcement administration agent who was killed in the line of duty while investigating a major drug cartel in mexico to honor his battle against illegal drugs friends and neighbors began to wear red badges of satin and some parents began to form coalitions national red ribbon week grew from these grassroots efforts to form a national movement against the use

005of illegal drugs its annual campaign encourages students to take a visible stand against substance abuse and makes a personal commitment to follow a drug-free lifestyle the 20 20 20 excuse me the 2021 red ribbon theme is drug free looks like me and it's a reminder that everybo everyday americans across the country make significant daily contributions to their communities by being the best they can because they live drug free additionally october is national principles month throughout their careers and especially throughout these past 19 months principles have gone above and beyond to foster an inclusive safe and loving learning environment where students are able to truly thrive in their school communities so let's make sure to thank our principals and to celebrate the tireless work they've done across fairfax county and across our nation thank you thank

006you agenda item 2.04 lgbtq plus history month resolution i call on mr frisch thank you whereas lgbtqia plus history month is recognized in october across the united states and in fairfax county public schools to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions and experiences of well-known and too often overlooked or silenced lgbtqia plus people communities and movements throughout our history and whereas this special month was founded in 1994 by missouri high school teacher rodney wilson who's who chose october for the inaugural celebration to coincide with national coming out day on october 14th and to commemorate the first march on washington for lgbtqia plus rights in october 1979 and whereas the national pta states quote negative attitudes toward lesbian gay bisexual and transgender students puts the increased risk of violence and bullying and that these negative attitudes also impact

007the student's ability to learn at school and whereas students are involved in gender sexuality alliance clubs at many middle and high schools throughout fairfax county public schools where they can network socialize and educate their communities through forums announcements and other activities and these clubs are an asset to our schools with research indicating that schools with gsas are better at achieving mental health outcomes and whereas the fairfax county school board celebrates its richly diverse community of lgbtqia students families and staff recognizes the urgency of its charge to foster a school community where all feel valued supported and hopeful and advances policies that protect lgbtqia students and staff so they can live without fear of prejudice discrimination or violence now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board on behalf of the students educators and

008families of fairfax county public schools does hereby proclaim october 2021 as lgbtqia history month in fairfax county public schools and in the spirit of one fairfax that the fairfax county school board urges all to learn more about the many historical and contemporary contributions and experiences of this diverse community and to build a culture of inclusivity and equity not only during lgbtqia history month but throughout the entire year iso move is there a second second seconded by miss cohen mr frisch would you like to speak to your resolution yes thank you the thing about history is that it's always being made today is just as much a part of history as the stonewall riots were in 1969 or the assassination of harvey milk in or the 1978 calif when california voters rejected a ballot measure that

009sought to prohibit gay and lesbian people from teaching or working in schools because the initiatives authors saw them as threats to children today is just as much a part of history as 2015 when this school board finally voted to protect lgbtqia students and staff from discrimination or 2016 [Applause] or 2016 when this board voted to make sure our family life education curriculum is accurate and more relevant to the needs of lgbtqia students [Music] [Applause] this meeting will go much faster if we limit the applause from everybody or this year when the school board voted to enshrine protections for transgender and other gender expansive or non-binary students in our student rights and responsibilities policy the thing about all of these moments is that there have always been people on both sides of the issue at hand

010after stonewall the liberal new york city media made fun of the writers with headlines screaming queen bees were stinging mad in one famous headline after a lifetime of police violence and intimidation after harvey milk's assassination police officers reportedly made jokes over the radios and defended his murderer a retired police officer after all the votes were counted for that rejected 1978 ballot measure nearly half of the state voted to keep gays and lesbians out of public schools because they thought they were a threat to children in 2015 not every member of this school board serving at the time was willing to say something as simple as lgbtqia employees and students shouldn't be subject to discrimination the hallmark of lgbtqia history all history is that we as we come out as we tell our friends and our

011families and our neighbors and strangers who we are as we stand up for ourselves society grows to accept us and they stand with us because of that it becomes easier clearer to see who is on the right side of history and who is on the wrong side of history i am certain that the many lgbtqia students who we hear from during these meetings month after month are on the right side of history and they are helping to create it and i can't wait to see the change they create in the world as they go forward thank you um thank you mr frisch before we proceed i do want to remind everyone that this is a public business meeting and virginia's open meeting laws provide members of the public with the right to observe but not

012the right to participate or disrupt in any way these public meetings please do not disrupt our proceedings and we are so ecstatic that we have such a large group here with us today thank you miss cohen please speak this month all across the country people will be remembering those who were first those who paved the way those who inspire those who gave their lives to change the world barbara giddings marsha p johnson sylvia rivera bayard rush bill tilden michael sam leonard matlovich alan turing len conway kathy kasich czech no chenko sorry harvey milk bernie frank and our very own danica rome this is so important because every time their stories are told one of our kids will see themselves they will be reminded of what we parents tell them all the time you can be

013anything you want to be but what is our role as a school system and as a community to make sure that it is true for each and every one of our students there's a quote i ran across this morning it said when a flower doesn't bloom you fix the environment in which it grows not the flower this school system is the soil in which every one of our students should have the opportunity to bloom and thrive no matter their ability what god they pray to who they love their gender or their pronouns it is our responsibility that when we say every child by name and by need it cannot just be a motto it must be a charge no matter the pushback thank you miss cohen i know how have some other board members wishing

014to speak miss keys gemara thank you i i just want to say to our community and to our fellow board members that i stand with you i know that this board stands with you it is our charge if you look at our strategic plan and and the documents that guide this school system we commit to having a caring culture for every student and it is our job to constantly work toward improvement to make sure that we try to do one day the next day a little better than we did the day before and i'm also in reminded of history i just listened to a continuing legal education today that started at the very roots of our american history and i know that we have had quite a few comments about how people think we should

015talk about history but after the civil war there was a concerted effort to make sure that there was a narrative that was favorable to the south and disregarded the experiences of so many who had suffered atrocities that has not helped this nation and to be untruthful to withhold information will not help us now and so i say that to say education means having access to information it means being able to grow and learn and respect one another and i pray i hope every day that we work toward that goal and that every child in our schools feels that effort and feels welcome thank you thank you mosquitoes gemara mr chowdhury that's okay no worries miss mclaughlin i first want to begin by thanking my colleague carl frisch and large and cohen for their beautiful remarks

016as some may know in the audience i am a proud parent of a gay son and i know what as that journey for our family when he came out in the middle of his junior year of high school my husband and i couldn't be more proud of our son and his courage but we also couldn't be more proud to be parents here in fairfax county he attended woodson high school and that was a community that made him feel safe and supported and i can't thank woodson enough the neighborhood in the community that changed so much from when my husband and i were in high school in the in the early mid 80s anyone who comes from that time knows it was a different time to come through high school and to feel different i also

017want to encourage the audience that look for an actor named robert gant robert gant was one of my classmates at the university of pennsylvania robert came through a time where it was still scary to forge a career in acting and to be out and so robert didn't come out until shortly after ellen degeneres but he was celebrated when he did and he's had an amazing career since and so my message tonight is simply to say that i am grateful to live in this county i'm grateful to live in the united states where we have continued to try each and every day each year each decade to become a better perfect union so thank you for being here to celebrate with us tonight on this important resolution thank you miss mclaughlin um miss marin thank you

018i too am glad to serve with people who have different views on life and i appreciate mr fresh and miss cohen in their work to make sure that all students feel that they have a space here and i'm glad to join them and i support students who want to explore their identity and who look to elevate love thank you miss omesh thank you uh thank you mr frisch and ms cohen for bringing this resolution i'd be remiss not to of course recognize our incredible stake community members in the audience but also not to speak on this topic given all that has unfolded over the past few weeks months and decades in our country's history and in our community as we continue to see history unfold i do appreciate that mr frisch uh mentioned and started

019us off with a reminder that history continues to be written so i remind myself and all of us that it is impossible to forge a path forward that includes everyone and that heals our nation without looking back to acknowledge the harms of the past the harms of today and to let them inform the history we shape as we build that future as it continues to unfold our lgbtqia youth and community members continue to be disproportionately impacted by harassment by hate by mistreatment and targeting that are entirely unjustified much of which much of which we continue to see in a month when we also reflect on countering bullying we must recognize that it is impossible to live in our communities with one another authentically sincerely and completely all embracing of one another without knowing and understanding

020the stories that our neighbors our friends and our colleagues have come with and have lived in their own pasts i am very excited to support this today as a part of forging forward that that journey for all of us to learn about one another to gain common understanding and to cultivate what we're building together that is an america for all of us where fcps can be a place for every child inclusive of all of our identities and a place where we can understand those journeys and stories that have brought us here today as we come together in one fairfax miss corbett sanders yes thank you madam chair i wanted to address this resolution for a couple of reasons one i wanted to thank my colleagues for bringing it to us but more importantly i also

021wanted to address why we do important resolutions such as as this when we do resolutions that address the history of certain portions of our community or different ethnic groups the reason we do that is because we want to recognize and ensure that our students see themselves in the potential and these hit these resolutions recognize the important history that the lgbtqia community has brought to us and has made us a better place and it allows our students to be inspired by the works of people that have come before them not just to see it as a history book but also to see themselves as being change makers of the future and that is why i am so happy when our colleagues bring resolutions like this to the table and so that we can have the discussion

022but more importantly so that we can inspire all of our students thank you mr kofax thank you as a school board member i feel it's our job to make certain each and every one of our students feel safe and supported and our job is to foster student success and that's through a caring culture i was proud to be chair of this board when we added gender identity as part of our non-discrimination policy and when we made our own little bit of lgbtq history our community is richly diverse and i am honored to serve a system that continues to build this culture of inclusivity and equity dr anderson thank you as no surprise to anyone here i will say some words that i have said before but before i get there i want to say i'm

023very supportive of this resolution thank you to mr frisia miss cohen for bringing it to our attention and my former work as a teacher and a principal my goal was always very very singularly focused to be sure that our kids felt safe they felt secured they felt they felt supported and i continue to want to do this in this position it is what every single one of our children deserve it is not a charge it is not a task it is our duty and we should not have a separate um expectation because of differences so i am honored to be able to share this resolution because i want that for my children i want that for your children i want that for all of our kids that they're not walking into our buildings feeling judged

024or less than miss seismor heiser thank you um i echo the words of many of my colleagues but i wanted to start by thanking mr frisch and miss cohen for bringing this forward this is such an important resolution and an important thing for us as a board as school leaders to stop and recognize so thank you for that and ms mclaughlin thank you for sharing your family's personal story it always moves me whenever you talk about it and i i appreciate the vulnerability in sharing your story and and how wonderful woodson was and and my goal on the school board is to make sure that every school is as welcoming and inclusive as what you shared about woodson because every child who walks in our doors and every staff member who works with those children

025deserve an environment where they are seen for all of who they are where they are valued for all of who they are where they are welcomed for all of who they are and all of who they are is seen as part of the norm of human experience period full stop and i am so proud to be on a board who has been and continues to create that environment and improve that environment because we cannot have a welcoming environment we cannot have a caring culture we cannot be inclusive unless every child sees themselves reflected in the community in which they are being educated until every child is not just worried about bullying until every child is seen for all of their strengths and welcomed it is important to stop the bullying and the hate but it's

026also impo important to promote the value that we are all human and we are all a valuable part of the human experience and that is my goal thank you you messize moreheiser and i will just quickly offer my remarks i also thank my colleagues for bringing um this forward um it is imperative as miss keys gemara spoke that we remember all of our history and i will say that last year when i when i had the opportunity to attend many graduations of our wonderful students it was incredible to see them making their history in their speeches and what i heard over and over and over were their words of accepting one another of treating people with respect of seeing people for who they are of not passing judgments on each other and and that is

027the type of school system that i want to send my kids to and every single day that i i come to this job and to the decisions we have to make that is the litmus test that i use how would i like my child to be treated and i want my child treated with respect and dignity um and all children deserve that in fairfax county and in every school and in our society thank you and with that i will go ahead and call for the vote all those in favor please raise your hands all those opposed and abstaining and that motion passes unanimously with ms tolen away if we could have the folks from fcps pride come forward for a photo with the board and the resolution [Applause] agenda item 2.05 national dyslexia awareness month

028resolution i call on miss marin thank you whereas the virginia department of education defines dyslexia in part as a specific learning disability that is neurological neurobiological in origin that is characterized by difficulties with accurate and or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities and whereas the onset and severity of dyslexia varies for each individual and impacts up to 15 to 20 percent of the population according to the international dyslexia association and whereas dylexia cannot only present challenges with reading writing and spelling but also affects speaking remembering understanding speed movement and basic maths and whereas dyslexia is a different way of learning and thinking though with the right teaching most dyslexics learn to read and write and whereas governor ralph northam has recognized october 2021 as dyslexia awareness month in virginia to acknowledge

029educators specializing in effective teaching strategies for individuals with dyslexia and to celebrate the many achievements of children and adults students and working professionals who have dyslexia and whereas fairfax county public schools is developing a division-wide literacy plan that ensures comprehensive pre-k-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 the nature of dyslexia and the combination of strengths and difficulties that individuals with dyslexia can have now therefore be it resolved the fairfax county school board recognizes october 2021 as dyslexia awareness month and encourages all residents and fcps staff to learn more about dyslexia including identifying dyslexia knowing supports available for use by educators and families and highlighting the success that individuals with

030dyslexia can have in their careers and life iso move is there a second second second did my miso mesh miss maron would you like to speak to your resolution yes i think this past tuesday was the most exciting school board meeting i've attended yet because we had such a robust conversation about how to ensure that every child in fcps receives reading instruction to ensure that they are achieving language proficiency language arts proficiency and we were we had a presentation by one of the foremost scholars in the science of reading dr emily solari from uva and we really there was a buzz of excitement and agreement that this is the way to move forward to make sure all of our students are achieving to their best abilities this comes from a push by advocates individuals and

031groups including decoding dyslexia virginia and i am experiencing firsthand in my own family what it takes to educate and really train someone with dyslexia to decode letters and sounds and to put words and sentences together to understand the meaning of written text it is indeed a very specific and labor-intensive activity that takes attention day after day to reprogram the brain to see letters differently than how it naturally it actually might be but in the vein of being strength focused while people with dyslexia do have a disadvantage and a disability when it comes to reading and writing there are so many other things they can be skilled at seeing the big picture of situations and ideas making subtle connections between things thinking in visual and graphic ways that can lead to new solutions and ideas so

032a key thing that we can do for students with dyslexia is to build and retain the confidence that children have about their own selves that despite dyslexia they have strengths and capabilities so we need to impor reinforce along the way that they are not there yet and that's the growth mindset that we can aim to instill in students throughout their learning they need to learn differently and fcps must meet that need ms omesh thank you happy to follow ms marin especially just after this work session that we had on literacy to support our students i want to thank decoding dyslexia for all the hard work they've put in to raising awareness on this topic and really advocating within our schools to make sure they're more supportive environments my point of advocacy for the community is

033to reconsider how we even think about these topics so in the same way that we want to cultivate a society a community schools that are inclusive and safe for all kids regardless of their background whether that be racial gender identity whether that be religion in the same way we talk about neurodiversity and the ways we can support our students and how they learn and they process and it's surprising and perhaps not known to everyone that one in five people have dyslexia that means tens of members of this audience likely live with dyslexia and so it's essential for us as a society as a community to continue to understand one another so that we can cultivate those supportive environments and of course as a division we commit to that literacy work which will hopefully keep in

034mind the neurodiversity element and then you know we can continue to advocate for professional development and additional supports that will ensure all of our professionals are aware and that every child is welcome no matter their uh diverse neural capabilities thank you miss corbett sanders yes thank you madam chair i couldn't let us go by tonight without um making a connection because we just had a resolution about history and when we talk about dyslexia we should also be able to learn from history and from some of the famous people whom have had dyslexia and are actually twice exceptional so i just wanted to uh give a couple of names so that we can inspire our students about how uh people have with the proper teaching and given the proper the best skills to be able to

035navigate the challenges of reading they have overcome and excelled for example steven spielberg henry winkler octavia spencer and whoopi goldberg are all famous people we know about today but we also have famous scientists and i just wanted to let identify three off the cuff and those are pierre curie very important given the pandemic we're dealing with today thomas edison we can thank him for our lights and albert einstein and so when we talk about dyslexia we should be talking about the brilliant minds that dyslexic children have and that we want to cultivate in our schools thank you thank you dr anderson i'm sorry i think my light was on from previously but i will quickly share something that i'm excited about i remember as a young assistant principal sitting in iep meetings where we could

036not even whisper the term dyslexia in schools it was the silent word that we could not approach it so i'm just very excited about the progress that we've made to be sure that we are diagnosing students properly so we have the right interventions so happy to support thank you miss mclaughlin as we talk about history this evening i'd like to bring a little history about fairfax county community alone on dyslexia i am so proud that a number of very strong women here in fairfax county created and founded decoding dyslexia virginia the the chapter in virginia started right here in fairfax county and when they not only fought so hard to help educate the school board our superintendent at the time karen garza also the community our educators about why best in class dyslexia education was

037so vital to his ms amish said one in five students they worked tirelessly to not only make a difference here in fairfax county and they did she created a new position for that role so that we could really begin best in class across all 200 schools in fairfax county but they also then helped bring this knowledge and awareness to the commonwealth of virginia and that's why as it's noted in here the governor doing that recognition it started with strong women right here in fairfax county and i'm very grateful to be just acknowledging that history and to the prior school board who listened so carefully and fought so hard alongside of them to make the progress that we continue to make even here today so to all of our students and families please do know that

038we care and your voices your advocacy your research everything you do that you bring to us it matters so thank you again to our amazing community it helps us become a better school system thank you miss seismore heiser i will be brief i appreciate ms mclaughlin recognizing decoding dyslexia and the incredible hard work declaring dyslexia has done and septa and many of the other organizations to really bring light the needs of our students with dyslexia but as importantly the strengths of our students with dyslexia and all of our students who are neurodiverse and i just wanted to highlight that that i'm glad that miss maron mentioned that um many of our students with dyslexia and i would say many of our special ed students if not all of them have strengths that we should be

039highlighting and so one of my goals and i know the goals of many of my colleagues is to have a strengths focus emphasis for all of our students and so while we um it's very important to make sure we have the right programming for our dyslexic students it's also important to have programming that celebrates and gives room and space to advance their strengths so i'm really super excited about that i'm super excited about this resolution and thank you to our advocates for keeping this at the forefront and making sure that students with dyslexia are educated in the way that they need to be educated thank you mr kovacs yes and i just too want to thank our community who has brought this to our attention i remember my first year on the board when um

040i guess my daughter was probably in third or fourth grade i was brought forward this issue by advocacy groups um in their in her elementary school about how things were not as as well as they could be for those children so i have seen and heard from you and watched this movement grow and thank you for educating us thank you for being at the forefront we we are blessed to have so many engaged parents to help us help make our decisions so thank you continue to do that for us and with us and we appreciate you thank you um i will also support this resolution thank you miss maron i will say i remember when i first began teaching um we didn't really talk about dyslexia that wasn't like a thing or word we used

041um and and because of all the hard work and and the advocates who pushed and pushed and pushed my own my own daughter now who is dyslexic is having a a very good experience um with the teachers and the interventions in fairfax county and as miss seismore heiser said um looking at these children who do have who are neurodiverse they have strengths that have to be harnessed um and i'll i'll just say that her strength is she is creative and persistent um and with that i'd like to call for the vote all those in favor all those opposed abstaining and that motion passes with ms tolen voting yes thank you okay we'd like to invite everyone who's here this evening in support of this resolution to please join us at the front for a board

042photo oh uh my goodness okay i'd like to call on miss tolan for a question of personal privilege miss tolin yes thank you um since i'm not in the meeting in person i just did want to voice my support for the lgbtq ia resolution that was just passed earlier thank you miss tolin that is noted agenda item 2.06 testimony on division-wide comprehensive plan at this time we will open the public hearing on the division-wide comprehensive plan the virginia department of education requires each local school board to adopt by annually a division-wide comprehensive plan the 2021 plan includes pertinent data from fiscal year 21 and consists of school board student achievement measures along with operational plans for the system the comments shared by the public hearing speakers must address the division-wide comprehensive plan if you have

043not registered to speak tonight but would like an opportunity to address the board please see one of the clerks to sign up for one of the five extra reserved speaker slots tonight there are 14 speakers that have registered to address the board our first speaker is megan duncan megan duncan our next speaker is melinda hamer melinda hamer our next speaker is christina cesari good evening i've been an educator with fcps for over 10 years and today i'm not here as a teacher but i'm here as a parent of my two elementary school age children a decade ago my husband and i chose to settle our family in fairfax county because of the quality of schools and exemplary work from teachers i've witnessed firsthand how educators in our district connect lessons and amazing ways to engage

044students and provide authentic learning experiences teachers understand what the job entails from grading papers at their child's baseball games to arriving early to help a student teachers balance the job to the best of their self to the students they have made the most of stagnant pay increasing cost sizes and higher testing demands it's widely known that good teachers have been leaving fcps for higher pay in neighboring districts for several years this makes me concerned as a parent because it jeopardizes the well-being of our students my children have invested time and trust in forming connections with teachers only for several of those teachers to leave the district or lead the profession i was shocked to see over 130 openings in the county at the start of this week my children and all fcps students deserve the

045best resource in this county is teachers rather than investing resources and attracting and retaining the best talent fcps places too much emphasis on initiatives that do little to benefit our children my children do not need another sel test they need an experienced teacher that not only knows the appropriate pacing of content but has the educational background to understand their unique social emotional needs as children they need hands-on labs field trips and memories to connect with our learning they need teachers who can build positive and appropriate relationships we need to give teachers the time and ability professionally and financially to create these opportunities so that they can bring their best self to the classroom we should be helping our talented teachers to stay in this county for our children's sake i ask that you make teacher

046pay and well-being a priority in goal three of the comprehensive plan thank you our next speaker is missy pratt my name is missy pratt i'm a parent in the fcps school system and i'm here to talk about the division-wide comprehensive plan a plan for parent and family involvement to include building successful school and parent partnerships that shall be developed with staff and community involvement including participation by parents and i'm here to hold you fcps leadership accountable to your plans but according to the doj apparently holding school board and school leadership accountable is tantamount to domestic terrorism this is not terrorism this is accountability we are the parents unlike true domestic terrorists and other leftist organizations which have been endorsed by fcps no we are the parents of the children you have been entrusted to craft

047a decent education for but you continue to make egregious policies and implement toxic curricula that harms our kids marxist ideologies permeating our curriculum critical race theory undermining true history in our great nation pornography and pedophilia found in our children's library books forced masking which is ineffective breeding ground for diseases forced rebreathing of carbon dioxide and dangerous restriction of oxygen forcing medical exemption experiments on our children over 15 000 deaths according to the vares data over 22 000 permanently disabled dr brabrand you said that you want the shot for five-year-olds statistically zero percent chance of a five-year-old dying from this disease you admitted knowing the risks of 12 to 17 year olds having heart inflammation all of this is not partnering with parents we pay you to help our kids not hurt our kids we pay

048you to educate not our next speaker is thompson sawyer our next speaker is thompson sawyer hello i would like i'd like to remind our speakers that this is a public testimony on the division-wide comprehensive plan and to please um try to avoid disruptions thank you thompson sawyer go ahead yes good evening uh first of all i want to thank you for allowing me to the opportunity to speak to you uh my topic is kind of sort of involved with what you're talking about but it it's a topic that other parents i'm sure at this present time are talking about and it's the transportation uh the bus transportation for our children to school um in the mornings and the evenings i realize like all the other folks and i understand the challenges that you guys are

049facing a shortage of drivers people calling out and everything but the bigger issue here is getting our children to school the weather's about to change it's going to get colder it's going to start snowing there's rain uh fortunately i've i dropped my child off at the bus stop every day and sit there for 15 20 minutes waiting on the bus while i'm in the car while they're standing out there waiting for the bus uh and there are days and there have been days where i've actually had to drive her to school because the bus did not show up or the bus was not there in a timely manner uh fortunately i'm in a position right now where i'm teleworking and i'm able to do that but it might not always be the case and so

050if their bus does not show up or it shows up after 30 or 40 minutes they've been standing out there there's no way for her to get to school so my thought is we need to start looking at so solutions and plans to deal with this transportation issue that we all knew was there before the school year started um we knew it before the year started we know it now and we need to start working on what we're going to do to make things better or try to fix this before the seasons change on our children and take the stress out of them off of them just trying to get to school to learn um it's incredible that you know they're all frustrated that they don't have the opportunity to get to school or to

051get there in a timely manner when they've been told to be there at multiple different times but thank you again for that opportunity to present this to you uh hopefully it's something that you will address and look at thank you our next speaker is cindy walsh cindy walsh our next speaker is michael clancy michael clancy angela boyer oh never mind michael clancy uh good evening i'm mike clancy my children in the aggregate have almost 25 years in fairfax county public schools i have four points on the comprehensive plan first the plan should include robust programs for all students at all academic levels in need so that each student has the opportunity to maximize their potential second excellence in stem has to be developed starting in first grade it can't be forced through discriminatory admissions policies

052to tj or by holding back students from advancing in math while they're in middle school third you must completely overhaul the criteria for selecting the books at our school libraries and those used in classes you are you are aware of the pornographic books that were found in fairfax high school you should know that virginia law makes the possession distribution and exhibition of obscene material and child pornography a felony crime every day you allow such books to be in our schools makes you complicit in furthering potential violations of the law finally the plan talks about promoting parent participation and i agree we heard resolutions tonight in this regard the board should pass a resolution condemning the department of justice for unleashing the fbi to harass and intimidate parents based on false narratives of violence the fbi

053has no place in our school board that's not this is not russia this is not communist china this is the united states of america ours is the government for the people and we the people and the voters have first amendment rights rights of free speech free association the right to petition the government and we will not be intimidated by the government's abuse of power and we will vote for new leadership at every level of the government thank you our next speaker is angela boyer angela boyer [Applause] good evening everyone it's nice to be here tonight it's nice to meet you and see each other face to face i think it's promising to be a very interesting evening so far i'm concerned taxpayer and mother of a fairfax county school graduate i'm here tonight to discuss

054the division-wide comprehensive plan and i looked for it i and my friends looked for it we couldn't find it we don't know what it is we didn't see it so i thought perhaps it would be important now to give you a few ideas on what i think it might cover and what it should cover let's talk about and parse those words division division was accomplished and ushered in by the illustrious one fairfax initiative introduced by our very own elaine tholen and thank you ma'am for that because you introduced the grandmother of all the words here equity the grandmother of crt the new buzzword that we've now endured for the last decade and i'm sure more to come so tell me do you know that crt seeks to divide our children and define them solely through

055their race and identity i think you know this already i think we all know this already we all know it already and yet we talk to you and you sit there def dumb and mute i don't think we don't notice because we do and another word that's been very popular today and over the last few months has been the fundamental march through our institutions for the tactic of turning it into a communist environment and of course you could laugh now you may not laugh later when you can't turn the bus around lennon said give me four years to teach the children and the seeds i have sown will never be uprooted and sadly my child was never taught about lenin she was never taught about stalin she was never taught about communism or fascism and

056maybe that's why she didn't our next speaker is john kochka [Applause] i'm a fairfax county resident taxpayer and sunday school teacher on page five of the division-wide comprehensive planet states all scps k-12 students will continuously progress in their development of the portrait of the graduate attributes i stood at this podium and read graphic sexual material from two boys kissing and i have the right to speak if you can't silence these people they need to leave i stood at this podium and read graphic sexual material from two boys kissing it describes how a 30 year old something tells an underage boy how exhilarating it will be to sodomize them what is the takeaway for graduates learn how to commit criminal sexual conduct or being a willing victim of predators the biden administration just said we are

057domestic terrorists this board should pass a resolution tonight condemning the department of justice for trying to intimidate and cancel parents but instead you're going to pass a resolution pushing gender sexuality clubs on students in fairfax county a few years ago a fairfax mom tried to do something about the porn that you're pushing on kids her son showed her a reading assignment given to him by his fairfax county public school it said this is quote all in their twenties minus women cows dreaming of rape sir waiting for these are a part of a reading assignment that your school assigned we have children in the world no obscenities was that you tell parents first before making their kids read the trash but you refused the virginia department of transport of education refuse we will not be silenced

058we are not intimidated by unconstitutional faxes [Music] [Applause] our next speaker i would like i would like to remind our public that we cannot hear our speakers when there are disruptions please allow our speakers or two minutes please go ahead our next speaker is chaya ortiz chaya ortiz our next speaker is christopher henzell good evening i read a draft of the county school system's comprehensive plan i regret to say that the school board itself is hampering progress towards many of the goals set out in this document for example on page three the vision statement of the school system includes an item-headed community support it states as an assumption that the community will quote embrace its schools and support the financial needs of the school system i recommend changing this item to read the board and

059the fairfax county public schools will earn the support of citizens for the financial needs of the system the board has lost the support of a large part of the community community through their recent mishandling of the controversy over pornography and school libraries the board can take a big step toward repairing its relationship with the public by ordering an immediate review of all materials in the schools that include sexual content that is inappropriate for students similarly under the heading school system guiding principles there is this item on page four families play a fundamental role in their children's education this would seem to be at odds with the statements of some members of the board and mr mcauliffe over the past two weeks rather than engaging with citizens angered over the pornographic materials used in the schools

060these board members publicly attacked parents the board cannot disqualify all criticism as some kind of illegal harassment and expect to retain the support of the community not even the fbi can make that happen for you finally on page 34 one finds the technology plan while this section discusses protecting the school system's data from hacking it makes no mention of the data on our next speaker is laura timmons thank you sir your time has expired thank you the division-wide comprehensive plan talks of the parent resource center on page 38 it specifically says that it works to encourage parent participation and promoting parent awareness that all sounds really great but it is in direct contradiction of the school board members supporting the labeling of dissenting parents as domestic terrorists thank goodness we have the constitution the first

061three words we the people affirmed that the government of the united states exists to serve the people the first amendment provides us freedom of speech the right to peacefully assemble and the right to petition government for the redress of grievances you are our elected officials it is not a privilege but a right to petition you and inform you if we don't like what's happening in our schools fairfax county held the elections and each of you were elected to represent us the three at-large candidates received 24 22 and 21 percent of vote registered voters in fairfax county there is approximately 75 percent of fairfax county residents that either didn't vote or didn't vote for you you were not elected to represent only the 25 percent you were elected to represent all of fairfax county rather than

062attempting to suppress free speech that you don't like you should probably listen to it figure out what we should be doing differently stop trying to restrict our freedom to the vote to one vote on election day in closing i would like to invite you to read a story a study out of university of michigan that states anger and politics can play a particularly vital role motivating some people to participate in ways that they might not ordinarily do so anger boosted president anger boosted participation in election our next speaker is cole mallard i would like to remind everyone that we cannot have disruptions we'd like to hear from our speakers go ahead mr thank you all right good evening my name is cole mallard i'm addressing pages two and three division division-wide comprehensive plan citing number

063six virginia public school standards of quality it requires a plan for parent and family involvement to include building successful school and parent partnerships that shall be developed with staff and community involvement including participation by parents i am a 50-year fairfax county taxpayer a vietnam veteran a former voice of america producer broadcaster and a community member and the parent of three former fcps students we we took our youngest out of cps in seventh grade because of the family life education curriculum and decided to enroll in private schools at the additional cost of fifty thousand dollars to us we could afford it but many parents unfortunately cannot many parents are not english proficient and they often work several jobs they do not necessarily know what is happening fcps recently entered into a 700 000 contract with new

064york's leadership academy to stealthily survey students and parents about critical race theory curriculum fcps has paid uh mr kennedy twenty thousand dollars for one hour's work that's to introduce racism now fcps quietly signed a 1.8 million contract with panorama education a boston-based big tech contractor to conduct a multi-year social and emotional learning screener in quote giving them the right to collect psychometrics on the school's district's 180 000 students and invasive questions panorama's ceo is married to attorney general garland's daughter if parents get upset a.g garland will classify them as domestic terrorists and these are the parents and community members you are to build successful partnerships with thank you very much our next speaker is george becerra george becerra can you hear me ma'am can you hear me go ahead we hear you good evening chairman

065picarski school board members and dr brayman as the majority of this new board is learning and realizing the 2021 division-wide comprehensive plan is submitted to the state every two years it's kind of a friendly self-study report from scps where the state has no enforcement or accountability measures to the plan the minority student achievement oversight committee critically reviewed and analyzed the data and information and plan but drew less rosy conclusions on performance of which all students in the general population could participate most 2019 2020 targets are not met and the gaps between asian and white students and all other demographic groups were significant be it school readiness for kindergarten reading a math sll course on-time graduation and participation and performance of rigorous coursework including advanced academic and honors courses taking algebra 1 by 8th grade and

066passing honors ap ib and dual role classes the data also showed that all demographic groups benefited and performed nearly equal and given opportunities to participate in young scholars elementary compacted accelerated math and elementary and middle school level four courses participation these programs tracks them into middle school algebra 1 and honors classes eligibility to apply to tj and toronto ap and ib dual enrollment classes and finally passing ib and ap exams by their senior year fcps should determine whether retaining the portrait or graduate goals is needed today for all students and not just a minority who benefit from a system that moves students along different academic and career tracks the portrait or graduate has been a focus for saps since it was adopted in 2014 but no formal data is yet to be collected on progress

067towards these attributes msaocs says 12 school division wide objectives our formal letter will be provided to the board tomorrow so you can digest our evaluations of the objectives also the board should make sure they are connecting all the dots with all their plans and making sure there are meaningful and data-driven school improvement plans for each 200-plus schools in which each principal will be evaluated from which rolls into the right ass evaluation then to the deputy superintendent's evaluation and then finally to the superintendents of federation a total system accountability on a final note msafc has invited mrs mccarsley for its december 18th to discuss this our next speaker is amber iglesias hi everybody i just signed up so i'm not as prepared as everybody else but my name is amber iglesias and i have two disabled

068children that attend fairfax county public schools in the elementary level my son is autistic and he's also level four aap he recently had to move from his neighborhood school in the local level 4 program to a css site he is very very happy and it's a great program however he does not get level 4 aap anymore um i'm here today to ask you to invest in two e centers throughout the district we already have the infrastructure we have css sites across every pyramid and we also have aap centers and local aap schools every school has an aart a meaningful partnership between these two programs is the next logical step for our tui children um fcps claims to meet every child where they are but tui children like mayan are not able to flourish and learn

069in the appropriate setting fcps also claims to be the leader and lead the way for other school districts so i'm asking you to do this lead the way so children like my son can flourish across the state and the country thank you our next speaker is amanda campbell [Applause] good evening i am excited for the work being done on the literacy plan discussed at tuesday's work session i especially appreciated dr solari specifically speaking throughout the work session about debunking the myth that all children learn to read differently the brain science shows that all children require explicit systemic instruction as a parent of a child accessing the adapted curriculum i was incredibly disappointed by the fcps staff response that adapted curriculum students were not part of the plan that they have a separate curriculum i repeat

070dr solari's words that the concept that children learn to read differently is a myth separate is not equal students with significant disabilities can learn to read and write research supports this i urge the school board and leadership to purchase the book comprehensive literacy for all teaching students with significant disabilities to read and write by karen erickson and david covenhaber additionally if fcps is serious about all kindergartners entering with that will have the essential skills needed for school success then fcps must stop denying preschool students access to speech and language services students cannot be given aac devices due to their severity of need for their communication yet not given speech services to learn to support learning how to use those devices this is a long-standing issue that deprives students of necessary interventions at a critical time

071of their development i really want to thank you so much for the literacy plan it is critically important it must include all students thank you our next speaker is osra namani [Applause] so i have come before you for many months now in may 2020 i was just another pta mom i didn't care about your politics because i thought you had it under control and then all of a sudden the system shut down and now a year and a half later you try to throw this division-wide comprehensive plan at us as if we're going to get lost in these details and be convinced i have sat alone here sometimes because i want to hear what you have to say as you try to pursue your tactics of deception and political corruption but now you have a

072room full of parents because you have not listened to us for the last year and a half we stand here now my shirt says very simply i am a mom not a domestic terrorist you abrara mesh sat here on the eve of 9 11 and dare to say that the hijackers from 911 should not be called terrorists [Applause] but now we sit here before you stacy langton came before you exposing pornography that you are buying for our school libraries and not a single one of you phoned her not a single one of you has followed up with her and so why do you have this why do you have this parent engagement when you don't want to engage with parents you've made it now federal policy to terrorize us to take a war on us

073why are these parents here you are parents can you not have any comprehension of the frustration anger and just sadness that is gripping the hearts of parents across this country you speak about one fairfax is a joke when you divide our community like this so look in your hearts and listen to these people we are parents and we are human beings our next speaker is alana willett alana willett hi i'm a student at fairfax county public schools currently i'm not a parent of a child that has already graduated some years ago or a parent who has graduated from the school some years ago i'm a current student at fairfax county and i'm just saying that's not these things that you are claiming about our libraries aren't true we're not being exposed to any information that

074is unnecessary why are you calling me a liar when i'm a student what ma'am i'm i'm i i'm a student at this at this school i've been through the education system i've wasn't i'm asian and i'm white i've been a part of the percentages that you guys have been mentioning over and over and over and this is not what's happening in our school system in fact i feel like there needs to be more education on fle curriculum in general because all we are learning is about anatomy that's it i know more about the anatomy of others than i do myself and that's that's just unnecessary in general if you just pause for just a minute i'd like to remind our audience that our speaker has two minutes we'd like to hear from her please allow

075her to finish speak i will thank you um so i'm just saying i've been in these libraries i've been in the library since elementary school there's nothing that is inappropriate unless you go looking for it our own curriculum within itself is please allow our speaker her two minutes our curriculu our curriculum our curriculum in itself are you really bullying a 17 year old girl right now i'm just saying it's it's just it's ridiculous because all of you don't know what it's like to be a high schooler in fairfax county at this time you don't know what it's like to be treated as a high schooler in fairfax county at this time you don't know what it's like for us to have to hear these types of ridiculous things to have be taken back to have

076steps be taken back from us when we're trying to go forward with this we're trying to move forward our next speaker is radhika murari before our next speaker out i would also like to remind our speakers to address the their comments to the board please thank you for letting me speak i just signed up and so i'm not as well prepared as some of the earlier speakers i actually came to this meeting a little bit worried about safety and i want to tell you in the past 19 months i think you said front of i have seen exemplary work and compassion and empathy from all the teachers of my son and all the children i know in fcps i've seen my friends who happen to be teachers learn not only how to teach a diverse

077group of children new curriculum sometimes but learn how to do this virtually and also be able to engage with the parents and the grandparents and sometimes the aunts and uncles who sat in on these classes and addressed vast quantities of feedback at the end of the day about unfortunately everything these uncles and aunts and everyone who was sitting in the classes thought these teachers who sometimes have 20 years of education advanced degrees they were told everything they were doing wrong all through the day so i want to be a voice of thankfulness and gratitude to you guys because i've seen a little bit behind the curtain thanks to my teacher friends and parents of children who really needed a lot of help during this time i realized you guys were thrown into this like most

078of us with absolutely no preparation and again i just want to thank you [Applause] i'd like to thank everyone who came to share your comments with us this evening the board will take action on the division-wide comprehensive plan at the october 21st regular business meeting this plan can be found on board docs it is publicly available to everyone who would like to look at it this public hearing is now adjourned and if there are no objections i'd like the board i'd like to offer the board that we take a five minute break and come back and resume our meeting thank you just a reminder that after the recess the meeting will resume with community participation thank you board members please take your seats we will be beginning if we could also have our community members

079please take their seats so we can begin our meeting agenda item 3.01 student representative matters and i call him mr choudhary thank you good evening madam chair board members um i'm so glad to be back and um yeah without further ado um here are some of the updates we've got from our student end so last week on wednesday we had our very first meeting of sac that is the superintendent's advisory council and so for those who don't know we get four representatives from every high school in the county and we really get to come together and talk about fcps policy related issues and let me just say the future for student-led advocacy in this school system is really bright and we've seen so many kids who see challenges in their communities and they're out there

080ready to make a difference all across this county and i got the chance to talk to our delegates and as we really start to get into the groove of school one thing that has been at the top of students minds for years and that will continue to be on students mind this year is mental health a lot of people don't know this but my freshman year i really struggled with my mental health and shrouded in pent-up self-doubt i began to lose who i was i stopped getting out of bed i lost the will to go to school i lost the will to even shower or talk to my friends and soon enough i lost the will to be alive i missed 78 days of school in one year and no one at least no adult

081seemed to really notice what was going on whenever i came back to school the question was always how can you make up all this work but never how are you doing i ended up repeating a grade and i had to work with dozens of school staff members and family members to get the clinical support that i so desperately needed one of my saving graces was an fcps mandated suicide risk screening something that allowed me to get help gave me so much opportunity for growth and fundamentally changed the course of my life but that screening was only administered because i had fallen so far behind that i was technically repeating the ninth grade and to this day those screenings are only given to seventh and ninth graders i know i'm okay because i was able to

082get help and i know i had some incredible people to help me get through it but what worries me is that there are so many people who don't have what i did if that could happen to me what's it like for the kids whose parents don't speak english what's it like for the kids who have to work multiple jobs to help provide for their families right i'm really fortunate to be where i am now i'm on track to graduate on time i have a great family great friends wonderful dog and i want to emphasize one thing as we move through this pandemic we're facing two crises at once when more than 15 percent of our secondary students have reported serious thoughts of suicide that's a crisis when six percent of all students have reported attempting

083suicide in the past year that's a crisis and when a majority of our students more than 50 percent who don't have any identified protective factors at home have seriously considered suicide that is a crisis keep in mind day by day my story is more often becoming the rule than the exception and so students think of the small things if someone sits alone at lunch sit with them if your friend hasn't been at school in a while check in and ask if they're doing okay and if you know someone who's being attacked for who they are take a stand for what's right we have so many resources both financial and human at our disposal and there is an abundance of mental health resources in this county but many students just don't know where to turn with

084almost every student i've talked to about mental health i've heard oh my gosh i didn't know we had a school psychologist until my junior year or our school has a social worker who can help me so let's sit down and let's really make sure that our struggling students don't slip through the cracks and so i just want to advertise some of the resources that are out there for our kids in every single high school in this county there is a full-time social worker and a full-time school psychologist who is there to help you and is available for on-demand help and there is of course the national suicide prevention lifeline and any adult or family member in your life but if you want to talk to someone who's trusted at school be it a counselor be

085it a social worker or be a psychologist what you say to them does not have to be relayed to your parents unless you mention seriously considering harming yourself or someone else and so uh with that i say thank you and goodnight everyone thank you mr chowdhury agenda item 3.02 community participation the next order of business is community participation speakers must limit their remarks to no more than two minutes in length at the conclusion of 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 a capital improvement program the budget bound and boundaries comments targeting criticizing or attacking individual students will not be permitted during

086public meetings complaints regarding school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school of fisher 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 giggling and comments that run counter to the spirit and letter of the school division's non-discrimination policy we'd like to hear everyone respectfully 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 everyone who has come today to speak to us and thank all of you for your cooperation tonight our first speaker is liam ride dear members of the school board

087um i'm a senior at falls church high school and i would like to thank you for your time this evening and for the effort you've put in towards the community and towards the coveted policies during this pandemic um like many i've faced challenges related to covid beyond my imagination um this this has left me concerned with our ability to remain safe at school um social media uh social distancing measures and hygiene uh that we were promised are simply not in place and the effects of it are seen everywhere uh from our buses um to our hallways cafeterias and classrooms compliance with covet 19 procedures are decreasing as the delta variant and this pandemic has proven it is not a matter of if there will be an increase of cases it is a matter of when

088while i appreciate the first steps undertaken by the board and administrators for a return to in-person learning the logistical challenges of implementing and enforcing um these measures remain impossible as is it is simply too dangerous to pursue a full person in in-person education for every student many of whom are vulnerable or have vulnerable family members we must make available a hybrid education plan once more we've already seen over 800 cases this last month and this is the only the beginning of our school year students are afraid and the current model does not meet the needs of our school community for the sake of those who are vulnerable those who are paused and those who may be sick i urge you to revisit the plans for this year's curriculum and implement a concurrent learning model that

089proactively prevents the spread of covenant 19 in our schools thank you for your time and your consideration our next speaker is aaron rewall good evening my name is aryan i use he-them pronouns and i'm a queer student at cps i'm also one of the lead organizers with the pride liberation project we're a coalition of students working to uplift every single queer student in fcps i'm here today to ask you to hold books that depict queer relationships to the same standards as books that depict heterosexual relationships our libraries are community hubs that are at the height of societal dialogues including sexual intercourse that understanding is reflected in the many books in our libraries that do depict heterosexual relationships like john green's looking for alaska jenny downham to you against me simone alex rules of attraction cassandra

090clare's city of heavenly fire stephen king's it and meg cabots ready or not none of these books have been pulled from libraries and fcps over the last couple of weeks despite their descriptions of sex why are we holding lgbtqia plus literature to a different standard the truth is is that these attacks aren't about sex they're about politicizing the existence of queer students over the last few weeks these books have been used in political debates and attack ads often accompanied by deeply damaging homophobic tropes like accusations of pedophilia as students we reject the politicization of our education well over 425 students from virtually every single high school in fcps signed a letter asking you to do the same thing i know that you are under an extreme amount of political pressure right now but queer students

091and staff face that pressure every single day in our school system where many of us have been threatened with conversion therapy many of us have been threatened to be kicked out of our homes and many of us are ostracized from our families for simply being who we are please demonstrate leadership and stop sending an exclusionary message to queer students stand with librarians and put genderqueer and lonboy back in our libraries thank you our next speaker is ruby persky ruby persky hi i'm ruby and i'm an fcps middle schooler i wanted to say that i have a lot of friends who are lgbtq plus and i think the best thing we can do is to love and support them for who they are thank you our next speaker is heather foglio hello i'm a proud parent

092of two fps fcps kids i'm here tonight to celebrate lgbtqia plus history this month in fcps and support of our students librarians teachers staff and school members who have been both threatened and under attack first i would like to say that it is so important for all our children to be seen and represented there should be a diverse environment and representation of religion gender economic status race and sexual orientation and education through books and discussions diverse learning has been proven to make our students smarter boost confidence build empathy and reduce prejudice this system sets them up to succeed in increasingly diverse and multicultural society a small group of parents should not dictate what books are in our libraries it is no surprise it is no surprise that the american library association lists the top reasons

093books are being challenged are because of lgbtqia plus anti-racist and perceived anti-police content that is what's happening here in our school district i trust our librarians to provide diverse and inclusive books of all groups of students for my kids to be able to read and learn on a wide variety of topics all of this hateful and divisive rhetoric at these school board meetings not only harms our students but fuels hate and hate-filled violence and it must stop learning cannot take place if students do not feel safe or valued i would hope that all of us would want to ensure that all our students feel value and safe in our schools to our school board members i'm so very grateful for your hard work the last couple of years and during this incredible difficult time thank

094you for all that you do for our kids and our schools our next speaker is jake uden good evening members of the board it disappoints me that the lgbt community even now in 2021 is still under brutal attack from those who show no grace empathy or understanding i want to thank the board and specifically mr fish for representing the lgbt community and reaffirming our place here in fairfax count in fairfax county last month three weeks ago i received a hateful email to my fcps email that began you are a disgusting human being following the ways of satan this person accused me of being being brainwashed and enforcing my beliefs on my students but that couldn't be farther from the truth i have lgbtq representation visible in my classroom not because i wish to to force

095kids to be gay but because there are students out there in our classes who are just like us they go to school every day and are often ashamed of who they are they may be different from their classmates but they are equally deserving of love and understanding many years ago i was this same child i had zero friends and only a few positive influences in my life some of those people were teachers it was those positive influences that kept me getting out of bed and carrying on hoping things would get better in the time since things have gotten better but we have a very long way to go we need more lgbtq plus representation in our classrooms we must do more to show that all students are welcome and more to encourage compassion from those

096who refuse to understand these attacks must stop we must do everything we can to defeat bigotry and misinformation quite simply mr fish said it best last meeting when he quoted the words of mary griffith whose son committed suicide after she refused to accept her son for who he was here's that quote again before you echo hate in your homes communities or places of worship please remember a child is listening thank you our next speaker is wendy eld wendy eld [Applause] our next speaker is heather metz heather metz bethany heim hello my name is bethany heim and i'm here speaking on behalf of the fairfax county parents association a non-partisan volunteer grassroots organization that seeks to ensure students are the first priority in fairfax county public schools tonight we are asking the school board to reallocate

097sr-3 funds to provide special education students the compensatory services per the newly released u.s department of education guidance during the june public hearing the fairfax county parents association urged you to spend these funds on urgently needed services for vulnerable vulnerable students including compensatory services for special education students yet this school board allocated only a half million out of 189 million sr 3 dollars for special education services that's only 0.3 percent of the total and equivalent to only 18 per special education student one week ago the us department of education released its latest section of the return to school road map it states that the department's long-standing position has been that iep teams are the appropriate vehicle for addressing the needs for and extent of compensatory services to address the chil the child's needs based on

098any failure or inability to provide appropriate services due to circumstances such as teacher strikes natural disasters and pandemics the guidance notes that state recovery services are not the same as compensatory services and secretary cardona is strongly encouraging iep teams to proactively provide compensatory services in order to avoid costly legal battles in special education due process to provide these services your iep teams need funding this is exactly what sr3 funding is for please spend it on our most vulnerable students thank you our next speaker is lydia lutt [Applause] good evening members of the board i appreciate this chance to speak to you my name is lydia lutt i am a resident of fairfax county and my two sons attend bellevue elementary rory is eight and jack is almost ten i'm here to ask you to change

099an fcps coveted policy that is putting children staff and bus drivers at unnecessary risk under current fcps policy when a potential close contact is identified if that child doesn't show any symptoms of covid they complete the school day and ride the bus home as normal the next day they must begin a 10 to 14 day quarantine the rationale is that it's just too disruptive to some families and guardians to have to pick up their child from school this policy just does not make sense if potential close contacts are deemed a public health risk and they must quarantine then they need to be removed from school as soon as they are identified as a potential risk one family's burden of an early pickup is far less than the potential harm done to other students and staff

100in the school and the children and bus drivers riding with them if they are extenuating circumstances deal with them on a case-by-case basis but overall the policy needs to be that these children need to go i am here because two weeks ago my sons were exposed unnecessarily to a child riding the bus home with them who my principal had already deemed a potential close contact someone that fcps found to be too much of a threat to ride the bus the next morning or to be in school for the next two weeks fcps officials including my principal region 3 administration and assistant superintendent michelle boyd all defend this policy and see no problem with it every parent i've spoken with has a problem with it and i hope you do too please change the policy our

101next speaker is tina williams good evening chairperson for carski school board members dr brabrand and leadership and our community i'm tina williams president of fairfax county federation of teachers union we're happy to see the motion to establish establish a full-time staff person to manage public health related work in our school and we thank dr boyd for her work we look forward to continued work with you on ways to address the sub shortage compensate compensation for all staff and planning time that has been redirected teachers and instructional support staff require time in the school day to plan and prepare for instruction this time must be protected as time dedicated for school learning student learning and success outcomes are important the fcft continues to hear from members that their excess workloads and increasing demands are extending their

102work days we look forward to working together to resolve these issues i am also here today to show support of our public education our school district our school board and our lgbtqia plus students and staff and our wonderful librarians who have been under attack ensuring the safety and well-being of our children is the center of education our work is an education is to support every child in being curious independent critical thinkers who possess a love of learning will stand up for their rights and beliefs can define what success means to them and are good global citizens human beings who value respect and seek purpose in themselves which can enable them to recognize and uphold it in others our role is to help our children understand that there is space in this world our next speaker

103is bernard fennell good evening remember the school board thank you so much for taking the time to listen to all of us tonight i'm not an activist i've never spoken to a school board meeting before or even attended school or meeting before i'd rather be watching football right now if i could but there's important issues in our community and i want to address them i'm a parent in the district i have two children who've gone through fcps one's on college one's a junior at langley high school i'm married been married for 27 years two women no less and i um my kids and my wife were all conventionally gendered and were heterosexual so i'm not here speaking on behalf of a marginalized community i'm speaking on behalf of a parent in a community who wants

104to talk about what kind of community i want to live in after last meeting i heard about the two books had been pulled genderqueer and long boy and of course having heard the scare talk i decided to read them so i read them from cover to cover which i doubt most people in this room have they're big sweet books big hearted poignant funny at times there are a couple moments if you take out context sounds scary but really aren't anything that is central to the book certainly they are not promoting pedophilia the books are no less or more inappropriate than you can see on tv shows our kids watch rick and morty american dad other kinds of satire things they see online the kids aren't going to be hurt by these books but they might

105grow low they might grow an appreciation for the struggles people deal with in dealing with complicated issues of class race gender and sexuality so i want you to think by the children when you when you look at these books but don't just think about the few children who might find an uncomfortable moment in these books or the parents might have to answer an awkward question think about the children who are marginalized and who will see removing these books and spending them as an attack on them as telling that they are not welcome this community well i don't want to live in a community where those people aren't welcome so our next speaker is elizabeth schultz as a mom i'm here to tell you you have one job provide education for the children of fairfax county

106with the best degree of academic excellence possible it is not to expose children to your political or ideological viewpoints it is not to expose children to critical race theory or call their social and emotional learning data by screening them 36 times from k through 12th grade with our money going to a.g merrick garland's 1.8 million dollar contract to his son-in-law it is not to expose children to sexually explicit material in the classroom or in the library politicizing the education of children is bad indoctrinating a child to look at each other as oppressors or oppressed as critical race theory put into practice demands is bad porn for kids is bad you consistently demonstrate your hostility to parental concerns you suppress mock or wholly ignore the voice appearance it is the go-to position of this board you

107are teaching our children to hate their country you are teaching our children revisionist history you are peddling porn to kids you do not value diversity unless it is your approved then compelled definition you do not value inclusion you pervert the very meaning by excluding parents who do not toe your ideological line you do not value equity you roll over those who have deeply held religious cultural or patriotic values you are destroying our community and our country we the parents we the people are mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore we're not going anywhere for years on this board i fought to increase the visibility of what is in our curriculum i am telling you stop pedaling porn to our kids it's child abuse stop making children hate each other it's racist

108stop teaching our children revisionist history it's lying our next speaker is laura dougherty laura dougherty [Applause] labels i'm a 40-year resident of fairfax county an fcps graduate mother of an fcps student white middle age christian bisexual we all hold labels yet they do not hold the sum of who we are our children also hold many sometimes contradictory labels some temporary like their grade level some permanent like their racial identity some labels waiting to be understood and claimed some are hidden due to fear of bullying and rejection i'm alarmed but not surprised inclusive books are being targeted some about the lgbtq plus experience some buying about black indigenous and other people of color the normalization of these fictional and non-fictional lives is vilified as if only certain voices should be heard in one story told our

109students need literature that speak to all students especially those belittled and shut out due to their differences from the norm these are valid complete human beings deserving of library content that respects that truth i'm proud that our school librarians work to provide resources for our diverse student population allowing students to see themselves to learn from and understand each other i pray someday our kids will all be seen without labels without being considered abnormal and as equal members of society concealing facts from kids about their nation's history and about the lived experience of others only serves to deepen the divide between us all thank you we'll now move to our wait list chaya ortiz thank you for allowing me to speak my name is chaya mohanty ortiz my pronouns are she her hers i am a

110happy fairfax resident and the mother of two young men who graduated from robinson secondary school as a child i absolutely loved to read reading was my escape from a very harsh reality through reading i was able to travel the world i was able to go back in time i was able to see futures yet imagined and i was so thrilled that my boys also learned to love reading in their school in california before we moved to virginia they were the earl the youngest kids in the school to read the entire harry potter series books take us places books teach us my eldest son perhaps if he had had the opportunity to read books about transgender individuals it would not have taken him years to come out to me as a trans man he knew from

111the time he was seven that he was transgender but he did not know how to explain it to anybody perhaps if he had read books about people like him he would have realized there was nothing wrong with him perhaps if he had read books about people like him he would not have tried to commit suicide on multiple occasions i commend everything that this board has done and the past boards to bring lgbtq plus identities to the forefront this is why i live here this is why i am not going anywhere this is why my friends who support my child who support our community are not going anywhere i would encourage the board to thoroughly look at the books because i am positive that what people are saying about them is an example of fairmont anna

112persky this is our last speaker hi my name is anna stolie persky i'm an fcaps parent and i want to first of all thank you all for your work on the board from deep in my heart thank you secondly i'm here to say that we've seen in the past few weeks an angry vitriol from outsiders and some people from within fairfax county public schools that has clearly made our marginalized students particularly our lgbtq plus students feel under attack i'm here to say there's another side of spps that stands by and not against our lgbtqia plus students i want to tell our lgbtq students and families where the families friends teachers administrators and school board members who have open doors and open homes and open hearts we will do everything we can to protect you and

113support you as you grow into the amazing human beings you will be i want to encourage other families teachers administrators to be louder and prouder in letting our lgbtq students know that we know what great gifts you have to offer the world and then in any attempt to block you makes us sick with worry and sadness and that we will not stand silently by i want to tell you that we are here for you and we love you thank you tonight we have three video testimonies our first video is willow wiki good evening my name is milwaukee she her hers i'm a trans woman president of the transgender education association on the board of fcps pride i'm also proud to have a my fourth rising junior through the ranks of fcps schools at the last

114school board meeting speakers came to talk about some diverse books i often speak to this board in support of our lgbtqia plus students this is lgbtqi plus history month and i want to speak about school librarians a few years ago my child joined a sport and i as a trans woman and parent had to navigate my fears about being accepted by the other parents on the team at that time i spoke at another school board meeting during a previous attempt to censor diverse books another parent on the team was watching that meeting and just happened to be a school librarian the next practice they thanked me for speaking out i suddenly felt accepted and i got to learn a little about what school librarians do school librarians have the difficult job of going through all

115of the books available and finding books that allow the students to see themselves or to see their friends in new ways whether a child is black or native american or neurodiverse or disabled or adopted or hispanic or south asian or come from a different family structure or are homeless or a trans or a multitude of other ways kids are unique they should be able to see themselves in the books in the library school librarians need to meet the needs of all students and motivate them to read they work with other school librarians finding the best written most appropriate most diverse material so all students can go to the library and find something that reflects their life or even inspires them i stand with the school librarians i stand against censorship our next video is andrea

116lewis i'm a mother of two fcps students and a 20-year resident of springfield virginia today i first want to publicly commend our fcps staff from the teachers and principals to the librarians and the counselors for their efforts to create a welcoming and inclusive environment in our schools this county includes people from various cultures religions and orientations so it can be a challenge to support our kids as they grow into adulthood but in my experience fcps does a great job of helping our kids build a healthy sense of self-respect and respect for others through classroom learning counseling sessions and through reading of books so i was surprised when i heard about the disruption of the last school board meeting that happened when members of the community requested a ban on two approved library books they claimed

117that these books included porn and pedophilia i was also surprised to learn that several attendees began to chant religious prayers to the archangel saint michael i would like to make a few observations about these events first the book citations that were read aloud were pulled out of context and were mischaracterized context matters there was no pedophilia in these books and this is according to the washington post patch.com and the authors themselves these books are included on our shelves because they tell a larger meaningful story they don't instruct the readers to harm themselves or others secondly i want to say religious chants have no place in our public buildings such acts are unacceptable and unconstitutional i have no more right to pray to the hawaiian spirit of thunder or the goddess or osiris no religion should

118expect precedent over another one in these united states let's please keep fcps a welcoming and inclusive place our next video is lauren mccahey i appreciate the steps that health department staff and school staff are taking to try to prevent kovit from spreading further among our children current policies for notifications and for household member testing are inadequate and prevent schools from being safe places you might think covet cases in our schools are surprisingly low i learned this week that the case count doesn't include students like my son he tested positive on a friday after two days of being absent so he was considered to have zero contacts at school his school community did not even receive a case notification that week as he was considered not at school during his infectious period this is true for

119all cases on mondays as they've been away from school for two days therefore the school's figures for covet cases are radical under counts all student cases should be counted and communities should be notified my son had no contact with anyone outside of school between monday and friday last week either he caught covered from one of the nurses who swapped him for it or he caught it at school on monday or tuesday the health department only contacted trace's back two days when he'd been absent so only his siblings and parents were considered close contacts his sister is in quarantine for 14 days his vaccinated brother was cleared to return to school within four hours despite the fact that vaccinated people can still catch and transmit coven i am fortunate that my children have separate bedrooms and

120our house has more than one bathroom so we were able to enforce a strict isolation between my kids many families aren't so lucky current policies allow for a vaccinated sibling to share a bedroom overnight with a coveted positive family member then head directly into classrooms the next morning the cdc recommends testing for all close contacts three to five days after exposure fcps should at least require testing for members of the same household i'd like to thank everybody for coming out tonight and offering their public testimony agenda item 4.02 vaccine accessibility and i call on miss marin thank you um i ask for unanimous consent to withdraw this motion without objection that motion is withdrawn agenda item 4.03 public health position i call on miss marin for a motion thank you madam chair i moved to

121direct the superintendent to establish a staff position in the department of special services to support the assistant superintendent in managing public health related work in the school division is there a second second that motion seconded by dr anderson miss marin would you like to speak to your motion yes thank you i do want to tie together um this motion with the one that was previously just removed um because it is all connected to our public health work in keeping our students and staff safe during covid um so first i would like to speak to that if you could just wait a minute i'm sorry i'd like to remind everybody to please exit quietly so we can continue conducting our business go ahead thank you so i made these two motions uh the genesis came to

122me about three weeks ago in mid-september after i spent the preceding weeks at the start of the school year seeking information to help constituents whose children were not age eligible for a vaccine and were home on pause for connections to covet cases in their classes since then i'm glad to see that the school division has done much work outside of its mission to educate students to assist and really lead public health work to mitigate covid among students and staff so since putting force this motion i have been heartened to see the progress and engaging partners done by the superintendent and dr boyd and other staff and i'm eager to see the plan that i've been informed of is going to be now forthcoming in a public board work session on october 19th i do want

123to say again the genesis though for this um mo this first motion to about vaccine convenings was because there are people outside of the school systems who are doing tremendous work like the first baptist church of vienna who with two other partners put 5000 coveted shots into arms there are many public partners such partners in our community such as this and i look forward to seeing that plan on october 19th for the motion at hand about the staff position again our school system has gone above and beyond our mission we have taken on work of epic proportions from creating systems to transfer vaccine records over to the county health department to vetting and hopefully hiring very soon a company that will do kova testing and covet vaccination to training on all sorts of mitigation efforts

124none of this is really our mission our mission to educate children but it is what we do because we care for children we care for our staff and we want to make them safe however the fact that the assistant superintendent for student services student services sorry special services thank you the fact that the assistant superintendent for special services both overseas the health work as well as key services like special education is too much for one person to bear just as a evidence and point one of our last work sessions our assistant superintendent spent the morning talking about the special education audit and then went to the afternoon to talk to us about the return to school and instructional operation work it is incumbent on us that we make this this position available and other jurisdictions

125are doing this montgomery county has already done this and i also want to point out that as was mentioned in our previous work session there are ample revenues from the state to help with many public services public health needs to be a priority if we want our public schools to function in this era going forward so i hope my board colleagues will join me in this motion and in helping our staff right-size the responsibility that is not going away anytime soon i do want to mention that the budget source for these this position would be from the fcps staffing reserve because it isn't it will be an ongoing position this is not a one-time thing which would you know be a potential esser fund it would come from the staffing reserve and it's estimated at

126about 150 000 thank you miss maron dr anderson would you like to speak to your second i would but i actually thought i was setting seconding a slightly different proposal which i'll share in my comments um obviously we have provided extra funds to the principals in order to help to bear the burden of some of the um administrative covert related work that they've been doing and i was under the impression we were doing the same thing for the assistant superintendent of special services um my thinking is that i believed it was that this would be a temporary position with the utilization of essa funds and that it would not necessarily be it would not be a medical professional because we have the public health office that does that in our county but it will be

127a coordinator to help ease the burden of um that position so that um dr boyd can attend to more mission critical tasks um i've talked to probably more than half of you about this but i'm feeling a little bit conflicted based on the comments that were just shared just now so i am not quite sure where i stand on kind of the original motion because some of the pieces are new to me at this moment in terms of this being funded from um reserve funds so i'm going to leave it there right now with a big question mark um miss marin would you like to respond to those questions yes induction dr i apologize for that confusion um i was just given the i did ask for the budget request um two weeks ago when

128i did first announce this motion and i was informed that it was from the fcps staffing reserve that is what our budget department is suggesting so i would turn to mr smith or dr brabrand to speak further about the funding for this position good evening so so yes when we have positions that come outside of the regular budget cycle and we don't have a revenue source for those positions we can go to the staffing reserve and so we would look at funding this position as a one-time position out of the staffing reserve any funding that comes out of the staffing reserve is a one-time position and then if we were going to look at this down the road we would have to put it into the base moving forward i am so sorry to do

129my inquiries at this point dr anderson i have you down as the list of speakers so um what i'd like to do is go ahead and take comment from the board members on this if i may as the seconder of this motion i do have some confusion i'd like to at least clarify something to see go ahead and then i'll try to continue my second of this motion i don't know if it's too late to do that so thank you um so i i guess the place that i'm thinking is if we are um can we if we're putting this position together to be a temporary position why not utilize essa funds in the way that we are doing for our schools why kind of build this into the operational position into the staffing reserve

130i'm so sorry this is very confusing to me at this moment so at this point all of our escrow dollars have been allocated uh so the sr positions that we've placed in our essa grant were identified by the board and again those those dollars have been fully allocated across the division and when we look at positions like this that come up again off budget cycle we would look at using the staffing reserve that does not place the position into the base budget so using the staffing reserve would simply be a one-time one-year position because we're using that one-time only money all right um thank you mr smith if you don't mind i will i'm just going to ask to um let our other board members speak to this motion as is and if there's an

131amendment that you need to propose at some point we can do that dr anderson i have you down on the list or if anyone else wants to propose an amendment so um we have the most on the table i want to call miss mclaughlin to speak followed by miss corbett sanders thank you a couple things first of all ms maron i really appreciate you bringing this to the board um i do have some questions for dr brabrand as you are hopefully aware the interim superintendent of montgomery county public schools ms mcknight or dr mcknight laid out a plan that the washington post covered and it did talk about having a division-wide public health officer having the community working group to help inform the challenges that the community is facing and so i just wanted to

132know did you happen to talk with her at all about her decision to do that especially given she's an interim and if she might have given you some thinking on that i haven't i haven't had a chance to talk to monica yet i'm definitely going to do it i saw that coverage and um you know i i think even part of this discussion today both of these esser or this is temporary but i do want to spend time to really make sure that we thoughtfully create the right kind of position to support our assistant superintendent for special services as you know but i'm just sharing it with the public she's in charge of health related services in schools and special education those are huge huge responsibilities and this pandemic has has required frankly the majority

133of our time being having to be focused on that instead of directing and leading our special education colleagues so um i know it's a little bit of a debate right now it's temporary and i'm not ready to commit that it would be permanent i'm not sure i wish i had the crystal ball on the pandemic but i definitely believe it's critical right now and i think it will still be critical this year to even inform our planning for next year which i think will be even farther along out of the pandemic but we're still going to have some pandemic related impacts um one thing just while we're in this conversation that i do want to know when your advocacy has been so key the county did share just um uh just in the last week

134that they are funding 82 new nurses to come into our schools and support our schools directly that's i know a long standing goal for you i'm glad to see it getting achieved in my final year here we need that additional support but we need additional staff to help us through this pandemic and we'll really work and i will talk to montgomery county a little bit more about how they've crafted their position i appreciate that the next question i have is that i do know that on dr boyd's team she has leah scurpsky and lorraine troutten who've been our current fcps staff that liaise with the public health department so how might this new position in you know sort of interact or interface with those two existing positions yeah we are creating the job description around

135that to try to figure out those interactions and working carefully with dr boyd and mr smith and the hr team i will tell you that when you think about 200 schools two people trying to coordinate all of that it it's just overwhelming in the pandemic so um i don't think that's a big enough health team for a system this size um and that's one of the reasons again that you know we are very supportive of this motion that miss marin has put forward right now by the way dr boyd and i are in the middle of convening anova the uh a pediatrician uh state leadership right here locally dr marin who's president of the state chapter of the american association of pediatrics the fairfax county health department and we are meeting regularly we met two

136weeks ago we met today we're meeting next week we know and i've shared with all of them that we need to have a broad-based community plan that i need to share with this community october 19th we may not have every question answered uh every single question but we need a broad uh strong plan to share so our community is ready for what we know is a lot of work ahead good news that we think the vaccination for five to 11 year olds is going to be available but we have vaccination and testing in front of us and we're going to need that additional support for dr boyd as we ramp up both of those things in our school system so i do want to share with you dr brabant and my colleagues that i have

137tremendous respect for dr boyd i have really enjoyed how hard she's working and the great work in general that she's brought to the to the position being so new to fcps um in in at the heart of this this motion in front of us i told miss maron i very much believe in the need my concern is uh the board giving you direction that i'm i'm a little worried isn't clear enough and you and i work together now for four plus years and one of the things you remind us is i can't read the minds of 12 people and if i don't know what you guys are asking of me then you might be upset by what you get and so i think what i would say to miss marin and dr anderson is i

138really like the idea of maybe amending this language where we would be asking the superintendent to bring back a proposal to the board on how he might enhance the staffing needs within department of special services to deal with the covid and our public health challenges i think that way we we kind of allow for ourselves to get it back to us and make sure we're on the same page with the superintendent because i also respectfully disagree with something that that mr smith said esser funds as we know from our cfo lee burden that was what we filed with the state and it can be amended at any time so the to say that all the esser funds are all allocated for it's half technically true half technically not exactly true and i'm not saying that

139mr smith is trying to say something isn't true or not true i'm just saying that there is the ability to amend it and pull and you re-allocate esser funds if we believe something more important has come to the fold so i do appreciate that mr smith's trying to say the stats of where it is but that's why i like the idea of this board directing you to bring us a proposal and it would allow you to also then go talk with the superintendent at montgomery county and find out because going to a director of public health is a very big different leap than adding additional staff person to dr boyd's team and so i look forward to hearing what all the rest of you have to say but that's kind of where my thinking is

140right now love where ms marin's coming from but i want to make sure we direct the superintendent the best way possible dr bergman if i could just because the budget's about 150 it's over a hundred thousand if you remember there's a follow-on motion from the summer for esther bring it back we really are trying to get this uh position up and running soon obviously we'll defer to the will of the board i certainly can commit tonight regardless of the way you word the final resolution that a copy of the job description before i post it is made available and if there are board concerns or questions around it let me know but i will say the the need is real the urgency is real i really do want to get this available as soon as

141we can and glad to share it with you before it's something that we make public but again we'll listen to board conversation and uh hope to have some forward motion tonight if you're willing thanks ms corbett sanders yes thank you and i'm pleased to be able to follow my colleague miss mclaughlin for a couple of reasons first two weeks ago we had a work session and at that work session dr brabrand you were very clear that you were planning on doing this without any board action that you were looking at the staffing to provide the supports to dr boyd so that dr boyd could focus on the special education piece of her work and so i'm a little confused as to why we are having this come to us today the second reason is that

142the motion as drafted is a permanent position and it's not clear and god willing we will not be in a permanent condition of a pandemic and the way that this is funded is from the staffing reserve that staffing reserve is used so that we can supplement educational personnel in our classrooms it is not typically a reserve that we utilize for central staff there's another piece too and that is the clear delineation of roles and responsibilities between the school board and the board of supervisors and the state and when you look at the state code the state code clearly states that the board of health has the responsibility for promulgating regulations pertaining to the implementation of school immunization law and standards of immunization the state health commissioner is the executive officer for the state board of

143health and the local health director is responsible for providing assistance in implementing this chapter to school divisions the state also code also says that the requirements shall be set forth in state uh regulations and we know that for this but it also then goes on to say that there will be from the local boards that they are to work with their community to develop a plan the state board shall review annually and make recommendations for changes every year but that they will also have a centralized database for immunizations something that i know that you're working with our colleagues on the board of supervisor side and that there will be mechanism for sharing that data and that there will also be the ability this is important of having a having work with the board of nursing

144and the state board the administration of the for the administration of influenza vaccines for minors by licensed pharmacists registered nurses licensed practical nurses or emergency medical all of this falls in the health department's agreement it talks about the local board shall actively participate i'm sorry let me pull it up the local board shall actively participate with community representatives in the formulation of a comprehensive plan for the development coordination and evaluation of local health services systems shall make formal recommendations to the governing body or authorities at least annually in a comprehensive plan and that uh it'll be the responsibility of the local health director to attend the meetings of the board of this advisory board to provide information and to participate in uh the development of it the reason i raise this tonight is because i

145do think that we need to have closer coordination i do think that we need that we have a role in this but that the primary role is that of the board of supervisors they recognize that role with the establishment of the additional nurses so what i i do appreciate um that this is a good idea but we need to make sure that we have clear delineation of roles and responsibilities we have a plan on how things will be implemented and so i would suggest that it would be more fruitful for you to come back to us with a plan that addresses those clear roles and responsibilities and how we're going to get things done and also not take from our teaching reserve to fund it thank you excuse gemara no okay all right um i

146do want to thank uh miss marin for bringing this forward but i am also concerned because there are some clear lines and virginia is a very um particular about how we dole out authority we are a dylan rule state which is my understanding means that if we have not been specifically given the authority we don't have it and as uh ms corbyn sanders just outlined there are some lines between the school system and the health department that we really do have to respect i had hoped at the work session that we had a few weeks ago when miss marin brought a similar idea forward i said to you dr bray brand can you give us a plan on how to do this i do believe that this is clearly operational i don't know what or

147how many people are in dr boyd's office and who's doing what and so only you have that information i do think that it is critical for us to know that we are authorizing the right thing because i think that it is too easy to have a blurred line and when we don't have clear duties something gets dropped right the health department or the county could expect us to be taking care of something and then because we have this new position and there's confusion and we don't even have a job description at this point so then they rely on what they think we're doing and in the meantime we've got children and families falling through the cracks that is essentially oh my goodness that is essentially my worry um i do want to avoid those misunderstandings

148and i don't i don't think that this was the intent but i do want to make sure that we send the right message to the community that we have a clear role so that when we publish a job description everybody understands and they can have an opportunity to comment on that and say well that how does that fit with you know the county uh health department and and the roles and clarification my fear here is that we're sort of putting the cart before the horse we recognize the need two weeks ago when we started talking about it but we didn't get a plan we still don't have a job description we're talking about staff reserve it doesn't say temporary i believe that it should say temporary and then we send the wrong message to the

149community so for that reason i i really would like to um get that plan first and then vote on this i'm actually surprised i was actually surprised to see that this was on the agenda today because i did ask for a plan when we had a work session and i haven't seen any additional information other than talking about um what is being done in maryland and they are not a dylan rule state so i i really do think that we have to be careful and for that reason i would ask that we get that plan before we vote on this thank you thank you miss kisgama mr frisch thank you um i i support this uh motion for much the same reason i supported motions at our previous board meeting different issues entirely but i

150think it's important to put the weight of the board behind something like this and i'm comfortable doing that precisely because the motion is broad enough for dr boyd and dr brabrand to use this position in a way that helps to coordinate our work on public health related issues [Music] as we work with our county counterparts and everybody else who's involved in this let's be clear about the language here no usurpation fun word um here for county authority or our state stakeholders or anybody in the public health world this is simply assisting dr boyd's current work on public health related matters and i think that's something i can get behind and i am comfortable that dr boyd will put this person right to work because we need the help thank you mr kofax thank you uh

151dr brabrand some of my colleagues have already asked some of my questions but i guess from you i i and it feels like you're in the process because that's my primary question to you what do you need what does dr boyd need and how can we work if some of my colleagues talked about with county officials can we can we you know is there a way they can continue to they can help us more or do we need do you feel that the school system should absorb this position and and create a new one so well one thing i'd say i think it's important to frame this isn't about um and we can be clear in the job description it's certainly not about taking over the health department's responsibilities at all we'd be absolutely clear

152about that but we are in a temporary situation that's now gone a year where we have an assistant superintendent who's outstanding who is not going to be able to sustain this and lead the special education work this board has that's my honest appraisal of this the special ed audit has taken place there is a lot of work about to be placed on her and i'm worried she will reach a breaking point and we will not have um we need to keep our best and brightest here in fcps and at least temporarily i do believe she needs the position and again as we've shared tonight we're not proposing it would be permanent i'm not ready to say that it's i don't know it may need to be this year and one more year after to be

153honest if i was just being honest right now in this moment i i don't know for sure i think it partly it's going to be how does the pandemic go over the next six months but i know she's overwhelmed i know she works seven days a week i know i call her every saturday and sunday she works all the time the staff's exhausted and i got to get her help if we're going to pull together the vaccination and testing work in front of us over the next few months so there is that urgency of it but i totally agree with what board members are saying i think we've developed a great relationship with the health department and in no way creating this position is to subsume any responsibilities they have again ultimately you all will

154decide but i certainly can make sure before i post anything that the board has it and if the majority of the board was not comfortable with this job description i would bring it back for for your review um but again i will listen to the rest of the conversation thank you thank you so at this point i would i would and i would like to support my colleague miss mclaughlin who said to bring a plant for you is that what you're saying to bring a proposal to us forward and then have a you know i don't need it know if it needs to be a vote like this just kind of a simple approval um because i'm still i i want to know i want to be able to support you and the best with

155you and dr boyd in the best way possible is it a coordinator position is it a coordinator and is a seymour senior and and i think that way we know what we're doing and we we all believe this is temporary and if it turns out to be different then we'll do that but at this point i don't want to just direct a single position with dollars attached until you bring us something more in detail and uh and i i think you have you said this question because i said it was there any my other one question was there any way you think you could arrange current staff to as assume some of these responsibilities i've certainly looked at that i've looked at it every way to sunday and and i don't believe uh that's something

156i can do i'll simply say this and then the board will decide what the board decides but you could uh either support today passing this with the note that i would bring you the update of the job description on the 19th i'm doing my return to school update to you all then right or if you don't feel comfortable that you can pass it tonight that you could pass it at the following meeting which is two days after the work session i'd love to get it going and and finalize it tonight but obviously i mean the board will decide in any event i'm certainly willing to share uh that position more scoped out at the work session briefly i hope it will be brief um so that you can feel assured that it's not crossing into

157lines where it should not thanks i appreciate that dr bray band but i do have confidence in you and your team that you'll bring us this this forward so i i too am a little confused why we're here tonight when i know that's what you're doing and that's your job anyway so um thank you and i'll wait to see if anybody brings that you're going to bring that proposal i'll be happy to suffer them for you miss mclaughlin miss cohen thank you we certainly heard a lot of disagreement here tonight from the folks in the audience i can tell you the one thing that about every constituent in the springfield district believes which is we've got to do better here we're just consistently hearing from folks that there are big gaps in support we're even

158heard from parents tonight who said that we have got to do a better job of getting children identified parents notified and getting our kids safely back to school dr brabrand you said we needed help we totally agree with you um i look at the people that we've seen managing the covid emergency now second round of the pandemic and we have amazing people who had other jobs before the pandemic we have ms gerpski who's data management and we have miss trouton who is a health services program coordinator all of the many things that our schools do to help interact on daily regular kids who need meds kids who need insulin kids who god forbid need an epipen all of that those were full-time more than i would argue full-time jobs before february of 2020 ever came

159around we have not hired a single person we've hired somebody to manage us or money which is incredibly important but we have not hired somebody to manage what we had hoped we'd be done with now and so i 100 we all the time i see in fcps we eliminate we reclassify we change positions if this is something that needs to ebb and flow great but i i think this is one of those places you're clearly identifying that you have a need we want to be able to give voice to that and support the community support you this seems like another win-win so ms marin you have my support ms omesh yeah thank you i'm also feeling more comfortable with a proposal but i do want to say i'm also mindful that i guess sometimes it's

160worth looking past the hills and and knowing that if if something needs to get done it needs to get done and we're going to likely what's going to happen is we're going to ask the doctor we're going to come up with a proposal he's going to bring the proposal we're going to approve the proposal and we're going to move forward with the hire so that leads me to think that time and energy is better spent elsewhere if we already know to this degree that the need exists um i tend to really hate growing central office i think that's i think you guys know that by now but um i i see value in this role specifically because it allows dr boyd to focus her energies on mental health and special ed which are both um

161you know areas of dire need as we know particularly because of the pandemic and i also think we'd benefit from a fresh set of eyes on the health situation and being responsive to constituents um you know given the the circumstances so in addition of course to always wanting to support the creative thinking and initiative of my colleagues and i'm really grateful to ms marin for bringing it um so i say that to say this wasn't planned so that colleagues don't get upset with me but based on the discussion i would suggest that we amend this just to include that it's a one-year position in explicit language so that folks have that understanding and it's codified as we move forward so i would move to amend that we say establish a one-year staff position and i

162suppose that could be further explored in the future but can we get can we update this motion and is there a second to that amendment yeah to direct the superintendent to establish a one-year staff position in the department and then the rest of it do we have a second to that amendment okay that amendment fails back to the main motion do you have other comments ms homich no i mean i'm trying to gather where folks are at um i thought you know folks are saying they wanted this to be temporary um that's fine i know there was concern around managing versus coordinating perhaps to align with the concerns around the dillon rule and statutes and whatnot um so if someone else wants to propose that amendment that's fine but i'm you know trying to think

163of how we can incorporate what people are saying here into the language of this because i think we all agree that the intention and the need is there but i mean i'll leave it at that if folks don't want my amendments thank you mr mesh massage more hyzer do you want to take your turn um here just briefly dr brayman let me ask you a couple questions um sorry i know it's late first i i appreciate this bringing forth forth um i think i heard you say that you're in the process of hiring somebody or not you've been looking at this and had made a decision that you operationally thought you needed somebody in this position to support um dr boyd's work is that correct that's correct so um if you'd kind of operationally made

164that decision and this doesn't pass what what does that say to you then you know yeah i stumped you i know i'm deciding how much how much i'm gonna just pour out we're in a pandemic we're struggling and you and i will regret if dr boyd is not part of our division she's been a superhero she needs help she's asked her supervisor dr presidio dr presidio came to me we were working on this before it came up and to be authentic partner i didn't say stay out of my business i'm going to put my own operating person in anyway it's let's work with the board i knew emotion was coming from the work session i'd love to partner i need help she needs help it doesn't have to be forever it does need to be

165this year for sure next year maybe to be honest to god i just don't know yet but she needs help and if we don't get her help i think you're going to come to me and say where's the plan where's this where's that there's not going to be and i'm not saying it to be hyperbolic i haven't been i don't think i've been that way but she is at the brink and i need to give her help that's all i'll show you the job description um now well as soon as it's done i think it's almost done before i post it and if there was a majority of board members with concerns about roles or responsibilities in it please let me know but it's just she needs help i don't know what i would do

166i'd be stumped i'd want to really go ahead and still do something but i also would feel after bringing here and if it were denied that it would be in a sense um not following the will of the board and would be disrespectful as as a professional relationship between the superintendent and you all so that's that's where my thoughts are i asked that question because um i hear all my colleagues and everyone has very fair comments and very fair thoughts and i ris i respect that um and but i i my personal opinion is i feel like we're in a middle of a pandemic and and from my own personal opinion special education has needed somebody desperately for at least 10 years and somebody like dr boyd and i personally feel like she 100 needs

167to be freed up to focus on special education it has been in crisis for way too long i would love to see you bring the the very reasonable requests that my colleagues are asking for you know job descriptions plans all of these pieces i would love to see that but i feel like we we need to do this yesterday to free her up so i'm in support of this i just wanted to to say to you that you know please do bring what our my colleagues are asking for if this passes but please like we're in a pandemic we need help with these health protocols we need someone to really own it who isn't doing another full-time job i i get it i do i i i want all the the documentation too because i

168think it's very important for a board and our oversight to have it but dr boyd has got to work on special education she has got to and we've got to find somebody to fill this role because we have you heard the young man speak today about his concerns about the protocols in his school we've got to get somebody who can focus on this 100 percent to make sure we have fidelity of implementation of our health protocols and do the work our system needs to coordinate with our county to make sure that we are keeping our kids safe in school to the best of our ability so that's my two cents thank you dr anderson second girlfriend sorry we've come full circle here um i i do have an amendment that i'd like to put forward

169but i also do want to say this because i don't think i had the chance to say this before um the reason why i felt this was important to bring this here it's because if we're going to use esser funds for it extra funds really fall to us for us to approve um if it was going to come out of operations that is your work and your barely wait having said that um and i'm not going to go on and on i agree with much has been said but at this point we know this is overdue we know what is happening i think all of us felt it when dr boyd had to leave the meeting to go attend to this work when it was a special education audit her bailiwick she left that to

170go do covid we have to relieve her of that responsibility in the same manner that we've relieved the principles at least we're trying to relieve the principles with those essa funds that have been allocated to them this is not going to be a position that competes with the public health director it is not it's going to be coordinating and managing what she's doing right now she's doctor boyd not dr boyd a medical doctor so i want to return her to the business of her job i would like to offer the amendment to just say that this will be from esther funds and mr smith if we have opportunity to um to amend the esser fund application i'd like us to be able to take advantage of that so that way we know this is a

171covet related need so it should be used by the funds that are provided to us to do that so that is my amendment is there a second to that amendment second okay seconded by um miss maren uh dr anderson i think you spoke to it uh miss marin no i'm good thanks um i now call on mr frisch okay okay um i moved to direct the superintendent to establish a staff position and the department of special services to support the assistant superintendent and managing public health related work in the school division utilizing essa funds i think that's the main difference okay that's true yes thank you okay so the question has been called um and i'll just take a moment to ask our parliamentarian do we vote on whether we vote right yes i'm doing

172on actually calling the question yes mr thank thank you thank you all right mr fish has called the question everybody in favor of voting on the amendment i'm so sorry can you repeat that i can't mr frisch has called the question everybody in favor uh on voting on calling okay one second y'all one one person mr frisch has asked us to call the question to the amendment everyone in favor of calling the question and voting on the amendment to the main motion please raise your hand miss cohen mr frisch miss sizemore eiser miss mclaughlin miss marin dr anderson and myself and mr first i said mr frisch thank you everybody opposed everybody miss corbett sanders miss omesh on the calling of the question anybody abstaining for the yeah the last part yes this passes so

173we are going to call the question to this amendment yes so the amendment to the main motion is on the screen underlined in green so we are yes dr henderson i'm voting okay okay all those in favor of the amendment to use esther funds to [Music] fund this position please raise your hands yes correct dr anderson miss marin miss uh miss mclaughlin with starring kofax massaismoreheiser mr frisch miss keysgamara miss cohen miss corbett sanders and myself and miss miss tolen all those opposed all those abstaining miss omesh okay so we will go back to the main motion um i still had some go back so i will go to mrs mclaughlin so the the reason why i wanted to go back is um number one i really appreciate dr brabrand you're saying that there's you

174can't say that this is one it's like a one-year position because we thought covid pre-delta was kind of gonna be in in the rear-view mirror that's the first thing the second thing my colleagues as you know we now have 80 plus new school nurses that is herculean in numbers compared to what we've ever had so we're going to need a best in class public health trained person to be working with dr boyd yes she has miss trouton and yes she has miss skarpski but this is a game changer what's going to happen with our school clinics and so i think we don't want to tie the superintendent's hands i also really want to again encourage you dr brabrand that if we're looking at having dr boyd focus on special ed she's going to need a

175senior level person on her team to be doing public health and i i don't know the roles of ms skarpski and miss trout and enough but our our counterpart across the river is going to have a public health officer i want to remind everybody also 25 of fairfax county children have a known health condition we have been woefully behind in having best-in-class clinics um staffed by school nurses now we're going to have them dr gloria and her team are trying to run a public health department for a county of a million people so we talk about understaffed in dealing with the whole child the health needs of our children a growing population of poverty that is now 30 percent i can't emphasize enough that dr brabrand i hope you a um please affirm in the

176microphone for me because i didn't want to make this amendment you will bring us at the october 19th return to school just a a a draft job description or whatever your where a status update is this proposal a draft job description i will do it for the 19th great and so what my hope would be my colleagues is it'll be incorporated in that work session we can then if we have any concerns did he shoot high enough do we want to see this you know what happens with the position i appreciate what mr frisch and others have said um it's broad enough now let's let them do their best thinking but i really do like the idea that on the 19th we can make sure it's what we all hope to see happen so uh

177again i i look forward to seeing everybody supporting this miss kisgamara yeah i i i have to clarify it because dr bradbury i did ask for this information when we had the work session and miss marin brought it up because the reason i asked was because i don't think we can assume we need just one person you may need a team right and so i'm a little i feel a little kind i feel like this is not the level i don't want to be critical this makes me uncomfortable because i'd rather vote on what i know the community would know what we're doing right and that's the reason i asked the question two weeks ago when we had the work session since then i haven't gotten any additional information and as a board member as

178me maybe not anybody else that makes me uncomfortable because i feel like when the community comes to me and says what did you do some may like it because it feels like okay they're moving in the right direction and and they're going to have this this guidance and and maybe it's what is missing but i was hoping for that thoughtfulness that would say with input from dr boyd to say what she really needs that's the reason i'm questioning this not because i don't support the idea but because i think that's at least how i want to govern and that's what has made me uncomfortable with this i think in if i could just an all candor uh a board member brought the motion no we're not ready i don't have it all dotted and eyed

179yet because we've been too busy in the last two weeks i haven't even had time with dr boyd to work on the full thing of the plan we have been working on drafting the job description i can only share with you a board member brought a motion i support this motion because it was something i was already working on i don't get to decide the timelines that motions come to the board we need this position i can tell you that with 100 truth i will bring the job description on the 19th as far as the plan to be honest again all candor the full plan it may require as miss mclaughlin said to hire that person to fully understand what we need or not need with 82 new nurses coming on with the scope of

180the pandemic dr boyd didn't get hired to do a pandemic she got hired to do special education and the pandemic has taken over dr brubrandt i agree with that and i i know you're not saying that i mean i know you think the world of her and i do too but i'm just saying no i haven't had time to do the work a board member brought the motion and so here we are that's why i don't have it done and i don't get to dictate when board members bring motions that's the bottom line i need the position though that's the truth i i appreciate that dr bray brand here's why i posed the question the way i did because dr boyd does know what has been on her plate and what has been burdening her

181and that should inform how we move forward irrespective of who else is coming in and i'll certainly be sure that's reflected in the position that we develop and how it's created i just haven't had time to i haven't had time to work with her and meet with her more than five minutes to go over this position because we've been so busy trying to just get ready for the vaccination the testing we're all working 16 17 hours a day and i'm doing my best to work with this board in the pandemic i ask for you to support it if you don't i'll have to figure out what we'll do but again i've already committed on the 19th to bring more i won't have a full plan though i would have a job description that's what i

182would have thank you dr brabrand thank you dr bravern i would ask you to consider this it may not be a just a position it may need to be a team and that's the reason i posed the question a few weeks ago and and that's honestly you and i honestly are on the same page but i won't have a full plan done in two weeks time i can have the job description and then have that build toward the plan and work with dr boyd to try to have a bigger plan of how that will really enter interface and i understand too this board's working hard we're all working hard um and again thank you for thank you for the points you've raised i would also ask dr bray brand that we put those parameters in

183there so that there is no confusion because i have heard from other folks who are in the other health realm right and they are watching where we write these lines and that is the reason that i'm saying this is so important so i'm not trying to be difficult i do appreciate miss marin's efforts and dr anderson's effort but sometimes even in our best intentions we step in stuff and we have to go back and fix it and i'd like to try to avoid that absolutely one thing just to recommit i will not publish that position until i review it october 19th with this board thank you dr barbara mrs corbett sanders yes thank you and thank you dr braveran for your frank words this is the the challenge that i think we're at we heard

184two weeks ago that you were planning on doing this and that this was going to happen and the reason it was going to happen is because you were in charge of operations of this school system and you recognized that we have an incredibly talented dr boyd who is over just has so much on her plate and that she needs staff and support to do it in the same way that in the past you have added coordinator positions and managers without the approval of this board i understand that this is in many ways a signal to the community that we all support a focus in this area and if that's what we're doing that's great but i don't think that we are actually utilizing or respecting the role of you as the head of operations being

185able to identify how to best put together the team that you need i mean you do when you hire an assistant superintendent or a senior level person that does typically come to the board but as a as described up here that really doesn't do that and so because and i respect that you you're feeling that because it's already come to the board that if we were to vote this down that there would be a reluctance on your part to proceed and what i think we need to understand is that we want you to have the flexibility to utilize the budgetary your own budget as needed to flesh out additional staff in different parts of the school system and in this case yes we do know that dr boyd needs additional staff i personally don't think

186it's my job as a school board member to get down into the level of detail as to the job description if you come to me and you say doctor and you know dr boyd has a position that she's filling that will offload some of the work she's doing then you should be able to hire that person but now because of where we're at tonight it sounds like you would like an affirmation because it puts you in a difficult position since it's been up here is that correct i'd say where we are now i would like affirmation from the board that ah dr boyd needs help the final detail of what that position looks like dr boyd will have a hand in creating and i would show it to you on the 19th so can i

187suggest then dr brabrand that rather than us directing you to do something that you've already said you were planning on doing that this board shows affirmation for the work you're doing honestly that's not for me to decide i defer to the board mrs thanks okay miss omesh and then i think we'll be ready to vote yeah i think i mean what we're hearing here is obviously this has been mentioned in various meetings there's clearly a need enough that dr brabrand has brought it up as a something he's considered for the division you know miss marin took initiative to bring this forward for us to to put into action um i think it's good news i think we're all in agreement to move forward on this thing and it seems like that's the direction we can

188head in um i i had a question i'm sorry just about the funding piece specifically um the part i'm having a hard time wrapping my head around but i do plan to support this either way is given the 80-some you know number of nurses that we're having funded by the county and given our intention potentially for this to continue given the the oversight role that person might have etcetera um [Music] you know i'm thinking just in a short amount of time we're going to end up wanting this to be reabsorbed into the regular budget um you know we're trying to use esser which could be diff used differently is temporary i guess i'm just i want to walk through a little bit of the rationale as to why we're choosing to specify it in that

189way um i haven't been the only person who didn't support that amendment uh yeah especially given that it seems like a county role i worry about our division becoming responsible for that health side you know this is kind of i don't know if it's department creep or roll creep here but just one clarification because you've added esser funds esser funds end at the latest in 2024 the latest nes or funds will exist or through september so it's a temporary position when it's used through esther funds it may extend into next year which is um and it could be built on the budget at a later time but because assessor funds this would be um only as good as the esser funds are allowed to be authorized authors authorized which i believe is through september 2024

190yeah yeah and that's exactly my concern is why are we specifying it to be esser when potentially it may be reabsorbed potentially it may have oversight over county paid positions mr mesh that's the motion on the table so if you could just speak to it i was just asking for a clarification that's the rationale for that given those we just discussed that yes there was an emotion there was an amendment i understand that it's what it is i i'm asking for the rationale they he didn't make the motion so the makers of the motion spoke to that when we had the amendment all right that's fine um i mean that's fine i i call the question okay the question has been called all those in favor of um taking this vote on this motion please

191raise your hands oh i'm sorry miss let's do an echo fox okay i don't like that okay so we have okay withdraw my motion i'm sorry okay thank you mr cofax and then we'll be ready to please take this vote yes thank you i i just wanted to clarify that dr braeburn thank you for answering our questions thank you for showing us that the need was there and thank you for agreeing to bring us a plan on the 19th i appreciate that i think this process was a little rocky i can speak to my colleagues offline how i think it might have been done better but i will support what's out here now because it's needed and our superintendent and all of us who have been out there talking to dr boyd and everyone who

192has to work with her team in these these very trying times and know she needs the help so thank you uh dr bray brand for easing my um concerns thank you um i will the motion is before us on the screen it's been seconded and i'm now calling for the vote all those in favor please raise your hands all those opposed ms tolin voted in favor of it no oppositions no extensions that motion passes thank you and i'll just briefly speak to it um now that that motion has passed i will say i did um [Music] vote for it because dr brabrand you know it was brought you asked us to give you that affirmation but i i think it's wholly inappropriate that this board would get into the weeds of somebody at this level

193within the organization to direct you to go hire them i i believe there is definitely a need you shared with us that you were looking to fill it and i i feel like this is overreach on the part of this board um but i voted in favor because at this point you asked us to ensure that we could give you that affirmation so thank you maybe you recognize man um go ahead miss fair well since we're continuing to talk about it after it was passed um um i i just miss marin i'd just like to say we took the vote i had not had an opportunity to have my comments and for parliamentary procedure i do get the opportunity to make comments even after the vote and as the maker of the motion i actually

194i did signal that i did want to have the last word which is usually a courtesy extended to the maker of the motion you had spoken to it miss marin yes and usually at times it's nice the courtesy is ex look may please speak madam's here be recognized mrs parent please please i think it's it's a shame that we're taking this motion that is something that we directly need and tainting it with such negativity about the process the truth is i announced this twice in public in a work session over two weeks ago i brought it as new business two days after that i followed up with people by phone email and text i did everything i could to try and get input i thank dr anderson and miss mclaughlin for working with me to

195make this something that would be more palatable i am not thrilled that we are asking the superintendent who has in absolute certain terms say he needs help who are we to say that we should not grant him the help to help our children my own child got put on pause today for 14 days now i would love to have someone who could help advocate to lessen the covet quarantine like lauren has done for 10 days i would love for someone to find out why his classmate who was paused excuse me on thursday still has not been contacted by the health department we need someone to liaise and that is the motion and i think we should be very proud that we are doing this for the help of our kids and our special education program

196and i'd appreciate not editorializing the hard work that has gone into making this happen thank you miss marin and again i do thank dr bray brown for realizing that this was a need in our organization and giving dr boyd the necessary um being willing to give that relief all right i will hand it over to the vice chair to go over the next two items on our agenda agenda item 5 consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed here have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to

197the meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda seeing and hearing no objection the consent agenda is approved agenda 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 agenda new business items are on the screen i will turn it back over to the chair agenda item 7.01 superintendent matters and i call on dr brabrand thank you chairman picarski and members of the board i just want to give you a couple of nuggets and then i'll be done this week i had the honor of presenting a surprise award to howard brewer who works at our inner agency alternative school located at

198bryan high school he was announced as the region for virginia teacher of the year mr brewer is also a u.s navy veteran and a career switcher and one of the reasons he got into education after serving in the military was to serve young people in this community i'm so excited about this principal jennifer knox touted mr brewer's works by saying his impact transcends his students and families he makes his colleagues better teachers every single adult who works alongside mr brewer emphatically agrees on one thing he makes me better he clearly makes his kids better and he is one of eight teachers now from the commonwealth's eight regions uh who will go to be part of the selection for the 2022 virginia teacher of the year and he will be honored at a reception in the

199governor's executive mansion next week we're very very excited for him for fairfax county public schools for region 4 and for bryant i think he's maybe the first tsrc specialist to ever be honored in this way and really a great way to lift up the work of him and his colleagues i also want to just take a moment to acknowledge dr john allwood his passing he was a fairfax county principal at edison high school he also founded lake braddock secondary school when it opened in 1971 he was the first principal there for many years the drive into like braddock bears his name the essence of his leadership can be appreciated and summarized by this quote from him teaching is the only important thing everything else is pretty incidental our thoughts and prayers go out to him

200and i want to just tell you a private thing many of you know i did work at lake braddock i certainly wasn't there uh when he was principal he was there i think from 71 to in the early 80s 10 to 15 years there there was a racial issue between lake braddock and tc williams and he heard about it and we've had some of that happen even in our system in the last year or two um teachers and uh came down and said this had happened coaches went down and said it happened he called a student assembly lake braddock four thousand kids and told the faculty to stay in their classrooms he personally would talk to all of those kids he told them he was disappointed that he expected better from lake braddock students and

201that the the following game at t.c williams he expected the highest levels of behavior and performance and there were no further issues at that game or throughout the season he was that kind of leader he didn't need teachers in the room he commanded that school and god rest his soul thank you very much thank you dr bray bran agenda item 8.01 board committee reports and i call on mr not go fax for an update from the audit committee thank you madam chair we had our first audit committee meeting um on september 29th and the audit auditor general first provided an overview of the office of the auto general's teams its roles and responsibilities the presentation included a refresher of the fy 22 audit plan as well as other office initiatives and accomplishments the audit committee

202also welcomed a new citizen member john shames who is beginning his two-year term the auditor general then presented on the audit general performance expectations which outlined the office leaders expectations and job responsibilities next the auditor general and her team presented the results of the inquiry related to a leadership development procurement as well as the results of the fy 21 quarter three and quarter four continuous monitoring and lastly the status of prior audit recommendations were discussed in the follow-up report the next audit committee meeting is scheduled for october 27th at 4 pm and we hope to see some of you there thank you agenda item 9.01 board matters i will call on miss corbett sanders thank you i'll be very brief i too enjoyed the celebration of mr brewer at bryant school it was absolutely amazing

203and uh we actually have here in fairfax county public schools not only mr brewer as the uh teacher of the year for region four but we have the school psychologist for fort belvedere upper fort belvoir upper school as the psychologist of the year for the whole state it's incredible and we are just so proud of the incredible work that all of our staff do to go above and beyond the call of duty in very difficult times so i'm forever appreciative of it and i've had the benefit of being able to visit a number of our schools and walk and observe classrooms with principals over the past two weeks and every place i go i see our children just embracing the joy of learning enjoying being together and the one thing that i do continue to

204urge is that get our kids outside during the day please thank you mr mesh thank you october is bullying prevention month on average more than half of our youth behave in ways to change themselves due to bullying meanwhile self-esteem is reported to be one of the most essential components in a child's ability to reach their full potential as we all know but too often forget children learn behavior bad behavior from their environments and the adults in their lives so whether we agree or disagree as we know everyone deserves to be heard to be seen to be valued and to be embraced charitably in our schools and in our communities charitably means we hear them out before we judge it means we pause when we are uncomfortable to ask ourselves questions and to learn a little

205bit more about what we might not be used to it means not ridiculing giggling yelling at others for their differences let's be curious not cowardly imagine how cool it is to challenge the ways we think by delving deeply into what someone else's story might be or in tapping into someone's soul and empathizing with their feelings and learning more about human experiences that are different than our own or coming to the conclusion that the same pain and struggle that one might feel when they're hurt or disrespected may be experienced by you and by others in the same way of course that deep love and friendship and happiness are too because those are the bonds that allow us to relate to one another in ways that are far deeper and more powerful than the reasons we see

206dividing us apart so in national bullying prevention month i hope that we can take steps to be bystanders when we face bullying for that kid who's not picked on the pe team for that kid who might not find a friend as our student representative said so articulately earlier uh to sit next to that person in lunch to be mindful of one another's mental health and to take that extra step this month especially but always uh to to be an ally and a bystander in preventing bullying in our schools ms miss kisgamara thank you um i i want to just mention a few things i had an opportunity to participate in these past few weeks i was able to along with some of my other colleagues to attend the fcps equity symposium as well as the

20724th virginia showcase of bands at herndon high school that was a lot of fun and i wanted to thank my colleagues miss uh prakarsky and miss corbett sanders for allowing me to participate in town halls with them and having an opportunity to interface with the community i do want to make a few comments about bullying prevention month which is recognized in october in my work in working with children and representing children in various situations i would say that bullying and what children experience when they are not properly supported is probably one of the most harmful things that i have been able to see in the course of my life it produces trauma it produces long-lasting harm that takes a lot of therapeutic work to try to address i think sometimes we can have a physical

208wound but an emotional wound is i don't know is it perhaps one of the most difficult things to deal with and so i just want to encourage us to follow the the wisdom of our student representative as ms omesh mentioned and in the words of wisdom i found on twitter i want to share this with you be the reason someone feels welcomed seen heard loved and supported i think we can all work toward that i wish some of those folks that were here earlier could hear that because i do think as a community we could work a little bit on communicating more and bullying a little less thank you mr frisch thanks uh first i want to thank my colleagues for their comments this evening and their kind words over the last few weeks um

209and i also want to mention something i went to this past weekend i had the honor of attending the unveiling of a historical marker at james lee community center in falls church right here in providence district um at the invitation of supervisor dalia palchek our former school board member the marker commemorates the james lee elementary school which opened at the site of the community center in 1948 james lee elementary school was built on land purchased in 1866 by james edward lee an african-american who was born free in 1945 lee's son sold a portion of the original property to the fairfax county school board to build a school a modern school for black children at the time these students were attending school and what amounted to a fairfax county public school by the way that amounted

210to a shack with a wood-burning stove in the middle of the room and as we heard from students who were the first to get into the new school and the last to be educated there they remembered [Music] very well how you know some days would be way too hot some days would be way too cold the draft etc and what it was like to be in the new building where they got to smell new books and this student who was the first to go through it talked about how even to this day when she goes to a bookstore and smells the smell of books it transports her back to that day when she got to be in a brand new school with brand new things and how lucky she thought she was and now the

211location of that school is is where we have the james lee community center and the event was just fantastic um and it was also a great reminder that fairfax county public schools is partnering with the board of supervisors to host the inaugural fairfax county historical markers contest that will showcase previously untold narratives and highlight the histories of those who are underrepresented in school curriculum and this year's focus will be on african-american history in fairfax county the fairfax county historical market program was established in 1998 by the fairfax county historical history commission and has since produced 53 markers across the county out of those 10 showcase african-american history it is planned that the inaugural contest will be the first of many opportunities to add historical markers throughout the county it will also serve as a learning

212opportunity for students as they will be encouraged to engage with the local community and learn about our county's rich history county and school division staff are already hard at work at this and i can't wait until we're able to share more information with our community as students begin taking part in this great contest thank you cohen uh i wanted to take the opportunity to thank our friends in prince william county who hosted us at colgan high school thanks to chairman latif and school board member lisa zagripor culligan high school was amazing and they hosted hayfield lake braddock john lewis high school edison mount vernon and justice and i can say with no bias whatsoever that the fcps bans kicked butt i am just perpetually grateful i will say all year long and sometimes i mention

213it and sometimes i forget to but the number of boy scouts and girl scouts who reach out to get help with their badges and it is one of the coolest parts of this gig i will say to get to hear from our boy scouts and girl scouts and the questions that they have and the ideas that they have um they just blew me away every time so this last week thank you so much to mason for your thoughts and ideas on overcrowding and your really thoughtful questions looking forward to heading out to liberty middle school next week for a planting event i'm super looking forward to our fcps excellence awards where we finally get a chance to shed some light on all of the amazing fcps staff and everything they do for all of our

214kids and the last thing i just wanted to say is many most of us share our schools with other people but sometimes we have a few that we get to keep all to ourselves so sangster elementary is one of those that i think i have 99.5 percent so i'm going to claim it as my own and they were named um dr brayman referenced it last time but i wanted to give a special shout out because they were named a blue ribbon school by the u.s department of education only seven schools in the entire commonwealth go falcons miss jjankovic our new principal um and miss lisa riddell our most recent past principal you guys are just unbelievable the whole staff at sangster from aps down to our custodians everybody you guys just really make us incredibly

215proud so thank you miss miss mclaughlin uh i want to just add on something to what dr brabrand had said about dr john allwood who had passed away something that his family shared that i really want to read because i think it's really special and reflects his legacy here in fairfax county most poignant was the way his christian faith sustained him in what became a national hostage crisis story in 1982 reason and compassion or what he used when an 18 year old rejected by his girlfriend took 10 people hostage in the school with a deer hunting rifle and held them all night the boy threatened to turn the violence on himself john said i told him he'd made a bad mistake but he could overcome it and make a life for himself john was the

216last hostage to leave and instead of being worried about himself or those waiting for him he was worried about the boy recalls his wife betsy the boy ultimately threw out the rifle and he came out alive i read that and i want to thank um principal daniel smith of lake braddock for sending that to me and my wonderful colleague laura jane cohen to let us know about the passing of this very special man who opened lake braddock at the time the largest secondary school of high school in all of the commonwealth virginia back in he gave his life to education and he leaves behind an amazing legacy i'm grateful for all that he gave to fairfax county schools my love and prayers go out to his family and all who knew and loved him he's

217certainly a shining star that we can be very proud of thank you if we could recognize miss tolin thank you um i am going to talk a little bit about our earlier motion um since i didn't get to speak earlier but um especially particularly since we've heard from parents and students tonight and um you know our need to clarify and improve our code 19 procedures and i know from talking with principals that they're overwhelmed in asking for centralized clear procedures and we have procedures that need to be updated regularly as we get new information and new data and we gain um you know insights into what's happening with covet 19. we definitely need someone to work on this and dr boyd needs help i know that um so i'm happy that we'll be able to

218do that and look forward to working with dr raymond to get this done as quickly as we possibly can um i am happy to start working on there are new committees um we had our first budget work session this week and i was able to participate in a meeting of the successful child and youth policy team the facilities planning advisory committee has gotten going and also participating in the audit committee that we heard about earlier this evening um this week i understand is custodian appreciation week and i just wanted to you know make a shout out to our custodians who are indispensable members of our team particularly during this time as they're working so hard to keep our schools clean and keeping everyone safe thank you so much for your hard work october is also

219principal appreciation month um another set of heroes and keeping our teachers staff and students safe in our schools thank you so much for everything that you do i'm going to be starting um to visit and shadow of different people working in the district across greensville i'm starting out with some mclean high school counselors in the next week or two and um wanted to give um just a happy homecoming shout out to mclean laney and emma herndon um mclean's homecoming was last week and unheard of seven claims coming up next week um i wanted to just you may have seen the article about one of our janesville students ethan zhang age nine and a fourth grader at churchill road elementary is a finalist in the time magazine for kids student journalist competition he chose to profile

220maria perrone our director of food service as part of the competition's final round with direct students to find a local hero to interview and to profile throughout the cupid pandemic this prune has helped a lot of families in need by providing more than 10 million meals to kids in our county ethan said so i thought her work and her leadership was very news movie and deserved to be written about by someone ethan is one of 20 student journalist finalists across the united states when he interviewed um with perron and he wound up being selected by time for kids as one of ten winners in the country whose work will be published on the magazine's website the story about uh ms peron is now available online on a time for kids fights way to go ethan

221thank you very much have a nice evening everyone thank you miss toelin we apologize for the earlier um tech issues miss erin thank you i have just finished making the appointments to uh the committees that hold uh seats for our citizens and excuse me our constituents and so i've got them all filled now for minority student achievement advanced academic programs student health and the challenged materials or the materials reviews committees and i'm really pleased with the representation of people from different areas upon our mill which are rest in vienna and some of herndon and you know these folks represent you know they include fcps parents with children spanning k-12 professionals with professional degrees and curriculum and instruction experience and just thoughtful people who want to contribute to the discussion and the work happening so i

222only wish i could include more people who had applied but i hope to stay in touch with them as well i'm really glad that i got to meet with laura jane cohen and our government relations staff about staff member about getting ready to advocate in richmond in january for the general assembly and um to elevate the laws and state supports uh that will help us here in fcps to keep doing what's best for kids especially around that literacy instruction piece and i'm eager to hear the board discussion and input on october 25th both at our meeting and the public hearing on the legislative agenda and i'm also working with supervisor walter alcorn of the hundred mill district to host a hundred mil huddle with state elected leaders soon after the election to really um express

223the the school divisions and the 100 mill areas you know needs and to that point the election is is days away and the school bond is on the ballot so i continue to advocate i'm at the point where i keep materials in my purse and everywhere i go whether it's at the grocery store or the library i'm asking people if they're registered to vote and if so i hand them some materials so um i this weekend is the fcps teacher artist exhibition over at the workhouse art center in lorton and i'm hoping to get there especially to see constituent and hunter mill teacher artist teacher extraordinaire bethany molino i'm looking forward to the first cpdc meeting next week that's our comprehensive plan committee of which we heard the and saw the uh report posted this

224evening and then also in a little a little bit of time on october 23rd we're going to do what ms rashford seismohazer helped promote i think it was earlier this year maybe last year which was to give the opportunity for people with disabilities or anyone who might need some practice and what to do if you are pulled over by the police at a traffic stop that was such a great idea that she initiated that now i believe it's in many locations uh so it will be in hunter mill at dogwood elementary on october 23rd and um i think that is such a worthwhile thing so thank you for that that initiative um thank you thank you miss mayor and dr anderson follow ms eisenhower heiser um thank you first i want to say thank you

225to the annandale adams who performed this evening they were just super awesome and in their honor i had to don my annandale red i've got my annandale pen i got all outfitted um i was just so proud to see that wonderful wonderful performance um speaking of annandale we have had um so many of the afghan students come into our schools over the last several weeks 46 out of the 80 are in annandale schools and mason district schools and we have parklawn that had 25 students that is an entire class i'm just so proud of the welcoming environment kind of the theme for tonight that we were discussing that the students and the staff at all of these schools and i believe i have one two three four five six eight schools that have welcomed afghan

226students and there's just been such concerted effort to ensure that those students are welcomed and not be left on their own to navigate the school or the community but really embraced and so i'm very proud of that effort so i wanted to talk about that but i would be remiss if i didn't say dr brabrand with these additional students comes new additional responsibilities particularly at parklawn with 25 new students which is an entire class i'm really hoping that they're being provided with the resources in order to do this great work that they are engaging in absolutely we've been carefully monitoring that and working through the registration process and then supports and we continue to provide the board weekly up weekly updates about the numbers but i think we're even up now to 90 families that

227are in our schools we welcome them and want to support them as we know they've been through just a traumatic set of experiences to arrive in our footsteps and we want to welcome them into our fairfax county schools family thank you i also want to remind our students that fcps will again be offering the s.a.t school day um during the school day on the 12 on the 13th to students in grades 12. while registration closed on september 8th i did want to lend my support for this approach having it on a school day and also absorbing the cost of the assessment has been a game changer for many of our families in the mason district because that tended to be cost prohibitive for many of our families so thank you i also want to highlight

228an initiative that our fairfax county board of supervisors are sponsoring this weekend which is the stuff the bus it is this saturday october 9th from 10 to 3 and in mason district that stuff the bus will be taking place at the george mason library in belvedere elementary and it will be benefiting um akka the annandale christian community for action which is an institution that provides early childhood education food rental assistance furniture and other services to needy families in the annandale and bellies crossroads area so please just bring some materials and stuff that bus at the library and at belvedere elementary school again very quickly as mentioned by my colleagues october is bullying prevention month each year over 2 million students report being bullied it's estimated that over 20 percent of youth in the united states

229are involved in bullying each year as a victim or an or as an aggressor bullying can occur online in our communities in our schools in the school board meetings it's imperative that adults and children really be more mindful and stand together to address this issue and to create a climate where bullying is not tolerated because we need to ensure a culture of respect and safety in our schools had the opportunity just this past couple of weeks to visit glasgow middle school and in westlawn elementary i want to say thank you so much to principals powell and hill to show off their staff and i know that they're working really really hard to make sure that not only they're putting together mitigate mitigating factors but also to focus on the academics of our students as well

230so thank you the bell game for falls church high school and um justice high school will be happening on october 15th 61 years of this tradition where the bell game promotes a friendly rivalry and good sportsmanship between those two high schools and they are provided they're presented um the winning team is presented with the bell from the uss ga jeb stewardship which is presented at the end of the football game so i'm really looking forward to attending that justice has won 35 games and false church has won 25 games over this history so game on lastly well next to lastly i want to remind the justice pyramid community about the virtual community meeting that will be taking place next week to talk about the high school edition project including the revised proposal for parking solutions

231please be sure to visit my newsletter which has a link for you to sign up or on the website at fcps lastly october is national principal month and i would be remiss if i didn't recognize the efforts of all of our school leaders in their devotion to student success and staff development especially during this very very difficult time so t principles everywhere but particularly in the mason district happy national principles month thank you first i'll say dr anderson i i love your pen but i really love the shirts that the andel chorus was wearing so i'm just gonna put out the universe that i need to go buy myself one of those shirts those are awesome um i wanted to say and i loved having the course saying they were amazing um congratulations so when

232you know with a link to buy the shirt let me know i'll go buy one um congratulations to howard brewer for our alternative schools teacher for um region 4 teacher of the year i love hearing one of our alternative schools teacher being named teacher of the year because the work they do is is so um groundbreaking and important for our students and um also to terry hodges who was named virginia school psychologist of the year for 2021 2021-2022 she worked at fort belvoir upper elementary school for the past 11 years serving our military connected students and acting as a leader in the community so congratulations and thank you miss hodges um i was honored to be able to give some opening remarks at the equity symposium on september 25th the theme of my remarks really

233were what if today we let go of the old and create a more inclusive normal where we where we affirm the humanity of all where all of our students are seen for their strengths first and for what they bring to us so i think today was a really great day to reaffirm that statement from the equity symposium i will say as a former marching band parent and as a parent of a child who's performed with every single performing arts department at his high school i was really really honored to be able to hang out with my colleague karen quiscamara and hang out at handout awards at the herndon high school showcase of vans on september 25th i've been to many of these competitions as a parent and it was so fun to go back and

234see the bands and their enthusiasm and just to hear the amazing music and see their shows i've also enjoyed attending some of our homecoming festivities and seeing the pictures of homecoming and the kids excited to be at the football games and at the dances and connecting with each other and i'm really excited thank you south lakes for being part of their homecoming parade next friday and um i did want to mention i that many of my colleagues have mentioned bullying prevention month but october is also disability employment acceptance month and i wanted to talk a little bit about that i had a great visit to the davis center thank you principal clayton for welcoming me and i saw some of the classes at the davis center um and the great work that our staff are

235doing with our post second postgraduate students in helping them transition the job skills and independent skills that our students are learning there and i appreciate my many conversations with dr presidio and dr boyd about the need to to continually improve our transition services for our students with disabilities so that we have better employment outcomes and post-secondary outcomes for all of our students with disabilities and i'll just put out that our wonderful programs that davis pulley and steph we probably have between i think three to four hundred students that utilize those but we have twenty seven thousand students with ieps um and the jaylark study itself mentioned the need for really good transition services so i appreciate the work that davis center is doing i'm looking really excited to go back and look at some of

236the go with them to some of their job sites and see the great work that's happening at the job sites as well and as we celebrate disability employment awareness month i just wanted to share a couple statistics with you all the unemployment rate for persons with disability is 12.6 percent in 2020 increased by 5.3 from the previous year and is much higher than the rate for those without a disability among workers with a disability 29 percent worked part-time in 2020 compared with 16 percent to those without in 2020 persons with a disability were more likely to work in service industries or in production transportation material but much less likely to work in management professional related occupations i'm very excited to have a neurodiversity specialist hopefully joining us on board at some point soon to expand

237our normative culture to include those who live norms of disabilities and last i promise i'm really really excited about the traffic stop events that miss marin mentioned they're actually taking place all around the county and these are events that i worked with our board of supervisors on piloting which is a chance for both our law enforcement officers and our persons with disabilities to practice safe controlled traffic stops so both our persons with disabilities and our law enforcement officers learn to work with each other and um practice safe interactions and i'm really really excited that these are now being expanded to not just traffic stops but walking stops for persons with disabilities who may not drive but still want to practice safe police interactions and i will say from the pilots that took place in talking

238to the law enforcement officers they felt they learned just as much as our students with disabilities did so i'm really excited that i think there's eight of them happening on october 23rd reach out to the ark of northern virginia for more information thank you have a great night everybody thank you all right i will give you all a a big gift and i will make one comment and bid you all a good night um i was really honored um with my colleague miss corbett sanders to attend an event um at bryan high school that um surprised and honored our virginia's region 4 teacher of the year mr howard brewer an alternative schools teacher for inter-agency alternative schools it was really wonderful to surprise him he's an amazing educator so we're really excited to see him

239progress through that process and we are just wanna again i want to publicly say thank you for all he's done and and congratulations and with that good night everyone meetings adjourned you