FCPS School Board Meeting - 08/26/2021

001[Music] if all board members can take their seats please i want to start together [Music] somebody thank you this august 25th 26 2021 regular meeting of the fairfax county school board will now come to order please rise and join our student representative pranav chaudhary as he leads us in the reciting of the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence keeping in mind the u.s service members and civilians injured and are killed in the explosion in afghanistan today followed by performance of the national anthem by jake sizemore 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 [Music] oh say can you see by the darkly so proudly we hail at the twilight's

002last screaming whose brush stripes and bright [Music] [Applause] streaming and a rocket switch the bombs bursting in [Music] [Applause] i [Applause] brave [Applause] thank you thank you jake that was incredible 2.02 certification of closed meeting compliance in order to comply with section 2.2-3712-d of the code of virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county school board convened a closed meeting on august 26 2021 and to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting agenda item 2.03 announcements if you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is

003being discussed tonight that information may be found in the back of the auditorium or on the website at the fcps.edu school board slash board docs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu tv slash channel sch99 a reminder masks must be warned by all attendees of this evening's meeting thank you agenda item 2.04 resolution naming mount vernon high school cafeteria to the chef rocky moore murray's cafe i call on miss corbett sanders for the resolution yes thank you very much hold on one second thank you whereas janet rocky moore murray passionately and faithfully served mount vernon high school students staff parents and community members for 16 years while leading the culinary arts program and the mount vernon cafe from until 2021 and whereas she was a consummate

004mount vernon high school major supporting and encouraging students and staff alike and always willing to lend a hand to anyone in need and whereas chef rocky moore murray's culinary program trains students for careers in catering hotel restaurant management and nutritional meals preparation she played a vital role in growing and fostering the love of culinary arts with students in her classes and mentored countless students in their quest and dream to become professional chefs and beamed with pride as she eventually worked alongside many of her former students who became her colleagues and whereas chef rocky moore murray's passion and love for food along with her caring demeanor made students staff in the entire mount vernon community feel welcome because she went the extra mile to create a positive experience the love she put into her food was

005obvious and it served as a connector bridging the entire mount vernon community she led her students with grace and dignity as they catered many events over the years from staff luncheons to graduation meals for honored guests to ensure she was fully prepared for the events chef worked tirelessly at school far into the night this was evidence the morning after her passing when we explored her spotless kitchen to find pounds of marinated chicken rice vegetables and a variety of desserts primed and ready to go for the teacher luncheon she planned that day and now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board names the mount vernon cafe at mount vernon high school chef rocky moore murray's cafe to honor the kind and vibrant spirit in which she she served our school and community for

006so many years i so move is there a second second seconded by the stare not cofax mccormick sanders would you like to speak to your resolution i would if you can just hold on one moment so i can bring this up in mount vernon we have an expression of the battle of the highway which is a friendly rivalry between west potomac high school and mount vernon high school this rivalry has gone on since i was a young kid chef rocky moore murray's culinary arts program is an area that has triumphed for over a decade it is the champion of the highway as the founder of the program chef rocky moore inspired students to express their creativity and management skills in serving delightful meals to students staff and the greater mount vernon business community chef rocky

007moore met her students where they were she shared her love of cooking and inspired them to achieve and pursue their passions many of her students went on to pursue careers in the hospitality industry and her inspiration and love for students resulted in a 2014 graduate isaac castro to pursue a career in education and culinary arts i know that he will proudly teach and inspire students in this newly named cafe she created a place where people gathered to have a good meal and fellowship and she will be missed greatly by our community and i proudly support the renaming of the cafe after this inspirational leader thank you miss corbett sanders mr not kofax would you like to speak to your second yes um miss corbett sanders you stated this so beautifully miss rocky more murray was

008loved by her students and by the community and she is truly missed i am so happy to support this well-deserved honor for her someone who's contributed so much to fcps and our students so thank you are there other school board members who wish to speak not seeing any i will go ahead and take the vote all those in favor and that vote is unanimous [Applause] madam chair can we ask the mount vernon high school staff to come forward so they can receive the resolution that way we can get a picture thank you so agenda item 3.01 community participation the next order of business is community participation speakers must limit their remarks to no more than two minutes in length at the conclusion of the two minutes the microphone or video will be turned off school

009board members will be listening but not responding to individual speakers the school board school school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings such as capital improvement program budget and boundaries comments targeting criticizing or attacking individual students are not permitted during public meetings complaints regarding school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school officials speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information in connection with any individual student or school-based employee additionally speakers should be respectful and observe proper decorum in their statements avoiding profanity inappropriate gestures shouting and comments that run counter to the spirit and letter of the school division's non-discrimination policy all statements should be directed to the school board and speakers should remain at the podium until concluding their remarks in-person speakers should

010wear a mask when addressing the board we are grateful for those who have joined us today to speak and thank you for your cooperation tonight 10 speakers will address the board and we also have three video testimonies our first speaker is joanne walton you can begin hi good evening chairperson picarski dr bray brand board members staff members it's great to be back my name is joanne walton and i'm a special ed teacher at woodburn elementary and i'm here this evening with the fea the fairfax education association on behalf of the petition that we would like to present to you this evening signed by over 500 staff and this petition is in support of a thousand dollar bonus for all summer school staff i had the opportunity this summer to teach summer school and i gotta

011say every single person in the building was working extra hard to make sure that all of our students had an amazing experience no exceptions um so i just want to really reiterate that we would like all of our staff to receive the bonus in addition i wanted to take the opportunity to thank dr brabrand and mr smith for meeting with us yesterday just to have the opportunity to receive our petition hear our concerns and i actually learned from mr smith that you know a couple years ago we really intentionally changed the title you know from support staff to operational staff and that was really an important distinction that has been made and so we just really want to reiterate that i also want to thank you so much because we are also really excited to

012hear about the opportunity tonight you're all talking about the budget or not sorry not the budget the potential bonus for staff um from last year and um essentially when i mentioned it to one of my assistants albeit a bit prematurely that you all will be potentially voting on this on this evening she actually broke down uh crying and she basically said you know i'm really sorry but you you have no idea what this would mean to me and um our next speaker is erica richie good evening ladies and gentlemen and thank you for the opportunity to address the board as the parent of a kindergarten and second grader in fcps i am here tonight virtually to voice my concerns over the full reopening of school for five day in-person instruction without an option for virtual

013schooling as we all know children under 12 are not yet eligible for a vaccine and yet we are forcing our most vulnerable population back to schools at a time when cases are on the rise and there is a highly contagious delta variant circulating in our communities cases in children have increased exponentially children's hospitals across the country are reporting a surge in symptomatic infections and health officials are expressing concerns that it could get worse the level of transmission is currently categorized as high for all states by the cdc with virginia reporting a 10 to 14.9 positivity rate i am not able to register my children for school without their immunizations up to date for a host of different diseases and yet the most looming disease and threat we are saying just wear a mask it'll be

014fine when i visited the school last thursday for open house there were no measures in place for social distancing in the classrooms my daughter is sitting at a table of six and lunches are being served indoors after just the first day of school this monday our elementary schools were already reporting cases during the town hall last week our superintendent spoke about having a plan in place to go virtually should things get bad why are we waiting for things to get bad why do we need our children to get sick and god forbid die before we allow virtual schooling while we recognize in-person education is best for our kids to learn and grow equally as important as safeguarding their health during a pandemic now is not the time to put our children's health at risk by

015mandating in-person attendance there is an online petition with nearly 4 000 signatures for a virtual school option we are just asking for the option to have virtual schooling not that all schools shut down or that it's mandatory just as we've had the option for this forum to go virtually other counties in neighboring states are providing this option why can't fcps i do not want to withdraw my our next speaker is kisa smith keisa smith our next speaker is leslie forte hello thank you for the time to speak to the board my name is leslie forte um we trusted you to be doing everything possible to keep our kids safe you touted multi-layer mitigation efforts but it's based on outdated cdc guidelines that still advise treating covin as primarily a closed contact issue since late last

016winter research has shown the covet primarily spreads through aerosols that can linger in the air delta strain being more easily transmissible than the original strain yet your plans did not adopt or change think of it like secondhand smoke it stays in the air and can travel fill the room you can smell it from one end of the room and don't need to be right next to the smoker the smoker represents aerosols containing the cobia virus from an infected person without proper ventilation from outdoors to dilute the concentration of aerosols in that room or medical grade hepa filtration with a high enough c-a-d-r clean air delivery rate to cycle through the air to clean it fast enough to reduce virus levels infections can easily spread to others in that room ill-fitting masks kids don't wear masks

017properly even adults have issues with wearing masks properly yet we are forced to do in-person instructions before our kids can even have the safety measure of having the vaccine many of us didn't find out how poorly prepared for the current variant until open house started and then it was too late to change plans we saw crowded rooms stuffy hot rooms meant poor ventilation indoor cafeterias for lunch but don't worry we will tell them to put their masks back on as soon as they're done actively eating are you kidding me was anyone informed of the current situation the delta surge paying any attention to news and research articles plagued applying basic common sense and critical thinking skills to know this was not sufficient to keep our kids safe your contact tracing policy again is based on

018close proximity contact to trigger notifying parents and this is unacceptable as well today i saw a kid in elementary school coughing continuously and was sent home early the parent was told by staff that they didn't have to test for covid but just needed a doctor's note to say that they were clear to come back even as early as the next day this is unbelievably unsafe especially for kids who are not vaccinated in elementary school everyone going home for covid like symptoms should be required to test and stay home for a period of time fcps went from one extreme overly cautious last year to another extreme of risky negligent this year someone in the chain of decision making must have seen the problems in your plans please stop putting politics before our next speaker is norm

019hall missed some parts of the tuesday work session but i'm sure i caught all of the sr-3 planned discussion did i miss the news that the kovid pandemic is over i asked because the superintendent presented an sr-3 spending plan that is not based on contingencies that would be practical given coveted interruptions i have pointed out that the federal regulations were issued on april 22nd they called for extensive stakeholder engagement that was supposed to be updated whenever the cdc issued major guidance this happened on july 9th and the ranks also call for periodic reviews with the same level of stakeholder involvement at least every six months this plan makes no mention of this in fact i never felt that my limited three-minute statement on june 7th was taken into account there is no evidence i was

020heard nor any of the 90 or so other speakers who followed me speaking without the benefit of the planned framework and staff's mind once the plan was set we couldn't even see it in any form until tuesday this week the documents posted then were not organized by stated assumptions to produce the calculated spending amounts and tonight right now is the first opportunity for anybody who is not in the leadership circle to speak out you can't seriously think that school improvement plans are both flexible enough and accessible enough to the broad community served by your schools to handle significant disruptions that could result from another extensive coveted wave again i asked if i missed it the staff discussion about each of the cdc mitigation delay layers as required by the federal regulations cohorts testing of asymptomatic

021carriers ventilation and stack rooms dear fcps community are we better prepared for the rising delta cases than we were for the alpha outbreak i'm all for vaccinations and mass i wish i'm wrong but the virus hasn't been defeated yet finally i just want to say that changing your public participation without getting public input was a twisted irony i think it reveals an unintended message that you're not really interested in listening i know that isn't true but it shouldn't be an act of faith in my part it should be how business is conducted when major decisions are being made please demonstrate to the community tonight that you do value meaningful two-way public participation adjust the sr-3 spending plan accordingly thank you our next speaker is sarah cluberdons good evening and thank you for the opportunity i'm

022the parent of a new kindergarten student with fcps i'm here today because i believe that the current measures fcps has in place to address covid are inadequate to protect elementary school students i recognize that when fcps made its plans for this school year it appeared as though we'd be able to return to something close to normal however circumstances have changed with the delta variant we now have a more transmissible virus and one that is potentially more dangerous for our children as well fcps's strategy relies almost exclusively on masks which are important but are not enough the strategy also relies on wiping down surfaces and hand washing which are not effective against an airborne virus and no longer allows for social distancing which worked so well for you last year i'm here today to ask for

023several things first more safety measures in our classrooms my son's kindergarten class has 24 kids in a small room if social distancing is not possible all classrooms should have windows open unless there's extreme weather they should also have an extra heap of filtration system second we need to implement effective safety measures at lunch particularly in our elementary schools having full cafeterias even with assigned seats and students facing the same way is unsafe and frustratingly this is an easy problem to solve every elementary school should have a tent with seating outdoors or other outdoor lunch arrangements finally we should have a virtual or hybrid option at least until the vaccine is available for all students in-person learning is best but a virtual or hybrid option is the safest way for our kids to learn until they

024can be vaccinated while not every student would choose such an option just having the option would allow for greater social distancing for in-person learners and also provide support to families with high-risk individuals believe me i hate having to make that request my son loves his teacher and his class but with the current measures in place i feel like it's only a matter of time before he gets sick it's only been four days and there's already a case in our school we must learn from what has been happening at schools across the country as they've reopened this wave of the pandemic has the potential to be devastating fcbs should be going above and be our next speaker is kathleen mallard kathleen mallard our next speaker is elizabeth mccauley members of the school board thank you for

025your time and attention my name is elizabeth mccauley i'm a fairfax county taxpayer and mother of two children parents deserve their respect to fulfill their god-given roles as the main caretakers for their children having the final saying determine the best medical social and emotional care child needs your recent policies have trampled on that final say parents choose to enroll their children in public school but in so doing do not transfer the role of parent to teacher or school board member the classroom is a place for students to learn thrive grow in reading writing math science and history the classroom is not a place to indoctrinate children to confuse political ideologies children deserve to be educated not indoctrinated what is the reasoning behind hiring an out-of-state firm leadership academy for equity training at a price tag

026of seven hundred thousand dollars when our dear children are falling behind in basic subjects equity is marxist in nature forcing equal outcomes lowers the bar for all we should be striving for excellence academic achievement meritocracy equality of the playing field not equity additionally i'm floored by one of the most recent direct infringements on parental rights i was shocked to find the free school-based vaccination clinics webpage with instructions on the fcps website stating these clinics will allow individuals to i quote have a parent or other adult 18 years or older who must be physically present accompany a minor for the duration of the covenanting vaccine appointment who is this other adult age 18 or over would i even be notified if my child receives a vaccine could that be my child's older friend teacher principal guidance

027counselor could it be any random adult off the street it truly doesn't matter what shot medication medical treatment we are referring to here fill in the blank this is a violation of parental rights we the parents demand that this board stop forcing their political agendas on our children we the parents are taxpayers and your constituents we expect you to act in the interest of our children not your ideology i refuse to co-parent thank you for your time our next speaker is brendan curry brendan curry our next speaker is joanne sears good morning can you hear me yes we can hear you thank you my name is joanne sears and tonight i want to address the devastating learning loss we are now seeing in sol scores from last year remember when you were focused on spending

028time renaming schools and telling parents everything was fine yeah not fine in fact it is devastating here are some facts ratings and percents passing on math assessments for all students went from an 86 in 2019 down to a 61 percent reading for all students went from 81 down to 73 math for each soul students 58 down to 19. math for economically disadvantaged students from a 71 percent down to 34. reading for economically disadvantaged went from 60 down to 49 and before you attempt to claim it doesn't matter because fewer kids took them doesn't cut it fcps push parents and kids not to have their kids take the sols and when you dig into this data school by school you will see that the affluent area areas did very well whereas the title one schools did

029not it's not good enough to brush this off with excuses like you usually do these kids were seriously harmed when the school board forced virtual through almost the entire year real work has to be done to fix it and create equity that goes beyond school renaming currently i'm attending the space symposium in colorado springs i have been sharing this unmitigated disaster with senior industry and government officials all of them are horrified because this is the next generation the next workforce and have noted that they want to ensure we stay ahead of russia and china because k-12 education is a national security imperative the political board the school board is full of political hacks and incompetence and you have failed our families and our nation and all we will now move to our wait list maria

030sherwell good evening all i'm here to talk about the masks i'm hearing that masks are for kids protection that it's the science i find this to be complete malarkey and i'm sick of hearing it i'm not hearing the studies like the cdc's own website that states quote disposable medical masks are loose fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids there is a limited amount of evidence for effectiveness in preventing influenza or other virus transmission the new york post has an article that states quote masking kids in closing schools is irrational and unscientific child abuse they quoted a study out of the uk that shows that kids transmit the coronavirus at a much lower

031rate than do adults and quote kids aren't taking the virus home and then transferring it to the community end quote rational ground posted a posted lab results of masks worn 5.7 hours a day less than what our kids are wearing right now 83 percent of those contaminated were contaminated with multiple strains of bacteria including meningitis and also antibiotic resistant pathogens the hill reported quote mask wearing can be especially challenging for students with disabilities these children face the potential to impede their verbal and non-verbal communication and by extension language development and social skills among the very things that we are sending these children to school for in the first place in addition to this the swiss policy research foundation found that mass do not work against respiratory virus epidemics and for the climate change advocates 129

032billion masks are made a month that's three million mass per minute with 96 unique pathogens found on each of the children's used mask 32 studies of negative health effects of mass wearing but hey that's just my science our next speaker is melinda hamer melinda hamer our next speaker is vanessa hall hi it's so nice to see you guys parents are worried and confused about your procedures to protect students against covid this includes crowded indoor lunchtime conditions and unknown procedures for quarantines and contact tracing i'm covering the latter after my son texted me yesterday mom someone in my first period had to go home because they felt ill and were coughing a lot i comforted and reminded him that he's waxed and masked but then i realized just how many questions i had about what happens

033next first how does contact tracing work will it involve contacting all families in the kids classes or just those who were determined to be within three or six feet for 15 minutes and how the heck do you truly determine that why be called texted emailed and if so how soon second how does quarantining work this seems to be a moving target is it 10 or 14 days does it matter if you're vaccinated or asymptomatic when can a covid test be performed and what type of cova test is required with whom do i communicate third how will education continue for quarantined students a substandard quarantined education could affect a child's ability to read do math or get into college depending on their age and abilities what about the mental health impact of inconsistent schooling as kids

034are pulled in and out of schools change and constant threat of change can be devastating fourth for my son will i know if this kid had covid and whether my kid was exposed i know that his high school had a positive covid case yesterday was it this student who returned to my son's class wearing his mask below his nose fourth finally sorry we need this basic information so that we can protect and support our kids please alleviate parental and student worries by providing clear procedures to manage covet cases and conduct contact tracing testing and quarantining also please fix lunch because it is the weakest link in covet mitigation efforts thanks so much it's nice to see you guys in person our next speaker is shawna yashar shauna yasher our next speaker is lauren mccahe makani

035our next speaker is kimberly adams wait for my colleagues to join me so i don't have remarks prepared but you know that i've been talking to many of you for the last few weeks and my colleagues and those who also joined us on zoom calls to discuss the disparity of the summer school bonus pay summer school stipend as i believe it's been referred to we definitely believe that our colleagues should feel valued in our schools and whether you're a teacher scale employee or you're a support staff employee we all do the same for our students we all are there every day to do the job we're assigned to do and we are always there through everything for those students this past year was harder than ever and so attracting people to work summer school was

036such a challenge and we were told that all hands on deck were necessary so the people who stood up to come in for summer school came because they wanted to be there for our students and some of them came because there was bonus pay involved and we expected that that would be equitable and once when staff found that they were going to be paid less than their colleagues the disparity was laid bare for them and teacher staff felt that their support staff weren't being supported by the district so the petition was raised by our support staff committee signed by over 500 people and brought to the superintendent and to you and we ask that the money that was not spent on unfortunately what we had hoped would be a robust summer school plan that the

037additional money that's left over be used to make that bonus equitable so that the 500 stipend become the 100 000 stipend for all thank you our next speaker is nicholas tempestini nicholas tempestini our next speaker is tina williams good evening school board members superintendent bray brandt and the leadership team i'm tina williams president of the fairfax county federation of teachers and i'm privileged to speak tonight on behalf of my members thank you all for working together along with our members to open our school doors across the county to to welcome our students back to five days of full-time in-person instruction our members enter this school year excited to be back in school with their students we appreciate the extended contract and bonus for special education teachers and acknowledge this as progress towards improving compensation for

038every employee in the school district thank you to this board for advocating for a potential one thousand dollar bonus to all staff and your continued support to pay fcps employees a step increase as soon as possible your commitment to a safe healthy and welcoming school environment for every child access to equity and learning for all students and collaborating with your stakeholders is how we will provide a quality education to our deserving students the fcft looks forward to working together with a focus on success this school year for every child their family and all of our staff to do this work it will take the collective effort and support of everyone including our community members the goal was to be on the other side of this crisis together we are not quite there yet but the

039fcft is committed to working together to ensure that all students and all staff have a successful school year now and well beyond this pandemic thank you our next speaker is nagar imam nagar our next speaker is lauren pakman lauren we also have three videos for you this evening our first video is kathleen friesen members of the school board i am speaking to you today as a mother of a kindergartner second grader and fourth grader my middle child has never had 990 instructional hours of school despite this being her third year in elementary disrupted education is all she has ever known we are amazed that her wonderful teachers have still imparted so much knowledge however we would love for her and her siblings to have a full instructional year we are worried that despite our school

040having excellent plans the masked mandate and the quarantine exception for math students and everything else that our three kids will be in a rotated carousel of pauses and quarantines there is a better alternative test and stay test and stay allows each identified close contact or before contact tracing is done all potential contacts to take a rapid test each morning and stay at school as long as the test is negative 13 high schools in utah piloted test and stay last spring and saved approximately one hundred and nine thousand seven hundred and fifty two in-person student days for a report by the cdc massachusetts is using testing stay this year using a 15-minute rapid test they call it an important step to reduce the disruption if there are positive cases this fall in the united kingdom where

041quarantines kept nearly a quarter of kids out of school schools using test and stay had no more spread of covid than schools using quarantines illinois is using test and stay with testing only on days 1 3 5 and 7 following exposure in conjunction with symptom monitoring for 14 days testing's day is a proven way to keep kids in school without increasing the spread of coronavirus for continuity of learning for all ages i request fcps to implement it as soon as possible we need to stop kovit from spreading while allowing healthy kids access to school thank you our next video is eric hooks conservatives make up a substantial minority of the student body and surrounding community in fairfax county but seem willfully underrepresented on the school board itself as well as in its various working groups

042fcps has been expending a great deal of energy and resources attempting to identify and rectify opportunity and achievement gaps for students across the county in accordance with one fairfax and one virginia while these initiatives seem well-meaning on their faces i'm concerned about the contents of supplemental instructional materials that have been featured on fcps websites i would like the school board to provide meaningful safeguards for planned curriculum and reforms by accounting for its own biases ask yourselves will conservative political affiliations be treated with the same dignity and respect as any other political affiliation the correct answer is yes will scps students who espouse traditional conservative views be affirmed as capable and worthy learners just as they are the correct answer is yes will conservative students have their perspectives represented in the curricula and in the classrooms

043with nuance and respect the correct answer is yes will policies be equally applied and opportunities offered to all students equally regardless of race sex religion creed social class or political affiliation once again the correct answer is yes will students be taught that at any individual by virtue of their race or sex is inherently privileged oppressive or subconsciously biased the correct answer is no our next video is robert rigby good evening school board members dr bray brown senior staff members of the community i am robert rigby president of fcps pride and lgbtqia organization for stakeholders uh in fairfax county schools first thank you for all you've done this summer for lgbtqia people it's tremendous we've set the standard fairfax is the gold standard um a couple of other things uh don't stop don't turtle up uh

044you know there there are there's a there's a lot of drama uh and and quite frankly uh uh a lot of attacks or or misspeakings or um or press whatever about lgbtqia people in particular trans people uh we've seen what's going on in neighboring loudoun and the lawsuits stay firm stay strong we're with you uh my third thing is uh of course always listen to the voices uh of queer youth uh especially queer youth uh uh who may not often have the opportunity to speak uh or to voice their consent you've got a group doing that now uh and the last thing is uh is is i ask uh that you include explicitly the concerns of marginalized people uh people with disabilities and and of race and gender and uh and gender identity and sexual

045orientation in the superintendent search the last few i've been through have been very successful but but uh explicit inclusion would be great thanks for listening agenda item 3.02 student representative matters and i call on mr chattery good evening everyone and i just want to say wow what a week i mean just think about where we were a year ago and where we are today it has really been incredible just even being a student at school and seeing the difference and just the fact that we were able to interact with one another directly face to face is so game changing um with that being said the number one thing that i have heard from kids as a concern is the wearing of masks properly so i do ask you know anyone if you're in your school

046community just make sure you remind your friends or if your teacher your students to just pull up that mask make sure it covers their nose and the other really big thing that i've heard from students is lunch of course and i think that um it's kind of a given when you don't have distant seating and it's indoors um and students are interacting without masks on but still overall i think we have really seen a lot of strength come out of this with that being said we do want to get creative if necessary to be to ensure that students are protected especially during lunch time for example i know um there are some proposals that might be student looking at having students eat lunch in their own classrooms in places where that they can be distant

047and of course maximizing outdoor space as much as possible um and then beyond that um i really want to give a huge huge thank you to our bus drivers especially over the course of this past week i know it has been tough both for our bus drivers and our students and um we've appreciated the expediency in terms of postings on the website publicly for students and families to access with that being said i think we cannot ignore the fact that a lot of students are coming into school late uh initially and they're missing out on some instructional time and while we are facing a national bus driver shortage once again it's about really seeing what we can do to make sure hey you know these kids aren't missing out on direct instructional time so one

048potential with that could be maybe looking at those advisory or sel periods and seeing if those could be earlier in the day to ensure that when kids are coming in late they're not missing crucial learning time additionally one thing that i've noticed is that usually the breakfast lines at schools are closed after that first bell so that can be a struggle because the kid can't control if their bus is late and yet still they can't get breakfast in the morning so that's uh one last major thing to look at um and then i may have to depart before this vote occurs because i have an sat in on saturday morning but i also just want to say oh my goodness our student advisory committee appointees for this year are such incredible and dynamic students we

049had more than 80 applicants and um kind of unintentionally but ultimately we got this really great kind of mosaic of the diversity of experience within fcps um we have multiple kids who came to this country knowing no english but went through the esol program and really got to get a grasp of what that experience is like we have one who saw major inequities in her school community and really worked to build up an equity coalition to ensure equal access for all students but really all of these students are amazing thank you so much thank you thank you agenda item 4.01 confirmation of action taken in closed meeting in order to comply with section 2.2-3712 section d of the code of virginia it's necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county school board

050convened a closed meeting on august 26 2021 and to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during this closed meeting do i have a motion moved my uh miss corbett sanders is there a second okay seconded my mysterno cofax all those in favor and that vote is unanimous this is a portion of the meeting where the board will confirm any action regarding issues that were discussed in the closed meeting these issues may include action taken regarding student disciplinary matters board members have discussed each individual case and at this time we'll make several motions to confirm the recommended action i call on miss

051corbett sanders for a motion i move that for the teacher identified and closed meeting a recommendation to revoke the teachers virginia teaching license be forwarded to the superintendent of public instruction at the virginia department of education is our second seconded by dr anderson all those in favor please raise your hands and that vote is unanimous i call on mr frisch for a motion i move that for the teacher-identified enclosed meeting a recommendation to revoke the teacher's virginia teaching license be forwarded to the superintendent of public instruction at the virginia department of education is there a second that it was seconded my miss cohen all those in favor please raise your hands that that vote is unanimous i now call on miss corbett sanders for another motion i moved to excuse from attendance at school certain

052students identified in closed meeting pursuant to the virginia codes section 22.1 uh 254by is there a second second and by dr anderson all those in favor miss marin dr anderson miss marin miss tolin miss darnacho faxmas sizemore heiser mr frisch miss keys gamara miso mesh miss corbett sanders and myself all those opposed seeing none all those abstaining miss cohen and miss mclaughlin thank you agenda item 4.02 school board liaison and committee assignments i call on ms eisemar heiser for the motion i move that the school board confirm committee liaisons and assignments as detailed in the agenda item is there a second second in my missteronack co-fax ms sizemoreheiser would you like to speak to your motion yes just briefly um colleagues i want to thank you all very deeply for your patients and your understanding

053as stella and i worked hard to find our balance and balance many factors and requests in determining committee assignments for this year we know the trust you all placed in us as electing as chair and vice chair and we take that trust very seriously which includes in our job to make these committee assignments we hope you will look at these charges as opportunities to work in new areas gain new insights into board work and be able to contribute your many talents and strengths in perhaps different ways than you have before stella and i really did try to harness your strengths and experiences and interests and provide chances to work more closely with colleagues you may not have had before it's going to be an incredibly busy year but also a very fulfilling year and i

054thank you for your tireless work and commitment to our board to each other and to our collective job and serving our constituents thank you mr nacofax do you wish to speak just briefly thank you for again stepping up to the chair and vice chair roles and um i know this uh as i've done this work it's not easy to please everyone but i appreciate your conversations and um i thank you and i look forward to my new roles some of which i have not ever had before even being on this board for as long as i have but thank you thank you mr cofax miss mclaughlin yeah uh i'm concerned that the document that's posted electronically at least the way i just pulled it up on my ipad from the website is showing the original

055document that was sent to the board at the work session but not showing the revisions that you would send back out to the board ms madeja can you please check that the latest committee assignment document is posted and and please put that up for board members to see if we could put it on the screen please that should be in an email i just wanted to prevent thank you for voting on something that's different i appreciate that mr mclaughlin ms corbett sanders yes while we're waiting for the revision to be put up i just wanted to personally thank both you and the vice chair for the hard work that you put in over the recess which really wasn't a recess for us and in reaching out and really trying to work towards a strengths-based approach

056to committee assignments and so i am appreciative of you and the vice chair's time and outreach thank you thank you miss tolin i just really want to second what um ms corbin sanders just said i know that um chair picarski and vice chair seizer heiser spent hours on this and spoke to at least to me over and over with different variations and i so appreciate the time and the thoughtful energy that went into putting this together thank you seeing no other members that like to speak i'll just take a moment um you know i think ms seismor heiser said it uh very well and i'll just say that i am very much looking forward to this year and to the work we have we have a lot of work there are many many big things

057this year so i look forward to that and with that i will call for the vote the motion miss mclaughlin did we're good i i just would say just making sure everybody understands it's what is before the board here not what is posted on board yes it is correct so the motion before us if we could put that on the screen as well please okay the motion before us is that the school board confirmed committee liaisons and assignments as detailed in the agenda item all those in favor please raise your hands dr anderson miss marin miss tolland miss mclaughlin mr not kofax miss sizemore heiser miss cohen mr frisch miss keys gamara and miss corbett stan ms corbett sanders and myself all those opposed all those abstaining miss omesh that motion passes agenda item 4.03

058fiscal year 21 year and budget and i will call on miss marin for that motion great thank you chair picarski i move that the school board approved the revenue and expenditure adjustments as detailed in the agenda item is there a second second that's seconded by ms dairnak cofax miss marin would you like to speak to your motion yes so this is the culmination of our fiscal year and this is something that staff works on over the summer and this year we heard from the superintendent to include bonuses to further show our staff just how vital they are and so that's a part of this year in funding and you know i think when the board decides to offer a bonus and make financial decisions we have to consider a lot including setting precedence and what's

059available and equitable across all staff positions so um we need to move forward with our financial decisions with the money at hand so i'm really glad that we can show our staff this and look forward to being able to pass this this evening thank you thank you miss marin miss darren at cofax yes we held a lengthy work session on tuesday and i want to thank miss burden miss wiggington mr smith and the entire budget team for your work on this fy 2021 year and budget to our employees ms adams you are there to our employees i am happy that we have been able to provide a modest but well-deserved bonuses to you and are contracted both are contracted and hourly employees i want to thank you for working tirelessly to cultivate a caring culture

060in the most difficult of circumstances so thank you all very much as you're representing to miss marin thank you for your work as budget chair to my colleagues i appreciate your diligence in working through this budget as well as the esser funds conversation we had on tuesday and i look forward to your support in approving the revenue and expenditure adjustments outlined in this our final fy 2021 budget will now open the floor to other school board members miss cohen i definitely second what miss marin said about finally taking a moment to recognize the difficult year and the difficult beginning that all of you have had um a thousand dollars doesn't touch the surface i understand that i think we all do here um but one thing i do want to highlight and dr brabrand it's

061more question to you i want to make sure that in the conversation that we had on tuesday when we talked about compensation for our bus drivers in particular we were assured that there would be a scale a conversation about a scale adjustment and i wondered if you could speak to the time frame on that and whether when there's a conversation about that does that become retroactive for the entire school year well thank you miss cohen we will be talking about our sr3 plan after this year in and we do have dollars in there to elevate our bus driver pay for those initial steps up to step six we are now in the middle of conducting an hr study on the market and would bring back before the end of this calendar year recommendations for the

062rest of the scale um and uh we plan to do that in terms of retroactivity that would be uh one of the recommendations we would make as appropriate to the board but we're reviewing that now and we'll have something with all deliberate speed as fast as we can but tonight when we get beyond this bonus plan and this year end in sr3 we do have a several million dollars to elevate our starting bus driver pay uh to be more competitive with other jurisdictions and to recognize the extraordinary critical shortage that we're seeing across the country and even here in our region in fairfax county and to recognize that we need to do a short-term fix but we need a long-term fix to support our overall transportation services folks and we'll be bringing that back to

063you before the end of this calendar year thank you i appreciate that and i do just want to note that this year-end budget the bonus is the thousand dollars for every contracted employee that we have even contracted hourly employees temporary hourly employees are in a separate category but i do want to make sure that when we look to any kind of bonuses that we're not devaluing our support staff so i appreciate this one and i think that this is a great way to use some of our year-end money thank you miss cohen ms corbett sanders yes thank you very much and i do want to echo the comments by my colleagues about how we would like to have done more but we are within the constraints of the budget that we are given by the

064state of virginia our locality and the federal government and uh the locality is the group that gives us the most towards our budget and that we continue to be chronically underfunded by the other two bodies and so although this is a recognition of how we value all of our employees we also know that we would like to see a return to the step process and making sure that we are competitive in our salary and wages for all not just our teachers we did some work with our elementary school principals and assistant principals this year we have done some work with other categories but this is an ongoing process that we need to be vigilant in ensuring that to be to maintain our status as a excellent school system we also have to attract the best

065and the brightest and a key part of that is ensuring that every employee is paid a competitive salary and so i very much appreciate this being brought forward i look forward to continued discussions about how we can attract the best and the brightest of all of our employees and i do want to distinguish a little bit of what we're doing with this year-end bonus from some of the other processes of bonuses that we have used and continue to use and maybe uh dr brabra and you can help us with this it's my understanding this is a bonus in recognition of the excellent work that people have done and continue to do and it will be given out in november but that this summer we looked at incentives to attract people into the classroom because of

066a shortage there and that we've also in the past used incentive bonuses such as what we will talk about in the esser funds to attract bus drivers is that correct that there is kind of two different types of bonuses that we use well well that's correct the the the year-end spending is a bonus plan to recognize all the extraordinary contributions of our employees through the pandemic we're excited about bringing this to you tonight um and uh look forward to your review and uh decision making so that uh we can after that share with the team the um the esser dollars will be raising the floor for our bus drivers we have also knowledge that there is competitive districts offering bonuses for recruitment and we are matching that using operating dollars but none of that is

067here for you tonight but we will match and be competitive with other divisions recruiting bonuses and as i pledged to you earlier tonight we will begin that hr market study with completion before the end of this calendar year for action for this board with recommendations on what we can do with the additional salary and bring some recommendations for you because we know this is a critical shortage area and we need to address the rest of our bus drivers on the rest of that scale thanks so i know this isn't the subject of tonight's discussion but i do bring to my colleagues a concept that perhaps we need to have a periodic review of all salary scales and do it on a standard schedule and so i will be bringing to my colleagues for their support

068a process in which we have a review of each category on a standard rolling schedule do you think that that is something worth doing dr brabrand well we can certainly talk about i think the my predecessor actually did do a market study with you all that i think first focused on teachers as i recall and i don't know what conversations the prior board had about how often to return to it i do think it's a good conversation to have instead of being reactive how do we proactively dip stick the market and what sort of cycle that should be and i'd welcome some additional conversation with board members um both collectively and individually about what that could look like and i could bring some recommendations as part of this year's budget thank you very much i

069appreciate that mr frisch followed by miss mclaughlin thank you um i don't think any of us have to tell anybody it's been a very difficult 18 months and the modest pay raise with this modest bonus i think it's about changing the conversation we have around our staff and changing the sales pitch we have for recruiting staff you know it's not easy to teach it is not easy to drive a bus especially with middle schoolers or high schoolers it's not easy to work in a cafeteria or any of the other critical jobs that we have in our system and it certainly has not been easy to do any of those things during covid we know what people have said about our workers and we know how hard that is and we know that people keep showing

070up because they love the work and they love the kids and at the end of the day every single person at this table wishes we could do a heck of a lot more and a demonstration of that reality will be not only moving this bonus forward but following through on that commitment wherever humanly possible in the months and years ahead that's how you change the conversation around recruitment in fairfax county people wanting to come here because it's different than everywhere else and the problems we have here are problems that everyone else has so i don't want to take any more time because we have more conversations about this coming but this is an exciting night and it's an opportunity for us to say thank you so thank you good luck thank you first of all

071i want to capture what my colleague miss corbett sanders was touching upon and what dr brabrand said very well it is extremely important that our school division continue to monitor the market and ensure that our salary scales are competitive in the region i am aware that in the past the county government has had a very good process in place particularly for their police and public safety that's one that i know in particular they can tend to really examine very frequently every few years so i think we would benefit from talking with the county executive of what their process is and really make sure it translates to all employees and i think the county government needs to ensure that happens for them too so i'm in full support of that i really appreciate what my colleagues

072have said our tremendous gratitude for every person who worked for fairfax county schools in this past academic year during the pandemic as someone who has served on this board now for close to 10 years i have never seen anything like this and uh recognize with humility that what we asked everyone to do they did with grit and heart and the year-end bonus i am so thankful that our superintendent and this board's support working with the county board of supervisors and the county executive really looked at a way that in a one fairfax approach how we could show our gratitude as best we could as people noted um you know and you're seeing in this year end when you're talking about 32 million dollars it's a lot but we did have our staff work really hard

073to find where that money could come from this is a little hard for me because at our tuesday work session i very much appreciate my colleagues and superintendent brabrand hearing my concerns about the year-end budget and i know that in any budget we're not always going to have everything we'd like to see in it but i have shared for a time now that i've been concerned on decisions that were made and how that has impacted our budget and finance particularly related to food nutritional services which is a grant fund that needs to be self-sustaining and um i'm i'm i'm disappointed we find ourselves having to provide another 1.8 million into that fund on top of the other 10 million we already did and so to my colleagues i will extend my um regrets to all

074of you that i i just in principle for where i've been on this i i can't support this tonight but i wanted you all to know and i wanted dr braeburn to know that i still do appreciate the many good things that are here mr frisch captured it well there's a lot to be here as a way of showing gratitude and appreciation i didn't want to lose that sentiment here but i also didn't want you to understand what where i was coming from and why my hand won't be up and i do want to publicly again say dr brabrand i am so appreciative of the phone calls that you and i get to have together and the fact that we've now worked four and a half years together and uh always trying to um find

075a way to meet in the middle and i look forward to continuing to do that with you miss tolen yes my colleagues have spoken very uh nicely and eloquently on um the importance of that that 32 million dollars in the year and year-end budget to be able to say thank you to our staff you know as an educator i can't even imagine the amount of work that you did as we you know changed course a couple of times and you know all of the things that you did last year during the pandemic and then having been out at many schools over the last week as we've been opening the amount of work that has gone into our opening this year is just incredible and i can't thank you enough for that so excited to be

076able to do that and i did i did have a few questions around the um for bus drivers for our current bus drivers and i had i was going to ask that in the next section but as long as we're talking about it here dr brabrand i just thought maybe you could help clarify for the public really that as we look at using esser funds for the um you know looking to hire more bus drivers and incentivize additional bus drivers we really also want to take care of our current bus drivers and our experienced drivers and you're talking about that hr review that will take place the funding that we will be looking at for uh you know providing something for our current bus drivers that will be in our next fiscal year budget correct

077uh it would certainly be something i would likely be recommending in next year's fiscal budget and i'd be looking at finding existing resources or funds to do something potentially this year during this school year's budget process not just next year but i don't want to get ahead of going through the process and letting the team do their work reviewing all of that and i would bring recommendations again as i said you before before december no later than december excellent i look forward to those conversations definitely want to be having those thank you ms toe and dr anderson thank you just very briefly and i'm so glad to follow miss tolin as a former teacher as a former school principal i have said many times throughout the last 18 months that i am really glad i'm

078not in those seats anymore because i know how hard it has been for all of you i haven't had the other jobs that's why i didn't mention them so i do just want to lend my voice to the course of thanks to all of you for all of the work this is minimally what we are able to do it it we wish it could be more as mr frisk shared but it's what we're able to do right now and wholeheartedly i am so glad that dr braeburn was able to make this happen to show our staff in a very very small scale how appreciative we've been of all of their hard work during the past 18 months so thank you mr mesh thank you let me start by thanking the budget team for putting this

079together in uncertain times the their diligence and professionalism miss burden and her entire team are really worth recognizing and i mean that i'm also grateful to the previous budget team miss marin and ms erina koufax for getting us through this year on the right track with some new process improvements over this past fiscal year i have two buckets to address folks uh brought out the conversation around uh the bonuses which i'd plan to address later but you know on tuesday leadership staff shared their rationale for how we ended up with the disparity that was shared from this past summer and that several of our speakers today mentioned it is important to me uh to assure our staff um that uh our staff being our our contract hourly workers that nobody intended to leave contract hourly

080employees out um and and i'm pleased to see that the adjustment has been made for the future it is important for me to say that because i know our leadership team didn't intend for that to happen now that of course doesn't prevent us from resolving the oversight of course i know we all agree about that and we do still have a 20 bus driver shortage fair recruitment money is certainly worth it we also put ourselves in a situation where now the employee categories from the first bonuses are inconsistent with what we are committing in our vote tonight understanding of course that it's recruitment versus retention but remains the case at least from an external eye i know many of you were expecting a follow-on motion tonight from me to correct this to support our bus

081drivers our food nutrition service workers our custodians and other contract employees but we unfortunately didn't have the votes required to accomplish that at this time but i have added it to new business to continue the conversation it is our collective goal this board to do what's right here and i hope to afford more time for us to discuss it as a group to our staff i'm not telling you to wait on your rights i certainly would never do that and you never should but i hope for a successful outcome at a later date and i'm hopeful that this time will allow us to do that my second bucket and i i know uh i need you know your indulgence here a little bit but i am choosing to abstain on this today not as a

082condemnation of staff at all or the hard work that's been put in but as a call for us all to think about how we could and certainly can move forward in a way that takes very seriously the appropriation of funds at the end of the year as we know this is a unique time and it's easy to take for granted how many zeros are associated with each line item in times that are consequential and fast-paced what's left during year-end is not a trivial amount we as a body are accountable to community as we all know we have obligations based on the tremendous needs that continue to be glaring in our underfunded schools and i'm hopeful that in this coming cycle we can number one have a process that is more thorough at the end of

083the year one that involves community input or at least more justification around the monies allocated to prevent the rubber stamping problem where all uh we are all united to to prevent especially given over 80 million dollars of of funds left that were considered number two that we allow the equity team to lead from the beginning when it comes to establishing the proper foundation upon which to assess the disproportionate needs that exist so that we can properly prioritize in a way that understands history and context but also in a way that makes sure we don't leave out those who we don't hear from because what we leave out is also consequential this coming year we have hundreds of millions of dollars of dollars to oversee the implementation and distribution of we have needs that are more

084urgent and disproportionate than ever and i won't get ahead of myself because i know that vote is coming up right now but i do hope we all remember uh and and that's you know my conscience in voting today as i remind myself of just how massively serious intentionality and accountability will be with this with all this money so i'm confident that our upcoming budget chair and vice chair uh will take this very seriously and i look forward in supporting them to build better and better each year thank you miss miss sizemoreheiser thank you i will i will be brief um i agree with much of what my colleagues said i am so incredibly grateful to our teachers and our staff this year for the incredible hard work and going above and beyond and i know

085what we were able to do here is just a small drop in the bucket of thanks but it is a heartfelt drop in the bucket of thanks and so i hope you know that we are committed to continuing to do good work for our drivers our support staff our teachers but especially in this moment of severe virus shortage you know i'm glad to see that there's support going forward for our drivers and we're committed to ensuring that we are compensating in a way that's fair and competitive and reflective of the work that is done um i want to thank our uh budget staff lee burton and marty smith and dr bray brand and our chair and vice chair for their hard work and getting us here and i just wanted to say a couple things

086i am really really proud of how this so3 funding plan has come together in terms of the focus on both academic and social emotional support because the year ends the year has come together thank you for academic and social emotional support because we know if we don't educate the whole child and take care of the whole child we cannot really get to the remediation and address the learning loss in the way that we need to so i'm really glad to see that and dr brabrand i'm really excited to see that you've added and listened to board feedback and community feedback and put the emphasis thank you for my colleagues in leading the charge around outdoor space and using outdoor space as some of our speakers said we are still in the middle of kovid and

087while we know in-person learning is best for our students we need to do it as safely as we possibly can and that means maximizing our outdoor space so i appreciate that addition thank you very much thank you and i'll just take a moment um i also want to extend some thanks to our to our budget staff because with the change of the board's um recess which wasn't a recess uh however you know we asked you to kind of switch things around and really get us this uh before we um took our break in july so i'm appreciative that you were able to get that i know that was a little bit of a challenge and for all the work you do always you're diligent you are flexible you take calls from all of us and

088the work always speaks for itself and to our employees i think this board um this entire year has been uh really united around finding a way to honor the work you do your commitment your dedication to fcps and especially this past year more than ever and you know i i don't want to go through all the things you have done but i hope that this is one small way that we can show you that you are appreciated and um we are so glad and happy to have you as part of fcps and as we move forward i think we're always looking to ensure that we build upon that so with that i will call for the vote and the motion which is before us on the screen to approve the revenue and expenditure adjustments as

089detailed in the agenda item all those in favor please raise your hands dr anderson miss marin miss tollen mr kofax ms sizemore heiser miss cohen mr frisch miss kisgamara miss corbett sanders and myself all those opposed miss mclaughlin all those abstaining miso mesh that motion passes thank you agenda item 4.04 sr3 spending plan i call on miss marin for the motion i move that the board approved the sr-3 spending plan is there a second second seconded by miss darynak kofax miss marin would you like to speak to your motion yeah this is really exciting it's exciting to receive an infusion of federal funding like this it's historic and i think that what we have here is a plan that has tried to hit the the three major areas that we want to be sure that

090our students um you know can receive support in and those are the unfinished learning the student academic social emotional mental health needs and a bunch of other things that range from transportation communications translators interpreters and such um you know for for myself my two largest areas of interest and concern are actually going to be further delineated in the follow-on motions and that's about our paid monitors and access to being outdoors but i'll say here more generally and to continue from the year-end conversation we were just having the year-end um budget is that you know my expectations for our hourly paid staff who are a really essential staff and just to you know who i'm grouping in that is our bus drivers our other hourly staff um that are doing the work um excuse me our

091bus drivers our food nutrition service parent liaisons that are not all yet up to full-time translators interpreters and honestly just other competent adults that can help in predictable pinches like substitute teachers or monitors so that our principles aren't scrambling at the last minute sometimes the morning of to try and find competent vetted reliable people to help you know manage student classes so i think again you know as much as esser is bucketed into these three chunks i i do expect that there will be some um flexibility in there because these funds will be you know spent not just you know immediately but over time to really amp up the hourly you know pay as we can and get to that place we were talking about of salaried positions so there is predictability because that predictability

092and reliability is what's going to help our students and i'm very glad to hear that there's appetite for that in terms of paying our staff and recruiting and compensating them i also just last my final piece on that is that you know we can model what it looks like to give people living wages in a public school system and that can be really inspiring and it's what needed so i'll speak more to outdoor access and such in a follow-on um but the last thing one more thing i'll say actually is what's most exciting about these funds is that they're going to get to our students quickly you know this plan is due to the state which is going due to the government september 1 and approval is expected to be expedited and so by september

093we're looking at an infusion of funds so that our principals can hire the staff they need get their staff trained get those supports in place for kids so i think that's that's fabulous and um i'm just thrilled that the federal government is paying attention to our public education needs thank you thank you miss marin mr not kofax would you like to speak yes um i i want to thank our staff for providing us with a robust plan that included input from the public our teachers staff and our employee organizations as well as this board as ms marin stated it will address unfinished learning our students academic social emotional mental health and wellness needs and prevention and mitigation strategies it will do all this while providing flexibility to our individual schools but with accountability standards that

094will be shared widely with regular updates as promised by the superintendent to this board and the public and this will allow for our adequate oversight it was a heavy lift in a short amount of time i thank you for working with us to get this done i know there was lots of conversation much passionate but each of us in our hearts want the best for each and every one of our students and that's how we do our work sometimes in a passionate way so thank you and i too look forward to this infusions of fun which is truly unprecedented and and we believe will be helpful in a way as you had outlined so i look forward to that and work in our board as a whole working together to make sure that those of

095us that represent districts those needs will be met some of which had before the pandemic after the pandemic making sure that we get what we need for all of our students so thank you and i look forward to my colleagues support as well as hearing from those of you who have follow on motions thank you i call him miss mclaughlin thank you i want to begin by conveying to the public that if you did not have an opportunity to see our board's extensive conversation at tuesday's work session as a recap uh there's a great deal of appreciation uh for from me and from my colleagues in our superintendent's effort to really look at a holistic plan for how we will utilize 188.6 million dollars over the next three years to address learning loss and the

096needs of our students post pandemic there are 26 line items and a month ago i had advocated that we would postpone uh approval of this sr3 plan until the board could get the details and understand what the plan was we need more than just a listing of the line items so i do want to express my appreciation uh to dr brabrand and his team that at 2 30 today they did finish that narrative and uh unfortunately the board went into closed session at five o'clock today so dr bray brandon do want to um compliment your team that that was a a really hard race to to the finish to get that for us and i do look forward to reading it i would say to my colleagues i hope when you indulge me when my

097request for information i think there's a lot of really great details in it and i think it's what we really need to be doing our jobs for the fiscal oversight and operational oversight so very pleased with the structure of the document but as i noted there is no way to go through all of that um while i'm sitting here this this evening so i i will be abstaining because to abstain is when you sometimes don't have enough information yet and i just simply don't feel comfortable um voting tonight in support of it but i do want to give the public some insight here one dr brabrand to you and your team and particularly mark greenfelder who really helped me and ms corbett sanders we talked about how could we extend after-school programming and extended learning

098there was a proposal in there that would have added more positions and instead through collaboration your team helped us find the solution that we will add another part-time hours of for our assistant directors of student activities in our buildings it's a proven structure and it's a really in my mind a nice long game and addressing the needs but also i'm utilizing the funds well i also do uh want to just ask the quick question for the positions that are listed in this sr3 plan many of them we know some will extend through the three-year fiscal years some stop after the two fiscal years and don't show up in that third fiscal year if you could just share with me and and the board and the public and or maybe someone on your team who's who's

099more in charge of this what is happening when we're going to hire people to do these jobs and then some of them they're very specific to the esser plan are these people that we hope since we're the third largest employer in virginia will be able to absorb them in other jobs but i i i just wanted to maybe see if you guys had had those discussions yet well let me quickly say and then if mr smith or mr mcdonald want to add you know we have had lots of experience with grant funded positions we have title one grant funded positions and other grant funded where yes the the employee knows that it's associated with the grants a certain time but we've had a real track record of being able to retain those employees or find

100additional dollars when this time is up now again these positions what we did in this application really is try as you just said to limit the number of permanent additional positions but i think we need to give ourselves room over the next two years and where the course of this pandemic goes to decide of some of the things that we're trying innovatively now need to become part of an operational budget frankly in two or three years maybe we don't know now we need to see and this board will be monitoring what works what doesn't and i think that will help recommend what ultimately makes it into the permanent operating budget after these federal grant dollars expire thank you so for the public who might be watching i also want to point out something really important

101this board the superintendent um we are really put in a difficult spot because of the federal government's requirements that we give notice on this plan august 1st that we submitted to the state by september 1st that does not give a school division of our size being the 10th largest in the united states the ability to really vet this in a way that uh i think would be optimal and so a lot of this is not because of fcps staff it's it's unfortunately a short-sightedness on the part of the federal government not realizing that we have very large complex school systems like ours so what gives me comfort is that we have the ability to revise this plan at any point in time we can work with dr brabrand if we identify things and so for

102my colleagues you'll be happy to know i did not bring you any amendments but with what did come to my mind are two things one um we are hearing about these test to stay programs that is a perfect way to use us or three funds that utah massachusetts have used them with success illinois as a way to keep children in school that we're hearing that covid wasn't any higher in those schools when they used those tests to stay testing options we didn't have time to be able to start talking that on tuesday and roll it into this plan but dr brabrand i hope your team will look into that in a timely way as much as possible anything to help keep our kids in school is key the second thing is that it was brought

103to my attention that prince george's county just recently announced that they're now going to expand their virtual learning for up to 12 000 students who are at the elementary school level because of the delta variant spike that we're in right now i would just suggest that your team maybe look at the fact that we have surrounding nonprofits that provide virtual learning and if virtual virginia and our own fcps campus are so limited in size what opportunities might we have with esser dollars to offer that to families who are saying for the unvaccinated elementary school kids what can we do i'm just offering that because it came up literally in the last 24 hours a night again once you all know i wasn't going to put that on your plate to say let's scramble around and

104try to discuss that one um right before tonight so i'll wrap up my comments again by just saying i hope my colleagues we we are humbled in recognizing that with 188 million dollars hopefully we will continue to look at this almost on a monthly basis and see um how we can continue to enhance the the sr-3 plan and uh again especially to ms burden i do very much appreciate you and your team having gotten that narrative to us and i really look forward to talking to you offline on any questions i might have but a lot of really important information appreciate it thank you mr mesh yeah thank you um i actually did want to take a moment to thank dr brabrand and staff for being responsive on some components after discussions around this funding

105of course i remain with my previous point that i do think we need to establish a foundation for how we think about budgeting from an equity standpoint to ensure that it's not just the loudest voices as always right and i look forward to seeing how we do that but here i do think with a short turnaround um i i am pleased and want to actually allow dr braban to show off a little bit as to what we were able to do because we did i mean at the beginning of kovat we identified three populations that were particularly disadvantaged by what happened right that was special ed kids lower income students and english learners and we were able to identify funding to be supportive of these three categories though perhaps on a central level we fell

106a little bit short on one of those but i really do appreciate dr abram's responsiveness there in addressing it so i will pivot to you now dr ribbon explain a little bit about how we were able to do that well just a couple of things that you know that are highlights even from tuesday we did add an additional 10 million dollars to support monitors that can support uh supporting the cafeteria which remains an area of concern for staffing supporting outdoor learning which is an important area and really to provide even additional support for things like substitutes other duties as a sign i know there's a follow-on motion some people are talking about kiss and ride help because our kiss and ride lines are are longer and and people are needing to come earlier to provide

107that support so there's really going to be maximum flexibility around that money uh today with an equity lens and we share it with principals today they're very very happy to hear that those dollars are on the way we also did as you know in our operating budget this past year add 50 positions as part of a three-year plan to expand esau staffing uh to deal with additional support at the elementary level where we have been behind the curve on our support for esau we're adding 10 additional positions for a million dollars to accelerate the hiring of those positions to go directly to schools this year finally several board members as you know 82 percent of this money is going directly to schools for academic supports and social emotional the academic supports on tuesday we showed

108you a formula driven plan that has esau special ed and frm but uh we didn't do that for social emotional and we got feedback so what we are doing even though it may not uh be reflected in the numbers we're only providing 25 of that social emotional dollars up front to schools and the remaining 75 percent will be reviewing to come up with the appropriate form formula or methodology uh based on some of the factors that were brought up attendance discipline the sel screener results so we're really going to take a deeper equity look um as we apply that formula for social emotional supports so thank you miss omesh for that feedback and and i'm confident that we do need to continue to have equity at the center of what we do is we make

109our budget decisions and we did have a robust conversation tuesday as ms darren at kofax and others ms mclaughlin mentioned but it's all in the spirit of doing what's best for the system and advancing our work forward we really have a new framework we shared at the leadership conference i'll just end with this i would have been part of my superintendent matter of remarks around our aaa approach of affirming assessing and advancing our work and i think that's what we're doing tonight is you're passing both this year in money and this sr3 with an equity lens and so thank you again for the feedback and i look forward to the rest of your discussion and review and action tonight thank you absolutely thank you dr bray brandon i think this is that that moment where

110we you know we're able to do this from an outcomes perspective and i'm very grateful for that uh and hopefully moving forward structurally to embed this within our process as a board for our division thank you that's corbett sanders yes thank you and i am glad to follow my colleague ms omish first miss burden miss marin mranak kofax and dr brabrand thank you thank you for the incredible amount of work that you put in to provide a plan to this board i also want to thank you for the responsiveness in adding in the narrative because that allows for people in the public to better understand and this board to better understand how monies are expended one of the things though that is really important for us to look at is that this is one of

111many pots of money that when you add them in aggregate they address a range of our challenges and so when we look at the s or three funds there were limitations on how we could spend them by the federal government it also i would like to echo ms mclaughlin's concern that we had a very short turnaround however dr brabrand i would like you to express a little bit about how we did that public consultation because i know that we started it we continue to have dialogue with the public and that you committed on tuesday that you would be coming back to the board with updates on a periodic basis which we will figure out what the right timing is so that the board and the public is well aware of how these funds are being

112managed but more importantly not necessarily how the funds are being managed but how they are moving the dial on student outcomes because this is really what it's all about and i am so proud dr brabrand that you actually went back to an old approach which was needs-based funding so when you look at sr3 it is a return to an approach that we somewhat abandoned a few years ago on needs-based staffing by looking at needs-based allocations and that these needs-based allocations focused on those highest need area and actually give more funding per pupil to those schools that have higher concentration of esau special ed free and reduced meals and other areas i believe and you did that based on looking at some preliminary data that we were seeing as a result of the pandemic and how

113some of these schools were more significantly impacted can you kind of address that a little so the public knows well let me make sure i got the last part can you just give me your last part the first part i heard we are going to do a quarterly report for the board for the board to review we have hired an sr3 executive principal implementation manager to really direct the work that's to do this immediate work to get these plans out in schools but we are based on board feedback back from july going to spend more time building a project management team that can help us not only in the cross-departmental work that we're going to do now with these s or three dollars but really begin to incorporate that project management approach across all of

114our uh budget spending and all of our work so we'll give you updates on that as well the last part of your question i i'm sorry the last part was really the focus on the needs-based asset allocations and so you gave us some very helpful charts in the presentation on tuesday that had three columns and those columns were lesser funding depending up for a number of schools medium-sized funding for another number of schools and then higher levels of funding and it and you took into account a number of criteria to address those high needs areas and i thought it would be helpful for the listening public and for this board to be reminded of the intentionality that you took in identifying those higher needs issues or higher need schools sure well first of all i

115do want to just say again marty smith lieber and alice winnington and the entire budget staff have done amazing work over the last several days and frankly the last 18 months since this pandemic hit to deal with so many different financial impacts to assess and as you said we did provide three levels of a range of allocations at elementary middle and high um based on a variety of factors frm special ed esau and am i forgetting anything miss burden test scores and test scores and we created this factor for all of our social for our academic support one of the feedback pieces is for social emotional we just had a flat distribution and that was the feedback we heard from you so we're only going to do a 25 distribution of that and we're going

116to go back and look at some of these other factors that may impact social emotional to include the screener that we're now going to have a universal social emotional screen or we were looking at just a pilot of a few schools to do in every school so that in the next month or so we'll have real time data from our kids well we have some data from last year too to look at but we'll have some real-time current data and we'll figure out that formula there so the range uh for example from a high school at the lower end could be 55 to 99 a pupil to the higher end of needs anywhere from 130 to 161 dollars almost three times the amount and so we are going to really continue to report to you

117on all of this and see that we're moving the needle but i wanted to say on the moving the needle i think we all need to be honest test scores have dropped in every state whether they started virtually last year in person or hybrid the pandemic hit the uh the education of kids no matter where they lived in this country uh we've been in this 18 months and we're not going to get out of it as miss clemenco said to you all on tuesday we're not going to get out of in a quarter or a semester or even a year we're going to have to step by step double down on what works discard what doesn't and continue to have that dialogue with this board of this community to make sure we're headed in the

118right direction thank you dr brabrand what i was trying to just capture is the importance in how we've allocated to be very intentional on those schools that have demonstrated the highest needs and we know that the public is very concerned about the scores that came out today and this is a very responsive approach to ensuring that we put the resources in those schools that need it the most so i appreciate that and i will be happy to support this thank you thank you dr anderson thank you firstly i do want to say thanks to the budget team ms burden mrs smith miss widgenton and everyone who's worked so hard in making this happen um we appreciate all of your work particularly in turning around this additional narrative um 11 pages of really good information like

119miss mclaughlin i i'm sorry that i didn't get a chance to dive into it as much as i would have liked to because of time but i will welcome you at this point dr bray brand i know you prepared an introduction um you kind of touched upon some of those pieces but i think to really center this conversation for the public's consumption it might be helpful for you to maybe provide that introduction and then maybe perhaps highlight some of these pieces that you have not yet spoken about that is in the new narrative well i certainly can just say to you uh this first of all the annotation that uh miss burden and miss wiggington and her staff have done we'll make that part of the standard uh moving forward so that we have that

120on some of these year-end and other additional funds so that really helps understand what's behind the numbers in greater detail i already sort of shared with you a couple of points about the 10 million that we changed since tuesday to support monitors for outdoor learning cafeteria and returning all of our kids in person 1 million for our esol in addition uh of 10 more positions to accelerate the 50 additional positions we had already put in our budget i want to just remind you all too we have a needs-based staffing that ms corbett sanders was referencing that we had historically and we still have it historically in our budget at the tune of 60 million dollars for needs-based staffing we have a title one program around 25 million that goes to our title one schools and

121we are looking and anticipating increased title one dollars this year to add some additional positions to those schools and we're grateful for the [Music] u.s department of education for working on increased title 1 funding that really means lower class size in schools where we have higher numbers of special ed english language and frm kids and uh i think as far as going through line by line uh i don't know i i think i would just want you to know we're working on again social emotional and academic support schools will get a allotment of money and they'll be working to in their school improvement process develop specific menus of actions that will be able to guide their improvement and that work will be wrapped up by the end of september and it will also be communicated

122out to the community so the community can know what the school school improvement plan is and how they'll be using those dollars we also talked a lot about continuing to engage our families and many of the items in here are around translators and multilingual engagement communication and we want to continue to do that i've already referenced the project management team that we're going to have not just the implementation manager but the project management group and we're working on a great grow your own approach we know we need to grow more of our teachers or get ias to become teachers so those are just some of the things i don't know anybody on my team want to add anything that they think i have missed that is important to share miss burnham and mr smith please

123let me know or mr greenfelder i see you leaning in anything everybody good sitting up making sure i'm not going to ask you to say something but i think we really have a lot of important detail in here and i see who did miss burton did you want to add something to what i'd already shared well i just thought maybe you should go over the changes in that from tuesday to now yes yeah i i i do believe i do believe i i went over those but i can go over that one last time we reduced the summer school funding for next year now we did reduce that we know we're going to actually have some summer school savings from this summer school year was not finished that was s or 2 in the budget

124we reduced it by 11 million and then we use that 11 million 10 million for the hourly monitors in our schools with maximum flexibility for that use in fact you're doing a follow-on motion to make sure that is crystal clear not just to uh our principles but also to our community and these those will be embedded in those plans also an additional 1 million for the 10 esau teachers that will provide direct support into school the sol results did come out today and our latino and english language are among our most impacted they were the most impacted before the pandemic and as our chief equity officer dr williams has said they're the most impacted now in the middle of this pandemic and they need as miss omash and others have talked about direct support and

125resources if we're going to catch those students up so i think that's the the the biggest nuggets again this plan will have 82 percent of the funding directly to schools for academic and social emotional supports i look forward to your final review of this and again thank you again for uh reviewing this tonight and acting on it thank you for sharing some of those pieces um the other thing that i wanted to be sure that i highlighted because i did raise that concern regarding the wellness allocations and providing part of the allocation right now to school so that they can go ahead and get started but still listening to what we discussed last thursday as a board i'm sorry last tuesday which is to ensure that we are also evaluating those allocations on a needs-based

126basis so i appreciate that of those allocations will fall under those criteria and i'm looking forward to screening some of that criteria you mentioned discipline and attendance i know i missed that part of the work session because of my travel we'll definitely update the board on the rest of that before we distribute those monies directly to schools you have my word thank you um one of the things that's also of great concern to many of our parents including myself as the parent of an unvaccinated elementary school student is what is happening in the cafeteria and how much access we have for our students to have their meals this is all of their meals outdoors because that's what's considered to be safest so i'm looking forward to hearing how and seeing in the schools how those

127monitors are being utilized to help further that effort because we know safety is key i would simply say yes we actually had a meeting with principals today we showed them four or five different formats of successful ways to expand the elementary footprint outdoors tents no tense examples alternative spaces outside of the cafeteria and again the the 10 million dollars you are going to spend or we hope uh you are going to approve for spending tonight will go directly to schools to give them the monitor support they need to assist with cafeteria outdoor learning or any other coveted related activities that require school support we told principals to watch tonight and see what the board decides but they were very excited to have that some of i've talked again about just additional work there's still tremendous

128um workload uh relative to the pandemic and all of the health concerns so we will um we will continue to do everything we can and we tell them revised expectations around the cafeteria that we need to have our kids outside as much as possible and what is feasible um given given the impact of this pandemic still on our school population thank you and lastly i did not get a chance to ask this question because it was not part of the information we were provided on tuesday but the allocation that would provide a million dollars for esau teachers it's great it's tremendous but i also know what it's like to hire after the school year has begun what supports will be in place for the principals to ensure that there are individuals to fill those slots

129well i don't know mr mcdonald if you want to talk about that all i'll say is we'll be sure we're committed to hiring quality teachers at any time and every time and i'll see if mr mcdonald has anything our hr assistant superintendent to add to that thank you dr bray ran and dr anderson thank you for the question uh ultimately we continue to recruit for all they can teach in teaching positions to include our esau positions we do currently have 15 unfilled esol vacancies so this will add to it but we will continue to reach out to organizations where we know that esau teachers are members of reach out to colleges and universities continue our campaign to work hard to fill those positions as soon as possible thank you because it doesn't work if we

130don't have the staff does it and lastly um to kind of echo something that miss mclaughlin shared earlier that we were just discussing um privately with which is a test to stay um i know you're looking into that as a possibility for our for our division and we're looking forward to having some plans from you um very soon because we want to be sure that our students are able to remain in school so that's it for me but thank you very much for all of the work thank you thank you dr anderson ms keysgamara thank you um so many of my colleagues have said thank you i'll just join the chorus and keep moving uh but i i just want the community to to know that this is a work in progress we were given

131a very short amount of time to pull this together and our staff member did just a yeoman's job bringing a forward a plan that included accountability uh incorporating the principles of project management and all those things that bring music to my ears um and i know that as we've discussed a number of things that have been included that my colleagues have brought been able to discuss we're we're really focused on the safety of our kids and so i think it's important to state that there's a process included in our discussion was this oversight to continue to monitor what changes need to take place how do we need to adjust uh to make sure that we're not only not not just that we came up with a plan but that we're adjusting according to the needs

132of our students and the needs within the school i've heard this term about testing in place and other ways of doing testing i would like to just say that as we look at that typically parents are accustomed to putting their child on the bus or dropping them at the school and if we're waiting for a test result i'm thinking there could be an operational issue with respect to who comes back to get that child so as we look at that i think that you know i would just say let's keep that in mind um because that's a whole nother layer unless we're going to have a place for parents to wait and i don't even want to think about what that would entail i know there's a great deal of concern regarding the sol testing

133scores and that has it's not something that just has impacted us nobody wants to see that nobody wants to see uh scores go down um however what is comforting to me as a board member is the laser focus in getting every child where they need to be and focusing on particular schools including every school having a school improvement plan and adjusting accordingly as well as regular reporting to our school board i am a little concerned um just looking at some of my letters and comments that we heard of concerns regarding when we say social and emotional learning and what that support means i think that there can because we've been so isolated over this last year or so that there can sometimes be a negative interpretation of that and this support for students is necessary

134when our kids are not coming into the classroom ready to learn we have to be focused on what it takes to get them there or providing the supports for them to be able to learn so i think that perhaps dr brabrand as part of our communications plan if we can explain some of these things if there would even be a video from our communications department that parents could look at to see what this means and what it doesn't mean i think that the wrong interpretation is that there's some sort of counseling taking place like what a therapist would be doing that is not what we are doing and i think that we clearly need to state that in our communications because when we don't provide information then people come up with an explanation and then

135we have to figure out how to unexplain something so i just thank you for um all the hard work that it took to get here and just making sure that we communicate as we go with changes focusing on the various needs and also realizing that we know that the pandemic helped us to see where inequities already existed and that this plan is also focused on addressing that as well so thank you thank you ms tolen thank you many of my colleagues have already focused in on a number of the items that i'm excited about with this new funding i do want to echo the thank yous to staff as well but a couple of things i think are important just to go over again um you know given the um sol data that we got

136today it shows us that we do have work to do it's not a surprise and one of the things we are doing is allocating these funds across our schools to deal with this over multiple years i think ms mclaughlin pointed out this is a three-year you know sum of money we're not spending it all right now and so that gives us time to really analyze how it's being used and that's one of the things i i want to point out again i appreciated the conversation about the um project management planning that will go um in place around this you know dr braven thank you very much i think you've listened to us all sort of hammer that idea over the year and i'm so excited that we'll have you know our new person on the

137leadership team assigned to monitor the use of these funds and staff at each of our schools to monitor and collaborate and help the schools plan on how to use these funds and make sure that they're being used effectively and that we will be monitoring this periodically to really make sure that we're doing the right things um ms keis gamara i think explained it very well that we want to make sure that our students have what they need and they have it in a timely manner and so we'll be able to look at how we're spending the money is it working we'll have this data on a periodic basis you know quarterly probably at at least so we can make adjustments as we go along and i think that'll be really important and i look forward

138to those discussions i did have a couple of questions um just simply you know the principles that you talked to today they really want that 10 million dollars to go through given the timeline with us or like how soon would that money be available to them they needed it weeks ago i'll let uh mr smith or mrs burden speak to that miss burn well again the grant application has to be conveyed to the commonwealth on september the 1st it's my understanding that the state is is doing what they can to expedite approvals so probably the first week of september at the latest the second week of september we'll have an approval of the grant application we did share with principals today they have hourly funds at their school to begin to spend it mr smith

139specifically and explicitly directed all principals today to begin to spend hourly money on monitors for whatever needs they have and then we will appropriately reimburse or support them if those accounts run out early on so we've given clear direction around this i know the follow-on motions are coming but i just want you to know we happen to have the principal meeting today at the same time that the board would meet and we conveyed again clear expectations that we'll begin to spend that money even in your existing operating accounts and that additional dollars to replenish those will be on the way fantastic thank you the other question i had is um i know we had some rules in esser as far as public engagement and so we did some public engagement over the summer do we

140have additional plans for engaging the public as we move through this three-year process i would say that um that's something helen lloyd our executive director of occr and i uh will talk about to be honest we did the engagement and we just wrapped up uh this first phase but i do plan and the law does guide us to come back to have a continual review and i think actually i'd like to work with the board to think about what that looks like is it after first quarter after the semester obviously this is a multi-year funding plan there will be time much like we do with our budget and having a mid-year review for operating budget to come back and make some tweaks based on uh our reporting out and board uh and community feedback and

141i would also share that as we expect our principals to use the the current school improvement planning process there is a parent and family component within that for review and discussion and collaboration as those plans are developed thank you miss cohen thanks again and i don't think anybody um had an opportunity to thank um miss wiggington who also is a powerhouse over there on her oh dr anderson saying she did but um we really do have the best budgeting team uh and financial services folks on the planet so they they get to hear us sing their praises hopefully um many times but not near as much as it's deserved um i just wanted to clarify dr brabrand you mentioned um using some of this essar money to help ias become teachers so could you just

142speak to that a little bit more for the few folks left in the peanut gallery let me see who would be best to do the grow your own is it uh who anybo anybody jumping uh shawn do you want to go with some additional detail yeah i'd be happy to share some additional details so this is a collaborative venture between our human resources office and our office of professional learning and family engagement and so what we're seeking to do is to provide a pathway for individuals that are current employees of the system who may hold a bachelor's degree or may not an opportunity to progress in their course work to obtain either that degree to then work towards the licensure or to work towards that licensure piece some of the funding will be used to

143help to offset some of the tuition costs for those individuals and that in return they would have to commit to teaching with fcps for a period of or a number of years additionally some of the funding is going to go towards providing some very specific coaching and development and so we're looking to bring on some instructional coaches that can provide that guided support for these individuals as they're going through their program we know from past experiences there's quite a learning curve for those individuals and so providing that very direct support is critical to their growth development and success in the classroom thank you so much i really there's a lot of wins in this money in a year where we've all felt a lot of losses and i just i can't say enough what a

144big one this is and how transformative i think this could be for for our system and for our employees so thank you so much i just want to give you guys an opportunity to highlight that thank you a seismo heiser thank you and since i you know accidentally gave a preview of my esther speech during my previous speaking i won't speak for too long um just very quickly dr bray brandt i had one question for you first i'm just going to reiterate my thanks to our budget team and and um ms whittington as well since i didn't say anything before i know how hard you worked on this along with miss burton um and thank you dr barry brandon our and our budget chair and vice chair i know this is a huge lift this

145year so thank you again for that um i am really thrilled to see the additional funding for schools to hire monitors and staff immediately to help with lunches and spacing and substitutes and all these things that they need to really help our schools immediately with the staff they need to keep our students safe and provide that education so so take my next statement in in that vein if you will um i will say i just wanted to ask sort of i understand that some of it is reduction for next summer's summer school programming is where that's not the money's coming from and i just wanted to ask whether what you're basing that reduction on beyond the fact that fewer people signed up for summer school this summer than we anticipated because i do think hopefully

146knock on wood vaccinations health conditions will be better next summer and more people may feel comfortable having their students go to summer school than they did before they may not be as sort of tired as everybody was coming out of virtual learning um so and there may be more of a you know a recognition um as mrs clemenco said about this is not going to be fixed you know in a quarter so you know are we sure we're not going to need this money for next summer and what is the plan if we do well i might let dr presidio make a couple of comments if he'd like but i would simply say we did summer school this year at a factor of seven times the normal summer school we do anticipate i anticipate beyond

147just looking at where we find some additional savings as i said from this summer from sr2 we don't have that number yet that could be applied to restore summer m of 22. the state right now is at the highest level of surplus and we need to have that dollars go directly to education uh including summer including teacher pay we keep bragging about being number one in the uh country and we are for business it's time to be number one in the country for education and our teachers salaries and our educator salary so i think that's got a hit and i think part of that is giving us the chance to do more extended contracts just like we've done here in sr3 where we could ask people to go ahead and get an extended contract to

148commit to summer school in the summer of 22. so um those are ideas but we we've got a lot i know the you have a lot on your plate but the general assembly legislative agenda will be coming i know to you all soon and i know you just assigned your federal and state liaison so they're going to get busy at that but i think it's time for a super strong message in a year where there is no true excuse to say there's not money it's about where it's going to be spent and it needs to be spent on virginia public education no group of folks has burdened has been has has carried the burden of the pandemic i think as uniquely as our educators here in the commonwealth of virginia across the country thank you

149and i appreciate that emphasis on the fact that we really need to support our educators and our families for the work that they're doing um from every level of our government so i appreciate that i just wanted to put that on your radar or something that i am concerned about but i am don't get me wrong dr ray brown i'm thrilled with what we've done and the focus on the whole child and the focus on um supporting our teachers and our staff i'm thrilled with this i just wanted to put that as a concern that i have thank you thank you ms eismar heiser i will just say that these sr3 funds and two really have been an unprecedented infusion of public funds into a system that has long been underfunded and not prioritized and

150they really were allocated to address a dramatic the traumatic impact of the kovid pandemic on our children whether they were in school during that time in some manner virtual the pandemic was traumatic to all children and this really is the first step for us to address um that trauma and to to find a way while it won't be overnight to ensure that we move forward and that these kids have really the best um outcomes in life that that we can um set up for them and i i really appreciate that this board took the time and i know ms mclaughlin you really pushed us to take the time to look at this and i think what happened because of that is that dr brabrand you your staff worked with us to really incorporate many of

151the things that we were concerned about that i think ultimately make this plan better which means our students get served more effectively from the implementation manager to the esau position allocation the sel allocations to the monitors i think our students will be better for that and i really appreciate that we took that time and i will tell my colleagues that i think dr brabrand definitely understands the accountability factor um and the responsibility that we uh need to um to to do our work because less than 24 hours after our work session ended he was already having me schedule our sr3 updates for the board so i i do look forward to that and i think that will continue to allow us to look at this and if need be make adjustments or ensure that um

152we are getting the um the desired outcomes um and with that i will call for the mo the vote the motion the motion is before us for the board to approve the esther three funding plan all those in favor please raise your hands dr anderson miss marin miss tolin mr nutco fax miss sizemore heiser miss cohen mr frisch miss keys kamara miss corbett sanders and myself all those opposed all those abstaining miss mclaughlin with miss omesh away from the table and that motion passes thank you now i call miss corbett sanders for a follow-on motion i move that the school board directs the superintendent to give guidance to principals regarding the expenditure of their portion of the 10 million dollars for monitors guide them to hire staff to provide stipends to existing personnel to meet

153the unique staffing needs of their buildings options may include ias monitors staff already in the building or other staff as needed to perform student supervision to maximize social distancing while eating to facilitate outdoor learning and act as a teaching substitutes or other duties needed for optimal school operations thank you is there a second seconded by ms tolen ms corbett sanders would you like to speak to your motion oh thank you it is with great pleasure that i put forth this follow-on motion and i will be seconding the next follow-on motion on outdoor learning spaces i believe that these motions capture the spirit of the conversations that this board had collectively during the board work session on tuesday and in july we know that our schools are returning strong but they are faced with extraordinary challenges

154due to the continuing pandemic our schools need people power to provide oversight when our students are eating outside we know that we will have increased needs for staff to cover classrooms as substitute teachers when a teacher may be out due to personal illness or that of a loved one we also know that there is a national labor shortage so building administrators need to be able to utilize creativity in filling these roles to include providing stipends to existing personnel to take on additional duties others may hire additional staff that may float between multiple roles of a classroom monitor outdoor space monitor or a substitute teacher and i want to personally thank miss tolan and each of the board members for working with me on this motion and allowing us to capture the collective spirit of this

155board ms tolen would you like to speak yes thank you um i just wanted to add a little bit to that um you know being out in schools over the last couple of weeks i have to say i think having conversations with the principals about how things are going what were they doing for lunch etc every principal said i just need additional supervision for students to be able to be really creative in getting the kids outside to social distancing them when they're eating you know etc having substitutes in the classrooms when they need them etc so i'm really excited and to be able to put this follow-on motion forward because i think what the following motion the intent of the follow-on motion is to give our principals ultimate flexibility in figuring out who can help

156them what they need in their particular community in their schools and and i'm thrilled that they're going to be able to do it soon because we really need it to happen very quickly and i think having this additional flexibility will allow them to to be nimble and move quickly and make some changes so i appreciate that thank you are there any other board members that wish to speak okay and i will call for the for the vote the follow-on motion is in front of you on the screens all those in favor miss o'mesh miss marin miss tollen miss mclaughlin mr not koufax miss sizemore heiser miss o'mesh mr frisch miss keys gamora miss corbett sanders miss cohen miss picarski um all those opposed abstaining that motion passes with dr anderson away from the table point

157of privilege madam chair yes please go ahead i would like to ask that the record with if there's no objection that the record reflect my support of the esther vote i stepped away to pray as i always do if there are no objections which i see none we will correct that thank you mr mesh i do appreciate that um i now call on miss marin for a follow-on i move that the school board directs the superintendent to communicate the expectation that students will be provided the opportunity to consume meals which includes breakfast lunch and snacks outside whenever it is possible additionally staff will be encouraged to utilize outdoor learning as a method of meeting curriculum standards is there a second second in my miss corbett sanders miss baron would you like to speak we've heard

158a lot about the need for outdoor eating and yes those opportunities must be offered whether it's under a tent at existing picnic tables or outside on yoga mats on the ground outdoor eating must be offered to mitigate kovid's risk and some of those solutions are actually cost neutral but what may need adjustment is the idea of what constitutes comfortable weather and so i'll share this often you saying in outdoor education which is there is no bad weather there's only bad clothing choices so an adjustment to our expectations of comfort and weather will need to be made and i also hope that the superintendent helps support principles in getting any needed clothing that children may need these are strategies that other outdoor successful successful outdoor programs have used so there's lots of great models here in

159america and abroad i'll also add that playing outdoors is essential another opportunity to get kids outside and again that could be in coverage space on a field could be a walk around but we have to ensure that space is accessible and safe that could include fencing for our little ones or where there's lots of traffic and that sort of thing which i know is not exactly the purview of this amendment but just wanted to add that um and you know for me access to outdoor eating as a common it's a combination of proven mitigation but also the research proven experiences of facilitating children's experiences outdoors for a real benefit for academic growth social emotional mental health physical health so i expect that this direction to provide students with outdoor eating opportunities will be the low

160hanging fruit upon which the school division's journey to more consistently and equitably providing outdoor learning opportunities will continue to grow and that includes professional development for staff the content and materials and tools that are designed to be used outdoors and that are aligned with academic standards as well as student wellness so this really gets to this whole vision of whole school sustainability environmental education connecting our children to their place so that they feel safe and ownership and will be the environmental stewards so a huge opportunity here but yes it definitely starts with we got to get the kids outside for their meals and we got to prepare everyone for the weather thank you miss marin ms corbett sanders thank you miss marin and i am proud to second this amendment prior to the pandemic many

161of us have advocated for the importance of outdoor learning spaces in my district i am proud of the work of holland meadows elementary school as the first school in the county to have an outdoor garden for our students to tend and learn at west potomac high school i was proud of the work that the community undertook to make the wolverine green a reality with outdoor learning spaces my colleague miss tolin and miss marin have worked with schools for over a decade on the get to green curriculum and much more we know that in the best of times when students participate in outdoor learning that they are positive and proof that there are positive improvements in academic self-esteem relationship building and mental well-being little did we know that when this work began that the outdoor learning

162would take on the precedence that it has in covid19 since march of 2019 this board has been speaking about the importance of fresh air as a means of mitigating the impact of coven 19 on our students and staff's learning unfortunately we are learning that not all of our students are being given the opportunity of outdoor learning and enjoying their lunch breaks and snacks outside and we know that currently our lunchrooms are overflowing as we return to school the follow this follow-on motion captures the spirit of what our board chair implored the superintendent to do at tuesday's work session and so i am very appreciative of the collective work of this board in really crafting this follow-on motion so i hope everybody will reassert their support that was so widely espoused on tuesday thank you miss

163mclaughlin thank you i will support the motion but i did want to just provide a counterpoint a bit and i'm going to blame it on my northern california wine country roots which is i don't like the cold so while i absolutely and mr frisch you grew up california as did miss seismer heiser we were fortunate to eat outside a vast majority of our our years growing up and um and i am fully in support of it outdoor fresh air for kids is fantastic however um washington d.c in northern virginia is not california and so i do want to make sure dr brabrand that we do have to be mindful we have 30 percent poverty in this county and too often not even just children in poverty just children in general they're not dressed appropriately when

164we hit our first cold snap and it you know we're wanting to have kids be outdoors it's healthy for them there's a safety feast but we've got some ways to go here because children could catch very serious cold pneumonia or worse so as we're talking about health and safety we also have to be mindful that there are going to be some um really serious considerations of what we're talking about temperatures outside and and helping our principals and teachers have yes the guidance and encouragement but also frameworks and i would like to turn to our public health nurses and our public health departments to really help create guidelines so that they're we're not asking our educators to make those kind of health decisions but with public health experts of what it means to have children outdoors

165as the temperatures plunge so that would be my only thing that i would ask everybody to also certainly be mindful of as we we embrace getting kids outdoors more frequently thank you miss mclaughlin does anybody else wish to speak i will miss oh sorry miss tolen please go ahead i can't resist an opportunity to speak on this topic um i do want to i'm very happy to follow miss mclaughlin and just to let you know that there's a group green schoolyards america that has convened a national effort around standards and ideas and and creative ways to deal with covid and getting children outside and actually centerville elementary school is one of their featured schools in the work that they've been doing we've had a number there's a team in our geographic area that is working

166on this and which includes some of our staff so there's lots and lots of information out there and to deal with exactly what you're talking about so appreciate that um i just wanted to make a couple of comments um you know besides having our children outside to eat we have great opportunities to get our kids outside for other parts of the day as well um you know i have personally had students outside covering standards in science language arts pe social studies math etc um and we have lots and lots of resources out there in our on our get to green website and other places for our teachers to utilize even our guidance counselors i know have been taking small groups of students outside with great success and special education and esl students often thrive in

167our outdoor learning environments one of the things i want to point out though is during our training for get to green we often purposely held our training at schools that did not have developed outdoor learning spaces we're very fortunate now in fcps that we have you know over 100 schools that have beautiful outdoor learning environments not everyone has it but that's why we purposely did our training in places that didn't have them if you have a tree a lawn a piece of asphalt you can take your kids outside to learn lots and lots of things and we i've also been talking with staff about how do we support our teachers and our school-based people to do this type of work and we've got um mr greenfielder and i were already talking about our science resource

168teachers in our school support program our science staff has many many many of the pieces of our curriculum that are already developed and asking teachers to take kids outside pbl lessons etc are all developed to take kids outside so we have lots of resources for people to use and we don't have extra dollars assigned to this follow-on motion and part of it is i've been assured by staff that we can cover our tents and tables for the tents and use our current staff to help our teachers and be able to do this work also we've got community resources tina williams and i had a conversation today about aft has some grants available for innovation and taking getting kids outside so we want to make sure we take advantage of those types of things our fairfax

169county park authority can offer on-site outdoor field trips right at our schools and we need to really make a point to take advantage of that and other partners so when you have lots of great opportunities here and i look forward to the work that we'll be doing thank you dr anderson thank you um as i shared earlier as a parent of a child at the elementary level that is not vaccinated this is really near and dear to my heart when we're talking about meals particularly one of the things that has caused me some concern is that some of the meals um snacks particularly are consumed in the classroom and that is a concern for me just a little bit earlier dr brabrand you talked about how you had the principals meeting earlier um and this

170uh follow-on motion speaks to the expectation and we'd like to bridge that gap between the expectation and the actual practice you mentioned about a menu of options that were provided to principals to increase the usage of outdoors for both meals and for i assume instruction as well can you speak to what some of those menu items are and if they include having parents provide some supports one of the things that i know at my child's particular school when it was noticed that most of the students if not all of them were in the cafeteria parents were texting me asking i can give a tent to the schools we all have soccer tents is that an option parents also wanted to offer their services to be outside monitors to help with the supervision are those options

171that have been included and what you have discussed today yes we certainly by the way we certainly current we certainly encourage parents to reach out to the schools and and offer support to the principals and we do encourage many parents to step forward after tonight first of all we did encourage even volunteers to come forward and that volunteers can come and support outdoor learning of the cafeteria but we'd love to have many of them step in and be monitors and be part of coming on a regular basis for paid work to do this so we did share that the use of volunteers is acceptable we did share that monitors will have ultimate flexibility and we did clearly share revised expectations about going outside uh as much as you can whenever you can and using alternative

172spaces beyond just the cafeteria so that we can spread kids out when they're eating okay just and again i hate to hone in on this point but those tents that parents own can they provide those to the schools to help if there's only one tent at the site is that permissible mr um i'd have to defer to mr planenberg about that part mr planberg yeah what we've had in the past is we've currently had as schools have requested we've provided additional ones but certainly if they're partnerships i've had questions about that about if there's families or people who happen to have a business who have that would they be interested and my reference is that i want to go ahead and have those people work with the get to green folks because they they can

173also plant the location and make sure that we support it as well but absolutely if a local school wants to provide uh something we'll be happy to work with them to go ahead and find placement for it i'm so sorry jeff i miss what you said did you say that the schools can accept donations of tents from the community yes okay thank you it was a little mumbled no i don't have anything else thank you mr pineberg said it well okay so i'm hoping with these two permissible options which is for parents to assist with providing tents to the schools and to be able to serve as volunteers um i think this will also help increase this follow-on and i'm also assuming um and please confirm that these volunteers would have to show proof of

174vaccination yeah dr anderson i apologize one thing i did want to mention is when we have by regulation any any group that wants to work participate or donate whether it's labor materials they do have to meet our specification so if it is something that somebody wants to donate we definitely would work with them to make sure it's something that would conform with the level of quality and stability that we've been providing and that is an important consideration that i admit it so i want to thank my colleagues for reminding me okay thank you so much i i will love i will be in support of this um follow-on motion but i would also like to have those specifications mr plattenberg as soon as you can provide them thank you dr anderson um i will just

175say thank you to the makers of this motion dr berbran you know i've been like a dog with a bone on this one for a very long time this is the only thing we have those of us who have young kids in the schools we parents are scared um you know they realize their kids need to go back but they are not feeling comfortable even as i'm sitting here tonight i i received a text from somebody who uh constituents saying that they are just so uncomfortable with what they're seeing in our cafeterias that they're they're seriously considering homeschooling and that is just you know unbelievable to me so i appreciate that we are looking at this with a little bit of intentionality now i i ask that we take as i said the approach that

176this is the expectation we always realize that there are impediments and it's not perfect and you know it may be cold out or rain and luckily our schools you know between our social workers and our counselors we are able to get kids the resources they need to be comfortable outside and i'm sure we will do that but it's about mitigating risk and even one day two days three days outside our kids will be safer if it can't be accomplished every single day and hopefully this is just a hump i mean we are looking and we are reading that these vaccinations will be available perhaps as early as the end of september it's a hump let's get through it safely and build that trust that our parents need and many of these school board members need

177here who have children in schools in these cafeterias so with that i will call for the vote the follow-on motion is miss picarski just one thing since you brought it up and it's live and off the cuff if there's a parent who's already gone to the point to consider homeschooling their kid an additional option that we haven't said and i'm saying it publicly we've told principals to support a parent who wants to come and check their kid out during lunch again we're going to do all these other things we talked about but that's just not good enough i'm concerned and i'm going to yank my kid from the educational program of fairfax we are working with parents to be flexible to say a quick check-in check out so that that parent can be with their

178child during lunch eat with the child you know right there in the parking lot and come right on back into school so we want to make sure we can get everybody to get to the comfort level and that that sense of comfort definitely varies based on each individual family and kid and we'll be again taking this follow-on motion we've already shared it with principals and we'll continue to do the very best we can to create more space during lunch thank you dr brabrand i know we will and i know we work very hard towards that so i'm very appreciative and with that i'll call for the vote the motion is before us on the screen all those in favor dr anderson miss marin miss toll and miss um mclaughlin mr not koufax miss seismore heiser

179miss cohen mr frisch vasquez-gemara mr mesh miss corbett sanders and myself all those opposed all those abstaining and that is unanimous thank you i will not thank you i will now turn the gavel to our vice chair to go over the consent agenda and new business items thank you agenda item five our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing of several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing and

180seeing no objection the consent agenda is approved agenda item 6 new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items but action is scheduled at a future meeting the new business items are on the screen thank you i'll turn it back over to mrs bakarski agenda item 7.01 superintendent matters and i call on dr brabrand first of all i want to thank you all for your thanks of staff they have been doing a tremendous job uh in in this pandemic last year and this year and again i'm very proud to work with the best leadership team in the commonwealth and in the country so i'm just going to do my little applause for them i really do appreciate [Applause] monday was a great day to be in

181fcps we returned over 180 000 kids to five days of in-person instruction um i started my day at mount vernon high school and got a chance to go really through the county to all kinds of places elementary middle and high to see kids and teachers reconnecting super exciting it's going to be a year with challenges right we all wanted an almost normal year and now we're going to have an almost almost almost normal year i think the the almost normal may come in a few more months as we get the vaccination age lowered we're going to be aggressive about continuing to advocate and i encourage this board and our community to ask the fda just as the american academy of pediatricians had to with all deliberate speed review the data for those under 12 and

182approve an emergency authorization so that we can allow parents the choice to get their kids vaccinated we know it's becoming an increasing increasing issue of course the schools return to in-person learning i want to thank again our staff for going above and beyond and for this board for approving the bonus i know we will be sharing that with staff very very shortly and it is a great recognition on your part of their outstanding work and then finally just a little occr shout out as you know we hired a new executive director helen lloyd and her team and we have a new beautiful sharing our success even in the pandemic there are silver linings which are kids going above and beyond teachers going above and beyond uh our central office staff and just really i hope

183you take a moment to look through just the wonderful stories that make up fairfax county public schools thank you all very much and have a good uh have a good evening thank you thank you dr brainbrand agenda item 9.01 board matters and it's not even 10 p.m so i call on dr anderson and i will only take a few minutes no i do mean that um i do want to say thank you again to all of the staff who are here both in central office and at the schools our bus drivers everyone contributed so much to making such an exciting first day first four days of school for our kids i know personally in my household my daughter could not wait to return back into the building after a year of being a year and

184a half of being at home with me every day every single day every day the excitement was palpable from the kids the teachers the parents and it was just a very exciting day and i'm glad during that first day i was able to visit columbia elementary with dr brabrand and miss seismo heiser where the principal was a former student which was an exciting opportunity mr assadio welcome to mason district i also had the chance to visit my children's school mason crest elementary and beach tree and justice high school again students were so excited to be back in school just pretty much at every single space that i entered you could see that they were excited to be there i do know we have some more work to do to increase parent confidence in the cafeterias

185in our lunch spaces um just pretty much a conversation we just had just a little while ago so i'm looking forward to seeing some of that in action i'm excited by the work that was done today again thank you to the budget team thank you to staff for moving us through both year end and esther funds i quickly want to highlight for the mason district if you are still watching i am looking for a representative for the family life education curriculum advisory committee so if you are interested please reach out to myself of miss coffee my assistant and with that i say good night happy first week of school to everyone thank you thank you dr anderson miss marin yes it also was a very momentous time at our house we actually threw a lot

186of confetti at my children that still remains on my living room floor because my my son wants to keep that excitement so how can i argue with that but so thank you for all the teachers and staff who have done so much this this week and i know there's been some hiccups especially with kiss and ride here but you know i think largely we're all trying to adjust so let's just keep calm and and you know my daughter's a safety patrol this this year for the first time and so i hope no parents are yelling at her or getting mad i don't know i think i think it's been going well anyway i shouldn't blather on but um but i did speaking of safety patrol i attended the training at west ox with our amazing

187school bus staff and students got to walk into a simulated bus on fire and a bus that had been turned on its side and climbed through the emergency exit so that was really something i'm sure they'll remember forever and know all the important things of what to do in an emergency to help the driver i also attended the fight suicide walk-a-thon that was hosted by the family counseling center of greater washington that's located in vienna to raise awareness about the occurrence of suicide and to remove the stigma around it so we can be there to support children and adults who might be considering that i visited seven schools last week for back to school events including open houses and back to school nights and i'm headed to several more in the weeks ahead and i

188was able to join dr brabrand and principal garden at the newly constructed mcnair upper elementary school and that was seeing our school bond in action it was pretty breathtaking and so as just a reminder you know our school bond is on the ballot this year and that's the only avenue for funding renovations and construction that funding does not come through the um the regular budget that comes from our real estate taxes so that bond is on the ballot and speaking of election i want to remind our students about the new law that provides the opportunity for people who have not yet turned 18 to register if they will be 18 to vote on election day so don't miss that opportunity to go in your very first election and something else you'll remember your whole life

189so um i'm excited to attend the south lakes open house and block party tomorrow night that will be followed by the football game so i think that's going to be the cap of a very exciting week and then maybe i'll sleep so uh congrats and thank you to all the staff for everything you really make a difference in my family's life and in the family of the constituents i i strive to serve thank you ms tollin followed my miss mclaughlin well it's been quite the week a happy week to have our students back in school five days per week again a huge thank you to staff for opening schools successfully and having everything as safe as possible for our students and for all the work that you did to to set everything up we have

190had a few issues with transportation in drainsville i must acknowledge that and one in particular on top of just our buses of course there was a huge construction project going on right at the entrance of langley high school by the county so i really want to thank john phil's office for coordinating with us to get that construction moved away and so that our arrival and dismissal times um at langley high school through kissing ride would go a little bit more smoothly i've been in contact with our transportation department daily and hope many of our issues are starting to get ironed out i'm really happy about our vote tonight to raise bus drivers salaries and will advocate strongly for our future work to set salaries where experienced drivers so that we can take care of this

191bus driver shortage to the best of our ability a huge thank you to parents for keeping me apprised of what's happening out there and transportation all the way across duringsville that has been super helpful for me to then advocate with transportation or just even you know understand what's happening so that i can work with mr plant more closely to try to alleviate some of those problems of course safety is our highest priority in our schools and i look forward to our conversations around hover testing and being creative to keep our kids safe i know our parents are nervous and we want to keep our kids healthy and in in school so these conversations will be very important i'm continuing i'm excited to work with schools to get our students outside for eating and learning last

192spring i worked for schools in duriansville taking students outside for lessons and i was at herndon middle school regularly to supervise outdoor lunch and i'll be offering that service again to my principals on during tools so look forward to that i'm also really looking forward to starting our pta leadership meetings our drainsville student meetings back to school nights pta meetings and look forward to our continued work across drainsville to make our school experiences as great as possible for our students and families looking forward to another year of working with you thank you i want to also convey my appreciation as stated by ms tolin just the incredible effort that our schools have put forth to open their doors welcome back our students and staff and uh really create that type of uh welcoming environment that

193we've been missing for so long because the pandemic this is a unique year for me it's the first time in 20 years that i have not had a son or a nephew in fairfax county schools so this is you know two decades uh somebody always had their first day of school so i am now officially just an alumni parent and aunt but uh still very grateful that to represent the braddock district where you all do such an amazing job letting me know how best i can serve you and meet your needs parents alerting me about concerns they have and really taking a a patient and respectful attitude to letting me know what's weighing on your mind i do want to also say that i know our board and our superintendent and his team are very

194committed to continuing to find our best practice best practice approaches to how do we identify where there has been a close contact for covid how do we quickly go through working with the health department to identify those cases everything is about safety mitigation but we also know it's how can we quickly ensure that there isn't a loss of of learning and so i do ask our community to continue to work with your principals work with your school board and the region offices let us know what your concerns are so that we can as you've hopefully seen tonight really focus on the way that we are partnering all together and really doing our very best to make this just an exciting and successful start to the year like everyone else i'm very hopeful that we will

195come through the delta variant but without question i am pleased to see how much our county is continuing to monitor the cases and really help make sure that our community knows what the presence of the virus is and finally uh to what's been spoken about earlier tonight when we can look at things like a test to stay program that's been successful in three different states it's just continuously improving on what we are doing and looking for new and novel ways to help support our students and most importantly to make sure our staff feel supported and safe as well so have a good night everybody mr fox followed by ms eisenheiser thank you and welcome back to school as all my colleagues have said we are thrilled to have our students back in the buildings and

196with our universal masking vaccination or testing requirements for our staff and upcoming screening testing throughout our schools we believe we of the school system with our county's health department we have a best practice layered strategy to keep our students safely in our schools this year as we know the start of school is always an exciting time i had a lot of fun at some of the community events i was able to attend it was an honor to attend the supporting our schools event in kingstown last week we're our partners at apple federal credit union sorry [Music] the supporting our schools event at applefred with apple federal credit union and nbc 4 where they collected backpacks for our students at rose hill elementary school and several members of the fairfax county fire and rescue department were

197there along with 97.1 wash fm to promote and thank those community members who came out with and brought donations apple federal credit union is still collecting backpacks until august 31st and you can drop them off at any branch location and i encourage you to do that i also enjoyed meeting parents and teachers and staff at resource fairs at open houses it groped in riverside and forest air elementary schools and there was really just such joy and happiness there at these back to school in events and in addition to that what you typically need to do at the back to school event they also had access to vaccines they were treated to pizza and snow cones served by their principals and honestly what better way to feel engaged and part of the community and get to

198know your teacher than by doing the cha-cha slide with them on the playground so it was a wonderful wonderful experience that i've had at these schools i look forward to attending more of these events over the next few weeks and as my colleagues said our board is here to help answer your questions and your concerns as we navigate through having our children back in the building while we're still trying to mitigate the covet and the delta variant so thank you have a great evening and continue all the wonderful things you're doing by sharing your children with us and keeping them safe great thank you very much and i just want to say i'm really excited to welcome us to the 2021-2022 school year after what felt like a six year long school year last year

199um so it is really nice to have our students back it was great on the first day of school to visit our schools and see the excitement and our students and our staff as they were in the classrooms back together lots of really great mask wearing and really creative strategy schools are using to increase safety i also want to thank the many parents who've reached out to me to express concerns about transportation about kiss and ride about lunch and i'm grateful for my colleagues and for our staff to work to ensure that we are being flexible and adapting for our outdoor spaces and spacing during lunch um i know i just want to say to our principals and admins and families out there um it's hard we left last school year and you know in

200early july we had i think four new cases in all of fairfax county on one day and we left last school year with our planning and our thought that we were in this place where we had such so few cases after a really difficult year and i know it's really hard on everybody and really traumatic to kind of have that melt away in the way it did in just a few short weeks and i promise our principals are working over time and our leadership team is working overtime to support them in adapting as fast as we can to ensure our students stay safe and i understand that fear and i appreciate all the parents and and staff members who are reaching out to me and my colleagues to carry that message forward and work with

201our team to ensure that safety um i know that our students do learn best in person and i know we're all committed to make sure that we can keep them in person as best we can and for all of those families out there who i know are worried about the learning loss and the long-term impact of this i i do get that and i know that we're all committed to the short-term and long-term work that we need to do to address our students academic needs and their social emotional needs so that they really are reconnected re-engaged and learning um as they can and so having said that i'm really excited for the great work we're gonna do i'm really excited to have our students back and i am just hoping for a great great school

202year where the fun and the joy just grows in our learning and i know that we need to center our students in that work but also support our teachers staff and administrators because they are the ones doing the work to take care of and educate our students so i'm really excited and i thank you all for your hard work this year and look forward to great work continuing going forward miss cohen followed by mr fresh thank you like dr anderson i realized this morning that i was sitting in the house by myself for the first time since march 12 2020. um it was weird it was great but it was really weird um but i i do just want to say late buses early buses double runs looking at sis and seeing vacancy listed as

203your child's teacher this is a consequence of how we have valued and treated our teachers and our support staff for years as a system but also as a community while our transportation staff hr and principals are doing an amazing job trying to fill every gap that has been created i i hope that when it comes time to our budget conversations this year that every parent in this county will be here asking for raises and better support for our teachers and our bus drivers and our lunch and food nutrition services workers and every person that helps support our kids because if you didn't realize it before the pandemic if you didn't realize it before the school year started we cannot do this without these people we have got to make sure that we keep these amazing

204folks here i just wanted to close tonight by saying how heavy my heart is for all of our service members and their friends and family tonight many of them are sitting at home right now waiting to find out if their loved ones are safe tonight and at least 13 families have already begun a journey that they never could have imagined for so many in our community tonight the news of today opens up very familiar very painful wounds and we are all with you thank you i hope everyone had a safe healthy and rewarding summer break as i've met with parents and students and visited schools throughout providence district this first week back to school there has been a common feeling of cautious optimism uh coupled with a touch of lingering uncertainty so much of what

205we're able to do is writing on our ability to work together our ability to respond to parents worried about their kids health during lunch on the bus in the classroom our ability to keep students safe and learning in classrooms five days a week our ability to meet the needs of students who can't join us in person our ability to address learning loss and provide social and emotional supports for our students our ability to continue making progress advancing equity and inclusion i know we are all eager to put the pandemic behind us but we're not quite there yet bearing our heads in the sand will not get us there if you are eligible and have not been vaccinated i encourage you to get your shots it is never too late to do the right thing wearing

206a mask when needed and getting vaccinated these aren't the requests of a school system intent on control or limiting freedom these are the actions neighbors take to keep each other healthy and safe to keep our schools businesses and vital public services running smoothly to show gratitude and empathy for the sacrifices we have all made because of the pandemic in the weeks and months ahead our school system will face many challenges but working together as neighbors as partners i'm confident we will do right by our students because they deserve nothing less thank you ms keith gemara followed by ms mesh thank you um i just i do want to thank everyone who worked so hard to get us to this point opening reopening our schools and returning strong and working so hard together i just want

207to thank our staff members our board i know we've put in we can't count the hours we just can't but i'm i'm so grateful and i have to say last week i was able to uh start go back to some schools as they were opening and i thought my gosh what is this thing i'm feeling it's excitement i mean why is that why is that yellow bus doing this to me so it is it is exciting i know that there are still concerns and that we are working it out but i am confident that um our staff members our everyone is on board to get this thing right and i tell you going into our schools the the joy was palpable um the first school i went to was actually my kids elementary school and

208um i i just don't know what it just was amazing it just did something to me it's a different principle but she likes me i'm good with that but um but i just so enjoyed um being able to welcome first-time parents at flint hill elementary and they actually have as 70 new parents 70 new families at that school so there are good things happening in our communities i know that we've heard about a lot of of the difficulties but they are really good things happening i was also happy to be able to go to mcnair upper and their amazing new building that just incorporates these best best standards and evidence-based structures to bring in light and enhance the learning environment and also to go to dogwood elementary who i think became the second elementary school

209that has an ib program so um it it there are good things happening let's continue to work together as a community i know that it has been hard i know that it is easy to be suspicious especially when we haven't been together but i look forward to being able to talk and explain what social and emotional learning is and things like that that may sound scary but is really there to support our students and help the educational process and i do also want to just send a words of comfort to military families as many of you know my son is actually in the military and i just had to send him a text and so i'm going to stop so that um i i just want to say that we're thinking about you and that

210we are praying for you and we are we are one community that takes care of one another so welcome back everyone and i look forward to a great school year building right on top of that congratulations to everyone on a successful start for good reason one of my biggest points of reflection from this summer and leading up to the first day of school just this past monday is that we can put our heads together to find solutions and that when we face difficult situations we can choose to split our energies in many directions even against one another and drive ourselves insane or we can put the collective our collective fuel together and let that synergy drive us forward and the latter is exactly what we saw just this past monday and this whole week starting

211monday i was pleased to witness students starting their first days as many of my colleagues did including our own at home who shares his nerves about calculus and sports and making sure he remembers his mask in the morning it's a funny time full of fears and excitement for everybody i did have the pleasure this past monday of hosting an overview session that breaks down some of the jargon in our conversations just from the work session and today's meeting with our high school leaders followed by a discussion with the health department to offer our community accessible updates on what to expect with delta and the bigger questions that lie ahead so do feel free to check that out if it would be useful to you looking ahead a group of our student leaders will be organizing

212an sat in college application prep session uh wishing the best of luck to those who are taking the sat this saturday um and we uh the the session will have representatives from various universities and institutions so look out for that in the next two weeks and i'm also excited to be meeting with our current executive team of give this saturday the free tutoring program that is available to students across the county uh this the this incredible group of student leaders offered hundreds of our kids with virtual tutoring just this past year and i'm also looking forward to checking out checking in with every one of our region leaders uh this week on the status of each school in our county and how the start to school went so if you are a community member and

213would like me to elevate anything leading up to that meeting or want to raise any questions or concerns please send me an email before monday today actually commemorates the first day of free kindergarten in our country's history back in the late 1800s and so it's really fitting that we enter this year in a way that is all embracing just no physical hugs of course where every one of us centers the spirit of of championing what is best for every community member wholly and completely even when it feels a little comfortable let's let love in to make space for learning growing and understanding what enables us to come together around our common values this year it's corbett sanders thank you so many of us here dr brabrand often use the term joy and that is what

214happened in our schools this week as our children came back into our classrooms there was joy in their hearts and in their approach to their education but there was joy in the welcoming committee from the moment the bus the bus door opened and a smiling bus driver was there to greet a child to the moment they got to the front doors of their elementary middle or high school and in some cases there were marching bands and cheerleaders cheering people on as they started this new year that's usually what happens every year as we reopen our schools but this year it was special it was palpable about how exciting and joy-filled it was so i want to thank each and every one of our educators who made this happen we are so so appreciative and i

215was blessed to be able to see many of you in action as i visited schools so i appreciate all that you're doing and i know it's going to be a great year i also know it's going to be a challenging year it's going to be challenging as our children approach the challenges of delayed learning our teachers approach the challenges of meeting children where they are and then scaffolding scaffolding supports for them and so just know that this board stands behind you and are here for you for the students for the staff the teachers and the administrators because we are just so blessed to be part of fairfax county public schools additionally i do want to reiterate the um comments the eloquent comments that we started the session today with about a recognition of the tragedy

216that occurred in kabul this morning we know that here in fairfax county we have one of the largest populations of military-connected youth of anywhere in the county and we know that when things like today's incident which impacted 13 families happens it not only impacts those 13 families but it impacts every family in which their parents serve or their siblings serve our country and so i just want you to know that we are here for you and that we have supports available in any way that we can i also want to address the likelihood that in the next couple of weeks we are going to be seeing new students we will be welcoming people whom are coming to the united states as refugees and i am just so appreciative of the work that dr brabrand's leadership

217team has already begun to put together a packet of materials that will be readily available to families whom are new to our community and so i very much appreciate it i hope that we can remember that this country is stronger because of the diversity of people who come to our gates and that we as a school system are here to serve thank you we we do spend a lot of time talking about the difficulties and and you know i share the anxiety that people are feeling parents are feeling um as i did earlier tonight and i know that is just because parents are scared and we continue to do better and as you said dr brabrand to work with families one-on-one to ensure that they're feeling comfortable and they're getting everything they need to keep

218our kids where they need to be in school but it really was an incredible incredible year and it was difficult getting here um it took a whole lot of um work and and dedication from um everyone in our schools and from our leadership and [Music] what i saw as well was just so much joy from kids from staff members it was it was just incredible to be at these open houses and to see the way kids just kind of jumped right into it like it just never ever changed and i will say for my own kids it's the first time in 19 years that i haven't had children at home during the school day that is a very long time and and i was i was quite sad that first day i'm over it now

219so i'm okay um but they came home and they were extremely excited um and i know we're gonna keep working to make sure our kids stay there and they're safe and while there are still obstacles ahead we'll do what we've done and we will continue to work hard to make sure that our kids get what they need so thank you to everyone i hope you've all had a wonderful first week i can't wait for the second one and this meeting is adjourned you