001do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so the rule was if we're presenting we have to be here [Music] studio we're expecting to begin at 7 30. it is everyday [Music] no it's not you [Music] do [Music] do [Music] good evening the july 15 2021 regular meeting of the fairfax county school board will now come to order i will take roll miss cohen here miss corbett sanders good evening ms danico fox good evening mr frisch good evening ms keith gamara good evening ms mclaughlin good evening ms marin hello miss omaesh hello miss picarski good evening everyone miss eisenheiser good evening ms tolen good evening mr chaudhary hello welcome please rise and join our student representative pranav chadri as he leads us in the reciting of the pledge of
002allegiance followed by a moment of silence 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 you may be seated gender item 2.02 certification of closed meeting compliance in order to comply with section 2.2-3712-d of the code of virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county school board convened a closed meeting on july 15 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 and the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during this closed meeting that is moved by miss cohen seconded by ms
003dennard kofax all in favor miss corbett sanders mr frisch missile mesh miss mclaughlin miss cohen miss mccarthy miss picarski miss seismo heiser mesquiz gamara miss tolin ms darnaco fox and myself and i do not have eyes on yes and miss marin thank you item 2.03 updated resolution for electronic participation to board meetings by calling dr anderson for the motion i move that the board approved the updated resolution for participation in board meetings by means of electronic communications as detailed in the attachment on the agenda item i will second the motion dr anderson would you like to speak to your motion i will not i will not speak to mine or the board members i will call for the boat the vote the motion excuse me excuse me i do have my hand raised vice chair
004ms marin please go ahead thank you yes i i realize that it is a new process that we are all learning on this very topic um i would like to offer an amendment to this it's administrative in nature it's um having been having experienced this for the first time myself this week being able to participate uh virtually i when i reviewed the um the resolution it should be clearer that the request by the board member of what needs to be included in that request so for instance for me being that i'm on vacation and thus taking the um personal excuse me let me look here the reasons for remote participation i would need to submit certain information including my location that's different than if you have a medical need so what is listed in number
005five as the information that would be included in the meeting minutes actually should be included for clarity under number one what the board member needs to submit in making the request i did put this in writing a bit late just prior to the meeting so um i'm not sure i can go ahead and communicate a specific amendment or perhaps the clerk can help us in in writing that up since i did send that language uh miss marin if we could have our clerks just post it so everybody can see what you're asking please sure it's it's rather um what i emailed was a description but so what i'm basically asking is administratively if the details of number five and references and meeting minutes could be put up to number one the request by the board
006member so that it indicates what exactly the board member needs to put in the request and then also what exactly will be included in the meeting minutes because it's unclear in the meeting minutes when a location is included or not modesha if we could have the original miss corbett sanders go ahead yes thank you madam vice chair i'm um i had asked some questions about this earlier of our general counsel and so i think that maybe what would be very helpful is if our general counsel could give a brief overview of the changes in the state code and what is required and what isn't so that we are all on the same page so is that possible madam vice chair yes um please go ahead thank you for that point of clarity thank you yes
007this uh proposed resolution basically summarizes the virginia code uh provisions that were updated as of july first um as ms mir has indicated section five of the resolution outlines what should be recorded in the minutes um that includes uh you know there are two bases for participating remotely one is a temporary or permanent disability or other medical condition um the uh second is a personal need or personal matter one other change from the previous code is that previous code only allowed two virtual participations in any given year that has been changed to 25 percent of the total meetings of the public body thank you so uh mr foster in your opinion what is written on the motion is that uh does that capture everything we need in the motion this is the motion made by
008ms mirren or the original motion making the original motion the original motion captures the virginia code i do not think that any additional amendments are necessary thank you thank you very much mr foster miss marin uh we don't have a second and and take yeah taking oh is there anybody who would like to second her no but i'd like to give miss marin the opportunity after she's heard counsel um if you would like to keep this as is or if you still would like to proceed so i mean again having been the only school board member to actually experience the implementation of this policy to date since it went into effect july 1 i would hope that my experience bears some some knowledge i will say that even the form itself it doesn't include what
009is required which is if you have a personal conflict if you're out of town if one of those reasons is on your own vacation you need to submit that location so that's all i have to say i think this form is is confusing and incomplete and i feel the resolution is confusing is there a second seeing none we will go back to the main motion and i will okay i will call for the vote the motion before us is that the board approved the updated resolution for petitious participation in board meetings by means of electronic communications as detailed in the attachment on the agenda item all those in favor scoreboard sanders mr frisch misomesh miss mclaughlin miss cohen dr anderson miss sizemore heiser miss keys gemara miss tolin mr kofax and myself as well as
010miss maron that is unanimous thank you thank you oh sorry i can't move my computer up item 2.04 considering a board member virtual participation request ms marin has submitted a written request to virtually attend this evening this evening's meeting due to vacation i will call for a vote from those board members who are in person this evening all those in favor of approving miss marin's request for virtual participation in the july 15 regular meeting please raise your hands we have miss corbett sanders mr frisch missile mage miss mclaughlin miss cohen miss fikarsky miss seismo heiser miss keys gamara miss toled ms dennis colfax and myself seeing that they're not opposed and none have abstained so that is unanimous with those who are in person thank you of course item 2.05 announcements i will now ask
011dr brabrand to share a quick health related announcement thank you chairman anderson just a brief reminder many of you know that the governor's executive order did expire june 30th the emergency order we did have the virginia department of health norm oliver shared that masks were required in schools through july 25th we are in a school there is a provision however that when kids are not present all those that are vaccinated do not have to wear a mask and that those that are not vaccinated we request that they do wear masks and i did want to share that with our audience tonight before we begin the rest of the school board's presentations and proceedings thank you very much and we appreciate your support thank you dr brabrand we want to recognize and welcome senator jennifer boiskall
012who is in the audience this evening please rise thank you senator for joining us as we are honored to have you here on behalf of the board i would like to welcome our new student representative pranav chaudhry to the dais this evening for his first regular meeting [Applause] [Music] pranav will share his comments later this evening during student representative matters if you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight that information may be found at the back of the auditorium or on the website at fcps.edu school board board docs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live stream on the website at fcps.edu tv slash ch9 item number two point zero six recognition honoring clay hale i call him miss keys i call
013him his keys gamora for the recognition thank you madam chair mr clay hale certified public accountant has been a citizen member of the fairfax county school board audit committee since 2017. providing industry experience and expertise in accounting auditing business management financial reporting risk and school district finances mr hale has been a vital part of the committee sharing the perspectives of both an auditor and an fcps parent with his colleagues in his measured respectful professional way like all of our committee appointees citizen members of the audit committee are volunteers so we also express our appreciation to clay's family we know that he missed family time to attend the monthly audit committee meetings and to do the behind the scenes work to help the board in their audit responsibilities mr hale began his career as an accountant
014with pricewaterhouse and has over 35 years of finance accounting i.t and internal audit experience mr hale is currently the chief financial officer of the government solutions sector for kbr prior to joining kbr he was the chief financial officer of siemens government technologies mr hale has an mba from duke university a bs in business administration from the citadel and is an army national guard veteran on behalf of the board i would like to extend our deepest appreciation to mr clay hale for his outstanding service and dedication to the fairfax county school board students family and community members of fairfax county public schools mr hale has joined us virtually this evening thank you mr hale for your service to fcps is he on the screen are we able to get mr [Music] we able to get mr
015hale on the screen while we are waiting for him to show up because we would love to offer him the opportunity to say a few words while we don't typically speak to recognitions i do realize that other long-standing members of the audit committee would like to say a few words regarding mr hale so ms mclaughlin oh there he is mr blackman please go ahead and laud him good evening mr hale i i did want to take this um special opportunity to personally thank you um when we first as a board decided to add citizens to the audit committee that was brand new the county board supervisors had done it but our school board never had and it has just been such a pleasure for me to have gotten a chance to work with you your
016incredible expertise absolutely helped me as a member of the audit committee and i know it really helped our school board and therefore our school system as well as the office of the auditor general so again i just want to personally thank you so much for your tireless work you made enormous difference and you will be greatly missed i wish you well thank you and um the school board members thank you for your dedication the effort you put in is is is amazing um for your efforts and the success of the fairfax county school system is uh is a result of that so thank you very much and thank you for all of your work to our division thank you i'm so sorry you have one more member of the audit committee who wants to sing
017your praises ms tolin yes uh mr hale thank you so much for your service uh and the list of things his work on the audit committee is just the beginning of his list of time and energy that he's given to fairfax county public schools i know his family was very very involved this year with the senior class at mclean high school and all the activities surrounding the congratulating our class of 2021 at mclean and we appreciate the the um just giving back attitude of your entire family and also um i do want to second with ms mclaughlin said your expertise on the audit committee was so so helpful with all the decisions that we were making thank you thank you thank you miss tolin ms keith gemara yes i know i had an opportunity to
018read the resolution but as the current audit chair i wanted to thank you for making us all look good and giving us the information that we needed to to really provide an independent voice as we reviewed information and to continue to have that continuous monitoring with the level of professionality that our community expects so i want to thank you and your family thank you was such an outstanding auditor general and audit committee it does not take much to make you all look good [Applause] thank you [Applause] [Music] thank you mr hale item 2.07 resolution for naming the black box theater at woodson high school i call him ms mclaughlin for the resolution thank you dr anderson as a two-generation woodson family it is truly my honor to read this resolution this evening in the resolution
019naming the black box theater at woodson high school the terry hobson black box theater whereas terry hobson passionately and faithfully served woodson high school students staff parents and community members for 23 years as the school's theater director bringing the school and community together through a common love of drama and performance and whereas she has been committed to improving the drama program and mentoring her students through her unwavering dedication in and out of the classroom day and night weekday and weekend pandemic or no pandemic and whereas she grew the woodson drama department to include generations of woods and drama students who will forever have their extraordinary theatrical experiences to draw upon for the rest of their lives and whereas terry hobson inspired her students to understand the linkages between the performing arts and their daily lives
020and encouraged each student to reach their full potential and whereas her innumerable rehearsals created superior performances and students with lifelong dedication to dramatic performances and appreciation now therefore be it resolved that the black box theater at woodson high school be named the terry hobson black box theater in honor of this superstar educator leader colleague and friend you so moved [Music] [Applause] [Music] we still need to vote [Applause] because we still need to vote but do you move the resolution miss mclaughlin you haven't moved it either yet we need a second for your resolution ma'am you kind of have to be up here to do that is there anybody up here who would like to second that resolution mr frisch thank you miss mclaughlin would you like to speak to your resolution i will speak briefly
021because i know the excitement is palpable and we've got to get up here and take take the vote and get some pictures but i i do want to just personally um thank ms hopson so much for all that you've done over the last 23 years at woodson high school it's evident the love that you have created among the students and staff and the community uh i was a former thespian in high school and then did uh performing arts in college and so i know what it means to have teachers who instill that passion that love and that lifelong appreciation for theater arts and all performing arts so what you gave to the woodson community students was such a gift and it is so amazing and such an honor that we now get to have your
022name grace the black box theater and so i encourage all of my colleagues to support this wonderful resolution mr mr fred i don't know i'm having second doubts mr fresh would you like to speak to your second yes just briefly thank you i'll echo everything that miss mclaughlin said and every word of the resolution i think the crowd's response speaks volumes about the legacy you're leaving behind that even a name on a theater can't match literally generations of students uh have you to thank as someone with a partner who teaches in the arts here in fcps i can tell you that the impact you have had on students is profound that's why the response that you've heard tonight is here and that's just part of the community that loves you again generations of students have
023you to thank for impacting their lives and putting your name on the black box theater woodson is only a small token of gratitude that we can express in an official manner so thank you thank you mr fresh are there any other are there any other board members who would like to speak to this resolution wow seeing none i will call for the miss corbett sanders i just want to um briefly address what what my colleague mr frish mentioned which is the very important role that the arts plays in the success of our children when we look at the whole child that social emotional and creative excellence that comes from the arts in fairfax county and i haven't visited woodson's black box theater but i grew up with miss kogelman at groveton in west potomac and
024i know that that that the arts is a key part to nurturing our children and i just want to personally thank you for uh doing that for the for your career thank you very much ms corbett sanders seeing that there are no other board members wishing to speak i will call for the vote all in favor of the resolution presented by ms mclaughlin please raise your hands miss corbett sanders mr frisch missile mage miss mclaughlin miss cohen miss picarski massaism heiser ms keith gamara miss tolin ms dernock colfax i need to go to the video which i can't find oh can we make this bigger thank you miss marin and myself that is unanimous let's give her a hand now at this time i would like to invite ms hobson the woodson's staff and administration
025and all other beloved woodson community members to come up for a picture we are very fortunate to have a community member here tonight who is going to take it with his amazing camera oh i do want to quickly thank principal carlin floyd and her senior administration who came out this evening to help join in the celebration we greatly appreciate all the support you gave ms hopson in her career [Applause] thank you item to point agenda item 2.08 annual school board organizational arrangements the next order of business is the an annual organizational motion section 22.1-676 of the code of virginia specifies that at the annual organizational meeting a school board shall elect one of its members to serve as chairman and may elect one of its members to serve as vice chairman both for a one
026year term and should also approve other appointments and designations of responsibility necessary for board operations during the year i will now ask superintendent bray brandt to conduct the selection process for the new for the school board chair for the next year dr brabrand thank you dr anderson at this time i will open the floors for nominations for chair of the fairfax county school board ms mclaughlin yes dr bray brand i would like to nominate stella picarski as the next chair of the fairfax county school board is there a second a second thank you miss cohen miss picarski has been nominated as chair of the fairfax county school board are there any other nominations hearing no other nominations the motion before the board is to elect ms stella picarski as chair of the fairfax county school
027board i'll call now on those members who nominated miss piekarski for comments first miss mclaughlin would you like to speak to your nomination i would thank you dr bray brown um before i speak to miss prakarski i do want to take the privilege of thanking our current chair dr riccardi anderson who has just done a phenomenal job leading this board especially through historic pandemic i'm so deeply grateful and i know my colleagues share that gratitude you have just been truly stellar and i hope you get some much deserved time now with your family um and to ms picarski you have been an outstanding right-hand person to dr anderson through your tireless work as our vice chair this year and as a veteran member of this board it is truly an honor for me to nominate
028you because i've had the privilege of serving with so many board members for almost a decade and what makes you stellar in this role is your incredible willingness to always presume positive intentions to always think broadly on these issues to make it a safe space for us to share our points of view that can be very diverse when there's 12 of us up here and it is for those many reasons that i am so thrilled that you are willing to step forward to serve this board to be that safe space for each and every one of us to be able to come and speak to you on any given issue i'm grateful that you're willing to sacrifice the time to to lead and to serve this board and look forward to all that you will
029bring to this new role miss cohen would you like to speak to your second i would thank you um i also just want to say a tremendous thank you to dr anderson for her leadership during this year it has been steadfast and calm and exactly what we needed in such a crazy crazy time i can't imagine anybody doing it any better than you did thank you um i'm grateful to be able to second the nomination of miss picarsky stella and ricky have been an amazing team and i look forward to the year ahead um as a mom with six kids i have no doubt that she can handle the 12 of us so looking forward to to working with you thank you miss cohen are there other board members who wish to speak miss corbett
030sanders yes thank you dr brabrand um i too would like to first start by thanking our current chair dr ricardi anderson for all of your work your dedication during a very complex and uh challenging period of time that has been a challenging period of time not only for this board but for this community for our students and for our staff and so it is greatly appreciated we know that i personally know that it is a challenge to to bring everybody together on so many different issues that come before the board and i know that you have dedicated your time and given up a lot of time on behalf of your children and your spouse and so we are appreciative of that thank you now i'd like to talk a little bit about miss picarski you
031just heard that miss picarsky is the mother of six children and that is a key characteristic for a couple of reasons it's not only to be able to multitask and manage complex situations but it's also an ability to listen and to encourage resolution of issues amongst people and to always uh move towards a solution on any issue that we're dealing with but it's also one of the key characteristics of a board chair of the fairfax county school board because they are elected by the their colleagues and their peers is that they are the chief coordinator of all of our efforts and they are the chief person for scheduling and balancing out all the different demands and saying okay what do we need to address first what do we need to address second what do we
032need to address third and we've seen you working to do that i also very much appreciate your willingness to pick up the phone and speak to different members of the board and really reach strive for consensus and so it is with great pleasure that i can support your role as the next chair of the fairfax county school board and i know that you've had a great year of uh partnering with our current chair so it works perfectly thank you miss marin you wish to speak miss mary thank you for seeing me up here um first i i will speak to the motion uh for miss picarski thank you for stepping up into this tremendous role you know you've shown your ability to listen to all members and make data and input-based decisions i value your
033approach to being methodical about boardwork and decisions and i appreciate that you you show up you show up prepared and you're just the consummate professional so i look forward to your leadership as you move from vice chair to chair and i want to also speak to the chair whom you'd be following dr anderson thank you for your leadership through an epic year in the history of fairfax county public schools you helped us forage ahead through every topic and decision imaginable under the sun you approach this work with intention with commitment with the experience of having led and facilitated groups professionals throughout your career and i've appreciated your desire to implement changes in the board's work that further clarify our work and make it more efficient so that we can be most focused on what's best
034for kids so i'm eager for our next chair to carry forward the work that you've helped us achieve so that we can maintain it and expand our effectiveness thank you dr anderson thank you miss mayor any other board members who wish to speak miss darren at kofax yes i just want to say i support the nomination of miss picarsky for chair i appreciate you stepping up i know the hard work that you and dr anderson put in as a team so thank you for doing this and dr anderson thank you so much for your leadership this year this was uh what were do we we're not even using that word momentous disastrous whatever year it was it was a difficult year um to be a chair of a board with so many issues on our
035plate you handled with grace and and tenacity and hard work and so thank you so much for your leadership and i look forward to continuing all of us working together and miss picarski with you now in this role and thank you dr anderson if there are no more comments then we will proceed with the vote which requires a majority of votes from those board members present whether physically or virtually voting this evening the motion before the fairfax county school board is that ms stella picarsky be elected chair of the fairfax county school board all those in favor of this motion please signify by raising your hand miss corbett sanders mr frisch mr mesh miss mclaughlin miss cohen miss picarski dr anderson miss seismer heiser uh miss keysgamara miss tollen miss darren at kofax and my
036vote is yes thank you miss marin are any opposed any abstaining no unanimously the school board has approved ms stella pakarski is the next chair of the fairfax county school board congratulations ms pakarski [Applause] all right thank you everybody for um dealing with us i do want to take a couple of minutes well less than a couple of minutes i'm going to try to be quick we've got a long night um i did want to offer uh first some remarks about my deep appreciation to dr anderson this year she stepped up to lead this board during the most difficult time in public education and during a worldwide pandemic she did so with a steady hand a deep desire to do good work that our public expects and deserves with integrity and with forward-looking vision it
037has been my pleasure to partner with her this past year and while we often disagreed on issues our partnership did develop into true friendship for which i'm grateful um and you absolutely helped me get through this past year so for that i am very grateful and i think we also have some small tokens of appreciation from the board if we could please present that to dr anderson thank you thank you [Applause] um you are welcome and just quickly um to my colleagues i am incredibly humbled by your votes of confidence i very much enjoyed developing strong working relationships with each of you this past year board work is often endless all hours of the day and night seven days a week every weekend all the time but every single one of you bring an unwavering
038passion to serve students families and your communities to make fcps a school system that successfully serves every single child that steps foot into our buildings for many of the of the board on this board that includes our own children who are fcps students this passion unifies us as a board as we strive towards continuous improvement and to effectively meet our oversight duties it is my sincere hope this year that we collectively center our efforts on building community over chaos on this board in our school system and the community at large this is an incredibly critical year for our students families and staff we're excited and we're eager to welcome all of them back into our buildings and to ensure that we have the supports and systems in place to address their socio-emotional and academic needs
039that have in many instances been greatly and negatively impacted during this pandemic the challenge is great but this board is committed to it nonetheless and we will persevere i commit to my colleagues so you will get the best of me every day to help our board partner with leadership staff our superintendent and each other through a transparent and collaborative spirit and i look forward to a great year working with the new vice chair thank you everyone [Applause] and with that at this time i would like to open the florida nominations for vice chair of the school board miss tolin i would like to nominate roger seismore heiser as vice chair of the school board is there a second mr frisch rajna sizemore heiser has been nominated for vice chair are there other nominations hearing and
040seeing none the motion before the board is to elect rajna sizemore heisors vice chair of the fairfax county school board ms tollin would you like to speak to your nomination yes thank you i am happy to nominate rachel seismer-heiser for this position as i have worked with rajna over the past 18 months she and i have often shared positions and opinions on what matters for our students she works hard she's passionate about improving fcps and building upon what we already do right she has assured me that her primary focus for the next year will be putting the board's time and energy toward getting our children back into our schools full time and focusing on the work we need to do successfully to move our students and our district out of any learning losses and emotional
041impacts we have suffered due to the pandemic rachel's expertise in special education will be helpful as we continue our audit of our special education services over the next year and her thoughtful and deliberate approach to analyzing data and finding solutions to problems will be essential i appreciate her strong communication skills and her willingness to reach out to all board members and to the community on any issue we are facing we have a lot of work to do in our communities to make all of our families feel welcome in fcps i know the leadership combination of stella and rachna can help us deal with where we are now and move us in a positive direction i look forward to the opportunity to work with her in this new role mr fresh would you like to speak
042to your second i would thank you but first i would like to thank dr anderson for her service this year as chair it's no exaggeration to say that these past 12 months have been trying through it all you have guided us on this board kept us focused modeled what it means to be a better public servant and helped us get into a little good trouble along the way you should be proud of the legacy you're leaving behind i'm certainly proud of all that you've accomplished on to the vice chair nomination russian sizemore heiser is an attorney and university professor she is a mother and special education advocate she has unique insight as a woman of color and a child of immigrants russia's professional training and career in higher education provide her with unique insight into
043the types of portrait of a graduate skills our students need to succeed when they leave fairfax county public schools russian is experienced as a mother of two fcps students with varied experiences in our system from special education and advanced academics to stem and the arts means she understands well the joys and challenges of being a parent in this system a proud indian-american child of immigrants she will be the first aapi woman of uh to serve as vice chair of this board she knows firsthand what it is like for students who face the difficult task of bridging two cultures the ones at home and the ones in school i have served on the public engagement committee under russian's leadership as committee chair for the past year i found her to be fair and thoughtful in addition
044i've seen her work with collaboratively with families stakeholders staff and our board colleagues she has led us through a review of our public comment policy and the structure and workings of our advisory committees in these massive undertakings she has demonstrated a willingness to innovate embracing what has served us well and working to change what has not i am excited to work with russian assistant serving in our leadership and i'm honored to second her nomination for vice chair of the fairfax county school board are there any other board members that wish to speak at this time okay i missed they're not cofax i just want to thank you for stepping up i really have enjoyed my work with you on this board i look forward to uh seeing you continue to use your leadership skills and
045um just best of luck you're the new team so thank you miss mclaughlin uh i've had the pleasure of knowing rachna for more than 10 years as a constituent in the braddock district before she became my colleague on the board and i have seen firsthand how tirelessly you have fought for the needs of children in our community and how much you have tried to build bridges and take action to change the life of others so one of the things that we know is so important is in a board of 12 there are 12 different personalities uh the county residents have absolutely chosen a diverse group up here even if sometimes people don't think we are and uh one of the things that i really appreciate is how much you spoke from the heart about your
046desire to help us always find our common ground with one another and so i will dub you uh the uh supreme court justice breyer of our board because justice breyer's deep commitment has and how do we find common ground and i appreciate both you and ms pokarsky's commitment to that and i certainly want to help support you both in that role and do my best as one member on this board thank you thank you there are no miss corbett sanders yes thank you very much uh madam chair doesn't that sound good and i do want to um thank my colleagues for their nomination of miss seismer heiser i know that um every year as we go through the reorganization it is always a lot of conversations about where do we want to take the board
047and what do we want to achieve as a board and um people step up and say you know this is what i can add and this is these are my commitments to bringing this board together to making sure that we have a focused agenda and that we um make those very difficult calls to people that we may not have as much in common with first because that oftentimes results in um in in having a different perspective and so i very much appreciate rajna your willingness to do that and i also appreciate the work that you have done not only on pec but a little later on um with our sac activities too so um thank you see our student representative would like to offer some comments yes so when i first met miss seismore heiser
048i was a student who was brand new to the special education process in fcps and frankly i was terrified i remember one of the first things i said to her was you know this one thing that we always hear as special ed students is you're very smart but and she said there is no but you are smart you are capable and you can do this and you know i think it's one thing to say that someone has been a special education parent and advocate but it's another to truly be one to be that person who's fighting for that kid who is thrown into the back of the room because no one believes that they can interact with their peers in a normal way that parent who believes that not just that we can do better
049by our students but that we must do right by everyone and yet at the same time as someone who is so passionate and so fervently committed to our kids ms sizemore heiser never lets that show in working to build common ground she let's show her passion for the kids but she never lets emotion get in the way of what needs to get done and she is this beautiful beautiful combination of both saying what needs to be done and actually getting the things done um rhetoric and results and that is what we need right now as a school system for the kids thank you and i apologize um miss maron also wanted to offer some comments go ahead miss mark yes thank you very much and thanks again for being flexible with our new mode of
050operations here with the virtual participation um ms seismore heiser thank you so much for stepping up to help be a leader on our board i've enjoyed and value your work and i um i'm only excited about the kinds of things you're going to bring to our board i know your intentions are great and your appetite for work is great and so i'm very um eager to see what the team of you ms bakarsky and ms seismer heiser will do for us and for kids thank you and i will quickly offer some comments miss seismore heiser you and i share many things in common we're educators we are have had experiences growing up as daughters of immigrants and all of um that comes with those experiences we have awesome musically talented children and we also have
051children who've had difficult experiences in our school system because of great needs and that has has brought us to a place where we share this common passion and i really appreciate you stepping up to do this work to work with this board and i look forward to the year so without any other comments we'll proceed to the vote which requires a majority of votes from those board members present and voting the motion before the board is that rajna sizemore heiser be elected vice chair of the fairfax county school board all those in favor of the motion please signify by raising your hand and saying aye miss corbin sanders mr frisch with so mesh miss mcglockland miss cohen dr anderson miss eisemar heiser miss kisgamara miss tolin miss darenack kofax um i miss marin thank you
052and myself and that vote is unanimous the motion carries this time i am pleased to introduce the new vice chair rajna sizemore heiser thank you everybody and um all your words meant so much to me but i have to say in front of your you made me cry a little bit up here saying that so i i thank you so much all of you um i wanted to first start by first thanking dr anderson for her incredible leadership this year she you really have been a role model to me in watching you lead this board steadfast steady strong sure and and making space for people's voices and people's thoughts and balancing all of that all and hurting a lot of cats sometimes so um really you've been an incredible role model and i if i
053can be half as good as a vice chair as you were chair i will think i've done my job very well so thank you for the tireless hours you spent and the number of 1am phone calls that i know you made to many of us um followed by 6 am phone calls so i hope you get some sleep i hope you get to spend a lot of time with your family and please know we respect and value you so much and the work you've done we could not have gotten through this year without you at all so thank you for that and miss karska i didn't speak to your nomination because i know i was speaking now so i wanted to say i am so incredibly honored to work with you um watching you in
054the role as vice chair i i have really big shoes to fill um first of all but really watching you take the time i don't think i ever called you or you didn't answer the phone or call me back pretty much immediately and i don't know how you do that balancing six kids and everything else you do but um listening to all of our voices taking the time to thought to talk your rational but em empathetic leadership is is a really difficult combination to be so rational to be so measured to be so data driven but also so empathetic that balance is so unique and i think that's what's going to make you an incredible chair for this school board and i am honored i've learned a lot watching you in your role and i
055i'm excited to learn a lot with you and do some good work and unite and bring our kids back to school um five days a week so i am so excited to serve with you thank you massage more heiser and with that just one more thing okay perfect sorry i just wanted to thank really quickly i want to thank my colleagues i know that this is always a difficult and lots of conversations around this this year and i just wanted to say that your faith in me has really humbled me and i'm honored and i recognize that my role here is as the facilitator and the administrator of all of our work and that is my role with mrs bukarski and my role is to make sure all of your voices are heard that all
056of you are reached out to and part of this and all of your strengths are featured but also all of your passions and so i just urge you in any of this work i am my door's open my phone is open i'm always here and i look forward to uniting us all and bring us all together as we move on thank you massage more hyzer and with that i will call on the new vice chair for a motion i move that the school board authorized organizational arrangements and appointments as follows number one designate the 2021-2022 calendar of regular business meetings which are typically held on thursdays the board's calendar of meeting dates will be based on the school year and will be published in july as detailed and attachment a of the agenda item special
057meetings board committee work sessions and other special functions will also be scheduled liaisons and committees will be organized to support the board's work committees of three board members consider student disciplinary cases in closed meetings typically on tuesdays the board does not customarily meet in august number two set the salary of board members at thirty two thousand dollars per year and that of the board chairman at thirty four thousand dollars and reimburse all board members for travel expenses in the conduct of official business including attendance at meetings at the same rate as employees of the board number three compensate the student representative for attendance at public meetings not to exceed fifty dollars per day and reimburse for travel related expenses at the same rate as employees of the board number four appoint francis ivey deputy superintendent
058to serve as a superintendent's designee to attend any meeting of the school board that the superintendent cannot attend number five appoint beverly medeja as interim clerk of the school board and laura cornell as deputy clerk of the school board each with a corporate surety bond as required by the code of virginia number six appoint deputy clerks of the school board for the limited purpose of signing titles to school division vehicles and counter-signing payment warrants as detailed and attachment be of the agenda item number seven appoint agents and deputy agents of the school board to examine approve and order payment of financial obligations of the school board and to approve disbursements made from all petty cash funds as detailed an attachment via the agenda item number eight appoint agents and deputy agents of the school board
059to examine approve and order payment only in connection with the educational employees supplementary retirement system of fairfax county erfc as detailed in attachment b of the agenda item authorize the chairman and clerk to sign all legal documents for the board other than those requiring the signature of some other officer or officers and authorize the vice chairman to sign in the absence or unavailability of the chairman and the deputy clerks in the absence or unavailability of the clerk number 10 authorized francis ivey deputy superintendent and marty smith chief operating officer either of whom may act without the other to execute official documents including those relating to state federal and impact aid requiring the superintendent's signature and those relating to the virginia department of education reports documents requisitions and other official correspondence in the absence or unavailability
060of the division superintendent effective through july 31st 2022 and number 11 retain the following outside law firms as assigned and managed by the office of division council the firm hutton andrews kurth to provide general legal advice and litigation services the firm of blankenship and keith to provide general legal and special education advice and litigation services the firm of franklin and prokabik to provide workers compensation services the firm of michael e kinney plc to provide general legal advice and litigation litigation services the firm of jackson lewis to provide general legal advice and litigation services the firm of sans anderson to provide general legal advice and litigation services and such other firms as are deemed determined to be necessary from time to time is there a second dr anderson would you like thank you ms seismore heiser
061would you like to speak to your motion um just briefly this is just organizational requirements we need to do as we change our leadership of the school board dr anderson would you like to speak no thank you are there other board members excellent seeing none i'll call for the vote all those in favor this motion miss corbett sanders mr frisch miss omesh miss mclaughlin miss cohen dr anderson miss seismore heiser miss kisgamara miss tolin miss sternakofax um miss is miss marin up there yes miss marin i see you and myself and that vote is unanimous thank you agenda item 2.09 citizen participation speakers are requested to limit their remarks to no more than three minutes the school report will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings such as capital improvement
062program budget and boundaries speakers should only address new business action items or resolutions as listed on the agenda item complaints regarding individual students or school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school official speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information in connection with an individual student and are expected to deliver their comments with a decorum and respect appropriate to the conduct of the public's business thank you for your cooperation and thanks to those who have come to speak to us today the microphone will be muted after three minutes have passed tonight there are ten citizens that have signed up to address the board and we also have three video testimonies i will now ask the clerk to call the first speaker our first speaker is paul woldridge thank you it's
063actually good to be here in person my name is paul woldridge i'm a 50-year resident of virginia 35 of those years in fairfax county i'm also a well-educated parent of two kids which are who are recent high school grads of fairfax county public schools thanks for the opportunity to speak i've been keeping up with the progress of our virginia regulators and this school board in promoting affirmative support and rights of lgbtq individuals i'm particularly proud of the progress of this school board that has made in updating nondiscrimination policies and adoption of the state mandated guidelines for support of transgender and gender and non-binary students i also support recent updates to propose to the student rights and responsibilities to include language that addresses treatment of trans and non-binary students that document explains expectations for how student
064behavior enhances the safety of all kids in fairfax county schools it's a code of conduct if you would that kids attest to and that they will abide by my kids are gay and one is transgender they both came out in high school a few years back um before any of these such policies were in place they both along with their peers would have benefited greatly from these updated policies and procedures this is especially true for my transgender son as the fairfax county school administrators were not prepared to affirm and support him fully at a time when he really needed it he was misgendered by teachers students and administrative staff he was denied access to the men's bathrooms he was even asked inappropriate questions about his his anatomy by one of the ski the teachers at
065high school these are to name a few issues he took it upon himself actually to educate the school administrators in high school on how to support him and what his specific needs were thank you for mclean high school administrators because they were very receptive to these requests no kid should have to play that role in educating school staff on fair and equitable treatment i'm happy to see that the fairfax county schools are now better prepared to support transgender students with affirmative non-discrimination policies and guidelines plus updated family life education curricula student rights and responsibilities these are important steps for all fairfax county school kids the updated policies and guidelines will allow future lgbtq students plus their peers better thrive in a safe and accepting environment especially when sometimes affirmative support is a matter of life
066and death i'm a peaceful person who believes in love and acceptance of all individuals especially when it comes to school environments none of us are free from discrimination until all of us are i leave you with some lyrics well i don't have time for that so never mind our next speaker is kristin apker [Applause] and before we go on to our next speaker i just want to say um we also have a former fairfax um county school board member uh in our audience today miss elizabeth schultz thank you go ahead ms madeja our next speaker is kristin apker the eye is first prior to the pandemic our family's experience with fcps was largely a positive one although we do not have family close by we have chosen to stay in the area because we value
067the access to quality special education programs and we are indebted to the many wonderful and caring teachers and staff whom we have encountered their intervention has particularly benefited our oldest son who currently attends the enhanced autism program at our local school like many autistic children he is incredibly bright but he has difficulty maintaining focus and interacting productively with others given that our oldest depends on the services and socialization that he receives at school the spring of 2020 was absolutely devastating despite connection issues with the blackboard platform we diligently logged on each day for our sons allotted 10 minutes with his special education teacher even though he frankly benefited far more from the consistent in-person support provided by his private aba therapist in the fall i shuttled back and forth between my two older boys who
068spent their mornings attending overlapping blocks of 10-minute virtual classes all while trying to keep my two little ones out of trouble i breathed a sigh of relief when the older boys went back to school in person in late october was thoroughly disheartened when they were forced to return to virtual learning the week before christmas break and persevered with them until they returned in person again in mid-february throughout this roller coaster we appreciated the steady stream of communication that we received from fcps even though we didn't always like or agree with what was decided then with no warning less than five days before esy was due to start we received the now infamous date change to summer instruction email adding to the confusion on sunday june 25th we received another email from transportation services indicating that
069my son actually was to attend the first esy session not knowing what to think the next morning i tried calling the school over two dozen times before finally taking my son there in person only to learn definitively that he was assigned to the tentative second session in short my son is once again waiting to be back in school i understand that fcps only has so much control over teacher burnout and staffing shortages but that does not excuse the lack of transparency and untimely communication especially for the children who rely on the routine of school and for the families who had already made child care and vacation plans and were left scrambling at the last minute why weren't we told weeks in advance that this could be an issue and presented with possible alternatives and choices
070at that time moving forward i sincerely hope that you can focus on implementing real solutions for our children rather than exhaust our next speaker is elizabeth schultz parents have turned to you in the past year and a half for leadership in their children's education and you have failed at every turn returning children to school in person honest communications with parents masking little children denying special education services destroying admissions to tj you have failed to prepare employees support students and listen to parents in fact tonight you are going to suppress parents voices even further by cutting citizen participation this move is shameful it furthers the distrust that you have built that you have wrought in the parent community in fairfax county it is anti-student it is anti-parent and it is anti-democracy your woke ideology embedding critical
071race theory to the tune of over seven hundred thousand dollars and counting compelled crt professional development renaming schools eliminating meritocracy rewriting curriculum and driving the agenda of crt theorists like ibram kendy at 44 dollars of taxpayer money for which you refuse to release the content is fomenting hate and division it teaches children that the merits in society are valued based on their skin color again this is shameful action on your part you have denied children access to desperately needed services special education services canceling esy and recovery services you yanked the rug out from underneath parents with days notice and the most vulnerable of our children are harmed by your persistent failures children have been harmed families have been harmed by your catastrophic lack of leadership finally school begins in six weeks five weeks really there's
072no return to school plan i get emails from teachers and administrators about your failure to provide any guidance it persists it's been a year and a half and you still give no guidance to your employees over forty 000 employees are waiting for you to stand up and lead all parents are waiting for you to stand up and lead your focus on hiring a new york based consultant shows where your priorities are you are promoting policies which devalue demoralize and divide you have mowed over parents ignored student needs and attacked merit and flouted accountability to taxpayers if anything is broken in this system it is because of you it is a single-minded lack of diversity of thought on this board and all the boards that came before it thank you your time is up next speaker
073our next speaker is olivia johnson hello members of the board and stakeholders my name is olivia johnson i'm an fcps graduate an fcps employee and a parent to three fcps students i want to thank you first and foremost for your openness in providing equity and safety to your transgender and other gender diverse students as a parent to a gender diverse child i have watched in horror as hate groups gather around virginia to attack gender diverse kids and their families transgender children are in danger the statistics on self-harm and suicide in these kids are staggering and the best way to support them and in fact prevent suicide in these kids is to affirm them i understand it's a thorny issue to accept the presence of gender non-conforming people is to unlearn a lot of what we've
074been told our whole lives about sex bodies gender and expression many parents worry about the trauma for their own children particularly with issues relating to bathrooms locker rooms and other shared spaces i hear that and i say let's work together to prevent trauma let's find solutions of safe spaces of bodily autonomy and privacy within bathrooms and locker rooms i believe we can find solutions to these problems and we don't need to keep doing things the same way we always have i have a lot of privilege as a white cis woman and i want to do my part to share what i know about my child and other gender diverse kids i welcome questions from adults in groups who may not understand but most especially i want to say this no one is performing surgery on
075these children no one is trying to force an agenda or make our kids transgender no one is giving cross-sex hormones to anyone without careful consideration from trained and compassionate doctors the only thing we are doing is affirming our children's pronouns their names and allowing them to dress and express in a way that feels authentic and yes we're asking that the community also affirm them not because we want to control you or forward our agenda but because we want to save our children from hate self-hate violence and suicide including harmful speech such as malicious dead naming and malicious misgendering in the students rights and responsibilities offers these kids a layer of protection and i applaud the board for including this the fight for equality is never ending to anyone who is pushing back on protecting trans
076kids in our schools in your arguments and rhetoric i hear the echoes of hate speech from white folks protesting school integration i hear the echoes of misogynistic culture that victim blame women who have experienced sexual harassment and assault i hear echoes of any time in history when we've sought to categorize people and assign them worth based on their abilities race sexuality religion or sex it's the same argument repeating yourself our virginia department of education along with fcps is on the right side of history here and to the entire community please believe people when they tell you who they are and what their experiences are let's protect these kids in school thank you so much [Applause] our next speaker is kat velkov my name is kat velkoff and i am a graduate of poplar tree elementary
077school rocky run middle school and south lakes high school go seahawks i will first ask those of you who are standing to please sit as i feel that standing for speakers is divisive there's a lot of tension here tonight but there is also a lot of love and that love comes from all the parents in this room on both sides of the issue reaching out to support their children and the children of this county please allow me to share a story about my family's love ten years ago i spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from a suicide attempt they couldn't pump my stomach because it had been too long and they were in constant contact with poison control because my liver was shutting down unfortunately i was allergic to the antidote they gave me
078and they broke out in hives all over my body they gave me stimulants to control the hives my mom asked what they would do if the stimulants didn't work and they had to take me off the stimulants and the antidote and the doctor said then we pray my mother slept in a chair in the hospital for two weeks straight because she loves me and i think every single parent here would do the same for their child i am here tonight because no other family should go through what mine did and no children should go through what i did i am now under the care of an excellent psychiatrist but not everyone gets the help they need in time according to the cdc queer youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide as
079their peers i am a statistic but the children in this county don't have to be trans youth with family and social support are 82 percent less likely to attempt suicide using language that includes and affirms queer trans and gender expansive youth is suicide prevention several years ago miss schultz proposed that we do away with the entire dress code and simply use the language dress appropriately the board felt the need to give a specific example of what appropriate means so students would know exactly what is allowed and what would bring disciplinary action why then would the same school board members not feel the need to give examples specific examples of hate speech if the srnr tells students how they will be disciplined it also needs to tell them how they will be protected examples of hate
080speech given to administrators during trainings do not always trickle down to staff and students regardless of what happens tonight go home and hug your kids fighting is for the adults the children deserve love please follow in my father's footsteps and make it abundantly clear that hate has no home in fairfax county public schools our next speaker is willow wookie ken is hard to follow hello i'm willa walke she her hers board member vote of both the transgender education association of greater washington and fcps pride i'm a transgender woman with kids who are in or have gone through fcps and a granddaughter i want to thank the school board for moving forward with protecting lgbtqia plus kids especially the guidance on treatment of transgender and non-binary students and updates to the students rights and responsibilities handbook
081when i first knew i was a girl and different from the other kids in my class around age six it was 1969 i had no knowledge of what being trans meant neither did my parents and certainly not my teachers i had no hope of people using my pronouns i had no hope of using a restroom where i felt comfortable i had no hope of liking p p e and middle in high school i loved doctor's notes so i could get out of pe i remember wearing my gym clothes under my street clothes so because i did not want to get undressed in front of boys i hated being exposed to their bullying and locker room behaviors i had no hope of sharing my whole self with my friends i didn't know how to explain them
082them that i was a girl i had no hope of trusting my parents i knew they would yell at me again and send me to a therapist again he told them i'd grow out of it trans and non-binary people know who they are on the inside often from an early age we may just not have the words for it i tried to deny who i am from age 6 until i was 53. i had no real hope of ever being me today science in the medical community knows that the best way to give trans and non-bearing kids hope is to affirm their gender giving trans and non-binary kids hope makes their lives better and will likely save some of their lives what has worked for me is accepting that i am trans and living as
083my gender i have an affirming family friends and job the people around me have my back what works for trans and non-binary kids is accepting them and affirming their gender giving them hope by using their pronouns giving them hope by letting them use the restroom and locker room where they feel comfortable giving them hope of being protected from bullies and give them hope you will keep their secrets safe because being trans is hard really hard and families may not understand or support their kids your visible support and words gives hope to lgbtqia kids this does not solve all of their problems but knowing someone has their back is a good start and the hat rule is a bad idea [Laughter] thank you our next speaker is sue zoldak i'd like to take this time to
084wish you all a great summer break as this may be the last time we see each other since tonight you are voting or considering whether to change the citizen participation rules perhaps you think your proposal has the appearance of fairness to have speakers selected at random that may seem on the surface to be fair to anyone that isn't familiar with how unions think did your friends give you this idea a union can send an email to a thousand members asking everyone to sign up to be chosen at random and have chosen read from a set script that they also send out if a singular parent has a new perspective that has to do with their real life experience they now have a one in one thousand chance of being heard your so-called random system gives
085power to those who have the most power already and strips power away from the very people who are least represented as each organized group grows more powerful as the audience shows here by their concerted actions your system rewards the groups more and more and the minority standalone parent less and less one could even use the word systematic bias i thought we didn't like that concept if that's a legacy you want to leave here this final day by installing systematic bias mathematically into the system go for it what i've learned is really how little you understand how your actions actually feel to the families you represent it is amazing month after month i've watched you parrot ridiculously partisan ideology and union talking points all the while claiming in your emails that you're here to represent your
086constituents we all know your job is hard harder than it looks it's tireless it's thankless etc but if you don't like your job please just step aside it is shocking that you stand up here and pretend to talk about diversity when we get emails at do better fcps every day from teachers i reiterate teachers your staff i know you guys don't like to look me in the eye which a lot i will just step aside from my comments saying my most frequently asked question is what is it like to stand up here and talk to you and i always say nobody looks me in the eye they can't even they are tired of being represented by a board that acts if the union it thinks that they are the majority kimberly knows that she is
087not the majority you make statements that are out there stating why are there so many partisan attacks against this the only reason there's any partisanship out here in the conversation is because you are partisan up there every action has an equal and opposite reaction and it is us reacting to you we hope that as we move forward into a new school year there will be a conscious change starting with the priorities that have been our stated mission statement since day one accountability that means enforcing the actual rules that you have on staff and with each other transparency that means good communication which i think you've heard many times is lacking actually parent input better leadership and most of all prioritizing and quality education our next speaker is ainea khan hi um good evening my name
088is anaya and i'm a rising junior in fcps i'm also a queer trans student and a member of the pride liberation project a coalition of lgbtq plus students working to uplift our community across fcps queer students including myself have faced discrimination in regards to our sexuality and gender orientation from both staff and students alike this discrimination has included bullying exclusion and outing many complaints discrimination to administration counselors or other trusted adults do not culminate in appropriate change or apology after my own experience of being repeatedly misgendered by a teacher of mine any appeals for help resulted in no change rather i was almost outed to my family which is a terrifying experience for any queer person scps has taken some great steps to dismantle this discriminatory environment for queer students on paper staff are no
089longer allowed to intentionally out us we also have the right to non-discriminatory accommodations that match with our gender identity and we have the right to not be dead name them for our pronouns to be respected people can also no longer use their dead names and misgender us to harass us these changes can be transformative for the average queer student in fcps especially since recent surveys have suggested that one-fourth of queer youth identify as non-binary however these new regulations will have a limited impact on the student body if you do not inform queer students of these new protections in multiple ways we're still going to attend schools scared of being being dead named and outed we're still not going to seek out counseling support because we're worried they'll out us and we're still going to face
090harassment unless you take steps to inform queer students of these new protections adopting the new changes to the srn r which explicitly state that a's new protections can help it can help inform queer students of these new changes the proposed language changes may add less than 200 words to a document over 19 000 words but these 145 words can ensure that the commendable work you've done can have an impact before this meeting you and your aide were emailed a student letter signed by 120 students with the subject line student letter sr r changes listen to the over 120 queer students and allies from every high school in fcps who have told you to adopt these changes add the new protections and rights for queer students in fcps to the srnr thank you our next speaker
091is frankie sellers good evening i would first like to congratulate miss picarski and miss sizemore heiser on your new positions on the board my name is frankie and i'm a transgender student in fcps and a co-president of the fairfax pride liberation project i've attended fcps for my entire school career and you all are most likely familiar with me by now as i have testified quite a few times i've experienced what it's like to transition and be out in high school it hasn't exactly been easy but i have been lucky enough to have my parents friends and some teachers and staff support me not everyone is so lucky a majority of the queer students in fcps are not out to their parents and that is why i am here so often my goal is to give
092a voice to those who cannot stand up here in front of you all in fear of being outed many lgbtqia plus identifying students have experienced hate from other students family and even from teachers and staff this hate might include bullying and taunting harassment dead naming and misgendering and as well as outing these all fall under the same umbrella of transphobic and homophobic hate and these all contribute to the extremely high rates of suicide and depression in the lgbtq plus community they can also all be minimized one single supportive person in a young trans person's life can cut the likeliness of suicide in half that could be a friend a family member or a teacher or staff member amending the srnr to designate dead naming and misgendering as bullying will absolutely minimize this fcps has already
093taken the huge leap of adopting new policies and protections for transgender students so why draw the line at the addition of less than 150 words to the srnr just before this meeting an email titled student letter s r r changes was sent to you with signatures from over 120 different students from every high school in fcps calling you to add these words that affirm and validate every queer student in your schools if that truly is your goal then it shouldn't be even be a question whether or not to add these words if you want to show your students that our county and our school board is against the 200 plus anti-lgbtq bills passed this year then you must continue your strides of protecting transgender students and keep reaffirming that support i thank you all for
094listening and working as hard as you all do and i hope we see continual growth in these steps forward to making fcps an open and welcoming space for all students thank you for your time our next speaker is air queen hello i'm glad for the opportunity to speak here again especially during this week which is non-binary people people's week my name is air queen i use they them pronouns i am a transgender non-binary music teacher in fcps and i graduated from fairfax high school in 2009. i've spoken to you before and told you some parts of my story as a queer and transgender person but today i'm here because our queer and transgender students deserve to be treated like the human beings that they are specifically malicious dead naming and malicious misgendering need to be
095explicitly included as hate speech in the updated srnr being misgendered or dead named can be devastating to a trans person but we understand that not all misgendering or dead naming is malicious here is an example i was one of dr brabrand's students when you were the main man at fairfax high school and when i was your student i went by a different name if you were to call me if you were to come up to me and call me by my previous name and then immediately correct yourself i would understand that you did not intentionally call me the wrong name changing language can be difficult and it's a process for everyone however if you or anyone else purposefully or repeatedly called me the wrong name or used the wrong pronouns without self-correction apology or an
096effort to improve that would be malicious misgendering or dead naming and that is absolutely hate speech hate speech of course is considered to be language that does harm but for our trans youth this purposeful disregard for who they have asserted themselves to be leads to higher rates of depression suicidality and in many cases actual suicide i hope that the lives of children are never considered to be so unimportant that the protection of a marginalized group is cast aside because doing so might be politically easier of course transgender people are not the only people who get maliciously misgendered think of how many times young boys get called girl as an insult when they don't conform exactly to western society's notion of what is considered manly the last time i checked being a girl is not a
097bad thing but when used in that context as an insult that is malicious misgendering including malicious misgendering under hate speech will give protections to our transgender youth but we must remember that when people from marginalized communities are shown care and compassion the entire community benefits including malicious misgendering and dead naming under hate speech is a signal to everyone our trans youth their families other students teachers staff and everyone else in the fairfax county public schools family that we care about all of our students not only that we care but we will protect them our transgender non-binary and gender non-conforming students deserve the same care and compassion that we say that we stand for now it's time to put it on paper and make it official protect trans students defend trans lives thank you so much
098our first video testimony is leah harris hello members of the school board my name is leah harris and i am an fcps parent who supports palestinian freedom as well as freedom of expression when i found out what was happening to my school board member ms abrahar omaesh i needed to speak out in solidarity with her i have been appalled by the escalating calls for her to take down her may 13 social media post which accurately characterized israeli state violence against palestinians and now the zionist organization of america zoa is also trying to suppress her free speech in its june 21st letter to you and superintendent braband zoa uses the highly controversial ihra working definition of anti-semitism and its examples that falsely conflate legitimate criticism of israel with anti-semitism zoa is using this distorted definition to
099try to smear ms omesh for her remarks about palestine and to pressure you to make her take down her posts now you might be aware that similar attempts to stifle free speech have been happening around the country and now they are happening here this ihra definition has been weaponized in title six complaints on numerous college campuses against students and professors who speak accurately as ms omash did about israeli state violence and human rights abuses in palestine and i worry about the damage that could be done and that has already been done will this backlash have a chilling effect on others who might now refrain from speaking out against israeli state violence for fear of being attacked like ms zomesh will fcps teachers now be afraid to teach about palestine could students who do a class
100project that criticizes the israeli nation state be censored or accused of anti-semitism whose narrative will be allowed and whose narrative will be absent i trust that you will do the right thing and will not cave to this pressure from zoa or any other quarter and that you'll refuse to be complicit in silencing one of your own what happens next will send a very clear message to the entire fcps community of course fight anti-semitism alongside all forms of discrimination and hate but please reject this harmful ihra definition and thank you for all you're doing to create a safer and more affirming educational environment for all fcps students our next video is amanda campbell [Applause] good evening my name is amanda campbell and i'm speaking tonight as the vice president of fairfax county septa septa general membership
101passed a resolution in january that includes calling on local pta units to advocate on the fidelity of implementation of special education services and programs virginia pta adopted a statewide resolution supporting the same in march of 2021. examining fidelity of implementation across special education services and programs is part of the proposed charge for the advisory committee for students with disabilities tonight we are here to share concerns that have been brought to us by the community regarding the fidelity of implementation of extended school year services otherwise known as esy after fcps sent out the june 24th and june 30th emails regarding changes to esy implementation this year septa began receiving numerous communications from both members and the larger special education community we reached out to fcps leadership asking for a town hall to address the concerns and
102began collecting questions and concerns from the community via a google form while fcps's most recent communication at the july 13th work session indicated that all esy concerns have been addressed as of the email that went out friday july 9th septa has continued to receive questions and concerns from both families and staff we will send a complete report on the concerns and questions we've received to both fcps leadership and the school board as soon as possible some of the overall topics of the questions we've received both from our form and otherwise include eligibility for private tutoring and therapy reimbursement in lieu of fcps provided esy how to make such a request and concerns regarding the equity of implementation across fcps of such a request what options are available to families if their child was moved to
103esy session 2 and they are no longer able to attend staff concerns regarding the inconsistency of communication surrounding incentives offered for esy employees concerns that staff are not appropriately trained or qualified to address the needs in their esy classrooms concerns that esy ieps are not being implemented as written an apprehension regarding staffing levels for the fall and what that means for implementation of school year services and any esi services that may need to be delivered in the fall virginia pta's aforementioned resolution also calls for robust parent communication regarding special education programs and fidelity of implementation we renew our request for a town hall with fcps leadership to address esy questions and concerns for special education families and staff a town hall will help to improve both equity and implementation and transparency we must also express
104concern that the issues facing esi this year may likely continue in future summers as the impact from the pandemic continues to become clear we urge fcps to be proactive and plan for such contingencies now to ensure the fidelity of esy implementation in summers to come thank you our final video is robert rigby good evening school board members dr brabrand's leadership team wonderful clerks and community parents guardian siblings family members and students my name is robert rigby this is my 22nd or 23rd year testifying to the board i'm co-chair of an organization called fairfax county public schools pride which is an lgbtq plus stakeholders and allies for our school system i just wanted to say thank you especially to the school board for all the work that you've done for my community uh and and for
105those on the previous or all the i mean the tremendous work against against odds uh uh that you did for us um there's been some animosity we've seen it uh in augusta county in the valley in warren county uh by the mountains and in neighboring london um of course uh in years past we've seen equivalent uh animosity uh and meanness at school board meetings that's why fcps pride came into came into existence six years ago to raise a voice of reason and civility against that um anyway just thank you for all that you've done thank you for the work that you're doing tonight it's important work uh and for for what we're going to do in the future all the communities come together but it's the school board that's taken the heat to do it
106i hope by this time this airs on thursday we haven't seen that sort of animosity in this room we've had the kkk flyers in the community but i hope it doesn't come in here because it comes in here it get trickles down to the schools a plug of course uh for the pride liberation project uh there really are student voices that that have never been raised at least in my time uh in this form uh so so listen to them talk to them respond to them do some of what they ask a final thing i think your changes to the sign up process are tremendous they open it up to everybody you don't have to get up at 6 45 or be privileged to be part of an organized group our group may get lost
107spot uh but we're we're really excited that then everyone will get a spot as dr hampton said the voices the people that most need to be heard at the school board now have a better chance of speaking and being heard here have a great evening and recess goodbye agenda item 3.01 confirmation of action taken and closed meeting 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 keys gemara for the motion i moved to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who possessed two knives with blade lengths
108of three inches or greater at school and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent is there a second miss tollen i will call for the vote all those in favor of the reassignment denying the reassignment appeal ms corbett sanders mr frisch miss mclaughlin miss cohen miss eisenheiser miss keys gamara miss tollen miss darina koufax miss marin and myself all those opposed all those abstaining ms omesh dr anderson that passes agenda item 3.02 srnr i call on mr frisch for motion thank you i move that the school board adopt regulation 2601.34 p student rights and responsibilities as detailed in the agenda item is there a second miss cohen mr frisch would you like to speak to your motion i would thank you madam chair tonight we are voting on a new student rights and
109responsibilities document which uh explains expectations for students behavior and adult responses designed to enhance school safety and create a fair equitable and supportive school environment like our school division this document has been a work in progress when it comes to increasing equity and achieving our strategic objective of seeing every child by name and by need in the face of alarming discipline disparities experienced by students of color and students with special needs my veteran colleagues on the board can tell you about the work done in recent years to make the srnr less biased and punitive and more focused on restorative justice that spirit of progress continues in this revised document talk to any gender expansive or transgender student and they will tell you about the difficulties they've encountered navigating school activities and facilities or the pain
110they've experienced being repeatedly dead named or misgendered by classmates and staff for the first time ever as an uh extension of the school board's nondiscrimination policy fcps regulations and virginia code this document specifically identifies several rights of particular interest to gender expansive and transgender students among them are the right to use facilities that align with their gender identity the right to be called by their chosen name and pronoun the right to non-disclosure of their gender gender identity or sexual orientation and the right to receive supports that ensure equitable access to all school facilities and activities additionally the document protects students from being intentionally outed or maliciously dead named or misgendered also a first in recent months school board meetings in neighboring counties have descended into chaos as extremists attempt to deny these students their very
111existence attack their humanity and object to their right to thrive in public school in year past former members of the school board have shared similar sentiments from this very deus we still hear such comments during public hearings from time to time to the gender expansive and transgender students and their families who have witnessed these attacks on their simple human dignity i am sorry you deserve much much better [Applause] tonight's vote will not sweep away the pain and hurt you have experienced at the hands of careless peers or adults who should know better but the changes we approve in this new student rights and responsibilities document demonstrate our commitment to your success and safety in fairfax county public schools they are long overdue and i am incredibly proud to offer this motion and to serve on
112a school board that is ready to chart a new path thank you miss cohen would you like to speak to your second [Applause] it's awfully hard to follow that very well said mr frisch every child deserves the opportunity to be successful and this starts with feeling safe and supported we have an obligation to protect all of our kids this document is a start to making sure that that is a reality for all our students so that every child who walks into the door of a fairfax county public school knows that they belong i'm so happy to second this and i will be even more excited to vote for him thank you miss mclaughlin please go ahead yes um in addition to expressing support for um the heartfelt words of my colleagues who are making and
113seconding the motion um dr brabrand i do also want to once again uh call attention to you and your team and especially dr michelle boyd um this has always been a passion of mine from now more than a decade of how do we have a srnr that really does help students to learn to be their best selves to learn what their responsibilities are but also what their rights are and at every step of the way you have been a great partner on that and i will be very grateful um that with your legacy we are a better school system because of it um but for dr boyd her incredible patients uh you know it is hard to come into a brand new school system and you just work tirelessly to engage with this entire board
114to hear our perspectives on how we hope to improve it i know it was a substantial amount of your your time at this at the office um to dedicate that to understanding how important it is to all of us and so i i want to personally thank you as well i look forward to each year as we continue to improve upon this document but your dedication your commitment and your shared desire for us to get there it shows here tonight so thank you so much miss corbett sanders yes thank you madam chair and i too want to thank dr boyd for her um collaborative uh approach to this uh work it's greatly appreciated and i want to thank you mr frisch for also uh talking about you know we are always striving to be a
115more perfect or a better system and the work that has gone into the student rights and responsibilities over the past few years has really reflected that continuum of always striving to do more to ensure that our students feel safe and secure in our schools but i wanted to bring attention today to a fundamental shift in our approach to the student rights and responsibilities and this is where in the past it was always a document that people referred to for discipline more from a legalistic approach and there's a shift this year to one that talks about rights what and when you talk about rights you talk about human dignity and uh that you start with the dignity of the individual student and how what rights they have to experience a safe secure and nurturing environment and
116then you talk about what are the responsibilities associated with the freedoms and the rights that are provided to our given to our students in our schools and i see this as a fundamental shift dr boyd and i really appreciate you working with us to achieve that shift and uh so with that i am very happy to support this and to encourage that not only in our in our schools but in our society encouraging students and our community members to understand what those rights are but associated with rights our responsibility thank you thank you are there any other school board members miss darina koufax yes thank you and uh i'm happy to follow um miss corbett sanders as you noted this is a continuum this isn't this is a continuation of efforts that began a while
117back and will continue to grow i do want to point out i am yesterday when we talked about examples of hate speech i didn't feel like it was inclusive enough and so i want to thank dr boyd for working late into the evening with many of us um to ensure that under the regulation on page 19 there is now a complete listing of what hate speech is and that includes malicious dead naming and malicious misgendering along with others so i want to um i i just want to people to understand that the intent talking about it yesterday was more was less of a compression and more of an expansion so thank you for all your work my colleagues uh staff it's extremely important that we continue this work and as we grow and listen um
118our our student we are listening to our students we are listening to our to our teachers we are listening to the community so thank you all for being here tonight talking to us and we will continue to work and grow this documents together thank you mr kofax and i'll just tell my colleagues if you wish to speak please put your hand up because the lights are not working so okay uh go ahead mr chaudhary um first off i want to give a huge thank you to all of our incredible students who took the time to come out and speak to us tonight it is hard being your true self and saying that not just in front of friends and family but in front of your entire community and showing our affirmation as a community toward
119inclusivity tonight is going to be a defining moment for us you know in 2015 when i was 11 years old the fairfax county school board voted to ban discrimination against students on the basis of gender identity 98 of the room in that meeting booed and jeered and yet still our board decided we are going to do right by our students we are going to do what respects the dignity and the humanity of each and every child in this school system so i just want to thank everyone for their work and division leadership especially dr boyd thank you so much thank you and i will just suffer i know there has been tremendous work done on this document through the year through the years and and this year is no exception so thank you to my
120colleagues for working so hard with staff to really get this right and and to dr boyd who i was texting late into the afternoon um to get uh to see if she was ready and she has worked tremendously hard on this so thank you very much and i see there are others who may want to speak now apologize okay miss omesh oh you too thank you so much uh thank you to our staff uh and community uh for coming out for having the courage to speak uh and sharing our your thoughts with us over the course of the past several months i've benefited from speaking directly to students and families about their thoughts and experiences with the student rights and responsibilities i know students often joke and i'm sure pranav can relate that this is
121the booklet that's given to kids every year who really reads it until they get in trouble but emphasizing again the place that this has to ensure that our students have their rights upheld that they have opportunities to ensure that they're included in our schools and these conversations have allowed have highlighted the importance of this document as one of the major ways that our division can convey the climate and the culture that we seek to facilitate in our schools as such i am proud to support these updates this evening especially those that name and outline the rights that our students can expect while learning within the division we must reject bullying malicious dead naming malicious misgendering these aren't controversial issues and these are basic demonstrations of an inclusive community and the community that we seek to
122build i'm grateful that my colleagues supported the effort and the staff went ahead back and forth with me over the course of many days to ensure that we elevate the equal opportunity component within our student rights and responsibilities booklet and that our student rights be presented at the top so that again we affirm and reaffirm the culture that we seek to create and that we fight for every child no matter their background in this county i'm of course uh continuing to look at additional ways in the future that we can further modify the student rights responsibilities so that we move finally towards a culture of restorative justice completely as we continue to do this over the years that we provide care that we invest in mental health supports as opposed to discipline so that we
123catch up with ourselves in the 21st century in educating the whole child and every aspect of the child so i'm pleased to be supporting this here today i want to affirm and reaffirm that the bullying of our children is not a controversial issue and that we can all come together to ensure that our county is a place where everybody belongs dr anderson oh thank you so much i just want to briefly say um thank you very much dr this is not on to dr boyd and um don't want to forget the rest of the staff because i know we put them through their paces uh mr foster what's that deb scott thank you and mr falcone i don't know if he's here and possibly helen kennedy i know we torture you all and really stretch
124it to your limits but i think we have a really good product here i really want to highlight some of the things that are new here which you have highlighted on the front page so that parents can automatically go see what are the new things just in case that they have you know a good basic understanding of what has happened in the past i think that really helps to hone in their um eyes into what the new changes are so thank you for incorporating that similarly to miss dennoir kofax i do want to say thank you while i know there was some concern regarding some of the statements that i know i made and also miss i call faxes regarding um what was on page 61 i believe it's not to erase it but it's
125to make sure that it was more appropriately listed so i appreciate the help and kind of finding a space where that could live so thank you again dr boyd for being receptive i think many of us sent you the very same um idea and it showed up here and thank you and because we do need to we do need to do this for our students because that's the least that we can do so that our kids can feel protected so thank you all miss seismore heiser um just briefly i'm in agreement with what many people have said tonight but i think this is really important just to flag one that um our srnr has really moved to understanding that we're educating students and that's educating students reproductive citizens we're not here to punish students we're
126here to educate them and give them a chance to be youth and teach them how to be in the world we're not here to punish and so i really appreciate the the focus on restorative justice the focus on learning the focus away from punitive and on support and i especially end on understanding behavior and what behavior is trying to communicate but i especially appreciate the additions of ensuring that all of our students especially our trans students are gender expansive non-binary lgbtq students and all of our students are equally seen as human valued belonging this is a school for everybody i am so glad for the work of my colleagues for dr boyd and their team for ensuring that our discipline procedures our students rights and responsibilities reflect the fact that everybody belongs here thank you
127thank you seeing that no other board members uh wish to speak i will go ahead okay sorry we didn't see you you didn't we didn't see your hand here go ahead miss baron from behind you yes i know i am so excited to have this document be approved i'm so excited for our students um to have us affirm publicly that we welcome you and you have your place here um i think putting into practice our regulation 2603 um for fcps's non-discriminatory policies to include gender identity and a lot of other protections just shows um how what we really feel for our students and like was just said it's not to be a punitive document overall this document i remember a year ago i was pouring over this and with the transition to dr boyd thank
128you for all of your team's work it's been a real pleasure to work through this process and i'm really proud of this i'm proud to use this as a parent in the coming year with my students as i try to address um you know how they grow and their behaviors and it will be helpful to me as a parent too so thank you very much i'm very and thank you to my colleagues i think this shows when we really work as a board and focus on policy that we can really do amazing things for for our kids so um eager to vote for this okay now we are definitely ready so i will be calling for the vote the motion before us is on the screen all those in favor miss corbett sanders mr frisch
129miss omesh miss mclaughlin miss cohen dr anderson ms sizemore heiser miss keys gemara miss tolin miss derna koufax miss maron and myself that vote is unanimous the motion passes thank you so much okay agenda item 3.03 sr3 spending plan i call on miss marin for the motion thank you i moved at the school board uh smoothly sorry i moved that the school board approved the sr-3 funding plan is there a second second ms darren at kofax miss marin would you like to speak to your motion yes this is a really momentous time for us in public education funding despite the reason for the funding being a global pandemic but nonetheless the staff with the guidance of our board has provided an initial framework to address the most pressing challenges ahead for our students and staff
130and those are addressing unfinished learning and attending to students needs including the academic social emotional and mental health needs so that our our students can be present and receptive during their learning so as such the funding i'm overwhelming is focused on these two areas and you know i think the board recognizes that there is a great responsibility in the spending of these funds and as such the board has been closely reviewing the work to align the funds with student needs and we've been listening to public input that has come to us in many forms and that includes our public hearing an electronic comment form focus groups and communication to board members and staff so i'm eager to see how we can continue to use the budget to fund the values and priorities of fcps and
131although this is one-time federal funding it can be the foundation in the next level of investments that public education has long been overdue for thank you thank you miss mayor and mr matt kofax would you like to speak not at this time i'll speak to the amendment i anyone else would like to speak okay i call on ms mclaughlin for an amendment thank you i moved that the school board authorized the superintendent to develop and submit a formal plan to the state in order to fully access all federal sr-3 grant funds the superintendent will present to the board an advanced copy of this official plan prior to the august 26 business meeting and its submission to the state on september 1st only time-sensitive sr-3 expenditures should occur prior to the board's august formal approval at
132a future september 2021 work session the superintendent will present more detailed information on the sr3 plan including its targeted goals operational timelines and accountability metrics the superintendent will work with the board to ensure these sr3 funds are utilized to improve student academic outcomes and social emotional learning the division superintendent is granted authority to make minor changes or technical modifications to the sr-3 plan but must provide timely written notice to the board all state filed amendments to the plan that reach or exceed a hundred thousand dollars must be authorized by the school board is there a second that's corbett sanders seconding actually can i just have a clarification first this seems to be more of a substitute motion than an amendment and may i just offer that this is a substitute motion for the main motion
133uh we have jason morgan our parliamentarian is it better to term this a substitute motion rather than an amendment because it's really substituting out the language of the main motion if you it's fine to amend to strike the entire main motion and replace it with the amended language okay that avoids some of the complexities that come in with a substitute motion okay so i would just preface it my colleagues by saying i move to strike the main motion and replace it with the following language and i'm happy to second it thank you miss mclaughlin would you like to speak to that yes i would um as uh our colleagues are aware it was during our work session just 48 hours ago that we had the opportunity to have an in-depth conversation with one another on
134the initial proposal that the superintendent has provided on the sr-3 funds that fcps has been designated to qualify for through this work with the state i want to first express my appreciation to superintendent brabrand and our cfo lee burden in particular as well as all the team members involved as many are aware the superintendent and his team worked very hard under very tight timeline we were only notified of these funds in may and with less than two months uh they uh put together an initial proposal uh spoke with board members uh in two by two conversations on monday but we were not able to come together and have the conversation until as i noted 48 hours ago um this is substantial amount of money we're talking about over uh 188 million dollars and we do
135want to make sure that while we did have a public hearing about where people would like us to target our monies we have not had an opportunity to get the greater details from the superintendent's team they're still working on that so it's important for the public and for the board to have those details before we would formally approve a plan that will go to the state and so i i do want my colleagues to know that uh i did spend the last 48 hours working with the superintendent and lee burden uh to really make sure that the language before you was something that they felt uh would be operationally uh appropriate and um you know something that they felt uh is achievable to serving the needs of the system so i i do hope very
136much that you will recognize this substitute um striking the language and substituting in this language as the main motion really uh serves our ability to not only do our best work with one another on such a sizable amount of funds that will span over two years time but also that it will give us a chance to work with the superintendent's team in the interim for any other questions or information that muay mu wants before we we vote on august 26th so i truly hope you will all support uh the the the uh proposed language uh before you miss corbett sanders would you like to speak to your second yes thank you and um it's i had hoped that miss darynnak kofax would speak to this because of the excellent work that she did in managing
137an incredible work session on tuesday it was greatly appreciated because what we found on tuesday was that there is a general appreciation by everybody on this board for the great work that had been done by the superintendent and his team in a very short period of time but the esser funds are unlike other funding uh by the federal government in that it has a requirement to have extensive community input and out outreach it also has a pretty prescriptive approach to how the funding can be used and that funding includes a an array of things including learning loss workforce development career development a career in technical education a whole series of areas as well as improvements for our buildings to make sure that if we ever were in the situation that we found ourselves in for
138the past 18 months that we have the best hvac systems that we have broadband in our buildings we have all the infrastructure necessary to be successful and we were notified in may the school system of the exact amount of money that would be made available to fairfax county public schools by the federal government and we have a very short deadline of having to provide by august 1st a general framework and by september 1st to the state a requirement for how we are going to expend the funds and so this is really a work in progress and rather than just green lighting they're giving us 188.6 million dollars we're going to put it in a line item list uh we felt that it was important to have a little bit more comprehensive planning around the um
139the esser funds grant as well as better understanding as a board and with the community how this is just one part of the overall funding of fairfax county public schools we have 3.2 billion dollars that also contributes to that is the foundation for the operational success and that this 188.6 is a very much appreciated um funding stream from the federal government but it's short term and we will have to over time make modifications as we determine the success of um the the expenditures and make adjustments and that so miss uh mclaughlin's motion what it does is allow us to have that comprehensive planning and also to have that continuous dialogue with defined metrics so i'm happy to support it thank you mr kofax thank you and uh i want to say that i am grateful
140to staff dr brabrand mr smith miss burden and miss wiggington and our board leadership for enabling us to have a productive work session on tuesday i really appreciated the opportunity for us to hear and listen to each other i thank staff for your original proposal and getting us your suggestions based upon your expertise and understanding of what we what we need to see when we what we may see i should say when our students return five days in the fall but as a board we all know we take our responsibility for fiduciary oversight seriously and we talked about looking for accountability and strategic oversight i appreciate this substitute motion that allows us more time for further analysis i also appreciate the fact that the superintendent and his team listen to our board in the work
141session and made some suggested changes within 48 hours i particularly appreciated adding a project team for oversight that was very important for me to hear as i mentioned during the work session the outcomes we expect from these esser dollars allow us to continue working towards the same goals that we've been striving for in our strategic plan we will not understand what we're facing until school starts but i am truly optimistic that with the hard work that we have seen you put into it prior to the work session since the work session that we will have the system in place to have a successful start in the fall so thank you all for working hard to get this done i appreciate it and i am very supportive of miss mclaughlin and miss corbett sanders for getting
142putting the time in to get this language right and for us to be able to use this is our substitute motion thank you ms omesh thank you i do plan to support this amendment i'm looking forward to being able to rigorously evaluate where the monies end up going and to make sure we're planning effectively for a massive sum of money that i hope will go into direct services more than anything else i do want to take this moment though to also celebrate some of the pieces that staff insured were included here not only massive investments in special education but also a focus on the academic and socio-emotional needs of our students especially given a challenging year i am especially excited to see the investment in parent liaisons who've been exceptional throughout this year and who
143have been essential in ensuring our students know about what resources are available to them and that our families are able to connect with their schools and then the noteworthy amount of money going into translations and language access to really eliminate barriers and expand opportunity for families that otherwise would not have been able to connect which is an essential component of course in student success i commend miss lloyd and dr williams and her team and even community groups like lupe that had a massive advocacy effort to ensure that we prioritize access for all our families no matter what language they speak and that's all reflected uh in the in the listing of what staff have included for our students uh in the in the current proposal looking ahead of course um i have i am grateful
144i do want to thank dr brabrand miss burden and miss mr smith and team of course for their collaboration on concerns that were brought up at the at the work session to hold a future opportunity in which we're going to be able to review the specifics of the school-based plans in particular to see how we might be able to standardize to ensure that the majority of our monies go to direct services for the academic and mental health needs of our students before we spend and then of course to ensure that we're regularly monitoring throughout that time to use these funds uh uh in a way that we can adjust and and adjust accordingly to make sure that they're meeting our student needs and fulfilling the outcomes we hope to see so i appreciate that addition
145and look forward to further accountability from the amendment that has been presented miss marin please go ahead yes thank you again you know it's really an exciting time to be able to work on this funding and as budget chair this is really you know the exclamation point of a year of just ongoing changes and needs from federal funding coming in and i appreciate miss mclaughlin's work these last 48 hours and that certainly continues to add on from the work that myself and mranak kofax have done in the weeks uh leading up to this to gather input from the board to create you know mechanisms to get input and conduct meetings i think that it's most in line with our committee structure to have the main motion come from the budget chair as i did make
146it this evening and to have the amendment go forward to the board for a vote on this um i think that the amendment is very detailed and i think it is more appropriate to make it as an amendment and since um i i wasn't closely involved in this i'd appreciate it if we carried on as we tend to do with the motion standing as it is so i am not in support of substituting this motion but i'm happy to vote for it as an amendment thank you for those comments miss maron is there anyone else who would like to point of speak madam chair yes go ahead mr ferris is the motion an amendment or a substitution it is an amendment mr frisch thank you okay i will call for the vote the motion on
147the amendment uh the amendment is before us on the screen please if we could get that up it was very long all those in favor of miss mclaughlin's amendment please raise your hand hold on i i the staff is missing the part in terms of where it says i move to strike the initial language substitute in this language to amend to mend the main motion strike strike strike there he goes yeah strike yeah well no no that would be i moved to strike the existing language and amend it with the following that be right mr morgan yeah thank you is it good miss mclaughlin of the main motion so you know what language you're talking about the existing language of the main motion and amend it to the following okay we are ready to vote
148all those in favor the motion is on the screen please raise your hands miss corbett sanders mr frisch miss omesh miss mclaughlin miss cohen dr anderson massimo heiser ms keis gamara miss tolin miss sternakofax and myself all those opposed miss marin um and that uh passes so i'm still learning are we going back now yes where's the language now we will go back to the main emotion um as amendment amended by miss mclaughlin's language uh if nobody wishes to speak no okay we'll go straight to a vote all those in favor of the motion as amended raise your hands miss cohen mr fritch i'm sorry miss corbett sanders mr fresh miso mesh miss mclaughlin miss cohen dr anderson miss eisemar heiser miss keys gemara miss tolin miss darna kofax miss marin and myself excellent that
149passes unanimously thank you thank you chair picarsky thank you for flattering me with ms cohen always agenda item 3.04 fiscal year 22 office of auditor general risk assessment and audit plan i call on ms keys gemara for the motion i move that the school board approved the fy 22 oag audit plan is there a second miss tollin miss kisgamara would you like to speak to your motion i would um first of all it's been a pleasure to serve as the audit chair this year and i thank miss cole for working with us so consistently as we try to figure out how we could use this office to enhance the information that the school board receives and to make sure that the community understood that we had an independent resource to evaluate and bring information uh
150to the board i'd like to bring to the community's attention that there's a couple of things that i think will be of interest one of them is the business continuity plan as well as the i.t review both of which will have a project management component to try to make sure that we begin to evaluate and continue to monitor not begin but also continue to monitor proper oversight there was also some extensive conversation during our work session that we wanted to be able to use the auditor general's office to help us to oversee the esser funds and so ms coe has agreed to begin that initial process and she will be coming back to the audit committee as well as the board should we find that more uh that it is more involved than we initially
151thought and then finally um we are in the we just completed the first year of the special education review i like to look at it as a diagnostic review and we did delay that discussion so that we could have a more comprehensive discussion regarding esser but we hope to reschedule that as early as uh september so that we can move forward and we are work moving into the phase where we do more community outreach so i wanted the community to understand the quality work that is coming out of our auditor general's office and uh we are so appreciative to have that independent resource so that we can um do our job in a in a highly professional way so thank you miss ko and that is my um summary i urge everyone to support this
152plan thank you miss keys gomorrah miss tolin would you like to speak to your second yes please um i would also like to um express gratitude to miss ko and her staff for the incredible work that they they do just so everyone understands the report that we are voting on tonight besides some of the important changes and discussions that we had that ms keiser talked about just in general what we're doing is setting out a plan for the um our office of the auditor general for the next year and they took a very careful look and analysis talking to i think it was over 20 leadership team members discussing with the audit committee including our citizen members um and and looking at a long list of potential audit topics for this upcoming year and boiled
153it down to looking at our community use programs our employee evaluation process and as ms keys camaro mentioned our it platform implementation and hardware acquisition and management and then in addition we have already ongoing audit projects in business continuity and our special education review so it's a busy office because on top of that they're of course you know following up on all the recommendations from previous you know audits that were done um they have a fraud waste and abuse inquiry line that they manage and and handle all of those um types of requests that come in throughout the year and do lots and lots of outreach and education across the school district so all of that is included in this report that i am happy to support and move forward this evening and thank you
154miss cow and your staff once again thank you are there other board members miss corbett sanders thank you i just wanted to uh thank the audit committee members for their excellent work this year as well as ms coe and your whole team you truly you truly make us proud uh fairfax county public schools the school board was one of the first to have an independent audit function and you are a trailblazer and i know that many people come to look at your operations because of the professionalism and your commitment to helping others learn this important skill so that all so that their organizations can benefit from your expertise and i know that our organization does as well i also want to thank you because after the esser funds discussion on tuesday you got a lot
155of feedback from this board about the these funds and the importance of the audit function in oversight of how the funds actually get spent and you really turned it around quickly to make sure that we address that concern that you address that concern so thank you very much miss omesh thank you i wanted to highlight two particular pieces and thanking miss ko and team especially number one i know the last time she presented we had a conversation about additional ways that we can be innovative and creative as to how to utilize the auditor general's office and i'm grateful that we started that conversation at the work session comparing divisions and seeing that we're comparable when it comes to budgeting and uh the size of our team but then perhaps uh thinking of further ways that
156we can uh benefit from what others do and then secondly building off of what ms corbyn sanders mentioned all given all the amazing work that's already being done and slated as misstolen highlighted uh the incredible audit team is still willing um and and you know agreed to collaborate with us i was grateful for unanimous support from my colleagues in moving forward in evaluation of how ester funds will be spent particularly those funds that are going to be on the school-based level uh to evaluate that as a part of the audit plan for the coming year since it is a massive amount of money that's going to be distributed locally so appreciate the team and looking forward to seeing that as a component of what we just discussed in the broader esser evaluation project ms mclaughlin
157yes i know it's late and we've had a lot on our plate but i i did want to take this opportunity to also express my appreciation to ms coe i know in particular that i tend to ask a lot of questions and and requests for how we can best utilize the office of the auditor general and you were always just very gracious in taking the time to answer my detailed questions and to help us find solutions and i also want to thank dr brabrand you continue to be the type of leader who looks at the office of the auditor general as an asset to the school system and you set the tone and from that i i continue to appreciate how you and your team continue to look at the the valuable partnership that the
158oag office as an extension of the board provides uh so that we can continue to build public confidence uh in uh the 10th largest school system in the united states so i'm very excited about what you've drafted and prepared for us and look forward to supporting it seeing that nobody else would like to speak i will go ahead and call for the vote the motion before us is on the screen get on the screen all those in favor miss corbett sanders mr frisch miss mclaughlin miss cohen dr anderson miss seismor heiszer miss keys gamara uh miss tolin miss dairnac kofax miso mesh is ms marin up there miss marin and myself that vote is unanimous thank you we are moving right along agenda item 3.05 advisory committee charges i call on miss keisgamara for the
159motion i move that the school board approved the charges for 2021-2022 for the following school board citizen advisory committees adult and community education advanced academic programs career and technical education facilities planning advisory council human resources minority student achievement oversight school health and students with disabilities advisory committee as detailed in the agenda item is there a second i will second but i i have one piece could you read that that second line again the last line i thought you said students with disabilities that one that's what it says okay that one should have been removed okay i'll read it without it yes okay the whole thing okay i moved the school board approved the charges for the 2021-2022 school year for the following school board citizen advisory committees adult and community education advanced academic programs career
160and technical education facility planning advisory council human resources so sorry ms miss keisgamaro there's one more i think they also failed to remove the advanced academic program so if you have to read it without that one too go ahead and if she could i'm so sorry i just wanna make sure she accurately gets there okay so let me just make sure i understand i'm deleting students with disabilities as well as advanced academics yes okay all right is it okay just to say i'm deleting that or you need me to read the whole thing i think without objection here i have an objection okay there's an objection okay um go ahead i guess and and re-read it and [Music] wait sorry i think there's some confusion that i can provide and then let us just get
161get through this you know mine just a minute miss keys gemara can you go ahead and re-read it and then we'll have a second okay i move that the school board approved the charges for 2021-2022 for the following school board citizen advisory committees adult and community education career and technical education facilities planning advisory council human resources minority student achievement oversight school health is detailed in the agenda item is there a second thank you a second okay miss keisgamara would you like to speak to your motion okay miss dr anderson yes i just want to offer one clarification because i think this is pretty self-explanatory um three items were pulled from that um approval list from the consent from that list including title one which i had asked for that to be pulled for us to
162have some further discussions and earlier this evening mr mesh asked for the students with disabilities as well as the advance academic ones to be pulled and that is why they're not part of the motion mr cofax go ahead yes so as a liaison to the advanced academic programs i was not informed of this and i'm i've never had a charge removed before without a greater consensus because the committee brings the charges to us so i i am confused about the process here i am very confused about the process ms cohen no and i agree i was just contacted by my liaison to acsd who also was unaware of the charge being pulled miss corbett sanders i too think this is a confusing process one of the things that uh for the community to understand is
163that we are blessed in fairfax county by a huge number of citizens that are appointed to these advisory boards and every advisory board or advisory committee has a chair who works with the liaison from the school board throughout the year and that liaison then just a couple of weeks ago we went through the process of having each one of these committees present not only their work of the year but they also presented their recommended charges and it is one of respect that if we were not in agreement with those charges then we should have had a discussion with the committee chair at that time and so i have people reaching out to me saying wait a second how did that happen and it creates a challenge for all of us when those when that situation
164happens i encourage people to be to work closely with their citizen appointees and with the chairs of these groups so that we have that continuous dialogue throughout the year i do want to commend the work led by miss miss seismer heiser over the past year where pec worked and is in progress of refining our advisory committee structure and actually having a handbook that will provide guidance and part of that handbook is going to include how do you develop the chart the recommendations for the charge for the following year and so i don't think that we should be removing charges without at a minimum the committee chair and the liaison to the committee knowing about it and so if i can respectfully ask that we have that conversation miss keys gemara was actually i'm going to
165call on miss maron real quick if that's okay go ahead ms marin yeah thanks i also agree that it's confusing about the charge this has actually been confusing since i was on human resources advisory committee before i was even elected who sets the charge is it the advisory committee or the board i know this is part of the effort that our public engagement committee is trying to clarify um so i i don't support just taking things off without the board having a chance to vote on whether that should happen so i'd like to see as much on here as we thought was going to be i don't want to see committees removed or at least not by amendment you know if not my amendment go ahead mosquitoes gamora so um as you could tell i
166was aware when i was told to mark it out um can i ask for our parliamentarian for some guidance as to how this type of thing is treated i know for the consent agenda we do treat it this way but for this type of motion is it just a matter of pulling it when a board member has a disagreement or what would be the appropriate procedure go ahead mr morgan thank you madam chair if there is a disagreement if members if there's a member or who would like to include say advanced academic programs and the other committees that charges for that one way of doing that would be for the member to move to insert those into the main motion and have that voted on i guess the only caveat here is i don't see
167the charges on here so that may create some issue i'm i'm sorry could you it was i'm not sure why it was difficult for us to understand you over here if you could just speak up a little bit and explain that again i'm so sorry yes the if there are any members who would like to have the full set of committees the charges for the all the committees approved tonight then those one of those members could move to insert that back into the main motion i don't know if there are any other issues though yeah given that those charges aren't at least in board docks at the moment okay so it it just appears that this is being treated like the consent agenda and i'm not sure that that's appropriate i guess that's the question
168madam chairman be recognized just a minute please i saw our clerk's hand up and i'd like to give her an opportunity to speak ms madeja i will say that we have done this in the past there was a charge pulled into september 2019 i believe it was it was a charge pulled by one board member and then we did go ahead and at the first meeting in september that board member brought back the new charge and we at that time voted on it that's a good question i don't know for sure make motions uh madam chair go ahead miss so much uh i just wanted to clarify the situation here there was some communication before this we don't even have to discuss this if there's no objection i do want to yield some of my
169time to pranav because i think he does want to say something about this um but but after that i'd like to just move that we return it if there's no objection of the consent agenda this was supposed to have been pulled uh altogether and this came out of wanting to uh modify certain uh uh charges to add student a student input component um that that would have been a part of uh what the committee's work would have been there's no reason to discuss this right now really this was just a misunderstanding um but i would like to hear from mr chowdhury yes i would like to issue my way one minute no i'm yielding some of my time no no we've gotta we've gotta go around um uh miss corbett sanders do you have your
170hand up can we ask the parliamentarian about that please i yielded my time today so i'm going to make a quick suggestion it's it's late anyway why don't we take a five minute break if there are no objections people work out what they would like to bring in front of the board and then we will start back up please so we'll come back at 10 17. i know me neither i know right i don't know if i could ask all board members to please take their seats our break is over i would like to call this meeting back it was my gavel board members if you could please take your seats thank you um we are now back so i will ask that without objection we are going to post um the motion with uh
171the language the correct language on the screen before us thank you if there are no other speakers i am going to go ahead and call for the vote okay i will go ahead and read it yeah i know but we didn't have to no no she said okay miss keisgamara do you want to go ahead and reread your motion guard sorry does that mean i have to start over take four i move that the school board approved the charges for the 2021-20 following school board citizen advisory committees adult and community education advanced academic programs career and technical education facilities planning advisory council human resources minority student achievement oversight school health and students with a disabilities advisory committee as detailed in the agenda item thank you for rereading that is there a second excellent miss kisgamara
172do you wish to speak again no dr anderson um yes very briefly i just want to very quickly say that on the evening of the title one parent advisory committee report i did raise some questions regarding regarding the charge for the next year that i was not fully an understanding of what that entailed not only did i raise it at that time i also raised it with the superintendent multiple times thereafter because the charge did not leave me to be clear in terms of what the tasks were going to be so that is why i asked for the title one to be pulled because as of yesterday we were not able to get some clarification on that charge thank you seeing nobody else that would like to speak the motion is before you on the
173screen all those in favor please raise your hands miss corbett sanders mr frisch miso mesh miss mclaughlin miss cohen no dr anderson miss eisenmuer heiser ms keys kamara miss tolin miss dare not kofax miss marin and myself that is approved unanimously excellent gender item 3.06 public engagement recommended changes to citizen participation i call on ms seismore heiser for a motion thank you i move that the board approved the public engagement committee recommended changes to the strategic governance manual regarding citizen participation as detailed on the agenda item yeah is there a second [Laughter] sanders are you seconding thank you miss seismore heiser would you like to speak to your motion um yes i i just want to sort of there's been some comments tonight and some emails that we've gotten so i just want to kind
174of explain as the public engagement committee chair what the the work is and talk a little bit about some of the changes to the community participation so over the last several months we've really heard a lot of concerns from the community members about how quickly the speaker slots are filling up and how um within seconds really and how the same people have the chance to speak on the same issues and the same time we've also heard community members want to have more chances to speak in front of our board so these new guidelines were worked in a series of public meetings really starting in february 2020 to expand opportunities for community members to share their thoughts with the board it was first discussed in public engagement committee meetings from february 2020 all the way to
175december 2020 and those were meetings that were open to the public it was also discussed at an april 6 school board work session that was open to the public and the june 25th school board retreat and just a few things that some of the few changes just to highlight we've increased the number of speaker slots we've expanded for the ability for speakers to speak on a broad range of topics previously in our current governance manual speakers can only speak on agenda items we no longer have the requirement to speak on agenda items and there's also no set-aside spots for organizations everyone has the same time limit we have set aside spots three spots for current students and three spots for pre-recorded videos the other way we've expanded access is we're going to continue allowing the
176use of live virtual testimony as well as in-person testimony even after the covet emergency expires to allow people to be able to testify from home without having to drive in um we've changed the selection of speakers to a random lottery process thereby a lot making it easier for people who can't get up at 6am or immediately get online to be able to have a chance to speak we've also limited speakers to speaking once and then not again for two more business meetings to allow for a greater variety of speakers to speak and then that restriction on speakers while two meetings is less restricted than the board of supervisors which limits to once every six months and then finally we've also added two public hearings a year where speakers can speak on any school related topic
177without a preset number of speakers our two-minute change to the limit time limit for speaking is also in line with some of our local school jurisdictions arlington county public schools has a two-minute per speaker limit for their public meetings as does montgomery county public schools so having said that i just want to explain a little bit that the purpose behind this was to really expand our access for people to have a greater variety of speakers to allow for a greater variety of topics on anything that is concerning our families and our students as well as allowing for more flexibility in how testimony can be given so i just want to give some of that background thank you miss corbett sanders i have very little to add because ms seismer heiser did an excellent job of
178explaining the why and the why really is about expanding access and opportunity for members of our community to come and speak to us and that's that's really what we want to do is have more opportunities the other piece of this is that we encourage those members of the community that cannot participate in person they can continue to do so virtually and they're also encouraged to send us correspondence as well as you can send a video and all of the board members will have a have the opportunity to look at your video that's sent to us via email and so it really is not um something that should be worried about but more importantly that we are opening access to many more people and encouraging people to take advantage of participating in the public process thank
179you dr anderson um thank you just very quickly i do want to say thank you to miss seismoheiser for her work on this because this was kind of a lot and she definitely took this on and was able to lead us through multiple conversations on on this both at the initial work session in march april i can't remember and then again during our board's retreat just last week so i'm happy to um to support but i think i will also be supporting the amendment i just want to say that uh echoing of course gratitude to ms seismer heiser who was our pec chair uh public engagement committee chair uh over the year and my colleagues mr frisch and miss corbett sanders who joined uh in some of this work and then of course brought it
180to the board i did want to celebrate just two pieces that i'm particularly proud of in this document one being the piece where accommodations will be provided for access barriers including but not limited to language ability and assistive technology needs um so anyone that comes and speaks here uh you know it the the burden will be on us to be able to accommodate um and make sure that your opportunity to speak is go smoothly and that it's accessible for you and then the second component is that now as a board we will be scheduling a public hearing in the fall and another in the spring to hear about any and everything that is of of concern to our families we saw that this past year we had the idea of having something on virtual learning
181and we had an incredible i think it was actually historic amount of interest in that public hearing and that inspired us to make sure that we have additional ways that we hear from our public so i'm really excited about those two pieces and this was a really tough process where we had to bring 12 minds with all their opinions about public engagement to distill something to come together that ultimately expands opportunity and access so perhaps you know a remaining challenge for me is is figuring out when people come in person how we can navigate that but this will always be an ongoing process and i'm excited that we've expanded opportunity with this effort our student representative would like to offer some comments absolutely i would um first off truly like to thank ms sizemoreheiser and
182the entire public engagement committee for their work on this and the piece that i really want to laud is the fact that now we have at least three speaker slots set aside for students that is so important in ensuring that we are accountable you know not just to taxpayers but to uh this division's most important constituency the students and now i think the work really lies in making sure that kids know who their board members are know what the school board does and know how they can engage and get connected so i'm looking forward to working on some of those civic engagement initiatives in the coming months i call on ms mclaughlin front amendment thank you i move to amend the main motion by striking the last sentence in section 1b which reads the school
183board chair in consultation with the vice chair may make exceptions about who may address the board during community participation provided that the board is notified at least 24 hours prior to the meeting is there a second second miss obesh miss mclaughlin would you like to speak to your amendment um yes just briefly uh i i did consult with our uh our two previous chairs dr anderson and ms corbett sanders about this caveat that we currently have in place and given that we are a board that embraces the importance of um equity and egalitarian uh approach to people being able to speak um i was uncomfortable with the language here where it gives the implication that there might be a separate special class of speakers who could appeal to the chair and vice chair for a
184special spot so i i think in all the great ways that um the public engagement committee has made all of these improvements i think removing this which during my tenure on the board i i can't recall that we ever exercised it but i think it's important to demonstrate to the public that we're not creating a special class of speakers so i hope you'll support the amendment and uh really appreciate again all the work that ms seismer heiser did including today with lots of her conversations with me much appreciated miss ole miss would you like to speak to your second yeah i i'd like to clarify for the public that um after conversation with my colleague and understanding that the purpose of this originally was really when you know perhaps dignitaries or exceptional circumstances arise where
185the school board may want to ensure that they're accommodated i think this removing this language will still allow us i would think to be inclusive of a you know any any kind of exception like that in the future but certainly not giving us the language to perhaps then limit i think as a public body always as public leaders we have a role while we have power to exhibit restraint and to hold ourselves to the same standards we would expect of anyone from the public so this is a great way of ensuring that we eliminate some of that discretion that otherwise you know could be abused and not not by any one of us i don't think but um certainly as a standard to hold ourselves uh accountable for for ensuring that we're fair and equitable
186uh and who's able to speak because we want this to be a place where everyone can come to the table no matter what the perspective is no matter you know partisan stuff aside we don't we don't want to limit anyone's voice and want to make sure everyone feels heard and included thank you miss marin thank you i appreciate the spirit of this um and clarifying the governance manual i always appreciate that of this amendment however um having done extensive review and suggested edits to the governance manual i don't think that where that correction and update is where it should be is in the public engagement section rather this is more appropriate in the governance manual to put it under b5 which is meeting protocols and and my reason is is because other electives and dignitaries
187are not in the same vein as the general public's participation in which we expect them to schedule and there's a certain time slot um because those folks who are exceptions and i understand we don't have an exceptional class but just a class of speakers but just as you know we as busy people oftentimes are given the first you know speaker slot at different meetings so too if a senator or state senator or someone comes to our meetings they might not be able to sit through the whole meeting to get to that public partition patient part but regardless again i think that the public participation that pec has worked so hard on is in essence something really different than what having a guest speaker or elected come to a meeting what they would be providing so
188as you all know the governance manual i've suggested numerous um edits and updates reflective of your input since february most recently that document can be found on board docs on the june 25th retreat which we were not able to get to but it does talk to about how the governance manual can better pull together our meeting protocol information under that b5 and i'd love to see this update go in b5 rather than be part of the public engagement section so i would love to see this included in that for when the board does act on those governance um so i will not be supporting this amendment at this time in this format thank you miss marin dr anderson thank you um i will be supporting this um amendment um this amendment because in my conversation
189with miss mclaughlin earlier i did share with her this when this came up last year where i had to make this decision and the language there was a little bit more more loose than it is right now it was just the chair i felt compelled to really quantify why would this be an important decision to make i chose not to exercise that discretion for the fear of appearing to be arbitrary and capricious and random it is not fair to our community for it to be for there to be an opportunity to go down this slippery slope i appreciate what miss um um marin has shared i think there's space for us to engage in this um amendment in both places whether it's here and we bring it forward to the governance manual when we get
190to that on to that stage as a board i still think the spirit and the intent of this amendment it's really worthwhile and we should certainly do it because it does and i'm speaking from my experience it put me in a very difficult place to have to make this decision without the board miss seismore heiser thank you um and first i was remiss earlier not thanking my fellow public engagement committee members miss corbett sanders mr frisch and mr mesh for their really great work over this last year um so i apologize for that and i wanted to say that i actually support this amendment also um and i you know this was this um part of this was actually par is currently in our governance manual so this isn't much of a change from what
191we had before and my understanding was as mr meh said this was to allow the chair some latitude in case there was a dignitary or um elected official who wanted to speak but there absolutely agree there's other places this can be in our governance manual i just wanted to thank miss mclaughlin for bringing this and miss omaesh for bringing this to my attention and for your really great thoughtful questions and comments and making sure you you know sort of checked and asked me what what was this and why was this here and working with me so well today so i really appreciated that partnership i just wanted to say that and i will be supporting this thank you mr cofax i too will be supporting this uh when i wish chair i was also faced
192with this situation it was as um as dr anderson said a slippery slope and it is not a comfortable slope to be on so i do appreciate you catching this and for us to be able to address it at this point and if we need to address it at another time we can do that as well but thank you see miss mclaughlin yeah i just wanted to provide some clarification based on what ms marin said because originally i had a language that was going to amend and add in the language saying who specifically were we talking about instead after getting information including from ms marin what's on the table is we're just striking out that caveat that says anyone can be in a special class in terms of how this board in the past has
193allowed elected officials to come speak that's not what's on the table right now this is just saying we're not making special exceptions to people who appeal to the chair and vice chair to come speak if we want in another portion to talk about protocol not in citizen community participation portion of the meeting which is what all of this is about it's just a totally different area of our business meeting ms marin anybody else can bring that up because i don't think it's delineated but this is just in the one portion of our business meeting we're saying we're not going to have a separate class of speakers and i really appreciate everybody's support and understanding of of where we're going here see miss marin would like a go back thank you i would like to point
194out that currently the board's practice is to allow special guest speakers to speak at the at the front of the meeting during the opening meeting so it's actually not currently the board's practice to do this during the public engagement portion of our meeting i also am concerned that we're making this change to the governance manual this one specific one kind of off the cuff um the changes that i've brought forth to the board over many months um look at a whole holistic view of how our governance manual is used and understood tweaking things here and there i think is how we've gotten into the um the unclearness of the governance manual in some parts in fact um the b5 meeting protocol section pulls from many places in the governance manual again reflective of the board's
195input as well so i'm really disheartened to hear the support for just changing this portion or that portion and not considering the totality of the board's governance work and approaches i think this piecemeal approach is really a disservice to the board's functioning so um even just yesterday our board clerk informed me when i asked about how we would um welcome state senator boisco what is the protocol and she said the protocol although it's not written down anywhere is that those guests speak at the start of the meeting they're not part of the public engagement section so again having these last-minute amendments and not a fulsome holistic review of the governance manual i think really waters down our work so again i will not be supporting this amendment thank you miss marin i'll now call for
196the vote the amendment will be posted on the screen please all those in favor of the motion on the screen please raise your hands miss corbett sanders mr frisch miss o'mesh miss mclaughlin bisco dr anderson miss seismer heiser ms keis kamara miss tolin miss dairnak kofax miss pikarsky all those opposed miss marin that amendment passes now we will go back to the main motion and i will call for the vote the motion is on the screen all those in favor miss corbett sanders mr frisch miss obesh miss mclaughlin bisco dr anderson besides where high service keys camaro miss tollin miss dare not kofax miss marin and miss picarski that motion passes agenda item 3.07 rfp for superintendent search firm i call on miss seismore heiser for a motion i move that the board authorizes the
197rfp for the superintendent search firm to be released no later than 5 pm on july 19 is there a second second miss corbett sanders messier heiser would you like to speak to your motion i'm just going to speak very briefly because it's late i want to thank the sac for working hard on this and mr smith and his team for working on this as well and i just wanted to say briefly to dr bray brandt i want to thank you for your for your many many years of service to fairfax county public schools and i know we'll speak more you know in the coming months but i just wanted to briefly say i thank you for your service i thank you for your big heart and your hard work and your love for our system
198and for your grace and um you know we're going to miss you but thank you for everything you've done for our students for our staff and for devoting so much of your life to our schools ms corbett sanders yes thank you madam chair and i too want to before i speak to the motion i want to thank dr brabrand for keeping the main thing the main thing and for your focus on ensuring that we have joy in our classrooms and within our staff it is greatly appreciated and i know that we will do great things together in getting our kids back in school five days a week in the fall and your dedication to that is just uh greatly appreciated so thank you thank you and uh to the main to the motion itself i
199wanted to talk a little bit about what this is because this is the beginning of a process and it's a process that takes quite a long time and we are very lucky that dr brabrand will stay with us as we go through this process so we have a continuity of operations that is critical to the success of fairfax county public schools and uh the process that we are embarking on is to release an rfp to obtain the services of an executive search firm and we are casting the net wider than we have in the past they are we are expanding it to professionals in the k-12 and um college environment we are also asking for um certain skills including being able to engage the community in multiple languages including ensuring that we have a robust
200community engagement process as we first develop the profile we have a profile of a graduate well we also have a profile of a superintendent and the executive search firm will work with us to develop that profile and then and we will be engaging the community in the development of the profile we will also be engaging the community in how we vet our um our potential candidates and so this is really the beginning of the process and uh so thank you very much for your excellent work ms seismer heiser in um pulling this together in a relatively short period of time and it also allows the firms that will be responding to this as this rfp to do their work while we are in summer break thank you miss mclaughlin yes thank you i just wanted
201to add a little bit to what ms corbett sanders was describing because um ms darnat kofax and i have uh done this twice before and we need to be mindful as she and i have this third go-around that for many in our community um they didn't have children in school at the time that we embarked on these prior searches uh or they just weren't really aware of the extent of the outreach that occurs and so i'm i'm really proud to be part of a school board and a school system that understands that um searching for a superintendent is all about engaging every key stakeholder and the the the steps that have been taken for many many years numerous superintendents uh we always have an opportunity to continue expand and improve on the way we engage
202our community but because this is a request for proposal for uh contract submissions uh this was something that the board needed to do in closed session and so here we are now bringing forth our our work that we were doing and the public now can see from the request for proposal really how committed this board is to the public engagement piece because so much of it is listed in the request for proposals and what we hope the search firms will bring to the table so i do hope that the public will continue to understand that we will keep them apprised as much as possible there's going to be a lot of timelines to come but the first important step is to get this executive search firm they will help us then guide the entire process
203but it's not uncommon that it can take starting in the fall all the way until springtime it is uh very in-depth and is appropriate given we're the 10th largest school system in the united states it's a national search and i i do want to say that certainly the kind words that my colleagues have shared with dr brabrand tonight um i know that he is with us working hard every single day as he noted in his message to the community earlier today and so for now i look forward to our continued partnership uh we have a long way to go um in this next year and i i certainly want to convey my personal appreciation for the tyler's work that dr brabrun does every day in in in my decade of service there's no superintendent who
204had a bigger heart or cares more about the families and our employees and uh for that i'm excited about this uh ending on a very high note as he shepherds us through the return to school thank you i'll just give a few comments uh dr bray brand i too want to offer my thank you to you you've given many many many years to this system and you know working with you for this past year i can say that i don't believe i've ever once questioned your passion for the work or whether or not you were giving your all every day i i absolutely believe that so thank you and i look forward to partnering you this last year as we do great things um post pandemic and with that i will call for the vote
205the motion is before us on the screen all those in favor miss corbett sanders mr frisch miso mesh miss mclaughlin miss cohen dr anderson miss eisemar heiser miss keisgamara miss tolin miss darren at kofax miss marin and myself that is unanimous 4.01 student representative matters mr chowdhury i'm going to keep this very brief because i think we all need a little bit of sleep um but i really just want to say it is such an honor and a privilege to be here with all of you and really you know have the opportunity to explore in depth the challenges that we face and how we can solve them and also a couple of announcements for any students watching i hope you guys are asleep by now uh northern virginia community college is continuing their early online
206college program so nova will offer select college courses at no tuition to fcps high school juniors and seniors and the deadline to apply for that is september 1st more info is available on the northern virginia community college website and then lastly i just want to say to the entire class of 2022 i know this has been kind of insane our last full year of school was freshman year and now we're a month or two away from applying to college um but you know let's just really kind of enjoy ourselves take this bit by bit you know maybe just send that one email to your counselor that you've been putting off ask an admissions officer for that clarification you've been too scared to ask for sign up for the august sat if you want to submit
207test scores as i say these i myself do most of these things um and yeah i hope everyone has a great rest of their summer and i so look forward to working with all of our incredible students across fcps in person five days a week next year thank you we are up to agenda item point 4.02 year end budget review i call on dr brabrand for the introduction thank you miss picarski we're gonna have a very very brief year-end presentation and i call on our chief financial officer who's just done an outstanding job this year leading us financially through all the uncharted waters of the pandemic and is going to do an amazing job as you saw tonight with our sr3 plan and leading us out of the pandemic as well miss burden thank you
208good evening uh chair picarski members of the school board dr brabrand the year-end review offers an opportunity for final revisions to the fiscal 21 budget and provide carryover information for revision to the fiscal 22 approved budget if you look at the detailed document that is was provided on board docs you should know that this info is a little bit repetitive because i identify carryover items from fiscal 21 and then we have to add those as a beginning balance or revenue for fiscal 22 as well as adjust identify expenditure adjustments for fiscal 22. once the urine is approved by the school board it's forwarded to the county for inclusion in their year in packet and make any necessary adjustments to our 21 budget and revision to 22 and the data of course is as of june
20930th 2021 on page one of the attachment is fiscal 21 revenue the revenue variance from budget to actual is a reduction of 16.6 million that is attributable to an increase in sales tax of 43.9 million reduced state aid due to enrollment that was under projection of 37.8 for a net increase of 6.2 federal funds also are carried over at 8.4 million because those largely represent grants funding that hasn't been spent and so it automatically carries forward into the next year we did have decreases in our other revenue which is community use tuition other fees like field trips parking those sorts of things that due to school closure and the pandemic were very reduced and that's a loss of 14.4 million and so again overall the net decrease in revenue for fiscal 21 is 16.6 million
210if you go to page two those are the fiscal 21 year end expenditures showing total funds available of 82.1 million after routine carryover funds for reserves like flexibility reserve and fuel of 10 million encumbrances or undelivered orders at 38.8 million schools and projects carryover 61.4 million department carryover 14.9 million and unspent multi-year grant funds of 9 million the total amount of the expenditure savings savings is 98.7 million less the revenue of variance from budget to actual of negative 16.6 for a total of 82.1 million in fiscal 21 funds available the expenditure variance represents about 2.8 percent of the total budget and is larger than normal due to the pandemic and is attributed to greater vacancies and turnover for contracted employees and lower costs in hourly and overtime in salaries and benefits we also had some
211savings and non-salary items like lower utility costs and fuel expenses and of course all of this is due to the pandemic moving on to fiscal 22 revenue on page three the total funds to be carried over to be added to fiscal 22 is 221.9 million routine carryover funds of 172.9 reserves encumbrances schools departments critical needs multi-year projects prior commitments and identified investments as well as a 29.9 million set aside for the fiscal 23 beginning balance and grant adjustments of 19.1 million page four and five of the agenda item provides detailed information about the recommended fiscal 22 expenditure adjustments that go along with that revenue that i just described again routine carryover for grants commitments in carryover like encumbrances or undelivered orders school and department carryover reserves multi-year projects as well as superintendent recommendations for replenishment
212of textbooks and basal resources and staffing reserves which you may recall were reduced to balance the budget based on the revenue available with plans to replenish at year end and continuation of the coveted reserve and the addition of a school board initiatives reserve transfers out also recommended are on page six and go to the construction fund ace and the food services fund the first transfer is 6.6 million to major maintenance to address the backlog of major maintenance projects that exist we also are recommending a transfer to ace of .6 million due to the impact of the pandemic many in-person ace classes were canceled resort resulting in a decrease in tuition and to support ace a one-time transfer of about 600 000 is recommended there is also a transfer to food services for 1.8 million this
213is the first year of a five-year replacement plan the funding request will support computer equipment and software upgrades at schools equipment replacement at the food service warehouse and replacement of several pieces of large kitchen equipment that are well past their life funding this equipment will help prevent operational failures improve efficiencies and reduce maintenance costs the next page page 7 identifies the beginning balance after all revenue adjustments and expenditure adjustments are approved we are left with a remaining fiscal 21 fund balance of 29.9 million to be set aside to fund the fiscal 23 budget at as the beginning balance and that's about that's less than one percent of our budget the summary page shows the net changes to the fiscal 21 budget less routine carryovers of reserves commitments and schools and departments recommendations for the remainders
214include the transfers placeholders reserves replenishments and the fiscal 23 beginning balance the remaining pages of the document detail changes to the other nine funds that we manage and provide some other supplemental information these other funds are all multi-year programs whose funds flow from year to year with fund balance and stability stabilization reserves as required year-end fund statements are also attached for each fund they just display the revenue expenditures transfers in transfers out and changes in fund balance for each of the nine school board funds and then the last section is a supplemental appropriation resolution that transmits to the county the changes across the whole year from mid-year third quarter and year-end and combined and then the fiscal planning resolution represents the transfers from the operating fund to other funds so this is new business and
215so it will come back for further discussion in august and if you have any questions in the interim just let me know or i guess if you had some questions now i could answer them as well let me know if i could just before any additional questions we did have a work session on this i just want to remind the board of that so we have gone over this in great detail and as as miss burden said there is not a vote tonight this is new business i also want you to know that the year-end items that we have previewed for you tonight do come back in august for approval as ms burton has said and that we continue to collaborate with our county uh counterparts as they prepare their year-end plan and as we
216do that um we'll uh notify you as we work with them if there may be any changes in our year-end recommendations as a result of any of the work that they are doing at their year-end if there are any recommended adjustments i would bring you a superintendent a revised year-end item or any change to these items at the august school board meeting thank you thank you dr brabrand and miss burden any school board members dr anderson just very quickly just want to say thank you to miss burton for her work and i just really want to highlight sorry this is too far i really want to highlight something that i saw here on page six that really i think spoke to what the ace committee shared with us during their advisory committee report which is
217to support the program a little bit more fully and so i'm very glad to see that there i have more statements at another time but i just wanted to say thank you to you ms mclaughlin yes uh just in terms of process so we will have a work session to review this when anybody know it was my understanding that there would not be a work session for year end um it's not on the draft calendar okay um but i'm confident that i appreciate that there'll be some of us i yeah i i will say that to our chair our new chair and vice chair i i think it's really important i'm not familiar that we've ever not had a work session on year end funds we're going to have thankfully a sizable carryover of almost
21830 million dollars so but there's there's a number of items on here that warrant full board review and discussion so i i do i guess i would ask miss burton being mindful of your operational needs is there a timeline that given the board is going into the august recess our first business meeting is august 26th uh where we will also be looking at the esser plan in its final version uh it is this something where the year end we can be doing in a september vote we will have to okay so i i do hope dr brabram that you can work with our chair and vice chair figure out what works for your team but uh and to my colleagues that would be my absolute advocacy that we do have a work session on the
219year-end funds and dr braver and the other thing not to put you on the spot so again something we can talk about at a work session instead but we have had employees ask us about trying to understand what the county government did um for its employees with pending raises for fiscal year 22 as as opposed to bonuses so one of the things that i know we're all committed to is ensuring that whether you work for the county government or you work for the school system we all serve the county and so we want to make sure that while we can't always do everything exactly the same public safety sometimes is very different even from county government employee raises but are you and the county executive still in conversations about how that's being handled because i
220know money gets limited yeah i i maybe i wasn't clear those comments after miss burden spoke i was trying to say that i am in collaboration with the county executive they're preparing their year end comes a little bit later than ours and we are using this intercession to talk to them a little bit more in depth to see uh how their year end is shaping up and if i have any additional adjustments that come from how their year-end shapes up i'll bring those at our august meeting thank you i i would sense that if we take what happened in their their may budget um or budget their april decision for fiscal year 22 as well as year-end taking our fiscal 22 commitments plus year-end hopefully we can make sure that where we can have the
221equity and parity of um any compensation increases that that will have a similar appearance thank you miss corbett sanders yes thank you and thank you miss burden you really have um not only the great skills but also the ability to work with all sorts of people and listen and and come up with great solutions so i really appreciate that in looking at what's before us i wanted to do a couple things i wanted to talk a little bit about going concern and the level of carryover that you have here this is a traditional piece i mean i i often hear in the community why are you carrying over all that money but we are a huge organization and best practices are that you have to start the year with some carryover and looking at this
222do you think that's a sufficient number i mean it's less than a percentage right it's it's about a percentage if you look at the divisions around us you know loudoun carries about 1.3 percent montgomery counties carries one percent prince william carries 1.3 the average of all of the wavy jurisdiction is about 1.5 percent so we're we're right there in the mix we're a little lower than others the beginning balance anytime you have a industry that is uh labor intensive 90 of our salaries or salaries and benefits you are going to have vacancy savings that you did not count on and that is going to create savings at the end of the year and when those savings are created it's going to fall out and is often put forward as a beginning balance to the next
223year because it relieves pressure on your request to the local government because if we didn't have that 30 million dollars then we would have to ask them for it so we try to keep it around the same level every year there was a concerted effort back starting i think in fiscal 14 it was 65 million dollars um which was over 2 and so i think there was a concerted effort to not rely on that so to that degree but we're always going to have some savings at the end of the year and one percent is certainly within the range that is acceptable thank you and then the other thing that i wanted to point out was that uh your recommendation actually restores a number of the cuts that were very painful cuts for the system
224when we uh were challenged earlier this year and that includes restoring a number of positions that had been cut as well as um including uh instructional resources that we had thought we would have to delay yes yeah and so i just really want to thank you for keeping your eye on on those items and bringing them back when we had more funding and then the last piece is the staffing reserve so people understand what that is and the importance of the staffing reserve especially because of needing to ha be nimble in addressing the needs of various schools so our classrooms don't come in nice little packages and what that allows you to do is address the needs and keep our classroom sizes smaller where possible thank you mr not cofax the hour is late so
225i will just say thank you for all of your hard work and thank you for this uh you know what you just presented with us tonight i'm happy to hear dr brabrand is still in consultation with mr hill and we can see where that ends up at the end of the summer so but thank you so much you've worked really hard on this the esser 3 funds and and so much this year so we appreciate you and your staff and all of the work that you've done thank you so much i also wanted to thank you ms burton and your staff for all your hard work i hope you get some rest in the next couple of weeks i don't look that tight i will now turn uh the mic to the vice chair for
226the consent agenda thank you our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to proving the consent agenda let me just check miss marin seeing and hearing no objection the consent agenda is approved i will turn it back to miss uh to our chair mrs picarski sorry the following are new business items there will not be a vote on these items but action is scheduled at a future
227meeting the business items are on the screen 7.01 superintendent matters call on dr brabrand the hour is late thank you all for your comments today it really has been a rewarding day to have so many folks reach out to me board members members of the community almost 30 years ago i was a young executive at uh verizon and i knew there was a higher level executive uh just next to me uh but my immediate boss said it's time to go serve your community he was a desert storm veteran and he said young man you need to serve your community and i went to an adopt a school program here in fairfax county public schools i fell in love with the schools i fell in love with another career and switched careers in 93 to be
228an intern and then became a full-time employee in 94. so it's been an amazing 30-year journey when my journey ends next june in 2022 it'll be a 30-year span of serving as a business volunteer an intern a teacher a principal a leadership team member and superintendent thank you all for your support and partnership we've had a challenging year but we have the conditions in place to have a very exciting year to watch kids return to the joy of learning and reconnecting face to face in person five days a week so i'm excited about that and i know you all sharing that excitement and we will have an amazing year and it's good to see all of you in person and and virtually miss marin and um i really am excited we had a wonderful work
229session on tuesday we've had a wonderful a little long meeting tonight but still a wonderful one and again miss piekarski and miss seismer heiser i look forward to working with you in your leadership and dr anderson you are a terrific leader a terrific chair and i have the highest regard for you personally and professionally for how you have conducted yourself and probably the hardest year in public education since education began in 1870 in this school system seriously thank you so much thank you all and i'll see you after the intercession [Applause] eight point zero one board committee reports i call him miss seismor heiser for you for an update from the public engagement committee um just very very briefly we had a june 28 public engagement committee meeting where we reviewed and discussed the strategic
230plan of the office of communications community relations and i just want to thank helen lloyd for her partnership in presenting the plan and seeking the feedback of the public engagement committee on the comprehensive strategy to strengthen fcps's capabilities to connect with all members of our community and i appreciate my fellow committee members for their insightful comments and feedback to ms lloyd thank you can call mr frisch for a report from governance committee thank you madam chair the governance committee met on june 30th we moved forward with a request for staff to finish development of a policy governing unstructured middle school breaks as requested by the board at forum in april we are assured fcps middle schools will have such breaks in place for the 2021-22 school year and that a draft policy will be forthcoming
231additionally we approved a new draft policy on religious accommodations that has been transmitted to the board chair and vice chair for a future work session finally june 30th will likely be my last meeting as governance committee chair as we will receive new committee assignments for the coming school year it has been an honor leading the committee over the past 18 months i have appreciated the many thoughtful contributions of my committee colleagues miss picarski ms keiss gemara miss omesh ms mclaughlin and miss corbett sanders together we helped strengthen our abuse and neglect reporting policy created clear conflicts of interest rules for senior fcps leadership enhanced our school counseling services policy retired obsolete policies updated the family engagement policy and sent it to the full board for a future work session broaden the school board's student representative
232policy allowing fcps students just living in the city of fairfax to serve on the board and we've begun work on the anti-bias anti-racist policy as requested by the board the next chair of the governance committee will begin their tenure with a full docket and i look forward to working with them this summer to make sure they have everything they need to hit the ground running thank you thank you mr frisch i now call on miss tolin and mr frisch again for an update from the joint environmental task force thank you again madam chair uh this is a historic day for fairfax county the board of supervisors and our school board have officially adopted the recommended goals of the joint environmental task force to achieve zero waste by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2040. to get
233there we are committing to aggressive action here are just a few examples transitioning our enormous diesel bus fleets to electric by 2035 decreasing total energy usage for all county and school facilities by 50 by 2040 making major renovations and new construction projects net zero beginning in 2021 improving options for safe biking and walking to and from school and work reviewing recycling efforts and expanding composting and helping students and adult learners to pursue green career paths by taking these and other steps we are embarking on a green new deal of sorts and acknowledging that waiting for others to act is not an option we are demonstrating our collective resolve that every level of government must do its part to address the climate crisis and chart a course for a sustainable future accomplishing these goals will not
234be easy but we quite literally cannot afford to maintain the status quo because of our school division's current and past energy efficiency efforts fairfax county public schools saves an estimated 8 million dollars annually imagine the taxpayer dollars we can reinvest in classrooms and student success by going even further these changes will also also help combat climate change clean our environment improve public health and enhance student and staff performance the technological landscape is changing fast costs are coming down efficiency is going up and companies are getting creative with their willingness to partner with local school divisions and county or municipal governments earlier this year montgomery county public schools approved the nation's largest procurement of electric school buses and charging infrastructure and this is a critical fact the deal will be budget neutral not costing anything more
235than they would have paid to continue maintaining their dirtier diesel fleet our own school division recently commissioned a report on the feasibility of making major renovations and new construction projects net zero the experts we consulted found such projects would be less expensive over 30 years of operating and maintaining the buildings in improving the joint environmental task force's recommended goals we are also directing the superintendent and staff to work with our county partners each year to assess our progress on each goal additionally we are directing the governance committee to work with the superintendent and staff to update our environmental stewardship policy so that it fully aligns with these goals our community partners and advocates have been a critical force behind this work especially students seeking solar on the schools mothers out front fighting for a transition
236to electric school buses and countless others pushing us forward to a corporate to a carbon neutral future the joint environmental task force would not have been possible or not for the collaborative leadership of then school board chair corbett karen karen corbett sanders and former uh board of supervisor chairman sharon bulova miss tolin and i have had the pleasure of representing the school board on jet with supervisors dan stork and penny gross since january of last year following in the footsteps of former school board members pat hines and dahlia palczek it has been an honor serving beside them and working with members of the community especially our students to develop these recommended goals tonight's vote is the culmination of countless hours of hard work but it is not the end we will continue partnering with the
237county to ensure these goals are implemented effectively and expeditiously as we explore other ways to protect our environment and enhance climate resiliency our students and taxpayers deserve nothing less thank you i know it's hard to believe but there are a few additional comments that need to be made this week europe laid out an ambitious plan to sharply reduce carbon emissions by 2030. here at home the united states recently promised to reduce emissions by 40 in the same time frame this week fairfax county and our school division are putting forth an ambitious local plan to reduce carbon emissions and take other positive steps to bolster sustainability it is only through these local efforts and the efforts of each of us that our nation and the world can combat climate change so one might ask why are
238schools involved in this because all students deserve to attend sustainable schools that enhance their health and wellness prepare them for 21st century careers and support a thriving planet the department of energy's energy smart schools report shares that k-12 schools spend more than eight billion dollars annually on energy making energy the second highest operating expenditure for schools after personnel costs green schools result results in budget savings that can be reinvested into more efficient buildings more inspiring learning environments new technology more resource resources for teachers or other priorities for the school by improving indoor air quality green schools can improve the health of students faculty and staff potentially decreasing sick days beyond the positive impacts of keeping students and teachers in school indoor air quality and access to outdoor spaces has direct effects on student achievement not
239to be overlooked it's the opportunity for green buildings to serve as teaching tools that provide real life examples of concepts being learned in the classroom teachers at green schools can use their buildings as the basis for project-based experiential learning green schools provide a clear opportunity to connect students with curricula in environment and science technology engineering and mathematics for stem education and they can serve as tools for interactive lessons across all subjects as fcps developed its gets a green program here is the vision in the mission that was crafted our mission is to promote student learning and action using the environment as a foundation we will be model environmental stewards by investing in green infrastructure and resources utilizing interdisciplinary environmental curriculum and fostering community partnerships by accepting our jet goals tonight and working with the board
240of supervisors we are helping to meet this mission tonight we are taking an important step and we are taking a step toward leaving behind a livable viable earth for our most precious resource our children thank you i call on ms mesh for an update from the joint cip task force thank you our meeting was actually today um just before this one we ended up having a conversation about the county capital pay down and bond program we looked at a presentation of the county's needs which followed a presentation that we had prior to what fcps needs are we had the opportunity to take a look at some of the the shifts in the bond allocations uh from 2007 until now and reflected on the fact that it there is a tremendous increase in the amount of
241money we have to contribute to metro which unfortunately has led to a decrease in what we've put into facilities over time so just this past year uh 38 of the bond program from the county has had to go to metro so it's been no surprise of course that we find ourselves in a situation where we have many uh tremendous infrastructure challenges county-wide which led to a conversation around the need to expand bonding capacity in radical ways so we're going to be looking into that in the coming months we also discussed the importance of taking seriously the opportunity cost of delaying maintenance and infrastructure development over years we also talked about the challenge that exists because as a county uh you know when it comes to evaluating facilities other than our schools and our schools we
242use different criteria to determine levels of urgency and the need for different projects and our conversation kind of went in a direction of potentially exploring the possibility of aligning some of those uh metrics and then finally we did discuss the potential need it's still under development and will be discussed further over the next course of the next months but the possibility of a county-wide infrastructure review especially in identifying needs to collaborate better as fcps with the rest of the county to make sure that our bond allocations are done in a way that's hopefully more sustainable over the years but i will say i think miss cohen and i did notice that the county is in just as much of a troubled state as we are with our capacity needs so as a county as a
243community we're going to have to think of some creative solutions moving forward and i think our team is ready to do it we discuss some potential solutions and we'll continue to have those conversations thank you agenda item 9.01 board matters i call on miss cohen super fast i just want to say thank you to mr hickerson ms scott and mr nguyen at chantilly high school for inviting me to hear from your students this week they had really amazing ideas about homework and grades lunch vending machines i have some people to talk to and masks and it was just so awesome to get to see our kids engaged in summer learning and really talk to them about how they were feeling and were they ready for the fall and how they were experiencing getting back together
244and when i asked them what was the best part of all of it they just said just building relationships and several of them said actually getting to build relationships with teachers and i thought that was pretty incredible for kids going into 10th grade that that was their number one takeaway from summer school so thanks so much i hope everybody has an awesome recess and we actually get some sleep thanks miss corbett sanders happy summer everybody this dare not cofax followed by mr frisch to my colleagues and to staff enjoy our break i unfortunately have a little bit more to say tonight now for those who were here for our previous board meeting the exact opposite thing happened so um here we go i promised my colleague on the board of supervisors that i would make
245this announcement tonight so for my board members board matters tonight i will be sharing some exciting news fairfax county public schools is partnering with the board of supervisors to host the inaugural fairfax county historical markers contest this project will showcase previously untold narratives and highlight the histories of those who are underrepresented in our curriculum this year's focus will be on african american history here in fairfax county the fairfax county historical marker program was established in 1998 by the fairfax county history commission since then it has produced 53 markers across the county 10 of which showcase african american history this inaugural contest will be the first of hopefully many opportunities to add historical markers throughout the county it will also serve as a great learning opportunity for students as they will be encouraged to engage with
246the local community and learn more about our county's rich history with the assistance of instructional services this contest will be integrated into our k-12 social studies curriculum as a project-based learning initiative for the upcoming school year all students who reside in fairfax county regardless of whether they are within fcps are invited to participate i would like to thank providence district supervisor dalia palcik for bringing this idea to dr ricardi anderson and me earlier this year my colleagues on the school board for providing their consensus to move forward the board of supervisors for unanimously approving this program on tuesday as well as the fcps staff and community stakeholders who are supporting this incredible opportunity for our students i cannot wait to hear about their stories and the stories they uncover through this effort thank you miss
247kisgamar followed by miss mclaughlin so i'm going to bank my time for another meeting and wish everybody a happy summer enjoy thank you so much to our staff that has worked so hard and answered so many questions and dealt with impromptu meetings etc so just thank you everybody have a great great summer and let's come back and do some team building good night mr clockwood bravo miss keys gemara i'm all about team building uh no i i i'm gonna just say to everybody um i know that the board has always historically taken a one-month recess and i think it's extremely important not only for the board but also for our staff you need to focus uh your time and energy on very serious operational matters nothing will be more herculean than bringing our our students
248and our employees back five days a week in the fall uh truly appreciate everything that you were all doing and i look forward to partnering with all of you as we make that happen even though we're taking the recess everyone knows school board members don't walk away from their phones and their inboxes and our continued passion but i do hope that we can find some time to recharge our batteries and just know that i'm really proud of our work here tonight i felt that we had one of the most packed agendas in a very long time and everyone just really approached tonight's meeting with with such a a great mindset and it makes me feel really good going into the one month recess thank you all for your hard work and your your friendship on
249the board thank you miss maron okay um miss omesh okay first i want to start off by thanking um staff dr bray brand dr ivey the entire leadership team for all the efforts throughout the year and you know of course as well dr anderson who's led us through a tough year i know i know guys i know everyone wants to go home i'm getting to the one part i actually want to get to um and then of course welcoming ms mccarson with sizemore heiser um it is tradition in my faith as we close out you know i i want to express my sincere gratitude to everyone but also my my apologies for any any misunderstanding any uh you know voices that i may not have fully heard and that i hope to continue to hear
250ways that i fell short ways that i perhaps conveyed anger before i did love or compassion um and uh frustration perhaps at times uh where my emotions got ahead of me um so i i you know i or ways that i fell short in advocacy or even for times when i didn't acknowledge and say hello to people in the room uh who i didn't directly communicate with so i i just i'm grateful for our ability to understand one another and hope that you know we turn the page and look ahead at the following year after much rest and self-reflection um to lead forward for our kids in ways that are equitable inclusive to all kids so i hope you'll take that from my heart and i look forward to continuing to build from with everyone
251miss tollin so as we're here tonight talking about winding down this year um i already see our school sending out lots of information on sports tryouts sports updates vaccinations help forms etc getting gearing up for next year i got my first announcement of back to school activities from drainsville elementary school the other day and i'm sure many others will be following soon i know i've had a few emails from parents asking so what's up with the beginning of the school year well it's upon us and schools are sending out lots of information i'm looking forward to seeing um you know everyone in a few weeks and all these great activities and tomorrow i'm going to visit the hutchinson elementary school and and herding to check out the summer programs that they've got going please check
252out my last newsletter i put a list in there of things that um just highlights of things we did in drainsville over the last year and the list was really long um so you know a huge shout out to my community and to my board colleagues and staff for you know working with me to have all of these things happen across our schools i really appreciate it and it is almost the olympics and what do we have four you know fcps grads that are going to be in the olympics so um let's make sure we cheer them on have a great summer everyone dr anderson all righty um i will not be very long um first of all i do want to say thank you to everyone for the kind words i really appreciate it
253thank you for the flowers it really means a lot um i'm glad that i was able to contribute in some meaningful way to our board so thank you all very much i do want to say best of luck to both of you you'll do great work and i'm looking forward to working with you and your new positions um dr brabrand thank you as well for your work it's been a pleasure to getting to know you um this year a little bit more um deeply and i echo the words that i think ms mclaughlin said your heart is large for this division you really love this work you love the students here in fcps and i think that has served you very well so thank you um i just want to highlight one quick thing uh
254myself and miss pikarski we were actually on july one we were able to attend the adult detention center graduation and i wanted to highlight that because i lost the program so i wasn't able to put it on social media right away and it was one of those most meaningful ceremonies that i think we've attended because these are kids who are going under the most significant challenges it's really hard to to see the conditions that they're under but yet they are trying to put their heads down trying to turn a corner getting their geds getting their highs getting their diplomas and just really trying to get out of the space where they are i was very grateful to be able to participate in that program and i do want to say a huge shout out to
255sheriff kinkade and her team for the work that they put together to be sure that this was able to happen under very very difficult circumstances so that really left a profound an impact on me so i just want to say congratulations to those kids you were amazing and i wish you all the very very best of luck happy summer miss eisenheiser i think i've spoken enough so happy summer everybody thank you i will speak just a little bit but i will quickly just quickly say um i'm gonna miss all of you uh but i am certainly very much looking forward to the break and all of us need to spend time with our families i am also looking forward to westfield high school's stage production of mamma mia at the end of the month so
256yes i'm very excited about that yes yes mike my kids uh high school so i will be there and as dr anderson already um really spoke to so well it was very moving to go to that ceremony and speaking to the students at the end we spoke to i think most of them and to hear from them [Music] what it meant to have an education and how it opened up so many opportunities and dreams for them and to see people that are in such a difficult difficult place have such hope because of education was i think just very inspiring so happy summer everyone the meetings adjourned good night [Applause] you