001so you work here [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] studio will be ready to start in two minutes so 709 good evening this june 17 2020 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 everybody mr not cofax good evening mr fresh hello miss keys gamora good evening miss mclaughlin here miss marin good evening miss o'mage miss bakarski good evening everyone miss eisenheiser good evening ms tolen good evening everyone yeah mr anubudo our student representative is not going to be with us this evening please rise and join me in the reciting of the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of under silence indivisible with liberty and justice for all you may be seated in order
002to 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 january 17 2021 and to the best of each members knowledge on the public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting thank you miss omaesh for the motion seconded by ms cohen all in favor miss corbett sanders mr frisch mr maysh miss mclaughlin miss cohen miss mccarskey miss tolin miss marin miss keys gemara miss seismo heiser ms darnacholfax and myself that is unanimous announcements if you would like to review a copy of the agenda or any agenda item
003that is being discussed tonight excuse me that information may be found at the back of the auditorium or at the or on the website at fcps.edu slash school board slash board docs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu tv slash c899 as i mentioned earlier mr anubudo is absent this evening item 4.02 students rights and responsibilities has been removed from tonight's agenda and will be scheduled for a future meeting assistant superintendent instructional services introduction i call on dr brabrand thank you chairman anderson members of the school board members of the fairfax community it is my honor to share with you tonight that i have recommended and named noel clemenco with the support of the board a proven fcps leader for over three decades as the assistant
004superintendent for instructional services ms clemenco has served currently as our fcps director of pre-k curriculum and instruction where she leads 12 content teams who create curriculum professional development and resource deployment to ensure alignment to fcps's learning model and strategic plan she has worked collaboratively this year and over all of her years in fcps with fairfax county school board leadership school division directors and managers school-based leaders teachers and parents enter a multi-faceted role that supports community engagement and overseas facilitation of citizen advisory committees i know dr presidio our chief academic officer who was very very much involved with me in this work and selecting noel says that noel is a proven collaborator a strategic thinker and has an eye to excellence that is unmatched please join me in giving a fairfax county public schools welcome to
005miss noel clemenco everyone and it's so nice to see you all in person i've been watching at home for um you know many many months so it's really lovely to see you all here so good evening to chairman anderson to the school board members to dr bray brand and to ladies and gentlemen both on television and and with us today i'm truly humbled by the trust and the confidence that you are placing in me is choosing me to serve as the instructional services assistant superintendent being selected being selected at any time for this role would be a tremendous honor but really coming out of the last 15 months and the pandemic that the significance of this really cannot be go unrecognized as dr bergram mentioned i have been around for a while and i've been
006in isd for quite some time as well and i've had the ability to serve in so many different capacities and because of those experiences i take this role with great responsibility the people in isd the talented committed people in isd work tirelessly to provide resources knowledge skills to our school staff so they can ensure that they can reach and teach every student every day are just an amazing group of individuals and it will be my pleasure and my honor to represent them many of you i've had the chance to work with over time and many others i look forward to getting know getting to know better so i'll take just a moment i'll try and be quick to just share a few things that you can expect from me in this role um you can
007you can count on that i'll be committed to equity that i'll be committed to collaboration and that i'll be colla i'll be committed to continuous improvement you know the equity work that started with one fairfax policy and continues today is extremely important to all of us and we we can't stop until every student feels known value and heard and we must must strive for educational equity where where students are not defined by their zip code by their race by their gender but their trajectory of success is unlimited when we collaborate as a division we are at our best and certainly during this pandemic we have seen more collaboration than ever before collaboration between departments collaboration between central office and schools and and probably the most importantly the elevation of voices from the community from the
008parents and most importantly from the students and i really believe that when we work together with a with an outcome of inclusivity we are truly at our best the the final thing the final expectation i just want to kind of name is continuous improvement we are a learning organization and our work will never ever be done i wish it weren't true but it is true and you know the the changing needs of our students and the demands of society will will make us in a constant state of change but we must rely on data we must rely on evidence and we must rely on each other to make really strong decisions and and lead our school system so i look forward to that so i stand here tonight in the school where i actually went
009to grade seven and grade eight um i think some of my teachers would be a little surprised to see me but you know nonetheless nonetheless i really stand here with with a lot of emotion um and the main the main emotion that i'm feeling really is excitement right i'm excited i'm excited to lead the instructional service department and collaborate with people there in new ways i'm excited to join the amazing fcps leadership team i'm excited to collaborate and work beside dr presidio dr boyd and mr greenfelder as sort of the newly formed chief academic office takes shape and i'm especially excited to collaborate with our regions with our schools and with our community partners to really define what teaching and learning will look like moving forward so again i thank you for your support and
010i really look forward to the journey thank you ms mclaughlin did you have a quick announcement your light is still on oh i had actually put my light on before um the announcement it was more to the general audience uh and i just communicated with our superintendent and general counsel i i do think we need to make an announcement on what is the mask policy inside the auditorium because i see people in the audience wearing masks i see some board members wearing masks some of us not wearing masks so i just want to know what's the official guidance sure mr mclaughlin i'll be glad to communicate we've communicated out to our community and staff that we've been monitoring the governor's executive order and he has created increased flexibility uh in our offices and in our
011schools when kids are not in session for those folks that are vaccinated not to wear mass nor is social distancing required we do recommend that those that are unvaccinated to the governor's executive order continue to wear their mask and again those that are even vaccinated may choose to wear a mask and we are following that guidance effective immediately and we will also have while mass remain part of what will happen in our schools when kids are in session we will have some additional flexibility when students are outside maintaining social distance they will not be required to wear masks so i wanted to share that information with you we also know that the governor's executive order ends at the end of this month and we will be looking for further guidance from the governor as it
012pertains to additional summer programs and activities and the fall and we're awaiting additional guidance from cdc about that and we'll inform the community as we get it so i hope that information is helpful thank you very much dr bray brandt and ms mclaughlin uh yes chairman anderson uh i know in the past after we have been introduced to a new member of the leadership team board members have uh commented uh in celebration of the news so i would uh ask that that opportunity be given tonight as well absolutely so let's go ahead i see some uh board members are wanting to speak so but as we just completed the introduction um let's go ahead and take that opportunity to really welcome ms clemenco into the fairfax county and so this position um so why don't
013we start with you ms mclaughlin sure actually uh i i am very honored to be able to start off uh this welcoming to ms clemenco uh she has just been an incredible partner for me as someone on the school board over the years who has worked very hard every day trying to make sure that we continuously improve our instructional to students and so i've had an opportunity to see ms clemenco in many different roles during her time and during mine here for the last nine and a half years and in particular what i really appreciated was the hard work that ms clemenco put in when former superintendent karen garza looked at our grading policy task force in the county really recognizing especially for our high school students that it matters greatly that we have standardization
014across the system so no matter what high school or student attends uh that the grading practices uh would create that sort of fidelity of opportunity and um fairness so anyway uh when dr presidio and and superintendent bray brandt announced that you were the finalist i just wanted to share with you noelle that i so appreciate your decades of service to fairfax county schools and i really appreciate the fact that you're also someone who is always extremely approachable you presume the best of intentions you you are willing to take hard questions and most importantly i know just how devoted and dedicated you are to really ensuring that each and every child in our school system has a chance to academically thrive so welcome to your newest position and uh it's lovely to to be able to
015celebrate this tonight thank you miss mclaughlin miss tolin congratulations it's very exciting for me to welcome you to this position for those of you that don't know i worked in instructional services for many years i'm for noel um so it's some kind of an interesting juxtaposition here but [Laughter] i'm really excited to say that i was actually in instructional services for several years when noelle took her current position as a director and was able to see her really move into that role with creativity and grace before she did that she was already doing some very innovative things she i remember her hunkered down in the corner with um jay naco really starting that office of school support and getting that whole thing going which is super exciting if we look and see you know where
016we are today and how incredibly um you know helpful that office is in making a big difference for all of our students noelle started a new team for us in isd a cross-curricular team of whoops um of people you know working on things that really couldn't be housed in you know science or social studies or a particular subject area we had to work across all of those and we were pulled together into this team that i think did a really nice job working in pbl get to green global classroom summer programs etc and you know that is just a few examples of how creative and innovative she has been over the years and so i'm really looking forward to um moving forward with you in this new position and um you know really doing great
017things as we move forward with the district welcome thank you so much thank you miss tollen is there not cofax yes i'm miss flamenco i am so thrilled to um welcome you into this new position i have had the pleasure of working with you almost my entire tenure on the board you are hard-working you have lots of institutional lot of knowledge you were able to explain different pedagogies in layman's terms and i have called upon you time and time again to do that so i just congratulate you again on this well-deserved promotion so happy to see you here staying with us in fairfax and um i look forward to working with you in this new role so congratulations thank you okay um are there any other board members wishing to speak miss um picarsky just
018quickly i wanted to congratulate you noelle well you and i haven't worked very closely together during this oddest of years i've heard very many wonderful things about you and i really liked your um talking about collaboration because especially in this time after covid we are all going to have to be all in collaborating with each other and working on behalf of our kids and really looking to advance those educational outcomes for all children so i'm looking forward to getting to know you better congrats thank you so much thank you miss isabel heiser thank you just briefly again congratulations noelle and i'm really thrilled and and like miss bakarski i haven't had a chance to work with you that much but i look forward to really digging deep into some of this work and working with
019you and i just wanted to mention i've been really thrilled to hear you talk about collaboration i know i've talked to dr presidio and dr boyd a lot about collaborating more with isd and dss and really especially in terms of promoting a culture of neurodiversity you know with our neurodiversity specialist so i look forward to talking to you about that as well and really thinking about how we can when you talk about equity work we can infuse neurodiversity in our equity work and our instruction and our curriculum so thank you i'm excited to work with you and welcome thank you thank you very much thank you miss omaesh thank you uh miss kalenko i'm really excited to see you move up to this role um i really appreciated your work with the msaoc and tpac
020and other committees especially on as you pointed out the equity component i think it's incredibly valuable that you're a product of the system and at a time that was very different than it is today so you've been able to see the trends changing and and equity uh means something deeper to you so i really do look forward to seeing that you know our equity work isn't just something we do in the equity division right or the equity team but a lens we want to have in all that we do so i'm really excited to see how you take instructional services to the next level with that equity priority so thanks i'm excited to work with you thank you so much thank you very much miss omeg and again congratulations we're very excited that you are
021in this new role so again welcome thank you all so much item 206 the school board character award recognition i call them is there nakofax thank you and i am excited and honored to present the school board character award the school board character award was first initiated by student representative to the school board chris jovare jovarelli and was established by the student advisory council in two thousand one the apple federal credit union education foundation has generously funded the five hundred dollar award since two thousand seven this award is given to a junior or senior who demonstrates a continuous record of high morals strong integrity and good character and who is recognized as a role model for students in fairfax county public schools in day-to-day behavior the recipient of the 2012 school board character award is
022garlene cower a senior yes yes thank you hello and we see you up there but i'm going to keep reading about you first and then give you a chance to talk um garlene has a powerful source of inspiration for the thomas jefferson community she is extremely intelligent compassionate and incredibly dedicated to nurturing the less fortunate she devotes countless volunteer hours weekly helping others garlene assisted in establishing a two thousand dollar scholarship for low-income students she coordinated volunteers for a student diversity initiative outreach club that host more than ten events yearly she tutored and mentored one to two students a year in learning and inquiry through fellowship and tutoring acronym is lyft on saturdays was a facilitator and then camp director for kids are scientists too cast and then encourage stem and encourage stem and she
023is also deeply interested in environmental sciences and shares her passion with second through fifth grade students through marine and geoscience novel interactions for youth known as magnify garlene has served as the president of humanitarian aid to north korea club co-wrote a proposal to the school board advocating for changes to the advanced academic program admissions process volunteered for magic of mothers that provide stem opportunities to students from low-income communities coordinated the annual stem fest that provides fair-like stem activities to students from over 70 elementary schools and she has left her mark on countless other projects caroline is a dedicated student who has always faced challenges as an opportunity to inspire others she possesses a positive spirit and strives to create an inclusive community she is an inspiration to all who meet her carolyn has earned and
024truly deserves the 2021 school board character award [Music] thank you guys so much would you like to say a few words yeah of course uh so most of all i would like to thank you guys so much for naming me the recipient of this award it really means a lot and i would also like to thank my mom who is sitting right here with me i really do not think i would have been able to do anything i have without her and she is always my biggest inspiration and i would also like to thank my school counselor miss martinez for nominating me for the award and for providing me with endless support throughout the past four years and i'd also like to thank my recommenders dr maro and frau osco who have been my ap
025biology and german teachers respectively they have been some of the biggest inspirations i've able i've been able to have and i am so fortunate to have had them as teachers and yeah i am just so grateful and so honored to have been the recipient of this award wonderful and congratulations again thank you for joining us and congratulations to mom as well we know it's done with her support and hard work so thank you both i'm so proud of her we are all too absolutely you have many many reasons to be proud of her so congratulations and thank you so thank you for joining us um agenda item 2.07 um the laura ashley piper award resolution uh call on miss picarski for the resolution thank you laura ashley piper served as student representative to the fairfax
026county school board from 1986 to 1987. this outstanding student talented athlete and exceptional leader graduated from robinson secondary school and the air force academy and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the air force she was killed in action over northern iraq in april 1994. to honor laura ashley piper's strong commitment to student participation and to recognize her high standards of achievement and involvement and her willingness to continually accept responsibility throughout her lifetime the school board of fairfax county has established the annual 1 000 laura ashley piper scholarship in 2007 apple credit apple federal credit union education foundation began its endowment of the laura ashley piper scholarship providing one thousand dollars annually we appreciate their continued generosity each year every high school may nominate one senior student who exemplifies the attributes of personal excellence and commitment
027to student government of lieutenant piper a committee from the office of school counseling services department of instructional services considers the nominees there is an engraved plaque in the school board office with each winner's name the school board tonight will recognize madeleine maddy miles from centerville high school the recipient of the 2021 laura ashley piper scholarship and she's thank you guys so much i appreciate being awarded this scholarship it means so much i want i want to read the resolution for you listen it's important we all need to know about her accomplishments which are amazing resolution naming madeline miles the 2021 laura ashley piper scholarship recipient whereas madeline miles has remained consistently committed to excellence in academics community service athletics and student leadership responsibilities throughout her years at centerville high school and whereas madeleine has shown
028great potential for continued academic success by maintaining a 4.519 grade point average and by working towards an advanced diploma and whereas during her time at centerville she has demonstrated commitment responsibility and kindness and has helped and advocated to further integrate the school english and spanish-speaking communities and whereas madeline has contributed to her community by being an engaged member volunteering her time to support blood drives trash cleanups and local parks food pantries and so school supplies distribution efforts events and fundraisers at her church and supporting health care facilities during the covet 19 pandemic and as whereas through her overall excellence in academics and activities including athletic success in gymnastics girls cross-country track and field and enthusiasm for biochemistry and medical technologies she in every way personifies the characteristics and ideals to which laura ashley piper adhered
029and now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board awards the laura ashley piper scholarship to madeleine miles in memory of lieutenant piper and recognition of both their drive determination and dedication to excellence iso move thank you miss mccarski is there a second second thank you miss keys gamora miss picarski would you like to speak to your resolution oh yes i sure would matty thank you so much for joining us tonight i am so honored to be able to read um this resolution for you and reading your packet i was i honestly got tired i told you that um i was just blown away by your you're so many many achievements in your um life before you've even gone to college i mean your your rigorous course load your um athleticism i think
030i think you have over 125 medals at state level competition amazing the the many honor societies to which you belong your community service especially during the pandemic and when we spoke on the phone and i ask you you know how have you been what gave you that drive this year such a hard and difficult year and you talked about community and that was that was very inspiring to me you are such an inspiring young lady and i am so excited to see where you go congratulations thank you miss picarski miss keys gamara would you like to speak to your second absolutely madeleine i want to thank you for being focused not just on the difficulty of the last year but on your community on your neighbors on those around you because these are the people
031that really help to create change during difficult time as i looked at your accomplishments i i also got tired i noticed your gpa i noticed that you participated in gymnastics and as a mom of a gymnast and the five hour practices i went to for nearly 15 years i said congratulations and you were also a part of the w.e.b du bois honor society a man that i admire greatly because he was so ahead of his time he was the first african-american to graduate from harvard and boy did he have a voice and i have a feeling we have yet to hear yours so thank you so much i look here forward to hearing your voice thank you miss keys gamara are the board members wishing to speak to congratulate madeline we will start with miss
032tolin yes um congratulations and if these two ladies think they retired when after they read your application i had the honor of being the board member to sit on the panel to look at all of the applications and we had 30 or so applications and i want to congratulate every person that applied because all of the applications were absolutely outstanding and but maddie rose to the top of this incredible group so a huge congratulations to you and i look forward to seeing what all of these applicants will be doing in the future was truly truly inspiring um to read about the incredible things that students across our county are involved in so maddie congratulations to you and you have a bright future ahead of you thank you miss tulin miss eisenheiser so just briefly i
033just wanted to say that i'm just really impressed at the way you are so calm to be perfectly honest you know it shows your strength of character and i'm joking with you but really you should be very proud of what you've done in this unprecedented year there are many people who have struggled and for you to give back even as you're trying to figure out virtual learning and trying to figure out how to manage your crazy impressive course load right and your sports and your activities and doing so in a way that gives back and helps lift up others is so commendable in a way that's positive in a way that promotes togetherness i just wanted to say you are you know one of the reasons why i think your generation is going to be
034the greatest next greatest generation so thank you for all you do congratulations thank you miss eisenheiser seeing that there are no other speakers i will now call for the vote all in favor please raise your hands at this time we have miss um miss corbett sanders mr frisch miss omaesh miss mclaughlin miss cohen miss picarsky miss tolland miss marin miss keys gamora and seismo heiser ms deronic kilfax and myself that is unanimous congratulations and now maddie we will turn the floor to you as you and your mom have joined us virtually to please um for a few remarks so i just wanted to say thank you guys so much for awarding me this scholarship i am so extremely appreciative and grateful i hope to make laura ashley piper proud by exemplifying the same courage generosity
035benevolence that she exemplified in her own life and i hope that when i go to college and in all facets of my life that i exemplify the leadership that she did and that one day i too will be able to go on and be able to do so much more within this community and in the united states and abroad hopefully so i just wanted to say thank you i also wanted to thank my parents my mother is right in front of me um not currently behind the screen but i wanted to thank both my parents my siblings my recommenders ashley zacamondo and mrs lauren siebelhopper so thank you to you guys for believing in me and being there for me um as the board members had said i believe that it is so important to
036build that community and i hope that being awarded the scholarship and just having those inspirations in our lives that we are able to further aspire and be more than we believe we can be and i think that it's important to find ways to build that community and be there for each other not just in difficult times but in daily life and find ways to make sure that we are an integrated and cohesive team a cohesive community and group not just in school or athletics but in all facets of our life so thank you so much to you guys for being for awarding me the scholarship and i really hope to make you all proud in the future and to do so much more to create a more unified world so thank you thank you congratulations
037i think we are all anticipating all the wonderful and great things that you will be doing in the near future congratulations again to you and your mom and thank you for joining us this evening thank you so much agenda item 2.08 lgbtqia plus pride month recognition and i'll call him mr fresh thank you june marks the anniversary of the first lgbtqia plus pride parade more than 50 years ago which served as a call to collective action just one year after the stonewall riots where lgbtqia people led by transgender women of color like marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera resisted police harassment and violence during an early morning bar raid in new york city the decades since have been won a struggle and celebration for the lgbtqia community despite increased understanding lgbtqia young people still face
038many challenges without accepting families they are far more likely to attempt suicide or experience homelessness in fact recent studies show most lgbtqia middle and high school students in virginia say they have been verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation and often hear negative remarks about transgender people in schools additionally about 10 percent of lgbtqia middle and high school students in virginia report experiencing physical assaults because of their lgbtqia status students of color are disproportionately impacted by anti-lgbtqia hostility with recent surveys showing large percentages of latinx and black lgbtqia plus middle and high school students experiencing bullying based on their orientation or gender identity the fairfax county school board celebrates its lgbtqia plus students and staff recognizes the urgency of its charge to foster a responsive caring and inclusive culture where all feel valued supported and
039hopeful and advances policies to seek to protect lgbtqia students and staff and enhance their experiences in fairfax county public schools furthermore the fairfax county school board appreciates the many contributions made by lgbtqia plus students staff and families to the vibrancy of the broader school community fairfax county has a richly diverse lgbtqia plus community that includes people from all walks of life who should be able to live without fear of prejudice discrimination harassment or violence on behalf of the students educators and families of fairfax county public schools the fairfax county school board proclaims june 2021 as lgbtqia plus pride month in fairfax county public schools in the spirit of one fairfax the fairfax county school board urges all to respect and honor our diverse community and to build a culture of inclusivity and equity not only
040during lgbtqia plus pride month but throughout the entire year as well thank you madam chair thank you mr fresh item 2.09 juneteenth recognition i call him miss hillmation this the month of june is the time that many in our nation recognize juneteenth as the holiday that celebrates emancipation day juneteenth marks the marks a day in 1865 when enslaved texans learned that they would be free two months after robert e lee surrendered and ended the civil war and two and a half years after president abraham lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation june 19th marks the day that african americans in the southern states exercised independence from those who benefited from their enslavement and labor in the founding of this nation at least physically the educational institutions of this nation including fairfax county public schools have a particular
041responsibility to recognize the painful realities of our history and to make sure that our curriculum reflects these realities working with the community as one fairfax together this board is committed to identifying actionable items to improve policies and procedures to enhance access to opportunities to ensure that students families and staff do not experience inequities here in fcps we value diversity and we are united in our opposition to racism and hate we stand in solidarity with our african-american students educators staff and their families fairfax county public schools hereby officially commemorates juneteenth as a day to celebrate and emphasize a collective call to action against injustice of any kind and we hope everyone has a good holiday tomorrow in observance of juneteenth thank you madam chair thank you very much miss omeg item 3.01 citizen participation um which
042is the next order of business speakers are requested to limit their remarks in not more than three minutes the school board will now hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings such as capital improvement program budget boundaries speakers should only address new business action items or resolutions as listed on the meeting agenda 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 the 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 your three minutes is up tonight
043ten citizens have signed up to address the board and we also have five video testimony excuse me testimonies i will now ask the clerk to call the first speaker our first speaker is aryan rawal good evening my name is aryan and i'm a current junior in fcps i'm also a queer student who's part of the pride liberation project a coalition of lgbtqia plus students working to uplift our community before i move forward i want to commend the school board for passing a pride resolution according to the human rights campaign 2021 has been the worst legislative year for queer rights in modern history in the face of these extreme attacks it is critical that we send a signal to lgbtqia plus students that they will not be subject to these attacks in fcps i'm glad and
044grateful that the school board was able to take that step today but it's also important that we remember that this is just the first step across the board queer students face a harmful school environment compared to our peers fcps is youth survey which doesn't include transgender students shows that we are significantly more likely to be depressed sexually harassed or suicidal this school board cannot expect that a single resolution will uplift my community real policy change is needed hosting a forum topic on sros before the start of the next school year can help usher in that change in the last two months you have heard from seven different queer students from diverse backgrounds on the dangerous post by sros and more efficient allocations for the 8 million dollars spent on them to chairwoman anderson and to
045vice chair picarsky we ask that you listen to the multiple students who have come forward to this board and schedule this forum topic before the start of the next school year i also want to remind the school board of the disproportionate impact the aids and the hiv epidemic have had on my community we lost a whole generation because of a failure to treat stis as a public health crisis unfortunately we never reversed that failure the vast majority of hiv transmissions still occur among gay men fortunately common sense solutions can address this crisis in particular the use of condoms can significantly lower the rate of transmissions of stis however due to financial constraints and a lack of family clinics and fcps over 50 percent of gay men do not use a condom according to fcps's youth
046survey we can address this cap through free condom distribution programs in our high schools these programs have been shown to be cost efficient the virginia department of health even shows that one hundred thousand condoms were free to participating organizations moreover research has shown that condom access programs in high school incurred safe sex without discouraging abstinence one research review even found that sexual interactions decreased by 88 when a condom access program was implemented and it's an entirely achievable program multiple queer students today were able to distribute over 50 free condoms before this very meeting this pride month we cannot just pass a resolution listen to the voices of lgbtqia plus students schedule a forum topic on sros before the start of the next school year and create a free condom distribution program in our high schools
047thank you thank you our next speaker is frankie sellers good evening school board members my name is frankie i'm a queer and transgender student in fcps as well as the co-president of the fairfax pride liberation project a queer student-led organization in fcps i i've been in fcps my entire academic career i have experienced fcps from the perspective of a trans person i have been misgendered and dead named by teachers and administrators designating dead naming and misgendering as hate speech is absolutely imperative in validating trans and gender expansive students fle also needs to be inclusive of all these students it is time we stop splitting students by gender into male and female this causes lots of panic within the trans community and within the gender expansive community i have heard transgender briefly mentioned in the curriculum
048but lots of the language used was harmful and inappropriate and disinformative it is important that transgender gender expansive and queer students see their identities reflected in the curriculum and it is important that there is access to free condoms in our schools in doing research it was very challenging for me a student to find free condoms for distribution it is not a new idea it was brought during the aids crisis and was implemented in many schools and i call the board to implement these free condom access programs in our schools to keep your students safe i'm thankful to the school board to see the new regulations for transgender students to see trans students supported by the board despite backlash and hate from citizens unfortunately the reality is that many of the teachers will not necessarily follow
049all these regulations and much of the hate speech will go unreported it is hard for transgender students to speak up for themselves when they are misgendered demon named or harassed it's hard for transgender students to stand up for themselves when others do not when they feel hate coming from parents teachers fellow students and others the regulations cannot stand or make positive change without enforcement and consequences in not following them i encourage the school board to not only listen and support your queer students but listen when they say that we can't stop at new regulations the board must reflect that queer and trans students are absolutely welcome and will be listened to i want my concerns not only heard but followed thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is amber beechler good evening
050my name is amber beekler i am the i'm a board member of the transgender education association of the greater washington area and i i thought a lot of things to talk about tonight first off thank you for your pride resolution thank you so much pride in june is a very is a very emotional month it has a lot of anniversaries that are both good and bad and i i guess when i think about why i'm proud i have a lot of reasons but i'm really proud of the work that i'm doing right now as a co-facilitator for a trans youth group for northern virginia um it's a small group not not many attendees but i'm so proud of of just the space that we're able to create and i just want to share a bit
051um i feel like a lot of people talk about transgender uh youth and students but i've never actually spoken spoken to many of them and so you're probably wondering what do we talk about well we talk about video games we talk a lot about comics we talk a lot about dnd and we talk about some transgender issues and i can say that the last 15 months has been incredibly difficult for all of them and i'm so proud of the work that they put in i'm so proud of them finishing up this year and it is very important to know that what happens in fairfax and politics and what happens here at the school and what happens in our neighbors also does not exist in a vacuum the students are very aware of what is going
052on as as obviously we had some tremendous students speaking tonight and i implore you please listen to what they have to say please listen to the students they hear they know what is being said about them and many other students like them there is much anti-lgbtq rhetoric that happens in fairfax and it happens to our neighbor at lcps my alma mater and despite that i still have some of my attendees asking what can i do can i speak who do i email what do i do they're half my age and they're so brave i don't know if i would have been able to do the same thing at their age so please listen to what they have to say they need to know that you all stand with them a hundred and twenty percent they
053need to know what resources are available they need to know how and who they can go to for support please listen and that's how you can celebrate pride month this year thank you our next speaker is zia tompkins good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight none of you have kids in fcps and i can only imagine why you would want to be on the school board giving everything crazy that's going on but i can believe that probably one of those reasons is ambition for higher office and let me say that that's okay it's okay as long as ambition brings about good for our community but let me say this it is immoral to use a school system of over a hundred thousand children as a personal footstool to advance an agenda
054people of this county and i get it elections have consequences but when the people voted they didn't stick in their sample ballots to give license to any school board member to go on a personal jihad that's just not what they did they expect a good education for their children think about that as you ponder your political futures rhetoric matters and there have been members of this school board that have been actively promoting and inciting hatred within our community it's wrong and i get it it's easy to provoke a response and then play the victim but these actions are actively hurting kids they're breaking bonds within our communities and they're destroying the reputation of this school system i don't want to read about fairfax county schools on the cover of a british tabloid which just happened
055recently i want to leave you with this quote from a wise man anger fear and aggression the dark side are they once you go down the dark path forever will it dominate your destiny consume you it will now i know a lot of people take up jihad thinking they're going to be some kind of hero but it always ends up the same exact way by becoming the villain crusades ruin people they ruin societies i've seen it if this school board continues down a hyper partisan path i fear you all will become righteous monsters and all of us here will suffer and for you you worm you make over 300 000 a year my property taxes it is your responsibility to be the adult in this room and rein in these folks as excesses you better
056do so if you think you're ever going to work again after they boot you in a year that's all i have to say thank you [Music] our next speaker is kashif bhatti no one ever sends it says it right so i want to point out i'm pretty sure you all said my name right just wanted to say that i definitely want to say that good evening school board members as a parent and as an accomplished award-winning teacher right here in fcps one of the things that's become crystal clear having raised four of my own in this county as well is that the definition of equity is very different from you to your stakeholders the way what equity means to us might not necessarily mean what equity means to you so it kind of really begs
057to be asked away from being unbiased to being fair to being just with everyone what is your real definition of equity you know we live in a melting pot here in northern virginia people all walks of life all different backgrounds and languages and we promote to create an inclusive environment for our students and their families but when we find messaging hidden within emails reactions maybe necessarily that might marginalize specific groups and ethnicities within your county one thing becomes crystal clear is that the people behind me outside and among the 1 million citizens of fairfax county might feel otherwise and so one of the best ways to really talk about equity we've heard one fairfax mentioned probably throughout this evening is to kind of go back to that exact point from the report from the board
058of supervisors from december of 2019 many of the things that were quoted there right at the top as concerns after open one fairfax was implemented in 2017 are some of the exact same things that are some of the biggest of concerns today right here in a place like northern virginia whether it be racism is a result of fear and a loss of an opportunity whether it be quote to get people to see outside of their bubble we have to work together parents teachers leadership hand in hand not just talk to talk but really walk the walk to be able to define an actual definition of equity look i'm a teacher man i've been doing this for a really long time and one of the things that we always talk about is metrics and data and
059all of that good jazz and one of the things that really gets to that almost really comes to mind is the following where's the data for all of this if we're really talking about closing the gap if we're really talking about closing the academic achievement that we've always been talking about we can't be narrowing one gap and opening up and broadening another gap that exists within this county and that's something to really take a moment to think about so my piece of advice take a moment let this sink in because if we really think that the foundation of a society is as strong as the school system how can we look our children in the eye and when they themselves will know that they probably don't feel welcome and they probably don't feel belong because
060we didn't just necessarily inherit a system of inequity we not only inherited it but we all thank you our next speaker is emma chattan [Applause] emma chattan thank you board members of fairfax county public schools superintendent bray band and staff my name is reverend emma chattan and i'm a long time resident of fairfax county pastor of the metropolitan community church of northern virginia and the executive director of the transgender education association of greater washington i want to thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly today and i want to begin by wishing a meaningful pride to all who celebrate and recognize june has lgbtqia plus pride month including myself i want to speak to what was an agenda item the student rights and responsibilities document with regard to pronouns and name i think it's been
061about five years to the day since i last spoke here and so much has changed you have moved a huge school district forward on many fronts the tenth largest in the nation carefully navigating and nurturing the complex growing edges of diversity and inclusion i'm here to encourage you to continue to move forward with the virginia department of education policy requiring the establishment and the implementation of mandated guidelines with regard to trans and gender expansive students this is particularly important since the u.s department of education has affirmed the title ix protection for gender expansive and transgender students now is not the time to wait now is not the time to wait even if there's so much going on now is not the time to wait i encourage you to move forward with the publication of your
062regulation regulations that are in alignment with the requirement to incorrectly gender a trans or gender expansive person is a failure to see them to recognize them for who they are using the correct gender is not so much about you or how you may feel but about the student and how the student feels i know i have seen kids faces light up when they feel and know that they have been seen proper use of pronoun and name is also a matter of mitigating risk this is important the risk of suicide substantially increases if a person is consistently called the incorrect gender according to trans student educational resources over half the trans students and unsupported environments both at home and at school will attempt suicide yes that's over half no one wants to be on the wrong
063side of that statistic however 70 percent of those in supportive environments describe their emotional health and well-being as very good and that's where you want your students to be one of the parents that i work with said i just want my kid to be alive and happy amen leadership needs to come from the top down and i encourage you and i promise you that the work you do in publishing your best intentions for trans and gender expansive students will have a direct impact on the security and their overhaul mental health isn't that thank you our next speaker is christy [Applause] hudson we reached five consecutive days of zero community spread of coped in fairfax this week that means we made it almost halfway to meeting the 14 day demand of our teachers associations before they
064would support returning to school that demand was always unreasonable but a good reminder that the wants of adults should never supersede the needs of children neglecting kids needs is why fcps is now forced to use taxpayer money to plaster the county in advertising banners and posters begging families to return to its schools a board member asked during the work session this week why families aren't rushing to re-enroll dr brabrand didn't know i can answer that question after spending the past year talking to thousands of people in my district and beyond here are the top five reasons why families are reluctant to return number one the stunning realization by parents that students are not the primary stakeholder in the system but instead are dollar signs in the words of one dead quote students are mere vehicles
065for collecting funds to sustain the gargantuan fcps bureaucracy end quote reason two families don't trust fcps they don't believe you'll open five days or follow science and they don't trust fcps to provide their kids with the best education possible they think they can find that elsewhere number three belief that the next covet variant or some other virus will be used as an excuse to shut the system number four that the removal of advanced math and sweeping curriculum changes will be implemented without any genuine input from parents lame surveys notwithstanding and finally number five parents are distraught that fcps leadership is more concerned with using their position as a political platform than educating kids leadership exists to represent constituents the ones who voted for you the ones who didn't and even the ones who voted for
066you but now wish they hadn't when delivering a commencement speech the focus should be on the incredible kids not you when fcps makes local national and international headlines the stories ought to be about education not board member antics this attention is distracting it's embarrassing and families don't want to be associated with it no one wants to come back to fcps because it's more focused on adults money politics and social agendas than education and despite the fcps website tagline that says differently children do not come first in fairfax county public schools our next speaker is sarah cortez de la cruz sarah cortez de la cruz our next speaker is air hair hello can you hear me yes go ahead please awesome thank you hello happy pride to everyone my name is air queen i use they
067them pronouns and i am a transgender non-binary general music teacher at braddock elementary school i also grew up in fairfax county and graduated from fairfax in 2009. i want to start with some of my own narrative as a queer person and former fcps student i knew that i wasn't straight when i was in first or second grade but i didn't have the language to talk about who i was until fourth grade until i was a fourth grader at providence i learned what a lesbian was because that's what my best friend called me as an insult one day so that's what my friend called me i thought it must be a good thing i called her one too since she considered it an insult i ended up in the counselor's office for being mean and calling
068her names through that conversation with my school counselor i heard what a lesbian actually was and that i definitely was one it was so exciting that i finally had a word to describe a part of myself that i had known existed for a very long time unfortunately i also learned that even though i knew this truth about myself it wasn't really something that i should go around telling people i was told that no one really needed to know and i went with that in my time as a student i only met one teacher who was openly gay and i wasn't even one of his students let alone at the same school i met him at a gsa event sponsored by another school and until i met mr rigby i had never encountered another adult who
069was openly gay let alone a teacher that was the first time that i saw a mirror with someone in my chosen profession and probably a determining factor in why i knew that it would be okay for me to also be a teacher even since becoming a teacher i've heard things like you don't need to share about your personal life in the same sentence i was invited to a baby shower for a co-worker i've also been misgendered and treated like i was weird by students and co-workers alike i don't blame them though talking about fairness is still considered taboo even though queerness exists all around us and people from all walks of life can be and are lgbtqia2s i am very lucky i am extremely privileged and even though i wasn't exposed to queer adults as
070a child i still managed to survive i say survive because that's what i did and i'm proud of myself for still being here today a recent study by the trevor project shows lgbtq youth who report having at least one accepting adult were 40 percent less likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year that's a huge reason why i am out and proud at my school even if i am uncomfortable our students deserve to see that queer adults exist and that i am a human being just like them i can't imagine how my life would have been different if i had learned about the existence of families that have the same gender or non-binary parents when i was younger as a single non-binary parent myself i hope that when my own child is a
071student in fcps that all family configurations are celebrated we owe it to all our students to demonstrate that love and compassion for each other and for all of our differences thank you all so much and i hope you have a happy pride our next speaker is bethany heim hello um i just want to say that all the the speakers that i heard about the um concerning the lgbtqia plus community were just powerful and i was um and i feel i'm really glad that i was here listen to it it's kind of emotional but anyway i i want to um give kudos to megan mclaughlin on your june 1 15th town hall i appreciate that you engaged so thoughtfully and recognize that we are simply concerned parents thank you for not sorry reducing the conversation to
072right-wing or left-wing politics and and and shallow political tropes so for better or worse some parents are concerned about crt or the anti-racist anti-bias curriculum i do not want our children to have to declare their position on controversial topics through class class homework or class class discussions or class work i do not want children and teachers to anonymously report on each other like in london county anonymous reporting goes against the concept of due process i think microaggressions bullying racism misogyny islamophobia anti-semitism and hatred directed towards the lgbtqia plus community must be dealt with and it must be dealt with transparently and consistently and now i want to bring up ms omash's comments about israel and the palestinian conflict some would consider her social media comments a microaggression i wonder if the way the school board
073has dealt with this microaggression sets a precedent as to how the school district will deal with microaggressions committed by students or teachers this is something to think about moving forward will teachers and students have the same freedom of speech that was afforded to ms omesh when sharing controversial statements on their social media accounts or in the classroom this is very complicated and i wouldn't want to be in your shoes what if a student or teacher denounces hamas in the classroom and the number of civilians they killed what perspectives are allowed and are not allowed that being said i hope the controversial issues policy is not revised i do not understand why an anti-biased anti-racist curriculum cannot coexist with this important policy and i would like to know who thought this policy needs to be revised
074and why and notice i am not telling you to abandon your efforts to develop this curriculum i am telling you that i have concerns and i want the curriculum to be developed thoughtfully and transparently and i do not want it to exhibit the pessimism that is frequently expressed by people who desperately want to advertise they are social justice advocates just for political pain anyway thank you very much we now have video from willow wake hello school board and happy pride my name is willa walke she her hers i am a trans woman and advocate for lgbtq plus students i'm on the board of both fcps pride and the transgender education association thank you for celebrating the fact that there are lgbtq plus people attending working at and sending their kids to fairfax county public schools
075this pride month recognition allows students to see that there may be someone in their corner when facing anti-lgbtq plus bullying this recognition allows staff members to trust their leadership that they can be themselves at work it makes parents like me feel safer interacting with teachers and staff as i have had to do a lot with my kids i happen to be the parent of four kids who have or are going through fcps in fact i have had kids in fcps since 1995. three graduated from high school and one is a rising junior only two more years our family is blended with two women as the parents my oldest son and my two step children often had to deal with the complexities of a blended family explaining in war the words of children concepts like going
076to dads for the weekend half siblings and step parents showing these family complexities to children in school will help them see that families often look very different but the important thing is the love in those families i have also have a grandchild it'll be a few more years before they're ready for school i want to see their family represented as they go through school they have three grandmas and a grandpa please include a variety of family structures in fle i don't want my grandchild to feel left out if their family is not represented kids get it kids know that family is the people who love them the family has two moms two dads two non-binary parents kids should recognize their family in school my grandchild should see families with not only two grandmas and two
077grandpas but a grandma a grandpa a nana and a grandson we need to ensure that kids who don't have traditional family structures see themselves for young kids not seeing your family in a family lesson can make you feel less a part of your class please update fle to include a wide variety of family structures focusing in on blended and lgbtq plus families thank you our next we have video testimony from robert rigby happy pride to all my name is robert rigby co-president of fairfax county public schools pride i have been teaching in fcps since 1999. it seemed an incredible risk 20 years ago when i first testified to the school board before any of you were here that i am queer and wanted to see more safety welcome respect and inclusion for all queer people
078in our schools there have been what i would generally call negative reactions because of my sexuality over the years with students parents and administrators too i have been often supported sometimes not in varying degrees through those occasions but i am genuinely pleased with my experience so far in fcps as a queer person the reality though is that i have a great deal of privilege as a white middle class cisgender not closeted house abled and third general generation college educate educated men there are many queer families staff and many many students who do not have that privilege they are the people and we need to turn our focus now the you surveyed in the fall with fairfax county government year after year says that 16 to 18 percent of our secondary students are lgbtq 16 to
07918 only a small percentage of those students are known to us many queer students in our system have barriers children who are black indigenous people of color those without support in their communities students with disabilities those with housing insecurity and food insecurity neurodivergent and twice exceptional students some students who are christian muslim jewish hindu confucian buddhist or religious in some other way conservative and progressive students students with families who are not known to any of us queer staff and families too being welcomed should not require being an extrovert or having privilege seek out and listen to the pride liberation products and other students we have progressed beyond my imagination of 20 years ago now people all over the state look to fairfax for leadership we've received four inquiries from around the state just this week
080let's not falter because there is a fuss in neighboring latin we really need to lead happy pride we now have video testimony from vanessa hall hello i'm a fcps queer student and i'm afraid about coming out to my family classmates and even teachers the possibility of becoming homeless losing all my friends and even getting harassed is very real to me growing up in an asian house household traditional household norms dominated furthermore the normalization and stigmatation of slurs and jokes around the lgbtq plus community have made me feel scared to come out i feel like i would never belong anywhere my fears are compounded by my experiences with racism from being bullied in elementary school due to my poor english to being asked by a teacher if i had the coronavirus last year fcps has always
081been a discriminatory experience for me i never feel safe anywhere i could be kicked out of my house any second if my parents knew of my sexual orientation all my life i've struggled with balancing my sexuality my family and my religion every day i debate whether i should continue to live life pretending to be someone i not or face the harassment potential homelessness and ostracism ostracization that will inevitably occur if i act who i am my story isn't unique many queer students are struggling with the same questions in fcps as school board members you all have the power to help many students like me passing basic protections is a good first step but let's not act as if that's going to end the institutionalized stigma that we face on behalf of queer students like me
082i'm asking you to stop ignoring this crisis please take action to address the homelessness suicide crisis and discrimination we face i'm a brown lesbian rising sophomore in fcps and i'm scared to come out fcps has never been a place where i put unconditionally accepted or safe in the middle school wherein right now i would get called racial and homophobic slurs every single day even though i wasn't out teachers would overhear and do absolutely nothing when i went to my counselor she told me that being gay was easy in fcps and that i couldn't possibly be experiencing the homophobia that i shared with that i shared with her how am i supposed to feel safe and be my authentic self in fcps if all of that was happening despite me still being in the closet the
083school board has the power to take actions that will help make fcps a more accepting place for queer students like me getting rid of outdated and bigoted regulations is a good start but we are begging you to start standing up for your students and pushing for radical change listen to the multiple students who have shared these stories reinvest the eight million dollars spent on sros on other resources create inclusive sex and education at curriculums create teletherapy options and invest resources in safe housing we have video testimony from maryam ben on omran hello everyone my name is miriam benaron i'm a teacher at chantilly high school and in fcps parents today i'd like to share with you a concern i have about the use of biased language and the need for unbiased language equity and inclusivity
084especially by our leadership one concern i have is about the message that was sent out to our fcps community on monday may 24th i was concerned and dismayed at the use of biased and accusatory language used in that message another similar concern i have was about the biased language used over and over again by the anti-abra protesters minutes before the fcps board meeting that commenced on thursday may 20th note that abroad is the first and only muslim representative on the fcps board currently multiple people that day at multiple times told multiple arabs or muslims in the crowd to go home one of the people yelled out that if we wanted freedom and justice then we should go home continuing go home where you came from which is such a vile racist hateful and demeaning way
085of saying that their voices and views are valued and matter while ours the muslims palestinians and minorities our life our voices do not matter while abroad supporters that day asked for peace justice freedom of speech and to end racist and discriminatory attacks toward and while anyone who spoke up about palestine was discriminated against and called names like anti-semitic while in fact we were promoting peace justice and equity none of this was broadcasted on media instead social media and the news uses smear campaign tactics that detract from the fact that hundreds of palestinian lives are lost daily a breach in violation of international human rights instead if we are to speak about their deaths people are accused of anti-semitism these were all one-sided misrepresentations of palestinians and muslims another recent event with students at justice high
086school where they were not allowed to present about palestine yet students from other clubs presented about similar issues or international affairs freshman students at justice high school made an amazing and educational slideshow to share with others at the school about the palestinian conflict however the students were denied the opportunity to present even though their slideshow was unbiased i want to make clear that i love respect and care about my muslim and jewish neighbors and all people of other faiths alike i want to emphasize however that palestine the palestinian conflict is not a religious conflict but affects multiple communities it is our job as educators and leaders to allow students to present what they're passionate about knowledge is power and we need to trust that students will show empathy and fair judgment likewise we need to
087model our commitment to empathy equity and inclusivity thank you we have final video testimony from lisa turkletop good evening parents i know this is a school board meeting but i know a lot of parents watch my videos so i'm going to talk directly to you parents we are at a pivotal moment going into 2021 2022 school year we are at a pivotal moment because this school board refuses to acknowledge the academic challenges that are headed your child's way we know that large portions of the curriculum were not taught this year or as or as the school would say we're taught in an asynchronous environment parents how much learning do you think your children did in an asynchronous learning environment this year 6th grade parents do you have any concerns about your child being academic academically
088ready to reach that seventh grade level and perform at a high standard eighth grade children's parents is your child ready for high school is your child ready to academically achieve at the ninth grade level do you have any concerns about what the watered-down curriculum this year has done to your child's learning capacity k-3 parents handwriting practice is something that happens every day inside the classroom what happened to your child this year with handwriting do you feel that your child is going to be able to achieve that next level next year this school board has not acknowledged learning loss has not even included that curriculum that was not taught this year as part of learning loss and this school board likes to laugh and make fun of concepts like learning loss but parents how do you
089feel about learning loss i will tell you in my experience your principal and your teachers at your school they hear you and they want your child to succeed parents you must advocate at the school level on your child's behalf if you have any concerns about how this school board or how the school system is going to handle next year and believe me if you don't start raising the issue now they'll probably try to dumb down the curriculum okay that's what they did this year oh we'll make the curriculum less challenging because we can't teach in a virtual environment that we're going to force everybody to but i know in my personal experience your teachers and your principal care you must advocate by reaching out to them and expressing your concerns this school board does not
090believe in the concept of loss academics untaught curriculum or learning loss but as parents i know you do and i know you're concerned advocate item 4.01 confirmation of action taken and closed meeting this is the 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 him ms donna kofax for the motion i move that the chairman of the school board be authorized to execute on behalf of the board the contract for the assistant superintendent of instructional services as discussed in closed meeting is there a second i was thinking that thank you ms darren
091not kofax thank you for the motion i believe we spoke um regarding the new super assistant superintendent earlier so i will now call for the vote all in favor of the motion that is presented we have mr frisch miss omega miss mclaughlin miss cohen miss mccarski miss tolin miss maron and miss dennarchofax and myself those opposed seeing none those abstaining ms corbett sanders miss keys gemara and miss eisema heiser thank you item 4.02 student rights and responsibilities has been removed until a future meeting agenda item 4.03 proposed boundary adjustment of elementary schools in the justice pyramid i call on dr brabrand to introduce a topic and the recommendation thank you vice chair piekarski uh good evening board members again and community um we're here to talk about the justice high school pyramid boundary change and
092the option and the attachments before you tonight is a revised version of what was presented to you on may 20th 2021 the attachment tonight has an estimated of 497 students that will be reassigned from seven schools in the justice high school pyramid the study was done to address concerns uh this study about glenn forest and when the school board expanded the scope we looked at additional elementary schools in the pyramid the revision uh that we have made addresses some of the comments and concerns from the public hearing that was held by this board on june 8. it uses parts of options a and c that were presented earlier to you and were part of the numerous community engagement meetings that we held in april of this year our communities always have questions and concerns with
093boundary changes and i know that our operational and school staff have worked hard to bring forward the best boundary adjustment for this pyramid and will based on your approval tonight work with our community and our school principals and staff to make sure there's a smooth transition for our caregivers and our students thank you thank you i call in dr anderson for a motion i move to adopt the revised fcps recommendation as posted in the attachment this would adjust the boundaries of bailey's bailey's upper beech tree belvedere glen forest park lawn and sleepy hollow elementary schools the adjustment will not change the middle or high school boundaries is there a second second so mesh dr anderson would you like to speak to your motion yes i would thank you um glenn forrest um as we've discussed
094previously his current enrollment is almost 1100 students that school has two modular structures and 12 trailers in february of 2020 the board voted to expand the boundary scope to include all schools in the justice pyramid including mason crest which is technically also in the annandale pyramid um staff engage in significant community engagement as this was important to this board as we've talked about previously that we must ensure that we involve all parts of our community the initial scoping meetings um which took place in march of 2021 yielded over 319 total registrations um with 58 of those participants requiring spanish and one arabic across the eight schools there was also an initial meeting that took place at one of the local organizations that was fully for our arabic speaking parents which yielded about 40 participants staff
095developed four options based on the feedback from those initial scoping meetings to present to the community apparently zones were utilized to ensure that parents had the information and were able to provide their feedback on those options the options were presented on april 2021 and those meetings yielded 406 total registrations with 171 spanish speakers and five arabic across the fight across the eight schools additionally a public hearing was held very recently where we had 16 participants who spoke before the board the proposed options before the board is a modified version of the option that was provided on may 20th and it is reflective of the community input of note of the of the during the public hearing there were concerns regarding a planning area in which um walkers would be bussed and that has been changed
096in this modified version that is provided today additionally one section that was provided in option a on from april was then brought back into today's um presentation there are no attendance islands this option that is provided today will allow the two modular sets of classrooms to be removed from glen forest over time as glenn forest houses the oldest modular classrooms and the division and they are not in good condition traffic will be positively impacted which will reduce the needs for busing because we know that has been a significant issue for glenn forest for the past several years i do want to be sure that i reiterate that this new proposal is a continuing it's a continuous of the hybrid option a which was provided many months ago in april and the primary difference between the
097option of may 20th and today's option or one to reinstate that walk zone which is spa area 20 5102 and also to provide some greater relief from glenn forest which is um planning area 50 24. and i think that's all i will stop there miss umash would you like to speak to your second yes please thank you um i want to start off you know this is one of those pieces in the agenda that sometimes can go over people's heads but i really want to pause here to recognize the importance of what's happening and especially to to offer gratitude to dr anderson um for her leadership and partnership and working to um really try to find a solution here uh you know this is kind of one of those situations i think in the county
098where you reflect and as an at large member you look county-wide and you ask yourself how did we end up here as she pointed out you know we had glenn forrest in elementary school where uh you know one of our only schools if not our only school um with kids more kids in in outside the building than were inside um you know one of our only schools with two modulars uh where teachers get parking tickets because the overcrowding is just so untenable and there aren't enough parking spots for our staff so i this is you know really commendable uh for a number of reasons the first is the full range full range examination our board you know took the step earlier on to look at not just uh the one school and the challenge there
099and the neighborhoods there but really to try to think long term and what's going to be sustainable moving forward for all these schools you know the other was that uniquely i think this time around we evaluated capacity utilizing the space or sorry with consideration of the space that's currently taken up in trailers and in modulars and that was an opportunity for us to say long term we want to start moving away from having to house our students outside of the building and finally you know there were some intentional steps from staff who i'm really grateful for and working really hard on this to maximize efficiency within the buildings and be creative about how we can bring about the best outcomes for kids no matter what school they end up going to in that area so
100i'm grateful to the community for all the uh input and to staff for their diligent work and setting an example i think for how we can do these boundary changes moving forward so thank you dr anderson and i look forward to our colleagues support on this other board members who wish to speak we have miss corbett sanders yes thank you and thank you dr anderson for bringing this to the table tonight i know that there are some community members that want to actually see it visually and so i don't know if it's possible if we could go ahead and put that up on the screen so people can see the excellent work that has uh gone into this because it's my understanding that you worked very closely with uh mr plattenberg and his whole team
101and i know mr plattenberg isn't with us tonight because it's his birthday but the work that you all did was really to address many of the concerns that were raised by the community in the public hearing and so that's that is to be commended especially addressing the needs of a community that did not want to lose the ability of students to be walking to school and that is an objective that we should have for all of our schools in fairfax county that all of our that our students that can walk to school should be able to walk to them the other thing that's really important here and unfortunately uh mr plattenberg isn't here but it i wanted to applaud the piece which is getting rid of the trailers trailers and modulars because prior the prior
102board was very concerned at one point we had close to a thousand trailers in fairfax county and we were working towards decreasing the reliance on them but there is an artificial concept that a modular because it is using funds from our capital improvement actually is considered equivalent to bricks and mortar and let me be very clear modulars are not typically bricks and mortar and it is a different learning experience for our students that spend their time in either trailers or modulars and so i think that setting the objective to minimizing our utilize utilization on tr of trailers and modulars should be congratulated and applauded and be the model for future work of this board as well as encouraging [Music] many of our students as many as possible to be able to bike or ride or
103bike or walk to school so thank you i will be happy to support this and thank you for whoever put the map up i think that makes it much easier for everybody to understand the changes that were made thank you miss corbett sanders miss tolin yes um i just wanted to um commend dr anderson for her hard work on um this boundary change or set of boundary changes in this case um and just want to mention one of the things i really liked about the process was the unique ways and the innovative ways that she and um you know the region looked at you know really reaching out to parents i reached out in different languages unique locations um you know within the community to try to reach people and i think that was quite
104remarkable you know i was working on a boundary change earlier this year and in that situation we utilized a team of homeowners associations and community groups um you know through that throughout that entire process and and that was new um you know to our facilities folks so we've had many conversations about you know really trying to get the community involved and using unique ways to do that and i hope that as we move forward with any of these kinds of discussions we really any discussions whether it's boundaries or other things that we continue these innovative ways to reach out to the community um i also was impressed that after all of that community engagement and our public hearing that we had a change you know we listened to people and we made a change in
105uh you know what's being presented tonight and i really appreciate that boundary changes always are filled with compromises but you know i think we have a pretty good solution here and i just wanted to commend you again dr anderson excuse gemara thank you um i just want to acknowledge the difficulty of handling something like this i mean there's um never an easy way to handle a boundary it's just not a good day generally but i also wanted to um i did have some concerns that i expressed to dr anderson earlier today the first is that there are changes here that we that have not been discussed publicly and i understand that they uh are in response to some of the concerns of the community uh one of the letters that i received from uh a
106one of your constituents or our constituents had to do with the autism program so i wanted to address or give you an opportunity to address what the impact is of this proposal on that program go ahead dr anderson thank you for that question miss keesgamar i'm actually glad you brought that up that's one of the things that i missed and my opening remarks there are not going to be any impact to the autism programs this is for general education students we have several of the schools including park lawn and sleepy hollow and also glenn forest with significant programs and there will be no impact to those programs okay as well as bailey's immersion programs there will be no impact there i wanted to be sure that i identified that okay and and there was also
107um mention of a um grandfathering clause you have here that if this were to be successful that will be what i will bring up in the next motion oh okay okay all right well thank you i i i'm a little on the fence quite quite frankly as i said earlier because i boundaries are very difficult um [Music] and the fact of the matter is just look at the lines it looks like some sort of i don't know interesting head the boundaries of the whole area but um it suggests that we need we need to hear from the boundary consultant that we need that comprehensive information to be able to truly um for parents to be able to feel that they're not being singled out that this is you know and this is the result of
108years of um trying to accommodate various groups of parents the use of the administrative boundary process that resulted in i don't know a cousin of that guy named gerrymander i think but um in any case i just wanted to raise those concerns thank you thank you if we could place the motion on their screen i don't see any other i say one more thing sure dr anderson i just wanted to say one more thing thank you for raising that issue and frankly when that map is placed there's really no way to explain that map none of it makes sense we do need to do something that is comprehensive and that makes sense so that anybody who's reviewing it can can determine oh this is why this is this way having said that while i am
109very eager as well for the banvi consultant to help us move forward in that effort we really need to provide effort um relief to glenn forest because they've been waiting for many many many years now in order to right-size their school so i fully agree with those things that you've raised miss keith gemara so thank you the motion is before us on the screen all those in favor miss corbett sanders mr frisch miss omesh miss cohen dr anderson miss tolin miss marin um ms seismor heiser mr kofax and myself opposed abstain ms keysgamara thank you emotion i'm sorry miss mclaughlin is away from the table i'm looking straight at that um i call on dr anderson for another motion thank you i moved to adopt the following phasing plan to implement the boundary change rising
110kindergarten and first grade students will be reassigned to attend the newly assigned schools for the 2021-22 school year rising second third fourth and fifth grade students will have the option to attend the newly assigned school or remain at their prior assigned school for the 21-22 school year and until they matriculate to middle school is there a second the size more heiser dr anderson would you like to speak to your motion i'll be brief because i think much of this has been covered one of the things that is hard to do while we are trying to provide relief to lent forest with a situation that they've been in for so many years boundaries are hard it's a it's a difficult um transition it's a difficult transition now even the community feedback around this has been mixed
111some members said this is a good year to do this after the virtual year some parents have said this is not such a good year to do this so this is an opportunity to help cushion the transition so that our parents have a little bit of time to enter into this change in a way that is uh reflective of the caring culture that we try to provide here in fairfax county ms eisenhower would you wish to speak yes um just briefly i'm very happy to second this motion and first i just wanted to thank dr anderson for all of her hard work and partnership and collaboration as we've gone through this process of the justice pyramid boundary changes to really bring some long needed relief to glen forest and i know how hard this is
112you know compromises must be made you can never please everybody and i'm very impressed with your tremendous outreach to the community in so many different ways to really try to hear those voices and then work with staff to center those voices as adjustments have been made throughout the process and keep us informed as it's been going on so i'm very impressed with that and i just want to say i'm really happy and glad to second this motion because while it is vital that we address these long-standing capacity issues at glen forest it's also important to do this with recognition of the place that we are in right now we are in a place that coming out of a year of tremendous sort of angst and trauma and change that was unexpected for our families our
113students our staff and to continue that caring culture it's important to understand the importance of consistency for our families and give them that option to maintain that consistency for their students who've been in school so i'm glad that we could do this as dr anderson to cushion this additional transition to proceed slowly and be mindful of that caring culture while also ensuring that we do address capacity issues at glen forest and i just wanted to share briefly that i was in a similar situation many years ago with my own son he was not able to attend his school because it did not have an autism program when he entered it and he had to leave his school and be out of his community and it was hard and when they did open an autism program
114at his school i was given the choice as a parent he was entering fourth grade he's been four years in his school and i was given the choice as a parent to keep him in the school that he'd been in for four years or move him into a school he'd never been in with staff he'd never been in and i know how angst provoking that is for our families so i'm really glad we're giving our families the option of doing what's best for their children but i will say that i chose to move my son and it was the best decision ever because he made so many friends in this new culture a new community and they really made an extra effort recognizing there was a new population of students entering their community to make
115them feel welcome and throughout his high school his friends he still has friends from the kids he met when he transitioned into fourth grade who were his champions his buddies and his prom partners so um i encourage our families to make the right decision but to know that it will be okay so thank you are there any other board members wishing to speak to this motion okay the motion is before us on the screen all those in favor miss corbett sanders mr frisch miso mesh miss cohen uh dr anderson miss tollen miss marin miss keys kamara maseism heiser mister not cofax myself and miss mclaughlin is away from the table thank you very much everyone item 4.04 family life education curriculum advisory committee report of recommendations i call on mr frisch for the motion thank
116you i move that the board approved recommended media and lessons objectives as detailed in the agenda item and is reviewed and recommended by the family life education curriculum advisory committee is there a second second all right miss koa and mr frisch would you like to speak to your motion please um first i'd like to thank uh dr presidio noel caminco and carrie reynolds for their their work on this um we've made tremendous progress with family life education over the past six years i'm grateful for the continued hard work of our family life education community advisory committee which has resulted in these recommendations of particular note fleacack recommends that discussions of types of families be more inclusive for kindergartners and first graders by among other things acknowledging the existence of same-sex couples and many other family
117makeups in the context of two parent families i can't tell you how impactful this change will be i've heard from a number of students with two moms or two dads or two sets of parents with any number of combinations of moms and dads cisgender transgender and non-binary they told me over and over that when they had these conversations in class as younger students all of their classmates knew when the family of the kid with two moms or two dads was excluded from what our instruction told them made a family they knew that love made a family but they nonetheless felt small alone and othered this change will be a game changer for these kids and it will tell students who don't have same-sex parents and they may one day grow up to be in a
118relationship like that and fall in love and start a family that their family is worthy of respect and is to be valued in addition the recommendations of fleacac clarify the correct venue for instruction on depression and suicide in seventh grade ad objectives related to the safety uh when technology in use of technology and appropriate workplace behavior adding media to eighth grade instruction on sexting revising instruction on amenorrhea for 7th and 8th graders and making 10th grade instruction on unplanned pregnancies more sensitive to families who adopted a child i'm honored to be able to make this motion tonight thank you thank you mr fresh i just want to for housekeeping purposes bring to your attention that i think you spoke to your amendment you spoke to the main motion oh okay thank you just okay thank
119you so much um miss cohen would you like to speak to your second i would thank you um i'm gonna do a little bit of both too so uh you know i think tonight um one of our very eloquent speakers said that it's incredibly important for all of our students to see their families represented um when we describe families in our classes and not only is the new fle curriculum more inclusive and respectful of what makes our students and our families unique the changes proposed will help many more of our students feel represented in our community and as mr frisch said be safer not only do many of our kids have two moms or two dads but it's also incredibly important to see the word guardian added many of our students have grandmas and grand
120zags aunts uncles cousins friends who play the role of parent for many of our students and we have an obligation to remind them that that is okay and part of a normal family structure so it is with a whole heart that i embrace these um not only the new changes but also the upcoming amendment by mr fresh miss if i now call him mr fresh for an amendment uh thank you dr anderson i move to amend the main motion by changing traffic that's what happens when you're coughing you miss significant portions of what needs to happen are there any other board members wishing to speak to the main motion miss marin thank you um i i'm really glad to see this happening i'm glad it's an understatement you know i voiced my support of the
121recommendation these recommendations not only for fcps's curriculum but also to the changes at the state level to the state curriculum and sols and relatedly to the state's model policy for protecting and respecting transgender and non-binary students so you know this is where we as school board members i think can do what we were elected to do it's policy it's driving what happens in classrooms and it's a big division and i hear stories that really break my heart but i also hear stories where children are affirmed and staff are trying and the more that we can give staff the guidance and the expectation and give them the required training to teach and see every child you know it's going to be better for everyone everyone has strengths to share and i just want kids to feel
122safe and included and that they matter so that they can learn and and do what their destiny is thank you thank you miss marin miss corbett sanders yes thank you thank you very much for uh the work of the fleek hack and all of our appointees to the fleet cac because this has been a work of continuous improvement in our family life education after a fairly robust review of the full curriculum two years ago we made some changes but this is really a continuation and there is one question that i have and a concern about the language and that is because it doesn't take into account uh joint custody arrangements and so ideally what i would like to see is that we delete the reference of living in the home to include multiple variations of
123family because the thing that we do know is family is a construct that allows for our children to feel nurtured and loved and uh that it there isn't a static static form of family families have changed over time and many families evolved themselves over time and so in my neighborhood i have families that live in multiple homes and so i would just suggest that it's a little late for this year but looking forward that we are inclusive of those families that may live uh may have joint custody and live in multiple homes thank you miss quebec sanders miss keith gabara i'm happy to speak i didn't have my light on but i think it was oh it could have been before it's from the previous time um i will say this um and i didn't
124get a chance to talk to you mr fresh about this but because i work with hundreds of families um i the fact of the matter is the variations of families i couldn't even tell you how many different variations there are right it it can be a mom with a uh you know it can be one mom it can be a mom and a grandmother it can be two moms it can be two dads it can be a mother and a father i mean it can be a a host of family members living in the same home it can be my dad's are all spread around and my concern with this language is when you say two it focuses on the idea of the nuclear family which comes from another generation before both of us let's
125just say so so um it's i think that i hope that we'll continue to work on this because even when you say oh i have two moms or two dads or two this we really as a society have moved away from that um and that's not to say that it's not okay for those who do have it but i would not want any child to feel marginalized by virtue of how we describe that thank you miss keys gomorrah was there not cofax mrs darnachova thank you i um i just want to say i want to thank the members of fleacac for their important and diligent work and i particularly have heard from [Music] students about the revision about part two in the seventh and eighth grade curriculum about girls with primary and secondary amarya because
126this is some this is something that um we haven't taught and it was brought up by a student member and i think it's extremely important as young women mature in to puberty at different levels in different ways so i appreciate the work of the student leadership as well as the um you know the members of of our committee i i guess i have a question with miss keys gamara and miss corbett sanders are you going to be adding an amendment at this time to the no i so um i was discussing it with mr foster um and so i had not written it up and i hadn't had an opportunity to discuss it but if it's something that the board is concerned about um certainly we can try all right i um i i just
127appreciate your um you know you're sharing your experience and so it just gave me pause for a second while i was supportive of this language i also hear you and understand that that could be a good addition so um if there's no update i'm supportive of the additional language and but if you know if there is a motion from the table i'd be interested in hearing that so thank you please ms corbett sanders go ahead miss darren at kofax i am not planning on putting forth an amendment what i think is more important is that as we build the chart committee charges for next year and we give instructions to our various committees as to things that we want them to look into i think it would be worthy of our attention to ask the
128flea cac to look at a more varied approach or a more holistic approach to defining families and how we can support them all right thank you thank you miss dernacle fox miss mclaughlin followed by bliss and fresh thank you uh we seem to be sort of doing this in different orders so am i speaking to the amendment or speaking to the main motion right now we are still on the main motion the amendment has not yet been made it's the confusion okay we're selling it a little bit yeah they're highly related but yeah process wise we'll talk offline i think there's a way to do this um that we've done in the past might help um to the main motion i just want to give my full support um to the recommendations coming from fleacac
129again i too appreciate their hard work on this and uh to some of the eloquent words that some of my colleagues have already said starting with mr frisch as a social worker as a loving parent and as a very proud parent of a gay son i can't tell you how important it is for me to see this kind of language in here for our children and for our community our educational community to see this for too long gay children with gay parents or children who came from just non-traditional parents did not hear and see their family's structures being recognized celebrated validated and so this is just very important language and to the other changes as always i really appreciate dr presidio your team that always looks to bring best educational practice to this work that's
130what we know is what we owe our students and uh the educators who deliver the materials so please extend my appreciation to all of your team that was involved in this work too ms clemenco there you go another hat that you continue to wear so in in terms of the main motion uh very much also appreciate my braddock district representative uh who served this year um with and really put in the hard work as well thank you very much miss mclaughlin mr frick i move to amend the main excuse me the main motion by changing two sections under recommendation excuse me recommended lessons lesson objectives on page three under kinder under kindergarten emotional and social health unit change and this is the current language uh descriptive statement colon students will identify adult and child members
131of their families the type of family structures included will be two parent families mother and father mothers fathers and children extended families relatives other than the immediate family living in the home single parent families adoptive families foster families families with step parents and blended families and to change it too and i will raise my hand when i am saying a word that i'm adding you'll see that my hand does not go up that much descriptive statement students will identify adult and child members of their families the types of family structures included will be two-parent guardian families mother and father two mothers two fathers and children extended families relatives other than the immediate family living in the home single parent guardian families adoptive families foster families families with step parents and blended families under grade one
132emotional and social health unit change discussions will include the family the following family structures two parent families parentheses mother and father mothers fathers and children extended families relatives other than the immediate family living in the home single parent families adoptive families foster families families with step parents and blended families a definition of community will be given along with examples of types of community communities including the family two and this is virtually the same language again i will raise my hand when i'm adding a word discussion will include the following family structures two parent guardian families mother and father two mothers two fathers and children extended families relatives other than the immediate family living in the home single parent guardian families adoptive families foster families families with step parents and blended families a definition of community
133will be given along with examples of types of communities including the family is there a second miss cohen second mr frisch would you like to speak to your amendment yes i'll try to keep it brief um so we were provided with the original language in april at our work session and you'll note that the recommendation from fleacac is defining two parent families that's not something that i'm doing with my amendment or my changes it's it says the types of family structures included this is their language will be two-parent families so my amendment does two things one it adds the word guardian to that to be more expansive two it makes explicit what the intent of fleek act was if you go back and read the documents on board docs you'll find that their discussions and
134conversations centered around making sure that students in kindergarten first grade when learning about two-parent families specifically when learning about two-parent families that those conversations would include mothers and fathers two mothers two fathers etc into the language it's not until we get to this document that we're voting on now that the word two is removed from mothers and fathers and i am simply making an amendment here or trying to make an amendment here that makes it very clear that that's what we're talking about i'm not limiting the scope of fleekex recommendations when i brought this amendment last month to kerry reynolds and noel clemenco and and dr presidio uh they agreed that it was uh warranted and uh and so here we are um so in supporting this amendment you are not limiting the definition of
135a family you're making explicit the recommendation of fleacac by making sure that in conversations about two-parent families the beginning of that conversation is mother and father two mothers two fathers so that there's no ambiguity about what it is we're doing and what it is that we're doing is making sure that these kids see their families recognized in their instruction i can't tell you how life-changing it would have been if when i was growing up i didn't have same-sex parents but i would have benefited greatly by seeing that represented in the instruction i was receiving to hear that the things going on in my head were normal i've talked to third graders who've come out this year i've talked to fourth graders who came out and were bullied that's what this work is about can we
136always do better yes and i think fleek hacking is an example of always doing better at least over the last six years we've done so much the previous boards have done so much to change the lives of these kids and we can do more thank you thank you miss cohen would you like to speak to your second carl certainly said it better than i could have okay very good other board members would like to speak seeing and hearing none i will call for the vote and the motion is before us on the screen all those in favor miss corbett sanders mr frisch miss mclaughlin miss cohen um dr anderson miss tolin miss maron miss keis myself and it's no no no no it's not miso mesh is away from the table but that amendment does
137pass i will now call for the vote on the main motion i move that the board approved recommended media and lesson objectives as detailed in the agenda item and as reviewed and recommended by the family life education curriculum advisory board and as amended all those in favor miss corbett sanders mr frisch miss mclaughlin miss cohen dr anderson miss tollen miss marin muskis gamara miss sizemore heiser miss dairnak kofax and myself and that motion passes with miso mesh away from the table agenda item 5 consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure roberts rules provide for 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
138from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to approving these agenda items hearing and seeing no objections the consent agenda is approved new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items but action is scheduled at a future meeting these these new business items are on the screen agenda item 7.01 superintendent matters dr brabrand thank you vice chairman picarski uh just a couple of quick things um first of all i just want to know the school year ended we had a wonderful end of the school year and it was so exciting to go out to so many of the in-person graduations and see students in the class of
1392021 including my own two sons walk across the stage and graduate so what a wonderful congratulations to the class of 2021 it really was so exciting and we got to do it in person we got to do it safely and we also got to really connect again in person and it really bodes well as we plan for such a strong return in the fall and we will be returning five days in person in the fall i also just want you to know while we were out and some of the graduations actually were out at jiffy lube live we had a chance to have the education foundation with human resources partner on our fcps honors event where we recognize our exceptional employees and creating a caring culture part of that is really making sure we take
140time to recognize outstanding contributions by our employees across our division it was sponsored as i said by the foundation for fcps and hosted at jiffy lube we had more than 700 employees in both instructional and operational roles recognized through the employee outstanding employee awards program and this year 74 finalists in 12 categories were recognized in this special award ceremony it was really a wonderful time i know many of the board were out there playing co-hosts as we did all of the academy award-like presentations but what a wonderful way to wrap up this year it was a year unlike any other and i do want to thank this board for your leadership during the pandemic i know that there have been moments in the community uh that have been of of great intensity and great feeling
141but i do believe that we can come out of this pandemic more united than oth than ever more dedicated than ever to focus on our students our staff our parents in our community i'm committed to giving you my all and i know this board will continue to unite around making sure that we get all of our students back in schools in the fall and really continue the work that we all need to do to reach every child by name and by need so thank you all and have a nice day and juneteenth is a federal holiday we're just seeing we got and did that in advance as you know uh last year and very excited to see it now being recognized at a federal level thank you thank you dr brade brand agenda item 8.01
142board committee reports i will call on miss cohen for a comprehensive planning development committee update thank you miss picarski as always i was excited to be joined by my colleagues ms tollen and miss picarski on the best committee that the board has the comprehensive planning and development committee and we took the opportunity to do a deep dive on our community use policy so um the ever amazing miss vicki garner who was up for an fcps honors award i'm shaking my fist at you because you just mentioned the awards and um while she didn't win she definitely won on the cpdc we absolutely wholeheartedly endorse her fcps honor um and she did an amazing job of comparing our community use fees to our neighboring jurisdictions of looking at policies and highlighting some areas of concern one
143being how are some private groups are using our sort of um very generous policy of how the ptas use our buildings so making sure that we get that right and that we are always doing it in a way that is absolutely safe for our students in our buildings making sure that anyone who is coming into contact with our kids has had background checks but also making sure that when we're talking about community use that we're really appreciating understanding not only the cost in terms of the staff in the building that's required to be there and particularly our custodial staff but also the cost of the wear and tear that happens on our buildings because they are open for many more hours than they were traditionally designed to be so in trying to do a good
144job at looking at where we were in the region there are some recommendations from mr plattenberg's office and i think unanimously on the cpdc we're very excited to embrace those recommendations and really appreciate all the hard work that has gone into really helping the committee this year take a deep dive into what the schools committee from the planning commission did a lot of really wonderful work on for the past couple of years so it's been a great run this year and again we're so appreciative to mr plattenberg happy birthday jeff and his staff and all of the hard work that they have done to support our committee and our schools this year thank you mr frish for a report on the governance committee all right uh the governance committee met earlier this week uh particular
145note the committee finalized it suggested changes to the more robust conflicts of interest policy coming to a board meeting near you very soon it's been sent to the full board for future consideration additionally we began discussing this board's requested policy for a 15-minute unstructured middle school break recess uh we also discussed the policy uh and regulation around religious leave and accommodations we'll be furthering these conversations at our meeting at the end of the month as well thank you thank you miss keys gemara uh to share an update on the audit committee yes thank you uh last night the audit committee met first to recognize our two audit committee citizen members mr clay hale and mr daniel warco miss mclaughlin can you help me on how long mr clay hale has been serving six years so
146without fail i don't think he's missed the meeting while i've been on there but we will be welcoming a new member but we did not want to be remiss and in thanking him for his long and valuable service the committee then reviewed two school business process audit reports one for mcnair elementary and another for oakton high school the office of the artist auditor general also presented the quarterly audit follow-up status update and the fiscal year 22 risk assessment and audit plan for the school board to review the audit committee proposed after much discussion that we consider audit item number 41 which would deal with division-wide program review as one of the fiscal year audit topics to address potential board concerns um i had not spoken with miss laura jane cohen but if you guys are
147looking at community use we were also looking at flipping out community use so that we could do that program review and look at project management and those processes being in place don't give me that face at any rate we'll discuss it at our upcoming work session thank you thank you columnist holland for an update on the jet committee i just wanted to let my colleagues know um we will be discussing the jet goals at our work session next tuesday and most of the materials are already posted on board docs so you have plenty of time to read over them and get ready um mr fish and i met today with a number of staff member members including francine furby who's here this evening to talk from transportation um to to go through the goals and
148so we'll be adding a couple of additional charts just for your reference on monday afternoon um but please take a look at all those materials and we look forward to discussing those goals next week thank you thank you miss tollin i call him on miss omesh for a report on the joint cip committee i think it's important for you to update that we are working in tandem with the board of supervisors and that the board of supervisors has already reviewed your uh those recommendations so this is so the work you guys are doing is just uh wonderful but that the two are coming together now um thank you for that comment um the board of supervisors had their environment meeting they've had a series of environment meetings where they've gone over all the goals to
149see how the county can meet them and they did meet this past tuesday and particularly talked about transportation they have a transportation committee meeting next week i think the same day we're meeting so they'll be finalizing their transportation goals and um you know we'll be discussing that on tuesday as well and uh mr fish and i are working on our motions for um you know our july meeting to figure out the best way to move forward is a board around those recommendations thank you all right mr mesh please go ahead thank you i'm actually really excited to give this update um there's some really good news that we heard today ms cohen and i were just at the meeting hours before uh today right now so we had the chance a consultant came forward and
150shared with us a debt policy review for the county we looked at the debt service as a percentage of our general fund disbursements and examine the credit rating criteria that we currently have in our county alongside some of our peers who maintain aaa bond ratings to see if we had some flexibility because our collective goal of course is to find additional ways to fund some of the best projects we have in our county uh in our schools and we know we're so behind on renovation cycles etc so in being able to do that you know our consultant outlines some scenarios of what might be possible and although we have been maintaining about an eight and a half percent uh uh rate when it comes to our our uh um a bond rating for the for
151the past 15 fiscal years it appears that we may have some room under 10 percent actually without harming our uh our bond rating so it's gonna be uh something to look forward to um it's really i mean this is huge this has not happened in fairfax for 15 years and we're really excited that it's potentially possible so we'll continue to update you guys on uh what that looks like in the months ahead thank you miss omesh i'll share um a little bit from our forum topics this week we heard two forum topics the first one was presented by mr frisch and myself on literacy strut instruction and elimination of opportunity gaps we asked for the board support to schedule a work session with staff to review the status of current fcps literacy instruction strategies professional
152development and plans to use research-based approaches to close the opportunity and achievement gaps additionally we requested that the board in collaboration with staff secure the participation of an independent expert to offer guidance and answer questions from the board during the work session mr frisch and i advocated for a systemic intentional approach and plan to literacy to ensure success for all students and this is critically important now given that this pandemic has left students particularly vulnerable to already existing gaps widening school leadership commented that the school's equitable access to literacy plan would be shared and discussed in depth at this work session the board voted and approved the motion unanimously except for miss holland who was absent that day the second forum topic it was centered around the ability of the school board to host student
153interns and was presented by miss marin she was asking for board consensus to form a task force to standardize the process the expectation and rules for these internships ms marin advocated that these internships provide a structured learning experience where students can contribute to efforts that improve experiences for their peers and future students school board members were supportive of forming this task force consisting of school board members staff aides and the the board clerk it was also noted that some school board members have interns and it would be beneficial to standardize this process and implement these best practices there was also interest expressed in offering paid internships to ensure that our students that have a need to work are paid for their time and have the ability to also participate the board voted and approved this
154motion ms omesh abstained i think we are on to board matters okay miss cohen first the only time i've ever regretted marrying my husband i used to be an h i could be like right in the middle um i i plan to speak tonight about pride month um and my excitement and enthusiasm and the excitement and enthusiasm that this month brings in my own home every year i am i will say two nights ago though many people in our community woke up to messages of hate left on their driveway by the kkk and those messages were targeted to all of us up here on this diocese no matter where we come from no matter what we look like the hate was equally distributed to every one of us up here tonight but one of the
155kkk's complaint seems to be our support of our lgbtqia students staff and families and i thought you know it was a good opportunity to tie in my excitement over pride month and my disappointment at how the language and the temperature and the amount of hate that has been spewed in these last few weeks and months has trickled throughout not only our community but certainly in our neighbors in loudoun county as well i'm incredibly proud of the work that this board has done even in the craziest of times we somehow managed to scrap together in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime i hope pandemic a year where many parents came to me and said my kids still cried on the last day of school they were excited for summer but they were so sorry to leave their
156friends to leave their teachers and we ought to be proud about that we all up here got to watch many graduations i don't think anyone went to as many as miss omega but the rest of us went to our fair share and got to see smiles and happiness and high fives and and pride in our school system parents and guardians and siblings pride in their graduates and we're reminded once again of the importance of what we all do here that the conversations we had in in our work session this week about pre-k to watching those kids cross the stage to all the work this summer that we're doing to help remediate anything that was lost i'm proud of what we do here i'm proud of everybody up here on this board so it is with
157great happiness that i say happy summer and happy pride and we absolutely cannot wait until august 23rd to welcome you back into our schools yes indeed miss corbett sanders well i'm definitely not going to be as eloquent as my colleague miss cohen but i did want to spend a couple of moments talking about how exciting it was to participate in the graduations at all of our high schools in the mount vernon district including west potomac on the field in which i graduated from i'm so proud of the students and the staff that made it possible our students graduating from our schools in mount vernon were awarded over 15 million dollars in scholarships and through the dual enrollment pathways program at mount vernon high school achieved one and a half million dollars in transferable college credits
158our on-time graduate graduation rates are up at our schools and the students are off to amazing opportunities attending schools across the country and overseas attending our service academies and pursuing post-graduation certificates the success of these students in the face of the most difficult time our country has faced in a century was awe-inspiring air students are neuro-diverse and represent multiple nationalities ethnicities religious beliefs and wish to be addressed by different pronouns and gender identities our graduation graduating class represents the american ideals of individuality and inclusivity in which all are welcome to achieving these dreams for so many all are welcome and encouraged to pursue their dreams our schools are an essential pathway to achieving these dreams for so many of our students the past few weeks have also tested these ideals unfortunately events outside of our
159community coupled with hateful rhetoric have resulted in acts of aggression against students and families including increased instances of anti-semitism islamophobia and hateful acts against our students who identify as lgbtqia we must as a community and as a board stand up against these hateful acts we as a board must be unified in our declaration against rhetoric that results in bigotry plays on ignorance and fosters fear hate has no place in fairfax county public schools and as we celebrate these amazing students we cannot lose focus on ensuring that the academic achievement of our students whom we'll be returning full-time five days a week in the fall we know that we must lean in on ensuring that the fairfax county public schools promise of an excellent education must be realized by every child in our school system that
160means that knowing every child by name and by need begins this summer with our enhanced summer programming and must be even more robust in the fall as we welcome all of our students back into our buildings and i encourage parents to contact their school leadership and partner with them to enroll your students in summer remediation opportunities as necessary and summer enrichment programs available at our schools in our parks and in our community in my magisterial district mount vernon we have wonderful learning opportunities at dyke marsh and in the lee district at huntley meadows the historic estates and gum springs and the newly opened suffragettes and army museums where you can learn and experience our history first hand and tomorrow i will have the opportunity to participate in the unveiling of the historical marker for own
161a judge on juneteenth this is so important because of the important role that ona judge played in in pursuing freedom from slavery where she was uh originally incar for one i actually say incarcerated uh on the estate and uh sought her own freedom and ended up raising her children in in freedom it's an important story i encourage because i'm taking too much time i encourage my colleagues to please go to mount vernon watch the videos about own a judge or participate on saturday as we do the unveiling of her historic marker and i want to thank our teacher maura keaney at laurel hill elementary school for laurel ridge elementary school for her amazing work with fourth graders that actually did the research and made the recommendation for the own a judge memorial marker so thank
162you all and please look into the own a judge story it's impressive mr kofax followed by mr fresh thank you today as we all know at 3 30 president biden signed into law legislation making juneteenth the celebration and commemoration of the end of slavery in the united states a federal holiday this was the first federal holiday added since martin luther king day was signed into law in 1983. last year our board expressed solidarity with our black and african-american students and staff and community as we added juneteenth as an official holiday for fcps employees now nationally june juneteenth will be a time of reflection learning and celebration and i'm happy our board had that resolution today today we also recognize that june is pride month in the united states a time to remember history celebrate how
163far we have come in advancing the rights of lgbtqia plus people but also to invigorate our efforts to continue to fight for equality and against discrimination and hatred in our schools and beyond i was proud to be chair of the school board when we added gender identity to non-discrimination to our non-discrimination policy i want to thank robert rigby and fcps pride members and all of tonight's speakers and all of those who always come out to educate us and it with outreach education and advocacy i will continue to work with you to ensure that our lgbtqia plus students will feel safe and supported finally i feel i must address recent issues within our community many of us look at one issue and we see it from different perspectives but we must grow and reflect on how
164best to support each other even when we have different perspectives we know there are different paths to progress and disagreements may occur however we must have the ability to compromise we must show each other respect and we must acknowledge that words do indeed matter recent social media activity combined with a sharp rise over the past few weeks of anti-anti-semitic tax on jewish americans have left fcps families in their words feeling hopeless afraid to show their identity bullied and harassed this is wrong we truly value diversity but we must be united in our opposition to any speech that makes anyone feel unsafe as part of a collective body i have heard many outcries from people to say they want to hear an apology so i say i'm sorry to the families who have found these words
165on social media to be inflammatory hateful and anti-semitic i want you to know that i am committed to our schools will always be safe warm and welcoming places free of bias for every student i am working to assume positive intentions but i also have heard from many constituents about the disappointment in the justice graduation first i have to say there is one way to say the pledge of allegiance by regulation we allow students to abstain sit or stand quietly in reflection i've heard disappointment and frustration from constituents when no corrective action was taken when the pledge was said incorrectly or no attempt was made to repeat it correctly secondly tonight and through the week i have heard disappointment from parents that they expected the justice graduation to be uplifting and encouraging but instead found it
166political in nature i am hopeful we as a board can come together with a common understanding as to how we can send our students off with positive messaging recognition and pride in their accomplishments in 1957 then senator john f kennedy stated what unites us as a nation is greater than what divides us i truly believe in these words i believe we must all listen to each other we must collaborate with each other and we must build bridges with each other to ensure that president kennedy's words remain true for both ourselves our children and our country and finally to our graduates of the class of 2021 we wish you the best as you begin your life's next chapter be it in going to college serving in the military or going right and starting your career i
167was honored to attend all of your graduations in person and i was inspired by our young voices and what they're saying and how uplifting it was so congratulations again i wish you well and for the rest of our students please take these summer months to relax rejuvenate and enjoy time with your family and friends thank you mr fresh thank you uh since our last meeting i had the honor of attending eight graduations uh featuring students from providence district including oakton marshall falls church madison woodson mclean as well as kilmer center and our fire fighting academy students despite the emotional high of these ceremonies the events of the last 24 hours have left a sour taste in my mouth there has been a lot of chatter online about the racist homophobic and anti-semitic flyers left at
168homes in different parts of the county by the clan hate groups like the klan seek to terrorize entire groups of people with their actions among other things their flyers called this board queer loving i remember the first time i was called a ask any queer kid and they will tell you they remember the first time they heard that word too i was in fourth grade i didn't even know what the word meant there was no internet for me to look it up so i just sat and stood in it when i finally learned what it was i wondered if these kids were mind readers how did they know what was going on inside of my head that was in the 1980s i'd like to say it was in the 1990s but it was the 1980s
169and we talk about progress in fact many of us are wearing progress pride pins tonight in honor of pride today when i talk to lgbtqia students they tell me about their experiences and unfortunately they are often very similar to mine from 30 years ago tonight we had lgbtqia plus students tell this board that they deserve more than pride recognition and they're right together we can take affirmative steps to meet the needs of this community to show that our commitment is real and that we are not going to back down when anyone hate groups members of the public here or in neighboring counties says otherwise these students and their families need to know we have their backs and in the spirit of stonewall i won't be backing down happy pride happy juneteenth thank you ms keis
170gemara followed my miss mclaughlin thank you uh i want to make a few quick comments and i will end with some comments i wanted to make earlier on juneteenth and part of the reason i want to do that is because we've heard a lot of comments and i think this is the proper time to address it first of all happy pride month i'm delighted to support every student and it is our job to make sure that every child feels welcome in our schools i want to say happy father's day and i'm going to leave that there we we just heard uh comments and i just have to respond to this because so many times we have people come up and say things and we want them to have an opportunity to express themselves but when
171someone looks at this board and says this school board doesn't care about loss of learning i feel like you mess with one of us you mess with all of us and that's just not true i mean we have had so many work sessions where we have been trying to figure out how to support students even today we we mentioned it again uh in closed session about how we have to provide that support and how we have to we weren't able to discuss loss of learning but we've discussed it many many many times so for parents who feel as though you're on your own that's just not true i have not talked to one person on this board dr brabrand so many people in our staff i just i just could not leave that untruth out
172there um and as i give my comments on juneteenth you'll understand how important that word truth is to me so i am so glad to hear today that um juneteenth has been declared as a federal holiday i'm glad the united states senate uh agreed uh as we decided some time ago but i think it's also important to note that the original celebration was actually a delay for those enslaved in texas who had not received news of the emancipation proclamation think of that this holiday represents the lack of notice or the knowledge of one's freedom i think that's ironic but historically not receiving information not being notified not saying that a delay is okay is actually part of our history and it's not foreign to our nation at all after the immense emancipation african americans rose
173after the civil war to their newfound freedom under the belief that they were full citizens of this nation since only men voted at the time in that in this nation black men registered in massive numbers and as a result they elected people to local office to congress and they spoke eloquently to help write laws to protect all citizens that's part of the reason we have the equal protection clause but at the same time african americans also bought land established communities banks churches and schools and businesses that thrived and supported their community and they prospered coincidentally the kkk was established at that time found a purpose in working to reverse that progress lyncheon's lynchings became common many towns such as what one known in tulsa as black wall street um a prosperous business center and that
174in wilmington north carolina were burned to the ground and hundreds of innocent african-americans were murdered the agitators in tulsa even used airplanes to drop bombs to assure certain destruction and such events happened all over the south all over the eastern seaboard but these events are rarely mentioned in our history books because we didn't talk about it we didn't want to give people notice we know this today because only recently we have we started to talk about the tulsa massacre about the horrors of post-reconstruction about the deliberate steps to reverse progress there were no reparations the insurance company would not even pay for those losses the harm to those families that lost millions of dollars in wealth and possible inherited wealth that was destroyed but we're just now starting to talk about it as i remember
175juneteenth i must also know why it happened as i said it was a celebration of delayed news i believe there's a message in that many on this board and in our community have come to this podium and talked about the need for justice the need to address inequities especially in our school system and those inequities did not occur in a vacuum they were a result of the history that i just described to you they are the result of the things with that we previously have been uncomfortable talking about for the sake of future generations we need to get comfortable everything i have mentioned today is a part of our history the massacres the laws the structures that even the supreme court upheld to require a lower status for people of color and those actions have
176had an impact in our history they help to explain where we are but in today's political climate we are being asked to be silent about that history and the patterns that developed even leading up to today think about george floyd that wasn't an accident it was the result of that history and the in the continued delay of this kind of conversation is far too costly i'd like to put this in perspective i come from a family not unlike many others my father served in the military and just a few months ago i shouldn't put the sentence in here i watched as he received military honors at his burial my son a west point graduate is currently serving i say this because these comments do not arise from a disdain for my nation or my neighbor
177but rather from a profound belief that we can rise higher still to the ideas of democracy that have not been realized i also come from a family that's founded on faith and i grew up hearing the phrase the truth will set you free today i believe we need some truth in our conversation about education as we celebrate juneteenth i pray that we as a community come together grappling with our truth for the betterment of every student in fcps and in our nation thank you for your patience everyone thank you mrs gamara miss mclaughlin wow it's going to be a tough act to follow miss quiscamara but thank you for your beautiful words uh i first want to say in that spirit happy juneteenth to each and all i am very proud to be part of
178a board and and in collaboration with our county uh executive and our board of supervisors who also understood how important it was to recognize juneteenth and how wonderful that we get to lead ahead of the federal government so way to go president biden and congress for getting on board um i also want to say happy pride month uh as some of my remarks were made earlier uh this is always a special time each year for me annually as a fairfax county parent and dr brabrand i always want to spotlight emphasize again how grateful i am as the proud parent of a gay son that he was so blessed to go to woodson and to grow up in a community where the students the staff the teachers gave him so much support so much love so
179much validation i know that that is not always the journey for every student certainly wasn't when my husband and i were coming through high school more than 30 years ago but that's what makes me grateful for the progress we are making as a society i want to thank all of my colleagues but in particular mr frisch i appreciate that you continue to help us understand understanding how to lift up these issues and to really make sure that every child um is fortunate enough to have the experience that that my son was able to have and i really love the beautiful pins that you gave us i'm excited to keep wearing that throughout the month i also want to say happy graduation to all of our seniors in fairfax county schools i was able to attend
180the braddock district graduations except for robinson for the first time in my nine years on the board so i was sorry to miss those graduates but i do want to give a special shout out to my nephew aiden kane i'm so proud of you for coming through as the fifth of five boys coming through woodson between my sisters and my family and it was really exciting to see him graduate on the woodson stadium field because that's where my husband and his two brothers had also graduated again more than 30 years ago so it was it was a special time and i really loved sharing that with our superintendent and many of my colleagues who were there that day and that's what brings me to wanting to share with all of you my colleagues about how
181much i hope we can really take some steps and learn from what happened in the graduation at justice high school and i want to say dr anderson i am so grateful um that you are an amazing representative for our for the mason district and justice high school and so my remarks are not at all directed at the representation i think that it's a learning lesson for us though as a board um and so i want to echo what mrs darren at kofax shared and and really touch on what ms keith gamara said and and what it means to have pride in our country and especially when we have veterans in our in our in our families and in our community braddock district has a very high military population but when we talk about the pledge
182of allegiance i hope that we look at it is not about how the pledge of allegiance is meant to make sure that we show honor to our military and our families it's how we honor our nation it is how we as a school division have decided that when we include the pledge of allegiance in our graduations we really need to make sure that it is honored and said if we don't honor the pledge of allegiance and have it said properly then one needs to wonder why are we saying it um and it goes to what's been said earlier what unites us what doesn't divide us and so i know we live in an imperfect union we know that's why our founding father said in pursuing a more perfect union but um dr brabrand i i
183really do hope going forward that we can use this as a lessons learned about the pledge that we will help students understand or anyone who says it that it is so important to say it with honor and dignity and distinction it and if that doesn't happen we will stop and we will restart and we will say it in the proper way and that we will let any individual who does that understand that we will admonish them on the stage we will say that is not appropriate to do this and we will apologize to the audience and we will then say it again i just think that's something that maybe needs a longer conversation but i wanted you all to know i have never in my nine and a half years received phone calls emails and
184town hall comments of how upset people were by that happening and so uh i really do think that we need to just again um use this for further conversation and secondly i would also say how important it is that we have um really some protocols in place about graduation speeches uh i think that you know again i received same comments people who were upset um by the justice high school speech they felt that it was supposed to be a moment for them to celebrate with their children with their families and that they did not come away from that feeling um and that's a captive place a graduation is a once in a lifetime for kids and families and so we really should dr braeber and i think just whoever our speakers are that we ask
185our principals to get a copy of the speech and this happened in texas too it's not just fairfax county um that that people say this is the speech they'll give and in texas the girl then gave an entirely different speech but we just need to be mindful that we we all and any guest speaker they're there to honor these graduates and their families and so if people are going to and this isn't what happened at justice but if we have speeches then we know what the content is going to be and we can help whoever is going to speak to help them understand what is our goal our purpose and our hope for these speeches and so i i do think that that is another thing that we need to be thinking about interestingly some
186graduations didn't have a keynote speaker at all which also surprised me i i like the keynote speakers and anyone who heard the annandale keynote speaker annual high school it was amazing the woodson one was a teacher who was really interesting and and uh and and and entertaining so i know i i have uh taken up too much time so i will um wrap up with my marks with just saying to what ms darnack kofax said uh to our community whether it was uh the high school graduation experience whether it's the recent comments that have been made in social media i just want you to know that i am sorry for when you're when you have felt hurt and i want you to know that i will do my very best to continue to use words
187that unite and bring us together to tackle difficult issues but in a way that you all feel heard and respected valued and welcomed in our communities thank you miss marin followed by miss omesh thank you and um i will agree that i we need to have more of a discussion and perhaps our students can help us lead this about our practices with the pledge and also our our speakers at graduation but i'd like to hear from students what what they're feeling about it and i do think it's time to have some discussion about it um speaking of kids i want to say that this pride month um more than ever i feel like it strikes me that i'm both so of course in agreement with pride and yet it's just so odd to try and
188teach my eight-year-old and my 11 year old why we have to continue advocating to allow people to love who they love it's so simple they get it and they love the rainbows i'm hoping to take them to the rest in pride event this this weekend although they don't listen to me very much right now so we'll see but um but i do want to say again you know i keep trying to come back to despite there's so much you know vitriol and hurt what can i as a school board member do well we talked tonight we didn't get to get to the student rights and responsibility but we have done so much work as a board and that's where we can make the difference for kids and staff and yes the implementation still needs to
189be worked out but at least we're trying to put it out there and i think that that kind of work the curriculum the family life education you know as student frankie said tonight enforcing the policies and regs remains a challenge but we're trying and again our schools are not the be all end-all for this you know the rest of the community has to come with us the guardians the parents the families the other elected officials we need everyone's help because we cannot carry the water on our own for all of our children i also really hope that we can continue to expand what we mean when we talk about diversity and equity it it's all about educating who about who people are um i just started reading a book about neurodiversity and you know it's
190just it's really mind-blowing you just look at people differently and how beautiful everyone is so um anyway i i wanted to switch just for a bit to juneteenth and miss keith's camara really had a bit of the tenor that i just wanted to share tonight as well you know it's especially meaningful because we are in ground zero of where slavery began in this commonwealth and we again in fcps have an opportunity to change and improve how we we teach our children and staff to accept this history and move forward and i think own a judge is such a great example of what we could do so i i read a week or two ago in the washington post there was an opinions essay and it was called germany faced its horrible past can we do
191the same it was by a person named michelle norris and in germany there was this whole concept of working off the past and it goes it is a culture of collective atonement and it looks at its history almost obsessively memorializing victims of the murderous era that happened there and they have these 75 000 small brass stumbling stones known as stalperstein that are embedded in the streets and plazas and it will say things about the people who live there here lived followed by the facts of their life their name the birth date and then the grim facts of how they died exile internment or murder so imagine if if we had those here and ona judge is is in that vein and it's continuing this legally legacy um and really expanding it so imagine if we
192had those kinds of things for indigenous peoples for enslaved peoples who were here in virginia and while i agree with the author that the horrors are not all the same in in this vein you know they're each distinctly diabolical and so while america is different than germany and the atrocities committed here are different they are the same in looking at redemption how do we face this path and really grapple with it and so i hope that in our observance of juneteenth um in our observance of indigenous peoples day that we changed last year that we can really continue to help our staff and ourselves and our students grapple with what this means and not keep running away from the reality that's here um i also want to mention as also ms keith gamara said you
193know we are doing so much to help our students the conversations alone to speak on literacy early childhood education course load homework curriculum improvements returning to school i mean we are just bursting at the seams trying to help our kids and staff recover from this this epic year so i'll also say the graduations wow that was really just a lovely way to end this this year and it wasn't until about my fifth event which was at oakton high school where the tears came and the teacher and student speakers they just really hit me and would enter my mind is that i hope that the school division did well by these kids um i hope they did i hope we did well i know i certainly tried but i i really wish them all well and
194i believe that was the largest graduating class we had was 720. so um thank you to the board tonight also for approving kilmer middle school receiving new classroom and learning space it's probably going to begin this summer be done by this calendar year we'll have class classrooms staff work room and restroom and that happens because fairfax county voters voted in 2019 for a bond to do that work so those bonds really matter so thank you fairfax county voters for continuing to invest and have our students and our staff being in great places congratulations to the new principal at thoreau middle school which is theresa calucci she begins there in july and so therona has a new leader and finally this weekend i'll be attending the liberty amendments month events that the town of vienna is
195kicking off and so this is an event it was the brainchild of town manager mercury payton who really wanted to honor the passage of the 13th 14th 15th and 19th amendments that really brought rights to people on paper who previously were excluded from full participation so check them out town of vienna liberty amendments month there's stuff online there's stuff in person it's going to be a multi-cultural festival in july so i'm looking forward to celebrating all that our community has thank you mr mesh thank you um i want to thank some of my colleagues who shared some really vulnerable stories today i think that takes incredible courage and it's not easy given the climate and so thank you and specifically mr frisch over the past few weeks as many of you shared we've been attending
196graduations it's really been a distinct honor to celebrate our students and their incredible accomplishments uh as ms cohen hinted at um i i've heard that old boards kind of compete in this kind of thing and i i do think i won this year um having had the absolute honor of attending over 17 graduations and would have totally made all of them had they not conflicted this year i was excited to see the experience and the tenacity and the grit of our students that you know and what they've exemplified especially over the past year and i was especially pleased to be able to celebrate in languages that would speak to their hearts and to the hearts of their families the many ways that they've made us proud that they've overcome their struggles especially over the course
197of this year with technology late nights and juggling all that life has brought again in languages that speak to their hearts and to the fam to the hearts of their families and i think it's it's it was especially uh you know one of the things that's lasted with me after all of that was the incredible number of students who have learned an entire new language over the course of their k through 12 education in fcps it really was incredible i want to give shout out to my mentees many many of whom graduated over the course of the past few weeks and congratulations of course to all our graduates and their support networks in the past several weeks i also had the uh pleasure of hosting a student organized live stream about our summer resources you
198know we have many partnerships uh in terms of equity and opportunities that are available through the park authority the public library system in our fairfax county neighborhood and community services programming if you're looking for summer resources don't hesitate to be in touch in touch and i would highly encourage you to take a look at some of that we had some fun talking to folks in the park authority about cicadas and all that's available to families this summer as we ramp up this month has been historic in so many different ways and we commemorate so many different things you know june 1st marked the anniversary of the tulsa massacre which my colleague touched on and which is extremely important for us to remember because it goes to show the legacy of some of what we think
199is in the past but that continues to plague our country june 12th was the day of the 1967 supreme court decision that decriminalized interracial marriage that recognized love can look like what it is in many forms and it's particularly um interesting that that fell into um pride month where we recognize uh love of all forms um june 13th marked the day when general thurgood marshall became our first black justice appointed to the supreme court after having been an advocate himself demonstrating his love of country by criticizing and fighting against the injustices he saw within our laws and systems and then ultimately serving on our highest courts to continue to uphold justice through his uh perspective june 15th then marked the anniversary of the supreme court decision pleiler versus doe where schools could no longer deny
200students based on citizenship status on the 18th we saw the passage of in of an act that attempted to reverse the suppression of native culture june 19th we commemorate juneteenth of course which tomorrow we're going to celebrate together and on the 28th we recognized the anniversary of the stonewall uprising where people were discriminated against and harassed for being who they are this of course is not and could not be an exhaustive list and there are so many incredible stories and narratives for a complete narrative of our past all of which we need to make sure we're teaching our children to prepare them for our world and likely many narratives that i've left out that are probably the least heard and i hope that we can collectively educate one another and continue to look for those
201stories uh that that are in our community um you know holding complicated truths and learning our history is necessary to ensure that all our students are equipped with the tools and the language to accurately name what they see in the world around them there was a day when we accepted things like genocide and slavery in our country we allowed the marginalization of people whose ways of loving and worshiping look different than our own when the world and we continue to live in a world that watched as a holocaust unfolded and this continues to happen as leaders i hope we'll learn to identify hate for what it is and empower only those voices especially from the dias that give our children clarity and help us to come together and today some of our kids have been
202uniquely targeted kids who want to be respected with the names and pronouns they recognize i really appreciated hearing some of those stories and i hope we can continue to take actions as they've encouraged us to those who are disproportionately harmed in in their mental health situations and who we have an absolute obligation to create a safe environment for spikes in anti-semitism and islamophobia the list goes on and i hope that we'll support student agency and empower all of our children to find relevance in our story and in the world by seeing the realities by seeing themselves in these realities too we can choose to embrace it to tap into our humility to understand it or we can choose to allow it to divide us there are over 180 languages spoken in fcps even in english
203we often find ourselves speaking in such varied tongues we bring people from all walks of life varied convictions and lenses to the world and bring them together in the same classroom to learn together to play together to struggle together to stand up for freedom together knowing that we will be free one day and we will figure it out one day and if america is to be a great nation if fairfax to be a great community that we know it is not withstanding its growing pains and the challenges it's going to take for us to get to that harmony this must come true so i wish us all a great summer and i hope that we can spend it reflecting and and coming together and understanding one another in the many ways that we have contributions
204that come to the table miss eismar heiser followed by ms tolen thank you um i appreciate this and i'll start with something i think no one else has started with which is happy father's day to all of the fathers in this room and in our community i am very grateful for the um three fathers that are most important in my life my own father and my first husband and my um who was an amazing father to my children until he died and my second husband who chose to be a father to my children and does it amazingly every day so happy father's day to all of you who are amazing fathers and i hope you get to relax and rest a little this weekend i'm really glad to get to the end of this school
205year that feels like it was five years long to be perfectly honest um i know we'll all emerge from this year changed in many seminal ways and i know that many of us are more disproportionately impacted than others by covid by those at key transition points and we're gonna have to work hard to support all of us and each other and especially those students at those key transition points and our families who've been disproportionately impacted by kovid and i know our our team is up to that challenge because i've watched you all our leadership team our teachers our staff our principals our building admins work so incredibly hard this year beyond what i ever thought i would see and work with a steadfastness and a patience that i don't think i have so i'm really
206impressed with you all so thank you for all that you've done this year um congratulations to the fifth and sixth graders and the eighth graders as they're promoted from elementary school to middle school and go on to the next exciting phase of their education fcps i'm really proud of you especially in this year and really to all of our students we owe you a great deal of gratitude and i don't think we say that enough to our students our students have sacrificed for the greater good of our society and done so without many complaints with incredibly positive attitudes with resilience and all the while supporting each other through it i know it hasn't been easy i know some have struggled more than others but we as a society owe our children a debt of gratitude
207and we should say that so thank you to our students thank you also of course to the families guardians teachers staff administrators leadership team for all your efforts in raising educating and supporting these students especially in this last year so to the class of 2021 i've been talking about you all year um so i was thrilled and cried to celebrate you at all of your in-person graduations as many as i could get to with my own two kids graduating this year but especially to see my own son walk across the stage it was particularly important this year that by the end at least we could focus on you and we should have focused on you i'm glad to see you celebrate joyfully at your proms i'm glad to see you come together united as a
208class at your graduations and leave fairfax county excited for what your future might offer i'm saddened to think that some feel like the graduation wasn't that and i hope that whatever life brings to you brings you that joy that you so wanted and deserved this year you all have survived the most unusual junior and senior year and i won't minimize the losses that this class faced big and small the fear the trauma and the extra stress of navigating how to create your path forward those seminal moments in junior and senior year trying to figure out how are you going to leave the world you've lived for 13 years school for many a family home while isolated and in virtual learning it is no small feat to figure out your path forward whether that's college career
209military a gap year whatever your path is it is no small feat to do that during normal times and i'm really impressed at how you've done that this time i won't pretend that what happened this year won't have a lasting impact on you and i won't pretend that impact will be all positive nothing we can do can give you back the experiences and the learning that you should have gained this year but i'll say the one thing i've remembered in spades and i hope that you've learned is to never take the mundane everything everyday things for granted the hallway time the late night ihop visits the practices it took me many years into adulthood before i understood this but you all start your adulthood with a profound appreciation of the ordinary that in itself makes
210you well ahead of the classes before you i believe the class of 2021 will leave school as one of the most empathetic and strongest classes in a century i know i've learned a lot from you watching you care for each other even in your own hardship and for those of you like my own senior whose expected path may have changed god i never cried these things whose expected path may have changed due to the challenges of this year it will be okay i have found that the greatest unexpected joys in my life have come right after i really hate this part i have come right after my greatest challenges and i know for you that you will have a great unexpected joy from this great challenge remember you can't control what happens to you you
211can only control how you respond and based on my experience with you this year i know you will respond really well to anything life throws at you because you i have no doubt are the next greatest generation so i will not speak to juneteenth in pride month as eloquently as my colleagues have done i think they have spoken well and i and i wholeheartedly agree especially with mr frisch and miss keith gamara and but i just wanted to say one thing especially in light of the hate and the threats that we that our jewish families our muslim families our lgbtqia families students staff and many others have experienced i will say one thing to you all love is love is love is love thank you ms tolin followed by dr anderson so miss cohen you're
212complaining about always having to go first t always comes after us [Laughter] so thank you for those comments um with that a happy juneteenth happy pride and happy graduation to our class of 2021. congratulations to everyone for making it through this past year of ups and downs and changes students and parents i'm so proud of all you have accomplished i enjoyed the graduations i attended and with all the class of 2021 has been through i'm truly inspired by you also good luck to all of our students and parents that will transition to our middle and high schools next year congratulations to the sports teams still in the playoffs with the way the season went this year our athletes have had a wonderful season despite everything a huge thank you to our parents our coaches our
213directors of student services and their staffs to allow these athletes to compete and play i have to tell you hot off the press the mclean girls soccer team beat oakton tonight to go on as regional champs to the state level so what was your first year of kids at both schools right i was happy to be at the mclean herndon game last night in mclean won that game to um to proceed in this wonderful season what a wonder wonderful season all of these kids have had herndon baseball is going to the regional semi semi-finals today it was against madison they're probably done i don't know what happened uh langley boys and girls lacrosse is on to regional finals and the langley boys varsity softball is also on to the regionals as a celebration of the
214work of our students and staff across the county i want to mention some of the amazing work of some of our students in drainsville i mean our kids have really really done amazing things this year first of all our staff we had our ftps honors ceremony dr bribrand talked about that a couple of us have mentioned it we had two drainsville winners melissa dulik a spanish teacher at mclean high school and margaret sisler a school-based technology specialist at westfield high school and we had several finalists alicia akbar from forestville elementary jonathan baker from haycock jane corton from herndon high school and paul stansberry from mclean high school i was also really happy over the weekend to talk about amazing things our kids are doing i attended the cappy's virtual gala at langley high school and
215was amazed at the incredible and creative work that our students have done this year some on stage some not on stage tj did an animated program you know this year because they couldn't do it in person it was just truly amazing and we had several dreams filled winners that evening too claire hearn was the returning critic champion from mclean high school and the graduating critic emilia ermanoski from mclean high school was a winner also and the top critic team this year from the region was westfield high school and i love this one mika williams is a second year heating ventilation air conditioning and refrigeration student who travels from mclean high school to pursue technical studies at edison and she won the state championships in the heating ventilation air conditioning refrigeration contest with virginia skills usa
216and here's a really fun one haycock's sixth grader delaney raptus is the youngest female golfer to have made a hole in one at the avenell golf course it's a tough golf course up in maryland ever since the um the call the golf course has kept records so that's pretty cool anyway amazing students across the county at the last board meeting and in my last newsletter i mentioned my commitment to work on pulling our community together so that we can work as a team to support our students in the way that they need to be supported at any time but especially as we move out of the pandemic and into a new school year we have so much work to do in academic supports and social emotional supports as many of my colleagues have mentioned we've
217been doing lots of work on that we cannot be a divided community to do this work for our students i will be meeting soon with the jewish community as the first of many conversations with many various groups and look forward to this work as we move forward and we fight to make sure all of our students are welcome in our schools and across fairfax county please have a wonderful summer thank you dr anderson okay thank you so much before i get into my remarks i do want to very quickly say i'm still wearing a mask because i'm under the weather just trying not to get anybody sick so i just wanted to put that out there secondarily i was really taken aback by one of the speakers earlier and i typically don't do this who
218kind of accuse all of us of not being parents and just trying to use this office as a stepping stone to someplace else i take that personally because i have two children in this district and every decision that we make i take it with the gravity of how is this going to impact not just them but every other student in this division every time i'm not saying i always get it right but they're always at the very center of my thinking and i found it more than um disrespectful that we were just discounted in that way and for those of you and i know most of the board has had children on the board but we still have those who have current kids on the board raise your hands we've got many so i just
219wanted to be sure that you know whatever decisions we make it impacts our kids too our own personal children so i just wanted to share that um i had just like many of my colleagues shared the opportunity to attend some really wonderful graduation ceremonies and i was so excited because last year it was all virtual and to be able to see that the students just being excited about moving on to their next chapter i really appreciated having that opportunity to do so as we turn the corner on this pandemic i had uh i have to mention the annandale speaker which miss mclaughlin talked about we had two wonderful speakers both the keynote and the student who was jimmy lee who is the class president and i want to kind of share some of the things
220that he shared during his speech that stuck with me so i'm going to start with a quick section now quote when i first started at annandale high school like many of you i was naive impressionable before we even got here everyone told us what annandale was and my classmates will know exactly what i'm talking about oh you go to annandale the poor school don't you guys barely have a parking lot you know you've got to be careful around those annandale kids this is what our kids are walking around with and that should not be what happens but i am going to take a minute to tell you about those annandale kids abiar zahir and andel kidd a 2021 graduate of annandale high school was named one of the 100 amazon future engineer scholarship recipients she
221received 40 000 to help support her at an accredited four-year college or university as well as a paid summer internship at amazon after their freshman year of college that was an annandale kid we have jorge orgetta arello and from falls church high school and nixon garcia orozco samuel juarez and ronnie hernandez these are students who successfully passed the very rigorous epa exam that takes place at edison academy hvac program those are the annandale kids we have 10 students who were there were 21 students from fcps who were awarded scholarships by the fcps hispanic leadership alliance 10 of them were from the mason district from justice high school i am so very proud of all of their efforts for their leadership for their mentoring and all of their social activities those are the annandale kids and
222i could not be prouder of all of their work the other piece that i want to share from jimmy lee's speech goes as follows if i learned anything from our stories and experiences over the past four years i learned that no matter what the status quo ananda high school is about changing the narrative the people at the school care about change making standing up for justice and most importantly working together to make the world more equitable and not just and more just for marginalized people we are the school of the underrepresented and the forgotten and for so long the unheard that resonates with me because that speaks so closely to the work that we try to do here as a board the work of equity it's not just maintaining the status quo it's ensuring that
223we are leveling the playing field for those who have not had opportunity for stomachs for so long and it's not just having those words be said but the actions and the practices need to show up in our curriculum and our policies and our boundaries and all aspects our students are watching they internalize every action we take or not take and when we don't hear them you know when we don't hear them we hear stories like what we've heard tonight not just from students but also from mr fresh where their formative years were marred by by experiences that we really should not be taking them through i want to end on a high note um i do want to say i am so excited that um that miss narcisse tiffany narcisse is the new principal of
224um justice high school she joins us from houston isd we are so excited she's here her own child will also be a student of justice which speaks volumes and she has that ear to the ground she has inside information so i think that's going to be life-changing i want to lastly um thank the region 2 staff mr flattenberg miss gillis and brian schrupster for all of their and for all of their work on the boundary that we um approved this evening and also dr zuluwaga and the region ii staff i have to be sure that i articulate how grateful i was for them picking up the mantle to make sure that we were able to reach all of the parents we were able to reach during this process it was not easy we had to
225get creative but they picked up the mantle and ran with it and for that i am very very grateful um happy pride month to everyone happy juneteenth happy summer thank you dr anderson so i had a constituent fairy recently tell me that she really appreciated and loved the fact that i always cut to the chase and get to the point real fast and i told her i've got six kids you there's never enough time i i learned long ago that that's the only way to try to stay ahead um but you know so many so many of the things i i wanted to share have already been shared so eloquently by my colleagues so i'll cut to the chase happy juneteenth happy pride month thank you mr frisch for everything you've done to push this
226board to ensure that um what you had to go through will not be what our students have to go through and i had a very smart friend tell me recently you know all the all the conversations you have the things you grapple with look at our students they're ahead of you and we heard that at our graduations all the graduation speakers it was about kindness inclusion telling kids to be proud of who they are so i'm proud of this board and i know how hard everyone works here and our leadership team and everybody in fcps to ensure that every kid has the best possible experience so thank you everyone and happy happy graduation to all the graduates this year we are so immensely proud of you thank you we adjourn the meeting you