FCPS School Board Public Hearing Esser Funds 6-7-21

001it is six o'clock so we will now begin uh this will be a public hearing before we begin we'll first take role of our school board members uh school board members if you could please unmute when i call your name to make sure that uh you're all linkedin okay miss darren at cofax i'm here good evening good evening miss abrar omesh good evening good evening miss elaine tolen i'm here thank you have a nice evening hello miss corbett sanders good evening i'm looking forward to hearing from everybody thank you miss kisgamara good evening good evening mr fresh good evening hello ms laura jane cohen good evening hello miss megan mclaughlin hi good evening hello miss rashtra seismor heiser hello good evening everybody hi uh dr ricardi anderson you can't hear anything oh hello how are

002you there oh doctor anderson hi we can't hear you hi and ms stella picarski that wasn't me oh yes i heard two speakers i did hear you thank you hi everyone good evening stella thank you okay well um we are here again to have a public hearing and this is of the fairfax county public schools allotment of elementary and second school emergency relief funds also known as esser or sr3 in this case so on behalf of the entire school board as the budget committee chair of melanie marin i'd like to thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us a condition of receiving this federal award is here community input so this is one way that we are doing so we continue to hear input via email and other discussions through staff

003and constituents parents and students this hearing is also being broadcast live on channel 99 and streamed on ftp fcps.edu tv channel or ch99 uh we have about 90 speakers registered to address the board this evening each of you is a lot of three minutes and we ask that you please do stay within that time the timer will start when you begin to speak and it will sound with a bell at the conclusion of your three minutes at that time the clerk will also switch you out of being an active speaker and you can certainly join in to hear the remaining broadcast on that channel 99 or live stream uh please do refrain from addressing topics other than the use of these sr3 funds your input will really help us to inform the superintendent on how

004best to use those funds when your name is called please unmute your microphone and begin speaking tonight's hearing will adjourn at 10 pm if there are speakers who have not addressed the board by that time you'll be added to tomorrow's public hearing which is about a school boundary and the clerk will be um contacting you if that is the case thank you for your patience as we work to hear everyone's input so i now call on our first speaker to share their comments and ms mulberg or ms madeja i'll turn it over to you to manage calling the speakers and the time limits thank you very much thank you our first speaker is arman nickmarad good evening thank you for having me my name is armand nickmrod i currently serve as the sj president for

005mclean high school and the ssc rep from mclean i come today to address issues that my peers and i face at school for the upcoming school year fcps students will be facing a setback and learning standards and to address that issue i strongly believe that fcps should improve their high school after school programs as of now fcps is only set aside one day for after school busing a week compared to middle school which is three days a week monday wednesday thursday if fcps expands the high school after school program by adding more busing programs and adding more security to the buildings that will allow for more students to receive more help from their teachers expand peer tutoring groups and allow students to be more active in more extracurricular clubs this will allow students to have

006access to all those resources during the week than to be limited to do those activities once a week i believe that expanding the high school after school programs will make up for the majority for the major learning loss that students have faced this year and give the opportunity for students to expand their high school portfolios finally another issue i bring to today is the facility's upkeep the bathrooms at mclean have been in need of complete renovation for a long time now the men's bathroom has no dividers between the urinals and has led to unnecessary hazing and harassment and overall unsanitary for students i hope some of the funds can be used to fix our bathrooms and overall the construction budget to be to be compliant with the american disabilities act thank you for your time

007and i hope you take my input into consideration thank you i do not see our second third or fourth speaker kira bakaja anshara malik and esram kiddain number five coca and i believe we have number six pranav chudari pranav chudari um yes good evening madam chair board members my name is pranav chaudhary and i'm a rising senior at langley high school i'm also the incoming student rep at the fairfax county school board for the 2021 2022 school year tonight i originally came here to talk to you about systems of support advisors and how funding that position at the middle school level can yield life-changing results for struggling students across every corner of this county however as i talked about during my election we are at a crossroads in the magnitude of the crises we face

008as we prepare for an in-person return to school one thing truly sticks out overcrowding overcrowding conditions have gotten so dire across our county that we now have multiple elementary schools in which more students learn temporary trailers than in their actual school building it's no coincidence that these almost entirely located in low-income heavily latino and heavily immigrant communities for example glenn forrest elementary school in the justice pyramid is expected to be at 146 percent of its capacity without modulars and forestdale elementary in the john lewis pyramid is expected to be at 176 percent capacity without modulars at first dale over 60 of students qualify for free reduced meals and almost half of students are non-native english speakers at glen forest more than 75 are on pre-reduced lunch and over 60 are english language learners the federal

009government has given us several hundred million dollars to address these crises that we face that's why i'm asking that we use some of that money just a tiny tiny fraction for capacity enhancements at both of these elementary schools it's our duty as a county not just to educate our students but to ensure that they're learning in a safe and human environment and most importantly to invest in our communities equitably let's do that and let's show our residents that we care by investing in forestdale in glen forest thank you thank you our next week are henry allen street who i don't see on the list and speaker number eight olivia tennant speaker number nine norm hall good evening the frame provided by fcps the community stakeholders for tonight is unusual why so little guidance and how

010staff would solve short-term problems with more than 160 million dollars in funding we don't see clearly defined baseline conditions such as school facility issues or specific staff shortages to be mitigated by short-term investments and most critical of all missing our benchmarks by schools depicting various levels of remedial need remarkable no hint of metrics for how marginalized students fell behind how much was it shifting methods to access education this year fewer evaluations supporting special education programs disrupted support for english language learners covert related trauma i would like to think that the framing of final recommendations for ester funding will take into account the permutation of staff students facilities and other resources at each school in other words let's have 194 school level reviews where the administrative teachers staff students and families can develop options by talking

011about the unmet needs before them and then work on solutions that would best provide the best fit imagine school communities working together rather than multiple voices all trying to compete for the best one-size-fits-all solutions because stakeholders are not aware of varying school contexts what should be considered uniformly are issues like child care that cut across neighborhoods and the range of parents who need help returning to work as the fairfax economy opens up fcps should set reserve child care spaces parents should register for it and the county needs long-term employees for it and if fairfax county can't hire enough merit staff to get the job done then why not let fcps hire temporary staff to do this work as well as other tasks that need to be done this summer and through the year consider a

012companion srs program to support the transition of distinguished sets of students who may need more time to return to school so their education can be structured around their previously hidden needs and please find a more humane approach to mitigate the harsh standards that fcps has taken by considering only a student's health matters rather than the medically fragile status of others in their household who may be immunocompromised this supporting return to school program could use sac staff advocates instructional assistants substitute teachers and home run teachers with esser funding to transition from one small virtual classes to two separate clusters meaning in classrooms and or three traditional homebound approaches to four eventually the transition of all students back to traditional classroom teacher instruction all too often school administrator and central staff have taken an all or nothing

013approach to students who may do better outside the traditional classroom spaces and instruction why not combine academic support along these lines but the extra mental health supports which fcps has wisely included in so many plans to date i know there are many fcps staff with knowledge and experience working with students who struggled before the pandemic with getting back to classrooms with conventional forms of instruction on a regular basis let's find a way to tap into that with some planning for this please not one and done comments not with a cacophony of testimony we need collaborative ongoing dialogue to develop modules to plan for the largest school transition ever let's get to work thank you for the opportunity thank you our next speaker number 10 george busera madam clerk can you hear me yes we can

014go ahead please uh madam clerk what are we going to do for msafc we have two spots tonight i'm just going to give this spot right now to dr lawrence bussie so he's number 85 so if you can uh take his number out but he's going to speak right now thank you very much go ahead dr mr bessie uh yes uh thank you ms marin uh my name is lawrence busse i'm a resident of arrest in virginia and i'm here this evening as a member of and representing the minority student achievement oversight committee this is our 29th anniversary as a school board advisory committee that focuses on improving minority student achievement and also as part of our charge this year from the school board to it to monitor issues affecting minority student achievement arising out

015of the plan to reopen schools we submitted a letter on uh april 23rd to the school system outlining our recommendations for the use of these funds so i'm here tonight just to elaborate on that point as you know the american rescue plan act enacted on march 21st to provide an additional 120 uh 122 billion funding of which uh fcps as we understand received 189 million and that 20 percent of that those funds must be used to address learning laws and the period of performance for that uh is for march 13th 2020 through september 30th 2024 we advocated in our letter uh these six items expansion of the community schools from three to five and those are the two additional ones would be hutcheson and herndon hiring a program manager for the community schools and providing

016for extra funds for professional development for these new sites the second thing we're advocating for is funding summer activities for 63 young scholars schools and provide stipends for counselors to identify young scholars middle school students for honors classes the third item that we advocate for is opening up six more uh early head start and six additional six pre-k classrooms for school year 21 22. the fourth item is increasing the number of credit recovery slots for the summer the fifth item is providing summer and year-long training for parent liaisons and classroom mentors to assist parents on how to use technology to help their children at home and finally the last item is to expand the middle school after school programs so that we can serve more children with that um that summarizes our letter and thank

017you very much for the opportunities to address uh you this evening thank you our next speaker is number 11 kimberly adams good evening can you hear me yes go ahead please good evening school board members my name is kimberly adams and i'm speaking as president of the fairfax education association a union representing your employees this evening we share our input for the development of the appropriation of the sr-3 funds we are told that this amount is approximately 189 million dollars while that is a lot of money it is very small compared to the 3.8 billion dollar budget appropriated annually for this school system this means that the s or three dollars will need to be targeted to support very specific items that our school system is in need of as we return from and recover

018from covid19 fda would like to once again point out that we have continued to lose ground in recruitment and retention of highly qualified staff in nearly all major drought job classifications teachers custodians food services instructional assistants transportation and more this is critical for our system increasing salaries was one way to show a workforce that they were valued but this next year's increase is already in jeopardy we would ask that some of the dollars be put towards increases in fcps healthcare costs to ensure that our two percent raise is truly a full full two percent raise and not just enough to cover our increased costs we would also ask that back pay be given as a bonus to all employees who continued service with fcps this past school year similar to what the county is giving

019its employees we would then ask that an additional bonus compensation be given to those employees who worked in person during the pandemic before vaccines were available fva would also like to once again point out that we have failed to hire and retain adequate substitute workforce to back us up when we are sick or need to be out to support our own families this includes all job classes who are unable to be absent without adequate coverage to continue to service our students increased compensation for substitutes is needed as well as a plan to encourage them to pick up more sub positions during the school year perhaps a system of reward based on the number of positions of sub covers or a tiered system of compensation up to and even including healthcare coverage options our last issue

020around training off contract hours there are many many who are often asked to provide on-the-job training without compensation or to attend training without compensation these expectations are forced on all types of employees without any acknowledgement of the work expected to be done off contract time often requiring the child care arrangements or leave from other paying jobs to complete their fcps responsibilities often acting in fear of retaliation or loss of future wages or job promotions tonight we know that many in the community are making very valid asks of you as well and that these millions will not cover all our needs we expect that you will work more explicitly over the next six months to develop a truly needs-based budget for fcps as prescribed by the code of virginia for all of your budgets it is

021possible to encourage stakeholder engagement earlier in the process much like the opportunities being given to us tonight thank you very much thank you our next speaker is number 12. good evening mute can you hear me okay yes go ahead yes uh good evening madam chair and members of the school board my name is sarah james lewis and i am an art educator fcps alumni mindful mindfulness coach and yoga teacher i'm here today to speak on behalf of a program called calm which stands for children and communities achieving lifelong mindfulness this program was started by suanne dupey and it was created to support students and staff with mindfulness and movement techniques for months we have heard fcps students staff school board members and families calling for additional inconsistent mental health calm is a solution that has

022had great success in providing what our students need i am passionate about mental health because i believe it is the art of living and as a student in fcps many years ago i never received these skills that i had to later acquire in life this past school year i've been teaching calm virtually and i want the opportunity to teach mindfulness in person next school year and to be able to spread this program and i've approached my principals about it and as much as they believe in it their hands are tied due to restrictions in funding and lack of a centralized curriculum from the fcps central office our schools need a dedicated block of time for mindfulness and movement it is the key the token to the art of living for years our students mental health

023has been in a crisis and this pandemic has certainly exasperated it our students need consistent preventative mental health resources to their safety happiness and well-being as you all know at the top of maslow's hierarchy of needs is self-actualization and meditation movement mindfulness is proven to boost self-esteem feelings of self-worth belonging and self-actualization please support this program of calm through the use of this year's essr funds thank you this evening thank you our next speaker is miss playwise can you need your microphone please our next speaker is number 13 cheryl binkley hello um my name is sheryl gibbs binkley good evening board members and fcps staff as always thank you for the deeply difficult job that you continue to do for our communities and our children when i googled ether funds in preparation for tonight the

024first four hits were ads for computerized instruction remediation and data collection with promises of increased accountability faster learning and easy answers please don't believe their hype i can assure you what we don't need is more computer time for our kids and for our staffs right now with the availability of esser funds we have a golden opportunity as our children return to buildings in we can help them fall in love with school again after a year of ever-changing landscape fear and isolation it's extremely important to approach their return to buildings as the gift and opportunity it can be by looking at this moment with a view to enrichment and enhancement not from a stance of loss and remediation we will better serve their mental health and wellness needs being seen as behind and damaged is not

025what they need right now please look for ways to return them to the joy of learning not the burden of being less and please give their teachers and supporters the maximum freedom to design how to do that best similarly these funds can help you recover the allegiance and equilibrium of your staffs by compensating them if only for this year for the meager funding you were forced to implement in the recently passed budget our workers whether educators or support staff need to hear from you in concrete compensation that you value the remarkable sacrifices extra hours flexibility and innovative problem solving that they exhibited this year it's the only way to stave off the loss of employees that's in the making finally parents and students must feel confident that they will return to buildings safely with adequate

026mediation of dangers and with enough staff to ensure custodial food handling transportation and engineering services will be able to meet their safety needs that may mean hiring temporary additional staff until the transition is passed and purchasing material resources for staff to meet those health and safety needs please stay focused on what are the needs of our students and our families at this point in time thank you again thank you our next speaker is number 14 suan tupi good evening everyone and members of the board my name is swan toopey and i'm a teacher at groveton elementary title one school and i've been teaching for over 26 years 25 of those years is at groveton i've been involved with kindergarten preschool going into homes and working with families and also as a lead mentor dealing with

027many of the stresses that teachers have during the day the last three years i have worked as a resource teacher in the comm program that sarah mentioned earlier and in about four days i'm going to be retiring from fairfax county and i'm here speaking from my heart about a program called calm that actually i wrote and with my principal jim swagger and went through instructional services and it was approved and it stands for children and communities achieving lifelong mindfulness and this program addresses the social emotional literacy for the students the proposal was written out of the need for teachers and teacher burnout because of the demands that are put on us across the county and students are taught in this class hand on hands-on ways to regulate and improve their self-esteem and reduce their stress

028the program is in many schools in the county and it is proven by the students have um it's one of their most their favorite specials it's part of a special rotation so the students are involved in our com classroom 30 minutes a week and they are learning additional tools for student success and their social um literacy so and i have been advocating with the school board for over five years now we have dr bravery came and visited and several the school members we all have talked to them and shared the program with them and we really hope that this is a program that really will make use of the essr's funds because it's already in the schools and it already has the support of the community and the students and it when the students come

029to the room they have a chance to pause notice how they're feeling and really really learn strategies to center themselves and help them to have a productive day as they go about their day and actually take it home at school so as i prepare to step down for my role of teaching in fairfax county public schools my dream and hope is that you will seriously consider and look further into the calm program as an additional tool for social emotional literacy that will always provide these students with a lifelong skill and not only the students and the staff we know that learning loss cannot begin until our students thank you thank you i our next speaker number 15 is molly young and i don't see molly young number 16 justin velez hagen number 17 sue zoldak

030speaker number 18 lauren mccoffee hello my name is lauren makahi and i am a parent to three fcps students two of whom have disabilities esther is a windfall for the district the chance to put millions of dollars into use quickly how can those dollars best be used in a transformative way ats assistive technology services uses adaptive technology tools to maximize the potential of fcps students with disabilities according to the fcps website quote ats staff members work in collaboration with school teams to ensure that all students with disabilities who require assistive technology have the technology tools and training necessary in order to access the curriculum narrow the achievement gap gain essential life skills and reach their full potential end quote esther funds could transform current realities and make the previous sentence true in practice currently ats

031is radically understaffed and underfunded with at resource teachers supporting an average of 8 to ten school sites each we need millions of dollars to purchase new tools hire additional staff provide extensive training to staff and students in their use and build the capacity of school teams to incorporate assistive technology options for all students with disabilities nothing is as magical as enabling a student to communicate more fully to read previously inaccessible texts to interact with their teachers and peers in ways which were not accessible without new technologies introducing the right tech tools at the right times will transform the futures that students with disabilities can reach five years from now will we remember how esser funds got used will we be able to point at measurable results and say this is what the millions got us

032if we direct sufficient funds into ats we'll be amazed this is our chance for a truly transformative change in how well fcps provides an equitable education for its students with disabilities and help to make up for their huge learning losses due to covet please don't squander this opportunity thank you our next speaker is number 19 jihoon doe speaker number 20 amanda grier amanda greyer yes hi my name is amanda greer and i'm a parent of two elementary age children at a title one school in the mason district my husband is a fairfax county esau school teacher and we're both foster parents and mason district has been hit really hard by covid we experienced some of the highest rates in virginia and i personally lost family members to covid and including my my younger brother who

033was 30 year old new father none of my children right now are eligible for the vaccine including my kindergartener who is high risk for severe illness so in my opinion the best way to use these funds is through rapid testing so that the nurse in the schools can start testing children when they start experiencing symptoms and we can find out sooner when there are children who are infected i also think that the virtual school program should be expanded there were a lot of children who learned a great deal through the virtual school including one of my children and that should be an option not just for those who are high risk but also for those who are siblings of high-risk um children as well we all know that if your biggest risk is living with

034someone who is also um covid positive so i think that the the funds putting them where they most the children who are the most vulnerable um uh in our community and targeting those would be very important i also think that um that teacher pay is a real issue in this county our real estate cast you know taxes are through the roof right now um and and teachers are not experiencing that pay some of the teachers they are not able to even make enough to pay for child care for their own children many of them are working second jobs and we are asking more and more and more of them every single day not just during this pandemic but before the pandemic and we are losing teachers we are we experienced a teacher shortage before this

035and we are going to continue to that especially for our english language learners these children have been through the ringer and it's more than just not having access to their teachers in person but seeing their family members sick and dying from this terrible illness um so these teachers need to be paid better their two percent increase is meager it's pathetic it doesn't even keep up with inflation and it's been stagnating for years we need to teach our pay our teachers better our children deserve teachers who are paid better who don't need to work second jobs who don't need to worry about where their own children are during the work work day and can focus on teaching our children during the core teaching hours and let's not keep asking them to do continuous extracurricular activities and

036continuous learning that is outside of their regular hours they have to pay for child care they have to focus on their own curriculum and their own instruction we have learned that teachers are the key to this let's pay them correctly thank you speaker number 21 rory cooper speaker number 22 bushra khan speaker number 23 astra ramon hi good evening can you hear me yes go ahead please okay good evening i want to start uh by saying i'm glad of this opportunity to voice my opinions i was disappointed by the letter dr braban sent out a few weeks ago about the effects of the rise of anti-semitism the rise in hate has been increasing and affecting many of our children as well as staff and families in fcps to specify one form of hate over others

037diminishes the feelings of those who've continually faced hate and discrimination without it being addressed i'm speaking not only on my behalf of myself and my three fcps daughters but i've heard from many of my friends and my daughter's friends about the lack of acknowledgment of their pain i want amanda for continuing to reach out to all these families affected their eyes finding a way forward she has been vilified and attacked as has our community and this house is exciting to learn from history and not allow our disney rest of the funding i am i'm talking about the funding thank you if you please get yes your funding that would be most helpful to the board this evening thank you so much oh i i believe you're muted can you hear me now yes with regards

038to funding i want to make sure the funding is available to have assistance to help with math and science many of our kids have fallen behind and struggled to catch up having an assistant in the classroom will allow more students to receive the help they need during class time allow teachers to truly see where you're struggling and how to best help secondly more funding needs to be made available for counselors kids need to they have a safe space to voice their fears concerns and get the help they need thirdly funding should go to ensuring no staff pays out of pocket for ppe i know from my own family who are teachers in fcps that they've had to pay for face masks and things like that i want to make sure that teachers assistants janitorial cafeteria

039or office staff should not have to pay for any of this from their own pockets that should be readily available to them finally adding additional after school help and tutoring especially for math and science for high schoolers this is paying teachers over time and adding busing is increasingly necessary thank you for your time thank you speaker number 24 dennis speaker number 25 arbina sharesa number 26 michael ravenscroft speaker number 27 kevin johnson hello can you hear me yes thank you yes yes so i'll i'll be brief i currently am a father of uh five children in the fairfax county public school system ranging in age from uh 15 year old 15 years old down to two six-year-old twins in elementary school so first of all i would like to say thanks to the fairfax county

040public school system administrators and teachers for a very difficult time this year um the one thing that i would have to say about the funding and that i was completely surprised about this last year was the inadequate um virtual distance learning experience it was you know it was not what i expected from fairfax county so being in the bcaa i always i would always have thought that you know because of where we are location-wise that uh distance learning or taking it back of the technology because of the potential of attacks within our community we have seen before that distance learning would have been just one of those automatic things that did so as far as esther funds are concerned i would like to see a more robust offering top notch for distance learning and i

041would also like to see a way to evaluate the children you know as far as the learning goals and objectives within the last year and you know just how to get back try to get that back on track that's all i have to say thank you speaker number 28 haley hicks 29 tracy compton 30 shea cousin 31 alman abdul raham rahman sorry hi can everybody hear me yes thank you okay um thank you for the opportunity to comment on the esther 3 grant i've come here today as fcps parents and also a pediatric emergency medicine physician concerned not only about my children but all children in our society that were most affected by coca-19 learning loss i have previously spoken to the board regarding my concerns about the learning loss caused by remote instruction especially

042in the grades of k to three and the need for an evidence-based curriculum for reading that is instruction methods based on science i have the concern i have this concern because even prior to covert 19 school closures only about a third of fourth graders were proficient readers knowing the ramifications of inadequate reading on a child's economic life and health i believe that we as custodians of children have a moral obligation to implement a curriculum based on science um and the science of reading which teaches reading based on scientifically proven approaches the science of reading teaches the sound of english explicitly and the spelling patterns that represent those sounds systematic using decodable books for practice the types of reading mathematicians three the code so that they'll be able to pull words off the page the skill

043by third grade i propose that fairfax county public schools use the money to train all teachers on the science of reading so that in the upcoming year teachers will use methods that is evidence supporting all students i also strongly suggest that county librarians not only be knowledgeable about the science of reading but also have decodable books available for parents as they try to help their children catch up we have amazing librarians who care deeply about children that they were not able to answer my questions about decodable books and how parents can teach their child to read realizing the education support needed for my kindergarten during school closure i am concerned that there are many children like him who have not yet received the same support i know that his learning was impacted by foreclosure and

044he has learning deficit that i need to work on but he is not the focus of my concern i am talking about children of frontline workers families who are english learners families with resources to support children their children for many reasons especially financially i read that the sr-3 grant was established to address many aspects of needs arising from a coronavirus pandemic however i have many questions about how fairfax county will use the money um spent i'm sorry we'll use the money spent um to direct impact the very children that the money is meant to support so there has been a lack of transparency on the decision-making and i'm not confident that those decisions will reach the children who need this assistance most but only two weeks were given for those students that qualify for summer

045school but in two weeks is not effective enough you know with two weeks be um enough for children that need to catch up how is professionally assessing the needs and what plans are there to ensure children are at grade level and by when thank you our next speaker is 32 wilda smith ferguson wilda smith ferguson whoops can you hear me yes go ahead hello okay okay all right hello um my name is olda smith ferguson um i am a parent of a special needs child who has been in the fairfax county school system since um since um i guess you could say pre-k um and one of the concerns that i have um and that i've been struggling with this entire pandemic is the decisions that are made by the school system in regards to

046protocols which don't take into consideration at all my child who is very complicated has medical issues and currently virtual learning and will probably be virtually learning um again at least for the health center because i'm not real confident in the protocol that the school system is in place to address her needs she is totally dependent on her teachers and support staff at at the high school that she attends and there are no um specific guidelines to address those needs of the kids that are most vulnerable the kids that cannot speak for themselves that cannot tell people what is working and what is not working for them um and so i would like to see some of the money um in the grant go basically instead of trip down trickle up um figure out what is

047best for the most vulnerable and work up um it's worked before it's worked in regular society if you look in the mall the ramps that able-bodied people use because those with disabilities um the the the indentations in the side that strollers use and people use as well are because of people with disabilities the most vulnerable who have to navigate and i think that's where um the money needs to go is first of all um those children that can't speak for themselves that can't advocate for themselves to have parents like me who often because we live the life that we live don't have time to um um probably as we should be regarding how um the school system makes its decisions because of our children because we're living and breathing something completely different than the greater

048majority of parents in the school system a lot of them stuck about social components of their kids and i get that i'm concerned that she catches something she wants up in the hospital um i would like to see them seriously look at the most vulnerable kids the cat one kids and um elementary through high school preschoolers um those with medical disabilities those with cognitive disabilities and figure out the program that works best for them and work backwards that is all thank you thank you our next speaker number 33 thewanna johnson number 34 alison gagne number 35 muna yusef number 36 amanda steffy good evening fcps school board members and community my name is amanda steffey and i'm a mother of two fcps students one with special needs and an iep and one in middle school

049in an advanced academic program my kids have been in fcps schools for over 12 years and i'm also a 25-year air force officer who has seen many school systems across the country thanks for the opportunity to speak at a school board hearing tonight you all play a very important role in our children's education and we elected you to represent our children's best educational interests i'm glad to have an opportunity to share suggestions on how these essr funds should be used [Applause] i've got two uses in mind for these funds the first recommendation is to use this funding to hire staff who will physically teach in the classroom if current fcps teachers do not want to return to work in the fall let's hire new teachers and staff who will virtual teaching is the last resort

050that should not be used unless absolutely necessary to address the impacts of cope 19 on the nation's students we need school staff to show person to educate our children virtual learning ensure protection of staff and students until a vaccine became available what we've seen in our county is that even though a vaccine was made available and teachers were given priority vaccinations many chose not to return to brick and mortar school settings earlier this spring our kids returned unvaccinated and masked yet four out of eight of my son's teachers in a seventh grade aap program did not return to the classroom virtual learning has its limits as a mother of two in the fcps schools i can tell you firsthand that my kid does not want to raise his hand with a virtual teacher to ask

051a question and does not want to interrupt the flow of a lesson if a teacher is not physically present in the classroom he or she does not see the confused looks on faces in the classroom or take a few moments to interact with the bashful child who approaches the teacher at the beginning or end of the class for help in person learning is so valuable as a teacher addresses those students who get ensures that the children understand the concepts and lessons that change a student will get so far behind that he or she flunks a class the second recommendation i have for these funds is to use our special education students hire additional teachers aides and related service providers like pts and ots in our two fcps centers key center and kilmer center my 16

052year old daughter kate attends a key center school in springfield a special needs center of approximately 100 students all with ieps at the end of march i requested she returned in person and i made that request on time i was told by the school principal that your daughter could not return in herself this time because it would be a hardship back in this room we need this money for additional staff and teachers so that our most vulnerable students thank you speaker number 37 nikki clayton yes thank you um i'd like to say that i would like to see these funds used to add school days to the school calendar in the coming year so that our students can make up the time that was so obviously lost by virtual education including tomorrow which happens to

053be inexplicably a virtual education day it's hard to understand how our students get notifications of absences when the only activity that's performed is a google spreadsheet that they fill out answering five or six questions i really believe that we can do much better and that we need to increase the number of teachers in a classroom and decrease the classroom size and that was pre-pandemic and we have an opportunity now to fix that and do so much better and i hope the school system will do just that thank you thank you speaker number eight nasiba bengam speaker 38 nasiba bengam okay we'll move on to speaker number 39 ricky o coles jr number 40 lindsay latham number 41 kimberly norton yes good evening madam chair members of the school board good evening my name is kim

054norton and i'm an fcps elementary art teacher in my 33rd year and i'm also a certified integral yoga instructor with over 300 hours of training i'm speaking this evening on behalf of calm children and communities achieving lifelong mindfulness through yoga and meditation as mentioned by two previous speakers i was first introduced to this group a year ago by another art teacher colleague who values school-based yoga as much as i do com is a program again started by growton teacher suzanne toopey four years ago the advice is to bring calm to every fcps school and elementary school and to support social emotional literacy is an additional tool for our student success recently as part of my master's study my action research i used the goldman's 1995 castle collaborative academic social emotional learning as the crux of

055my research and interestingly in response to the coven 19 pandemic fcps response was to quickly adopt this same research included into the return to school professional development for educators according to fcps the fairfax county government sel provides numerous benefits students including an increase in academic achievement by points increase of social behaviors including kindness sharing and empathy and improvement and attitudes to itself and others and school reduction also of mental health problems including depression and high levels of stress for every dollar invested in sel programming there's a savings of eleven dollars that would have spent on costly interventions um one group of researchers argued a school-wide social emotional learning program maximizes full benefits by becoming an organized framework for fostering students potential as scholars community members citizens and students schools are crucial for promoting social emotional

056learning because children spend so much time in those communities blocks on monday mornings very well attended evidence gained from my study shows that students who attended calm classes on a regular basis improved in attendance and participation overall feedback from the survey will reveal that student recognition of the positive benefits both physical and mental wellness a necessary component for the success of the calm program is teacher training it would be extremely beneficial if all column instructors will be commenting and a unified curriculum thank you so much for your time our next speaker number 42 muhammad nayeem number 43 joseph miller number 44 iman hamad yes good evening um i will just from my voice i'm under the weather uh a little bit but um just make it quick my suggestion is to allocate money to introduce

057community health post pandemic people all over the country young and old now know the danger of a bad diet and precious diseases now is the time to introduce nutrition education to the curriculum to build better health for our children we cannot expect kids to grow and excel without the proper nutrition time is of the essence here students of all ages were introduced a public health crisis due to cover 19. this is an eye-opener for many who over many years were fed food that caused them health issues like blood sugar imbalances juvenile diabetes and high blood pressure i see it every day in the school and those issues were made recovery from covert even harder i heard many speakers today talking about social and emotional literacy programs but let's face it if kids are well fed

058many of these programs will not be in need as much because appropriate nutrition should make kids happier and healthier and therefore kids will rise over these issues naturally i will not spend much time talking about nutrition per se here but i cannot stress it how important it is a design in our life to improve the health power growing children who will be the product of tomorrow um and this they will actually achieve their best potentials uh based on good nutrition and good communities thank you thank you speaker 45 eileen ciaola good evening i'm here speaking on behalf of the fairfax county parents association a non-partisan volunteer grassroots organization of parents that seeks to ensure students are the first priority in fairfax county public schools my daughter like all the other children in this county needs

059help now the children in this county need you to open up these sr3 funds to reimburse parents for private tutoring professional education related services and private mental health services over this summer if fairfax county public schools sincerely intends to help students with the sr-3 funds we all need to stop taking every observation of student learning loss as an opening to re-litigate the decisions the school board and the superintendent made this year the fact that students suffered losses doesn't mean that fcps staff weren't working hard the fact that students suffered losses doesn't mean the staff don't care whether school should have opened up in october or december or february is irrelevant and discussing it now is monumentally unproductive whether those decisions were made rightly or wrongly they were made and that time has passed instead let's

060start talking about in the actual language the federal government uses for sr3 funds the current education needs of the students that fcps has a duty to care for some students will need 60 of an algebra 2 class some students will need occupational physical and therapy some students will need an entire extra year of education because they couldn't reliably connect to virtual learning some students like my daughter will need more than one year of education because they're right now behind where they were in february of 2020 teachers and staff understandably need to recuperate over the summer magical thinking about how teachers will years of education into the 2021 2022 school year will simply accelerate the exodus bring school districts private schools we don't need fantasies we need action fcps staff can't meet student needs right now

061they need to allow this funding to flow to family in order to allow us to meet our children's needs now spending these funds on additional facility improvements ppe staff raises or technology just as these options don't require cps staff to be available right now deny students the help they need right now it would be moral negligence of the highest order thank you thank you speaker is number 46 aurelia carlson good evening i don't know if you can hear me or if you can see me but my name is hi and i am the parent of a newly minted fairfax county public school graduate from west potomac high school and the mother of two others i'm also an air force retiree after serving 22 years as an officer and i stayed in fairfax county with my

062son from first grade to to high school so that he would have the experience being in one school system throughout his school career and i really appreciate everything that the school system has done for him i appreciate the opportunity to speak this evening and talk about where i think that these funds could be very beneficial to our school district we've already had three speakers who have spoken spoken about the mindfulness program bringing mindfulness studies into the school and so i can save my time and say that i would also like to see that we dedicate some of the funds to helping interrupt the pipeline from school to prisons for minority students in that a lot of this there's studies that are out there that show that the disciplinaries the disciplinary actions that are taken upon

063minority students specifically minority males and i am the mother of three sons that it's harsher or than than others and so i would like to see the not not only bringing the mindfulness students mindfulness studies to the school system but also to expand the disciplinary programs to go from a punitive program to one that's more reformative one that does incorporate mindfulness training to help bring the students who obviously need attention instead of suspension and detention to take them to through with a space where they can have the attention that they need so that they can have actually better intention of why they're in school and what their lives will have for them um after they move forward um looking at my notes and um i also would like to see that you know in in

064those that that medium that we also expanded so that we call it maybe time out but not time out in a punitive way but if a person needs to come into a space where they are feeling that they can voice themselves where they can relax themselves and bring themselves back into a space of calm so that they can be productive in the school system for the staff the students and the administrators and everyone that we also expand the program to to look at that as well and so that's it and thank you for um your time thank you speaker number 47 mariha clark speaker number 48 elizabeth lodal elizabeth lodol okay speaker number 49 carmen paredes oliveira oh i'm on i'm on okay there you are go ahead please uh can you see me we

065could and then you disappeared but we can hear you go ahead please okay i hope you can see and hear me uh can you hear me yes go ahead please okay thank you very much uh good evening school board what a great job you have and what a difficult one uh my name is elizabeth lodal i'm a former employee of the fairfax system having served proudly as principal of four different schools including kilmer and hughes middle schools mclean and tj high schools it was a wonderful 40 years of working in your system tonight i want to introduce you to a new program called edututor va it's a tutoring nonprofit created by six colleagues five of whom are also former fairfax educators this includes people you know chris amundson eleanor saslaw shirley bloomquist kathy cole glazer

066and margie vanderheim to address the enormous disruption caused by the pandemic we have created a virtual tutoring program to serve some of the neediest students in the title one schools of fairfax arlington and alexandria and at the same time we are training teachers of the future because we know there's a terrible teacher shortage this year we've served three schools one in each district next year we hope to serve three more schools in each district we currently tutor students in the eighth grade at walt whitman middle school in fairfax and you're going to learn more about this from my colleague kathy colglazer in just a moment edutude or va's high intensity tutoring model is based on research by the late dr robert slavin of johns hopkins university our tutors work with small groups of two students

067for an hour three times a week our tutors are training to become teachers and our current students at george mason university under the direction of dr robert thomas who was also once a fairfax principal and are also education students from the seven campuses of northern virginia community college edutudor va provides ongoing professional development to these tutors whom we pay for their tutoring work we pay 15 an hour first semester 20 an hour second semester and 25 to our graduate students most of whom are working at walt whitman in fairfax in this way we're helping to encourage and prepare new teachers to come into our public schools they are discovering the joy of helping a child learn and opening up that child's uh world and their future they're learning how to manage a small group which

068will pay off when they walk in to a real classroom thank you and we're asking for the esser funds to fund these students who are tutoring our neediest children thank you thank you time is up speaker number 49 carmen paredes o'neil speaker number 50 tina williams can you hear me yes go ahead please good evening i'm tina williams president of the fairfax county federation of teachers thank you for this opportunity to engage as a community on allocating funds for learning for our students that is safe healthy engaging welcoming and fully supports their needs funding should recognize the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on students from low-income families students of color children with disabilities english language learners migratory students students experiencing homelessness and children and youth in foster care and provide more intense social emotional mental

069health and academic services and funding and interventions implemented must address these needs appropriately to help students and families and staff recover from the pandemic i ask that you please consider these recommendations as well expand community schools to offer direct services and support to students and families community schools provide students the resources opportunities and programs to ensure that social emotional mental wellness and academic success can create strong ties among families students schools and community that are necessary for equitable opportunities to prepare our students for success in life as well as citizens offer more activities that promote social engagement expand sports programs and clubs such as robotics stem the arts the com program and other related programs funds could be used for curriculum including relevant professional development increased mental health support our students staff families are experiencing

070more anxiety stress and trauma and much more support from school counselors psychologists social workers school nurses specialists and school support professionals funding as many new positions as possible will help to meet recommended minimum staffing ratios support the anticipated high demands and provide appropriate professional development compensate fcps staff by providing a bonus and or an additional msa this will demonstrate they are valued will improve morale and help us to attract and retain more high quality employees fund career and technical education programs by providing educators with professional development to expand their expand their knowledge of key technologies in learning methodologies to increase student interest and relevancy of cte courses to industry occupations provide programs to increase awareness of workforce trends and high demand skills through externships and opportunities to engage with industrial professionals also improve facilities to

071increase access to courses having specific laughing in hard to fill areas like cyber and computer science thank you so much thank you speaker number 51 kathy cole glazer hello everyone i don't see my picture up there but i hope you can hear me we can hear you and see you go ahead oh oh that's wonderful it's just not a computer okay good evening everyone i'm kathy coglazer and i'm glad to be so close to elizabeth louisville because i'm also speaking about uh edu tutor va the new non-profit that we all started when we realized how devastating um the pandemic was going to be and the the severe impact is going to have on education as chris aubison another one of our founders said the learning gap is going to become a canyon and uh it's

072funds because we want to continue what we've done this past year let me tell you what happened at walt whitman this year uh principal greg nicely invited us to a school and felt that there was really a learning uh a writing issue in some of his eighth grade students so we with our tutors from george mason graduate students that dr palmas found for us uh trained people many of them knew how to do it and they jumped right in and they created a platform so these students could work with our tutors two to three times a week for an hour so every day they would come in they would work in these small online groups and they would brainstorm ideas think of ways to do writing in a more engaging way they learned punctuation and

073grammar but most of all they just wrote and they liked what they wrote and they wrote two or three times a week i want to tell you a story of one girl kylie cravata and this was a shy girl that our two men was assigned it was perfect great news that they got connected because this young girl was working through emotionally having a parent be deployed but lori was also deployed because she's a military vet and she also came from military family she knew exactly what young kyrie was thinking about and working through so that you're working with kyrie has taught her a lot about writing i'm going to tell you about that in a minute but also a lot of good support and that's what happens with small intense you know targeted tutoring where

074relationships form amanda gorman of course we all remember wrote you know gave that a stirring uh city on the hill and after that uh her tutor along with one of our other tutors tammy carsolo you yeah they they brought um a lesson to their kids at whitman and one of the the poem that kyrie wrote being so wonderful that it was part of the talent show and if you want to see it you can go to youtube it's called whitman's got talent and i tell you this poem that young kyrie wrote will uh move you and inspire you um so edu tutor v8 is coming here tonight uh for these three funds because we want to move and expand we're going to we'd like to extend attend to at whitman but we also want to

075go to you know mount vernon speaker number 52 talia goldstein hello and thank you so much for the opportunity tonight my name is talia goldstein and i'm the mother of a rising fourth grader at s in the fcps schools i'm also a professor of applied developmental psychology at george mason university and have a phd in developmental psychology my suggestion for the use of the esser funds is to focus on what students need to help them understand process express and be resilient in the face of the ongoing and prolonged trauma of the past year since march of 2020 children see their lives become completely interrupted endured learning new modes of creating and learning and ongoing risk and fear of illness for themselves and their loved ones space time and activities for the processing of these traumas

076and helping children develop an understanding of their emotions resilience and build them towards the future with stronger mental health my hope is that fcps will consider spending the money to bring in and supplement current teaching artists of all genres and domains to help children express themselves work together socially and gain emotional skills a growing body of developmental psychology research shows that the arts visual arts theater dance and music are contexts and activities that need to improve well-being empathy and emotional control and knowledge these activities can be culturally responsive when implemented correctly this developmental psychology research shows that simply participating in an art form for its own not even necessarily emotional and social outcomes in mind can help children process and express their emotions children are highly motivated to participate in artistic activities in fact research

077shows that attendance increases days in which children knows an art period during that day bringing trained musicians actors theater teachers artists and teachers who can guide children to see their schools as an emotionally safe and contained space would be a worthy use of our funds setting children up for emotional resilience and self-expression i advocate for increased time opportunity and options for artistic practice such as dance theater music and arts classes at all levels of k-12 education and particularly in the elementary school arts can be a pathway for children to express themselves or they may not otherwise have the words or cognitive understanding of what has happened to them over the past year and a half thank you for your time and work on these issues thank you speaker 53 delmne carbajal speaker number 54 tom

078catarette number 55 carlos orianna number 56 thomas o'donoghue number 57 donna janeta lynn number 58 ilana jurgen donegar hi hello school board members and fcps staff thank you for your time today my name is alana jurgen donegar i've lived in fairfax for over a decade and i have two children who are students in fairfax county public schools i'm seeking today in multiple capacities as a parent as an advocate researcher of cove 19 and is a leader of the advocacy group fcps techsmart i'm excited to give input into the use of the esser funds intended to keep schools open and safe center and to address that this past year plus has had on our students i will speak first to keeping schools open safely we are so fortunate that older children have vaccines but the expectation

079is that school will open this fall with elementary school students unvaccinated it's wonderful that fcps will be back five days a week this fall but in addition to masking and making sure that classrooms have good air flow we need to do more limit code spreading classrooms full elementary students we've known for a while that testing is really important to stop the spread of covid because many cases of code 19 are asymptomatic especially amongst children we know that people spread the virus so in order to stop spreading we have to identify the cases via testing there must be surveillance tests in elementary schools in the first week of school our county's health department has done some things right but has gotten cova-19 testing very wrong in fairfax county you can't get tested for covered by county

080unless coveted symptoms and or proven exposure this is in stark contrast by jurisdictions like prince william and dc amongst others where anyone could just walk out to a county location and get tested for free with no symptoms or known exposure needed fcps students under the age of 12 should have automatic access to free testing in fairfax county without having symptoms or protect to get a free test should be used to set up survey investing in schools pool testing should be elementary schools at the start of the school year and continue until there has been plentiful time for that population to be vaccinated montgomery county and other counties have instituted pool testing schools to stop the spread of covet after tonight's hearing i will email us with links about lifting in schools i'll now speak as

081a parent concerned the leader of the advocacy group fcps tech smart these sr funds are supposed to be used to mitigate the impact that this past year plus has had on our children amongst other challenges the pandemic led to so much more screen time for kids including our youngest children we need young children back on track with learning how to learn with social interaction with classroom skills and with motor skills that are so important these younger years when i talk of using these funds for more technology it makes my heart hurt this is the very last thing that these kids need they need more books more textbooks more manipulatives more hands-on activities i beg you to spend money there instead of one more technology but most of all the very youngest learners gain more support

082many of the children who are entering first grade next year won't have been in a classroom since part way through their pre-k year school at all these children will have important onboarding and physical kindergarten classrooms which happens with the health with the help of both a lead teacher and an instructional assistant having two teachers in kindergarten classrooms allows teachers to spend more time with students and to do more of the activities that most help young children to learn next year's first graders will be much like gardeners entering elementary school buildings for the first time the first grade teachers will be on their own one teacher to a room full of children many of whom are new to school these teachers will need extra hands and extra help i urge you to use these funds to

083hire a shared first grade instructional assistant at every elementary school next year having that extra help and allowing teachers to help these little kids catch up and get where they need to go thank you so much for your time thank you speaker number 59 mona sambuni number 60 vicky lambert number 62 guadalupe williamson hi can you hear me all right yes we can go ahead please yes we can hear you guys so the money from esser needs to go directly to the children please please i beg you do not use this money for things that do not translate into direct enrichment for children specifically for children with special needs my son has an intellectual disability he like countless children especially those in lower elementary and those with disabilities were severely affected by school closures the

084funds need to be spent this summer you have wasted so much time already please don't delay these funds waiting until the fall by then children will already have full time five days a week of school they don't need to be overwhelmed then the summer is the time to start the summer programs that you all feel very proud about that fcps has launched are only helping a very small part of the students for instance my son with an intellectual disability in third grade didn't qualify for it they are helping kids who don't speak english but what about my song with the special needs if you don't have the staff we parents know service providers what we don't have is the money you have been granted that money a lot of that money please do partnerships with

085tutors with camps lessons that are already provided everywhere around our fairfax county let us parents use these resources already in our community you don't have to reinvent the wheel these options already exist but money is usually what prevents the students from accessing these services now you have the money make those partnerships and let parents make be able to use this while you give us the funds thank you speaker number 63 nicole crane coolmies speaker number 64. yahwan liu hello can i really okay everyone hear me yes go ahead please hi good evening my name is yajon liu um i very much appreciate you holding this meeting today um to hear all the concerns and proposals from everyone who obviously has given it a lot of considerations um in terms of how to use the emergency

086fund i am a parent of a kindergartener in fcps and we're also expecting a new family member the coming summer so needless to say there will be mobile members in our house vaccinated by the time that the new school year starts um i would have to share that back in may when i first received the communication from the county regarding the plan to return to school um i was frankly surprised to see you know how restrictive the requirements were for students to continue to stay virtual due to copic concerns a lot of people might recall you know students with high risk family members weren't eligible to apply and there was no guarantee for the special programs such as the language immersion um the very program that our family and many others have actually moved to

087this area for um and there was not even a guarantee for the students to go to the same school and of course before we had time to really give it some serious considerations the wendover application was already closed within a week um so you know while i could appreciate that this you know seemingly rushed decision or push for everyone to go back in personal was due to resource restrictions i was at the same time really disappointed to see that there was never any clear communication as to what has led to this consideration um especially during the time that we still have new cases being reported regularly out of schools and really hundreds of deaths are reported daily across the nation so this is why i thought the emergency fund really gives us and you the

088board members a real opportunity to give the situation some serious considerations well i do not have the visibility of the actual limitations that the board had identified to land on the decision that a reasonable virtual option would not be possible i assume it would have to be based on one or more of the following factors staff limitation salary limitation technology limitation and you know if this was accurate then i would have a set of proposals how to use this fund first the first one would be pertaining to the you know maintaining the reasonable um reasonable virtual opportunity for those who have reasonable needs increase the staff salary increase the number of staff you know as needed to ensure that virtual students can still can continue to go to the same school at least and to

089be enrolled in the same programs as in-person classmates and those are invested in the computers and technologies which have actually been widely used over the past year um really making sure that the students who are virtual um can still do a synchronized learning as their peers who are going to school in person and i you know i've heard this being repeated multiple times in in the previous speaker's notes um for those who are going to going to school in person make sure that the money is spent on the surveillance on the contact tracing that can quickly identify or who have been in close contact um if again we're hearing reports from from the school of positive cases test everyone who's been in close contact really making it's really important thank you thank you speaker number

09065 amanda campbell can you hear me yes go ahead please good evening my name is amanda campbell and i'm speaking tonight as the vice president of fairfax county septa the sr funding provides fcps a chance to begin to address long-existing achievement and opportunity gaps it is well documented that many of those gaps occur in special education implementation which is why fcps began a comprehensive audit of special education services this past year fcps must consult the special education audit for their year one recommendations and results now and use them in determining how to allocate this esser funding you cannot address the exacerbated gaps without understanding the foundation of the gap's existence in the first place there are numerous gaps in special education that existed pre-covered that have been and will continue to be exacerbated by covet

091the achievement gaps in literacy and math students with disabilities and fcps are well-planted the reasons for their existence are complicated appropriately staffed equipped classrooms inclusive appropriate levels of related services and more the needs for all of these intertwined please consider the following concerns when looking to allocate this funding the turnover rate for special education has historically been hired general education teachers how has coveted impacted the turnover rate especially for our cap b teachers what is the plan for addressing this has cove impacted the turnover rate for our related service providers and how does the turnover rate impact student opportunity and achievement cat b teachers often instruct students in multiple grade levels in one classroom this is not currently an intentional universal design for learning based practice but rather one of necessity due to lack of

092staffing how can this be improved would any single general education teacher be asked to teach two or three different grades in the same classroom at the same time what about seven different grade levels there are cat b classrooms that serve k to six in one room what does the turnover rate mean for the number of classrooms that are going to serve multiple grade levels at the same time in a single year will that number increase and by how much how does the practice of multiple grade levels in a single is currently impacted implemented opportunity and achievement how much literacy curriculum access do our students with disabilities get compared to their non-disabled peers considering sol pass rates for student with students with disabilities approximately 30 percent lower than those of their non-disabled peers research has shown

093that administrators scheduled almost two hours a day of re reading language arts in action for typically developing third graders according to erickson and coffin haver office of literacy for all students significant disabilities actually may receive very little time for literacy learning for various reasons including therapy schedules provision of special education services and meeting personal campaigns the sr funding being one thing only presents challenges for how to best approach these complex problems but that cannot become a reason to continue to ask our special education students families and teachers to wait every child by name and by need includes our students with disabilities and it is well past hi good evening i'm diane cooper gold advocacy chair of fairfax county septa and it is a perennial truth that school boards must weigh the demands of many different

094interest groups when making decisions there's never enough pie and everyone wants a large piece with sr funding we must also ask what needs a result of or worsened by the coveted pandemic unquestionably academic and social emotional learning loss or lack of progress has been the outcome of the good pandemic for many the best efforts of staff if that learning law is not directly addressed in a systematic and deliberate way it will negatively affect students for years to come additionally students with idps students and those requiring interventions and related services have had their learning loss further compounded they're at a double deficit additional related service providers and social emotional support staff will be required to ensure sufficient time and manpower to address these compounded needs and i cannot stress how critical it is that the essr

095funds not hazardously throw a multitude of problems but rather that the county develop an overarching strategy for covid lost remediation through universal evaluations strategic information and progress monitoring this board must insist that the plan be specific data driven and cover multiple years not just one year the initial financial investment must buoy the learning of all students over multiple years as well as tools that target deficits who have lost significant ground during critical developmental years we must also be prepared to offer additional learning opportunities after school and over the summers or throughout specialized courses and this will likely take multiple years as well as many of you know septa has been joining the advocate for switched to literacy instruction for all students structured literacy based on the science reading is absolutely best practice for teaching students

096to read regardless of their ability without the fundamental building blocks of literacy additional knowledge is not accessible this is the perfect opportunity to invest in this switch as we have an entire generation of students missed out on many of the literacy fundamentals needed to be successful lifelong readers septa has been further dismayed to discover that many of our subpopulations of students with disabilities have not been receiving much if any direct instruction and explicit literally literacy based in the science of reading information i encourage this board to demand an overarching explicit multi-year plan for addressing kovacs across all settings and grades and an immediate switch to structured literacy to help students rebound this devastating miracle thank you speaker number 67 sri mishra number 68 christian donlin good evening madam chairperson representatives and members at large my

097name is christian donland and i'm a band director at sandberg middle school it is no secret to anyone that this past year and a half has been trying at every given moment you can hear at your device of choice and hear dissonance running rampant in our society i can say with unwavering certainty that the ripples from the pandemic are most evident in our instrumental music programs they've already shown themselves and will intensify in the fall we are at a tremendous deficit regarding high quality practical music participation enrollment count the west potomac pyramid is no exception their amounts of research to back up the importance of neurodiversity and the impact on success in other subjects because of music construction while important that this is only a sliver of what students will lose i believe that left

098to a natural course our students will be at a severe socio-emotional disadvantage arts education offers unrivaled pathways to socio-emotional emotional learning we do most of our work as ensembles and small groups it isn't just the emotional impact of students self-image self-efficacy and work at greater good but how to successfully navigate frustration even agreements in an empathetic way towards others that is paramount briefly exactly what we need to come together as one right now i love working at sandburg and with the west potomac community our student population is the best microcosm of our county diabetes in the band your effort and ability to work together is what creates success in what neighborhood you live in in short need a need need students require options for success outside of the for and they need opportunity not blind

099transportation or extra fees to learn social emotional skills with their community at large i would like to bring the community to all of our band students earlier in their musical journey we are blessed to have world-class musicians living right in our backyard we have amazing freelance musicians but we also have united states military band members i would like to encourage our least personal coaches to work for elementary school it's benefit that our secondary schools have because of our booster communities musicians parents and teachers love it and the students get exposure to career level musician mentorship and social emotional mindset even better one that can fill them up through high school i think we could reinvigorate the 600 or so fifth and sixth grade roots of our elementary school pyramid at a cost of 20 000

100i would like to create a fun for our youngest and most precious student musicians called band bootstraps this would be most beneficial for our at-risk students since there are maybe more students unable to find bootstraps for themselves however in the true spirit of universal learning it would benefit all students this program would allow our span kids to buy in and enrich our students in ways that are with other subjects simply can't a faster rate i've included endnotes to some research you are interested thank you all for your consideration thank you speaker number 69 romana akbar number 70 jorge figuereto number 71 mark post and read we can see you have signed in okay number 72 alexander zarachnik [Music] yeah i thank you for having me my name is alex richneck our family has lived in

101fairfax county for almost 50 years and we're fortunate to see our children and our grandchildren benefit from the high quality of education here so thank you to the parents and administrators for all of all of that work tonight frankly i'm impressed by the heartfelt and thoughtful speakers who have come before me and whose presentations have detailed so many important needs for improving the education of our children especially minority students and how the many tremendous new programs proposed to address these needs will place competing claims on the funds available through esser and ultimately on the fairfax county school budget so my comments come from a different direction the board has an opportunity to fund some of these critical needs identified today by redirecting funds from another program which if implemented will do more harm than good

102by increasing racial divisiveness in our classrooms without eliminating racial disparities in academic test scores the last thing our kids need is to be taught that the color of their skin is how they should be viewed and how they should be considered that program is the recently led contract for the new york city leadership academy i've submitted eight specific questions regarding this program and i ask that the board provide written responses the most important questions are simply will you make public the specific program proposals and instructions and training materials developed from your contract with the new york city leadership academy and respond to input from parents on those programs and instructions prior to implementation and will you consider redirecting those funds to the many needs for which our parents and teachers are pleading for today thank

103you thank you speaker number 73 angela boyer [Music] go ahead please ms boyer oh okay we will come back to angela boyer number 74 ken cassasa 75 carolyn dimar 76 han chen 77 hassan shah 78 marlee gutierrez 79 kim espinoza hello there this is jeanette corcelius i'm actually going to step in for kim espinoza as she is in traffic if that is okay go ahead thank you good evening madam chair school board members and fcps leadership my name is jeanette corcelius a music educator fcps alum and an at-large member of the board of the fairfax education association i am an advocate for the com program children in schools achieving mindfulness palm is a program that i was exposed to in late july with my colleague sarah jane blake you heard speak earlier this evening she

104shared information with me about it and i proceeded to attend a virtual meeting where suanne tooby founder and creator of this program was speaking and advocating um two to uh fellow classroom teachers and specialists and advocates i am a big believer that everything happens for a reason i met sarah jane at lemon road when she was teaching art there and we instantly became friends because we had a lot in common sarah jane's godmother and aunt was an advocate for counseling positions over a four-year period from 1985 to 1989 and we know how important it is to have counselors in the school system however our counselors are not able to spend time with our students one-on-one and they need more time for their students to spend time with the more on one to help them through

105this anxiety and provoking time calm is a mindfulness based movement program that help our students through this crisis and the crisis crises that they were dealing with prior to the pandemic and continue to go through after this pandemic i can speak so broadly on this topic but i will say that yoga and meditation and mindfulness same life it's saved so many people's lives i know it will continue to save our students lives if we allow this program to flourish and expand with us within our school system i've heard many times throughout this school year from students staff school board members and community for the need to support our students mental health give this program a chance use your esr funds to fund this program thank you so much and have a wonderful evening thank you

106speaker number 80 renee gorman go ahead miss gorman miss gorman we can't hear you you now you okay we still can't hear you um we can come back to you while you figure that out is that and we'll move on to number 81 fanny salazar lasky good evening first member um i'm gonna start saying thank you very much for everything you've been doing i'm i'm from new york many years ago i'm here in in a military family we are a military family we support we the reason we move here because education is a great education here and apparently also from her domino school and support the hurricane program they have been doing a lot of volunteer work please i will ask him to support our school here title 1 school and also the program jrtc

107just recently my son passed away with kobe and my my son was great always volunteer because this program is great i'm friend with renee gorman who she's here and she knows how much the families here they need if you don't take and cut the route the families in here doesn't matter all the progress we can have we can spend all the money but we don't take and cut the family it's about computer simple stuff parent view all this stuff simple stuff in here and hurt them yes they need the hunger to learn english they're hungry to learn basic stuff please use the money to hurt her no thank you thank you i'm gonna go back and call angela boyer yes i'm here can you hear me yes go ahead please there we go i don't

108know what that was okay good evening i have a couple things i'd like to speak with you about first involves a recent ransomware attack that made the news again we have uh foia that information uh to miss stolen and have so far gotten no details provided to us so my first few questions would be what is the total dollar expended to pay the ransom and from what fairfax county account was that money taken was it taken from the general budget and would those funds be used to be repaid by the american rescue plan if required if there were subsequent ransom attacks the colonial pipeline and city of baltimore disclosed to their stockholders and their citizens what the costs were yet we've heard nothing could it be that it was a fairfax county employee that uh

109caused the attack and and perhaps no one wants to admit that and if so do we have access to who he was and i'd like to know why no one is interested in getting to the truth so from our perspective equity is a very powerful word these days very misused but i'll get to that in a second how many programs need to be eliminated or curtailed to pay for the ransomware attack excuse me um it would be most helpful to the board to hear how you would you're interested in seeing esser funds spent please thank you so much well i i think that funds could be redirected in ways that are much more positive for the environment for the education of our children and not spent um as they have often been in programs that

110don't give results that the parents and the community members find important and are representative of their equity in the system for which we pay so let me just digress real quickly then and close this all up for you i recently attended the ed equity conference the webinar i thought it was fascinating for many reasons but fascinating because what i didn't know it's all based on an idea of cultural competency which are behaviors that allow a group to work together effectively and i would say to you that it's teaching the very and promoting the very opposite did you know that our historical issues permeate our culture and our education i'd like to take funds away from the american rescue plan and erase all of the crt in 1619 propaganda that's being infiltrated into our scriptures i'm

111sorry miss boyer um we really remind you tell us excuse me mrs boyer if i could just give you some guidance on how to deform the board we'd love to understand the s r funds please thank you so much how about how about you and the sr funds on removing croco race theory and 1619 project materials from the education system that means educating the coaches educating the teachers educating the staff which i know you have a two-year program to do repeatedly and i think that we need to derail that process and not create hall monitors and behavior monitors that are going to be spying teaching the kids to surround each other [Music] and there'll be more next time thank you very much speaker number 80 renee gorman mrs gorman go ahead please renee gorman we

112still cannot hear you miss corman i'm sorry speaker number 82 bethlehem bear speaker number 83 kathleen mallard speaker number 84 wendy icolts number 86 george tarico yes evening can you hear me yes we can thank you perfect good evening scoreboard thank you so much for having me my name is jorge torrico a fairfax county parent of three yeah hello i'm here also okay should i proceed call you miss mallard we will call you after this speaker thank you go ahead please mr tariq nice for interesting speaker please give him a few more seconds thank you appreciate it um again my name is roy trico a parent of three fairfax county public school students also a paris county public school graduate and i'm here to actually um i'm a part of two non-profits once the tj

113and i'm an action group but i'm not here to discuss that i'm here to address my role in the board of edu futuro edu futuro is a non-profit founded in 1998 with a proud history of serving the population of our area recently serving over six a population of people from over 60 different separate countries and i wanted to bring to light the work that edu futuro has been doing for over 20 years in our community because i believe that is really in a great position to continue to serve our community and if these extra funds are made available to our population in fairfax county is a very diverse population with a very diverse set of needs as evidence the people that are here expressing and advocating for their perspectives so i definitely think that the

114responsibility is one set of interests but rather it should go to serve the diverse population that we have uh in particular to empower our diverse communities and our diverse centers of service in particular edo futuro has developed a research based two generational approach that ensures immigrant youth and families attain secondary goals improve long-term financial stability and strengthen inter family cohesiveness and even more families are positively impacted with those programs the past year of 2019 to 2020 they provided 2628 services for 2021 uncomplicated individuals the services that they provide are two levels both for the students and for the parents and i'm beginning to see the effectiveness of their work and rather than support new non-profits that are newly being formed rather than without money uh to establishing new things we should really unite to support

115the work that's already been done out there in the community i believe and that's why i got involved with i believe that they are doing the work i i plead the school board to very much consider and portion out an equitable assault over to the future to continue the work that they're doing the impact that they're having both on students parents and growing workforce that they're helping develop thank you so much for this evening's time thank you for all your work that you do certainly you guys are always overworked and under recognized so i very much appreciate the school award and everything that you have been doing for us thank you and have a wonderful evening thank you speaker number 83 kathleen mallard thank you thank you everything okay can you see me can you

116hear me can you can hear you but not see you you can't see me okay here we go can you see me now yes we can please go ahead great thank you so much okay uh i welcome the opportunity to speak to you tonight and um complaints you refused oh please mute your line if you're speaking please only um mr hollinger can you please mute well you're not speaking uh thank you uh miss um miss mallory please continue thank you i have my first amendment right to be heard and you've excused me um mr hollinger you'll have your turn just not right this moment please thank you miss miss mallard thank you thank you so much okay um gee there there have been so many impressive uh speakers this evening parents with and teachers and

117uh others involved fairfax county public schools with uh different programs that will help bring our kids back into the classroom in a healthy and safe way um everybody knows the purpose of this uh esser relief is 189 million dollars to help safely reopen sustain safe operations of schools um you know we have to look at the students academic needs their social needs their emotional needs and their mental health needs which will be great we know there's been an uptick in suicide among students so because of desolation um and the trauma of the loss including their social mental and physical activities i thought it was very interesting about art is very important for our students music so um and also our special needs children of course you know and direct those funds to help them and

118esau students many of whom probably don't have much of a voice because their parents are probably non-english speakers themselves so uh these are all serious concerns worthy of our consideration for use of these important funds however as also is expressed by several speakers we need to be extremely cautious about using these funds for purposes purposes that promote divisiveness and racism to the guise of promoting um anti-bias and anti-racism as we all know superintendent scott braves has entered into a contract with the leadership academy to the tune of seven hundred thousand dollars is that money coming from ees esse our funds instead of some other we don't know some other source uh these the leadership academy is they're going to revise yet to be spent or budgeted esser funds thank you so much okay well you're

119knocking me off are you no no just trying to thank you again for the more helpful information well i mean i i really i really hope that uh the funds will be used to help especially the students who are most in need do not have access to tutoring we're not able to uh have parents at home to help them so but i am concerned i mean i think we're all concerned and i will i don't i haven't seen that we haven't seen the actual budget so it's hard to say we're just i'm just saying i hope it won't be used to divide our our students um i hope these monies will be used um to bring our students back to bring them together and not thank you we're going to go back to speaker number

12030 shea cousin hi i'm sorry i was muted talking to everyone i apologize i apologize i was in an emergency hoa meeting um i just want to thank everybody for helping my family and my kids get through this last year it's been you know a nightmare situation and i like that we all kind of stuck together i'm so proud of the teachers and what they've done my main concern with the budget is that there have you know children have fallen behind um and i'd like to see more tutoring and i was kind of disappointed that there's nothing available for this summer for just like you know my kids can join their home school for an entire day of doing art but there was no like math or anything to help them get further along you

121know and kind of catch up with their peers um or at least get back to to where they're supposed to be um so i'd like to see some extras the funds diverted to tutoring i really think that's helpful um so that's one segment that i'd like to discuss and the second one is i am all about safety and smaller classroom sizes um i'd like to know how the budget is going to help pay for us having smaller classrooms when our kids return to the fall you know are they going to have a space around them are they going to be crammed into a room with 33 kids i mean how is this going to work you know and i think smaller classrooms are more successful academically so i'd like to know what fairfax county is

122going to do to cr to try to make it a more successful smaller classroom environment and that's all i have thank you number 43 joseph miller hi everyone uh i just wanted to recommend uh spending some of these funds on school renovations if you look at the justice high school pyramid uh the superintendent has not listed any of those schools uh that are supposedly uh overcrowded in the uh cip uh for the next four years and the top ten uh that have already been completed are disproportionately white compared to those schools in the justice high school pyramid and this is going on throughout the the uh the county this misallocation of resources um to renovate um schools with the lowest need first and to i don't know just leave the other uh schools hanging in

123the air while they do boundary adjustments so i just wanted to put that uh in the record for this evening thank you thank you speaker number 70 jorge figuereto jorge figuereto yes i'm here um can you hear me yes we can thank you oh thanks uh good evening uh chairwoman anderson and distinguished members of the fairfax county school board my name is jorge figueredo and i'm the executive director of edu futuro a 501c3 community-based organization with the mission of breaking the cycle of poverty for low-income immigrant and minority families in northern virginia through education leadership development and family engagement we're proud to be an ignite partner with fcps and i am grateful for this opportunity to share some great news about the latino and immigrant students served by the futuro i would also like to

124encourage you to include non-profit partner organizations like kedufuturo in your consideration for much needed sr funding the work of edu futuro is based on the concept of education as a critical catalyst for positive permanent change in the lives of low-income families we provided students with a path to college through the emerging years program while at the same time empowering their parents through our patent empowerment services elp offers a continuum of academic support and skills training for latino and immigrant students in grades 4 to 12 that prepared youth for college enrollment and career success elps stem and robotics clubs help elementary and middle school students develop competence in stem subjects erp-1 provides high school students with leadership and skills training for college readiness elp 2 helps high school seniors gain access to college and financial aid

125and elp 3 supports first generation college students i am very proud to report that despite the enormous academic disruption of the pandemic our 47 eop graduates in 2020 were offered 2.4 million dollars in financial aid and scholarships for their first year of college and 5.5 million in fourth in their four-year renewable colleges scholarships and financial aid i am even more proud to add that this year edu futuro has needle needed nearly double the number of students in our flagship college admission and financial aid program elp2 and the 83 students we mentored and supported for the entire school year and they have already broke all the records for our organization earning more than 20 million dollars in scholarships and financial aid for their four years of college additional mornings are still coming and our students have

126already received acceptances acceptance notices from hartbart yell stanford duke george mason george washington marymount uba nova and other post-secondary institutions i want to emphasize that this major accomplishment is a testament to the hard work and relentless determination of our students who refuse to allow the pandemic to steal their opportunity to reach their dream of college education this accomplishments is also the testament of the outstanding work of our bilingual staff members who have spent approximately 8500 thank you speaker number 35 muna yusuf okay speaker number 71 mark poston reed hi this is uh thanks for the opportunity to speak i just wanted to thank the board and the staff there at the fcps for having this opportunity what i'd like to say is that uh echoing a lot of what i've heard so far oh mr

127poston reed i think you just uh we just lost you you there hello mr poston reed i guess we'll come back speaker number 80 renee gorman renee gorman speaker number oh we again we cannot hear you miss gorman i'm so sorry speaker number 82 bethlehem bear hey mr reed are you reconnected no okay speaker number 83 cap we had that sorry speaker number 84 wendy icolts number 87 serene al moment yes um i'm here hi everyone can you see me yes awesome thank you uh for giving me this opportunity to speak with you all today my name is serene almond my son is a student at cabran elementary school in centerville virginia i'm here to speak with the board about the importance of improving the infrastructure in our schools all of us agree that infrastructure

128improvement is needed to reduce this learning environment for our children and keeping them safe based on the work at the online work as a ceo of a technology company based in virginia named sense where i have seen firsthand infrastructure challenge challenges being faced today at schools across the country the state of california is a leader in this area and has recognized the deficiency in their infrastructures based on the acknowledged science of high co2 levels negatively impact children's cognitive ability they now mandate active co2 measurements in classrooms to improve hvac ventilation performance we all believe that fairfax county should be a leader in the education arena active air quality monitoring should be one of the first items addressed in the infrastructure improvement budget commercial real estate operators are adopting real-time indoor air quality monitoring as part

129of their plans to reopen spaces safely in the scoped environment these infrastructure improvements should represent the minimum investments by fairfax county the technology is here and progressive and the progressive school systems like the district of columbia have already taken proactive measures in implementing real time and foreign to improve education performance for the children of fairfax county cannot sit back passively while other school districts take care of their children keeping our kids safe means monitoring the air they breathe thank you so much and i appreciate all the hard work you have thank you i see speaker number 71 is signed in read yes i'm here sorry about that i've been having connection thanks for the opportunity thanks for the board and moderators and the staff i just want i'll just be really brief um based on

130the comments we've heard everybody's very concerned about what has happened in the last year and a half and my concern are what i like to see the funds used for is primarily to help kids who have been uh have had a tough time during this whole period you know kids with two or more fs and kind of having some kind of mandatory uh remedy support training i mean support help in especially in math reading science and from k through 12 whoever needs it to be able to get it from the summer through the next school year we have to somehow redouble efforts in terms of i've heard people mention like the middle school after school but also increasing the uh acts of school availability in high school and uh you know anything that we can

131do to help improve the academic performance for kids who need it and that would be the the best way i think that the funds should be used thank you thank you speaker number 88 dinorah number 89 marlene santu number 90 kevin hollinger number 91 emily vanderhoff hello um good evening chairman anderson dr brabrand and members of the board my name is emily vanderhoff i'm a first grade teacher at hunt valley elementary school and a proud member of my union fcft i'm also speaking tonight as a member of the fairfax naacp literacy subcommittee i'm here to speak in favor of using sr3 funding towards supporting fcps's move toward implementing structured literacy at the elementary level one of the purposes of sr3 funding is to address the impact of covet 19 on students by supporting their academic

132social emotional and mental health needs one of the best ways to support students academic needs and ensure the academic success of all students is to create lasting meaningful changes for literacy by moving away from balanced literacy and adopting a structured literacy approach i'm encouraged fcps has heard the call from numerous degrees calling for structured literacy and is beginning to make plans for implementation the key to making this fundamental shift in our approach to literacy is high quality training for staff this summer a few staff members from each school will participate in a one week intensive training in orton gillingham oregon birmingham is the gold standard for literacy practices that align with the science of reading and i'm grateful that we'll be educating more staff in these methods however at this time this training is only

133being offered to one or two staffers at each school typically reading specialists and some special education teachers orton gillingham training must be provided by a registered orton gillingham fellow so this training cannot be turned around from reading specialists to teachers in order to see the true impact needed into and to ensure every child has access to high quality literacy instruction that aligns with the last 40 years of research and how that learns to read we must train all k3 instructional staff in practices that align with the science of reading as soon as possible i've heard that primary instructional staff will receive a one day training in august and have mandatory finance lessons to teach in the coming year i've also heard that scps does not plan to move away from balanced literacy but rather merge

134practices from both balance literacy and structured literacy this is not the way to create meaningful change making this shift to structured literacy means a fundamental change in our understanding of how children learn how to read it means overhaul of instructional practices that i've been using for years that have actually been done to harm the process of orthographic mapping this is the process that being uses to match the sounds to the letters on the page and pair it with meaning to store a word in long-term memory for instant retrieval i've been learning about the science of reading for over a year now taking me time to fully understand the urgency of changing my instruction and also learn practices to support my first graders in developing a proficient leader i'm still by no means an expert and

135i continue to read and seek out training in my free time to improve my practice making a system-wide shift is going to involve robust training which will come at a cost we must dedicate sp3 funding toward providing ongoing high quality training such as him to training to all k3 instructional staff [Music] thank you speaker number 92 maria worthen good evening madam chair members of the board thank you very much for your leadership during this challenging time my name is maria worthen and along with emily vanderhoff who just came before me i'm a member of the fairfax county chapter of the naacp um a parent of a rising fcps student and also a lifelong advocate for equity in public education an issue to which i've devoted my entire career there has been much discussion this year

136of learning loss the fact is far too many fcps students have been losing out on the opportunity to learn to read for at least the last two decades the pandemic has only deepened and made these gaps deeper this is a long-term problem that demands long-term investments not short-term band-aids as such i urge you to invest esser funds in district-wide implementation of structured literacy in k to three with all the requisite supports to teachers including instructional materials coaches assessments to ensure comprehensive implementation with fidelity in teacher and leader capacity to sustain it the science of reading the established body space research and children learned has been around for at least the last 22 years and yet in 2019 the achievement gap was only two points less than it was in 2006 um and yet fcpa continues

137to implement a balanced literacy approach which even the developer has acknowledged is not empirically effective this is educational malpractice if a medical treatment had been disproved by science two decades ago we would see another doctor but fcps learners do not have the choice to simply change districts as their funds should support a comprehensive switch to an evidence-based structured literacy methodology this must be implemented with fidelity division-wide in the general education classroom starting in kindergarten and continuing through third grade that effective k-3 reading instruction requires a strong core curriculum which must include explicit systematic core classroom instruction in addition we must have instructional materials that are aligned to research appropriate reading assessments times intervention and high quality embedded ongoing professional development in each fcps school meeting a few staff members is not enough as emily just

138mentioned it should be a core element of the k-3 core curriculum this moment demands nothing less than redesign of our educational models to be responsive to the needs of every student allow them to develop to their full potential and right wrongs that have been continuing for generations uh forcing our most marginalized to miss out on the basic human right to read thank you very much for your time thank you we have three additional speakers that are signed in muna yosef yusuf speaker number 35 muna yosef speaker number 80 renee gorman can you hear me yes we can go ahead please okay let me start the video okay trying to get the video on as well but um okay thank you very much for the opportunity and apologize for those um difficulties but i'm a school

139counselor at hutchinson elementary school it's a title one school um a hundred percent free and reduced lunch and um i want to just speak of some of the things that i see come to me as a school counselor and in my experience as a school counselor it would be beneficial to use the esser funds to hire additional mental health staff counselors social workers psychology moving away from formulas of formulas away from numbers but knees based one size does not fit all i heard mr hall say that as well and i think we found that out that there were some equities and we we would certainly benefit um the title one schools from more mental health staff and all schools from that matter trauma existed in the life these students pre-pandemic and now they have additional

140trauma burdens related to the effects of the pandemic the knees have been amplified treating more with more stressors hurdles to deal emotionally and students are experiencing difficulty regulating emotions and accessing the education these are some of the things that students have expressed to me feeling uncomfortable eating or drinking publicly because they feel self-conscious and inhibited students are going eight hours without food or drink not because fairfax county doesn't provide food yes they do but because of the emotional impact they are imagine that you can imagine without lack of nutrients and hydration how academic and emotional behavior is affected the students express feelings of embarrassment feeling that everyone's staring at them not doing natural things like eating and taking um talking with their peers has become a painful experience for them they like the mass covering

141it provides a barrier for them to block emotions and provide emotional comfort many students persist to wear hoods prior to the covid but that's increased it helps them feel secure and control students feel uncomfortable speaking in classes they're not used to talking in public they feel their actions are being magnified everyone's watching them they want to position themselves in the back of the class so that they can blend in helps them feel safe the lights in the class are giving them stress and headaches different environment from being home in a darker room some students have gone have had previous difficulty engaging in healthy peer relationships the pandemic experience has further stunted social emotional relationships students have expressed feelings of loss and uncertainty and relating to friendships another recommend so therefore i'm definitely recommending esser funds

142are used to more mental health professionals in the schools another recommendation is use of funds is for professional development for all staff providing depth of knowledge and strategies for social emotional learning investing in additional well-trained mental health staff and pd will help support the elevated social emotional and academic needs of our students thank you we have one more speaker bethlehem hi uh this is bethlehem berge uh i am working fsp ps pht i start this year's 2021 i have two kids to go middle school in fairfax and i want to say thank you for the teacher and the staff because this is hard time to work is is appreciated keeps us as hard to a virtual class i hope next year everything is going well in percent and thank you so much thank you give

143me time thank you thank you that was our final speaker great well thank you so much to ms mulberg and ms madeja for helping and miss cornell for helping to navigate this um robust list of speakers this is um a very it was a very full hearing and is very important for us to hear from the the community and it's been very helpful not only for the board but also the superintendent and staff to hear so the school board and the school division will be continuing to keep the community informed of what is happening with these esser funds as they begin to get budgeted the board will be approving the plan if i'm remembering correctly and um we will continue to advocate that and excuse me to inform the community on the web page that

144is dedicated to the esser funding process so with that i believe that we are finished and we will adjourn for the evening thank you very much good night good night everybody good night miss marin thank you good night thank you good night everybody good night everyone good night thank you