001it is 11 a.m so we will go ahead and get started with roll call um so dr anderson good morning miss cohen good morning miss corbett sanders okay staring at cofax good morning mr fresh okay miss keys gamara she's connecting miss mclaughlin morning miss marin good morning miss mccarski good morning everyone miss seismore hyzer massage my heiser can you guys hear me yeah there we go and ms tolen good morning okay i'm going to go back miss corbett sanders mr frisch good morning miss keith gamara good morning all right uh so we have quorum we will go ahead and get started uh today as you all know we have two different topics on our agenda uh we're gonna start off with the family life education curriculum advisory committee updates a presentation of their revisions followed
002by a return to school in-person learning work session of course our intention is to start off with this presentation and then any questions from from the board i do want to make sure colleagues are aware that um this will be posted for new business in our in our first may meeting and then we will have board action on june 17th at our public meeting uh but what is asked of us today is really just to take a look at the revisions and to comment specifically on those so i just want to make sure we stay focused because i um in looking at the agenda it shouldn't take too long um and hopefully then we have the return to school presentation uh in advance of our break and then of course we'll break for lunch around
003one o'clock hopefully and come back for board comments and go backs um so with that i will pass it on to staff to get us started with the fleetcat presentation well thank you uh mr nation good morning everybody um i'm i'm very happy to have the opportunity to introduce you to our new coordinator of health pe driver's education and family life education carrie reynolds so carrie is our coordinator and is the uh facilitator of and chair of the flea cat committee so she's going to do the presentation today but we're very excited to have her in her newer role as coordinator of the program many of you know that she replaced liz payne when liz retired the long-time and long-serving coordinator of uh health and um and pe in the division he's just been doing
004an amazing amazing job in this new leadership role so i just wanted to welcome her and i also wanted to point out that noel clinico is with us today as well she's the director of curriculum instruction and noel and i can certainly help address any questions the board might have but at this time i think what i'll do is i'll turn it over to carrie and let her go through the brief presentation that we've prepared for you today thank you dr presidio um good morning i'm happy to be here this morning to share with you the recommendations from the family life education curriculum advisory committee or fleacac as we refer to it um see there we go so um briefly what i would like to share with you today is just to start with an
005overview of family life education here in fcps as well as our advisory committee and then go through the objectives for the last two years and the next steps in the process for approving and implementing the recommendations from the committee family life education is an instructional program for our students in kindergarten through grade 12. we have two units of instruction which include emotional and social health and human growth and development we'll talk a little bit more about opt out in just a moment but families do have the option to opt their students out of any or all instruction related to family life education we do use in fairfax county what doe calls a locally developed program which means that we have to have a community involvement team which is our flea cat committee that makes recommendations
006to the school board on topics for inclusion in our curriculum so the potential changes can come from changes from doe on the sols as well as from community members members of the committee staff students or the school board and recommendations are then considered by the committee we present those to the school board followed by a 30-day community review and input process those comments will be made available to you prior to the june 17th meeting when we would ask for you to vote to approve or not approve the recommendations but we do need school board approval in order to move forward with implementing any changes to the curriculum and just as a note we are expecting new standards or revision to the standards of learning um in march 2022 which will inform the flea cac work
007the following year there we go um so our opt-out process um is outlined in regulation 3204 and i have it provided for you the opt-out numbers as of march of this year um currently we are at less than one percent of our students have opted out of fle instruction in the current school year the flea committee is outlined in regulation 1708. the purpose of the committee is to provide the coordinator myself in this case with recommendations on the curriculum media or other special instructional materials as we develop the lessons and instruction for students and we have their breakdown of the members of our committee as you know we have school board appointees we also have a representative from the fairfax county council of ptas and the fairfax county health department and we look for representative
008representatives to represent the faith community and practicing physicians and our representative this year for the faith community comes from the fairfax county government community interfaith coordination which is part of neighborhood and community services we also reach out to the medical society of northern virginia inova and physician offices to help with the medical professionals we have have teachers and administrators and students represented in our committee as well we do meet monthly a minimum of three times a year this past year we had four meetings and our meetings are open to the public because of the current situation the public participated virtually in meetings this year if they requested to to attend um so our report this year covers two school years worth of um work from the committee due to the school closure last spring the
00919 2019-2020 report was delayed and so that is included in this year's report as well as recommendations from the 20 20 21 um school year so we're going to look at the 19 um in 2020 sorry 2020 recommendations first um so the first two are similar they would be at our kindergarten and grade one levels and here you'll see in the blue text we are asking to we're recommending adding the words mothers and fathers in our description of family structures and at kindergarten we would remove the word traditional the virginia department of education sols no longer includes the word traditional and defining families and we feel that representing mothers and fathers is representative of the family some of our students come from where they may be living with two mothers or two fathers in their
010home there was also a recommendation at grade seven to change part of this descriptive statement in emotional and social health at the end of the descriptive statement you will see the text which has been struck out related to depression and suicide um i do want you to know that the reason that's being removed from this objective is because in 2020 we also updated health sols and the new health sols include depression and suicide and general health instruction so all students are receiving the general health instruction and all students would receive instruction on depression and suicide so we can remove that now from fle where students may opt out of that instruction the next two objectives are related to our modified curriculum we do have a modified curriculum that serves students with low incidence disabilities or
011our cap b students and these objectives came forward from teachers working on a summer curriculum project in the summer of 2019 they were teachers of students with low incidence disabilities and felt that this was information that was needed in their curriculum so in the grades one through six curriculum the recommendation is to add an objective for safety related to technology use um particularly focused on keeping personal information private when they are online and using the internet and then for our grades 7 through 12 students the recommendation is an objective that helps support students getting along with others in appropriate workplace behavior so they understand different roles in the workplace and what would be appropriate and inappropriate in behaviors and conversations in the workplace and then finally from the 1920 we have a new piece of
012media that's being recommended to support our 8th grade instruction it comes from common sense media teen voices sexting relationships and risks there was it was believed there was a need to have further instruction on sexting and this video would help introduce students more to sexting hear teams perspectives and hopefully open some conversation and dialogue around the topic as part of the instruction if we look at the recommendations from this year's committee we have two recommendations that are related at grade seven and eight for human growth and development we had a high school student ask that we consider the inclusion of amenorrhea in the curriculum she felt that that was something that was missing the committee did receive input from a local pediatrician and gynecologist on what they felt would be appropriate in the grade levels
013where this should be introduced and so you'll see the addition of that information in the blue text again primary amenorrhea being introduced in grade seven and then in grade eight a review of primary amenorrhea and inclusion of secondary amenorrhea and then the final recommendation would be at 10th grade and this is just a change of wording in the objective changing it to discuss unintended pregnancies related to adoption the current word in our objective is unwanted pregnancy and we had a parent reach out who had adopted a child and was concerned that unwanted pregnancy did not convey the proper message but unintended pregnancy would be a more appropriate word in talking about pregnancy and adoption so our next steps new business will come to the board on may 6 which will be followed by our community
014review period from may 7th through june 7th and then school board action on june 17th with implementation if these objectives and recommendations are approved implementation for the next school year 2021-2022 all right thank you so much um and just a reminder again to colleagues that we are focusing specifically on these revisions um for comment today and and of course at our future action uh so i see some hands uh we will go ahead with our regular three minutes followed by any go backs uh afterwards if we have time mr frisch thank you um thank you for the presentation um i you know it may not say traditional families anymore um but having various families now articulated including mothers and fathers for our young students doesn't just tell these students that you know those with two
015moms or two dads that their families are no less a family than anyone else's it also tells the other students of the room uh who might have a mom and a dad or some other formulation that um a student who has two moms or two dads is no less uh you know has no less of a family than anyone else's and i think that is a very big deal um i've said before that i've met with most of the gsas in fairfax county um our gender sexuality alliances or gay straight alliances and without fail i hear the same things at each meeting right i hear from kids who hear hate speech and don't report it because they think nothing will happen but i also hear about the contact the context of our fle curriculum and
016um what it's like to be othered um and because our status quo had been not mentioning two moms or two dads we were sending a message to students in two ways one for students who have two moms or two dads we were saying your family is not the same as somebody else's and for students who might grow up and be in a family where there are two moms or two dads we were saying that that is not an acceptable option and uh that's why these changes are so profound so thank you people's lives will be better because of these changes um and that's what one fairfax is all about is about making things better for everyone um and you know this is no less impactful on um lgbtq students or students with lgbtq family as
017they are on students who are not part of that community it's important for everyone so i very much appreciate these changes and look forward to um hearing about everything else that flea kac is up to in the year ahead so thank you all right uh dr anderson thank you um i also echo uh much of what was said by um probably all of what was said by mr frisch in terms of how our students are able to view themselves here i also want to point out that i was glad to see that the um the instruction of symptoms of depression was moved more generally i was concerned that it was struck given the climate and what our students have been undergoing so i'm glad to see that it's just been um inserted into an air
018another area of our curriculum my question and i hope my question is still jermaine to today's because i know the revision is not necessarily where my question lies this is the grade 10 human growth in development i know that the change is from unwanted to unintended which i think is great but i would love a little history in terms of the positive choice um this was probably something that took place the years before but i would love to know what may have been the discussion regarding labeling this a choice and how did we land on it being a positive choice sure so um i can't speak to the conversation that may have been had from the committee at that time but what i can share is that it was legislated that it be included that
019adoption be included in the curriculum as a positive choice um in the event of an unintended pregnancy um so because it was legislated it was something that we had to add to our curriculum okay i just want to share that i'm just concerned about the judgment that seems to be embedded in that term versus other choices but since this is something that was part of the legislation it is for a different audience um thank you so much for all of this work much appreciated with seismohazer you um and again i i really appreciate this work and i echo mr frisch's comments as well i think it's really important to be inclusive and when we talk about families and you know who makes the family so i appreciate that work i did have a couple questions
020on um i agree with dr anderson i'm glad that our conversation on depression is broader than through here but i did have a question on whether the committee discussed talking about anxiety in particular as opposed to just depression and i bring that up because while often students who have anxiety you know they're at higher risk of depression but they're not always the same thing and the signs and symptoms of anxiety versus depression aren't always the same thing and you know even free pandemic from 2007 to 2012 anxiety went up 20 in our students and one in three teens aged 13 to 18 um experienced an anxiety disorder so i think it may be helpful for our students i just wonder if the committee talked about specifically adding signs and symptoms and support mechanisms for anxiety
021into our fella curriculum no the committee did not discuss anxiety as part of this instruction we do include some information on anxiety in the general health curriculum as well but that might be something that we could could look at more in our general health community curriculum and make sure that we are including enough information on that we definitely hear from students as well that mental health in general is an area that they are concerned about thank you and i appreciate that i think there may be room to kind of at least review what we offer and see if it's you know what's needed and especially considering the great increase in anxiety so i appreciate that um i just want to be careful not i sometimes i hear the two of them completed together so i
022just want to be careful we're not doing that too much right this size heiser if if i could add to carrie's comments you know we're just uh sharing right now obviously what the committee looked at this year uh but certainly that could be something that the committee could look at um when we reconvene you know in the fall to look at changes for future changes to the program so we'd be happy to do that thank you dr presidio i appreciate that um i mean i know the question i had um is around the slide i think it's like nine around the modified curriculum and the changes the committee made towards the modified quickly i'm glad this i'm really glad to see actually the changes about getting along with others at work and appropriate workplace behaviors
023because a lot of time what impacts our students with disabilities being successful in the workplace isn't workplace skills but um both the workplace adapting and our students adapting so but i was wondering is there room for something similar to that for grades one through six and especially i would say grades four five and six as our students are moving into middle and high school and um potentially interacting more and you know you're in puberty you're showing interest in you know a relationship and making sure our students are set up for success both in terms of appropriate ways to interact with people they're interested in because there's sometimes i've heard students who can encounter the discipline system because of lack of understanding of what's appropriate and not appropriate in the middle and high school setting as
024well as at students at higher risk actually for being victims of sexual crimes and sexual assault and so i'm wondering if there's room at the upper elementary school um for our students to have some lessons on on that for middle and high school as well as the other question i had i'll just throw that up there is um more direct instruction for our cat a students who may not be getting the modified curriculum but maybe you need more direct instruction some of these pieces both the workplace piece and the um sort of navigating the teen world i don't know how to say it piece of it so i just that's my other comment again this may be something for next year but just some thoughts that i had thank you um so i we do
025have a summer curriculum project that's being formed this summer where we are trying to look at areas of need in the curriculum as well as equity bias and stereotypes so i think as part of that work we could certainly be looking to make sure that our our curriculum is meeting the needs of students with special special needs as well we do have lessons specific to relationships in our modified curriculum but i would like to work with those teachers who teach those courses to see if they feel that that would meet the needs or if there's something that we need to to add to um further meet the needs of the students i'd be happy to talk to you offline just give you sort of expand on my thoughts a little bit as you're doing that
026work if you like yeah i'd be happy to talk with you thank you thank you i appreciate that thank you who's the extent of my questions all right miss marin great thank you so much um i was so moved literally that i had to go upstairs to get a book that i just started reading yesterday um about a woman named haben who is deafblind and while um her book talks about her um physical disabilities this quote is really centered i think what we're trying to do here communities design with just one kind of person in mind isolate those of us to find their narrow definition of personhood so i'm really glad to see that um these changes reflect that in that portion when we're talking about our lgtbq families and students um on another note
027i think that it's um i'm wondering about how these recommendations align with what could be put into the update to our student responsive rights and responsibilities work that will be engaging next month so that's not really a comment for this revision but um to staff can you please consider what could mirror or needs to be boosted in our srnr to uphold this because this is really like you know you can really see how we're trying to address in a multifaceted way instances of you know bias and promoting inclusion right so this is one of those prongs that we have that opportunity to elevate um i i really appreciate this advisory committee's work i think that it's an example of how advisory committees can be very focused on a specific task and impact the school board
028and the school divisions work and i found it very helpful i also appreciate the data about who has you know how many families have opted out by and large this is critical um content to know as a mother of a fifth grader i eagerly read what the school would be um teaching um in this curriculum in the coming months so thank you for this work and i'm so glad we're being so thoughtful and inclusive about it that's all just keith gamara thank you i too appreciate the comments of my colleagues um we certainly want to focus on um being inclusive um my concern arises uh with respect to the extent to which we're really training our children in the use of technology and how they can be impacted not realizing that they can be impacted
029i noticed that they're dealing with grade 8 starting to talk about topics like sexting i'm wondering if we've done any surveys or how we gathered information to really look at that um because i think that kids are getting phones much earlier than that um and so you know what what was the cut off or how did we kind of determine what that cut off would be um and i'll stop there and give you an opportunity to answer before i go on so the media that's being recommended is in support of an objective that was already in place so to enhance that instruction um further we do talk about internet safety starting in our elementary schools i believe sexting is introduced at the fifth or sixth grade level so this media this piece of media is
030really to enhance what's already being instructed we also the school division teaches internet safety outside of fle as well so there's certainly a multi-prong approach to providing students with internet safety and how to stay safe online and this is just one piece of what our students are receiving okay um i assumed that well i certainly wanted our community to just hear that and i'd love to understand the intersection of it i certainly in my work have seen students get caught up and not understanding uh what transmitting specific information related to one's sexuality how that can impact you in the long run um and so i would be curious as to how we are uh you know having an intersectionality not only with fle with our digital uh education and then how that impacts our srn
031r because i do believe um this is a little bit like driving a car right uh and perhaps the maturity that's needed for using a lot of the technology that's available to our kids isn't really there and so um i would love to see how we are bringing all those things together to make sure we're really covering because i think young kids i think you know certainly in elementary school i would think certainly by fifth or sixth grade can fall or be impacted in this way so um thank you and i you know i look forward to how we might be able to address that in the future did you want response excuse me that would be nice but i wasn't going to if anybody had a response i'm happy to hear it i know
032our instructional technology team has been working on some you know lessons and and so forth at the different grade levels so i can reach out to them to look more at how our lessons and their work has intersected and we did have some conversation pre pandemic so i need to refresh my memory on exactly where we were um with that work yeah i i would just add too to what kerry said i mean we do have a very comprehensive set of instructional materials related in curriculum related to digital citizenship that spans the grade levels um so you know as kerry mentioned some things are reinforced with a particular focus in our fle program as they pertain to you know the state standards and the standards that we have within our own fle program but in
033no means is the instruction around digital citizenship skills and internet safety limited uh to what's in the fle program um there is a nexus there i think as you've pointed out ms keisgamara as well as the nexus to the sr and r um and making sure that we're you know providing appropriate instruction to students on the behaviors that we expect both within the school system and then um the types of skills and behaviors that they need to have to be able to lead you know healthy productive lives as you know citizens within our school community and within the larger community to keep themselves and others safe so you know for example the lesson objective that we're looking here is reinforcing you know again the idea of you know using technology in inappropriate ways um you
034know a grade eight with the introduction of this new media but there's there's a lot of additional instruction that goes on about what's appropriate to share and what's not appropriate to share starting much earlier in the in the younger grades as well so so we'll continue to to collaborate across the programs and across the departments to make sure that we're reinforcing those types of instructional experiences for students as it pertains to you know behaviors and skills that our students need to have i appreciate that thank you so much and i i look forward as we go you know into our srnr discussion kind of how that crosses the last comment i'd like to make there was a comment about how we were talking about adoption um and using the phrase positive choice um i would
035simply say um that there can be a lot of negative stigma for children around adoption and i suspect that that language may have come to address some of that if that's just my assumption uh dr presidio i don't know if you have any knowledge on that but i know in my work uh that is something that we see quite often so yeah i can't really speak to the legislative intent but but definitely i would agree with you that you know a big part of what we want to do is make sure that we're not addressing or adding any negative stigma um in this particular so you know individuals who might make the choice uh during an unintended pregnancy for adoption so you know that's our intent um and that's how we're designing our curriculum and
036that's how we'll deliver our instruction in fcps all right miss stolen yes um i definitely appreciated my um colleagues earlier comments on um changes me to um descriptions of families and peer relationships but i'm really pleased to follow um karen case gamara because my um comments were very similar um although you know it's hard to imagine that you know grades seven and eight you know we're dealing with sexting and other types of uh behaviors um you know we certainly know that that is the case so i just wanted to um you know quickly just substantiate my support for um you know definitely collaboration across the different groups that are working on digital citizenship overall i know there's been you know for years lots of work along those lines so i'm happy to see that you
037know fle is kind of bolstering that work as well um so just definitely support that and support the work that you're looking forward to doing this summer as well um in your equity and bias um things that you're looking at across your curriculum and congratulations carrie you have big shoes to fill but i know you'll do a great job so um thank you everyone mrs mclaughlin thank you i'm just pulling up my video great uh carrie first of all welcome uh i was a big fan of liz payne enjoyed working with her during my time on the board when she was here so i i know when an exciting position you hold and an important one um i want to sort of reinforce some things that my colleagues have shared um first of all to
038what mr frisch said i i can't emphasize enough as a parent of an lgbtq's uh son how important that is uh if he were sitting in an fle lesson which he did when he came to our school system and when we did the way in which we talk about what a family is for him to think about himself and when he will become a father and a parent and what it means to feel represented so i i feel how powerful this is to make sure that we just continuously improve and recognize the diverse world that we live in and what a beautiful world that is um secondly about anxiety really want to emphasize that um dr presidio that uh someone with a specialty mental health and social work anxiety is equally um prevalent and important
039so i would really appreciate is one of our next steps maybe the board gets um briefed on how and and where we're covering anxiety and to the full extent because it is significant and and really important to help educate our families and our students um i would also just say that i would like to see carry more of um more meetings for fle uh you know i think it was mentioned that they can meet once a month um and that could easily be eight or nine times a year there's so much important work that gets done even if it's that the charge is supposedly done for the year uh i would really like to see us capitalize and take advantage of of this amazing advisory group um and i just uh for too long i've
040been hearing from my own appointees that maybe they meet two or three times and it's like well our charge was done and that's the end of that and we lose that secondly um i really want to emphasize the sexting piece um so i do want to ask dr presidio again if uh you'll be able to show us how that's all knitted together um again it's not time sensitive but i'd really like to see um how it's scaffolded and how we're really delivering that as someone who's really involved in student discipline reform the the worst thing i can think of is that students unknowingly um are engaging in behaviors that they have no idea that they're creating risk for themselves and others and then i also would like to ask two questions one how are we
041benchmarking our program around um fle since they're all locally developed who do we draw upon for best practice and inspiration so um in our locally developed program there are several topics which we are required to include whether they've been legislated or they're outlined in the vdo edua guidance documents so things around abuse dating violence um relationships boundaries consent adoption as we've already mentioned and there's several others that we have to to draw from we use the standards of learning as a reference to baseline our program and then we have flexibility within those of where we can move um objectives up or down or decide that they are not appropriate for our community in the same way we could add other topics which we did i know you're familiar with the work we did on human
042trafficking several years ago where that wasn't in the standards but something that came forward from our public safety officials in that case is a need for our community so we can do that as well i also um talk with fairfax county government representatives around abuse and violence gangs human trafficking we have a group that meets monthly on mental health and wellness topics so we have input from those areas as well and you know certainly when we're doing research or something comes to our community or to our committee we would look to the cdc the national institutes of health or organizations that represent the specific topic that's come to us we also i also meet with coordinators around the state multiple times throughout the year so we hear what each other is doing in their programs
043both on fle and health and physical education as well oh i admit like what specific school districts around the country that we might look to do we do that at all um i don't know that we've looked to school districts around the country we did do some work with the human trafficking to other school districts um i know liz had done that in the past but recently i'm not aware of it of us working with school divisions around the country mr blockley you're out of time i [Music] me but i will go ahead and my fellow meeting manager we uh give everyone the chance first very good i appreciate that i appreciate that i wanna um just go back to something that um dr anderson said about um the addition of the adoption and i
044understand um the conversation and the importance um around that but in ensuring that our students are not um you know feeling judgment are there other parts of the curriculum that um you know may speak to unintended pregnancy and and going you know talking to your doctor etc um that would you know that this is kind of a part of i don't know what else is in there but just just going back to that point do we have more in the curriculum um so in the 10th grade we have a lesson on the options if a student has an unintended pregnancy so in that lesson they talk more about if they choose to keep and raise the child adoption and also abortion as the options that would be available to them um and certainly reinforcing that
045they should be talking to a trusted adult whether that be a parent or guardian a doctor a faith or communi religious leader whoever they they feel comfortable talking with to get get support and and help in that situation perfect that that's really where i think i wanted to get at that we're ensuring that we're talking about talking to a trusted um adult uh in the case so yeah thank you in general everything that um i had questions has uh have been already brought up thank you for all your work and the work of the committee it's appreciated corbin sanders yes thank you and i really appreciate the continuum that we have been on for the family life education uh every year we we seem to um unpack a bit more and really strengthen it and
046i am very appreciative especially on family structures uh the language there because i know that many of us have raised this in the past so that is fantastic news um similarly you mentioned the human trafficking work which fairfax was the first in the state to really address human trafficking in our family life and i'm pleased that it has become a model for the rest of the state miss keys gamara mentioned the issue of sexting and could we address it at an earlier age or an earlier period in the curriculum and i would like to reinforce that message and suggest that if we are introducing privacy online to our kids at an earlier age we could talk about protecting one's privacy in what we share in the form of pictures or um comments online and so
047if we could consider doing that as part of the curriculum i'd like to hear where you all are on that and then another area um that was addressed a couple years ago and i really appreciate it was on bystander awareness and interventions which has been a game changer on um on sexual assaults but we've been hearing from some that they would like to see a stronger discussion on consent and what consent means and i think this is an area where i'd like to hear from you all whether or not there could be more um intentionality and how we address consent and this should be for all of our children because oftentimes we have kids who are very who may have disabilities who in uh are thinking that they are being um it's you know are
048being treated respectfully but they're they may not and so having having a more um direct approach to consent or a more um overt approach to consent across the whole curriculum and so in those areas if somebody could comment and so i think those are areas we could certainly look at either as a committee or with my team looking at how what we already have around that um yes if we don't really need to change the objective and it's how we're approaching that within the lesson then that's something that we can can do as we revise and continue to improve our instruction but certainly as we go through that process looking at it if we feel like there is a gap then that is something we could bring forward to the committee to look at either
049revising or adding an objective that would then come to you as the school board so yes i think that is work that we can can continue to work to do and if you could look at that this summer i think it would be great uh greatly appreciated because these are big areas and they're areas that if we only have one child who's negatively impacted that's one child too many yes we can do that thank you all right miss cohen thanks so much um i really appreciate the work here i had a few questions um the first is how are the results from the youth survey um relayed to the committee is there a process for that yes we do typically look at the results of the youth survey the questions that pertain to family life
050education and so we do we do use that that data and certainly if we are happen to be addressing a topic um that's directly related we definitely look at the survey and changes that may have occurred over the last several years which are represented by the survey that's great that's what i was going to ask is you know is it an opportunity when we look at even the section that was added about amenorrhea we relied on a student coming to us and saying hey there's a real deficit here um in the curriculum and i think you know all of us likely all the school board members you know we hear things as we go through the community in places that we really you know think there are gaps where we need to make sure that
051we're having these conversations that certainly was one of them so i guess um you know also if you don't mind giving us a little more information about how in your opinion how can we do a better job of supporting that communication um between students and the advisory committee in making sure that our curriculum is addressing what they're really facing and i think we are looking for ways to get more of the student voice um one of my specialists has been working with the sac this year and they've been talking specifically about mental health um another one of my specialists has had the opportunity to be in some student listening groups around the transgender and gender expansive work that's been happening and we actually were talking this morning to try to look at some ways that
052we can bring some student groups together specifically for our fle topics and hear more of the student voice i think that's really been an interest across content areas to ensure that we're hearing that student voice and getting that into our curriculum so we are working um to hear hear more from students that's awesome and i hope that you'll use us as partners um in that work for sure because we we would love to be helpful i'm so glad um that you mentioned my next and last topic you know i just wanted to say i see this some movement here this year and doing a good job of supporting our lgbq community but not our not our teas so i i want to make sure that as we as a commonwealth are moving forward and we're
053getting some better guidance with bdoe around curriculum that we're really working to better support and address our trans and gender expansive kids um and so i really look forward to seeing what the changes that vdoe will recommend and how we incorporate those going forward so again please use us as partners we think what you do is incredibly important and and we're excited to be on this new journey with you and and look forward to helping you however we can all right um so i will take my comments and then if we have some time we'll go to go backs um thank you all so much for the presentation and and for the work over the course of the year uh there are a lot of great pieces here um my questions are more related to
054uh thinking kind of taking a step back um and how we do this i i'm for one i know there there was some work underway with the department of um with dss on uh you know mental health specifically and developing curriculum for that uh and and i see there are pieces here that are related to different things that might be going on in different departments although i imagine you know dr presidio you're overseeing this so i'm curious about you know for example there's a component of technology right um and then there's the workplace life skills type of element that was added have we been kind of having those inter-departmental conversations or specifically with the mental health component because i know um previous leadership has shared with me that that's underway but and maybe this is
055a dr ray brown question but what are we doing to kind of overlap those things it would be a great addition to i mean to russia's point earlier about anxiety and and you know what others have shared there's a lot more that we can we can speak to on mental health and really informing kids about their own you know circumstances so yeah i think um a few things i would say i mean we are doing that you know across team and cross-departmental collaboration work and you know we need to do more of it um there's no question about that um we took a really deep dive um prior to uh the new board coming coming on board if you will um we did a deep dive where we went through as a committee our entire
056fle curriculum and looked at all of our lesson objectives in every grade level and that was just like two years ago just pre-pandemic so we did a complete kind of overhaul and we did identify a lot of places where you know we could continue to collaborate across departments to do some of this work i think now um you know what we're all seeing as a result of the pandemic is kind of a heightened awareness of some of the anxiety and mental health and social emotional needs and you know we do have a cross-departmental team who's leading that work it's not just folks in dss it is folks in other departments like the counseling team um like kerry's team and uh in in health education as well so we are doing that work and i do
057anticipate that you know next year's committee um we'll be looking probably with you know um you know an opportunity to add some additional uh lesson objectives in um kind of as we've discussed here so you know i would encourage board members that you know certainly have more questions you can reach out to me directly and carry we can talk to you kind of individually about the program um and some of that work that's underway but we can also continue to take suggestions and feedback from the board that we bring into our summer curriculum development work and that we bring into the committee's charge for next year as we look to you know even bowl strike i guess i would say some of the some of the work that we've already been doing in these areas
058of mental health and wellness yeah um i don't know how to add anything but uh the only thing i would say i saw noel i saw you nodding and i know you do so much around curriculum for us did you want to share anything else uh in in elaborating on some of the points that dr presidio aptly made anything else that you wanted to add no i would agree with with dr presidio i do think we want to be a little bit careful about loading up family life education with everything because we want to make sure you know that this is um that our approach not only is in this confined family life that students could potentially opt out and miss out um that that we have that we understand what's in family life and
059we understand the broader spectrum of what's in our curriculum in different places whether it be digital citizenship or whether it be ourselves curriculum and that all these things work together so the students have a more comprehensive and as carrie use multi-pronged sort of um engagement with these concepts because one one hits on these types of things don't always work yeah no that's a helpful point i mean i think in always trying to think of it from the student perspective um you know i mean this is one of those things that kids just feel forced to sit through right and it's awkward and um and and then you know you have like a mention of this technology piece and then maybe a mention of this other element and and i don't know how much a student
060takes away for for the benefit of their wellness and and understanding how to apply things or connect the dots maybe in the way we're presenting it right now um i'm trying to think you know if it was maybe framed in a holistic health kind of way where you know um eamon amenoria now is as an example of something that's really you know step forward and thinking of how you know uh certain students can relate to their bodies and understand what's going on the mental health component is an aspect of that but if we're kind of going to dedicate the the resources or you know the time to do that in a different setting i i think some thought needs to be given to how we present this to students and again from that student perspective
061what is the student really benefiting uh from what are they taking away as opposed to it kind of just being a formality that they sit through and go through these topics and giggle to each other and walk away you know um so that i i think there's still more work to be done on that front and maybe we can connect the dots amongst these pieces uh or we just decide that certain things aren't going to be addressed altogether in this you know maybe the technology safety and workplace life skills is something to be addressed by counselors you know and then we focus more on mental health and sexual health and these kinds of things that um we can then flesh out in a way that's more practical and applicable um and relatable to students i
062don't know i think i'd want to rework it but um can can someone comment on that if there's a way to kind of reframe and i know that's my time well i mean i i think what you're raising is is kind of a central tension in teaching and learning which is you know how do we integrate things in a way that students understand the connections across content areas and knowledge transfers from you know one subject to another from one class to another and you know it's a it's a central challenge that we continue to address so there's always improvement work that we can do there um i i think one thing i would say that you know might be helpful is for board members that are newer on the board to look at some of
063the previous review work that we did of all of the fle curriculum um you know just to get a sense of that work that we did you know prior to the board elections because a lot of that a lot of those questions that you're raising were things that we did look at you know and we looked at every content objective at every grade level and said you know is this something that really needs to be in the fle program because we don't want things there um that aren't you know really reinforcing you know key learning outcomes for students right and so what we have is is we have the committee's best thinking and the board at the times best thinking about what was appropriate um but we certainly welcome you know newer board members that
064didn't have a chance to be part of that process to give us feedback as well as we form the committee's charge for next year so that might be a starting place appreciate that um so i will uh go to go back since my time was up i see we have two miss mclaughlin uh and we will we'll do uh just to make sure we fit the time let's do one and a half minute go backs um just let me finish go ahead thank you ms amesh um quickly um dr presidio as you know for many years now uh our families some want to dive more deeply into what fle is and the curriculum they noted on the website that what we provide is year at a glance and it will give instructional objectives but you
065there aren't hyperlinks then to even look at like the health media um and really other than like a one sentence descriptive statement about what an objective is how might families who want to know more about the how and the content that's actually being delivered beyond the concept statement um we don't really have anything on the web page that helps people go any further than that i i would like to know your thoughts on how we make that more accessible uh for parents to at least know where to go to get beyond just a descriptive statement on an objective related to the fle curriculum because it'll it says curriculum on it and then when you go there it just it just says you know the descriptive statement and i'd like to know how are people able
066to access that they want to look at it and know grade but levels by grade level what their child's going to be taught right so um this is something we've worked on to try to make you know the materials more accessible and more transparent and we might have more work to do there i'm kind of wondering noelle or kerry if you could kind of remind us of what the current state is about how we share the the lesson materials sure so all families receive at the beginning of the year an opt-out letter that provides the links in the directions to access the materials and all of the lessons and almost all of the videos are available to parents through their parent view account in blackboard we have a couple of videos which we do not
067have streaming rights for so parents would need to view those at their child's school if they wanted to see them but the majority are there for them and we're working on how we're going to transfer that into schoology for next year as we move away from blackboard and part of the parent preview night that has to be available at all schools they provide very explicit details step-by-step directions on how to access those materials so parents can read the actual lessons see the learning activities and view any of the media okay so just to clarify then uh it fcps parents who have a parent view account can access all of the curriculum itself and the instructional questions but that's the only way you're going to be able to do that it's there's nothing on the website
068i i know i wanted to get my question in to ms reynolds and dr presidio's response that's correct so the materials right now are available to fairfax county families and parents and guardians through through their parent view account in blackboard we intentionally did not make it available on the public web because then it's also available to students which contradicts our are opt-out and what information students may then have access to there have been cases where other community members have asked to see lessons and i have shared those with those community members individually if they cannot access them because they are not part of our our parent community great i do think we need to post that on the website so everybody understands all right mrs mclaughlin i'm sorry we're just thank you thank you thank
069you dr anderson um thank you i just wanted to kind of follow up a little bit and when ms mclaughlin shared you know as a parent of a sixth grader and a third grader i avail myself of those videos and content every single year we literally and they're nicely laid out in parent view and it's very easy to access as a parent so i'm appreciative of that being available um i wanted to go back to a statement that was made earlier regarding the local development of the fle curriculum you mentioned that there are some standards that are um provided that are maybe not part of the fcps curriculum can you walk me through in terms of how that is determined um as in if you could also provide any examples of standards that have been
070removed in the past from instruction sure so the standards of learning um for family life education as they're written are very involved and comprehensive and long and i don't know i mean this goes back many years well before before i was in instructional services as to where those initial objectives and recommendations came from and how we ended up with the program that we have but we do use those standards of learning when we talk about topics um the committee is always interested in what the state has and what they're asking for so we use those as a reference some things that come to mind that we don't instruct for example i believe it's first or second grade the state wants to include the babies develop in a uterus they start to introduce the human anatomy
071in the earlier grades where we hold off on that until fourth grade so that would be an example they make references to using pets and animals as examples for reproduction where we focus our instruction on human reproduction and not what animals may do and there there are there are a lot of objectives i certainly don't have that document memorized to to share with you um i could provide the website where you can access the document if you are interested in looking more at what is in included in the user else no no i know where to find it i guess i wasn't under the impression that we had such latitude to determine which standards we can instruct in which we cannot um and i'm wondering is that the same latitude that can be applied to
072math or language arts that's just something that i was not aware that we could pick and choose which standards we would instruct my understanding is that family life is different in that the sols do not need to be implemented in their entirety as they are in other content areas but as i said there is a specific list that's included that if you do have a locally developed program these 10 or 12 things must be included as part of your program after presidio perhaps you can also confirm is that the case for family life that it um is under a different set of regulations in terms of adherence it is um uh the regulations lay out basically the opportu the option for school divisions to either adopt the state's program or to develop their own local
073program and again as kerry said you know many decades ago fairfax chose to make that decision to develop our own local program so that we would have a little bit more autonomy and control over over what was included in the program and then also as carrie said there are some standards that are required even if you have a local program to be included in your local program so you know that's the route that we've chosen to take in fairfax and you know i think it's similar to the approach philosophically that we take with our program of studies in fairfax you know including the things that were required in other content areas to to instruct to and oftentimes then adding additional content standards on top of that in terms of things that meet our own local
074community expectations here so philosophically you know we've we've made that decision to adopt you know um or to create our own locally developed program thank you both all right thank you um because of what was brought up i have to take it come back i don't see any other hand so just real quick what percentage of our families are on parent view i would i would have i don't want to speculate on that we can get you a number and follow up i mean we've made a lot of progress and maybe i just saw gotham's camera come on i don't know if he knows the answer but you know during the go ahead gotham sorry it's it's gonna be speculation too it's uh it's the one time logons are i think about 50 to 60
075percent but if the repetitive or the consistent logons are not that high okay i think that's something as a board we will constantly have to think about and also this is only provided in english is that correct the instructional materials the lessons and so forth are only in english the opt-out forms which includes the objectives and descriptive statements are translated yeah no i appreciate that i mean obviously the the aspect of family engagement is important but i want us to just be really honest and mindful of the fact that we're not engaging the majority um and certainly from what mr safety said less than half regularly checking in a way that they may be unaware or looking at this so i just want to remind us as a board and hopefully as a division of
076where we can focus some of our energies and really not leave major chunks of our community behind um with that i see dr anderson's hand we weren't going to do double go backs and i did want to make sure we could take a five minute break before presentation is this really if this is a comment i i don't think it's a question it's a question because for staff about yes okay i see more hands now um i i think i see miss picarski who did not take a go back so i will go to her um and then i think we do have to move on but you know i'm fast so quickly aren't the materials available in school as well yes they should be available in the school library as well right thank you
077ms amisha i have a process question it's not related to fla all right um go ahead dr anderson was your comment your comment was about the content of this i mean okay at this point it's the two of you so let's just take a minute each dr anderson go ahead and then the other thing i wanted to share is parent view is not the only place where that information is made available and i don't know whether this is just what i've been lucky to have but my children's teachers when they are coming around to the time of fle they do send the information home as well so you have a very recent update of what will be happening it's yet another opportunity for parents to opt out and get a chance to review the information
078parent view outlines all of the lessons in very very um and high level of specificity but in terms of the general topic to be covered i think those are provided at least to me and my schools more than one time a year mr mclaughlin thank you yeah i had just contacted our clerk i did not know that we've changed our process and how we post this but um i think it's really important that there's no time here it's just when we start when we stop we don't list list how long this section is going to go we don't then list when we take the lunch break we don't list when we're going to start section two and i know we don't have time to debate it now but even as a board member this is
079very frustrating to me because i walked into this and unless there's an email somewhere else i have no idea how much time we all had to be able to discuss this topic and then what that where that leaves us with so i understand that sometimes one section runs longer than another or runs shorter than another but this is kind of problematic i don't even know what operation time ms amish you're going with we've spent an hour on fle some of us have questions we wanted to [Music] we shouldn't be basing things on the people can come into a building we have transportation issues with people working during business hours having it in the library is not the only solution yeah i just wanted to address uh i mean that's why in the beginning we frame
080the conversation and sharing that we're going to go about an hour on fleek try to have the rts presentation and then break for lunch for you know typical half hour um and it's really to afford us the flexibility to be able to go with the time of what what you know seems to be coming rts obviously is a big topic so i don't want to belabor the point to take up more time i did want to be able to offer it it's fine but i i i think we're um then to chair and vice chair we'll we should be having a board yeah about this change yeah i mean that's a bigger process question i think we can take to a different forum um it's 1209 um my hope was to start at 12 10.
081i think we can give folks a couple minute break so let's come back at 12 15. we'll start immediately with the return to school presentation uh and go from there thank you all you