FCPS School Board Meeting 4-8-2021

001[Music] so [Music] so [Music] it is seven o'clock studio we will begin in one minute [Music] okay the april 8 2021 regular meeting of the fairfax county school board will now come to order we will now take roe miss cohen and have a mic check as well miss corbett sanders good evening everybody mr aranaco fox good evening mr fresh hello ms keith gamora miss mclaughlin miss marin hello miss omeg hello miss mccarski good evening everyone miss eisenheiser miss tolin good evening mr annabuto miss cohen good evening was that miss cohen i'm so sorry oh you're right here next to me uh miss keys gamara miss mclaughlin ms seismoheiser i'm here and mr anabooto are you with us hello hello good to have you we will check in on our two remaining board members in a

002little while please rise as student representative nathan anabuto leads us in the and reciting of the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you please be seated in order to comply with section 2.2-3712-d of the code of virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county school board convened a closed meeting on april 8 and to the best of each member's knowledge on the public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such meeting requirements that only such public business matters as were identified and the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or

003considered by the board during the closed session moved by ms corbett sanders seconded by miss cohen all in favor miss corbett sanders miss cohen miss picarski miss eisenheiser miss marin mr frisch miss omesh miss donna koufax ms tolin and miss mclaughlin thank you and checking to see online i apologize i don't have all of my screens today miss keysgamara are you in agreement checking for you yes are you able to hear me yes we are able to hear you thank you okay my hand is raised so i'm not sure if you can see that now i can see it thank you so much if you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight that information may be found at the back

004of the auditorium or on the website at fcps.edu school board docs slash board docs struggling tonight tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu tv slash ch99 item 5.01 minutes has been removed from tonight's agenda with us tonight is our newest addition to our school board office maggie hamadi please welcome maggie welcome we're very excited that you are here with us and i'll call miss aranabudo for a few announcements thank you dr anderson national volunteer week is april 8th through the 24th the theme for the 2021 national volunteer week celebrates service an opportunity to shine a light on the people and causes that inspire us to serve volunteerism empowers individuals to find their purpose to take their passion and turn it into meaningful change when each of

005us in our own way answers the call to make a difference we make progress in solving our most persistent problems and create stronger communities and a more just society over this past year volunteers played a vital role in fcps during the pandemic we are so proud to have compassionate caring and dedicated volunteers who supported our students and schools as we navigated new and ever-changing situations with covid19 the partnerships and support this past year were beyond measure whether online at our schools or at our few distribution locations during good comes and doing good comes in many forms and we recognize and celebrate them all hey we celebrate our volunteers in fcps during national volunteer week and every day this year thank you volunteers dr anderson that's all thank you mr anubudo and i'll call him mrs

006corbett sanders for the recognition yes thank you cherry anderson i'm so pleased to be able to offer this recognition of the month of the military child these students and their families are a major part of the fcps community and in the mount vernon magisterial district because of its home of fort belvoir one of the largest military installations in the country so april is the month of the military child this year's theme is military children and youth a resilient force and a changing world it is a time to recognize our military and veteran connected students for their service and sacrifice military kids sacrifice and serve our country in their own way here in fairfax county we are extremely fortunate to have over 11 000 students who are part of a military family as well as part

007of our fairfax county public schools family air military connected students bring a strong sense of community and a wealth of life experiences to our schools they are resourceful and adaptable while living with numerous challenges presented by frequent moves parental deployments and a host of life transitions that often include reintegration and dealing with profoundly changed parents the following are just a few of the challenges military children face moving and starting over on an average of every one to three years attending six to nine different schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade and multiple deployments of a parent throughout all of this military children are resilient and patriotic they know firsthand what it feels like to be the new kid so they are usually the first one to welcome a new student to a school celebrating the month

008of the military child provides a powerful opportunity to raise awareness and build support to help these children meet the unique challenges they face it's an opportunity to recognize and thank military children and youth for their heroism character courage sacrifices and continued resilience we invite you to join us on april 21st for purple update as we encourage everyone to wear purple to celebrate our military connected students and as a bit off script this year we will be celebrating the 10th year of the month of the military child and so it's more important than ever to wear purple so with that i would like to invite colonel seagraves to say a few words he is the garrison commander of fort belvoir great thank you ms corbin sanders you guys have good audio yes we're able to hear

009you okay great we'll try the video and see if that works too um so um miss corbin sanders and dr anderson thank you for uh allowing us really as a military community but me as the commander the opportunity just to recognize our military children but also the school board really in fairfax county and all of the schools for their continued support of military students throughout the year and and really just as a special thank you for recognizing our children during april the month of the military child i'd also like to thank miss albers our l l at fort belvoir our liaison officer and our principals mrs pereira and ms gianetta they are just great partners along with the fairfax county schools so ms corbett sanders as you talked about you know virginia is the largest

010is the state with the largest number of military connected students including more than 11 000 in fairfax county and one of the many jewels of fort belvoir is our elementary campus which has about 600 students enrolled preschool through second grade and then another 600 from grades three through six we're very proud of our dolphins and thoroughly enjoy the relationship we have with the students staff and administration as well as our families that participate and attend those schools students of all ages and grades and their families represent the strongest of our military family improve time and time again their resilience and fortitude and sense of community military children make soldiers stronger through their support patriotism love and adaptability we're certainly stronger as an army and as a military because we have the support from our families

011and military children the fact that local governments recognize the unique circumstances in military children's lives let us all know how important they are to our duties and most importantly to our collective future we greatly appreciate you being in tune with the military children's frequent relocations parent deployments and what seems like sometimes constant change the need for flexibility and other stresses of military life an integral part obviously of these kids development is the world class education opportunities that exist especially here in fairfax county we know the partnership between fort belvoir and the schools prepares them for success both in education and as future leaders we continue to address the evolving needs of our larger family to ensure they are healthy self-reliant and ready for anything this applies not only to soldiers but also to military children

012i also want to thank again the fairfax county public schools for your additional support to our military committee and for their continued efforts of the staff and administrators in the entire school district for our military students and their families we greatly appreciate that and we certainly appreciate the long-standing partnership that we have with fairfax county public schools and your ongoing advocacy for military children as they take their educational journeys and finally i'd just like to say once again uh thank you for recognizing military children with this proclamation your public support of our family really does mean the world to us and just another plug for the fort belvoir elementary school so i got to do a welcome back a couple of weeks ago and the staff just the professionalism and the way that they interact

013with the parents and the students mostly now during a pandemic is more important than ever and they just did an absolutely phenomenal job thank you for the opportunity to address the board tonight thank you colonel for those wonderful remarks we appreciate that you were able to join us this evening our next agenda item is 2.06 national library week and school library month recognition i call him mr fresh thank you national library week and school library month april 2021 national library week is april 4th through the 10th and april is school library month the american association of school librarians celebration of school librarians and their programs strong school library programs play an essential role in a student's educational career fcps school librarians have made tremendous contributions to students and staff this past year during the pandemic

014fcps librarians sprang into action ensuring students had access to books when buildings closed whether through curbside checkout mobile check out locations in neighborhoods buses turned into bookmobiles or by personally delivering books directly to students at home librarians kept families reading librarians partnered with transportation and food services employees to manage the process and ensure everyone was safe this year 4.2 million fcps library books have been checked out students have also used more than 530 000 digital books library online resources have been essential to student learning in the virtual environment librarians shared these centrally purchased research databases and ebook platforms with teachers and families to support learning and a record 10.5 million searchers searches have been taken place on fcps library online resources this year the greatest assets for school library programs are the librarians themselves they

015provide instruction on information literacy skills and digital citizenship co-plan and co-teach with teachers through an inquiry-based approach to learning develop maker activities host book clubs and much much more most importantly they provide an environment for students to be themselves pursue their interests and know they that they belong the school board welcomes this opportunity to commend fairfax county public schools librarians and to express its gratitude for their dedication to our students their commitment to equity and their wide ranging services they provide to the school system thank you very much mr frisch item 3.01 citizen participation speakers are requested to limit their remarks to not more than 3 minutes the school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings such as capital improvement program budget and boundaries speakers should only address

016new business action items or resolutions as listed on the meeting agenda complaints regarding individual students or school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school official speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information in connection with an individual student and are expected to deliver their comments with the decorum and respect appropriate to the business to the conduct of the public's business in-person speakers should wear a mask stand behind the black line on the floor and speak into the microphone thank you for your cooperation and thanks to those who have come to speak to us today tonight we have 10 citizens who've signed up to address the board and also five video testimonies i will now turn this over to the clerk to call our speakers thank you our first speaker is

017samir chowdhury good evening my name is samir chodary and i'm a senior at mclean high school recently i was fortunate enough to be admitted into multiple top universities and yet throughout the year i've struggled to pass several classes however this isn't an isolated incident nor is it a narrative about unmotivated students performing poorly across the board from middle schoolers to high school seniors we see accomplished driven and intelligent students facing the profound difficulties imposed by covet 19. according to the washington post fcps reported that the percentage of students who earned f's in at least two classes jumped to 11 so why is that the answer is that simply switching our classes to blackboard collaborate is not sufficient nor equitable education strategy in the midst of a global pandemic we have certainly been equal in providing

018students laptops but were we equitable did we increase support to communities who may face language barriers or have working families the answer is no furthermore we have not mandated training resources for teachers to discern mental health issues within their own classrooms we have not successfully nor consistently implemented an engaging social and emotional or sel curriculum and we have not accounted for the diverse experiences across fcps in our current sel curriculum yes we have reformed the grading policy to alleviate some student stress but the fact of the matter is that this is a mere band-aid on an increasingly prevalent mental health crisis and what do we know about band-aids they inevitably come off for the past few weeks over 40 students across 15 high schools in our county have mobilized to organize around the mental health

019crisis in fcps we've produced three extensive proposals regarding telemental health student-led initiatives and the revised sel curriculum which we plan on lobbying to all of you in the near future today i wanted to hone in on one of the core facets of a revised sel curriculum embracing diversity the current fcps approach is problematic because it emphasizes pro-social behaviors including kindness sharing and empathy but does not account for a student's experiences with racism or even homophobia which are factors that clearly impede on pro-social behaviors oftentimes external aspects such as a volatile home life or living in poverty yield devastating implications on student mental health with over 29 percent of our student population economically disadvantaged more than 27 percent of students being english learners and well over 60 of students being people of color it is imperative

020that we account for the vastly different life experiences such as extreme trauma that these populations face throughout life all of these groups and these experiences must be addressed in an sel and our status quo on the other hand is merely a one-size-fits-all approach as the school board it is your duty to serve your citizens diversity may be the hardest thing for society to live with but it is also the most dangerous thing for society to be without thank you thank you our next speaker is astrid maslin good evening members of the school board and dr bray brandt my name is ashford maslin and i'm an eighth grade student at frost middle school at the moment i am in hybrid i will i'm pleased to be speaking about opening schools as the board will be awarding

021the frost renovation contract this evening at the moment i'm in the hybrid learning environment however my wish is to be back in the school building school building for five days a week in person learning this spring and definitely next fall every student in this county from kindergarten to 12th grade needs to have the option of being in the school building with the teacher in front of a class why is five days a week of in-person learning so important we need to be active both physically and mentally these objectives are much more difficult to achieve via a computer screen we have now lost a year of being motivated to be physically fit our minds and critical thinking skills are dulled by being in front of screens we need to have social interaction with our peers socialized

022socializing teaches us life skills like how to look at someone when you speak how to make friends how to solve problems in group settings being with our friends allows us to talk about our days share good and bad times listen and help those who may need a friend to lean on without those opportunities many students feel isolated and alone some students feel like they don't even know how to be a friend anymore as a student who will be transitioning to high school next year i'm extremely concerned about others like me who are heading into a new school without much preparation for what lies ahead many of my peers including myself are taking high school courses which will count towards our gpa has the best educational foundation been laid for us this year from kindergarten until

02312th grade we are expected to learn and grow so that the next year will be another building block in our education during this past year the foundation so carefully built started to crack how many students will slip through these cracks how many students will have the anxiety over the fact that they are falling behind their peers will we be able to recover mentally physically and academically you our elected leaders have the power to start the repairs to our educational foundation open our schools for in-person learning five days a week now don't let any of the 188 000 students in your school district fall through those cracks due to lack of leadership this week we were told there was a possibility that many students will go back to four days a week all students who have

024chosen in-person learning should already be back it should be a reality not a possibility the mission of fairfax county public schools states fairfax county public schools inspires and empowers students to meet high academic standards lead healthy ethical lives and be responsible and innovative global citizens as a student in your school district it's my expectation that everyone who sits before me tonight will be a responsible and innovative leader you can do this and you must for the health welfare and future success of every student as i end my comments i want to thank my principal mr harris and all my teachers at frost middle school who are at school and teaching me in person i appreciate the opportunity to speak before this board and i hope my words will spur you to take immediate action on

025opening schools five days a week for in-person learning thank you our next speaker is marcy reeves i am here to speak as a military family as a scientist with a phd in molecular biology and a mom my husband has served in the military for nearly 20 years in the submarine force and is currently at the pentagon we have three kids three six and eight we moved to fairfax county just in the summer of 2020. i want to highlight two things tonight the choices that we make based on evidence at any one point can change new evidence new data new choices require new innovative solutions i could speak to you as a molecular biologist but rather i choose to share our story my kindergartner including her pre-k years has attended three different schools in three different

026states my son four had the military not moved us my kids would be in person five days a week since september and as it stands their school will be open in less than two weeks at a hundred percent capacity it breaks my heart that my kids see their friends their peers in person while they sit behind a screen they see their dad go to work each and every single day including during the shutdown over the past school year i have watched my kids love of learning drain out of their eyes to be replaced with dark circles and tears as a parent i have not been given the choice for full-time opportunity as a scientist i had hope that the data all kids could return in person and yet we watched as our friends our peers

027returned around the world in person and my kids sat behind a screen the choice for my kids to attend school in person full time continues to be delayed by fairfax county public schools and those in this room more and more delay when my kindergartner finally did go to school she left off the bus after that first day to tell me she had finally made a friend in the same moment i felt joy and heartbreak considering all of this lost time the next day when she got off the bus she told me that her new friend gets to go four days why can't she her friend was given a choice we were given more heartbreak and delay my kids were interviewed for the morning news show being military children when i asked if they wanted to

028participate you know what my son said i wonder if they'll do the interview in another part of the school i've never seen the inside of the library does it even have a music room like my old school as newcomers we were not welcomed and invited into our new school to help us military families connect into our new community our military family and community and the schools within it are essential and we need a choice to be in person full time now thank you thank you our next speaker is tom goudreau good evening i recommend that the school board not approve the annual plan flow-through application for part b funds presented today by superintendent bray band please note the presentation later tonight this document serves as a formal agreement between the fcps school board and the

029virginia department of education the same report approved last year by the school board repeated the exact same policy statements and submission statements sadly fcps's action did not comply with the plan this past school year additional safeguards need to be added to this year's plan this past year fcps did not provide special education students a free appropriate public education fcps began the school year by predetermining reduced special education services regardless of services needed fcps instructed special education teachers to propose new iep goals that could be satisfied by the reduced services fcps was willing to perform they instructed fcps iep team members to present that reduced service plan is in line with fcps special education services when parents would not agree to the predetermined services fcps repeatedly unilaterally implemented reduced service plans in a format inappropriate for

030students iep goals and needs without following due process fcps also repeatedly refused to offer contracted supplemental iep support services where appropriate and available in fairfax county even in-home support services were deemed unavailable except by virtual support when confronted with a due process complaint fcps would argue in court that they should be allowed to de facto implement anything they want to due to covid that viewpoint renders meaningless the procedural safeguards in the virginia special education regulations that a parent must consent to quote any revision of a child's iep services unquote it is also in conflict with the office of special education programs guidance related to covet 19 dated september 28 and it is also in conflict with last year's policy statements and submission statements which were published by this school board after kovid closed the schools

031fcps special education is broken the written assurances of last year did not assure fcps compliance with idea what assurance does this plan provide that parents will not be presented with another email stating that fcps wants to further reduce special education services again fcps can't even return half of the students to four days a week in person learning this spring fcps special education students need more protection than the status quo yes you should seek and obtain part b federal funds but the school board needs to ensure that fcps does not simply write something that is compliant and then do whatever they want let me be clear my issue is not with my iep teachers it's not with my special ed teachers and so the people that wrote this policy instructed the staff to do it have

032not been accountable our next speaker is frankie sellers good evening my name is frankie and i'm a junior in fcps as a queer and transgender student i'm here to talk to you about the school system's flawed approach to my mental health and the mental health of our other marginalized students as a transgender student i have always felt unsafe in the presence of school resource officers i avoid interaction with them in fear that i may be verbally harassed dead named or misgendered i'm afraid of being targeted for being transgender and i know if i were sent to a juvenile justice system i would be treated unfairly like so many other transgender youth my story about how the school system does not treat people equally is not unique and is shared by thousands of marginalized fcps students

033like me the damaging impact of this discrimination is clear it harms our academic performance safety and mental health it's why the depression rates in the queer community at 50 percent are so high statistics that are likely and under count since they don't always include transgender students despite the damaging mental health impact of these systematic systemic inequalities the school system continues to talk about mental health only in the context of the 19 pandemic to be clear covett has certainly impacted our mental health negatively but it's not the only factor and the school board can't continue to act like it is your actions to continue to allow the suicide crisis in the queer community to grow ignore the religious minorities on the school calendar allow sros to remain in our buildings and rescinded equity statements will only

034damage the mental health of marginalized students like me you need to take action now and especially need to address school resource officers and you cannot keep avoiding those conversations it's not just me so many of my friends especially friends who are queer and people of color have talked about their damaging interactions with sros one talked about an sro who placed his hands on his firearm the entire duration of what should have been a routine meeting with their counselor one mentioned that sros only serve as painful reminders of a racist system that doesn't treat them equally and another student mentioned an sro who wore a blue lives matter mask a symbol that directly harms students of color and makes them feel unsafe and targeted sros are not keeping our school system safe and are only terrorizing

035marginalized students instead of continuing to spend limited resources on a traumatic and racist system let's invest in the mental health and wellness of marginalized communities it's especially important because of the rise of transphobic and racist attacks that are happening across state legislatures in this country right now there has never been a more important and pressing time to eliminate trauma and invest in the mental health of my community you can do that by talking about mental health in non-coveted contexts removing sros and investing in support for my community thank you our next speaker is vanessa hall hi i went to frost middle school in the 1980s oddly it didn't look much different than it does now however it was a very different place because of rampant bullying i'm thrilled to see that it will be renovated

036soon possibly while my own child is there simultaneously i'm also pleased to see the change frost atmosphere to one of respect and kindness which was attained through the concerted efforts of policies administrations staff students and families speaking of respect and kindness i recently read about anti-transgender organizations that are challenging the virginia transgender student policies as a parent and active volunteer in fcps i see this lawsuit as a direct attack on all of us but especially on transgender students and their families to me trans students are kids first and foremost they are kids who wear clothes have names play sports and love laugh and live in our communities why would someone want to force students into the wrong clothes wrong bathroom wrong names why would anti-trans groups want to restrict the daily function of these kids

037and make them targets most parents i know want policies that support trans students because we all recognize how hard it is to be a kid these days and we want to support kids particularly the most vulnerable ones i say most vulnerable because anyone who looks at the health statistics for the transgender community knows that we need to do so much better to support people when they're young so that they can thrive and grow into healthy adults for example did you know that using a transgender youth's chosen name at work and school with friends and at home reduces depression symptoms by 71 and reduces suicide attempts by 65 percent to clarify these health statistics are not because these kids are trans but because they are misgendered and bullied efforts to remove their agency over their body

038and names is harmful if not deadly i say all of this not just as a parent but also as an educator an active school community and church volunteer i'm a sunday school teacher and a church and scout leader i'm also a certified youth mental health first aider and a certified owl teacher if you don't know what owl is it's our whole lives a renowned comprehensive sex and relationship education curriculum i took these intensive courses in order to better support children and families in all of my communities kids at my church and in my schools know and trust me because i'm a safe adult i listen to them respect them and will go to bat for them when needed which is why i'm here now to sum up you can help make trans kids healthy and

039happy or you can make trans kids miserable and isolated please ensure that we have a protective and supportive trans student policy enforced in our schools also in my experience your program is only as good as the guidance and training that supports it kids need support but adults need guidance please don't skimp on the guidance that ensures that teachers and staff fully understand the critical nature of supporting and protecting transgender students thank you so much thank you our next speaker is rory cooper good evening i would like to speak to the local special education and will be presented tonight i would have been there in person but i was coaching my son's baseball team see little league resumed last fall with a little thinking children have been together since august just not in school in your

040presentation there is no mention of the direct harm caused to students especially those at risk or with learning and physical disabilities caused by the decisions of this board and superintendent because of the actions of this board little children in our community are suffering from anxiety depression suicidal thoughts and a tragic loss of self-esteem and learning moms and dads are leaving the workforce to do what our tax dollars are supposed to do educate our children my kindergartner first saw the inside of the school in march his first directive stay off the playground i have to assume that the board still sprays its mail with lysol my kids will always struggle to keep up with their cousins and millions of families who have been safely in school since september big school systems that just figured it out

041this board hasn't just put fairfax county behind most of america where schools are open five days a week it's put us on a different planet a world that existed 12 months ago but that most people have used science and public health guidance to move past rather than stubbornly sticking their heads in the ground this board and its favorite union demanded that teachers were first in line for vaccinations before cancer patients before disabled and vulnerable populations before essential workers doing their jobs outside of their homes and then after every teacher administrator and union leader got a shot this board decided to revert to a hybrid model that was designed for the fall of before vaccines were available a moral choice that i would struggle to live with the teachers are vaccinated the cdc says they cannot

042carry the virus the six-foot rule has been debunked and yet we're clinging to it in cafeterias as one more excuse surface transmission is debunked nearly every epidemiologist pediatrician and psychologist in this country is begging school boards like you to open your eyes children are being unnecessarily harmed for life not just a month or a year but their lives because of the stubbornness of 13 people now you're doing it again bray brand announces we're going back four days and then everyone receives an email from their principal a few hours later saying sorry bray brandt's cafeteria rules won't allow it and that's ignoring your need for a lifetime three-day weekend we moved to this county for these schools and like thousands of families were regretting that decision because of this board's indifference to the pain you've inflicted

043open the schools five days a week immediately not next fall which is a cowardly crutch not next month today science says we can experts and doctors say we must 99 of parents in neighboring falls church city say parents want it but 13 people keep saying no you broke this school system now fix it you're on the wrong side of history thank you our next speaker is kim putins kim putins can you hear me yes thank you okay um thank you for having me this evening i actually had an entirely different statement drafted for today's meeting until i saw a tweet that was loved by a member of the school board the tweet by a teacher essentially accused all parents advocating for opening schools of hating teachers and that we are sending them to death and

044asking them to teach our kids in person a basic question that went through my mind is why is this teacher even teaching if they can't read the many studies that defy this notion that teaching our kids means that they will be at increased risk for copen this has been entirely debunked not to mention as rory had pointed out teachers have been vaccinated more so as a parent i really became insulted i'm truly insulted and tired of this school board making a mockery of parents who want their kids in school when did it become such a horrible idea to want to be in school since when did parents become an enemy of the state i thought when i enrolled my children in fcps that i was entering into a partnership with the school system to teach

045my kids and that we would truly be partners in this endeavor so i asked myself and i've been scratching my head for the past year what is going on in this school system truly what is going on when fundamentally our school board and the superintendent mock parents who want their kids in school i really think every single person on this school board needs to ask themselves that question why are you on the school board if we're not all in alignment about teaching our kids because it's clearly not about putting students first it's clearly isn't about supporting the educational needs of students and it isn't about partnering with parents what is the end game for you because i know my end game my end game as a parent is to do whatever i have to do

046to support my kids period end of story and i will do whatever it takes this year has been mind-boggling heartbreaking and troubling i have never heard a single parent or student who advocates for opening schools say they hate teachers that is absolutely a sickening narrative and it's only attempts to divide parents and teachers and students and teachers i have sat idly by why you roll your eyes at parents who want our kids in school have you forgotten that we are your constituents too i also want to just end with one other thing i have been hearing rumors we're all hearing rumors that it is absolutely a jam that we are going to bring students back five days a week in the fall and i want this we are all open to this deception we have

047seen it for the past year and i want you to know that we have every intention of making you making sure that our kids are back in school five days a week next fall back to normal i also want to make sure that you are aware that the governor did sign into law sb 1303 and we intend to hold you accountable to that law thank you thank you our next speaker is air quinn hello dr bray brands leadership team and school board members my name is air queen i use they them pronouns and i am a transgender non-binary elementary general music teacher at braddock elementary school i also grew up in fairfax county and graduated from fairfax high school in this evening i will start by spotlighting autism acceptance month an apparent link between autism

048and gender diversity a recent study found that up to 15 of adults on the autism spectrum are also transgender non-binary or otherwise gender expansive compared to 5 of non-autistic adults who are gender neighbors autistic and neurotypical gender gender expansive adults don't just become transgender or non-binary when they turn 18 but they are gender expansive for their whole lives including when they are students in our classrooms in fairfax county public schools as an elementary music teacher i have the opportunity to see teach and learn from every student in a school building and i value that experience i value the opportunity to see students who are new to our country and getting to work with neurodiverse students with many levels of need it is because i see every student in the school that i know i also

049have gender diverse students whether they have realized that truth about themselves yet or not because i know that i do teach students both on the autism spectrum and not who are gender expansive like myself that has driven me to live authentically as i am when i was a student in fairfax county public schools i did not yet know that i was transgender and there was no representation of transgender or other gender diverse people at school or otherwise having representation is not just important for the students who might find a mirror with me or other gender expansive people but can also help to build empathy within inner students for people who are different from themselves an irrefutable aspect of being an ethical and global citizen i hope that in the future being inclusive and affirming of

050all gender identities in the school setting will be seen as commonplace one way that we can start on that path is by normalizing the use of our pronouns when we introduce ourselves as i did tonight when i began my name is air queen and i use they them pronouns we should also ask our students to share their pronouns whenever possible and be accepting if those pronouns change the next important step that we can take is believing our students when they say who they are no matter what other labels they may already have or what we might perceive their gender to be our students are the experts on themselves and when a student self-identifies they are sharing a key part of who they are it's our responsibility to believe their truths and affirm their gender through

051our words and actions i hope that fairfax county will continue to stand up against transphobia on behalf of all the students we teach i'm glad that fairfax county public schools has historically been on the side of our 2s lgbtqia plus students and i truly hope that we will continue on that path students in every school are gender diverse including and especially our students who receive special education services thank you for your consideration thank you our final speaker is paige hahn hello can you hear me yes okay my name is paige han and i am a parent to a third grader and a fifth grader at haycock elementary one of which who has an iep i am also the pta president first i'd like to publicly say that we have an incredibly strong administrative team at

052haycock and a fantastic teaching staff and i consider them partners in education as pta president i can say with certainty that our parent community supports and appreciates what our haycock team both teachers and administrators are doing to go above and beyond for our kids when we went virtual in march of 2020 i of course understood and i agree having a virtual option for families now when cases spiked into november i agreed pulling back in-person plans and i have always understood the desire of teachers to be vaccinated this is to say i believe i've had a measured approach to school reopenings but my patience is gone and so is the patience of many many parents across this county our students are suffering academically emotionally and developmentally the harm being done to our children particularly those with

053special needs far outweighs the threat of covid19 in schools it is well documented that children with special needs and ieps have not had their needs met this year you know this you have documentation on this and you've seen the lawsuits you know what children with aid you know that children with adhd cannot thrive in a virtual environment you know that children with speech delays need additional pull outs you know that children with significant learning challenges need structure and one-on-one attention and they need in-person emotional support for months you've heard parents plead with you to open full-time principals have seen the tears and heard the pain and parent voices begging for their children to be allowed back in school you've heard from pediatricians and guidance counselors about how children themselves say they are sad and depressed

054you likely have friends with special needs children going into debt to pay for private services that were supposed to be provided by the county the solution for all children is to open schools four days a week now for everyone who wants it and five days a week in the fall this is not a novel idea 52 of public schools in this country are doing just that taking into account private schools were well over 60 percent call other large school districts that have opened for best practices miami-dade and broward in florida clark county and nevada gwinnett county and georgia and most recently charlotte this isn't because we can't open them full time it's because there is a lack of political courage to do so fccps is touted as one of the best districts in the nation

055a district home to some of the most educated and innovative minds in this country let's start acting like it thank you thank you we now have five video testimonies from josh israel robert rigby christie hudson lisa turkeltob and michelle liu good evening my name is josh israel i'm a fairfax county residence i was pleased to see on their website that anderson mechanical services makes very clear in their employment section that they do not discriminate on a series of basis including sexual orientation and gender identity i'm proud to see that fairfax county public schools is working with a vendor that has the same inclusive approach has been taken by this school board through his non-discrimination policies and hope this is always the case with contractors and vendors several state governments in recent weeks have taken aim

056at lgbtq youth rushing through legislation created by hate groups and aimed at keeping kids from playing sports and accessing appropriate health care even here in virginia anti-lgbtq extremists have filed lawsuits trying to overturn the protections enacted by the general assembly for our transgender and gender non-conforming students fcps has been among the leaders in virginia and i am proud and grateful that our community has strongly embraced the one fairfax vision and created policies protecting our kids faculty and staff from discrimination and bullying as elective officials in many places send a message that they believe some kids should be singled out and discriminated against i implore you all to continue to take steps to remind every kid in our community they are accepted and valued and i encourage you to continue to choose contractors like anderson mechanical

057services who uphold these values and put front and center their commitment to not discriminating thank you for your time good evening dr bray brand leadership team and school board members my name is robert rigby jr i am the co-president of fcps pride and was a special education teacher for 22 years including eight in fairfax county schools fcps pride is an organization for lgbtqia employees families of lgbtqia students and lgbtqia families in fairfax county public schools tonight you are hearing about the special education plan in my 22 years in special ed i observed that lgbtqia students accumulated or piled up in special education programs in part because discrimination and a lack of welcome led for many children to a lack of school success in 2020 the general assembly attached the virginia department of education with developing

058a model policy for welcoming transgender students in our state schools they mandated that local school districts follow suit with their own policies by august 2021 the development of the vdoe model policy involved school professionals including from scps and school service and social service professionals including from fairfax county during the public comment period in february many fairfax teachers parents and students wrote in support of the trans welcoming policies a few wrote in against there was a raft of anonymous comments against which apparently came from out of state last week two anti-trend organizations brought suit against the state model policy enumerating a long list of complaints grounded in anti-trans prejudice i just want to acknowledge and thank the leadership team and the school board for your support and welcome of transgender and gender expansive students in the

059past and your ongoing support despite the threat of the anti-trans organizations in their words to fight this battle in every single locality you're standing by us means that trans and other lgbtqia students staff and families will be increasingly welcome and safe in our schools and in the wider community thank you sometimes occasionally on facebook i have a friend that will make this grand post about their husband bob you are the best thing that ever happened to me i appreciate you i don't know how you do it all you work so hard to provide for your family and provide for me um you are so wonderful and great and i'm so lucky to have you in my life and then six months or a year later they're getting divorced and it's almost like when you look

060back in retrospect and that that that post it wasn't the you know pound relationship goal post i thought it was when i first read it it was actually you know an apology it was an apology to bob that you know things were going downhill and um and and it's hard to break up on on facebook for sure and it's embarrassing and so people only put out there what they want you to see people don't really put out what's really happening and that that's that's that's true in everything you never really know what goes on behind closed doors you really don't and in the virtual environment what has happened is all of the kids lives are behind closed doors you know the video cameras are off during school the teachers are not able to interact with

061the kids the way they want to interact with the kids and you never really know what's going on in the home and what's causing the problems in school and if you think about somebody like elon elon is a first grader and grade level but your math skills are significantly difficult over here elon often does not this is the confirmed speaker assignments yeah if you're is the confirmed speaker math that's problem in and of itself because i challenge any school board member to try to do 30 minutes of second grade st math and ireland participates in virtual school elon has been absent three days in the month of march for unknown reasons lauren is an english language learner lauren participates well in virtual but is reading below grade level lauren completes all st math assignments lauren

062is unable to attend virtual school on friday afternoons due to her mother's work schedule and in this some kids model that you're rolling out how do you pick how do you pick between lauren and elon how is picking between them ethical equitable and fair and the answer is it's not okay extending four days to only four kids based on an arbitrary assessment of what you think is happening is unethical unequitable discriminatory and unfair and then make it red for that this is my school on march 22nd around 6 20 p.m an asian boy was practicing soccer right it is very disturbing to me and now i would like to ask the fairfax county school board to add more asian american history in the k-12 curriculum dear fairfax county school boards and dr ray brandt thank

063you for the opportunity to speak with you about a very important issue we need the students parents and teachers of fairfax county public schools petitioned the fairfax county school board to include more asian american history they within the required curriculum and resources for all grades k through 12. currently there are few historic references to the experiences of asian american people and the fairfax county k-12 curriculum as a result many teachers and students have little knowledge of asian-american history the lack of knowledge contributes to a one-sided view of american history and creates the impression that asian-american experiences are not valued close to 20 of fairfax county's population is of aapi descent it is important their history to be acknowledged and that students see themselves as a part of the american story it is essential to tell

064all sides of the historic events as well as the stories of the people all across the globe students are not learning enough about the famous and hidden figures that came from asian countries and contributed to america's success if asian american history is included in the fairfax county k-12 curriculum that more students and teachers will understand how asian-american people have positive positively shaped america's history this new and understanding may have the additional benefit of increasing positive interactions the asian american and pacific islander month heritage month will begin on may 1st of during this month as asian american history and stories are shared across the country county we ask that the fairfax county school board seriously consider changes to the next year's k-12 curriculum that include asian american history thank you for your time and attention and

065in addressing this important issue we are counting on you to help make this change possible thank you please be informed that due to an unexpected development we will forego our student representative matters at the request of our student representative at this time we're up to item 3.03 the local special education annual plan and report dr anderson i'm sorry but prior before we go on to the next portion of the agenda would it be possible for us to make sure that the citizen participation videos are clearly marked as to who is presenting those materials because i got confused and i'm not sure who whether they were two separate videos or if it was one video and who was responsible for each absolutely there were two separate videos and i apologize for the confusion to all we

066will be sure to at least identify um in between who the speakers are i think one rolled right into the other there were two separate videos i appreciate that and i'm sorry for the interruption no problem that's fine sorry i didn't see your hand there item 3.03 the local special education annual plan and report i now call on dr brabrand for the introduction thank you chairman anderson and members of the school board tonight it's our pleasure to share with you the local special education annual plan report for the school year 2021 and 2022 this is something we started to bring to the board just a few years ago that we are required to share annually about how we spend federal dollars towards special education now you'll hear tonight we spend this is focused on how

067we spend federal education but federal education dollars supporting special education are really only a drop in the bucket we really rely on our local fairfax county support to provide the kind of education that we do for our special education students but it's very important for you to see how we're spending our federal dollars and dr boyd our assistant superintendent for special services is here tonight and she will be sharing this uh presentation so dr boyd without further ado good evening and thank you dr bravran again my name is michelle boyd and i'm the assistant superintendent for special services and i'll be joined this evening by a variety of members from the special services team ms leah sterpski director of operations and strategic planning miss jacqueline prentice finance coordinator mr mike bloom director of special education

068instruction and dr james strong director of special education procedural support this evening we're going to be sharing information regarding fcps's 2021 2022 special education annual plan which is the process which is the process in which school divisions demonstrate your eligibility for federal funds through the individuals with disabilities education act 2004 or known as idea to support students with disabilities within their jurisdiction fairfax county public schools is required by state and federal law to submit an idea annual plan to the virginia department of education in this plan fcps must demonstrate eligibility to receive a flow-through allocation from the state's federal ida part b grant award the iba part b refers to the provisions related to the formula grants that assist states in providing a free appropriate and public education in the least prescriptive environment for children

069with disabilities ages 3 through 21 inclusive the plan also outlines how fcps plans to use the idea funding for special education services provided to identify children with disabilities the anticipated award for the 2021 2022 school year is 38.3 million dollars the link provided on the slide takes you to the vdoe website which provides detailed information on the federal idea part b funding in the state's various reporting requirements for your reference at the state level idea compliance is governed by the code of virginia scps must ensure that all children with disabilities that is for which is it was responsible for including children who are parentally placed in private schools within our jurisdiction are provided with certain rights and protections the code of virginia also requires the idea annual plan to be reviewed by the school division's

070local advisory board and an fcps referred to that board as the advisory committee for students with disabilities this review took place on march 10 of 2021. the code of virginia also requires fcps's school board approval of the idea annual plan prior to submission to the virginia department of education during this presentation we will highlight some of the components of the idea annual plan this year the ida annual plan is due by may 14 2021 and a detailed timeline will be provided later in this presentation the fcps fy 22 advertised budget for special education totals 594.8 million dollars which is 18.8 percent of fcps's 3.2 billion dollar operating budget based on the fy21 allocation we anticipate receiving 38.3 million in idea funds and will describe our intended use uh for those anticipated allocation this evening there

071are two ida part b awards section 611 which funds eligible services for k-12 special education activities and early intervening services in section 619 which funds eligible preschool services fcbs projects the idea grant awards will be 37.4 million for the second section 611 award and 0.8 million for this section 619 or preschool award the 2021-2022 idea annual plan assumes fcps will receive awards that are similar to what was received last year the iba annual plan is a formal agreement between the fairfax school board and the virginia department of education for implementing federal and state laws and regulations governing special education services once the virginia department of education approves the idea annual plan fcps completely spend what was agreed to the plan for expenditures to be eligible for reimbursement the 2021 2022 annual plan covers the federal

072grant period of july 2021 through september 30th of 2023 over the last five years fcps's idea part b allocations in total have increased by 2.7 million or 7.7 from 35.5 million in fy 17 to 38.3 million in fy 21. looking at the year-to-year changes from fy17 to fy21 the largest increase in idea awards amounts is 3.3 percent which occurred in fy 19. there was no increase in fy 20 and 21 reflects a 3.2 increase during the same period of time the number of students with disabilities for which fcps is responsible fluctuated with the fy21 enrollment being similar to that in fy 17. the virginia department of education has not yet released the projected 611 and 619 awards therefore projections contained in our 2122 idea annual plan and application workbook is based on the actual fy21

073award once the actual fy 2022 awards are known bdle will have ftps adjust the budgeted amounts as needed each year historically in december bdoe releases a superintendent's memo that details under the provisions of idea what local school districts are required to submit requirements for the 2122 idea annual plan were released on december 4th of 2020 along with the standard workbook to use when developing and submitting the iba grant application and report on implementation the required components are listed on this slide for the purpose of this presentation i will highlight these key requirements fcps must have established policies procedures and programs that are administered to comply with idea these include federal idea regulations bdoe established policies and procedures for idea compliance the idea eligibility requires fcps to certify specific assurance examples of the insurances include items

074such as responsibility for controlling grant funds maintaining required grant documentation restricting the use of grant funds to acceptable activities under idea maintaining the maintenance of effort and maintaining a proportionate satisfied for children with disabilities who are parentally placed in private schools to be eligible for the idea grant funds fcps ensures that it has procedures in place to help prevent barriers from accessing special education programs on the basis of gender race national origin color disability or age another component of the grant application can require school divisions with a regional or local jail in its jurisdiction to certify if there is an interagency agreement with the sheriff or jail administrator responsible for the operation of the jail fcps provides a full instructional program at the juvenile detention center scps also has an inter-agency agreement with the fairfax

075county sheriff who operates the fairfax county adult detention center the agreement outlines responsibilities for the provision of compulsory special education services to eligible inmates at the adult detention center as a part of the ida annual plan fcps must report on the implementation of the prior year's plan in fcps flow through funds for school year 2019-2020 were used to support activities related to two major goals for students with disabilities one providing an appropriate identification evaluation and therapeutic and instructional services and two providing child find screening and evaluation services for children ages two to five in the next two slides you'll see reported data on the number of services number of students served and other key data points related to the implementation of special education activities during the 2019 2020 school year fcps used the majority of

076the idea grant funds it received for personnel costs including salary and benefits there were 298 298.6 ftes in total of which 292.6 ftes were funded by section 611 and six ftes were funded by section 619 611 funded positions of the 292.6 250 of those positions were special education positions 42.6 positions supported coordinated early intervening services for students without ieps who are struggling we will discuss cis for coordinated early intervening services in more detail later in this presentation the majority of the positions funded by were school-based special education teachers totaled 224 ftes for 89.6 of the 250 ftes supported by section 611 section 619 supported six possessed six school-based positions supporting early childhood special education here you will see that during the 2019-2020 school year primarily excuse me fcps provided primary and related services totaling 47

077576 services examples of those services would include specific learning disability services autism services non-categorical services that might be provided to support reading comprehension decoding executive functioning and a number of other supports needed for our students to access a free appropriate public education we also serve a total of 28 051 students with disabilities this includes students enrolled in scps receiving contracted services and those in private schools or being home schooled in the 2019-2020 school year fcps screened 1 411 preschool students suspected for disabilities through initial evaluations child 5 activities were done for 1411 preschool students who were sprained and for suspected disabilities at area preschools and daycare centers diagnostic center personnel completed 3579 evaluations for pre-school-aged children out of the 1235 preschool eligibilities 1121 students were determined to be eligible for special education services you'll note

078on this slide the total number of psychological social cultural and speech and language evaluations and re-evaluations that were completed on last year these are the data points that have been identified for reporting by fcps in our grant application during the 2019-2020 school year evaluations and assessments reflect the impact of the unprecedented extended school closure in spring 2020 due to the covic 19 pandemic psychological evaluations decreased by or 20.8 percent as compared to the prior year there were 10 309 students found eligible and 1383 students found ineligible for special education services during that time frame the 2021-2022 idea annual plan plan contains a report on implementation for the prior year the data used for that report is based on fy20 actuals the additional periods contained in this chart are for information purposes only to assist with

079providing contacts regarding fcps's special education programming from this chart you will see the trends and the number of special education services provided and enrollment for students with disabilities during the last five years the number of students with disabilities and services provided have incrementally increased with the exception of the decline noted this year the number of students with disabilities referred for id excuse me reference for the iea annual plan includes students receiving contract services those parentally placed in private schools and those who are homeschooled that have individualized service plans which averages around 410 students while the overall number of students with disabilities or which fcps is responsible has decreased this year the number of students served receiving contract services home school and private school has increased by 7.6 for 31 students this chart shows the enrollment

080for k-12 students with disabilities based on the least restrictive environment also referred to as lra the majority of students with disabilities approximately 60 percent spend most of their day in general education settings conversely approximately 12 percent of scps students spend most of their day in special education settings as noted by the percent of students who spend less than 40 percent of time in generated settings or were served in other settings as previously mentioned the 2122 idea annual plan application report on prior year implementation reflects data from 2020. the additional periods contained in this chart are again for informational purposes to assist with context as illustrated in this table the total number of psychological evaluations and social cultural assessments have gradually increased like the number of students with disabilities from fy 16 to fy19 however there

081was a notable increase in the total number of evaluations in fy20 despite the increased number of students with disabilities which is attributed to the unprecedented school closure as a result of the covet 19 pandemic while staff have been conducting evaluations while students were virtual going to 2020 school year year-to-date actuals for evaluations through february indicate the total number of evaluations will not be comparable to pre-pandemic years the number of psychological evaluations for re-evaluations for this year shows the most significant decrease the decrease may be attributable to teams using existing data to determine continued eligibility as is permissible by the special education regulations the next section goes back to our components for our annual plan application maintenance of effort is a requirement that school divisions spin from state and local funds an amount equal to or

082greater than the amount spent for special education and related services in the prior fiscal year as a part of the idea annual plan bdoe or the virginia department of education obtains information to see whether a school district is projected to meet its maintenance of effort this data is based on the overall special education program not just the 38.3 million dollar idea grant there are four maintenance of effort tests that bdoe uses to see if a district is projected to meet its special education maintenance of effort requirements fcps receives funding from three sources federal state and local funding however federal funding is excluded from the moe calculation fcps has consistently met its special education maintenance of effort requirements the 2122 application projects fcps spending at the same amount certified in the maintenance of effort calculation for

083the school year 2019-2020 as submitted in january of 21. the pie chart on this slide shows fy20 special education costs as reported to the vdoe and fcps's fy 2020 annual school report fcps spends significantly more on special education than what is received from federal and state contributions for fy 2020 the federal and state contributions combined total 88.6 million dollars or 14.6 of the 607.3 million spent on special education by comparison 518.7 million dollars for 85.4 percent came from local funds the annual plan requests information on the division's budget relative to coordinated early intervening services known as ceis and proportionate satisfied requirements divisions that are not mandated to provide comprehensive coordinated early intervening services may choose to voluntarily set aside up to 15 percent of their ida award for ceis fcps voluntarily sets aside 5.7 million

084the 15 maximum allowed to provide support for students who are not currently identified as needing special education services for example ceis funds supplement the cost of behavioral social emotional development programs such as implementing positive behavior approach specialized attendance interventions restorative justice programs and many more the local school divisions must expend funds to provide special education and related services for parentally placed private school children with disabilities enrolled in private schools located within their jurisdiction in fcps parentally placed private school students are eligible to receive related services such as occupational therapy physical therapy and speech and language services through an individualized service plan bdoe provides a formula that fcps uses to calculate the required special education proportionate set-aside as previously chaired the proportionate set-aside is one of the assurances that fcps must provide in order to receive

085federal funding fcps requirement totals 0.3 million dollars in summary as referenced earlier this evening the 2021 2022 idea annual plan covers the federal grant period of july 1 2021 through september 30th 2023 in section 611 projected budget is 37.4 million and section 619 the projected budget is 0.8 million the projected says that for ceis or coordinated early intervening services is 5.7 million and the mandatory projected proportionate set-aside totals 0.3 million the two ida awards 611 and 619 will primarily be used to fund personnel costs for 301.6 full-time equivalent positions supporting special education preschool and coordinator early intervention service activities most of which include special education teachers the remaining grant awarded allocated for indirect cost and professional development subscription bdo has set fcps's indirect cost rate at 1.1 which permits fcps to claim administrative or overhead

086costs up to 1.1 percent of reimbursable costs which amounts to approximately 0.4 million dollars indirect costs are appropriately uh again 4.4 million dollars and are included in the budget a small amount or twenty thousand five hundred dollars is used for subscription for professional development in closing here is our timeline for submitting the idea annual plan for 2021 2022 the plan was reviewed by our acsd or advisory committee for students with disabilities on march 10 of 2021 school board action and requested approval is scheduled for april 23rd and to be eligible to receive the projected 38.3 million in idea grant funding we must submit the annual plan application to the virginia department of education electronically no later than may 14th of 2021 thank you for your time this evening and we look forward to hearing your

087feedback thank you very much dr boyd i'm sure we'll have several questions from board members but as a reminder to all the board the board will be taking action on the special education annual plan at the april 22nd meeting which is the next scheduled regular business meeting at this time i invite board members who do have questions to signal to me in some way and we will start with ms corbett sanders thank you chair anderson and thank you very much dr boyd this was a very comprehensive presentation of the ida plan and recognizing that this is only a small portion of the overall expenses and work that you do with your department in support of our students our exceptional students with disabilities i have a couple of questions for you the first is just as

088a reminder to me because i see that we are now receiving 6.4 percent of our total funding from the idea i believe that's a decrease in overall percentage year over year and it certainly is not the percentage of funding that is called for in the idea could you remind me what the idea calls for for the federal funding and support of our exceptional students with disabilities certainly so i have the part b of idea um allows for up to 40 um of funding from the federal allocations of part b um unfortunately as you indicated we are not um close to that rate and so again much of our special education programming at this time is supported by local dollars so again it up to 40 um from federal dollars could be allocated as indicated in

089idea section b with that i would like to especially thank you thank the taxpayers of fairfax county for their generous support of our students in this area because it is certainly an area that we know is the most one of the most important areas of our work and it's one that uh certainly is largely attributable to the support of fairfax county secondly and i sent you this question earlier the demographics of those students who are identified for idea do we have those demographics yes we do um and again thank you for the question so what we did in terms of demographic and again thank you for sharing that question in advance for us so that we would have that information available to share with the board and also um with the community um as we

090look at our racial um outbreak for students with disabilities 32 percent of our students with disabilities race and ethnicity is identified as hispanic 4.9 percent are identified as two or more racial ethnicities point two nine percent um as american indian or alaskan native nine point nine six percent asian 11.35 black and 41.2 white and point 12 native white and we also looked at where those percentages are comparable to our overall representation of those various ethnic and racial groups um within our membership within um fcps um and and as a we can certainly provide this in detail to the board but at a high level um the major uh differences are for our hispanic students and our students who identify as white um those students are identified there's a 4.9 percent skinny 4.97 percent um difference

091uh in those representations and for our students who are identified as asian um compared to their representation in our overall population it's a decrease of 9.84 thank you and if you don't mind sending those to us in writing i'd really appreciate it uh third thank you um there's been a lot of discussion in the long overdue modifications to the restraint and seclusion regulation and a key part of that with students returning to our schools now and in the fall full time can you give us a little bit because i see there's some professional development funding here can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing on professional development for uh behaviors so that we make sure that we meet all the timelines for the restraining seclusion regulation certainly and with that question i'll

092invite mr bloom into the room our director of special education instruction he provides key leadership in collaboration with deborah scott who is our director of intervention and prevention around restraint and seclusion mr bloom would you provide an update to the board on pending pd and where we are relative supporting our new policy around restraint exclusion yes thank you dr boyd so as a result of the new policy on restraint and seclusion we did have professional development that was provided to staff instructional staff in all schools prior to january 1st which was level 1 training on pre-crisis de-escalation we also had advanced training that was provided to an administrator and members of school teams within our school buildings the advanced training is provided via in fairfax county through man system training and or professional crisis management

093or pcm training this training provides the techniques involved for de-escalation as well as if staff needed to physically intervene they would be able to do that in a safe manner a majority of those courses focused on de-escalation pre-crisis relationship building communication skills and a smaller portion of the training is the actual physical interaction techniques that staff would engage with students in order to keep students and staff safe in an emergency situation also as far as training initiatives we have partnered as many of you know with dr ross green on his collaborative and proactive solutions approach and i've been in communication with dr greene and we've got a couple of dates that are set on our calendar april 13th dr greene will be meeting with some of our central office office behavioral support members our behavior

094intervention teachers our applied behavior analysis coaches and some of our special education central office behavioral support team and then on april 19th dr green will be meeting in the morning with a number of our school-based administrators as well as our public day administrators our css site administrators and also the afternoon with select instructional staff which includes teachers and instructional assistants these meetings will inform a more comprehensive plan that we'll be working with dr greene on to scale up and provide some division-wide training in collaborative and proactive solutions another initiative that we've piloted at burke school is the ukuru methodology this again is a trauma-informed approach that teaches staff information related to trauma informed education de-escalation and also provides staff with tools and resources necessary to diffuse potential situations where students may become physically aggressive and

095they're able to do that in a safe way to minimize the use of physical restraint and seclusion we also have a number of trainings that provided that are school-based by our behavior intervention teachers our aba coaches all of the training that they provide uh is provided virtually this school year and we'll be expanding some of that training that we can for face-to-face interactions right now they are in schools providing job-embedded coaching with staff for students who are experiencing behavioral challenges and we continue to provide that level of support both in the virtual environment and in the environment so this those just a few of the initiatives around professional development that we're continuing to provide and uh we'll continue to work together with our other departments and our school-based administrators so that as we look at

096the calendar for the summer and next school year we're providing opportunities to scale up this training division-wide thank you mr bloom that's very helpful and since you mentioned the summer training and what to expect this summer i apologize for not sending this question earlier but i would appreciate if somebody can address either tonight or in the next couple of weeks the plans for extended school year in support of our students as well as how we will be using the american relief act funds that have targeted funding for our special needs population for summer programming certainly and thank you mr corbett sanders i'll invite mr bloom he is our lead for esy to just give us a very brief snippet on esy and dr jane strong to weigh in to provide updates on our plans for

097recovery services uh that will take place on this summer um as well as some of those things that are taking place as we speak thank you dr boyd so i'll begin with esy services so we have been planning really all this school year long for our summer services our extended school year services this summer we are going to be providing both virtual options and in-person options for students both will be five days per week which is a change from last school year where we were providing virtual services only for four days per week and so we're happy to be able to expand that to a five day per week program and offer choice for parents in terms of their students attending either virtual or in person we'll be holding our our school-based services in 16

098sites we have 13 elementary sites and we also have three secondary sites and then our public day sites burke school he and kilmer center as well as cedar lane school and quanda road school will be providing their own summer services to students with disabilities of course children who may require extended school year outside of the school-based program work together with iep teams to just to determine additional services that might be required again that might fall outside of our scheduled summer program good evening i am going to chime in a little bit for uh how we are planning for our summer recovery services and some of our relief funds are being used to fund summer programming for students with disabilities whose iep team has determined that the student qualifies for a recovery program these services will

099be provided in uh some of the same schools where esy will be located and on a small scale there there are some plans for some recovery services at base elementary schools iep teams are hard at work working with families to identify the students and the areas for which they need recovery and the dates and times for those services that work is ongoing and i know that our school principals and our special education teachers are quickly trying to get these plans in place and we are staffing our program for the summer recovery academy this is mike again i'll also mention that for members of our community who would like additional information on extended school year services our public webpage has all of the sites that will be providing esy services as well as bell schedules if

100you go to the fcps webpage and do a search for esy or extended school year services you can have access to many more details regarding our summer services thank you that was very helpful thank you are there any other board members wishing to ask a question before i take my turn ms eisenheiser please go ahead thank you just briefly i appreciate this um great summary and and i have many questions but i'm not going to ask all of them tonight and hopefully we'll catch up in a moment but i had a couple questions in the narrative that accompanied the powerpoint i noticed that there was a couple of um statements made about paraprofessional training the right to participate in state assessment systems and data regarding lea that um that goes to the state so and

101i'm happy to follow up with you in another time but i was curious if you could talk a little more about the paraprofessional training that we do as well as when it talks about the right to participate in state assessment systems does this include alternative assessment systems and the third question from lea is do you know what our recent status is on indicator five dr boyd yes i'm sorry for the delay it took a while for my my uh camera to catch all of them there's a lot of questions i threw at you so i apologize for that no worries no worries we do have some information um when you talk about indicator um five and indicator six we share some information regarding um the lre specifically as it relates to our students who are

102educated in k-12 settings and we do have comparable data regarding lre for our preschool students and we can certainly uh provide that information for you and you broke up just a little bit and i apologize for asking you to repeat the first part of your question but i don't think i completely caught it first the first one was about paraprofessional training as required i was just curious if we could elaborate a little bit on what paraprofessional training we provide to our paraprofessionals who are working with our special education students sure sure um and then mike bloom can certainly add on um but as a result of some house bill guidance we have to have um specific training for our pair of professionals who are supporting students with autism there's a variety of ways that that

103particular training can take place but it really gets that ensuring that persons are knowledgeable of how to work and support students with autism characteristics of autism and understanding the various dynamics around supporting those student populations but mr bloom if you'll talk a little bit more about how that's been done in fcps um to share with the board and miss rashness asmr hauser at this time sure thank you dr boyd so our applied behavior analysis program provides training to instructional instructional assistants and paraprofessionals who are working with students with autism as dr boyd mentioned and we've created a number of modules that paraprofessionals can access of course pre-kobid we were providing a lot of in-person training on the fundamentals of aba on verbal behavior support and behaviors supporting curriculum as paraprofessionals work in our enhanced autism

104classrooms our secondary classrooms our preschool autism classrooms and we've also provided virtual training since covid uh in a number of those modules as well so as dr boyd mentioned it is a requirement we've had to transition a lot of that training from the in-person module to the virtual modules in addition we've also provided our paraprofessionals with training around the reduction of restraint and seclusion so all of the same requirements for our instructional staff around the level one training where we straighten seclusion our paraprofessionals have taken that training and are required to take that training and then we also provide level 2 advanced training for identified paraprofessionals who are working directly with students who may require the use of physical restraint and or seclusion in addition to that our central office team our aba coaches our

105behavior intervention teachers also provide job embedded coaching and assistance and school-based professional development to paraprofessionals around instructional best practices supporting students within general ed and self-contained special education classrooms and at the request of building administrators we can also provide shoulder to shoulder coaching sessions with our paraprofessionals we do also focus uh very often on our new paraprofessionals new to fcps new to teaching and new to our classrooms so that again we can provide an additional layer of support and professional development as they begin their careers or as they enter fairfax county public schools working with our students with disabilities great thank you just a couple questions to follow up um first you had said that the level one is required regarding the um sort of reducing student behavior but in terms of the aba and

106vb training that you provide um one of that is mandatory mandatory and what are that involves i guess pre-covered sort of practicing the skills because with aba and vb a lot of it is practicing as opposed to learning but really what is mandated for our paraprofessionals in that training well this the state mandate certain components to be covered within the training and so our aba program has identified and they they've done a crosswalk with the requirements from the state of virginia and so any of our paraprofessionals who participate in our fundamentals of aba training as well as our verbal behavior training they will be receiving the required training as required by the state of virginia but you're right the in-person training provided additional opportunities for uh participation for you know looking more specifically and working

107in small groups around some of the techniques and some of the aba methodology we're still able to do that in the virtual environment we do you use videos in a lot of that training to show examples of some of the aba techniques with students and teachers and instructional assistants within the classroom our aba team over the years has videotaped a number of scenarios and situations that they utilize during that training and so once the pandemic hit we did try to enhance our training so that we would include more of those opportunities for staff to be able to see in action some of the techniques that are used within the classroom setting great thank you i appreciate that i guess i didn't quite answer the question of which of that part is mandated but we can

108follow up online on that one not just what mandates with the state but which of those trainings are mandated which are not for our ias but i can follow up with you offline on that the last question i guess was about state assessments and the right to participate in state assessments i had asked that one as a second one if i broke up then dr boyd when i asked that one sure so um and if i'm not fully addressing your question please let me know so um yes our students with disabilities do have the right to participate in our state assessments and we do have a variety of ways as you know which they can participate um whether that be the standards of learning or whether they participate in our virginia alternate assessment program and

109that is something that we work to ensure particularly when students are enrolled in those sol courses that they are given those opportunities to participate in those state assessments as are their peers without disabilities so that did that address your question i just wanted to clarify that that right is um not just sol assessments but any assessments correct so we're talking about vision wide assessments correct okay thank you i appreciate your time and your answers i appreciate that thank you thank you dr boyd are there any other school board members wishing to speak uh miss mclaughlin yes um my question is to dr brabrand and dr boyd i don't know if it's relevant to the presentation but i wanted to pick up a little bit where my colleague ms corbett sanders had asked some questions about

110statistically where we're looking at our student populations where we're either seeing over representation of student certain student populations compared to underrepresentation to the general population if that kind of analysis gets done on the annual basis because again a lot of this leads to better delivery of services my concern being that we know over time we hear from families how they can access special education services and that some families in our communities are afforded the opportunity of not just having english as their first language but whether they have the financial means to have advocates or other accesses to even attorneys to help them and accessing special education and so when i think about our annual review of special education services what weighs on my mind is how do we as a system continuously improve and ensure

111that every child regardless of background and circumstance can access the special education services they need so if if my question is really outside the bounds of the report then my apologies if it's tangentially connected and especially to what ms corbett sanders said then uh that would be what's weighing most of my mind with the report tonight sure so um thank you so much for the question so one of the things uh we do always want to be mindful as we look at our eligibility practices our identification and evaluation practices we always want to be mindful um that we're not having as you said those um disproportionate whether it's over representation or underrepresentation and so there are some um state indicators that have each school division to evaluate that process and looking at their their systems

112but also the things that we're doing is um we share some information with you but we can also go back and calculate risk ratios as we would look at um different students based on racial and ethnicity to the to share with schools to share with you all as our community if there are situations where one particular racial or ethnic group is more likely to be identified as a student with a disability um than others again those as we looked at our our data for this year compared to our fall membership um we're showing under representation in the area or i should i shouldn't use the word underrepresentation a lower representation of our students who identify as asian and a higher representation with our students who identify as hispanic and our students who identify as white

113um being eligible for special education services but we can certainly provide more detailed information um using some risk ratios and working with our our partners and the chief equity officers uh office to be able to really look more closely at those practices further i appreciate that dr boyd and i know as we are so fortunate to have you having joined the system that you'll help bring fresh eyes to uh the work we do here what maybe you've learned from other school divisions but again i think where my concern is that as a system until we start to sort of peel back the onion of looking at what our student our special education population is who's who's in it who do we hear from maybe even our ombudsman's office of families saying that they're they're not

114being able to access special education services uh we certainly have through the psls and our due process um uh processes already in place where families are saying to us we're trying um to get special education services and we can't and finally i would just share with my colleagues and dr braeburn that we also have situations and i'll include my own family where if you've never had an introduction and understanding of special education you may not even know to ask for your child to be evaluated and uh you know one of my own sons it wasn't until high school that as i started to understand and learn some things about special education needs and uh you know it but my husband and i were in a situation where we could get that evaluation done and and

115i just can't help but think about how many unidentified children we may have and how that contributes to some of the achievement gaps that we we wrestle with and want to try and and close so anyway that's that's sort of i would say overall when i think about our special education work and our annual review of uh how we're utilizing these dollars just what are we doing in our identification practices and i think that requires that deeper analysis so thank you thank you miss mclaughlin i'm seeing that there are no other speakers i will quickly take a turn i just have one quick question but before i ask i do want to say dr boyd i would be quite interested in what you've just talked about regarding using the risk ratio to evaluate student representation

116as we know this is a process that is utilized quite frequently in the disciplinary process to determine over-representation and i think such data would really may really uncover some information that will help improve our processes so i look forward to that work so thank you for bringing that to our attention my question it's really a very quick one and now i cannot find my page oh there it is regarding the ci the ceis the coordinated early intervention services you mentioned that there was a set aside of 15 how did we arrive to that percentage i'm just curious because i i'm not i don't understand if you can give me some additional information there yes thank you dr anderson so 15 is the maximum amount that a school division can allocate to use for those cis

117funds out of their grant awards so that's the maximum amount that we can use from federal special ed dollars to support students who do not have ieps um some school divisions are required to allocate that 15 we're not required because we have not been found to be disproportionate um but so we could have said we will allocate seven percent or ten percent um but the benefit of allocating that maximum amount is to really be able to intervene early and often um because we track those services that are that are provided through cis ceis um to determine if those students are subsequently identified for special education related services the goal of utilizing those ceis funds would be to provide the appropriate supports such that students would not have to be subsequently provided so it's it's engaging

118early and allocating those resources early um to have that impact on outcomes oh thank you so much for that information dr brabrand if i could i just want to say one of the things out of this report right we're voluntarily putting 15 of those federal dollars for that ceis to do that proactive so i do want the board and community to think about don't just look to see whether the numbers for special ed services are expanding and maybe one of the things we can do better is talk about how we're doing this earlier intervention so that we can actually meet students and help them while they're starting the struggle and they may not need to have the special education interventions later and we need to talk up you know maybe we can do even more

119to talk about what we're doing to lean in earlier and really help nip some of these issues with students earlier on so that they're not in need of as much special education or any special education depending so it's balanced of course some some families and kids some kids obviously need it no matter what but we are trying to as i want you to see in this annual plan being proactive being voluntary and the federal government is really trying to say two to us spend that money earlier in the gen ed setting and do those interventions for kids early on and we're doing that and maybe we can talk about that in the future work session a little bit more about what that those cis activities look like no absolutely thank you for that early intervention

120is key because the the gap only grows as they proceed up in the grades those were the last of my questions at least for now seeing that there are no other questions i will just remind our audience that this um plan will be voted upon by the board on april 22nd at this time i will turn the agenda um the rather the gavel over to miss picarsky to take us through the consent agenda items okay thank you our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of

121any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing and seeing no objection the cassette agenda is approved new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items tonight but action is scheduled at a future meeting new the new business items are on the screen thank you very much miss picarski at this time we are up to agenda item 7.01 superintendent matters i call him dr brabrand for his remarks thank you very much chairman anderson members of the school board and community um just really want to go over a couple of things uh very briefly with you first of all i hope everyone had a wonderful spring break um you know and

122we're really approaching the moment where we look back on a year where we were a year ago at this moment um and where we are now and and certainly uh having that perspective as we move forward we are much uh in a much better place than we were a year ago and we know there's still more work to do in our school system as we serve students going forward but i do want to share with you that we've shared some promising news of course over the last several weeks with the revised cdc guidance and after spring break we shared that we were moving to three feet and using that to expand opportunities for students for in-person instruction using first our mts model mtss model for those kids who are most struggling and then looking at

123kids who were in for two days providing four days of instruction as staffing and school capacity allows i do want to clarify we provided some additional news today the cdc guidance says three feet for elementary regardless of community transmission but for middle and high it says uh only uh if you are not in high transmission we've been in high community transmission but this week it's dipped down from high into a lower category of substantial and so we're excited that we're going to be able to go to three feet at our middle and high which is going to open up additional opportunities not just at the elementary level but at the middle and high school level so we're very excited just a reminder i know everybody's excited i know everybody uh wants to know more about

124those opportunities principals will be communicating out directly and families will be contacted directly by the child school so please give patience and grace to our school folks as they reach out to parents and right now please don't be calling in the the school folks are going through the data now and will be reaching out directly to your child and it will look different from school to school one of the big reminders is that the the in-person uh percentage of uh interest in our schools has ranged from in person in some schools to 80 percent in person and others so those are dramatic differences one of the things we need to do and we know we need to do as we expand these in-person opportunities is to contin continue to build confidence with our community and

125our families and our students for all of our families and kids to be prepared to return to school in person in the fall the cdc director you may have seen today talked about she believes all school systems in the united states will be uh in uh in a place to have in-person instruction we've already communicated that we'll have five days of in-person instruction and we're also seeing some promising news again we're going to stay up with the latest updates around vaccinations we know we've done a massive job of vaccinations here for our community but we're getting some data that the cdc director shared today that maybe by mid-may vaccinations may be available for students as uh at the age as early as 12. so we're certainly going to be in discussions dr boyd who you

126heard earlier tonight and working with our health department to do the kind of vaccination campaign that we were able to do with staff we really want to reach out to our families and our kids so we can get ready for the summer and the fall again there's a lot of continues to be a lot of moving parts and again ultimately we want to have vaccinations available for all of us students all the way down to pre-k kids through 12th grade so we're going to continue to work with the health department and bring you information we have a return to school work session coming up in just a few more weeks and we'll be having more information on a host of things around return to school and we'll be very excited to be sharing those updates

127with you the other thing i just wanted to mention um is uh as we come into april here and we're expanding instruction for in person that may a lot of our work in may will be around testing we are having sol testing uh we want uh everyone to know that that is still part of the expectation from the state and from the federal government um and we are encouraging uh uh our folks that testing is in person and schools are really working hard to arrange their schedules for the testing that's required to come in while still being following all the social distancing policies and safety mitigation policies families do have the right as they always have had to refuse the sol test but the state is providing a remote access test that is like the

128sol it will not be it will not be the sol it will be a separate assessment because the state is trying to make sure that we're capturing data on the kids that come in to test in person but also those that remain virtual so that can really help us in fairfax county but around the commonwealth really inform instruction for the fall um and so i wanted you to be aware of that and i also just while we're talking about may after the month of may we'll be getting to june and graduation and i do want to communicate to you that we have gotten very very positive news from governor northam through our advocacy and some advocacy around other parts of the state but i want you to know that fairfax was front and center with

129the secretary of education the state superintendent and the governor's office to provide in-person graduation at all of our high schools more information will be coming out soon i know i i see miss eisemar heiser who like me is a parent of the class of 2021 and uh having the opportunity again socially distance we're going to need to follow guidelines and we will and there will be information that again school principals will be sharing out in the weeks ahead around those opportunities so we're very excited about all of that and uh again thank you uh very much and i just want to do a final minor thanks to dr boyd uh and her team for tonight's conversation i know we started i think under um karen corbett sanders leadership as chair a couple years ago to

130bring this annual report and really something that we've always done internally and building the transparency for our community to see a report how's the money spent what are the trends over four or five years and i know some of our board members continue to talk about data and data in context and really lifting this up to be more transparent and have the conversations that were had tonight and we look forward to being able to provide more information on risk ratios and other things that you brought up the professional development and training that you brought up tonight so thank you all and i'll see you guys really soon thank you very much dr brabrand now we are up to agenda item 8.01 the board committee reports i will invite miss sizemore heiser from pec for her

131report followed by ms keys gemara from the audit committee great thank you madam chair the public engagement committee met this month in two ways one we presented at the work session recently about our citizen participation and public participation revised draft policy and great got some great feedback from our fellow colleagues on this policy we will now take it back and revise it with the feedback we got take it back to peck one more time and then bring it back to our board for a vote on our revised citizen participation but i'm just want to give a big shout out to my committee members for um karen corbett sanders carl frisch and abraramesh for all their hard work on that citizen participation policy i think we did a lot and thank you also to our clerk

132who provided some great information eileen mulderberg i think we got a lot done in a few months on revising that we also continued our work on our advisory committees we are in the process of doing the work charged to us by the forum topic to update the policies and procedures of our advisory committees in accordance of course with applicable state law so we have started work on what we're calling informally an operating manual of sorts for our advisory committees and we looked at four main topics each of our members reported out on research four main topics one is membership roles and responsibilities the other was the structure and expectations of the end of the year report ms corbett sanders presented us her research and work on the structure of the end of the report mr

133mesh provide us information on her research on membership roles and responsibilities and then we discuss those at length and our takeaways from that is two of us are going to work on drafting out those two sections of the report and then our next meeting mr frisch will talk to us more about his research on membership criteria and i will present my research on policies and procedures of the meetings and suggestions for school board interactions and so we'll work on those sections of the operating manual we're hoping to have a draft of that done as sort of a update to bring to the full board i'm hoping in june but we'll just see how this work goes and then we continued our conversation with helen lloyd about how to better engage our public and that's going

134to be ongoing work about just how do we have better and more robust engagement with our public so that's a report from pec thank you thank you massimo hi so miss keys namara thank you yes we had our monthly audit committee meeting this month and we really covered two primary topics uh the first was the fidelity of implementation audit report which which our auditor general uh has been working on for several months this looks at the board processes and how uh board motions um directives to the superintendent and cetera are monitored uh it was quite an extensive report and it took up most of our meeting because we do realize how we are able to follow the actions of the board is helps us to better serve the community we were not able to finalize

135that report but we will be receiving additional information to make sure that we actually have those structures in place we also talked about the fidelity of implement i'm sorry the potential audit topics which all of the board members have received an email regarding because this would be our our work plan for the following year uh and this is how we um address the concerns for you know how our auditor general will allocate her work so we look forward to the next meeting where we will be able to continue to work on how we monitor and track board actions which is at the crux of how we do our job thank you thank you ms keys gamora i'd like to invite miss cohen to provide an update on cpdc committee thank you very much cpdc met

136last night that's our comprehensive planning development committee and agreed that the remainder of this year will be used to review and work to implement the recommendations from the schools committee of the planning commission our next meeting will focus on student yield calculation and the proffers formula thanks thank you very much miss cohen and now we will turn it over to ms pakarski who will provide us with two reports one she will provide an update on the forum that was held earlier this week and secondly as the vice chair of skipped she will also provide an update from that committee thank you dr anderson mine are just a little bit lengthier but i will try to go fast the board discussed two forum topics this week on april 6. the first one was presented by ms

137mesh school board member at large regarding our religious accommodations policy ms omesh was seeking board consent consensus to send this policy along with the associated regulation to the governance committee for review she advocated that in order to be a competitive school system with a caring culture fcps must revise its leave policies that have resulted in inconsistent discretion for supervisors when it comes to approval fcps leadership mentioned that this work of revising the regulation is already underway since it is linked to our calendar resulting in a discussion of the timeline for the revisions and a desire for alignment between policy and regulation board members also requested that leadership look at how principals can be provided necessary resources to allow them to better support staff with their religious accommodations and and make these uh more accessible the

138board unanimously approved the request to send this gov to governance the second form topic was presented by dr anderson and myself and requested the board direct superintendent to create a regulation for unstructured outdoor breaks aka recess for middle school students this forum topic was actually introduced by former school board member sandy evans in 2018 at the request of parents including me at the time for middle schools to provide students with a minimum of 15 minutes of unstructured outdoor break time daily of course weather permitting this break time would not be withheld to uh for any academic performance or behavior issues and we noted that mental health and academic benefits of these breaks and the overwhelming research to support the need for all students to have them many jurisdictions have made these middle school breaks an

139option including our neighboring of loudoun county school board members expressed general support and noticed that this would increase opportunities for students to reconnect with outdoor spaces and be more inclusive of our special education students [Music] there were questions about and and wondering if state law was an impediment and that will be followed up of course and we also requested that staff look at what guidance principles could be provided for possible changes in the upcoming school year this was also approved unanimously my second report was about skipped fairfax county successful children and youth policy team met yesterday miss mclaughlin and i attended there was discussions after the executive meeting in the prior month that the skipped would maintain its emphasis on school readiness behavioral health and community schools expansion the executive comm committee also elevate elevated

140workforce readiness as a fourth area of focus for this gift the goal of wednesday's meeting was therefore to ensure that for each of these areas of focus there was there were clear expectations for future work uh the full skipped heard updates on the accomplishments under each area for the fiscal year 2020 and 21 and i'll actually be providing a very detailed written overview via email on the updates that were provided to us in the meeting and it will also be posted on the skipped page of the fairfax county website for the public to access we broke out into breakout rooms to discuss the priority areas and then reconvened on school readiness some of the key accomplishments this year included implementation of the early development instrument created creation of a dedicated children's fund and participation in

141the development of virginia's unified early childhood system the groups discussed how to be more equity focused and inclusive of our families and include them in decision making for their children the need for more agile programming so we can expand opportunities and the need to further explore existing spaces and community partnerships on behavioral health discussions were centered around the need to develop a new children's behavioral plan of action and how skip can be more focused if we narrowed it down to about three to five goals um and and how we are res and responding to the cover 19 crisis there was also discussion around doing a youth services mapping taking a pause to look at what we have versus what is needed affordability gaps and the need for case management to aid in access to services

142the group wanted to ensure that all services were accessible equitable and affordable on community schools there were there was a discussion and questions about expansion of of schools and a framework to do so as well as training expansion it was noted that wrap around services are key to community schools and and important especially during this time also shared with us was that glasgow middle school has been identified as a community school and funded by communities and schools of northern virginia and while miss mclaughlin and i had not heard of this before we we have asked staff to provide us and you with an update on on glasgow on workforce readiness there was a discussion around barriers to employment opportunities for some students and that many of these students are male english language learners dr presidio

143introduced the work that fcps has done in closing the gaps and welcome conversations about how to continue improving improvement in a strategic intentional manner uh the skipped has been asked by the county to help lead my brother's keeper challenge an initiative started by president obama to address persistent opportunity gaps for boys and young men of color there has not been there haven't been any detailed conversations or discussions at the board of supervisors level yet and this is really just the beginning of a conversation of how skip could be involved but it was stressed that any involvement should be data driven and not stray from the established focus areas of the skip committee it was noted by ms mclaughlin that our board should have a more in-depth introduction to this new initiative as we consider involvement

144the executive committee of skift will be meeting in may and i encourage anyone with questions to reach out to ms mclaughlin or myself and i see you want to add something miss mclaughlin go ahead just briefly that uh yeah we were informed during that meeting that glasgow actually was named a community school back in 2019 so even before covid and so this runs a pattern dr brabrand that when miss kofax and i were on the skip we didn't know about sandberg and mount vernon woods being selected and so i really would encourage your team to please let the board know i i recognize that this is a joint venture i recognize that it typically comes from outside funding sources but it's it's difficult to be a board member on this joint task force and this

145is now not only those three but we also found out in the meeting that hutchinson elementary and herndon middle school are now next in line for um community schools and i am a massive champion for the community schools and been doing that for for gosh i think eight years now so i'm thrilled about it but i would really like for the board to be viewed as an important um body to just know when this is happening and so i don't think anybody did anything intentionally but it's just a pattern that just keeps happening and i'd like to see us not be in that situation dr brabrand please go ahead thanks ms mclaughlin and you know i will look into it i will tell you that i have had staff check that we did do a

146brave brand briefing about it i'll have to go back and pull when that was again we're talking well over now almost two years ago but we need to obviously continue to be sure that we're communicating this out and i also think around this time we may have been having a transition um on our folks who were helping manage that at the senior executive level our chief equity officer and we were in transition i i believe but again we'll go back we i do believe we did put something in a bray brand briefing and as you said it's exciting work but we need to be sure we're keeping the board and uh in tune with it and uh and i'm glad that skip is really getting a chance to sort of come back now in this

147pandemic and re-talk across county and school lines because the whole idea here is community partnerships can really help deepen the work of our schools and give even kids more rich opportunities so we'll work on the communication and sorry about that part and thanks for sharing it uh sharing it with me uh this evening that's okay i i just want to be clear though because i i'm not saying you didn't try it's just i would then put to my colleagues community schools are something that fairfax county is more than a decade behind montgomery county we know it's one of the best ways to get vital services into communities in need and so i really would prefer not be in a brae brand briefing but that it's actually when i think about the number of presentations we

148get nothing could be more vital than this system and this board being actively engaged knowledgeable and understanding of why community schools matter so just maybe you something you guys can talk about and shares but i think we need to elevate the importance of it thank you thank you thank you miss mclaughlin and dr brabrand if i can just kind of plug in as the magisterial district member who represents glasgow i would love to have access to that old brabrand briefing because i would like to be able to support to be supportive in that effort our next presenter to speak about cip will return back to ms cohen thank you so much earlier today ms omash and myself met with our board of supervisors colleagues supervisors faust and smith on our joint cip committee we are

149making great progress towards i think a truly unified vision of facilities in both our counties and our schools we did agree that we're going to increase the frequency of our meetings so that we're prepared for to bring recommendations for the fy budget we're also looking forward to and i'm throwing this in your lap here at the dios dr anderson but looking forward to scheduling a joint retreat with both boards in the coming months where we can share the work from this committee i am on it thank you ma'am for that work now we are up to item 9.01 board matters i will invite our i'm so sorry did i miss yeah uh if i can just add a clarification it was stated that carl sandberg middle school was a community school it is not it's

150actually walt whitman is the community school so just so that the community knows that it is it is one of the two not the uh thank you ms corbin sanders for that clarification and i apologize i keep missing your hand today i think it's the color i'm missing it so i apologize we are up to board matters i will be inviting our colleagues three at a time to provide any information they'd like for the community to hear and i will not be introducing each single person just the groups so please just be on the lookout we will start with mr frisch miss jenna koufax and miss keys gamara mr frisch ms thernak kofax and miss keys gamara thank you dr anderson over the past few weeks i've had the opportunity to visit several schools including

151stenwood elementary oakton elementary mantua elementary pine springs elementary luther jackson middle school where we are right now kilmer middle oakton high with my colleague stella picarski and false church high as well i've enjoyed talking with our principals with our teachers and staff and students and hearing their thoughts about our return to in-person learning their successes and how they are addressing the challenges as well on monday i joined about 85 of our teachers and staff for professional development with cultural proficiency module 5 led by tar hewen an fcps educational specialist for the equity and culturally responsiveness team in the fcps office of professional learning and family engagement we discussed privilege power bias and a number of other issues it was a phenomenal session and i strongly encourage my colleagues to sign up at the next opportunity

152that's it for me tonight thank you thank you and i want to thank the many people who come out and speak to us directly as well as those who write us letters on all of the issues that are before our board it's a privilege to serve the league district and more broadly fairfax county as a school board member and it is responsibility that i do not take lightly this has been particularly true this year with respect to my decisions on how best to manage our schools with my colleagues during the coveted pandemic in my district depending on the school about one-third to one-half of our families have chosen in-person learning the other one-half to two-thirds have chosen to remain virtual for those i've spoken to or who have spoken to their teachers or administrators they

153have chosen to stay virtual for various reasons some because they have personally seen the devastating reality associated with covid they may have experienced death of family members or friends they know someone experiencing the devastating long-term effects of covet survivors or they are afraid that their students getting coveted and being asymptomatic carriers and bringing it home to elderly or immune compromised family members i cannot state more plainly or more clearly these are the reasons i for one board member i as one board member have been so cautious in returning children in person no one wanted covid we all want students back in school we all want to be back to normal but for the past year covet has been in charge a global pandemic that has killed 573 819 in the u.s as of today i

154appreciate that some individuals tolerance of risk is higher than others but please do not assume unethical intentions the health and safety of our students staff and families has always been a top priority it has been because we care because we wanted to keep you safe until we believe the risk was lower based upon science and data and now with revised guidelines and a growing vaccinated population this is beginning to happen if you have been fortunate enough not to be touched personally by covet if you do not know a friend or a relative who has died from covet please consider yourself blessed not all of us have been so lucky the decisions we've made are not because we didn't care it's truly the opposite it's because we do care and we care very deeply thank you

155i wanted to start off by acknowledging that april is national child abuse prevention month and i am so grateful to our community that has been such an integral part of making sure that our children are safe our teachers and staff members and leaders as well as our families working together this is a issue that is near and dear to my heart as i have dedicated dedicated much of my legal career to protecting children and so i did want to acknowledge this as well as to give the phone number for the child abuse hotline which is 703 325 which is the number in fairfax county now on a personal note i wanted to thank um my colleagues members for the community staff members fcps for all the cards and flowers and texts and phone calls um

156an expression of condolences on the recent passing of my dad um this has been a very difficult time for my family and your thoughts and prayers mean a lot to us thank you thank you miss keys gamora our next three speakers miss mclaughlin massaismohiser and miss tolin miss mclaughlin miss seismoheiser and miss tilwood thank you i just want to uh tell dr brabrand i've really appreciated your principles um being so welcoming as we board members go to visit our schools in our districts and i continue to have those scheduled through the month of april it's been very helpful to listen and hear about what has been going so well as we've welcomed students back into our schools what challenges they may face and how that helps us as a board work with you um i

157also want to say that uh seeing the smiles uh through the the masks you can see his child's eyes just light up when you ask them what it's like to be back in person and bar none they all say how much they're loving it and it's it's really exciting to see that after coming through this pandemic that we are making those steps to bring that joy and light back into the kid's eyes i also want to i guess add a little bit to what ms kofax said because i've said this before maybe a month or so ago as a body the school board we individually respect each other very much we recognize that we bring diverse perspectives and that's how you hopefully arrive at your best decision making and while we will not always agree

158one thing i know for certain is that every one of us all 12 of us along with our superintendent's team care deeply about every single child and about our staff and so when there are presumptions that our actions are hurting one stakeholder group or another stakeholder group it's not helpful to our community trying to come through this pandemic together so i absolutely encourage everyone to continue to share their thoughts but to consider doing it in a way that we model for our children what it means to have respectful exchanges of ideas and concerns but there's not it doesn't necessitate attacking people for whatever they presumed motives or intentions it's it's not productive and i hope that when people again look at how we 12 talk and speak to one another and how we also you

159know engage in asking the hard questions we are also trying to model mutual respect for one another and we're not always perfect i know i'm not um but it is certainly a goal and so i would ask for that and then finally i would just say for anyone who's watching tonight's meeting as dr brabrand noted his team is working very hard that we can bring back as many students as possible by april 20th for four days a week and that will vary building by building but i also hope and this is my personal plea to every principal in this school system if you are struggling to meet that goal of four days a week please please reach out to regent offices reach out to our superintendent deputy superintendent i'm concerned that i'm getting messages from

160families that they're being told it's going to be too hard to handle lunch and so they're not going to be able to meet that four days and that is i think unfortunately creating anxiety in our families as we want to give grace to come through these next two weeks and how we transition and expand opportunities and learning so i would just say that again we really are all in this together but we are he in order to do that we have to be able to lean on one another and we have to let each other know where challenges are and uh and look for the solutions at every turn so i thank my colleagues for the indulgences as i shared my remarks tonight thank you um i will try to be brief it's been a

161great month or so um being able to go into classes and see our students in the buildings and smiling and the teachers engaging and hearing from them how great it feels to be back in the building but also to see the interactions the teachers still have with our virtual students and it's been really great to sit in on the flip side in the virtual classrooms in these concurrent classrooms and see that engagement going on and i challenge us as we are bringing more students into the building to keep the student perspective in the center of that whether they're virtual students or in-person students and keep finding ways for the students to connect with each other and with their school community so we can rebuild and re-engage our school communities to be as strong as they

162are and to find ways to bring the fun into school you know and continue to do that whether it's in person or in virtual keep finding ways to find the fun because if we take what's happened in covid and and the the deep difficulties and the heaviness of that we have to acknowledge that but if we let that drive out the fun the joy that we can still find in life and in school that is how we have a disengaged and fractured community so i hope we can still despite the heaviness of this year find the joy and keep the student perspective i want to say i appreciate my colleagues and our leadership team and the words um standing strong in support of our asian american students and staff as someone who is asian american

163i've heard certain words in my own life towards myself and implicit biases and words do matter as we see and words lead to actions that can hurt so i appreciate the strong support and i wanted to acknowledge it is both autism acceptance month and military child celebration month and we have a large military family i have a large military family contingent in my neighborhood and i know how resilient our military children are so i wanted to stop and recognize that and i wanted to say for autism acceptance month i am glad we've gone from awareness to acceptance but i hope the next step is to go to redefining diversity to include the lived norms of those with autism as part of diversity so we no longer have autism acceptance month but we just celebrate autism

164as part of diversity so i am glad to see that additional step and i just want to share a couple really um cool things i met with the girls boy scouts of america troop recently and i was very impressed at the girls very thoughtful questions but my favorite question was when they asked me what was my most impactful class i took in high school and my answer hands down without hesitation was theater because that is the class where i learned all the soft skills and portrait graduate skills that really have led to me to be successful in college in law school and in my career and i can't tell you a single thing about biology but i can tell you that i can rock an interview thanks to my theater class so that was my

165answer to the girl scouts and i wanted to end with one thing that to pick up from my colleagues said about the tone and the divisiveness we all have the best interest of our school system and our community in mind whether we agree on the path forward or not and i wanted to say that recently i sat and listened to two groups of students who had felt very hurt by each other's actions and words and i sat and i listened to them the one group that felt hurt reach out to the group the other group the other group being very open to listening to the first group that was hurt and the two of them in very raw open honest and curious conversations come to a place where they found a compromise and moved forward

166as friends and i sat and i told those students that they were real models for what the rest of us could and should be so with everything that our students have gone through this year i am so impressed with the lessons they have learned thank you um i'm happy to announce that work am i happy to announce that we have a new principal for spring hill elementary school um maria eck is coming to us in the summer when she finishes her work at justice high school a huge thank you to mr sal rivera our interim principal that is willing to stay at spring hill elementary school until she's available um during this month of the military child i want to highlight the work i saw first hand while working for scps the creative and innovative

167stem and environmental education programs at fort belvoir elementary school the dod environmental goals and ethic make fort belvoir a wonderful partner for the fcps gets a green program in addition the military call to service has fort belvoir students sharing their incredible work with students across the region i'm really excited for the opportunity we are giving more of our students to have four days in our school buildings i know many of our students and families need that and i'm happy we are working to provide this i do however want to recognize the herculean task we are asking of our school-based staff to make this happen our principals are planning details for classrooms for bus rides for lunch service and more while they're fueling many questions from our families our technology specialists are installing and moving equipment

168from room to room our teachers are reformatting lessons and learning groups in order to have almost 50 percent of our students still in virtual learning and to bring in some for four days and some for two days we are asking our teachers to manage classrooms that have some number of in-person students tuesday and wednesday some other number thursday and friday some virtual all of those days some virtual some of those days it's really hard and it's exhausting but our teachers are amazing and they're stepping up to do it i have been visiting concurrent classrooms the past weeks to see what the student experience is in those rooms it has been varied but what is consistent is the energy of the teacher always shines through they use classroom management tools to keep in-class at-home students engaged

169and they are keeping students learning even as we move into the fourth quarter of this learning i've learned a lot of algebra calculus science poetry analysis and more i did struggle a little bit i admit with french five but that was my problem not the teacher so to our teachers in particular thank you for offering our students so many needed opportunities and for being creative as we move forward and transition even further in addition i want to congratulate our students for their continued successes even in this unusual year our students are competing regionally and nationally for awards and coming out on top just this past week we announced deca first place winners from mclean high school jackson chadwick and jason in marketing management congratulations to mclean high school sophomore ethan zao for qualifying for the

170united states of america mathematics olympiad for the second year in a row we have national scholastic writing and art winners in janesville gold medalists from mclean high school ellen pan and sarah bowers and erin kang and from tj allison juan has two gold medals and best in grade award and mclean high school student marina q has a silver award and tj students eileen zao and mulan pan also have silver awards and not to be outdone our drainsville staff mclean high school paul stansberry director of student services has been named region 2 outstanding school-based leader and melissa dulick has been named as the region 2 outstanding new teacher congratulations to all of you we're proud of you in janesville thank you miss tollin our next set of speakers miss marin miss cohen and miss corbett sanders

171miss marin miss cohen and miss corbett sanders thank you good evening well i'm certainly aware of the different experiences with availability of in-person learning in schools and hunter mill you know the principle is making determinations on what can be offered based on the very finite limit of space and staffing but i understand the frustration that this raises for some families who aren't receiving an option to increase to four days and i acknowledge the extra work that these additional changes are placing on our teachers and staff in my role i continue trying to provide information to constituents as best as possible so they can make the decisions needed to best support their families in these circumstances i do want to speak briefly to instances and allegations of racism that have been that we've heard about lately

172regarding our football program at fcps and i want to share thoughts and aspects that i'm observing and considering as i've interacted with involved parties my board colleagues and fcbs staff to identify the responsibilities that fcps has to attack racism as a school division that is public in a place of community gathering and employment that we demand respect of all individuals in our schools and community as an educational institution we must nurture children whether they're 7 or 17 on how to coexist in society and how to be tolerant but even better how to be accepting and respectful of others having a commitment to doing the work to eradicate racism in our schools through many approaches which includes fortifying our staff to be anti-racist swiftly identifying situations where racist behaviors occur and being open with the community

173when this happens and implementing clear consequences and learning opportunities when egregious behavior occurs once again this is an instance where what happens in public schools is not the only factor contributing to some students comfort with using racial slurs and bigoted language the solutions that fcps is attempting may not be all inclusive or perfect yet but the solutions are not only fcps's alone to impart families we need your help we need to end racism in our schools and to face a hard truth and educate our children that hate and bigotry of any person has no place here on that note i am planning an upcoming community meeting about racism and bias and curriculum this is leading off of the state's work to update our social studies standards and i welcome 100 mill residents and others to

174to join in the conversation so that we can contribute more comments to the state and scps on how to make our curriculum more anti-racist so you can look on my web page on the official fcps site to sign up for my newsletter and it'll be in there i did have a student town hall before spring break and while i provided an update i was most glad to hear from students on topics that included their experiences on online learning and mental health needs and other topics like bringing in therapy dogs to schools to help with mental health and talking about student government opportunities i'm very excited about the graduation dates i've put some on my calendar i hope it all work out that i can attend i know space will be limited but it's so exciting

175to know that we will have in-person ceremonies this year i did just want to shout out to two particular people or organizations one is a group called vienna foodies and i'm wearing their mask this evening which side this is a group that has grown exponentially during the the covid what started as a way to convene lovers of food locally grew into a movement in vienna of 12 000 people on a facebook page headed by a woman named lydia russo and her friends which has done tremendous work to get food to food insecure families to support our local businesses in vienna that are owned by fcps families and it's really fostering good will around the community and doing fundraisers and engaging other groups like rustic love vienna and so if you're driving around and you see

176a heart sign or magnet know that that's an expression of trying to garner goodwill and keep our economy afloat keep our family businesses running and it's just really a beacon of goodwill in the community so thank you to vienna foodies and also i wanted to congratulate a first grade student who is the new newly published artist in fcps sarah saravan of mcnair lower elementary won the virginia lottery's annual thank a teacher art contest she was one of three students statewide that won and her art will be featured on thank you cards that are going to be sent all over the state for thanking a teacher in the weeks ahead so and finally happy ramadan ramadan mubarak to those observing in the weeks ahead thank you thank you i will continue the train of thanking our

177schools for having us and supporting our students i got to go to liberty middle school south county high school silver brook elementary school and west springfield elementary school in the last couple of weeks and i'm just so appreciative of everything that you all are doing to support our students and everything that our staff is just doing going above and beyond to try to make everything work in a world that just doesn't feel like that is very easy right now i also just wanted to remind everyone that today is yamashoa which is our holocaust remembrance day ellie wiesel said for the dead and the living we must bear witness today we mourn the six million jews and millions of others who were lgbtq disabled roma and senti and as we all say every year never forget

178never again thank you miss cohen and if i can pick up on your very eloquent comments about holocaust remembrance day i want to encourage all of our families to actually have conversations about the holocaust remembrance day and the importance of discussing the impact of hate speech and hate hatred based on somebody's religious affiliation their the color of their skin the person that they love and how that if we don't talk about it and talk about the importance of respecting and including people then we have the risk of repeating the horrors of the holocaust so please i encourage people to have that conversation at home secondly i wanted to talk a little bit about our national library month and that we can't really talk about the importance of national library month without talking about the importance

179of literacy and i wanted to thank the naacp for their letter this week about the importance of having a structured approach to literacy in our schools and the importance for fairfax county to review its practices of literacy and i look forward to having a continued conversation dr brabrand with you and your leadership team about that work third i wanted to follow up on the discussions regarding skipped and the importance of workforce development because of the activities of the cte advisory committee which i am the liaison and i wanted to share with this board and with the community the great successes of our students that have just been winning awards across the state and the nation over the past month in a wide variety of subjects and that includes the cyber patriot teams from tj and

180woodson that placed in the top 10 in the nation for high school teams in cyber security there was also three teams from carson middle school that swept the state finals in cyber security we also had 56 students from the chantilly academy the falls church academy west potomac academy all participating in the health and science and medical health and medical sciences uh state competition in all placing in that uh competition so it just shows that even in this very difficult time of covid that our students are resilient and focused on doing innovative cool things in the area of cte and we should be encouraging them and i'm just so excited to see where else they'll go with these programs i want to give a heads up on april 23rd it's going to be a very big

181day we have the real food for kids we'll be announcing via facebook live the winners of that competition and we will also be having the rededication of the john r lewis high school that evening and so i'm really looking forward to that i also understand that there is the seas environmental earth day power session on that day as well and i hope miss tolling can give more details on that since this is really something that it's on my calendar but i don't know enough so i'm going to let you pick that one up and i'm also going to encourage people once again following up on skip about the importance of head start and the head start enrollment is ongoing as we speak and there are vacancies so please if you know children that could benefit

182from head start encourage their families to enroll thank you thank you ms corbett sanders our next three speakers will be miss omega miss mccarski and myself mr mesh thank you this past monday i was thrilled to join nathan our student representative on our bi-weekly stream along with dr williams our chief equity officer and school community leaders about challenges and opportunities that we can expect to face after this year i've been really excited to see our students returning to school and our staff working really hard to have them feel welcome and to make sure we're fulfilling all the safety protocols to bring them back and and seeing the smiles on their faces has really been a joy in our conversation this past monday we did try to keep it real and i want us to continue

183being alert to the intentional work that continues to be necessary to support our students who may have faced challenges as we look ahead whether that be in academic challenges or in mental health supports which brings me to a huge shout out i'm really proud of our student mental health working group that has been developing solutions for some of the challenges that students have been going through and what they're facing ahead we've been working with staff and are really excited to present some of those soon so stay tuned for that also a huge shout out to all the seniors many of whom have incredible stories of overcoming adversity this past year and are just now solidifying exciting paths ahead with all their college acceptances uh or even paths towards technical and trade opportunities or perhaps even

184gap year programs uh i did want to also uh especially because of the date tomorrow being the commemoration of the end of the civil war uh and then this month being the anniversary of the civil rights act in this country acknowledge and echo some of miss marin's thoughts about what we've been hearing you know just this past week with robinson and marshall before that and on and on of unacceptable stories that we're hearing and at some point we have to make the decision to believe those students who come forward to understand their powerful voices and to stand in solidarity together on the side of what we know to be justice moving forward for our communities so i want to make sure that as a division we continue to think about ways that we're going to

185be very serious about weeding out these challenges and hopefully raising a generation that has a different mindset and mentality i am really excited about an effort i'm working on with some students and and actually some conversations with colleagues and and staff to develop accountability mechanisms it's not enough for us to think that these things are just going to go away because we condemn them but we really have to be intentional about incentivizing and disincentivizing the behaviors that we expect in our division so i look forward to that intentional work and encourage and urge any of my colleagues who are interested in in joining me on that uh to be to be in touch and i look forward to further uh collaborating with all of you on that and finally um i did want to wish

186everybody a blessed ramadan it's going to be a month of reflection there's a lot to think about after this year but hopefully everyone is able to come together as a family starting next tuesday thank you um i i did want to thank oakton high school for such a welcoming um visit uh with mr frisch that we had i guess about a week and a half ago it was nice to see kids being kids and in classrooms and utilizing outdoor spaces it really was a wonderful reminder of you know how things were and how we will continue to try to get back to normal as much normal as possible i also had a wonderful visit with the greenbrier west pta where i was a parent um at that school for a decade so it was nice

187to see old friends to see the new um administration and everything that was happening um over there and to speak with parents uh and i thank them for that invitation i also had the opportunity to be meet with um cappanova which is a newer group of asian american parents and and community members who have really come together in the last few months out of concern of where we are as a community as a society and wanted to have a voice and wanted to share their experiences and wanted to really get involved in a more intentional manner in our school system and have their voices heard and their stories told so i look forward to more conversations and more work that we have to do in the areas that some of my colleagues have brought tonight

188and that's it everybody have a good night thank you thank you miss picarski um i will try to be very brief as i know i stand between us and um going home i do want to say i am really encouraged and heartened by the news as of late um our students returning back to school both for two days and the expansion you know my personal child comes home with that joy each and every day that he is in school so i'm really looking forward to that expansion so he can go all four of those days the graduation news i am so excited not just for all of our families in fairfax county who will have the opportunity to really see their students in a more traditional manner but also for our board members here i

189know it was very hard last year when we had to watch miss picarski not participate in that and so for this year i'm glad that we'll have some opportunities for the seismic heiser and you as well dr bray brand i do want to say um very excited for miss um eck who is moving on to drainsville but we are very much saddened that she's not going to be part of the mason district family not to end on on a low note but this causes some concern for me dr bray brand that i'd like for us to kind of dig into i think of all of the board members here in my year that i've been on this board i have probably sat through five six new principal appointments with two more coming that bear some

190discussion that bears some address it's an issue our community deserves a little bit more continuity and so i need for us to dig very deeply and to determine how to make that happen um i will end there i want to say thank you all to everyone who participated thank you to my colleagues and to staff for the presentations and have a good night all we are adjourned you