001good at good evening studio we are ready to start in two minutes we'll have roll call just to ensure that we have everyone with us and that their microphones are working it's really more of a mic check for the folks that are at home miss tolin i'm here thank you very much can you hear me yes thank you mister not cofax i'm here good evening miss klobet sanders i'm here good evening everybody ms keys gamora i'm here good evening miss pakarski good evening i'm here miss cohen here thanks and in person we have miss mclaughlin mr frisch miss marin massismo heiser mr mesh myself and dr anderson the leadership team okay this is the december three regular meeting of the fairfax county school board it will now come to order please i'm sorry mr anubudo
002are you with us let's do a mic check i am can you hear me yes thank you please rise as our student representative nathan anabudo leads us in reciting 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 thank you mr anubudo in order to comply with section 2.2 dash of the code of virginia bear with me that's my document it is necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county school board convened a closed session on december 3rd 2020 and to the best of each member's knowledge and public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such
003public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed session were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting thank you miss omeg do we have a second thank you mr fresh all in favor of the motion miss omeg messize mohaiser miss baron mr frisch miss mclaughlin miss cohen miss pokarsky miss tolin ms keys gamara miss corbett sanders is there not colfax and myself that is unanimous this is our nonsense portion item 4.02 mosby woods elementary school renaming has been postponed to a later date copies of tonight's agenda are available at the back of the auditorium tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu tv slash c899 and now call on mr anubudo for an announcement thank you dr anderson sorry my
004computer is now acting up give me two seconds okay sorry about that you're fine human rights day december 10th 2020. human rights day is observed every year on december 10th the day the united nations general assembly adopted in 1948 the universal declaration of human rights this year human rights day marks the 72nd anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights a milestone document that proclaimed the inalienable rights which of every which everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being regardless of race color religion sex language political or other opinion national or social origin property birth or other status it is the most translated document in the world available in more than 500 languages drafted by representatives of diverse legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world the declaration sets out universal values
005and a common standard of achievement for all people and nations all nations it establishes the equal dignity and worth of every person the declaration and states commitment commitments to its principles the dignity of millions has been uplifted and the foundation for more just world has been laid while its promises yet to be fully realized the very fact that it has stood the test of time is a testament to the enduring universality of universality of its perennial values of equality justice and human dignity the universal declaration of human rights empowers us all the principles enshrined in the declaration are as relevant today as they were in 1948 we need to stand up for our own rights and those of others we can take action in our own daily lives to uphold the rights that protect us
006all and thereby promote the kinship of all human beings thank you dr anderson thank you mr anubudo and i'll call him ms tolen for the resolution for national inclusive schools week ms tollin yes thank you dr anderson whereas since its inception in 2001 national inclusive schools week has celebrated the progress that schools have made in providing a supportive and quality education to an increasingly diverse student population including students who are marginalized due to disability gender socioeconomic status cultural heritage language preference and other factors and whereas inclusive schools week is an annual event sponsored by the inclusive schools network and is held during the first week of december and whereas this year's theme the time for inclusion is now was chosen in recognition of ways in which a greater appreciation for inclusion as a philosophy and
007a way of life in our schools and community has emerged and whereas many of us have seen positive changes in awareness of inclusion as a requirement for achieving greater success or excuse me greater access equitable opportunities and more authentic relationships recognizing that we have many more steps to take to reach our goal of a fully inclusive school culture and whereas the week also provides an important opportunity for educators students and parents to discuss what else needs to be done to in order to ensure that their schools continue to improve the ability to successfully educate all children now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board reminds the entire fcps community that education takes on a beautiful shape when all children are included iso move thank you is there a second thank you miss
008eisenheiser ms tolen would you like to speak to your resolution yes um just briefly please um each year the joyous examples of inclusive practices in schools around our district um fill our spirits and increase our commitment to reaching a day when inclusion is fully embedded in all of our practices i have seen great examples of inclusion across our classrooms and i'm sure this occurs across all of our subject areas i've seen all students given great opportunities to excel in our project-based learning activities our clubs and our community building activities and know that we can expand this work in my work with teacher professional development i've worked with all types of teachers and often found our special education teachers to be some of the most creative and giving people i've ever worked with and i applaud
009the work that they do um at this point i would i think it's a great opportunity to um to welcome again welcome our new assistant superintendent for special services michelle boyd under her leadership we are hopeful ftps will be a conclusion in our district school to a whole new level welcome dr boyd and we are so happy to be working with you in addition we will welcome lisa williams as our chief equity officer in january and we look forward to working with her and out and her team as we strive to make fcps as inclusive as possible thank you thank you miss tollen miss eisenheiser would you like to speak to your second oh boy would i um i i really am so excited for this and i'm really really honored and thankful to be
010able to second this because um as many of you know inclusion and inclusive settings is is probably my number one passion and and the main reason i am here today and so i almost cry like i know doctors you talk about crying on certain things and i i really cry when i think about celebrating inclusive schools week because i firmly believe that we all are better when we include everybody inclusion shows inclusive settings are shown research shows that it improves long-term outcomes for students with disabilities and it improves our world inclusion in life starts with inclusion in schools and if we're truly going to have an inclusive society where everybody is welcomed and everybody is valued for all the things that they can do and not seen for all the things they can't do that
011has to start in our schools and it has to start not just for a week but every minute of every day we have to find a way to make sure that everybody is given a chance to find that spot where they can shine and where they can be included i'm just going to end it i won't talk too long about me but with a really short personal story my son has autism and he spends a lot of his time in non-inclusive settings due to his academic needs but he spends a lot of time in inclusive settings because of his strength of music and early on when he was in bands um because of his behavioral differences there were students who were not happy that he was there and as he was in the bands for
012a while and the students saw the joy that he brought and the talent that he brought and the positive attitude that he brought student after student have come up to me over the years and told me how much they have learned from being in an inclusive setting with my son and how much they're going to take those lessons onto the their life and how much they have been transformed because they've understood not just people who are like them but everybody that they live in this world with so i am thrilled to be able to second this and i am excited that we're bringing this forward so thank you thank you any other board members who wish to speak to this resolution miss mary yes i'm so glad that we're making a public um statement about
013this today although i hope that our work shows that we support this in other ways on many other days and i just wanted to share that um in my own role as a parent working with my children who have differing abilities and disabilities it's really showed me how i need to learn to look at what people's strengths are and it's been actually quite refreshing to see how someone who is labeled with a disability actually or not label but who seems to have a disability actually has some really great strengths so i'm very glad that we're sharing this today thank you thank you miss corbett sanders yes thank you so much dr anderson for recognizing me i wanted to give a little bit of a different perspective because we hear so much about the importance of
014uh inclusion for our exceptional students with disabilities i'd like to talk a little bit about the incredible uh role and importance inclusive classrooms have on all of our students and how fairfax county's leadership in this area actually leads to our students going on to college and into the professional world and benefiting so greatly from being in classrooms with neurodiverse students i have a daughter who certainly spent a lot of time in inclusive classrooms because of her experience at bellevue elementary school carl sandburg and west potomac and when she got to university she actually was selected to be a um an extra support system for students who were being included for an inclusive uh classroom and at her university and she ended up having this great experience assisting with note taking for this student but more
015importantly the bonds and the experience and the growth for her personally were so important and i just want to encourage people that our inclusive classrooms are beneficial for all of the students in those classrooms so thank you thank you any other board members wishing to speak to this motion to this resolution well very quickly i will say that as a former school principal this has been one of the highlights of my year when we had the opportunity to celebrate nationals um inclusive weeks and school inclusive schools week it is an opportunity to do exactly what my colleagues have shared which is for students to benefit and learn from each other it is for all of our students to learn empathy and patience and that differences are not deficits and it's an opportunity for all of
016us to grow so i'm very happy to just say a few words on behalf of this resolution at this time i will call for the vote all in favor miss omega missismo heiser miss marin mr frisch miss mclaughlin miss tolin miss corbett sanders miss cohen miss picarsky miss donna koufax miss keys gemara and myself that is unanimous thank you and i'll call on miss cohen for the recognition of purple star schools thank you so much dr anderson virginia is home to over 7 300 military connected school-age students more than any other state in our nation all our fairfax county public schools proudly welcome and support the over 14 000 military connected youth and their families who are part of our school community in 2018 the virginia department of education established the purple star designation to
017be awarded to military-friendly schools that have demonstrated a major commitment to students and families connected to our nation's military criteria established for the award were designed to increase educator awareness of military connected youth and help schools structure their support two and four military connected youth and their families schools that earned this prestigious designation received a resolution for the virginia state superintendent dr james lane and a special purple star recognition to display at their school tonight we are pleased to honor two new schools who happen to be located in the springfield district they are keen mill elementary and west springfield elementary and they've been awarded the 2020 purple star designation these two schools join our 32 other fcps schools who have received this prestigious recognition to date the purple star award serves to set each of
018these schools apart for the hard work of the faculty students parents and community partners who stand together to ensure that our military connected students are supported academically behaviorally and emotionally during their transitions we thank principal renee miller from keene mill and principal kelly shears from west springfield elementary school and their school staff students and community for their awesome support of military connected students and we thank our military families for all they give to our nation and our community principals miller and shears have joined us virtually this evening along with colonel joshua p c graves garrison commander at fort belvoir and he's watching the recognition in support of the military community in fairfax county and we thank him very much for his collaboration with fcps thank you miss cohen and congratulations to keene mill elementary in
019west springfield elementary you know we're in person we can actually clap they will hear us too much in the virtual world here the next order of business is citizens participate participation speakers are requested to limit their remarks to not more than three 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 new business action items or resolutions as listed on the meeting agenda complaints regarding individual students or school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school official speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information and connection with an individual student and are expected to deliver their comments with the with the decorum and respect appropriate to the conduct of the public's business
020in-person speakers should 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 we also have four video testimonies i'll now turn to our clerk to welcome our speakers our first speaker is teddy geiss good evening school board members i hope you all had a great thanksgiving and i want to thank megan mclaughlin and carl frisch for participating in woodson's thanksgiving project for healthcare workers i'm here to express my concern regarding the recently published orsi report found in the washington post and reported by nbc cbs abc fox cnn and the daily mail about failure rates being up 83 for students in grades 7
021through 12 and up 300 for middle schoolers alone that's unacceptable and embarrassing to ourselves as an elite and outstanding school system right now we need to get our priorities straight i'm aware that the other nine speakers here tonight are most likely going to speak about tj and that's what's really concerning we are in the middle of the worst public health crisis in over a century and rather the school system is more worried about an admissions test to one school than improving mitigation strategies are helping failing kids and struggling teachers there are friends of mine who struggle and fail virtual assignments because teachers are too overburdened to help them i have had teachers who have broke down and cried in the middle of class because they missed their students and aren't getting the support they need
022this is a major problem that fcps needs to fix rather than focus on this tj issue because those proposals aren't good enough for anyone not first of japa hampton not for the tj coalition so i ask you please don't focus on 500 kids at a single school focus on the other 190 000 kids who need just as much attention during these tough times i'm okay with not going back to school right now because it's better to be safe than sorry however we really need to focus on student wellness because we are emotionally exhausted overworked and feel failed by this school system there is a work session on monday about tj admissions i urge you for the good of the county hold a return to school meeting instead because there should be a more important priority
023for the school board right now creating better mitigation strategies and getting students the support they need thank you thank you our next speaker is emily belizel am i on can you hear me yes good evening my name is emily and i'm the mother of two elementary fcps students i'm here to speak on their behalf and also on behalf of the thousands of parent members of the open fcps group a volunteer group of fairfax parents from across the economic and political spectrum who are advocating for our kids to have a choice to attend school in person full time coven 19 has certainly brought challenges but one silver lining of this virus is that it largely spares children and yet fcps has failed to make choices that reflect this incredible good fortune we continue to languish in
024a distance learning model that is failing children it has been four weeks since our children have stepped foot inside a classroom during this time parents have been sharing our concerns about the daily struggles of our kids and now the official results are in and reflect exactly what we have been saying the first quarter saw an alarming increase of failing grades we have also seen how the ungodly amount of screen time social isolation and lack of physical fitness is damaging our kids this all virtual model is not sustainable second we have waited and watched and listened to every meeting of the school board in hopeful anticipation of a clear and detailed plan with real return dates to rely upon one would expect that in these 40 weeks that the staff and board would commit every shred
025of energy and focus to opening of our buildings but instead we see you planning to rename schools and overhaul the admissions process for a high school that no one can even step foot into and when in-person plans are addressed we watch an utter confusion as you ignore advice from our county's health department when they have stated twice now even as early as july that schools should and could open and now the same sentiment is echoed in every corner of academia health and education in fact the cdc director announced last week that schools should open and remain so we are not asking that you take away the option of virtual for those who choose it but structure but structuring an entire school year around a fair failing model is unacceptable and perhaps the most egregious of
026all is that according to the long-awaited health metrics that they have revealed that our kids could have been in the classroom since the beginning of the school year to just before thanksgiving all the while we watch helplessly as millions of kids in other districts all over the country with the same guidance from the same cdc have been attending school for months public education in america is an essential service it's one of the treasured cornerstones of our society and yet in fairfax county we are allowing it to be chipped away please act in the best interest of children and their education as you swore an oath to do so by opening our schools thank you thank you our next speaker is himanshu verma hi everyone can you hear me yes go ahead please okay good evening
027school board members the columbus group has defined giftedness as a synchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combined to create inner experiences and awareness which are different from normal this asynchronously increases higher with intellectual capacity the uniqueness of a gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modification in parenting teaching counseling in order for the child to develop optimally essentially stating that gifted and special needs children are two sides of the same coin giftedness can be as much of a curse as a blessing this is the reason why virginia has a law that protects these children by not being aware of this law you have grossly neglected these children what you may not realize is that tj is safe haven for many such twice exceptional students who are highly gifted and have learning
028disabilities their voices are being suppressed their academic strengths and weaknesses put them on an average scale and hence they are extremely hard to identify tj is a place where twice exceptional students can immerse themselves in classes and challenge them in areas of strength some of the required classes are in their weak areas and might be stressful but social emotional and academic affirmation that they get from excelling in their areas of strength can more than make up for their struggles their reading and writing assignments some of you have special needs children so you probably understand you know what special needs services you get from the county and you also understand the pain that a parent of such a special needs child endures so you would also understand why thousands of parents are up in arms and
029are thinking to start recall campaigns to join hands with open fcps movement i think such issues can be easily resolved if board ads parents of toys exceptional students as stakeholders in this process and takes their input university of california berkeley task force found that sat and act scores accurately distinguished among black and among hispanic students that did not and did not recommend elimination of sat the experts that you hired to make recommendations on the aap did not recommend the elimination of all tests have you asked them why a test is still useful in identifying students to be screened for aap a good test will help identify twice exceptional kids while over reliance on gpa and essays why not tj is not supposed to be a school for students with exceptional verbal gifts it is a
030failure to consider math tests means that admissions will be skewed away from toys exceptional students who are weaker at language arts regardless of how strong they are in math of science you can have all the applicants take a ct math test online this year but if you cannot do that sorry this is the first time from other previously taken tests thank you sir you're in the holistic process thank you our next speaker is george tarico good evening school board can you hear me yes go ahead please thank you good evening school board thanks so much for uh allowing me the opportunity to speak um although i am a part of the tj alumni action group i actually i'm not here to speak about tj uh today i'm here to speak about eap and the ap
031process because coincidentally just uh three days ago was the deadline for this particular year of um aap application it was actually a deadline that was uh made to be earlier and it was a deadline that like it was announced in a you know sub bullet point in emails to parents and teachers and students throughout the county and i worry in particular that this particular year we're going to have even less uh kids of underrepresented groups and their parents doing the application process for aap it has already been identified in the associated press that the academic advanced academic placement process in fairfax county disadvantages uh black and latin and uh kids of low income and kids uh english is a second language again it is something that you can appeal if you have money you have
032more resources i've talked about in detail about how that is possible and provides more advantage to those that have both social knowledge and resource capital and i worry that again we're going to have another year of not having that inclusion and to this point i want to make that again i'm here not to advocate even for myself i'm here not not just advocating for my children i'm advocating for kids and students around the county i commend mr geiss the first speaker because consistently he has been the first speaker in many of these meetings and each time he's advocating for others not for himself and i want to make that point in distinction the tj alumni action group and myself are not advocating for ourselves we're not advocating for our children in fact actually my kids
033would have a better shot if nothing changed but the status quo and people who oppose the efforts they are advocating for themselves for their children they worry about their second child their third child missing the opportunity because they already figured out the formula to get in there and they figured out how to navigate the aap process how to appeal it what additional lectures what additional teachers what additional resources what additional advantages will get them on that path and i want to indicate finally that you know it is ridiculous that in second and third grade a child's life can be begin to be set their path can begin to be set but based on a few tests that are preparable that you can prepare for you know i thought i was talking with my coworker and
034she was telling me about how her son her son was eligible for aap4 they chose not to go to the aap for school because they wanted him to be closer to home with his friends from the neighborhood but already her son was feeling that she was not doing the best for him that he was not getting the best education and that's not me to foster through the aap system that's not something we need to foster through our academic system we need to foster situations where there's not a differentiation your time is now up thank you thank you so much our next speaker is ashke devarakonda hi my name is akshay and i'm a 2011 tj graduate school board i hope each of you and your loved ones had a safe thanksgiving i understand that given
035everything going on now the last thing you all want to hear about is tj non-stop speech after speech month after month i know the past few months have had a narrow focus on how to admit 550 students when there are other issues concerning the 188 000 students in fcps tj has taken way too much of your time and i know you all have been unfairly attacked vilified and criticized over this please remember that tj represents larger education access issues for underrepresented minorities girls special ed and neurodiverse students and students with free orders meals which is why we're coming coming back to it i admit this is the fifth time i'm speaking to y'all since september but i fully support the changes the school board is making to make citizen participation more fair when it is
036only those who want the status quo regarding tj admissions speaking you hear many offensive viewpoints some more explicit than others at the october 8th school board meeting one speaker said said to your faces quote my kids spent a summer for prep and i know so many black high schoolers who spent their summer getting strength training end quote is a derogatory stereotype that assumes black people will only choose sports if we don't participate then these crowded dog whistles dominate furthermore we aim to support marginalized groups in the system not to monopolize the system two weeks ago we gave speaking slots to the fairfax education association and to the naacp this week we made sure to give speaking slots for both a potential academy at john lewis high school and for septa regarding restraint and seclusion back
037at the same meeting in october tj alumnus brandon kim asked you all not to forget about low-income asian american students since he was one himself we are sending you all a statistical analysis that we have done for u.s news of world report top 50 high schools showing that schools that use lotteries and admissions deliver significantly better representation outcomes in schools with other systems regardless of whether you consider the top 10 20 or 50 schools 40 percent of them use lotteries they better lead the representative diversity and they can top national rankings too regardless of either system you choose tj alumni action group advocates for a minimum allotment of the tj on a middle school middle school level or at high school pyramid level evaluate applicants according to the circumstances and opportunities afforded to them not
038who seems to be the best quote unquote overall this includes socioeconomic status available stem courses available after school programs for each individual the school board has a third choice too you all welcome dr lisa williams with open arms at the last meeting but you're making the admissions decision before she officially starts with fcps next month please set standards and metrics for an equitable admission system and then empower dr braban and dr williams to select and design what that system may be thank you happy holidays to you and your families and thank you all for the work that you're doing thank you our next speaker is kimberly bletang hello school board um many of you guys already recognize me so respectfully i'll just skip the formalities and just kind of get to the point i have
039written letters emails tweets about how this year is absolutely destroying students and in all honesty i've seen close to nothing to prove that you are listening to us i am really not too sure what else there is for students to do students are surrounded by so much grief trauma death and we are expected to continue on as if this is normal this is not normal we are not last year students students across the country are sitting in front of their computer screens wondering when they are going to catch a break and the break never comes i want to say for the record that i love my teachers i love all the teachers in this county and we wouldn't have gotten this far without them but we as a county have to do better and i'm
040so tired of hearing that we are trying and seeing nothing change if you ask me about aspiration and any other subject i'll tell you i love aspiration but not right now i am tired of the same aspirational goals i need concrete actions and we all need it to happen right now it's becoming too much i can't even take a mental health day for myself before things becoming stacked on and i end up worse off than i was before i am tired of the we see you emails of the i hear you tweets i want intention i said every meeting when i was student rep where is the intention we need intention i need intentional things and on a quick tangent to hear this board preach so much about anti-racism and student well-being and to witness
041you all argue for hours again simply taking a look at an opportunity for black and brown students honestly i'm sorry but i'm ashamed we could give you one conflict one issue and you'll spend a million minutes to discussing why you can't help rather than spending a hundred trying to help us the students we are watching and we're tired there's only so much left in us right now so something needs to happen right now you cannot blame us for failing you cannot blame us for poor attendance you cannot blame us for anything we're not the problem i need us to be taken seriously we're focused more on sending students back to a building rather than making our current education livable we are in the present and there will not be a future if we can't fix
042it right now so we really need to do better thank you thank you our next speaker is vijay bethula mr bethula you're on mute can you hear me now yes go ahead please oh good evening everyone my name is vijay batula i've been living in fairfax county for more than 20 years as a part of the small business we provide employment to hundreds of people residing in northern virginia many businesses move here due to high quality education in our area a study by prominent economist found that a lottery will reduce the ranking of tj from number one in the country to number six in fairfax county that's a significant drop which will result in cascading effect on rest of the schools in this county businesses will move away from the county the education standards come
043down as fcps reputation is one of the most attractive features for the majority of the population living here today despite the high cost of living we personally chose fairfax county as our home for the same exact reasons we all know that some kids are inherently gifted irrespective of their race ethnicity and income levels early identification in school improves the likelihood that gifts will be developed into talents there should be multi-phased approach for identifying gifted students at various levels starting early as giftedness is dynamic not static talent comes in various forms and it has to be scouted by employing a combination of objective and subjective methods like testing and assessments targeted recruiting activities teacher observations and community partnership this needs a lot of planning and training kits from early on failing grades are already spiking across
044the schools in fcps removal of tests for tj will guarantee under prepared students will be selected sending underprepared students into an advanced program like tj will result in failing grades in tj as well and this will send the message to the business community that fairfax county does not believe in excellence and any businesses striving for excellence will move out of our area this is exactly what's happening in new york city and san francisco with their education system crumbling fairfax laws will be gained for other counties and other states the boat canceled the test without a viable alternative plan in place with no proper notification and no input from the community these decisions were made based on input from a handful of activists and no proper input from community and parents due to the presence of
045technology companies there is significant demand for stem in our area i request the boat make plans for more schools like tj to accommodate the demand and address lack of representation of underrepresented minorities identify why fcps outreach efforts to blacks and hispanics had no money monitoring no measurable metrics and no accountability with experience gained in running successful stem school like tj we can elevate the standards of other fcps schools rather than diluting the existing standards of this prestigious institution thank you thank you our next speaker is amanda campbell good evening my name is amanda campbell and i'm speaking tonight as the vice president of fairfax county septa first we want to express our gratitude to the school board for incorporating so much of septa's feedback and questions in your work session earlier this week we sent
046you a lot of information to digest in a very short amount of time and we very much appreciate how you took our work to heart thank you the theme of this year's inclusive schools week the time for inclusion is now couldn't be more appropriate our country's educational system has been turned on its head over the last nine months if ever there was an opportunity to reimagine our schools to be truly inclusive it is now true inclusion in fcps will require a culture shift that starts with leadership in central office to illustrate the current culture consider the fcps video intended to help families determine whether their child should be screened for child find within approximately one minute 15 seconds the word behavior or problem behavior is used six times to describe preschool children the word behavior
047implies willfulness by the student to act as such the focus of this video could be on more objective measures such as whether a child is meeting their milestones or whether a child is having difficulty expressing or processing emotions etc instead the scps video emphasizes that families should primarily think about behaviors when determining whether or not to seek special education services intentional or not this sets a tone that continues to frame the manifestations of these children's disabilities as willful choices rather than developmental deficits as they age through elementary and then secondary grades severe behaviors are preventable not inevitable when the student has access to appropriate resources in staffing services and training we are hopeful that dr boyd's new leadership will bring about a significant shift in mindset that focuses on the need to proactively address through
048services and accommodations the underlying issues that severe behaviors are communicating rather than relying on reactive measures to retrain a child's response one important way to address these underlying issues is through the work done by our incredible related service providers unfortunately we know our related service providers are understaffed and current caseloads in fcps are not in accordance with evidence-based practice research supports that educational provider caseloads should be determined through a workload analysis approach rather than the medical caseload model used by fcps due to the additional administrative work that service providers have in schools we urge the school board to take the first steps necessary to begin this shift by first adopting a top-down culture that behavior is communication of unmet needs and also modifying fcps approach to staffing standards to reflect a workload analysis approach to
049caseloads as we enter preparations for the next budget cycle we also invite the school board and scps leadership to join us on monday night at 7 pm for a screening of the kids we lose a documentary about the human side of being a child or student with behavioral challenges dr ross green whose research the film is based on will join us for discussion after the viewing thank you thank you our next speaker is alice guo good evening uh i'm alice cool i'm here to uh talk about your the school policies millions came to america after being inspired by the declaration of independence we are installed by our creator with certain union of rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness so 23 years ago i came to america believing that in
050america one can work extremely hard achieving true happiness and liberty colors or race were not the lens i looked through at america but rather work ethics my grandma always said you don't get anything free just because you were born you have to earn it she taught us about hard work my mother always said you don't get anything just because you need it you have to earn it my mother built my mental toughness now i'm proud to tell my children you don't get anything free just because you want it you have to earn it so my question to you does work ethics discriminate colors before 2020 my husband and i had not seen our world through the lens of colors thanks to fcps we are now looking at everything with the race lens on within three
051weeks we ran through the new tj high school admission reform that includes lowering enrollment standards and race quotas to match the demographics of our county so is it not about having to earn it based on merit but based on color do you really want our children to grow up in a nation where they will not be judged by the content of their character but the color of their skin you call this progressive i call this regressive so stop the discrimination i want to firmly remind you the people of all colors do not come to america because it is a such racist country but because it is a great country with equal opportunities for all equal opportunities do not mean outcome which is largely influenced by efforts and motivation i also want to firmly remind you
052that asian american community fully embraces the equal opportunity through hard work the high academic performance is no accident so let our kids earn their right to tj fairly so stop the racial discrimination the children the families the cultures which believe in you have to earn it through hard work should not be the victim of a racist color-based quota policy in fairfax county you have provoked a sleeping giant we the taxpayers we no longer tolerate your idiotic policies of cutting off notes to spite face so stop the systematic racist discrimination against colored asian communities thank you thank you our next speaker is anil advani can you hear me yes go ahead please good evening i'm the father of two school-aged children in fairfax and a health policy professor who has administered federal programs for underserved communities
053across the u.s my scientific career was greatly inspired by a nigerian mathematician who challenged me to study the mathematics of the human brain i care deeply that many more such mathematically creative minds should be nurtured both as students and teachers the question is how do we find and nurture young minds from each of our social communities here in fairfax for the disadvantaged african american and hispanic communities especially neuropsychological testing and its high school correlates are essential for accurately diagnosing and screening mathematically gifted children this is because those children may not have the shiny curated resumes that well-off children do to succeed in holistic admissions banning objective tests just washes away problems and does no favor to the truly disadvantaged student the analysis document from fcps doesn't address this issue at all simply superficially pointing to
054inequities and providing racial balancing remedies does nothing for gifted african-american and hispanic kids let's look instead at what neighboring prince george's county maryland with a well-educated majority african-american population uses for admissions criteria to the 4 500 spots in their selective magnet schools it is a simple transparent fair and objective criterion they use your core middle school gpa to account for hard work average with your psat 8 9 score which is nationally norm that includes both mathematics and language components are any of the black or hispanic students who make up 75 percent of the student population their parents school board members or school administrators fighting against the use of these tests clearly not the same holds for florida's number one public high school the school for advanced studies in miami-dade county which is 74 hispanics and
055uses the accuplacer next generation college basic skills assessment tests somehow the nation's number one hispanic majority selective magnet school also believes that standardized testing is important to transparently and rigorously select mathematically and scientifically gifted children any method for selecting students for gifted or advanced programs in fcps should have the integrity to ensure that the highest scoring students within any racial group or partition are selected the simple suggestion to achieve this is to combine the two options that fcps has presented to you take the hundred top students region-wide and use an existing test such as sols for this year or psats or the act etc and integrate this with the holistic criteria for the other 400 students within each regional pathway to ensure social equity using this approach the school board would present a positive vision
056for encouraging the growth of creativity and academic excellence at fcps and would ensure that all students of any race at any school are absolutely encouraged to excel and move forward in mathematics and science thank you thank you we now have video testimony from susan danowitz reyna fisher lisa raj singh and sarah bigley hello my name is sarah bigley and i'm from solar on the schools a student-led environmental advocacy group in fairfax county public schools he asked that when considering the root of replacement for hunters woods elementary school we keep the environmental initiative outlined in the debt in mind we really appreciate the recent steps that fcps has taken to buy renewable energies through ppa but we must expand these initiatives to ensure a better future for all of fcps students one of the plans put
057forth by the jet is for county and school operations to be carbon neutral by 2040. we must take significant steps to lower the energy use of fcps buildings and to switch to clean energy system so we can reach this goal ways we can do this include installing solar energy on our schools as soon as possible ensuring renovations and constructions of the current schools are designed with the intent of net zero energy and transitioning our bus fleet's electric vehicles there are many environmental economic and educational benefits to transitioning to renewable energy arlington county already has three net zero energy schools and they have been immensely successful our group recently had a presentation with robert winstead from vmdo the architecture firm that designed arlington's net zero schools the discovery school was their first net zero energy school
058and it is a fantastic model for fcps schools discovery which includes a photovoltaic system and a geothermal heating and cooling system was built under budget at a cost of less than some elementary schools in fairfax county the school district spends approximately 17 cents per square foot of energy compared to the 1.29 cents per square foot for the other schools in arlington this means that they save 118 000 a year just for that one school they also integrate their solar panel system into experiments and other lessons for their students um using their interactive data dashboards the school encourages environmental stewardship in their students which is imperative to our future health and well-being again if we're to reach these goals we must start implementing these environmental initiatives right now thank you very much for your time and
059we look forward to the changes in 2021 hello we're solar on the schools a group of students across fairfax county representing over 10 high schools in the area and we want to expand the use of renewable energy in the county i'm ronnie fisher i'm a senior at oakton high school i'm in the providence district and i want solar energy so we can use those energy savings on programs for students hi my name is kitika gorthy and i'm a junior at chantally high school and i am located in the sally district i want solar on our schools because it will help our planet become more eco-friendly and will teach students the importance of conservation of our resources hi my name is lucas bickford i go to woodson high school in the braddock district and i want
060to put solar panels on our school to set a good example for the rest of virginia sarah and i'm a sophomore at oakton high school and i live in the solely district i want solar and fcps schools because schools use so much energy and so it's vital for them to cut down on this energy to help out the environment hi i'm carolyn from oakton high school in the providence district and i want solar on our schools because it will set an example and a precedent for climate-friendly infrastructure in our county my name is sierra kim and i am a senior at woodson high school i'm from the braddock district and we want solar in our schools to help educate and urge students to become ethical and global citizens and leaders in our community we also
061want to share the importance of being environmentally conscious hi i'm sophie gideon i go to hayfield i'm in the league district and i want to help bring solar energy to fcps i can give back to the environment and staff members who help contribute to my education hi my name is fatima salem i'm a junior at marshall high school in the drainsville district and i want solar on my school so we can cut down on the extreme use of energy in fairfax county public schools thank student at w2 you high school and a member of the braddock district being a junior and a proud member of the solar on the schools club i went solar on the schools because to put it simply this is our future salon schools could educate students of all ages within
062the school system and will ultimately benefit our environment for future gender and current generations thank you i'm wilted esco and i am a junior at marshall high school i'm in the drainsville district and i want to learn the schools because i believe it's imperative to set the precedent for future generations of the value and importance of energy conservation through solar on the schools future generations of children learn the importance of renewable energy and helping the environment by seeing it in action hello school board today i'd like to share with you words from my fellow tj alum class of 99 duke grad and holder of both a master of bioethics and a jd from u pen nicholas vaughn thanks susan my parents had no choice but to participate in segregated institutions the heroism of their generation
063was the stuff of legend my ambition was to be worthy of that legacy integration of traditionally white spaces like thomas jefferson seemed my duty twenty years later the racist experiences of current students and recent graduates near my own i failed through sheer force of my own excellence to convince the closeted and open white supremacists in fairfax county that black americans are equal to their white peers in the pursuit of academic excellence after all why else would tj simply refuse to meaningfully integrate tj is in many ways a reflection of this nation there is a tension between creating a better society for everyone and the unencumbered pursuit of individual ambition you see classes may be more rigorous at t.j but standards for adherence to the honor code are not national merit semi-finalists are lauded and produced
064and masked and yet stories featuring the application of more courage are rare perhaps that is too high standard but young people are pioneering breakthroughs for stem challenges that plague the modern era climate change vaccine development and data privacy but can anyone honestly imagine greta thornberg attending thomas jefferson you must attract a thoroughly different kind of student to prove that thomas jefferson isn't just a private academy for the children of ambitious northern virginian parents that taxpayers have been duked into funding at the expense of their own children i am not just talking about fixing an environment where students and faculty are comfortable being openly racist and have been for more than 20 years i'm talking about fixing an environment that teaches that intelligent behavior is simply doing what is most expedient to advance one's own self-interest
065i am talking about fixing an environment that teaches that success can only be measured in numbers on transcripts or in bank accounts rather than being part of scholarship as a mechanism to improve the human condition tj should move to a full merit lottery system or you simply need to close the school otherwise we're left hoping that perhaps a slightly more numerous slightly more diverse class will succeed in integrating thomas jefferson where my peers and i failed as a young child i was of course delighted and proud to be placed into the gifted program or the advanced academic program here in fairfax county it wasn't until my younger sister was denied the gifted label her confidence shattered that i questioned my giftedness how was it that the same girl who solved one thousand piece puzzles and
066taught multiplication to her stuffed animals felt crushed at such a young age how was it that we by categorizing our youth by supposed intelligence are handcuffing our own intellectual growth at age six the same age students began testing into aap i remember my parents reading to me every night enrolling me in summer science programs i attended greenbrier west and rocky run middle school both well-funded schools and affluent areas my elementary school in taiwan a top-ranked country in education offered advanced academics without separating students viability i was not gifted by birth i was the product of a solid education since last year i've read limitless mind by education pioneer joe buller and dozens of scholarly articles that confirm my belief up to 88 of students placed in lower level tracks fail to catch up to their
067high achieving peers another study with 12 000 students across the us observed that none of the students in the lowest reading group ever caught up to their high achieving peers none of the levels including the highest indicated improved achievement this suppression of all of growth for all students including the gifted for up to six years in aap's case is tragic but hardly surprising once you've dictated a student's performance as lower level their academic achievement becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy even though i benefited from aap i felt unyielding pressure to be the smartest in the room and to answer questions instead of asking them for fear of losing my gifted label reading carol dweck's book mindset grounded in science what i had struggled with for years her studies indicated that those labeled smart consistently chose easier tasks
068whereas those labeled as hard-working challenge themselves much more often gifted programs suppress even the gifted for the past nine months i've worked with other students researching and speaking with experts including dr elka hansen from education reimagined who has shared her work with revamping elementary school education she explains that other parts of the country including new york city and san francisco have led the way in seeing success with removing their gifted programs changing tj was a temporary solution the root issue stems from the simple act of labeling such young students as gifted i implore you all universalize aap and remove the practice of separating students at such young ages thank you that was our final video thank you very much miss mulberg now i'll call on mr anabuto for student representative matters thank you dr anderson
069good evening fairfax county community as always it's an honor and a privilege to be able to speak to all of you to our community this evening i will keep my remarks short because i know the meeting is long and everything but there are a couple things that i think are really important that i want to say the first is this in response to the recent news and headlines about the increase and failing grades that have come out you know over this past quarter that we have just finished in this incredibly unusual school year unfortunately i think in many ways kimberly watang in her speech before me encapsulated touched on what students are feeling now somewhere in the space between we need to be back in school five days a week full time in person right
070this second and no kid should ever step foot into the school building because there's a deadly virus that could kill us all i feel like students many students feel like their voices aren't being heard they feel like somehow they're being forgotten even in the midst of all the conversations being about them now i know that students aren't forgotten i know that all of us the reason we're here today is because we care about students but i don't think anyone can blame students for feeling that way when you're listening and hearing the amount of suffering you might hardly get the amount of stress that goes into just simply waking up every morning to go to school one of my friends said it best when they were saying that it doesn't matter what happened what happens to
071our school buildings in a week or in a month or when there's a vaccine that's widely available it doesn't matter because there's real suffering that's going to happen tomorrow when students open up their laptops to go to school when there are grades that are permanently enshrined in our rolling grade books that seniors are civilian colleges to see even though they are learning in a model that they've never used before and they're failing because of it see i'm caught in this place between what i know the county is working on doing to support students and the hard work that's going on going into that and the actual reality of what it's like to be a student in fairfax county every day right now the place that i'm caught in fills me with hope because i see
072what is possible and i see the hard work that our school system is putting into caring for students unfortunately many students and parents for that matter don't see that hard work they don't realize that and as a result students feel that their voices that their complaints that their struggles are falling on deaf ears this is dangerous because it creates this this pragmatic feeling that there's no hope in what is going on right now and that the best solution is to just give up i don't know what we can do to immediately help students when they wake up to go to school tomorrow but what i do know is that this situation is urgent we need actual change to our system that supports students in what is going on right now that recognizes we are learning
073in the midst of a global pandemic and that we've never done this before and that what was going on when we were in school in person cannot be what we're trying to institute in our virtual model because students simply cannot handle it we need to recognize that as soon as possible and address those concerns in a public manner so that students know that their voices are being listened to i know their voices are being listened to because just this week i had the honor and the privilege of getting to meet with county leadership to discuss some of the meaningful ways we're looking at addressing some of the systemic issues we're facing in our county right now to make sure that students are not only passing their classes but they're thriving in their classes in a
074virtual model i got to see in that meeting i got to listen to that feedback i got to hear what was going on and i got to provide some of my own feedback not every student the county was in that meeting in fact almost no other students were in that meeting how do they feel what do they know about what is going on to help them and how long will that take for that help to be there i know change takes time and i know that there's no easy solution to what is going on but i just want everyone listening to know that this is how students are feeling this is what is happening in the massive debates that are going on about what school needs to look like and what's failing and what's not
075failing students are just simply suffering it's no longer about whether we want to go back or whether we want to stay virtual whether it's safe or not it's just we want to get through we want to survive we want to make it without being told that we're failing for classes even though we don't even know what we're doing because we're learning in a mall that we've never used before i will be writing a letter to dr brabrand the school board and the rest of leadership staff about what my recommendations are um and in talking with the student advisory council for moving forward particularly in regards to grading to ensure that students can you know be met with some race and this time seems graceless i'm honored to be given the opportunity to write this letter
076and i'm thankful to dr brabrand and the rest of the fairfax county public schools leadership team for everything that again i know that they are doing to address student needs and the concerns of students across the county i'm here to tell students that any students or parents are listening that our leadership does care they are listening but i'm here to tell our leadership that students don't know that students need to be shown that and more most importantly students need to be given the opportunity to succeed through change through this system way back when when school first shut down in march we were given a system that you know was a mess and rightfully so because no one had ever done it before was a mess all over the country and right now it's better but
077in ways it's also worse we need to keep tweaking what we're doing until we find some sense of normalcy in a situation that is anything but normal for us to sit back and pretend like it's not like it's like it's working when students are saying it's not would simply just mean failing students all together thankfully i know our county won't do that i just urge us to do it quicker moving on from that piece i want to take a moment to speak to all my seniors out there all the fellow class of 2021 members and their parents who may be listening i'm switching gears kind of quiet fast and kind of abruptly um but i recognize that i haven't done this yet and it kind of shocked me when i realized i hadn't but i
078want to take a moment to congratulate any senior who has taken steps to kind of map out their post-secondary plans um for what life is going to look like after high school i mean whether that's talking to your teacher your counselors your parents about opportunities that exist out after high school ends or whether that's filling out a college application submitting a college application or even get accepted into university at this point i just want to say congrats it's one thing for us to have weathered um seemingly unweatherable storm that has been the last seven months but it's another thing for us to be able to keep moving forward and even looking forward because that's hard on its own but with all the fog that is right now i just want to say thank you and
079congratulations to all of you who have been able to do that i know it's not easy i know it's hard and i want to address the fact that i've gotten a couple of notes um from different places about dealing with stress um particularly after sitting in college submitting called after submitting a college application and waiting for that you know that decision and not knowing what's going to happen i just want to let all the students reach out to me know that i'm experiencing the same thing too um that stress is near universal for for this time and i want to reflect on something that i had conversation i had with a group of my friends earlier um that kind of helped me get through the moment because i feel like there's no need for any
080additional stress onto everything that's going on so i just want to take a moment to go for this conversation kind of explain how it helped me reframe the situation we were talking about how the next few months are going to be some of the most stressful which was wait because we're waiting for college decisions and what if we get rejected in all of that and we were thinking about how that's even possible considering the last four months have been some of the most stressful in our lives ever um and we were reflecting on what our lives might look like a year two years from now and we remembered that one of our friends who is no longer with us won't ever get to submit the application won't ever get to find out what you know
081what what school she'll get into whenever i get to leave home and go to college and it made us realize that there is joy to be found in the anxiety and in the stress and in the mess that that is this current moment and i know that sounds counterintuitive but it's true and we won't ever have these days back as weird and as messed up as they are sit and revel in the fact that we're here and that we're present and that someday we'll get to look back on this and say that this was an experience that united all of us as the class of 2021. um so i just wanted to say that i know that that was super important and that was sitting on my heart and i just want to kind of
082get that out there um and finally hopefully ending on a more positive and uplifting note i want to give a quick shout out to my high school's choral department the course department run by mr rodriguez they found a super duper creative way to say thank you to the staff members in our school um a video that is up on youtube is called the job you can check it out if you want um it was edited by one of our seniors resha he's saying um she the entire course department it's basically them singing about how great a job they think our teachers are doing how thankful we students are across the county for all the work that they've been doing and i know i see this time and time again when i get to speak um
083here at the board meetings about how thankful i am um to teachers um but it's entirely different when they can do it in such an artful and creative way and use their talents to uplift the voices of students and say thank you to our teachers i thought that was super powerful and i'm super appreciative appreciate it for it and i kind of want to re-echo their sentiments to all the teachers at fcps um just one more time to say thank you because there's no amount of gratitude um that can reach that can make it enough because we're still thankful for everything we're doing um so on that note i want to say thank you to all of the hard work the county leadership is doing that our school board is doing and again i know
084that these times were murky um but we'll move forward um and i'm appreciative for this opportunity again so thank you everyone and with that i give it back to you dr anderson nathan you make it hard to follow you thank you so much for your very powerful sentiments you certainly have provided the board the staff and our community a lot to reflect on i very much look forward to reading the letter that you'll be sending to the board and to the superintendent but thank you again for your powerful testimony and for your optimism and for your encouraging words and for you to remind us to continue to find the joy in small things even during these times so very much appreciated that thank you and i'll call on mr frisch for an announcement regarding the
085renaming of mosby woods elementary school thank you madam chair we have not had the level of public participation that we'd hoped for and therefore we're working with staff to come up with additional options and to solicit additional community input more information about these two items will be announced as details are worked out with staff thank you thank you and i'll call on dr brabrand for the introduction of our mid-year budget review thank you chairman anderson it's my pleasure we're going to do our mid-year budget presentation budget review for fy 2021 and i am going to ask our assistant superintendent for financial services lee burton to share the presentation with you and i want to remind the board and the uh the community that our mid-year budget will be discussed at our december 15th work session
086and then there will be action scheduled for the board at our next board meeting on december 17th so without further ado miss burton would you like to begin the fy 2021 mid-year budget review uh good evening chairman anderson school board members and dr brabrand the mid-year review offers an opportunity to revise the fiscal 21 budget based on current year trends and any new requirements that have become known since the year in budget review was approved in late july of 2020 and the agenda item is organized with descriptions of the recommended changes followed by updated fund statements and as dr brabrun mentioned we have a work session on tuesday december 15th where mid-year can be discussed in greater greater detail and the data for this report is as of the end of october on page one
087for the school operating fund revenue there are three changes the beginning balance change due to a sales tax increase of 3.1 million less an expenditure increase of 0.9 million for a net change of 2.1 million and both of these changes are due to a fiscal 20 adjustment that occurred after year end the other primary changes are for grants that support the school operating fund our idea grant award increased 1.2 million in fiscal 21 the preschool grant increased a small amount and these grant increases are offset by a decrease to the fiscal 20 adjustments so a net increase of about 0.4 million and the change to the fiscal 22 beginning balance to provide a supplement to the food services fund of 7.5 million so the total revenue changes are about 10 million and the revenue adjustments
088include a corresponding expenditure adjustment so displayed on page two are the recommended school operating fund expenditure changes revenues going up 10 million and expenditures are also at 10 million leaving no additional funds available grant expenditure changes are the recognition of the offsetting idea awards of 0.4 million position authority is also recommended but does not require any funding recall recall that at the adoption of the fiscal 21 approved budget last may funds to address the coven pandemic were allocated as placeholder funding with the understanding that we would be adding 24 and a half t specs 13 and a half estimates 10 psychologists and 10 social workers so we don't need to change the budget for the funding but we do need authority to establish those positions and finally a transfer to the food and nutrition services
089fund of 9.6 million our latest projections showed an expected supplemental need of 10 million but we got an additional 400 000 from the state so that reduced that projection from 10 million to 9.6 again this is the current projection but a return to school for in-person instruction we'll change participation rates and that will impact the projection the school operating fund summary on page 3 shows what i just reviewed in detail and there's also a beginning balance summary for fiscal 22. um we ended up with uh 24.4 million from the fiscal 20 budget to fund the beginning balance of the fiscal 22 budget but we will use a portion of that to supplement student nutrition services leaving a beginning balance of for fiscal 22 of 16.9 million page four shows the fiscal 21 enrollment update this
090reflects actual enrollment as of september 30 compared to the projection as you know we are down about 7680 students or four and a half percent and this decrease decreases believed to be temporary um other special groups official reporting is not as of september 30 it's december for special education january for non-traditional students and march for fee set and so we're still waiting on the official enrollment for those groups you should also know that between uh fall of 2019 and fall of 2020 enrollment statewide decreased by about 38 000 or 3 percent almost all school divisions experienced enrollment loss and again these enrollment losses in fairfax and across the state are expected to be temporary page five shows changes to other funds starting with cool school construction uh the change in the expenditure adjustments for projects
091uh after the year end resulted in an increase to the beginning balance of about three hundred thousand authorized bonds increased 163 million for additional projects from the 2019 bond referendum also on page five is food and nutrition services changes due to adjustments reported after year in resulted in an increase to their reserve of approximately 26 000 again we will receive additional state revenue federal aid is projected to increase but food sales are expected to be negligible since continuation of the summer program which allows all children in fairfax to eat free has been continued through june 30th as a result we are currently recommending a transfer of 9.6 million from school operating fund sources to supplement the food services fund revenue shortfall on the expenditure side we've reviewed the expenditure budget and believe we can reduce
092it 16 due to reduced costs in materials and food so overall we are projecting an additional revenue need of 9.6 million to be funded from the fiscal 22 beginning balance held in reserve and disclosed in the joint fiscal forecast last week we are also utilizing the remaining food and nutrition services reserve to reduce the reliance on school operating fund supplements if you look at the next item it's adult and community ed or the ace fund on page five the total fund is 8.4 million there is a slight increase to the beginning balance due to adjustments after year-end and there's also a net increase of 0.2 million and due to the adult ed and family literacy grant that was awarded in august and you'll see that increase in both revenue and expenditures also on page five
093are the grants and self-supporting programs a slight change to the fiscal 21 beginning of balance again due to adjustments after year in and then an 8.5 million increase due to new awards or adjustments to the current year awards and details about the increase in grants can be found on page six also in the grants fund is the summer school sub fund this fund totals 19.4 million there's a small change of seven thousand dollars in the beginning balance again due to year in adjustments and a corresponding increase in the sub funds reserve on page seven is the school insurance fund which is workers comp and risk management in this fund there is a twelve thousand dollar change in the beginning balance due to year end adjustments that weren't known at the final budget review and a
094corresponding increase to the fund's allocated reserve that's followed by the health and flexible benefits fund an increase of 0.9 million to the fiscal 21 beginning balance again due to adjustments after year in and we've also updated our estimates for revenue and are projecting a net increase of 3.6 million due to increases in contributions increases in pharmacy rebates offset by reductions in interest income and flex fund revenue decreases again for a net of 3.6 million increase expenditures have also been recalculated based on more current trends and reflect a net increase of 3.3 million and due to higher than projected claims we do have some lower administrative costs that are offsetting that and also some lower flex fund reimbursements these changes result in an increase to the healthcare's premium stabilization reserve excuse me of 1.2 million also
095on page 7 is the erfc fund the beginning balance reflects an increase of 14.7 million to the fiscal 21 beginning balance due to adjustments reported after year in investment income is up 15.9 million but offset by greater fees of 1.1 for a net of 14.7 and even though this seems large it's primarily due to timing since the final portfolio values are not available until after year-end is completed other adjustments based on more current information for fiscal 21 net to 19.2 million so that the fund's ending balance shows an increase also on this page is the opeb opeb trust fund and the beginning balance reflects an increase of three million due to a year ended adjustment in fiscal 20 and this adjustment results in an increase to the projected ending balance for the fund of 3
096million the fund statements for each fund begins on page 8 and reflect the changes that i've shared with you from the narrative section of the mid-year report the last page of the document provides summary information about the current year or fiscal 21 grants and a final update for the fiscal 20 grants as well and again one more reminder that we have a work session scheduled for tuesday december 15th so any detailed questions can be addressed then um with actions scheduled at the regular school board meeting on december 17th that's it thank you very much miss burden um as dr brabrand shared there will be a work session on this mid-year budget review on december 15th at this time i call on miss pikarski for the motion madam chair i had my hand up i'm so
097sorry i did not see that they were quit that there were hands up for questions i i put it on the computer just because i thought that'd be the only way you'd see it go ahead megan miss mclaughlin thank you um yes i know ms burden you mentioned that uh we're going to be having a work session on this so i'm not going to ask detailed questions but i did just want to cite a couple things that maybe you'll need to have prepared for that meeting the first one again doesn't need to be tonight but just what basically created the 1.1 million in additional investment service costs the second one is that the enrollment data where we're down 7 800 students what date is that pulling from because i heard some questions and concerns from
098parents about when they received requests from the school about their students being enrolled and they said it was after the september 30th date and they had withdrawn their students so i just want to know how current that 7 800 number is and then finally i will definitely want to have extensive conversation with my colleagues about the food nutritional services needing a 9.6 million dollar infusion of funding that's going to affect our beginning balance as we talked about this at the august work session many of us on the board expressed concern of drawing down our beginning balance of potentially 10 million or more so i think that's going to require a great deal of conversation to where we are at that's that's a big number and i thought we were taking advantage of the federal program
099feeding every single child in fairfax county regardless of financial need in order to get a hundred thousand meals a day and then get federal reimbursement so i'm going to want to understand why the 10 million or the 9.6 million so just want to give a heads up on those uh three things for now and uh i know we've got a lot on plate colleagues so i i don't need ms burton to answer it tonight unless she's got something quick she wants to say right away otherwise we can talk about the work session thank you miss burton did you want to respond quickly or wait until the 15th um well the question about erc and food services those are longer discussions so we'll definitely do that at the work session and we'll be ready for that
100and the enrollment numbers on um that were included are as of september 30. but we'll have the enrollment uh people there at the work session as well so if you have other questions they'll be able to address them um yes madam chair i would ask that if since that enrollment number is september 3rd that it's absolutely gonna be important that we have the the most current numbers on our enrollment um especially if it's going to be a notable variance off the 7800. thank you so noted if if i could miss burden september 3rd or september 30th september 30th yeah the september 30th the reason she's brought it as the financial assistant superintendent for financial services is that's the report by which we do the state adm revenue uh that the revenue from the state comes
101based on that september report 30th report but i know what you're saying is you'd like to see where is enrollment now is it up is it down and how may that impact us the state right now had agreed to hold harmless the adm september 30th and wait until the march 30th adm comes in so we'll have more information on that and we might you're right on about what's our trend are we seeing uh the opportunity for uh more and as we do return to school especially in january we'll have time prior to march 30th to see enrollment which i believe will increase as we return more groups of students to school but we'll be glad to talk about the work session thank you dr brabrand i know that many of us on the board have
102had inquiries from the public on the number and i just know we want to have the accurate information and yes hopefully the state will hold us harmless thank you miss club sanders yes thank you and miss burden as always thank you so much for your very comprehensive approach to briefing this board it is greatly appreciated i have two questions that i will want to unpack a bit more when we meet later this month one is on the status of our impact aid submissions to find out where we are on funding for that and then the second piece is in the cost area of where we are um or an estimated cost for the classroom aids or classroom monitors that we are looking to hire and how that will impact our operating budget yes and we'll
103be ready to address those i really appreciate that thank you so much are there any other questions thank you seeing none we will move on to the next item and i'll call on miss picarski for the motion okay thank you dr anderson i move that in the school year 20 20 21 for schools with an aap local level 4 or aap local 4 center the pool of second grade students to be screened for aap level 4 services will be identified by piloting the use of local building norms while ensuring that any student who meets the national norm is also identified for screening in schools that do not yet have a local level for program national norms will continue to be used to identify students for eligibility screening thank you miss bakarski is there a second
104would you like to speak to your motion um sure i will briefly um i do hope my colleagues have had the opportunity to read the information that was emailed and posted about this topic and i do thank dr presidio and his team for providing those documents so quickly in the external aap study that the prior board initiated one of the expert recommendations to increase equitable access and ensure we are identifying students that have high potential to do well in our aap program was to implement local norms for the student identification pool this evidence-based support was followed up by the letter from our researchers that stated that this would be a quote low risk high reward strategy that would likely lead to improved equity of participation in the near future end quote i think it is
105imperative that we implement these low-cost recommendations in a thoughtful way this pilot will allow the system to get gathered at uh and track progress and impact for a program that we know is important to this community during our numerous tj conversations this year there was emphatic support amongst our community for this board to support equitable access to aap and strengthen the pipeline in shoes that still exist in fact some schools in fcps continue to have zero identified students for aap consideration i think it is imperative for the public to understand that this motion will not have any obvious impact to our current aap process external and parent referrals to aap which already account for 70 percent of applicants will continue and i do hope that my colleagues will be supported thank you thank you miss
106picarski miss cohen would you like to speak to your second i would thank you um in a 2019 article that came out about the importance of local norms and gifted education um dr jonathan plucker who we were lucky enough to have as part of our team who looked at um aap equity here in fairfax county um gave some really great quotes about local norms that i would just like to share with my colleagues today local norms find advanced students hidden in plain sight when educators examine performance relative to peers performance within each individual school building gifted education is about determining which children are not being challenged by the existing grade level instruction in a specific school setting and every building needs to proactively identify and serve those kids i think this is a really good
107step in making sure that the kids who need something more than the regular curriculum in a building that we are finding them and we are helping them early become um just like we want every kid here in fairfax county dr braeburn always says by name and by need and this is just one of those ways that is in the world of things we do here an easy fix to be able to help find those kids who are hidden in plain sight and as a former lower grades teacher um this makes my heart so happy because we had so many kids who didn't quite meet the national norms and had to work really hard through the parent referral system and a much more complicated process to be identified as a level four kid in our system
108and yet um the regular curriculum that i was able to offer them even when differentiated was not cutting it and so it gives me a lot of joy to be able to second miss picarsky's motion and i hope that all of our colleagues will join us in extending opportunity to even more kids thank you so much miss cohen are there any board other board members who'd like to speak to this motion ms sizemore heiser yes thank you and i appreciate the addition and the motion of using national norms i don't want this i think this is a great idea to open up the the screening pool but i want to make sure that what we're doing doesn't unintentionally hurt students as well so i'm glad that we have the flexibility of using local norms and
109national norms and letting students qualify either way i did have a question for our staff um dr presidio i think of dr brabrand what um what are you using to make up local norms i'm assuming it's you know norming that the test or is there other pieces that's going to make up local norms i'm going to let dr presidio speak to that uh and he can speak to it with a little bit more clarity than i can great thank you yeah thank you dr bravery and uh thank you ms seismore heiser for that question so essentially the local norm process takes uh the division uh norms and looks at what the norms would be at a particular school so it's basically using that definition of gifted education of looking at students performance based on students
110of the same age and experience in the local context so we're looking at using the test scores in this case on their universal screening assessment on the endnap the maglieri assessment at the local level not just at the national or division level all right so if i understand using the neglige test that you're still using it's just norm that the local levels are normed at a national level that's correct but if there's schools where um normally at a national level would result in students being entered in the screening pool whereas normally at the local level would not result in them you could still use the national norms correct yeah that's um that's what this motion is saying is that we would use either the local norms or the national norm to identify students so again
111i want to thank the board members miss picarski who worked so hard on this miss mclaughlin who worked so hard on this as well to make sure that we weren't disadvantaging any students through the use of local norms yeah that's that's my concern i love the idea of being more inclusive in our screening pool using local norms but i obviously don't want to hurt anybody who would have qualified using national norms as well so as long as it's more inclusive and not less that's how i first understood it i'm fine with it thank you that's right thank you miss mclaughlin followed by miss donna kofax yes thank you i do want to first say to ms pikarsky and ms lorjan cohen i appreciate both of them listening to my concerns earlier today and making some
112modifications so we could incorporate both national and local norms depending on each of our 150 elementary schools uh what what happens with those normings and i just want to ask um on page on slide five if uh staff can bring up the presentation on slide five dr presidio part of what i want to make sure the public understands if they were looking at this without the modification in the motion tonight school f um under national norms 18 of those students would have been identified for eligibility in their in their testing local norms only in that particular school would have created a six percent drop um uh down to only 12 percent being identified so that's the benefit of this modification to the motion um and i think this really achieves that equity for all that
113i believe this board the superintendent that the community recognizes is important but following along with ms seismore heiser asked when we look at the column schools a through c where we really see a tremendous benefit by using our local norms per the recommendations of our external research experts uh what actually creates that leap from like say take school a from three percent to 12 percent to ms seismore heiser's point when you're you know creating the the local norms um how does it differ from the national norms of creating that sort of broader capturing of students like do you you take that test i understand it but how are you at one point saying like are you looking at just a certain percentage of students within that school and and that's going to be that that
114local norming and what what percentage are you looking for a certain percentage of the students or just us who scores within a certain range within those local norms i just i would like for the public and maybe those of us who don't understand how that generates the growth right i mean essentially what we're doing is looking at the statistical distribution of the scores within that particular school so we start with you know the national sample then we look at our division sample and then we look at the sample within the school so you're really looking at you know the distribution within a particular local context for local norms within that school so however many standard deviations you you are away from the mean in that particular school and the reason that that's important is we're
115looking for those kids in that particular school that need to have some additional challenge some of this additional acceleration based on their ability to work and learn at a rate and pace where they might not be challenged in the general education curriculum in that particular local context so for like slide six on the chart where it says combined local and national norms uh the first chart where it was just national norms standard deviation reads 8.4 and then that was on slide five slide six then goes to the combined local and national norm standard deviation is now 14.98 so is and again that's for the overall second grade pool um that's not for the standard deviation within a particular local school right but by doing this way that's that's where the change will be that's where
116the change that's correct okay and the other thing i just want to point out for the public is on slide six where it it was showing what those changes might be from slide five because of this motion being adjusted i think it will be important for the division to adjust that chart so we don't create concern in the community where there isn't needing to be um in terms of like we're looking at making positive improvement for students there's no by doing this change we don't have a a harmful shift um in any particular school or or demographic correct absolutely that's absolutely correct and and we are happy to update the numbers we didn't have a chance to do that and post it yet this afternoon but um we're happy to do that that is very
117important and again um thank you very much for your work and your work with mrs bakarski this afternoon to to make that change so we appreciate it and and dr presidio as always i appreciate how much you make yourself incredibly available um to this board on a constant basis it's it's deeply appreciated dr brabrand i want to make sure you hear it sincere's boss um finally to my colleagues um you know me i dig down in the data to a fault sometimes this is a pilot and so for the public where there's any concerns about when you're doing a pilot and it'll be nice to get even more data than we we might have in front of us but what i like about this is that it's a one-year pilot and we're trying to to
118do good and so i'm willing to take a leap of faith um the only question i might have dr brabrand is that um are you willing to bring to our board after you go through this first selection cycle bring us the results allow the board to look at it and say okay this is this is what it yielded by this action and then i know and then maybe lead maybe present as part b what your plan will be on how we'll measure the pilot because right now we're the pilot's a concept but we don't know the pilot absolutely we need to continue and you've been a great advocate about data driven decision making we're going to bring that and really we want to again dr plucker recommended it that was step one step two really
119is this pilot and then step three is taking the data from the pilot and coming back with a more long-term plan um and it is time to develop a long-term strategic plan for advanced academics programming and i know dr presidio now in his role as chief academic officer is going to make this one of his key priorities so i'm very excited about it and i really am excited that miss pikarski and you working together i think this is going to be a great step forward it's inclusive it's an equity lens on our work and it's going to give more kids an opportunity to shine and do the talent development the talent development that we want to do in this system so thank you for your advocacy and i look forward to the rest of the
120board conversation and uh hopefully a positive review tonight absolutely i just i i want this pilot to be successful and that's why i think if you bring your plan back to the board we can hopefully make sure we've got our bases covered for how we're going to measure it and uh and and allow the public to know that we're trying to be very intentional thank you thank you mr not kofax thank you um i uh wanted to say that i appreciate uh the makers of the motion um as i had um stopped talk to uh and the modifications made to the motion tonight and today as i talked to so many of you i did feel that there was a certain um while there was a need to strengthen equity of access to the programs
121cast the net wider do more talent development that has been something i had been talking about for a long time with respect to the aap program i was concerned and i wasn't able to articulate it the way my colleagues did earlier today to ensure that there while we're casting the net wider one way it wasn't shrinking the other way so i appreciate the change to the amendment i am in support of it uh in in that way um i do have one question for dr presidio on part six on page six of the charts when you talk about um the combined local and national norms and you have a minimum of 79 can you explain that um obviously maximum is um 160 that's what you could get on the negliari or i think the cogat
122is scored the same way but 79 um based upon what the nagli area says i i'm i'm i just like to know why you chose that number and how that was arrived at because it's kind of low on the score for the neglige yeah again it's not a number that's chosen it's a it's a number derived again from the statistical distribution of the entire sample so here we're looking at the entire sample of all the test takers at grade two okay but it would still be a the net would be you could have a minimum of 79 is that right on the score yes am i am i reading that wrong no that's correct okay um so again when you look at the naglieri and they have descriptions of of what percentile rank and they
123are that am i incorrect in saying that that's that's described by the makers of the text is below average well it's it's a nationally norms test so yes i mean it's below the mean okay i don't know where i just want to i guess i'm trying you just understand how that was the number again it's it's just a statistical description of the distribution of the scores so it's not a number that we chose that just happens to be the minimum number of a score of a student at a particular school who potentially would be identified but i think the the really important thing for everybody right here that description helps okay and go but keep going you're gonna say something else i didn't want to cut you off well no no that's okay it's just
124i i think sometimes when we look at the scores you know and the score is an important indicator but it's just to get you to the table to be considered for identification so once once the students come to the table which is basically our screening process then what we're looking at is a holistic review of student test scores student work samples any teacher scoring that's done on the gift of behavior rating scale any parent letters that might be included in the file in in other uh work samples well i think thank you and thank you dr presidio again as so many have um said uh we are appreciative of you and um being available to us to talk this through and um with the changes made today i will be supporting this motion thank you
125thank you miss hamesh followed by miss corbett sanders thank you uh thank you first to miss picarski and and uh miss mclaughlin for bringing this forward and really effectively saving what was a great effort we had been working on since the work session um you know i i'd really be remiss not to be very clear about where we are on this matter um i i want to ask dr presidio a question uh regarding you know the the idea if we were to have expanded this um absolutely right so without necessarily uh limiting it or or confining it in a particular way would any child who would have been normally included have been excluded from the local level four or aap services i think it's important to remember that there's two ways that a student can
126come to the table to begin the eligibility process one is through the universal screener the end that test in this case or through a parent referral 70 of our students come to the table directly through parent referral so i'm not sure that students who would not have been identified with the local norms in a particular school where that local norm was higher than the division norm there would be some students like that that's what we represent in the attachment the school f example but those students could still be self-referred so it's just hard to say whether or not those students and families would choose to self-refer or not but what this motion as amended does is it prevents that possibility from happening right no thank you and and really all it would uh change on
127the ground is to expand the number of students who can access the service right well that's correct that's what the local norms does in in most of our schools it expands the opportunity for us to identify students to have them come to the table i just want to be very clear i mean i think you know on the equity issues we tend to think that there's a zero sum when really we're uh you know the um we're raising the bar for all students right we're uh allowing access for more uh like the you know the the old expression of of a high tide rises or raises all boats right um so just want to be clear on on that uh dr presidio would you also please outline the background research study uh the board actions
128that have taken place um throughout the past year and even beginning with the previous board that have you know substantially uh backed up the the recommendations we we visited in the work session that led to this yeah absolutely and i think uh miss picarski did a great job of that in uh speaking to the motion originally that this is a recommendation that came from an external study that was completed over the course really of a year where we brought together five external researchers from some of the most prestigious universities research institutions in the country that specialize in gifted education and they engaged in extensive study data analysis and stakeholder interviews in fcps over a lengthy period of time and which culminated in a number of recommendations for us in terms of strategic actions that we
129could take to increase equity of access and opportunity and the number one strategy that they identified actually was the use of local norms because as the researchers pointed out really what you're trying to do is identify those students in their local context as close as possible to their school to their classroom that we believe and we know that if we could get them to the screening table many of them will be successful in greater academic challenge so this was one of the highest recommendations that we had from that external research team and we're excited to be able to bring that to you for a vote again today thank you dr presidio my final question for you is is what additional steps that may have come out of this research from your understanding on the ground
130could be done perhaps you know discussed at the work session or you're welcome to elaborate further that is not being done to expand equity and access for all families right now well i think um you know as dr brave mentioned we definitely want to study the impact of the identification process that we're proposing here and that if it is successful we would come back to the board share that information with you and seek to expand it to other schools well i should say to all schools all of our elementary schools um in the in the coming years i think that would be the number one thing yes yeah no i appreciate that i mean i think again um and just really being honest about uh the situation here you know we we visited this in
131a work session and and we had the opportunity to take a look at the many reforms dr president has mentioned that have been backed by the research the previous board had commissioned um and and are now you know uh and had the opportunity to consider how staff was going to implement that based on years literature reviews and uh robust research that led us here and and and this is a step again i appreciate miss picarski saving the situation by allowing us to pilot it um but i look forward to seeing the many ways we can expand aap for all students i don't want to be in a position where and i don't believe it's right to be in a position whereas the division we are telling a family we are telling a child you want
132to take this advanced course but maybe not you know i get it that you see yourself having this potential but we're not sure you belong there this is an opportunity for us dr presidio has outlined many things that i look forward to seeing the support of my colleagues on because at the end of the day again this is expanding access this is really truly uh embodying one fairfax and saying every child has potential and every child can succeed in our system by name and by need not just you know ones who are going to make it through some kind of filter and i know there are many parents out there who are frustrated because they want their kids accessing this advanced program that our takes taxpayer dollars pay for anyway i was lucky enough to
133be a product of it myself and i think any student can succeed in it given the right resources and supports which is our job to provide um so so with that obviously i'll be supporting this and and i do look forward to us further supporting the localizing piece after it's successful which i have no doubt it will be as we know from the research already uh universalizing it further and expanding aap for all students and and supporting the the additional pieces dr presidio spoke to thank you thank you mr mesh miss corbett sanders thank you and i'm pleased to be able to follow my colleague uh miss omeg how appropriate is it that we are looking at this motion on the same day that we talk and we honor inclusive schools because what this is
134about is casting a wide net for access to opportunities for students it recognizes that looking at each child by name and need means that you also have to look at the environment from which from whence they come it is something that builds on work that this board and previous board has done in the advanced academic area it is an incremental incremental piece of that work i want to draw my uh colleague's attention to both mr uh professor plucker and professor scott peters who are both part of the consulting team that did the initial study on aap and access to aap for this board both of those gentlemen have done extensive analysis on how the utilization of local norms does not take away opportunities but rather rose opportunities and grows opportunities and access to areas of
135our community that may not have seen it in the past there has been extensive work on the positive impact of local norms that they have on creative inclusive advanced academic opportunities it is my understanding that dr peters will be releasing a new handbook on how to actually implement local norms and i look forward to that handbook being shared with this board but i also want to draw attention to this board's role in creating the positive policy environment for improving access to opportunities for all there are 17 states in this country that currently require the use of local norms the state of virginia does not require the use of local norms but the state of virginia watches what the fairfax county school board does in increasing opportunity and access for students and so with that i
136just want to know want you to know i appreciate all of the hard work of miss picarski miss cohen miss mclaughlin miss darren at kofax over the years on advanced academics and just let you know that i will be supporting this effort so thank you and i look forward to the results of this pilot thank you seeing that there are no other speakers i will take a brief turn to speak on this matter i'm very glad as well to follow miss omega miss corbett sanders i will be supporting this motion and apparently i was thinking along the same lines as miss corbett sanders because i think particularly in light of what we just recognized earlier with inclusive schools week that this is apropos i do believe that this approach will increase opportunity for our students
137but i want to really caution us into thinking that the work is done with this pilot or even if this pilot is expanding into other spaces uh there's a body of research and we heard about it this evening too that speaks to universal access to advanced curriculum this is a great opportunity to cast a wide net but we can still cast an even wider net to capture all of our students i am not going to belabor the point because i think mr mesh made much of the shared much of the content that i wanted to articulate but we need to be able to challenge ourselves to move beyond sorting our students to provide them with opportunity we can provide all of our students with opportunity it is okay gifted instruction or advanced curriculum it's good
138teaching and it is good for all of our students and they will rise to that occasion i've seen this firsthand as someone who's been in education for 23 years and so i look forward to the day where we can be that bold and engage all of our students and not feel the need to sort and separate them in order to grow them we can meet them where they are we can differentiate for them so that they all excel so that they all have that access so having said that i don't see any other speakers i will call for the vote except my computer died and my screen just closed so please give me a moment while i find the script to read the motion and of course it is not working miss um miss pokarsky
139can you please read the motion that you would like for us to vote upon please enact pulling it up right now i'm sorry okay i'm there sorry i got okay the motion before us um is i moved that in school year 21 2021 for schools with aap local level 4 or ap local level 4 center the pool of 2nd grade students to be screened for ap level 4 services will be identified by piloting the use of local building norms while ensuring that any student who meets the national norm is also identified for screening and schools that do not yet have a local 4 program national norms will continue to be used to identify students for eligibility screening all of those in favor we have missile mesh massimo heiser miss marin mr frisch miss mclaughlin miss
140cohen miss corbett sanders miss picarsky miss tolin miss keys gemara mr not koufax and myself that is unanimous thank you miss pokarsky and miss cohen for your work on this at this time i will turn it over to miss picarski to go through our casino consent agenda okay thank you i am just pulling it up i'm sorry too many okay okay our our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to a meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen are
141there any objections to approving the consent agenda and hearing none and seeing none the consent agenda is approved we'll move on to 6.01 new business the new business items are on the screen there will not be a vote tonight on these items but action is scheduled for a future meeting thank you at this time i call on dr bray brandt for superintendent matters thank you chairman anderson first of all i just want to say nathan i heard you our leadership team heard you our principals heard you our staff heard you and kimberly i sat with you here last year i heard you and we want your voice and your input as we continue through this year and we will use your recommendations to make the changes necessary to make sure students are heard respected listened
142to valued so i look forward to nathan getting your letter and i have reached out to kimberly and kimberly i look forward to getting your recommendations and bringing those before the board and acting on real recommendations that are going to affect kids right now i want to also share with you all um that this is virginia department of education's ed equity week in virginia with a focus on equity for all kids and i did applaud just a moment ago i am thrilled as ms corbett sanders so eloquently said what fairfax county does is what uh a lot of the rest of the virginia school districts watch of course other districts across the country watch and doing the pilot for local norms tonight is going to send a powerful message about equity across this commonwealth and
143work to eliminate the predictability of student outcomes based on factors such as race zip code family income ability or home language so i'm excited to see not just words but action and what a perfect time to do it as we're observing at equity week i want you to know too that we've established as i talked about listening to nathan and kimberly a new leadership program around keeping equity at the center of our work and ample amplifying student voice we have seals i know you've heard of navy seals but now we have seals in fairfax county that are our student equity ambassador leaders they have been selected from each of our schools to help us provide an increased understanding of diversity equity and inclusion through leadership development projects and relevant experiences these high school kids have
144already had the opportunity to meet with our staff is meeting with them regularly and this is about students getting to create a more active role for themselves and for school leadership to hear them on how we're going to have a more equitable and culturally responsive learning environment in our schools i want to thank all of our staff that are working with the seals and i want to thank the board for your continued commitment and partnership to equity in fairfax county public schools i also just want to mention we've got great kids we know that and we have a great community and it's wonderful to see our kids and staff and community members come together to support our community herndon high school their njrotc students donated 11 family meals for thanksgiving and pledged another 10 meals
145for the winter break in honor of the class of 2021 and they'll be provided to families via the food for neighbors program the cadets normally visit neighborhoods to ask for food donations but this time they found new ways to contribute and so glad that they've done it we also have families in the mount vernon community they've teamed up with unity food bank along with fairfax county supervisor rodney lusk and students from langley high school so really a cross section of our county to provide over 300 baskets of food including turkeys donated by nbc washington and pies donated by century 21 to families in our fcps community what a wonderful collaboration and just so proud to see all of our kids coming together with members of our community to do this and then i also want
146to note south lake south lakes high school junior christina and her brother christopher who is a recent graduate of south lakes along with their mother have sewn and donated 1 000 masks to the south lakes food pantry for distribution talk about the fcbs portrait of a graduate being an ethical and global citizen we really shout out christina and her brother from south lakes for this amazing work and then finally as a final note of giving as we celebrate thanksgiving holiday and think about the winter break coming up before us the fcps foundation continues to collect funds in support of students they're currently collecting funds for project cornucopia which makes sure our students in greatest need can enjoy a holiday meal with their family any funds donated to the foundation will be used for gift cards
147that can be redeemed for groceries and contributions can be made through december 31st please go to the fcps foundation website you can find that link to our fcps website at www.fcps.edu as superintendent i am proud of the work that this community is doing as we rally people together to support one another during this pandemic thank you very much chairman anderson thank you very much dr bray brand at this time i will call on mr frish for a report on the governance committee and then miss seismor heiser for a report from the public engagement committee and then we will end with miss picarski with an update from the forum held earlier this week please feel free to follow each other without me reintroducing the three of you thank you uh governance committee met on november 18th
148and made progress on updates to our long-awaited conflicts of interest policy we hope to vote on our final draft at our meeting this month and send it to the full board for consideration also we approved a timeline for developing the board's anti-racism anti-bias policy and controversial issues policy amendments including independent gathering of stakeholder and community input lastly a new no change memo has been received by the committee and we have already started our review of nearly two dozen uh policies and we'll dive deeper at our meeting later this month thank you thank you the public engagement committee also met this week and we've actually been working on the public comment policy and updating our public comment policy which is actually great timing because i know we've heard from some members of our public that um
149they have not been as able to access speaking at our board meetings as they would like so we've been working for the past i think three months or so updating a public comment policy with the really the eye of being more inclusive and giving more opportunities for more community members to be able to address the board and have their voices be heard so we um finalize that policy this week the draft of the policy so i want to just thank my colleagues on the public engagement committee mr carl frisch miss corbett sanders and ms omash for really their hard work and really excellent ideas on how to be more inclusive and open with our public comment policies and i look forward to bringing the policy to the full board for comment and hopefully approval soon
150so um i think we've done great work we're going to um turn our focus really to folks on our advisory committees to make sure that they are as effective as we would like them to be as and um update our policies and procedures so that will be the next step for our public engagement committee so thank you okay thank you um the board heard one forum topic this week presented my miss karen keys kamara she requested that the board approve directing the super intendent um to create a scoping plan to establish an academy at john lewis high school that adopts the principles of his life's work miss keys gamara passionately presented this idea for an academy with curriculum focused on government public policy leadership human rights and opportunities for internships around the washington dc area
151during board discussion there was excitement for a program of this nature and the opportunities it would bring to lewis students and others in the surrounding region the concerns raised were prioritization of a program such as this during a time of increased workload on staff due to covet and potential budgetary implications with the anticipated difficult year ahead the forum topic failed to gather the majority support of the board at which point ms keys kamara asked the board to reconsider the forum topic request by postponing the scoping to begin in the summer of 2021 with no upcoming budgetary implications the board through a majority vote of 93 approve this exploratory work to begin next summer thank you thank you at this time we are up to board matters and i call on miss cohen can never decide
152if marrying someone with the last name c was a blessing or a curse um on the 18th um abrar omesh and i were pleased to be a part of the joint cip meeting the first one with the board of supervisors we were pleased to be joined by supervisor faust and supervisor smith as well um and we'll be meeting every six weeks and i can't speak for miss omaesh but i think we both felt really encouraged and excited about the idea of working together with the county on really addressing some of the capacity issues and the extremely long renovation queue that we have here in fcps and i think everybody was really motivated towards um solutions and real answers and we'll have more hopefully to update soon um we are pleased to be able to be
153a part of that um i've really appreciated my time these last couple of weeks speaking to students and families um and teachers and our pta leaders thanks to fccpta for having me last night um sorry for all the technical issues but i appreciate your patience and bearing bearing with me um and i look forward to participating in the white oaks pta meeting on the 15th and just to follow up on what nathan shared um and i so appreciate everything that nathan brings to this board i i feel so encouraged every time um i get to hear him speak that if we're churning out students like that in fcps i i i feel just awfully proud of of who these kids are turning out to be um but i do want to say just to echo
154what nathan said we hear you um you know and we are working really hard to try to get better answers for now and in the future so um i know sometimes it rings hollow but um please hang in there and um and just know that we are we're trying um and trying to make things better um right now so happy belated thanksgiving um and look forward to seeing seeing you virtually in the next couple of weeks miss club at sanders followed by ms down not colfax thank you chairman anderson and i too want to echo the comments with my colleagues cohen uh about how important it is for us to hear not only nathan's voice but uh kimberly's voice we do hear you and we understand how important it is for every student to feel
155that they are being heard that their needs are recognized we respect what you're um calling out for and we will do everything in our power to meet your needs we know that this is a very difficult time this board is focused on ensuring that we act on what we are hearing from you and we are hearing not only from you but we're hearing from parents we are hearing it from ptas we are hearing it from uh people our neighbors our our nieces our nephews our children about how important it is for us to recognize the impact that this epidemic is having on our children and we need to act and we will act i also want to thank the stratford on the potomac the south fairfax chamber of commerce and the american association of university
156women who over the past two and a half three weeks have created opportunities for me to hear even more from our community as well as the mount vernon high school and west potomac high school pyramid ptas it is with that information and the the comments that each of you have made that i will be working with my colleagues and with the superintendent to make sure that we address your cries for help and support and finally just on a public notice point i want to make sure that people know that there is free coveted testing in on the richmond highway corridor at the mount vernon adult day health care center monday tuesday wednesday and fridays and so given where we are with the numbers in our community right now i anybody who needs to get a
157test should follow up with the mount vernon adult day health uh mount vernon adult day health care center thank you miss nana tolfax followed by miss marin and then miss omesh thank you and um i this is more of a thanks post thanksgiving um update uh i do want to say thank you to our entire northern virginia delegation for turning out for our legislative uh briefing that we have our virtual briefing that we had we had a hundred percent attendance um and we really appreciate you taking the time to listen to us and we look forward to working with you as we go um as we as you begin to begin your session in january after the holidays i also want to thank hayfield secondary ptsa for your partnership with the community and all of
158the funds and meals that you served that you were able to provide i should say to give those gifts to those members of the community in need you made you made such an impact so i'm i am grateful for you doing that there are so many um organizations out there that have helped scott reference some um here in the community in my community as well so thank you all for looking out for your neighbors um now um during this holiday time but also during this time where there's where there's a pandemic and people are not able to are are not working or not are not unable to get out the way they would so thank you so much for everything that you do um thank you to alice's kids you have been great partners for
159us in each and every week there are amazing stories um about that group on the uh mount vernon side of the of of the district so thank you for all that you do for us as well and um and grand involved who continue to support our most vulnerable uh learners um virtually um a group of that started out grand involved was a was a grandparent group i think it's mixed age group now but those who are reaching out to their members in the community in a virtual way and continuing to help so i thank you for all of that and i do um look forward to our return to learn um update which we will be having next next week and um i do want to say i will continue to monitor that make certain
160that we as we proceed we do it safely and and with the health of our our teachers our staff and our students in mind so thank you and have a good evening hi good evening thank you let me get set up here yeah so um i i'd like to share two things tonight one is to share some reflections about uh the work that i've been involved with um to this point almost a full year and then just share some specific work updates so i must say the comments of our three student reps tonight or our two student representatives and a public speaker about the status of student students during covid resonated profoundly with me i usually don't read remarks but i had to write down my thoughts because there's a lot that i just wanted
161to share so i want to say that i center students every day and this happens most prominent with me when most probably with me when i sit with my own children every school day who are in second and fifth grade as they learn virtually and like many parents i've had to find patients and fortitude that i didn't know that i had to put the needs of students ahead of my own and i observe how their classmates are faring and eager to see how they engaged and really heartbroken when i see that they don't but of course it's not just through my personal experience that i center students students are everywhere for me in my mind when i go for a walk and i don't see school buses when i walk by empty schools or on
162the athletic fields i'm always thinking about what could have been happening or what should be or what will be you know in the emails i get from families and students begging to return to school and those i get begging to remain virtual i try to figure out ways i can help specifically most often i let them know that i hear them i'm sharing their comments with my colleagues and the superintendent i've tried to be action oriented during this pandemic choosing carefully where i spend my time in the work when so much simultaneously needs to be a priority multitasking has taken on a new definition for me doing at things at least two of them simultaneously is a new norm for me i've tried to analyze where i and the board can maneuver within the constraints
163of the very limited powers that a local school board has in virginia and the realities of covid that thwarts our actions when our student rep mr onobuto advocated for homework changes a month ago through an eloquent letter to the superintendent and school board i immediately asked our superintendent what could we do i asked about the homework policy that hasn't been updated on record since 2004 and the back story also is that in june on the governance committee you know i supported the next step needed to get that policy into a work session and yet this hasn't happened but back to the future in response to mr anubuda's letter while the superintendent fairly soon did communicate to staff about initiating a catch-up day where no new work would be assigned one day a quarter and reminding
164staff as they had been directed in the start of the year to grade you know differently and keep homework at a minimum when i asked mr arnabito tonight if anything had changed since then he said no nothing noticeably had changed in his workload and then we all heard his public comments since july i've been asking the school board as a body and the superintendent and leadership team to clear the decks of anything except return to school admission critical work like the budget and other legally legal requirements that we need to maintain the operations of the school division yet as students have communicated tonight and they are joined with many students and families in the community other topics have come before this board for attention in summonses instances opportunities present themselves or really thrust themselves on
165us like work to defeat racism and grow equity i've supported this work during kovitt because for some of the topics in particular the public rose to a clarion call never heard before in this community and it's tough when advocates say that we that i am not doing enough because i'm simultaneously working to address needs regarding return to school and racism they are mutually exclusive to me ensuring kids are supported during virtual learning means helping all kids and especially those who are traditionally underserved marginalized and victims of racism so it's hard to keep finding time that doesn't exist to carve out more and more time while we are trying to help students survive and there is this tension of being creative and aspirational against trying to tread water where we're at and all there should there
166should be some bit of creativity in that treading of water it's really hard to envision new work right now so i asked the community to consider all the boiling pots on the stove that i know i'm trying to attend hearing older students tonight and young adults articulate their experiences and their disappointments and their pleas to this board on which i'm just one of 12 really hits me in a way than what my own children are are developmentally ready to communicate miss boitang as she often does said it pretty much right on things are not normal now and we are acting towards students as we are i want to say to you miss botang and your peers that unfortunately we're all we're all subject to this kind of behavior right now and we need to do
167what we can better to be more focused uh mr onobudo so eloquently gave this board his remarks um to be creative and to elevate work to the common good and i believe that that we can do that um i want to say just in closing i think this is the longest sport matters i've ever had um this board is tasked with doing important work for the success of children everything feels like a priority but if that's really the case then nothing is we can't strategically undertake the work in a way to really help kids it's true that not everything right now in this moment is a priority for this board so i believe at this time that i would like for the school division to prioritize those items that pertain to the entirety of our
168student body and the school division those must be our priorities at this time i'd also just really quickly like to share some work that i've been involved in just today myself and mr seismer heiser met with fcps mental health staff to learn more about what is being done systemically and there is a lot of great stuff happening i just wasn't aware and so i look forward to hearing more about that to the full board i'm hosting a set of pta executive board meetings with different pyramids so elementary schools for madison and south lakes and then high school meetings we're also trying to get some of the boosters to be represented there so if you're um affiliated with the high school boosters that please reach out or we'll find you um indeed as another club said
169we've had a lot of well i've had the last full two weeks regarding advocacy and partnership with the delegates and senators that represent us in the general assembly so i hosted a take your legislator to school visit in honor of the virginia school board association's monthly observance where we went to coleman run elementary so thank you mr young mr stotterstrom ms scarborough and miss johns for having us in your school and kindergarten classroom it greatly helped the elected officials to see what we're grappling with and it was so important for them to see that then we did have the legislative briefing with dozens of electeds and then just this week it might have actually just been yesterday i testified in front of the state foia council about more of supporting a subcommittee's recommendation for more
170meeting flexibility for individuals to be to meet virtually in local times and this whole normal times and this whole board signed a letter for a total of 61 elected officials in virginia representing 20 jurisdictions asking for that and it went through but so now it just goes to a bill so we keep advocating but it's a good step for trying to make us be very available to our constituents and participate fully so thank you for indulging me on extra time tonight and i'll be shorter in the future thank you thank you miss mary miss omeg despite having many things to share i want to be mindful we're going to be going i'm going to be bringing a motion to going to close later i just want to make sure i announce for the public's sake
171three motions that i'm uh likely bringing to the board next meeting uh two on tj one to localize our evaluation of students the second to universalize our consideration of students and finally uh as was reflected in the work session a motion to ban seclusion uh if and and to replace the rooms with sensory rooms but but i'll stop there because i know i i promised my colleagues we're going into closed and i don't want to take up too much time mr fresh followed by ms keysgamara thank you i'll keep this short um i feel like we're going to race to the end of the year with fewer and fewer days left to fill to that end i'm trying to squeeze in as much time with constituents as possible continuing to hold office hours and over
172the next two weeks i'll be meeting with some community associations including the providence district council and about a half dozen ptas at elementary schools so um trying to jam it all in before the 2020 on the calendar turns into 2021. thank you go ahead followed by ms mclaughlin thank you um i will ask for your indulgence and misamish i am so sorry that you want to make a motion and i will not be able to um follow that based on our current workload i do want to thank everyone this board has been working very hard and so has our staff members and our families and i i want to first of all recognize that and thank our our staff for trying to address many many things some of the things that i have been involved
173in um i had the pleasure of participating with mr fritz uh at the public hearing at mosby woods participated in a meeting regarding principal selection for glasgow and have been able to meet with a number of our principals to try to understand what we are facing as you heard one of the big events for me this week was my john lewis forum topic and i will say that i have worked very hard to represent those people who have really reached out to me because this was so important to them to help to build our community and with the hope that it would impact the entire county we had support reaching out to local universities we had petitioned signatures from students nearly 200 we had petition signatures from adults and so i understand that our board
174is working to try to figure things out i would like to continue the discussion about how we do that because we are a large system of many parts and um i think that it is a mistake to think that we cannot focus on those parts make sure that the whole is strengthening so i we will continue to work i want to say to the young people who have expressed disappointment that we are not giving up that members in the community have been energized and we will continue that work and just in closing the day that this motion was made for john lewis the john lewis academy to be established for public policy human rights leadership and government was also the day that rosa parks refused to give up her bus seat and the day that
175abraham lincoln said reaffirmed his commitment to abolishing slavery and i gather inspiration from that because we will continue to fight for the parts that make us the whole because that is how we grow stronger so i will continue this discussion with my colleagues and with our community and i thank you all miss mclaughlin followed by ms pikarski uh thank you uh before i give my remarks i just want to confirm um dr anderson we are not going back into close this evening that's correct we're taking up whatever issues we have tomorrow in our closed i think um somewhat some board members are interested in putting that forward to the board for consideration to return so we'll have the board act on that motion so i'm i'm just once again i'm just disappointed i mean the
176board was told and closed we would take it up tomorrow something's changed i don't know why we weren't notified as a florida whole that someone wanted to do that because it it comes as a surprise at 10 41 that now something's changing i i i would really ask in the future whoever is going to give the motion that we want to go back into close tonight you really should copy all of your colleagues we shouldn't be surprised by one board member making note of it and you know in me asking for clarity i'm now finding it only because one board member mentioned it i just don't think that's good practice but anyway um i do want to um first of all say to dr brabrand the concerns we've continued to hear from mr onobudo and
177our former student rep i'm kimberly blattang as you know this division under karen garza took really good steps to address teacher workload and student workload by the division telling our teachers we are not requiring two graded assessments a week we dropped it from eight from two a week down to one a week which meant nine assessments per quarter instead of eighteen now we've been in covid we keep talking to those students remarks that we're very mindful of teacher workload and student workload so i would just formally ask for your consideration that when we really talk about that we hear them we care we understand it for our teachers and employees we need to really think about again bringing down the number of graded assessments and homework loads we we want this obviously to be meaningful
178measures to check and see how students are doing but it's the grading component that i think is putting so much mental health stress and physical brain stress for teachers and students so i'm not necessarily putting you on the spot right now tonight but i just i want to say that i really think this isn't as complicated as it needs to be it's whether you and your leadership team talk and say what can we do um with direction we give to our teachers because i think that right now the direction to them is one graded assignment per week and until we change that the students aren't going to see a change in their workload stream we'll have more to share at thursday's return to school work session i absolutely agree thank you and we've heard the
179students loud and clear tonight we've been working on it and we'll have more to share thursday's return to school work session that's great and i appreciate that um dr brabrand i also want to tell you dr brabrand i've so appreciated the teachers in our school division who've invited so many of us to come visit their virtual classrooms as well as when we were able to go visit their concurrent classrooms that has really allowed us as board members to get to see firsthand what instruction is looking like right now and you and i have had the pleasure of working together the last three years you know i'm always pushing on you for data so i do hope that this division will continue to really focus as ms marin and others have said return to school has
180got to be our paramount focus and a piece of that is i hope that the office of research and strategic improvement will really um narrow its focus to all of the incredible amount of research and reporting on national and global school divisions that have remained open during covid what their what their positivity rates have been in those jurisdictions we're hearing from our families that even here in the united states where the positivity rates are above ours in our metrics that they've remained open i think it would be helpful in those jurisdictions that what's meaningful is what do their covid cases look like and so uh i do think that um as some colleagues have asked it of course needs to be apples to apples but there are plenty of jurisdictions that their public health conditions
181mirror ours they're open and we need to be able to help our community understand where success is happening i truly appreciate that i you speak eloquently about your desire to get our kids back in school and i know that's where your heart is and especially for your own boys my nephew rochness son who are all seniors and i i just hope we can really dedicate using the research and the findings and the data to help bring comfort and confidence in our system and your mitigation teams i know are a critical component so to the community please if this is a paramount focus for you we will have our return to school work session next thursday december 10th and we really hope you'll get to tune in and hear more about where this is and i
182just want to say thank you to not just the braddock district residents but all of our community that you're you're writing your emails to us they matter we are overwhelmed um and and uh we aren't able to respond in the way that we normally all of us have taken great pride in um do know your voices matter and um your input is appreciated so thank you miss picarski and then miss seismohazer hey thank you i'm actually gonna be um super quick number one i would like to congratulate miss meredith norris who was the going to be the new principal at stone middle school um that community i know was very excited for this announcement excited to work with her and her staff as a school board member but also as a parent when one of
183my own kids will be at stone next year um and i would also like to thank the rocky run student services team who in uh invited um actually miss keith kamara and and myself were both there for their um fall advisory uh brainstorming meeting uh and i can say there is real work hard work and real dedication shown by our our teachers and staff around supporting our students and really being open to listening from from school board members to parents to community uh members and and advocates to to really get all the ideas they possibly can to support our kids in the best way possible this year and i am very um very much looking forward to our return to school update so thank you thank you um i appreciate it and i will say
184i'll be brief but i never am so i'll just put that out there um i also want to say that while i appreciate that we on this board um we all have amazing ideas of how to make our school system better and we all spent a lot of time and effort in getting to these positions so we could make our school system better and we could do some amazing things with our school system and and create some amazing things and um the covid means that we have to keep the main thing the main thing and that right now is our student and teacher mental health our student and teacher overwhelmed returning our kids to the school building as safely as we can do it and supporting our students and our teachers in virtual learning in
185the meantime that is the main thing and that has to be the main thing we are in a global pandemic our teachers are suffering and our students are suffering i have been talking since the summer since may about our student mental health about the overwhelm and about the concerns of a long term which i will say we're in a long term now virtual learning environment and trying to figure out how to return our students to school so it's been difficult for me and for many of us i will say to put priorities and really great ideas on hold but that's what we have to do if we're going to be able to do the main thing in the best way we can and that is at the end of the day taking care of our
186most vulnerable students if equity is what we believe in then let's look at who is actually failing through virtual learning let's look at who hasn't been mentioned tonight in the conversations here our special education students let's look at the fact that our students from davis and pulley and stepp will be transitioning out this year and they'll lose their eligibility and going off that cliff without the work space experiences and i know our principals i've talked to them today at pulley and davis are doing amazing things in this virtual environment and their teachers are doing amazing things but those are the kids who already have incredibly poorest post-secondary outcomes let's look at our special education students in secondary school who are in self-contained special education academic classes who are trying to maintain on sol level but
187maybe reading several grade levels below reading level and if they do not pass the rest of wells this year or next year or the year after they will not get a high school diploma and it will change the trajectory of their life that is the main thing so i i love every idea that people are bringing i love trying to make our programs more open and equitable and i believe in it wholeheartedly but we have got to educate our students period end of conversation we've got to take care of their mental health so that is my piece i'm going to say so since i was all you know strong armed i'm going to leave it on a good note and i want to um say two things first nathan i really appreciate your words i
188always do kimberly i appreciate your words i too am looking forward to how we're going to make change now to the class of 2021 since i have one of those i just spent like an evening a couple nights ago picking my son's yearbook ads it is hard and this division needs to do better in acknowledging how hard it is for our seniors who don't have another year and i know that you are halfway through your senior year almost and i am committed to continuing to fight to make sure we celebrate you and take care of all of our students those in transition those struggling and even those who are doing great in virtual we want to take care of you so i'm going to end with something that i wanted to say because in all
189of this i have been most impressed with our students and their attitudes and their resiliency and so um it's a little personal to me but the lake braddock secondary school choir students on their own put together an amazing virtual concert for the residents of heatherwood retirement community as a way to say to the residents who are many of them isolating quarantining trying to stay safe that these high school students see you hear you and are there with you and are sending you some joy and i think it's amazing that these students put together not one but two virtual concerts for these residents so i want to give a shout out to lake product course thank you very much i appreciate it and thank you for all those who are still hanging in there listening thank
190you massimo hi so ms tolen so uh miss cohen maybe the only thing worse than having a name starting with the c is having it start with the t and i go after my size for heiser every time um i also want to thank nathan for talking about how our students are doing um tomorrow i'm getting on the computer and spending my whole day as a middle school student in just a very small way to see um you know what that day is really like um tomorrow i'm following i heard the middle school student through the day um through the schedule and i'm aiming at middle school because i've heard some very heartfelt stories about struggles of our students at this level um you know in addition of course to high school elementary school et
191cetera and then next week i'm attending cooper cooper middle school and a long fellow in january um in addition i i have um organizing some meetings with duriansville ptsa pta and pto leaders i'm in conjunction with the save community coalition uh and uh this is on december 14th and 15th and we'll be hearing particularly about resources for parents to assist children start struggling in virtual learning and just dealing with the pandemic in general so you know trying in some small ways to um you know get at you know the struggles that our students are having and and our parents too in on working with these with their children at home um in dealing with our overcrowding issues at mclean high school i want the community to know that if you hopefully you know that we
192have a meeting on monday evening um on our boundary adjustment and scoping at 6 30 on monday and we're doing something a little bit different with this boundary adjustment we have a community advisory council that we put together made up of neighborhood association leaders the great falls citizens association mclean citizens association make spaces and even more importantly a student rep from each of the high schools involved in the boundary change and they have been working with myself and staff um and will work with us through the boundary process to make sure the community has the information that they really need and um that they can make the comments that they need and make their voices heard looking forward also to our next return to school session on the 10th as i know our parents and
193students and staff are anxious i'm very anxious for an update and i think um miss mcgowan for her comments around that um i'll be meeting with haycock staff and pta members soon and look forward to hearing um from them and lastly just want to put out a huge congratulations to the mclean high school highlander journalists and all of the awards that they have won recently both overall and individually for the incredible journalism that they do in the production of the highlander magazine thank you very much thank you miss tolen i will be brief in my remarks i have a number of things that i would like to share um first of all i want to remind the public that as we discussed the restraining seclusion policy just a couple of days ago our board did
194decide during that meeting to hold a public hearing on that topic that date will be deceptive friday december 11th so you should look forward to having that posted um very shortly i also want to share that there's been a lot of wonderful things happening in mason um very similarly to some of my colleagues i had the opportunity to attend both the middle school advisory for poe and um glasgow middle schools and i had the chance to hear how they are addressing the issues that are facing our students particularly in light of the grade reports that was done by orsi very recently and as a parent of one of those students one of those sixth graders who attends that school i really want to say i am heartened and encouraged by the hard work that the
195staff of those schools are undertaking to ensure that our students are successful it is definitely an uphill climb it it's hard but the will is there plans are there and i know they will continue to tweak those plans until we have the result that is desired i also want to say a major shout out to justice high school the virginia foundation for community college education along with the northern virginia community college and fairfax county have partnered to introduce the urban initiative partnership this is a new career coaching initiative for underserved students that will be piloting at justice high school this partnership represents an opportunity for students many of whom have not otherwise would be able to continue their education after high school or to participate in intensive academic guidance career coaching and workforce skills building
196under the tutelage of a full-time career coach who is who will be located at the high school the program seeks to increase a number of students who complete high school as well as the number of students who choose both college and workforce training after high school it builds on the existing partnerships with nova and fcps but will really provide personalized guidance and support to students who need that targeted assistance to achieve academic success and post high school career development goals i'm very excited that justice has had this opportunity so thank you to mrs eck the principal there and the entire team because i know it's your hard work that have managed and making sure that this has happened and also dr zuluwaga thank you so much for your leadership and my last comment is just
197a welcome to the newest principal in mason mr christoph hill who has been presented as the principal of westlawn elementary school and the community is so very excited to working with you and i am looking forward to that as well so welcome and i think that concludes our um our comments for this afternoon and i do understand miss mclaughlin we do have a board member who wants to make a motion and ask for robert's rules that has to be allowed so miss um omish please go ahead yeah thank you and i understand it's an unpopular thing to suggest at 11 pm um but i do want to be efficient in our considerations obviously it is closed so i can't speak too much to it but i want us to consider that this will allow a
198more efficient outcome than deferring so i would like for the board to uh uh share anderson i'm asking that i move to suggest that we um or rather i move that we go into is there a second okay we have a second um obviously miss um omesh would you like to speak very generally to your emotion yeah i i think we can get somewhere tonight in an efficient amount of time uh instead of deferring to tomorrow where i anticipate we might rehash a lot of the same conversation and i gotta leave it at that because it's closed thank you uh miss marin okay miss mclaughlin in addition to my disappointment that only certain board members were made aware of this desire and it's just very harmful to not include the full board on this not
199to mention i don't even know how this gets done during a meeting i thought our clerk of the board said that the closed meeting room has been broken down for the evening so where would we be meeting to do this and the equipment is no longer in the building like there's no place to meet so how are we going into closed if the technology and everything in order for the 12 of us to do a concurrent meeting can't i don't think we were aware of that so we do have an issue in terms of being able to participate with the individuals who are at home yeah i i happened to see the email come in from our clerk about 10 minutes ago oh yeah my understanding we had paused and not decided whether we're moving
200forward either direction so that is not point of order one second please well i believe at this point we haven't the space um we don't have the technology to set up it's been broken down is that correct it's been broken down so we don't have the opportunity to have that be put together so i think essentially our decision has been made for us because staff will not have an opportunity to do that and we have no other no other space to do it well that's why i i requested to speak because i was trying to understand why the motion was continuing thank you and and to miss corbett sanders where she's trying to interject there are some of us who distinctly recall that the chair said we would carry this over tomorrow and so i'm
201not sure why people think we voted to pause being that we have no space for it and yes we did ask for that consideration but it wasn't finalized but however there is no opportunity to have this um meeting in the course dr anderson so the meeting is now adjourned and i'm happy to chat a little bit later on about this good night everyone you