001good evening good evening hello this September 3rd this September 3rd 2020 regular um meeting will now come to order I will now take B call Miss Cohen here Miss caret Sanders I will come back Miss Dar kofax here Mr frish here miss key gamara Miss ml miss mlin here miss Marin here Miss om here miss bski hi I'm here miss siser and Mr anabo is not with us yet but he will be joining us later oh Mr anabo are you with us I'm with I'm here yay thank you I'm so glad um this CET Sanders here miss Keys gamara okay we do not have Miss Kei gamar with us as of yet um so we will um continue and hopefully she will join us soon please rise as our student representative Nathan anabo leads us
002in the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a Moment of Silence Mr an buo I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands stands one one nation under God indivisible justice for all thank you thank you Mr anabo um in order to comply with Section 2.2 D 3712 D of the code of Virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that the Fairfax County School Board convene a Clos meeting on September 3rd 2020 and to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the Clos session do we have
003someone to certify this motion thank you Miss omes do we have a second thank you miss seism moiser all in favor we have Miss om Miss seism moiser Miss Tolen Miss Marin miss bakari m frish Dr Anderson Miss Dar kofax Miss Keys gamar Miss Cohen okay all who are against I'm Sorry Miss pakari I'm so sorry let me call your name um if you all voting NOS please raise your hands at this time those Miss seis moisa are you voting no to to the certification thank you all of those abstaining miss m miss mclocklin and miss kit Sanders thank you all please lower those hands tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu tv/ um ch99 I call on Mr anabo for an announcement thank you thank
004you Dr Anderson um US Constitution Day and citizenship day September 17 2020 Constitution Day and citizenship day are observed each year on September 17 to commemorate the signing of the Constitution on September 17 1787 and recognize quote all who by coming of age or by naturalization have become citizens end quote recent legislation has named the day is Constitution Day and citizenship day and urges proper observance of the day this year the official observance day is Thursday September 17th and is the 20 233rd anniversary excuse me of the nation's founding document all FCPS all schools in FCPS will observe this day with activities that recognize the adoption of the United States Constitution and those who have become citizens under the Constitution schools will use a variety of curriculum resources to teach students about the importance of
005the Constitution and responsible citizenship throughout the school year high school students will have an opportunity to participate in service learning projects related to responsible citizenship which can lead to a Civic seal on their diploma thank you Dr Anderson thank you Mr anabo I appreciate that uh those statements now I will call on Miss Dara kofax for a resolution on Childhood Cancer Awareness for recognition thank you madam chair I am honored to read this recognition um the American Childhood Cancer organization or a CCO has designated September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month to Spotlight the types of cancers that largely affect children and to help raise funds for research and family support according to ACC 15,780 children under the age of 20 one are diagnosed with cancer every year in the United States approximately a quarter of
006them will not survive the disease a diagnosis turns the lives of the entire family upside down ACC offers support information and advocacy through their community of families survivors and Friends affected by childhood and Adolescent cancer they are dedicated to improving the lives of Children and Families living with Childhood Cancer and engaged in this life altering struggle FCPS students being treated for Childhood Cancer participate in homebound instruction while they are undergoing treatment or recuperating we are joined tonight by a longtime teacher Jay kley retired from FCPS after 30 years of teaching physical education Jay returned to FCPS as a part-time Elementary physical education at Woodburn Elementary it was at Woodburn where Jay met a little girl named Ellie who had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in the spring of 2013 By the time Ellie entered
007kindergarten that fall she had lost most of her hair and was wearing hats to school every day jay noticed her affinity for fun and cheery hats and organized a hat drive to provide Ellie with a broader selection of hats and Ellie's hats was born now thanks to the hard work of individuals who like Jay took an interesting Ellie and her hats thousands of kids across the country who are battling cancer have received new hats and so much more Ellie's hats does much more than send hats to children with cancer they have helped to provide financial assistance to local families who have children with cancer they recently reached a milestone of $100,000 in donations to local families we are delighted that Ellie and her mother Jennica joined our meeting tonight Ellie is now in sth grade
008and will be celebrating her 12th birthday this Saturday she's into Marvel Harry Potter and drama on behalf of our board I'd like to encourage everyone to visit the website for Ellie hats at Ellie hats. org that's spelled e l l IES hs.org and the American Childhood Cancer organization at acc.org to learn how you can help now I understand um Madame Sher if I could take just a moment Ellie and jenica I understand that you're with us tonight can you uh wave to us and say hello hi there how are you how are you you look amazing congratulations Ellie on um the Milestone of Ellie's hats reaching so many people and your fundraising and donation Milestone that you reach reached um if you'd like to say something that would be great if you don't want to
009that's okay too you like to say hi hi there and you know what we have you have another Milestone coming up right Saturday is your birthday and 12 is a big big milestone so congratulations on that but I have some colleagues who would like to share with me so colleagues one two three birth [Music] to oh my goodness oh my goodness the thank you thank you for being with us thank you for all that you do for um other children with who've battled with you have and congratulations on turning 12 as I said it's a big year and you're starting middle school as well so enjoy and um we look forward to hearing more about your organization as you share with us each and every year so please stay in touch and enjoy your birthday
010weekend thank you Miss Dar copax please don't go yet Ellie and her mom because I have I cannot not take the opportunity to say this um prior to being on on the school board I was a principal of a of a of an elementary school in um this area um in Len County and every year this was one of our drives where we did a drive for Ellie's hats and I am just so thrilled to be able to put the face of somebody who we've talked about that I've talked about for so many years right now and I'm just really Beyond thrill to be able to meet you at least virtually so Ellie thank you you have inspired so many so many so many students that I can speak to very very directly because we
011have collected hats for so many years um due to your efforts so thank you and I'm just so um tickled tonight to be able to meet you so thank you Miss Dar kofax and thank you for being able to join us um at this time I would would like to um turn it over to uh Miss omes who will be reading a recognition regarding Hispanic Heritage Month thank you Dr Anderson uh each year Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month by celebrating the histories cultures and contributions of Americans whose ancestors came from Spain Mexico the Caribbean and Central and South America most of whom are in fact an extension of the Americas that we share many and many of whom are indigenous or represent mixed ancestries this observation started in 1968 amidst the Civil Rights era
012as Hispanic heritage week and later expanded in 1988 to an observation period of 30 days starting on September 15th and ending on October 15 it was enacted into law August 17th 1988 and is a long-standing American celebration of many decades now National Hispanic Heritage Month is a tangible reinforcement of the school board's belief that our diversity is a strength that creates resilient open and Innovative Global Citizens more importantly it is a wonderful opportunity for our schools and Community to celebrate the richness of many nationalities cultures languages religions and traditions within this diverse ethnic group we celebrate the likes of Cesar Chavez Dolores huera and Ramon Rahim te Ocasio American Civil Rights and labor leaders of Hispanic heritage in FCPS one in four of our students is of Hispanic heritage representing multilingual talents and Origins from
013tens of countries 10.5% more than one in 10 of every employees of every one of the employees in our system contribute to this richness as leadership team members as principles teachers cafeteria workers interpreters parently Liaisons custodians bus driver and staff all across our division these cultures in turn enrich our school communities I encourage our schools to set the tone in recognition of the need to reinvigorate the celebration of Heritage culture and an empowered Narrative of our friends and neighbors here in FCPS and encourage community members to participate in the programs and events taking place during this time in your school communities FCPS values its diversity and acknowledges that all people contribute to the well-being of the community the vast diversity and richness within the his anic experience include the longevity of Hispanic heritage in this
014country for centuries before Columbus arrived on our shores as well as the continued struggle and reality for migrant Americans of our brothers and sisters and mixed status families Those whom are undocumented documented dreamers some whose parents are on TPS and many others whom we welcome FCPS is fortunate to have many groups whose members work within our Latin X and immigrant student student communities empowering them to be the next generation of leaders and professionals these include but are not limited to the staff mentioned earlier as well as the Hispanic Educators Association edu futuro Lupe Kasa lativa and our own minority student achievement oversight committee and of course to honor this month I'm going to read this in Spanish as well [Music] C John [Music] in FCPS FCPS FCPS for [Music] gracias thank you Miss um om
015and thank you for um showing us your bilingual skills and honoring our um Spanish speaking communities very appreciative of that appreciative of that um at this time I will call on Miss caret Sanders for the high school voter registration challenge resolution thank you Madame chair it is with great pleasure that I read this resolution this year whereas voting is the most important Civic opportunity of the United States citizens and the Cornerstone of our democracy and whereas a new Virginia law requires every public high school to provide opportunities for eligible students to register to vote during the school day and whereas the ethical and Global citizen attribute of the FCPS portrait of a graduate is an expect ation of all students and schools are committed to developing students who will Ex exercise their rights and responsibilities
016as Citizens providing fair and equal access to voting is an ongoing effort in our country and whereas civic education contributes to the development of engaged citizens and increases the likelihood of future participation in voting providing information to students about voter registration and how when and where to vote prepares students exercise their voting rights and whereas young people who are registered to vote participate in numbers close to the participation rates of older voters voting is habit forming when young people exercise their voting rights they are likely to become lifelong voters exercising their duties and responsibilities as Citizens now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board recognizes the efforts of the League of Women Voters of the Fairfax area the Fairfax County Office of Elections Fairfax County Council of ptas and the FCPS social
017studies teams and teachers who provide voter registration opportunities and nonpartisan information about voting procedures for eligible V students therefore be it res be it further resolved that the Fairfax County School Board will recognize schools that make significant contributions to students voter registration via the redesigned High School voter recognition challenge this recognition is sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Fairfax area and the Fairfax County Council ptas I so move is there a second thank you Miss Tolan Miss car Sanders would you like to speak to your motion to your resolution it's with great pleasure that I speak to this resolution because we know that if you register to vote when you're 18 years old you are more likely to be a lifelong voter exercising one's right to vote is a critical component of having
018a functioning democracy September is voter registration month and tonight's uh efforts represents the fourth year that we have initiated the voter registration challenge for our students this year it is especially poignant that we are doing this recognition because it is the Centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment and the passing of the voting rights Champion Congressman John Lewis we know that the virtual environment poses challenges but I am optimistic that we will be able to get our students to register to vote do their research and participate in elections at the local state and National level students born born on or before November 3rd 2002 can vote in the upcoming election the voter rights challenge was initially launched by the governor of Virginia in 2016 and FCP s working with the League of Women Voters and the
019ptsas has held a challenge since the fall of 2017 over the past three years over 20,000 students have been registered I would love to see us exceed previous year's efforts and for selfish reasons I would love to see the award brought back to Region Three where it won the first two years additionally I'm really excited that Nathan anabo will be hosting a town hall on voting rights on Constitution Day September 17th with Senator Cain and I want to conduct conclude by thanking the Board of Elections the League of Women Voters and our social studies department for all that you do to ensure our students are active participants in our democracy thank you so much Miss cor Sanders Miss Tolen would you like to speak to your second yes please I would love to do that
020um as someone that has advocated for student voice throughout my current education I'm very excited um to Second this resolution our students are passionate about so many topics and often do not know about the Avenues to make their voices heard as they reach voting age programs such as what the League of Women Voters and our other support organizations are doing um I'm happy to celebrate what they are doing in our schools their work is invaluable they assist students to register to vote to understand how to vote and to understand when to vote all key things our local league has several loyal members that are working very hard to help us meet the statistics that Karen mentioned and I happen to know several of these people personally and I wanted to um reach out and thank
021them two of my longtime friends and um one lives in drainville one lives in Hunter Mill uh Camille milks and Nancy ruberg are working alongside Alice Riley and Pat figy and just there some of those making a huge difference and for those of you that don't know um Alice Riley was the Fairfax County Public School coordinator for social studies for many years and Pat Peggy was the coordinator for a language arts and they both retired and upon retirement I think they have found the perfect way to still positively increase the Civic knowledge and action of FCPS students through their passionate work I want to thank these women and all of their colleagues and everyone else across all of the organizations that Karen just mentioned um for the incredible work that you're doing and the service
022to our students now many students and many Virginia don't realize that we have elections every single year not every state has that presidential elections are not the only elections that are important in some ways I might argue that local elections for things like school board or Board of Supervisors may even have a bigger impact on your daily life so I appreciate that our students are being taught by these organizations that every year they need to make their voices heard they need to get out and vote thank you so much for all the incredible work that you are all doing thank you Miss toen would any of my colleagues like to speak to this resolution Miss myth llin please go ahead yes thank you uh I just wanted to add that uh I do hope in
023the Centennial of women getting the right to vote uh that we will make sure as a School Division that we find an opportunity to build this into our social studies lessons from kindergarten through 12th grade um it is such an incredible anniversary to be thinking that just a hundred years ago 50% of our world's popul ation was told that they did not deserve to have the right to vote and so um while here in the United States we finally got it right um a hundred years ago only um I think that to have this anniversary um be acknowledged in our school system couldn't be more important and I hope all families who are watching this evening all teachers instructors that um you have an opportunity to really um put into appreciation for our young people
024uh what it meant for those suffragettes to fight so hard um for one of the most inable rights that we need as a Democratic Society so it's a really exciting um Centennial I do hope this board will think about how we can honor it Beyond just today's uh push to get people out to um register to vote uh young people both uh uh all of students but um particularly for women um to celebrate um all those who came before us to give us this incredible opportunity so thank you thank you Miss mlin um at this time I don't see any other hands so I will call for the vote all all in favor we have Miss omesh Miss coret Sanders miss m Miss MC Laughlin uh Miss Tolen Miss seismo Heiser Miss pakari Miss D
025kofax Mr frish um Miss um Cohen Miss Keys gamara myself and Miss Marin thank you all very much for that support that is unanimous um the next order of business is Citizens part is citizen 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 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 speakers are expected to deliver their comments with a decorum and respect appropriate to the conduct of the Public's business thank you for your cooperation and thanks to those who have come to
026speak to us today today we have 10 citizens who've signed up to address the board and I will call clerk to call our speakers I'm sorry I wasn't aware that I was calling hang on our first speaker is Teddy G followed by Ashley DEA hi can the board hear yes okay thank you uh thank you chairman Anderson and everyone on the school board I wanted to First say thank you for letting the um free sat day happen this uh September as we all know it's been very hard to do test so I want to thank you guys for letting that happen that's that was a very good decision um second I know later on the meeting tonight is the new 6.1 item about the Mosby Woods Elementary School renaming and as I wrote to the
027board last month about it I do support this and I think it would be a very good decision if the board does go ahead with this and we go through the whole process because we need to get away from you know the very bad and painful you know building names that you know the racist Southerners Left Behind 50 years ago and I think that we should name it in honor of a very prominent Virginia African-American former Governor L Douglas Wilder but I'll let that go through the when it happens with the um with the process second I wanted to um talk about this was actually something that I started noticing about five years ago and then my grandparents also talked about it I think that FCPS should reintroduce cursive writing into the elementary school curriculum
028because you know it's sad to see all of us go through not learning in cursive anymore especially the little kids and I know we're Al going to be a technology driven Society within the next 10 to 20 years but we should still know how to handw write because there are kids in my grade who teachers still can't not read their handwriting because they stopped teaching it after kindergarten for me and I think that's sad I lastly want to conclude with the homework for this and I have talked to um the student rep Nathan anabo about this I hope that the board can set a policy for Teacher workload that they give out during distance learning because although we are online we are on for six hours and I wish that like there could be a
029limit that the teacher set so they don't stress everyone out because it is much harder to do all the work from home without like all the support that we have from school and I just hope the board can consider maybe putting in a policy of how much the teacher can assign and what can do to make our lives much easier in this hard time thank you very much our next speaker is Ashley Deanda followed by Andrew Hayes hi good evening members of the school board I hope you all and your families are safe and doing well my name is AK Deanda and I graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in 2011 I'm here this evening to advocate for dropping the exam for the 2020 2021 TJ admission cycle with regards to
030hosting and proctoring the exam during the covid-19 pandemic hosting a large Gathering of of students indoors to take the exam would not be safe as many people would not be able to socially distance from each other this would be unsafe not just for students taking the exam but for any teachers and other staff proctoring the exam and any parents with Stu For Whom the students would be going going home to after the exam furthermore disruptions to learning in the spring and fall semesters of this year because of the pandemic will amplify existing knowledge and achievement gaps and means some students are less prepared for the exam than others Virginia has already canel so exams Statewide for the fall and the College Board has canceled sat testing for over a million students Nationwide already if the
031College Board who makes considerable money off of the SAT cannot logistically handle the exam how can we expect FCPS to do the same furthermore when Virginia state superintendent James Lane canceled SS he made the point that schools should be focused on student wellness and reestablishing school and student communities when it's safe to do so not immediately rushing students back into test taking and test preparation the same logic applies to the TJ exam as well the thing is even when we don't factor in the pandemic standardized testing is unequal as it is it's been demonstrated through data to be racially socioeconomically ability and gender biased um with regard to the Quant Q test specifically this is a test that's used in the TJ admission cycle it was implemented two years ago and was said to be
032quote unquote unpre unfortunately um we see that many families are using private tting programs to crack the test for example cury Learning Centers is one such example the numbers that I'm about to site come from their Facebook page in the first year that the Quant Q exam was administered in the TJ admission cycle Cy Learning Centers had 51 students who took their testb program get into TJ the second year that the Quant Q program was administered 133 students who took CA Learning Centers program uh got into TJ what happened here is not that uh FCPS students suddenly got two and a half times smarter what happened here is that two and a half times more applicants figured out that they could use a sprep course to gain the system and get a leg up by
033spending $4,200 on a 16th month Prep course and this only subset of students can have access to these types of resources I end my time and thank you all for your consideration thank you our next speaker is Andrew Hayes followed by George Basera hello I'm Dr Andrew Hayes parent and proud 1999 alumnist of Thomas Jefferson school for science technology I want to speak to the board tonight about the Jefferson commissions test uh a matter of great urgency as we enter the Jefferson application season uh specifically I would like to convince the board that it's not just advisable but imperative to cancel the test this year some fellow alums and I examined the demographics of each application stage and found that the test is a strong driver of the racial and socioeconomic inequalities that have dogged
034Jefferson throughout its existence and which made headlines once again this year um the applicants test score for the years that we examined was factored in as an explicit 20% of the applicant's overall admission score however our team found that it actually wields 40% statistical explanatory power over whether admission is ultimately offered uh this means that as an admission variable the test must be borrowing clout from another variable not uh otherwise controlled in the analysis um further test scores must correlate with this missing variable very strongly um that's what the test really measures in other words the missing variable uh must govern exactly those students that we know are missing at Jefferson black Latin X and the socioeconomically disadvantaged doubly so for students at the intersection of those groups the test does not end up actually
035measuring what it's designed or purported to measure some sort of Merit aptitude or Readiness um rather it measures what race students are and how much money their parents make can we agree that's a really bad look especially in the black lives matter era um finally I would like to draw the board's attention to the lawsuit of Smith versus Regents of the University of California where a preliminary injunction was handed down just two days ago by the superior court of alam County California now I'm not a lawyer myself but I have conferred with yet another Jefferson Alam a California civil rights attorney to help me understand its significance the ruling was that an admissions policy where the standardized test was optional violated the civil rights of a number of different legally protected classes including the uh
036disabled and underrepresented minorities because the option was inaccessible to some this ruling pertains to California of course but while it isn't binding precedent it can be cited in Virginia civil rights lawsuits as the advisory of an alien Court California also has very high standard for issuing preliminary injunctions so it must be taken as very luckely to hand down it incurring uh I believe the board recognizes that it is impossible to require all students including the forign disabled to Traverse the cumbersome test process during a global pandemic uh sorry [Music] your okay with the uh ruling from the Alam County I think you're left with no choice but to cancel the test entirely this year thank you our next speaker is Mr George berera followed by Kimberly Adams can you hear me chairman Anderson yes thank
037you you can be heard all right thank you uh good evening school board members superintendent and Mr drer from hya uh school board members and superintendent best of luck in the new school year starting next week before we get there there are still some unsettled business from last year and things currently first has the law firm you hired in April finished their work if so can the reported finings be distributed can you make this a work session topic so the public can be knowledgeable of it also how much did this report of findings cost can you make this public also several School members on social media stated this that this would be a very nominal expense when this action was taken hope this is the case early rumors have that this has cost taxpayers over
038a million dollars as of last month you all can squash these rumors now if not true another item still in the air is the chief Equity officer position glad to hear that there are now two separate positions one for the chief Equity officer and the other the chief academics officer when looking at both job announcements that came out like two weeks ago several things stuck out in my mind for the chief Equity officer position one is the announce is that the announcement does not tie into one fairfx and the countywide effort on Equity diversity and or inclusion it also does not state that the position reports directly to the superintendent another matter is the announcement states that the one qualification that could be used is successful experience as a principal this sounds like to me
039a loophole for a current scps principle be hard if we have not had Equity here before then how do we expect the change for a person from within or on the other hand what school district is doing a good job in this Equity area and why aren't we incorporating that into FCPS I do agree on the part in the announcement that says the qualification could be from a person who has a CH agent change agent in a large organization the job announcement and the current structure of FCPS does not list additional Specialist or analyst to do Equity work this was a major complaint by Dr Durant it was him and his secretary of course the new Equity office will be staffed with about 400 positions coming from existing offices but they will come with current
040full-time duties also won't there be an apparent conflict of interest here because the chief equ officer May both manage and assess equity for programs they supervise one thing the FCPS organizational chart is lacking as it does not have have the equity employees relations office under the chief Equity office why not instead it's under HR makes no sense they are responsible for investigating and resolving non-discrimination complaints third item i' like to bring up is a cultural poincy training for school board members how many board members have completed these training levels that all School Personnel have to complete I hope all or most I know it's not required for board members but I think it should be last but not least I hope that the joint board's meeting later this month is productive and a lot of
041not a lot of talking I have to assume the meeting will be in person because all the joint boards meetings have been done during Board of supervisor Tuesdays you all need to set the groundwork for maintaining at least the same level funding for next year because early indications are that the amount will be less in the unwritten Mandate of the 52 to 53% thank you very much our next speaker is Kimberly Adams followed by Margaret Summers good evening chairman Anderson school board members Dr Bray brand and leadership team my name is Kimberly Adams and I'm representing the Fairfax Education Association a union representing thousands of employees in Fairfax County Public Schools many of whom are also parents this pandemic has changed so much about our lives and our jobs the FEA is proud of our
042school board and our superintendent for making a virtual start to school but we are still very concerned about the plans for a return to school buildings for our most vulnerable students special education and English language Learners this is not in the best interest of those students their families nor the staff who work in those buildings this is not this should not be Equity achieved by risking the lives of students and staff under a premise that their educational Gap may be greater than their peers this is setting up certain populations of students some who actually may be more susceptible to covid-19 and more at risk as a test subject for what we have already seen in the news we are likely to increase exposure in cases of this virus in our own Community you have a
043choice keep all learning virtual or more people will die unfortunately it is just that simple thank you our next speaker is Margaret Summers followed by Angela Wilson turnball hi my name is Margaret Summers I'm here to talk about Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and its admissions process my perspective on TJ is shaped by two different lenses for one I'm a TJ alumnist class of 2007 also I am now a teacher in FCPS I currently teach fifth grade Advanced academics or AAP and previously I taught third grade AAP for seven years I want to tell you a story about one of my students before tonight I talked to the student and her family about what I would say at this meeting and they not only approved but they're watching now so hi last
044year when I worked as a third grade AAP teacher I had the opportunity to teach a truly special student she is an incredible thinker and is so dedicated to learning this child's favorite book is about electrons and one of her favorite hobbies is writing computer code one day she found out I went to TJ and she asked me Miss Summers do you think I would like TJ I hesitated I hesitated because I do not want this student to have to endure the same things my friends did 17 years ago she reminds me so much of my best friends ch and Mala not just because she is brilliant and truly a rising star but also because she is black in previous Schoolboard meetings Kristen and mikica who were two of a small number of black students
045in my graduating class at TJ shared with you stories from their TJ experiences and how racism affected them every day if a super intelligent student who is passionate about science and technology asks us if she might enjoy our commun oh am I still there yes if she might enjoy our County's high school for Science and Technology we should be able to say yes without reservation but we can't not yet not until we Center equity in all of our decisions about the school the student I've talked about tonight is currently in fourth grade so we have four years to fix things before she applies to TJ but there are other students who will apply in three years and two years and next year and this year thinking about this year in particular I am so worried
046about our kids taking the teach PJ admissions test the test was already inequitable the number of black students admitted this past spring was too small for reporting now with covid-19 the test would also introduce health risks if kids taken in person if taken at home it would present access and academic Integrity concerns now is the perfect time to completely rethink TJ Admissions and Implement a process that is more holistic student centered and anti-racist Dr brand in your back to school message to staff you asked us to make a personal and professional commitment to put Equity at the center of all that we do you said we must confront racism and bias when we see it that is great advice and I'm here to support you in this Mission and also to hold you accountable for
047it we see racism and bias at TJ now is our chance to confront it and part with a new PJ admissions process this fall thank you our next speaker is Angela Wilson chall followed by Diane Cooper ghoul hello can you hear me yes hello thanks for the opportunity to speak to the school board I'm Angela Wilson turble a resident of Fairfax County for over 20 years I'd like to address the problem of exclusion of black people for Prime educational opportunities I'm sharing my personal struggles in FCPS my daughter being shut out of AAP and being told the program was closed and not available to a student like her highlights she is one of many underrepresented minorities who have been harmed by the current policies admissions to Jefferson is currently not fair nor is it effective
048for Fairfax County while over 10% of our AAP students are on free and reduced price lunch and 31% of students in general less than 2% of TJ students are even lower than the student body at Langley a damning commentary on how a lack of money is a barrier to Jefferson opportunities the student body at TJ is less than 2% African-American a percentage you'd see in private schools back in the 1960s while they had just begun admitting black kids Jefferson should have 48 black students accepted a year not six if the Count's latinx population was represented at TJ they'd have 125 kids accepted each year not 16 black and latinx taxpayers in Fairfax County are paying for a segregated school one that is Out Of Reach for our children and is offering huge opportunities to those
049who already have plenty 100% of minority constituency pays taxes in support of Governor Elite high schools but is being denied access to the resources that they pay for black taxpayers are paying to send white kids to Elite schools the school board must redesign the admissions process this year why the TJ diversity struggle is littered with Decades of minor attempts to remedy the problem without circling back to assess whether changes are effective unintended consequences are common the test which is completely prepp has been compromised and ensures that those who can pay for the test prep gain unate Fair advantage over those who can't how can you change top tier universities and companies recognize the value of the diversity ads and universities build their student body upon this premise Fairfax County and TJ must do the same
050as a result of covid 2020 is an ital year to remove the standardized tests required to make it optional for TJ applicants many colleges now make standardized tests optional with a range of standardized tests uh accepted privilege bias every step of the way to the TJ admissions process must stop the impacts a change to DJ as the number one high school in America as the model for stem education could have Ripple effects as a president across the country in this way Virginia could be a model for historic transformative change and education we are requesting this bold change take place right now thank you for your time and your earnest attention thank you our next speaker is Diane Cooper ghoul followed by Tina Williams okay just checking you can hear me can you hear me yes
051okay super good evening and and uh welcome back to a strange new virtual school year I'm Diane Cooper Gould advocacy chair for Fairfax County SEPTA and I first like to thank the school board for your long long hours of service to our community during this pandemic and for your tireless work over the summer to keep FCPS moving forward tonight I'm here to speak in support of the proposed 2021 advisory committee for students with disabilities or acsd charge SEPTA is extremely proud to work hand inhand with the acsd to add at for students with disabilities and this charge speaks very clearly to our shared goals and purposes since our Inception in 2017 SEPTA has been advocating for more equity and consistency in the access to and administration in access to and administration and Fidelity of all
052special education programming across Fairfax County we've heard from literally hundreds of families about the problems that arise when policies and programs are applied differently in different regions pyramids different schools and even within different classrooms and teams in the same school from year to year we've also heard from staff members who are overwhelmed and frustrated by a lack of consistent messaging coming from school administration psls and central office Specialists navigating special education is extremely challenging for famili staff and administration alike the fact that this pandemic has forced us all into a virtual environment has only added to these challenges you've heard from tearful families and staff you've probably even shed your own tears but please know that sea believes that we are all part of a team working together for our community as a whole we
053encourage the Schoolboard and central office staff to show Grace to their staff while continuing to push for excellence we encourage you to give Grace to our FCPS families who are extremely worried and Afraid and remind you to give yourselves some Grace and we will do the same it's clear that this current FCPS school board has heard the concerns of special education families and staff your commitment to ensuring the completion of the special education it shows this and we thank you for it and we also want to thank Mike Bloom for stepping into the role of acting assistant superintendent of DSS in the midst of likely the most challenging summer our special education Teem in has ever faced we appreciate the long hours that you and your staff have devoted to our community and moving forward
054we are extremely excited for the opportunity to work with incoming assistant superintendent of DSs Dr Michelle Boyd we hope that she is empowered to help break through the silos that currently prevent the special education Community from being integrated into the full FCPS culture we hope that she is welcomed by the regional assistant superintendence and executive principles as someone who could help bring best practices to all of our FCPS schools thank you very much and good luck this week thank you our next speaker is Tina Williams followed by our final speaker DD LSI good evening FCPS leadership and school board members thank you for your support of FCPS staff who are working tirelessly to prepare for the start to school on Tuesday staff are working around the clock and are already overwhelmed overworked and anxious for
055the start of school and we know that FCPS leadership is also in a similar position only by working together supporting and uplifting each other will we have a successful school start that creates the best learning environment for our children as we head into the start of school we urge you to focus on the following three areas Equity our educators are already experiencing a lack of consistency in terms of expectations this means the educational experience for students across the county will differ we also want to express our concern about a recent incident of hatred and violent language expressed against an FCPS staff member we appreciate that superintendent Bray brand and members of FC FCPS leadership have responded and supported this person however this issue underscores that systemic racism occurs in our school communities daily and the
056Urgent work that our entire FCPS community must do to Foster an environment of anti-racism we urge FCPS to strive for consistency and equity in every aspect of our school system communication our staff are already to begin working with students and have felt there is a lack of clear Clarity or have received information at the last minute leading up to the start of the school year we know FCPS is still finalizing many details but it's challenging for staff to thoroughly prepare if they receive information at the last minute we hope moving forward that FCPS can regularly provide updates to staff even if that means letting employees know that all the information is not yet available so that everybody has the best information possible to serve our students technology some staff are still reporting that they have
057not received School laptops others have been given laptops without video capabilities some staff still don't have Wi-Fi and some support staff don't have access to online resources that they've been training on WE urge sccps to eliminate these digital divides as quickly as possible because with them we are hindering the ability of our students to learn we know that this is a very challenging period and we urge FCPS to resolve these issues as quickly as possible I am humbled by the task in front of us and I want you all to know that we are all in this together fdft your employees are here to work with you because that is the only way we can accomplish things that are impossible on our own thank you thank you our final speaker is DD [Music] elad hi
058my name is D I'm a rising senior at TJ I am not the first and I guess I am the last for tonight to AR that testing should be removed from this year's TJ admission cycle and you've heard a variety of reasons why health concerns include that we're currently in the midst of a global pandemic making it dangerous for students and Proctors we could move it online but ignoring the logistics behind that online testing would worsen disparities due to the unequal access to Reliable internet or technology devices and the fact that not everyone has a quiet and comfortable testing environment at home you've probably also heard that testing acts as a barri to diversity and that the diversity in question is typically socioeconomic status and race however there's another form of diversity that the current
059system is hindering but no one is talking about neurodiversity in my three years as TJ I have not met once met a student with a disability at least no one wants to talk about it we don't even have clubs that support these students either though there is no shortage of autism Ys you might wonder however is the test really a barrier for these students students when I was in AAP I was always in the same class as my friend who had special needs he was so incredibly smart I was partnered with him a lot and it was always insane to me to see how much he knew on the day of the TJ test I found myself sitting right next to him and in the middle of the test he started to get really stressed
060out he got louder and louder and they had him escorted out of the room I'm sure it's no surprise that he did not get into TJ you could have asked anyone that knew him whether it was the teachers or classmates like me he was so incredibly gifted he was smart his his grades reflected that and it's students like him that TJ should be serving but he never got that chance the testing space was not suitable for him and it weeded him out just like so many other students I'm not arguing for the removal of testing for selfish reasons I don't want to see more black students in spite of the Asian population at DJ I'm not anti-asian and I'm not anti-immigrant seeing that my parents are immigrants themselves I genuinely trying to make TJ more
061accessible for everyone I want genuine diversity and that's everything from race to socioeconomic status to Artistic ability to narrow diversity not for my sake but for the for all the students that are gifted in their own right but don't have the resources to get through that door of opportunity please remove the testing for this year round if the colleges can do it we can too there are kids out there that are depending on this and that deserve this thank you you thank you that was our final speak thank you and now we will be moving on to student representative matters and I call on Mr anabo get out hi can everyone hear me yes um so today I actually it's the week's been kind of crazy so I don't have any prepared comments for my
062student rep matters but I will say I am looking forward to the start of the school year and I'm so excited for Tuesday and I hope that everybody out there who's watching has the best possible first day and first week in school year and that like I said last time when my last student rep matters I'm here to help anyone who needs it especially a students so I've gotten a couple good emails and responses from you guys so please keep reaching out I'm excited to hear about how your school year starts and how it goes and I'm here if you guys have any concerns so thank you I see the rest of my time thank you Dr Anderson thank you Mr anabo um at this time we are up to our annual erfc report and
063I call on Dr Bray brand for the introduction thank you chairman Anderson it's a pleasure to be able to uh present to you Eli Martinez who's our executive director Marty Smith and I had the opportunity about three years ago to bring Eli here to Fair County he is just a wealth of experience and brings a leadership to erfc uh that is unparalleled and uh erfc is part of um the package of support that we give to attract a premier Workforce part of goal three um and really being able to have a retirement uh not just a wage and salary but a retirement part of our overall compensation approach that brings people here to Fairfax County Public Schools and gets them to stay he is going to provide you the annual update of our erfc uh
064work our performance and we'll be glad to take a few questions as needed this evening uh and without further Ado Mr Martinez thank you Dr Bray brand uh for that great introduction uh hopefully everybody can hear me now um I want to really start off by thanking uh the chair and the rest of the board for uh allowing me to update you um on the status the health and status of the ERC benefits um I also want to thank Dr Bray brand and the rest of the leadership team for their ongoing support um in addition I want to just remind the board that this presentation is really for your information only uh we don't expect any decisions to be made as a result of of this presentation um by way of introduction as Dr Bray
065brand uh indicated my name is Eli Martinez I'm the executive director and chief investment officer at erfc uh joining me today are members of my team uh Jim roner Michael lunter and Lisa Scott I'll be walking you uh initially through the key highlights of of the presentation um we'll talk about the plan Dynamics and the members ship I'll cover the financial strength of the organization the cost efficiencies uh some of the initiatives we've undertaken over the last three years we'll summarize and then we'll open up for questions uh so for starters as I indicated I want to give you a brief overview of the key highlights of of this presentation uh the key takeaways the first is that the 2001 tier 2 plan is the only plan that's open for new membership uh and it
066also happens to be the least expensive plan for FCPS that'll become more significant and more clear later on in the presentation how that impacts you as well um in addition uh our performance continues to be strong we've averaged over uh We've averaged 7.7% per year after fees for the last 10 years we've also uh increased our funded ratio from 74 to 74 and a. half% over the last year uh member benefits continue to be safe uh and lastly we continue to look at ways to keep competitive and uh increase our sustainability in a in a prudent manner uh versus our peers and and in the industry um in the next slide I I just want to walk you through the history and and some of the plan Dynamics for for the membership I want you
067to bear with me uh in that I've added a couple slides for the benefit of those those of you who might not be as familiar as others uh with respect to erfc uh so uh for starters erfc was uh uh created through negotiations between the FEA and and Fairfax County Public Schools uh as a way to support the quality of life at retirement um and to increase retention and recruitment capabilities of high quality Educators and support staff um the first plan that was created initially in 1973 was was a legacy plan and we'll talk about that um later on as well in terms of memb ship Dynamics um the the next plan that was created by the school board was a 2001 tier one plan uh that plan then closed the prior plan uh and
068beca became a little bit less expensive for FCPS um and then in 2017 uh the school board created another plan that made the the pension plan even less expensive uh for FCPS the 2001 tier 2 plan that really hits the main milestones for 47 years of history of of erfc obviously we've done a lot more uh but in the interest of time I I won't cover everything uh in the next slide I just want to give you uh a brief overview of the oversight of the plan um we operate under the code of Virginia and um we operate as a 401a under the IRS tax code uh we have our own independent board the Board of Trustees really has ultimate oversight of of what happens at erfc uh we also work subject to the supervision
069and control of of the FCPS Schoolboard I think the important takeaway here is that we all operate under the court of Virginia and then ultimately any decisions that are made uh regarding the erfc uh that impact the membership would have to be made in consideration of what's in the best interest of those members uh looking at this next slide I think this is one of my favorite slides only that there's a lot of hidden gems and I'll try to uncover some of those uh with you today this really shows you where the money comes from to fund this benefit um what you're seeing now on the screen is uh an 18% uh piece of a pie that's really put together by uh contributed by the members of the system now I'm not saying that the
070members uh are we're not deducting 18% of the paycheck but we're saying saying here is that the 3% of their pay that that comes out of the pay every month really amounts to 18% of what it takes to cover the benefits in the future for these members as of June 30th 2019 similar similarly the uh 6.44% that comes out of FCPS is funds to cover the benefit really amounts to 37% of what it cost to cover the plan but by far the Lion Share of what it takes to cover to pay for the plan comes from investment growth and earnings I mentioned there was going to be a couple uh gems hidden gems here the first one I want to offer you is uh the power that it brings to to the employees of FCPS
071the um if you think about what's Happening Here If an employee wanted to recreate this benefit on their own um they would not only have to contribute 3% of their salary but they would have to come up with another 6.44% contribution out of their salary and in addition to that they would actually have to find a way to guarantee themselves a seven and a quarter percent return uh over the life of their investment until they retired so that's the first uh I think a key Takeaway on this uh the next thing I would the next observation I would offer you here is the power that this brings to FCPS as as an employer um for onethird of the cost of funding giving an equivalent benefit in today's dollar uh you're able to take advantage of
072the time value of money by investing in in the stock market and offering employees uh a benefit that that really grows to to two two-thirds more than what what you're uh contributing so it's very very powerful message here um let's look at next the retirement plans that are covered under uh the erfc uh plans and so the first one really is as I alluded to earlier is the legacy plan this was established in 1973 um the majority of the membership in this plan is is now retired as you can see in green um we do have a sliver of population still actively working in this plan U that 3761 that you see in blue and um that plan is closed and that membership is you know as years go by they they they retire so
073that number is going down the other plan that's as I mentioned earlier is is closed to new membership is the 2001 tier War plan this plan was established in 2001 uh the majority of the membership really is actively employed for FCPS you see a small population in green that has retired this really is representative of individuals who uh have entered the system maybe later in their careers uh or at a later stage in their life and have reached a vestment period and have decided to retire uh but it's certainly as you can see not representative or indicative of the the rest of the population the last plan uh is the 2001 tier 2 plan and that plan was established in 2017 by the school board um important takeaway here is obviously there's no retirements from
074this plan we don't expect any retirements to until at least 2022 when the first member becomes vested um and at that point we're we're probably looking at members who Venture the system at later stages in the career uh next I just want to give you uh some retirement projections as as you see here again we're not going to see the the 2001 tier 2 plan on the next slide because there hasn't been any retirement projections U so what you're seeing now is uh the the retirements from the 2001 tier 2 plan uh tier one plan excuse me in green and the legacy plan in blue over the last 10 years um really the the takeaway here is that the 2001 tier one plan is is a less expensive plan for FCPS um so as time
075goes by and that green barb becomes bigger than the blue bar uh your plan becomes less expensive uh we're projecting that by 2029 the 2001 tier one plan will will actually be larger than the will be actually larger in terms of retirements uh than the legacy plan so the green bar will be bigger than the blue bar by 2029 I want to now just pivot to the sustainability of the plan and you'll see a couple uh different end dates uh in the coming slides I think that's really because we wanted to make sure we use the latest uh public information when we compare oursel to to other plans and in addition we want to give you a couple different um dates in terms of how we look at ourselves in in the industry and and
076the numbers that we use to set u our contribution rates uh so first and foremost I just want to talk to you about sustainability because that's a very important uh word with with erfc we want to make sure that the plan continues to be sustained and I can I can say that um unequivocally that erfc is sustainable in perpetuity I can say that comfortably because we have a 47-year track record of meeting erfc assumptions uh over the long term we also are happy to say that FCPS has a 47e track record of funding their payments in full and on time uh and so that's very significant um next I want to look at the performance of the plan um what you're seeing now is the fiscal year end performance as of June 30th of 2019
077this is obviously a very short-term number and and I'm going to show you um you know six months later what it looks like uh really in in this industry we're long-term investors uh the short-term numbers are are blips on the map they change a lot but for the first for the one year ending ending 2019 June 20 June 30th 2019 uh we were at 4.7% after fees um what we like to look at and focus on more is the long-term number so our average return over the last 10 years was 88.9% after fees um I also want to show you how we compare versus uh one of our local plans the FCPS Fairfax County uh government plans um but first I want to just introduce you to what you're going to see um in green
078you're you're looking at our performance at 4.7% as of June 30th of 2019 after after fees uh you're also looking at um the $ two and a half billion dollars in assets that we had under our charge uh we also have 28 staff uh that administer the system U and and I'm happy to say that we've been able to reduce our headcount over the last few years and I'll talk about some of those efforts as well um and how they tie in uh and then our funded ratio which I mentioned has increased over the last year so the the three plans is that that you're looking at here are the Fairfax County plan plans the uniform plan that police officers plan and the employees retirement system plan uh these are the ones in blue you
079can see their stats there um importantly you can see that um as compared to uh the Fairfax County uh employees retirement system our plan is slightly better funded if you look at all three plans combined if you take a weighted average of the returns um you're you're looking at the the returns a little bit closer to what FCPS uh returned at the end of 2019 June 30th of 2019 um um and and if we move forward if we fast forward six months down the road and you look at our performance at at December you're going to see what I was talking about earlier and um in that the market is very volatile and and while we're very proud that we made 17.1% return as of December after fees the important thing is that over the
080long ter over the long run we we still manage to uh outperform our Target which is 7 and a qu% on average after fees um we don't expect 17% every year we we expect that again on average we're going to outperform over the long term the seven and a quarter per. uh the next slide is um one of the most I would say complicated topics in in the pension fund industry and I'm going to try to demystify it a little bit for you for you hopefully I'm successful um but we'll see how I do here so what you're looking at now are the liabilities the unfunded liabilities for erfc over the last 10 years in that blue bars really unfunded liabilities is is a really ugly word number one it doesn't make a lot of
081sense when you first hear it uh secondly it doesn't really convey what this is um what this really is telling us is that an unfunded liability is what you owe for past service provided um I'm going to try to give you an analogy that that I think fits this case U if you think about your mortgage most of us uh have or will have a mortgage at some point in our lives you think about a mortgage um as long as you're making your payments uh in full and on time your mortgage will eventually get paid off and I don't know very many people who open up their bank statement their mortgage statement and look for ways to pay their their mortgage off the next day I think that's that's the way you should think about
082the unfunded liability as long as you pay your payments in full and on time your mortgage will be paid off so continuing on with the mortgage analogy I want to add one more layer of of complexity um this green line that you're seeing now on your screen this really is representative of what you what we have divided by what we owe so if you think about this in your own personal finances this this would be a kin to comparing what the balance of your checkbook of your checking account to what you owe on your mortgage uh on your mortgage balance um so in other words if if we liquidated the erfc assets today we would be able to pay off 74.5% of our mortgage now chances are we would probably not want to pay all
083our mortgage tomorrow and and so this is a very healthy number um an important takeaway here and what you can kind of glean from this is that that we're able to keep our our funded ratio that green line very very um steady and and and very flat over the last 10 years um going uh going to 77% at at the maximum and 74% at the minimum this has positive implications for FCPS you're able to project the cost of the plan going forward more easily you're able to also um control the shock to the to the system in terms of your mortgage payments um and and so that kind of begs a question and and you might be thinking well Eli that's all great but when are we going to pay off our mortgage um I
084want to look at that now before I do want to introduce another concept that you might be familiar with um an hoe fee um a lot of us in addition to a mortgage uh here in Fairfax County might uh be subject to HOA fees I know that I am and so when you think about paying off a mortgage even if you paid off your mortgage tomorrow you would still have that HOA fee uh unfortunately and so this next slide really starts off with your HOA fee um the 2001 tier 2 plan normal cost the normal cost is your HOA fee that's that's something that will never go away um fortunately for FCPS your tier 2 plan is actually coming down in in cost so your HOA fee is coming down over time so that's a
085benefit to you um and then your funded status is slated to come up again this this translates into your mortgage your mortgage balance is slated to to come down if you want to think of it in opposites I know it's might be a little confusing there but uh and at the end of the day by 2040 your mortgage is is slated to be paid off uh or you're or we're thinking about this in in in pension terms we're looking at being 100% funded so now let's look at your contri contribution rates and and think of contribution rates as your actual mortgage payment so your your mortgage payment over the next two years is divided into two parts the first part in green is your employee uh the cost for from your employees that's being contributed
086by the employees on a monthly basis uh to to the the pension fund and then the second part is coming from FCPS this is your employer rate and and so um what you can see here is that the rates are going up from 6.44% to 6.7 I'll explain why in a couple slides so bear with me I first want to show you what the rates have looked like over the last 10 years um and as you can see here again in green you're seeing the employee contribution rates uh at 3% over the last 10 years so those haven't really changed a lot um the employer rate is gradually increasing there is a reason for that um I'll give you one of the reasons one um the school board has in the past uh actively decided
087to in lie of giving employees pay immediate pay races that taking advantage of the time value of money would be a better idea and reducing the employee rate from 4% to 3% would have uh a less of an immediate impact on on the budget potentially um and so that was an Avenue to to reward employees uh in addition in the next just to keep on the the mortgage analogy uh sometimes when we have a mortgage we also uh or a home we also decide to add on a room or remodel our home um and then some of us might decide to take on a home equ home equity line of credit um think of what you're going to see next as a home equity line of credit remember when you take on a home equity
088line of credit that's an additional payment or or a payment on top of your original mortgage so the first thing that you can think about is maybe the addition to the to the home um adding more people we've been FCPS has been fortunate over the last few years to be able to grow it's uh its employee population its employee base um and that has an impact on on the costs U and to think about about that as as an additional home equity line credit um in addition we've been also been fortunate to to be able to give pay races to our employees uh think about that as remodeling your home and taking out a home equity line of credit as well and then also there's you know this this Market volatility that I alluded to
089earlier that you know nobody really can avoid who's invested in the market um for example in years like 2008 where the market really went down substantially and um we were able to really smooth that loss over five years um now that didn't that didn't come for free what happens in years like 2019 where we had that 17% return we're going to have to smooth that also over five years so we don't get immediate recognition on on the big losses or the or the big gains and that's just best actoral practices um but by far the biggest uh contributor to the cost of of the of the penion plan going up the the mortgage payments going up is really time if you think about your original amortization schedule where you originally started with 30 years to
090pay off your mortgage and now you have 20 years and additions to your home any remodels to your home are going to have a magnified impact uh to your your um uh to your payments to your mortgage payments um so so as time goes by any new changes and the the clock ticks by any new changes when we get to you know 10 years any changes on your part are something that you're really going to have to consider in terms of the impact of the pension plan because we're going to to be closer to paying off our mortgage uh it's not all bad news I I just want to share with you and something that we're really proud of um you know we happen to have one of the best boards in the industry uh
091the Board of Trustees has been extremely Forward Thinking uh really proactive in terms of thinking about sustainability uh of the plan uh we started off in 2018 with a strategic plan that really focused on sustainability as as a main endeavor uh one of the things we were able to accomplish o over the last three years really set us up for saving uh over $40 million in investment manager fees over the next 10 years uh that's the equivalent of saying that you know the erfc Board of Trustees walked in with a $25 million check and deposited it into the pension fund and to let it grow over the next 10 years it has the same impact we didn't stop there we're also looking at the fund operations we're looking at ways to improve our oper internally
092uh we're looking at uh becoming a lean Sigma organization uh this is really the gold standard in any industry in terms of increasing efficiency and quality of service we want to really cement the mindset of continuous Improvement as an organization uh we want to make sure that uh one of our goals before the end of the fiscal year is really to achieve a US productivity and quality award uh to be recognized uh this is something that not many Pension funds have been able to do uh we also want to make sure that we continue uh this mindset going forward in terms of improving sustainability but the but the but the small changes that we've been able to impact thus far really amount to $2 and a half million dollars in Savings in addition to what
093I just I showed you in the previous slide over the next 10 years um just wrapping up to the end of this uh before we open up for for questions uh I want to talk to some of the initiatives again uh that were part part of our strategic plan in in 2018 that have really paid dividends over the you know over the over the the last year and really coming into this virtual environment um we were one of our goals was really to revamp our communication efforts part of that was revamping our website we made it more user friendly uh we made it more relatable and we we increased our transparency to the public as well um we're also looking at forms I don't think anybody likes to fill out government forms we want to
094take that away it uh we want to make them simple we want to make them intuitive um I can tell you that retirement is not easy it's not an easy decision um there's there's a lot of individuals that that come to us who who really have mixed feelings about retirement and forms just make that even even harder and we want to we want to make sure to to alleviate that that pain Point uh we're also looking at uh improving uh our video content we've added a lot of video content over the last six to eight months especially during covid we had already started started on this path uh ways where our members can access education remotely um at their fingertips it's we have things on mypd now uh we have training videos we have education
095videos and so on and we're going to continue doing this on an ongoing basis lastly we're looking at revamping our brochures um we want to make these more relatable we want to we recognize that uh FCPS teachers and support staff are are very busy individuals especially now in in in a virtual environment and we want to make sure they're able to digest the information that they need in a very short manner in a relatable Manner and and they're able to understand it at the end of the day um one of the things that you might be aware of some of you might be aware of is our ambassador program uh this program started in 2016 as as a way to use uh FCPS volunteers uh that are located on site throughout the through all of
096all of FCPS locations to really help distribute and and guide members to erfc resources uh it's been very successful we've made a lot of progress it started with 14 uh 14 individuals in 2016 we're up at 186 we're very proud of that number um our goal really at by the end of the year is to hit 200 or at least one Ambassador at every school location or every FCPS location excuse me um and so to recap uh and in summary really uh the 20 01 tier 2 plan is the only plan that's open and growing remember that it's your least expensive plan think about this as your HOA payment and your HOA payment is slated to come down and the plan as a whole has performed well we've maintained uh We've achieved our our long-term
097uh return targets uh the plan remains stable remember this is our funded funded ratio your the ratio of your checking account assets to what we owe for our mortgage AG has been very stable and we're well funded um our costs remain relatively low we continue to look for ways to increase our sustainability in that man and then lastly we're we're growing our awareness and looking for ways to to continue to position FCPS as uh as a top employer and increase your your competitive status amongst your peers as well so with maybe I'll open up for questions um thank you very much Mr Martinez for that presentation um at this point we will open the floor for questions from our school board members thank you Miss Corbett Sanders go ahead thank you for this very informative
098and detailed presentation it has uh in my four years now five years on the board um this is probably the most comprehensive uh presentation that I have seen for the erfc so I I greatly appreciate it I'm also very appreciative of the work you have done in um creating more efficiencies and putting in the best practices that are showing real uh returns in um how the erfc fund is being managed I have one question for you and you might not have this information today and if you don't that's fine um if somebody could get it to me I'd appreciate it and that is um whether you have a comparison of the employer rate employer contribution rate provided to the other Fairfax County funds you know I'm sorry I don't have that with me but we
099can get it to you that would be greatly appreciated thank you um additionally I would just hope that uh we make this a more um you know that we ensure that this is on our Board calendar every year in the past we've actually had a work session with erfc are we planning on having a work session on this uh subject Madam chair um no we were intending to have the conversation that we typically have during this meeting because of our schedule just attempting to balance it out a little bit um so all of the questions that we typically would have during that work session can be had tonight we've budgeted time for that okay thank you very much um so uh just as a next steps in the future if we could return to having
100a more robust uh work session discussion on this uh for I know this year is very unusual because of what we're dealing with with uh covid-19 the return to school but in the future it would be great thank you did you have any other questions Miss coret Sanders no uh Mr Martin EDS is going to provide that information to the board and it would be very helpful once we have that information we can have other conversations thank you are there any other questions okay seeing none I think we are all very impressed by the detailed information that you provided to us this uh this a this evening Mr Martinez and since we haven't any uh more questions from our school board members I will turn it over to you for closure because I believe you
101had a few more slides oh thank you chair I I actually those are just appendix slides in case it were just qu there was questions I I don't have any other um you know comments on my presentation I will just just add that you know I want to also thank U our chair kimbery Adams she's been fantastic in terms of supporting the pension plan and um you know we we really couldn't do a lot of the things that we've done without without that support thank you very much and thank you for joining us this evening have a good night Dr Bray brand did you want to offer any um other statements I I think uh Miss Corbett Sanders nailed it this is the best presentation uh Mr Martinez that's been done for this for in
102in years thank you for your leadership and uh we uh we're grateful that you came to Fairfax County Public Schools and we're grateful you're here leading erfc to new levels of Excellence so thank you and uh I'll see you soon Eli thank you sounds good great to be here thank you all this is the portion of the meeting where the board will confirm any action regarding issues that were discussed in the closed meeting these issues may include action taken regarding student disciplin disciplinary matters board members have discussed each individual case and at this time we will make several Mo motions to confirm the recommended the recommended action I'm struggling this evening um I will call on Miss corett Sanders for the motion yes I move to excuse from attendance at school certain students identified in
103the closed meeting pursuant to Virginia code section 22.1 through B1 do we have a second second thank you Miss Tolen all in favor of the motion oh oh I'm so sorry did we need to speak to the motion Miss Corbett Sanders I think the motion speaks for itself Dr Anderson thank you thank you Miss Tolen did you want to speak to your second no I don't need to speak to my second thank you thank you all in favor please raise your hands we have Mr frish Miss Marin Miss Dan kofax Miss Corbett Sanders Miss SEO Heiser Miss Tolen myself Miss um Cohen Miss Keys gamara miss pakari and miss mlin thank you very much please lower your hands at this time I call on Miss seismo Heiser for a motion regarding the acsd advisory committee
104ch pardon M chair will you also please call for the no votes and the abent ones oh I'm sorry thank you um are there those who are against the motion that was previously shared by Miss Corbett Sanders all those against Miss mlin thank you all those abstaining no no um chair chairman Anderson I'm I voted yes okay thank you for yes I appreciate that I I didn't remember that so we have no no votes and we have no abstentions at this point no we have one abstention Miss om is that correct yeah thank you um Madame clerk we have one abstention and 11 votes for yes thank thank you I will turn it over now to um Miss GM moiser thank you madam chair um I move that the school board approve the acsd charge
105for the 2020 2021 students with disabilities Schoolboard citizen advisory committee as detailed in the agenda item thank you is there a second thank you Miss pakari Miss Eiser would you like to speak to your motion just very briefly I'm very very excited about this charge I think as one of our speakers spoke earlier speaking viewing the Fidelity of implementation and ensuring consistency in our special education Service delivery as well as making sure that our wonderful resources and expertise in our department of special services are utilized in a consistent way to support our students and teachers across the county is a great charge and something that um I think will help all of our students and teachers implement the services for our students with disability so I'm very excited about this charge and I appreciate the
106hard work that U Mike Bloom and his department and the acsd chair lenon have done to come up with this charge and I really appreciate their work and efforts I'm highly in support of this thank you Miss moiser Miss pakari would you like to speak to your second I just want to say um thank you to Mike Bloom and to acsd chair um and the committee for working to get this um just right for next year I appreciate that thank you thank you would any of our colleagues like to speak to this motion okay seeing none the motion before us is I move that the school board approve the acsd charge for the 2021 students with disability Schoolboard citizens advisory committee as detailed in the agenda item all those in favor we have Miss parari
107Mr frish Miss Cohen Miss corit Sanders Miss om Miss seore Heiser Miss Dan kofax Miss Marin Miss Tolen myself Miss Kei gamara and miss mlin all those opposed there are none all those abstaining there are none the motion carries at this time I call on Miss omes for the motion regarding our standard school year calendar um I believe Marin uh go ahead go ahead oh I'm so sorry it's Miss Marin for the school year calendar um actually I was going to defer to miss eore Heiser please eore Heiser you have the floor great thank you very much I appreciate that I would like to make a motion to remove the 2021 2022 standard school year calendar off tonight's agenda item and instead ask our chair to bring the um reviewing the calendar to a work
108session to have a further discussion to review our calendar in the lens of educational best practices in light of covid and the needs that Co has on the remediation needs and other needs of our students and how education can be reimagine going forward is there a second Miss Cohen thank you for your second uh Miss seis moiser would you like to speak to your motion yes just just briefly I think um I know there's a lot of work that went into framing this calendar but a lot of the thought and discussion around this calendar was done in in a preco era and just as we've had to redo and reimagine so much of how we're delivering education due to the realities of covid and honestly I think the long-term needs of our students due to
109the realities of covid I think it's important to look at our calendar again from this sort of Co knowledge lens in terms of reimagining Education reimagining what our students need might be and really focusing on academics and educational best practices in the era of Co so I think it would behoove us as a board to really take a deeper dive into our calendar and what might be uh the best what might best meet the schedule and educational needs of our students thank you very much Miss Cohen would you like to speak to your second I just Echo uh what my colleague Miss seore Heiser just said about I think we really need a relook at how we make sure that we're going to meet the needs of our kids given um what last year brought
110us and and this year unfortunately with Co um it gives us some opportunities to look at um framing best practices so I'm excited to Second this motion and grateful for Miss Marin's support because of all the work that the committee did going into this thank you uh would any colleagues like to speak to this motion Miss Marin please go ahead yes thank you yes um I had served as the board's Lees onto the calendar committee earlier this year and in addition to agreeing with the points made tonight about how um unknown the future is and how we can actually leverage some better practices that come can come out of this experience you know the calendar committee which was made up of community members and staff talked at length about how even you know back then
111before Co the calendar could better serve students um and that was a conversation that included a wide array of people so I think that it's a it's a really good opportunity and although our community does like to know what's happening well in advance I think right now in this time in this era we can um put a put a hold on this and talk about it more deeply um as a as a full board as we deliberate so thank you I support the motion thank you are there any other speakers seeing none I will call for the vote on this motion the motion made by Miss seore Heiser is uh Miss seism moiser please read it um read your statement again please absolutely I'd like to make a motion to remove the the 2021 2022
112standard school year calendar off tonight's agenda instead and instead ask the chair to bring reviewing the calendar to a Schoolboard work session all those in favor we have Miss corett Sanders Miss pakari Miss Marin Miss Cohen Miss om Miss Keys gamara Miss seismo Heiser Miss mclin Miss Tolen Mr fr Miss D kofx and myself and I believe that is unanimous that is 12 thank you please lower your hands at this time we'll be moving to our consent agenda 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 the Board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and to the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at
113the request of any board member prior to the meeting 5.01 approve the minutes of the regular school board meetings as detailed in the agenda item 5.02 approve the bus pass memorandum of agreement with the county 5.03 approve contract change order number seven for the Mason Crest geothermal project the project in the total amount of 60,3 $15.94 cents and two authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facility and transportation services either of whom may act without the other to accept execute deliver and administer change order number seven as well as any future change orders on the project on behalf of the school board with a copy of any such future executed change orders to be prompt to be promptly filed with the clerk of the board for distribution to the members of for their
114information 5.04 consent to revised policy as reviewed by the governance committee 5.05 adopt a resolution stating the board's intention to be reimbursed for eligible equipment purchases with proceeds from the fy2021 State Technology Grant which is funded with Virginia Public School Authority B bonds 5.06 appoint individuals to serve on committees as detailed in the agenda item is there any objection to approving the consent agenda seeing none the consent agenda is approv approved new business the following a new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items tonight but action is scheduled at a future meeting 6.01 consider the renaming of Mosby Woods Elementary School as outlined in our regulation 8170 6.02 award the contract for the running track replacement at Lewis High School to field Turf USA Incorporated in the amount of 328
1158,579 and authorize the division superintendent or the assistant superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute and administer the contract on behalf of the school board 6.03 award the contract for the running track replacement at Thomas Jefferson High School to field Turf USA Incorporated in the amount of $368,500 I'm sorry and um authorize the division superintendent or the insistent superintendent of facilities and transportation services to execute and administer the contract on behalf of the school board 5.04 appoint individuals to serve a one-year term on the challenge materials enter departmental Review Committee as detailed in the agenda item 6.05 authorize the the assistant superintendent in consultation with staff and legal counsel to take all actions necessary and appropriate to finalize and Grant the Fairfax County EAS uh the Fairfax County easement over the relevant portion of
116West Springfield High School 6.06 adopt the newly revised 2020 Fairfax County Purchasing resolution previously adopted by the Board of Supervisors subject to the conditions detailed in the agenda item at this point I will call on the superintendent for superintendent matters Dr Bray brand thank you chairman Anderson uh I just have a few comments this evening uh first I want to say just from the bottom of my heart um a big thanks to our staff our staff members have been working nonstop these past weeks and months to prepare our students for the very best and safest start to school I'm very proud of all of them uh I can safely say to you all tonight and to this community this is the biggest challenge FCPS has ever faced and every one of our teachers and support
117staff and principls and central office staff and leadership team have risen to this occasion I could not be prouder to be superintendent of this school system to see what our individuals have done each and every day and so to our staff members this evening I hope you take a moment this weekend to truly rest and recharge enjoy the Labor Day weekend and come back ready as I know you will be to provide a worldclass education to our students uh in Fairfax County Schools I also want to thank our families and students um I know how hard this pandemic has been on our students and families it's not the way you wanted your school year to start it is uh at the end of all the things that we had to look at the right way
118to begin and it is my hope that we will be able to end this year differently uh with our students back in school full-time no matter what I can't predict the future none of us can what I can tell you with 100% certitude is that our teachers and staff will give their very best every day to support the students and families of Fairfax County Public Schools I want to also thank all the members of our reopening of school task force we've been working with them all summer uh to get their feedback as we have prepared for this reopening and we will continue uh to be uh working with them uh through the first quarter of the year and uh working on uh making sure we continue the positive momentum into the school year I also
119want to thank our superintendent technology advisor committee uh you all got to hear from one of the co-chairs Greg Baron just a few weeks ago all of them have done amazing work and I am grateful to everything uh they have done to support our team and I want to thank all of our Community Partners who've been partnering with our schools uh with our uh Director of Business Partnerships Jay garan and working with Elizabeth Murphy in our Education Foundation to really step forward in a time of need and provide additional services and supports to our families finally I just want to say we are ready for Tuesday we are ready for the first day of school for this school year I know there will be challenges along the way some that uh we may not be
120able to know in this moment but I do know in this moment that we will rise to meet the challenge and we will continue to go above and beyond to deliver an exceptional educational experience to all of our students and families and I'm grateful for everything that's been done I'm grateful for our team and I'm excited very excited to start a new school year in Fairfax County Public Schools so thank you very much thank you very much Dr Bray brand for those remarks um at this time we will move to board committee reports I call on Miss seismo Heiser for an update from the public engagement committee and Miss Tolen for an update from The Joint environmental task force great thank you very much Madam chair I appreciate the opportunity to share we had our
121first uh public engagement committee meeting yesterday of our newly reconstituted public engagement committee for this next year and I'm very very excited we took some time to really delve deep into the public engagement charge I believe and I know our committee agrees with us that there's there's never really been a more important time to make sure that we're communicating and engage engaging our community as we move forward into this unusual and unprecedented school year to make sure we hear the voic of our community and communicate out to them and stay connected and keep them engaged so we looked at our charge and reviewed the charge around planning strategies topics timelines and others matters related to board and community dialogues and public engagement with stakeholders and we looked we broke this down into two pieces the
122communication piece as the and the engagement piece and on the communications piece I'm really excited to say that as a as a committee we are going to work hand inhand with our communication staff our FCPS communication staff OCR to really help coordinate commun board Communications around major major initiatives and items that are coming up to make sure that we inform our our community of what we are doing why we are doing it and what the the goals and outcomes that we were hoping to have so we really keep our community informed and also engaged in the work of the board and the work in the board of oversee our um our system to make sure that our system is providing the excellent education so I'm very very excited to really delve have our committee delve
123deep into the work of Communications on a consistent basis working with our occr team and then on top in addition to that we looked at the engagement piece of our charge and how do we really ensure in this 21st century that we are engaging our public in the variety of ways that we're used to whether it's through town halls through use of social media through apps and we decided as a committee we're really going to delve into looking B best practices and recommendations to our colleagues on the board of how can we trly engage all of our diverse populations in the 21st century as well as looking at our citizen participation practices in our governance manual this is ongoing work from the previous pet committee on revising our citizen um communic participation practices in our
124public meetings so we'll be bringing that work to our full board colleagues as well and finally we have a pending Forum topic to look at our committee structure and processes and procedures to make sure again we're really maximizing um Community engagement and hearing Community voice and communicating out and that's also work we bringing if our board colleagues approve the form topic next week we'll be working on in our public engagement committee so there's a lot of exciting work that I think we're we're taking on as public engagement but the the most exciting piece is really making sure that our charge is being fulfilled consistently and helping partner with our board to provide that coordination on commity communication so our public knows what we're doing and feels like a partner in our board work and we're
125representing the voice of our constituents and the people so that's the update on the pet committee we're excited to do this work and I'll have more next month after we again thank you very much Miss Asma Heiser Miss Tolen yes thank you um Carl frish and I are very excited to report that the a joint environmental task force is working toward having a set of recommendations by early October that we can present to both the school board and the Board of Supervisors we met yesterday evening um and each of our four subgroups energy waste reduction transportation and Workforce Development have draft recommendations on topics ranging from uh Net Zero Energy goals electrifying our bus and car fleets procurement with an eye toward less waste um using the sustainable features in our buildings as learning tools
126and collaborating further across County agencies to bring our students internships apprenticeships en Rich interactions with environmental professionals that can enhance career possibilities and more to formulate these recommendations the jet met in person and virtually since its Inception in April of 2019 um both Carl and I joined the Jets just in this past January um in 2020 I I want to extend a huge thank you to our scps staff in U facilities and maintenance Energy Management Career and Technical education get to Green Transportation and design and construction for giving our task force guidance along the way um your expertise and on the ground experience has been incredibly valuable in um putting these recommendations together um Carl and I will be meeting with our Board of supervisor counterparts uh Penny gross and Dan St on September 16th
127to discuss our next steps and how we will work to inform each board about the details of the final recommendations and how we will jointly announce the work um that the jet has done to date um the recommendations will be needed uh will need to be looked at by staff experts in FCPS and across uh our County agencies um to determine the budgetary impacts and reasonable next steps for implementation so then um each board can um get that information and um make decisions on on which recommendations to move forward with so that's where we are um and we're looking forward to bringing you more in uh late September and October thank you thank you so much Miss Tolen for that informative um um update um we do have one more uh Miss Marin please go
128ahead and provide a budget update yes so our budget committee is working on um two budgets right now one is the current budget operating which is um the fiscal 2122 budget so we're executing that budget and that work includes um requesting additional money from the County Board of Supervisors under the federal cares act which was sent over to the county this week um we're also managing the cares act funding that will come from the government that the district received Direct l so we received uh about $19 million from directly for our school district and the County Board of Supervisors received uh 200 million Federal cares act funding of which we are seeking about 19 million to cover um immediate needs to deal with covid costs we'll also be having a first quarter review coming up
129and that will um you know keep us on top of this year's funding additionally we are beginning to prepare for the next budget that's fiscal year 22 so that would be the budget that begins next July and Schoolboard members have been having conversations with the superintendent our Chief Financial Officer and finance staff to determine start to determine our priorities for the year and at our meeting in September our regular school board meeting our public meeting staff will present their summary and Analysis of these conversation that conversations that we've been having so that will be a very interesting conversation to hear and continue so thank you very much thank you very much Miss Marin at this time I would call on our colleagues for their updates Miss Cohen please go ahead followed by Miss corett Sanders
130thank you very much uh first just wanted to start off in the same vein as Dr Bray bran and really thank staff I know this has been one heck of a learning curve uh since March 13 so thank you for all you have done to get us ready um for Tuesday I know it has been a Herculean effort and has meant working well um into the night and weekends and it is so appreciated not only by this board um but definitely speaking as a parent um we sure appreciate all your hard work um and now we're going to call on your patience with us as we learn um to bridge the the this New Horizon for us um and your patience with some of us who are more technically challenged um than probably our students
131so thank you I also wanted to thank the Cherry Run Community um for the amazing response to my book drive and wanted to highlight a couple of students FCPS students Ben messers Smith from Boy Scout Troop 698 who worked uh to earn his reading badge by collecting 608 books to donate and Miss Riley kol from Girl Scout Troop 2922 who collected over 1,500 books to earn her silver Award with their help since April we've collected and distributed over 3,000 books to elementary school students during grab andg go meal pickup um and I'm so grateful for the support uh later this month I'll resume my PTA round taes and listening sessions I want to hear all about week one um and so please don't hesitate to reach out to me my eighth and 10th graders um
132will be um figuring it all out with your kids as well and I look forward to hearing all of the awesome things that happen um and certainly let me know if there's anything that we can be helpful with um we'll be in it with you and very nervous on Tuesday Morning um as we watch our kids take an a first step in a very different different way this year um I hope your families have lovely Labor Day weekend um be careful be safe and um be ready for Tuesday morning when we get to start this school year officially thanks thank you Miss Cohen Miss Corbet Sanders followed by Miss Co D kofax sorry I was a little delay in getting my video on um it is amazing that we are just just five short days
133away from the start of the new school year and I too want to thank not only our staff and our teachers and everybody who's been working around the clock to be ready for this new virtual start but I also want to thank our community members that have leaned in and helped everybody in our most vulnerable communities um with the supports that are that are just necessary to get through the difficult times we've been through and I want to do a special shout out to both nna and their support of the back the backpack drive at Mount ver in high school this past week and Alice's kids for their um funding of home um learning packages for some of our Title One kids which includes ear uh earbuds to be able to more effectively engage in
134the virtual learning experience because many of our students will be in relatively tight um uh learning uh you know multiple kids accessing the virtual um classroom in the same room at in their homes and so these earbuds are a great um contribution from Alice's kids so I do want to thank them I also um look forward to hearing everybody's uh hearing from from everybody about the experiences that uh they are going to have on Tuesday we want to hear all the great uh experiences your children have and if you have any challenges please know that we're here to try to support you in those challenges the there is an excellent um hotline uh for parents and students um to access for technology and uh just you know we know that this may be a challenge
135but we want to uh make sure that we're all in this together and make this a positive experience thank you thank you Miss Dar kfax followed by Mr frish sorry took a little while um I too as my colleagues have spoke um I want to thank Dr Bray brand and his leadership team the teachers and principes and staff for the very hard work that they have done um to get us to where we will be on Tuesday um this pandemic has challenged our board and our staff in ways that we could not have imagined at the beginning of this calendar year and I am proud of the work that we have done together to get us ready for the virtual opening on Tuesday to our parents and students I hope you know how excited our
136teachers are to be begin um this New Year virtually with their students and for our parents we have lots of uh new resources to help you during this distance learning time and I've watched them some of them are just incredible we have some podcasts we have a parent help desk and we have videos filled with tips on Virtual learning so um I thank our staff for doing that and and getting that together and I just want everyone to know that um I am confident that we are going to be in a good place with our virtual start and I just hope everyone has a successful start on Tuesday again as my colleagues referenced our board is here you know how to reach us our contact information is on the website if you're having challenges of
137course first start with your teacher your principles your counselors but we are also here as a board to help listen to your concerns if any eyes but I look forward to hearing all the first day opening positive stories that we we we hope to see and hear and uh have a great Labor Day weekend and uh do something some more summer fun before we get started on our new year thank you Miss kofax Mr fr followed by Miss Keys gamara thank you chairman Anderson um I want to thank everybody as everybody has said for their hard work in preparing for this coming Tuesday not only our our staff and our amazing teachers and and support staff but also for the parents who are getting their students ready to uh engage in distance learning I think
138we all know that this return to school is unlike any fall we've ever experienced before so um you know I look forward to hearing uh all of the stories that that there are to be had uh this week um uh I'm I've been fortunate to uh continue to meet with constituents although virtually um and as people heard in the meeting earlier tonight the board has moved forward with the process of renaming Mosby Woods Elementary School so now a 30-day clock has begun and we will begin the community engagement portion of the process I look forward to talking about that process with the Mosby Woods Community at the PTA meeting the Mosby Woods Elementary School PTA meeting later this month um this week I completed my 240th hour of office hours scheduled to hold uh meetings
139with Providence District families parents students teachers staff since we began uh the school closure back in March um I'll close by saying I think we all know that our ability to make the most of this difficult situation is incumbent upon parents and teachers and staff to share their honest feedback with them us the good and the bad about their experiences with distance learning and we need to know what's working and What needs Improvement so that we can make things better so please don't hesitate to continue reaching out to me during this time of social distancing hearing directly from constituents is extremely important um we are all in this together and I thank everybody from the bottom of my heart for the support and dedication they've shown to our students to our staff and to our
140families thank you thank you Mr fr Miss ke Garo followed by Miss mclin I will have to continue the chorus of thank yous I know from having spoken to so many people in our community especially students and having been able to have uh Town Halls discussing issues on the minds of our students uh looking forward to um you know what can happen next as we change these names and how we focus on um issues that are concern to them I just want our families and everyone to know that we see how hard our members of our community are working how our students have not lost hope how they're continuing to Advocate I've been so proud of them um so happy to be able to work with our um uh our student representative to continue to
141make sure that the voice of our students are heard um our parents continuing to learn and calling that hotline uh to make sure that we're ready to go on Tuesday uh our staff members our teachers our food service workers our bus drivers all everybody pitching in in whatever way that they can and so thank you I just wanted you to know that we see you um we want to be available I want to continue to be available and it truly is an honor to serve uh this community because we are truly stronger together um and thank you guys so much and I look forward to to working through this and also to having additional discussions on September 15 as we um plot out how we're going to go forward so thank you so much thank
142you Miss K gamar Miss mlin followed by Miss great thank you I'm happy to be following Mr fr and Miss Kei Kamara um who captured my sentiments uh not just appreciation to uh all of the FCPS employees who are working so hard to prepare for next Tuesday uh but for our families who are finding this um without question the most uh challenging opening to a new school year uh when you're talking about incorporating um new technology and access for student learning and so the only thing I would add beyond their eloquent remarks is that I do I want to reinforce for our families as as well as for our teachers and school building staff uh that this board and I know our superintendent are deeply dedicated to supporting you every single day in this learning
143effort and if you come across any challenges or concerns uh please speak up please don't suffer in silence please know that when you alert us we can help problem solve and it's going to be so critical that if uh for parents especially if if you see your child is struggling socially emotionally um or even academically to connect um in this virtual setting please um we are just one email one phone call away and we want so much to make sure that um unlike the spring that every single child is engaged in learning every single day and we want to partner and support that so my best wishes to all of you as you celebrate these final days of what is officially known as summer vacation um know that we are going to do everything we
144can to make this a joyfill year um but most importantly we stand here to serve you so uh best wishes I hope everyone stays safe and stays well and we look forward to continuing to serve you um as we give a new school year thank you Miss Marin followed by Miss om yes hello to the community I am right there with you fellow parents in this really unique time um this week we picked up school supplies from the school we've my daughter's changing the background on her laptop uh that she got from school the kids met their teachers for the virtual openhouse and we had orientation online it it's been quite a whirlwind and uh I think I've been walking a lot around my house so I hear you it's it's exciting but it is
145it is a lot so please know that I I really understand what you're going through and it's it's not ideal but wow it's also pretty exciting and um speaking of exciting I I would like to just reflect on the tremendous work that you know the School Division continues to put forward and I'm proud of the school board for doing so as well tonight we approved the child abuse reporting policy which had been needing State and really glad that our governance committee which I was part of um earlier this year was able to do that and we know that you know abuse reporting is actually down with kids outside of school and know that kids are suffering so having a clear policy will just further help our staff identify you know how they can you know
146what they need to do if they suspect the child is being abused um also I've been active in advocating for General assy right now who's in special session in Richmond and there are some threats to our funding um due to changes in tax revenue structure and how attendance is calculated so it's been a lot to try and um advocate for us down State uh to our leaders who are representing us there and we will need to continue that through the special session and you know the General Session in January I mentioned the budget shair work and one particular thing that I'm very interested um as we develop the budget is looking at how the budgetary impacts of changing things like our TJ admissions policy and access to AAP programs what budgetary work is to make
147those changes happen because unless we have funding and um Protocols of process tied to that change can't happen so uh that's just one aspect I wanted to share I will say I'm really eager to attend any p and Community meetings that you have and I'll be sending a note out to PTA andent organizations soon I welcome the chance to listen uh in on your meetings and hear your concerns and ideas and share updates and finally I have to thank our staff from central office to the school you know I've just have seen so many ways that staff are working I've seen it as a Schoolboard member as a parent and you know throughout this trial since March I have only met people who want the best for students so please keep this in mind let's
148be kind to one another in this um unusual time but know that we are all here trying to do our best for students and I wish you all a restful weekend and a great start to this school year thank you thank you Miss may miss om followed by Miss pakari thank you um I will uh especially and you know uh right before Labor Day coming up uh thank our staff um you know I'd be remiss not to mention that Labor Day itself has been a struggle to be heard to be acknowledged to fight for the rights of workers and of course we have thousands of them in our system who've been working so hard in addition to leadership and everyone else who's been putting this together so incredibly grateful and uh looking forward to a
149successful start of our year um as you guys always know I have office hours I encourage folks to sign up if there's anything uh pressing that you want to speak about or any issue you want to bring to my attention um or if you want to participate in a working group on any number of issues and topics that um you may be passionate about um you can also find us on our stream every Monday at 7 uh we've been trying I co-host with Nathan actually our student rep we've been really trying to highlight issues that could be of benefit to the community uh we just had a detailed session on Advanced academics um this previous session we had one with the health department and we'll be doing a back to school overview with actually Ken
150cor Sanders uh coming up with the latest that information that we have um and and allowing you to ask your questions live so I encourage you guys to tune in that's easy to find me every week um in addition to that I do want to uh start with in using my board matters time um to give voice to some of our community members in FCPS uh we all kind of live our experiences and uh Forge your own paths and and it can be uh insightful to to imagine the experiences in FCPS through the lens of someone else um and so given that we had just you know recognized Hispanic Heritage Month um I thought to recognize a particular staff member um and so I'll read a a quick quote from her she says working in
151the FCPS system has been an incredible experience as the leader of the Spanish early literacy program I have been able to impact the lives of many families in my community while maintaining my identity as a Latina Muslim my community has embraced me and accepted me as I am so I hope to hear many more positive stories like that um and as we look at the first day of school I remind us that number one uh this is historic and that you're part of a historic class of students um so you your kids and grandkids will be able to read this in the history books one day um but really it's an opportunity for us to reflect as we start the new year to come together yet again um and I encourage everyone to perhaps set
152some personal goals as we walk into this year um in in what kinds of new beginnings we can forge for ourselves and and a beginning of Hope um so despite the challenges as my colleagues have touched on I I hope that we can enter this year with some enthusiasm um and and a desire to better ourselves and and better our circumstances so uh with that I yield my time thank you thank you Misses Miss bakari followed by Miss seore Heiser and then miss toen thank you good evening everybody um I sorry that's um today I took my my youngest to school um my sixth child she's starting kindergarten um and she had to pick up her laptop she had some testing that was um to be completed with a staff member who came out in
153full PPE and a mask and you know we were not allowed to go into the into the office area and I was reminded um just how different this year is um as if we needed any more reminders but it just it it it really just kind of left an impression on me um but my kindergartner was excited she was happy um and I I want that for all our kids even though this won't be the expected school year um I think it's going to be a great school year and I want to thank all of the parents for your patience with us I share your anxieties they're many um you know we all want the best for our children we all want them to have a spectacular school year even if it's going to be
154a little different and I can say hands down that in my 20 years in Fairfax County in in all the different ways that I've been involved teacher parent you know now Schoolboard member I have never seen this level of hard work um and just sheer desire to do anything and everything it takes to ensure that we reach every single child um and you know I want to thank Dr Bray Brown your leadership staff um administrators teachers everyone for the many many many many hours you you have put in um as a parent you know I can attest I've been overwhelmed at times in the amount excuse me the amount of Outreach I've had from our schools and um I want to thank um all of you and and parents please reach out we are here
155to help you to partner with you um and I I look to hearing from all of you and hopefully sharing some stories of your first week thank you thank you Miss barski um Miss asore Heiser great uh thank you very much and um I appreciate the time to speak and um I just was want to Echo my colleagues and and really thanking um our staff our teachers our administrators and Echo Miss bski said I have never seen a group of people work so hard to um make sure that in this era covid where things things are not how any of us want them to be that they are going to do everything they can to make this as good as possible for our students and reach every student I've been incredibly impressed not just at
156the work that they're doing but the attitude by which they're doing it every time I speak to a principal a teacher um an administrator one of our leadership team there's just this era of we got this we got our kids we love our kids we're going to do whatever it takes for our kids and really I I my hats off to our our stff and our teachers and our team for doing that um and to Dr Bray brand for leading that chart I really appreciate um all that you've done especially considering that everyone has their own families and their own worry and their own Trauma from Co um and they're still doing that and it's it's just very impressive um I wanted to talk to our families directly as as a parent um of a
157rising senior I know and a parent of a special ed kid I know that this is not the school year that many of us wanted and there's a lot of anxiety and a lot of worry and there's there's kids who are better able to access a virtual environment than others are and and I promise you we see all of that we know all of that is there and we are trying to do our best to do our best by everybody um I ask as we start I I'm very excited to have for school to start on Tuesday um I watch my own kids through the orientation sit through and with a big SM on his face um talk to his new teacher and um is's in course boot camp this week as we speak I
158you know I ask everyone in this world to have some patience some Grace some kindness and some understanding for everybody for our parents for our teachers for our students um we are all doing our best and um we want to do right by everybody so we know that an important education is is valuable to you as well as for your children to have that sense of belonging um you know I've been holding town halls in August I had a mental health focused town hall and I appreciate our student representative Nathan onibudo for joining me as long as well as many staff members our counseling staff to focus on Mental Health I appreciate Marty Smith and Miss Banning and Dr iy for joining me last night on return to school town hall and I'll have another
159one on September 16th right after our work session on return to school that'll be focused on special education and I appreciate Mike Bloom and Jane strong for joining me there to really answer a lot of our special families questions um I wanted to say just a really quick word to our class of 2021 um I know that that you have not stepped foot in your high school since March junior year I know how hard that is I know many of you are worried about college and about what your last year of high school will look like and in your connections and your schooling and I just want you to know that we do see you and we care about you and we're going to make sure that you guys are okay so I just wanted
160to give that to the class of 2021 that we got you we see you we know you're there we want to make your senior year special as for all of our students we want to make this year a special as possible and and I'm just going to end with one thing and I've said this before and and I said at my town hall last night but there's a lot of angst and and Trauma out there and it's causing a lot of us and and myself included at times to really living in this negative atmosphere that we're sort of surrounded ourselves with and I think moving forward the best way to learn to live with covid and the impact it's had on our life is not living it's not living in the negative it's learning to
161live with the negative and if we learn to live with the negative and truly live we might actually find moments of joy and even moments of unexpected growth in this next year so I hope that you all out there find a way to live with this I appreciate it thank you thank you Miss Isis moiser Miss Tolen thank you yes welcome back to school just a few more days um not the opening we expected but um we're moving forward nonetheless um I do want to applaud all of our families um I've just seen so many creative way ways that families are collaborating with each other setting up amazing workstations for Kids U in their homes um you know figuring out ways for um you know kids to collaborate and I've just been really impressed um
162with your resiliency and um I also really want to thank our families for supporting our school-based staff the way that they have and supporting their teachers and um you know being excited to work with them and just to um make next week and the rest of our school year um the best of it possibly can be um yes I have seen our staff working day and night um to bring us the best of virtual learning um I know my friends in curriculum and instruction have worked endless hours to rewrite curriculum materials um for our teachers and run professional development programs all summer long um you know well you know into next week and um I'm also excited to see that our teachers signed up for those professional development courses um in drow our teachers I
163heard stories of you know many of them um you know decided to take online teaching courses at Mason or you know through other organizations um just to try to be able to provide the best um service that they can possibly give their students um starting next week Tuesday and I just want to thank them for doing that um and you know just being so proud of them in their professional developments um I was really excited this past week I attended a couple of virtual orientations and it was really great to see how excited the students were and how excited the teachers were and how the teachers were working super hard to um build community and excitement you know even though we couldn't be in person um I have to say my favorite question that a
164student asked was when's the first day of school anyway like when do we start I thought that was pretty cute um uh I'm continuing to have um conversations with our school staff our parents our community organizations and I was happy to um talk with blly high school students this past week along with Nathan um just to kind of hear you know what they're thinking about and what they're nervous about you know with um everything that's been happening over the last several months and starting the year virtually um I do want to thank Douglas Tyson for um participating in a town hall with myself and Stella B carski earlier this week and um you know he was a huge help in getting a detailed information out to families and we'll continue to work on projects like
165that um together as we move forward this year um don't hesitate to reach out to me as my other colleagues have said we definitely want to hear how things are going what's working what isn't and I'll be continuing my office hours and my newsletters um throughout the fall and I of course wish only the best for you know you and your families um as we U finish up Summer and you know move into the next school year and uh just look forward to U working together to do the best job for our students possible thank you very much thank you very much Miss Tolen I will take a very brief turn I do want to Echo much of what my colleagues have shared regarding best wishes for our families our students um and our staff
166um as a parent myself I'm also walking the walk with all of you uh but I do want to share that for me the opening of schools has always been meaningful in my life because as a teacher and as a former teacher and as a former School principal I've always been part of creating the experience for students as they're returning back to school it's been my New Year's Eve my New Year's Day um this year is different but I don't want to sober this moment too much with reminders of what isn't but I do want to take some time to focus um this evening and to honor what is um what is for me right now is really deep gratitude to our superintendent um Dr Bray brand to our leadership team um Dr Ivy do
167Dr Ivy Mr Smith Dr pridal uh I don't want to leave out any names but I know I am I I do re I think we all do we all recognize all of the hours all of you have been putting forth since since May I'm sorry since March it's just been nonstop um I also want to recognize the rest of the central leadership um administrators the regional superintendent Dr um zuluaga and my region and countless others who have been working non-stop um it is very appreciative in terms of all of the efforts that you're putting forth to a smooth reopening of schools um all of the plans all of the hours all of the work that you're putting forward um also what I want to focus on is the appreciation for the school staff the
168principles the teachers the support staff for all of the hours that I've gone around the schools in Mason District and seeing all the um distribution of laptops and the hot baking sun for days and days on end distribution of school supplies um helping parents figure out everything from A to Z and as U Miss pakari shared I as a parent I'm also feeling the Outreach it's been a ton of emails um remind um text regular text messages and phone calls from both the staff at Mason Crest and at Glasgow so I do want to shout out those two schools because I know very specifically about the efforts that you're putting forward to ensure that our students are ready um that they are connected and that they are prepared for next week um so thank you
169for all of that in the hopes of a very successful launch next week um I definitely know that instruct teaching learning it's always been interconnected but more than never this year we are relying on Persons more than we some persons more than we have ever in the past you know as a parent as it was shared earlier who's creating those um learning environments in our um living room bedrooms Etc to make sure that our kids have a space where they can access their instruction I'm just appre appreciative of all of the effort um from all staff from our parents and families who are trying very hard to be sure that we have a successful start of the year lastly I do want to give a very very very deep thank you to Riley coel she
170is a student at West Springfield who collected hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books which she passed along to me which I was able to share with about 12 of our um elementary schools in this area I'm so appreciative of your work for your girl scout award which has benefited hundreds of students in our area so thank you for that um having said that I'm the last speaker I will now ask for one of our Schoolboard members to make a motion to go into close meeting to consult with legal counsel for matters pertaining to actual or probable litigation where such consultation or briefing and open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the public body and regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such Council specifically Personnel matters
171and student accommodations pursuant to 2.2 3711 A7 and 8 of the code of Virginia thank you Mr fr for making that motion do we have a second okay thank you Miss okay let's start again do we have someone making the motion I have Miss is moiser seconding the motion miss oesh all of those in favor please raise your hands we have Miss seis moiser Miss omesh Miss Marin Miss Cohen Miss to Miss mclin Miss Corbett Sanders myself miss pakari Mr frish Miss keys gamara and Miss darak kofax um that motion will carry thank you all um we will now adjourn to our close session and we will come back after to um certify clothes as we do normally I will see you all in the other room in in 2 minutes 9:50 thank you e